In the middle of the twentieth century, an unusual star was spotted in the constellation of Canes Venatici (Latin for “hunting dogs”). Years later, astronomers determined that this object, dubbed AM Canum Venaticorum (or, AM CVn, for short), was, in fact, two stars. These stars revolve around each other every 18 minutes, and are predicted to generate gravitational waves -- ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein.

 

The name AM CVn came to represent a new class of objects where one white dwarf star is pulling matter from another very compact companion star, such as a second white dwarf. (White dwarf stars are dense remains of sun-like stars that have run out of fuel and collapsed to the size of the Earth.) The pairs of stars in AM CVn systems orbit each other extremely rapidly, whipping around one another in an hour, and in one case as quickly as five minutes. By contrast, the fastest orbiting planet in our solar system, Mercury, orbits the sun once every 88 days.

 

Despite being known for almost 50 years, the question has remained: where do AM CVn systems come from? New X-ray and optical observations have begun to answer that with the discovery of the first known systems of double stars that astronomers think will evolve into AM CVn systems.

 

The two binary systems -- known by their shortened names of J0751 and J1741 -- were observed in X-rays by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope. Observations at optical wavelengths were made using the McDonald Observatory’s 2.1-meter telescope in Texas, and the Mt. John Observatory 1.0-meter telescopes in New Zealand.

 

The artist’s illustration depicts what these systems are like now and what may happen to them in the future. The top panel shows the current state of the binary that contains one white dwarf (on the right) with about one-fifth the mass of the sun and another much heavier and more compact white dwarf about five or more times as massive (unlike sun-like stars, heavier white dwarfs are smaller).

 

As the two white dwarfs orbit around each other, gravitational waves – that is, ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein – will be given off causing the orbit to become tighter. Eventually the smaller, heavier white dwarf will start pulling matter from the larger, lighter one, as shown in the middle panel, forming an AM CVn system. This process continues until so much matter accumulates on the more massive white dwarf that a thermonuclear explosion may occur in about 100 million years.

 

One possibility is that the thermonuclear explosion could destroy the larger white dwarf completely in what astronomers call a Type Ia supernova (the type of supernova used to mark large distances across the Universe by serving as so-called standard candles.) However, it’s more likely that a thermonuclear explosion will occur only on the surface of the star, leaving it scarred but intact. The resulting outburst is likely to be about one tenth the brightness of a Type Ia supernova. Such outbursts have been named -- somewhat tongue-in-cheek -- as .Ia supernovae. Such .Ia outbursts have been observed in other galaxies, but J0751 and J1741 are the first binary stars known which can produce .Ia outbursts in the future.

 

The optical observations were critical in identifying the two white dwarfs in these systems and ascertaining their masses. The X-ray observations were needed to rule out the possibility that J0751 and J1741 contained neutron stars. A neutron star -- which would disqualify it from being a possible parent to an AM CVn system -- would give off strong X-ray emission due to its magnetic field and rapid rotation. Neither Chandra nor XMM-Newton detected any X-rays from these systems.

 

AM CVn systems are of interest to scientists because they are predicted to be sources of gravitational waves, as noted above. This is important because even though such waves have yet to be detected, many scientists and engineers are working on instruments that should be able to detect them in the near future. This will open a significant new observational window to the universe.

 

The paper reporting these results is available online [arxiv.org/abs/1310.6359] and is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. The authors are Mukremin Kilic from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK; J.J. Hermes from the University of Texas at Austin in TX; Alexandros Gianninas from the University of Oklahoma; Warren Brown from Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA; Craig Heinke from University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada; Marcel Ag¨ueros from Columbia University in New York, NY; Paul Chote and Denis Sullivan from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; and Keaton Bell and Samuel Harrold from University of Texas at Austin.

 

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

 

Read entire caption: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/white-dwarf...

 

Image credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss

 

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

 

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

 

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

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Canyonlands National Park is an American national park located in southeastern Utah near the town of Moab. The park preserves a colorful landscape eroded into numerous canyons, mesas, and buttes by the Colorado River, the Green River, and their respective tributaries. Legislation creating the park was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on September 12, 1964.

 

The park is divided into four districts: the Island in the Sky, the Needles, the Maze, and the combined rivers—the Green and Colorado—which carved two large canyons into the Colorado Plateau. While these areas share a primitive desert atmosphere, each retains its own character. Author Edward Abbey, a frequent visitor, described the Canyonlands as "the most weird, wonderful, magical place on earth—there is nothing else like it anywhere."

 

In the early 1950s, Bates Wilson, then superintendent of Arches National Monument, began exploring the area to the south and west of Moab, Utah. After seeing what is now known as the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park, Wilson began advocating for the establishment of a new national park that would include the Needles. Additional explorations by Wilson and others expanded the areas proposed for inclusion into the new national park to include the confluence of Green and Colorado rivers, the Maze District, and Horseshoe Canyon.

 

In 1961, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall was scheduled to address a conference at Grand Canyon National Park. On his flight to the conference, he flew over the Confluence (where the Colorado and Green rivers meet). The view apparently sparked Udall's interest in Wilson's proposal for a new national park in that area and Udall began promoting the establishment of Canyonlands National Park.

 

Utah Senator Frank Moss first introduced legislation into Congress to create Canyonlands National Park. His legislation attempted to satisfy both nature preservationists' and commercial developers' interests. Over the next four years, his proposal was struck down, debated, revised, and reintroduced to Congress many times before being passed and signed into creation.

 

In September, 1964, after several years of debate, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Pub.L. 88–590, which established Canyonlands National Park as a new national park. Bates Wilson became the first superintendent of the new park and is often referred to as the "Father of Canyonlands."

 

The Colorado River and Green River combine within the park, dividing it into three districts called the Island in the Sky, the Needles, and the Maze. The Colorado River flows through Cataract Canyon below its confluence with the Green River.

 

The Island in the Sky district is a broad and level mesa in the northern section of the park, between the Colorado and Green rivers. The district has many viewpoints overlooking the White Rim, a sandstone bench 1,200 feet (370 m) below the Island, and the rivers, which are another 1,000 feet (300 m) below the White Rim.

 

The Needles district is located south of the Island in the Sky, on the east side of the Colorado River. The district is named for the red and white banded rock pinnacles which are a major feature of the area. Various other naturally sculpted rock formations are also within this district, including grabens, potholes, and arches. Unlike Arches National Park, where many arches are accessible by short to moderate hikes, most of the arches in the Needles district lie in backcountry canyons, requiring long hikes or four-wheel drive trips to reach them.

 

The Ancestral Puebloans inhabited this area and some of their stone and mud dwellings are well-preserved, although the items and tools they used were mostly removed by looters. The Ancestral Puebloans also created rock art in the form of petroglyphs, most notably on Newspaper Rock along the Needles access road.

 

The Maze district is located west of the Colorado and Green rivers. The Maze is the least accessible section of the park, and one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of the United States.

 

A geographically detached section of the park located north of the Maze district, Horseshoe Canyon contains panels of rock art made by hunter-gatherers from the Late Archaic Period (2000-1000 BC) pre-dating the Ancestral Puebloans. Originally called Barrier Canyon, Horseshoe's artifacts, dwellings, pictographs, and murals are some of the oldest in America. The images depicting horses date from after 1540 AD, when the Spanish reintroduced horses to America.

 

Since the 1950s, scientists have been studying an area of 200 acres (81 ha) completely surrounded by cliffs. The cliffs have prevented cattle from ever grazing on the area's 62 acres (25 ha) of grassland. According to the scientists, the site may contain the largest undisturbed grassland in the Four Corners region. Studies have continued biannually since the mid-1990s. The area has been closed to the public since 1993 to maintain the nearly pristine environment.

 

Mammals that roam this park include black bears, coyotes, skunks, bats, elk, foxes, bobcats, badgers, ring-tailed cats, pronghorns, desert bighorn sheep, and cougars. Desert cottontails, kangaroo rats and mule deer are commonly seen by visitors.

 

At least 273 species of birds inhabit the park. A variety of hawks and eagles are found, including the Cooper's hawk, the northern goshawk, the sharp-shinned hawk, the red-tailed hawk, the golden and bald eagles, the rough-legged hawk, the Swainson's hawk, and the northern harrier. Several species of owls are found, including the great horned owl, the northern saw-whet owl, the western screech owl, and the Mexican spotted owl. Grebes, woodpeckers, ravens, herons, flycatchers, crows, bluebirds, wrens, warblers, blackbirds, orioles, goldfinches, swallows, sparrows, ducks, quail, grouse, pheasants, hummingbirds, falcons, gulls, and ospreys are some of the other birds that can be found.

 

Several reptiles can be found, including eleven species of lizards and eight species of snake (including the midget faded rattlesnake). The common kingsnake and prairie rattlesnake have been reported in the park, but not confirmed by the National Park Service.

 

The park is home to six confirmed amphibian species, including the red-spotted toad, Woodhouse's toad, American bullfrog, northern leopard frog, Great Basin spadefoot toad, and tiger salamander. The canyon tree frog was reported to be in the park in 2000, but was not confirmed during a study in 2004.

 

Canyonlands National Park contains a wide variety of plant life, including 11 cactus species,[34] 20 moss species, liverworts, grasses and wildflowers. Varieties of trees include netleaf hackberry, Russian olive, Utah juniper, pinyon pine, tamarisk, and Fremont's cottonwood. Shrubs include Mormon tea, blackbrush, four-wing saltbush, cliffrose, littleleaf mountain mahogany, and snakeweed

 

Cryptobiotic soil is the foundation of life in Canyonlands, providing nitrogen fixation and moisture for plant seeds. One footprint can destroy decades of growth.

 

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Canyonlands National Park has a cold semi-arid climate ("BSk"). The plant hardiness zones at the Island in the Sky and Needles District Visitor Centers are 7a with an average annual extreme minimum air temperature of 4.0 °F (-15.6 °C) and 2.9 °F (-16.2 °C), respectively.

 

The National Weather Service has maintained two cooperative weather stations in the park since June 1965. Official data documents the desert climate with less than 10 inches (250 millimetres) of annual rainfall, as well as hot, mostly dry summers and cold, occasionally wet winters. Snowfall is generally light during the winter.

 

The station in The Neck region reports an average January temperature of 29.6 °F and an average July temperature of 79.3 °F. Average July temperatures range from a high of 90.8 °F (32.7 °C) to a low of 67.9 °F (19.9 °C). There are an average of 45.7 days with highs of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher and an average of 117.3 days with lows of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower. The highest recorded temperature was 105 °F (41 °C) on July 15, 2005, and the lowest recorded temperature was −13 °F (−25 °C) on February 6, 1989. Average annual precipitation is 9.33 inches (237 mm). There are an average of 59 days with measurable precipitation. The wettest year was 1984, with 13.66 in (347 mm), and the driest year was 1989, with 4.63 in (118 mm). The most precipitation in one month was 5.19 in (132 mm) in October 2006. The most precipitation in 24 hours was 1.76 in (45 mm) on April 9, 1978. Average annual snowfall is 22.8 in (58 cm). The most snowfall in one year was 47.4 in (120 cm) in 1975, and the most snowfall in one month was 27.0 in (69 cm) in January 1978.

 

The station in The Needles region reports an average January temperature of 29.7 °F and an average July temperature of 79.1 °F.[44] Average July temperatures range from a high of 95.4 °F (35.2 °C) to a low of 62.4 °F (16.9 °C). There are an average of 75.4 days with highs of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher and an average of 143.6 days with lows of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower. The highest recorded temperature was 107 °F (42 °C) on July 13, 1971, and the lowest recorded temperature was −16 °F (−27 °C) on January 16, 1971. Average annual precipitation is 8.49 in (216 mm). There are an average of 56 days with measurable precipitation. The wettest year was 1969, with 11.19 in (284 mm), and the driest year was 1989, with 4.25 in (108 mm). The most precipitation in one month was 4.43 in (113 mm) in October 1972. The most precipitation in 24 hours was 1.56 in (40 mm) on September 17, 1999. Average annual snowfall is 14.4 in (37 cm). The most snowfall in one year was 39.3 in (100 cm) in 1975, and the most snowfall in one month was 24.0 in (61 cm) in March 1985.

 

National parks in the Western US are more affected by climate change than the country as a whole, and the National Park Service has begun research into how exactly this will effect the ecosystem of Canyonlands National Park and the surrounding areas and ways to protect the park for the future. The mean annual temperature of Canyonlands National Park increased by 2.6 °F (1.4 °C) from 1916 to 2018. It is predicted that if current warming trends continue, the average highs in the park during the summer will be over 100 °F (40 °C) by 2100. In addition to warming, the region has begun to see more severe and frequent droughts which causes native grass cover to decrease and a lower flow of the Colorado River. The flows of the Upper Colorado Basin have decreased by 300,000 acre⋅ft (370,000,000 m3) per year, which has led to a decreased amount of sediment carried by the river and rockier rapids which are more frequently impassable to rafters. The area has also begun to see an earlier spring, which will lead to changes in the timing of leaves and flowers blooming and migrational patterns of wildlife that could lead to food shortages for the wildlife, as well as a longer fire season.

 

The National Park Service is currently closely monitoring the impacts of climate change in Canyonlands National Park in order to create management strategies that will best help conserve the park's landscapes and ecosystems for the long term. Although the National Park Service's original goal was to preserve landscapes as they were before European colonization, they have now switched to a more adaptive management strategy with the ultimate goal of conserving the biodiversity of the park. The NPS is collaborating with other organizations including the US Geological Survey, local indigenous tribes, and nearby universities in order to create a management plan for the national park. Right now, there is a focus on research into which native plants will be most resistant to climate change so that the park can decide on what to prioritize in conservation efforts. The Canyonlands Natural History Association has been giving money to the US Geological Survey to fund this and other climate related research. They gave $30,000 in 2019 and $61,000 in 2020.

 

A subsiding basin and nearby uplifting mountain range (the Uncompahgre) existed in the area in Pennsylvanian time. Seawater trapped in the subsiding basin created thick evaporite deposits by Mid Pennsylvanian. This, along with eroded material from the nearby mountain range, became the Paradox Formation, itself a part of the Hermosa Group. Paradox salt beds started to flow later in the Pennsylvanian and probably continued to move until the end of the Jurassic. Some scientists believe Upheaval Dome was created from Paradox salt bed movement, creating a salt dome, but more modern studies show that the meteorite theory is more likely to be correct.

 

A warm shallow sea again flooded the region near the end of the Pennsylvanian. Fossil-rich limestones, sandstones, and shales of the gray-colored Honaker Trail Formation resulted. A period of erosion then ensued, creating a break in the geologic record called an unconformity. Early in the Permian an advancing sea laid down the Halgaito Shale. Coastal lowlands later returned to the area, forming the Elephant Canyon Formation.

 

Large alluvial fans filled the basin where it met the Uncompahgre Mountains, creating the Cutler red beds of iron-rich arkose sandstone. Underwater sand bars and sand dunes on the coast inter-fingered with the red beds and later became the white-colored cliff-forming Cedar Mesa Sandstone. Brightly colored oxidized muds were then deposited, forming the Organ Rock Shale. Coastal sand dunes and marine sand bars once again became dominant, creating the White Rim Sandstone.

 

A second unconformity was created after the Permian sea retreated. Flood plains on an expansive lowland covered the eroded surface and mud built up in tidal flats, creating the Moenkopi Formation. Erosion returned, forming a third unconformity. The Chinle Formation was then laid down on top of this eroded surface.

 

Increasingly dry climates dominated the Triassic. Therefore, sand in the form of sand dunes invaded and became the Wingate Sandstone. For a time climatic conditions became wetter and streams cut channels through the sand dunes, forming the Kayenta Formation. Arid conditions returned to the region with a vengeance; a large desert spread over much of western North America and later became the Navajo Sandstone. A fourth unconformity was created by a period of erosion.

 

Mud flats returned, forming the Carmel Formation, and the Entrada Sandstone was laid down next. A long period of erosion stripped away most of the San Rafael Group in the area, along with any formations that may have been laid down in the Cretaceous period.

 

The Laramide orogeny started to uplift the Rocky Mountains 70 million years ago and with it, the Canyonlands region. Erosion intensified and when the Colorado River Canyon reached the salt beds of the Paradox Formation the overlying strata extended toward the river canyon, forming features such as The Grabens. Increased precipitation during the ice ages of the Pleistocene quickened the rate of canyon excavation along with other erosion. Similar types of erosion are ongoing, but occur at a slower rate.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

Forecasters predicted a Perseid "outburst" event this year. I am not a regular Perseid observer so I cannot really attest to this but for the two hours that I was out watching the night sky between 2am and 4am, I saw many meteors streaking across the sky. Unfortunately most of them were very fleeting and rather faint (probably due to the heavy light pollution where I was).

 

The Perseids are known for being colourful meteors and this one I managed to capture has a distinct purple to green transition as it streaked across the sky.

While I plan not to go "wall-to-wall Walmart" with my photos in the future, this area is about to see a lot of Walmart activity (and hopefully in the form of Black Décor 2.0 instead of more Cheap Impact!), starting (as I predicted in one of this photo's comments: flic.kr/p/CZb7CV) with the Senatobia Mississippi location.

 

Here it is folks, possibly the very first of the Senatobia Mississippi Walmart 2016 remodel: concrete replacement on the north side of the building. But as far as any other remodeling (inside or out), forget about it for now :( Nothing else had changed yet, at least as of my April 16, 2016 visit. But...

____________________________________

Walmart, 1993-built, Hwy 51 (N. Panola St.) at Wilson Dr., Senatobia MS

Weather reports predict the so called "Beast From The East" is due to revisit the UK over the next few days, today the 16th of March 2018 I visited Collieston Bay, its the first time I have witnessed the impact unusual weather has had on the area, it really was exhilarating and offered great photo opportunities.

 

Collieston is a small former fishing village on the North Sea coast in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The village lies just north of the Sands of Forvie Special Protection Area, between Cruden Bay and Newburgh.

 

The earliest recorded history of Collieston is of the arrival of St Ternan, a Columban monk on a mission to convert the local picts to Christianity. There is, however, evidence that people lived here during much earlier times.

 

Collieston was established as a fishing village by the 16th century, and it provides the first safe harbour in over fifteen miles of beachesand dunes stretching north from Aberdeen.

 

Fishing for herring, haddock, whiting and codflourished in the 17th century and 18th century and was the foundation of Collieston's economy. The village became known for 'Collieston Speldings', salted and sun-dried haddock and whiting, a popular delicacy throughout Britain. As drift netting developed during the mid 19th century, the fishing began to decline and the focus of the industry shifted to places like Peterhead because the harbour at Collieston was too small to safely accommodate the larger boats needed.

 

The numerous sea caves in the nearby cliffs, and small coves with shingle beaches provided ideal terrain for smugglers. In the late 18th century it was estimated by the Excise that up to 8000 gallons of foreign spirits were being illegally landed in the area every month. In 1798, the notorious village smuggler, Phillip Kennedy, was killed by a blow from an exciseman's cutlass. His grave and tombstone still stands in the village graveyard.

 

A ship from the Spanish Armada, the Santa Caterina, carrying arms for the Earl of Erroll is said to have sunk just off the rocky point of St Catherine's Dub in 1594. In retaliation for the Earl's involvement in the Catholic plot against him, James VI blew up the Earl's castle which stood on the cliffs, a mile north of Collieston. The Earl went on to rebuild Slains Castle, six miles further up the coast, in 1597.

Collieston is now mainly a commuter village serving Aberdeen, and is largely given over to tourists during the summer months.

You could say this is bad timing but it reminds me of the film The Omen where the strange lines in the guy's photos predict the upcoming decapitation.

If i could only turn back time, life may have been so very different now.

Embrace your life, don't be afraid to follow your feelings and heart.

  

he petrifying well , Mother Shipton's Cave , Yorkshire . Amazing place . This lady , born in the times of Henry VIII predicted that humans would fly, she also bizarrely predicted the internet ! Saying there would be a time when ideas would flow through the air ! (maybe she meant something else , like tapping into our unconscious ) The well , as you can see, turns objects to stone. The two 'bumps' you can see in the stone are a lady's bonnet and a gentleman's top hat, left there in Victorian times. The atmosphere around the well is certainly strange . It sent my camera settings crazy outside ,yet produced a perfectly exposed picture (without flash) in the cave itself .

Our Premiere will deliver "Stark" information about predicted numbers for Ontario today.

So, yesterday I put on my mask, gloves, glasses and headed to the quietest, cleanest store. I stocked up on a lot of supplies. I also have a delivery order coming by Tues. (earliest) to top things up.

We should be good for over a month now. Doing our part and protecting ourselves.

 

As predicted Fred was sent home from the groomers with only half the job done. We will try again Tuesday for the finishing touches. What a guy!

Lorenzo Monaco. (Piero di Giovanni) 1370-1425. Florence.

Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers.

Prédelle Arrestation du Christ, Christ dévêtu.

Christ in the Garden of Olives.

Prediction Arrest of Christ, Christ undressed.

Florence. Galleria dell' Accademia.

 

L'ART MIROIR DES VALEURS D'UNE SOCIETE (2)

 

L'Histoire de la peinture européenne démontre une vérité : l'Art est fondamentalement idéologique et politique. L'Art est idéologique c'est à dire qu'il est le reflet, l'expression, du système de valeurs qui façonne une société donnée à une époque donnée. L'Art est politique car ce système de valeurs est toujours imposé par les puissances gouvernantes de l'époque. Ces puissances gouvernantes ne se confondent pas nécessairement avec les chefs politiques au pouvoir. Ce sont des Influences qui débordent souvent le cercle étroit des dirigeants manifestes, les politiciens.

L'art de tous les temps et dans toutes les sociétés est un moyen pour les élites d'imposer une religion (sacrée) ou une idéologie (profane, laïque). Dans toutes les civilisations l'art de chaque époque se comprend donc au travers du filtre idéologique qui inspire les élites de cette civilisation à cette époque.

L'art est donc un intéressant révélateur de la pensée philosophique et morale qui anime les élites d'une société donnée en un temps donné.

 

La peinture Egyptienne permet d'apercevoir les croyances de ce peuple à son époque. On y voit clairement le reflet d' une société bien équilibrée, également partagée entre un amour de la vie quotidienne, celle du peuple et celle des élites, et des espérances concernant l'au delà. Espérances qui, contrairement à ce qui a été écrit, n'étaient pas réservées au Pharaon. On y lit l'existence d'une société relativement libre, où la femme est très présente, égale de l'homme dans toutes les classes de la société. Sans entrer dans les détails, l'art des civilisations de la Mésopotamie, à la même époque, ne présente pas les mêmes caractéristiques.

 

L'art des lettrés chinois est un reflet des conceptions du monde taoïstes et confucianistes. Il est significatif que dans d'immenses paysages, l'homme y est toujours présenté comme une créature agissante, pensante, mais presque insignifiante. Un être parmi les Dix mille Êtres. Le commandement premier est de ne pas troubler l'harmonie de l'Univers. Il est clair aussi que cet art ne reflète pas les valeurs de la société chinoise dans son ensemble mais d'une petite minorité.

 

L'Art hindouiste exprime l'extraordinaire complexité, la profondeur, des interrogations philosophiques et religieuses qui caractérise la civilisation indienne. On y voit clairement que l'une des idées essentielles de la spiritualité hindoue est que la vérité à des visages multiples, et même apparemment contraires. La profusion des Dieux qui fait que certains esprits simples croient voir dans l'hindouisme religieux un polythéisme est le symbole de cette multiplicité des aspects de la vérité. L'homme tient dans l'univers une place éminente, mais il reste une créature parmi d'autres, au sein d'un univers complexe qui le dépasse beaucoup, dans le temps comme dans l'espace.

 

L'Art de l'Antiquité Grecque et Romaine donne l'image d'une société équilibrée mais où l'humain a pris beaucoup d'importance. L'Homme domine clairement un monde où il vit sa vie, mais cependant toujours à condition de se tenir à distance des Dieux, tout en les honorant. On n'aperçoit pas en Grèce ou Rome, à la différence de l' Egypte, de grandes espérances métaphysiques. La Vie c'est la vie, puis la mort. Point.

 

L'Art, la peinture en particulier, montre que pendant Mille Cinq Cent ans (500-1500) l'Europe a construit sa société sur les fondements de la spiritualité et de la morale catholique et orthodoxe. 1500 ans cela constitue des racines. Ces racines peuvent être totalement oubliées, si l'élite le veut. Et elle le veut. Au Proche Orient absolument rien n'a subsisté, après les invasions musulmanes, d'une domination de la civilisation gréco-romaine qui avait pourtant duré, elle aussi, plus de mille ans. Mais les racines, profondes, au Proche Orient étaient sémitiques pas indo-européennes. La Grèce et Rome n'étaient qu'une greffe superficielle. Les "Maîtres du monde" occidental on décidé, depuis les "Lumières", qu'ils feraient table rase du passé catholique et orthodoxe de l'Europe, et que les valeurs que ces religions représentent seraient abolies. Depuis la seconde guerre mondiale ils sont en train de réussir pleinement. Jusqu'alors les peuples européens, surtout au sud, avaient résisté. Mais le laminoir de l'éducation publique et des médias agit efficacement. De telle sorte que ces religions ne seront bientôt pas plus vécues par les populations européennes que la religion égyptienne antique dans l'égypte moderne.

 

La peinture des Pays Bas du Nord, protestants, met en évidence l'existence d'une rupture très claire, et très rapide, en l'espace d'une ou deux générations, des valeurs qui animent une partie de la société européenne.

D'une part c'est la disparition des références à l'Antiquité Grecque et Romaine. La revanche de l'Europe du Nord sur celle du Sud n'est pas seulement économique, elle est culturelle.

D'autre part c'est la quasi disparition des thèmes religieux. C'est la naissance d'une peinture, profane, matérialiste, dont les thèmes sont : Le paysage, les moeurs de la vie en société, la nature morte, le portrait. La peinture du Siècle d'Or néerlandais est l' acte de naissance de la peinture que l'on appellera "Art Moderne".

 

A partir de 1815, une fois la paix revenue en Europe, et jusque vers 1950, en dates grosses et larges, c'est la période de l'Art Moderne. Dès l'époque romantique la peinture explose en une multitude de courants représentatifs de conceptions du monde et de valeurs extrêmement diverses. Globalement, et malgré les conflits très violents, l'Europe n'est pas soumise à une idéologie unique. La peinture montre cette diversité d'inspiration. Du romantisme au classicisme, du réalisme à l'expressionnisme, du symbolisme au surréalisme, du néo-raphaélisme au fauvisme, de l'art académique à l'impressionnisme, du figuratif à l'abstrait c'est une explosion de diversité, de recherches, d'innovations. Mais le passé européen n'est pas rejeté, ni moralement, ni culturellement, ni techniquement. L'Architecture montre aussi très bien cette diversité : c'est à la fois le temps de la Tour Effel, et l'époque de toutes les architectures historicistes : néo-grec, néo-romain, néo-byzantin, néo-roman, néo-gothique, néo-baroque. C'est surtout une époque de grande liberté artistique : l'art s'invente à la base comme au sommet de la pyramide sociale. L'élite n'est plus la seule inspiratrice de l'esthétique européenne. Pourquoi ? Parce que les élites européennes sont idéologiquement divisées. Cette division des élites va être la cause de la mort des peuples sur les champs de bataille. Mais cette division des élites va être aussi à l'origine de la diversité de l'Art Moderne.

Un chant du cygne ?

 

A partir de 1950 la peinture européenne change : On le constate dans nos musées d'Art Contemporain.

Les élites idéologiques occidentales ont décidé une inversion totale des valeurs qui gouvernaient l'art européen depuis 3000 ans et notamment imposé l'idée que l'art de la peinture et la sculpture ne devaient pas nécessairement être beau. Le Beau était selon les nouveaux Influents un concept dépassé.

En réalité c'est la notion même d'un art qui serait un partage d'idées et d'émotions communes entre les élites et les peuples qui est reniée avec l'Art Contemporain (l'Art Moderne II selon les dernières tendances). Cet "Art" nait aux Etats Unis dans les années 1920, à partir d'idées européennes et même françaises (Duchamp), et s'impose en Europe après la seconde guerre mondiale. L'art laid et absurde, provocateur jusqu'à l'abjection, faussement révolutionnaire, mais totalement académique, est un art imposé car politiquement et idéologiquement conforme.

Des questions se posent inévitablement :

Quelles valeurs de civilisation cette peinture contemporaine reflète ?

Quelles fidélités, et quelles espérances ?

Quelles beautés ?

Quelles significations, métaphysiques ou physiques, symboliques ou réalistes ?

Quelles croyances ?

Quelle vie pour aujourd'hui ou demain ?

 

Sauf le public des scolaires et de leurs enseignants, public contraint d'être là, les musées d'art contemporains d'Occident sont vides. Le jugement esthétique s'établit par la conjonction de l'avis des peuples et des élites à une période donnée mais aussi au cours des siècles.

Depuis 1950s l'Art Contemporain officiel des musées a eu le temps de faire ses preuves dans le présent : les peuples d'occident s'en détournent en masse. On verra bien quel sera le jugement de l'avenir à propos d'une peinture qui revendique expressément le laid et l'absurde comme thèmes d'expression esthétique. Il est possible de conduire une politique ou de faire des affaires contre les peuples, mais on ne fait pas un art durable contre les peuples. Et on peut attendre avec intérêt le verdict de l'histoire sur "l'Art Contemporain". L'histoire ne s'est pas encore prononcée à ce sujet, il est bien trop tôt, mais on commence à lire, en français, des avis de spécialistes de l'art qui s'écartent de la louange idéologiquement et économiquement obligée, comme le livre de Christine Sourgins "Les Mirages de l'Art Contemporain. Brève histoire de l'art financier" aux éditions de la Table Ronde 2005 et 2018. Ou encore comme les livres de Aude de Kerros "L'Art caché, les dissidents de l'art contemporain" Eyrolles 2007 et 2013 et "L'imposture de l'Art contemporain, une utopie financière" Eyrolles 2016. En anglais l'article "How Modern Art Serves the Rich" by Rachel Wetzler, in the Republic de February 26, 2018 est aussi très intéressant.

 

L'affirmation selon laquelle l'art d'une époque est commandé par les croyances actives en son temps est une évidence pour tout le monde, quand on parle de l'art égyptien, de l'art Grec ou de l'art de l'Europe médiévale. Aucune contestation ne s'élève. Il est unanimement admis que l'art de l'Europe médiévale est le reflet des valeurs de la religion catholique, qui en a conditionné toutes les représentations notamment en peinture. Le constat n'a aucun intérêt, il enfonce des portes ouvertes.

Par contre, dès que l'on applique cette clé de lecture et de compréhension de l'art, à l'Europe de la Réforme, puis à l'art Moderne, et encore plus à l'Art Contemporain de l'Occident, de fortes réserves, des réticences, des circonspections, des bouderies, apparaissent. Il n'y a plus d'évidences, mais soit disant plein de problèmes. La même clef, qui était reconnue opérante, mais banale, insignifiante, sans grand intérêt, pour les temps du passé lointain, est ressentie comme polémique, agressive, outrancière quand on l'utilise pour les temps actuels ou proches.

Pourquoi?

Une clé qui ouvre les portes d'une compréhension, simple mais efficace, de l'art d'une civilisation qui s'est épanouie 2500 ans avant notre ère, et encore de civilisations ayant duré de cinq siècles avant notre ère à cinq siècles après, qui fonctionne encore pendant plus de 1000 ans pour toute l'Europe, de 500 à 1500, doit aussi être efficace du 17è siècle au 21è siècle.

Elle est simple et toujours efficace, mais elle ne plait pas. Cette clé est devenue dérangeante. On ne veut pas s'en servir.

Cette clé est acceptée pour le passé lointain, et les civilisations étrangères, mais pas pour le passé récent et notre présente société.

L'homme de tous les temps n'a jamais aimé qu'on lui démontre qu'il vit en fonction de croyances, souvent respectables, souvent aussi très efficaces au plan social et politique, mais qui sont tout à fait contingentes, qui ne sont que des vérités très relatives ou même seulement des erreurs communes, des superstitions partagées.

Les hommes veulent bien qu'on leur montre que leurs ancêtres lointains ou leurs voisins ont vécu ou vivent conditionnés par une religion ou une idéologie profane. Mais ils n'acceptent pas du tout d'appliquer à eux mêmes et à leur époque cette clé de lecture.

L'homme n'a jamais aimé qu'on lui démontre que ses rêves du monde, ses vérités, absolues et incontestables, n'existent que pour lui, et seulement pour son époque. Que ces vérités n'existent pas du tout, ou peu, ou moins, ou très différemment, dans d'autres lieux et dans d'autres temps.

Un des grands principes de toutes les croyances, sacrées ou profanes, principe d'intolérance maximale, rarement efficacement combattu, qui n'a rien de surréaliste, mais qui est au contraire tout à fait réaliste, est celui ci: "Même si c'est vrai, c'est faux" et son corollaire "Même si c'est faux, c'est vrai". C'est faux parce que ce n'est pas conforme à ce que nous croyons à un moment donné de l'histoire. Et le faux avéré, établi, est quand même vrai pour le même motif de conformité à l'idéologie régnante.

L'aveuglement des contemporains quant aux idéologies actives à leur propre époque est un constat que l'on peut faire tous les jours. Dans un reportage sur une grande chaîne de télévision à propos de la Chine actuelle le commentateur a déclaré avec le plus grand sérieux du monde " Le Petit Livre Rouge n'a pas eu raison des superstitions. Les vieilles croyances n'ont pas totalement disparues". Comme si le Petit Livre Rouge, et le marxisme, n'avaient pas été une des plus grandes superstitions de tous les temps, et comme si nos idées actuelles sur le monde n'étaient pas elles mêmes des croyances : "Les Lumières" sont une accumulation de superstitions (Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,Raison, Révolution, Progrès, Bonheur, Démocratie, République Universelle...), mais elles sont actuellement actives, elle ne sont pas vieilles, donc elles sont "vraies". Les superstitions auxquelles l'homme croit ne sont évidemment pas des superstitions.

Ce n'est pas une réaction populaire qui caractériserait seulement les analphabètes. Les personnes instruites, les intellectuels et les idéologues y sont tout particulièrement soumis. Ils ont élaboré une vision du monde et ils y souscrivent d'autant plus qu'ils l'ont inventée et qu'elle sert leurs intérêts. Ils ne veulent pas admettre que leurs conceptions du monde sont relatives, que c'est une affaire de point de vue. Et qu'il est possible d'en changer. La réponse immédiate est l'anathème, l'exclusion, la crucifixion ou le bûcher. Les mises en accusation pour sorcellerie, blasphème, réaction, racisme, conspirationnisme etc...fonctionnent exactement de la même manière à toutes les époques de l'histoire. L'esprit scientifique dont l'Occident se vante d'être la terre d'origine, sans doute avec raison, n'a absolument aucune influence dans ce domaine.

Les "Eclairés" de notre société des "Lumières" sont au moins aussi intolérants que les croyants des temps passés et des civilisations lointaines. Leur doctrine proclame que tout ce qui a vécu, pensé, agi, avant "les Lumières" est obsolète. Eux seuls, sont l'incarnation de la Raison éclairant le Monde. Ils sont la nouvelle "Révélation". Tous les autres avant, et tous les contemporains égarés, qui ne pensent pas selon leurs schémas, sont dans l'Erreur. Et c'est définitif, car bien sûr ils sont la Modernité pour Mille ans, et même bien plus, pour l'Eternité. Quant on est les "Lumières" c'est pour plus longtemps que la vie même ! C'est exactement ce que signifie la Statue de la Liberté, ouvrage maçonnique, à l'entrée du port de New York. Tout discours qui tend à montrer que leur doctrine ne fait que systématiser des vérités très contingentes et très fragiles, de simples hypothèses, des points de vue très relatifs sur le monde, est inacceptable. Les Idéologues occidentaux ne peuvent admettre qu'ils ne sont que les serviteurs d' une vision du monde parmi d'autres possibles, tout aussi valables ou même plus. C'est ainsi que l'on aboutit à l'Art Contemporain Officiel : l'art des Guidestones et de la Corporatocratie . Un art qui se dit démocratique et universaliste mais qui n'est en définitive qu'un art d'état, anti-national, anti-populaire, néocolonialiste qui avance masqué derrière de grandes idées proclamées qui sont seulement les superstitions des temps contemporains.

 

L'histoire de l'art européen contient un enseignement qui tient en un constat de fait et un jugement :

1° De - 500 à + 1950 l'art européen en peinture et en sculpture s'est voulu Beau et dans son ensemble a été beau.

2° A partir de la deuxième moitié du 20è siècle l'art européen, devenu l'art occidental, l'art officiel, celui des élites idéologiques et politiques, a rejeté la finalité du Beau. L'Art Contemporain officiel est Laid. Une anti esthétique, revendiquée comme telle.

Ce sont des faits. Il est possible de les nier, et de construire un "réel idéologique", une réalité inventée, c'est à dire fabriquée pour être conforme aux croyances actuelles. Mais ce sont des faits quand même.

3° l'Art Contemporain Officiel, laid, est un signe de décadence, de destruction, de mort. Car tout est lié, le Beau, le Bien, le Vrai. C'est un jugement, une opinion, qu'il est possible de ne pas partager

  

ART, MIRROR OF THE VALUES OF A SOCIETY (2)

 

The history of European painting shows a truth: Art is fundamentally ideological and political. Art is ideological ie it is the reflection, the expression, of the value system which shapes a society at a given time. Art is political because this system of values is always imposed by the ruling powers of the time. The governing powers do not necessarily overlap with the political leaders in power. These are Influences that often extend beyond the narrow circle of manifest leaders, the politicians.

The art of all times and in all societies is a means for the elites to impose a (sacred) religion or an ideology (secular, secular). In all civilizations the art of each era is understood through the ideological filter that inspires the elites of this civilization at that time. Art is therefore an interesting revealer of the philosophical and moral thought that inspires the elites of a given society in a given time. These religions or ideologies can differ a lot as to the benefit that peoples will or will not withdraw. Some are conducive to the establishment of long-term civilizations (ancient Egypt, Greek-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam ...) others are more or less rapidly mortal (Aztec and Inca religions, Communism, national Socialism).

Indeed, certain ideologies, sacred or secular, conceived by the elites, have been, more or less short term, accepted and totally shared by the peoples who adhered to it without reluctance. They can then impose themselves completely without hurting the feelings and freedoms of the people, or at least a largely significant majority, even unanimity within their society for a long period of time.

Other ideologies, on the other hand, have been imposed by the elites, but did not generate the membership unanimous or majority of peoples that came into resistance, passive or active with more or less success after a shorter or longer period.

It is possible to encounter a different situation in the history of the world: those of ideologies, sacred or secular, often of foreign origin which have been adopted, or would have been adopted by peoples, but were fought by the elites ideological and political of the country.

  

The Egyptian paint allows to see the beliefs of the people in his time. It clearly shows the reflection of a well-balanced society, also shared a love of everyday life, that of the people and the elite, and the Hopes for the afterlife. Expectations that, contrary to what was written, were not reserved for the Pharaoh. We read the existence of a relatively free society, where women are very present, equal to men in all classes of society. Without going into details, the art of the civilizations of Mesopotamia, at the same time, does not have the same characteristics.

 

The art of the Chinese literati is a reflection of the Taoist and Confucian concepts of the world. It is significant that in immense landscapes, the human is always presented as an creature, acting, thinking, but almost insignificant. A Being among the ten thousand Beings. The first commandment is not to disturb the harmony of the universe. It is also clear that this art does not reflect the values of Chinese society as a whole, but a small minority.

 

Hindu Art expresses the extraordinary complexity, the depth of philosophical and religious questions that characterize Indian civilization. It is clear that one of the essential ideas of Hindu spirituality is that the truth has multiple faces, and even apparently opposite ones. The profusion of Gods, which makes certain simple minds believe that religious Hinduism is a polytheism, is the symbol of this multiplicity of aspects of truth. Man holds an eminent place in the universe, but he remains a creature among others, in a complex universe that is far beyond him, both in time and space.

 

Art, the painting in particular, shows that during Thousand Five Hundred Years (500-1500) Europe has built his society on the foundations of spirituality and morality Catholic and Orthodox. 1500 years this is roots. These roots can be completely forgotten, if the elite wants. And she wants. In the Middle East absolutely nothing has remained, after the Muslim invasions, of domination of the Greco-Roman civilization, although it had lasted, too, over a thousand years. But deep roots in the Middle East, were Semitic. They where not Indo-European. Greece and Rome were only a superficial graft. The "masters of the Western world" have decided, since the "Enlightenment", that they would make a clean sweep of the catholic and orthodox past of Europe, and that the values that these religions represent would be abolished. Since the second world war they are succeeding fully. Until then the European peoples, especially in the south, had resisted. But the rolling mill of public education and media acts effectively. In such a way that these religions will soon be no more lived by the European populations than the ancient Egyptian religion in modern Egypt.

 

The painting of the Netherlands Northern, Protestant, reveals the existence of a very clear rupture, and very fast, within one or two generation, of the values that animate a part of European society.

On the one hand it is the disappearance of references to ancient Greek and Roman. Revenge of northern Europe on the South is not only economic, it is cultural.

On the other hand it is the virtual disappearance of religious themes. This is the birth of a painting, secular, materialist, whose themes are: landscape, customs of social life, still life, portrait. The painting of the Dutch Golden Age is the birth of painting which will be called "Modern Art".

 

Since 1815, when peace returned to Europe, and until about 1950, in large and wide dates, it is the period of Modern Art. Since the romantic era, the painting explodes in a multitude of currents, representative of worldviews and values, extremely diverse. Overall, and despite the very violent conflicts, Europe is not subject to a single ideology. The painting shows the diversity of inspiration. From romanticism to classicism, from realism to expressionism, from symbolism to surrealism, from raphaélisme to fauvisme, from academic art to impressionism, from figurative to abstract, it is an explosion of diversity, research and innovations.

But the European past is not rejected, neither morally or culturally or technically. The architecture also shows very well this diversity: it is both the time of the Eiffel Tower, and times of all historicist architectures: Greek Revival, neo-Roman, neo-Byzantine, Romanesque, neo-Gothic, neo-Baroque.

It is especially a time of great artistic freedom: art is invented at the base as at the top of the social pyramid. The elite is no longer the only inspirer of European aesthetics. Why ? Because the European elites are ideologically divided. This division of the elites is going to be the cause of the death of the peoples on the battlefields. But this division of the elites will also be at the origin of the diversity of Modern Art.

A swan song?

 

After 1950 European painting changed: This can be seen in our museums of Contemporary Art.

The Western elites have decided a total reversal of the values that have governed European art for 3000 years and imposed the idea that the art of painting and sculpture need not necessarily be beautiful. Beauty was, according to the new Influents, an outdated concept. In reality it is the very notion of an art that would be a sharing of ideas and common emotions between elites and peoples that is denied with Contemporary Art (Modern Art II according to the latest trends). This "Art" was born in the United States in the 1920s, from European and even French ideas (Duchamp), and was imposed in Europe after the Second World War. The ugly and absurd art, provocative until abjection , falsely revolutionary, but totally academic art is an imposed art because politically and ideologically compliant.

Various questions inevitably arise:

What values of civilization reflects this contemporary painting ?

What loyalties, and what hopes?

What beauty?

What meanings, metaphysical or physical, symbolic or realistic?

What beliefs?

What a life for today or tomorrow?

Except the public of the school and their teachers, public forced to be there, the contemporary art museums of the West are empty. The aesthetic judgment is established by the conjunction of the opinion of peoples and elites at a given period but also over the centuries.

Since 1950s the official Contemporary Art of museums has had time to prove itself in the present: the Western peoples are turning away en masse (70% in France in the 2000s). We will see what will be the judgment of the future about a painting that expressly claims the ugly and the absurd as a theme of aesthetic expression. It is possible to conduct a policy or to do business against the people, but one does not make an enduring art against the peoples. And we can look forward to the verdict of history on "contemporary art". History has not yet pronounced on this subject, it is too early, but we begin to read in French the opinions of art specialists who deviate from the praise ideologically and economically obliged, such as the book by Chrstine Sourgins "The Mirages of Contemporary Art: A Short History of Financial Art" at the 2005 and 2018 Round Table editions, or like Kerros' Aude's books "L'Art caché, les dissidents de contemporary art "Eyrolles 2007 and 2013 and" The imposture of Contemporary Art, a financial utopia "Eyrolles 2016. In English the article" How Modern Art Serves the Rich "by Rachel Wetzler, in the newspaper "Republic" of February 26 , 2018 is also very interesting.

  

The assertion that the art of an era is controlled by the active beliefs in its time is an obvious one for everyone, when one speaks of Egyptian art, Greek art or the art of medieval Europe. No protest rises. It is unanimously accepted that the art of medieval Europe is a reflection of the values of the Catholic religion, which has conditioned all representations, especially in painting. The observation has no interest, it pushes doors open.

On the other hand, as soon as we apply this key to the reading and understanding of art, to the Europe of the Reformation, then to Modern art, and even more to the Contemporary Art of the West, appear strong reservations, reticence, circumspection, sulkiness.

There is no more evidence, but supposedly full of problems. The same key, which was recognized as operative, but banal, insignificant, without much interest, for the times of the distant past, is felt as controversial, aggressive, outrageous when used for current or near times.

Why?

A key that opens the doors to a simple but effective understanding of the art of a civilization that flourished 2500 years before our era, and still of civilizations that lasted from five centuries before our era to five centuries later , which still works during more than 1000 years for all of Europe, from 500 to 1500, must also be effective from the 17th century to the 21st century.

She is simple and always effective, but it does not please anymore. This key has become disturbing. We do not want to use it anymore.

This key is accepted for the distant past, and foreign civilizations, but not for the recent past and our present society.

The man of all times has never liked being shown that he lives according to beliefs, often respectable, often very effective socially and politically, but which are contingent, which are only very relative truths or even only common mistakes, shared superstitions.

Men accept that they are told that their distant ancestors or neighbors live or have lived conditioned by a secular religion or ideology. But they do not accept at all to apply to themselves and in their time this key of reading.

Man never liked that he was shown that his dreams of the world, his truths, absolute and incontestable, exist only for him, and only for his time. That these truths do not exist at all, or little, or less, or very differently, in other places and in other times.

One of the great principles of all beliefs, sacred or profane, principle of maximum intolerance, rarely effectively fought, which is not surrealistic, but which is on the contrary quite realistic, is this: "Even if it is is true, it's false "and its corollary" Even if it's false, it's true ". It's wrong because it's not consistent with what we believe at some point in history . And the false proved, established, is still true for the same reason of conformity to the reigning ideology.

The blindness of contemporaries with regard to active ideologies in their own time is an observation that can be made every day. In a report on a big television channel about China today, the commentator said with the greatest seriousness in the world "The Little Red Book has not got the better of superstitions - the old beliefs have not disappeared completely" . As if the Little Red Book, and Marxism, had not been one of the greatest superstitions of all time, and as if our current ideas about the world were not themselves beliefs: "The lights" are a accumulation of superstitions (Freedom, Equality, Fraternity, Reason, Revolution, Progress, Happiness, Democracy, Universal Republic ...), but they are currently active, they are not old, so they are "true". The superstitions that man believes in are obviously not superstitions.

This is not a popular reaction that would characterize only the illiterate. Educated people, intellectuals and ideologues are particularly subject to it. They have developed a vision of the world and they subscribe to it all the more because they invented it and it serves their interests. They do not want to admit that their conceptions of the world are relative, that it is a matter of point of view. And that it is possible to change. The immediate response is anathema, exclusion, crucifixion or pyre. Accusations for witchcraft, blasphemy, reaction, racism,conspirationnism etc ... work in exactly the same way at all times of history. The scientific spirit that the West boasts of being the land of origin, no doubt with reason, has absolutely no influence in this field.

The "Enlightened" of our "Enlightenment" society are at least as intolerant as the believers of past times and distant civilizations. Their doctrine proclaims that everything that has lived, thought, acted before the "Enlightenment" is obsolete. They alone are the incarnation of Reason enlightening the world. They are the new "Revelation". All the others before, and all the misguided contemporaries, who do not think according to their schemas, are in the error. And it is definitive, because of course they are Modernity during even more than a thousand years, and even more, for Eternity. The "Lights" it is for longer than life itself! That's exactly what the Statue of Liberty, Masonic work, means at the entrance to New York Harbor. Any speech that tends to show that their doctrine only systematizes very contingent and very fragile truths, simple hypotheses, very relative points of view on the world, is unacceptable. Western ideologues can not admit that they are but the servants of a vision of the world among others possible, just as valid or even more. This is why Contemporary Art (AC) is ugly, absurd and sacred. This is how we end up with the Official Contemporary Art: the art of the Guidestones and of the Corporatocracy. An art that is said himself to be democratic and universalist but which is ultimately a state art, anti-national, anti-popular, neocolonialist who advances masked behind large proclaimed ideas that are only the superstitions of contemporary times.

 

The history of European art contains a teaching that is based on a statement of fact and judgment:

1 ° From - 500 to + 1950 European art in painting and sculpture wanted to be beauitful, and as a whole was beautiful.

2 ° From the second half of the 20th century, European art, now Western art, the official art, that of ideological and political elites, rejected the finality of the beautiful. Official Contemporary Art is Ugly.

An anti aesthetic, claimed as such.

These are facts. It is possible to deny them, and to build an "ideological real", an invented reality, that is to say manufactured to conform to current beliefs. But these are facts anyway.

3 ° Official Contemporary Art, ugly, is a sign of decadence, destruction, death. Because everything is linked, the beautiful, the good, the true. It is a judgment, an opinion, that it is possible not to share.

   

I predict this photo will be almost as popular as my photo of a safe at the Boston Public Library. Jumeirah Essex House, New York City.

🗻

 

theoutline.com/post/1485/how-the-aztecs-predicted-the-apo...

 

“But neoliberalism really does work, it just doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. It might not be any good for the population at large, but it has facilitated a massive upward redistribution of wealth; the poor are scrubbed clean of everything, and the rich drink it up. Class power creates both the excess of cruelty and the mythic ideology to justify it. Marxist writers like Eric Wolf have tried to find something similar operating among the Aztecs: Human sacrifice cemented the rule of the aristocratic elites — they were believed to literally gain their powers through eating the sacrificial victims — while keeping the underclasses in line and the conquered peoples in terror. But all contemporaneous societies were class-based and repressive; it doesn’t begin to explain the prescient nihilism of their theology. Something else might.

 

The Roman Empire could never defeat their eternal enemy in Persia, and the dynastic Egyptians were periodically overwhelmed by Semitic tribes to the north, but until the day the Spanish arrived the Aztec monarchs were presumptive kings of absolutely everything under the sun. The only really comparable situation is the one we live under now — the unlimited empire of liberal capitalism, a scurrying hive of private interests held together under an American military power without horizon. We have our own flower wars. The United States and Russia are fighting each other in Syria — never directly, but through their proxies, so that only Syrians suffer, just as they did in Afghanistan, and Latin America, and Vietnam, and Korea. Wars, like Reagan’s attack on Granada or Trump’s on a Syrian airbase, are fought for public consumption. There is a pathology of the end of the world: dominance, ritualization, reification, and massacre.

 

The Aztecs were not capitalists, but their economy has some spooky correspondences with ours. While they had a centralized state, there was also an emerging free market in sacrifices, and a significant degree of social mobility: every Aztec subject was trained for war, and you could rise through society by bringing in captives for slaughter. The Oxford historian Alan Knight describes it as “a gigantic ‘potlatch state,’ a state predicated on the collection, redistribution and conspicuous consumption of a vast quantity of diverse goods. Sacrifice represented a hypertrophied form of potlatch, with humans playing the part elsewhere reserved for pigs.” The potlatch is a custom practiced by indigenous peoples further up in the Pacific Northwest, in which indigenous Americans ceremonially exchange and then spectacularly destroyed vast quantities of goods — blankets, canoes, skins, but most of all food — in a show of wealth and plenitude. In the sophisticated class society of the Aztecs, the grand triumphant waste was in human lives.

 

We are, after all, assembled from the bones of four dead universes. We were dead to begin with. Perched on the end of history, the Aztecs beheld a dead reality in which life becomes lifeless, to be circulated and exchanged. Four-and-a-half centuries later, Marx saw the same processes in capitalism. He describes it in Wage Labor and Capital: “The putting of labour-power into action — i.e., work — is the active expression of the labourer's own life. And this life activity he sells to another person [...] He does not count the labour itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life.” (Emphasis mine.) Workers are cut off from their own labour and from themselves by a production process in which they are not ends but means, part of a giant machinery that exists to satisfy the demands not of human life but of “dead labor,” capital. From his 1844 Manuscripts: “It estranges from man his own body, as well as external nature and his spiritual aspect, his human aspect.” His labour-power becomes a commodity; something to be bought and sold in quantifiable amounts, something inert. The worker under capitalism, like the captive walking up the temple steps, is consecrated to death.

 

We exist in that rubble. The Aztec Empire conquered its world, strip-mined its future, and turned human populations into fungible objects. Contemporary society too has nowhere else to go: capital has saturated the earth, and outer space is a void. Our world, with the monstrous totality of its stability and order, is relentlessly producing its own destruction. In fantasies of black holes and the wrath of God; in the actuality of an atmosphere flooded with carbon dioxide and a biosphere denuded of all life. We missed the apocalypse while we were waiting for it to take place. Baudrillard writes: “Everything has already become nuclear, faraway, vaporized. The explosion has already occurred.” Capitalism built a corpse-world. Its sun keeps rising every morning, whatever we do, but it’s growing hotter in the sky; poisoning the seas, frizzling farmlands to desert, carrying out Tezcatlipoca’s last act of revenge.” ―Sam Kriss

One sunny day and another predicted tomorrow - yippee!

I was impressed with the words that were suggested.

Time and Space Rhythms of Life by Andrew Rogers

 

The creation of the ‘Time and Space’ land art park in Cappadocia Turkey by Andrew Rogers over a period of four years.

 

Rhythms of Life is located in Cappadocia, near the World Heritage-listed rock formations and cave dwellings. The completion of Rhythms of Life was accompanied by freezing temperatures and snow.

 

A Day on Earth, The Gift, Grind, Listen, Time and Space, Predicting the Past, Rhythms of Life, Sentinels, Siren, Strength, Sustanence, Yesterday Today Tomorrow, Presence

As predicted, the rain is back! So, you guessed it, only the flies are out in force again! This one was kind enough to pose on a geranium petal for me for today's project 365 theme shot!

 

If anyone is using 500px, I've setup an account here! :)

 

~FlickrIT~ | ~Lightbox~

Many predicted that TE935-941 would be withdrawn last weekend after the loss of the 125 freed up VWH hybrids. However this hasn’t happened and all seven were at work today.

TE940 took me to ‘Lee Valley Leisure Park’ for a Costa at the nearby Odeon. 31.1.22.

Not as much as they predicted, but more than enough!

New York City, NY '23

Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Reception Hall, Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, Boscoreale, c. 50-40 BC

One can consider the presentation of this spectacular hardtop coupe as an ultimate afford to gain attention of the audience to persuade them for buying a Packard. The financial position of Packard was terrible in 1956. But it wasn't much of a help.

Richard 'Dick' Teague (Los Angeles, 1923-1991) designed the Predictor. It was built at Carrozzeria Ghia, Torino in Italy on a Clipper platform. In ninety days the Italians managed to get this project ready, just in time for the Chicago Car Show.

 

The Predictor had all kinds of new automotive features, like tilting headlights, roof doors rolled back when opening the door, lowering back window, swiveling seats, dashboard design which followed the hood profile, a power operated trunk lid, and a wraparound windshield that curved into the roof.

Many car brands copied several novelties: the grille at the 1958 Edsel, the roof line at the 1958 Lincoln Premier, the rear bumper at the 1958 Oldsmobile, opera windows or portholes in the rear pillar at the 1957 Thunderbird, and the headlights at the 1962 Corvette.

 

Only one Predictor was made. It still exists and is on display at the Studebaker National Museum, South Bend, Indiana (see photo).

 

6128 cc V8 engine.

Production Packard Predictor: 1956.

 

Image source:

Video still from a movie of a visit to the Studebaker National Museum, South Bend, Indiana, by OldModelTGuy.

Seen on YouTube.

 

Halfweg, July 16, 2024.

 

© 2024 Sander Toonen Halfweg | All Rights Reserved

Lorenzo Monaco. (Piero di Giovanni) 1370-1425. Florence.

Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers.

Prédelle Arrestation du Christ, Christ dévêtu.

Christ in the Garden of Olives.

Prediction Arrest of Christ, Christ undressed.

Florence. Galleria dell' Accademia.

 

LA PEINTURE EUROPÉENNE ET LE DIALOGUE SOCIAL

  

"Il est impossible de rien comprendre à l'art médiéval si l’on ne comprend pas quel espace de liberté y est consenti à l’artiste. L’art médiéval offre l’évidence d’un plaisir des formes qui est commun aux artistes et à leur public et qui ne se confond pas avec l’inspiration religieuse."

ANDRE CHASTEL. L’Art Français Flammarion 1993

  

L'art, la peinture en particulier, mais aussi la sculpture, est commandé par les idéologies qui dominent son époque, et décidé par les élites idéologiques et politiques des sociétés. Il est possible de tenter une analyse de l'histoire de la peinture européenne sous un angle un peu différent du fondement idéologique de l'art, bien que très lié à lui : celui du dialogue inter-social. C'est un autre chapitre de "l'art miroir des valeurs d'une société".

 

1° Dès l'époque romane la peinture européenne, qui commence par la fresque et la mosaïque, se poursuit par les enluminures (les livres de piété...), puis les vitraux et enfin plus tardivement les tableaux de chevalet, présente, pendant environ 1000 ans (500-1500 en dates grosses) des caractéristiques communes intéressantes.

- C'est un art dont le sens est univoque, idéologiquement commandé par la doctrine de l’Église catholique à l'ouest, l'église orthodoxe à l'est dans l'Europe slave.

- C'est un art pleinement partagé, totalement inter-social : il s'adresse à toutes les couches de la population. Les élites, idéologiques et politiques, religieuses et aristocratiques, s'entendent pour promouvoir un art qui est compris par toutes les classes sociales. Depuis elles mêmes jusqu'aux petites gens, la paysannerie, en passant par la bourgeoisie moyenne ou petite et l'artisanat. Pendant toute la période gothique et romane, qu'une historiographie orientée appelle "le Moyen Age", tout l'art des églises, partout en Europe, du moindre village aux plus grandes villes, pendant un millénaire, part du haut de l'échelle sociale et se destine aux peuples, y compris et même surtout aux illettrés.

 

2° A la "Renaissance" l'élite sociale, aussi bien celle profane que celle religieuse, toute l'aristocratie et la très haute bourgeoisie qui a conquis sa place et s'est assimilée à l'aristocratie, sous l'influence des idées Humanistes, font naître, à côté de l'art médiéval sacré, un art nouveau. Cet art, profane, s'inspire des thèmes empruntés à l'histoire de l'antiquité européenne et à la mythologie gréco-romaine. C'est incontestablement un art réservé à l'élite cultivée. Mais la même élite continue de commanditer et de participer à l' art religieux inter-social, pluri-social, qui continue de s'adresser à tout le peuple, du bas en haut de l'échelle sociale, élites comprises. Il n'y a pas affrontement entre ces deux domaines de la peinture européenne qui vont continuer à vivre en parallèle et en bonne intelligence. En effet la Renaissance n'est pas, contrairement à ce que l'on écrit souvent, une rupture idéologique dans la société européenne. Le dialogue inter-social continue comme auparavant sur les mêmes thèmes religieux.

 

3° "La Réforme" va mettre en place, dans les seuls Pays Bas du nord, une évolution remarquable. Contrairement à la Renaissance, sur le plan idéologique la Réforme est très clairement une rupture par rapport à la société antérieure. Une scission qui va provoquer une orientation profane, laïque et matérialiste des thèmes de la peinture.

Au plan social c'est la naissance et le triomphe de la peinture bourgeoise des classes moyennes.

Avant la Réforme, et après la Réforme, dans toute l'Europe hors des Pays Bas, la haute bourgeoisie européenne s'est totalement assimilée à l'aristocratie, et ses goûts artistiques ne s'en distinguent pas : elle préfère "le grand art", outre bien sûr les portraits.

Après la Réforme, mais aux Pays Bas uniquement, c'est le triomphe d'une peinture laïque mais surtout très réaliste, très proche de la vie quotidienne du petit peuple. C'est bien sûr la bourgeoisie néerlandaise dans son ensemble qui est l'élément catalyseur de cet art, qui sponsorise et fait vivre les peintres. Mais les thèmes de cette peinture peuvent être très populaires. Le paysan n'accroche pas de tableaux dans sa chaumière, mais il est souvent, ainsi que les animaux de la ferme, le sujet de la peinture des Pays Bas. Il est possible dès lors de parler d'un "art de la classe moyenne" car le marché de cet art est toute la classe moyenne des Pays Bas. Même si cet art se décide, comme toujours, tout en haut d'une société dirigée par une très haute bourgeoisie et quelques aristocrates.

Cet art caractéristique des Pays Bas du 17è siècle ne se répand pas ailleurs dans l' Europe restée catholique (Allemagne, Autriche, Italie, Espagne) ou de manière tout à fait marginale. Pendant tout le 17è et le 18è siècle l'art de la peinture de ces pays continue sur la lancée de la Renaissance : il reste divisé en deux domaines distincts, mais non affrontés, complémentaires :

- L'art religieux à destination des peuples, toujours dirigé par l’Église catholique, toujours commandé par une volonté de dialogue social, et par le souci constant de s'adresser à toutes les couches de la population européenne y compris les analphabètes. Depuis la haute aristocratie et la haute bourgeoisie jusqu'à la paysannerie, selon la destination du tableau, l'importance des églises ou le particularisme des demeures privées.

- "Le Grand Art" dont les thèmes sont à la fois religieux, historiques et mythologiques, commandité par les Rois, les Princes et la Haute Église. Un art destiné aux Palais des Rois, aux Hôtels de l'Aristocratie et de la Haute Bourgeoisie commerçante et financière, aux églises d'importance, et aux édifices publics.

Une précision s'impose si on veut différencier les périodes de l'art médiéval et de l'art postérieur à la Renaissance, de la situation contemporaine : il n'existe pas d'art d'état. Même en France, nation pourtant très centralisée, sous le règne de Louis XIV. Les décideurs, les sponsors sont multiples. Les rois, en France ou dans toute l'Europe, ne sont pas l’État. Leur influence dans les provinces est faible. Il existe un art de la Cour, mais les aristocraties, la grande et la moyenne bourgeoisie, la haute église, les couvents, les églises régionales et rurales, forment un monde de commanditaires très divers. Les valeurs sociales, morales, spirituelles, esthétiques de cette société sont très unifiées, mais il n'existe pas à ces époques d'art officiel. Il n'existe pas alors d'art d'état, l'art d'un parti unique, officiel et reconnu comme sous les régimes communistes, ou officieux et dissimulé comme actuellement dans l'Occident capitaliste. Les circuits de décision et de création de l'art à l'époque médiévale, comme après la Renaissance dans toute l'Europe, sont très divers et très décentralisés. C'est ce qui explique que malgré l'existence en Europe de l'Ouest d'une idéologie unique, la religion catholique, la société n'est pas totalitaire. Cette société politiquement décentralisée permet à un art authentique de s'épanouir en créant les conditions d'une réelle liberté esthétique et en tenant un discours qui s'adresse à toute la population du haut vers le bas de l'échelle sociale. Il n'y a pas d'art séparé à destination de telle ou telle catégorie sociale. La situation est un peu différente dans l'Europe slave et orthodoxe, pour des raisons politiques et culturelles.

 

4° Une fois mis fin aux guerres imposées par la Révolution et l'Empire, l'Europe va pouvoir retrouver la paix, et se consacrer à nouveau à son développement scientifique, technique et économique interrompu pendant un quart de siècle par les ambitions françaises.

A partir de 1820 et jusqu'en 1950, toujours selon des datations approchantes, c'est la période de l'Art Moderne. Une période extraordinairement plurielle au plan idéologique. On constate un net effacement de la religion catholique, mais les "Lumières" n'ont pas encore triomphé absolument et aucune idéologie sacrée ou profane ne domine totalement la société européenne. C'est ce qui explique la grande diversité des thèmes et la liberté de création dont jouissent les artistes. Sauf les deux exceptions communiste et nazie mais qui restent circonscrites dans le temps et dans l'espace.

Au plan social on peut dire que c'est la victoire progressive de l'art bourgeois compris comme un art des classes moyennes. Bref, c'est l'art des Pays Bas du 17è siècle qui s'installe dans toute l'Europe avec toutefois une résistance un petit peu plus évidente de la peinture religieuse, qui n'est cependant plus commanditée exclusivement par l’Église.

La Grande Peinture, "le Grand Art", c'est l’école Académique en France qui le perpétue. Il va résister très peu de temps. Dès les Impressionnistes, la peinture de style et de thème classique doit s'effacer, non pas disparaître, mais accepter de laisser vivre la peinture bourgeoise des paysages ordinaires, des mœurs de la vie quotidienne, des nature-mortes. Une peinture en outre d'un style très éloigné du grand classicisme.

L'Art de la période Moderne c'est un art de la peinture très divers, représenté par de multiples écoles, qui réduit à peu de chose les grands sujets religieux, historiques ou mythologiques et s'adresse en fait à toutes les classes du bas en haut de la hiérarchie sociale. L'art abstrait, une nouveauté qui apparaît dans les années 1900 s'adresse plus spécifiquement aux intellectuels, mais toujours de toutes les classes de la société. On peut donc bien parler d'un art bourgeois des classes moyennes, mais qui n'est aucunement exclusif, totalitaire, qui laisse vivre le Grand Art notamment dans l'art décoratif monumental, et qui laisse se développer sur ses marges l'aventure de l'art abstrait. Bref la période de l'Art Moderne est un temps de dialogue et d'art partagé entre les différentes couches de la société, mais sans aucun doute avec plus de diversité thématique et stylistique que dans les temps plus anciens, entre 500 et 1800.

Les valeurs morales et esthétiques de la société européenne, ne sont plus aussi unifiées qu'aux siècles précédents, elles se sont diversifiées. Dans les parties de l'Europe où aucune idéologie n'a encore triomphé, malgré la centralisation étatique croissante, une grande liberté de création artistique est possible. En dehors bien sûr des régimes totalitaires de la Russie communiste et de l'Allemagne nationale-socialiste, la période de l'Art Moderne ne connaît pas non plus d'art officiel, d'art d'état.

 

5° A partir des années 1950 et suivantes s'impose en Europe l'Art Contemporain. Il est inspiré par des avant-gardes européennes et souvent parisiennes, mais est en provenance de New York.

La caractéristique de cet "Art" est qu'il se veut radicalement révolutionnaire, absolument novateur, qu'il entend faire table rase de toute l'esthétique du passé européen. A commencer par le rejet du Beau comme but de l'art. Le Nouveau Monde des Amériques du Nord, celui des USA, entend s'opposer à l'Ancien Monde, Européen, et s'imposer à lui. Le Nouveau Monde a donc systématisé cette idée "géniale", esquissée en Europe, à Paris : le Beau n'est plus un critère de l'art. Quant au Sens, il est possible de l'inventer, de lui faire dire ce que l'on veut. Et de vendre ce petit montage nouveau avec beaucoup de profit.

A partir de la Fontaine-Urinoir de Marcel Duchamp le laid est promu à la dignité de concept créateur, d' idée fondatrice, inséparable du nouvel Art Conceptuel, à égalité avec quelques autres obsessions : le Nouveau, l'Absurde, la Provocation et la Rentabilité.

L'artiste contemporain officiel doit proposer froidement, avec détermination les objets les plus hétéroclites : sièges et tables bancales, cartons, toutes les brosses, à dent, à ongles, à cils, à cheveux, à vêtements, des lunettes, des chaussures, balais brosse et serpillières, cintres, vêtements, chiffons entassés, boites ouvertes ou fermées, machineries cassées ou concassées, tubulures, poutrelles rouillées, tordues, cassées, poutres de ciment, moellons, parpaings, tuiles, briques entières ou pulvérisées, tubes de néon, tas de gravats ou de charbon, sacs de cailloux, toutes les sortes de tuyaux: fer, ciment, plastiques, tous les tissus en vrac, du caoutchouc, des seaux, brocs, pots, un vieux téléphone, des machines à écrire, à laver, un évier... et bien sûr toujours des carrés ou rectangles blanc, jaune, noir, rouge et des taches ou des lignes à l'infini. ...et proclamer haut et fort, avec une grande assurance, le plus de culot possible même, que c'est de "l'art" et surtout de l'art anti-bourgeois. Car bien sûr cette élite éclairée et argentée qui commandite le non-art contemporain se proclame et s'affiche révolutionnaire. Son art est conçu pour déranger les peuples, mais c'est pour leur bien, donc c'est révolutionnaire.

Le mépris des classes moyennes, le mépris des peuples, est devenue une caractéristique de l'art de l'élite éclairée de l'Occident. C'est l'art des "Lumières" idéologiquement monolithique, mondialiste, qui triomphe au niveau de l'art officiel c'est à dire celui étatique, des grands ensembles et des Organisations Internationales, et même des Grandes Fondations Internationales privées. Ainsi qu'au niveau de la Finance Internationale.

Cet art officiel, d'état ou privé, n'est plus en Occident un outil de dialogue inter-social, il s'enferme dans un discours ésotérique, s'impose dans des musées construits exprès pour lui, et se fabrique un marché particulier. L'art Contemporain, Conceptuel est devenu une Réserve pour Eclairés et Riches. Un art réservé à l'Oeil qui illumine, de tout en haut, et à ses Gardiens du Temple des niveaux supérieurs, la Pyramide sociale. La Pyramide qui figure sur le billet de un dollar et dans la cour du Louvre à Paris. Et dont le programme d'extermination et de contrôle absolu des peuples, anti-humaniste, est inscrit sur le monument appelé les Georgia Guidestones (USA). Bien sûr au nom de la Raison Eclairée, celle des "Lumières".

 

6° A d'autres niveaux de la société occidentale, au niveau tout à fait moyen de la Pyramide, au niveau de la bourgeoisie ordinaire et des classes moyennes, au niveau local et régional des villes, s'est maintenu vivant un art privé, commercial, qui survit en dehors du catéchisme de l'art officiel, mais aussi de ses sources de financement.

D'autre part, parti aussi de New York, mais vraiment originaire du Nouveau Monde, l'art des rues, à l'origine rebelle et sauvage, se développe un peu plus tardivement, puis s'impose en Europe à partir des années 2000-2010, jusqu'à devenir un art toléré, semi-organisé, puis adopté et sponsorisé. Le secteur public et celui privé sont associés dans son succès. Mais cet art est toujours à des niveaux de décision locale, et bien sûr essentiellement citadin, comme toute la société occidentale.

 

L'art privé commercial et l'art des rues sont deux domaines de la peinture occidentale qui pratiquent le dialogue inter-social, à l'intérieur de toutes les classes moyennes, et même en direction des classes les plus défavorisées. On peut penser que le développement de l'art des rues pourrait permettre de limiter les graffitis vandales imposés par quelques asociaux, qui malheureusement ont défiguré beaucoup de nos villes. Après seulement on pourra peut être s'occuper de construire une esthétique pour les exclus de la société. Encore qu'il est très douteux que les exclus aient du temps à consacrer à l'esthétique, et que cette question est surtout un faux problème agité par des intellectuels-idéologues, très semblables à ceux qui nous ont fabriqué l'art contemporain.

 

Mais il existe d'autre domaines où le Beau et le Sens persistent. La photographie contemporaine, par exemple sur Flickr, montre avec évidence que c'est le beau et le sens qui rassemblent et font dialoguer les peuples de la Terre. Il est vrai qu'il n'y a pas que de bons photographes et que des esthètes sur Flickr, mais ce qui émerge, ce qui retient finalement l'attention, en moyenne, c'est à dire dans "la classe bourgeoise moyenne", c'est la qualité d'une production artistique, considérable en nombre, attachée à la beauté et au sens partagé. Tout un monde qui parle un langage commun. Cet art populaire photographique est un rayon d'espoir quant on sort d'un musée d'art contemporain: une fraternité et une liberté réelles, authentiques, une vraie universalité esthétique, dans le respect des différences individuelles et culturelles. Un Partage, pas une Exclusion.

Il reste cependant que ce qui fait gravement question, c'est la naissance en Occident, au niveau des élites, durant la seconde partie du 20è siècle, d'un art (peinture-sculpture) très puissant, très protégé, très financé, qui exclut non seulement les niveaux inférieurs de la société, mais toute la classe moyenne occidentale. C'est une première dans l'histoire de l'art européen.

Mais la nouveauté est-elle toujours un progrès ?

Ou l'Art Contemporain Officiel serait-il une laide grimace et une impasse absurde tout en haut de l'arbre de l'évolution humaine ? Une image prémonitoire de l'avenir des hommes ?

 

EUROPEAN PAINTING AND SOCIAL DIALOGUE

 

"It is impossible to understand anything about medieval art if we do not understand what space of freedom is granted to the artist. Medieval art offers evidence of a pleasure of form that is common to artists and their audiences and not confused with religious inspiration."

ANDRE CHASTEL. French Art Flammarion 1993

 

Art, painting in particular, but also sculpture, is controlled by the ideologies that dominate its time, and decided by the ideological and political elites of societies. It is possible to attempt an analysis of the history of European painting from a slightly different angle from the ideological foundation of art, although closely linked to it: that of inter-social dialogue. This is another chapter of "art, mirror of the values of a society".

1 ° From the Romanesque period European painting, which begins with the fresco and the mosaic, continues with the illuminations (the books of piety ...), then the stained glass windows and finally later the easel paintings, present, during about 1000 years (500-1500 in big dates) interesting common features.

- It is an art whose meaning is univocal, ideologically controlled by the doctrine of the Catholic Church in the West, the Orthodox Church in the East, in Slavic Europe.

- It is a fully shared art, totally inter-social: it is addressed to all layers of the population. The elites, ideological and political, religious and aristocratic, agree to promote an art that is addressed to all social classes. From themselves to the little people, the peasantry, through the middle or small bourgeoisie and crafts. Throughout the Gothic and Romanesque period, which an oriented historiography calls "the Middle Ages", all the art of churches, everywhere in Europe, from the smallest village to the largest cities, for a millennium, goes from the top of the ladder social and is addressed to the peoples, including and even especially to the illiterate.

 

2. At the "Renaissance" the social elite, both secular and religious, all the aristocracy and the very high bourgeoisie who conquered its place and assimilated to the aristocracy, under the influence of ideas Humanists, give birth, next to sacred medieval art, to a new art. This secular art, is inspired by themes borrowed from the history of European antiquity and Greco-Roman mythology. It is undeniably an art reserved for the cultured elite. But the same elite continues to sponsor and participate in inter-social, multi-social religious art, which continues to address to all the peoples, from the bottom up the social ladder, elites included. There is no clash between these two areas of European painting that will continue to live in parallel and in good intelligence. Indeed, the Renaissance is not, contrary to what is often written, an ideological break in European society. The inter-social dialogue continues as before on the same religious themes.

 

3 ° "The Reformation" will put in place, in the only Northern Netherlands, a remarkable evolution. Unlike the Renaissance, ideologically Reformation is very clearly a break from the previous society. A rupture that will provoke a secular and materialistic orientation of the themes of painting.

On the social level, it is the birth and triumph of bourgeois painting of the middle classes.

Before the Reformation, and after the Reformation, throughout Europe outside the Netherlands, the European upper class fully assimilated to the aristocracy, and its artistic tastes are not distinguishable: it prefers "the great art ", and besides of course the portraits.

After the Reformation, but in the Netherlands only, it is the triumph of a secular painting but especially very realistic, very close to the daily life of the small people. It is of course the Dutch bourgeoisie as a whole which is the catalyst element of this art, which sponsors and makes painters live. But the themes of this painting can be very popular. The peasant does not hang pictures in his cottage, but he is often, as well as the animals of the farm, the subject of the painting of the Netherlands. It is therefore possible to speak of an "art of the middle class" because the market for this art is all the middle class of the Netherlands. Even if this art is decided, as always, at the top of a society run by a very high bourgeoisie and some aristocrats.

This characteristic art of the Netherlands of the 17th century does not spread elsewhere in Europe remained Catholic (Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain) or quite marginal way. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the art of painting in these countries continues the Renaissance momentum: it remains divided into two distinct, but not confrontational, complementary domains:

- Religious art for the people, always directed by the Catholic Church, always driven by a desire for social dialogue, and by the constant concern to address all the layers of the European population including illiterates. From the upper aristocracy and the upper middle class to the peasantry, according to the destination of the painting, the importance of churches or the particularism of private homes.

- "The Great Art" whose themes are at once religious, historical and mythological, sponsored by the Kings, the Princes and the High Church. An art destined for the Palaces of kings, the hotels of the aristocracy and the high-class commercial and financial Bourgeoisie, the churches of importance, and the public buildings.

A clarification is needed if we want to differentiate the periods of medieval art and post-Renaissance art from the contemporary situation (since the 1950s-1960s): There are no official art at these times. There is no state art at the time. Even in France, yet very centralized nation, under the reign of Louis XIV. Decision makers, sponsors are multiple. Kings, in France or all over Europe, are not the state. Their influence in the provinces is weak. There is an art of the Court, but the aristocracies, the big and the middle bourgeoisie, the high church, the convents, the regional and rural churches, form a world of very diverse sponsors. The social, moral, spiritual, aesthetic values of this society are very unified, but it does not exist an offical art, at these periods. There is no state art, the art of a single party, official and recognized, as under communist regimes, or unofficial and concealed as now in the capitalist West. Circuits of decision and creation of art in medieval times, as after the Renaissance throughout Europe, are very diverse and very decentralized. This politically decentralized society allows an authentic art to flourish by creating the conditions of a real aesthetic freedom and by holding a speech that addresses all the population from the top to the bottom of the social ladder. There is no separate art for this or that social category. The situation is a little different in Slavic and Orthodox Europe, for political and cultural reasons.

 

4. Once the wars imposed by the Revolution and the Empire have been ended, Europe will be able to find peace again, and devote itself once again to its scientific, technical and economic development interrupted for a quarter of a century by French ambitions.

From 1820 until 1950, according to approximate dates, it is the period of Modern Art. An extraordinarily plural period at the ideological level. There is a clear erasure of the Catholic religion, but the "Enlightenment" has not yet triumphed absolutely and no sacred or profane ideology totally dominates European society. This explains the great diversity of themes and the freedom of creation enjoyed by artists. Except for the two societies, Communist and Nazi, but which remain circumscribed in time and space.

On the social level, it can be said that it is the progressive victory of bourgeois art understood as an art of the middle classes. In short, it is the art of the Netherlands of the 17th century that spread throughout Europe with however a little more obvious resistance of the religious painting, which is no longer exclusively sponsored by the Church.

The Great Painting, "the Great Art", is the Academic School in France which perpetuates it. He will resist very little time. Already in impressionist times the painting of style and classic theme must fade, not disappear, but agree to let live the bourgeois painting of ordinary landscapes, of the mores of everyday life, of still life. A painting in addition to a style far removed from the great classicism.

The Art of the Modern Period is a very diverse art of painting, represented by multiple schools, which reduces to little matter the great religious, historical or mythological subjects and actuallyu addresses alle the classes, from the bottom tot the top of the social hierarchy. Abstract art, a novelty that appears in the 1900s is more specifically for intellectuals, but always of all classes of society. We can therefore speak of a bourgeois art of the middle classes, but which is by no means exclusive, totalitarian, which allows Great Art to live, especially in monumental decorative art, and which allows to developp on its margins the adventure of abstract art. In short, the period of Modern Art is a time of dialogue and art shared between the different layers of society, but without any doubt with more diversity thematic and stylistic, than in the older times, between 500 and 1800.

The moral and aesthetic values of European society are no longer as unified as in previous centuries; they have diversified. In parts of Europe where no ideology has yet triumphed, despite increasing state centralization, a great freedom of artistic creation is possible. Apart, of course, from the totalitarian regimes of Communist Russia and National Socialist Germany, the period of Modern Art does not know either official art or the state art.

 

5 ° From the 1950s onwards, Contemporary Art impose oneself in Europe. He is inspired by European avant-gardes and often Parisian, but is coming from New York.

The characteristic of this "Art" is that it wants to be radically revolutionary, absolutely innovative, that it intends to make a "clean slate" of all the aesthetics of the European past. To begin with the rejection of Beauty as a goal of art.

The New World of North America, that of the US, intends to oppose the Old World, European, and impose on him. The New World has thus systematized this "brilliant" idea, sketched in Europe, in Paris: Beauty is no longer a criterion of art. As for the Meaning, it is possible to invent it, to make it say what you want. And sell this little new montage with a lot of profit.

From the Fontaine-Urinoir of Marcel Duchamp the ugliness is promoted to the dignity of creative concept, of founding idea, inseparable from the new Conceptual Art, on par with some other obsessions: the New, the Absurd, the Provocation and the Profitability.

The official contemporary artist must propose coldly, with determination the most heterogeneous objects: wobbly seats and tables, cartons, all brushes, for tooth, nail, eyelashes, hair, clothes, glasses, shoes, brooms brushes and mops, hangers, clothes, packed rags, open or closed boxes, broken or crushed machinery, tubing, rusted beams, bent, broken, cement beams, rubble, blocks, tiles, whole or pulverized bricks, neon tubes, heaps of rubble or coal, pebble bags, all kinds of pipes: iron, cement, plastics, all loose fabrics, rubber, buckets, jugs, pots, an old phone, typewriters, washing, a sink ... and of course always squares or rectangles white, yellow, black, red and spots or lines to infinity. ... and proclaim loud and clear, with great assurance, even with insolently, that it is "art" and especially anti-bourgeois art. Because of course this enlightened and silvery elite who sponsors the contemporary non-art proclaims itself anti-bourgeois and revolutionary. His art is designed to disturb people, but it's for their own good, so it's revolutionary.

The contempt of the middle classes, the scorn of peoples, has become a feature of the art of the enlightened elite of the West. It is the art of the "Enlightenment" ideologically monolithic, globalist, which triumphs at the level of the official art, that is to say of the State, of the large groups and International Organizations, and even of the large Private International Foundations. As well as at the level of International Finance.

This official art, state or private, is no longer in the West a tool of inter-social dialogue, it is enclosed in an esoteric discourse, imposes itself in museums built especially for it, and manufactures a particular market. The Contemporary Art, the Conceptual Art has become a Reserve for Enlighteneds and Richs. An art reserved for the Eye which illuminates, from above, and at its Guardians of the Temple of higher levels, the Social Pyramid. The Pyramid that appears on the dollar bill and in the courtyard of the Louvre in Paris. And whose program of extermination and of absolute control of peoples, anti-humanist, is inscribed on the monument called the Georgia Guidestones (USA). Of course in the name of Reason. Of course in the name of the Enlightened Reason, that of the "Enlightenment".

 

6. At other levels of Western society, at the very average level of the Pyramid, at the level of the ordinary bourgeoisie and the middle classes, at the local and regional level of the cities, a private commercial art has been kept alive, which survives outside the catechism of the official art, but also from its sources of funding.

On the other hand, also starting from New York, but really native of New World, street art, originally rebellious and wild, develops a little later, then imposes itself in Europe from the 2000s -2010, until becoming a tolerated art, semi-organized, then adopted and sponsored. The public and private sectors are associated in its success. But this art is always at local decision-making levels, and of course essentially urban, like all Western society.

Private commercial, non-international art, and street art are two areas of Western painting that practice inter-social dialogue, within all the middle classes, and even towards the most disadvantaged classes. One can think that the development of the art of the streets could make it possible to limit the vandal graffiti imposed by some asocials, which unfortunately have disfigured many of our cities. After only it may be possible to build an aesthetic for the socially excluded. Although it is very doubtful that the excluded have time to devote to aesthetics, and that this question is mainly a false problem agitated by intellectual-ideologues, very similar to those who made invented contemporary art.

But there are other areas where beauty and meaning persist. Contemporary photography, for example on Flickr, shows with obviousness that it is the beautiful and the sense which gather and make dialogue the peoples of the Earth. It is true that there are not only good photographers and aesthetes on Flickr, but what emerges, which finally holds the attention, on average, ie in "the middle class middle class" is the quality of an artistic production, considerable in number, attached to beauty and shared meaning. A whole world that speaks a common language. This popular photographic art is a ray of hope when one comes out of a museum of contemporary art: a real and authentic fraternity and freedom, a true aesthetic universality, with respect for individual and cultural differences. A Sharing, not a Exclusion.

It remains, however, that what poses a serious question is the birth in the west, at the elite level, during the second part of the 20th century, of a very powerful, highly protected, highly funded art (painting-sculpture) which excludes not only the lower levels of society, but the entire western middle class. It is a first in the history of European art. But is novelty always a progress ?

Or would the official contemporary Art be an ugly grimace and an absurd impasse at the top of the tree of human evolution? A premonitory image of the future of man?

   

Lorenzo Monaco. (Piero di Giovanni) 1370-1425. Florence.

Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers.

Prédelle Arrestation du Christ, Christ dévêtu.

Christ in the Garden of Olives.

Prediction Arrest of Christ, Christ undressed.

Florence. Galleria dell' Accademia.

 

L'ART MIROIR DES VALEURS D'UNE SOCIETE (1)

 

L'Histoire de la peinture européenne démontre une vérité : l'Art est fondamentalement idéologique et politique. L'Art est idéologique c'est à dire qu'il est le reflet, l'expression, du système de valeurs qui façonne une société donnée à une époque donnée. L'Art est politique car ce système de valeurs est toujours imposé par les puissances gouvernantes de l'époque. Ces puissances gouvernantes ne se confondent pas nécessairement avec les chefs politiques au pouvoir. Ce sont des Influences qui débordent souvent le cercle étroit des dirigeants manifestes, les politiciens. Les politiciens peuvent être totalement dominés par les idéologues, ou non, ou un équilibre peut s'instaurer. A partir de la seconde moitié du 19è siècle, en Occident, une très ancienne catégorie d'acteurs des sociétés humaines s'est imposée, discrètement, progressivement, mais totalement jusqu'à devenir, les Maîtres du Monde: les commerçants, et plus particulièrement les commerçants de l'argent, les financiers.

Ce qui est certain c'est que chacune de ces catégories a besoin de l'autre autant qu'elle est en concurrence. Gouverner c'est frapper les imaginations populaires d'une manière ou d'une autre, pour le bien ou pour le mal.

L'art de tous les temps et dans toutes les sociétés est un moyen pour les élites d'imposer une religion (sacrée) ou une idéologie (profane, laïque). Dans toutes les civilisations l'art de chaque époque se comprend au travers du filtre idéologique qui inspire les élites de cette civilisation à cette époque.

L'art est donc un intéressant révélateur de la pensée philosophique et morale qui anime les élites d'une société donnée en un temps donné. Ces religions ou idéologies peuvent différer beaucoup quant au bénéfice que les peuples vont, ou non, en retirer. Certaines sont propices à l'établissement de civilisations au long cours (Egypte ancienne, Antiquité greco-romaine, Christianisme, Hindouisme, Bouddhisme, Islam....) d'autres sont plus ou moins rapidement mortelles ( Religions Aztèque et Inca, Communisme, National-Socialisme). En effet certaines idéologies, sacrées ou profanes, conçues par les élites, ont été, à plus ou moins court terme, acceptées et totalement partagées par les peuples qui y ont adhéré sans réticence. Elles peuvent alors s'imposer totalement sans heurter les sentiments et les libertés des populations, ou tout au moins d'une majorité largement significative, voire faire l'unanimité à l'intérieur de leur société durant une longue période de temps.

D'autres idéologies par contre ont été imposées par les élites, mais n'ont pas suscité l'adhésion unanime ou majoritaire des peuples qui sont entrés en résistance, passive ou active avec plus ou moins de succès au bout d'une période plus ou moins longue.

 

1° L'Art de L'Egypte était clairement le reflet des croyances religieuses de l'époque et du pays. Une époque qui a duré plus de 3.000 ans.

 

2° L'Art Gréco-Romain est commandé par sa vision d'un monde où l'Harmonie universelle dépend du repect par les Dieux et par les hommes, chacuns à leurs places, des règles qui régissent les grands équilibres naturels.C'est cette croyance en une loi d'Harmonie universelle qui explique l'architecture, la sculpture et la peinture grecque et romaine. Pour l'Antiquité Gréco-romaine, l'architecture et la sculpture sont les témoins essentiels de l'art de cette époque. La peinture est seulement aperçue au travers de témoignages très rares, souvent en mosaïque. L'Ordre harmonique, divin et humain, semble en être le commandement principal. Mais il n'est pas à l'origine du monde.

C'est la fonction de Zeus (Jupiter) : Avoir fondé, dans la lutte et par la guerre, et préservé ensuite par son autorité bienveillante un ordre universel, chez les Dieux et chez les hommes. Un Ordre à peu près harmonieux, après les grands bouleversements des Temps Primordiaux et les règnes chaotiques de Ouranos (Uranus) et Chronos ( Saturne).

Un Ordre universel qui relie les Dieux et les hommes dans un esprit de sagesse et d'accord distancié. Distancié, car l'homme doit honorer les Dieux, mais s'en tenir à l'écart s'il veut bien vivre. L'homme doit impérativement éviter l'Ubris (Hybris), l'esprit de démesure, l'orgueil, qui le porte trop souvent à croire qu'il est l'égal des Dieux. Zeus est un Dieu suprême, mais pas créateur, seulement organisateur, plein d'une saine et paillarde vigueur masculine, très indo-européenne.

On est très loin avec les Grecs d' une vision du monde divin et humain identique à celle sémitique. On est très loin aussi de la vision du monde occidentale, telle que celle issue de la religion des "Lumières". L'homme grec est éclairé en comparaison du barbare, mais il s'interdit de se croire aussi éclairé que les Dieux. S'il venait à l'homme l'idée de se croire bon juge dans les querelles entre les divinités, grandes ou moins grandes, il se trouverait affublé d'oreilles d'âne comme le Roi Midas. Et encore la sanction serait très modérée: Midas aurait pu être écorché vif comme Marsyas.

Sagesse antique. Chacun à sa place, l'homme n'est pas suffisamment éclairé pour mépriser les grands équilibres naturels garantis par les Dieux, et régner sans conditions sur l'Univers. Il doit s'y conformer modestement, même s'il peut raisonnablement tenter de le comprendre et de l'utiliser avec prudence. En mesurant sans cesse son insignifiance, mais sans timidité excessive ou sentiment de culpabilité pour autant. C'est la conception que l'église catholique adoptera, sans doute parce qu'une partie de ses sources sont grecques. L'homme des Lumières d'Occident placé devant l'immensité des problèmes que lui posent son Dieu "Progrès" et sa Déesse "Modernité", finira peut être par revenir à cette sagesse. Mais il a encore bien du chemin à parcourir.

 

Les Grecs n'ont pas inventé l'art, d'autres l'avaient fait avant eux, depuis même le paléolithique!! Mais la théorie de la démocratie (pas la pratique, les Grecs étaient nuls dans cette pratique) la philosophie rationaliste, et même les prémisses de l'esprit scientifique sont à mettre à leur crédit.

Le résultat en art est brillant : Un art millénaire, et même plus que millénaire par ses répercussions aux époques ultérieures dans toute l'Europe, et même l'Occident. La Statue de la Liberté de New York est un pastiche de l' antique : Un mixte du Phare d'Alexandrie et du Colosse de Rhodes, ressuscités par un franc maçon français.

L'art grec privilégie l'harmonie, la clarté des formes, ses thèmes sont la Nature, les Dieux et les hommes. Les Dieux Grecs sont tout à fait anthropomorphes. Différence notable avec la religion Égyptienne et même avec celle de la Mésopotamie. Est ce déjà le signe d'une rupture entre l'homme et la nature avec ses "Dix Mille Êtres" ? Quand l'homme choisit l'anthropomorphisme pour représenter ses Dieux il s'instaure définitivement au dessus de l'animal. Il ne totémise plus, mais il cesse de participer avec l'animalité et s'éloigne peut être de l'Esprit Universel. Est ce une promotion de l'homme ce point de vue humain sur toutes choses ? N'est ce pas une perte de Sens, un tragique éloignement de la Vie et de la Nature? Une trahison qui commence ? L'homme était il destiné à régner absolument sur le monde ? Régner sur le monde au mépris de la Nature et des Dix Mille Êtres, y compris au mépris des hommes et de leur diversité raciale et culturelle ?

Ce sont des questions que l'art grec conduit à se poser, car il est à l'image d'une société qui n'était pas parfaite, mais qui vivait à peu près en harmonie avec son environnement.

L'art est un reflet des valeurs de son temps, mais il peut éclairer l'avenir des temps.

A la condition que l'homme accepte d'examiner et de respecter les leçons du passé. Qu'il cesse de se croire supérieur parce qu'il est Eclairé, Moderne et Progressiste. Qu'il se pense dans la continuité de l' histoire des hommes et non pas d'un concept d'homme abstrait, et dans la continuité de l'histoire d'un vivant multiple. Univers est un mot d'origine latine : unus/versus, c'est à dire unité/diversité. Le contraire du projet mondialiste d'uniformisation des peuples et de son art contemporain, laid et absurde, identique dans le monde entier. Avec l'art Grec, beau et harmonieux, superbe et modeste, équilibré, on est très loin des excès provocateurs de l'art contemporain officiel et des banquiers qui lui sont associés et qui ont provoqué la grande crise mondiale, financière et économique, de 2008.

 

3°Un des premiers commandements de l'Islam est la condamnation de la représentation de Dieu et son art pictural géométrique et abstrait est le reflet de cette interdiction. Il n'existe pas d'art contre les croyances ou les incroyances des hommes.

Une des grandes guerres civiles dans l'Empire Byzantin a été de savoir si on représenterait ou non Dieu, la Vierge. C'est la crise iconoclaste qui s'achève par la victoire des Images.

 

4° De 500 à 1500 en Europe l'Art a été presque exclusivement catholique, ou orthodoxe à l'Est. Pendant Mille ans la peinture et la sculpture européenne ont été le résultat de cette idéologie religieuse.

A ces époques l'art est incontestablement un art imposé aux peuples par les élites du moment, mais c'est aussi un art partagé, auquel les peuples adhèrent, car il correspond à leur conception du beau et est porteur d'un message compris par eux. Bref l'art roman ou gothique est inter-social, il réunit les élites et les peuples dans une même vision du monde. C'est un art inspiré par une idéologie unique qui anime pleinement la société de cette époque, mais cette société n'est pas totalitaire, sinon il n'y aurait pas eu d'art. La sincérité évidente des artistes de cette époque, l'authenticité manifeste de leurs oeuvres bâties, sculptées, peintes sont la démonstration d'une réelle liberté de création à l'intérieur d'un système spirituel et moral aux tendances univoques.

 

5° Au 15è siècle en Italie apparaissent de nouveaux thèmes : La religion catholique n'est plus l'unique inspiratrice de la peinture et de la sculpture européenne. La Mythologie et l'Histoire de la Grèce et de Rome fournissent de nouveaux thèmes à l'art européen, qui retrouve les règles stylistiques en vigueur pendant l'Antiquité. Notamment une représentation naturaliste et réaliste du monde. Mais cette nouvelle inspiration de la peinture européenne n'exclut pas du tout l'art religieux, qui se maintient vivant à destination des peuples et d'une grande partie de l'élite. La coexistence entre les deux sources durera dans les pays d'Europe du Sud jusqu'à la fin du 19è siècle. Nous sommes toujours dans un art imposé-partagé. Imposé, certes d'en haut par les élites, mais accepté, compris par la grande majorité des peuples. La preuve: tous les artistes, à l'époque des artisans, sont issus des peuples.

Certes la Renaissance introduit une nouveauté : Un Art à deux vitesses, un art très majoritaire en quantité, à destination des peuples, l'autre à destination d'une fraction plus étroite, aristocratique et bourgeoise, intéressée par la culture de l'antiquité gréco-latine

 

6° C'est au 17è siècle, aux Pays Bas protestants, que devient totalement dominante une peinture d'esprit non religieux, laïque, qui privilégie la représentation de la nature, les natures mortes, de la société du temps, et les portraits. Le premier acte des protestants dans toute l'Europe a été de détruire les églises et les oeuvres d'art catholiques. De nouvelles valeurs, plus profanes et matérialistes se sont alors mises en place. Les représentations religieuses deviennent tout à fait minoritaires dans cet art. 1000 ans de racines catholiques de l'Europe s'effacent. Il en est de même d'ailleurs des motifs de tableaux tirés des autres racines de l'Europe : l'Antiquité gréco-romaine. La peinture des Pays Bas du Nord abandonne totalement au 17è siècle la Mythologie et l'Histoire Gréco-Romaine comme source d'inspiration.

Cette rupture culturelle, très importante dans l'histoire de l'Europe, bien plus que "la Renaissance", sera l'occasion d'un renouvellement tout à fait intéressant de la peinture européenne avec l'apparition ou le développement :

- du paysage comme motif unique des tableaux.Sans aucune allusion religieuse ou mythologique. Les peintres d'églises ne peignent pas non plus des oeuvres religieuses, mais des paysages d'églises.

- de la peinture de moeurs, soit en milieu paysan, soit en milieu bourgeois.

- de la nature morte. Les "vanités" sont une survivance moraliste de la peinture religieuse mais aussi bien souvent l'occasion de célébrer la prospérité du pays et la richesse de ses habitants. Elle sont un miroir d'une société très matérialiste.

- Le portrait est un art très développé. Les personnages des tableaux sont des bourgeois. Différence sensible avec les autres pays européens, la France par exemple..

Cette évolution va gagner l'Europe du sud ou celle germanique et slave, mais beaucoup plus lentement au cours du 18è et du 19è siècle.

 

7° Il ne faut pas confondre l'Art Moderne et l'Art Contemporain. Ils ne reflètent pas du tout les mêmes circonstances politiques et idéologiques. La continuité n'est qu'apparente, ou propagande.

 

a) L'Art Moderne, de 1850 à 1940-1950, est le reflet d'une période historique où les idéologies les plus diverses coexistent ou s'affrontent en Europe. C'est ce qui explique l'étonnante diversité et l'esprit de recherche de nouvelles esthétiques qui caractérise cet art. Cette période de l'art est sans doute la seule dans toute l'histoire de l'art européen où la peinture a pu être un phénomène spontané, né de la base populaire, sans intervention directrice observable des élites. Les élites européennes étaient trop divisées pour imposer une esthétique. Les artistes romantiques, réalistes, les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes, les post impressionnistes n'obéissent pas à des mots d'ordres politiques ou idéologiques précis. Ils peuvent avoir leurs opinions, mais leur art n'est pas dirigé et la spontanéité de l'artiste est respectée. Il n'existe pas, pendant toute cette période en Europe, d'art officiel, d'art d’État. Sauf à partir de 1917 en URSS et de 1930 en Allemagne. Les artistes fuient alors ces régimes ou se conforment. Et en réalité il n'y a pas d'art du tout dans ces deux pays totalitaires.

 

b) L'Art Contemporain, en peinture et en sculpture, est né à New York dans les années 1920, en provenance de Paris, et il ne s'impose dans les cercles officiels européens, qu' à partir des années 1950. Le monolithisme de cet art du Laid et du Non Sens poussé jusqu'à l'absurdité la plus provocatrice, la peinture massacrée prédite par Joan Miro, est le reflet du triomphe progressif de l'Idéologie Eclairée du Nouvel Ordre Mondial. L'Art Contemporain ne se comprend qu'en référence aux grands dogmes qui structurent le catéchisme qui est celui des "Lumières", l'idéologie qui, après une montée en puissance qui a duré plus d'un siècle, gouverne absolument tout l'Occident depuis l'après seconde guerre mondiale. C'est la nouvelle religion occidentale. L'Europe, après la brève période de libertés de l'Art Moderne (en datation large : 1815-1940), est revenue à un art officiel imposé, exposé dans ses musées d'art contemporain. Un art imposé aux peuples, mais aussi aux artistes qui se conforment pour réussir dans cette voie là.

Cette religion laïque a son clergé, ses ordres, et ses temples, certains ostensibles, publics, beaucoup d'autres discrets et même secrets. Car la religion des "Lumières" cultive dans le secret, mais avec constance, l'Ombre. Les musées d'art contemporain font partie des temples publics de l'idéologie officielle. C'est l'art des Guidestones et de la Corporatocratie. Un art qui se dit volontiers "Conceptuel" mais qui est totalement vide de toute spiritualité, et dont le seul concept agissant, obsessionnel, est le renversement total des valeurs qui ont structurées toutes les civilisations humaines depuis les temps historiques. Un art dont la prétention à l'intelligence n'a d'égal que sa bêtise et sa laideur.

Précisons bien qu'il ne faut pas confondre cet art contemporain officiel, qui a la faveur des grands musées occidentaux, avec d'autres secteurs de la peinture ou de la sculpture : l'art commercial et privé de niveau non pas international mais local, et l'art des rues. Deux secteurs importants de l'art contemporain qui témoignent d'une bien plus grande diversité créative que l'art officiel et qui continuent de proposer au public, pas toujours mais le plus souvent, un art du Sens et du Beau. C'est dans ces arts non officiels que se rencontre l'art libre et inventif. Les successeurs des Impressionnistes sont là, pas du tout dans les musées d'Art Contemporain.

D'autre part on observe une évolution récente, toujours en cours, qui consiste à supprimer l'appellation Art Contemporain pour la remplacer par celle d'Art Moderne qui se veut applicable à tout l'art occidental depuis les impressionnistes. Un changement d'appellation qui a bien sûr une signification idéologique et politique (cf le texte "Art ancien, Art moderne, Art abstrait, Art Contemporain")

 

L'histoire de l'art européen contient un enseignement qui tient en un constat de fait et un jugement :

1° De - 500 à + 1950 l'art européen en peinture et en sculpture s'est voulu Beau et dans son ensemble a été beau.

2° A partir de la deuxième moitié du 20è siècle l'art européen, devenu l'art occidental, l'art officiel, celui des élites idéologiques et politiques, a rejeté la finalité du Beau. L'Art Contemporain officiel est Laid. Une anti esthétique, revendiquée comme telle.

Ce sont des faits. Il est possible de les nier, et de construire un "réel idéologique", une réalité inventée, c'est à dire fabriquée pour être conforme aux croyances actuelles. Mais ce sont des faits quand même.

3° l'Art Contemporain Officiel, laid, est un signe de décadence, de destruction, de mort. Car tout est lié, le Beau, le Bien, le Vrai. C'est un jugement, une opinion, qu'il est possible de ne pas partager.

  

ART, MIRROR OF THE VALUES OF A SOCIETY (1)

 

The history of European painting shows a truth: Art is fundamentally ideological and political. Art is ideological ie it is the reflection, the expression, of the value system which shapes a society at a given time. Art is political because this system of values is always imposed by the ruling powers of the time. The governing powers do not necessarily overlap with the political leaders in power. These are Influences that often extend beyond the narrow circle of manifest leaders, the politicians. From the second half of the 19th century, in the West, a very ancient category of actors of human societies imposed themselves, discreetly, gradually, but totally until becoming, the Masters of the World: traders, and more particularly money traders, financiers. What is certain is that each of these categories needs the other as much as it competes. To govern is to strike popular imaginations in one way or another, for good or for evil.

The art of all times and in all societies is a means for the elites to impose a (sacred) religion or an ideology (secular, secular). In all civilizations the art of each era is understood through the ideological filter that inspires the elites of this civilization at that time. Art is therefore an interesting revealer of the philosophical and moral thought that inspires the elites of a given society in a given time. These religions or ideologies can differ a lot as to the benefit that peoples will or will not withdraw. Some are conducive to the establishment of long-term civilizations (ancient Egypt, Greek-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam ...) others are more or less rapidly mortal (Aztec and Inca religions, Communism, national Socialism).

Indeed, certain ideologies, sacred or secular, conceived by the elites, have been, more or less short term, accepted and totally shared by the peoples who adhered to it without reluctance. They can then impose themselves completely without hurting the feelings and freedoms of the people, or at least a largely significant majority, even unanimity within their society for a long period of time.

Other ideologies, on the other hand, have been imposed by the elites, but did not generate the membership unanimous or majority of peoples that came into resistance, passive or active with more or less success after a shorter or longer period.

 

1° The Art of Ancient Egypt was clearly reflect the religious beliefs of that time and of that country.

An era that lasted more than 3,000 years.

 

2° The Greco-Roman art is driven by its vision of a world where universal Harmony depends on the respect by the gods and men, each in his place, the rules that govern the great natural balances. It is this belief in a universal Harmony law that explains the architecture, sculpture and painting of Greek and Roman. For Greco-Roman antiquity, architecture and sculpture are the essential witnesses of the art of that time. The painting is only seen through very rare testimonies, often in mosaic.

The harmonic Order, divine and human, seems to be the main command.But he is not at the origin of the world.

It is the function of Zeus (Jupiter): To have founded, in the struggle and by the war, and then preserved by his benevolent authority a universal order, among the Gods and among the men. An almost harmonious order, after the great upheavals of the Primordial Times and the chaotic reigns of Ouranos (Uranus) and Chronos (Saturn)

A universal Order that connects Gods and men in a spirit of wisdom and distant agreement. Distanced, because the man must honor the Gods, but stay away of the Gods if he wants to live well. Man must absolutely avoid Ubris (Hybris), the spirit of excess, pride, which too often carries him to believe that he is the equal of the Gods. Zeus is a supreme God, but not a creator, only an organizer, full of a wholesome and masculine vigor, very Indo-European.

We are very far away with the Greeks from a vision of the divine and human world identical to that of Semitic. It is also very far from the Western world view, such as that resulting from the religion of the "Enlightenment". The Greek man is enlightened in comparison with the barbarian, but he forbids himself to believe himself as enlightened as the Gods. If it came to man the idea of believing himself to be a good judge in the quarrels between divinities, big or small, he would be decked out with donkey's ears like King Midas. And again the penalty would be very moderate: Midas could have been skinned alive like Marsyas.

Ancient wisdom. Everyone in his place, the man is not sufficiently enlightened to despise the great natural balances guaranteed by the Gods, and reign unconditionally on the Universe. He must abide modestly, although he may reasonably attempt to understand and use it with caution. By constantly measuring his insignificance, but without excessive shyness or guilt. This is the conception that the Catholic Church will adopt. probably because some of its sources are Greek.

The Western Enlightenment man, faced with the immensity of the problems posed by his God "Progress" and his Goddess "Modernity", may end up returning to this wisdom. But there is still a long way to go.

 

The Greeks did not invent art, others had done before them, since the Paleolithic! But the theory of democracy (not the practice, the Greeks were void in this practice) the rationalist philosophy, and even the premises of the scientific mind are to be put to their credit.

The result in art is brilliant: A thousand-year-old art, and even more than millennial by its repercussions at later times throughout Europe, and even the West. The Statue of Liberty of New York is a pastiche of the ancient: A mixture of the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes, resurrected by a French Freemason.

Greek art favors harmony, the clarity of forms, its themes are Nature, Gods and men. The Greek gods are predominantly anthropomorphic. Noticeable difference with the Egyptian religion and even with that of Mesopotamia. Is this already the sign of a break between man and nature with his "Ten Thousand Beings"? When the man chooses the anthropomorphism to represent his Gods he settles definitively above the animal. It does not totémise anymore, but it stops participating with animality and may move away from the Universal Spirit. Is this a promotion of man, this human point of view on all things? Is it not a loss of meaning, a tragic distance taken with life and nature? A betrayal that begins? Was the man destined to reign supreme over the world? To rule over the world in defiance of Nature and the Ten Thousand Beings, including the contempt of men and of their racial and cultural diversity?

These are questions that Greek art leads to ask, because it is a reflection of a society that was not perfect, but lived in harmony with its environment.

Art is a reflection of the values of its time, but it can illuminate the future of the times.

On the condition that the man agrees to examine and respect the lessons of the past. That he ceases to believe himself superior because he is Enlightened, Modern and Progressive. That he thinks himself in the continuity of the history of the men and not of a concept of abstract man, and in the continuity of the history of a multiple living. Universe is a word of Latin origin: unus / versus, ie unity / diversity. The opposite of the globalist project of standardization of peoples and its contemporary art, ugly and absurd, identical in the whole world. With Greek art, beautiful and harmonious, superb and modest, balanced, we are very far from the provocative excesses of the official contemporary art and the bankers who are associated with it and which caused the great global crisis, financial and economic, of 2008.

  

3° One of the first commandments of Islam, is the condemnation of the representation of God, and his geometric and abstract pictgorial art is the reflection of this prohibition. There is no art against the beliefs or unbelief of men.

A major civil war in the Byzantine Empire has been to know whether, yes or no, the art would represent God, the Virgin .... This is the iconoclastic crisis, which ended with the victory of Images

 

4° From 500 tou 1500, Art in Europe has been almost exclusively Catholic, or Orthodox in the east. During thousand years painting and European sculpture was the result of this religious ideology.

At these times art is undoubtedly an art imposed on peoples by the elites of the moment, but it is also a shared art, to which the peoples adhere, because it corresponds to their conception of the beautiful and carries a message understood by them. In short, Romanesque or Gothic art is inter-social, it brings together elites and peoples in the same vision of the world. It is an art inspired by a unique ideology that fully animates the society of that time, but this society is not totalitarian, otherwise there would have been no art. The obvious sincerity of the artists of this period, the evident authenticity of their built, sculpted and painted works, are the demonstration of a real freedom of creation within a spiritual and moral system with univocal tendencies.

 

5° In the 15th century in Italy appear new artistic themes: Catholicism is not the only inspiration for painting and European sculpture. Mythology and history of Greece and Rome provide new themes to European art, which applies to new, stylistic rules applicable during Antiquity. Especially a naturalistic and realistic representation of the world. But this new inspiration of European painting does not exclude at all religious art, which keeps itself alive for the people and a large part of the elite. The coexistence between the two sources will last in the countries of Southern Europe until the end of the 19th century. We are always in an imposed-shared art. Imposed, certainly from above by the elites, but accepted, understood by the great majority of peoples. The proof: all the artists, at the time of the craftsmen, are from the peoples. Certainly the Renaissance introduces a novelty: A two-speed art, a very majority art, for the peoples, the other for a narrower, aristocratic and bourgeois fraction, interested by the culture of antiquity Greco-latine.

6° It's in the 17th century, in the Netherlands Protestants, that becomes completely dominant non-religious spirit painting, secular, which favors the representation of nature, still life, of the society of the time, and portraits. The first act of Protestants in all Europe was to destroy Catholic churches and works of art. New values, more secular and materialistic, were then put in place. Religious representations become a minority in this art.

1000 years of Europe's Catholic roots disappear. It is the same elsewhere of the patterns of paintings, from other roots of Europe: the Greco-Roman Antiquity. The painting of the Northern Low Countries completely abandons, in the 17th century, Mythology and History Greco-Roman as a source of inspiration.

This cultural rupture, very important in the history of Europe, much more than the "Renaissance" will be an opportunity for renewal quite interesting of European painting with the appearance or development:

- The Landscape as unique pattern of the tables. Without any religious or mythological allusion. The painters of churches, nor painted religious works, but churches landscapes.

- Painting of manners, either farm or in bourgeois circles.

- Still life. The "vanities" is a moralistic survival of religious painting but often the occasion to celebrate the prosperity and the wealth of its inhabitants. It is a mirror of a very materialistic society.

- The portrait is a highly developed art. The characters of tables are bourgeois. Significant difference with other European countries, France for example ..

This evolution is going to win Southern Europe or the Germanic and Slavic, but much more slowly during the 18th and 19th century.

 

7° We must not confuse the Modern and the Contemporary Art. They do not reflect at all the same political and ideological circumstances. Continuity is only appearance, or propaganda.

a) Modern Art from 1850 to 1940 to 1950, in large dates, is a reflection of a historical period in which the most diverse ideologies coexist or confront each other in Europe. This is what explains the astonishing diversity and the spirit of seeking the new aesthetics that characterizes this art. This period of art is undoubtedly the only one in the history of European art where painting has been a spontaneous phenomenon, born from the popular base, without observable directional intervention of the elites. European elites were too divided to impose an aesthetic. Romantic, realistic artists, pre-impressionists, impressionists and post-impressionists do not obey precise political or ideological words of order. They can have their opinions, but their art is not directed and the spontaneity of the artist is respected. There is no official art and state art throughout this period in Europe. Except from 1917 in the USSR and 1930 in Germany. The artists flee these regimes or conform. And in reality there is no art at all in these two totalitarian countries.

b )The Contemporary Art, in painting and sculpture, was born in New York in the 1920s, but it comes from Paris, and it is not imposed in official European circles until the 1950s. The monolithism of this art of ugly and nonsense pushed to the most provocative absurdity, the massacred painting predicted by Joan Miro, is the reflection of the progressive triumph of the Enlightened Ideology of the New World Order.

Contemporary Art is understandable only in reference to the great dogmas that structure the catechism which is that of the "Enlightenment", the ideology which, after a rise in power which lasted more than a century, governs absolutely all the West since the after World War II. This is the new Western religion.

Europe, after the brief period of liberties of modern Art (in broad dating: 1815-1940) came back to an imposed official art, exhibited in its contemporary art museums. An art imposed on the peoples, but also the artists, who conform to succeed in this way.

This secular religion has its clergy, its orders, and its temples, some ostensible, public, many other discreet and even secret. Because the religion of the "Enlightenment" cultivates in secret, but with consistency, the Shadow. Contemporary art museums are part of the public temples of official ideology.

This is the art of the Guidestones and the Corporatocracy. An art which is said hitself to be "conceptual" but which is totally void of all spirituality, and whose only obsessive concept of action is the total reversal of the values that have structured all human civilizations since historical times. An art whose the pretension to intelligence is matched only by its stupidity and ugliness.

It should be noted that this official contemporary art, which is favored by major Western museums, should not be confused with other areas of painting or sculpture: commercial and private art of level not international but local, and street art. Two important sectors of contemporary art that reflect a much greater creative diversity than official art and continue to offer the public, not always, but most often, an art of meaning and beauty. It is in these unofficial arts that the free and inventive art meets. The successors of the Impressionists are there, not at all in the museums of Contemporary Art.

On the other hand we observe a recent evolution, still in progress, which consists of removing the name Contemporary Art to replace it with that of Modern Art which is intended to apply to all Western art since the Impressionists. A change of name which of course has an ideological and political meaning (see the text "Ancient Art, Modern Art, Abstract Art, Contemporary Art")

 

The history of European art contains a teaching that is based on a statement of fact and judgment:

1 ° From - 500 to + 1950 European art in painting and sculpture wanted to be beauitful, and as a whole was beautiful.

2 ° From the second half of the 20th century, European art, now Western art, the official art, that of ideological and political elites, rejected the finality of the beautiful. Official Contemporary Art is Ugly.

An anti aesthetic, claimed as such.

These are facts. It is possible to deny them, and to build an "ideological real", an invented reality, that is to say manufactured to conform to current beliefs. But these are facts anyway.

3 ° Official Contemporary Art, ugly, is a sign of decadence, destruction, death. Because everything is linked, the beauty, the good, the true. It is a

 

Western Australia's grain crop harvest is still predicted to be a record of 20.2 million tonnes this year, 2021.

The first grain delivery, is due in October for the Geraldton Port zone area.

This location, is along the Great Northern Highway, near Pithara.

Ireland is braced for Storm Eowyn, forecast to be the severest storm in living memory.

Naturally everyone decided they had to buy bread.

We've got our phones, laptops and power banks charged, candles and torches to hand, and plenty of food that doesn't require cooking (including bread!)

Keeping our fingers crossed that it won't be as bad as predicted and that everyone stays safe.

@greygirl25

 

I have learned that predicting sunsets is nearly impossible. I can watch the weather all day, watch the cloud cover and still not know what I’m going to get. A destination is a destination and they are always glorious, but… when you want a sunset, cloud cover can be really disappointing.

We headed out to the coast on a whim and was thrilled to see a clear sky. As we got closer, we noticed the heavy cloud bank on the horizon. That only meant one thing, not much color in our future. As we walked down on the beach, we played a little, danced in the water and I watched the sun.

In a moments notice, I knew that if I was going to capture anything, it was right then because I knew once the sun disappeared behind the cloud bank, the skies would be gray.

A family driving on the beach recognized what I was doing, realized that Timber was a sight hound and he stopped his truck to make sounds from the driver’s seat. Timber was completely enchanted, it was perfect.

I was so excited the entire drive home in anticipation of what I was hoping I captured and I wasn’t disappointed.

These components perform key computations for Tide Predicting Machine No. 2, a special purpose mechanical analog computer for predicting the height and time of high and low tides. The tide prediction formula implemented by the machine includes the addition of a series of cosine terms. The triangular metal pieces are part of slotted yoke cranks which convert circular motion to a vertical motion that traces a sinusoid. Each slotted yoke crank is connected by a shaft to a pulley, which causes the pulley to follow the sinusoidal motion. A chain going over and under pulleys sums each of their deflections to compute the tide.

 

The U.S. government used Tide Predicting Machine No. 2 from 1910 to 1965 to predict tides for ports around the world. The machine, also known as “Old Brass Brains,” uses an intricate arrangement of gears, pulleys, chains, slides, and other mechanical components to perform the computations.

 

A person using the machine would require 2-3 days to compute a year’s tides at one location. A person performing the same calculations by hand would require hundreds of days to perform the work. The machine is 10.8 feet (3.3 m) long, 6.2 feet (1.9 m) high, and 2.0 feet (0.61 m) wide and weighs approximately 2,500 pounds (1134 kg). The operator powers the machine with a hand crank.

Last Saturday after watching it snow and listening to the news predict our wintery doom all day long from work, I knew I had to get out in it. As soon as I was off of work I bundled up (which for me means wearing a sweater under my fleece instead of a t-shirt and actually putting on a hat and gloves) and made a bee-line for downtown. Well that is not quite true, as driving was pretty messed up by this point, Portland's snow plows after all were considered old in the 1980's, I relied on Tri-Met.

 

Now I know many people complained about how unpredictable Tri-Met schedules became during the storm. Many of those same people also complained about how they had to go a day without mail, or two or three days without getting a newspaper. I want to say that I was damned impressed by the fact those drivers were out at all, shuttling people around. My hat really goes off to Tri-Met, and the USPS (I did not miss mail one single day, though UPS and FedEx both deemed my street to be in an "unsafe" zone and stopped service). And sure I was without my Oregonian for a few days, but considering there was no way I was going to try and drive, especially on my street, I thought it understandable if my Oregonian delivery driver took the day off too. Before I move on off this topic, I do wonder how many of those people complaining about the lack of mail, or their freakin' newspaper (really folks, its just a newspaper) missed work themselves. Odd how when terrible weather hits people will stay home from work yet expect everyone else to be manning their posts. Just look at the sudden increase in pizza delivery drivers called out on the road in such conditions...

 

Anyway, I managed to hop a bus to a MAX line with few troubles and the steady whump-whap-whump of snow chains to accompany the voyage. I made the point of getting off at the Rose Garden arena specifically so I could walk across the Steel Bridge.

 

Wind can be cold, very very cold. But gosh was that exhilarating. There is something that is so exciting about being in conditions severe enough that even a simple act like stopping to get my cameras out of my backpack becomes a decision requiring serious contemplation. Speaking of which, I carried my Leica M3 and Nikon FM2n bare on their straps slung across my hips. By the time I got across the Steel bridge and stopped to take a photo with the Leica the aperture ring was literally frozen. I worked it gently and got it unjammed and snapped a photo and the shutter button froze down. Nothing like making your one shot count. My Nikon shot fine though it had some issues with freezing. Both of those cameras thawed out just fine though by the way.

 

Anyway, having made it across the Steel Bridge I encountered a Waterfront Park that was adrift in deep snow, and constantly blasted by some pretty bitter wind. I was not surprised that other than Manyfires, who had accompanied me out, the whole place was deserted... almost. I did run across a small group of homeless huddling together under the bridge. They had laid down tarp, then sleeping bags on top of that, then tucked themselves into their sleeping bags and wrapped more tarp on top of themselves. I had no idea how many were wrapped up in it, I am guessing four or five at least, I could only tell there were actual people sleeping there because of the shifting going on under the top tarp. As I was getting a few shots, another homeless fellow wandered by to yell something over the wind at his fellows sleeping under the tarp. As I was packing up he approached me and offered to let me take his photo for some change. I declined, to my later chagrin, because my fingers had already turned numb from being exposed to the conditions while using my cameras just a few moments prior. I did give him the change out of my pocket though and wished him luck. I never turn down offers for photos like that and now wish I had toughed out the burning fingers a few more minutes. Ah well.

 

So we trudged up through Waterfront Park, or rather waded through drifts is probably a more apt description. The interior of the city was almost devoid of any signs of life too. We passed a few stragglers here and there, and cars trundled by now and then, but the city had largely ground to a halt.

 

I was even able to set my tripod up in Pioneer Courthouse Square and take photos of the Christmas Tree. Ha! Wait, I am not done. Ha! Ha! Take that security guards and your tripod ban. Actually I did see a lone guard, but he did not seem too interested in walking over to me to enforce their silly ban.

 

And finally we made it up to the South Park blocks, which was actually a last minute detour as we were heading back to the Yellow MAX line. It occurred to me that good old Abe had nowhere to shelter either and would be covered in snow. So I quickly jog/waded the block to the Park Blocks to set up this shot. I was in a bit of a rush as my bus transfer was set to expire and I did not want to have to by new fare. Which turned out to be a good thing as Tri-Met closed the Yellow MAX line not long after due to the switches in the tracks freezing.

 

Phew. It was quite an adventure. But I came home with multiple photos and zero frostbite, so I consider that a success anyway you choose to look at it.

Also known as "ORLANDO WEST," Lake County, Florida's 2020 population was estimated to be more than 400,142. Lake County has ranked among the top 6 fastest-growing counties in Florida. Lake County is expected to experience significant population growth over the coming decades as the Orlando urban core approaches build-out. Forecasts predict Lake County’s population to grow more than 431,500 by 2030 and more than 780,500 by 2050."

 

Tavares – from “Anytown USA” to “America’s Seaplane City”

By John Drury, Tavares City Administrator

 

I am frequently asked, “How did they do it?” How did Tavares transition from “Anytown USA” to “America’s Seaplane City”? The short answer is, that everyone started rowing in the same direction at the same time at the right time. The long answer follows below.

 

Approximately 19,500 cities in the United States, 400 in Florida, and 14 in Lake County. Most cities have no brand. They are perfectly content being who they are – Anytown USA. There is nothing wrong with that. They are proud and welcoming cities perfectly satisfied as is, with no distinctive brand. Some cities have a brand. Key West, for example, has a brand, as does Boulder, Colorado, and Daytona Beach, Florida. What is a brand? In short, a person’s brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. Similarly, a City’s brand is what people say about the city when they have left it and reflect on it.

 

About 15 years ago, under the leadership and guidance of then-Mayor Nancy Clutts and East Central Florida Regional Planning Council’s Executive Director Phil Laurien, the citizens of Tavares assembled for about a year and ½ studying their current state of affairs (a struggling downtown) and developing a road map for the future. The result was the creation of a citizen-led, City Council-approved “Vision Statement” and supporting Downtown Redevelopment Plan. The leadership understood a vision without implementation is a hallucination, so the 169-page redevelopment plan included Chapter 11’s “Implementation Plan” describing what would be built, when, by whom, and how it would be funded.

 

The citizens, business community, faith community, City Council, and their city staff put their oars in the water simultaneously. They began rowing in the same direction in unison to get the job done and complete the “Implementation Plan” together. By 2010, America’s Seaplane City was formed, a seaplane base and marina constructed, a 3,000-foot FAA-approved virtual runway on Lake Dora was permitted, and three boutique hotel buildings were under construction, along with a wedding events pavilion. What followed was ten years of a renaissance period with both the business community and city government investing in itself. As the saying goes, “When you invest in yourself, others will invest in you,” which is exactly what happened here in Tavares.

 

First, a seaplane scenic tour operator, then a flight training center, followed by an FAA-approved passenger air charter operation, a seaplane manufacturing facility, many restaurants, and too many new businesses to list here. From practically a ghost town with very few businesses whose tax base was 90% funded by the residents and only 10% by the business community, to a tax base funded 35% by the business community and only 65% by the residential community. This shift in tax contribution for city services like police, fire, libraries, parks, and recreation is important because for every dollar a resident contributes on average in taxes to a city, they consume about $1.20 in services on average, and for every $1 a business contributes, they only consume about 80 cents, as they do not use parks, recreational services or libraries, nor call for police and fire services nearly as much as the residents do. So the business community ends up not only creating good jobs but also subsidizing city services for its residents.

 

Tavares continues to shift the tax burden from its residents to its productive business community, has lowered its tax rate three years in a row, and is growing its brand as “America’s Seaplane City”!

 

Tavares Seaplane Base (FA1) is a city-owned, public-use seaplane base on Lake Dora in Tavares. The base is popular and gives rise to the city's nickname, "America's Seaplane City."

 

History

The City of Tavares was founded in 1880 by Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, a newspaper and railroad man from a Creole family in New Orleans. He gave it the surname of a Portuguese ancestor. In 1883 a post office was established; by the next year, a hotel, three stores, a sawmill, and eight cottages were built. St. Clair-Abrams's dream of Tavares as the state capital was not realized, but in 1887 it was designated the county seat of Lake County. St. Clair-Abrams later chartered a railroad from Tavares to Orlando. In 1919, Tavares was incorporated.

 

The City of Tavares has served as the County's Seat for Lake County, Florida, since 1888. Downtown Tavares lies on the shores of Lake Dora. The picturesque Wooton Park sits only one block from Main Street and offers families everything from picnic pavilions to boat ramps. Tavares is also home to the Dora Canal, one of the most beautiful waterways in the world. Tavares is located in the center of the State of Florida, 45 minutes northwest of Orlando.

 

In the 19th century, Major St. Clair Abrams began implementing a vision for Tavares. He not only oversaw the development of the hub of rail lines converging in Tavares, but he also saw the state's future capital waiting to be realized. Had it not been for an inadvertent fire 125 years ago, the major’s vision of Tavares being the state capital may have become a reality. The spark from a train ignited the adjacent lumberyard downtown, destroying three dozen buildings in a matter of minutes. That same year, the Florida legislature removed Tavares from consideration as a potential new center of state government. Although times have changed, one factor remains a constant for Tavares. It is the center of government for Lake County, and it is, therefore, Lake County’s Capital City. A partnership has evolved through the years between Lake County’s Board of County Commissioners and the Tavares City Council. The two elected bodies work together to make downtown Tavares a supportive home for the civic activities of Lake County.

 

Modern Day Tavares

The Tavares Seaplane Base (FA1) is a public-use seaplane landing area owned by the City of Tavares, Florida. The State of Florida licensed the facility as a public airport in 2010. City officials launched the idea for a seaplane base as part of a plan to reinvigorate business and tourist activity in the downtown area. The Seaplane Base has been a major success, and the City of Tavares is now known as “America’s Seaplane City.”

 

Tavares, Florida, has experienced a renaissance. Inspired by the strategic approach of its citizens, elected officials, employees, and former City Attorney Robert Q. Williams (who served the city for 37 years, 1984-2021), Tavares has rebranded itself, appropriately, as America’s Seaplane City. It is an appropriate moniker for a city helping boost the downtown as a Central Florida entertainment spot and serving as the natural stopping point for seaplane pilots en route to the Bahamas and other island nations. However, the rebranding of Tavares to better align with its unique offerings is not the only revolution happening in City Hall. Tavares’ leaders are responding to citizens’ new expectations for personal digital experiences with their local government through their rapid and innovative adoption of smart technology.

 

Credit for the data above is given to the following websites:

www.tavares.org/1208/ABOUT-TAVARES

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavares,_Florida

 

© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.

 

best seen when Viewed On Black

This plant is very cool even 10 years after it has been cut from its root it predicts weather the sun will show or not

Today was a sunny day

Warm rich red, oranges and golds predict leafy new life to this unusual tropical tree that has delicate powderpuff flowers and dark foreboding chard-like bark.

 

Witches, trolls, ghosts... they seem to belong in this tree's world.Such a contrast to the rows of delicate new-red, orange and gold leaves that emerge from these fractured trunks. And the red and green mobile clusters that float about as they grow in the breeze.

 

Sabicu wood or sabicu comes from two species of the genus Lysiloma. Lysiloma sabicu (L.) Benth. occurs sparingly in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. It was named by George Bentham (1800-1884) from a Cuban specimen examined in 1854. Bentham went on to identify a second species, Lysiloma latisiliquum (L.) Benth., which grows best in the Bahamas. The latter is commonly known as 'wild tamarind' or 'false tamarind'.

 

The wood of both species is similar, mid-brown in color with a reddish hue, heavy (specific gravity of 0.40-0.75) hard and durable. Some timber is well figured, but most relatively plain. The wood has been used in construction, shipbuilding and furniture making, although its weight is a distinct drawback for the latter purpose. The stairs of The Crystal Palace in London, in which The Great Exhibition of 1851 was held, were made of sabicu due to its durability. Despite the enormous traffic that passed over them, the wood at the end was found to be little affected by wear.

 

Seen on my morning walk in Biscayne Park, a neighborhood in Miami FL

www.susanfordcollins.com

As predicted, we got snow last night in our corner of North Alabama- melting off pretty fast, but the weather people all say we will get more starting tomorrow! Ken & I are enjoying it since he didn't have to go to work! :)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet (C/2012 S1) ISON was photographed on April 10, 2013, when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 394 million miles from Earth.

 

Even at that great distance the comet is already active as sunlight warms the surface and causes frozen volatiles to boil off. Astronomers used such early images to try to measure the size of the nucleus, in order to predict whether the comet would stay intact when it slingshots around the sun -- at 700,000 miles above the sun's surface -- on Nov. 28, 2013.

 

The comet's dusty coma, or head of the comet, is approximately 3,100 miles across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 57,000 miles, far beyond Hubble's field of view.

 

This image was taken in visible light. The blue false color was added to bring out details in the comet structure.

Credit: NASA/ ESA/STScI/AURA

 

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More details on Comet ISON:

 

Comet ISON began its trip from the Oort cloud region of our solar system and is now travelling toward the sun. The comet will reach its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day -- 28 Nov 2013 -- skimming just 730,000 miles above the sun's surface. If it comes around the sun without breaking up, the comet will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye, and from what we see now, ISON is predicted to be a particularly bright and beautiful comet.

 

Catalogued as C/2012 S1, Comet ISON was first spotted 585 million miles away in September 2012. This is ISON's very first trip around the sun, which means it is still made of pristine matter from the earliest days of the solar system’s formation, its top layers never having been lost by a trip near the sun. Comet ISON is, like all comets, a dirty snowball made up of dust and frozen gases like water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide -- some of the fundamental building blocks that scientists believe led to the formation of the planets 4.5 billion years ago.

 

NASA has been using a vast fleet of spacecraft, instruments, and space- and Earth-based telescope, in order to learn more about this time capsule from when the solar system first formed.

 

The journey along the way for such a sun-grazing comet can be dangerous. A giant ejection of solar material from the sun could rip its tail off. Before it reaches Mars -- at some 230 million miles away from the sun -- the radiation of the sun begins to boil its water, the first step toward breaking apart. And, if it survives all this, the intense radiation and pressure as it flies near the surface of the sun could destroy it altogether.

 

This collection of images show ISON throughout that journey, as scientists watched to see whether the comet would break up or remain intact.

 

The comet reaches its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day -- Nov. 28, 2013 -- skimming just 730,000 miles above the sun’s surface. If it comes around the sun without breaking up, the comet will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye, and from what we see now, ISON is predicted to be a particularly bright and beautiful comet.

 

ISON stands for International Scientific Optical Network, a group of observatories in ten countries who have organized to detect, monitor, and track objects in space. ISON is managed by the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

 

NASA image use policy.

 

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

 

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To say we live in tumultuous times is an understatement. But is it one we could have predicted? Prognostication has always interested humanity. Who wouldn’t like to know the future? We’re always looking for signs and pathways from the historical (Nostradamus) to the sketchy (astrologers and palm readers). We want to be prepared and know what to expect. Data is now the currency of prediction. The stock market and politicians rely on past performances and historical trends to predict market swings and elections. But as we’ve learned, polls often fail to tell us what’s coming. It’s not the data; it’s the interpretation that fails us.

 

I look at a person’s past behavior, whether a friend or a public figure, to predict what they will do or say—how they will act. People are generally consistent. But I see it only as a guide, and sometimes I’m wrong. But a general sense is good enough for me. It’s a way of protecting myself and my expectations.

 

In 2000, Radiohead released their album, Kid A. It was a massive reset for them. “Kid A was Radiohead’s first No. 1 album in the U.S. Its foreboding music and non sequitur lyrics were off-putting to critics and fans at first. But today, they evoke the feeling of everyday life, from ‘glitchy cell reception’ and ‘decontextualized social-media updates’ to ‘the modern reality of omnipresent technological interconnectivity at the expense of genuine human connection,’” says music critic Steven Hyden in his book, This Isn’t Happening.

 

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Hyden says, “When you heard the album in 2000, it didn’t make sense—as rock music, as a Radiohead record, even as songs. But when I listen to it now, it feels like what it’s like to experience daily life. We live in this world where we’re being inundated with information.” The 21-year-old Kid A conveys the destabilization we feel now. “We can’t really take it all in. We absorb as much as we can, the best we can, and we assume we’re right in the conclusions we make.”

 

Saul Bass’ 1968 iconic short film, Why Man Creates, celebrates the creative spirit, one that can sustain us as we traverse those ups and downs. The film notes the cyclic nature of our lives and humanity throughout. But there is one scene that always stops me when I come to it, a digression in the storyline in which two snails are talking with each other. One says to the other: “Have you ever thought that radical ideas threaten institutions, then become institutions, and in turn reject radical ideas which threaten institutions?” For one sentence, this packs quite a punch. This is the recurring nature of our civilization and our lives. A novel idea threatens accepted institutions and meets with resistance. Eventually, that idea may supplant the traditional thought until another discovery comes along and jeopardizes the sanctity of that belief. And, once again, it is met with resistance. People’s lives are made better or destroyed along this fault line.

 

Capitalism is a perfect example of this type of adjustment. For over a century, it has referred to an economic system in which privately or corporately owned companies produce products and services sustained by the accumulation and reinvestment of profits. During the duality of the Cold War, it was the bulwark against communism. Now, many, including politicians like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and CEOs such as Ray Dalio, Co-Chief Investment Officer & Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, are reimagining capitalism. Income inequality is at one of its highest points in our history. Each wants to restructure the system to reduce the profits going to mostly CEOs and stockholders (today American CEOs make 351 times more than workers; in 1965, it was only 15 to one) while including companies’ workers in the profits. This is a hard sell on Wall Street. And, along with other initiatives that aim to redistribute our country’s wealth, conservatives call this socialism. Fervent opposition greets the new idea that challenges the old paradigm.

 

Boomers like myself have lived history. We’ve experienced many of society’s cycles. Sometimes we’ve been taken to a precipice like the Cuban Missile Crisis or a shared sorrow like the assassination of John F. Kennedy or 9/11. And, because of that experience, we assume that as shocking as such events can be, we will bounce back. That’s the way it was. But is that the way it is now?

 

When I was young, the pace of these phases was slower than it is today. There were sharp jags every so often, but our culture’s main direction, while often chaotic, wasn’t inundated with the amount of conflicting information we receive today. The speed of change has accelerated so much that many try to put their feet on the brake pedal. I often hear my fellow Boomers wax poetic about the 1960s and 1970s (which were anything but optimistic). Time has a way of leveling those good and bad times. Our children, who’ve only experienced our current pace, are not immune to its effects. Depression and suicide amongst teens and young adults are at an all-time high.

 

Opposing messages bombard us hourly. Not only is this broadcasted to us, we actively engage each other with these contradictory ideas via social media. Boom, boom, boom. It’s debilitating. Today’s contradiction: should we get COVID booster shots? The FDA’s decision to greenlight it for people over 65 is far from a firm YES! The CDC is still monitoring the situation, and there is still a question of whether the science supports it. And, if so, when will we know? We’re looking for an answer now when we may not have one yet. Politicians and federal and state governments haven’t adjusted to this new norm any better.

 

The pandemic presents us with an ongoing dilemma. Forget the anti-vaxxers and vaccine-hesitants for a second. Even if you believe in science and the efficacy of vaccines, this is unfamiliar territory. Science isn’t “facts.” It represents a process by which we learn facts. And these facts can change. So, scientists may not know the answers or may differ in their opinions. And, as new information becomes available, they may even change their minds. Many accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci of flip-flopping when all he’s doing is altering his opinion based on updated findings. When scientific inquiry meets public expectations, anger ensues. For people expecting answers, this makes them anxious and suspicious. After a year and a half, many are tired and stressed with nothing definitive to go on. In the spring, we thought we might see the end of the pandemic. Euphoria broke out with talk of a new “Roaring 20s.” Then, along came the delta variant. Once again, we’re trapped in this sped-up loop of additional problems and updated solutions supplanting old ones over and over.

 

This acceleration of change and influx of ideas has led to greater polarization. The Constitution tells us we’re a nation of individuals with personal rights. But look what’s happening when we plant our feet firmly in our belief systems and cling to our biases. We aren’t agile enough to live with so many unknowns, so many buckle down. Our system of governance is not changing to meet this new reality and engender confidence. Our inability to address the pressing issues that divide us (affordable health care, reasonable gun control, addressing mental health, teaching critical thinking, just to name a few) led to the authoritarian presidency of Donald Trump. The Republican Party’s platform, based entirely on opposition, has kept us in the same place even after Trump has left office. Radiohead predicted this dystopian world. And here it is.

 

Can we acknowledge the truth of our lives right now? Unlike the game “Truth or Dare,” this is both a truth and a dare. The truth is, we are in the vortex where one idea challenges another multiple times a day. We’re overwhelmed and insecure. And that insecurity has consequences that exacerbate solutions. It’s not the data; it’s how we interpret it that’s important.

 

I’m also daring us to accept and use this reality to alter our lives. Not only must we survive this chaos, but we can also change our country’s trajectory by our own actions. If we don’t, we might lose it all.

  

Feel free to pass this poster on. It's free to download here (click on the down arrow just to the lower right of the image).

 

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

 

Follow the history of our country's political intransigence from 2010-2020 through a seven-part exhibit of these posters on Google Arts & Culture.

Text as appears in the article:

 

Great is Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, The Messiah

FORETOLD PATHETIC END OF DOWIE AND NOW HE PREDICTS PLAGUE, FLOOD AND EARTHQUAKE

 

Twenty-Three were the days of August in 1903 when Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, of Qadian, India foretold the death of Dowie yclept Elijah II, while took place last March, and now cometh the aforesaid Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India, on June 23, and said: “The turn of this country is drawing near. “Earthquakes... will be unparalleled in the world’s history and will remind men of the destruction of the judgment day.

 

“In Europe and on the Christian countries a kind of plague will make its appearance which will be very severe.

 

“With my appearance, the secret designs of the wrath of God have been made manifest.

 

“The days of Noah will you again witness, and the scene of Lot’s land you will see with your own eyes.”

 

“He called the turn on Dowie, and why may be not on devastation?” his followers ask.

 

“He has foretold plague, too, in the Punjab and other places, and great is the name of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India.”

 

The Indian Gentleman has been well known in the eastern pasture of the world for many years. His claim is that he is “the true Messiah who was to come in the last ages.” And that God has showered him with grace. He first came to the attention of the United States in 1903, on account of a controversy with Elijah III. Since the death of Dowie the Indian prophet’s reputation has soared, for did he not tell of the death of Dowie, that it should take place within (the Messiah’s) lifetime, should take place “with great sorrow and torment”?

 

Dowie was aged 59, the seer was 75.

 

It was in these words that Dowie was requested to strive for the fray:

 

“I am the true Messiah who was to come in the last ages: thus has Almighty God spoken to me. I do not claim to be the promised Messiah simply by my own assertion, but Almighty God who made the earth and heaven has borne witness to the truth of my claim.

 

“The evidence of God has been manifested in hundreds of heavenly signs shown in my support. I say it truly that Almighty God has poured his grace upon me in far greater abundance than upon the Messiah who has gone before me. In the looking-glass of my person the face of God is revealed to a far greater extent than in that of Jesus’ person. If these are simply my own assertions, and there is no other authority for them, I am a liar, but if Almighty God bears witness to my truth, no one can give the lie to me. Thousands of time- I should say times without number- has he borne witness to the truth of my claims.

 

“A sign of the evidence of God in my favor will appear on the death of Mr. Pigott, the arrogant pretender to divinity, who shall be brought to destruction within my lifetime. Another sign will appear for Dr. Dowie’s acceptance of my challenge. If the pretender to Elijahship shows his willingness by any direct or indirect means to enter the lists against me he shall leave the world before my eyes with great sorrow and torment. These two signs are particularly for Europe and America. Ah! that they ponder over them and benefit by them.

 

It should be borne in mind that Dr. Dowie has not given any reply to my challenge sent him in September last, nor has he even so much as mentioned it in his paper. For an answer to that challenge I will wait for a further period of seven months from this day, the 23rd of August, 1903. If he accept the challenge within this period and fulfils all its conditions as published by me previously, and makes an announcement to that effect in his paper, the world will soon see the end of this contest. I am about 70 years of age, while Dr. Dowie is about 55, and, therefore compared with me, he is young man still. But since the matter is not to be settled by age, I do not care for this great disparity in years. The whole matter rests in the hand of Him who is the Lord of heaven and earth and judge over all judges, and He will decide it in favor of the true claimant.

 

“But if Dr. Dowie cannot even now gather courage to appear in the contest against me, let both continents bear witness that I shall be entitled to claim the same victory as in the case of his death in my lifetime if he accepts the challenge. The pretensions of Dr. Dowie will thus be falsified and proved to be an imposture. Though he may try as hard as he can to fly from the death which awaits him, yet his flight from such a contest will be nothing less than death to him, and clamity will certainly overtake his Zion: for he must take the consequences of either the acceptance of the challenge of its refusal.

 

I close these brief remarks with the following prayer: O powerful and perfect God, who hast ever been revealing and will ever continue to reveal Thyself to Thy prophets, do Thou give Thy judgment and show to Thy prophets, do Thou give Thy judgment and show to Thy people the imposture and falsehood of Dowie and Pigott, for Thy weak creatures, having taken to human-worship and trusted in weak mortals like themselves, have fallen away from Thy path and are wandering in errors far from Thee.”

 

Dowie at first paid no public attention directly to the challenge from the Far East. But on the 26th of September, 1903, he said, in his Zion City publication:

 

“People sometimes say to me. ‘Why do you not reply to this, that and the other ting?” Reply! Do you think that I shall reply to the gnats and flies? If I put my foot on them I would crush out their lives. I give them a chance to fly away and live.”

 

Only once did he show in any way that he knew of the existence of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. He referred to him as the “foolish Mahometan Messiah.” And on Dec. 12, 1903, he wrote:

 

“If I am not God’s prophet, there is none on God’s earth that is/” In the following January he wrote:

 

“My part is to bring out the people from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and settle them in this and other Zion cities until the time shall come when the Mahometans are swept away. ... May God grant us that time.”

 

Whereupon Mirza tersely challenged him to “pray to God that of us two whoever is the liar may perish first.”

 

Dowie died with his friends fallen away from him and his fortune dwindled. He suffered from paralysis and insanity. He died a miserable death, with Zion City torn and frayed by internal dissensions.

 

Mirza comes forward frankly and states that he has won his challenge, or “prediction.” And he asks every seeker after truth to accept the truth as he announced it. He regards the misfortunes which befell his transducer in America as evidence of divine vengeance commingled with divine judgment. As a follower says, however:

 

“It is not to exult over fallen enemy that we refer to certain circumstances in Dowie’s life.

Such a thing is furthest from our ideas. It is only in the cause and for the furtherance of truth that we publish these facts. The holy religion of Islam, no doubt, teaches us not to mention the faults of the dead, but this does not mean that facts should be concealed when their disclosure is in the interests of society and a service to humanity, truth and God.”

 

All these conclusions the follower arrives at with a certainty which rings with self-conviction, or at least with pride in the accuracy of his prediction. He goes on to say:

 

“In bringing disaster upon Dowie’s head and ultimately in his untimely, brought about with sorrow and torment, Almighty God has given his judgment exactly as he had informed his messenger three or four years previous to these occurrences.”

 

J.H. Smyth Pigott, to whom the Messiah refers, heads a peculiar sect in Clopton, London, known as the Agapemonities, or “Dwellers in the Abode of Love.” About seven years ago he proclaimed himself the “New ‘Messiah’” and drew around him 3000 fanatics, including many women.

 

Pigott promised to take his followers to heaven on Aug. 24, 1901. At the appointed time they gathered in a field and waited vainly for the event to take place. Pigott promptly explained that they had been sinning, and thereby had so sorely grieved the Lord that he refused to accept them. The Agapemonities believed this explanation and promptly did penance by subscribing a large sum of money for the erection of a beautiful Church. In this Clopton region which is called the “Abode of Love” there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and the inmates are supposed to dwell together in an atmosphere of spiritual comradeship and platonic affection. Grave scandals resulted in popular hostility against the doctrines of Pigott.

 

Pigott’s annual receipts are $30000. At one time this Messiah, whom Mirza disapproves of so strongly, was a sailor on the Pacific coast. In 1890 he returned to England, his native country, took holy orders and became a curate of the Church of England in a London parish. Subsequently he joined the Salvation Army, rose to the position of major and then acquired divinity.

 

As to disasters dire, the Indian divinity says:

 

“Bear in mind that Almighty God has informed me of earthquakes in general. Know it for certain, then that as earthquakes have come in America, Europe and Asia in accordance with my former prophecies, more will yet occur in diverse places, some of which would be so severe that the destruction wrought by them will be unparalleled in the world’s history and will remind men of the destruction of the judgment day.

 

“Death will make such havoc that streams of blood will flow. Calamities of a terrible nature from earth as well as heaven will come upon men.

 

“Many shall be saved and many shall be destroyed. The days are near, nay, they are at the door, when the world shall see an unparalleled scene of devastation. Not only will great earthquakes come, but other calamities from heaven and earth will also visit the earth. As this will be brought about because men have forsaken God, and with all their heart and all their soul they are bent low upon the world.

 

“Had I not come, these calamities would also have been put off for a while, but with my appearance the secret designs of the wrath of God have been made manifest, for he says that ‘punishment is not sent upon a people until a messenger is raised.’ Those who repent shall be saved, and those who show fear before the calamity shall be shown mercy.

 

“Do you think that you can be saved by your own plans? That cannot be. Do not think that sever earthquakes have come in distant places in America and your country will be safe for I see that greater distress is in store for you/ thou, O Europe! Art not safe, nor thou, O Asia! And ye that dwell in islands! No self-made deity will assist you on that day. I see cities falling down and I find inhabited places in ruin.

 

“I say to you truly that the turn of this country is drawing near. The days of Noah will you again witness and the scene of Lot’s land will see with your own eyes. But God is slow in sending his wrath. Repent, that mercy may be shown to you. He who forsakes God is a worm, not a man and he who does not fear him is dead, not living.”

 

The words of a plague prophecy, literally translated, run as follows:

“In Europe and other Christian countries a kind of plague will make its appearance which will be very severe.” The appearance of plague in India was foretold by promised Messiah by more than 10 years, assert his followers.

 

______________________

 

This is a Photostat print copy of an article which appeared in the magazine section of the newspaper “The Sunday Herald”, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. The original can be seen in the Archives Section of the State-House library of Massachusetts in Boston, U.S.A.

 

Signatures

Ghulam Yasin

Former Ahmadiyya Muslim Missionary

in U.S.A.

______________________

While predicting where the Cranes will spend the night is always an uncertain undertaking, we have found that this shallow lake just off the tour-route road through this refuge is a good spot ot watch. The Cranes often seek additional protection offered by the water... it makes it more difficult for predators to sneak up on the roosting birds. While sometimes this lake draws a blank on such activity, we have often been rewarded by scenes such as this where the incoming birds are silhouetted against a grorious western sky. These conditions allow for a fast enough shutter speed to result in a sharp image. The show lasts for at least a half hour, and the bird continue their arrivals long after it's too dark for photography.

 

IMG_4271; Incoming Bunkies

record very dry wind storm predicted... continuing forest fires and possible fire break outs due to branches and trees falling everywhere, including city streets...

 

here in my back yard garden, looking East... the sky is a yellowed color due to the fact that the wind is blowing in from fire areas one to two hours car drive distance from here. My garden is low, and creates a micro climate of its own. Can smell various scorched things in the air, as well as some ash falling...

 

this morning, things didn't look as bad as I thought they might.. Seems wind changed direction, skies cleared... I feel for all the people caught in the path of the fire. I hear a small town disappeared in the state of Washington. There are reports of fallen trees around. Wind storm to continue into this afternoon.

“And Quaker State is years ahead, too!”

 

“This is no ordinary motor oil. It is rich, remarkable Quaker State Super Blend . . . a super-refined, all-weather oil of such quality that it surpasses even the rigorous requirements of tomorrow’s motors. . .” [From the ad copy]

 

In keeping with the reference to “tomorrow’s motors,” the ad features five futuristic concept cars: 1956 Packard Predictor (top left); 1956 Pontiac Club De Mer (top right); 1956 Oldsmobile Golden Rocket (center left); 1954 Ford Atmos (center right); and 1955 Chrysler Falcon (bottom left).

 

Of the five, the Packard Predictor is probably the least familiar, so here are some highlights:

 

The Predictor debuted at the 1956 Chicago Auto Show. Designed by Richard Teague and built by Carrozzeria Ghia in Italy, it was a true "dream car" of its time. It featured scalloped fenders, a long flat hood, and distinctive tail fins. The wraparound windshield and hidden quad headlights added to its modern look. It had four individual seats with reversible cushions (fabric on one side, leather on the other) and a center console running the length of the cabin.

 

The car included an electronic push-button Ultramatic transmission, electric servos for the roof panels and windows, and a retractable roof. Powered by a 300-horsepower, 374-cubic-inch Packard V-8 engine, it also featured torsion-level suspension for a smooth ride. Despite its groundbreaking design, the Predictor couldn't save the Packard brand, which ceased production in 1957. However, its influence can still be seen in the designs of other automakers, and one of these visionary cars has been preserved for future generations. It is on display at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana.

 

with a snow storm predicted for the weekend I ran out with my mom to cut down my folks' annual Christmas tree. just us gals breaking tradition! #vscocam #christmas

 

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I Predict a Riot the Blue & Green Striped Riote Van used by Merseyside Police in 2003 but rarely on patrol mostly for staff duties.

 

It is seen here in use for the Wirral Egg Run 2003 but the month is acutally Aprill not January as the Camera Claims.

Another few snaps from waking above the clouds on a summit camp on Cruach Ardrain a few weeks back . Sometimes you have to endure the bad to get the good . Video here - youtu.be/aQodLwq64vs?si=e1cHx6Jv6ua_lgBE