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Back from our trip and physically exhausted. I just wanted to post this and wish you all a wonderful St. Patrick's Day. Hope you had a lot of fun!
By the way, my son's school is raising money for the American Heart Association. If you would like to make a donation in his name you can go to this website. The photo of my son was taken by yours truly: amha.convio.net/site/TR/JumpforHeart/SCA-SouthCentralAffi...
This photo is me.
[ Not litterally, no: it is not a portrait of me, physically ]
This photo is showing me as of now:
physically incomplete, almost invisible, blurry from the inside and on the outside, and confused.
Me, trying to escape from the light into some darkness and out of phase.
Or else, me trying to get out the darkness and getting back into the light, in focus.
And that's because: I don't get which is which, I am blinded.
This photo is me since some 4 days: confused, unbalanced and not as I want to be.
Me, but not as I feel I am - or should be.
I don't want to be this me.
It hurts, you see.
The set My Blurry Life is here
Taken with a Colorsplash Flash (see the complete set here)
Karate is a way of life which teaches self-confidence, health, and physical strength. Every effort in karate teaches you … commitment … for any task in life. You build karate and life at the same time. You grow spiritually and physically at once. Individual change comes through self-study. Then you find your own special techniques — and you find yourself. The final goal of training is to act against any opponent with maximum efficiency.
1-2 out of every 100 students reach Black Belt and of those only 1 out of every 1,000 achieves his 2nd Dan.
So yeah, nothing really interesting happened today. Oh wait, yes! Something DID happen haha. But that's after.
So, I went to karate today and it was the promotional for the lower ranks. It was the same as any other promotional. But at the end of every year, they count up everyone's classes and see who has the most. Teaching classes do not count. I got the highest with 138 =) But with all the teaching, it's about... 155 or so maybe. I only started going everyday over the summer way before my Nidan promotional, but I've been going every since because I've realized how much I love and need karate.
So yeah, my karate instructor congratulated me and thanked me for everything I've done for him. I would do anything for him on a dime. Or a penny =)
OKAY! So for the interesting part. Well, it's nothing exciting, but it was the highlight of my day. So, after school I decided to go and talk about my midterm with my History teacher. I'll call him... Mr. Man. That works. Anyway - So we talked about my midterm for about a half an hour, and I only lost points on the multiple choice and essays. I missed two multiple choice questions, and got threes instead of fours on the essays. When he read my DBQ he figured it to be a four, so he's taking it to his supervisor to revise it and give me a four, which will bump my midterm into the 90's =) My average is still a 96, so I'm still happy hah.
And then after that we just started talking about colleges because I told him I wanted to get into teaching history. We talked about college and grad school and things like that.
After the student that needed to talk to him left, we just kinda kept talking until 4.30 about random things. We talked about college, family, life, weapons, movies, people, history, photography, etc. It was nice, haha. We laughed and joked around. I like him. Mr. Man is a cool guy. So it was like, 2 SOLID hours of just... talking =)
Anyway, that was my day. I dunno a song that would go with this...
"Are you still lost tonight?
Living but dead inside
This is the proclamation
This is the call to rise
Are you abused alone?
Walking with broken bones
If you feel you’ve been forgotten
Let this song guide you home
We are the disillusioned
We’ve been left wanting more
Before every aspiration
Hits the floor
Hold on for your life
All we feel is so far from alive
The damned are done believing
And the cursed can dream no more
So hold on for your life
Because only the strong survive
They tell you what you should be
They sell you the plastic dreams
Opinions are all provided
But nothing is what it seems
I dare you take control
Cause empty are hands
And bruised are the souls
Of those who show no resistance
Of those who are weak below
We are the disenchanted
Who die with each passing day
No one here understands us
So I say
Hold on for your life
All we feel is so far from alive
The damned are done believing
And the cursed can dream no more
So hold on for your life
Because only the strong survive
How will it feel?
To live your life Until your dying day
Where nothing is real
As we sacrifice
Bending until we break
It’s been revealed
Hold on for your life
Dreams are not theirs to take
Dreams are not theirs to take
Hold on for your life
All we feel is so far from alive
The damned are done believing
And the cursed can dream no more
So hold on for your life
Because only the strong survive"
("White Knuckles" by Alter Bridge) I know I usually only post part of songs, but I like the whole song haha. =)
Spiritual/physical definition;
Gantree…
Framework, structure, supporting, containing, holding, bridging forms physically or spiritually.
Around a thousand trees went into building this Traffic Bridge in Fremantle opened 1939.
The bridge that stands there today pictured above was planned to only be there for 5 years; still standing 77 years later and still undergoing major repairs to keep it strong enough to keep up with the ever growing traffic use in a port city.
The first bridge built on this site was around 180 years ago. There has been 4 timber bridges built on this site over those years.
My Great Great Grandfather who was sent out with the Royal Engineers to help construct the Fremantle prison also would have been involved with the construction of the original timber bridge on this site.
When you look at the old images of these original bridges you can see they also were built of many trees cut down from local bush lands.
Still a vital bridge connecting the northern and southern sides of the metropolitan areas of Western Australia.
Added to each image in this album are their inspired stories to this emerging family HISHERTREE.
Each image has a word title that would have been spelt in English with "try" at the end like ancestry, carpentry, or infantry. I have added "tree" to replace the "try" and then taken their dictionary meanings that are only ever describing the outside physical world and married some spiritual elements.
The human beings body lives in the outside world of the physical but their inner self lives in the realm of spirit.
Ayreon
Day Ten: Memories
Best friend:
It’s been 10 days
It shouldn’t last this long
The doctor’s mystified
Nothing’s physically wrong…
Wife:
But maybe in his head
He’s struggling to survive
Would it help if we talk to him?
Bring him back to life…
Best friend and Pride:
Do you remember that time
We were showing off our brand new flashy bikes
Wife and Love:
You looked so fine
Until you both fell over and then started to cry!
Best friend and Pride:
Do you recall that day
Fearlessly we climbed the highest tower
Wife and Love:
Then you became afraid
Too scared to climb down you stayed up there for hours!
Best friend and Pride:
Do you remember that time?
Wife and Love:
Do you recall that day?
Wife and Love:
Do you remember that time
Alone at last, naked by the fire
Best friend and Pride:
Then all your friends came by
They rushed in the room and you had no time to hide!
Wife and Love:
Do you recall that day
You proposed to me, and fell down to your knees
Best friend and Pride:
You didn’t know what to say
So she knelt down too for she thought you’d lost your keys!
Wife and Love:
Do you remember that time?
Best friend and Pride:
Do you recall that day?
Passion:
Can you see her light
Shining through the black
She’s reaching out to you
What’s holding you back?
Reason:
Can you feel her warmth
Glowing on your skin
Don’t repress the memories
Let them all in…
I couldn’t physically bring myself to carve another pumpkin this year, so let’s just relive last year's magnum opus.
(Glasgow, 2015)
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are not in Lettice’s flat, and whilst we have not travelled that far physically across London, the tough streets and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. We have come to the home of Lettice’s charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, where we find ourselves in the cheerful kitchen cum living room of her tenement in Merrybrook Place: by her own admission, a haven of cleanliness amidst the squalor of the surrounding neighbourhood. Edith, Lettice’s maid, is visiting her Cockney friend and co-worker on a rather impromptu visit, much to the surprise of the old char when she answered the timid knock on her door on a quiet Sunday morning in early January and found Edith standing on her stoop, wrapped up against the winter cold in her black three quarter length coat – a remodelled piece picked up cheaply by the young maid from a Petticoat Lane** second-hand clothes stall, improved with the addition of a black velvet collar.
“Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby exclaims in delight and one of her fruity smokers’ coughs, a lit hand rolled cigarette in her right hand releasing a thin trail of greyish white smoke into the atmosphere. “What a luverly surprise! Whatchoo doin’ ‘ere then?”
“I’m sorry to pay a call unannounced, Mrs. Boothby, and I know you said I shouldn’t come here unescorted.” Edith apologises sheepishly.
“Not at all, dearie!” the old Cockney assures her, stepping back and opening the door to grant Edith entry. “That were ‘bout comin’ ere when it’s getting’ dark. Nastiness lurks and dwells in the shadows round these parts, but durin’ the day, so long as you ‘old onto yer ‘andbag and are aware of pickpockets, you’re pretty safe.” She stuffs the nearly spent cigarette into her mouth. “Come on in wiv ya. Can’t ‘ave you standin’ on the stoop in the cold. Got a nice fire goin’ inside to warm you up.”
“Thank you Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says gratefully.
Mrs. Boothby gives a hard stare over Edith’s shoulder as she ushers her in, glancing at the dirty lace scrim curtains of Mrs. Friedmann’s lamplit front window opposite, where she knows instinctively the nosy Jewess stands in her usual spot in one of her paisley shawls, observing the goings on of the rookery*** with dark and watchful eyes. “Piss off, Mrs. Friedmann!” Mrs. Boothby yells out vehemently across the paved court to her neighbour. “My guests ain’t none of your business, you busybody old Yid****!” She spits the cigarette butt she holds between her gritted tea and nicotine stained teeth out into the courtyard, and watches with satisfaction as the grubby and tattered scrim flutters. She turns her attentions back to Edith and says kindly, “Come on in, dearie.”
It takes a moment for Edith’s eyes to adjust from the weak winter light outside to the darkness within. As they do, Edith discerns the familiar things within the tenement front room that she has come to know over her occasional visits since befriending the charwoman who does all the hard graft for her at Cavendish Mews: a kitchen table not too unlike her own at the Mayfair flat, a couple of sturdy ladderback chairs, an old fashioned black leaded stove, a rudimentary trough sink on bricks in the corner of the room and Mrs. Boothby’s pride and joy, her dresser covered in a collection of pretty ornamental knick-knacks she has collected over many years. The thick red velvet curtains hanging over the windows – doubtless a remnant discarded by one of her employers last century – are drawn against the cold, their thick material performing an excellent job in excluding the draughts coming in through the small gaps around the shoddy and worn wooden window frames.
Mrs. Boothby shivers. “It’s a bit cold out there this mornin’, but the ‘ouse is nice and warm. I got the range goin’, Edith dearie.” the old Cockney woman says as she pulls a heavy tapestry curtain along a brass rail over the front door. The eyelets***** make a sharp squeal as she does, startling Edith. Mistaking the reason for the young woman’s head turn, Mrs. Boothby remarks, “Luverly, ain’t it?” She holds the heavily hand embroidered fabric proudly. “Got it from old Lady Pembroke-Duttson, a lady I used to do for in Westminster, ‘till ‘er ‘ouse burnt dahwn in November that is. This ‘ere were one of ‘er old bed curtains from ‘er fancy four poster. Got it in the fire sale of ‘er leftovers.” When Ediths eyes grow wide, Mrs. Boothby adds, “Oh don’t worry dearie. She ain’t perished in ‘er own fire! She lives at Artillery Mansions****** nahw, but they’s got their own live in staff to maintain the flats, so I don’t do for ‘er no more. But bein’ as she moved somewhere new and smaller, and wiv so many fings from ‘er old ‘ouse damaged by the fire, she ‘ad a fire sale and sold orf a lot of stuff that was still serviceable that she didn’t want no more. It’s good at keepin’ the draughts out. Pity the matchin’ ‘angin’ was burned up by the fire. I rather fancy smart matchn’ curtains for the windas, but you can’t ‘ave everyfink, can ya? It did pong a bit of fire smoke at first, but my cookin’ and fags soon put short shrift ta that!” She nods curtly, lifting the curtain fabric to her nose and taking a loud sniff.
“Oh Mrs. Boothby!” Edith laughs heartily. “You are a one!”
“I know dearie, an’ it made you smile. I like it when youse smile, dearie.” The old woman joins in Edith’s laugh, releasing another of her fruity coughs as she bustles past Edith. “Nahw, you know where ta ‘ang up your coat ‘n ‘at. I’ll put the kettle on for a nice cup of Rosie-Lee*******, if this is a social call, that is.”
“Oh yes, thank you, Mrs. Boothby. That would be lovely.” Edith replies as she shucks herself out of her coat and hangs it on a peg by the front door. “Yes, I’ve been to services this morning already.”
Edith is comforted by the smells of soap and the lavender sachets Mrs. Boothby has hanging from the heavy velvet curtains to keep away the moths, the smells from the communal privy at the end of the rookery, and to a degree the cloying scent of tobacco smoke from her constant smoking.
“Good. Nahw, make yerself comfy at the table.”
“I’ll fetch down some cups.” Edith replies cheerfully.
“Oh you are a good girl, ‘elpin’ me out, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says gratefully, emitting another couple of heavy coughs as she stretches and pulls down the fine blue and white antique porcelain teapot she reserves for when guest come to call from the tall mantle shelf of the old fireplace out of which the old Victorian black leaded stove protrudes.
“Miss Eadie!” Ken, Mrs. Boothby’s mature aged disabled son, gasps in surprised delight.
Edith looks affectionately across the room to the messy bed nestled in the corner of Mrs. Boothby’s kitchen cum living room upon which Ken sits. Not unlike a nest would be for a baby bird, Ken’s bed is his safe place, and he is surrounded on the crumpled bedclothes by his beloved worn teddy bear, floppy stuffed rabbit and a selection of Beatrix Potter books. A gormless grin spreads across his childlike innocent face as he stumbles quickly off the bed and brushes his trousers down.
“Yes, it’s Miss Eadie, Ken!” his mother says brightly. “She come visitin’ us all the way from Mayfair.”
“Miss Eadie!” Ken exclaims again as, still clutching his teddy bear, he lollops across the room, enveloping Edith in his big, warm embrace. He smells of a mixture of cigarette smoke and the carbolic soap Mrs. Boothby uses to wash him and his clothes. A tall and muscular man in his mid-forties, his embrace quickly starts to squeeze the air from Edith’s lungs as his grasp grows tighter, making the poor girl gasp.
“Nah! Nah!” Mrs. Boothby chides, turning away from the stove quickly and giving her son a gentle slap to the forearm. “What do I keep tellin’ you, Ken! You dunno ya own strengf, son. Let poor Miss Eadie go will ya. You’ll crush ‘er wiv your bear ‘ug.” She emits another fruity cough as she gives him a stern look.
“Oh! Sorry!” Ken apologises, immediately releasing Edith from his embrace and backing away as if he’d been burned, a sheepish look on his face.
“It’s alright, Ken.” Edith replies breathily. “They might be crushing… but I like… your hugs.”
“Good!” he says definitely, the gormless grin creeping back into his face and turning up the ends of his mouth.
“You want some tea too, Ken luv?” Mrs. Boothby asks her son.
“Yes please Ma!” he replies.
“Good lad. Nice to ‘ear your good manners bein’ used.” she acknowledges. “Then sit dahwn at the table wiv Miss Eadie and I’ll make you a cup.”
Obediently, Ken takes a seat at the deal pine table on a low stool, leaving the two chairs drawn up to it for his mother and Edith as their special guest. He holds his teddy bear in front of him and looks intently at Edith. “Present!”
“What?” Mrs. Boothby asks, turning again to look at her son.
“Present!” Ken repeats, bouncing excitedly in his seat and gesticulating to a neat parcel wrapped up in brown paper and tied with blue and white twine which Edith has placed on the surface of the table. “Present, Ma!”
“What I tell you ‘bout pointin’, Ken!” Mrs. Boothby scolds her son. Then turning her attentions to where Ken is indicating she adds. “Just ‘cos somefink’s wrapped up in brown paper an’ tied up wiv a string don’t mean it’s a present for ya, son.”
“Christmas present!” Ken says, now no longer pointing, but still bouncing excitedly on his stool.
Mrs. Boothby rolls her eyes and shakes her head, glancing first at Ken, then at Edith and then back to Ken. “Lawd love you son, Christmas is long past! Baby Jesus is sleepin’ and won’t be back ‘till next Christmas, I told you. And that’s a whole year away!”
“Christmas present, Ma!” Ken continues to repeat.
“You want brainin’ you do!” Mrs. Boothby chides Ken good naturedly. “Oh get on wiv ya, Ken!” She chuckles as she kindly tousles her son’s hair affectionately. “Youse fink ev’ry time Miss Eadie comes visitin’ us, she’s got a present for you.” She turns her attention to Edith. “I swear he finks every parcel wrapped up is for ‘im, Edith dearie, even when it’s the sausages I done picked up from the butcher on the cheap.”
“Sausages!” Ken gasps.
“Nah son!” Mrs. Boothby assures him. “Nah sausages today. Just bread ‘n drippin’********.” She eyes him and cocks an eyebrow, and Ken falls silent, although he continues to bounce up and down on the seat of the stool, albeit a little more calmly.
“Well as it turns out, Mrs. Boothby, Ken is right about this being a present for him.” Edith says, pushing the present slightly further across the table towards the disabled lad.
“See Ma!” Ken says triumphantly, leaping up from his seat and dancing around the stool, clutching his teddy bear in joy. “Christmas present. Christmas present for Ken! See Ma! See!”
“You what?” Mrs. Boothby asks sharply.
“Ken’s right, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith says loudly over Ken’s joyful cries. “It is a present for him.”
“Christmas present. Christmas present for Ken! “ Ken continues to chant excitedly.
“Yes! Yes!” the old Cockney woman says, trying to calm her son with softening hand movements. “Alright Ken!” she insists. “I ‘eard you the first time. Youse can open your present in a minute, but first,” She eyes him seriously. “Youse gotta calm dahwn an’ let Miss Eadie and I ‘ave a cup of Rosie-Lee. Right?”
“Right Ma!” Ken replies, stopping his galumphing around the stool.
“You want a cuppa too, don’t choo, son?”
“Yes Ma!”
“Right, well.” Mrs. Boothby continues. “Best you sit dahwn ‘ere on the stool then, and wait, like a good lad. Eh?”
“Yes Ma!” Ken says as he returns obediently to the stool and clutches his teddy bear, trembling with excitement as he beadily keeps his eye on the package in the middle of the table, tantalisingly close enough for him to snatch.
“Right!” Mrs. Boothby says, filling the elegant blue and white teapot with hot water from her kettle.
Mrs. Boothby busies herself in the relative temporary calm of her kitchen, placing the pot on the table next to the brown paper wrapped parcel. She fills a dainty non matching blue and white jug with a splash of milk from a bottle she keeps in the coolest corner of her tenement, underneath the trough sink. She places the jug on the table along with a small sugar bowl of blue and white porcelain of a different pattern again, its lid missing, which is probably the reason why the old Cockney charwoman even has it.
“Right.” Mrs. Boothby says again. “I reckon that’s ‘bout it then. Fancy a biscuit then, Edith dearie?”
“Oh, not for me, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith protests. “Thank you though. It’s too early, and I had a nice breakfast at Cavendish Mews before Sunday services and coming here.”
Edith remembers to carefully avoid the use of the words ‘chapel’ and ‘minister’, remembering that they upset Ken after some of the local Christian charities in Poplar tried to take him away from his mother at various times throughout his life. According to Mrs. Boothby, a Catholic priest in the district used to bother her to have Ken committed to an asylum quite regularly, until she gave him short shrift one day after he really upset Ken. Edith glances anxiously at Ken to make sure he isn’t getting upset now, but she sighs with relief as she sees him bobbing up and down on his stool, still eyeing his wrapped gift, as if expecting it to sprout wings and fly away any moment, it being his one and only focus.
“I tell you what Edith dearie, I’m dying for a fag!” Mrs Boothby says as she sinks into her seat. “Nuffink better than a fag to get the chatterin’ goin’.” She starts fossicking through her capacious blue beaded handbag on the table.
“You don’t need a cigarette to get you chatting, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith chuckles, shaking her head.
“Well, maybe not, but maybe I just want an excuse for a fag. Oh!” she then adds as she withdraws a rather smart looking box from her bag. “And to show orf my luverly new present from Ken.” She reaches over and rubs her son warmly on the back. “’E found it on ‘is rag’n’bone********* run wiv Mr. Pargiter’s boys, ain’t you Ken?”
“Yes Ma!” Ken says, momentarily distracted by his mother asking him a question, before returning his attention to his as of yet unwrapped present.
Mrs. Boothby proudly holds up an Ogden’s Juggler Tabacco********** box of thick card featuring the Union Jack in each corner, extolling its British patriotism. “Nice innit?”
“Very nice, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith opines.
“Just shows you that one man’s rubbish, is someone else’s treasure***********, don’t it?” Mrs. Boothby says, opening the box by its flappable lid and fetching out a pre-rolled cigarette from amongst the stash there, along with her matches. “You just gotta ‘ave a good eye, like my boy ‘ere.” She tousles Ken’s hair affectionately again.
Mrs. Boothby takes her cigarette and lights it with a match and utters a satisfied sigh as she drags on it, the thin cigarette papers and tobacco crackling as she does. Still holding it between her teeth, she emits one more of her fruity coughs, blowing out a tumbling billow of acrid cigarette smoke as she does. She drops the match into a black ashtray that sits on the table full of cigarette butts. Mrs. Boothby settles back happily in her ladderback chair and with her cigarette still between her thin lips, and blowing out plumes of blue smoke that tumbles through the air around her rather like a steam train, she pours tea for Ken, Edith and herself.
“Christmas present, Ma!” Ken pipes up as he accepts the cup of sweet and milky tea from his mother. “Christmas present for Ken, now?”
Mrs. Boothby’s face crinkles as she gives in. “Oh alright then!” She laughs and coughs again. “Miss Eadie ‘n I, ‘ll get no peace whilst that’s sittin’ there unopened!” She nods at the present.
Ken needs no second bidding as he leaps from his seat and pounces upon the gift, tearing at the paper and string.
“Careful nahw, Ken luv!” Mrs. Boothby mutters. “What if it’s a crystal chandelier youse openin’ there? You’ll break it.”
“Not a crystal chandelier, Ma!” Ken says joyfully with a child like chuckle as he tears at the paper.
“You wouldn’t know a crystal chandelier if it done ‘it you in the ‘ead.” the old Cockney woman opines. Then, thinking for a moment, she corrects herself. “Then again, maybe you would. Plenty ‘a uvver fancy bits ’n pieces land in Mr. Pargiter’s carts. Why not a crystal chandelier?”
As Ken tears the paper noisily asunder, the cover of a book, blue and ornately printed in black and red, appears. “A book Ma! Miss Eadie got me a book!” He drops the shreds of paper and blue and white twine on the tabletop and begins flipping through the book, skipping the black and white printing, but pouring with delight over the brightly coloured illustrations, running his fingers with careful and surprisingly delicate actions for such a bulking lad over the images of characters, houses, landscapes and ornate rooms. “Oh fank you, Miss Eadie!” he exclaims in awe.
“You’re welcome, Ken!” Edith purrs with delight, thrilled at how happy Ken is with his gift. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas Miss Eadie!” he murmurs in reply, smiling broadly as he admires a double page illustration of a woman in a pink gown clutching a paper fan, draped across a blue upholstered gilt Regency style sofa with a creature with a warthog’s ears, snout and tusks sitting in an anthropomorphic************ way opposite her, rather like a gentleman.
“Oh Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby exclaims. “It’s luverly!” She admires the fine details of the illustration, running her own bony, careworn fingers over the image of an ornate Regency pianoforte************* with a large greenish blue vase containing a flowering tree atop it. She gazes at the anthropomorphic warthog who wears a monocle against his left eye. “This is Beauty ‘n the Beast, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” Edith says a little wistfully. “I thought Ken could do with some books that weren’t Beatrix Potter for a change, and maybe a story about the fact that even different people can still find happiness in life was appropriate.”
Mrs. Boothby looks across the table at Edith with a grateful smile. She turns back and watches Ken with delight as he continues to admire the details in the colourful illustration: a blue and white tea set on a gilt table between Beauty and the Beast, a leopard skin rug beneath their feet, a lute carefully leaning against a music Canterbury**************.
“You spoils us, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby murmurs.
“Well, Ken deserves spoiling.” Edith counters with a satisfied sigh as she sips her tea. “He’s such a good boy. Anyway,” she goes on. “Think of it as a thank you to you, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Me dearie?” the Cockney woman queries. “What I ever do to deserve such a pretty book as this?”
“You helped me, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies. “With Frank, and all that business over moving to Metroland***************.”
“Ahh,” Mrs. Boothby says noncommittally as she turns her attentions away from her son and back to her guest. “So, you ‘ad a chat wiv young Frank ‘bout it then, did cha?” Another billowing and tumbling cloud of cascading cigarette smoke obscure her face, making her look all the more inscrutable.
Edith nods shallowly and smiles shyly as she sips her cup of tea again. “We spoke about it on New Year’s Eve.”
“Whatchoo say then?”
“Oh, I was such a fool when I came here that day before Christmas, Mrs. Boothby, crying and moaning about moving to the country, when in fact it hasn’t even happened yet,” Her face colours with embarrassment as she blushes. “And it isn’t really the country, even if it does happen. It’s just like moving to a new place: always fraught with worries, but not so terrible as to not go.”
Mrs. Boothby smiles and nods as she listens to her young friend, puffing smoke like a contented steam shovel**************** as she does.
“So you told ‘im you’d go?”
“If the situation arises.” Edith counters.
“Knowin’ young Frank and ‘is fancy ideas of betterment, and a better life for the workin’ man, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.” Mrs. Boothby remarks sagely. “Sooner rather than later.”
“I think you might be right, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says with a chuckle infused with trepidation. “But I guess that’s part of being in a partnership, isn’t it? If the dream is so important to him, I have to be prepared to support him, even if it is scary.”
“It’s ‘ow my Bill n’ I rolled, Edith dearie. We didn’t know what life‘d be like raisin’ a special angel like Ken.” She takes a final long and satisfying drag of her cigarette before stumping it out in the ashtray as she blows out another plume of cigarette smoke in front of her. She turns and looks at her son with loving eyes as he now looks at a picture of Beauty in an ornate gown surrounded by monkeys and baboons dressed as flunkies*****************, the allegory of Eve and the serpent appearing in a decorative panel in the background. “We didn’t know ‘ow it was gonna be, raisin’ a kiddie what them god bovverers told me was gonna ‘ave no more brain than a six year old. But Bill ‘n me, we did it.” The old woman nods and screws up her nose in determination. “I fink I told you what Lil Conway next door told me.”
“Tell me again, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Lil told me that all kiddies is a blessin’, and she was right. Bill ‘n I took our chances wiv Ken, and maybe we ain’t always done right, but all in all we didn’t do too bad by ‘im. We taught ‘im ‘ow ta defend ‘imself, ‘ow ta get on in the world and ‘ow ta make a livin’. It were scary, but we ‘ad each uvver, and as you say, that’s what a partnership involves: the smooth ‘n easy and the scary and unknowable, and it all works out.” She turns back and nods ad Edith knowingly. “It’ll work out for you and Frank too, Edith dearie. You’ll see. One day when youse old and grey like me, you’ll look back on this ‘ere conversation and say, ‘that Ida Boothby were right’.”
“Frank has to propose first.” Edith says a little glumly.
Mrs. Boothby reaches out her hand and places it around Edith’s, giving it a gentle and comforting squeeze. “Waitin’s the ‘ardest part of courtship, dearie.” She smiles broadly. “Just enjoy the moment. The weddin’ will come along soon ennuf, and it’ll ‘ave its own trials and tribulations that’ll make you wish youse was never getting’ married. I’m right ‘bout that too.”
Edith doesn’t reply, but looks at Ken and his few book as he points something important out to his teddy bear, his voice such a hushed and contented mumble now that even though he is just across the table, she cannot hear what it is he is sharing with his toy companion.
“You will read him the story, won’t you, Mrs. Boothby? Tell him that the Beast is kind and loving and worthy of Beauty’s love.”
“Well,” Mrs. Boothby looks back at the book. “I don’t really ‘old much wiv books, as you know, and they’s some pretty dense pages of writin’ in there: a bit too much for a busy soul like me wiv so much to do. But yes, I’ll tell ‘im, Edith dearie. Although,” she adds. “I might shorten it a bit. Nuffink better than a good quick story at bedtime, Eh?”
She winks at Edith, the folds of her pale skin hiding her sparkling left eye momentarily.
“You’ll learn that too when you have babies of your own. And,” She delves into her Ogden’s Juggler cigarette box again and takes out another hand rolled cigarette. “I’ll be right ‘bout that too.”
*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
**Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
***A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.
****The word Yid is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang. When pronounced in such a way that it rhymes with did by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'. It is uncertain when the word began to be used in a pejorative sense by non-Jews, but some believe it started in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century when there was a large population of Jews and Yiddish speakers concentrated in East London, gaining popularity in the 1930s when Oswald Mosley developed a strong following in the East End of London.
*****Eyelets, also known as grommets, are used to describe the open ring that is usually made from metal. These rings that are incorporated into the top of the curtain, enable the curtain to be open or closed.
******Built in Westminster, quite close to the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament Artillery Mansions was just one of the many fine Victorian mansion blocks to be built in Victoria Street around St James Underground Railway Station in the late 1800s. Constructed around open courtyards which served as carriageways and residential gardens, the mansion blocks were typically built of red brick in the fashionable Queen Anne style. The apartments were designed to appeal to young bachelors or MPs who often had late parliamentary sittings, with many of the apartments not having kitchens, providing instead communal dining areas, rather like a gentleman’s club. Artillery Mansions, like many large mansion blocks employed their own servants to maintain the flats and address the needs of residents. During the Second World War, Artillery Mansions was commandeered by the Secret Intelligence Service as a headquarters. After the war, the building reverted to private residences again, but with so many of its former inhabitants either dead, elderly or in changed circumstances owing to the war, it became a place to house many ex-servicemen. The Army and Navy Company, who ran the Army and Navy Stores just up Victoria Street registered ‘Army and Navy Ltd.’ at Artillery Mansions as a lettings management company. By the 1980s, Artillery Mansions was deserted and in a state of disrepair. It was taken over by a group of ideological squatters who were determined to bring homelessness and housing affordability to the government’s attention, but within ten years, with misaligned ideologies and infighting, the squatters had moved on, and in the 1990s, Artillery Mansions was bought by developers and turned into luxury apartments.
*******Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.
********Dripping is the fat that has melted and dripped from roasting meat, used in cooking or eaten cold as a spread. Being cheap to buy, in poorer households, dripping was usually a staple and often a valuable source of nutrition for what would otherwise be a very plain and mean diet.
*********A rag-and-bone man is a person who goes from street to street in a vehicle or with a horse and cart buying things such as old clothes and furniture. He would then sell these items on to someone else for a small profit.
**********Ogden's Tobacco Company was an English company specialising in tobacco products. The company was founded in 1860 by Thomas Ogden who opened a small retail store in Park Lane, Liverpool. Within a small period of time, he established more branches throughout Liverpool and then a factory on St. James Street in 1866. By 1890, Thomas Ogden had six factories in Liverpool. Then in 1901, the American Tobacco Company bought Ogden's factory for £818,000. But in 1902, with the establishment of the Imperial Tobacco Company, Odgen's Tobacco was back in British hands. The company remained in business until the 1960's. Half of the main factory was demolished sometime around the 1980s to make way for a new building for the site's new owners Imperial Tobacco Limited. They closed the site's doors in 2007. In 2016 the factory was demolished to make way for housing while the iconic Clock Tower was converted into nineteen Apartments. It was completed in 2019.
***********The phrase "One man's trash is another man's treasure" is often attributed to the Nineteenth Century German social reformer and writer, Ferdinand August Bebel. However, the origin of this saying is not precisely documented, and similar expressions have been used in various forms by different people over time. The sentiment behind the phrase conveys the idea that something considered worthless by one person might be highly valued by someone else.
************Anthropomorphism, on the other hand, involves non-human things displaying literal human traits and being capable of human behaviour.
*************A pianoforte is the full name of a piano.
**************A music Canterbury is a low, open-topped stand with vertical slatted partitions that frequently was designed with a drawer beneath and sometimes, was built with short legs and occasionally on casters, intended for holding sheet music, plates, and serveware upright, now often used as a magazine rack.
***************Metroland is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north-west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the Twentieth Century that were served by the Metropolitan Railway. The railway company was in the privileged position of being allowed to retain surplus land; from 1919 this was developed for housing by the nominally independent Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE). The term "Metroland" was coined by the Met's marketing department in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide. It promoted a dream of a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway service to central London until the Met was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.
****************A steam shovel is a large steam-powered excavating machine designed for lifting and moving material such as rock and soil. It is the earliest type of power shovel or excavator. Steam shovels played a major role in public works in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, being key to the construction of railroads and the Panama Canal. The sight of them on building work sites was common. The development of simpler, cheaper diesel, gasoline and electric shovels caused steam shovels to fall out of favour in the 1930s.
*****************A funky is a liveried manservant or footman.
This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Central to our story, the copy of Walter Crane’s Beauty and the Beast on display here is a 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. In this case, I bought this book and various others illustrated by Walter Crane on purpose because I have loved Walter Crane’s and his father Thomas Crane’s work ever since I was a child, and I have real life-size first editions of many of their books including, a first edition of Beauty and the Beast from 1874. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. I can vouch that the double page spread illustration you see is an authentic replica of one from his Beauty and the Beast book, however if you wish to see it for yourself you can also see it here and judge for yourself: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_%281874,_Cran.... To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make them all miniature artisan pieces. Not only did Ken Blythe create books, he also created other 1:12 miniatures with paper and that includes the wonderfully detailed Ogden’s Juggler tobacco box and National Safety Match box, which have been produced with extreme authentic attention to detail. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.
The black ashtray is also an artisan piece, the bae of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there).
Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag on the table is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. Hand crocheted, it is interwoven with antique blue glass beads that are two millimetres in diameter. The beads of the handle are three millimetres in length. It came from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
The paper and blue and white twine are real pieces I have retained to use in my miniatures photography from real parcels wrapped up in brown paper and tied up with string.
The various bowls, cannisters and dishes and the kettle in the background I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia.
The ladderback chair drawn up to the table and the black lead stove in the background are all miniature pieces I have had since I was a child.
The grey marbleised fireplace behind the stove and the trough sink in the corner of the kitchen come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The green wallpaper is an authentic replica of real Art Nouveau wallpaper from the first decade of the Twentieth Century which I have printed onto paper.
Hijras are physically men, however, they identify themselves as spiritually female. In India, they are socially outcaste, and often live together in groups, many working in prostitution or begging for a living. Others, however, take on a semi-religious role, offering (for a large price, and often at the threat of being cursed if unpaid) blessings and good luck at births, weddings and other significant life-events. These two Hijras were walking to the Hanuman temple in Bangalore when they saw me with my camera, immediately posing for photos and chatting away, blessing me afterwards.
I say almost, because there will be a picture on my birthday to show one full year. And I'm sure I will still take random pictures of myself, but it is really weird knowing I don't "have to" take a picture each day. Part of that knowledge is rewarding, part is a void. It is odd.
I have learned a lot in my year of self portraits...
a. I still cannot spell portraits or narcissism without using spell check.
b. just as in life, I only show myself even in my pictures, as I want others to see me, I never truly "put it all out there" because not mater what i might say...I am still worried about how I am perceived and viewed.
c. I am still insecure with parts of me, but I am much more comfortable in my skin.
d. I can actually finish something I start. I have, for the first time in my life, actually finished a project I started. I was late a few times, and I lost one picture, but for the first time EVER I started and finished something major. That has now proven that I have no excuse for not finishing other projects I start (such as starting to sell my photography and getting published and writing a letter to my son and trying out for SG)
e. I really do have the most amazing people in my life. In the past year some have left my life, for that I am sad!! But also, some have been added to my life, for that I am so thankful. I have learned that people will let me down, on a regular basis, but that I can always depend on their love and support being there even if it is not in the form I expect at that moment.
f. I have learned balance...to give up some of my control, and yet I have taken more control of other areas of my life.
g. I have learned that I truly love who I am, and know I will love what I will be in the future, and that it is ok to love who I was in the past, even with all my imperfections and mistakes.
h. I have found that my heart is so full of love and I love to share that with everyone I meet even if they are not ready for that love at that moment, I can still give it, and if they do not accept it at that moment, they will feel it when they need it most...and that is the most important part of love...it is always there...when it is needed.
i. I Love Me...I am a good person and I have a good genuine loving heart. I am a spoiled brat that needs to keep myself in check, but I am also selfless when other need me. I am happiest when I am doing something for someone else, it warms my heart. I deserve to be happy and not keep the skeletons in my closet, but instead can clean that closet out for storage of good memories that make me happy, not for memories that do more damage.
j. I love my hubster...more then even I thought was possible to love someone. I love that he is not perfect nor does he expect me to be perfect and yet we are perfect for each other. I love how much he teaches me, by actions, inactions, words, words left unsaid. I love how he shows his love with words, actions, hugs, kisses, looks, notes, seriousness, silliness and food. I love that he has accepted me with all my flaws and imperfections. I love that I have him for the rest of our lives.
k. I love my friends. They have taught me so many things about myself, love, life, hurt, healing, growing, maturing, letting go and holding tighter. Every one of you that has appeared in a picture (physically in the shot or verbally in the comments & description or if I took the picture with you in mind)...each and every one of you has made an impression on my life...touched my heart...made me a better person by some action you have shown me. Thank you...each of you...for that.
In order of appearance in my 365...
Daniel aka Hubster, Ashlee & John, Russ, Mary, Maia (62uolegnaiam), Dyxie(Dyxie), Matt, Ann(Libraryann), Mandy (Redjade75), Steve (Irish), Jake, Caleb, Charles, Justin, Marc & Alexis, Kelli (Kellifornia), Kevin (slworking2), Jakilyn, my family, Deven (Tequila&Donuts), Jason (punkJr), Carlton, Basden (Basden Clark), Joe (nonoJoe), Amanda (Wednesday81), Christy, Dante, Kenny, Dave (d.rex), Tara, Jon, Sydney (kungfukitten), Kell (~kell~), Rob, George, Sean, April, Brandon, Steve, Chris, Dave, Grammy, Shawn Sin, Lynn (agentretro), Puck, Anita, Angie, Alice, Nicole (like_shipwrecks)....Thank you all!!!! (there are a few more to add to this list but I have to leave so I'm not late for work)
Go-Go for a wild ride with the action girls! Russ Meyer, the king of exploitation, directs this lurid thrill-ride starring Tura Satana, Haji, and Lori Williams as a trio of dancers who turn to murder and mayhem on a road trip from hell. Varla is well-endowed, beautiful, physically powerful, savvy and conniving. She lives for kicks, but she's also got a serious mad on for the world, and anyone who crosses her finds out the hard way. Her job as a go-go dancer, supplemented by a part time career in petty crime has afforded her a sleek and fast sports car, which she enjoys riding in the desert with her fellow dancers. One of them, Rosie, has a crush on Varla, which she happily encourages, even if Varla is really more interested in the control it gives her over Rosie than in Rosie herself. The other dancer, Billie, is a little harder for Varla to manage, but Billie isn't bright enough to outmaneuver Varla.
When the little gang run into a square drag racer, he winds up getting into a fight with Varla, losing of course. Varla makes sure he never talks back again, then kidnaps his girlfriend and makes a run for it. BIllie and Rosie tag along, and they soon become involved in intrigue with an old letch in the desert rumored to have a stash of cash hidden away somewhere. When Varla starts to lose control of the situation, things (again) become violent, leading to a revved-up climax! Three strippers seeking thrills encounter a young couple in the desert. After dispatching the boyfriend, they take the girl hostage and begin scheming on a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert, reputedly hiding a tidy sum of cash. They become houseguests of the old man and try and seduce the sons in an attempt to locate the money, not realizing that the old man has a few sinister intentions of his own.
synopsis
Exploitation maven Russ Meyer created a cult classic with this turbo-charged action film. Three curvaceous go-go dancers in a cool sports car go on a desert crime spree, led by Varla (the amazing Tura Satana), a busty, nasty woman dressed entirely in black. Varla's lesbian moll, Rosie (Haji) -- who has an extremely overwrought accent -- and reluctant bimbo Billie (Lori Williams) are along for the ride. When they meet a naïve young couple, Tommy and Linda (Ray Barlow and Sue Bernard), Varla challenges the man to a race then kills him by breaking his back. They take Linda hostage and drive to a house owned by a crippled old lecher (Stuart Lancaster) and his muscular but retarded son, Vegetable (Dennis Busch). Varla discovers that the old man has money hidden on the property, so the girls try to find it. Meanwhile, Vegetable's perverted father tries to trick him into assaulting one of the girls as he watches, but his other son (Paul Trinka) finally shows up to save the day. A great deal of bloodshed, campy catfighting, and funny dialogue fills the bulk of this fast-paced comic book of a movie.
Born 1946 Quebec,Canada
Passed on 2013
Birth Name - Barbarella Catton Nickname - Haji
Haji was a Cando-American actress renowned for starring in Russ Meyer's sexploitation classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), in which she made her theatrical film debut. Barbarella Catton was born in Quebec City, Quebec on January 24, 1946, and at the age of 14, began dancing topless. The renamed Haji caught the eye of cinema's "King Leer" while performing as an exotic dancer.
He also cast her as one of three go-go dancers who turn into avenging furies in "Pussycat", which was her theatrical film debut as it was released before Motor Psycho (1965). She also appeared in Meyer's potboiler Good Morning... and Goodbye! (1967), his big budget Hollywood sextravaganza Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and his cartoonish amalgamation of sex and violence, Supervixens (1975).
Haji died on August 10, 2013 at the age of 67.
Was a fervent supporter of animal rights and environmentalism. Interviewed in the book "Invasion of the B-Girls" by Jewel Shepard. Began as an exotic dancer. Moved to California at the age of fourteen and was discovered by filmmaker Russ Meyer performing in a topless bar. Her only child, a daughter she had at age 15, is named Cerlette. Haji was of British and Filipino descent, and her nickname was bestowed on her by an uncle. Was a friend and co-star of former stripper and long-time Russ Meyer paramour Kitten Natividad.
Haji, an Actress Featured in Cult Films by Russ Meyer, Dies at 67
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK
Published: August 17, 2013
Haji, a voluptuous actress who played one of three homicidal go-go dancers in Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult film “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” died on Aug. 9 in Southern California. She was 67.
Her death was confirmed by the dancer and actress Kitten Natividad, a friend, who said she did not know the cause. She said Haji had high blood pressure and heart problems in recent years and was taken to a hospital after falling ill at a restaurant in Newport Beach.Haji, a brunette of Filipino and British descent, met Meyer, the celebrated B-movie director, in the mid-1960s while she worked in a strip club in California. He cast her as the lead in his biker movie “Motorpsycho” (1965) even though she had no acting experience.Later that year Haji appeared in “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” the tale of three dancers who beat a young man to death, kidnap his girlfriend and flee into the desert. She played the lesbian paramour of the lead character, Varla, played by Tura Satana. The film has acquired a devoted following and has been embraced by the filmmakers John Waters and Quentin Tarantino and even some feminists, including the film critic B. Ruby Rich, who praised it in The Village Voice as a “female fantasy.”“You just didn’t see women taking over and beating up men in those days,” Haji said in an interview posted on Russ Meyer’s Ultravixens, a Web site devoted to Meyer, who died in 2004, and his films. “Russ did something no one else had the imagination to do. And he was smart to use three bodied-up women, so whether the picture’s good or not, you still sort of stare at it.”Haji played a scantily clad bartender in Meyer’s “Supervixens” in 1975 and appeared in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” the story of an all-woman rock band’s descent into debauchery. It was the first of Meyer’s films produced by a mainstream studio. She also acted in John Cassavetes’s gritty drama “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” in 1976.
Haji was born in Quebec on Jan. 24, 1946. Ms. Natividad said that Haji’s last name at birth was Catton, and that she thought her given name was Cerlette. (The name Haji, she said, was a nickname given to her by an uncle.) Haji left school before finishing the sixth grade and began stripping at 14. She had a daughter, also named Cerlette, at 15. She lived in Oxnard, Calif. Her survivors include her daughter and a granddaughter. Haji’s last screen role was in the 2003 comedy “Killer Drag Queens on Dope.”
www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/arts/haji-an-actress-featured-...;
Being physically warm seems to be associated with emotional warmth:
You know that warm feeling you get when you spend time with someone you love? How about the one that comes from wrapping your hands around a steaming mug of coffee? They might be related. That’s what scientists at the University of Colorado and Yale University claim in the October 24th issue of the journal Science.
The researchers recruited 41 undergrad volunteers. Participants were handed a cup of either hot or iced coffee to hold, without being told it was part of the experiment. Then they were handed a description of an imaginary person, Person A, with a list of A’s personality traits. Afterwards, the undergrads described that person. Those who’d held the hot coffee rated Person A significantly warmer—friendlier, more generous—than those who held the ice coffee.
In a second study 53 volunteers held hot or cold therapeutic pads. Then they could choose a gift certificate for themselves or for a friend. Those who’d held the hot pads were more likely to be generous and give the gift certificate to friends. Researchers say this shows that physical and metaphorical warmth are linked.
Care in the Community (also called "Community Care" or "Domiciled Care") is the British policy of deinstitutionalisation, 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 1983 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.
community care was not a new idea. As a policy it had been around since the early 1950s. Its general aim was a more cost-effective way of helping people with mental health problems.
Public opinion was gradually turned against long-stay institutions by allegations from the media. Some might argue that such allegations were politically driven and that the deliberate underfunding, mismanagement and thus undermining of some institutions by the government was used as an excuse by the government to shut them down. It could also be argued that although there might have been incidents of where care should have been improved, the care in many such institutions may have been satisfactory or good.
In the 1980s there was increasing criticism and concern about the quality of long term care for dependent people. There was also concern about the experiences of people leaving long term institutional care and being left to fend for themselves in the community. Yet the government was committed to the idea of 'care in the community'. In 1986 the Audit Commission published a report called 'Making a Reality of Community Care'. This report outlined the slow progress in resettling people from long stay hospitals. It was this report which prompted the subsequent Green and White papers on community care.
In March 2015 Norman Lamb, the Minister of State for Care and Support launched a twelve week consultation process on how the changes to services should be implemented. While welcomed by most, others saw progress as lamentably slow on the identified issues for what amounts to community care for people with learning disability and autism. Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, on hearing the outlined plans of the health service on these proposed changes, said:
″Why can’t we just get on and do it?..To say it’s going to go into a green paper fills me with horror. It suggests to me that our successors will be sitting round the table in a couple of years’ time having the same conversation.
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If you don't do it properly it doesn't matter if the care is in an institution or your home, poor care is still poor care. To do it properly costs money, a lot of money and no government wants to provide the funding for a group of the population that isn't likely to vote. A sad reflection on our society and values.
....... Neil Moralee.......
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Tonight however we are not in Lettice’s flat, and whilst we have not travelled that far physically across London, the tough streets and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. We have come to the home of Lettice’s charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, where we find ourselves in the cheerful kitchen cum parlour of her tenement in Merrybrook Place: by her own admission, a haven of cleanliness amidst the squalor of the surrounding neighbourhood.
The sun is setting on the late autumnal, cold November day. The golden orb, which has been shrouded in clouds for most of the day is now barely a dull greenish yellow glow above the rooftops of the tenements opposite Mrs. Boothby’s own terrace as a thick fog, fed by all the coal and wood fires heating the houses of London, begins to settle in. As darkness envelops the streets, warm flickering lights begin to appear in the windows of Merrybrook Place as its citizens settle in for an evening at home.
Mrs. Boothby has just reached for her tobacco when she hears a pounding on her door. Looking up in surprise, she remains silent and unmoving, all her senses suddenly alert. The hammering comes again. She gets up and walks over to the corner of the room where she reaches for her broom. The knocking comes a third time.
“Hoo’s there?” Mrs. Boothby’s cockney voice calls out in a steely fashion, attempting to project a stronger persona than the wiry and older little charwoman that she is. “Whatchoo want?”
“It’s me, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith voice calls weakly from the other side of the door. “Edith.”
Mrs. Boothby gasps aloud, swiftly unbolts the door and flings it open, appearing in the doorway, still with her broom in her hand. “Ere! Whatchoo doin’ ‘ere, Edith dearie? You come ‘ere on your own did ya?”
Mrs. Boothby’s eyes grow wide as she sees Edith’s tear stained face in the golden light reflected from the paraffin lamp that illuminates her parlour.
“I’m sorry to call on you unannounced,” Edith snivels. “I just didn’t know where else to go.”
The old Cockney woman quickly puts the broom aside, next to the open door, and embraces Edith in a firm hug. “Come in in wiv you, Edith dearie!” As she draws Lettice’s young maid-of-all-work into her tenement, she glances over Edith’s shoulder with owl eyes at the darkened streetscape slowly being softened by the greenish fog outside. There is no-one else around, but down at the end of her rookery**, where the privies are, she notices a flash of a shadow as two mangy stray cats hiss and spit at one another in either play or in a territorial war. In the distance a dog barks. Then she notices the tatty lace curtains in one of her neighbours’ windows rustle and quiver. “Keep your big bloody Yid*** nose out of my business, Golda Friedman!” Mrs. Boothby calls out angrily across the way.
“Ahh shuddup!” a strident male voice from somewhere above and further down the terrace calls out. Whether directed at Mrs. Boothby or elsewhere, the old charwoman doesn’t care as she begins to close her door. The curtains at Golda Friedman’s windows flutter quickly once again and then stop.
“Cor! You didn’t ‘alf give me a turn!” Closing the door behind her, Mrs, Boothby heaves a sigh of relief. “Edith dearie, whatchoo doin’ ‘ere?” she asks again. “You’re takin’ your pretty young life in your own ‘ands comin’ dawhn ‘ere this time of day. Poplar’s like an old shape shifter**** as the London fogs settle in for the night, and streets you fought you knew well, are suddenly strangers, unless you’re a local like me, whoo can find their way through the fog.”
“I’m sorry Mrs. Boothby.” Edith apologises again, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand before opening her green leather handbag and fetching out a dainty lace handkerchief embroidered with a cursive letter E in pale blue cotton. “I… I just didn’t know where else to go. What with Miss Lettice being out with Mr. Bruton at the Café Royal***** this evening, I just couldn’t bear to be alone at Cavendish Mews with my thoughts.”
“There, there, Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby enfolds Edith in an all-embracing hug again, tightening her wiry arms around Edith’s trembling figure and patting her on the back with her gnarled and careworn hands. “It’s alright. You’re ‘ere nawh. No ‘arm done.” Then she releases her, steps back slightly and looks again at Edith’s blotched and reddened face. Grasping her by the shoulders she gasps, “Youse didn’t get attacked by a man on the way dawhn ‘ere, did cha? That ain’t why yer cryin’ is it?”
Edith releases a snuffly guffaw. “No, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Fank the lawd for that!” the old woman casts her eyes up to the oatmeal cigarette smoke stained ceiling. “A nice girl dressed like you is, is ripe for pickin’s on them streets out there. You should only be comin’ dahwn ‘ere wiv me by your side to guide you, Edith dearie!”
A soft, hurried tapping on the wall adjoining the tenement next door breaks into Mrs. Boothby’s speech. “You alright in there, Ida luv? I ‘eard bangin’!” the anxious muffled voice of Mrs. Boothby’s neighbour, Mrs. Conway, calls out.
“Yes Lil, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby assures her. “It’s alright. Just a surprise visitor, and that nosey gossip Mrs. Friedman not mindin’ ‘er own business like usual.”
“Bloody Yid! Alright Ada, luv.” Mrs. Conway’s voice replies with relief. “Night.”
“Night Lil, dearie.”
“Miss Eadie!” comes a booming voice from the room.
Edith and Mrs. Boothby both glance across the kitchen-cum-parlour to the clean deal kitchen table. Ken, Mrs. Boothby’s mature aged disabled son sits at the table, his beloved worn teddy bear, floppy stuffed rabbit and a few playing cards in front of him. A gormless grin spreads across his childlike innocent face, but it falls away quickly when he sees that Edith has been crying. He drops his bear, his precious toy forgotten, his face darkening as he leaps up from his seat and hurries over to Edith and his mother in a few galumphing steps.
“Oh lawd!” Mrs. Boothby hisses. “Ken’ll be beside ‘imself!”
“Hoo did this, Miss Eadie?” Ken asks anxiously, hopping up and down on the spot with agitation before the two women. “Who hurt my Miss Eadie?”
“Nahw, nahw, son. ‘Ush nahw.” Mrs. Boothby says soothingly, raising her hands up to her son in an effort to placate him. “We don’t know niffink yet, do we?”
Ken’s large, careworn, sausage like finger fly to his mouth. “’Ooo made my Miss Eadie, cry?” he seethes, the anger blazing in his eyes. “I’ll kill ‘im!”
“Nahw, youse won’t go killin’ no-one, Ken!” Mrs. Boothby replies. “What are you like?”
“It’s alright, Ken,” Edith replies a little shakily. “It’s just my beau. He said something that upset me, but…”
“I’ll kill him!” Ken interrupts, his voice rising in anger. “I’ll kill that bastard!”
“Ken!” Mrs. Boothby snaps. “Whatchoo fink Miss Eadie is gonna fink, you cussin’ like that in front of ‘er! Fink I raised you up a bad’n, she will! Miss Eadie is a lady!”
“Oh!” Ken gasps in apology. “Sorry Mum!”
“It’s not me you need to be apologising to, Ken!” Mrs. Boothby snaps. “It’s Miss Eadie, ‘ere.”
“Sorry Miss Eadie.” Ken apologises earnestly.
“A nice lady like Miss Eadie ain’t gonna be your friend, nor bring you nice presents like she does, if youse go cussin’ and fretenin’ to kill ‘er beau like that in front of ‘er!”
“I will! I will!” Ken insists. “I’ll kill ‘im if ‘e made my Miss Eadie cry!”
“Oh, he didn’t mean to, Ken.” Edith assures Ken, reaching out and placing a hand comfortingly upon his forearm. “It’s alright. He just said something… something nice, but it just didn’t seem that nice to me when he said it. It’s alright. Really it is.”
“I’ll kill him.” Ken affirms again, but in a calmer voice as his agitation begins to dissipate.
“You’d never kill anyone, Ken.” Edith soothes. “I know you wouldn’t. You’re far to gentle. That’s why I like you and why I bring you pretty books and toys, because you’re gentle with them.”
“Whatchoo like, Ken?” Mrs. Boothby goes on. “Miss Eadie is right. You’d nevva ‘urt a fly!”
“Of course I’m right, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith goes on. “Look how gentle Ken is with his toys.” She nods at the teddy and rabbit lying on the table.
“Anyways, ‘ooo would Miss Eadie marry if you went and dun ‘er young man, in, Ken? Tell me that!”
“Me Mum!” Ken smiles cheerfully, the anger of moments ago forgotten in an instant. “She can marry me, Mum.”
“Oh that’s sweet of you, Ken,” Edith’s blush goes unnoticed because of her already reddened face. “But I think we’re probably better being very good friends, rather than stepping out together. Don’t you think?”
“Yes, Miss Eadie.”
“And you don’t have to be my beau in order for me to bring you presents, Ken.”
Ken’s eyes light up, this time with excitement. “Did you bring me a present, Miss Eadie?”
“Ken!” Mrs. Boothby scolds again. “What kind of question is that to ask our guest, when she’s not even sat down yet!”
Kenn immediately moves back to the kitchen table and draws out the ladderback chair that he was sitting on, encouraging Edith to sit upon it.
“I’m sorry Ken.” Edith apologises sadly. “No presents today. Maybe next time.”
“Next time is Christmas, Miss Eadie!” Ken replies, clapping his hands.
“Yes. Why yes it is, Ken.” Edith replies distractedly. “I’ll bring you a nice Christmas present.”
“You’ll do nuffink of the sort,” Mrs. Boothby hisses. “You spoil my son with all those gifts you give ‘im!”
“I can if I choose, Mrs. Boothby.”
Ignoring Edith’s reply the old woman says, “Nahw Ken, do me a favour, son. Run ‘n get me bag will you?”
“Yes Mum!” Ken replies as he scurries off.
“You ‘ungry, Edith derie?” Mrs, Boothby quickly asks Edith.
“Well, I hadn’t really considered it, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies.
“Well, I’m goona distract Ken by sendin’ im on an errand to go get us somfink for tea, so then you and me can ‘ave a quick chat alone wivout bein’ disturbed, if you know what I mean.” Mrs. Boothby whispers, winking at Edith. Then raising her voice more loudly, she continues, “Could you stomach some chippies, Edith love?”
“Well,” Edith replies with equal loudness, “Frank did take me for afternoon tea at Lyon’s Corner House****** this afternoon for sandwiches, but I did lose most of my appetite, so I’m quite peckish now.”
“Then some chippies will do you the world a good then, dearie!” Mrs. Boothby replies.
Ken quickly returns with Mrs. Boothby’s capacious blue beaded bag and hands it to his mother. She opens it and fishes around inside before withdrawing a small beaten brown leather coin purse with a silver metal clasp. She opens it and withdraws a coin. “Nahw Ken, what’s this then?” she asks, holding up a shiny bronzed halfpenny******* featuring King George on one side and Britannia seated holding a trident******** on the other between her right thumb and index finger.
“It’s money, Mum!” Ken scoffs with a broad smile. “I’m not dumb you know!”
“Ahh lawd love ya, son,” Mrs. Boothby runs her left hand lovingly along her son’s cheek before pinching it, making him smile even more broadly. “I know you ain’t. Ain’t I be the one what always tells ya not to let anyone tell you that youse fick? Nah! I know youse got more brains than a lot of people out there.” She gesticulates to the world outside their front door. “But if youse so smart, Ken, ‘ow much is it, I’d ‘oldin’ ‘ere?”
“It’s an ‘a’penny, Mum.”
“Good lad!” Mrs. Boothby agrees. “It’s an ‘a’penny bit.” She smiles proudly. “Nawh, I want you to take this ‘a’penny bit wiv ya and go round to Mr. Cricklewood’s and buy us an ‘a’penny bit’s worf of ‘ot chips, right?”
“Ain’t Mr. ‘Eath’s chippe closer, Mum?” Ken asks, his face crumpling up questioningly.
“It is, son,” Mrs. Boothby agrees. “But you know as well as I do, that Mr. Cricklewood’s chippies is much nicer. That’s why ‘e’s always got a queue out tha door on a Sunday night, ain’t it?”
“Yes Mum! Evva so much nicer, Mum!”
Mrs. Boothby drops the halfpenny in the palm of his hand. “So orf you go!”
“Yes Mum! An ‘a’penny bit’s worf of ‘ot chips.” Ken repeats back.
“Good lad!” Mrs. Boothby says encouragingly. “And whilst youse gawn, I’ll pop the kettle on, and fry us up a couple a nice eggs to go wiv ‘em. Reckon you could eat a couple a eggies, Ken?”
“Yes Mum!” Ken agrees in delight, rubbing his burgeoning stomach to show her how hungry he is.
As the door closes behind him, and Ken steps out into the dark and fog filling street, Mrs. Boothby heaves a sigh of relief.
“Well, that’ll distract Ken for a while.” she says. She goes to the window and pulls back the red velvet curtain that excludes the cold of the night, and watches as Ken disappears into the darkness shrouded by the growing fog. “The queues outside Cricklewood’s Fish and Chippery are ever so long on a Sunday night, even a foggy one. That it’ll give you enuff time to dry you’re tears, and me enuff time to pop on the kettle, and for us to ‘ave a quick chat undisturbed an’ get to bottom of what’s got cha so upset, Edith dearie.”
“I’m sorry again for dropping in on you unannounced, Mrs. Boothby, and for upsetting Ken.” Edith says.
“Nawh, don’t you fret about that, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby replies with a dismissive wave. “I’m just glad you made it ‘ere before it gets too dark. The streets round ‘ere ain’t too safe for young slips of girls like you at night – ‘specially when there’s a fog brewin’ like tonight. Ken ‘n I will take you back to Cavendish Mews after our tea. ‘Ere, give me your coat ‘n ‘at, dearie.”
“Will Ken be alright?” Edith asks in concern, looking to the closed door anxiously as Mrs. Boothby shucks her out of her three quarter length black coat, a piece she picked up cheaply as per Mrs. Boothby’s recommendation from a Petticoat Lane********* second-hand clothes stall not far from Mrs. Boothby’s tenement, and remodelled it.
“’E’ll be fine, dearie. Don’t worry.” Mrs. Boothby replies, taking Edith’s black straw cloche decorated with black feathers and lavender satin roses obtained from Mrs. Minkin’s haberdashery in Whitechapel, another place that Mrs. Boothby recommended Edith to. “’Ooose gonna take on a great big bulk of muscle like my Ken, dearie? E’ll give anyone what tries a right royal bollockin’ if they do.” She hangs up Edith’s coat and hat on a hook behind the door. “Anyway, unlike you, our Ken’s a local, and there’s a certain amount of respect for locals, even ‘mongst the thieves and pickpockets round this way. You don’t make a mess, or enemies, in your own patch, nahw do you?”
“I suppose not, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies.
“Sit yourself dahwn, while I pop the kettle on. Nahw Edith dearie,” Mrs. Boothby says with concern, walking the few paces across her parlour to the old blacklead stove. “What’s all the commotion then?” She turns back and looks the young maid squarely in the face, a kindly look on her worn and wrinkled face. “Tell me why youse come to see me outta the blue like this on a Sunday night, and cryin’ at that? Are you alright?” She gasps. “Well obviously you ain’t! What was I finkin’ askin’ that? You said somfink about it to do wiv your young Frank Leadbetter? ‘As ‘e wound up in some trouble?”
“No Mrs. Boothby. It’s nothing as bad as all that.” Edith sinks down into the ladderback chair at the kitchen table, not too dissimilar from her one at Cavendish Mews, where Ken had been sitting, and toys idly with the paw of his well loved teddy bear. “I should be embarrassed for coming here really, and bothering you like this. You’ll think I’m stupid, no doubt.”
“Nahw you let me worry ‘bout what I fink about yer, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby chides Edith with a wagging finger as she fills her battered kettle from the small trough sink in the corner of the room and carries it the two paces over to the stove. “But I can tell you right nahw that I won’t fink you’re stupid, no matter what. Nahw, I ‘ope ya don’t mind, but I’m dying for a fag! I was just about ta ‘ave one when you knocked on me door.” Without waiting for a reply, Mrs Boothby starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag, which she cast carelessly onto the tabletop after taking out the money for Ken, before withdrawing her cigarette papers, Swan Vestas and tin of Player’s Navy Cut. Rolling herself a cigarette she lights it with a satisfied sigh and one of her fruity coughs, dropping the match into a black ashtray full of used cigarette butts that also sits in its usual place on the table. “Nahw, tell me what all the trouble is then, Edith dearie.” she says, blowing forth a plume of acrid smoke.
“I’m almost too ashamed to tell you, Mrs. Boothby.”
“’Ere! ‘E weren’t bein’ ‘andsy, were ‘e?” Mrs. Boothby gasps. “Under the table like at Lyon’s Corner ‘Ouse, takin’ liberties ‘e ain’t supposed to be?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Boothby, nothing like that.”
“That’s good! I didn’t ever take Frank Leadbetter as an ‘andsy sort of chap, or I’d nevva ‘ave tried settin’ you two up.”
“Oh, he’s a gentleman, Mrs. Boothby.”
“And you ‘aven’t ‘ad a fallin’ out, ‘ave you?” the older woman asks warily.
“Oh no, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Then what’s ‘e done that’s upset cha?” Mrs. Boothby asks, before coughing again, sending forth another few billows of smoke accompanying her throaty outbursts.
“He was only trying to be nice, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith goes on. “You see, we had a lovely tea at Lyon’s Corner House up in Tottenham Court Road today after we went to see ‘The Notorious Mrs. Carrick’********** at the Premier*********** in East Ham. I knew Frank was distracted. I could tell he was itching to talk to me about something.”
“What was it, dearie? What did ‘e say?”
“He wanted to talk about our future, Mrs. Boothby.”
“And that’s a bad fing?”
“Well no, but what he said has raised a lot of concerns for me, you see.”
“So, what was that then?”
“Well, you know how Frank has been spending time at these trade union meetings?” Edith begins. When Mrs. Boothby nods she goes on, “He went to a trade union meeting the other week and he met up with a chum of his who told him that he might have a position opening up Frank soon, as an assistant manager at a grocers.”
“Well what’s so bad about that, dearie?” Mrs. Boothby asks. She pulls a face. “Certainly nuffink to get upset about! I fought that’s whatchoo bowf wanted.”
“We do, Mrs. Boothby, but its where it may be that’s the problem.”
“Where is it then? The moon?” the old Cockney woman laughs light-heartedly. “It can’t be as bad as all that, can it?”
“It may just as well be the moon, Mrs. Boothby. The opening is for a grocers in one of those new estates being built north-west of London.”
“And where are they then?” Mrs. Boothby asks. “Pardon my hignorance.”
“Hertfordshire or Buckinghamshire!” Edith exclaims. “Miss Lettice’s sister lives in Buckinghamshire! It’s the country!”
“Ahh!” Mrs. Boothby sighs knowingly, placing her cigarette between her thin lips to free her hands so she can pick up her old Brown Betty************ and fill it with water from the now boiling kettle. “So, Frank wants you to move to the country then?”
“Yes.” Edith sighs. “I mean, Frank says that where he’s taking about isn’t really the country as such. It’s an estate built along the railway line, not far from Wembley Park, but it sounds like its all in the planning at the moment, and in my mind, its still very much the country.” She sighs again. “And I’ve never lived in the country, and having lived in the city all my life, I don’t think I much fancy country living, especially not after that awful time Hilda and I had in Alderley Edge when we visited our friend Queenie. Remember me telling you, Mrs. Boothby?”
“I do dearie.” She nods as places the pot on the table, huffing out cigarette smoke as she speaks. “Everyone in those little villages knows everyone else’s business, and I ‘ate people nosin’ in on mine.” She eyes the door and pictures Mrs. Friedman’s twitching lace curtains beyond it.
“I mean Frank says it won’t be like that. He says there won’t be uppity families living in these new suburbs, because everyone will be working class, like us, or maybe middle-class, but there will still be the people who have lived in those areas for generations, surely, and they’ll be the ones who’ll rule the roost.”
“Indeed they will, Edith dearie. Country folk don’t like town folk any more than we like them.”
“Have you been to the country before, Mrs. Boothby?”
“Good lawd no!” Mrs. Boothby cries before coughing again as she stubs her cigarette butt out in the ashtray. “But I’ve read about it, mark my words. I’d never give up my life in the city. I ‘ave ‘eard and know enuff ‘bout the country to know it’s far too quiet out there for someone like me! Nah! I ain’t for the country and the country ain’t for me nivver.”
“Frank says that the air out there is fresher and healthier, with none of the pea-soupers************* we get here in London, like tonight.”
“I fink that talk ‘bout fresh air’s overrated. They got cows in the country, ain’t they?”
“Yes, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Then you tell me, wiv all them cows out there, ‘ow can the air be fresh? It’d be full of cow farts and cow droppin’ smells, and we all know that horse droppin’s stink, and I don’t imagine the same from cows would smell any better!”
“I hadn’t actually thought about that, Mrs. Boothby. I can’t say that I noticed the smell of cow droppings in Alderley Edge.”
“Well, it sounds like they’s far too grand there to even ‘ave cow droppin’s, so they might not ‘ave any, Edith dearie.”
“What really concerns me, Mrs. Boothby, more than the quiet, or the cow droppings, is the fact that I won’t have my family nearby, or the people I love: no Mum, no Dad, no Hilda, no you, Mrs. Boothby, and that’s what really made me upset. The realisation of how isolated I might be didn’t really strike me until I got back to Cavendish Mews and I was on my own with Miss Lettice out. I listened to the silence and I suddenly started to cry, and that’s when…” Edith cannot finish her sentence as she starts to cry again. She quickly fishes out her handkerchief again.
“And that’s when you come to see me.” Mrs. Boothby concludes, once again wrapping her arms around Edith.
“Exactly.” Edith’s muffled voice from within her handkerchief agrees. “I wanted to be with a friend.”
“And do you are! Nahw let me pour you a nice cup of Rosie Lee**************, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby fetches a dainty floral cup from her large Welsh dresser and sets it in front of Edith. She then gathers her sugar bowl and fetches a small glass jug of milk from a poky cupboard in a dark corner of the room that serves as her larder. She lifts up the well worn Brown Betty pot and pours a slug of brackish, well steeped tea into Edith’s cup. “I’ll let ya add your own milk ‘n sugar, dearie.” She pauses for a moment and looks across at Edith with worry in her eyes. “Although considerin’ the state yer in, I fink you should add a couple of sugars, personally. Then dry your eyes again. Ken’ll be ‘ome soon wiv the chippies I sent ‘im out for an’ ‘ell be beside ‘imself all over again like before if ‘e sees you blubbin’. ‘E won’t know whevva to punch the lights out of Frank, or give you a big ‘ug to make you feel better.” She releases another few fruity coughs. “Finkin of which, I better get on wiv fryin’ the eggs before ‘e does get back. Nahw you just sit there and enjoy your nice cuppa Rosie Lee and compose yourself, while I get cookin’.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says gratefully.
Mrs. Boothby walks quickly back to her larder and gasps as she withdraws some lard wrapped in foil and the eggs. “It’s Ken’s lucky day! I plumb forgot I ‘ad a rasher of bacon left over from breakfast! I’ll fry it up for ‘im to ‘ave wiv his chippie tea, and you and I‘ll ‘ave an egg each wiv ours.”
The old woman takes a battered old skillet and sets it on the stovetop after poking the coals to bring them to life and drive up the heat. She rolls herself another cigarette, and after lighting it, pops it between her lips and puffs away pleasurably, sending plumes and billows of acrid greyish white smoke about her like a steam locomotive. Using a wooden handled knife, she cuts some lard from the congealed square wrapped in foil and scrapes it into the skillet and leaves it to melt. Once it starts bubbling, she drops in the rasher of bacon and starts frying it.
“So you don’t think it would be advisable to go to the country then, Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks.
“Well, that all depends.” she replies over the comforting sound of hissing fat, releasing another of her fruity coughs and a plume of smoke as she does.
“Depends? Depends on what?”
“On what the pros and cons of the circumstances are. You’ve said that you’re concerned about bein’ isolated. Fair enuff.”
“Well, Frank says that these estates won’t be in the country forever. He says that they are developing them all the time. He even said that places like Harlesden where Mum and Dad live and where I grew up, used to be the country.”
“’E’s got a fair point, Edith dearie. All of London was once countryside. Even ‘ere!” She shudders. “So, it may be a bit isolated to begin wiv, or it may not. Nahw, you’re worried that there may be some toffee-nosed people abaht.” Mrs. Boothby turns back and looks at Edith, who nods shallowly. “Well, I hate to tell you this, dearie, but there’s toffee-nosed people wherevva you go. Take that Golda Friedman from across the way.” She nods to the door again, a few pieces of ash falling from the burning end of her cigarette as she does and wafting gently through the air towards the ground. “She goes around wiv ‘er nose in the air wrapped up in that fancy paisley shawl of ‘ers, what needs a damn good wash, actin’ like she was the Queen of Russia ‘erself, lawdin’ it over us all. But she ain’t no better than the rest of us.”
“And Frank did say that there would be working-class people like us there too.”
“So, you could make some new friends there then?” Mrs. Boothby smiles as she shifts the bacon in the skillet, the aroma of cooked bacon starting to arise from the pan.
“Well,” Edith ponders. “I suppose so.”
“And youse concerned that you won’t ‘ave your mum ‘n’ dad round?”
“Or Hilda, or you, Mrs. Boothby.”
Mrs. Boothby smiles kindly as she moves the browning bacon to one side of the skillet and cracks two eggs from a small chipped white bowl into the space she has made. They hiss and fizzle as they hit the pool of bubbling fat. Smiling more broadly, she goes over to the dresser again and takes down four blue and white floral painted plates, placing three on the table, and the fourth on the edge of the stove next to the now cooling kettle.
“’Ere, ain’t that fancy Empire Stadium*************** what they built for the British Hempire Hexhibition**************** close to where your parents live, Edith dearie?”
“Well yes, I suppose.” Edith admits. “There’s even a big sign fastened to the Jubilee Clock***************** in High Street at the moment which says, ‘British Empire Exhibition, Wembley’ with a big arrow underneath it, so I guess it’s reasonably close by.”
“Nahw correct me if I’m wrong, but these new hestates what the’re buildin’ that your Frank is talkin’ ‘bout, they’s built along the railway line, yes?”
“Yes, Frank says it’s only a few stops on from Wembley Park to reach some of these estates he was thinking the openings might be in.”
“Well don’t that mean you’d be closer to your parents than where you are now, in Mayfair, Edith dearie?”
“Oh, I see what you’re doing, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith suddenly says with a smile.
“Hhhmmm?” Mrs. Boothby replies distractedly as she prods the edges of the eggs as they start to crisp. “What ‘m I doin’?”
“You’re trying to allay my concerns, aren’t you? You really think I should go to the country.”
“Well, just past Wembley Park ain’t the city, like ‘ere, but it ain’t the country neiver, and what I fink, don’t matter a jot. It’s what you and Frank fink, Edith dearie.”
“But I don’t know what to think Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies, her face suddenly clouding over.
“Is Frank askin’ you to decide about movin’ wherever nahw?” Mrs. Boothby asks, coughing again between her gritted teeth holding onto the fast reducing remains of her cigarette as she speaks.
“Well, no, not exactly.” Edith replies. “This just came up in conversation this afternoon as a possibility for Frank when he was at the trade union meeting, and Frank wanted to tell me about it. He wanted me to consider whether I’d be happy to go.”
“Right.” Mrs. Boothby says. She sets the white metal flip she is using to move the eggs and bacon about aside and turns back to Edith. Lunging over, she takes her spent cigarette from between her lips and stubs it out in the ashtray. “Then I will tell you what I fink, because you’re in such a state over nuffink right nahw, that I fink you need to ‘ear it, dearie.” She places her hands firmly on her bony hips. “I fink you is lookin’ too closely at what ain’t even ‘appened yet, Edith dearie. Frank ain’t said youse movin’ anywhere yet. You ain’t even wed yet! ‘E’s just askin’ you to fink about the possibility in yer future is all. ‘E could get a new position in Clapham or Putney or somewhere, couldn’t ‘e?”
“Well, he could, Mrs. Boothby, although he says they may not be as advantageous as the ones he is talking about.”
“But ‘e could?”
“Well yes, of course, Mrs. Boothby. Anything could happen.”
“So, what youse goin’ to do is ‘ave a lovely slap-up tea of egg ‘n’ chips ‘ere, wiv Ken and me, and then Ken and me, we’s gonna take you ‘ome to Miss Lettice’s where you belong, and where you need to be before she gets ‘ome from dinner in the West End tonight at that fancy café, so you can take ‘er coat and ‘at ‘n’ all and tuck ‘er into bed.”
“Oh I don’t really tuck her in….” The words die on Edith’s lips as Mrs. Boothby holds up her palm in protest to stop her.
“And then you’re gonna go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. And then tomorra, when youse wake up, you’re gonna see this all in a much more sensible light. Right nahw, you’re in shock, see? Frank sprung this on you as a surprise, so of course it’s gonna get your mind to tickin’ over like an alarm clock. But dearie, there ain’t nuffink to be alarmed ‘bout.” Mrs. Boothby smiles at Edith, sitting at her table. “When, or if, Frank gets offered one of these fancy manager jobs ‘e’s talkin’ ‘bout, well you just need to sit dahwn wiv ‘im and talk about it - just the two of you, mind - and work out what the pros and cons are. Share your concerns wiv ‘im, just like you did wiv me, and work out togevva, whevva youse gonna be ‘appy or not.”
“Yes, you’re so right, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith exclaims.
“Yes, I am, dearie!” Mrs. Boothby agrees proudly. “You don’t get to be on this earth as long as I’ve been and not be right at least once or twice in your life. Nahw listen to me. Frank loves you. It’s as plain as the nose on your face******************, and that’s a fact. So, ‘e’s not gonna make you do anyfink that won’t make you ‘appy, and that includes movin to Timbuktu or wherever. So, if the time comes, just be ‘onest wiv ‘im, and then you can work it out togevva. It’ll be alright. Tell ‘im nahw, if ‘e wants an answer nahw, that you’ll consider it when the time comes and not before. That way you won’t lose any sleep over what might not ‘appen.”
A smile, gentle and warm, breaks across Edith’s face, and as she looks at her, Mrs. Boothby can see the anxiety and concerns that had her arrive at her door in a state of tears. Lift and melt away.
“That’s better, dearie!” The old Cockney char leans forward and gives Edith’s hand a friendly and comforting squeeze. “Nah more tears.”
“You’re such a good egg, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith exclaims. “And such a good friend to me!” She leaps from her seat and gives the old woman a kiss on the cheek as she throws her arms around her neck. “What would I do without you?”
Just at that moment, both Edith and Mrs. Boothby hear a happy whistle in the foggy rookery outside.
“And thinkin’ of eggs, ‘ere’s our Ken, back from Mr. Cricklewood wiv an a’penny’s worth of chippes I ‘ope!”
The door bursts open and Ken’s bulk appears in the doorway.
“Hot chippies Mum!” he says as he smiles his gormless smile at his mother and Edith.
*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
**A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.
***The word Yid is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang. When pronounced in such a way that it rhymes with did by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'. It is uncertain when the word began to be used in a pejorative sense by non-Jews, but some believe it started in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century when there was a large population of Jews and Yiddish speakers concentrated in East London, gaining popularity in the 1930s when Oswald Mosley developed a strong following in the East End of London.
****A shape shifter is someone or something that seems able to change form or identity at will, especially a mythical figure such as a witch that can assume different forms (as of animals).
*****The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.
******J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.
*******The British pre-decimal halfpenny, once abbreviated ob., is a discontinued denomination of sterling coinage worth 1/480 of one pound, 1/24 of one shilling, or 1/2 of one penny. Originally the halfpenny was minted in copper, but after 1860 it was minted in bronze.
********The original reverse of the bronze version of the coin, designed by Leonard Charles Wyon, is a seated Britannia, holding a trident, with the words HALF PENNY to either side. Issues before 1895 also feature a lighthouse to Britannia's left and a ship to her right. Various minor adjustments to the level of the sea depicted around Britannia, and the angle of her trident were also made over the years. Some issues feature toothed edges, while others feature beading.
*********Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
**********”The Notorious Mrs. Carrick” is a 1924 British silent crime film directed by George Ridgwell and starring Cameron Carr, A.B. Imeson and Gordon Hopkirk. It was an adaptation of the novel Pools of the Past by Charles Proctor. The film was made by Britain's largest film company of the era Stoll Pictures. It was released in July 1924.
***********The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.
************A Brown Betty is a type of teapot, round and with a manganese brown glaze known as Rockingham glaze. In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.
*************A term originating in Nineteenth Century Britain, a pea soup fog is a very thick and often yellowish, greenish or blackish fog caused by air pollution that contains soot particulates and the poisonous gas sulphur dioxide. It refers to the thick, dense fog that is so thick that it appears to be the color and consistency of pea soup. Pea-soupers were particularly common in large industrial cities like Manchester and Liverpool and populous cities like London where there were lots of coal fires either for industry and manufacturing, or for household heating. The last really big pea-souper in London happened in December 1952. At least three and a half to four thousand people died of acute bronchitis. However, in cities like Manchester and Liverpool, where the concentration of manufacturing was higher, they continued well beyond that.
**************Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.
***************A purpose-built "great national sports ground", called the Empire Stadium, was built for the Exhibition at Wembley. This became Wembley Stadium. Wembley Urban District Council was opposed to the idea, as was The Times, which considered Wembley too far from Central London. The first turf for this stadium was cut, on the site of the old tower, on the 10th of January 1922. 250,000 tons of earth were then removed, and the new structure constructed within ten months, opening well before the rest of the Exhibition was ready. Designed by John William Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, and built by Sir Robert McAlpine, it could hold 125,000 people, 30,000 of them seated. The building was an unusual mix of Roman imperial and Mughal architecture. Although it incorporated a football pitch, it was not solely intended as a football stadium. Its quarter mile running track, incorporating a 220 yard straight track (the longest in the country) were seen as being at least equally important. The only standard gauge locomotive involved in the construction of the Stadium has survived, and still runs on Sir William McAlpine's private Fawley Hill railway near Henley.
****************The British Empire Exhibition was a colonial exhibition held at Wembley Park, London England from 23 April to 1 November 1924 and from 9 May to 31 October 1925. In 1920 the British Government decided to site the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, on the site of the pleasure gardens created by Edward Watkin in the 1890s. A British Empire Exhibition had first been proposed in 1902, by the British Empire League, and again in 1913. The Russo-Japanese War had prevented the first plan from being developed and World War I put an end to the second, though there had been a Festival of Empire in 1911, held in part at Crystal Palace. One of the reasons for the suggestion was a sense that other powers, like America and Japan, were challenging Britain on the world stage. Despite victory in Great War, this was in some ways even truer in 1919. The country had economic problems and its naval supremacy was being challenged by two of its former allies, the United States and Japan. In 1917 Britain had committed itself eventually to leave India, which effectively signalled the end of the British Empire to anyone who thought about the consequences, while the Dominions had shown little interest in following British foreign policy since the war. It was hoped that the Exhibition would strengthen the bonds within the Empire, stimulate trade and demonstrate British greatness both abroad and at home, where the public was believed to be increasingly uninterested in Empire, preferring other distractions, such as the cinema.
****************The cast iron Jubilee Clock has remained a Harlesden landmark since its erection at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. It is ornate, decorated with dolphins, armorial bearings, a fluted circular column with spirals, shields of arms and swags. When it was built, it featured four ornate gas lit lamps sprouting from its column and two drinking fountains with taps and bowls at its base. It also featured a weathervane on its top. During the late Twentieth Century elements were removed, including the lanterns and the fountain bowls. In 1997 the clock was restored without these elements, but plans are underway to restore of the weathervane and recreation of the original four circular lanterns to the clock and the two fountains.
*****************A idiom used to describe something that is obvious and quite clear, “plain as the nose on your face” is attributed to Francois Rabelais in 1552 by Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. It was also used by Shakespeare in England in 1594 in Act II, Scene I of Two Gentleman of Verona.
This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The black skillet with the rasher of bacon and the two eggs frying in it are an artisan piece that I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. The blue and white plate on the edge of the stove to the right of the photograph also comes from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop.
The square of lard wrapped up in silver foil is an artisan miniature piece that I acquired from former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Frances Knight’s work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.
The small serrated knife with the wooden handle on the blue and white Cornish Ware plate comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures Shop in the United Kingdom.
Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.
The Box of Sunlight Soap standing on the edge of the trough sink and the jars of Coleman’s Mustard and tartaric acid on the shelf of the stove are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.
Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884. It was produced at Port Sunlight in Wirrel, Merseyside, a model village built by Lever Brothers for the workers of their factories which produced the popular soap brands Lux, Lifebuoy and Sunlight.
Colman's is an English manufacturer of mustard and other sauces, formerly based and produced since 1814 for one hundred and sixty years at Carrow, in Norwich, Norfolk. Owned by Unilever since 1995, Colman's is one of the oldest existing food brands, famous for a limited range of products, almost all being varieties of mustard.
The various bowls, cannisters and dishes, the kettle and the Brown Betty teapot I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia.
The black Victorian era stove and the ladderback chair on the left of the table and the small table directly behind it are all miniature pieces I have had since I was a child. The ladderback chair on the right came from a deceased estate of a miniatures collector in Sydney.
The grey marbleised fireplace behind the stove and the trough sink in the corner of the kitchen come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Miniatures.
the poor, mentally and physically ill
the outcasts
the dhalits
the untouchables
those who society reject
but number in the millions
congregate
for friday prayer
aka
J U M M A H
or
N A M A Z
on
ZACHARIA street
in
KOLKATA
So, this might be a long post. When I shot this, I was trying to re-capture a moment. Its not identical physically, but its close. Since shooting and editing though, it has come to represent several themes that I will try to summarise here.
My Mum died at 6.45am on Friday 29th June. The moments directly after passing were the most surreal I have ever encountered in my life. As with anything in life- when you are thrust into a world that you don't understand (like MOT's or buying a house) you look to the people who work in that field to guide you through it. In this instance it was the Doctor who came to do the final checks to register that this life has now passed. The Doctor came out of the room and shook both our hands and told us how sorry he was. I asked him what happens now. What I was expecting was some sort of ownership for Arthur and I. Politely, the Doctor told me I would have to ask the Nurses. I asked them "So we just pack up and go home?". Turns out that is exactly what happens. So we left the ward, and went to our cars respectively. I remember the drive home. Unable to really process yet able to drive. When I got home, I went into shock. For 3 hours I was unable to move, talk or breathe. I stared at the same point on my headboard and the noises that came out of my mouth were like nothing I had heard before. Primal.
Over the couple of weeks that have followed, you try to make sense of time. The days that led up to the passing become incredibly important. Everything becomes of significance. I remember looking back at my stream to pinpoint when Mums diagnosis had been. It was 11 weeks prior to death. From what I wrote I can see the questions I had back then. We knew the diagnosis was Bone Cancer (following 2 years of tests) but there was no timeline "You're healthy, working, you will probably just tick along like this indefinitely" was the prognosis.
I was in Paris the week before Mum died. I didn't want to go, but she insisted. She told me it was important that I go, and when I returned she would have had a healing. I lasted for 2 days out of 6 and honestly, the time I spent there were misplaced. Really, I shouldn't have gone, but in some aspects it was good that I did. The major highlight was finally meeting Derek Gores and his partner Christy. The collage on the wall in my bedroom was the catalyst that led me to seek out Derek, and through one twist and another I got to spend an evening having dinner and making some photographs with the 2 of them. It was amazing.
During the evenings in Paris, I spent them on my own as Michaela who I was staying with had to work. I listened to a lot of worship music via her laptop and Youtube and cried a lot. I think I was preparing for Mum to die at that stage.
One of the songs I listened to a lot was Facedown by Matt Redman. It really spoke to me about how small we are really and how much bigger what we do with our lives is. Ultimately are we spending our time in the right areas or are there places we know we need to address?
October 6, 2016: Hurricane Matthew was getting to me, physically. I was worried about getting to Miami and that my father and pets survived the hurricane in Savannah. Finally, for the night, we were able to get one of the last hotel rooms in Kissimmee. We stopped at a Chinese restaurant for dinner and they had this display.
Other than my dad's house getting some damage, we made it out OK. My house was untouched. My dad evacuated, but had to leave some pets behind at my house since they would not allow themselves to be caught.. Since the hurricane, everyone is at my house temporally.
(280/366)
While Skakdi are capable of physically wearing Kanohi Masks, they do not possess the measure of focus nor the mental capacity to utilize their powers...
Except for the very small fraction of the population who were mutated by the personal experiment of one curious Great Being.
About 1-3% of the Skakdi population have well above average mental capacities - even beyond that of Toa. While the average Skakdi cannot use Kanohi powers, these mutant Skakdi can use the powers of multiple masks at the same time, without even wearing them.
Known as Shamans, or Witch Doctors, these Skakdi are physically larger than their regular counterparts, and their spines are more elaborate. Their mutations also cause the appearance of various abnormal growths on their bodies, though luckily these are always symmetrical.
Other physical characteristics are more vibrant skin pigments - the average Skakdi are bi-colored without armor, though both colors are always different shades of the same color - and hunched back.
Skakdi Witch Doctors are equally revered and feared by their counterparts, while their existence is seldom considered more than a rumor beyond the shores of Zakaz. The Witch Doctors wield terrifying power, and are able to activate and control the powers of Kanohi masks even at a distance, thus using the powers of opponents' masks against them. They also wield elemental powers, considered by their fellow Skakdi to be "magic", and immense physical strength.
It's fortunate, therefore, that Witch Doctors seldom engage in combat. While they are rarely seen outside of Zakaz, all Witch Doctors travel to other islands occasionally to harvest Kanohi - usually still attached to the original owner's head. Beyond this, they do not engage in the warmongering typical of their race.
Instead, the Witch Doctors dedicate their time to rituals, incantations, hexes and the consumption of various mushrooms, while practicing the use of Kanohi powers, Their innate abilities allow them to control 3-4 masks, however if exercised (much like a muscle), this can be increased. The most powerful known Witch Doctor managed to simultaneously activate the powers of 35 Kanohi. After this, he claimed to have been "enlightened", and traveled to a nearby Skakdi village where he preached that their world was actually the body of a larger being, who was travelling through the void. The villagers promptly tore the Witch Doctor to bits and ate his remains.
Two shamanistic pursuits of the Witch Doctors not related to Kanohi are Voodoo and the training of familiars. The former involved the crafting of - usually Skakdi-like - effigies which can then be linked to the soul of another, thus any force affecting the effigy would effect the individual bound to it. Familiars, in turn, are rahi who are tamed by the Witch Doctor, and kept as loyal pets.
This particular Witch Doctor once caught a newly hatched Visorak, tamed it, and enchanted it so that it will never grow in size.
Witch Doctors often live in huts or hovels deep in the jungles of their homeland. While the homes of the Shaman often mirror their denizens and are thus unique, one constant in all such homes is a ritual altar, which functions much like a table. Witch Doctors are keen collectors of all kinds of oddities, so seeing various Kanohi, old weapons and even kraata around their altars is not unheard of.
All Witch Doctors carry a special staff, which they adorn with the heads of those whose Kanohi they collected. The Shaman are capable of using not only the Kanohi they wear, but also those on their staff. They also all possess ritual daggers, used in the art of Voodoo, as well as other rituals requiring living sacrifice.
Feeling very out of control both mentally and physically today. My mood has been terrible and there's no telling what the cause may be. There is so much going on with me at the moment medically and with my family and such, it's likely just the combination of all of it.
Regardless, I find it incredibly frustrating to not be in control of my emotions. I'm not ranting and screaming all day (ok, maybe part of the day!), and for the most part it is more of an inner process... but still, there are definitely moments where I think I'm about one dog bark, hot flash or stubbed toe away from a padded room.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are not in Lettice’s flat, and whilst we have not travelled that far physically across London, the tough streets and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. We have come to the home of Lettice’s charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, where we find ourselves in the cheerful kitchen cum living room of her tenement in Merrybrook Place: by her own admission, a haven of cleanliness amidst the squalor of the surrounding neighbourhood. Edith, Lettice’s maid, is visiting her Cockney friend and co-worker on a rather impromptu visit, much to the surprise of the old char when she answered the timid knock on her door on Easter Sunday morning and found Edith standing on her stoop, dressed in a lovely floral patterned cotton frock and the wide brimmed straw hat decorated with ribbon and ornamental flowers she bought from Mrs. Minkin’s Haberdashery in Whitechapel.
“Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby exclaims in delight and one of her fruity smokers’ coughs, a lit hand rolled cigarette in her right hand releasing a thin trail of greyish white smoke into the atmosphere. “What a luverly surprise!”
“I’m sorry to pay a call unannounced, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith apologises sheepishly.
“Not at all, dearie,” the old Cockney assures her. “Come on in wiv ya. Can’t ‘ave you standin’ on the stoop, what wiv all and sundry keepin’ an ear out for business what ain’t their own.” She gives a hard stare over Edith’s shoulder to the door of Mrs. Friedmann, where the nosy Jewess stands in her usual spot in her doorway, where she leans against its frame wrapped in one of her paisley shawls, observing the goings on of the rookery** with dark and watchful eyes. “Wanna paint a picture Mrs. Friedmann?” Mrs. Boothby calls out across the paved court, challenging her open stare with a defensive one of her own. “Might last you longer, your royal ‘ighness!” She casts her cigarette butt out into the courtyard, and makes a mock over exaggerated curtsey towards her, hitching up the hem of her own workday skirts. She turns her attentions back to Edith. “Come on in, dearie.”
It takes a moment for Edith’s eyes to adjust as the old Cockney woman scuttles ahead of her. As they do, Edith discerns the familiar things within the tenement front room that Edith has come to know over her visits since befriending the charwoman who does all the hard graft for her at Cavendish Mews: a kitchen table not too unlike her own at the Mayfair flat, a couple of sturdy ladderback chairs, an old fashioned black leaded stove, a rudimentary trough sink on bricks in the corner of the room and Mrs. Boothby’s pride and joy, her dresser covered in pretty ornamental knick-knacks she has collected over many years.
“Close the door behind you and come on in, dearie. It was a bit cold this mornin’, but the ‘ouse is nice and warm. I got the range goin’, so I’ll put the kettle on for a nice cup of Rosie-Lee***, if yer ‘ave the time that is.”
“Oh yes, thank you, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies as she closes the door behind her. “That would be lovely.
Shutting out the unpleasant mixture of odours outside with the closing of the door, Edith is comforted by the smells of soap and the lavender sachets Mrs. Boothby has hanging from the heavy velvet curtains to keep away the moths, the smells from the communal privy at the end of the rookery, and to a degree the cloying scent of tobacco smoke from her constant smoking.
“Good. Nah, go ‘ang up your ‘at ‘n make yerself comfy at the table.”
“I’ll fetch down some cups.” Edith replies cheerfully.
“Oh you are a luv to ‘elp, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says gratefully, emitting another couple of heavy coughs as she stretches and pulls down the fine blue and white antique porcelain teapot she reserves for when guest come to call from the top shelf of her dresser. “Look ooh’s ‘ere, Ken!” the old woman adds brightly.
Edith looks affectionately across the room to the bed nestled in the corner upon which Ken, Mrs. Boothby’s mature aged disabled son sits, playing with his beloved worn teddy bear and floppy stuffed rabbit on the crumpled bedclothes.
“Miss Eadie!” Ken gasps, a gormless grin spreading across his childlike innocent face as he recognises Edith.
“That’s right, son. It’s Edith come to pay us a call, and on Easter Sunday ‘n all.”
Ken drops his stuffed companions, leaps up from his bed and lollops across the room, enveloping Edith in his big, warm embrace, filling her nostrils with the scent of the carbolic soap Mrs. Boothby uses to wash him and his clothes. A tall and muscular man in his forties, his embrace quickly starts to squeeze the air from Edith’s lungs as his grasp grows tighter, making the poor maid cough.
“Nah! Nah!” Mrs. Boothby chides, turning away from the stove quickly and giving her son a gentle tap to the shoulder. “Let poor Edith go. You dunno ya own strengf, son. You’ll crush ‘er wiv your bear ‘ug.” She emits another fruity cough as she gives him a stern look.
“Oh! Sorry!” Ken apologises, immediately releasing Edith from his embrace and backing away as if he’d been burned, a sheepish look on his face.
“It’s alright, Ken.” Edith replies breathily. “Your mum is right though.” She huffs. “You… you do give strong hugs.”
“Eggies!” Ken answers excitedly, immediately forgetting his mild chastisement, pointing to some brightly painted eggs**** filling the wicker basket in Edith’s left hand as her arm hangs limply at her side.
“’Ere! Mind yer own business, son. What’s in Edith’s basket’s ‘er own affair right enuff.” The old woman strides over to her dresser where she takes down an ornamental Art Nouveau tin, which Edith knows well enough from her previous visits to Mrs. Boothby’s tenement, contains biscuits. “’Ere.” She takes out a shortbread biscuit from the tin and gives it to the bulking lad. “Nah, go sit dahn on your bed and play wiv your toys for a bit longer, and let Edith and I ‘ave a nice chat over a cup of Rosie-Lee. I’ll make you a cup ‘n all. And then Edith can share wiv you wot’s in ‘er basket later,” She turns to Edith and gives her a serious look. “If she wants to, that is.”
“Oh, what’s in my basket is what I’m here about, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies, depositing the basket onto the deal pine kitchen table before taking off her hat and hanging it up on a spare peg by the door.
“Eggies!” Ken says again.
“Oh get on wiv ya, Ken!” Mrs. Boothby chuckles as she kindly tousles her son’s hair affectionately. “Youse got a biscuit, nah go an’ sit dahwn like a told you, and you’ll find out soon enough about them eggs since Edith seems to fink they might be for you.”
“Yes Ma!” Ken replies.
“Good lad.” his mother replies as he retreats obediently to his bed, where he starts playing with his teddy bear and stuffed rabbit again, yet with half an eye on the basket of pastel coloured eggs on the table.
“I fought you’d be spendin’ Easter Sunday wiv Frank, or your parents, Edith dearie.” Mrs Boothby says as she pours hot water into the blue and white china pot and swirls it around to warm it, before pouring the water down the drain of the small trough in the corner of the room.
“Oh I’m only stopping for a short while, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith answers, reaching up and withdrawing three pretty blue and white china cups and saucers from the dresser. “I went to Easter services this morning at Grosvenor Chapel*****.”
“Chapel! Church! Priest!” Ken calls angrily from his truckle bed. “Priest bad!”
“Yes son! The priest is bad, but ‘e ain’t ‘ere so don’t you trouble your pretty ‘ead about it.” Mrs. Boothby says comfortingly, reminded of the Catholic priest that used to bother her to have Ken committed to an assylum. She looks over at her son, and just like a cloud momentarily blocking out the sun, Ken’s angry spat dissipates and he happily mumbles something to his teddy bear before laughing. “That bloody Irish Catholic priest offered to take Ken away, has a lot to answer for.” the old woman mutters as she adds spoonfuls of tea to the pot and tops it up with hot water. “Anyway, you was sayin’ ‘bout your plans today, dearie?”
Edith takes down the dainty blue and white sugar bowl and hands a non matching blue and white floral jug to Mrs. Boothby’s outstretched gnarled fingers. “I’m meeting Frank in Upton Park at midday and we’re going to visit his granny, for a few hours, and then, with Miss Lettice down in Wiltshire for Easter, I’ll have a light supper with Mum and Dad before heading back to Cavendish Mews tonight. I had Good Friday with them anyway.”
“Got time for some biscuits, Edith dearie?” Mrs. Boothby asks, filling the jug with a splash of milk from a bottle she keeps in the coolest corner of her tenement, underneath the trough sink.
“I’ve got the time, but I’d better not spoil my appetite. Mrs. McTavish is roasting lamb****** for lunch, and Frank tells me that she makes a delicious simnel cake*******, and she’s baked one especially for today because I’m visiting.”
“That’s so luverly of ‘er, dearie.”
Mrs. Boothby puts the pot of tea and milk jug on the table. She encourages Edith to take a seat in the sturdy ladderback chair in front of the dresser with a sweeping gesture, whilst she takes a seat in her own chair by the range.
“I tell you what Edith dearie, I’m dying for a fag!” Mrs Boothby says. “And a good chat before you do go on and see Frank and ‘is gran.” She starts fossicking through her capacious blue beaded handbag on the table before withdrawing her cigarette papers, box of National Safety Matches and tin of Player’s Navy Cut********* tobacco. Rolling herself a cigarette she lights it with a satisfied sigh and one more of her fruity coughs, dropping the match into a black ashtray that sits on the table full of cigarette butts. Mrs. Boothby settles back happily in her ladderback chair with her cigarette in one hand and sighs. Blowing out a plume of blue smoke that tumbles through the air around them, the old woman continues. “Nah, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure, and what’s it got to do wiv them eggs?” She nods at the basket between them.
“Eggies!” Ken pipes up from his corner.
“Oh Lawd!” Mrs. Boothby exclaims, before stuffing the cigarette between her teeth. “I’d forget me own ‘ead if it weren’t screwed on good ‘n tight.” She snatches up one of the three teacups, sloshes in a splash of milk, adds two heaped teaspoons of sugar and pours in some tea. She stirs the milky tea with a tannin tarnished teaspoon. “Ere you are then, Ken!” She tuns around and holds the cup out to her son, who happily skips across the room and takes it from her hand. “Be careful wiv that, won’t cha love?” She runs a hand lovingly down his cheek to his chin, which she tweaks gently. “That’s Ma’s good china, ain’t it?”
“Good china.” Ken says with reverence as he looks down at the cup full of steaming milky tea in his hands.
“That’s my boy. Nah, go and have it over there just for nah.” she continues, pointing over to his truckle bed.
Edith pours tea for she and Mrs. Boothby whilst the old Cockney woman addresses her son.
“’E likes ‘is tea sweet ‘n milky, does my Ken.” Mrs. Boothby says as she turns back to Edith. “Oh fank you, dearie.” she adds as she sees the hot steaming black tea in her cup. She perches her cigarette on her black ashtray and pulls the cup towards her. “Much obliged.”
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies, as she adds some milk to her tea before handing the jug to her hostess.
Adding a splash of milk to her tea, Mrs. Boothby muses, “I’d a been glad of a daughter like you, if God ‘ad granted me annuva child.” She turns and looks momentarily back at Ken, who sits sipping his tea, looking almost comical as the bulking lad holds the cup so carefully and daintily. “Not that Ken ain’t gift enuff. “E’s one a God’s angels right ‘ere on earf.”
“Thank you Mrs. Boothby.” Edith murmurs in reply, blushing at the old woman’s compliment. “I learned my best manners from my Mum.”
“I should think you would!” She takes a long drag on her cigarette, the intake making the thin cigarette paper crackle as it is slowly consumed, before she exhales a long greyish plume of acrid smoke above their heads. “Any girl, or boy for that matter, should pay attention to their mas.”
“Well, thinking of mums, that’s why I came here today: to give you these.” Edith pushes the basket across the cleanly scrubbed pine surface of the table towards Mrs. Boothby. “With Miss Lettice having gone back down to Wiltshire to have a look at Mr. Gifford’s house and stay with her parents for Easter, Mum and I had time to enjoy an Easter tradition of ours this year, and we dyed these eggs for you as a gift.”
“For me?” Mrs. Boothby gasps in delight.
“Well, for you and Ken, or course.” Edith goes on.
“Eadie!” Ken calls back from his corner, smiling again at Edith.
“Oh that’s so luverly of yer both, dearie!” Mrs. Boothby puts her thin, careworn fingers around a bright yellow egg and takes it carefully out of the basket. “Just look at the colour in this one!”
“Onion skin.” Edith replies.
“What dearie?”
“My Mum and I use onion skins to make the yellow dye.”
“You never?” exclaims the old woman, her eyes widening in amazement.
“On yes, Mrs. Boothby. Onion skins make for a lovely dye. Don’t forget that my Mum is a laundress, so she knows a lot about natural pigments to dye fabrics with.”
“Well fancy that! I ain’t never ‘eard of onion skins bein’ used for anyfink much avva than rubbish!”
“We use spoiled red cabbage to make blue dye.” Edith smiles.
“But red cabbage is red!” Mrs. Boothby laughs, emitting a couple of fruity coughs as she does. She puts the yellow egg back and picks out a blue one. “’Ow can you get blue from red?” She shakes her head in disbelief.
“Well, you boil up the red cabbage leaves and then strain out the cabbage. That will make pink or even purple dye.” She takes out a pink egg from the basket and holds it up. “Then you add a tiny bit of baking powder to the cabbage liquid, and it will turn blue.”
“Go on wiv ya!” laughs Mrs. Boothby.
“It’s true, Mrs. Boothby, sure as…”
“As eggs is eggs, dearie?”
Edith laughs and sighs. “Yes, Mrs. Boothby! As sure as eggs are eggs. You have to be careful though. If you add too much baking powder, the dye turns green.” She replaces the blue egg and pulls out a green one. “Mum and I always dye pink and purple eggs first, then add a little baking powder to make blue dye, and then once we have enough blue eggs, we add more baking powder and dye green eggs.”
“Well, I never!” the old Cockney char exclaims. “I’s older than your ma is, I’ll wager, yet you just taught me sumfink new today. Come ‘ere, Ken!”
Ken comes over quickly, carefully replacing his now empty cup and its saucer onto the tabletop next to his mother’s bag.
“Good boy. See this ‘ere egg, son?” Mrs. Boothby asks, as she wraps her free right arm part way around her son’s girth.
“Yes Ma!” Ken says, smiling with delight at the egg in his mother’s hand, reaching out and carefully touching the dyed surface, running his fingers lightly along it.
“This ‘ere egg, Edith coloured and made just for you, ‘cos she knows ‘ow much you love blue.” She hands the egg to him, and Ken holds it carefully. “Nah, whacha say to Edith then, Ken?”
“Thank you Eadie!” Ken says lovingly. “Pretty!”
“You’re welcome, Ken.” Edith replies with a smile. “Happy Easter.”
“Happy Easter, Eadie!” he replies joyfully.
Edith watches with delight as Ken rolls the egg around his palms and carefully strokes the blue dyed surface of it.
“We’ll keep it for a bit sos you can admire it.” Mrs. Boothby says.
“I’m just sorry that they aren’t chocolate Easter eggs*********, Mrs. Boothby, but I can’t really afford that kind of luxury.”
“Nonsense Edith, dearie!” the old woman scoffs, waving away Edith’s apology dismissively before picking up what is left of her cigarette and drawing upon it. Billows of greyish smoke tumble from her mouth as she stubs out the butt in the ashtray and says, “You made these ‘ere eggs wiv your own fair ‘and, and look ‘ow ‘appy Ken is. What would ‘e want wiv a chocolate egg, eh? ‘E’s as ‘appy as a lark. Bless ‘im.” She squeezes her son lovingly. “Nah, after a few days of lookin’ at it, then I’ll break it up and we can ‘ave boiled egg on toast, eh Ken?”
“Yum Ma!” Ken remarks.
“You spoil ‘im, givin’ ‘im all these eggs.” Mrs. Boothby scolds Edith. “Don’t cha want some for Frank and his gran, Mrs. McTavish, since she’s makin’ ya a roast for Easter tea, and a simnel cake ta boot?”
“Oh I already gave some for Mrs. McTavish to Frank. He’s going to find a nice box to decorate and present them in, so he’s bringing them.” Edith explains with a smile. “But I did make a few extra for you because I did rather think that you might give them to your neighbour, Mrs. Conway. I remember seeing the children she looks after for the mothers of the neighbourhood who work. I thought you and Ken can take your pick, and you could give the rest to her to share with the children.”
“I dare say she’d love that dearie. We could ‘ave a egg rolling contest********** right ‘ere in Merryboork place! The kiddies would ‘ave a right royal time! Fank you for bein’ so thoughtful, Edith dearie.”
*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
**A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.
***Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.
****People have been decorating eggs for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians decorated ostrich eggs, and early Christians in Mesopotamia dyed eggs to mark Easter. Throughout history, people have given each other eggs at spring festivals to celebrate the new season. Eggs represent new life and rebirth, and it’s thought that this ancient custom became a part of Easter celebrations. In 1290 King Edward I paid for four hundred and fifty eggs to be coloured or covered in gold leaf and given to his entourage, and Henry VIII received one in a silver case as a present from the Pope. From the Eighteenth Century children decorated their own eggs at Easter, or recieved them as presents. These were called ‘pace eggs’. Pace eggs were made from hard boiled hen, duck or goose eggs, with decorated shells dyed with bright colours – just like in the medieval period. They were given as presents at Easter, or to the actors at pace egg plays. Pace egg plays were medieval style mystery plays, with a theatrical fight between a hero and a villain. The hero character was usually killed, before being brought back to life to triumph over the villain. In many plays, the hero character was St George. Pace eggs were also rolled along the ground in a race called an egg roll. Children would roll a decorated pace egg down a hill, and see whose egg rolled the furthest without breaking. It’s possible that these races started as a symbol of the rolling away of the stone from Jesus’ tomb.
*****Grosvenor Chapel is an Anglican church in what is now the City of Westminster, in England, built in the 1730s. It inspired many churches in New England. It is situated on South Audley Street in Mayfair. The foundation stone of the Grosvenor Chapel was laid on 7 April 1730 by Sir Richard Grosvenor, 4th Baronet, owner of the surrounding property, who had leased the site for 99 years at a peppercorn rent to a syndicate of four “undertakers” led by Benjamin Timbrell, a prosperous local builder. The new building was completed and ready to use by April 1731.
******Like most families in Britain at the time, roast lamb was the meal most associated with Easter Sunday – the tradition of eating lamb on Easter has its roots in early Passover observances.
*******Simnel cake is packed with fruits and spices, and covered in marzipan – traditional cakes have 11 marzipan balls on top as well, to represent the 11 apostles (minus Judas).
********Made by Nottingham based tobacconist manufacturer John Player and Sons, Player’s Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today’s rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player’s and two thirds of these were branded as Player’s Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player’s sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London). Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player’s was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes. Nowadays the brands "Player" and "John Player Special" are owned and commercialised by Imperial Brands (formerly the Imperial Tobacco Company).
*********The first English chocolate Easter egg was sold by Fry’s in 1873, and Cadbury’s quickly followed them, introducing their own chocolate egg in 1875. These early Easter eggs were made using dark chocolate, and were smooth and plain, but in 1897 the famous Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate was first introduced. Chocolate eggs made with this new recipe were very popular, and soon became Easter bestsellers. Even today, most Easter eggs are made using milk chocolate.
**********Egg rolling is a tradition that goes back to the Eighteenth century in England. Commencing in Lancashire ‘pace eggs’ became very popular. It continues in some parts of England today, although nowadays it is chocolate eggs being rolled down the hill, rather than the traditional boiled and painted eggs of the past! There is an egg rolling event every year in Preston, Lancashire, but the most famous egg roll takes place in the United States of America, on the lawns of the White House, in Washington
This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene with its Easter festive tones is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.
The Easter eggs in the basket are 1:12 miniatures which came from Kathleen Knight's Dolls' House Shop in the United Kingdom.
Mrs. Boothby’s beloved collection of ornaments come from various different sources. The rooster jug, the cottage ware butter dish, Peter Rabbit in the watering can tea pot and the cottage ware teapot on the dresser were all made by French ceramicist and miniature artisan Valerie Casson. All the pieces are authentic replicas of real pieces made by different china companies. For example, the cottage ware teapot has been decorated authentically and matches in perfect detail its life-size Price Washington ‘Ye Olde Cottage Teapot’ counterparts. The top part of the thatched roof and central chimney form the lid, just like the real thing. Valerie Casson is renown for her meticulously crafted and painted miniature ceramics. All the plates on the dresser came from various online miniature stockists through E-Bay, as do the teapot, plate and cups on Mrs. Boothby’s kitchen table.
Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag on the table is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. Hand crocheted, it is interwoven with antique blue glass beads that are two millimetres in diameter. The beads of the handle are three millimetres in length. It came from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
Spilling from her bag are her Player’s Navy Cut cigarette tin and Swan Vesta matches, which are 1:12 miniatures hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. The black ashtray is also an artisan piece, the bae of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there). Made by Nottingham based tobacconist manufacturer John Player and Sons, Player’s Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today’s rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player’s and two thirds of these were branded as Player’s Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player’s sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London). Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player’s was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes. Nowadays the brands “Player” and “John Player Special” are owned and commercialised by Imperial Brands (formerly the Imperial Tobacco Company). Swan Vestas is a brand name for a popular brand of ‘strike-anywhere’ matches. Shorter than normal pocket matches they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline ‘the smoker’s match’ although this has been replaced by the prefix ‘the original’ on the current packaging. Swan Vestas matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen. The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard & Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced ‘Swan wax matches’. These were superseded by later versions including ‘Swan White Pine Vestas’ from the Diamond Match Company. These were formed of a wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened ‘Swan Vestas’ in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s ‘Swan Vestas’ had become ‘Britain’s best-selling match’.
The rather worn and beaten looking enamelled bread bin in the typical domestic Art Deco design and kitchen colours of the 1920s, cream and green, which have been aged on purpose, are artisan pieces I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.
The various bowls, cannisters and dishes, the kettle and the Brown Betty teapot I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia. A Brown Betty is a type of teapot, round and with a manganese brown glaze known as Rockingham glaze. In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.
The black Victorian era stove and the ladderback chair on the left of the table and the small table directly behind it are all miniature pieces I have had since I was a child. The ladderback chair on the right came from a deceased estate of a miniatures collector in Sydney. The Welsh dresser came from Babette’s Miniatures, who have been making miniature dolls’ furnishings since the late Eighteenth Century. The dresser has plate grooves in it to hold plates in place, just like a real dresser would.
The grey marbleised fireplace behind the stove and the trough sink in the corner of the kitchen come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The green wallpaper is an authentic replica of real Art Nouveau wallpaper from the first decade of the Twentieth Century which I have printed onto paper. The floorboards are a print of a photo taken of some floorboards that I scaled to 1:12 size to try and maintain a realistic look.
That's what I really need today. So drained..emotionally and physically. Starting week three...who knew? Thanks to all of you that are still sending prayers. They're much needed and appreciated. Will catch up on your streams later. God bless...have a wonderful day. For those of you that are following the blog..thanks for all the wonderful comments. Hopefully..Kraig will get to read them one day soon.
"Chocolate causes certain endocrine glands to secrete hormones that affect your feelings and behavior by making you happy. Therefore, it counteracts depression, in turn reducing the stress of depression. Your stress-free life helps you maintain a youthful disposition, both physically and mentally. So, eat lots of chocolate!"
~Elaine Sherman, Book of Divine Indulgences
Highest position in Explore: 157
M20 is located within the boundaries of the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer, in the night sky. The nebula is physically located in the Scutum-Centaurus Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy at a distance of about 4,000 light years from Earth. M20 is about 21 light years in diameter.
M20 is an example of three different types of nebulae collocated in space to form one composite colorful image. The red emission nebula is the predominant feature of M20. It is the star forming ionized hydrogen region in which new stars are in the processed of being formed. It glows red due to the stimulation of the intense ultra-violet radiation from the hot blue giant stars that have already been born in this stellar nursery.
The dark radial dust lanes are absorption or dark nebulae that divide the red emission nebula in to basically three parts by blocking the light from the red nebula behind the dust lanes. The name trifid indicates in Latin that the emission nebula is divided into three parts making it appear like the petals of a red flower.
The blue reflection nebula above the red emission nebula is a large interstellar dust cloud. The cloud acts like a reflection surface for the hot blue giant stars that are located in front of it.
The CHI-1 astrograph used to capture the image of M20 is located at El Sauce Observatory in the Rio Hurtado Valley in the high-altitude Atacama Desert of Chile. CHI-1 is part of the Telescope Live global system of remotely controlled robotic astrographs.
The CHI-1 astrograph is optically composed of a PlaneWave CDK24 610 mm (24 inch) diameter reflecting telescope with a photographic speed of f/6.5. The imaging system attached to CHI-1 is the Finger Lakes Instrumentation FLI Proline PL9000 Monochrome CCD astronomical imaging camera. AstroDon wideband color filters (Luminance, Red, Green, and Blue) were inserted between the telescope and the camera to acquire the complete set of imaging data used to make the final true color data of my Flickr photo. The astrograph is mounted on an equatorial Mathis MI-1000/1250 fork mount. A total of 1.3 hours of imaging data was acquired to process the final color image shown above. The data was downloaded over the Internet to my home for processing on my PC.
The following software was used to process the calibrated dated from CHI-1: Astro Pixel Processor, PixInsight, and Photoshop.
Grade II* listed historic building constructed in 1883.
"Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over seven hundred students and fellows. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its founding, as well as extensive gardens. Its members are termed "Valencians".
Pembroke has a level of academic performance among the highest of all the Cambridge colleges; in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2018 Pembroke was placed second in the Tompkins Table.
Pembroke is home to the first chapel designed by Sir Christopher Wren and is one of the six Cambridge colleges to have educated a British prime minister, in Pembroke's case William Pitt the Younger. The college library, with a Victorian neo-gothic clock tower, is endowed with an original copy of the first encyclopaedia to contain printed diagrams.
The college's current master is Chris Smith, Baron Smith of Finsbury.
Cambridge is a university city and the county town of Cambridgeshire, England, on the River Cam approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of London. At the United Kingdom Census 2011, its population was 123,867 including 24,506 students. Cambridge became an important trading centre during the Roman and Viking ages, and there is archaeological evidence of settlement in the area as early as the Bronze Age. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, although modern city status was not officially conferred until 1951.
The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209. The buildings of the university include King's College Chapel, Cavendish Laboratory, and the Cambridge University Library, one of the largest legal deposit libraries in the world. The city's skyline is dominated by several college buildings, along with the spire of the Our Lady and the English Martyrs Church, and the chimney of Addenbrooke's Hospital. Anglia Ruskin University, which evolved from the Cambridge School of Art and the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, also has its main campus in the city.
Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology Silicon Fen with industries such as software and bioscience and many start-up companies born out of the university. Over 40 per cent of the workforce have a higher education qualification, more than twice the national average. The Cambridge Biomedical Campus, one of the largest biomedical research clusters in the world, is soon to house premises of AstraZeneca, a hotel, and the relocated Papworth Hospital.
The first game of association football took place at Parker's Piece. The Strawberry Fair music and arts festival and Midsummer Fair are held on Midsummer Common, and the annual Cambridge Beer Festival takes place on Jesus Green. The city is adjacent to the M11 and A14 roads. Cambridge station is less than an hour from London King's Cross railway station." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
While I have physically seen and photographed all of Norfolk Southern's 20 original heritage units, there are a few that crossed my viewfinder at inopportune times. One of those units is 8104, the Lehigh Valley, my technical hometown railroad.
Being raised in the Allentown, PA area, hearing stories of Snowbirds, big Alcos, and Bethlehem Steel were a given. Yet for some reason, this heritage unit eluded me for quite a while (perhaps it was my biting desire to leave the area, but I digress).
Just before Easter, I headed down to Leipsic Junction, south of Deshler, OH, to check out the NS and CSX lines through town. Early in the afternoon, eastbound NS stack train 272 passed through with a relatively fresh rebuild C6M leading. As the end of the train approached, I could see two DPUs on the rear, the outer facing one catching my attention. Not sure what it was, I was utterly amazed when I saw the distinct Cornell Red paint of the Lehigh Valley heritage unit!
Talk about a hometown surprise!
“Sometimes, I get frustrated because I can’t feel You. I know You’re around me and I know You’re always there. But part of me just wishes I could physically feel your arms as they wrap around me. I wish I could know you better and know if you’re proud of me or disappointed or if I’m doing all of this right…”
And then He says “Imagine the love you have for your boyfriend, your family, your friends and those around you. The way they make you smile. That swelling that occurs in your heart when you think of them and that uncontrollable need you have to just break into a grin from ear to ear. Now imagine my love, a love that saw you in all your weakness, your failures, your achievements, your strengths, your sin, and your rebellion. A love that did not write you off as hopeless or useless. No, you are not hopeless or a lost cause because I AM the cause of the lost finding hope.
Do you hear me? I am the cause of the lost finding hope. I gave my Son to you in the most beautiful exchange. I looked onto all that you would do wrong and still said “I want that child”. You are precious in my eyes. You are growing. You are walking and you are stumbling, but a righteous man falls 7 times but each time they get up and continue pursuing righteousness. You are pursuing what is of Me because you are pursuing me. I have given you this love through your friendships, relationships and family in order to allow you to feel a fraction, only a fraction, of my Great Love for you. “
This is only a little bit of what I feel God putting on my heart lately. He has been opening my eyes up constantly to the beauty around me. Everything He has created. Everything He makes us feel…He made it for a reason. He made you for a reason. And sometimes, it is so easy to get in a dry place and live life day to day without even noticing His incredible ways. God wants you to encounter Him. Sometimes I wonder how? But it’s not about big worded prayers starting with “Abba Father who art and art to come” (I don’t actually speak old school, give me a break haha). It’s about surrendering it all to Him. I talk to God like I talk to the love of my life. He knows my frustrations, my worries, my hurts and He knows all that I am thankful for and all that I am ASTOUNDED by because He is so great.
And for those that ask why I follow Jesus? I follow Him because when I was a sinner, when I was a fake, when I was a broken mess of lies, when I was full of hate, spite, depression, pain and unbelief…He called me His. He bathed me in light and showed me my filth and He simply said “My grace is enough.” And through that and His forgiveness I was set free. I am fuller. I am happier. And I am constantly excited to wake up every morning knowing all the blessings in my life are all because of Him. No matter how poorly my day goes, I will always try, try is the key word because we are not perfect, to lift my hands in thankfulness. I love Jesus because He first loved me, even when I didn’t know Him.
I encourage you to think of those relationships in your life. And if they aren’t good…don’t fret. Imagine how God intended it to be. Imagine the protection, the romance, the security, and comfort that should be found in that bond. Think of those blessings and try to see them as a minor reflection of God’s own love for you.
(PS I JUST SAW TESTIMONIALS FROM FOREVER AGO THAT I DID NOT APPROVE YET. Wow. you guys encourage me, inspire me and give me so much...confidence in who I am and who I have been called to be. Never stop doing what you do because your kind hearts leave me smiling. I love you all!)
End of a busy week - I've got next week off so I should be jumping for joy. Instead I find myself completely knackered out physically and mentally.
It's not that work is bad, but I'm learning a lot of new stuff so I'm ready for when my boss starts her secondment, and this week we had our new person start in the office and I've been spending a fair amount of time with him to get him up to speed. He's settling in great and picks stuff up quick but the pressure for me is being the 'teacher', so to speak, and trying to explain things to him. I'm not very good at explaining things clearly, and a lot of the time I'm teaching him things that I'm not sure I know about properly and it makes me nervous. Does anyone else get like that?
And then my boss called in sick this morning so I had to switch from worker Daz to manager Daz, which is a big shift for me mentally as I'm not good at managing people or delegating. I need a bit of a run-up at it to feel comfortable doing it. Funny thing is I felt better being manager Daz without my boss there and I felt much more organized and in control than when she's in the office.
This is nothing to do with her of course, she's a great boss who really knows her stuff, but because she's so knowledgeable it's too easy to rely on her for validation when she's around instead of trusting my own judgement.
Also got a job sprung on me just after lunch - I was planning on leaving early today but it didn't happen and by the time I left work my head felt like it was going to fall off.
Which is where this photo hopefully starts to make sense.
OK, it's yet another clone shot, but it's a pretty accurate representation of how I felt by the end of today - head on the floor and empty inside.
This is not to say I'm miserable, it's just that I haven't had much time off in ages and I'm a bit burnt out.
The shot is also an homage to the great Stephen Poff, and inspired by this shot by him.
The shot itself required a bit of forward planning, unfortunately I didn't put enough into it! I had to try a couple of different positions both in the chair and on the floor before I got it how I wanted it.
Where I slipped up was my positioning in the chair - where I had to clone out my head from the shot it was obscuring part of the chair, so I had to do some very careful cloning to clone back in the detail of the chair leg and seat and luckily it came out OK.
For the head on the floor I just laid on the floor for the shot, copied my head to a seperate layer in Photoshop and went round carefully with the eraser to remove the extraneous bits 'n' pieces. Oh and I used a bit of blurring around the sharp edges to mask the ever so slightly dodgy erasing! This was on the recommendation of Disco~Stu, who came round with Chloe and Robyn for chinese tonight and caught me halfway through creating my 365 shot.
We also met up with our mutual good buddy Andy, who works in London but always come back to visit his old pals in the holidays. We had a great time and talked cameras. Lots.
I'm looking forward to getting some sleep tonight, then having a huge lie-in tomorrow safe in the knowledge that I don't have to utilise the ol' grey matter for, ooooooooh, 11 days!
Oh yeah, and Stu decided I needed Flickr Uploader so I got that tonight - it's cool! So I must say cheers to Stu for that.
Today's music was Gold Against The Soul by the Manic Street Preachers. Their second album, and underrated if you ask me, it's home to some of their best tracks like La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh) and Roses In The Hospital.
The Crucifix by Cimabue at Santa Croce (c. 1265) is a very large wooden crucifix, painted in distemper, attributed to the Florentine painter and mosaicist Cimabue, one of two large crucifixes attributed to him. The work was commissioned by the Franciscan friars of Santa Croce and is built from a complex arrangement of five main and eight ancillary timber boards. It is one of the first Italian artworks to break from the late medieval Byzantine style and is renowned for its technical innovations and humanistic iconography.
The gilding and monumentality of the cross link it to the Byzantine tradition. Christ's static pose is reflective of this style, while the work overall incorporates newer, more naturalistic aspects. The work presents a lifelike and physically imposing depiction of the passion at Calvary. Christ is shown nearly naked: his eyes are closed, his face lifeless and defeated. His body slumps in a position contorted by prolonged agony. A graphic portrayal of human suffering, the painting is of seminal importance in art history and has influenced painters from Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Velázquez to Francis Bacon.
The work has been in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence since the late thirteenth century, and at the Museo dell'Opera Santa Croce since restoration following flooding of the Arno in 1966. It remains in poor condition despite conservation efforts.
Both of Cimabue's surviving crucifixes were commissioned by the Franciscan order. Founded by Saint Francis of Assisi, their reformist, religious and social views had a profound effect on the visual arts in the century after his death. The son of a wealthy cloth merchant, Francis abandoned his inheritance to take up preaching in his mid-twenties. He venerated poverty and developed a deep appreciation for the beauty of nature. Byzantine depictions tended to show Christ as invincible, even in death. Imagery based on Franciscan ideals in the thirteenth century generally reinforce his veneration of simplicity and naturalism, infusing the paintings with the new values of humanism.
The church at Santa Croce was the third that the Franciscans constructed at the site. The first was begun in 1295, and is where Cimabue's Crucifix probably hung, given its large size, above the rood screen. It was later positioned at the north transept, in the sacristy and by the entrance on the southern flank.
Cimabue achieves a masterful handling of colour; medieval churches tended to be extremely colourful, with frescoed walls, painted capitals, and gold leaf paintings. Pale tonalities dominate, with the main contrast found in the dark areas of Christ's hair and beard, which are utilised to make the features of his face stand out more, and position his head as the focal point.
Compared to earlier works of this type, Christ's body is more physically corporeal, depicted as a real object, and his anatomy more closely rendered. His hands and feet seem to extend beyond the pictorial space, which is delineated by the flat, coloured borders of the cross, in turn made up of at least six boards. Both his body and semi-circular nimbus are placed at angles which rise outwards and above the level of the cross.
His body arches, forcing his torso to raise against the cross. Blood pours from the wounds in his hands as his head falls to the side from fatigue and the physical reality of approaching death. His body is naked except for a sheer and transparent loincloth that only just covers his thighs and buttocks. The choice of a white, veil-like loincloth, dramatically more modest than the red garment in the Arezzo work, may be influenced by earlier crucifixions by Giunta Pisano. His nakedness highlights his vulnerability and suffering. It seems influenced by a thirteenth-century Franciscan Meditation on Christ that emphasised pathos and human interest in the suffering of the Passion; "Turn your eyes away from His divinity for a little while and consider Him purely as a man".
His eyes are open, and his skin is unblemished. The cross is painted with deep blue paint, perhaps evoking an eternal or timeless sky. This evocation, not present in the main crucified figure, was known as the Christus triumphans ("Triumphant Christ"), and for contemporary – especially Franciscan – taste lacked verisimilitude, as it bore little relation to the actual suffering likely endured during a crucifixion, and overly distanced the divine from the human aspect of Christ. From about 1240, painters favoured the Christus patiens ("Suffering Christ") style: a saviour who shared the burden and pain of humanity. The Santa Croce Crucifix is one of the earliest and best known examples of the type.
The work surpasses Cimabue's c. 1268 Arezzo crucifix in several ways. It is more human and less reliant on idealised facial types, and the anatomy is more convincing. Christ's face is longer and narrower, and his nose less idealised. These features, according to art historian Robert Gibbs, give him "a coarser but more personal expression". A similar approach is taken with the cloth in the background of the cross itself, which although highly ornamented, lacks the lavish ornamentation of the equivalent cloth in the Arezzo cross.
His head hangs in exhaustion, and his hands bleed from the puncture wounds suffered during his nailing to the cross. His arms are placed higher above his head and strain to carry the weight of his body, which visibly slumps. His body takes on a dramatic, almost feminine curve, the result of the contortions forced upon a body nailed to a vertical support.
The painting contains elements typical of Cimabue's representations of Christ, including the illusionism of the drapery folds, the large halo, long flowing hair, dark, angular faces and dramatic expressions. But in other respects it conforms to the then strict iconography of the thirteenth century. Typical of depictions of the crucified Christ of this era, with his outstretched arms he is as wide as he is long, conforming to prevalent ideals of proportions.
Representations of the Virgin and John the Evangelist flank Christ in small rectangular panels at either end of his outstretched arms. Both are dark-skinned, and bear agonised and sorrowful expressions as they rest their heads on their hands and face inwards towards Christ. In keeping with the Franciscan idea, the gilding surrounding the mourning saints is kept to a minimum. The size and positions of the figures are reduced compared to usual Byzantine iconography to maintain sole focus on the passion of Christ.
Their cloaks are simpler and lack the lavish gilding of the Arezzo crucifixion. The Virgin wears a red dress. Her robe was originally blue, but has darkened.
The crucifix measures 448 cm x 390 cm and consists of five basic physical components; a vertical board reaching from the base to the cymatium onto which Christ is nailed, two horizontal cross-arms, and two vertical pieces acting as aprons adjacent to the central board. There are another eight minor pieces; mostly terminals, bases or framing devices. The structure is reinforced by two full length vertical battens. The horizontal cross-arms extend the full width of his outstretched body and are slotted into ridges in the vertical supports. The timber would have been cut and arranged by carpenters before Cimabue applied his design and paintwork.
Its dimensions are highly symmetrical and proportionate, probably influenced by the geometric ideals, ratios and rules of design of the ancient Greeks. The balance of measurements, especially between the width and height of the cross, seem derived from the sides and diagonals of squares, and dynamic rectangles. Cimabue was not rigid in his placement, however, and to accommodate the sway of Christ's body, altered the positioning of some of the boards on the lower half.
Due to lack of surviving documentation, it is difficult to attribute unsigned works from the period with any degree of certainty. The origin of the Crucifix has often been contested, but is generally thought to be by Cimabue based on stylistic traits and mentions by both Vasari and Nicolò Albertini. It is relatively primitive compared to his 1290s works and is thus believed to date from his early period. According to Vasari, the crucifix's success led to the commissions at Pisa, Tuscany that established his reputation.
Rejecting these views, Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle in 1903 concluded that the Santa Croce crucifix "in technical examination...makes some approach to the Florentine master, but it is rather of its time than by the master himself."
The crucifix was installed in the church of Santa Croce at the end of the thirteenth century. The church flooded in 1333 and 1557, but only experienced serious flood damage in 1966 when the banks of the Arno river burst and flooded Florence. During the event thousands of artworks were damaged or destroyed and the Crucifix lost 60% of its paint. By 1966 it was returned to display at the lower Museo dell' Opera, which is at a lower elevation and closer to the waterline than the Santa Croce church, where it had been located during earlier floods. The water level reached the height of Christ's halo and took large tracts of paint when it retreated. The water deposited oil, mud and naphtha on the wood frame, which further swelled from soakage, forcing the panel to expand and bend, cracking the paint-work.
A team of restorers led by conservators Umberto Baldini and Ornella Casazza at the "Laboratario del Restauro" in Florence spent ten years reapplying paint. Utilising computer modelling, they worked in an almost pointillist manner. The tiny specks of pigment floating around the piece were recovered with pliers by staff wading in the water after the torrents had subsided. The wooden frame had significantly weakened, and it was necessary to separate it from both the gesso and canvas to prevent buckling as the reapplied paint dried. The Crucifix was put back on public display in 1976. The restoration was covered by the international press.
Since restoration the work has been lent to galleries outside Italy, the first time it had left Florence since its creation. According to the critic Waldemar Januszczak, it was brought "around the globe in a curious, post-restoration state—part original artwork, part masterpiece of modern science... a thirteenth century—twentieth-century hybrid."
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 August 13,1961. The Wall cut off (by land) 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, 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. The demolition of the Wall officially began on June 13,1990 and was completed in 1992. The "fall of the Berlin Wall" paved the way for German reunification, which officially took place on October 3,1990. This wall represented to me the horrors of Soviet domination over their half of the German nation.
Saint Vincent-Ein Kerem is a home for physically and mentally handicapped children in Israel.
History
Saint Vincent was founded in 1954 at Ein Kerem, on the edge of Jerusalem. It is a non-profit enterprise operated by the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. The home cares for disabled children with the help of volunteers from around the world.
Ein Karem is a historic mountain village southwest of Jerusalem, presently a neighborhood in the outskirts of the modern city, within the Jerusalem District. It is the site of the Hadassah Medical Center.
Ein Karem was an important Jewish village during the late Second Temple period, during which it became important to Christianity. Christian tradition holds that John the Baptist was born in Ein Karem, following the biblical verse in Luke saying John's family lived in a "town in the hill country of Judea". Probably because of its location between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, this location was a very comfortable one for a pilgrimage, and this led to the establishment of many churches and monasteries in the area.
During the years of Ottoman and later British rule in Palestine, Ein Karem was a Palestinian Arab village. It was depopulated of its residents during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After the war it became once again a Jewish settlement. Today, Ein Karem is a vibrant bohemian neighborhood of Jerusalem, with a population of 2,000 (2010). It has retained a very high-level of authenticity, its natural environment remains intact, and its old houses are still inhabited and preserved. It attracts three million visitors a year, one-third of them pilgrims from around the world. Alongside its religious landmarks, Ein Karem is also known for its fine art, culinary, and musical scenes.
Etymology
The name Ein Karem or Ein Kerem can be literally translated from both Hebrew and Arabic as "Spring of the Vineyard". It is derived from the springs and vineyards established on the village's terraced slopes. Another possible translation would be "Spring of Carem", if derived from an ancient Iron Age Israelite city called Carem, mentioned as a city in the dominion of the tribe of Judah in the Septuagint version of Book of Joshua. In Arabic, other than meaning "Spring of the Vineyard", it could be understood as well as "the Generous Spring".
History
A spring that provides water to the village of Ein Karem stimulated settlement there from an early time.
Bronze Age
Pottery has been found near the spring dating to the Middle Bronze Age.
Iron Age/Israelite period
During the Iron Age, or Israelite period, Ein Karem is usually identified as the location of the biblical village of Beth HaKerem (Jeremiah 6:1; Nehemiah 3:14).
Second Temple period
A well-preserved mikveh (Jewish ritual bath) indicates there was a Jewish settlement in the Second Temple period along with some other discoveries such as handful of graves, bits of a wall, and an olive press. A reservoir here was mentioned in the Copper Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Roman and Byzantine periods
During excavations in the Church of Saint John the Baptist, a marble statue of Aphrodite (or Venus) was found, broken in two. It is believed to date from the Roman era and was probably toppled in Byzantine times. Today, the statue is at the Rockefeller Museum. Excavations in front of the same church, which has at its core the cave which Christian tradition identifies as the birthplace of John the Baptist, have unearthed remains of two Byzantine chapels, one containing an inscription mentioning Christian "martyrs", but without any mention of John. Ceramics from the Byzantine period have also been found in Ein Karem.
In the Byzantine period, as part of the establishment of the “Liturgy of Jerusalem", Ein Karem was identified with the "Visitation", an event mentioned in the New Testament where Mary, expecting Jesus, encountered her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Byzantine sources link Ein Karem with the residence of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, a place not specified in the New Testament. In around 530 CE, the Christian pilgrim Theodosius places Elizabeth's town at a distance of five miles (8.0 km) from Jerusalem,[20] which suits Ein Karem.
Early Islamic period
Ein Karem was recorded after the Islamic conquest. Al-Tamimi, the physician (d. 990), mentions a church in Ein Karem that was venerated by the Christians, also mentioning an old custom of the Jews of Ein Karem to make wreaths from the boughs (branches) of a wild plant belonging to the mint family (Lamiaceae) during the Jewish holiday of Shavu'ot.
Crusader period
It is mentioned under the name St. Jehan de Bois, "Saint John in the Mountains", during the Crusades. The Crusaders were the first to build here a church dedicated to St John, rebuilt in the 17th century by the Franciscans and still active today, and Moshe Sharon considers it as "almost sure" that the Crusaders are the ones who started the tradition of identifying that particular site as St John's birthplace.
Ayyubid and Mamluk periods
After conquering Jerusalem in 1187, Saladin granted the village of Ein Karem to Abu Maydan, a renowned Sufi teacher from Seville, Andalusia. Abu Madyan had fought in the 1187 Battle of Hattin against the Crusaders before returning to the Maghreb, where he eventually died in Tlemcen, in what is today Algeria. A document, drafted in Jerusalem in 1320 (720 AH) by Abu Maydan's great-grandson, outlines the waqf's holdings, beginning with Ein Karem:
"A village known by the name of Ein Karem, one of the villages adjacent to Jerusalem. This village includes farmed and fallow lands, both cultivated and abandoned, slopes and plains, unproductive bare rock, buildings in ruins, farmhouses, buildings in good repair with their surrounding fields, a little garden, pomegranate trees and other kinds irrigated with water from springs on the property, olive trees of a “rumi” or western variety, carob trees, fig trees, sessile oaks, qiqebs (hardwoods). This village is bounded on all sides: to the south by the great Maliha (salt pan); to the north by properties belonging to Ein-Kaout, Qalunya, Harash, Sataf, and Zawiya el-Bakhtyari; to the west by Ein Esheshqqaq, and to the east by properties belonging to the Maliha and to Beit Mazmil. This village is established as a waqf, with all attendant rights, appurtenances, fields, cultivated lands, threshing floors, loamy earth, with freshwater springs on location, prairies, planted trees, disused wells, vineyards, in a word, with all rights relating thereto, both within and without. However, the mosque, house of God, the path and the cemetery intended for use by Muslims, are not included in the present waqf."
The Waqf Abu Maydan endowment, which included the Mughrabi Quarter in Jerusalem, has been supported by agricultural and property revenues from the village of Ein Karem until the 1948 war.
A coin from the reign of As-Salih Hajji (1389 CE) was found here, together with pottery, glassware and other coins from the Mamluk era.
Ottoman period
Most of the village – some 15,000 dunams – was waqf land set aside charitably to benefit the Moroccan Muslim community in Jerusalem, belonging to the endowment established by Abu Madyan in the 14th century.
In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine and in the 1596 tax-records it appeared as 'Ain Karim, located in the Nahiya of Jabal Quds of the Liwa of Al-Quds. The village had at this time 29 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, summer crops, vineyards, grape syrup/molasse, goats and beehives in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 5,300 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf.
In the course 17th century, the Franciscans manage to recover the ruins of the church raised by the Crusaders over the traditional birth cave of St. John and, in spite of local Muslim opposition, to rebuild and fortify it as the Monastery of St. John in the Mountains.
Israeli geographer Yehoshua Ben-Arieh described Ein Karem as "the most important village west of Jerusalem" in the 19th century.
James Silk Buckingham visited in the early 1800s, and found he was "more pleased with this village [...] than with any other place I had yet visited in Palestine."
In 1838, Ain Karim was noted as a Muslim and Latin Christian village in the Beni Hasan district.
In 1863 Victor Guérin noted a thousand inhabitants "of whom there are barely two hundred and fifty who are Catholics; the others are Muslim." The ancestors of the latter were held to descend from Maghrabins, that is to say, originating from the Maghreb (North Africa). Guérin describes them as rowdy and fanatical, until a few years before his visit having very often attacked the Catholic monks at the Monastery of St John in order to extort from them food and money, a habit that had subsided only lately.
An official Ottoman village list from about 1870 showed that Ain Karim had 178 houses and a population of 533, though the population count included only men. The population consisted of 412 Muslims in 138 houses, 66 Latin Christians in 18 houses, and 55 Greek Christians in 12 houses.
In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Ain Karim as: "A flourishing village of about 600 inhabitants, 100 being Latin Christians. It stands on a sort of natural terrace projecting from the higher hills on the east of it, with a broad flat valley below on the west. On the south below the village is a fine spring ('Ain Sitti Miriam), with a vaulted place for prayer over it. The water issues from a spout into a trough."
In 1896 the population of 'Ain Karim was estimated to be about 1,290 persons.
During the 1929 riots in Palestine, Arab residents of 'Ain Karim launched raids against the nearby Jewish neighborhood of Bayit VeGan.
In the 1945 statistics, Ein Karim had a population of 3,180; 2,510 Muslims and 670 Christians, The total land area was 15,029 dunams, of this, a total of 7,960 dunums of land were irrigated or used for plantations, 1,199 were used for cereals; while a total of 1,704 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) areas.
The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine placed 'Ayn Karim in the Jerusalem enclave intended for international control.
1948 Arab–Israeli War
When the 1947–1949 Palestine war started, 'Ain Karim became a major base of operations against nearby Jewish neighborhoods. In February 1948, the village's 300 guerilla fighters were reinforced by a well-armed Arab Liberation Army force of mainly Syrian fighters, and on March 10 a substantial Iraqi detachment arrived in the village, followed within days by some 160 Egyptian fighters. On March 19, the villagers joined their foreign guests in attacking a Jewish convoy on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road. Immediately after the April 1948 massacre at the nearby village of Deir Yassin (1.2 miles (2 km) to the north), most of the women and children in the village were evacuated.
The village was finally captured by Israeli forces during the ten-day campaign of July 1948. The remaining residents fled on July 10–11. The Arab Liberation Army forces which had camped in the village left on July 14–16 after Jewish forces captured two dominating hilltops, Khirbet Beit Mazmil and Khirbet al-Hamama, and shelled the village. During its last days, 'Ayn Karim suffered from severe food shortages.[51]
State of Israel
After the war ended, Israel incorporated the village into the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. Ein Karem was one of the few depopulated Arab localities which survived the war with most of the buildings intact. The abandoned homes were resettled with new migrants, many of whom Mizrahi Jews who fled from the Arab countries who fought the Arab-Israeli War during the war and after it, i.e. Jews from Iraq and Egypt but also from Yemen. Over the years, the bucolic atmosphere attracted a population of artisans and craftsmen. Today it is a vibrant bohemian neighborhood of Jerusalem, attracting many artist, young people and tourists.
In 1961, Hadassah built its medical center on a nearby hilltop, including the Hadassah Medical Center and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, and pharmacology.
Biblical connections
Old Testament
Main article: Carem
Only the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible, the base for the Christian Old Testament, names a place in the hills of Judah as "Carem" (Joshua 15:30).
New Testament
According to the New Testament, Mary went "into the hill country, to a city of Judah" (Luke 1:39) when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah.
During the Byzantine period, Theodosius (530 CE) gives the distance between Jerusalem and the town of Elizabeth as five miles (8.0 km).
The Jerusalem Calendar (Kalendarium Hyerosolimitanum) or the Georgian Festival Calendar, dated by some before 638, the year of the Muslim conquest, mentions the village by name, "Enqarim," as the place of a festival in memory of Elizabeth celebrated on the twenty-eighth of August.
The English writer Saewulf, on pilgrimage to Palestine in 1102–1103, wrote of a monastery in the area of Ein Karim dedicated to St. Sabas, where 300 monks had been "slain by Saracens", but without mentioning any tradition connected to St. John.
Landmarks
The Church of the Visitation, or Abbey Church of St John in the Woods, is located across the village to the southwest from St. John's. The ancient sanctuary there was built against a rock declivity. It is venerated as the pietra del nascondimento, the "stone in which John was concealed," in reference to the Protevangelium of James. The site is also attributed to John the Baptist's parental summer house, where Mary visited them. The modern church was built in 1955, also on top of ancient church remnants. It was designed by Antonio Barluzzi, an Italian architect, who designed many other churches in the Holy Land during the 20th century.
Monastery of St. John in the Mountains
The Catholic Monastery of St. John ba-Harim (St. John "in the Mountains" in Hebrew) is centered on a church containing the cave identified by tradition as the birthplace of Saint John the Baptist. The church is built over the remnants of a Crusader church and its porch stands over the remains of two Byzantine chapels, both containing mosaic floors. The current structure received its outlook as the result of the latest large architectural intervention, finished in 1939 under the guidance of the Italian architect, Antonio Barluzzi.
In 1941–1942 the Franciscans excavated the area west of the church and monastery. The southernmost of the rock-cut chambers they found can probably be dated to the first century CE. Some remnants below the southern part of the porch suggests the presence of a mikve (Jewish ritual bath) that is dated to the Second Temple Period.
The church is mentioned in the Book of the Demonstration, attributed to Eutychius of Alexandria (940): "The church of Bayt Zakariya in the district of Aelia bears witness to the visit of Mary to her kinswoman Elizabeth."
The site of the Crusader church built above the traditional birth cave of St John, destroyed after the departure of the Crusaders, was purchased by Franciscan custos, Father Thomas of Novara in 1621. After a decades-long struggle with the Muslim inhabitants, the Franciscans finally managed to rebuild and fortify their church and monastery by the 1690s.
Convent of the Sisters of Zion
he monastery of Les Sœurs de Notre-Dame de Sion (Sisters of Our Lady of Zion), built in 1860, was founded by two brothers from France, Theodore and Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne, who were born Jewish and converted to Christianity. They established an orphanage here. Alphonse himself lived in the monastery and is buried in its garden.
Gorny or "Moscobia" Convent
The convent was established by the Jerusalem mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1871 (see also Russian Wikipedia page here). The name "Gorny Convent" refers to the visit of the Virgin Mary to her cousin St. Elizabeth "into the hill country, to a town in Judah," gorny meaning mountainous in Russian. It was nicknamed "Muskobiya" (Arabic for Muscovite) by the local Arab villagers, which mutated in Hebrew to "Moskovia." Apart from the structures serving the nunnery and a pilgrims hostel, it now contains three churches, enclosed within a compound wall. The Church of Our Lady of Kazan (Kazanskaya) is dedicated to the holy icon of Our Lady of Kazan and is the oldest among the three churches, being consecrated in 1873. The Cathedral of All Russian Saints, with its gilded domes, was started before the Russian Revolution and could only be completed in 2007. The cave church of St. John the Baptist was consecrated in 1987.
Mary's Spring
According to a Christian tradition which started in the 14th century, the Virgin Mary drank water from this village spring, and here is also the place where Mary and Elizabeth met. Therefore, since the 14th century the spring is known as the Fountain of the Virgin. The spring waters are considered holy by some Catholic and Orthodox Christian pilgrims who visit the site and fill their bottles. What looks like a spring is actually the end of an ancient aqueduct. The former Arab inhabitants built a mosque and school on the site, of which a Maqam (shrine) and minaret still remain. An inscribed panel to the courtyard of the mosque dates it to 1828–1829 CE (AH 1244). The spring was repaired and renovated by Baron Edmond de Rothschild.
St. Vincent
St. Vincent-Ein Kerem is a home for physically or mentally handicapped children. Founded in 1954, St. Vincent-Ein Kerem is a non-profit enterprise under leadership of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul.
Other churches and religious institutions
Catholic
The Convent of the Franciscan Sisters
The Convent of the Rosary Sisters, built in 1910
Casa Nova, a guesthouse for pilgrims reopened in 2014
Greek Orthodox
The Greek Orthodox Church of St John, built in 1894 on the remnants of an ancient church
Related sites in the area
Monastery of St. John in the Wilderness
Monastery of Saint John in the Wilderness
The Monastery of St. John in the Wilderness, containing a cave associated with the saint, is located close to Ein Karem and Moshav Even Sapir.
Notable residents
Shlomo Aronson (1936–2018), Israeli landscape architect
Erel Margalit (born 1961), Israeli high-tech and social entrepreneur
Naomi Henrik (1920–2018), Israeli sculptor
My father has been ill lately. Well, he's been "ill" for a very long time, truth be told, but that has more to do with his outlook and attitude than anything physically awry with the man. After a few days stay in the ER with back and stomach pain, test results were inconclusive. Once home, he's had the living room converted into a makeshift hospital room, complete with twin bed and portable toilet. Home health workers tend to his therapeutic needs 3 days a week, and my mother carries the weight of the feeding/cleaning chores squarely on her shoulders the rest of the time.
There is no real quality of life left for them. He has resigned himself to basically living out the rest of his days as the sick, needy, demanding martyr of the house, and my mother knows no other reality than being his dutiful, sympathetic servant - a job she's held for the last 50 years. He takes it upon himself to do as much as he can (within his limited power) to draw the rest of us into an environment that feels heavy with misery and negativity as soon as you walk into the house.
When he gets into this mindset, his belief is that the world should stop firmly on its axis and begin to revolve around him. His needs, his wants, his expectations must be met. He's "suffered" for so long taking care of others, that reciprocity in his eyes should be automatic, of course. After giving up a good deal of my own life to his care, I can honestly say that this recent turn of events has left me cold, disheartened, angry and frustrated.
The man has indeed had a rough childhood, being one of 13 kids, growing up in a small Pennsylvania coal-mining community. All of the stories one hears about their elder relatives "walking miles in the snow to get to school" and sharing the bath water were truth in his case. Many demands were placed upon him by his older brothers and sisters - he being number 12 in the line of succession. If one didn't pull his/her own weight and sacrifice for the family, then the common good was lost. One could not be the weakest link in the chain. And if you were, strength then came from parental discipline, sibling rivalry, or religious penance.
This reality of his undoubtedly influenced the way he chose to live his life and raise his own children. A great deal was expected of us. Mistakes were met with ridicule. Punishment was mostly in the form of condescending remarks, or a trip to the confessional booth, or the occasional belt strap across the ass (if the infraction warranted it). How he treated my mother, colored my perspective on how women should be seen. Their purpose was to either serve or comfort, quite plainly. If they were elder matriarchs, they were then afforded a reverence on par with that given to the Madonna.
I grew to become an introverted young man - with diminished self-worth, retarded social skills, addictive tendencies, and a skewed sense of purpose. In many ways, that residue is still evident in both my personal and professional lives. The fact I have progressed so far in spite of such dysfunctional upbringing is nothing less than miraculous. I look back and wonder what I could have become in the light of a more empowering, nurturing, liberating atmosphere. What if my efforts were praised instead of criticized? What if positive concepts and healthy choices were promoted instead of dismissed? What if, what if...? There's no use in asking now. What's done is done. A person either rises above and builds on misfortune or stays pinned underneath it.
But it truly is amazing to me how the influence of a parent can still reach through the wide expanse of time and space, like the ocean from the shore. It doesn't matter to some of us how "mature" and experienced we've grown, or how far we've come in establishing our own families. It seems we continually strive for the acceptance of our mother or father.
It's too late for my father to change his outlook, to right all of the ill done to him, which filtered down to others. His dis-ease is of his own making. My mother suffers the collateral damage. My brother and I become increasingly indifferent to his needs. It's a shame.
And then I remind myself of something I saw haphazardly pasted onto the side of a NYC construction site barrier many years ago: Nothing takes away the past like the future.
And the future is wide. Like possibility. Like an ocean.
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As a way of returning the extraordinary generosity and support
you have all shown me in this great community, whenever I upload
a new pic or series of shots this year, I'll provide a link to another
flickr photographer whose work, personality, or spirit I feel you
should discover.
Visit and introduce yourself. Make a friend. Share the love.
Open your eyes to BenLikesMovingImages today.
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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The ferret (Mustela furo) is a small, domesticated species belonging to the family Mustelidae. The ferret is most likely a domesticated form of the wild European polecat (Mustela putorius), evidenced by their interfertility. Physically, ferrets resemble other mustelids because of their long, slender bodies. Including their tail, the average length of a ferret is about 50 cm (20 in); they weigh between 0.7 and 2.0 kg (1.5 and 4.4 lb); and their fur can be black, brown, white, or a mixture of those colours. The species is sexually dimorphic, with males being considerably larger than females.
Ferrets may have been domesticated since ancient times, but there is widespread disagreement because of the sparseness of written accounts and the inconsistency of those which survive. Contemporary scholarship agrees that ferrets were bred for sport, hunting rabbits in a practice known as rabbiting. In North America, the ferret has become an increasingly prominent choice of household pet, with over five million in the United States alone. The legality of ferret ownership varies by location. In New Zealand and some other countries, restrictions apply due to the damage done to native fauna by feral colonies of polecat–ferret hybrids. The ferret has also served as a fruitful research animal, contributing to research in neuroscience and infectious disease, especially influenza.
The domestic ferret is often confused with the black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes), a species native to North America.[1]
Etymology
The name "ferret" is derived from the Latin furittus, meaning "little thief", a likely reference to the common ferret penchant for secreting away small items.[2] In Old English (Anglo-Saxon), the animal was called mearþ. The word fyret seems to appear in Middle English in the 14th century from the Latin, with the modern spelling of "ferret" by the 16th century.[3]
The Greek word ἴκτις íktis, Latinized as ictis occurs in a play written by Aristophanes, The Acharnians, in 425 BC. Whether this was a reference to ferrets, polecats, or the similar Egyptian mongoose is uncertain.[3]
A male ferret is called a hob; a female ferret is a jill. A spayed female is a sprite, a neutered male is a gib, and a vasectomised male is known as a hoblet. Ferrets under one year old are known as kits. A group of ferrets is known as a "business",[4] or historically as a "busyness". Other purported collective nouns, including "besyness", "fesynes", "fesnyng" and "feamyng", appear in some dictionaries, but are almost certainly ghost words.[5]
Biology
Skull of a ferret
Characteristics
Ferret profile
Ferrets have a typical mustelid body-shape, being long and slender. Their average length is about 50 cm (20 in) including a 13 cm (5.1 in) tail. Their pelage has various colorations including brown, black, white or mixed. They weigh between 0.7 and 2.0 kg (1.5 and 4.4 lb) and are sexually dimorphic as the males are substantially larger than females. The average gestation period is 42 days and females may have two or three litters each year. The litter size is usually between three and seven kits which are weaned after three to six weeks and become independent at three months. They become sexually mature at approximately 6 months and the average life span is 7 to 10 years.[6][7] Ferrets are induced ovulators.[8]
Behavior
Ferrets spend 14–18 hours a day asleep and are most active around the hours of dawn and dusk, meaning they are crepuscular.[9] If they are caged, they should be taken out daily to exercise and satisfy their curiosity; they need at least an hour and a place to play.[10] Unlike their polecat ancestors, which are solitary animals, most ferrets will live happily in social groups. They are territorial, like to burrow, and prefer to sleep in an enclosed area.[11]
Like many other mustelids, ferrets have scent glands near their anus, the secretions from which are used in scent marking. Ferrets can recognize individuals from these anal gland secretions, as well as the sex of unfamiliar individuals.[12] Ferrets may also use urine marking for sex and individual recognition.[13]
As with skunks, ferrets can release their anal gland secretions when startled or scared, but the smell is much less potent and dissipates rapidly. Most pet ferrets in the US are sold descented (with the anal glands removed).[14] In many other parts of the world, including the UK and other European countries, de-scenting is considered an unnecessary mutilation.
If excited, they may perform a behavior called the "weasel war dance", characterized by frenzied sideways hops, leaps and bumping into nearby objects. Despite its common name, it is not aggressive but is a joyful invitation to play. It is often accompanied by a unique soft clucking noise, commonly referred to as "dooking".[15] When scared, ferrets will hiss; when upset, they squeak softly.[16]
Diet
Ferrets are obligate carnivores.[17] The natural diet of their wild ancestors consisted of whole small prey, including meat, organs, bones, skin, feathers and fur.[18] Ferrets have short digestive systems and a quick metabolism, so they need to eat frequently. Prepared dry foods consisting almost entirely of meat (including high-grade cat food, although specialized ferret food is increasingly available and preferable)[19] provide the most nutritional value. Some ferret owners feed pre-killed or live prey (such as mice and rabbits) to their ferrets to more closely mimic their natural diet.[20][21] Ferret digestive tracts lack a cecum and the animal is largely unable to digest plant matter.[22] Before much was known about ferret physiology, many breeders and pet stores recommended food like fruit in the ferret diet, but it is now known that such foods are inappropriate, and may in fact have negative consequences for ferret health. Ferrets imprint on their food at around six months old. This can make introducing new foods to an older ferret a challenge, and even simply changing brands of kibble may meet with resistance from a ferret that has never eaten the food as a kit. It is therefore advisable to expose young ferrets to as many different types and flavors of appropriate food as possible.[23]
Dentition
Ferret dentition
Ferrets have four types of teeth (the number includes maxillary (upper) and mandibular (lower) teeth) with a dental formula of
3.1.4.1
3.1.4.2
:
Twelve small incisor teeth (only 2–3 mm [3⁄32–1⁄8 in] long) located between the canines in the front of the mouth. These are used for grooming.
Four canines used for killing prey.
Twelve premolar teeth that the ferret uses to chew food—located at the sides of the mouth, directly behind the canines. The ferret uses these teeth to cut through flesh, using them in a scissors action to cut the meat into digestible chunks.
Six molars (two on top and four on the bottom) at the far back of the mouth are used to crush food.
Health
Male ferret
Ferrets are known to suffer from several distinct health problems. Among the most common are cancers affecting the adrenal glands, pancreas and lymphatic system.
Adrenal disease, a growth of the adrenal glands that can be either hyperplasia or cancer, is most often diagnosed by signs like unusual hair loss, increased aggression, and difficulty urinating or defecating. Treatment options include surgery to excise the affected glands, melatonin or deslorelin implants, and hormone therapy. The causes of adrenal disease speculated to include unnatural light cycles, diets based around processed ferret foods, and prepubescent neutering. It has also been suggested that there may be a hereditary component to adrenal disease.[24]
Insulinoma, a type of cancer of the islet cells of the pancreas, is the most common form of cancer in ferrets. It is most common in ferrets between the ages of 4 and 5 years old.[25]
Lymphoma is the most common malignancy in ferrets. Ferret lymphosarcoma occurs in two forms—juvenile lymphosarcoma, a fast-growing type that affects ferrets younger than two years, and adult lymphosarcoma, a slower-growing form that affects ferrets four to seven years old.[26]
Viral diseases include canine distemper, influenza and ferret systemic coronavirus.[27][28][29]
A high proportion of ferrets with white markings which form coat patterns known as a blaze, badger, or panda coat, such as a stripe extending from their face down the back of their head to their shoulder blades, or a fully white head, have a congenital deafness (partial or total) which is similar to Waardenburg syndrome in humans.[30] Ferrets without white markings, but with premature graying of the coat, are also more likely to have some deafness than ferrets with solid coat colors which do not show this trait.[31] Most albino ferrets are not deaf; if deafness does occur in an albino ferret, this may be due to an underlying white coat pattern which is obscured by the albinism.[30]
Health problems can occur in unspayed females when not being used for breeding.[32] Similar to domestic cats, ferrets can also suffer from hairballs and dental problems. Ferrets will also often chew on and swallow foreign objects which can lead to bowel obstruction.[33]
History of domestication
Women hunting rabbits with a ferret in the 14th-century Queen Mary Psalter
In common with most domestic animals, the original reason for ferrets being domesticated by human beings is uncertain, but it may have involved hunting. According to phylogenetic studies, the ferret was domesticated from the European polecat (Mustela putorius), and likely descends from a North African lineage of the species.[34] Analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggests that ferrets were domesticated around 2,500 years ago. It has been claimed that the ancient Egyptians were the first to domesticate ferrets, but as no mummified remains of a ferret have yet been found, nor any hieroglyph of a ferret, and no polecat now occurs wild in the area, that idea seems unlikely.[35] The American Society of Mammalogists classifies M. furo as a distinct species.[36]
Ferrets were probably used by the Romans for hunting.[37][38] Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, is recorded as using ferrets in a gigantic hunt in 1221 that aimed to purge an entire region of wild animals.[3]
Colonies of feral ferrets have established themselves in areas where there is no competition from similarly sized predators, such as in the Shetland Islands and in remote regions in New Zealand. Where ferrets coexist with polecats, hybridization is common. It has been claimed that New Zealand has the world's largest feral population of ferret–polecat hybrids.[39] In 1877, farmers in New Zealand demanded that ferrets be introduced into the country to control the rabbit population, which was also introduced by humans. Five ferrets were imported in 1879, and in 1882–1883, 32 shipments of ferrets were made from London, totaling 1,217 animals. Only 678 landed, and 198 were sent from Melbourne, Australia. On the voyage, the ferrets were mated with the European polecat, creating a number of hybrids that were capable of surviving in the wild. In 1884 and 1886, close to 4,000 ferrets and ferret hybrids, 3,099 weasels and 137 stoats were turned loose.[40] Concern was raised that these animals would eventually prey on indigenous wildlife once rabbit populations dropped, and this is exactly what happened to New Zealand's bird species which previously had had no mammalian predators.
Ferreting
Main article: Rabbiting
Muzzled ferret flushing a rat, as illustrated in Harding's Ferret Facts and Fancies (1915)
For millennia, the main use of ferrets was for hunting, or "ferreting". With their long, lean build and inquisitive nature, ferrets are very well equipped for getting down holes and chasing rodents, rabbits and moles out of their burrows. The Roman historians Pliny and Strabo record that Caesar Augustus sent "viverrae" from Libya to the Balearic Islands to control rabbit plagues there in 6 BC; it is speculated that "viverrae" could refer to ferrets, mongooses, or polecats.[3][41][42] In England, in 1390, a law was enacted restricting the use of ferrets for hunting to the relatively wealthy:
it is ordained that no manner of layman which hath not lands to the value of forty shillings a year shall from henceforth keep any greyhound or other dog to hunt, nor shall he use ferrets, nets, heys, harepipes nor cords, nor other engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies, nor other gentlemen's game, under pain of twelve months' imprisonment.[43]
Ferrets were first introduced into the American continents in the 17th century, and were used extensively from 1860 until the start of World War II to protect grain stores in the American West from rodents. They are still used for hunting in some countries, including the United Kingdom, where rabbits are considered a pest by farmers.[44] The practice is illegal in several countries where it is feared that ferrets could unbalance the ecology. In 2009 in Finland, where ferreting was previously unknown, the city of Helsinki began to use ferrets to restrict the city's rabbit population to a manageable level. Ferreting was chosen because in populated areas it is considered to be safer and less ecologically damaging than shooting the rabbits.
As pets
A ferret in a war dance jump
In the United States, ferrets were relatively rare pets until the 1980s. A government study by the California State Bird and Mammal Conservation Program estimated that by 1996 about 800,000 domestic ferrets were being kept as pets in the United States.[45]
Regulation
Australia: It is illegal to keep ferrets as pets in Queensland and the Northern Territory;[46] in the Australian Capital Territory a licence is required.[47]
Brazil: Ferrets are allowed only if they are given a microchip identification tag and sterilized.
New Zealand: It has been illegal to sell, distribute or breed ferrets in New Zealand since 2002 unless certain conditions are met.[48]
United States: Ferrets were once banned in many US states, but most of these laws were rescinded in the 1980s and 1990s as they became popular pets.
Illegal: Ferrets are illegal in California under Fish and Game Code Section 2118;[49] and the California Code of Regulations,[50] although it is not illegal for veterinarians in the state to treat ferrets kept as pets. "Ferrets are strictly prohibited as pets under Hawaii law because they are potential carriers of the rabies virus";[51] the territory of Puerto Rico has a similar law.[52] Ferrets are restricted by some municipalities, such as New York City,[52] which renewed its ban in 2015.[53][54] They are also prohibited on many military bases.[52] A permit to own a ferret is needed in other areas, including Rhode Island.[55] Illinois and Georgia do not require a permit to merely possess a ferret, but a permit is required to breed ferrets.[56][57] It was once illegal to own ferrets in Dallas, Texas,[58] but the current Dallas City Code for Animals includes regulations for the vaccination of ferrets.[59] Pet ferrets are legal in Wisconsin, however legality varies by municipality. The city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for example, classifies ferrets as a wild animal and subsequently prohibits them from being kept within the city limits. Also, an import permit from the state department of agriculture is required to bring one into the state.[60] Under common law, ferrets are deemed "wild animals" subject to strict liability for injuries they cause, but in several states statutory law has overruled the common law, deeming ferrets "domestic".[61]
Japan: In Hokkaido prefecture, ferrets must be registered with the local government.[62] In other prefectures, no restrictions apply.
Other uses
Ferrets are an important experimental animal model for human influenza,[63][64] and have been used to study the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) virus.[65] Smith, Andrews, Laidlaw (1933) inoculated ferrets intra-nasally with human naso-pharyngeal washes, which produced a form of influenza that spread to other cage mates. The human influenza virus (Influenza type A) was transmitted from an infected ferret to a junior investigator, from whom it was subsequently re-isolated.
Ferrets have been used in many broad areas of research, such as the study of pathogenesis and treatment in a variety of human disease, these including studies into cardiovascular disease, nutrition, respiratory diseases such as SARS and human influenza, airway physiology,[66] cystic fibrosis and gastrointestinal disease.
Because they share many anatomical and physiological features with humans, ferrets are extensively used as experimental subjects in biomedical research, in fields such as virology, reproductive physiology, anatomy, endocrinology and neuroscience.[67]
In the UK, ferret racing is often a feature of rural fairs or festivals, with people placing small bets on ferrets that run set routes through pipes and wire mesh. Although financial bets are placed, the event is primarily for entertainment purposes as opposed to 'serious' betting sports such as horse or greyhound racing.[68][69]
A very small experimental study of ferrets found that a nasal spray effectively blocked the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19.[70]
Terminology and coloring
Typical ferret coloration, known as a sable or polecat-colored ferret
Most ferrets are either albinos, with white fur and pink eyes, or display the typical dark masked sable coloration of their wild polecat ancestors. In recent years fancy breeders have produced a wide variety of colors and patterns. Color refers to the color of the ferret's guard hairs, undercoat, eyes and nose; pattern refers to the concentration and distribution of color on the body, mask and nose, as well as white markings on the head or feet when present. Some national organizations, such as the American Ferret Association, have attempted to classify these variations in their showing standards.[71]
There are four basic colors. The sable (including chocolate and dark brown), albino, dark-eyed white (DEW, also known as black-eyed white or BEW) and silver. All the other colors of a ferret are variations on one of these four categories.
Waardenburg-like coloring
White or albino ferret
Ferrets with a white stripe on their face or a fully white head, primarily blazes, badgers and pandas, almost certainly carry a congenital defect which shares some similarities to Waardenburg syndrome. This causes, among other things, a cranial deformation in the womb which broadens the skull, white face markings, and also partial or total deafness. It is estimated as many as 75 percent of ferrets with these Waardenburg-like colorings are deaf.
White ferrets were favored in the Middle Ages for the ease in seeing them in thick undergrowth. Leonardo da Vinci's painting Lady with an Ermine is likely mislabelled; the animal is probably a ferret, not a stoat (for which "ermine" is an alternative name for the animal in its white winter coat). Similarly, the ermine portrait of Queen Elizabeth I shows her with her pet ferret, which has been decorated with painted-on heraldic ermine spots.
The Ferreter's Tapestry is a 15th-century tapestry from Burgundy, France, now part of the Burrell Collection housed in the Glasgow Museum and Art Galleries. It shows a group of peasants hunting rabbits with nets and white ferrets. This image was reproduced in Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400–1500, by Jacqueline Herald, Bell & Hyman.[72]
Gaston Phoebus' Book of the Hunt was written in approximately 1389 to explain how to hunt different kinds of animals, including how to use ferrets to hunt rabbits. Illustrations show how multicolored ferrets that were fitted with muzzles were used to chase rabbits out of their warrens and into waiting nets.
Import restrictions
Australia – Ferrets cannot be imported into Australia. A report drafted in August 2000 seems to be the only effort made to date to change the situation.[73]
Canada – Ferrets brought from anywhere except the US require a Permit to Import from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Animal Health Office. Ferrets from the US require only a vaccination certificate signed by a veterinarian. Ferrets under three months old are not subject to any import restrictions.[74]
European Union – As of July 2004, dogs, cats and ferrets can travel freely within the European Union under the pet passport scheme. To cross a border within the EU, ferrets require at minimum an EU PETS passport and an identification microchip (though some countries will accept a tattoo instead). Vaccinations are required; most countries require a rabies vaccine, and some require a distemper vaccine and treatment for ticks and fleas 24 to 48 hours before entry. Ferrets occasionally need to be quarantined before entering the country. PETS travel information is available from any EU veterinarian or on government websites.
New Zealand – New Zealand has banned the import of ferrets into the country.[75]
United Kingdom – The UK accepts ferrets under the EU's PETS travel scheme. Ferrets must be microchipped, vaccinated against rabies, and documented. They must be treated for ticks and tapeworms 24 to 48 hours before entry. They must also arrive via an authorized route. Ferrets arriving from outside the EU may be subject to a six-month quarantine
Gruene Hall, built in 1878, is Texas’ oldest continually operating and most famous dance hall. By design, not much has physically changed since the Hall was first built. The 6,000 square foot dance hall with a high pitched tin roof still has the original layout with side flaps for open air dancing, a bar in the front, a small lighted stage in the back and a huge outdoor garden. Advertisement signs from the 1930s and 40s still hang in the old hall and around the stage.
In the 1800s, Gruene Hall held weekly dances and played host to everything from traveling salesmen to high school graduations to badger fights. Today, the Hall has continued to be a center for the Gruene and Central Texas social and entertainment scene, and the activities are just as varied. In any given week, locals hold court in the front bar after work talking over their day’s activities, a friend’s passing, the weather or the state of the economy. Possibly at the same time, the filming of a movie or commercial or preparation for a festival, fundraiser or a major corporation’s private party may be taking place in the main hall or beer garden.
Gruene Hall, located in Gruene, Texas, is one of the oldest functioning dance halls in the state. Largely a tourist attraction today, Gruene (originally known as Goodwin) was settled in the mid-nineteenth century by German farming families. As the head of one of these families, Ernst Gruene moved with his wife and two sons to the area northeast of New Braunfels in 1872. The second of his two sons, Henry (Heinrich) D. Gruene, firmly established the family's presence in the area by acquiring enough cotton-producing land to support between twenty and thirty tenant-farm families. In 1878 he built the dance hall known today as Gruene Hall. Before his death in 1920 he built the town's first mercantile store, cotton gin, lumberyard, and bank. He also provided land for a school and served for a time as postmaster.
Henry Gruene's Dance Hall provided area residents a place for socializing and offered hard-working farm families a diversion from their difficult lives. A sign hanging over the bar proclaimed "Den feinsten Schnaps, das beste Bier, bekommt man bei dem Heinrich hier" ("The best liquor, the best beer, you get at Henry's here"). In addition to serving both "the best beer" and "dime-a-shot whiskey," and providing a venue for polka bands and square dancing, the hall often was used by traveling salesmen for displaying their wares. Gruene Hall also became a popular location for Saengerfests (German singing festivals), high school graduation ceremonies, political elections, and both dog and badger fights. During Prohibition, Henry Gruene hung a sign in the bar that read, "Only Near Beer is Sold Here. Real Beer is Sold Near Here."
In the early part of the twentieth century, weekend dances usually began early on Saturday evenings. Typically, there would be a break at midnight for sandwiches and coffee, followed by more dancing until 5 A.M. The late Oscar Haas, a long-time resident of New Braunfels, remembered "those wonderful all-night dances at Gruene Hall—the long bar and the beer—the midnight supper—the children sleeping in the side room, as the parents danced until 5 A.M….the polkas, schottisches, waltzes, and the happiest of all, the ring-arounds."
Despite such joyous occasions, the residents of Gruene faced difficult times as well. In 1925 a boll weevil infestation devastated area crops. The Great Depression and the attendant decline in cotton prices nearly wiped out what was left of the town, though Gruene Hall continued to stay open.
In the early 1970s developers planned to raze the town in order to build new homes. While visiting the dormant community in 1974, Cheryle Fuller began her own efforts to save the town through devising a development plan and conducting a historical survey. In 1975 Gruene was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Two years later, San Antonio residents Bill Gallagher and Pat Molak used a $20,000 loan to purchase a number of local buildings, including the hall, and Molak, along with Mary Jane Nalley, began the work of preservation and renovations of the buildings. Their plans for the 6,000-square-foot hall involved very little structural change. They insisted on maintaining the vintage signs, stage, dance floor and forty-eight-star United States flag.
Under the current ownership, Gruene Hall has become internationally recognized as a destination tourist attraction and major music venue for up-and-coming as well as established artists. Since 1975, the Hall has played host to hundreds of celebrities whose pictures adorn the walls.
An incomplete list includes: George Strait, Garth Brooks, Lyle Lovett, Albert Collins, Ernest Tubb, Loretta Lynn, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Arlo Guthrie, Texas Tornadoes, Merle Haggard, Joe Ely, Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt,
Los Lobos, Buddy Guy, Willie Nelson, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, BB King, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Dr. John, Reverend Horton Heat, Lucinda Williams and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, & Ziggy Marley.
Referenced: gruenehall.com/about & Texas State Historical Association
Zorro Poster
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.
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.
The jaguar (Panthera onca) is the largest cat in tropical America and in the world the third largest cat after the tiger and lion. The jaguar's present range extends from the U.S.-Mexico border across much of Central America and south to Paraguay and northern Argentina, particularly in the Amazon basin.
The jaguar has largely been extirpated from the United States since the early 20th century.
This spotted cat most closely resembles the leopard physically, although it is usually larger and of sturdier build and its behavioural and habitat characteristics are closer to those of the tiger. The rosettes on a jaguar's coat are larger, fewer in number, usually darker, and have thicker lines and small spots in the middle that the leopard lacks.
While dense rainforest is its preferred habitat, the jaguar will range across a variety of forested and open terrains. It is strongly associated with the presence of water and is notable, along with the tiger, as a feline that enjoys swimming.
The jaguar is largely a solitary, opportunistic, stalk-and-ambush predator at the top of the food chain. Jaguars are powerfully built, with large, square jaws. Jaguars have lean bodies and muscular limbs. They are built for power, not speed, although they can run briefly. Height at the shoulder may be up to 75 cm. Body length is 130 to 190 cm long with a tail of 45 to 75 cm. Jaguars weigh between 65 and 125 kg. Base coat colors range from pale yellow to reddish brown, with black, rosette-shaped spots.
They may also be black (a melanistic form), but then, despite being the same species, are often called panthers. These jaguars have a base coat color of black with black spots that are usually dimly visible against the black background. Black jaguars are more common in forested habitats.
In captivity jaguars can live over 25 years, but in the wild they are unlikely to even reach half this age.
This picture was taken in the Zoo of Krefeld, Germany.
De grootste kat van het Amerikaanse continent is de jaguar (Panthera onca). Na de tijger en de leeuw is deze kat de derde grootste van de wereld. De jaguar heeft een groot leefgebied dat zich uitstrekt van de Amerikaans-Mexicaanse grens via Midden-Amerika tot in Paraguay en Noord-Argentinië in Zuid-Amerika. In het Amazonegebied komen de meeste jaguars voor. Tot het begin van de 20e eeuw leefde de Jaguar ook in het zuiden van de Verenigde Staten, maar daar is de soort uitgeroeid.
De jaguar lijkt oppervlakkig sterk op de luipaard of panter, maar is meestal groter en zwaarder gebouwd. De vlekken (rozetten) op de vacht van een jaguar zijn ook groter, minder in aantal, meestal donkerder, en hebben dikkere lijnen en kleine vlekjes in het midden, die bij de luipaarden ontbreken.
Het gedrag en de leefgebieden van jaguars zijn dichter bij die van tijgers. Jaguars leven vooral in tropische bossen, maar ook in meer open terreinen, mits er genoeg dekking is van gras en rotsen tijdens het jagen. Ze hebben net als tijgers een voorkeur voor waterrijke gebieden. Ze zijn ook niet bang voor water en kunnen goed zwemmen.
Vrijwel ieder dier dat in het leefgebied van de jaguar voorkomt, vormt een potentiële prooi voor dit roofdier. De solitair levende jaguar is vooral in de ochtend- en avondschemering actief.
Jaguars zijn krachtig gebouwd met grote sterke kaken. De poten zijn relatief kort, maar erg sterk. De staart zorgt voor evenwicht bij het springen. De vacht is lichtgeel tot roodbruin met zwarte rozetten, ronde of ovale vlekken met daarin één of twee donkere stippen. Midden op de rug verandert de rij zwarte vlekken soms in een doorlopende lijn. De hoogte bij de schouder kan oplopen tot 75 cm. De lichaamslengte is 130 à 190 cm met een staart van 50 à 75 cm. Jaguars wegen tussen de 65 en 125 kg.
Naast de hiervoor beschreven lichtgeel tot roodbruin kleur is er ook een melanistische (zwarte) variant, waarbij de vlekken wel te zien zijn in de zon. Ondanks dat het dezelfde soort betreft, worden de zwarte jaguars vaak onjuist panters genoemd. Zwarte jaguars komen wat meer voor in bosrijke gebieden.
In gevangenschap kunnen jaguars tot 25 jaar oud worden, maar in het wild worden ze waarschijnlijk maximaal 11 à 20 jaar.
Deze foto is gemaakt in de Krefelder Zoo in Krefeld, Duitsland.
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All rights reserved. Copyright © Martien Uiterweerd. All my images are protected under international authors copyright laws and may not be downloaded, reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without my written explicit permission.
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Although not as physically large as the other cells, this was one of the largest internally allowing icing tests (testing to see how ice affects a turbines performance) to be carried out on engines and helicopter rotors. The engine or turbine would be suspended from the metal structure on the roof of the cell, and the air would be blasted through the black pipe at the rear.
Raphaela Vogel ( °1988, Nürnberg ) is a German sculptor and performance artist. Raphaela Vogel makes connections between sculpture and video, space and readymade. Her art consists of a physically palpable tension and a richly contrasting interplay between imagination and scale. Powerful and energetic spaces emerge, highlighting human, especially female, subjectivity. Time and again, the multimedia artist addresses gender issues and the socio-political formation process of seeing and being seen. She also makes it a point of honour to realise all her works herself, no matter how specialised they are.
More about this work: www.beaufort21.be/en/artists/raphaela-vogel
This work can be admired during Beaufort 2021 at the Belgian coast in Westende: www.beaufort21.be/en
Raphaela Vogel ( °1988, Nürnberg ) is een Duitse beeldhouwster en performance-kunstenaar. Raphaela Vogel legt verbanden tussen sculptuur en video, ruimte en readymade. Haar kunst bestaat in een fysiek voelbare spanning en in een rijk contrasterend samenspel tussen verbeelding en schaal. Er ontstaan krachtige en energieke ruimten die de menselijke, en dan vooral de vrouwelijke, subjectiviteit onder de aandacht brengen. Telkens weer snijdt de multimediakunstenaar genderkwesties aan en het sociaal-politieke vormingsproces van zien en gezien worden. Zij maakt er ook een erezaak van al haar werken volledig zelf te realiseren, hoe gespecialiseerd het ook is.
Titel van het werk: Er bestaan inderdaad middelgrote verhalen.
Meer over dit werk: www.beaufort21.be/kunstenaars/raphaela-vogel
Dit werk kan worden bewonderd tijdens Beaufort 2021 aan de Belgische kust in Westende: www.beaufort21.be/
Raphaela Vogel (°1988, Nürnberg) est une sculptrice et artiste de performance allemande. Raphaela Vogel établit des liens entre sculpture et vidéo, espace et readymade. Son art consiste en une tension physiquement palpable et un jeu richement contrasté entre imagination et échelle. Des espaces puissants et énergiques émergent, mettant en avant la subjectivité humaine, notamment féminine. À maintes reprises, l'artiste multimédia aborde les questions de genre et le processus de formation sociopolitique du fait de voir et d'être vu. Elle met également un point d'honneur à réaliser elle-même toutes ses œuvres, aussi spécialisées soient-elles.
Titre de l’oeuvre: Ils existes en effet des narratifs de taille moyenne.
Plus sur cette oeuvre: www.beaufort21.be/fr/artistes/raphaela-vogel
Cette œuvre peut être admirée pendant Beaufort 2021 à la côte belge à Westende: www.beaufort21.be/fr
Training golden eagles to hunt is physically and mentally demanding. Young Nurguli needs all her strength and a great deal of focus to call her eagle to come to her from a perch at the top of the hill and to land on her gloved arm. Her two uncles and her grandfather are on hand to help in the training process.
Mongolian horses are small, fearless, half wild, and unbelievably tough. They are an essential means of transport in this rugged environment.
For the PhotoBlog story, please visit: www.ursulasweeklywanders.com/animals-2/nurguli-kazakh-eag...
Greetings mate! As many of you know, I love marrying art, science, and math in my portrait and landscape photography!
The gold 45 revolver is designed in accordance with the golden ratio! More about the design and my philosophy of "no retouching" on the beautiful goddesses in my new book:
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"Photographing Women Models: Portrait, Swimsuit, Lingerie, Boudoir, Fine Art, & Fashion Photography Exalting the Venus Goddess Archetype"
If you would like a free review copy, message me!
And here's more on the golden ratio which appears in many of my landscape and portrait photographs (while shaping the proportions of the golden gun)!
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The dx4/dt=ic above the gun on the lingerie derives from my new physics books devoted to Light, Time, Dimension Theory!
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Thanks for being a fan! Would love to hears your thoughts on my philosophies and books! :)
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Beautiful swimsuit bikini model goddess!
Golden Ratio Lingerie Model Goddess LTD Theory Lingerie dx4/dt=ic! The Birth of Venus, Athena, and Artemis! Girls and Guns!
Would you like to see the whole set? Comment below and let me know!
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I am working on several books on "epic photography," and I recently finished a related one titled: The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Why the Fibonacci Numbers Exalt Beauty and How to Create PHI Compositions in Art, Design, & Photography: An Artistic and Scientific Introduction to the Golden Mean . Message me on facebook for a free review copy!
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The Golden Ratio informs a lot of my art and photographic composition. The Golden Ratio also informs the design of the golden revolver on all the swimsuits and lingerie, as well as the 45surf logo! Not so long ago, I came up with the Golden Ratio Principle which describes why The Golden Ratio is so beautiful.
The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Dr. E’s Golden Ratio Principle: The golden ratio exalts beauty because the number is a characteristic of the mathematically and physically most efficient manners of growth and distribution, on both evolutionary and purely physical levels. The golden ratio ensures that the proportions and structure of that which came before provide the proportions and structure of that which comes after. Robust, ordered growth is naturally associated with health and beauty, and thus we evolved to perceive the golden ratio harmonies as inherently beautiful, as we saw and felt their presence in all vital growth and life—in the salient features and proportions of humans and nature alike, from the distribution of our facial features and bones to the arrangements of petals, leaves, and sunflowers seeds. As ratios between Fibonacci Numbers offer the closest whole-number approximations to the golden ratio, and as seeds, cells, leaves, bones, and other physical entities appear in whole numbers, the Fibonacci Numbers oft appear in nature’s elements as “growth’s numbers.” From the dawn of time, humanity sought to salute their gods in art and temples exalting the same proportion by which all their vital sustenance and they themselves had been created—the golden ratio.
The Birth of Venus! Beautiful Golden Ratio Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess! Helen of Troy! She was tall, thin, fit, and quite pretty!
Read all about how classical art such as The Birth of Venus inspires all my photography!
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"Photographing Women Models: Portrait, Swimsuit, Lingerie, Boudoir, Fine Art, & Fashion Photography Exalting the Venus Goddess Archetype"
Greetings mate! As many of you know, I love marrying art, science, and math in my fine art portrait and landscape photography!
The 45surf and gold 45 revolver swimsuits, shirts, logos, designs, and lingerie are designed in accordance with the golden ratio! More about the design and my philosophy of "no retouching" on the beautiful goddesses in my new book:
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"Photographing Women Models: Portrait, Swimsuit, Lingerie, Boudoir, Fine Art, & Fashion Photography Exalting the Venus Goddess Archetype"
If you would like a free review copy, message me!
And here's more on the golden ratio which appears in many of my landscape and portrait photographs (while shaping the proportions of the golden gun)!
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The dx4/dt=ic above the gun on the lingerie derives from my new physics books devoted to Light, Time, Dimension Theory!
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Thanks for being a fan! Would love to hears your thoughts on my philosophies and books! :)
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Beautiful swimsuit bikini model goddess!
Golden Ratio Lingerie Model Goddess LTD Theory Lingerie dx4/dt=ic! The Birth of Venus, Athena, and Artemis! Girls and Guns!
Would you like to see the whole set? Comment below and let me know!
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I am working on several books on "epic photography," and I recently finished a related one titled: The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Why the Fibonacci Numbers Exalt Beauty and How to Create PHI Compositions in Art, Design, & Photography: An Artistic and Scientific Introduction to the Golden Mean . Message me on facebook for a free review copy!
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The Golden Ratio informs a lot of my art and photographic composition. The Golden Ratio also informs the design of the golden revolver on all the swimsuits and lingerie, as well as the 45surf logo! Not so long ago, I came up with the Golden Ratio Principle which describes why The Golden Ratio is so beautiful.
The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Dr. E’s Golden Ratio Principle: The golden ratio exalts beauty because the number is a characteristic of the mathematically and physically most efficient manners of growth and distribution, on both evolutionary and purely physical levels. The golden ratio ensures that the proportions and structure of that which came before provide the proportions and structure of that which comes after. Robust, ordered growth is naturally associated with health and beauty, and thus we evolved to perceive the golden ratio harmonies as inherently beautiful, as we saw and felt their presence in all vital growth and life—in the salient features and proportions of humans and nature alike, from the distribution of our facial features and bones to the arrangements of petals, leaves, and sunflowers seeds. As ratios between Fibonacci Numbers offer the closest whole-number approximations to the golden ratio, and as seeds, cells, leaves, bones, and other physical entities appear in whole numbers, the Fibonacci Numbers oft appear in nature’s elements as “growth’s numbers.” From the dawn of time, humanity sought to salute their gods in art and temples exalting the same proportion by which all their vital sustenance and they themselves had been created—the golden ratio.
The Birth of Venus! Beautiful Golden Ratio Swimsuit Bikini Model Goddess! Helen of Troy! She was tall, thin, fit, and quite pretty!
Read all about how classical art such as The Birth of Venus inspires all my photography!
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"Photographing Women Models: Portrait, Swimsuit, Lingerie, Boudoir, Fine Art, & Fashion Photography Exalting the Venus Goddess Archetype"
this week for me has been such a roller coaster.....I'm physically and mentally exhausted. there were so many buttons of mine that were pushed this week that I honestly never thought would ever frustrate me so much. This past week was definitely one of the most challenging ones I've had in terms of being in my advertising program. This week was all about teamwork and combining minds to come up with successful solutions to problems. Instead all I got out of the week was real anger and frustration due to to one sided-ness to the whole process. There was absolutely no give and take going on, it was all about what my partner wanted. Nothing I said and or suggested ever got through or mattered at all. It's really times like these where I slowly regret being in this field, knowing there are times where I'd have to work with impossible people. However at the end of the day I know that it's just all part of the learning experience and process.
With all that said, I know the lighting in this is a little different to what I usually work with, but for the first time I shot a self portrait at night in my house so lighting was pretty limited. Also, what do you guys think of my red-ish hair? It's been done for months now, but I realize this is the first time you guys are seeing it.
i wonder what you wanted to tell me that day. It's a question that's been in the back of my mind for awhile now
A helpless & physically disabled beggar on the Farmgate overpass...looking out for passerby and their small changes...being looked down upon each & everyday...
©Anirban Aurgha
Original Caption: Older Citizens, Retired Persons and Those Unable to Care for Themselves Physically Are Cared for in Two Community Centers. This Man 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-15874
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=558324
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