After years of reading Found Magazine, I finally had my very own "finding" this week. I was getting on the train headed home when I came across a handwritten letter left in a vacant subway seat.

It seems to have been deliberately discarded by the recipient. He had torn out part of the envelope that contained his mailing address, but carefully left everything else intact.

The letter is sort of heartbreaking. The return address corner doesn't have an address -- just the words "Your True Friend." The letter begins with an apology. The author, presumably a jilted lover, is writing to ask the recipient, Mr. Allen, for forgiveness after the end of their relationship on January 10, 2005. The first page is a thoughtful, sincere apology. However, the second, third, and fourth pages are full of vindictive rage and righteous indignation.

I can see why Mr. Allen didn't want to hang on to the letter. This woman is still pretty hot under the collar.

Every time she uses the word "remember" it's underlined two or three times.

An excerpt follows. Spelling is copied:

By know means was I an angel — oh know! Because toward the end, say 2 1/2 - 3 yrs I was taking from you, not for the reason you thought oh know — but to keep a little money in my pocket, because you didn't and wouldn't give me anything, when I would think about it being wrong and feel really sorry about doing it — my other side would say he did it to you the first 8 yrs of the relationship and think about how he is doing you now, then it began easy, when you had your car & truck remember how you was, when you would leave and come back when you got ready without any answers remember — you wouldn't call me back when I would beep you remember — you wouldn't give me anything $2 - 3 dollars here and there. Lovemaking and everything even cooking food you was in control of that remember me telling you that? Everything you put in the house even food was yours remember? all the times we would be at home, something you didn't have 2 words to say to me remember? I would listen to you say what you did for your friends — home boys — not me. 14 years — Oh God 14 long years — but you know what was really really happening, while you thought you was putting me down and I was doing things that was not of my kindred spirit — my Father-God was bulding me up, not to hurt, because he knew Jan 10, 05 was coming and where you really thought that you left me, I had left you long before you physically left the house.

All the time you were sleeping with your so call ____ [the author just wrote a dash — I think she couldn't bring herself to write the word "girlfriend" here] now and doing what you thought was getting over on me — my God had my back :)

I hope you're happy, you think you are. I hope your so call ____ read this. I pray God have mercy on your soul, because if you haven't felt his wrath you will. you see you took my love and feeling for granted for 14 long years and you just don't do that to a child of God — he doesn't like that Mr. Allen. Remember I used to tell you that I loved you and I was in love with you — you acted like you didn't know the different remember.

Dublar Char, Sundarbans, Bangladesh.

Not all prisons confine you physically.

Some prisons let you free, into the open sea and the vast sky....

They just confine your soul in a dark dungeon.

A fisherman busy drying fishes in Dublar Char, Sundarbans. Dublar Char becomes one of the major flocking place of fishermen during winter. Almost all the fishermen gathered in Dublar Char are under the supervision of a specific person, who buys all the fishes caught. What the fishermen get is several times lower the actual price in city markets. However, the fishermen have no way to sell their commodities to any other buyer, because they are bound by debt to that specific person, and with their minimal income, they are never able to clear their debt completely after the fishing season. So, they have to come back next year in the same old 'Dublar Char'. The cycle never breaks.

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All rights reserved worldwide. DO NOT use this image in any commercial, non-commercial or blogging purpose without my explicit permission. Otherwise, you'll face legal action for violating national or international copyright law.

these 2 have been physically close together ever since they came back from boarding. not sure if it's because they got spayed there thus found comfort in each other, or they grew closer to each other as time passed. anyway, this is what i have hoped to see because i wanted them to bond.

~Og Mandino

Something that is very on topic as of now in my life. Spiritually as well as physically.

Hiya there. Hope everyone has had a great Wednesday.

* I'm tired.

* I should be cleaning up and making food

* That's why I sit in front of the tv with my laptop

* Watching some lame Finnish reality-tv, scrolling gossip-sites on the net

* According to the weather forecast we won't have sun for at least a week, but more snow, strong winds and temperatures around -20'C

* Thank you weather gods, I am your loyal supporter

* (But now you could go and screw yourself. Sincerely, Hannah)

* Vancouver has got on to a very lousy start for the insanely pressured Finnish atletes

* Tonight the Finnish hockeyteam plays its first game, against Belarus. I'm pessimistic about the outcome. The ugly truth is, that Finland hasn't succeeded in hockey since 1995, when we won the World Championship. Coming second, third, fourth, well, it doesn't really count. Not when we talk about Finnish icehockey and the pride that comes with it. Icehockey makes grown men cry, makes people depressed and suicidal. Well not everyone, but it involves a lot of feelings, a lot of passion around here. It's our national game. I choose to not care though, much easier that way, ;).

(as long as we beat Sweden, that is always a must).

Why...? There's always this rivalry between Finland and Sweden, a competition in the competition. If Finland doesn't win, the only consolation will be if Sweden is below us in the ranking. It's always been like this, in everything. Usually playful, not bloody serious, but... Icehockey.... that's serious stuff. Finns still remember that grand moment in 1995 when we won, and not only won, but actually beat the Swedes in the final. A double pleasure. And when we have lost against Sweden in other finals, it's a double defeat. We also tell jokes about Swedes, and they about Finns, in very stereotypical ways.

Do these "rivalries" occur between other countries as well? Is there something like this between Canada and the US for instance? Ireland and the UK? In other forms? Would be interesting to know, :).

* And now I'm actually sitting here talking about icehockey and all that, which I'm not usually even interested in.... *sigh*. Get your ass up from the couch this instance Hannah, start the cooking, get the vacuum cleaner out. Now.

I'll try to catch up with you all during this week, I haven't had much time in the last couple of days. I'm sorry for my abscence... Still decided to upload, because it makes me feel that I'm at least taking some part in the community, and helps me to get involved again. Yep....

I’ve given much thought to this week’s theme. Photographically I’ve been in a creative slump since the middle of 2016. Three years ago my husband of 41 years passed away, and I’ve spent the time since getting rid of things, downsizing and trying to build a life on my own. Last May I moved into a newly built home in an “empty nester” community. It has been a really good move for me, but it has left me mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. After 36 years in one place, I am surprised at how challenging the adjustment has been. So my story starts with rest and recovery that will hopefully lead to renewed creativity in my photography.

I thought I’d jumpstart things with a new macro lens. I’ve been wanting the 60mm for at least a year and a half, and finally decided to order it. It came, I took this picture of it and was planning to use it for this theme, and then realized I had mistakenly ordered the wrong lens! This is the AF 60mm and I need the AF-S! So I have to send it back and exchange it for the correct one. So my photographic story starts with a frustration and a delay. Hopefully by Week 3’s theme I’ll be able to do something creative with my new lens! :-)

Also for the ODC Theme “Three”

2 Weeks of 2017 - Week 1 - Theme: My Story starts with a… - Category: Creative

ODC Three

.....physically and economically. View On Black

F Train.

"I may not have physically given you life, but life has physically given me.....YOU!"

Like all New World orioles, this species is named after an unrelated, physically similar family found in the Old World: the Oriolidae. "Oriole" ultimately derives from Latin aureolus, "golden". The genus name Icterus is from Ancient Greek ikteros, a yellow bird, usually taken to be the Eurasian golden oriole, the sight of which was thought to cure jaundice. The specific galbula is the Latin name for a yellow bird, again usually assumed to be the golden oriole.This medium-sized passerine measures 17–22 cm (6.7–8.7 in) in length and spans 23–32 cm (9.1–12.6 in) across the wings. Their build is typical of icterids, as they have a sturdy body, a longish tail, fairly long legs and a thick, pointed bill. The body weight averages 33.8 g (1.19 oz), with a range of weights from 22.3 to 42 g (0.79 to 1.48 oz).[5] The male oriole is slightly larger than the female, although the size dimorphism is minimal by icterid standards.[6][7][8] Adults always have white bars on the wings. The adult male is orange on the underparts shoulder patch and rump, with some birds appearing a very deep flaming orange and others appearing yellowish-orange. All of the rest of the male's plumage is black. The adult female is yellow-brown on the upper parts with darker wings, and dull orange-yellow on the breast and belly. The juvenile oriole is similar-looking to the female, with males taking until the fall of their second year to reach adult plumage.

Original Caption: Older Citizens, Retired Persons and Those Unable to Care for Themselves Physically Are Cared for in Two Community Centers This Woman Lives at the Highland Manor Retirement Home, Keeping Busy with "Old Country" Crafts. New Ulm Is a County Seat Trading Center of 13,000 in a Farming Area of South Central Minnesota. It Was Founded in 1854 by a German Immigrant Land Company That Encouraged Its Kinsmen to Emigrate From Europe.

U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-15873

Photographer: Schulke, Flip, 1930-2008

Subjects:

New Ulm (Brown county, Minnesota, United States) inhabited place

Environmental Protection Agency

Project DOCUMERICA

Persistent URL: arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=558323

Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.

For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html

Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted

Use Restrictions: Unrestricted

Pennhurst Asylum

Spring City, PA

May 25th, 2014

Some History of the place:

"Pennhurst was constructed and opened in 1908 as a state school for the mentally and physically disabled. Pennhurst's property was vast, covering 120 acres. Created to house over 10,000 patients at a point in time, Pennhurst was one of the largest institutions of its kind in Pennsylvania. Half of Pennhurst's residents were committed by court order and the other half were brought by a parent or other guardian. It was devoted strictly to the care, treatment and education of the disabled. Originally named Pennhurst Home for the Feeble Minded and Epileptic, it finally was just called Pennhurst State School. Pennhurst employed a large number of staff to help assist in maintaining the facility. This staff included a board of trustees, medical staff, dental staff, and specialists in psychology, social services, accounting, and various fields of education. The grounds of Pennhurst included a 300-bed hospital, which had a full nursing staff and two surgeons on call at all times. Others at Pennhurst included members of the clergy and farming experts who grew most of Pennhurst's food . Pennhurst was an essentially self-sufficient community, its 1,400-acre site containing a firehouse, general store, barber shop, movie theatre, auditorium and even a greenhouse. The buildings of Pennhurst were named after towns in Pennsylvania such as Chester and Devon. The original buildings were designed by architect Phillip H. Johnson. All of Pennhurst's electricity was generated by an on-site power plant. A cemetery lay on the property, as well as baseball and recreational fields for the residents. Many of Pennhurst's buildings were strictly for storage; however, the majority were dormitory and hospital-style living quarters for the residents. Many of the buildings had security screens that were accessed on the inside, to prevent patients from escaping, or jumping to their deaths. Most of the stairwells had security fences to keep patients from jumping over the railings. Many of the buildings are linked by an underground tunnel system designed for transportation of handicapped patients to and from the dormitory, recreational buildings and dietary.

Pennhurst was often accused of dehuminazitation and was said to have provided no help to the mentally challenged. The institution had a long history of staff difficulties and negative public image, for example, a 1968 report by NBC called "Suffer the Little Children".

Pennhurst State School was closed in 1986 following several allegations of abuse. These allegations led to the first lawsuit of its kind in the United States, Pennhurst State School and Hospital vs. Halderman, which asserted that the mentally retarded have a constitutional right to living quarters and an education. Terry Lee Halderman had been a resident of the school, and upon release she filed suit in the district court on behalf of herself and all other residents of Pennhurst. The complaint alleged that conditions at Pennhurst were unsanitary, inhumane and dangerous, that these living conditions violated the fourteenth amendment, and that Pennhurst used cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the eighth and fourteenth amendments. After a 32-day trial and an immense investigation, prosecutors concluded that the conditions at Pennhurst were not only dangerous, with physical and mental abuse of its patients, but also inadequate for the care and habilitation for the mentally retarded. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania also concluded that the physical, mental, and intellectual skills of most patients had deteriorated while in Pennhurst.

In 1986, Pennhurst was ordered closed, and began a program of de-institutionalism that lasted several years. Once the buildings were closed, they began to rapidly deteriorate from lack of heating, moisture invasion and vandalism. Thousands of people began to illegally tour the property spray painting everything in sight and breaking all the glass in the place. Theft was rampant and the destruction of the property was in full swing. Patients were thrown out and a large homeless contingent developed in the area.

Pennhurst fell into complete ruin as the complex was shut down. Buildings were abandoned as they were, with patient’s clothes and belonging strewn about. Furniture, cabinets and medical equipment were left to decay as if someone had just got up and walked out the front door. This is the place that will eventually resurrect into one of the most studied properties in the ghost hunter media, and will become an amazing haunted attraction."

SOURCE: www.pennhurstasylum.com/index2.html#/history

Not physically ready for climbing around a construction site yet.

Going to let body let me know.

Get tired quickly. Body using most of it's energy on repair.

Think Sandra will be the final test.

When l can rock all night with her.

I will be able to do everything.

And l mean everything. That girl Is a Puma with a lit firecracker on her tail. If you get my drift.

But for now it's all computer and research. As many hours l can do.

Work a couple hours. Rest. And work some more.

Boss also brought over several sets of blueprints for review.

Have Froggy keeping me company. Just kinda sits in his aquarium looking around.

Sometimes wonder what he's thinking.

Anyways. Back to work.

Luv ya.💋😻

[129/365]

Probably the hardest photo to shoot and edit. Physically and Mentally. I think we took about 290 all together, my face looked like roadkill in all of them. But when I got this one, it was so perfect. Exactly what I had visioned in my head. I ran too and from the stupid camera about 130 times, because I don't have a remote, and about half of the time, I knocked the stupid tripod over with my cape bed sheet. Then, 2 hours to edit, and not even satisfied, I settled for this. I guess, it turned out better than what I had in my head, but ugh, I am never satisfied. I think it's time for bed.

Flickr sharpening ruins this. Press L.

Inspired entirely by the spectacular Brooke Shaden. I literally cannot fathom how she does it.

Formspring | Tumblr | Facebook Page |

The North American river otter is physically well-equipped for aquatic life. The ears are short, the neck is the same diameter as the head, the legs are short and powerful, the toes are fully webbed, and the tail (one-third of body length) is tapered. These qualities give the North American river otter a streamlined profile in water, but reduce agility on land.

Taken Dinner Island Management area, Florida.

Nelvaan had tested us. Not just physically, but mentally as well. It drove us down to our last ounces of strength before it finally relinquished it’s hold. And now, I was shaken; we all were. I could see it written across their face, and I was sure they could tell the same of me. I refrained from mentioning that to them, even though I knew we all shared the same emotion. Death had stared into my face, and the icy wind whispered promises of destruction. I couldn’t remember clearly the incidents that had taken place in that frozen world, though I knew it was all behind us. We had only survived by luck and chance, for the fact that we had been able to overcome a battalion of SBD, overpowered a heavily-armed enemy outpost, had been able to hail a gunship safely through the sea of Vultures, while returning cover-fire to protect another squad, was simply inconceivable to achieve through skill. Overall, I could tell that it was a miracle that we had been able to leave the system with our hearts still pounding. However, I couldn’t say the same for the other troopers. Once, we had landed safely aboard the our frigate, a medical crew had rushed up and taken him off immediately to an infirmary, accompanied by Tally and Dodge. That was the last I had seen of them, and I was deemed to fear the worst as I’d looked into that pale face, stricken with pain.

“Men, Welcome home.”

_Left to Right

Number: CT-6394

Name: Spark

Rank: Sergeant (Lt. Corporal)

Primary Weapon: DLT-19 Heavy Blaster Rifle

Number: CT-5835

Name: Carver

Rank: Corporal Grade III

Primary Weapon: Silenced DC-15x Sniper Rifle

Secondary Weapon: DC-15 Side Arm Pistol

Number: CT-6628

Name: Sever

Rank: Sergeant

Primary Weapon: DLT-19 Heavy Blaster Rifle

Number: CT-7516

Name: Tak

Rank: Corporal Grade I

Primary Weapon: Modified DC-11 Rifle

East Side Gallery, Mühlenstraße, Berlin, Germany.

[EN] The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Construction of the Wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds", and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany.

GDR authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame", a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize physically the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the Wall prevented almost all such emigration. During this period, over 100,000 people attempted to escape, and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll ranging from 136 to more than 200 in and around Berlin.

In 1989, a series of revolutions in nearby Eastern Bloc countries—in Poland and Hungary in particular—caused a chain reaction in East Germany that ultimately resulted in the demise of the Wall.[9] After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, euphoric people and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall. The Brandenburg Gate in the Berlin Wall was opened on 22 December 1989. The demolition of the Wall officially began on 13 June 1990 and was completed in November 1991. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" paved the way for German reunification, which formally took place on 3 October 1990.

[DE] Die Berliner Mauer war während der Teilung Deutschlands ein Grenzbefestigungssystem der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (DDR), das mehr als 28 Jahre, vom 13. August 1961 bis zum 9. November 1989, bestand, und die DDR von West-Berlin hermetisch abriegeln sollte. Sie trennte nicht nur die Verbindungen im Gebiet Groß-Berlins zwischen dem Ostteil („Hauptstadt der DDR“) und dem Westteil der Stadt, sondern umschloss völlig alle drei Sektoren des Westteils und unterbrach damit auch seine Verbindungen zum Berliner Umland, das im DDR-Bezirk Potsdam lag.

Von der Berliner Mauer ist die ehemalige innerdeutsche Grenze zwischen West- (alte Bundesrepublik) und Ostdeutschland (DDR) zu unterscheiden.

Die Berliner Mauer als letzte Aktion der Teilung der durch die Nachkriegsordnung der Alliierten entstandenen Viersektorenstadt Berlin war Bestandteil und zugleich markantes Symbol des Konflikts im Kalten Krieg zwischen den von den Vereinigten Staaten dominierten Westmächten und dem sogenannten Ostblock unter Führung der Sowjetunion. Sie wurde aufgrund eines Beschlusses der politischen Führung der Sowjetunion Anfang August 1961 und einer wenige Tage später ergehenden Weisung der DDR-Regierung errichtet. Die Berliner Mauer ergänzte die 1378 Kilometer lange innerdeutsche Grenze zwischen der DDR und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, die bereits mehr als neun Jahre vorher „befestigt“ worden war, um den Flüchtlingsstrom zu stoppen.

Für die DDR-Grenzsoldaten galt seit 1960 in Fällen des „ungesetzlichen Grenzübertritts“ der Schießbefehl, der erst 1982 formell in ein Gesetz gefasst wurde. Bei den Versuchen, die 167,8 Kilometer langen und schwer bewachten Grenzanlagen in Richtung West-Berlin zu überwinden, wurden nach derzeitigem Forschungsstand (2009) zwischen 136 und 245 Menschen getötet. Die genaue Zahl der Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer ist nicht bekannt.

Die Berliner Mauer wurde am Abend des 9. November 1989 im Zuge der politischen Wende geöffnet. Dies geschah unter dem wachsenden Druck der mehr Freiheit fordernden DDR-Bevölkerung. Der Mauerfall ebnete den Weg, der innerhalb eines Jahres zum Zusammenbruch der SED-Diktatur, zur Auflösung der DDR und gleichzeitig zur staatlichen Einheit Deutschlands führte. (Wikipedia)

Music

Well, I don't have a facebook or anything, this is about the only social media I have, so I've decided to post this for my friends here on Flickr... I will be making this post private later. You are more than welcome to private message me if you want to, I really don't mind, and I could use all the support right now... I don't have many people to physically talk to in real life, so this is a comfort to get this off my chest...

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

The past year of my life, and especially the past 6 months, has been very difficult for me. As some of you know, 2 years ago my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. This was a shock to everyone... she was young and healthy, she was the support of my family -- everyone could count on her. I kept thinking, "How can this be real? How is this fair?"

The first year was ok. She didn't seem any different, and I tried my best not to think about it and continue my life as it had been. My fiance and I had been engaged 5 years at this point, always saving up for a wedding that was always out of reach. In early 2013, we decided to just get married in the courthouse so my mom could be there to fully enjoy it. It was only a few weeks into her chemo treatment, so she wasn't feeling bad at all. She loved it! She always talked about how nice our little courthouse wedding was. I'm so happy I was able to have that time, it's such a happy memory.

2014 was different, and I had to watch my mother's health decline.

The first 6 months of 2014 became difficult, yet I was still full of hope that she would beat the cancer. I did my best to be positive. The last 6 months of 2014 became increasingly grim, it was so hard to watch. My mother, the strongest, toughest person I've ever known... how could this disease do this to her? How can this be fair? How did it come to this?

The end of November was when it really started getting bad. My mother really wanted to be able to enjoy Christmas, it was her absolute favorite holiday of the year. She always decorated the entire house full to the brim with Christmas themed decorations, always was singing Christmas songs... anything that had to do with Christmas themed she just loved it! She stopped chemo for the month of December so that she could feel a little better to enjoy Christmas day. Christmas came and we did the best to enjoy it, but that lingering sadness just wouldn't go away.

I was still a little hopeful at this point. My mom was always such a positive person, and her attitude really carried with us. I really honestly convinced myself that she was going to get better. My sister's birthday was in the middle of January, and I think my mom was really holding out for that date. For the past few months at this point, her suffering was so immense, so much torture. It was so hard. It's still hard... I was in such denial. I still am.

My mother started hospice care on Jan. 24th. She was only supposed to go to the facility for a few days to get some medicine, than come home to continue treatment here. They came to pick her up that day, they only gave us 2 hours notice to get everything ready, so things were rushed. They said, "It's ok, she will be home again in a few days!" But she never came home.

I spent the entire week at the hospice center with her.

On Wednesday I still was thinking she could get better, the doctor even said she would be coming home on Friday!

On Thursday they told us that she was dying, and that we should call the rest of the family. Everyone visited with her that day. It was so tough, and it is just a blur in my memory now. They said goodbye to her, and left sometime that night.

We stayed with her all on Friday. My father, sister, brother, my husband, and I were with her all day.

My dear mother, only age 54, passed away on January 31st, with her loving family by her side.

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

I can't believe I was able to actually write that down. It's been a month, and the pain hasn't lessened. I think I just need to talk about it for a little bit... all of this has been eating away at me. The only people I've really talked to since then are my father, sister, and my husband, and we all live in the same house so I've been feeling lonely. I haven't even gone outside in a month...

I love my mother more than anything. I miss her so much. My mother was always there for me, never a day went by in my entire life that I didn't see her! I would always talk to her about when something was on my mind, but now... now she's just not there. She is the reason that I love dolls and crafting, she taught me everything about all these different crafts since I was little... We would go to the craft store every week, always going shopping together... Now I just feel... empty. We were supposed to spend many more decades together! How can she be gone? She was too young, how is this the way the world works?

The first two weeks after, I did nothing. I stared at the wall all day. All her things are still lying where they were. Why isn't she using them? Couldn't sleep. Lost all appetite.

Had nightmares of seeing her dying over and over. Her cold hands. Her last gasp of air. Her discomfort, and pain, even to the very end. Can't sleep. Can't eat.

How can she be gone? Why did this happen? This isn't real!

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

Two weeks ago I tried to start sewing, and I discovered that if I do something, I feel better. I really dove into that. When I'm doing something like a hobby, or making something, I feel like I don't have to think about anything else. I've sewn more dresses in the past 2 weeks than I have in the last year. I decided that I need to start going on with my life and just try to accomplish my goals, because focusing on something like that really helps me deal with all of this.

Sometimes when I'm making something, and I don't have the color thread or something else I need, I would go ask my mom if she had some. Last week, I was working on something, so I got up to go to her room to ask her if I could borrow some dark red thread.... I did it without realizing, but then it hit me that she was gone. I slowly opened her door, walked to her craft table... I asked out loud, "Can I use your thread?" I took the thread box and walked back to my room, crying. I promise I'll put all of it to good use...

So I think for now, I'm really going to dive into my doll hobby. I'm going to take photos of them, make them outfits and things, and just try to take enjoyment from it. For Christmas, my mother gifted me 3 Pullips (Pere Noel, Bloody Red Hood, and Kuhn), and I really want to make them nice clothing and make them feel special. For my birthday she gave me a Pullip MIO kit, and I've been planning on making it purple/green themed (purple was her favorite color), and I hope it can look really nice. All these projects, and I really want to do them! Thinking about it makes me feel more positive.

I know eventually I'll feel better. It's going to take time, lots of time, but I know the pain will always be there, but it will be easier. This is really the first time I've really been able to talk about this, how I'm feeling... maybe I just need to get out there and start talking to people more. I'm always just a big recluse and super shy, but maybe if I open up more and have more friends, I can feel better.

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

Well, if you read my entire wall of emotional outpouring...... thank you. I'm sorry I had to put you through that... Typing it out though... it has helped somewhat and I didn't expect it to!

My sister is here on Flickr as well, her user name is buboplague, please give her your support too, she really needs it. She is on flickr here: www.flickr.com/photos/23031541@N06/

I wanted to thank everyone here on Flickr that has given me support concerning this matter these past 2 years, it's really been greatly appreciated and helped me immensely. THANK YOU! Seriously, thank you, to all of you.

Such an incredibly difficult day. I'm physically and emotionally exhausted. I know it will get easier, but right now it just really, really sucks.

I have to say a huge thank you to so many of you, though. Your kind words and the love and support you've been showing me here, and on facebook, twitter and via text, not even knowing what's going on...I can't even tell you how much that's meant to me and how many times today it's lifted me up when I needed it. You all are such amazing people.

That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Current mental state: coping.

precione " L " para uma melhor visualização .

"Fisicamente, habitamos um espaço, mas, sentimentalmente, somos habitados por uma memória." (José Saramago)"

"Physically, inhabit a space, but emotionally, we are inhabited by a memory." (José Saramago) "

Music

Music

December 5, 2024 - Toronto's skyline has changed quite a bit since I shot this 16 years ago, as well as my editing skills. So I re-processed this shot using Photoshop 2024, replacing the old file done with CS3.

Warning to anyone thinking of changing the privacy setting of a photo: For some technical reason known only to the Flickr gods, you lose all your faves.

Located in Toronto's Metro Hall Square, the Eternal Flame of Hope is dedicated to physically disabled persons. The plaque at left reads: " ... symbolic of the hopes, aspirations and triumphant achievements burning within the human spirit. May courage never be extinguished or light diminished nor spirits bound in pursuit of personal excellence."

Roy Thomson Hall is Canada's premier concert hall. Designed by Canadian architects Arthur Erickson and Mather & Haldenby, it's the home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.

Nikon D80

Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6

► All my images are my own real photography, not fake AI fraudography.

■ Please don't use my images for any purpose, including on websites or blogs, without my explicit permission.

■ S.V.P ne pas utiliser cette photo sur un site web, blog ou tout autre média sans ma permission explicite.

© Tom Freda / All rights reserved - Tous droits réservés

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Community Care" is the British policy of deinstitutionalization, treating and caring for physically and mentally disabled people in their homes rather than in an institution. Institutional care was the target of widespread criticism during the 1960s and 1970s, but it was not until the 1980s that the government of Margaret Thatcher adopted a new policy of care after the Audit Commission published a report called 'Making a Reality of Community Care' which outlined the advantages of domiciled care.

Mental health and community care Deinstitutionalisation

Under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, people with mental health problems were able to remain in their own homes whilst undergoing treatment. This situation raised some concerns when acts of violence were perpetrated against members of the public by a small minority of people who had previously been in psychiatric hospitals.

Although there have been some murders by a few people in the community with mental health problems, the truth is that it is far more likely that someone with mental health problems will be subject to attack by someone who is healthy themselves.

The National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 was passed so that patients could be individually assessed, and assigned a specific care worker; in the unlikely event that they presented a risk they were to be placed on a Supervision Register. But there have been some problems with patients "slipping through the net" and ending up homeless on the street. There have also been arguments between Health and Social Services departments on who should pay.

In January 1998, the Labour Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, said the care in the community programme launched by the Conservatives had failed.

This former home of a prison administrator is on the grounds of the Port Arthur penal colony, now an open-air museum. From 1833 until 1853, prisoners from Britain who had been sentenced to serving time in Sydney, Australia but who then re-offended while in custody were sent here. Juveniles were also sent here, some as young as 9. The location was chosen for the difficulty of escape, although a few successfully did. The winters were harsh and the mandatory labor physically demanding.

For more information, go here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur,_Tasmania

Engage tendency

Merged physically

Psychological resonances

The art of letting go.

I read somewhere that the realization that death awaits quickly puts man back into his place. The examination of the fleeting essence of the material nature of this life and how this relates to creation and living is the main component of this work. The struggle that comes with this realization is what causes this tension within my soul. I seek to create this tension within my photos through the materials I choose and the interactions they have with my body. The materials serve as a remembrance to what we are created from and what we will return to. The images record an emotional and spiritual process represented physically; the tension between the physical desire to hold on to the material, and the deeper, spiritual desire to let go.

Junction of Abbey Street Middle & O'Connell Street - Dublin - Ireland

It is said that the better you get along with someone the more you physically synchronise with them.

Original Caption: Older Citizens, Retired Persons and Those Unable to Care for Themselves Physically Are Cared for in Two Community Centers. This Woman Lives at the Highland Manor Retirement Home, Keeping Busy with "Old Country" Crafts. New Ulm Is a County Seat Trading Center of 13,000 in a Farming Area of South Central Minnesota. It Was Founded in 1854 by a German Immigrant Land Company That Encouraged Its Kinsmen to Emigrate From Europe.

U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-15876

Photographer: Schulke, Flip, 1930-2008

Subjects:

New Ulm (Brown county, Minnesota, United States) inhabited place

Environmental Protection Agency

Project DOCUMERICA

Persistent URL: arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=558326

Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.

For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html

Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html

Access Restrictions: Unrestricted

Use Restrictions: Unrestricted

Fort Lytton, a pentagonal earthwork fortification located at the mouth of the Brisbane River, was constructed in 1880-82 by the Queensland government on advice from British military engineers Col. Sir WFD Jervois and Lt. Col. PH Scratchley. The fort contributed to the coastal defence of Queensland until the end of the Second World War. In 1990 the site was gazetted as an Historic National Park.

Prior to the 1860s, defence of the Australian colonies had been solely the responsibility of the Imperial government. Britain considered that the Imperial Navy would always provide the first line of defence in any threat to her colonial empire, but from 1863 required the Australian colonies, by then self-governing, to contribute toward the costs of maintaining Imperial garrisons on colonial soil, and encouraged the colonies to provide for their own military infrastructure such as fortifications and barracks. Queensland, which had separated from New South Wales in December 1859, could not afford to contribute to Imperial defence, and so Imperial troops were gradually withdrawn from the colony - the last had left by 1870. In the 1860s Queensland established a number of volunteer defence units, based on the British model, but their effectiveness was severely impaired by a lack of armaments and ammunition.

By the 1870s the Australian colonies were developing rapidly and were concerned with potential threats from colonial powers such as Russia and France [the latter had annexed New Caledonia in 1873]. In 1877 the colonial governments of New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, anxious to secure the land defence of their coastlines, jointly invited British Royal Engineers Colonel Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois and Lieutenant-Colonel Peter H Scratchley, to inspect existing defence installations and make recommendations as to how these might be improved. Scratchley's particular expertise was in the design and construction of deterrent coastal fortresses.

Jervois and Scratchley identified maritime attacks as the greatest threat to Australia, and recommended that coastal defences be developed for all the mainland colonies. Despite being physically closer to the source of most threats, Queensland, with its sparse population and limited resources, was not considered to be greatly at risk. In his August 1877 preliminary report on Queensland coastal defences, Jervois identified the principal threat to Queensland security as an attack from the sea on the major ports [Brisbane, Rockhampton and Maryborough], in the form of city bombardment to secure supplies and coal, rather than for permanent occupation. Sea-power would prove the first line of defence, but recommended that Brisbane, as the capital and principal port of Queensland, be defended with the construction of a fort at Lytton, at the mouth of the Brisbane River. Moreton Bay, with its myriad of islands on which enemy forces might establish bases from which to raid the mainland, could not possibly be defended. However, sandbars at the mouth of the Brisbane River, which restricted the size of up-river vessels to a 4.8 metre draught [unarmoured gun boats], provided a natural defence which could be enhanced with the construction of a fort at the river mouth, supplemented by sub-marine mines located so as to force shipping within range of the guns located at the fort.

In late 1878, despite initial opposition to the cost of Jervois' scheme, the Queensland Parliament sanctioned the construction of Fort Lytton. Early in 1879 Scratchley fixed the position of the battery, and Colonial Architect FDG Stanley, in consultation with Scratchley, commenced work on plans for the barracks, magazines and gun emplacements, which were to be constructed in brick and concrete. Excavation and earthworks for the Lytton battery commenced in August 1880, tenders for construction of barracks, magazine, etc were called in September 1880, and the main battery was completed by mid-1882. The contractor for the whole was John Watson of Bulimba. In 1882 the firing of two 64-pounders signalled the commencement of operations at Fort Lytton.

The fort was constructed at an initial cost of £10,000, and comprised four gun emplacements protected by a closed earthwork parapet surrounded by a water-filled moat, which extended a quarter of a mile around the perimeter, enclosing some 900 square yards of ground. Within the moat was a narrow berm, beyond which was an earthen mound or parapet, turfed to reduce the risk of erosion and to improve the camouflage of the site - the object being to conceal the fort from ships entering the river. The mound formed an irregular pentagon, and within the parapet were set four gun-bays to house the larger 64-pounder RML guns. Gun positions 1 and 2 protected the seaward approach to the fort, and positions 3 and 4 covered the mined area within the river mouth. [In 1893 the 64-pounders in gun positions 3 and 4 were replaced with 6-pounder QF guns, and gun positions 5 and 6 were constructed to house the RML guns removed from positions 3 and 4.] The landward side was to be defended by field guns. Inside the fort were barracks, powder magazine and shell room, with brick-lined passages connecting the magazines to the gun emplacements. Lifting tackle was installed on rails to facilitate the handling of ammunition. Special accommodation was provided for the electrical connections associated with the submarine explosive devices which were strung across the river. The rear parapet sheltered timber buildings to house the officers, guards, cook-house and ablutions areas. The entry was provided with a timber bridge and the entry passage was reinforced with timber blocks bolted together. A wooden gate reinforced with iron sheeting protected the entry. Scratchley also arranged for prickly plants, trees and buffalo grass to be planted over the battery, to supplement the defences. In addition, a boys' reformatory was established on nearby Lytton Hill in 1880-81, the buildings to serve a dual function as part of a Redoubt commanding Fort Lytton. The Redoubt was not completed until 1885.

Even as Fort Lytton was under construction, attitudes towards colonial defence were changing. Military experts were supporting the implementation of more mobile defence forces, as opposed to fixed facilities such as the Lytton battery. Technology was changing rapidly, both for weaponry and shipping, such that techniques for defence against maritime attack were under constant review. Despite this, Fort Lytton was maintained and contributed to Queensland's defences until the mid-20th century. It also served as a semi-permanent military camp from 1881 until the early 1930s, principally during the annual Easter Encampments at which militia from all over Queensland gathered at Lytton for manoeuvres.

Following the passage of Queensland's Defence Act 1884 under which a core defence force of 150 men was established, supplemented by militia groups, "A" Battery Queensland Artillery was garrisoned at Fort Lytton. During the 'Russian scare' of March 1885 [generated by British-Russian mobilisation along the Afghanistan border], 20 men from "A" Battery, and 200 troops raised from militia units, were mobilised at Fort Lytton to defend Brisbane; the force was stood down in May when the border dispute was submitted to arbitration.

Following the 'Russian scare' a series of improvements to the Lytton battery were approved in 1887. These included the provision of casemates, and an engine shed to accommodate dynamo, two boilers, and duplicate engines. An underground tank to hold 10,000 gallons of water was also constructed. Queensland's muzzle-loading guns were sent to England for conversion to breech-loading and new hydro-pneumatic carriages were provided. The slope of the embankments at Fort Lytton was eased to provide a deflection surface or glacis for enemy shells. Further improvements occurred as funds became available.

When the Lytton Defence Reserve of 120 acres [48 hectares] was finally gazetted late in 1887, it included Reformatory Hill, Fort Lytton, and possibly part of the Customs Reserve. By 1901 the Defence Reserve had been extended to 640 acres [259 hectares] following the resumption [in two stages: 1891 and 1900] of Lytton township for defence purposes.

The severe economic depression of the early 1890s restricted expenditure on Fort Lytton, but by 1897 money was once again being spent on the facility. A shed was provided for artillery stores and a new smithy, fitters' and carpenters' workshops and a large new store were constructed. Additional storage was provided in 1900.

In 1901 the Queensland Defence Force was amalgamated into the new Commonwealth defence force, and Fort Lytton was transferred to Commonwealth ownership. Various small improvements were made to the fort during the early 1900s. In 1903 a new concrete base was provided for the search light which had been installed in 1892. Culverts, roads and wharf structures were repaired and improved. A new bridge was provided over the moat in 1907 as well as new ablutions areas, gates and kitchen facilities. In the years immediately prior to the First World War [1914-18] yards for horses were provided and major repairs were made to the wharf servicing the fort. With the outbreak of war, new barracks and cook-houses were erected [1914-15] and water supplies and drainage were improved. A new forage barn was built in 1916 and a dermatological hospital was constructed on Lytton Hill in 1917. The fort fired in anger only twice during the First World War - on both occasions a round was fired across the bows of civilian craft which ignored procedures for approaching the river mouth during war time.

In 1913-14 a quarantine station was established on land adjacent to the fort. This accommodated newly arrived immigrants and persons considered to be at risk of causing infection to the general population. The quarantine station buildings at various times also provided accommodation for persons stationed at the fort. Fort Lytton also played a role in the function of the quarantine station, controlling ships attempting to enter the Brisbane River without appropriate health clearances.

By the end of the First World War the inadequacies of Fort Lytton as a defensive base were clearly apparent. Expenditure was kept to a minimum during the interwar period and in 1932 the wharf at Fort Lytton was closed, with the battery relying on the berthing facilities at the quarantine station. In 1938 training walls and revetments were installed along the river banks to improve navigation and flood control.

The Second World War [1939-45] brought a major change in the role which Fort Lytton served in the defence of Australia. The longer-ranging capabilities of modern armaments made real the threat of shipping and aircraft strikes. In response, outer defences were established on Moreton and Bribie Islands and anti-aircraft installations were provided at Lytton, Colmslie, Hemmant, Balmoral, Hendra Park, Mount Gravatt, Archerfield, Amberley and on the islands in Moreton Bay. Fort Lytton provided an important coastal communication link and was pivotal to the coastal defence of the Brisbane River. Boom defences against submarine invasion were placed in the river at Lytton, and the fort was adapted to defend these: gun position 4 was altered to accommodate a modern 4.7 inch QF gun; gun position 7 was installed to house a 6-pounder QF gun; and a forward command post was constructed to provide a better viewing position than was available previously. A signal station was established on Lytton Hill and an anti-aircraft facility was established on land between the fort and the hill.

Fort Lytton's role as a defensive facility ceased in 1946 when all fixed coastal defensive positions in Australia were decommissioned, but military authorities maintained Fort Lytton as a communications base until the 1950s. In the early 1960s the land was acquired by Ampol for the establishment of an oil refinery. During the construction of the refinery fill was deposited in the moat, and the timber bridge across the moat, which the military had damaged by fire in the 1950s, was replaced by a permanent causeway.

By the 1970s various community-based historical groups were lobbying for the protection and restoration of the area and in 1988 the Department of Environment, Conservation and Tourism, through the National Parks and Wildlife Service, took over the management of the former fort. In 1990 Fort Lytton was declared an Historic National Park, and during the last decade of the 20th century the site was recorded and the framework of the fort restored. In 1994 minor preliminary works in anticipation of the stabilisation of some concrete roofs and retaining walls, and the restoration of existing drainage pipes, was undertaken. The bitumen roofs over the Engine Room and casemates 1 and 2 were resurfaced. In 1996 a restored hydro-pneumatic gun was installed in gun pit No. 1. A military museum has been established in a former artillery store, and various military history groups conduct annual pageants at the fort, reminiscent of the Queensland militia's annual Easter encampments. In 1999, Fort Lytton National Park was extended with the incorporation of part of the adjacent former Lytton Quarantine Station. The buildings on this site have been occupied and managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service since 1988, and serve as the administration centre for Fort Lytton National Park.

Besides its defence and communications functions, the Lytton battery also acquired a ceremonial role. In May 1901 it was the venue for His Royal Highness, the Duke of York, to present medals to Lytton-trained troops who had served in the South African War [1899-1902]. In 1963 a 21 gun salute from the Lytton guns welcomed Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II in the Britannia as she sailed up the Brisbane River. In April 1991 the muzzle-loading cannon at the fort were fired to greet soldiers returning from the Gulf War.

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

historywillabsolvemike.blogspot.com/

EAST SIDE CONFIDENTIAL

part two: Confusion on the Heels of Chaos

"I was once, if I remember correctly, present at a gathering of madmen."

- Roberto Bolaño

Conjoined twins sharing a vital organ are destined to die simultaneously. Frank "Turk" Jaworski and the Open Kitchen took the same exit. Their departure marked the end of an era, one that was an anachronism by the time of its disappearance. The Open Kitchen was a small space unaffected by linear time. Within the confines of its walls, time sputtered and stalled somewhere in the mid-fifties due to a defect in the time/space continuum. The Open Kitchen was a unique experience. It could never be duplicated. No one in their right mind would even attempt such a folly. The bar was the three dimensional manifestation of Turk's personality. Bill Curry opened the Copabanana not long after the Open Kitchen closed. Change was inevitable after so many years of stasis. Only one element remained the same. All hell continued to break loose at the same address.

The Copabanana was entirely different from the Open Kitchen. It featured a fully stocked bar, not just cans of Schmidt's and cheap booze. Every element of Turk's bar was completely erased by the new owner. The Copa yanked the clock violently into the present. Unlike the dictatorial reign of Turk, Bill Curry preferred a laissez faire approach toward running his bar. As long as the behavior of his clientele didn't jeopardize his liquor license, he was quite tolerant of borderline behavior. It was easier and more profitable to ignore everything but major transgressions. All Curry required from his customers was a modicum of discretion and no blatant acts of lawlessness. Considering the clientele and the staff, even this small concession was a challenge. Society was changing in the late seventies and early eighties. These changes were responsible for a more open sexual atmosphere. The birth control pill was in widespread use and sexually transmitted diseases were not yet identified as being permanent or fatal As a result the sexual revolution was in full swing. South Street swung a bit further than other neighborhoods. The area had a reputation for embracing creative, eccentric and marginal behavior. It consequently attracted a diverse range of humanity, all bent in some fashion. Styles that attracted attention uptown or in the suburbs were met with a jaundiced eye on South Street. The bizarre was not only accepted, it was embraced on South Street. Normal became weird. In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." If we weren't professionals, we were damn good amateurs.

No one went to the Open Kitchen to meet women. There were none. Turk didn't ban them, he just did nothing to encourage their patronage. He didn't really encourage anyone to frequent the place. He was more interested in making sure that irritating people stayed out. If they irked him he kicked them out with alacrity. These exclusions had nothing at all to do with race. Most of his clientele was black. He banished people from all walks of life with equanimity. The limited drink selections offered, Turk's brusque manner and the fact that the kitchen was never open at the Open Kitchen discouraged errant tourists. It attracted a loyal clientele of cynical and grizzled veterans, all male. Anyone that frequented the place played by Turk's rules or went elsewhere. It is only logical that women would avoid a bar owned by a proprietor with a reputation for jamming a chrome-plated 45 in someone's face on a fairly regular basis. The Open Kitchen was an acquired taste. It was Turk's personal fiefdom and he didn't seem to be interested in profit. Bill Curry was primarily interested in running a profitable business. He realized that tolerance was profitable in this fringe neighborhood.

This specific evening exceeded the standards of chaos in a chaotic time period. A large group of us attended an art opening that night. I forget the exhibition and the name of the gallery but it doesn't matter. We all agreed to meet at the Copabanana afterwards. In hindsight it was a questionable decision. Some of us had to work the next day, me for example, but immediate gratification almost always overruled good sense. The entire crew was on the charming side of drunk by the time we left the gallery. That state would prove impossible to maintain as the night wore on. Collectively we lacked basic impulse control on a good day. The odds were against this unfolding as an evening of quiet reflection considering the cast of characters and the quantity of alcohol consumed. Although we operated in the shadows of the culture industry, this was not a group of gentile aesthetes and dilettantes. Drunk, our behavior was reminiscent of orangutans on unauthorized leave from the zoo. Any gains we made within the art system were immediately erased by transgressive acts. We repeatedly snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. If good behavior was the price of success, it was much too high a price to pay given our disinterest in the game and our contempt for rules.

Our tactics were more street than salon. One night in the Khyber I was at the urinal taking a piss and some fucking idiot said to me, "Oh, you're Michael Macfeat, the guy who paints the crazy things and does the crazy things." I punched him in the mouth, zipped up and returned to the bar.

Most of the exhibiting artists and our friends went to the Copabanana that evening. My father and his friend Rocco were at the exhibition and they decided to join us for cocktails. It was not unusual for Al to socialize with us. He was always up for a few drinks and the pursuit of pleasure. In fact pleasure was his sole motivation in life. To their credit, none of my friends' fathers behaved like Al. He was a unique individual and often not in a good way.

My father was fun to go out with although growing up with him was a nightmare. He was good company and charming. It made it easier to forgive his faults. On the other hand he was also a larcenous bastard. If it wasn't screwed down he would steal it. If it was he brought a screwdriver. He could be quite entertaining and he was generous when he had the means. Al would never let any of us pay for anything when we went out. Considering the limited funds at my disposal it would have been self-defeating to refuse his largesse. He wouldn't come around if he didn't have cash. As is often the case with gamblers, his finances were tied to his luck so he wasn't around much. His absences lasted long enough to ensure he would be welcomed back.

His friend Rocco was no stranger. Rocco always carried a pistol with him although I was never sure why he felt the need. He was a rather large man and quite capable of handling himself without it. He made no display of the weapon but the gun sometimes created an unmistakable bulge under his clothing. Hanging around with Rocco taught me to look for signals that a man was armed. Despite the firearm, Rocco was gregarious and a fun to be around. His gun was an accepted fact, like his size. Certainly no one had the balls to question him about the pistol.

Once inside the Copa, Rocco and my father insisted on paying for everyone's drinks. It became an expensive night for those two spendthrifts. A rather large entourage followed us to the bar and took full advantage of the offer. From experience, I knew that these displays of wild extravagance usually meant that a scam or a bet had born fruit. Apparently they both reaped the benefits of some lucrative caper since they were squandering money like drunken stock brokers with expense accounts. I knew that these windfall profits often came at some else's expense. Some unseen loser was probably back in New Jersey, licking his wounds and cursing his bad luck. Fuck it. Free drinks were free drinks. I learned to ignore the source of Al's funds. It wasn't worth wasting time thinking about it.

Funded by their (presumably) ill gotten gains, multiple cocktails began piling up on both floors for our pleasure. Free cocktails might sound lovely in the abstract but in reality they almost always prove to be a mistake. Paying for drinks sometimes helps one keep excessive spending in perspective; not always but sometimes. Considering the Rogues Gallery in the Copa that night, excess was preordained. The drinks were free but they certainly did nothing to promote good behavior in this group of errant primates.

Fueled by the seemingly endless flow of alcohol, the evening began its slow descent into anarchy. People went between floors in search of some anticipated but indefinable amusement. Both floors had multiple cocktails at our disposal so these migrations weren't for entertainment purposes only. Fortunately I had a good relationship with the manager of the bar so she left us to our own devices. She had incredible eyes, large and mesmerizing. Granted, I was easily mesmerized back then.

One of the women from our group took umbrage to something or another (either real or imagined) and noisily stormed out of the bar. She had a reputation for pulling a Houdini when drunk. We had all seen this routine before and knew that pursuit was an exercise in futility. I wish I could forget who she was. She later claimed to walk back to New Jersey over the Ben Franklin Bridge. An attractive woman surviving an evening stroll through the city of Camden was unimaginable. Camden led the nation in per capita murders. At the time it was one of the most lawless cities in America and it remains so. Whether this trek actually happened or not was irrelevant. Fact and fiction blurred on evenings such as these. At any rate, no one batted an eye about the sudden departure. It was old hat and it meant more free alcohol for the rest of us.

My father, quite inebriated by this time, got it into his thick skull that one of our friends was pregnant. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. She was just a big-boned girl. Understandably, my father's comments horrified her. At an early age men are trained to avoid asking about a woman's weight and age. It wasn't as if Al didn't have extensive experience with the opposite sex. His success with women was legendary. Unfortunately his common sense and discretion went south this particular evening. Either he forgot or he just didn't give a fuck, I am not sure which. Al didn't stop at one comment about her perceived delicate condition. Oh no, he went on and on about it. If only he made these comments behind her back it would have been less embarrassing for everyone. He was quite direct in his interrogation and he was relentless. Al spent an excruciating amount of time trying to get her to confess to being pregnant. It was the height of absurdity for a man who would confess to nothing, even when caught red handed, would have the audacity to demand a confession from anyone else. Whatever his motivation, he was tenacious. With the singularity of mind that drunks often exhibit he was fixated on the subject. This horror-show went on for what felt like an eternity. Graced with the attention span of a two year old, Al tired of the game and moved on to the other equally absurd delusions.

To deflect the poor girl's attention away from my father's abuse, a close friend asked the girl for her telephone number. Her mood brightened at the prospect of potential romance with this handsome rake. I knew that this bastard had no intention of ever calling her (in fact he never did) but she felt a bit better about herself, however fleetingly.

Cocktails flowed without end, an alcoholic version of the nearby Delaware River. Whatever decorum we could muster was simply to ensure that it continued unabated. Kevin, our friend Mike and I retired to the upstairs bar. It was less crowded up there and I needed a break from my father's lunacy. It was obvious that our luck couldn't hold out forever. As inevitable and unwelcome as my hangover the next day, my father and Rocco were bound to notice our absence. In much too short a time they did.

At the opposite end of the bar was an attractive woman sitting by herself and wearing a white fur coat. She was a few years older than Kevin and I but that was irrelevant. Her style wasn't right, it was much too flashy. Her wardrobe was all shiny and sparkly, like a human disco ball. Her clothes identified her as a South Philadelphia native. Their style signified a certain attitude and told us that we couldn't get there from here. From across the bar it was obvious that it was a clash of sensibilities. The stylistic soundtrack was the Clash's White Riot at our end of the bar and It's Raining Men at the other. She looked like a materialistic pain in the ass. Never one to fight battles that I couldn't win I settled into my Tanqueray and tonics and let sleeping dogs lie.

Unfortunately not everyone followed my prudent example. Rocco and Al gravitated to her. They still lived some low rent Rat Pack version of the past. Contemporary clues held little meaning to them. Even if they understood the clues, as far as they were concerned they were free to ignore them. In that sense they were anarchists. They did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted as long as their funds held out. They began chatting her up as if either of them had a chance with her. The fucked up thing is that from a cursory glance it appeared that they might. Either she enjoyed the company which was hard to imagine or she was plying them for drinks, a more likely scenario. It was impossible for me to care. These two clowns were on a mission and it was best to leave it alone. I kept one eye on the conversation as one does passing an accident on the other side of the highway. I didn't really want to see the carnage but it was fascinating on some morbid level. I was disinterested in hearing the actual conversation. It was bound to be all lies and I had heard enough of the sound of my father's voice for one evening. She was physically fit so at least Al wouldn't ask her if she was pregnant. That provided me some small comfort.

My father could be exceptionally charming when he saw fit to make the effort. His guile with women was legendary and taken for granted. It was unthinkable to leave my girlfriends with him for any length of time. Even if he didn't snake me it was in the realm of the possible. He was that charming, that devious and his wiles with women were unaffected by any wide age discrepancy. The woman had as much chance as a wounded zebra run to ground by a hyena. Al could never be trusted with women or money. He was treacherous on both fronts.

Kevin, our friend Mike and I were at the near end of the bar still practicing our drinking. It was going pretty well if oblivion was the goal. We were regulars at the bar so we were familiar with the bartender. He and I had a mutual interest in Soldier of Fortune magazine. We had little else in common so the discussion usually began and ended on that topic. He wasn't a bad guy but he was wound a bit too tight. If I remember correctly he was also in a twelve step program, which at the time I perceived as a symptom of insanity. His interest in the magazine far exceeded my own, however. He was short but he actually aspired to become a mercenary. That seemed nuts to me but it didn't matter. He took care of us, we took care of him and if the conversation lagged we could always discuss the engineering merits and dependability of the AK47. Even drinks on the house have a price. My curiosity about Soldier of Fortune concerned the international politics that kept mercenaries employed. I also used the magazine as source material in my artwork. Occasionally an article about the Irish Republican Army would appear but I had no fucking desire to join them. It never hurt to have a friendly bartender in your corner so I finessed the conversations as best I could. I did suspect that he was nuts and that one day he might explode into a one man orgy of violence so I kept a respectful distance.

He came over to our end of the bar but not to bring us drinks or talk about Soldier of Fortune. As an avid gun enthusiast he probably noticed the tell-tale lump under Rocco's shirt. He said quietly, "You know the woman that those two older guys are talking to? She isn't what they think she is." We weren't entirely sure what he meant. In my case I was drunk and my powers of deduction were as impaired as the rest of me. She looked presentable from a distance if you could ignore her sense of style. If the implication was that she was a prostitute, I doubted that either Rocco or my dad would perceive that as a negative. Perhaps things would be less complicated for the three of them if they had crime in common. "Is she a working girl?" He replied in a whisper, "No, she's a transvestite." Kevin and I swiveled our heads to our right in unison. A more critical analysis of this changeling confirmed his assessment. Curiously, these two drunken reprobates seemed completely oblivious to the situation at hand, despite having a closer view of her. This could not end well. As was often the case with Mike, he was in the Men's Room at the crucial moment and missed the bartender's warning.

In the process of writing this, I considered the possibility that Kevin and I had overreacted and had misread the threat assessment. That doesn't explain the two pirates chatted her up but God knows what the fuck they were talking about. It didn't look to us like they knew the score but maybe they did. Perhaps Al and Rocco found the conversation comical. It seemed plausible. I am so often wrong that I never discount the possibility. The situation seemed to us to have all of the ingredients of a perfect storm.

I brought the subject up with Kevin recently for the first time in years. I asked him for his general impression of the evening. He said, "Fuck, I was just glad that no one got shot." My later and more benevolent analysis of the situation began to crumble with his answer but I pressed on. "Kevin, is it possible that we were overreacting and that Al and Rocco knew that they were talking to a transvestite?" "No man" he said, "not a fucking chance." I asked him a question that I knew, if answered contrary to my revisionist theory, would collapse the whole theoretical house of cards that I hoped to construct. "You don't really think that they would have shot her, do you?" "As drunk as those two idiots were that night? I'm certain of it. There is plenty about that evening I don't remember but I do remember being relieved that no one got shot." His view reinforced my original fear that we had been staring into the dark abyss of violence.

Despite being hedonists, both Al and Rocco were old school and ignorant of the subtler developments in contemporary social mores. We decided that it would be wrong to withhold the truth. There was a possibility that nothing would happen if we left them to their own devices but we didn't trust fate. I hoped that no one would get shot but on the other hand they were quite drunk. Getting hit over the head with a gun or thrown down a flight of stairs would be enough of a disaster. Rocco was always sociable but an underlying violence lurked beneath his affable demeanor. He was a criminal, after all, or he would not have been running around with my father. He was also quite large, drunk and armed. If the shit hit the fan with Rocco there was fuck-all Kevin and I could do about it. We were experienced at fighting in tandem but there was nothing two hyenas could do against a drunk and armed mastodon.

Our friend Mike was useless in violent situations. He had a quick tongue, a bad attitude and nothing to back either quality up. He was also a functional junkie. His indiscretions may have been the result of his habit or an inability to maintain it at times. It wasn't unusual to get drawn into fights due to Mike's rapier wit and his inability or unwillingness to fight. Just a few weeks before he stood idly by and watched a close friend of ours take a hellacious beating at the hands of four men. Michael could watch his friends get pummeled but his friends couldn't, even knowing that he was wrong and deserved a severe ass kicking. It ran contrary to code, whether he ascribed to it or not. Although he was smart and funny, he was a liability at worst and no help at his best. He couldn't be trusted so our only option was to leave him out of it.

My father's temper was inescapable growing up. He never hit me until I was sixteen and I returned the favor by hitting him over the head with a lamp. He did act violently toward others, however. He was 6' 1" tall and rangy. Once he dove across the bar at Hannigan's (at 69th and Ludlow, across from the Tower Theater) and strangled a customer until the man croaked an apology. Al was in his fifties at the time. His speed and brutality amazed me. I never heard what precipitated the attack but it may have been a gambling debt. The poor bastard had no chance. He was probably as shocked as I was. I couldn't trust Al not to be violent if he felt provoked.

Kevin and I were aware that our intervention might have a negative effect. They were behaving themselves at present but the truth could potentially upset this convivial equilibrium. Al and Rocco were very drunk and past the point of reason. Two drunken reprobates, a pistol and a transvestite seemed a recipe for disaster.

We got a lucky break. Rocco and my father lacked focus in their drunken state. They eventually headed downstairs in pursuit of new and improved entertainment. Had the transvestite had lost her luster? There was no way of knowing. Kevin and I weighed our options and we decided that they all sucked. We felt that the situation needed to be addressed before they reversed field. With any luck they would be too drunk, too complacent and too lazy to go back upstairs after getting the news. By the time we located the two bastards their condition had noticeably deteriorated. They were talking and laughing loudly and it was hard to get a word in edgewise. We eventually found an opening and explained the situation as diplomatically as possible. To our horror they rebuffed us. They acted like we were nuts! They told us to fuck off and dismissed us like insolent children. Is it possible that they knew that they were dealing with a shape-shifter? These two hooligans were inscrutable at the best of times so it was difficult to determine what they knew or didn't know. People whose professions demand deception learn to present a blank expression.

We truly had no qualms concerning the sexual predilection of the transvestite. We lacked morals ourselves so her morality was not in question. No one faulted her for running her game for free drinks if that's what she was doing. Each to their own. Live and let live. The problem was that these two drunks were capable of losing their minds and we were unable to influence them. The other problem was my own inebriated state. It made my threat analysis (and everything else) a bit suspect.

After our failed attempt at disaster control we returned to the upstairs bar. Perhaps we would have better luck with the third party in this bizarre triangle. Once upstairs, the first thing that we noticed was that our buddy Mike had changed seats. He was now at the far end of the bar and engaged in witty repartee with the transvestite. We did not fucking need another complication at that moment. Now we had to explain the situation to this ass-clown before we approached Miss Thing with a plan. We went to the far end of the bar and shoehorned ourselves into their conversation. At close quarters her artifice of deception paled considerably, maybe it was the Adam's apple. One of us distracted the transvestite while the other debriefed Mike. He took the news surprisingly well. He took it too well in fact. He said he didn't care what she was, he was having fun and that we should leave him the fuck alone. That was the third person to tell us to fuck off in ten minutes and it was getting a bit tedious. Imparting the truth to these three fools was a thankless job. It was not unusual for a quiet evening on the town to turn into a three ring circus. This night had no hopes of being a quiet evening from jump street considering the personnel. Kevin and I were not very experienced at calming situations down. We were much better at escalation. Everyone else in the equation had by this time made it very clear that they thought we were assholes. Of course they were right. We were assholes, just not for the reasons that they thought we were assholes. We had good intentions even if our analysis and strategy sucked ass.

With Mike (somewhat) sorted or at least informed, we turned our attention to this obscure object of desire. We explained that her lifestyle choices were of no concern to us. We applauded her courage to pursue her dreams. We had no issues with transvestites whatsoever. Our only concern was that the two mature gents might not act so maturely if push came to shove. All we wanted was to avoid trouble, trouble that could result in the expulsion from a favored watering hole and/or arrest. She smiled slyly and cooed, "I can take care of myself." We retorted, "Uh…no you fucking can't." We explained that these two old gents were not exactly docile and at least one of them had a concealed weapon. They were much too drunk to expect even semi-rational behavior from them. Rocco and Al weren't exactly enlightened individuals. We strongly advised her a change of venue, at least temporarily. After a brief period of resistance she agreed to leave after we offered her cash. How much cash it took to get rid of her is lost in the black hole of memory. She exited through the door on the first floor, still resplendent in fur and glitter. She was a spectacle, an artificial Christmas tree walking in high heels. Despite the small size of the bar, Al and Rocco were too plastered to even notice her flamboyant exit.

We had no further contact with the Al and Rocco that night and the subject was too bizarre to bring up later. They were so drunk that it is possible that they forgot by morning. I am surprised that I remember as much as I do about the incident. After our objective was reached I lost interest in the matter. Problem solved. It was as if she never existed. At least we thought that was true until we spoke to Mike again.

He berated us for causing her to leave. "I liked her," he whined about his loss like a Catholic school girl with skinned knees. Kevin and I just looked at each other in disbelief, shook our heads and walked away. Actually, we didn't give a fuck if Mike left with her or not. That was his business. He was an odd bird anyway. We were simply trying to protect her from the other two fools. Their breed of dinosaur was nearly extinct but they were still dangerous. Neither of them were particularly forward thinking in the realm of sexual politics or any other politics for that matter. We solved the problem by paying her off but now Mike was bitching. Fuck him. I fought enough fights for that little bastard that he should have been more appreciative of our efforts, even if he disagreed with the results or our approach. I repressed the urge to backhand him.

There was nothing left for us to do now but resume our cocktail consumption. Memory abandons me beyond this point. The trip home is a complete mystery. I am quite sure that I didn't walk. It was enough of a challenge to remain upright in that state. I was so drunk that I had as much chance of flying as I did driving home. I would have crashed the car before I ever got in it.

Defying even my own optimistic and delusional expectations I reported for work the next day, late and hungover as fuck. If I wasn't still drunk I might have called out sick. I was usually in trouble on this job for various serial indiscretions. It must have been pretty damn important for me to show up or I doubt I would have made it. Although drunk on the morning drive I negotiated it without incident.

When I got near the job I stopped at a roadside stand for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on a long roll. It was my Saturday morning ritual. My boss always brought his shit-bag dog to work, an untrained an intact male Vizsla. It was red and it had a pronounced knot on the top of its head that made it look as stupid as it actually was. I love dogs but I couldn't stand this fucking cur. If you didn't protect yourself it would jump up on you and smack you right in the balls. I spent the majority of every working day with my hand covering my crotch. It isn't a good look and it makes a lousy first impression. People familiar with the dog understood. Most of our regular customers came in holding their packages as a defensive tactic. It must have looked weird seeing everyone standing around clutching their yarbles. The dog was relentless and would jump up if you made eye contact. It happened all day long. I smacked it on multiple occasions. With no one else reinforcing the discipline and partly due to the dog's sub-par intelligence it had no affect. Training the useless piece of shit would have helped but my boss felt that training and spaying a dog violated its freedom. He preferred his dogs in a near feral state. I can only think of one other dog that I hated this much. I preferred dogs that bit me to dogs that punched me in the testicles on the regular. But the dog was the least of my problems that morning. I was hungover and insanely hungry. I proceeded to unwrap my sandwich and attack it voraciously. While taking an order from a customer, I foolishly dropped the hand holding the sandwich to my side. The Vizsla swiped it right out of my hand! I lost it!

I am not proud of it now but I punched the dog as hard as I could, right on its bumpy noggin. It fell to the floor as if shot. It remained unconscious for a few seconds. Until that moment I had no idea that it was possible to knock a dog out. Fortunately my boss was in his office when this happened. He eventually came out to investigate the clamor but he was on the phone with a customer at the time of the incident. When he finally got to the counter the dog had recovered enough to stand up but it was wobbling on its long, skinny legs. Although vertical it was still on queer street. I admitted that I smacked the dog but I didn't tell him that I knocked it out. He knew that my version of the story lacked credibility but, to the Visla's credit, the dog never ratted me out and I did not get fired. Not two minutes after things had calmed down the dog jumped up and tried to smack me in the nuts. I was beginning to feel besieged. As the day droned on the hangover escalated. It was unbearable. I was too hungover to even eat lunch. Unlike large chunks the previous twenty-four hours, the memory of the hangover remains quite vivid.

Around 11:00 the business phone rang and I reluctantly answered it. I had no interest in speaking to anyone, let alone our bone-head customers. It wasn't a customer though, it was a collect call from a jail in Atlantic City. I accepted the charges. It was difficult to predict the morning getting any worse but it did. My father was on the phone. He was still so fucked up that it was impossible to understand a word he said. It literally sounded to me like he was speaking Chinese. Al was laughing maniacally through the entire unintelligible conversation. There was no laughing on my end of the phone at all. I was hungover, irritable, hungry and I had just knocked a fucking dog out. I didn't need any more challenges to my patience. These two clowns were a pain in the ass. The old man really pissed me off by speaking in tongues. Gibberish was totally unacceptable in my fragile condition. Without pointing out his linguistic failure, I asked him if Rocco was available to speak. Fortunately Rocco got on the phone and was slightly more coherent than my father. He said that they had been arrested in Atlantic City. I shuddered to imagine their long drive there. They were both post-verbal before they left the bar! How could either of them have driven for an hour in that condition? Now they had a plan and to my horror the plan involved me. They wanted me to leave work, drive to Atlantic City and post bail for them. The idea was ludicrous. I had no desire to see either them anytime soon let alone be responsible for their release from jail. I felt sick. I also had no ready cash after the previous night of debauchery, despite the fact that the drinks were free. Either I was a very sporty tipper the night before or I gave all of my money away in tips and bribes or I lost all of it on the barroom floor. The reason for my poverty was a moot point. It didn't matter why. I was flat broke. I spent my last few dollars on a sandwich that had been scarfed up by a dog as useless as tits on a bull.

There was only one option as far as I was concerned. I told them to go fuck themselves, sleep it off in the drunk tank and come up with a plan that did not involve me. I had neither the desire nor the wherewithal to pick them up. I had no compassion for them whatsoever. I was penniless. They got arrested on their own merits. They could get themselves bailed out the same way. Jail seemed like a swell place for those two jerk-offs. Fuck you. No.

Later I asked my father about the arrest. Neither he nor Rocco would talk about it. To this day I don't know what happened. It didn't make sense that they would stonewall me over a simple DUI. They were quite open about far more scandalous matters. The only thing they volunteered was that Rocco's uncle bailed them out. Whatever the reason for their incarceration, there was never any talk of a court appearance and neither of them ever became long term guests of the state of New Jersey. Perhaps Rocco's uncle had connections. It is useless to speculate. They are both dead and the truth died with them.

Every once in a while I would ask Al about it, just to see if he if he would let his guard down and come clean. Sometimes I brought it up just to break his balls. My father discussed the events preceding the arrest but never directly about the arrest itself. It amazed me that he had any memories of the night at all. Over a period of years he steadfastly refused to give me a straight answer. This was no surprise, Getting the truth out of my father was like collecting rain water with a sieve. It was an act of abject futility.

Obfuscation and evasiveness were my father's forte. He was impossible to pin down. It was useless to pursue a topic with him once the nonsense started. He would give you irrelevant answers as long as you had the stamina to ask pertinent questions. Lying was a tool to him, like a weed-whacker or a hammer. I am sure that the Atlantic City police quickly tired of his machinations and found his bullshit annoying but their contact with him was relatively brief compared to mine. I grew up with him and share his DNA. Both of these concepts are sobering.

Michael Macfeat 12/24/12

Pablo Picasso

I INTRODUCTION

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish painter, who is widely acknowledged to be the most important artist of the 20th century. A long-lived and highly prolific artist, he experimented with a wide range of styles and themes throughout his career. Among Picasso’s many contributions to the history of art, his most important include pioneering the modern art movement called cubism, inventing collage as an artistic technique, and developing assemblage (constructions of various materials) in sculpture.

Picasso was born Pablo Ruiz in Málaga, Spain. He later adopted his mother’s more distinguished maiden name—Picasso—as his own. Though Spanish by birth, Picasso lived most of his life in France.

II FORMATIVE WORK (1893-1900)

Picasso’s father, who was an art teacher, quickly recognized that his child Pablo was a prodigy. Picasso studied art first privately with his father and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in La Coruña, Spain, where his father taught. Picasso’s early drawings, such as Study of a Torso, After a Plaster Cast (1894-1895, Musée Picasso, Paris, France), demonstrate the high level of technical proficiency he had achieved by 14 years of age. In 1895 his family moved to Barcelona, Spain, after his father obtained a teaching post at that city’s Academy of Fine Arts. Picasso was admitted to advanced classes at the academy after he completed in a single day the entrance examination that applicants traditionally were given a month to finish. In 1897 Picasso left Barcelona to study at the Madrid Academy in the Spanish capital. Dissatisfied with the training, he quit and returned to Barcelona.

After Picasso visited Paris in October 1900, he moved back and forth between France and Spain until 1904, when he settled in the French capital. In Paris he encountered, and experimented with, a number of modern artistic styles. Picasso’s painting Le Moulin de la Galette (1900, Guggenheim Museum, New York City) revealed his interest in the subject matter of Parisian nightlife and in the style of French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a style that verged on caricature. In addition to café scenes, Picasso painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of friends and performers.

III BLUE PERIOD (1901-1903)

From 1901 to 1903 Picasso initiated his first truly original style, which is known as the blue period. Restricting his color scheme to blue, Picasso depicted emaciated and forlorn figures whose body language and clothing bespeak the lowliness of their social status. In The Old Guitarist (1903, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois), Picasso emphasized the guitarist’s poverty and position as a social outcast, which he reinforced by surrounding the figure with a black outline, as if to cut him off from his environment. The guitarist is compressed within the canvas (no room is left in the painting for the guitarist to raise his lowered head), suggesting his helplessness: The guitarist is trapped within the frame just as he is trapped by his poverty. Although Picasso underscored the squalor of his figures during this period, neither their clothing nor their environment conveys a specific time or place. This lack of specificity suggests that Picasso intended to make a general statement about human alienation rather than a particular statement about the lower class in Paris.

Why blue dominated Picasso’s paintings during this period remains unexplained. Possible influences include photographs with a bluish tinge popular at the time, poetry that stressed the color blue in its imagery, or the paintings of French artists such as Eugène Carrière or Claude Monet, who based many of their works around this time on variations on a single color. Another explanation is that Picasso found blue particularly appropriate for his subject matter because it is a color associated with melancholy.

IV ROSE PERIOD (1904-1905)

In 1904 Picasso’s style shifted, inaugurating the rose period, sometimes referred to as the circus period. Although Picasso still focused on social outcasts—especially circus performers—his color scheme lightened, featuring warmer, reddish hues, and the thick outlines of the blue period disappeared. Picasso maintained his interest in the theme of alienation, however. In Two Acrobats and a Dog (1905, Museum of Modern Art, New York City), he represented two young acrobats before an undefined, barren landscape. Although the acrobats are physically close, they gaze in different directions and do not interact, and the reason for their presence is not made clear. Differences in the acrobats’ height also exaggerate their disconnection from each other and from the empty landscape. The dog was a frequent presence in Picasso’s work and may have been a reference to death as dogs appear at the feet of figures in many Spanish funerary monuments.

Picasso may have felt an especially deep sympathy for circus performers. Like artists, they were paid to entertain society, but their itinerant lifestyle and status as outsiders prevented them from becoming an integral part of the social fabric. It was this situation that made the sad clown an important figure in the popular imagination: Paid to make people laugh, he must keep hidden his real existence and true feelings. Living a life of financial insecurity himself, Picasso no doubt empathized with these performers. During this period Picasso met Fernande Olivier, the first of several women who shared his life and provided inspiration for his art. Olivier’s features appear in many of the female figures in his paintings over the next several years.

V CLASSICAL PERIOD (1905) AND IBERIAN PERIOD (1906)

Experimentation and rapid style changes mark the years from late 1905 on. Picasso’s paintings from late 1905 are more emotionally detached than those of the blue or rose periods. The color scheme lightens—beiges and light browns predominate—and melancholy and alienation give way to a more reasoned approach. Picasso’s increasing interest in form is apparent in his references to classical sculpture. The figure of a seated boy in Two Youths (1905, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.), for example, recalls an ancient Greek sculpture of a boy removing a thorn from his foot.

By 1906 Picasso had become interested in sculptures from the Iberian peninsula dating from about the 6th to the 3rd century bc. Picasso must have found them of particular interest both because they are native to Spain and because they display remarkable simplification of form. The Iberian influence is immediately visible in Self-Portrait (1906, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania), in which Picasso reduced the image of his head to an oval and his eyes to almond shapes, thus revealing his increasing fascination with geometric simplification of form.

VI AFRICAN PERIOD (1907)

Picasso’s predilection for experimentation and for drawing inspiration from outside the accepted artistic sources led to his most radical and revolutionary painting yet in 1907: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907, Museum of Modern Art). The painting’s theme—the female nude—could not be more traditional, but Picasso’s treatment of it is revolutionary. Picasso took even greater liberties here with human anatomy than in his 1906 Self-Portrait . The figures on the left in the painting look flat, as if they have no skeletal or muscular structure. Faces seen from the front have noses in profile. The eyes are asymmetrical and radically simplified. Contour lines are incomplete. Color juxtapositions—between blue and orange, for instance—are intentionally strident and unharmonious. The representation of space is fragmented and discontinuous.

While the left side of the canvas is largely Iberian-influenced, the right side is inspired by African masks, especially in its striped patterns and oval forms. Such borrowings, which led to great simplification, distortion, and visual incongruities, were considered extremely daring in 1907. The head of the figure at the bottom right, for example, turns in an anatomically impossible way. These discrepancies proved so shocking that even Picasso’s fellow painters reacted negatively to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. French painter Henri Matisse allegedly told Picasso that he was trying to ridicule the modern movement.

VII CUBISM (1908-1917)

For many scholars, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon—with its fragmented planes, flattened figures, and borrowings from African masks—marks the beginning of the new visual language, known as cubism. Other scholars believe that French painter Paul Cézanne provided the primary catalyst for this change in style. Cézanne’s work of the 1890s and early 1900s was noted both for its simplification and flattening of form and for the introduction of what art historians call passage, the interpenetration of one physical object by another. For example, in Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902-1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), Cézanne left the outer edge of the mountain open, allowing the blue area of the sky and the gray area of the mountain to merge. This innovation—air and rock interpenetrating—was a crucial precedent for Picasso’s invention of cubism. First, it defied the laws of our physical experience, and second, it indicated that artists were viewing paintings as having a logic of their own that functioned independently of, or even contrary to, the logic of everyday experience.

Scholars generally divide the cubist innovations of Picasso and French painter Georges Braque into two stages. In the first stage, analytical cubism, the artists fragmented three-dimensional shapes into multiple geometric planes. In the second stage, synthetic cubism, they reversed the process, putting abstract planes together to represent human figures, still lifes, and other recognizable shapes.

A Analytical Cubism (1908-1912)

Profoundly influenced by Cézanne's later work, Picasso and Braque initiated a series of landscape paintings in 1908. These paintings approximated Cézanne’s both in their color scheme (dark greens and light browns) and in their drastic simplification of nature to geometric shapes. Upon seeing these paintings, French critic Louis Vauxelles coined the term cubism. In Picasso’s Houses on the Hill, Horta de Ebro (1909, Museum of Modern Art), he gave architectural structures a three-dimensional, cubic quality, but he abandoned conventional three-dimensional perspective: Instead of being depicted one behind the other, buildings appear one on top of the other. Moreover, he simplified every aspect of the painting according to a vocabulary of cubic shapes—not just the houses but the sky as well. By neutralizing differences between earth and sky, Picasso made the canvas appear more unified, but he also introduced ambiguity by not differentiating solid from void. In addition, Picasso often used inconsistent light sources. In some parts of a painting, light appears to come from the left; in other parts, it comes from the right, the top, or even the bottom. Spatial planes intersect in ways that leave the spectator guessing whether angles are concave or convex. Delight in confusing the viewer is a regular feature of cubism.

By 1910, it had become evident that cubism no longer had any cubes and that the illusion of three-dimensional space, or volume, was gone. Picasso seemed to have dismantled the very idea of solid form, not only by fragmenting the human figure and other shapes, but also by using Cézanne’s concept of passage to merge figure and environment, solid and void, background and foreground. In this way he created a visually consistent painting, yet the consistency does not conform to the physical consistency of the natural world as we experience it. Picasso’s decision to limit his color scheme to dark browns and grays also suggests that his paintings have initiated a radical departure from nature, rather than attempted to copy it.

The year 1912 marks another major development in the cubist language: the invention of collage. In Still Life with Chair Caning (1912, Musée Picasso), Picasso attached a piece of oilcloth (that depicts woven caning) to his work. With this action Picasso not only violated the integrity of the medium—oil painting on canvas—but also included a material that had no previous connection with high art. Art could now be created, Picasso seems to imply, with scissors and glue as well as with paint and canvas. By including pieces of cloth, newspaper, wallpaper, advertising, and other materials in his work, Picasso opened the door for any object or material, however ordinary, to be included in (or even replace) a work of art. This innovation had important consequences for later 20th-century art. Another innovation was including the letters JOU in the painting, possibly referring to the beginning of the word journal (French for “newspaper”) or to the French word jouer, meaning “to play,” as Picasso is playing with forms. These combinations reveal that cubism includes both visual and verbal references, and merges high art with popular culture.

B Synthetic Cubism (1912-1917)

By inventing collage and by introducing elements from the real world in his canvases, Picasso avoided taking cubism to the level of complete abstraction and remained in the domain of tangible objects. Collage also initiated the synthetic phase of cubism. Whereas analytical cubism fragmented figures into geometric planes, synthetic cubism synthesized (combined) near-abstract shapes to create representational forms, such as a human figure or still life. Synthetic cubism also tended toward multiplicity. In Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass (1912, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas), for instance, Picasso combined a drawing of a glass, several spots of color, sheet music, newspaper, a wallpaper pattern, and a cloth that has a wood–grain pattern. Synthetic cubism may also combine different textures, such as wood grain, sand, and printed matter. Sometimes Picasso applied these textures as collage, by gluing textured papers on the canvas. In other cases the artist painted an area to look like wood or wallpaper, fooling the spectator by means of visual puns.

VIII CONSTRUCTION AND AFTER (1912-1920)

In 1912 Picasso instigated another important innovation: construction, or assemblage, in sculpture. Before this innovation, sculpture, at least in the West, was primarily created in one of two ways: by carving a block of stone or wood or by modeling—shaping a form in clay and casting that form in a more durable material, such as bronze. In Guitar (1912, Museum of Modern Art), Picasso used a new additive process. He cut various shapes out of sheet metal and wire, and then reassembled those materials into a cubist construction. In other constructions, Picasso used wood, cardboard, string, and other everyday objects, not only inventing a new technique for sculpture but also expanding the definition of art by blurring the distinction between artistic and nonartistic materials.

From World War I (1914-1918) onward, Picasso moved from style to style. In 1915, for instance, Picasso painted the highly abstract Harlequin (Museum of Modern Art) and drew the highly realistic portrait of Ambroise Vollard (Metropolitan Museum of Art). During and after the war he also worked on stage design and costume design for the Ballets Russes, a modern Russian ballet company launched by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev. Inspired by his direct experience of the theater, Picasso also produced representations of performers, such as French clowns called Pierrot and Harlequin, and scenes of ballerinas.

Picasso separated from Olivier in 1912, after meeting Eva Gouel. Gouel died in 1915, and in 1918 Picasso married Olga Koklova, one of the dancers in Diaghilev’s company. Picasso created a number of portraits of her, and their son, Paulo, appears in works such as Paulo as Harlequin (1924, Musée Picasso).

IX CLASSICAL PERIOD (1920-1925)

After World War I, a strain of conservatism spread through a number of art forms. A motto popular among traditionalists was “the return to order.” For Picasso the years 1920 to 1925 were marked by close attention to three-dimensional form and to classical themes: bathers, centaurs (mythical creatures half-man and half horse), and women in classical drapery. He depicted many of these figures as massive, dense, and weighty, an effect intensified by strong contrasts of light and dark. But even as he moved toward greater realism, Picasso continued to play games with the viewer. In the classical and carefully composed The Pipes of Pan (1923, Musée Picasso), for example, he painted an area of the architectural framework in the foreground (which should be grayish) with the same color as the sea in the background, revealing again his pleasure in ambiguity.

X CUBISM AND SURREALISM (1925-1936)

From 1925 to 1936 Picasso again worked in a number of styles. He composed some paintings of tightly structured geometric shapes, limiting his color scheme to primary colors (red, blue, yellow), as in The Studio (1928, Museum of Modern Art). In other paintings, such as Nude in an Armchair (1929, Musée Picasso), he depicted contorted female figures whose open mouths and menacing teeth reveal a more emotional, less reasoned attitude. Picasso’s marriage broke up during this time, and some of the menacing female figures in his art of this period may represent Koklova.

The same diversity is visible in Picasso’s sculpture during this period. Bather (Metamorphosis II) (1928, Musée Picasso) represents the human body as a massive spherical shape with protruding limbs, whereas Wire Construction (1928, Musée Picasso) depicts it as a rigid, geometric configuration of thin wires. Picasso also experimented with welding in sculpture of this period and explored a variety of themes, including the female head, the sleeping woman, and the Crucifixion. The model for many of his sleeping women was Marie Thérèse Walter, a new love who had entered his life. Their daughter, Maia, was born in 1935.

In the early 1930s Picasso had increasing contact with the members of the surrealist movement (see Surrealism) and became fascinated with the classical myth of the Minotaur. This creature, which has the head of a man and the body of a bull, appears in a study by Picasso for the cover of the surrealist journal Minotaure (1933, Museum of Modern Art). Here Picasso affixed a classical drawing of a Minotaur to a collage of abstracted forms and debris. The Minotaur has numerous incarnations in Picasso’s work, both as an aggressor and a victim, as a violent character and a friendly one. It may represent the artist himself and frequently appears in the context of a bullfight, a typically Spanish scene close to Picasso’s heart.

XI GUERNICA (1937)

In 1937 the Spanish government commissioned Picasso to create a mural for Spain’s pavilion at an international exposition in Paris. Unsure about the subject, Picasso procrastinated. But he set to work almost immediately after hearing that the Spanish town of Guernica had been bombed by Nazi warplanes in support of Spanish general Francisco Franco’s plot to overthrow the Spanish republic. Guernica (1937, Prado, Madrid) was Picasso's response to, and condemnation of, that event. He executed the painting in black and white—in keeping with the seriousness of the subject—and transfigured the event according to his fascination with the bullfight theme.

At the extreme left is a bull, which symbolizes brutality and darkness, according to Picasso. At the center, a horse wounded by a spear most likely represents the Spanish people. At the center on top, an exploding light bulb possibly refers to air warfare or to evil coming from above (and putting out the light of reason). Corpses and dying figures fill the foreground: a woman with a dead child at the left, a dead warrior with a broken sword (from which a flower sprouts) at the center, a weeping woman and a figure falling through a burning building at the right. The distortion of these figures expresses the inhumanity of the event. To suggest the screaming of the horse and of the mother with the dead child, Picasso transformed their tongues into daggers. In the upper center, a tormented female figure holds an oil lamp that sheds light upon the scene, possibly symbolizing the light of truth revealing the brutality of the event to the outside world. In 1936 Picasso met Dora Maar, an artist who photographed Guernica as he painted it. She soon became his companion and the subject of his paintings, although he remained involved with Walter.

XII WORLD WAR II (1939-1945)

Picasso, unlike many artists, stayed in Paris during the German occupation of World War II. Some of his paintings from this time reveal the anxiety of the war years, as does the menacing Still Life with Steer's Skull (1942, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany). Other works, such as his sculpture Head of a Bull (1943, Musée Picasso), are more playful and whimsical. In this sculpture Picasso combined a bicycle seat and handlebars to represent the bull’s head. Upon receiving news of the Nazi death camps, Picasso also painted, although he did not finish, an homage to the victims of the Holocaust (mass murder of European Jews during the war). In this painting, called The Charnel House (1945, Museum of Modern Art), he restricted the color scheme to black and white (as in Guernica) and depicted an accumulation of distorted, mangled bodies. During the war Picasso joined the Communist Party, and after the war he attended several peace conferences.

XIII LATE WORK (1945-1973)

Picasso remained a prolific artist until late in his life, although this later period has not received universal acclaim from historians or critics. He made variations on motifs that had fascinated him throughout his career, such as the bullfight and the painter and his model, the latter a theme that celebrated creativity. And he continued to paint portraits and landscapes. Picasso also experimented with ceramics, creating figurines, plates, and jugs, and he thereby blurred an existing distinction between fine art and craft.

Picasso’s emotional life became more complicated after he met French painter Françoise Gilot in the 1940s, while he was still involved with Maar. He and Gilot had a son, Claude, and a daughter, Paloma, and both appear in many of his late works. Picasso and Gilot parted in 1953. Jacqueline Roque, whom Picasso married in 1961, became his next companion. They spent most of their time in the south of France.

Another new direction in Picasso’s work came from variations on well-known works by older artists that he recast in his own style. Among these works are Women on the Banks of the Seine, after Courbet (1950, Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland) and Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe after Manet (1960, Musée Picasso). What makes these works particularly significant is that they run counter to a basic premise of modern art, Picasso’s included: namely, originality. Although many modern painters were influenced by earlier artists, they rarely made such direct and obvious references to each other’s work because they deemed such references unoriginal. In the postmodern period, which began in the 1970s, artists and critics began to question the modernist directive to be original. In acts of deliberate defiance, many postmodern artists have appropriated (taken for their own use) well-known images from their predecessors or contemporaries. Seen against this context, Picasso’s later variations on paintings by earlier masters hardly seem out of place; on the contrary, they anticipate a key aspect of art in the 1980s.

One of Picasso’s late works, Head of a Woman (1967), was a gift to the city of Chicago. This sculpture of welded steel, 15 m (50 ft) tall, stands in front of Chicago’s Civic Center. Although its semiabstract form proved controversial at first, the sculpture soon became a city landmark.

Because of his many innovations, Picasso is widely considered to be the most influential artist of the 20th century. The cubist movement, which he and Braque inspired, had a number of followers. Its innovations gave rise to a host of other 20th-century art movements, including futurism in Italy, suprematism and constructivism in Russia, de Stijl in the Netherlands, and vorticism in England. Cubism also influenced German expressionism, dada, and other movements as well as early work of the surrealists (see Surrealism) and abstract expressionists (see Abstract Expressionism). In addition, collage and construction became key aspects of 20th-century art.

Contributed By:

Claude Cernuschi

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2006. © 1993-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

I have been trying to physically isolate. teaching virtually has kept me busy over the past few weeks. I hadn't been for a walk in a while. From the first week of physically/socially isolating, I noticed a change in the messages business were putting out - new delivery plans, positive community messages.

174/365 Scape.

I would like to know what you think when you cut yourself, when you decide to physically hurt you, I would like to be there to tell you "No, don't do it, please". I would like to know that it happens to you, help you to solve your problems or overcome reality. I wish that you will not act as if everything in your life is good, because if it would be, you would not do that. I wish that when you ask "You what?" you answer the truth, and not a "nothing", because I see sadness in your eyes, you no longer smile and know you too. I see in your dolls brands, brands that are never cured and always hidden. I would like to tell me what's wrong so we can help you, and although you will never do it, I can't escape you, if it is what you need.

-

Desearía saber lo que piensas cuando te cortas, cuando decides herirte físicamente, desearía estar ahí para decirte "No, no lo hagas, por favor". Desearía saber que te ocurre, ayudarte a resolver tus problemas o superar la realidad. Desearía que no actuaras como si todo en tu vida estuviera bien, porque si lo estaría, no harías eso. Desearía que cuando te pregunto "¿Que te pasa?" contestaras la verdad, y no un "nada", porque veo en tus ojos tristeza, ya no sonríes y te conozco demasiado. Veo en tus muñecas las marcas, marcas que nunca se curan y que siempre se ocultan. Desearía que me contaras lo que te pasa para poder ayudarte, y aunque nunca lo harás, puedo escapar contigo, si es lo que necesitas.

Facebook /500px /Deviantart /Tumbrl /Instargram</a</a

Vampira's Literary Lounge presents:

Toy Photographer Magazine: Volume 1 Issue 1

The first issue of Toy Photographer Magazine (June 2024) is a professional quality publication, physically of a much higher caliber than I was expecting. It's an independently produced publication, possibly print-on-demand, but it is full color throughout, printed on heavy paper stock with a stiff glossy cover, and filled with photos which are reproduced at a very high quality. The typefaces used are large, clear, and printed in attractive colors contrasting nicely with the background colors and images for a high level of easy-on-the-eyes readability.

There are no advertisements in the magazine, so functionally, both in form and in layout, it is more like a reference book than a magazine. Little area is wasted with empty "white space." The layout maximizes color, images, and text size and placement for outstanding visual appeal and readability while fitting in as much information and as many images as possible.

The 95 pages consist of interviews with several Instagram toy photographers who talk about their backgrounds, their choice of subject matter, their influences, and their techniques. Other than one brief article on constructing dioramas using XPS (insulation) foam*, and some of the interviewees offering suggestions about lighting, there's not a lot of specific hands-on how-to info, but there's a sense of enthusiasm running through every page.

I was pleasantly surprised by the level of copy-editing. There are very few punctuation errors, only a handful of easy-to-miss usage errors ("bare" for "bear", things like that), and a few negligible grammar errors where interviews were transcribed verbatim. After all, we don't all talk in perfect prose all the time, right? I noticed two or three minor instances of paragraphs having been misplaced during the layout process, necessitating hunting around to find where a sentence continues. One short paragraph appears to have been omitted, with another few lines duplicated in its place (page 4, left column, bottom). Overall, the reading experience was better than what I see in most mainstream magazines from legacy publishers.

My "takeaway" is that the currently popular style of toy photography requires a fairly high level of Photoshop proficiency. The interviews frequently mention Photoshop post-production and using "from 10 to 100 layers," and several photographers mention spending hours fine-tuning a single image using Photoshop and other digital image editing applications before posting to Instagram. The digital post-production seems to be an aspect that many of the current popular toy photographers enjoy. Several of those interviewed mention the compositing and editing being the "fun" part of the toy photography process.

The emphasis in this volume leans heavily toward Star Wars and super-hero figures in 1/12 (6-inch) scale, and there is a similarity of techniques used in the images showcased that, to my eye, becomes a bit monotonous after 90-plus pages. The quality of the images featured is uniformly high; but variety in the subject matter is somewhat lacking.

Subjectively, I would like to have seen a magazine broadly titled Toy Photographer include some toys outside the narrow scope of Star Wars and super-heroes; perhaps some miniature vehicles, model trains, or dolls (both playline and high-end). What is included, though, is presented very professionally in a fun, approachable, and colorful manner. On the whole, this publication offers an interesting, entertaining read and an enjoyable overview of the style of "1/12-scale action figure" photography that is popular online today.

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* Handy hint not featured in the mag: buy your insulation foam at a major home improvement supply center. The article recommends purchasing foam online from hobby retailers. You'll save buckets of money buying foam panels at a hardware store. "But... an 8-foot sheet won't fit in my car!" Yeah, well, you're not buying 8-foot sheets online, either. Take a pocket knife with you to the big box store and chop the 8x sheet in to manageable sections in the parking lot.

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Technical details: this image was snapped with an older model iPad. The figure was placed in front of the magazine, a small flashlight was propped up on the edge of a partly pulled-out dresser drawer, and several images were snapped from slightly different angles in the hope that one would not have an undue amount of glare.

The image was processed by tapping the "auto correct" filter on the iPad "Photos" app. Then the image was imported in to an image processing app called "PhotoToaster." The "Happy" filter was applied, which boosts the warmth in the image; and a framed edge called "Brushed" was selected. The image was exported from PhotoToaster back to Photos and from there was emailed to my desktop computer and subsequently uploaded to Flickr. Total production time: maybe fifteen minutes.

It took me a lot longer to write and edit the long-winded caption.

Singapore National Day Parade

Singapore celebrated its first National Day as an independent nation in 1966, one year after Singapore's separation from Malaysia on 9 August 1965.

The first National Day Parade started in the morning at 9:00 a.m. that day. People came as early as 7:00 a.m. in order to get good vantage points. Singapore's first President, Mr Yusof bin Ishak and Singapore's first Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, were seated with members of the government at the grandstand on the steps of City Hall. When the parade began, 6 military contingents (including the Singapore Infantry Regiment, SPDF and the then Republic of Singapore Police), a mobile column from the SIR, and various schools and civil contingents marched past City Hall and then into the city streets. Three military bands accompanied the parade inspection and later the march past with military music. The Singapore Fire Brigade also took part in this first parade with its firetrucks included in the mobile column. Rounding it all was a massed lion and dragon dance performance from drum and dragon troupes nationwide.

The following year, the contingents increased to 76, including those of the then established Singapore Armed Forces, the RSP and more cultural groups, with the addition of more civil marching groups. The reason is partly due to the introduction of the National Service program in the military and police forces, and later extended to the Fire Brigade, later called the Singapore Fire Services in the 1970s. Street performances by various groups also debuted in that year's parade. The 1968 edition, although held on a rainy morning that surprised even the marching contingents and the dignitaries, saw the first ground performances on the Padang as the weather improved - a prelude to today's show performances. 1969's parade, the one where the Mobile Column made its first drivepast, commemorated the 150th year of the city's founding and had Princess Alexandra of the UK as principal guest.

On the August 9, 1970 NDP edition, the Flypast of the State Flag and the Republic of Singapore Air Force Flypast debuted. A combat simulation performance by Singapore Army personnel was one of the new highlights for that year.

The 1971 NDP was the first to include the iconic mobile parade floats from various organizations. Choirs also debuted on that year's edition.

The 1973 parade was held from the afternoon to early evening for the first time to attract more attendance from the public. The next year, colour broadcasts of the parade on television began.

The 1975 parades, held to celebrate Singapore's 10th year, were for the first time decentralized into 13 parade venues for more public participation. Almost all of them lasted for an hour and all of them even had route marches on the streets to the participating venues.

By the time the NDP was held at the National Stadium (for the first time) in 1976, the NDP Guard of Honour, composed of officers and personnel of the SAF and the Singapore Police Force made its first appearance, followed after the parade proper by the very first evening presentations by various groups, a prelude to future evening NDPs in 1980 and from 1984 onward. 1977's parade was a decentralized event like two years before (and like 1968's was damped by the rain) while 1978 would see the parade back at the Padang grounds. 1979's parade was yet another decentralized one, held in several high schools and sports stadiums nationwide.

The 1980 parade, held at the National Stadium, almost rained at the start, but the performances went on as planned as the weather improved later. This was the first parade in which the feu de joie of the Guard-of-Honour contingents made its inaugural appearance. 1981's NDP was the very first parade appearance of the then SPF Civil Defense Command, presently the Singapore Civil Defense Force, later combined with the SFS in 1989. (The SCDF of today showed itself for the first time in the 1982 NDP held in the Padang.) They were held in two decentralised venues, Jurong and Queenstown Sports Stadiums for further increase public attendance and participation in the celebrations. 1982's parade, back at the Padang site, featured more contingents and for the first time the mobile column drove past after the marchpast had concluded, thus making it a predecessor to the parades at the Padang from 1995 onward (every 5 years).

1983 would be the final year that the NDP was held in multiple venues.

The 1984 NDP, now back at the Padang, celebrated Singapore's Silver Jubilee of self-governance and included a bigger Mobile Column, the first appearance of the popular Silent Precision Drill Squad from the Singapore Armed Forces Military Police Command and the first true evening fireworks display (plus the debut of the very first NDP theme song) while NDP 1985 celebrated the nation's 20th year with more participants in the parade segment and in the show proper. The 1986 edition was the first true evening edition of the parade, and the first to use flashlights for audience use. 1987's parade, held at the Padang, was the first ever evening event held there and featured the first appearance of the massed military bands of the SAF. 1988 saw the card stunt feature being used for the first time during the National Stadium event and the 1989 edition, the first National Stadium daytime event, saw the debut of the nationally famous Red Lions parachute team and the daylight fireworks after 1966. The parade returned to the Padang in 1990 to honor the nation's silver jubilee year, which would turn out to be the last afternoon event ever to be held.

In 1997, for the first time, there was a National Education Show, where Primary 5 students watch NDP rehearsals.

The government set up the electronic voting ticketing system in 2003 in order to tackle the problem of overcrowding. Such ticketing system enables citizens to stand a chance at winning the tickets by registering their e-mail addresses or mobile numbers at the NDP website or phonelines.

Starting 2008, the NDP is also aired all over the Asia-Pacific region through Channel NewsAsia.

2009's NDP was the first ever edition to have an integrated show including the parade segment.

In 2014 Third Warrant Officer Shirley Ng became the first female Red Lion parachutist to jump at the NDP.[1][2]

2015's parade, even as all was planned for the parade to be at the Padang, will be the first ever parade to be held both there and at the Float at Marina Bay, breaking a parade tradition in the process. NDP 2015 is the first National Day Parade without the founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, who never missed a single National Day Parade since 1966, for whom he had died on 23 March 2015, within 8 months after attending the 2014 edition.

NDP editions

The venue of the parade is usually at the historical grounds of the Padang, where the declaration of Singapore's independence was held. Since the first parade in 1966, all the way to 1975, the venue was located in this central area to bring the parade closer to the people. In 1976, the parade was held for the first time at the newly completed National Stadium, where the much larger capacity allowed for more to view the parade live.

Although offering about 60,000 seats in the National Stadium, the demand for tickets remained high. Hence there were several attempts to decentralise the venue to bring the celebration closer to more Singaporeans. From 1975 to 1983, celebrations were alternated between a decentralised event and one centered at the Padang or stadium. From 1984, the parade was held twice at the stadium before being brought back to the Padang. This three-year cycle was repeated up to 1994.

From 1995, it was decided that the Padang would be used as the venue every five years. The Padang, although historically important, posed a greater logistical challenge and also offered fewer seats for spectators. The event and rehearsals also required the closing of surrounding roads. There was a need to construct temporary spectator stands around the field. The site remained, however, the only feasible venue for the mobile column, as the heavy vehicles could not be driven onto the stadium track. The Padang was used as the main performance venue for the 2005 parade, with fringe activities decentralised to Marina South, Jurong East, Yishun and Tampines.

Several alternate locations were mooted, including the utilisation of the Padang, which is physically bigger and less likely to disrupt daily functions in the city.

Parade being held at the Marina Bay Floating Stadium in 2007

On 16 October 2005, it was announced that that 2006 NDP would be held at the old stadium for the last time before moving to The Float at Marina Bay [1]. The 130 metre by 100 metre platform would be used for the next five years until the new stadium is completed. Although offering a seating capacity of only 27,000, which is less than National Stadium, there is a vast area for 150,000 extra spectators along the Marina Bay waterfront.

Since the 2000s (decade), every year's parade would revolve around a theme which would guide the planning of the parade and show.

After ten-year hiatus, the 2016 edition of NDP will return back to the new National Stadium

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Time passed as Soundwave and Steelwing explored further into the chasm that they had been tricked to fall in to more than one and a half days ago. As the pair progressed it became clear to both of the pair that theirs was a partnership of circumstance and that a significant personal details would remain a mystery to the other until when and if a deeper, evidence-based trust was forged. The secrecy was not the fault of Steelwing for he had tried to bridge the gap between the pair for some time now. But the derelict felt that so long as he was physically incapable of remembering the details that Soundwave had deemed important, his Decepticon partner would remain reclusive. The truth of the matter was of course that Soundwave simply did not care for his diminutive partner. Soundwave felt in fact that his lack of concern for Steelwing was virtually palpable. What did concern the Decepticon was the fact that despite a proven lack of concern for Steelwing, the communicator still felt compelled to pull his partner along.

Long hours of exploration took place in virtual silence. Both Soundwave and Steelwing were too preoccupied with their own thoughts to strike up a conversation with the other beyond the occasional call to the other's attention when a discovery made.

While silent, Soundwave completed his scan of the information collected from the mind of Fitor. The story of the trials that he and his Renegade Gobots had faced over the last decade and a half would have been shockingly devastating to most that were aware of the tale, but Soundwave did not consider the Gobots worthy of an expense of emotional energy. Soundwave was focused on determining facts that he could exploit at a later date, particularly any clues as to why Steelwing hated the Renegades so. Unfortunately, Soundwave could find nothing. Fitor did not even recognise the identity of Steelwing. Soundwave determined that this must mean the Steelwing's past with the Renegades must extend far beyond the history and Fitor and Soundwave share. Interesting. Soundwave looked at the derelict who was limping alongside him, muttering to himself. Perhaps another brainscan was in order.

Say, would you let me cry on your shoulder

I've heard that you'll try anything twice

Close your eyes

And think of someone you physically admire

And let me kiss you..

Magpie: *switches back to Mendelssohn’s wedding march*

Danny: *face takes on a hungry quality, as he physically leans forward, trying to catch a glimpse of his bride*

Candy: *appears at the end of the aisle, eyes immediately finding Danny’s, as she clutches the arm of Paul (Mr. M), slightly nervous smile on her lips*

Mrs. M: *in an emotional murmur* “She’s like an angel straight from heaven. Look at her! That beautiful girl’s my baby! *cries loudly* “That’s my baby!”

Candy: *buries her face in Paul’s shoulder, halfway between laughter and tears*

Paul: *whispers* “You’re as good as ours, Candy—our daughter and an enormous blessing in our lives. Don’t you ever doubt it, you hear?”

Candy: *lets out a small sob and nods* “I won’t.”

Candy: *leaning on Paul’s arm for support, begins making her way sedately toward the love of her life…only to stop abruptly in the middle of the aisle*

Kumi: “Bloody hell.”

Yuri (exasperatedly): “Surely not again!”

Caid: *hurries up to stand by Mags, while strapping on his guitar* “Ready to rock, li’l mama? I’ll start out slow, and you can join in whenever you think you’ve caught the vibe…”

Magpie: *lifts her eyebrow in haughty disdain and begins ripping out Walk This Way on her violin*

Caid: *surprised chuckle* “Alright, I guess I‘m the one who needs to keep up, huh? Consider me schooled.” *joins in, the blare of rock-n-roll echoing down the beach*

Fashion Credits

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

Magpie

Dress: IT – FR2 - Only Natural Fashion

Belt: Randall Craig RTW – April in Paris Fashion

Earrings: IT – Fashion Royalty

Necklace: IT – Fashion Royalty – Behind Velvet Ropes Natalia

Shoes: Jennifer Sue

Doll is a Wild at Heart Lilith, re-rooted by the remarkable valmaxi!

Caid

Jeans: IT – Fashion Royalty – Homme – Style Strategy Lukas

Shirt: Volks – WTG? – Selfish

Jacket: Mattel – Barbie Collectible – The Waltz Ken

Shoes: IT – Fashion Royalty – Homme – Fast Track Victor James

Hat: Mattel – Ken Playline

Bind Me Necklace: Knife’s Edge Designs (me)

Doll is a Dark Hunter Acheron. His eyes have been repainted by me.

2601 E Huntington Dr, Flagstaff, AZ 86004

Walmart in Arizona with solar panels in the parking lot. A friend of mine sent me this pic, so I did not physically visit this store. I wish I was in Arizona....

I had to physically pry him away from that hole in the ground. He was so focused I actually felt bad about my own impatience.

This ibex, despite the presence of older ibexes with a more imposing trophy, was certainly the most physically powerful and probably dominant one within its group of males.

I've been stressed, mentally, physically, financially & logistically. Long story... I thought this was Thursday. Wrong! I was going to put this in Happy Truck Thursday group. Oh well. Maybe next Thursday.

I think I got the correct place, Oak Grove Safety Rest Stop off of I-5 Southbound side. It is around Milepost 206 or 207, I think.

This truck is hauling for Zhidel, Inc. that is a licensed and bonded freight shipping and trucking company running freight hauling business from Marysville, California. I looked it up on Google and saw two other locations, Rancho Cordova and San Francisco, California, although it wasn't clear to me if all 3 locations mentioned, all do trucking/hauling or some other business. I bet you truckers know. LOL

For Dave C. and other Flickr friends, I think the *soul of this that I haven't posted much for 3 or 4 days and I'm willing to admit some troubles.

For Paul Grillo, Happy Truck Thursday!

(DSCN7971TruckProbRestStop206I5SouthCrpTUInitFlickr120420)

The Athenian tyrant Peisistratos himself may be alluded to on the prominent east pediment of the Treasury. In the center of the scene, Zeus physically intervenes in the struggle for the Delphic tripod, grasping the arm of Apollo (who is assisted by Artemis and the tripod carried by Herakles. As is conventional in pedimental scenes, Zeus, the central figure, faces the victor Apollo who will retain the tripod, the sign of his oracular power. This scene is based on a story that Herakles had come to Delphi for a prophecy (or purification), and had been refused by the oracle, whereupon he had violently carried off the tripod in order to establish an oracular shrine of his own. Thus ensued the struggle over the tripod. Apollo was said to retrieved the tripod through the intervention of Zeus.

The scene of the struggle for the tripod first appears in vase painting after 560 B.C. but only becomes popular after the erection of the Treasury pediment, which inspired a long series of Attic vase paintings. If Boardman's connection of Herakles and Peisistratos is accepted, then perhaps the pediment of the Siphnian Treasury may be interpreted as a reference to the contemporary rivalry between Peisistratos (He- rakles) and Delphi (Apollo), and to the tyrant's attempt to usurp the god's authority by setting up a rival oracular establishment at Athens. In the pediment, the outcome of the rivalry is made explicit by the intervention of Zeus, whose will Apollo prophesies. The scene provides a visual justification for the oracular authority of Delphi, as do certain literary passages."

Source: Livingston Vance Watrous, “The Sculptural Program of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi”

Greek high-relief

High Arcaic Period

530 BC - 525 BC

Siphnian Treasury

Delphi, Archaeological Museum

youtu.be/syvF_cutj8w

It's 1865 and the telegraph is heading west. George Crane, wanting to keep law and order out of his territory, is out to stop the construction. The engineer on the job is Ken Mason and he is the grandson of Zorro. As Crane sends his men or Indians to stop the work, Mason repeatedly puts on the Zorro costume and rides to the rescue in this 12-chapter serial.

Clayton Moore

September 14th, 1914 — December 28th, 1999

Clayton Moore, though best remembered today as television’s Lone Ranger, had a lengthy and distinguished career in serials. Moore was a physically ideal serial lead, but his greatest strengths were his dramatic, quietly intense speaking voice and expressive face. These gifts helped Moore to convey a sincerity that could make the most unbelievable dialogue or situations seem real. The bulk of Moore’s cliffhanger work was done after World War 2, when serials’ shrinking budgets cut back on original action scenes and made the presence of skilled leading players more important than in the serial’s golden age. Moore, with his sincerity and acting skill, was just the type of actor the post-war serials needed.

Clayton Moore was born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago. He began to train for a career as a circus acrobat at the age of eight, and joined a trapeze act called the Flying Behrs after finishing high school; as a member of the Behrs, Moore would perform for two circuses and at the 1934 World’s Fair. An injury to his left leg around 1935 forced him out of the aerialist business, and after working briefly as a male model in New York he moved to Hollywood in 1937, beginning his film career as a stuntman. He played numerous bit roles in addition to his stunt work for the next three years, among them a miniscule part in his first serial, Zorro’s Fighting Legion (Republic, 1939), as one of the members of the titular group. Edward Small, an independent producer allied with United Artists, cast Moore in his first credited parts in a pair of 1940 films, Kit Carson and The Son of Monte Cristo. The former featured Moore as a heroic young pioneer, the latter as an army officer aiding masked avenger Louis Hayward. Following these two films, Moore began to get credited speaking parts in other pictures. In 1941 he played the romantic lead in Tuxedo Junction, one of Republic Pictures’ “Weaver Brothers and Elviry” comedies, and the next year the studio signed him for his first starring serial, Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942).

Perils of Nyoka (Republic, 1942) was a vehicle for Republic’s new “Serial Queen,” Kay Aldridge, who played Nyoka Gordon, a girl seeking her missing scientist father in the deserts of North Africa. Moore was the heroic Dr. Larry Grayson, a member of an expedition searching for the “Tablets of Hippocrates,” an ancient list of medical cures sought by Nyoka’s father before he disappeared. Nyoka joined forces with Grayson and his expedition to locate Professor Gordon and the tablets–and to battle Arab ruler Vultura (Lorna Gray) and her band of desert cutthroats, who were after the Tablets and the treasure hidden with them. Perils of Nyoka was a highly exciting serial, with consistently imaginative and varied action sequences, and colorful characters and locales. Although Moore took second billing to Aldridge, his character received as much screen time as hers and his performance was a major part of the serial’s success. Moore, with his intense sincerity, made his nearly superhuman physician character believable; the audience never felt like questioning Dr. Grayson’s ability to perform emergency brain surgery on Nyoka’s amnesiac father in a desert cave, or his amazing powers of riding, wall-scaling, marksmanship, and sword-fighting, far beyond those of the average medical school graduate.

Moore went into the army in 1942, almost immediately after the release of Perils of Nyoka. He served throughout World War Two, and didn’t resume his film career until 1946, when he returned to Republic Pictures to appear in The Crimson Ghost. The impact of his starring turn in Perils of Nyoka was diminished by his long hiatus, and he found himself playing a supporting role in this new serial. He was cast as Ashe, the chief henchman of the mysterious Crimson Ghost, and aided that villain in his attempts to steal a counter-atomic weapon called a “Cyclotrode.” Ashe was ultimately brought to justice, along with his nefarious master, by stars Charles Quigley and Linda Stirling. The Crimson Ghost showed that Moore could play intensely mean villains as well as intensely courageous heroes. His sneering, bullying Ashe came off as thoroughly unpleasant, as he stalked through the serial doing his best to kill off hero and heroine.

Moore returned to heroic parts in his next cliffhanger, Jesse James Rides Again (Republic, 1947). The serial’s plot had Jesse, retired from outlawry, forced to go on the run because of new crimes committed in his name. Jesse and his pal Steve (John Compton) wound up in Tennessee, where, under the alias of “Mr. Howard,” Jesse came to the aid of a group of farmers victimized by an outlaw gang called the Black Raiders. The Raiders, secretly bossed by local businessman Jim Clark (Tristram Coffin), were after oil reserves beneath the local farmland, but Mr. Howard ultimately outgunned them. James’ own identity was exposed in the process, but he was allowed to escape arrest by a sympathetic marshal. Jesse James Rides Again was Republic’s best post-war Western serial, thanks in part to the unusual plot device of an ex-badman hero. Moore was able to give Jesse James a dangerous edge that most other serial leads couldn’t have pulled off; his cold, steely-eyed glare when gunning down villains seemed very much in keeping with dialogue references to Jesse’s outlaw past.

G-Men Never Forget (Republic, 1947), Moore’s next serial, cast him as Ted O’Hara, an FBI agent battling a racketeer boss named Vic Murkland (Roy Barcroft). O’Hara broke up various protection rackets organized by Murkland, but his efforts were hampered by Murkland’s impersonation of a kidnaped police commissioner (also played by Barcroft). G-Men Never Forget possessed a tough and realistic atmosphere not typical of gang-busting serials, and Moore delivered a grimly determined performance well-fitted to the serial’s mood. Moore’s acting, good supporting performances, skilled direction, and a well-written script made G-Men Never Forget a superior serial, one that could hold its own against earlier gang-busting chapterplays like the Dick Tracy outings.

Moore’s next serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), in which he reprised his Jesse James role. Joined this time by Steve Darrell as Frank James, Moore tried to help a former gang member named John Powell (Stanley Andrews) develop a silver mine. Part of the mine’s proceeds were to be used to pay back victims of James Gang robberies, but the plan was derailed by a crooked mining engineer (John Crawford), who discovered the mine contained gold instead of silver and murdered Powell to keep this find secret. Crawford then used every trick in the book to keep Moore, Darrell, and Noel Neill (as Powell’s daughter) from developing the mine, but the James Boys unmasked his treachery by the end. Frank and Jesse James drew heavily on stock footage and plot elements from Republic’s earlier Adventures of Red Ryder, and was thus more predictable than its predecessor, but it was still an entertaining and well-made serial. Moore again made Jesse seem both sympathetic and (when fighting the bad guys) somewhat frightening.

By now, Moore was established as Republic’s premiere serial hero; however, his next cliffhanger would lead to his departure from the studio and change the course of his career. The last in a long line of Republic Zorro serials, Ghost of Zorro (1949) starred Moore as Ken Mason, the original Zorro’s grandson, who donned his ancestor’s mask to help a telegraph company establish a line in the wild West in the face of outlaw sabotage. Like Adventures of Frank and Jesse James, the serial was somewhat derivative of earlier outings (particularly Son of Zorro), but smoothly and professionally done. Moore delivered another strong performance, but for some odd reason Republic chose to have his voice dubbed by another actor in scenes where he was masked as Zorro. This strange production decision did not diminish Moore’s potential as a masked hero in the eyes of a group of television producers who were trying to find an actor to play the Lone Ranger on a soon-to-be-launched TV show; Moore’s turn in Ghost of Zorro landed him the part. Moore debuted as the Ranger in 1949, and played the part for two seasons on TV. During this period, he did make one apparent serial appearance in Flying Disc Man From Mars (Republic, 1950), but all his footage actually came from The Crimson Ghost.

In 1952, Moore was dropped from The Lone Ranger without any explanation from the producers, who apparently feared that Moore was becoming too identified as the Lone Ranger, and that he might become so sure of his position that he’d ask for a bigger salary. John Hart replaced Moore as the Ranger for the show’s third season, and Moore returned to freelance acting. He played numerous small roles in feature films, made multiple guest appearances (usually as a heavy) on TV shows like Range Rider and The Gene Autry Show, and also found time to make four more serials.

The first of these was Radar Men from the Moon (Republic, 1952), which featured Moore as a gangster named Graber, who was working with lunar invaders to bring the Earth under the dominion of Retik, Emperor of the Moon (Roy Barcroft). Scientist “Commando” Cody (George Wallace) opposed the planned conquest with the aid of his flying rocket suit and other handy gadgets. Moore met a fiery demise when his car plummeted off a cliff in the last chapter, and Retik came to a similarly sticky end shortly thereafter. Moore’s characterization in Radar Men from the Moon was reminiscent of his performance as “Ashe;” once again he performed deeds of villainy with swaggering relish.

Moore’s next serial, Columbia’s Son of Geronimo (1952), was his first non-Republic cliffhanger. He returned to playing a hero in this outing, an undercover cavalry officer named Jim Scott out to quell an Indian uprising led by Rodd Redwing as Porico, son of Geronimo. The uprising was being encouraged by outlaws John Crawford and Marshall Reed to serve their own ends, and Scott and Porico ultimately joined forces to defeat them. Son of Geronimo remains one of the few popular late Columbia serials, due to its strong and unusually violent action scenes and the forceful performances of Moore and his co-stars, particularly Reed and Redwing.

Moore’s last Republic serial was Jungle Drums of Africa (1952), in which he played Alan King, an American mining engineer developing a valuable uranium deposit in the African jungles. Moore was assisted by lady doctor Phyllis Coates and fellow engineer Johnny Sands and opposed by a group of Communist spies (Henry Rowland, John Cason) and their witch-doctor accomplice (Roy Glenn). While Drums drew extensively on stock shots of African animals to augment its jungle atmosphere, it relied to an unusually large extent on original footage for its action scenes and chapter endings, and the result was a modestly-budgeted but enjoyable serial that served as a good finish to Moore’s career at Republic.

Gunfighters of the Northwest (Columbia, 1953), Moore’s final serial, cast him as the second lead, a Mountie named Bram Nevin who backed up RCMP Sergeant Jock Mahoney. Moore, in his first and only “sidekick” role, played well off Mahoney; while the latter’s character was the focus of the serial’s action, Moore’s role was really more that of co-hero than of a traditional sidekick. The serial pitted the two leads against the “White Horse Rebels,” a gang of outlaws trying to overthrow the Canadian government. Though thinly-plotted, Gunfighters, with its nice location photography and good acting, was the last really interesting Columbia serial; it was also Moore’s last serial. In 1954, he returned to the Lone Ranger series, its producers having been forced to realize that Moore was firmly established as the Ranger and that audiences wouldn’t warm up to his substitute John Hart. The fourth and fifth seasons of the show featured Moore in his familiar place as the “daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.”

After the Lone Ranger series ended in 1956, Moore reprised the role in two big-screen movies and then retired from acting. He remained in the public view, however, making personal appearances throughout the country in his Lone Ranger garb. Publicly and privately, he upheld the ideals that the Lone Ranger–and his serial heroes–had upheld on the screen: courage, charity, and a sense of justice. In 1979, he was barred by court order from making personal appearances as the Lone Ranger because the property’s owners worried that Moore’s close identification with the character would undercut a new Lone Ranger film. Moore nevertheless maintained his status as the “real” Lone Ranger in the eyes of fans, and, after the failure of the new Ranger feature, he was allowed to resume his mask in 1984. Moore died in Los Angeles in 1999, leaving behind several generations of fans that honored him not only for his TV persona, but for the kindess that characterized the off-screen man behind the mask.

Part of Clayton Moore’s success as the Lone Ranger was due to his respectful attitude towards the character. While some actors would have had a hard time taking a masked cowboy from a children’s radio show seriously, Moore’s performance was as heartfelt as if he had been playing a Shakespearian role; he gave the part all the benefit of his considerable acting talent. Moore played his cliffhanger roles, heroic and villainous, with the same respect and the same wholeheartedness. It’s no wonder that serial fans hold him in the same high regard that the Lone Ranger’s fans do.