published photos on Flickr

Also published in Primal Survivor on June 8th, 2016 to illustrate an article by Jacob Hunter:" Urban Survival: 6 Essentials to Surviving any Disasters in the City".

www.primalsurvivor.net/urban-survival-essentials/

Ketchup by j. silveira

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HISTORY

Mushroom ketchup

Ketchup was historically prepared with mushrooms as a primary ingredient, rather than tomatoes.

In the United States, mushroom ketchup dates back to at least 1770, and was prepared by British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies.

Tomato ketchup

Many variations of ketchup were created, but the tomato-based version did not appear until around a century after other types.

An early recipe for "Tomato Catsup" from 1817 includes anchovies.

The term ketchup first appeared in 1682.

Ketchup recipes began to appear in British and then American cookbooks in the 18th century.

James Mease published the first known tomato ketchup recipe in 1812.

In 1824, a ketchup recipe using tomatoes appeared in The Virginia Housewife (an influential 19th-century cookbook written by Mary Randolph, Thomas Jefferson's cousin).

Tomato ketchup was sold locally by farmers.

Jonas Yerkes is credited as the first American to sell it in a bottle.

By 1837, he had produced and distributed the condiment nationally.

Shortly thereafter, other companies followed suit. F. & J. Heinz launched their tomato ketchup in 1876.

American cooks also began to sweeten ketchup in the 19th century.

The Webster's Dictionary of 1913 defined "catsup" as: "table sauce made from mushrooms, tomatoes, walnuts, etc. [Also written as ketchup]."

As the century progressed, tomato ketchup began its ascent in popularity in the United States. Tomato ketchup was popular long before fresh tomatoes were. People were less hesitant to eat tomatoes as part of a highly processed product that had been cooked and infused with vinegar and spices.

Heinz Tomato Ketchup was advertised: "Blessed relief for Mother and the other women in the household!", a slogan which alluded to the lengthy process required to produce tomato ketchup in the home.

With industrial ketchup production and a need for better preservation there was a great increase of sugar in ketchup, leading to the typically sweet and sour formula of today.

In Australia, it was not until the late 19th century that sugar was added to tomato sauce, initially in small quantities, but today it contains just as much as American ketchup and only differed in the proportions of tomatoes, salt and vinegar in early recipes.

While ketchup and tomato sauce are both sold in Australia, American ketchup is sweeter and thicker whereas Australian tomato sauce is more sour and runny.

Modern ketchup emerged in the early years of the 20th century, out of a debate over the use of sodium benzoate as a preservative in condiments.

Harvey W. Wiley, the "father" of the US Food and Drug Administration, challenged the safety of benzoate which was banned in the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

In response, entrepreneurs including Henry J. Heinz, pursued an alternative recipe that eliminated the need for that preservative.

Katherine Bitting, a bacteriologist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, carried out research in 1909 that proved increasing the sugar and vinegar content of the product would prevent spoilage without use of artificial preservatives.

She was assisted by her husband, Arvil Bitting, an official at that agency.

Prior to Heinz (and his fellow innovators), commercial tomato ketchups of that time were watery and thin, in part because they used unripe tomatoes, which were low in pectin.

They had less vinegar than modern ketchups; by pickling ripe tomatoes, the need for benzoate was eliminated without spoilage or degradation in flavor.

But the changes driven by the desire to eliminate benzoate also produced changes that some experts (such as Andrew F. Smith) believe were key to the establishment of tomato ketchup as the dominant American condiment.

PUBLISHED! :D by Justin Nixon

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"Delaware Beach Life" -- July 2014 cover!

Croydon Airport Between 1934 and 1940. And the Fatal Crash of an Imperial Airways de Havilland in Purley. by pepandtim

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The Postcard

A postally unused postcard that was published by the Photochrom Co. Ltd. The card, which has a divided back, was printed in Great Britain.

The aircraft in the photograph was a British four-engined 39-seat biplane airliner designed and built by Short Brothers at the request of Imperial Airways. Two of them were ordered in 1933, 'Scylla' (G-ACJJ) and 'Syrinx' (G-ACJK).

Scylla, which is in the photograph, first flew for Imperial Airways on the 26th. March 1934.

Imperial Airways used the Scylla for scheduled flights from London to Paris and other European cities. Both aircraft served with Imperial Airways until its merger into BOAC in 1939, when both were taken out of service the following year, Scylla after being wrecked and Syrinx being scrapped.

The Photochrom Co. Ltd.

The Photochrom Co. Ltd. of London and Royal Tunbridge Wells originally produced Christmas cards before becoming a major publisher and printer of tourist albums, guide books, and postcards.

These mainly captured worldwide views as real photos, or were printed in black & white, monochrome, and color.

They also published many advertising, comic, silhouette, novelty, panoramic, and notable artist-signed cards in named series as well. The huge number of titles that Photochrom produced may well exceed 40,000.

In 1896 they took over Fussli’s London office established three years earlier, and began publishing similar photo-chromolithographic postcards after securing the exclusive English licence for the Swiss photochrom process.

This technique was used to produce a great number of view-cards of both England and Europe. While they captured the same fine details as the Swiss prints, their colours were much softer and reduced.

Apart from their better known photochroms, they produced their Celesque series of view-cards printed in tricolor.

One of the largest unnamed series that Photochrom produced was of view-cards printed in brown rotogravure. Many of these cards were simply hand coloured with a dominant red and blue, which gives these cards a distinct appearance. They are similar to cards produced in their Photogravure and Velvet Finish Series.

Photochrom postcard series include:

-- Night Series - Line block halftone over a blue tint depicting London.

-- Carbofoto Series - Black & white real photo cards.

-- Sepiatone Series - Sepia real photo cards.

-- Grano Series - View-cards printed in black & white.

-- Exclusive Photo-Color Series - View-cards printed in colour.

-- Duotype Process Series - View-cards printed in two tones.

Croydon Airport

Croydon Airport was the UK's major and only international airport during the interwar period. Located in Croydon, South London, it opened in 1920, built in a Neoclassical style.

It was developed as Britain's main airport, handling more cargo, mail, and passengers than any other UK airport at the time. Innovations at the site included the world's first air traffic control and the first airport terminal.

During World War II the airport was named RAF Croydon as its role changed to that of a fighter airfield during the Battle of Britain; and in 1943 RAF Transport Command was founded at the site, which used the airport to transport thousands of troops into and out of Europe.

After the Second World War, its role returned to civil aviation, but the role of London's primary international airport passed to London Heathrow Airport. Croydon Airport closed in 1959. It had been known under eight different names while it was active.

In 1978, the terminal building and Gate Lodge were granted protection as Grade II listed buildings. In May 2017, Historic England raised the status of the terminal building to Grade II*. Owing to disrepair, the Gate Lodge is now classified as Heritage at Risk by Historic England.

The Origins of Croydon Airport

In December 1915, Beddington Aerodrome was established - one of a number of small airfields around London that were created for protection against Zeppelin airship raids during the Great War. In January 1916, the first two aircraft, B.E 2C's, arrived at the aerodrome as part of Home Defence.

Waddon Aerodrome opened in 1918 as part of the adjoining National Aircraft Factory No. 1, to serve aircraft test flights. The two airfields were on each side of Plough Lane.

Beddington Aerodrome became a large Reserve Aircraft and Training aerodrome for the Royal Flying Corps. At the end of the Great War the aerodrome was retained, becoming an important training airfield for the newly formed Royal Air Force.

During 1919, Prince Albert (later George VI) gained his 'wings' here with No. 29 Training Squadron, the first member of the Royal Family to learn to fly. His elder brother, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), also received flying training with No. 29 Training Squadron at Beddington during 1919.

The two aerodromes were combined following the end of the Great War to become Croydon Aerodrome, the gateway for all international flights to and from London. The new aerodrome opened on the 29th. March 1920, replacing the temporary civil aerodrome at a Cavalry ground on Hounslow Heath.

Plough Lane remained a public road crossing the site, and road traffic was halted when necessary, first by a man with a red flag and later by a gate. The aerodrome stimulated a growth in regular scheduled flights carrying passengers, mail and freight, the first destinations being Paris, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Two flights daily from Paris were scheduled for ease of communication with London during the Paris Peace Conference. In 1923, flights to Berlin Tempelhof Airport began.

Penshurst Airfield was an alternative destination for airliners when Croydon was closed on account of fog. One such diversion was on the 24th. September 1921, when a de Havilland DH.18 aircraft was diverted to Penshurst. This situation lasted until Penshurst closed on the 28th. July 1936.

Innovation

Croydon was the first airport in the world to introduce air traffic control, a control tower, and radio position-fixing procedures.

The aerodrome control tower (visible in the photograph) was designed with windows on all four sides. It provided basic traffic, weather and location information to pilots.

The 'Mayday' distress call was also first established at Croydon.

Croydon Airport also had the world's first airport hotel.

Imperial Airways

On the formation of Britain's first national airline, Imperial Airways, on the 31st. March 1924, Croydon became the new airline's operating base. Imperial Airways was the British Government's chosen instrument to develop connections with the U.K.'s extensive overseas interests.

It was therefore from Croydon that Great Britain first developed its European and long-haul routes to India, Africa, the Middle and Far East, Asia, Africa and Australia (in conjunction with Qantas).

The Crash of the Imperial Airways de Havilland

Following the Imperial Airways de Havilland DH.34 crash, Great Britain's first major civil aviation accident, conditions at Croydon came under criticism from the public inquiry that investigated the causes.

The crash occurred on the 24th. December 1924. The aircraft took off from Croydon Airport on a scheduled international passenger flight to Le Bourget Airport, Paris. Witnesses described the aircraft as flying low over Purley before nosediving to the ground and overturning. The crash was followed by an explosion and fire.

The crash site was 1 1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) from Croydon Airport, at Castle Hill, Purley, where the Kingsdown housing estate was then under construction. Attempts to rescue the pilot and the seven passengers were made, but the intensity of the fire made this task impossible. A witness stated that he thought the accident was unsurvivable.

It was only after the local fire brigade had extinguished the fire that the bodies of the victims could be extricated from the wreckage. The accident was the first fatal accident suffered by Imperial Airways.

A memorial plaque and cross were placed at Kingsdown Avenue. They are still there to this day.

The inquiry was Great Britain's first into an aviation accident. It led to an Act of Parliament, the Croydon Aerodrome Extension Act 1925.

The Expansion of Croydon Airport

The 1925 Act led to large-scale expansion, redevelopment and construction of an improved new airport between 1926 and 1928, with a new complex of buildings being constructed alongside Purley Way, including the first purpose-designed airport terminal and air traffic control tower, the world's first airport hotel, and extensive hangars.

The development cost £267,000 (£16.2 million in today's prices). Plough Lane was closed permanently to let heavier airliners land and depart safely. The airport's terminal building and control tower were completed in 1928, and the old wooden air traffic control and customs building demolished. The new buildings and layout began operations on the 20th. January 1928, and were officially opened on the 2nd. May 1928 by Lady Maud Hoare.

Notable Flights

Croydon was where regular international passenger services began, initially using converted wartime bombers, and the Croydon - Le Bourget route soon became the busiest in the world.

Amy Johnson took off from Croydon on the 5th. May 1930 for her record-breaking flight to Australia.

In 1927, Charles Lindbergh arrived in the Spirit of St. Louis, to be greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of over 100,000 people.

Winston Churchill also took flying lessons at the airport.

On the morning of the 11th. July 1936, Major Hugh Pollard and Cecil Bebb left Croydon Airport for the Canary Islands in a de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft, where they picked up General Francisco Franco, taking him to Spanish Morocco and thereby helping to trigger the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

The airport also hosted a much-publicised visit by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the National Socialist Women's League (NS-Frauenschaft) and rumoured to be a spy; historians have speculated that she landed in Britain to cultivate German spies living here, in the run-up to WWII.

BOAC

In March 1937 British Airways Ltd. operated from Croydon, moving to Heston Aerodrome in May 1938. Imperial Airways, serving routes in the British Empire, and British Airways Ltd, serving European routes, were merged in 1939 to become the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).

Croydon Airport in WWII

When the Second World War started in September 1939, Croydon Airport was closed to civil aviation, but played a vital role as a fighter station during the Battle of Britain. No. 92 Squadron flew Supermarine Spitfires from RAF Croydon during the early part of the Second World War and the Battle of Britain.

On the 15th. August 1940, Croydon Airport was attacked during the first major air raid on the London area. At around 6.20 pm, 22 fighter-bombers mounted a final raid of the day, intended for RAF Kenley nearby, but attacked Croydon (four miles further north) in error.

The armoury was destroyed, the civilian airport terminal building was badly damaged, and a hangar was damaged by cannon fire and blast. Another hangar and about forty training aircraft in it went up in flames.

Six airfield personnel died (four airmen from No. 111 Squadron, an officer of No. 1 Squadron RCAF, and a female telephonist from Station HQ). Factories next to Croydon Airport took the worst of the bombing. The British NSF factory (making electrical components) was almost entirely destroyed, and the Bourjois perfume factory was gutted.

The Rollason Aircraft factory also received bomb hits and accounted for many of the 62 civilians (including five women) killed and 192 injured. Eight of the attacking aircraft were shot down by the Hurricanes of 32 and 111 Squadrons.

Croydon became the base of RAF Transport Command in 1944.

Post-War Developments and Final Closure

Following the end of the war, it was realised that post-war airliners and cargo aircraft would be larger, and that air traffic would intensify. The urban spread of south London and the growth of surrounding villages had enclosed Croydon Airport and left it little room for expansion. Heathrow was therefore designated as London's airport.

Croydon returned to civil control in February 1946. Northolt opened to airlines soon after that, cutting Croydon's traffic, but the September 1946 ABC Guide shows 218 departures a week to Belfast, Dublin, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Jersey, Guernsey, and several continental airports. A year later there were only 56 departures a week, mostly BEA de Havilland Dragon Rapides that weeks later left Croydon for good.

It was decided in 1952 that the airport would eventually be closed, as Blackbushe Airport in Hampshire and Northolt Aerodrome in Middlesex could accommodate European flights during the 1950's.

The last scheduled flight from Croydon departed at 6:15pm on the 30th. September 1959. The airfield officially closed at 10:20pm.

On the 27th. September 2009, to mark the 50th. anniversary of the closing of the airport, eleven light aircraft, including eight biplanes, staged a flypast. A gold laurel leaf tribute was laid in the control tower to mark the anniversary.

Croydon Airport Today

Much of the site has been built over, but some of the airport buildings near Purley Way are still visible, clearly identifiable as to their former purpose. The former terminal building is called Airport House, and the former control tower houses a visitors' centre.

A de Havilland Heron (a small propeller-driven British airliner of the 1950's) is displayed on the forecourt outside Airport House, mounted on struts. The Heron is painted to represent an aircraft of Morton Air Services which flew the last passenger flight from Croydon on the 30th. September 1959. A memorial to those lost in the Battle of Britain stands slightly to the south.

Although Croydon Airport has long ceased operation, the two cut ends of Plough Lane have never been reunited, but the area between has been developed instead into parkland, playing fields, and the Roundshaw residential estate with its roads aptly named after aviators and aircraft.

All that remains of the runways is a small area of tarmac about 400 feet (120 m) long in Roundshaw Park just west of Purley Way, which is a remnant of the WNW-ESE runway due south of the control buildings. The area is used primarily by walkers, model aircraft enthusiasts, locals playing football and the Croydon Pirates baseball team.

The church on the Roundshaw estate has a cross on its outside wall that was made from the cut down propeller of a Spitfire based at Croydon during the Second World War.

In recognition of the historical significance of the aerodrome, two local schools (Waddon Infants School and Duppas Junior School) merged in September 2010 and became The Aerodrome School.

The Airport Buildings

The Aerodrome Hotel and the terminal building including its grand booking hall were built in the neo-classical geometrical design typical of the early 20th. Century. A further item that would have caught the eye of visitor and traveller alike was the time zone tower (now lost) in the booking hall with its dials depicting the times in different parts of the world.

The Airport Hotel survives (2020) as the independent Hallmark Hotel.

Events and Celebrities Associated With the Airport

- 1919 - Winston Churchill took extensive flying lessons at Croydon, and was nearly killed during a crash at take-off in 1919.

- 1925 - Alan Cobham flew from Croydon to Cape Town and back in 1925-6.

- 1927 - Charles Lindbergh flew into Croydon in 1927 shortly after completing the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.

- 1928 - Mary Bailey flew solo from Croydon to Cape Town.

- 1928 - Mary, Lady Heath was the first pilot to fly a small open-cockpit aircraft from Cape Town to Croydon Aerodrome on the 18th. May.

- 1928 - Bert Hinkler made the first flight from Croydon to Darwin, Australia.

- 1928 - Charles Kingsford Smith beat Hinkler's record.

- 1929 - Armstrong Whitworth flew an Argosy from Croydon to Paris, and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford met Countess Mountbatten of Burma.

- 1930 - Aspy Engineer and R. N. Chawla were the first Indians to fly from Karachi to Croydon and shortly after, Engineer flew from Croydon to Karachi solo and within the specified one month time frame to win the Aga Khan competition.

- 1930 - Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly from Croydon to Australia, later to return to Croydon to a jubilant welcome. Amy left Croydon on the 5th. May with a few people to see her off. She returned from Australia to be greeted by crowds of thousands.

- 1934 - Tom Campbell Black and C. W. A. Scott won the MacRobertson London to Melbourne Air Race.

Literary References to Croydon Airport

Croydon Airport features heavily in two detective novels, Freeman Wills Crofts' 'The 12.30 from Croydon' (1934) and Agatha Christie's 'Death in the Clouds' (1935).

It is also mentioned in Evelyn Waugh's 'Labels: A Mediterranean Journey' (1930), Elizabeth Bowen's 'To the North' (1932) and Winston Churchill's 'Thoughts and Adventures' (1932).

W. H. Auden, in his Letter to Lord Byron (1937), lists 'Croydon Aerodrome' as one of the locations visited by a modern-day Don Juan.

Accidents and Incidents Associated With Croydon Airport

- On the 15th. March 1923, a Farman F.60 Goliath F-AEIE of Compagnie des Messageries Aériennes overran the runway on landing and collided with a building. The aircraft was later repaired and returned to service.

- On the 22nd. January 1924, a Goliath F-GEAO of Air Union was destroyed by fire following an accident when landing.

- On the 24th. December 1924, an Imperial Airways de Havilland DH.34 G-EBBX crashed and caught fire shortly after take-off from Croydon, killing the pilot and all seven passengers.

-- On the 24th. July 1928, Alfred Loewenstein, a Belgian financier and one of the wealthiest people in the world at the time, was killed when he fell out of his privately owned Fokker airliner at an altitude of 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Flying from Croydon Airport to Brussels, he is believed to have opened the wrong cabin door before plunging out into space over the English Channel. Suicide was suspected, although it was probably just an unfortunate error - he was last seen by the six other passengers walking to the rear of the aircraft to use the bathroom. However he stepped through the door opposite the bathroom. His body was found on a beach in France eight days later.

More on Loewenstein and his disappearance below.

- On the 6th. November 1929, the Deutsche Lufthansa Junkers G 24bi Oberschlesien (registration D-903) crashed after striking trees on a hill in Morden Park, Surrey, while attempting to return to Croydon in thick fog after taking off for a flight to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Three of the four crew members and four of the five passengers died.

- On the 19th. May 1934, a Wibault 280 of Air France crash-landed on a cricket pitch adjacent to Croydon Airport as a result of running out of fuel. Only one of the ten people on board was injured.

- On the 31st. May 1934 an Air France aircraft carrying newspapers to Paris crashed after hitting the mast of an aircraft radio navigation beacon that had been erected off the end of the white-line take-off path, killing the two crew. (...On the face of it, a pretty silly place to erect a navigation beacon.)

- On the 6th. March 1935, in the Croydon Airport robbery, £21,000 worth of gold bullion was stolen. Three men were charged, although only one was sentenced. The gold was never found.

- On the 9th. December 1936, a KLM Douglas DC-2 crashed on take-off at Croydon Airport on a flight to Amsterdam. The accident killed 15 out of the 17 on the DC-2, including Juan de la Cierva and Arvid Lindman. Juan de la Cierva was the Spanish inventor of the autogyro.

- On the 25th. January 1947, a Spencer Airways Douglas Dakota failed to get airborne on a flight to Rhodesia. The aircraft struck another parked and empty aircraft, killing 11 passengers and the pilot.

Further Accidents and Incidents of Imperial Airways

(a) Fatal Accidents

- On the 13th. July 1928, a Vickers Vulcan G-EBLB crashed at Purley during a test flight, killing four of the six people on board. As a result of the crash, Imperial Airways stopped the flying of staff (so called joy rides) during test flights.

- On the 17th. June 1929, a Handley Page W.10 G-EBMT ditched in the English Channel following engine failure whilst on a flight from Croydon to Paris with the loss of seven lives.

- On the 6th. September 1929, a de Havilland Hercules G-EBMZ crashed and burned on landing at Jask, Iran in the dark due to the pilot misjudging the altitude and stalling the aircraft, killing three of the five individuals on board.

- On the 26th. October 1929, a Short G-AADN force-landed off La Spezia, Italy in poor weather; the flying boat sank in the night during attempts to tow it to shore, killing all seven on board.

- On the 30th. October 1930, a Handley Page W.8g G-EBIX struck high ground in fog at Boulogne, France, killing three of the six individuals on board.

- On the 28th. March 1933, an Armstrong Whitworth Argosy G-AACI crashed at Diksmuide, Belgium following an in-flight fire. This is suspected to be the first-ever case of sabotage in the air. All fifteen people on board were killed.

- On the 30th. December 1933, an Avro Ten G-ABLU collided with a radio mast at Ruysselede, Belgium and crashed. All ten people on board were killed.

- On the 31st. December 1935, a Short G-AASJ crashed off Alexandria, Egypt when all four engines failed on approach, possibly due to fuel starvation; twelve of the 13 on board drowned when the flying boat sank.

- On the 22nd. August 1936, a Short G-ABFA sank at Mirabello Bay, Crete after a heavy landing, killing two of the 11 on board.

- On the 24th. March 1937, a Short G-ADVA crashed in the Beaujolois Mountains near Ouroux, France following a navigation error, killing five.

- On the 1st. October 1937, a Short G-ADVC crashed on landing in Phaleron Bay, Greece due to poor visibility, killing two of 15 on board.

- On the 5th. December 1937, a Short G-ADUZ crashed on take-off from Brindisi, Italy due to incorrect flap settings, killing two.

- On the 27th. July 1938, an Armstrong Whitworth G-ABTG flew into a hillside near Kisumu, Kenya shortly after take-off, killing all four on board.

- On the 27th. November 1938, a Short G-AETW crashed in Lake Habbaniyah, Iraq in bad weather after the pilot descended to maintain visual contact with the ground following spatial disorientation, killing all four crew.

- On the 21st. January 1939, a Short G-ADUU ditched in the Atlantic 285 mi off New York due to carburettor icing and loss of engine power; three drowned while ten survivors were picked up by the tanker Esso Baytown. Thereafter Imperial Airways and Pan-American trans-oceanic flying boats had the upper surfaces of the wings painted with orange high visibility markings.

- On the 1st. May 1939, a Short G-ADVD crashed in the Lumbo lagoon while attempting to land at Lumbo Airport, killing two of the six individuals on board.

- On the 1st. March 1940, a Handley Page H.P.42 G-AAGX disappeared over the Gulf of Oman with eight on board; no wreckage, cargo or occupants were ever found. The cause of the crash remains unknown, but fuel starvation, a bird strike damaging a propeller and causing an engine or wing to separate, an in-flight breakup or multiple engine failure were theorised. Two months after the crash, the H.P.42 was withdrawn from passenger operations. It was also recommended that all commercial aircraft used in long flights over water be equipped with personal and group life saving gear; this would later become standard throughout the airline industry.

The 18 fatal Imperial Airways accidents listed above (including the 1924 Purley crash) produce a death toll of 101 fatalities, which is relatively modest by today's standards - the years between 1924 and 1940 produced an average of only 6.3 deaths per year.

This is due at least in part to the fact that modern aircraft have a much larger capacity and transport vastly more passengers, resulting in many more fatalities per crash; the Imperial Airlines fatal crashes recorded above produced an average of only 5.6 deaths per flight.

(b) Non-Fatal Accidents of Imperial Airways

- On the 21st. October 1926, a Handley Page W.10 G-EBMS ditched in the English Channel 18 nautical miles (33 km) off the English coast after an engine failed. All 12 people on board were rescued by FV Invicta.

- On the 19th. April 1931, a de Havilland DH.66 with registration G-EBMW was damaged beyond repair in a forced landing following fuel starvation at Surabaya.

- On the 8th. August 1931, a Handley Page H.P.42 G-AAGX was operating a scheduled passenger flight from Croydon to Paris when an engine failed and debris forced a second engine to be shut down. A forced landing at Five Oak Green, Kent resulted in extensive damage, although no injuries occurred. The aircraft was dismantled and trucked to Croydon to be rebuilt.

- On the 9th. November 1935, a Short G-ABFB caught fire and burned out during refuelling in Brindisi Harbor; the refuelling crew were able to jump clear of the burning aircraft and survived.

- On the 29th. September 1936, an Armstrong Whitworth G-ABTK burned out in a hangar fire at Delhi, India.

- On the 31st. May 1937, a Handley Page H.P.45 G-AAXE was destroyed in a hangar fire at Karachi, India.

- On the 3rd. December 1938, a de Havilland G-ADCN burned out at Bangkok.

- On the 12th. March 1939, a Short S.23 Empire Flying Boat G-ADUY was damaged beyond repair at Tandjong, Batavia, Netherlands East Indies. It struck a submerged object while taxiing. The aircraft beached, but proved to be damaged beyond repair by immersion and mishandling during salvage. The aircraft was dismantled and shipped to England, but not returned to service.

- On the 7th. November 1939, a Handley Page H.P.42 G-AXXD was written off following a forced landing at a golf course at Tiverton, Devon.

- On the 19th. March 1940, a Handley Page H.P.45 G-AAXC and H.P.42 G-AAUD were both written off after being blown over in high winds while parked at Whitchurch Airport.

PUBLISHED - DIGITAL PHOTO MAGAZINE by MARK RUTLEY

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I was lucky to have another of my images published in the Spring 2014 Digital Photo Magazine.

Arsène Lupin French 2004 by Chatwick Harpax

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Arsène Lupin is a fictional gentleman thief and master of disguise created by French writer Maurice Leblanc.

Lupin was featured in 20 novels and 28 short stories by Leblanc, with the short stories collected into book form for a total of 24 books. The first story, "L'Arrestation d'Arsène Lupin", was published in the magazine Je sais tout on 15 July 1905.

The character has also appeared in a number of books from other writers as well as numerous film, television , stage play, and comic book adaptations.

Arsene Lupin Contre Herlock Sholmes

Aside from the Arsène Lupin stories written by Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941) himself, five authorized sequels were written in the 1970s by the celebrated mystery writing team of Boileau-Narcejac.

The character of Lupin was first introduced in a series of short stories serialized in the magazine Je sais tout, starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905. He was originally called Arsène Lopin, until a local politician of the same name protested, resulting in the name change.

Arsène Lupin is a literary descendant of Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail's Rocambole. Like him, he is often a force for good, while operating on the wrong side of the law. Those whom Lupin defeats, always with his characteristic Gallic style and panache, are worse villains than he. Lupin shares distinct similarities with E. W. Hornung's archetypal gentleman thief A. J. Raffles who first appeared in The Amateur Cracksman in 1899, but both creations can be said to anticipate and have inspired later characters such as Louis Joseph Vance's The Lone Wolf and Leslie Charteris's The Saint.

The character of Arsène Lupin might also have been based by Leblanc on French anarchist Marius Jacob, whose trial made headlines in March 1905, but Leblanc had also read Octave Mirbeau's Les 21 jours d'un neurasthénique (1901), which features a gentleman thief named Arthur Lebeau, and had seen Mirbeau's comedy Scrupules (1902), whose main character is a gentleman thief.

The official last book of the series, The Billions of Arsene Lupin, was published without the ninth chapter "The Safe" ("IX. Les coffres-forts"), and even the published book was withdrawn at Leblanc's son's request. However, in 2002, by the efforts of some Lupinians and Korean translator Sung Gwi-Su, the missing part was restored and the complete final collection of Arsene Lupin happened to be published first in Korea, from Kkachi Publishing House.

Arsène Lupin and Sherlock Holmes

Leblanc introduced Sherlock Holmes to Lupin in the short story "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late" in Je sais tout No. 17, 15 June 1906. In it, Holmes meets a young Lupin for the first time. After legal objections from Conan Doyle, the name was changed to "Herlock Sholmes" when the story was collected in book form in Volume 1.

Sholmes returned in two more stories collected in Volume 2, "Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes", and then in a guest-starring role in the battle for the secret of the Hollow Needle in L'Aiguille creuse. Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmes was published in the United States in 1910 under the title "The Blonde Lady" which used the name "Holmlock Shears" for Sherlock Holmes, and "Wilson" for Watson.

In 813, Lupin manages to solve a riddle that Herlock Sholmes was unable to figure out.

Sherlock Holmes, this time with his real name and accompanied by familiar characters such as Watson and Lestrade (all copyright protection having long expired), also confronted Arsène Lupin in the 2008 PC 3D adventure game Sherlock Holmes versus Arsène Lupin. In this game Holmes (and occasionally others) are attempting to stop Lupin from stealing five British valuable items. Lupin wants to steal the items in order to humiliate Britain, but he also admires Holmes and thus challenges him to try to stop him.

In a novella "The Prisoner of the Tower, or A Short But Beautiful Journey of Three Wise Men" by Boris Akunin published in 2008 in Russia as the conclusion of "Jade Rosary Beads" book, Sherlock Holmes and Erast Fandorin oppose Arsène Lupin on December 31, 1899.

Fantasy elements

Several Arsène Lupin novels contain some interesting fantasy elements: a radioactive 'god-stone' that cures people and causes mutations is the object of an epic battle in L’Île aux trente cercueils; the secret of the Fountain of Youth, a mineral water source hidden beneath a lake in the Auvergne, is the goal sought by the protagonists in La Demoiselle aux yeux verts; finally, in La Comtesse de Cagliostro, Lupin's arch-enemy and lover is none other than Joséphine Balsamo, the alleged granddaughter of Cagliostro himself.

Bibliography

1.Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar (Arsène Lupin, gentleman cambrioleur, 1907 coll., 9 stories) (AKA Exploits of Arsène Lupin, Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin)

2.Arsene Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes (Arsène Lupin contre Herlock Sholmès, 1908 coll., 2 stories) (AKA The Blonde Lady)

3.The Hollow Needle (L'Aiguille creuse, 1909)

4.813 (813, 1910)

5.The Crystal Stopper (Le Bouchon de cristal, 1912)

6.The Confessions of Arsene Lupin (Les Confidences d'Arsène Lupin, 1913 coll., 9 stories)

7.The Shell Shard (L'Éclat d'obus, 1916) (AKA: Woman of Mystery) Not originally part of the Arsène Lupin series, Lupin was written into the story in the 1923 edition.

8.The Golden Triangle (Le Triangle d'or, 1918) (AKA: The Return of Arsène Lupin)

9.The Island of Thirty Coffins (L’Île aux trente cercueils, 1919) (AKA: The Secret of Sarek)

10.The Teeth of The Tiger (Les Dents du tigre, 1921)

11.The Eight Strokes of The Clock (Les Huit Coups de l'horloge, 1923 coll., 8 stories)

12.The Countess of Cagliostro (La Comtesse de Cagliostro, 1924) (AKA: Memoirs of Arsene Lupin)

13.The Damsel With Green Eyes (La Demoiselle aux yeux verts, 1927) (AKA: The Girl With the Green Eyes, Arsène Lupin, Super Sleuth)

14.The Overcoat of Arsène Lupin (Le Pardessus d'Arsène Lupin, published in English in 1926) First published in 1924 in France as Dent d'Hercule Petitgris. Altered into a Lupin story and published in English as The Overcoat of Arsène Lupin in 1926 in The Popular Magazine.

15.The Man with the Goatskin (L'Homme à la peau de bique (1927)

16.The Barnett & Co. Agency (L'Agence Barnett et Cie., 1928 coll., 8 stories) (AKA: Jim Barnett Intervenes, Arsène Lupin Intervenes)

17.The Mysterious Mansion (La Demeure mystérieuse, 1929) (AKA: The Melamare Mystery)

18.The Mystery of The Green Ruby (La Barre-y-va, 1930)

19.The Emerald Cabochon (Le Cabochon d'émeraude (1930)

20.The Woman With Two Smiles (La Femme aux deux sourires, 1933) (AKA: The Double Smile)

21.Victor of the Vice Squad (Victor de la Brigade mondaine, 1933) (AKA: The Return of Arsene Lupin)

22.The Revenge of The Countess of Cagliostro (La Cagliostro se venge, 1935)

23.The Billions of Arsène Lupin (Les Milliards d'Arsène Lupin, 1939)

24.The Last Love of Arsene Lupin (Le Dernier Amour d'Arsène Lupin, 2012)

Other material by LeBlanc

1.Arsène Lupin (Arsène Lupin (pièce de théâtre) Originally a 4-part play written by Maurice LeBlanc and Francis de Croisset, it was subsequently novelized by LeBlanc and published in 1909. It was then translated into English by Edgar Jepson and published in 1909 by Doubleday as "Arsene Lupin: By Maurice LeBlanc & Edgar Jepson"

By other writers

Boileau-Narcejac1.Le Secret d’Eunerville (1973)

2.La Poudrière (1974)

3.Le Second visage d’Arsène Lupin (1975)

4.La Justice d’Arsène Lupin (1977)

5.Le Serment d’Arsène Lupin (1979)

Notable pastiches

The Adventure of Mona Lisa by Carolyn Wells in The Century (January, 1912)

Sure Way to Catch Every Criminal. Ha! Ha! by Carolyn Wells in The Century (July, 1912)

The Adventure of the Clothes-Line by Carolyn Wells in The Century (May, 1915)

The Silver Hair Crime (= Clue?) by Nick Carter in New Magnet Library No. 1282 (1930)

Aristide Dupin who appears in Union Jack Nos. 1481, 1483, 1489, 1493 and 1498 (1932) in the Sexton Blake collection by Gwyn Evans

La Clé est sous le paillasson by Marcel Aymé (1934)

Gaspard Zemba who appears in The Shadow Magazine (December 1, 1935) by Walter B. Gibson

Arsène Lupin vs. Colonel Linnaus by Anthony Boucher in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Vo. 5, No. 19 (1944)

L’Affaire Oliveira by Thomas Narcejac in Confidences dans ma nuit (1946)

Le Gentleman en Noir by Claude Ferny (c. 1950) (two novels)

International Investigators, Inc. by Edward G. Ashton in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (February 1952)

Le Secret des rois de France ou La Véritable identité d’Arsène Lupin by Valère Catogan (1955)

In Compartment 813 by Arthur Porges in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (June 1966)

Arsène Lupin, gentleman de la nuit by Jean-Claude Lamy (1983)

Auguste Lupa in Son of Holmes (1986) and Rasputin’s Revenge (1987) by John Lescroart

Various stories in the Tales of the Shadowmen anthology series, ed. by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier, Black Coat Press (2005-ongoing)

Arsène Lupin is also referred to as the grandfather of Lupin III in the Japanese manga series of the same name. He appears in chapter 37 of the series.

Arsène Lupin and Sherlock Holmes have been the basis for the popular Japanese manga series Detective Conan. Kaitou Kid (originating from Magic Kaito) resembles and represents Lupin, while Conan Edogawa resembles and represents Sherlock Holmes.

In the Adventure of The Doraemons, the robot cat The Mysterious Thief Dorapent resembles Lupin.

A funny animal pastiche of Arsène Lupin is Arpin Lusène, of the Scrooge McDuck Universe.

Případ Grendwal (A Grendwal Case), a play by Pavel Dostál, Czech playwright and Minister of Culture

Tuxedo Mask from the popular Japanese manga and anime series Sailor Moon, also resembles Arsène Lupin.

Arsène Lupin et le mystère d'Arsonval by Michel Zink

Qui fait peur à Virginia Woolf ? (... Élémentaire mon cher Lupin !) by Gabriel Thoveron

Crimes parfaits by Christian Poslaniec

La Dent de Jane by Daniel Salmon (2001)

Les Lupins de Vincent by Caroline Cayol et Didier Cayol (2006)

Code Lupin by Michel Bussi (2006)

L'Église creuse by Patrick Genevaux (2009) (short story)

The Many Faces of Arsène Lupin collection of short stories edited by Jean-Marc Lofficier & Randy Lofficier (Black Coat Press, 2012)

Related Links:

Secretum Secretorum - or Kitab Sirr al-Asrar is a medieval treatise also known as Secret of Secrets, or The Book of the Secret of Secrets, or in Arabic Kitab sirr al-asrar, or the Book of the science of government: on the good ordering of statecraft. It is a mid-12th century Latin translation of a 10th century Arabic encyclopedic treatise on a wide range of topics including statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine. It was influential in Europe during the High Middle Ages.

Arabic of Book of Causes attributed to Apollonius of Tyana

Aurelium Occultae Philosophorum by Georgio Beato

Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani (Second Book of the Elements of Foundation) attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan

Kitab Sirr al-Khaliqa wa San`at al-Tabi`a ("Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature"), dated between 650 and 830 AD.Bernard Trevisan

The Seven Sermons to the Dead - C.G. Jung identified "The Emerald Tablet" with a table made of green stone which he encountered in the first of a set of his dreams and visions beginning at the end of 1912, and climaxing in his writing The Seven Sermons to the Dead in 1916.

Translation from the original Arabic of Book of Causes attributed to Apollonius of Tyana

Key Names: Albertus Magnus Aleister Crowley Alexander the Great Apollonius of Tyana

Aristotle ChrysogonusPolydorus - Nuremberg 1541 C.G. Jung Georgio Beato Hermes Trismegistus - "Hermes the Thrice-Great" Isaac Newton Jabir ibn Hayyan John of Seville - Johannes "Hispalensis" or Hispaniensis ca. 1140 Michael Maier Ortolanus - alchemist, wrote a substantial exegesis on "The Secret of Hermes Philip of Tripoli - c. 1243 Roger Bacon. Trithemius References: Translation from the original Arabic of Book of Causes attributed to Apollonius of Tyana "Newton's Commentary on the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus" in Merkel, I. and Debus, A. G., Hermeticism and the Renaissance. Folger, Washington 1988. Sometimes written Thelesmi. This indicates a Greek origin. The Latin word "Tela" (ae,fem.) roughly means "loom" or "incomplete cloth". The true meaning of the word is somewhat obscure.Holmyard, E.J. "The Emerald Table" Nature, No. 2814, Vol. 112, October 6 1923, pp 525–6.Holmyard, E.J. Alchemy, Pelican, Harmondsworth, 1957. pp95–8.Needham, J. Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, part 4: Spagyrical discovery and invention: Apparatus, Theories and gifts. CUP, 1980. Ruska, Julius. Die Alchimie ar-Razi's. n.p., 1935.Ruska, Julius. Quelques problemes de literature alchimiste. n.p., 1931.Stapleton, H.E., Lewis, G.L, Sherwood Taylor, F. "The sayings of Hermes quoted in the Ma Al-Waraqi of Ibn Umail. " Ambix, vol. 3, 1949, pp 69–90. M.Robinson. "The History and Myths surrounding Johannes Hispalensis," in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies vol. 80, no. 4, October 2003, pp. 443–470, abstract.An Interpretation of The Emerald Tablet by William Hoper drawing on Jung's Synchronicity and Plato's Theory of FormsSir Isaac Newton's translation of The Emerald Tablet with analysis and contemporary commentaryLetterpress edition of the Emerald Tablet offered by a US publisherThe Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus Ed. Vladimir Antonov.Comments on the 13 sentences of Tabula Smaragdina and Introductions to Alchemy (hermetic thinking) by Béla Hamvas.Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet"

The Emerald Tablet, also known as the Smaragdine Table, or Tabula Smaragdina, is a compact and cryptic piece of Hermetica reputed to contain the secret of the prima materia and its transmutation. It was highly regarded by European alchemists as the foundation of their art and its Hermetic tradition. The original source of the Emerald Tablet is unknown. Although Hermes Trismegistus is the author named in the text, its first known appearance is in a book written in Arabic between the sixth and eighth centuries. The text was first translated into Latin in the twelfth century. Numerous translations, interpretations and commentaries followed. The layers of meaning in the Emerald Tablet have been associated with the creation of the philosopher's stone, laboratory experimentation, phase transition, the alchemical magnum opus, the ancient, classical, element system, and the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm.In its several Western recensions, the Tablet became a mainstay of medieval and Renaissance alchemy. Commentaries and/or translations were published by, among others, Trithemius, Roger Bacon, Michael Maier, Aleister Crowley, Albertus Magnus, and Isaac Newton. The concise text was a popular summary of alchemical principles, wherein the secrets of the philosopher's stone were thought to have been described.The fourteenth century alchemist Ortolanus (or Hortulanus) wrote a substantial exegesis on "The Secret of Hermes," which was influential on the subsequent development of alchemy. Many manuscripts of this copy of the Emerald Tablet and the commentary of Ortolanus survive, dating at least as far back as the fifteenth century. Ortolanus, like Albertus Magnus before him saw the tablet as a cryptic recipe that described laboratory processes using decknamen (or code words). This was the dominant view held by Europeans until the fifteenth century.By the early sixteenth century, the writings of Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516) marked a shift away from a laboratory interpretation of the Emerald tablet, to a literal approach. Trithemius equated Hermes' one thing with the monad of pythagorean philosophy and the anima mundi. This interpretation of the Hermetic text was adopted by alchemists such as John Dee, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Gerhard Dorn.C.G. Jung identified "The Emerald Tablet" with a table made of green stone which he encountered in the first of a set of his dreams and visions beginning at the end of 1912, and climaxing in his writing Seven Sermons to the Dead in 1916.[citation needed] Historians of science, Eric John Holmyard (1891-1959) and Julius Ruska (1867-1949) also studied the tablet in the twentieth century. Because of its longstanding popularity, the Emerald Tablet is the only piece of non-Greek Hermetica to attract widespread attention in the West.Heinrich Khunrath The Emerald Tablet .http://www.thelivingmoon.com/44cosmic_wisdom/02files/Heinrich_Khunrath_Emerald_Tablet.html

The figure from the fifteenth century is described as living from 1406-1490. He was born into a noble family in Padua and spent his entire life spending his family fortune in search of the Philosopher's stone.He began his career as an alchemist at the age of fourteen. He had his family's permission, as they also desired to increase their wealth. He first worked with a monk of Cîteaux named Gotfridus Leurier. They attempted for eight years to fashion the Philosopher's stone out of hen eggshells and egg yolk purified in horse manure.He is believed to have been influential on the work of Gilles de Rais in the 1430s.He then worked with minerals and natural salts using distillation and crystallization methods borrowed from Jābir ibn Hayyān and Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi. When these failed he turned to vegetable and animal material, finally using human blood and urine. He gradually sold his wealth to buy secrets and hints towards the stone, most often from swindlers. He traveled all over the known world, including the Baltics, Germany, Spain, France, Vienna, Egypt, Palestine, Persia, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, to find hints left by past alchemists. His health had been deteriorating, most likely from the fumes he had created with his alchemy. He retired to the Island of Rhodes, still working on the Philosopher's stone until his death in 1490.Bernard Trevisan AlchemistC.G. Jung identified "The Emerald Tablet" with a table made of green stone which he encountered in the first of a set of his dreams and visions beginning at the end of 1912, and climaxing in his writing The Seven Sermons to the Dead in 1916.

Birthplace of / Geburtshaus von Wilhelm Busch (1832 - 1908) by SurfacePics

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Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch was a German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter. He published comic illustrated cautionary tales from 1859, achieving his most notable works in the 1870s. Busch's illustrations used wood engraving, and later, zincography.

Busch drew on contemporary parochial and city life, satirizing Catholicism, Philistinism, strict religious morality and bigotry. His comic text was colourful and entertaining, using onomatopoeia, neologisms and other figures of speech, and led to some work being banned by the authorities.

Busch was influential in both poetry and illustration, and became a source for future generations of comic artists. The Katzenjammer Kids was inspired by Busch's Max and Moritz, one of a number of imitations produced in Germany and the United States. The Wilhelm Busch Prize and the Wilhelm Busch Museum help maintain his legacy. His 175th anniversary in 2007 was celebrated throughout Germany. Busch remains one of the most influential poets and artists in Western Europe

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Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch war einer der einflussreichsten humoristischen Dichter und Zeichner Deutschlands.

Seine ersten Bildergeschichten erschienen ab 1859 als Einblattdrucke. In Buchform wurden sie erstmals 1864 unter dem Titel „Bilderpossen“ veröffentlicht. Schon seit den 1870er Jahren in ganz Deutschland berühmt, galt er bei seinem Tod dank seiner äußerst volkstümlichen Bildergeschichten als „Klassiker des deutschen Humors“. Als Pionier des Comics schuf er u. a. Max und Moritz, Die fromme Helene, Plisch und Plum, Hans Huckebein, der Unglücksrabe, die Knopp-Trilogie und weitere, bis heute populäre Werke. Oft griff er darin satirisch die Eigenschaften bestimmter Typen oder Gesellschaftsgruppen auf, etwa die Selbstzufriedenheit und Doppelmoral des Spießbürgers oder die Frömmelei von Geistlichen und Laien. Viele seiner Zweizeiler sind im Deutschen zu festen Redewendungen geworden, z. B. „Vater werden ist nicht schwer, Vater sein dagegen sehr“ oder „Dieses war der erste Streich, doch der zweite folgt sogleich“.

Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan. And John F. Kennedy's Fateful Limousine. by pepandtim

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The Postcard

A postally unused C.T. Art-Colortone postcard that was published on behalf of The Union News Co. In the space for the stamp it states:

'Place One Cent

Stamp Here.'

The following is printed on the divided back of the card:

"The historic village centers

in the 'Green' as did early

American communities.

About this spot stand the

public buildings - the Inn,

the Chapel, the School,

the Court House, the Town

Hall and the General Store."

The Henry Ford

The Henry Ford (also known as the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, Greenfield Village, and the Edison Institute) is a history museum complex in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan.

The museum collection contains the presidential limousine of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln's chair from Ford's Theatre, Thomas Edison's laboratory, the Wright Brothers' bicycle shop, the Rosa Parks bus, and many other historical exhibits.

It is the largest indoor–outdoor museum complex in the United States, and is visited by over 1.7 million people each year. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 as Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1981 as "Edison Institute".

Background to the Museum

Named for its founder, the automobile industrialist Henry Ford, and based on his efforts to preserve items of historical interest and portray the Industrial Revolution, the property houses homes, machinery, exhibits, and Americana of historically significant items as well as common memorabilia, both of which help to capture the history of life in early America. It is one of the largest such collections in the nation.

Henry Ford said of his museum:

"I am collecting the history of our people as written

into things their hands made and used .... When we

are through, we shall have reproduced American life

as lived, and that, I think, is the best way of preserving

at least a part of our history and tradition."

History of the Museum

Architect Robert O. Derrick designed the museum with a 523,000 square feet (48,600 m2) exhibit hall that extends 400 feet (120 m) behind the main façade. The façade spans 800 feet (240 m) and incorporates facsimiles of three structures from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia – Old City Hall, Independence Hall and Congress Hall.

The Edison Institute was dedicated by President Herbert Hoover to Ford's longtime friend Thomas Edison on the 21st. October 1929 – the 50th. anniversary of the first successful incandescent light bulb.

The attendees included Marie Curie, George Eastman, John D. Rockefeller, Will Rogers, Orville Wright, and about 250 others. The dedication was broadcast on radio, with listeners encouraged to turn off their electric lights until the switch was flipped at the Museum.

The Edison Institute was, at first, a private site for educational purposes only, but after numerous inquiries about the complex, it was opened as a museum to the general public on the 22nd. June 1933. It was originally composed of the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, and the Greenfield Village Schools (an experimental learning facility).

Initially, Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum were owned by the Ford Motor Company, which is currently a sponsor of the school, and cooperates with the Henry Ford to provide the Ford Rouge Factory Tour. The Henry Ford is sited between the Ford Dearborn Development Center and several Ford engineering buildings with which it shares the same style gates and brick fences.

In 1970, the museum purchased what it believed to be a 17th. century Brewster Chair, created for one of the Pilgrim settlers in the Plymouth Colony, for $9,000.

In September 1977, the chair was determined to be a modern forgery created in 1969 by Rhode Island sculptor Armand LaMontagne. The museum retains the piece as an educational tool on forgeries.

In the early 2000's, the museum added an auditorium to the building's south corner. This housed an IMAX theater until January 2016, when museum management decided to change formats for the facility to better fit with its mission. The renovated theater reopened in April of that year.

The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation

The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation began as Henry Ford's personal collection of historic objects, which he began collecting as far back as 1906. The museum features a 4K digital projection theater, which shows scientific, natural, or historical documentaries, as well as major feature films.

Today, the 12 acre (49,000 m²) site is primarily a collection of antique machinery, pop culture items, automobiles, locomotives, aircraft, and other items:

-- An Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

-- The 1961 Lincoln Continental in which President John F. Kennedy was riding when he was assassinated.

-- The rocking chair from Ford's Theatre in which President Abraham Lincoln was sitting when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

-- George Washington's camp bed.

-- A collection of several fine 17th. and 18th. century violins, including a Stradivarius.

-- Thomas Edison's alleged last breath in a sealed tube.

-- Buckminster Fuller's prototype Dymaxion house (see below).

-- The bus on which Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott.

-- Igor Sikorsky's prototype helicopter.

-- The Fokker Trimotor airplane that flew the first flight over the North Pole.

-- Bill Elliott's record-breaking race car clocking in at over 212 MPH at Talladega in 1987.

-- Fairbottom Bobs, the Newcomen engine.

-- A steam engine from Cobb's Engine House in England.

-- A working fragment of the original Holiday Inn "Great Sign."

-- Chesapeake & Ohio Railway "Allegheny"-class steam locomotive #1601, built by Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. The Allegheny was the third most-powerful steam locomotive ever built, after the Union Pacific Railroad "Big Boy" locomotive and the Pennsylvania Railroad Q2-class locomotive.

-- Toyota Prius sedan, the first mass-produced hybrid vehicle.

Behind the scenes, the Benson Ford Research Center uses the resources of The Henry Ford, especially the photographic, manuscript and archival material which is rarely displayed, to allow visitors to gain a deeper understanding of American people, places, events, and things. The Research Center also contains the Ford Motor Archives.

To commemorate the 100th. anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, the Henry Ford Museum exhibited a vast array of artifacts and media documenting the Titanic's voyage and demise. The exhibit was hosted from the 31st. March to the 30th. September 2012.

Greenfield Village

Greenfield Village, the outdoor living history museum section of the Henry Ford complex, was (along with the adjacent Henry Ford Museum) dedicated in 1929 and opened to the public in June 1933.

It was the first outdoor museum of its type in the nation, and served as a model for subsequent outdoor museums. Patrons enter at the gate, passing by the Josephine Ford Memorial Fountain and Benson Ford Research Center. Nearly one hundred historical buildings were moved to the property from their original locations and arranged in a "village" setting.

The museum's intent is to show how Americans have lived and worked since the founding of the country. The Village includes buildings from the 17th. century to the present, many of which are staffed by costumed interpreters who conduct period tasks like farming, sewing and cooking.

A collection of craft buildings such as pottery, glass-blowing, and tin shops provide demonstrations while producing materials used in the Village and for sale. The Village features costumed and plain-clothed presenters to tell stories and convey information about the attractions. Some of these presenters are seasonal, such as the "games on the green" presenters who only operate in the summer.

Greenfield Village has 240 acres (970,000 m²) of land of which only 90 acres (360,000 m²) are used for the attraction, the rest being forest, river and extra pasture for sheep and horses.

Village homes, buildings, and attractions include:

-- Noah Webster's Connecticut home, which served as a dormitory for Yale students from 1918 to 1936, when it was obtained by Henry Ford and moved to Greenfield Village where it was restored.

-- The Wright brothers' bicycle shop and home, which were bought and moved by Henry Ford in 1937 from Dayton, Ohio.

-- A replica of Thomas Edison's Menlo Park laboratory complex from New Jersey. Its reconstruction started in 1928. The buildings were laid out according to exact foundation measurements from the original site. It was furnished with original or faithful duplicates, all placed as they were originally sited.

-- The Edison Homestead, birthplace of Thomas Edison's father. It was built in 1816 in Vienna, Ontario, and moved to Greenfield Village in the 1930's.

-- Henry Ford's birthplace, which was moved from Greenfield and Ford roads in 1944. Henry Ford had it furnished exactly as it was during his mother's time.

-- Henry Ford's prototype garage where he built the Ford Quadricycle.

-- Harvey Firestone the tire magnate's family farm from Columbiana, Ohio, which was given to the Village by Harvey's two remaining sons in 1983 to perpetuate their father's memory. It took over two years for the disassembling and rebuilding process, and has been operated as a working sheep farm since 1985.

-- The Logan County, Illinois courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law.

-- William Holmes McGuffey's birthplace.

-- Luther Burbank's office.

-- J. R. Jones General Store was built circa 1857 in Waterford Village, Michigan. It was moved to Greenfield Village in 1927 after being purchased by Henry Ford from its then-owner August V. Jacober for $700 and the agreement to rebuild a new store on its Waterford site. It was the first structure to arrive at the Greenfield Village site. The general store was placed in its permanent location facing the village green in the spring of 1929.

-- Ackley Covered Bridge, a 75' wooden covered bridge, built in 1832 over Enlow Fork along the Greene - Washington County line in Southwestern Pennsylvania and moved to the village in 1937.

-- Cape Cod Windmill, also known as the Farris mill, is considered one of the oldest in America. It was originally built in 1633 on the north side of Cape Cod. It was moved several times around Cape Cod until it was gifted to Henry Ford from the Ford Dealers Association, and installed in Greenfield Village in 1936.

-- In 1935, a structure was added to the park and was identified as the home of Stephen Foster. The structure was identified by historians at the time as being authentic, and was deconstructed and moved piece by piece from the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Greenfield Village. However Foster's niece insisted that it was not his birthplace, and in 1953 the claim was withdrawn.

-- A 1913 Herschell Spillman carousel with an Artizan 'C' band organ with a replica Wurlitzer façade converted to play Wurlitzer rolls.

-- There are various modes of historic transportation in the Village providing rides for visitors which utilize authentic Ford Model Ts, a 1931 Ford Model AA bus (one of about 15 known to exist), horse-drawn omnibuses, and trains pulled by steam locomotives.

The Weiser Railroad

The rail line on which the steam locomotives in Greenfield Village presently run originally consisted of a simple straight stretch of track along the northern edge of the museum property, and has been present ever since Greenfield Village was dedicated in 1929.

The rail line, now named the Weiser Railroad, was later expanded into a continuous loop around the perimeter of the museum property, which was completed in stages between 1971 and 1972. This 4 ft 8½ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge passenger line is 2 miles (3.2 km) long, and has four stations.

All of the railroad's stations consist solely of single side platforms except for the station in the Railroad Junction section, which also includes the relocated Smiths Creek Depot building originally built for the Grand Trunk Railway in 1858.

The line utilizes a modern replica of a Detroit, Toledo & Milwaukee Railroad roundhouse built in 1884. At the time it opened in 2000, the new DT&M Roundhouse replica was one of only seven working roundhouses open to the public in the United States.

The railroad, unusual for a heritage railroad built purposely for tourism, has a direct connection to the United States National Railroad Network. The line to which it connects is a section of the Michigan Line owned by MDOT.

The Weiser Railroad's Torch Lake steam locomotive, built in 1873, is the oldest operational locomotive in the U.S. as of 2021.

Signature Events

(a) Civil War Remembrance

Each year the Village honors the sacrifices and achievements of those who fought in the American Civil War. The Civil War Remembrance event takes place on Memorial Day weekend every year.

An estimated 750,000 people died during the Civil War. The Civil War Remembrance includes hundreds of Union and Confederate re-enactors, musicians and historic presenters. Greenfield Village provides many opportunities to learn about the Civil War: exhibits, presentations, battle re-enactments, concerts, short plays, hands-on activities and Q&A with historians.

(b) Motor Muster

Motor Muster is one of two car shows that take place annually in Greenfield Village. Motor Muster is traditionally held on Father's Day weekend. This event currently features cars built from 1932–1976, and features between 600–800 cars. Special attractions include car judging, and Pass in Review in which experts discuss highlights of the passing cars.

Every summer the Henry Ford has a Summer Camp. It takes place inside Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum between June and August. It is for children in grades 2-9. Each grade level has a different theme, and children who participate in the Summer Camp have the opportunity to look at both the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and Greenfield Village from different perspectives.

Children participate in activities such as apprenticeships, canoeing, glass blowing and other age-dependent activities.

(d) World Tournament of Historic Base Ball

The World Tournament of Historical Base Ball takes place every year in August. Guests get to take a step back in time to 1867 as vintage base ball clubs from around the country compete using the game's early rules in a two-day exposition of historic base ball.

The clubs engage in two days of throwing, batting and competition.

(e) Salute to America

For four nights around Independence Day, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra performs a patriotic concert on Walnut Grove in the Village. Attendance ranges from 5,000 to 9,500 per evening.

(f) Ragtime Street Fair

This weekend event in July was first presented in 2007, and ran annually through 2015. Ragtime Street Fair featured dozens of live performers, including the River Raisin Ragtime Revue, "Perfessor" Bill Edwards, Mike Montgomery, Nan Bostick, Taslimah Bey, John Remmers, and Tartarsauce Traditional Jazz Band, who celebrated the Ragtime era (ca. 1900–1917).

The event also featured silent movies, phonograph demonstrations, a cake walk, a cutting contest, and a musical revue in the Town Hall as well as the 1912 presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt.

Instruction in the ragtime one-step was provided free of charge at this event.

(g) Old Car Festival

The Old Car Festival takes place every year in September. The festival has been held on the first weekend after Labor Day since 1955. The festival takes over the streets and grounds of Greenfield Village with the sights, sounds, and smells of hundreds of authentic vehicles from the 1890's through 1932.

This event features 500–700 cars. Special events include car judging, Pass in Review, the gaslight tour, and car races on the Walnut Grove field. Guests can take a self-guided tour of the exposition and talk to the owners of the treasured vehicles.

Visitors can watch a Model T be assembled in just minutes, attend presentations, and hear experts share information about the vintage vehicles.

(h) Hallowe'en in Greenfield Village

The Village's Halloween celebration features decorations, a headless horseman, witches, as well as other costumed characters, treats and activities for visitors. It is held Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings in October.

(i) Holiday Nights

The Christmas season has traditionally been popular in Greenfield Village. Many buildings feature period decorations, and the Village is open for self-guided strolls. An ice skating rink is available.

Visitors can view live entertainment and costumed presenters, or ride in a horse-drawn carriage or a Model T.

(j) Rouge Tour

The Ford Rouge Factory Tour is a first-hand journey behind the scenes of a modern, working automobile factory. Boarding buses at the Henry Ford Museum, visitors are taken to the River Rouge Plant and Dearborn Truck Plant, an industrial complex where Ford has built cars since the Model A that once employed 100,000 people.

In 2003, the Ford Rouge Factory, the manufacturing facility for the Ford F-Series truck, re-opened following extensive renovations. When it reopened as sustainable architecture led by noted 'green' architect William McDonough, it also opened a new state-of-the-art visitor center highlighting the factory's sustainable aspects and educating visitors on the legacy of the historic manufacturing facility as well as the vehicle manufacturing process that takes place within the manufacturing plant.

The visitor experiences offer two multi-screen theaters, numerous touchscreen interpretive displays, and overlook the world's largest "Green" roof, atop the factory. Visitors then walk through the working assembly plant.

Admission Fees

Admission fees for buy-at-the-door tickets for adults are currently (2022) $30 for the Village, $27 for the Museum, and $22 for the Ford Rouge factory tour.

There's also a $9 parking fee. However on-line discounts and combination tickets are available at a reduced price.

The Dymaxion House

The Dymaxion House on display in the Museum was developed by inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller to address several perceived shortcomings with existing homebuilding techniques.

Fuller designed several versions of the house at different times — all of them factory manufactured kits, assembled on site, intended to be suitable for any site or environment, and to use resources efficiently. A key design consideration was ease of shipment and assembly.

As he did when naming many of his inventions, Fuller combined the words dynamic, maximum, and tension to arrive at the term Dymaxion.

History of the Dymaxion House

The Dymaxion House was completed in 1930 after two years of development, and redesigned in 1945. Buckminster Fuller wanted to mass-produce a bathroom and a house.

His first Dymaxion design was based on the design of a grain bin. During World War II, the U.S. Army commissioned Fuller to send these housing units to the Persian Gulf. In 1945, science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein placed an order for one to be delivered to Los Angeles, but the order was never filled.

The Siberian grain-silo house was the first system in which Fuller noted the "urban dust dome" effect: many installations have reported that a dome induces a local vertical heat-driven vortex that sucks cooler air downward into a dome, if the dome is vented properly - a single overhead vent, and peripheral vents. Fuller adapted the later units of the grain-silo house to use this effect.

The final design of the Dymaxion house used a central vertical stainless-steel strut on a single foundation. The strut carried utilities and plumbing. Structures similar to the spokes of a bicycle-wheel hung down from the strut to support the roof, while beams radiating out supported the floor. Wedge-shaped fans of sheet metal aluminum formed the roof, ceiling and floor.

Each structure was assembled at ground level and then winched up the strut. The Dymaxion house represented the first conscious effort to build an autonomous building in the 20th century.

It was a prototype with water storage and a convection-driven ventilator built into the roof. The Dymaxion was designed for the stormy areas of the world: temperate oceanic islands, and the Great Plains of North America, South America and Eurasia.

In most modern houses, laundry, showers and commodes are the major water uses, with drinking, cooking and dish-washing consuming less than 20 liters per day. The Dymaxion house was intended to reduce water use by a greywater system, a packaging commode, and a "fogger" to replace showers. The fogger was based on compressed-air and water degreasers, but with much smaller water particles to make it comfortable.

Two Dymaxion houses were prototyped – one indoor (the "Barwise" house) and one outdoor (the "Danbury" house). However no Dymaxion house built according to Fuller's intentions was ever constructed and lived in.

Fuller also designed a 10-story variant which was to have been dropped in place by the Graf Zeppelin.

The only two prototypes of the round, aluminum house were bought by investor William Graham, together with assorted unused prototyping elements as salvage after the venture failed. In 1948, Graham constructed a hybridized version of the Dymaxion House as his family's home; the Grahams lived there into the 1970's.

Graham built the round house on his lake front property, disabling the ventilator and other interior features. It was inhabited for about 30 years, although as an extension to an existing ranch house, rather than a standalone structure as intended by Fuller.

The large wrap-around windows and lightweight structures were popular with the children, who crawled on the windowsill, and twanged the bicycle-wheel-style main struts.

In 1990, the Graham family donated this house, and all the component prototyping parts, to The Henry Ford Museum. A painstaking process was used to conserve as many original component parts and systems as possible and to restore the rest using original documentation from the Fuller prototyping process. It was installed indoors in the Henry Ford Museum in 2001 as a full exhibit.

Since there was no evidence of the crucial internal rain-gutter system, some elements of the rain collecting system were omitted from the restored exhibit. The roof was designed to wick water inside and drip into the rain-gutter and then to the cistern, rather than have a difficult-to-fit, perfectly waterproof roof.

There was to be a waterless packaging toilet that deftly shrink-wrapped the waste for pickup for later composting. However during the prototyping process, the idea for the packaging toilet was quickly replaced by a conventional septic system, because the packaging plastic was not available. Other features worked as advertised, notably the heating, and the passive air conditioning system, based on the "dome effect."

The Dymaxion Bathroom

The inhabitants of the much-modified version of the house said that the bathroom was a particular delight. The bathroom consisted of two connected stamped copper bubbles, built as four nesting pieces. The bottom piece is fully plated in tin/antimony alloy, and the top half is painted. Each bubble had a drain.

No area had a radius of less than four inches (10 cm), to aid cleaning. The commode, shower, bathtub and sink were molded into the structural shell in one piece. One bubble contained a step-up ergonomic bathtub and shower, high enough to wash children without stooping, but just two steps (16 inches / 40 cm) up. The oval tub had the controls mounted on the inside left of the entrance to the tub.

The other bubble was the bathroom proper with commode and sink. The ventilation for the bathroom was a large silent fan under the main sink, which kept odors away from people's noses. All lighting was totally enclosed. To prevent fogging, the mirror faced into the medicine chest, which was ventilated by the fan. A plastic version of the bathroom was available intermittently until the 1980's.

Criticism of the Dymaxion

Criticism of the Dymaxion House included its supposed inflexible design, which completely disregarded local site and architectural styles, and its use of energy-intensive materials such as aluminum, rather than low-energy materials, such as adobe or tile.

Fuller chose aluminium for its light weight, great strength, and long-term durability, arguably factors that compensate for the initial production cost. Aluminum was also a logical choice if the homes were to be built in aircraft factories, which, since World War II had ended, had substantial excess capacity.

The Wichita House

The Wichita House was a project Fuller accepted during World War II as an attempt to produce cost-effective dwellings for everyone. The project continued to develop the technological concept of the Dymaxion House, now incorporating a round floor plan instead of a hexagonal one.

The reactions to the prototype were extraordinarily positive; nevertheless it was not produced industrially because of high re-tooling costs.

Fuller, a consummate perfectionist, felt that he could improve the design, and was dissatisfied with the prototype. He refused to begin production rather than allowing the "unfinished" design to be used.

published. by Kevin van der Leek

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The Globe and Mail published my photo today!

Published Picture!!! by Ronah Lee

8 22

One of my photos was published in a Maine Magazine.

(Right hand corner - Machias Me.)

(My 2nd time being published and still such a thrill!)

Please view large.

Fantasyland Cottage by Calsidyrose

23 4

Published by Golden Books from 1961 to 1965, this is one of four books in a slip-cover set designed to excite families about the joys that awaited them in the World of Walt Disney.

The books included: Fantasyland, Nature, America, and Stories from Other Lands. I found this copy of the Fantasyland book for $4 at my Friends of the Library Bookstore. Boxed sets on eBay run about $30 on the lower end.

I like the old-school feel of the illustrations--this is the Disney I grew up with.

Published by TIME by josefrancisco salgado

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25-sec, ISO 2500 | Nikon D700 | ALMA array, Llano de Chajnantor Observatory, Chile, 16 Jun 2010

PLAY VIDEO

100 New Scientific Discoveries

ISBN-13: 978-1603201728

Cover artwork by my buddy Martin Kornmesser

CUPPYCAKE - oil on canvas by Pascal Lecocq, The Painter of Blue ®, 31x61cm, 12″x24″, 2009. lec798. Private collection, Antibes, France. Published in “Chefs-d’oeuvre/masterpieces by Pascal Lecocq" (Usa, 2011). © pascal lecocq #frog #S by pascal lecocq

Stacey's Sweet Shop Gift Set by Big Red Angel

31 6

Published in Haute Doll Magazine.

Sold benefiting Love 146.

Vintage Stacey model 1165 circa 1969. Vintage Barbie fashion set Barbie-Q circa 1959-1962. Handmade miniature cakes by Cathy McGhee. Handmade lollipops by Ericka.

Design Concept Realisation - Wolfgang Schmittel (ABC Verlag) by insect54

29 5

Published 1975. Featuring brand work for Braun, Citroën, Herman Miller, Olivetti, Sony, Swissair.

Homeless and cold by Ed Yourdon

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Note: this photo was published in a Jan 25, 2010 PopTech blog titled "Help Count the Homeless Tonight in NYC." It was also published as an illustration in an undated (Feb 2010) Squidoo blog titled "Tent Cities In America," as well as an undated (Feb 2010) Squidoo blog titled "Homeless Combat Veterans." And it was published on a Wikipedia page on Jan 30, 2010. It was also published in a Sep 3, 2010 blog titled "Veterans Make Up 35% of the San Diego Homeless." And it was published in a Sep 15, 2010 blog titled "Cadillac Man tells tales of a city’s mean streets." It was also published in a Dec 21, 2010 "Deflation Times" blog titled "Homeless In America: Ed Yourdon Photography."

Moving into 2011, the photo was published in a Jan 10, 2011 blog titled "Seeing the world as a nomad." It was also published in a Jan 26, 2011 blog titled "The Road Home." And it was published in a Jan 28, 2011 blog titled "Santa Barbara's Quick Fix to Homelessness: Sweep It Out of Sight." It was also published in a Jun 15, 2011 blog titled "Blessed are the Uncool." And it was published in a Sep 14, 2011 blog titled "Modern-day slavery in the UK? Travellers charged in Leighton Buzzard case." It was also published in a Nov 2, 2011 blog titled "Choose to be generous." And it was published in a Dec 16, 2011 blog titled "Census: Half of Americans not poor; but economy still bad as 25-year recession looms," as well as a Dec 16, 2011 blog titled "The Legislature adjourns - and kicks the tough questions down the road, again."

Moving into 2012, the photo was published in a Jan 18, 2012 blog titled "How a United Way event gets at real needs of the homeless." It was also published in a Feb 2, 2012 blog titled "A Christian Nation? Stephen Colbert Calls Us Out," as well as an Apr 16, 2012 Australian blog titled "Parents: Don’t teach your child to fear people." And it was published in a May 17, 2012 article summer titled "tPreying on the Poor." It was also published in a Jun 22, 2012 blog titled "The modern homeless - and their Louis Vitton suitcases." And it was published in a Jun 27, 2012 blog titled "Terrorized by the Supreme Court on Healthcare." It was also published in an Aug 30, 2012 blog titled "Top 5 Worst Lies Paul Ryan Told", at www-dot-care2-dot-com/causes/top-5-worst-lies-paul-ryan-told.html?page=4 And it was published in an Oct 17, 2012 blog titled "When Homelessness Causes PTSD." It was also published in a Dec 10, 2012 blog titled "Night shelter for the homeless to open during cold snap," as well as a Dec 10, 2012 blog titled "Sparkle Box Christmas Tradition – Bible Verses About Giving." And it was published in a Dec 21, 2012 blog titled "National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day."

Moving into 2013, the photo was published in a Jan 24, 2013 blog titled "Making Your PIT Count More Useful to Local Providers ." And it was published in a Feb 20, 2013 blog titled "Mike Bloomberg Will Leave the Homeless Worse Off Than He Found Them." It was also published in a Mar 24, 2013 blog titled "Open Bible With Pen." It was also published in an Apr 5, 2013 blog titled "21 Statistics About Poverty You Must Know." And it was published in a May 6, 2013 blog titled "Homelessness and Mental Health: Moving Past Stereotypes," as well as an Aug 21, 2013 blog titled "Wall Street's Fix for Homelessness," and an Aug 30, 2013 blog titled "Study: Poverty Impairs Brain Function." It was also published in a Nov 15, 2013 blog titled "Folks Could Die Out There" and a Dec 19, 2013 blog titled "USA spenderar hundratals miljarder på kärnvapenupprustning."

Moving into 2014, the photo was published in a Jan 22, 2014 blog titled "Finding Housing When You're Homeless." It was also published in an Apr 20, 2014 blog titled "Across the Tracks."

Moving into 2015, the photo was published in a Feb 1, 2015 blog titled "The thing that kills people…."

**************************************

This is a continuation of a set that I created in 2009 (shown here ) and 2008 (shown here ) to show a variety of scenes and people in the small park known as Verdi Square, located at 72nd Street and Broadway in New York City's Upper West Side.

cats by Stellybags

Lots of things to find and colour, published by Usborne. 2010.

Gordon Microcar by Robert Grounds

16 5

THE GORDON

by Tony Marshall (published in the Isetta Gazette September 1980)

In this article we travel back in time to the mid-fifties. Every enthusiast of British motor cycles must surely be familiar with the magnificent shaft driven Sunbeam machines, often described as the 'Rolls Royce' of the motor cycle world. how many of them are aware, though, that there was a three wheel car that was related, albeit in only a minor way, to those Sunbeams? The link that provides the connection between bike and car is the designer. Erling Poppe became well known for his design of the Sunbeam S7, but his attempt at making a three wheel car went almost unheralded. "And no wonder," you may exclaim when I tell you that the car was the Gordon.

Like many small cars of the period, the Gordon was manufactured by a company that had been hitherto completely unconnected with any aspect of vehicle manufacture. In this instance it was Vernons Industries of Liverpool, whose main claim to fame was, and still is, the football pools. The origin of the name 'Gordon' seems to have been forgotten in the mists of time that have elapsed since ten.

When the Gordon was announced at the beginning of 1954, it was to join the already established makes of Bond, Reliant, A.C.Petite, and, like them, it was of fairly conventional car shape, but with only one front wheel. The chassis was basically a two inch section tubular backbone, and on this was mounted an open body constructed of aluminium at the front and rear 'ends', with a centre section of 'Zintec' steel sheet. The front end, which looked as if it housed the engine, was empty apart from the steering assembly, batteries, petrol tank, and the enormous front wheel. There was only one door, and this on the left. It was not possible to fit a drivers door as the lower portion of the space normally allocated to such items was the mounting point for the engine. Fitted low down, it did not intrude much on interior space since it was placed partially outboard, and covered with a bulging metal panel. From here, the drive was by chain to the offside rear wheel.

Prototype models were two seaters, but by the time the car went on sale in April 1954, the body had been altered to accommodate two sideways facing hammock seats in the back for children, and the hood was extended to that it stretched from the windscreen right to the rear of the car, rather like a marquee!

The bodywork was of angular styling with flat panels and squared off corners. The size of the vehicle was quite considerable, being ten feet two inches in length and four feet nine and a half inches wide, though of course the engine and its cover contributed to much of the width.

The power for this 'incredible hulk' came from a Villiers 8E/R two stroke engine of only 197cc, with three forward gears and a reverse. There was an electric starter which turned the flywheel by belt, quite an unusual arrangement, but one which was shared by the Bond Minicar Mark 'C', which had the same engine.

Probably the most attractive feature of the Gordon was the price. It cost £269.17.9d including purchase tax. This made it considerable cheaper to buy than any other car on the market at that time.

Surprisingly, perhaps, it was reported in contemporary roadtests that the uneven weight distribution, even with only a driver in the car, did not really affect the handling, not that the single rear wheel drive was not a cause for concern. In fact, most testers seem to have been impressed by the comfort and performance of the Gordon.

The makers drove one from Lands End to John O' Groats as a publicity exercise, and claimed to have covered 1937 miles using only 31 gallons of petrol, approximately 62.5 mpg. One continuous run of 24 hours covered 546 miles, and another stretch produced a fuel consumption of 69 mpg.

Taken all in all, the Gordon was quite successful, and continued in production until 1957, by which time a deluxe model was on offer, boasting two tone paint, modified body trim, and white wall tyres!

Today, the Gordon is rare. One is in the Surrey Micro Car Collection. Only one other is known at the time of writing (1980).

Bayreuth - Richard Wagner's Grave. And Wagner's Turbulent Life and Death. by pepandtim

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The Postcard

A postally unused postkarte that was published by Ottmar Zieher of Munich. The card has a divided back.

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, who was born on the 22nd. May 1813, was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works.

Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to the drama.

He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Richard's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration. He also used leitmotifs—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements.

His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music.

Richard's Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music.

Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. Bayreuth is a town on the Red Main river in Bavaria. At its center is the Richard Wagner Museum in the composer's former home, Villa Wahnfried.

The Ring and Parsifal were premiered at the Festspielhaus, and Wagner's most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, run by his descendants.

Richard's thoughts on the relative contributions of music and drama in opera were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Until his final years, Wagner's life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors.

His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment – particularly since the late 20th. century, where they express antisemitic sentiments.

The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th. century; his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre.

Richard Wagner - The Early Years

Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, who lived at No 3, the Brühl (The House of the Red and White Lions) in the Jewish quarter on the 22nd. May 1813.

He was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine (née Paetz), the daughter of a baker.

Wagner's father Carl died of typhoid fever six months after Richard's birth. Afterwards, his mother Johanna lived with Carl's friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has been found in the Leipzig church registers.

Johanna and her family moved to Geyer's residence in Dresden, and until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father.

Geyer's love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben, Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel.

In late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received piano instruction from his Latin teacher. However Richard struggled to play a proper scale at the keyboard, and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear.

Following Geyer's death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, the boarding school of the Dresdner Kreuzchor, at the expense of Geyer's brother.

At the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Weber's opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct.

During this period, Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright. His first creative effort was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was at school in 1826, the play was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe.

Wagner was determined to set it to music, and persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.

By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in harmony were taken during 1828–1831 with Christian Gottlieb Müller.

In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th. Symphony and then, in March, the same composer's 9th. Symphony. Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th. Symphony.

Richard was also greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart's Requiem.

Wagner's early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures date from this period.

In 1829 Richard saw a performance by dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In Mein Leben, Wagner wrote:

"When I look back across my entire life

I find no event to place beside this in

the impression it produced on me.

The profoundly human and ecstatic

performance of this incomparable artist

kindled in me an almost demonic fire."

In 1831, Wagner enrolled at Leipzig University, where he became a member of the Saxon student fraternity. He took composition lessons with the Thomaskantor Theodor Weinlig.

Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons. He arranged for his pupil's Piano Sonata in B-flat major (which was consequently dedicated to him) to be published as Wagner's Op. 1.

A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major, a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833.

He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which he never completed.

Richard Wagner's Early Career and Marriage (1833–1842)

In 1833, Wagner's brother Albert managed to obtain for him a position as choirmaster at the theatre in Würzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies).

This work, which imitated the style of Weber, went unproduced until half a century later, when it premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.

Having returned to Leipzig in 1834, Wagner held a brief appointment as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

The work was staged at Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance. This, together with the financial collapse of the theatre company employing him, left Richard bankrupt.

Wagner had fallen for one of the leading ladies at Magdeburg, the actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer, and after the disaster of Das Liebesverbot he followed her to Königsberg, where she helped him to get an engagement at the theatre.

They married in Tragheim Church on the 24th. November 1836, although In May 1837, Minna left Wagner for another man. This was however only the first débâcle of a tempestuous marriage.

In June 1837, Wagner moved to Riga (then part of the Russian Empire), where he became music director of the local opera; having in this capacity engaged Minna's sister Amalie (also a singer) for the theatre, he resumed relations with Minna during 1838.

By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga on the run from creditors. In fact, debts plagued Wagner for most of his life.

Initially they took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for his opera Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), with a plot based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine.

The Wagners settled in Paris in September 1839 and stayed there until 1842. Wagner made a scant living by writing articles and short novelettes such as A pilgrimage to Beethoven, which sketched his growing concept of "music drama", and An end in Paris, where he depicts his own miseries as a German musician in the French metropolis.

Richard also provided arrangements of operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. During this stay he completed his third and fourth operas Rienzi and Der Fliegende Holländer.

Richard Wagner in Dresden (1842–1849)

Wagner had completed Rienzi in 1840. With the strong support of Giacomo Meyerbeer, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre (Hofoper) in the Kingdom of Saxony.

In 1842, Wagner moved to Dresden. His relief at returning to Germany was recorded in his "Autobiographic Sketch" of 1842, where he wrote that, en route from Paris:

"For the first time I saw the Rhine—

with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor

artist, swore eternal fidelity to my

German fatherland."

Rienzi was staged to considerable acclaim on the 20th. October 1842.

Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there Der Fliegende Holländer (2nd. January 1843) and Tannhäuser (19th. October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas.

Wagner also mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer Ferdinand Hiller and the architect Gottfried Semper.

Wagner's involvement in left-wing politics abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among socialist German nationalists there, regularly receiving such guests as the conductor and radical editor August Röckel and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

Richard was also influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ludwig Feuerbach. Widespread discontent came to a head in 1849, when the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role.

A warrant for the arrest of Richard Wagner was issued on the 16th. May 1849, along with warrants for other revolutionaries.

Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zürich where he at first took refuge with a friend, Alexander Müller.

Richard Wagner In Exile: Switzerland (1849–1858)

Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed Lohengrin, the last of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850.

Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his friend Karl Ritter, began to pay him a small pension which she maintained until 1859.

With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual sum of 3,000 thalers per year, but the plan was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot.

Wagner even plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her husband prevented. Meanwhile, Wagner's wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after Rienzi, was falling into a deepening depression. Wagner fell victim to ill-health, according to Ernest Newman "Largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing.

Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of essays. In "The Artwork of the Future" (1849), he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), in which music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts and stagecraft were unified.

"Judaism in Music" (1850) was the first of Wagner's writings to feature antisemitic views. In this polemic Wagner argued, frequently using traditional antisemitic abuse, that Jews had no connection to the German spirit, and were thus capable of producing only shallow and artificial music.

According to him, they composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art.

In "Opera and Drama" (1851), Wagner described the aesthetics of music drama that he was using to create the Ring cycle. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became Der Ring des Nibelungen.

He initially wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfrieds Tod (Siegfried's Death), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded the story with Der junge Siegfried (Young Siegfried), which explored the hero's background.

He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for Die Walküre (The Valkyrie) and Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold) and revising the other libretti to conform to his new concept, completing them in 1852.

The concept of opera expressed in "Opera and Drama" and in other essays effectively renounced all the operas he had previously written through Lohengrin. Partly in an attempt to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical "A Communication to My Friends".

This included his first public announcement of what was to become the Ring cycle:

"I shall never write an Opera more. As I have

no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works,

I will call them Dramas ... I propose to produce

my myth in three complete dramas, preceded

by a lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel).

At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose,

at some future time, to produce those three

Dramas with their Prelude, in the course of

three days and a fore-evening."

Wagner began composing the music for Das Rheingold between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with Die Walküre (written between June 1854 and March 1856).

He began work on the third Ring drama, which he now called simply Siegfried, probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts.

He decided to put the work aside in order to concentrate on a new idea: Tristan und Isolde, based on the Arthurian love story Tristan and Iseult.

One source of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde was the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, notably his The World as Will and Representation, to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend Georg Herwegh.

Wagner later called this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life.

One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role in the arts as a direct expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will.

This doctrine contradicted Wagner's view, expressed in "Opera and Drama", that the music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer's influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose.

Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti.

A second source of inspiration was Wagner's infatuation with the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852.

From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his household expenses in Zürich, and in 1857 placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal, which became known as the Asyl ("asylum" or "place of rest").

During this period, Wagner's growing passion for his patron's wife inspired him to put aside work on the Ring cycle (which was not resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on Tristan.

While planning the opera, Wagner composed the Wesendonck Lieder, five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as "Studies for Tristan und Isolde".

Among the conducting engagements that Wagner undertook for revenue during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with the Philharmonic Society of London, including one before Queen Victoria. The Queen enjoyed his Tannhäuser overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing in her diary that:

"Wagner was short, very quiet, wears

spectacles & has a very finely-developed

forehead, a hooked nose & projecting

chin."

Richard Wagner in Exile: Venice and Paris (1858–1862)

Wagner's uneasy affair with Mathilde collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter to Mathilde from him. After the resulting confrontation with Minna, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for Venice, where he rented an apartment in the Palazzo Giustinian, while Minna returned to Germany.

Wagner's attitude to Minna had changed; the editor of his correspondence with her, John Burk, has said that:

"She was to him an invalid, to be treated

with kindness and consideration, but,

except at a distance, was a menace to

his peace of mind."

Wagner continued his correspondence with Mathilde and his friendship with her husband Otto, who maintained his financial support. In an 1859 letter to Mathilde, Wagner wrote, half-satirically, of Tristan:

"Child! This Tristan is turning into something

terrible. This final act!!!—I fear the opera will

be banned ... only mediocre performances

can save me!

Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive

people mad."

In November 1859, Wagner once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new revision of Tannhäuser, staged thanks to the efforts of Princess Pauline von Metternich, whose husband was the Austrian ambassador in Paris.

The performances of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 were a notable fiasco. This was partly a consequence of the conservative tastes of the Jockey Club, which organised demonstrations in the theatre to protest at the presentation of the ballet feature in act 1 (instead of its traditional location in the second act).

The opportunity was also exploited by those who wanted to use the occasion as a veiled political protest against the pro-Austrian policies of Napoleon III. It was during this visit that Wagner met the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who wrote an appreciative brochure, "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris".

The opera was withdrawn after the third performance, and Wagner left Paris soon after. He had sought a reconciliation with Minna during this Paris visit, and although she joined him there, the reunion was not successful, and they again parted from each other when Wagner left.

Richard Wagner's Return and Resurgence (1862–1871)

The political ban that had been placed on Wagner in Germany after he had fled Dresden was fully lifted in 1862. The composer settled in Biebrich, on the Rhine near Wiesbaden.

Here Minna visited him for the last time: they parted irrevocably, though Wagner continued to give financial support to her while she lived in Dresden until her death in 1866.

In Biebrich, Wagner at last began work on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, his only mature comedy. Wagner wrote a first draft of the libretto in 1845, and he had resolved to develop it during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks in 1860, where he was inspired by Titian's painting The Assumption of the Virgin.

Throughout this period (1862–1864) Wagner sought to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna. Despite many rehearsals, the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "impossible" to sing, which added to Wagner's financial problems.

Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II succeeded to the throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas, had the composer brought to Munich.

The King, who was homosexual, expressed in his correspondence a passionate personal adoration for the composer, and Wagner in his responses had no scruples about feigning reciprocal feelings.

Ludwig settled Wagner's considerable debts, and proposed to stage Tristan, Die Meistersinger, the Ring, and the other operas Wagner planned.

Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, Mein Leben, at the King's request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news of the death of his earlier mentor (but later supposed enemy) Giacomo Meyerbeer. Wagner wrote:

"I regretted that this operatic master,

who had done me so much harm,

should not have lived to see this day."

After grave difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered at the National Theatre Munich on the 10th. June 1865, the first Wagner opera premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for the 15th. May, but was delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner's creditors, and also because the Isolde, Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, was hoarse and needed time to recover.)

The conductor of this premiere was Hans von Bülow, whose wife, Cosima, had given birth in April that year to a daughter, named Isolde, a child not of Bülow but of Wagner.

Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess Marie d'Agoult, who had left her husband for Franz Liszt.

Liszt initially disapproved of his daughter's involvement with Wagner, though nevertheless, the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalised Munich, and Wagner also fell into disfavour with many leading members of the court, who were suspicious of his influence on the King.

In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him.

Ludwig installed Wagner at the Villa Tribschen, beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne. Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on the 21st. June the following year.

At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the Ring, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870. However Wagner retained his dream, first expressed in "A Communication to My Friends", of presenting the first complete cycle at a special festival in a new, dedicated, opera house.

Not everyone was impressed by Wagner's work at the time; on the cover of the 18th. April 1869 edition of L'Éclipse, André Gill suggested that Wagner's music was ear-splitting. He produced a cartoon showing a misshapen figure of a man with a tiny body below a head with prominent nose and chin standing on the lobe of a human ear. The figure is hammering the sharp end of a crochet symbol into the inner part of the ear as blood pours out.

Minna died of a heart attack on the 25th. January 1866 in Dresden. Wagner did not attend the funeral. Following Minna's death Cosima wrote to Hans von Bülow several times asking him to grant her a divorce, but Bülow refused to concede this.

He consented only after she had two more children with Wagner; another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of Meistersinger, and a son Siegfried, named for the hero of the Ring.

The divorce was finally sanctioned, after delays in the legal process, by a Berlin court on the 18th. July 1870. Richard and Cosima's wedding took place on the 25th. August 1870.

On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance (its premiere) of the Siegfried Idyll for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life.

Wagner, settled into his new-found domesticity, turned his energies towards completing the Ring cycle. However he had not abandoned polemics: he republished his 1850 pamphlet "Judaism in Music", originally issued under a pseudonym, under his own name in 1869.

He extended the introduction, and wrote a lengthy additional final section. The publication led to several public protests at early performances of Die Meistersinger in Vienna and Mannheim.

Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (1871–1876)

In 1871, Wagner decided to move to Bayreuth, which was to be the location of his new opera house. The town council donated a large plot of land—the "Green Hill"—as a site for the theatre.

The Wagners moved to the town the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival Theatre") was laid.

Wagner initially announced the first Bayreuth Festival, at which for the first time the Ring cycle would be presented complete, for 1873, but since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of building was delayed, and the proposed date for the festival was deferred.

To raise funds for the construction, "Wagner societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner began touring Germany conducting concerts. By the spring of 1873, only a third of the required funds had been raised; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the project on the verge of collapse, the King relented and provided a loan.

The full building programme included the family home, "Wahnfried", into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temporary accommodation on the 18th. April 1874. Wagner was ultimately laid to rest in the Wahnfried garden; in 1977 Cosima's ashes were placed alongside Wagner's body. The grave is shown in the photograph.

The theatre was completed in 1875, and the festival scheduled for the following year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the building, Wagner remarked to Cosima:

"Each stone is red with

my blood and yours".

For the design of the Festspielhaus, Wagner appropriated some of the ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had previously solicited for a proposed new opera house at Munich.

Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations at Bayreuth; these included darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience.

The Festspielhaus finally opened on the 13th. August 1876 with Das Rheingold, at last taking its place as the first evening of the complete Ring cycle. The 1876 Bayreuth Festival therefore saw the premiere of the complete cycle, performed as a sequence as the composer had intended.

The 1876 Festival consisted of three full Ring cycles (under the baton of Hans Richter). At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who thought the work "divinely composed", and that of the French newspaper Le Figaro, which called the music "The dream of a lunatic".

The disillusioned included Wagner's friend and disciple Friedrich Nietzsche, who, having published his eulogistic essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" before the festival as part of his Untimely Meditations, was bitterly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner's pandering to increasingly exclusivist German nationalism; his breach with Wagner began at this time.

The festival firmly established Wagner as an artist of European, and indeed world, importance: attendees included Kaiser Wilhelm I, the Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, Anton Bruckner, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Wagner was far from satisfied with the Festival; Cosima recorded that months later, his attitude towards the productions was:

"Never again, never again!"

Moreover, the festival finished with a deficit of about 150,000 marks. The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried meant that Wagner still sought further sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions such as the Centennial March for America, for which he received $5000.

Richard Wagner - The Final Years (1876–1883)

Following the first Bayreuth Festival, Wagner began work on Parsifal, his final opera. The composition took four years, much of which Wagner spent in Italy for health reasons.

From 1876 to 1878 Wagner also embarked on the last of his documented emotional liaisons, this time with Judith Gautier, whom he had met at the 1876 Festival.

Wagner was also much troubled by problems of financing Parsifal, and by the prospect of the work being performed by other theatres than Bayreuth. He was once again assisted by the liberality of King Ludwig, but was still forced by his personal financial situation in 1877 to sell the rights of several of his unpublished works (including the Siegfried Idyll) to the publisher Schott.

Wagner wrote several articles in his later years, often on political topics, and often reactionary in tone, repudiating some of his earlier, more liberal, views.

These include "Religion and Art" (1880) and "Heroism and Christianity" (1881), which were printed in the journal Bayreuther Blätter, published by his supporter Hans von Wolzogen.

Wagner's sudden interest in Christianity at this period, which infuses Parsifal, was contemporary with his increasing alignment with German nationalism, and required on his part, and the part of his associates, "the rewriting of some recent Wagnerian history", so as to represent, for example, the Ring as a work reflecting Christian ideals.

Many of these later articles, including "What is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860's), repeated Wagner's antisemitic preoccupations.

Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on the 26th. May.

Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe angina attacks.

During the sixteenth and final performance of Parsifal on the 29th. August, he entered the pit unseen during act 3, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its conclusion.

After the festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on the 13th. February 1883 at Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a 16th.-century palazzo on the Grand Canal.

The legend that the attack was prompted by argument with Cosima over Wagner's supposedly amorous interest in the singer Carrie Pringle, who had been a Flower-maiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth, is without credible evidence.

After a funerary gondola bore Wagner's remains across the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried.

Richard Wagner's Works

Wagner's musical output is listed by the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV) as comprising 113 works, including fragments and projects.

The first complete scholarly edition of his musical works in print was commenced in 1970 under the aegis of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz, and is presently (2023) under the editorship of Egon Voss.

It will consist of 21 volumes (57 books) of music and 10 volumes (13 books) of relevant documents and texts.

Richard Wagner's Early Works (to 1842)

Wagner's earliest attempts at opera were often uncompleted. Abandoned works include a pastoral opera based on Goethe's Die Laune des Verliebten (The Infatuated Lover's Caprice), written at the age of 17, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), on which Wagner worked in 1832, and the singspiel Männerlist Größer als Frauenlist (Men are More Cunning than Women, 1837–1838).

Die Feen (The Fairies, 1833) was not performed in the composer's lifetime and Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love, 1836) was withdrawn after its first performance.

Rienzi (1842) was Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged.

The compositional style of these early works was conventional— the relatively more sophisticated Rienzi showing the clear influence of Grand Opera à la Spontini and Meyerbeer — and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history.

Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be part of his oeuvre; and they have been performed only rarely in the last hundred years, although the overture to Rienzi is an occasional concert-hall piece.

Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, and Rienzi were performed at both Leipzig and Bayreuth in 2013 to mark the composer's bicentenary.

Richard Wagner's Romantic Operas (1843–1851)

Wagner's middle stage output began with Der Fliegende Holländer (1843), followed by Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850).

These three operas are referred to as Wagner's "romantic operas". They reinforced the reputation, among the public in Germany and beyond, that Wagner had begun to establish with Rienzi.

Although distancing himself from the style of these operas from 1849 onwards, he nevertheless reworked both Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser on several occasions.

The three operas are considered to represent a significant developmental stage in Wagner's musical and operatic maturity as regards thematic handling, portrayal of emotions and orchestration.

They are the earliest works included in the Bayreuth canon, the mature operas that Cosima staged at the Bayreuth Festival after Wagner's death in accordance with his wishes.

All three (including the differing versions of Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser) continue to be regularly performed throughout the world, and have been frequently recorded.

They were also the operas by which his fame spread during his lifetime.

Richard Wagner's Music Dramas (1851–1882)

Wagner's late dramas are considered his masterpieces. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring or "Ring Cycle", is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Germanic mythology—particularly from the later Norse mythology—notably the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Volsunga Saga, and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied.

Wagner specifically developed the libretti for these operas according to his interpretation of Stabreim, highly alliterative rhyming verse-pairs used in old Germanic poetry.

They were also influenced by Wagner's concepts of ancient Greek drama, in which tetralogies were a component of Athenian festivals, and which he had amply discussed in his essay "Oper und Drama".

The first two components of the Ring cycle were Das Rheingold, which was completed in 1854, and Die Walküre, which was finished in 1856.

In Das Rheingold, with its "relentlessly talky 'realism' and the absence of lyrical 'numbers'", Wagner came very close to the musical ideals of his 1849–1851 essays.

Die Walküre, which contains what is virtually a traditional aria (Siegmund's Winterstürme in the first act), and the quasi-choral appearance of the Valkyries themselves, shows more "operatic" traits, but has been assessed by Barry Millington as:

"The music drama that most satisfactorily

embodies the theoretical principles of

'Oper und Drama'... A thoroughgoing

synthesis of poetry and music is achieved

without any notable sacrifice in musical

expression."

While composing the opera Siegfried, the third part of the Ring cycle, Wagner interrupted work on it, and between 1857 and 1864 wrote the tragic love story Tristan und Isolde and his only mature comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, two works that are also part of the regular operatic canon.

Tristan is often granted a special place in musical history; many see it as the beginning of the move away from conventional harmony and tonality, and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th. century.

Wagner felt that his musico-dramatical theories were most perfectly realised in this work with its use of "the art of transition" between dramatic elements and the balance achieved between vocal and orchestral lines. Completed in 1859, the work was given its first performance in Munich, conducted by Bülow, in June 1865.

Die Meistersinger was originally conceived by Wagner in 1845 as a sort of comic pendant to Tannhäuser. Like Tristan, it was premiered in Munich under the baton of Bülow, on the 21st. June 1868, and became an immediate success.

Millington describes Meistersinger as:

"A rich, perceptive music drama

widely admired for its warm

humanity."

However its strong German nationalist overtones have led some to cite it as an example of Wagner's reactionary politics and antisemitism.

Completing the Ring

When Wagner returned to writing the music for the last act of Siegfried and for Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), as the final part of the Ring, his style had changed once more to something more recognisable as "operatic" than the aural world of Rheingold and Walküre, though it was still thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer and suffused with leitmotifs.

This was in part because the libretti of the four Ring operas had been written in reverse order, so that the book for Götterdämmerung was conceived more "traditionally" than that of Rheingold; still, the self-imposed strictures of the Gesamtkunstwerk had become relaxed.

The differences also result from Wagner's development as a composer during the period in which he wrote Tristan, Meistersinger and the Paris version of Tannhäuser. From act 3 of Siegfried onwards, the Ring becomes more chromatic melodically, more complex harmonically, and more developmental in its treatment of leitmotifs.

Wagner took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed Götterdämmerung in 1874.

The Ring takes about 15 hours to perform, and is the only undertaking of such size to be regularly presented on the world's stages.

Parsifal

Wagner's final opera, Parsifal (1882), which was his only work written especially for his Bayreuth Festspielhaus and which is described in the score as a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" ("Festival Play for the Consecration of the Stage"), has a storyline suggested by elements of the legend of the Holy Grail.

It also carries elements of Buddhist renunciation suggested by Wagner's readings of Schopenhauer. Wagner described it to Cosima as his "last card".

Parsifal remains controversial because of its treatment of Christianity, its eroticism, and its expression, as perceived by some commentators, of German nationalism and antisemitism.

Despite the composer's own description of the opera to King Ludwig as "this most Christian of works", Ulrike Kienzle has commented that:

"Wagner's turn to Christian mythology,

upon which the imagery and spiritual

contents of Parsifal rest, is idiosyncratic,

and contradicts Christian dogma in

many ways."

Musically, the opera has been held to represent a continuing development of the composer's style, and Millington describes it as:

"A diaphanous score of unearthly

beauty and refinement".

Richard Wagner's Non-Operatic Music

Apart from his operas, Wagner composed relatively few pieces of music. These include a symphony in C major (written at the age of 19), the Faust Overture (the only completed part of an intended symphony on the subject), some concert overtures, and choral and piano pieces.

Richard's most commonly performed work that is not an extract from an opera is the Siegfried Idyll for chamber orchestra, which has several motifs in common with the Ring cycle.

The Wesendonck Lieder are also often performed, either in the original piano version, or with orchestral accompaniment.

More rarely performed are the American Centennial March (1876), and Das Liebesmahl der Apostel (The Love Feast of the Apostles), a piece for male choruses and orchestra composed in 1843 for the city of Dresden.

After completing Parsifal, Wagner expressed his intention to turn to the writing of symphonies, and several sketches dating from the late 1870's and early 1880's have been identified as work towards this end.

The overtures and certain orchestral passages from Wagner's middle and late-stage operas are commonly played as concert pieces. For most of these, Wagner wrote or re-wrote short passages to ensure musical coherence.

The "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin is frequently played as the bride's processional wedding march in English-speaking countries.

Richard Wagner's Prose Writings

Wagner was an extremely prolific writer, authoring many books, poems, and articles, as well as voluminous correspondence. His writings covered a wide range of topics, including autobiography, politics, philosophy, and detailed analyses of his own operas.

Wagner planned for a collected edition of his publications as early as 1865; he believed that such a work would help the world to understand his intellectual development and artistic aims.

The first such edition was published between 1871 and 1883, but was doctored to suppress or alter articles that were an embarrassment to him (e.g. those praising Meyerbeer), or by altering dates on some articles to reinforce Wagner's own account of his progress.

Wagner's autobiography Mein Leben was originally published for close friends only in a very small edition (15–18 copies per volume) in four volumes between 1870 and 1880.

The first public edition (with many passages suppressed by Cosima) appeared in 1911; the first attempt at a full edition (in German) appeared in 1963.

There have been modern complete or partial editions of Wagner's writings, including a centennial edition in German edited by Dieter Borchmeyer (which, however, omitted the essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik" and Mein Leben).

The English translations of Wagner's prose in eight volumes by William Ashton Ellis (1892–1899) are still in print, and commonly used, despite their deficiencies.

The first complete historical and critical edition of Wagner's prose works was launched in 2013 at the Institute for Music Research at the University of Würzburg; this will result in at least eight volumes of text and several volumes of commentary, totalling over 5,000 pages.

It was originally anticipated that the Würzburg project will be completed by 2030, although this time frame may need to be extended.

A complete edition of Wagner's correspondence, estimated to amount to between 10,000 and 12,000 items, is under way under the supervision of the University of Würzburg. As of January 2021, 25 volumes have appeared, covering the period up to 1873.

Richard Wagner's Influence on Music

Wagner's later musical style introduced new ideas in harmony, melodic process (leitmotif) and operatic structure.

Notably from Tristan und Isolde onwards, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system, which gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th. century.

Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, which include the so-called Tristan chord.

Wagner inspired great devotion. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner's music. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were greatly indebted to him, as were César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and many others.

Gustav Mahler was devoted to Wagner and his music; at the age of 15, he sought Wagner out on his 1875 visit to Vienna. Mahler became a renowned Wagner conductor, and Richard Taruskin has claimed that:

"Mahler's compositions extend

Wagner's maximalization of the

temporal and the sonorous in

music to the world of the

symphony."

The harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (both of whose oeuvres contain examples of tonal and atonal modernism) have often been traced back to Tristan and Parsifal.

The Italian form of operatic realism known as verismo owed much to the Wagnerian concept of musical form.

Wagner also made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay "About Conducting" (1869) advanced Hector Berlioz's technique of conducting, and claimed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison.

He exemplified this approach in his own conducting, which was significantly more flexible than the disciplined approach of Felix Mendelssohn; in Wagner's view this also justified practices that would today be frowned upon, such as the rewriting of scores.

Wilhelm Furtwängler felt that Wagner and Bülow, through their interpretative approach, inspired a whole new generation of conductors (including Furtwängler himself).

Among those claiming inspiration from Wagner's music are the German band Rammstein, Jim Steinman, who wrote songs for Meat Loaf, Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, Celine Dion and others.

Wagner also influenced the electronic composer Klaus Schulze, whose 1975 album Timewind consists of two 30-minute tracks, Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried 1883.

Joey DeMaio of the band Manowar has described Wagner as:

"The father of heavy metal".

The Slovenian group Laibach created the 2009 suite VolksWagner, using material from Wagner's operas.

Phil Spector's Wall of Sound recording technique was, it has been claimed, heavily influenced by Wagner.

Richard Wagner's Influence on Literature, Philosophy and the Visual Arts

Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant. Millington has commented:

"Wagner's protean abundance meant that

he could inspire the use of literary motif in

many a novel employing interior monologue;

the Symbolists saw him as a mystic hierophant;

the Decadents found many a frisson in his work."

Friedrich Nietzsche was a member of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870's, and his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, proposed Wagner's music as the Dionysian "rebirth" of European culture in opposition to Apollonian rationalist "decadence".

Nietzsche however broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties, and a surrender to the new German Reich.

Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the later Wagner in "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche Contra Wagner".

The poets Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner.

Édouard Dujardin, whose influential novel Les Lauriers Sont Coupés is in the form of an interior monologue inspired by Wagnerian music, founded a journal dedicated to Wagner, La Revue Wagnérienne.

In a list of major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, Bryan Magee includes D. H. Lawrence, Aubrey Beardsley, Romain Rolland, Gérard de Nerval, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rainer Maria Rilke and several others.

In the 20th century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner:

"Perhaps the greatest

genius that ever lived."

Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him, and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is also discussed in some of the works of James Joyce, as well as W. E. B. Du Bois, who featured Lohengrin in The Souls of Black Folk.

Wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which contains lines from Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, and Verlaine's poem on Parsifal.

Many of Wagner's concepts, including his speculation about dreams, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud. Wagner had publicly analysed the Oedipus myth before Freud was born in terms of its psychological significance, insisting that incestuous desires are natural and normal, and perceptively exhibiting the relationship between sexuality and anxiety. Georg Groddeck considered the Ring as the first manual of psychoanalysis.

Richard Wagner's Influence on the Cinema

Wagner's concept of the use of leitmotifs and the integrated musical expression which they can enable has influenced many 20th. and 21st. century film scores.

The critic Theodor Adorno has noted that:

"The Wagnerian leitmotif leads directly to

cinema music where the sole function of

the leitmotif is to announce heroes or

situations so as to allow the audience to

orient itself more easily".

Film scores citing Wagnerian themes include Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which features a version of the Ride of the Valkyries, Trevor Jones's soundtrack to John Boorman's film Excalibur, and the 2011 films A Dangerous Method (dir. David Cronenberg) and Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier).

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's 1977 film Hitler has a visual style and set design that are strongly inspired by Der Ring des Nibelungen, musical excerpts from which are frequently used in the film's soundtrack.

Richard Wagner's Opponents and Supporters

Not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, German musical life divided into two factions, supporters of Wagner and supporters of Johannes Brahms; the latter, with the support of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick (of whom Beckmesser in Meistersinger is in part a caricature) championed traditional forms, and led the conservative front against Wagnerian innovations.

They were supported by the conservative leanings of some German music schools, including the conservatories at Leipzig under Ignaz Moscheles and at Cologne under the direction of Ferdinand Hiller.

Another Wagner detractor was the French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, who wrote to Hiller after attending Wagner's Paris concert on the 25th. January 1860. At this concert Wagner conducted the overtures to Der Fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, the preludes to Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde, and six other extracts from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin.

Alkan noted:

"I had imagined that I was going

to meet music of an innovative

kind, but was astonished to find

a pale imitation of Berlioz.

I do not like all the music of Berlioz

while appreciating his marvellous

understanding of certain instrumental

effects ... but here he was imitated

and caricatured ... Wagner is not a

musician, he is a disease."

Even those who, like Debussy, opposed Wagner ("this old poisoner") could not deny his influence. Indeed, Debussy was one of many composers, including Tchaikovsky, who felt the need to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was so unmistakable and overwhelming.

"Golliwogg's Cakewalk" from Debussy's Children's Corner piano suite contains a deliberately tongue-in-cheek quotation from the opening bars of Tristan.

Others who proved resistant to Wagner's operas included Gioachino Rossini, who said:

"Wagner has wonderful moments,

and dreadful quarters of an hour."

In the 20th. century Wagner's music was parodied by Paul Hindemith and Hanns Eisler, among others.

Wagner's followers (known as Wagnerians or Wagnerites) have formed many societies dedicated to Wagner's life and work.

Film and Stage Portrayals of Richard Wagner

Wagner has been the subject of many biographical films. The earliest was a silent film made by Carl Froelich in 1913. It featured in the title role the composer Giuseppe Becce, who also wrote the score for the film (as Wagner's music, still in copyright, was not available).

Other film portrayals of Wagner include:

-- Richard Burton in Wagner (1983).

-- Paul Nicholas in Lisztomania (1975)

-- Trevor Howard in Ludwig (1972)

-- Lyndon Brook in Song Without End (1960)

-- Alan Badel in Magic Fire (1955)

Jonathan Harvey's opera Wagner Dream (2007) intertwines the events surrounding Wagner's death with the story of Wagner's uncompleted opera outline Die Sieger (The Victors).

The Bayreuth Festival

Since Wagner's death, the Bayreuth Festival, which has become an annual event, has been successively directed by his widow, his son Siegfried, the latter's widow Winifred Wagner, their two sons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, and, presently, two of the composer's great-granddaughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner.

Since 1973, the festival has been overseen by the Richard-Wagner-Stiftung (Richard Wagner Foundation), the members of which include some of Wagner's descendants.

Controversies Associated With Richard Wagner

Wagner's operas, writings, politics, beliefs and unorthodox lifestyle made him a controversial figure during his lifetime.

Following his death, debate about his ideas and their interpretation, particularly in Germany during the 20th. century, has continued.

Racism and Antisemitism

A caricature of Wagner by Karl Clic was published in 1873 in the Viennese satirical magazine, Humoristische Blätter. It shows a cartoon figure holding a baton, standing next to a music stand in front of some musicians.

The figure has a large nose and prominent forehead. His sideburns turn into a wispy beard under his chin. The exaggerated features refer to rumours of Wagner's Jewish ancestry.

Wagner's hostile writings on Jews, including Jewishness in Music, correspond to some existing trends of thought in Germany during the 19th century.

Despite his very public views on this topic, throughout his life Wagner had Jewish friends, colleagues and supporters. There have been frequent suggestions that antisemitic stereotypes are represented in Wagner's operas. The characters of Alberich and Mime in the Ring, Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, and Klingsor in Parsifal are sometimes claimed as Jewish representations, though they are not identified as such in the librettos of these operas.

The topic is further complicated by claims, which may have been credited by Wagner, that he himself was of Jewish ancestry, via his supposed father Geyer. However, there is no evidence that Geyer had Jewish ancestors.

Some biographers have noted that Wagner in his final years developed interest in the racialist philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, notably Gobineau's belief that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between "superior" and "inferior" races.

According to Robert Gutman, this theme is reflected in the opera Parsifal.

Other biographers however (including Lucy Beckett) believe that this is not true, as the original drafts of the story date back to 1857 and Wagner had completed the libretto for Parsifal by 1877, but he displayed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880.

Other Interpretations

Wagner's ideas are amenable to socialist interpretations; many of his ideas on art were being formulated at the time of his revolutionary inclinations in the 1840's. Thus, for example, George Bernard Shaw wrote in The Perfect Wagnerite (1883):

"Wagner's picture of Niblunghome under the

reign of Alberic is a poetic vision of unregulated

industrial capitalism as it was made known in

Germany in the middle of the 19th. century by

Engels's book 'The Condition of the Working

Class in England."

Left-wing interpretations of Wagner also inform the writings of Theodor Adorno among other Wagner critics.

Walter Benjamin gave Wagner as an example of "bourgeois false consciousness", alienating art from its social context.

György Lukács contended that the ideas of the early Wagner represented the ideology of the "true socialists" (wahre Sozialisten), a movement referenced in Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" as belonging to the left-wing of German bourgeois radicalism.

Anatoly Lunacharsky said about the later Wagner:

"The circle is complete. The revolutionary

has become a reactionary. The rebellious

petty bourgeois now kisses the slipper of

the Pope, the keeper of order."

The writer Robert Donington has produced a detailed, if controversial, Jungian interpretation of the Ring cycle, described as "an approach to Wagner by way of his symbols", which, for example, sees the character of the goddess Fricka as part of her husband Wotan's "inner femininity".

Millington notes that Jean-Jacques Nattiez has also applied psychoanalytical techniques in an evaluation of Wagner's life and works.

Nazi Appropriation of Richard Wagner's Work

Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music, and saw in his operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation; in a 1922 speech he claimed that:

"Wagner's works glorify the heroic

Teutonic nature ... Greatness lies in

the heroic."

Hitler visited Bayreuth frequently from 1923 onwards, and attended productions at the theatre.

There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), who married Wagner's daughter Eva in 1908 but never met Wagner, was the author of the racist book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, approved by the Nazi movement.

Chamberlain met Hitler several times between 1923 and 1927 in Bayreuth, but cannot credibly be regarded as a conduit of Wagner's own views.

The Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda, and ignored or suppressed the rest.

While Bayreuth presented a useful front for Nazi culture, and Wagner's music was used at many Nazi events, the Nazi hierarchy as a whole did not share Hitler's enthusiasm for Wagner's operas, and resented attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence.

Guido Fackler has researched evidence that indicates that it is possible that Wagner's music was used at the Dachau concentration camp in 1933–1934 to "re-educate" political prisoners by exposure to "national music".

There has been no evidence to support claims, sometimes made, that his music was played at Nazi death camps during the Second World War, and Pamela Potter has noted that Wagner's music was explicitly off-limits in the camps.

Because of the associations of Wagner with antisemitism and Nazism, the performance of his music in the State of Israel has been a source of controversy.

A Published Picture :) by Shauna Kosoris

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Check it out! My picture of Scott Summerton (creator of Guilty Pleasures Cinema) is in this month's edition of The Walleye, Thunder Bay's arts and culture magazine!

This is the picture I took of the article for Instagram.

If you zoom in, you can see my name in the bottom corner of the picture. :)

Paillettes II by Donatello

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Fashion shooting published in Umbigo Magazine

www.donatelloromanazzi.com

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Credits:

Model: Laura Tollesson (Francine Models)

Art direction and Stylist: Gemma Malé

MUA & Hair Stylist: Lucía Hernandez Calderón

Assistant: Isma Guirado

Dress: Valentina Bcn

Jewelery: Luz Vargas Exclusive Jewelery

Press L

Ifugao blacksmiths using bellows and stones in metalworking, Luzon, Philippines, 1887 by John Tewell

Published in: Album von Philippinen-typen ... / Hrsg. von Dr. A.B. Meyer .... Dresden, Wilhelm Hoffman, 1885-1904. 3 v. Plate 30, titled "Kiangan in Sapao Valley".

Creator Meyer, Adolf Bernard, 1840-1911

Otley Beyer collection of photographs

Condition: fading along edges and pigment loss at top.

Title devised by cataloguer based on information from file NLA/16269.

National Library of Australia

New Book Out by Mike Rhodes

Published by Amberley.

n486_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library

Ibis

[London]Published for the British Ornithologists' Union by Academic Press.

biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8619473

Rome - Sunset on the "Cuppolone" by Fabio Dorascenzi

Detail of the Third Ida Rentoul Outhwaite Stained Glass Children's Library Window - George Street, Fitzroy by raaen99

The third Ida Rentoul Outhwaite Children's Library Stained Glass Window features the excerpt from a poem; "While underneath in phantom shells, the fairy sailors go, and shining o'er the silent dells, the fairy beacons glow". It, and the painted panel above come from "Fairy Islands" from "Elves and Fairies" published by Thomas Lothian in Melbourne in 1910. The book illustration, much more Art Nouveau in influence than any of the others, is rich with night time blues. Yet the stained glass panel featuring six faeries riding down a river in nautilus shells beneath a silvery full moon, has highlights of pink and golden yellow. The girl faeries all wear Edwardian empire line dancing dresses, such as Isadora Duncan and Anna Pavlova wore, with belts of trailing yellow flowers. Whilst the water looks tranquil enough, the faeries are obviously moving swiftly down the river as their hair and dresses blow in the breeze, and the pink heath sprigs they carry all bend to the wind. The silhouettes of narrow gum trees stand against a full moon glimpsed between two steep banks.

In 1923 with Fitzroy still very much a working class area of Melbourne with pockets of poverty, the parish of St. Mark the Evangelist decided to address the need of the poor in the inner Melbourne suburb. Architects Gawler and Drummond were commissioned to design a two storey red brick Social Settlement Building. It was opened in 1926 by the Vicar of St. Mark the Evangelist, the Reverend Robert G. Nichols (known affectionately amongst the parish as Brother Bill). Known today as the Community Centre, the St. Mark the Evangelist Social Settlements Building looks out onto George Street and also across the St. Mark the Evangelist's forecourt. When it opened, the Social Settlement Building's facilities included a gymnasium, club rooms and children's library.

Opened in 1926, the children's library, which was situated in the corner room of the Social Settlements Building, is believed to be the first known free dedicated children's library in Victoria. The library was given to the children of Fitzroy by Mrs. T. Hackett, in memory of her late husband. The library contained over 3,000 books, as well as children's magazines and even comics. The Social Settlements Building was only erected because Brother Bill organised the commitment of £1,000.00 each from various wealthy businessmen and philanthropists around Melbourne. Mrs Hackett's contribution was the library of £1,000.00 worth of books. Another internationally famous resident of the neighbourhood, Australian children's book illustrator Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, then at the zenith of her career, was engaged by the relentless Brother Bill to create something for the library. Ida donated four stained glass windows each with a hand-painted panel executed by her, based upon illustrations from her books, most notably "Elves and Fairies" which was published to great acclaim in Australia and sold internationally in 1916 and "Fairyland" which had been published earlier that year. These four hand painted stained glass windows were equated to the value of £1,000.00, but are priceless today, as they are the only public works of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite ever commissioned that have been executed in this medium. Ida Rentoul Outhwaite was only ever commissioned to create one other public work; a series of four panels executed in watercolour with pencil underdrawing in 1910 for the Prince Henry Hospital's children's wards in Melbourne (now demolished). Of her panels, only two are believed still to be in existence, buried within the hospital archives. The four Ida Rentoul Outhwaite stained glass windows each depict faeries, pixies, Australian native animals and children, taken from her book illustrations. At the time of photographing, the windows - three overlooking George Street and one St. Mark the Evangelist's forecourt - were located in the community lounge, which served as a drop-in lounge and kitchen for Fitzroy's homeless and marginalised citizens. Today the space has been re-purposed as offices for the Anglicare staff who run the St. Mark's Community Centre, possibly as a way to protect the precious windows from coming to any harm. The only down-side to this is that they are not as easily accessed or viewed as when I photographed them, making my original visit to St. Mark the Evangalist in 2009 extremely fortuitous.

The Ida Rentoul Outhwaite Children's Library Stained Glass Windows are one of Australia's greatest hidden treasures, which seems apt when you consider that the pixies and faeries they depict are also often in hiding when we read about them in children's books and the faerie tales of our childhood. The fact that they are hidden, because it is necessary to enter a little-known and undistinguished building in order to see them, ensures their protection and survival. The windows are unique, not only because they are the only stained glass windows designed and hand-painted by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, but because they are the earliest and only examples of stained glass art in Australia that deals with theme of childhood.

I am indebted to Peter Bourke who ran the St. Mark's Community Centre in 2009 for giving me the privilege of seeing these beautiful and rare windows created by one of my favourite children's book artists on a hot November afternoon, without me having made prior arrangements. I also appreciate him allowing me the opportunity to photograph them in great detail. I will always be grateful to him for such a wonderful and moving experience.

Ida Sherbourne Outhwaite (1888 - 1960) was an Australian children's book illustrator. She was born on the 9th of June 1888 in the inner Melbourne suburb of Carlton. She was the daughter of the of Presbyterian Reverend John Laurence Rentoul and his wife Annie Isobel. Her family was both literary and artistic, and as such, gifted Ida was encouraged from an early age to embrace her talent of drawing. Her elder sister, Annie Rattray Rentoul (1882 - 1978), was likewise encouraged to write, and both would later form a successful partnership. In 1903 six fairy stories written by Annie and illustrated by Ida were published in the ladies' journal "New Idea". The following year the Rentoul sisters collaborated on a book called "Mollie's Bunyip" which was received with instant success because it combined the idea of European faeries, witches and elves and the Australian bush. "Mollie's Staircase" followed in 1906. In 1908 the Rentoul sisters published their first substantial story book, "The Lady of the Blue Beads". On 9 December 1909 Ida married Arthur Grenbry Outhwaite (1875-1938), manager of the Perpetual Executors and Trustees Association of Australia Ltd. (Annie remained unmarried her entire life). After her marriage, Ida was known as Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, but did not publish anything substantial as she established her family and household until part way through the Great War. In 1916 she brought out her first coloured work; "Elves and Fairies", a de luxe edition produced entirely in Australia by Thomas Lothian. The success of the book, with its delicate watercolour plates, was due both to Ida's artistic talent and to the business acumen of her husband, who provided a £400.00 subsidy to ensure a high-quality production and consigned royalties to the Red Cross, thereby encouraging vice-regal patronage. "Elves and Fairies" is still her best known and loved work. Encouraged by her latest success, Ida travelled to Europe after hostilities ended and in 1920 exhibited in Paris and London. The critics compared her to other artists of the golden years of children's illustration such as Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, thus sealing her international success. She signed a contract with British book publishers A. & C. Black who published five books for her over the next decade, including "The Enchanted Forest" (1921), with text by her husband, and, probably the most popular of all the Rentoul sisters' collaborations, "The Little Green Road to Fairyland" (1922). "The Fairyland of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite" (1926), another sumptuous volume, with text by her husband and sister, was less successful. A. & C. Black also produced a number of postcard series using her illustrations from "Elves and Fairies" as well as her other books published by them. In 1930 the last of her books published by A. & C. Black was released, but already times were changing, and the interest in Ida's work was rapidly fading. Angus & Robertson brought out two more books in 1933 and 1935 but they received relatively little attention. Her last two exhibitions, which between 1916 and 1928 were almost annual events, were held in 1933. The Second World War changed the world, and Ida and Annie's work was relegated to a bygone era, shunned and forgotten. Ida suffered the loss of both of her sons during the war, and she spent her last years sharing a flat in Caulfield with her sister, where, survived by her two daughters, she died on 25 June 1960. She did not live to see the resurgence of interest in her work some twenty-five years later, when in 1985, her picture of "The Little Witch" from "Elves and Fairies" was published on an Australian stamp, opening the fairy world of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite to a whole new generation of children and adults alike.

Policial em Revista #163 by Komic-Kazi

Published by A Noite, Brazil 1947

Papavero by Daniela Franz

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All material in my gallery MAY NOT be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission

Beta Ray Bill custom by Xandru G

Beta Ray Bill is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.

The most important part of this character is the head, the horse face head, and it was quite a challenge to make it. I used for the base of his head, a small Kinder Surprise animal head, that had exactly the cheeks that a horse has, but only that part, because it wasn't a horse head, so everything else, it was added by me, especially because I wanted his mouth to be open.

The process of adding his helmet was quite difficult, because the piece that I used for the base of the head, was way too short, so at the end I used a connection similar to a minifig head and drilled very small holes for the jaw and tongue.

The boots are from Thanos, helmet and the hammer I have them from Thor minifig.

I have a couple of Thor, torso pieces , that it was easier to use, but I wanted something else, so I created the armor, and on top I added the plastic red cape. I don't know why, but I like more plastic or rubber capes, instead of those made of fabric.

What I don't like about Bill character, is the fact that he has too many colors: silver helmet, white gloves, blue clothes, silver bracelets, golden boots and golden hammer...I decided to change this, (the beauty of making customs :) so no more white gloves, and also for the Stormbreaker and armor I wanted silver, to go better with his helmet. I never understood the point of Bill having a golden Stormbreaker anyway.

This in my take on a character, trying to keep it close to the original, but adding things to make it more personal and unique.

I hope you like it.

Stay tuned, more will come :)

All the best!

Point Reyes, CA by Christin Cordova