Urs Fischer Exhibit at MOCA, Los Angeles

Those strange and crazy shapes were fun to look at it at first but then once I tried to understand what they mean, and to evaluate their aesthetic and artistic merit, I started to feel indifferent and my resentment for being made to look at with these mannered creations started to mount. If the above images at least awed one with its outrageous scales, the below familiar objects were quite silly and empty, besides the occasional whimsical effects. Quite banal.

BG Annual Conference 2018 | November 8–10 | ZK/U – Center for Arts and Urbanistics

ambient-revolts.berlinergazette.de

 

The growing interconnectedness of everyone and everything is transforming our world into an unprecedented techno-social environment. The boundaries between atmosphere and politics are being suspended; already, tiny ruptures can cause cascade-like repercussions – think of cyber-attacks or stock market crashes, right-wing resentment or hashtag-based protest. Such ambient revolts are increasingly driven by artificial intelligence (AI) – involving human interaction but seemingly beyond human oversight. Set against this backdrop, the conference poses the questions: What are the techno-social logics of both regressive and repressive tendencies? What are emancipatory movements up against? What potential do micro-political acts have in day-to-day life? What regulations of automated systems at the macro level will enable democracy to emerge in the age of AI? The Berliner Gazette conference will explore these questions in the context of performances, lectures and workshops.

 

More info: projekte.berlinergazette.de/ambient-revolts/

 

Photo taken by Norman Posselt (berlinergazette.de / cc by nc)

  

I make no excuses for uploading six images of this amazing wood sculpture. Here's some information taken from a plaque beside the artwork:

 

The history of the Rebecca Riots is one of the most dramatic chapters in Welsh history. Against a background of agricultural crisis and grinding rural poverty, associations known as Turnpike Trusts established a network of tollhouses on country roads. Whether taking cattle to Market or collecting lime to fertilise their fields, hard pressed farmers had to pay tolls at every turn.

Resentment built up over many years until 1839 when there was a sudden explosion of violence directed at a new tollgate at Efailwen in north western Carmarthenshire. The attack was led by the stirring figure of 'Rebecca', a man disguised with a blackened face, wig and women's clothes, astride a white horse and waving a sword.

When the Main Trust placed a new tollgate near the Mermaid Tavern in St Clears on 18th November 1842, it marked the start of a four month battle between 'Rebecca' and the authorities. Positioned to make it impossible for traffic to pass through the area without paying a toll, it was pulled down by 'Rebecca' and her followers within hours. The Mermaid Gate was smashed a second time on 12th December that year when seventy to a hundred men, dressed in women's clothes and armed with scythes and guns, descended on the town at midnight. The rebuilt gate was torn down on 20th December and a fourth gate was destroyed in April 1843.

Every area seemed to have its own 'Rebecca' who became, and remains an almost mythical figure - a Welsh Robin Hood. Police and troops were called in to help protect the gates but 'Rebecca' and her daughters were usually one step ahead of the law. The protests came to an end in 1844 when a government Commission of Inquiry led to a reform of the Turnpike Trusts and answered many of the grievances of the rural population.

 

Wood sculpture by Simon Hedger (2008), commissioned by St Clears Council, standing close to the site of the original tollgate.

www.simonhedger.com

   

Love just is…love is loving the truth about the other without trying to change it…love is integrity, to always act from a place of rightness…love is tenderness, to always be kind…love is courage, the willingness to be there even when life becomes challenging…love is selflessness, to be able to put the other before you when needed…love is compassion but also toughness, to be able to set your boundaries and put yourself first knowing there will be no resentment…love is vulnerability, knowing the other person will hold your heart and will cherish it, protect it and nurture it…love is holding your loved one’s hand and feeling home…love is acceptance…love is understanding…love is a conscious decision we make every day, every moment…to love someone, you have to love all of him/her…love does not choose which parts you love of the other, love just loves all of it…love inspires change in the other and does not force it nor demands it…love is not about approval, love is about acceptance.

We perceive love as a duality in motion…love can feel as fragility and strength…pleasure and pain…joy and despair…we perceive love as a dichotomy that transcends us because it makes us feel so many intense emotions…and yet the only constant that love has, in all its purity, that feeling that elevates us and makes us go beyond, feeling all so very alive…is that LOVE JUST IS…in all its glory, in all its beauty and splendor, in all its nakedness…and when we find it, because love is such a complete emotion, it’s like a drug that we can never get enough of!

Here’s to love my friends and the eternal quest to find it, keep it…transform it…but most importantly, feel it!❤️

HISTORY OF MOULTON VALLEY, IDAHO Willie Erdix Mounton came to the valley in covered wagons with his wife and their seven children and his brother Otis Moulton. They came from Gooding, Idaho, september 1909. Albert and Otis Moulton filed on homesteads. Laura and Willis took desert claims in 1909. Albert built a big two story house. Otis had a long cabin on his land. The house on Albert's land was the first location for the Moulton, Idaho, Post Office. In some mysterious way the house caught on fire and burned the whole top off. The family fought to save the lower part of the house and the cointents of the office. They passed buckets and pumped water from the well. All the bedding and clothes upstairs were burned. The winter of 1909 was long and lonely. Only a few trappers or someone on the way to the Holtman ranch, which was some miles south, would stop by to visit. One man stopped because he heard the Moulton girls playing their organ. It was very strange to hear music about the tall sagebrush. By 1910 the valley was most all homesteaded. This built up resentment from the big cattle companies, The Miller and Lux cattle companies drove big herds through the land on the way up and over Granite Pass to Nevada. The cattlemen must have thought Mr. Moulton was the leader of this settlement, and he was the one to frighten off. One evening the foreman of the Keogh Ranch drove up very close to the house with his small buggy. He said he was Jack Crisp, and his boss had sent him to say, there was not enough room for the cattle. They would see the settlers all left the land by fair means or foul. As he spoke, he struck the ground very close to Bill Moulton's feet, Bill Mouton never moved. He just stood there smiling at the man. Then he told him, he was a long way from home and he would be welcome to spend the night there. The man looked astonished. Then he said, he guessed there would be room in the valley for all. They could all be good neighbors, and they were from that day on. The year 1910 was a good one. The grain grew six feet tall. But those who had to go to work and leave their families were not so fortunate. Some of the women made dresses from quilt scraps, when they could not buy calico goods. Most of them had a cow. They cooked boiled wheat and ate it with milk. This did not make them bitter as to make them want to leave. The nearest doctor was twenty miles away. However, each pioneer was a doctor in his own way, and helped his less fortunate neighbors. One year Mr. Chris Moeller and Charles Augustine got ptomaine poisoning from eating canned fish. They were ill for weeks. Not one day were they left alone. Every man in the valley took turns staying day and night with them. The only crops raised there were the ones that would ripen quickly, as winter came early. Snow fell before all the grain was threshed. The grain grown was wheat, rye, barley and oats, and some hardy vegetables for the gardens. One year a snow storm came in June and froze the crops, even the hay. Many had to take their stock from the valley and buy feed for the winter. Then came a drought and dried all the grain crops. There was no school for the children and some families sent them to a school in Utah about eight miles away. It was not such a good school and too cold to make the sixteen mile trip in the winter. The children in Utah, belonging to that district, had never seen strangers. They were not sociable. The first school was held at Robert Griffith's log house and the teachers name was Mrs. Mable Ross. Four of the Moulton children and the two children of Mr. Irvin Johnson attended that year (1911-12). In July 1912, a big log school house was built by the men of that district. Each one helped get the logs and Robert Griffith bought the lumber, for the top, from Strevell, Idaho. It was not built with the school district money. The school section, where a school was supposed to be built, was too far from any of the school childrens homes. Robert Griffith gave two acres of ground for the school. He did not deed it to the district, because at the time he had not proved up on his homestead. The first teacher in the new school was a Mr. Freed (1912-13). Mr. Will Pack taught in 1914-15. There were about twenty pupils in grades one to eight. Two graduated from the eighth grade that year. Mr. Pack was a good teacher. The first child, of those settlers, was born May 1910, to a Mr. and Mrs. Fred Kidman. She was named Cassie. The first wedding was January 1, 1911, at the Moulton ranch. Miss Mary Moulton and Robert Griffith were married by the Bishop from Almo, Idaho. A store was built by Mr. and Mrs. fred Hubbard. They came from Albion, Idaho in 1912. Before the building for the store was built, they put up a big tent. The first entertainment provided was a pavillion. It was built for dancing. It was on Mr. Moulton's farm, under some willow trees where wild grass grew. Every family came. They brought snow from the mountains, for making ice cream. Our first celebration there was July 4, 1911. We also celebrated the 24th of July there. Our music was from two phonographs with the same kind of records. Because the snow was too deep to visit the neighbors, they all decided to meet at the school house, every last Saturday of the month; with each family bringing food. The food was placed on long boards put on the desks. Everyone enjoyed this. In the afternoon there was dancing for the little ones (those little ones could dance too). Then at night the dance was for the adults. Many young people came from Almo, twelve miles away and also from Yost, Utah. One winter, to pass the time, we had a literary club. It was called The Emersonian. The young folks had story plays, sang songs and read jokes for all that were there. Almo post office was the nearest place to get mail. Several families got mail from the office at Yost, Utah. It was carried by pony express, A young man by the name of Willie Howe carried the mail to the Holtman ranch, it was about eight miles from the valley settlers. The mail was delivered Mondays and Fridays at the first post office. The mail had to be carried by volunteers for six months to see if there was enough mail to establish a post office. On November 10, 1910, Willis Moulton was appointed post master. The certificate was signed by the Post Master General, Mr. Frank Hitchcock. The gold seal contains a picture of a Pony Express Rider. The first mail carrier was Sam Ross. The next two were Lenord Howell and Monte Kirkpatrick. Mr. Chris Moellar took over the post office in 1914.

 

It was here that the hyper-inflation of the '90s occurred. At one point inflation hit a million percent a month and if you didn't spend your salary within 15 minutes of receiving it it would become worthless. The problems were eventually solved by pegging the Dinar to the dollar (and similarly the BiH Converted Mark was pegged to the Deutsch Mark). Our guide was very bitter about this because he blamed it all on the sanctions of the UN during the Bosnian war (there was no mention of WHY the sanctions were imposed). It turned out that he was very bitter (and angry) about a lot of things and I learnt to avoid mentioning topics such as Sarajevo, Bosnia, Muslims, the UN, NATO, aircraft, Srebrenica (actually, I was never going to mention Srebrinica), and health and safety.

 

This last I learnt too late. One of the group asked about a sign that we passed at the castle which said, 'Do not enter here, you will die' (or words to that effect). The guide said it was because of rusty nails - 'DON'T GO THERE', he said. At this point I thought it might be nice (and a little light-hearted) to mention the contrast with Sarajevo, so I told him (and the girl) about the entire lack of H&S in Bosnia where you can climb crumbling stairs of hotels, traverse walls of castles with 100 foot drops with no barriers within sight, lean on leaning walls that would obviously collapse and bring down the ceiling ... I thought it was quite a difference in attitude between the two countries and worth stating - no signs, no warning, no rails or closed-off areas (brilliant).

 

So, our guide starts off saying, 'I came back from sarajevo yesterday. I was there to pick up some girls.' He didn't go on to explain and instead, his pitch and volume raised, he launched into the following rant ... 'They rely on WAR TOURISM, you know that? That's ALL they talk about. There is more to the '90s than the war but that's all they want to talk about. They are so BIASED. They hate the Serbs and the whole world agrees.' Phew. A shocked German tourist came up to me and whispered, 'What did you ask him?' I said I hadn't asked him anything, I'd just mentioned the lack of H&S in Sarajevo. That was it, that was the trigger. Sarajevo.

 

5 minutes later the guide was showing us some military exhibits including a SAM system that he gleefully told us was responsible for downing an F-16 during the 1999 conflict: 'It was supposed to be a stealth fighter but no-one told us it was invisible. Hahaha. We Serbs have a dark sense of humour that gets us through difficult times.'

 

It's interesting that there is still this lingering resentment of how the world (and NATO countries especially - Serbia has no intention of joining because of the '99 attacks) regards Serbia (I think, purely imagined). And there is still a lingering hope that the Montenegrans and Kosovans will give up their 'ridiculous' independence and again rejoin the brotherhood that is Greater (and Most Glorious) Serbia. He was also scathing about the Muslims - 'The Croats are Catholics, the Serbs are Orthodox, and the Muslims are ... Muslims. What kind of nation is that?'

 

Is he representative of Serbs? i don't know. I didn't hear any other Serb voicing opinions such as his but maybe they are being politic and circumspect. Then again maybe the nation as a whole (if not our guide) has changed - after all, they elected a gay president last year.

 

The guy was clearly a fanatic and I took leave of him as soon as I could. I would love to have had a discussion with him but a) it wasn't the time or place (I don't think the youngsters in the group would have appreciated it), and b) he was a good 2 feet taller than me.

Shanghai writer XIA Shang described how the Shanghai police stopped him from having dinner with fellow writer LI Chengpeng and prevented him from going to Shandong to see rights activist Chen Guangcheng who is under house arrest.

The Sina microblog deleted ten of Xia Shang's complaining tweets so he converted them to an image file and reposted them. The imaged deleted complaints have been retweeted over 25,000 times. Here is the translation of those ten "tweets" called micro-blogs on the Sina.com microblog, a Twitter-like service popular with millions of Chinese.

Yesterday I posted on my Sina micro-blog an invitation for friends to go on a trip to Linyi, Shandong Province to see "black eyeglasses". [Translator note: Shangdong blind rights activist Chen Guangcheng now under house arrest.]. Yesterday the river crab tribe (hexiezu homonym for harmony tribe] went into action. The deleted my postings. Here are my deleted postings. [Note: Xia Shang used the automatic text to image conversion microblog at www.changweibo.org then posted the image. The image of the deleted micro-blog postings was then forwarded by over 2500 people on the Sina micro-blog]

 

[First posting] Half an hour ago, the police burst into my office. They didn't mince words. "You may not go to Linyi!" I asked them, "Why?" Answer: "You just can't. One hundred people going to Linyi, what are you doing? You will have to suffer the consequences." "What consequences? Do you mean some mob is going to make trouble?" Then the police made a veiled threat "I hope your business gets better and better." Of course, that is saying the opposite of what they mean. Just before he left he said, "You had better cancel that dinner you have planned with Li Chengpeng this evening." How did they know I was going to see Big Eye? Obviously, they were tapping my telephone.

 

[Second posting] Those four unwelcome guests were Shanghai police. I met them a few times last year at the time of the big Jing'an Fire. They stated clearly that "going to visit black eyeglasses" was crossing a red line. After they left, I used a different cell phone to ask advice of two lawyer friends. Their opinion was going online or making phone calls could be used to taken as evidence that you are gathering a mob to disturb the peace and suggest that I don't sacrifice myself needlessly. The lawyers added that if they really try to charge you just for doing that, they are clearly just setting you up. In China, they are always up to tricks.

 

[Third posting] @Lichengpeng Li, I was just about to leave the office to go to the tea house you suggested to see you. At the intersection of Datian Road and Fengyang Road, I was surrounded by four policemen who told me that we are not permitted to see one another. They wouldn't say why. They would only say that they are determined to prevent us from meeting. They called for a police car. I couldn't get away. I can't play host today. I apologize. I am strongly opposed to these fascist methods that violate fundamental human rights. What nonsense this is! Damn.

 

[Fourth posting] I had no alternative but to go back to the office. Four policemen also prepared to follow me into the office. I had them show their IDs and police numbers. One wearing coffee colored glasses said "Are you going to sent out some micro-blogs? So we won't go into the room. They stood outside and smoked. Now, I am in my office in the Jiayou Building on Beijing West Road under soft detention by four policemen (Shang Xia's note: on the micro-blog, I wrote the actual office room number, I leave it out here.) I wasn't able to go to Linyi and I am am not getting the same treatment as Chen Guangcheng. Are there any friends nearby? Come and watch the show. It's free.

 

[Fifth posting] Today the police mobilized to prevent me seeing my friend. When they put me my under soft detention in my office, for the first time in my life I cursed them. Of course I am not cursing them as individuals. But police brothers, when you go home and take off that uniform, you are a family man like everyone else. Although you do need to eat, you should now that western story "aim an inch too high" and you should know even better the old Chinese trick of inviting people into a trap. Don't let you family, relatives and friends be ashamed of you. Think it over.

 

[Sixth posting] Just a few minute ago, a young woman stranger knocked on my door. She has just read my posting and realized that she is my neighbor in this apartment building. She came down to check and when she saw so many police, she knew that it was true. She wanted to take a picture, but she would have been seen easily and so it was too dangerous. She said a few words of encouragement and left.

 

[Seventh posting] I told the men at the door that Li Chengpeng has already left for the airport. They can go home now. I want to go home too. But they still wouldn't leave. Today when Big Eye came, he came to take his son to an athletic event. I wanted to take my son and play host and let the two children get acquainted. This was just a private family meeting. Nonetheless, I was detained by a gang of police in my office. What are those damned people doing! What utter nonsense! [Translator's note: the sound of this explanation can be written using several different ways. Here Xia Shang writes 马列隔壁 which taken literally could mean Marxist-Leninism's neighbor, which might refer to Mao Zedong Thought, thereby cursing two cursables with one curse.] Damn.

 

[Eighth posting] Just now, a micro-blogger named @Sugary Gelatin is Too Sweet came to see me. He took a picture of the policeman upstairs and the one downstairs. The pictures are quite fuzzy. It doesn't matter, I am not interested in exposing the policemen. In fact, I don't have any personal resentment against the policemen, not even against some of their higher-ups. The are just carrying executing the procedures assigned to them in this black box system. The are just making a living. Now just who is going to take responsibility for this system!

 

[Ninth posting] When I was confined one of the policemen said, "We can prevent you from seeing Li Chengpeng; we can also prevent you from going to Linyi." I want to go, but the policeman said, "Our task for today is not to let you see Li Chengpeng. When you call up Li, place the responsibility for not letting you go on our shoulders. You can curse us as much as you want, you can call us utter idiots if you like."

 

[Tenth posting] Without any going through any process whatsoever, they illegally prevented a citizen from going to a small meeting. They pushed and shoved to stop me. When that didn't work they called for a police car and took me into custody verbally. I had not alternative but to return to my office, where they stayed, smoking outside my door. What is it that so scares them that they would do this? To those people hiding behind the scenes, I say, look to your own consciences. Today you stripped a citizen of his proper rights. You too will one day taste that same bitter fruit.

ICU

By Fielding Edlow

Directed by Brian Shnipper

 

World Premiere production

Performances Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00pm, Sundays at 7:00pm

September 25 - October 31, 2015

 

Photos by Jeff Galfer

 

An obnoxious, caustic, oblivious New York family has to deal with their dying son and a complete stranger who insists on making an “amend.” Can they suppress their resentment toward each other––and toward their son’s irascible charge nurse––long enough to hear a cry for help?

 

Featuring Caroline Aaron, Shaun Anthony, Tony DeCarlo, Dagney Kerr, Ericka Kreutz, Joe Pacheco, Doug Sutherland

 

Producers: Tim Wright and Jennifer A. Skinner

Assistant Director: Sam Sonenshine

Stage Manager: Cassandra Scott

 

Set Design: Amanda Knehans

Lighting Designer: Ric Zimmerman

Costume Designer: Dianne Graebner

Sound Designer: Jeff Gardner

Props: Bethany Tucker

 

Location: Atwater Village Theatre, Theatre #4, 3269 Casitas Ave., LA CA 90039

Munira's Project Wazi by Ari aims to celebrate womanhood by providing sexual reproductive health education to adolescent girls in shanties around Nairobi, Kenya. As well as provide easy accessibility to sanitary pads through sanitary pad dispenser called Ari. Currently, 67% of women in their reproductive age have absolutely no access to sanitary pads in Kenya. Of the 33% access is limited to traditional distribution and packaging. Furthermore, sex and reproduction health is not talked about. The culture is to shy away as the girl is deemed dirty at that time of the month. Because of this adolescence girls rely on inaccurate information to form perceptions of their body. In addition, lack of access to sanitary pads and information create a resentment to be a woman, it is seen as a curse. Wazi by Ari changes this narrative by offering a "Big sister approach" where we do not judge or discriminate.

It's not worth ruining relationships and connections with people, especially those we care about, with understatements, resentments, and stupid silences. Sometimes you just have to forget. Tell yourself, "Fuck what happened, I still care about you," and move on. I've forgotten so many times, even though it hurt more than once that someone let me down, that they said too much, that they didn't say anything when they should have. But I don't regret not pulling away, because if I hadn't tried to forget, at least a few friendships would have surely fallen apart long ago. The truth is, I can't just write someone off overnight, just because something about them pisses me off, something I don't like, something I can't stomach at a certain moment. Sometimes all it takes is sleeping on it to change your perspective... We've all hurt someone at some point, hurt them with words, gestures, or lack thereof, with silence or indifference. I've been hurt, hurt, abandoned, or simply didn't give a damn about them many times. Me too... I've felt sorry and bad many times because I screwed up. I didn't mean to hurt, but I did. I said or wrote too much, sometimes things I didn't mean at all, but emotions got the better of me. Someone forgave me, someone else didn't. Someone offered me a hand of reconciliation, or when someone else let me down. And yet another sent me to hell with my shitty apologies. Today I know one thing... We're all just people who make mistakes. We hurt, we injure, we neglect, we doubt something or someone every day, only to be able to believe again the next day that it was worth it. And yet, it's worth apologizing, making amends, giving someone a chance, taking risks. It's worth loving...

 

Jacob lived in his father’s land, the land of Canaan. His son, 17-year-old Joseph, helped tend the flocks with his brothers (the sons of Jacob’s wives, Bilhah and Zilpah). One day, Joseph brought a bad report about his brothers to Jacob.

Israel (Jacob) loved Joseph more than any of his other son...

 

bibleblender.com/2017/bible-stories/old-testament/genesis...

each nanometre of this cable equals one disillusioned, angry, resentful customer of rogers. this spool was one of thousands in the neighbourhood.

ICU

By Fielding Edlow

Directed by Brian Shnipper

 

World Premiere production

Performances Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00pm, Sundays at 7:00pm

September 25 - October 31, 2015

 

Photos by Jeff Galfer

 

An obnoxious, caustic, oblivious New York family has to deal with their dying son and a complete stranger who insists on making an “amend.” Can they suppress their resentment toward each other––and toward their son’s irascible charge nurse––long enough to hear a cry for help?

 

Featuring Caroline Aaron, Shaun Anthony, Tony DeCarlo, Dagney Kerr, Ericka Kreutz, Joe Pacheco, Doug Sutherland

 

Producers: Tim Wright and Jennifer A. Skinner

Assistant Director: Sam Sonenshine

Stage Manager: Cassandra Scott

 

Set Design: Amanda Knehans

Lighting Designer: Ric Zimmerman

Costume Designer: Dianne Graebner

Sound Designer: Jeff Gardner

Props: Bethany Tucker

 

Location: Atwater Village Theatre, Theatre #4, 3269 Casitas Ave., LA CA 90039

Javed bhai is a Great cricketer and a wonderful human being. I was fortunate to have trekked in his company from Pir Chanasi to Pir Hassimar and back to Muzaffarabad city. Lack of opportunities for cricketers in Kashmir is one of the many reasons for local resentment against Punjab dominated PCB

Coptic Christians in Cairo Egypt living in El Zabaleen, or garbage city. For generations families would work together to collect all the rubbish from the streets of Cairo and take it back to their homes. They then sift and sort through all the items which are then sold on to merchants. 85% of all solid waste is thus recycled from the city.

 

Families used to own pigs that used to eat the organic waste but everyone of them was slaughtered during 2009 during the outbreak of the H1N1 'swine' flu, even though there were no cases reported in Egypt. It was the only country that carried out a mass cull, and was also reported that it was done in an inhumane manner. This increased tension and resentment with the Government.

BG Annual Conference 2018 | November 8–10 | ZK/U – Center for Arts and Urbanistics

ambient-revolts.berlinergazette.de

 

The growing interconnectedness of everyone and everything is transforming our world into an unprecedented techno-social environment. The boundaries between atmosphere and politics are being suspended; already, tiny ruptures can cause cascade-like repercussions – think of cyber-attacks or stock market crashes, right-wing resentment or hashtag-based protest. Such ambient revolts are increasingly driven by artificial intelligence (AI) – involving human interaction but seemingly beyond human oversight. Set against this backdrop, the conference poses the questions: What are the techno-social logics of both regressive and repressive tendencies? What are emancipatory movements up against? What potential do micro-political acts have in day-to-day life? What regulations of automated systems at the macro level will enable democracy to emerge in the age of AI? The Berliner Gazette conference will explore these questions in the context of performances, lectures and workshops.

 

More info: projekte.berlinergazette.de/ambient-revolts/

 

Photo taken by Norman Posselt (berlinergazette.de / cc by nc)

  

"Beneath our worrying lives, however, something else is going on. While our minds and hearts are filled with many things, and we wonder how we can live up to the expectations imposed upon us by I ourselves and others, we have a deep sense of unfulfillment. While busy with and worried about many things, we seldom feel truly satisfied, at peace, or at home. A gnawing sense of being unfulfilled underlies our filled lives. Reflecting a little more on this experience of unfulfillment, I can discern different sentiments. The most significant are boredom, resentment, and depression."

 

Do you remember me telling you I gift those I cherish as people or scholars with the name 'Papa' or 'Mama' before their name? I talk often of Papa Lewis (C.S. Lewis). It is almost a holy sentiment not far from priest, but less political or worldly motivated.

 

Henri Nouwen will soon be among those I will seek to gift. In the above passage I was so struck by the 'a-ha' of his words I was ready to stay cocooned in the alcove window of my hotel.

 

The last time I can remember Depression take such a physical stake in my life was years ago. I've dealt with boughts here and there and often they feel so closely knit that it is more a straight path of continuation than a circle pacing me through a cycle.

 

I feel physically oppressed. The last time it was this bad I remember people in my life then giving me every manner of excuse for how I was feeling. None of which got to the heart of the matter, I wasn't happy. I was filling my life with others version of fulfillment. Messy business. Ugly and painful.

 

"It feels like gravity is pushing down. It wants my knees to buckle. It is heady with excitement at the prospect of witnessing me pass out any second." I told this to mum. Unclear and unwilling to admit Depression is roosting strong on my shoulders. I am always more willing for an alternate explanation.

 

"Depression can feel like that Maddie. Anxiety too."

 

Immediately I rise to the defense of my body because it can't possibly be falling prey (again) to this beast. There. Has. To. Be. Another. Reason.

 

It isn't weakness to admit it, but I can be swayed by self to look in the mirror and tell it, "Get yourself together. You are stronger than this. Switch off the shit keeping you from keeping it together AND STOP BEING WEAK."

 

Papa Nouwen talks later about Jesus response to the dilemma of being filled and yet not.

 

"Jesus responds to this condition of being filled yet unfulfilled, very busy yet unconnected, all over the place yet never at home. He wants to bring us to the place where we can belong. But his call to live a spiritual life can only be heard when we are willing honestly to confess our own homeless and worrying existence and recognize its fragmenting effect on our daily life. Only then can a desire for our true home develop. It is of this desire that Jesus speaks when he says, 'Do not worry…Set your hearts on his Kingdom first…and all these other things will be given you as well.' "

 

I don't have all the answers, not by a long shot, but more and more I find myself asking to be used. I ask to be emptied of all that seeks to fill me with what truly makes me weak and to be filled with what the Lord can use...love and understanding and the ability to listen more and act less. This doesn't mean the days are a flash from Depression to 'Over the Rainbow Maddie'. I have seen glimmers though.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots were a series of race riots that occurred over six days in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in California in April 1992.

 

The riots started on April 29, 1992, after a jury trial resulted in the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King following a high-speed police pursuit.

 

Thousands of people throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area rioted over the six days following the announcement of the verdict. Widespread looting, assault, arson and murder occurred during the riots, and estimates of property damages topped one billion dollars. The rioting ended after soldiers from the California Army National Guard, along with U.S. Marines from Camp Pendleton were called in to stop the rioting. In total, 53 people were killed during the riots and over two thousand people were injured.

 

In addition to the immediate trigger of the Rodney King verdicts, a range of other factors were cited as reasons for the unrest. Anger over Korean American shop-owner Soon Ja Du's weak sentence for fatally shooting a black teenager Latasha Harlins was pointed to as a potential reason for the riots, particularly for aggression toward Korean Americans. Publications such as Newsweek and Time suggested that the source of these racial antagonisms was derived from perceptions amongst blacks that Korean-American merchants were taking money out of their community and refusing to hire blacks to work in their shops. According to this view, these tensions were intensified when Du was sentenced to five years probation but no jail time after a jury convicted her of manslaughter.

 

Another explanation offered for the riots was the extremely high unemployment among the residents of South Central Los Angeles, which had been hit very hard by the nation-wide recession, and the high levels of poverty there. Articles in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times linked the economic deterioration of South Central to the declining living conditions of the residents, and suggested that local resentments about these conditions helped to fuel the riots.

 

Social commentator Mike Davis pointed to the growing economic disparity in Los Angeles in the years leading up to the riots caused by corporate restructuring and government deregulation, with inner-city residents bearing the brunt of these changes. Such conditions engendered a widespread feeling of frustration and powerlessness in the urban populace, with the King verdicts eventually setting off their resentments in a violent expression of collective public protest. To Davis and other writers, the tensions witnessed between African-Americans and Korean-Americans during the unrest was as much to do with the economic competition forced on the two groups by wider market forces, as with either cultural misunderstandings or blacks angered about the killing of Harlins.

 

One of the more detailed analyses of the unrest was a study produced shortly after the riots by a Special Committee of the California Legislature, entitled To Rebuild is Not Enough. After extensive research, the Committee concluded that the inner-city conditions of poverty, segregation, lack of educational and employment opportunities, police abuse and unequal consumer services created the underlying causes of the riots. It also pointed to changes in the American economy and the growing ethnic diversity of Los Angeles as important sources of urban discontent, which eventually exploded on the streets following the King verdicts.

 

In his public statements during the riots, civil rights activist and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson sympathized with the anger experienced by African-Americans regarding the verdicts in the King trial, and pointed to certain root causes of the disturbances. Although he suggested that the violence was not justified, he repeatedly emphasized that the riots were an inevitable result of the continuing patterns of racism, police brutality and economic despair suffered by inner-city residents — a tinderbox of seething frustrations which was eventually set off by the verdicts.

 

Democratic presidential candidate, Bill Clinton, argued likewise that the violence resulted from the breakdown of economic opportunities and social institutions in the inner city. He also berated both major political parties for failing to address urban issues, especially the Republican Administration for its presiding over "more than a decade of urban decay" generated by their spending cuts. He maintained that the King verdicts could not be avenged by the "savage behavior" of "lawless vandals". He also stated that people "are looting because ... [t]hey do not share our values, and their children are growing up in a culture alien from ours, without family, without neighborhood, without church, without support."

 

Conversely, President Bush argued that the unrest was "purely criminal". Though he acknowledged that the King verdicts were plainly unjust, he maintained that "we simply cannot condone violence as a way of changing the system ... Mob brutality, the total loss of respect for human life was sickeningly sad ... What we saw last night and the night before in Los Angeles is not about civil rights. It's not about the great cause of equality that all Americans must uphold. It's not a message of protest. It's been the brutality of a mob, pure and simple."

When routine bites hard / And ambitions are low / And resentment rides high / But emotions won't grow / And we're changing our ways / Taking different roads.

 

Phoenix, AZ

February 2011

(Love Will Tear Us Apart.jpg)

I make no excuses for uploading six images of this amazing wood sculpture. Here's some information taken from a plaque beside the artwork:

 

The history of the Rebecca Riots is one of the most dramatic chapters in Welsh history. Against a background of agricultural crisis and grinding rural poverty, associations known as Turnpike Trusts established a network of tollhouses on country roads. Whether taking cattle to Market or collecting lime to fertilise their fields, hard pressed farmers had to pay tolls at every turn.

Resentment built up over many years until 1839 when there was a sudden explosion of violence directed at a new tollgate at Efailwen in north western Carmarthenshire. The attack was led by the stirring figure of 'Rebecca', a man disguised with a blackened face, wig and women's clothes, astride a white horse and waving a sword.

When the Main Trust placed a new tollgate near the Mermaid Tavern in St Clears on 18th November 1842, it marked the start of a four month battle between 'Rebecca' and the authorities. Positioned to make it impossible for traffic to pass through the area without paying a toll, it was pulled down by 'Rebecca' and her followers within hours. The Mermaid Gate was smashed a second time on 12th December that year when seventy to a hundred men, dressed in women's clothes and armed with scythes and guns, descended on the town at midnight. The rebuilt gate was torn down on 20th December and a fourth gate was destroyed in April 1843.

Every area seemed to have its own 'Rebecca' who became, and remains an almost mythical figure - a Welsh Robin Hood. Police and troops were called in to help protect the gates but 'Rebecca' and her daughters were usually one step ahead of the law. The protests came to an end in 1844 when a government Commission of Inquiry led to a reform of the Turnpike Trusts and answered many of the grievances of the rural population.

 

Wood sculpture by Simon Hedger (2008), commissioned by St Clears Council, standing close to the site of the original tollgate.

www.simonhedger.com

   

Chanel is a French luxury fashion house founded in 1910 by Coco Chanel in Paris. It is privately owned by the Wertheimer family and has been headquartered in London since 2018.

 

Chanel specializes in women's ready-to-wear, luxury goods, and accessories and licenses its name and branding to Luxottica for eyewear. Chanel is well known for its No. 5 perfume and "Chanel Suit". Chanel is credited for revolutionizing haute couture and ready-to-wear by replacing structured, corseted silhouettes with more functional garments that women still found flattering.

 

History

The House of Chanel originated in 1909, when Gabrielle Chanel opened a millinery shop at 160 Boulevard Malesherbes, the ground floor of the Parisian flat of the socialite and textile businessman Étienne Balsan, of whom she was the mistress. Because the Balsan flat also was a salon for the French hunting and sporting élite, Chanel had the opportunity to meet their demi-mondaine mistresses who, as such, were women of fashion, upon whom the rich men displayed their wealth – as ornate clothes, jewellery, and hats.

 

Coco Chanel thus could sell to them the hats she designed and made; she thus earned a living independent of Balsan. In the course of those salons, Coco Chanel befriended Arthur "Boy" Capel, an English socialite and polo player friend of Étienne Balsan; per the upper class social custom, Chanel also became mistress to Boy Capel. In 1910, Boy Capel financed her first independent millinery shop, Chanel Modes, at 21 rue Cambon in Paris. Because that locale already housed a dress shop, the business-lease limited Chanel to selling only millinery products, not couture. Two years later 1913, the Deauville and Biarritz couture shops of Coco Chanel offered for sale prêt-à-porter sports clothes for women, the practical designs of which allowed the wearer to play sports.

 

The First World War (1914–1918), affected European fashion through scarcity of materials, and the mobilisation of women. By that time, Chanel had opened a large dress shop at 31 Rue Cambon, near the Hôtel Ritz, in Paris. Among the clothes for sale were flannel blazers, straight-line skirts of linen, sailor blouses, long sweaters made of jersey fabric, and skirt-and-jacket suits.

 

Coco Chanel used jersey cloth because of its physical properties as a garment, such as its drape – how it falls upon and falls from the body of the woman – and how well it adapted to a simple garment-design. Sartorially, some of Chanel's designs derived from the military uniforms made prevalent by the War; and, by 1915, the designs and the clothes produced by the House of Chanel were known throughout France. In 1915, Chanel opened her very first Couture House in Biarritz, France. She had 300 employees and even designed her first line of Haute Couture.

 

In 1915 and in 1917, Harper's Bazaar magazine reported that the garments of La Maison Chanel were "on the list of every buyer" for the clothing factories of Europe. The Chanel dress shop at 31 rue Cambon presented day-wear dress-and-coat ensembles of simple design, and black evening dresses trimmed with lace; and tulle-fabric dresses decorated with jet, a minor gemstone material.

 

After the First World War, La Maison Chanel, following the fashion trends of the 1920s, produced beaded dresses made popular by Flapper women. The simple-line, 'flat-chested' fashions Chanel couture made popular were opposite of the hourglass figure fashions of the late 19th century – the Belle Époque of France (c. 1890–1914), and the British Edwardian era (c. 1901–1919). Chanel used colors traditionally associated with masculinity in Europe, such as grey and navy blue, to denote feminine boldness. Chanel clothing often featured quilted fabric and leather trimmings; the quilted construction reinforced the fabric, design, and finish, allowing the garment to maintain its form and function while worn. An example is the woolen Chanel suit – a knee-length skirt and a cardigan-style jacket, trimmed and decorated with black embroidery and gold-coloured buttons, often accessorized with two-tone pump shoes, a necklace of pearls, and a leather handbag.

 

In 1921, to complement Chanel's clothing lines, Coco Chanel commissioned perfumer Ernest Beaux to create a perfume for La Maison Chanel. His perfumes included the perfume No.5, named after the number of the sample Chanel liked best. Originally, given as a gift to clients, No.5's popularity prompted La Maison Chanel to offer it for sale in 1922.

 

In 1923, to explain the success of her clothes, Coco Chanel told Harper's Bazaar magazine that design "simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."

 

Business partners (late 1920s)

The success of the No. 5 encouraged Coco Chanel to expand perfume sales beyond France and Europe and to develop other perfumes – for which she required investment capital, business acumen, and access to the North American market. To that end, the businessman Théophile Bader (founder of Galeries Lafayette) introduced the venture capitalist Pierre Wertheimer to Coco Chanel. Their business deal established the Parfums Chanel company, a parfumerie of which Wertheimer owned 70 per cent, Bader owned 20 per cent, and Chanel owned 10 per cent; commercial success of the joint enterprise was assured by the Chanel name, and by the cachet of la "Maison Chanel", which remained the sole business province of Coco Chanel.

 

Nonetheless, despite the success of the Chanel couture and parfumerie, the personal relations between Coco and her capitalist partner deteriorated, because, Coco said that Pierre Wertheimer was exploiting her talents as a fashion designer and as a businesswoman. Wertheimer reminded Chanel that he had made her a very rich woman; and that his venture capital had funded Chanel's productive expansion of the parfumerie which created the wealth they enjoyed, all from the success of No. 5 de Chanel.

 

Nevertheless, unsatisfied, the businesswoman Gabrielle Chanel hired the attorney René de Chambrun to renegotiate the 10-per-cent partnership she entered, in 1924, with the Parfums Chanel company; the lawyer-to-lawyer negotiations failed, and the partnership-percentages remained as established in the original business deal among Wertheimer, Badel, and Chanel.

 

War (1930s–1940s)

From the gamine fashions of the 1920s, Coco Chanel progressed to womanly fashions in the 1930s: evening-dress designs were characterised by an elongated feminine style, and summer dresses featured contrasts such as silver eyelets, and shoulder straps decorated with rhinestones – drawing from Renaissance-time fashion stylings. In 1932, Chanel presented an exhibition of jewellery dedicated to the diamond as a fashion accessory; it featured the Comet and Fountain necklaces of diamonds, which were of such original design, that Chanel S.A. re-presented them in 1993. Moreover, by 1937, the House of Chanel had expanded the range of its clothes to more women and presented prêt-à-porter clothes designed and cut for the petite woman. Among fashion designers, only the clothes created by Elsa Schiaparelli could compete with the clothes of Chanel.

  

Chanel's spymaster:

General Walter Schellenberg, Chief of the Sicherheitsdienst

During the Second World War (1939–45), Coco Chanel closed shop at Maison Chanel – leaving only jewellery and parfumerie for sale – and moved to the Hôtel Ritz Paris, where she lived with her boyfriend, Hans Günther von Dincklage, a Nazi intelligence officer. Upon conquering France in June 1940, the Nazis established a Parisian occupation-headquarters in the Hôtel Meurice, on the rue de la Rivoli, opposite the Louvre Museum, and just around the corner from the fashionable Maison Chanel S.A., at 31 rue Cambon.

 

Meanwhile, because of the Nazi occupation's official anti-Semitism, Pierre Wertheimer and family, had fled France to the U.S., in mid-1940. Later, in 1941, Coco Chanel attempted to assume business control of Parfums Chanel but was thwarted by an administrative delegation that disallowed her sole disposition of the parfumerie. Having foreseen the Nazi occupation policy of the seizure-and-expropriation to Germany of Jewish business and assets in France, Pierre Wertheimer, the majority partner, had earlier, in May 1940, designated Felix Amiot, a Christian French industrialist, as the "Aryan" proxy whose legal control of the Parfums Chanel business proved politically acceptable to the Nazis, who then allowed the perfume company to continue as an operating business.

 

Occupied France abounded with rumours that Coco Chanel was a Nazi collaborator; her clandestine identity was secret agent 7124 of the Abwehr, code-named "Westminster". As such, by order of General Walter Schellenberg, of the Sicherheitsdienst, Chanel was despatched to London on a mission to communicate to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill the particulars of a "separate peace" plan proposed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who sought to avoid surrendering to the Red Army of the Soviet Russians.

 

At War's end, upon the Allied liberation of France, Chanel was arrested for having collaborated with the Nazis. In September 1944, the Free French Purge Committee, the épuration, summoned Chanel for interrogation about her collaborationism, yet, without documentary evidence of or witnesses to her collaboration with the Nazis, and because of Churchill's secret intervention in her behalf, the épuration released Coco Chanel from arrest as a traitor to France.[9][13] Despite having been freed by the political grace of Churchill, the strength of the rumours of Chanel's Nazi collaboration had made it not possible for her to remain in France; so Coco Chanel and her German lover, Hans Günther von Dincklage, went into an eight-year exile to Switzerland.

 

In the post–war period, during Coco Chanel's Swiss exile from France, Pierre Wertheimer returned to Paris and regained formal administrative control of his family's business holdings – including control of Parfums Chanel, the parfumerie established with his venture capital, and successful because of the Chanel name.

 

In Switzerland, the news revived Coco Chanel's resentment at having been exploited by her business partner, for only ten per cent of the money. So she established a rival Swiss parfumerie to create, produce, and sell her "Chanel perfumes". In turn, Wertheimer, the majority capital stock owner of Parfums Chanel, saw his business interests threatened, and his commercial rights infringed because he did not possess legally exclusive rights to the Chanel name. Nonetheless, Wertheimer avoided a trademark infringement lawsuit against Coco Chanel, lest it damage the commercial reputation and the artistic credibility of his Chanel-brand parfumerie.

 

Pierre Wertheimer settled his business and commercial-rights quarrel with Chanel, and, in May 1947, they renegotiated the 1924 contract that had established Parfums Chanel – she was paid $400,000 in cash (wartime profits from the sales of perfume No. 5 de Chanel); assigned a 2.0 per cent running royalty from the sales of No. 5 parfumerie; assigned limited commercial rights to sell her "Chanel perfumes" in Switzerland; and granted a perpetual monthly stipend that paid all of her expenses. In exchange, Gabrielle Chanel closed her Swiss parfumerie enterprise, and sold to Parfums Chanel the full rights to the name "Coco Chanel".

 

Resurgence (1950s–1970s)

In 1953, upon returning to France from Switzerland, Coco Chanel found the fashion business enamoured of the "New Look" (1947), by Christian Dior; the signature shape featured a below-mid-calf-length, full-skirt, a narrow waist, and a large bust (stylistically absent since 1912). As a post–War fashion that used some 20 yards of fabric, the House of Dior couture renounced wartime rationing of fabric for clothes.

 

In 1947 – after the six-year austerities of the Second World War (1939–45) – the New Look was welcomed by the fashion business of Western Europe because sales of the pretty clothes would revive business and the economy.

 

To regain the business primacy of the House of Chanel, in the fashion fields of haute couture, prêt-à-porter, costume jewellery, and parfumerie, would be expensive; so Chanel approached Pierre Wertheimer for business advice and capital. Having decided to do business with Coco Chanel, Wertheimer's negotiations to fund the resurgence of the House of Chanel, granted him commercial rights to all Chanel-brand products.

 

In 1953, Chanel collaborated with jeweler Robert Goossens; he was to design jewelry (bijouterie and gemstone) to complement the fashions of the House of Chanel; notably, long-strand necklaces of black pearls and of white pearls, which high contrast softened the severe design of the knitted-wool Chanel Suit (skirt and cardigan jacket).

 

The House of Chanel also presented leather handbags with either gold-colour chains or metal-and-leather chains, which allowed carrying the handbag from the shoulder or in hand. The quilted-leather handbag was presented to the public in February 1955. In-house, the numeric version of the launching date "2.55" for that line of handbags became the internal "appellation" for that model of the quilted-leather handbag.

 

The firm's initial venture into masculine parfumerie was an eau de toilette called Pour Monsieur. Chanel and her spring collection received the Fashion Oscar at the 1957 Fashion Awards in Dallas. Pierre Wertheimer bought Bader's 20 per cent share of the Parfums Chanel, which increased the Wertheimer percentage to 90 per cent.

 

Later, in 1965, Pierre's son, Jacques Wertheimer, assumed his father's management of the parfumerie. About the past business relationship, between Pierre Wertheimer and Coco Chanel, the Chanel attorney, Chambrun said that it had been "one based on a businessman's passion, despite her misplaced feelings of exploitation . . . [thus] when Pierre returned to Paris, full of pride and excitement [after one of his horses won the 1956 English Derby]. He rushed to Coco, expecting congratulations and praise. But she refused to kiss him. She resented him, you see, all her life."

 

Coco Chanel died on 10 January 1971, at the age of 87. She was still designing at the time of her death. For example, in the (1966–1969) period, she designed the air hostess uniforms for Olympic Airways, the designer who followed her was Pierre Cardin. In that time, Olympic Airways was a luxury airline, owned by the transport magnate Aristotle Onassis. After her death, the leadership of the company was handed down to Yvonne Dudel, Jean Cazaubon and Philippe Guibourgé. So far, the bags designed by Chanel are still very popular in the vintage market.

 

After a period of time, Jacques Wertheimer bought the controlling interest of the House of Chanel. Critics stated that during his leadership, he never paid much attention to the company, as he was more interested in horse breeding. In 1974, the House of Chanel launched Cristalle eau de toilette, which was designed when Coco Chanel was alive. 1978 saw the launch of the first non-couture, prêt-à-porter line and worldwide distribution of accessories.

 

Alain Wertheimer, son of Jacques Wertheimer, assumed control of Chanel S.A. in 1974. In the U.S., No. 5 de Chanel was not selling well. Alain revamped Chanel No.5 sales by reducing the number of outlets carrying the fragrance from 18,000 to 12,000. He removed the perfume from drugstore shelves and invested millions of dollars in advertisement for Chanel cosmetics. This ensured a greater sense of scarcity and exclusivity for No.5, and sales rocketed back up as demand for the fragrance increased. He used famous people to endorse the perfume – from Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Tautou. Looking for a designer who could bring the label to new heights, he persuaded Karl Lagerfeld to end his contract with fashion house Chloé. Chanel has partnered with friends and ambassadors over the years including notable actors, musicians, and other artists: Jennie, Angèle, Whitney Peak, Caroline de Maigret, Margaret Qualley, Victoria Song, Wang Yibo, Minji, Lily-Rose Depp, Keira Knightley, Kristen Stewart, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, and Penélope Cruz.

 

Post-Coco era (1980s–present)

A Chanel store in North America

In 1981, Chanel launched Antaeus, an eau de toilette for men. In 1983 Karl Lagerfeld took over as chief designer for Chanel. Like Chanel, he looked into the past as inspiration for his designs. He incorporated the Chanel fabrics and detailing such as tweed, gold accents, and chains. Lagerfeld retained what was signature for Chanel but also helped bring the brand into the present. In later collections Lagerfeld chose to break away from the ladylike look of Chanel and began to experiment with fabrics and styles. During the 1980s, more than 40 Chanel boutiques opened worldwide. By the end of the 1980s, the boutiques sold goods ranging from US$200-per-ounce perfume, US$225 ballerina slippers to US$11,000 dresses and US$2,000 leather handbags. Chanel cosmetics and fragrances were distributed only by Chanel outlets. Chanel marketer Jean Hoehn explained the firm's approach, saying, "We introduce a new fragrance every 10 years, not every three minutes like many competitors. We don't confuse the consumer. With Chanel, people know what to expect. And they keep coming back to us, at all ages, as they enter and leave the market." 1984 saw the launch of a new fragrance in honor of the founder, Coco. In 1986, the House of Chanel struck a deal with watchmakers and in 1987, the first Chanel watch debuted. By the end of the decade, Alain moved the offices to New York City.

 

Maison de Chanel increased the Wertheimer family fortune to US$5 billion. Sales were hurt by the recession of the early 1990s, but Chanel recovered by the mid-1990s with further boutique expansion.

 

In 1994, Chanel had a net profit equivalent to €67 million on the sale of €570 million in ready-to-wear clothes and was the most profitable French fashion house.

 

In 1996, Chanel bought gun-makers Holland & Holland, but failed in its attempt to revamp the firm. The swimwear label Eres was also purchased in 1996. Chanel launched the perfumes Allure in 1996 and Allure Homme in 1998. The House of Chanel launched its first skin care line, Précision, in 1999. That same year, Chanel launched a travel collection, and under a license contract with Luxottica, introduced a line of sunglasses and eyeglass frames.

 

While Wertheimer remained chairman, Françoise Montenay became CEO and President. 2000 saw the launch of the first unisex watch by Chanel, the J12. In 2001, watchmaker Bell & Ross was acquired. The same year, Chanel boutiques offering only selections of accessories were opened in the United States. Chanel launched a small selection of menswear as a part of their runway shows.

 

In 2002, Chanel launched the Chance perfume and Paraffection, a subsidiary company originally established in 1997 to support artisanal manufacturing, that gathered together Ateliers d'Art or workshops including Desrues for ornamentation and buttons, Lemarié for feathers, Lesage for embroidery, Massaro for shoemaking and Michel for millinery. A prêt-à-porter collection was designed by Karl Lagerfeld.

 

In July 2002, a jewelry and watch outlet opened on Madison Avenue. Within months, a 1,000-square-foot (90 m2) shoe/handbag boutique opened next door. Chanel continued to expand in the United States and by December 2002, operated 25 U.S. boutiques.

 

Chanel introduced Coco Mademoiselle and an "In-Between Wear" in 2003, targeting younger women, opened a second shop on Rue Cambon, opened a 2,400 square feet (220 m2) boutique in Central, Hong Kong, and paid nearly US$50 million for a building in Ginza, Tokyo.

 

In 2007, Maureen Chiquet was appointed CEO. She remained CEO until her termination in 2016.

 

In 2018, Chanel announced relocation of its global headquarters to London. In December of the same year, Chanel announced that it would ban fur and exotic skins from its collections.

 

In February 2019, Lagerfeld died at age 85. Virginie Viard, who had worked with Lagerfeld at the fashion house for over 30 years, was named the new Creative Director.

 

In December 2021, Leena Nair was appointed Global Chief Executive Officer.

 

Exhibitions and retrospectives

The Palais Galliera featured a retrospective Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto (October 1, 2020 – August 17, 2021). The exhibit later traveled to Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo, National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (December 3, 2021 – April 25, 2022), and will debut at London's Victoria & Albert Museum (September 16, 2023).

 

The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid explored the relationship and reciprocal influence between Pablo Picasso and Gabrielle Chanel with a four-part exhibition (October 11, 2022 – January 15, 2023) spanning their works between 1915 and 1925.

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art first honored the house with a (May 5-August 7) 2005 exhibit chronicling the work of Coco Chanel's designs dating back to the 1920s. The museum's Costume Institute will unveil a posthumous retrospective, paying homage to former Creative Director, Karl Lagerfeld (May 5-July 16).

 

Philanthropy, sustainability, arts and culture

Fondation Chanel is the philanthropic arm of the house. Founded in 2011, some of the organization's key initiatives include promoting greater healthcare advocacy; addressing the disparities in gender-based violence; and "accelerating economic agency and empowerment". Fondation Chanel has partnered with organizations in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

 

Chanel announced (June 2021) an anchor investment in the Landscape Resilience Fund, contributing $25 million to farmers grappling with the impacts of climate change. Setting a new series of science-based targets, the company also launched the No.1 de Chanel beauty and fragrance line in 2022, with 97% naturally derived ingredients and eco-conscious packaging designed. The house also announced goals in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2030 and reduce its emissions from value chain by 40% by 2030. As part of the Chanel Mission 1.5 Climate Action Plan, the brand has pledged to transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2025. The company is also sourcing eco-responsible tweeds; shitfing to maritime transport with a gial of 80% shipments by sea by 2024; and supporting land and livlihood projects throughout communities in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. In January 2024, Chanel launched an initiative with the consortium of 15 cosmetics-manufacturers, called the Traceability Alliance for Sustainable Cosmetics to catalyze traceability in the cosmetics sector.

 

Arts and culture

The Chanel Culture Fund is a global program of initaitves and partnerships. Since its inception, the House has partnered with the National Portrait Gallery (London), The Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Power Station (Shanghai). The Fund awards an annual prize (Chanel Next Prize) of €100,000 to ten artists in the fields of performing and visual arts.

 

Yana Peel, global head of arts and culture said of the Fund in an interview with Harper's Bazaar, "At a time when we are navigating our way through complex new environments around the world, we know that artists generate transformative ideas that help us envision the way forward. Chanel has always championed the vitality and advancement of the arts, and we now expand that tradition through the Fund with a focus on supporting cultural innovators and path-breakers who are mapping out what's next.”

 

Corporate identity

The Chanel logotype comprises two interlocked, opposed letters-C, one faced left, one faced right. The logotype was given to Chanel by the Château de Crémat, Nice, and was not registered as a trademark until the first Chanel shops were established. The logo is commonly known to stand for "Coco Chanel" and has become one of the most recognizable logos in the world. It has also become the symbol of prestige, luxury, and class.

 

In 2022, Chanel donated €2 million towards Care and UNHCR, the money will go to Ukraine to help it during the Russian invasion.

 

Worldwide, Chanel S.A. operates around 310 Chanel boutiques; 94 in Asia, 70 in Europe, 10 in the Middle East, 128 in North America, 1 in Central America, 2 in South America, and 6 in Oceania. The shops are located in wealthy communities, usually in department stores like Harrods and Selfridges, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, high streets, shopping districts, and inside airports.[9] In 2015, the company paid a record $152 million for 400 North Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. This is the most expensive amount paid for retail space in Los Angeles. In October 2020, the company bought its flagship Bond Street boutique in London for £310 million.

 

Trademarks

One timeline measurement for Chanel presence in the United States is via trademarks registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). On Tuesday, 18 November 1924, Chanel, Inc. filed trademark applications for the typeset mark Chanel and for the interlocking CC design plus word mark. At that time, the trademarks were registered only for the perfume, toiletry, and cosmetic products in the primary class of common metals and their alloys. Chanel provided the description of face powder, perfume, Eau de Cologne, toilet water, lip stick, and rouge, to the USPTO. The Chanel and double-C trademarks were awarded on the same date of 24 February 1925 with respective Serial Numbers of 71205468 and 71205469. The first trademark application for the No. 5 perfume was on Thursday, 1 April 1926, described as perfume and toilet water. First use and commercial use was stated as 1 January 1921. Registration was granted on 20 July 1926 with Serial Number 71229497.

 

Combatting counterfeits

Along with other makers, Chanel is a target of counterfeiters. An authentic classic Chanel handbag retails from around US$4,150, while a counterfeit usually costs around US$200. Beginning in the 1990s, all authentic Chanel handbags were numbered.

 

In 2018, Chanel filed suit in the Federal District Court of the Southern District of New York, alleging The RealReal was hosting counterfeit (fake) Chanel products on their website and implying to customers that an affiliation existed between the two.

 

Due to the high volume of Chanel counterfeits, the legal department at Chanel has set up a website to educate consumers about "Spotting Fake vs Authentic CHANEL Products." Many fashion bloggers are spreading awareness about identifying fake luxury items such as Chanel's products.

 

Fragrance

In 1924, Pierre Wertheimer founded Parfums Chanel, to produce and sell perfumes and cosmetics; the parfumerie proved to be the most profitable business division of the Chanel S.A. corporation. Since its establishment, parfumerie Chanel has employed four perfumers:

 

Ernest Beaux (1920–1961)

Henri Robert (1958–1978)

Jacques Polge (1978–2015)

Olivier Polge (2015–present)

 

Fragrance and Skincare counter at Myer in Sydney

Perfumes

Allure EDT

Allure Eau Sensuelle EDP

Allure Eau Sensuelle EDT

Chance Eau Vive

Chance Eau Fraiche

Chance Eau Tendre

Coco

Coco Mademoiselle

Coco Noir

Cristalle

Cristalle Eau Verte

No. 5

No. 19

No. 19 Poudre

No 22

Gardénia

Bois des Iles

Cuir de Russie

Eau de Cologne

31 Rue Cambon

No. 18

Coromandel

Bel Respiro

28 La Pausa (named for La Pausa, Chanel's villa on the French Riviera)

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1932

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1957

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Colognes

Allure pour Homme

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Antaeus

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Bleu De Chanel Eau de Toilette

Bleu De Chanel Eau de Parfum

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Pour Monsieur

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Cosmetics are the most accessible Chanel product, with counters in department stores across the world, including Harrods, Galeries Lafayette, Bergdorf Goodman, Hudson's Bay, and David Jones, Wojooh, Selfridges & Co, John Lewis, Boots as well as its own beauty boutiques.

 

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Fine jewellery

Chanel 'High Jewellery' was founded in November 1932. Chanel debuted 'Bijoux de Diamants' at her Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris mansion. In 2012, the company created a special collection to celebrate Diamants' 80th anniversary. Current collections include High Jewelry, Camelia, Comete, Coco Crush, Baroque, 1932, Ultra, Bridal and Jewelry Watches.

 

Watches

The Chanel wristwatch division was established in 1987. In 1995, division presented a second design, the Matelassé. Although the Première and Matelassé wristwatches were successful products, the presentation, in 2000, of the Chanel J12 line of unisex style wristwatches, made of ceramic materials, established Chanel wristwatches as a Chanel marque. The J12 line of wristwatches features models in four dial-face sizes: 33mm, 38mm, 41mm, and 42mm. In 2008, Chanel S.A. and Audemars Piguet developed the ceramic Chanel AP-3125 clockwork, exclusive to the House of Chanel.

 

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Chanel owns the wineries Château Rauzan-Ségla, Château Canon, St. Supéry Estate Vineyards & Winery, and Domaine de i'lle located on the island of Porquerolles in the Cotes de Provence AOP.

Boudica was the wife of Prasutagus, who was head of the Iceni tribe in East England, in what is now Norfolk and Suffolk.

  

In 43 CE, the Romans invaded Britain, and most of the Celtic tribes were forced to submit. However, the Romans allowed two Celtic kings to retain some of their traditional power; one was Prasutagus.

  

The Roman occupation brought increased Roman settlement, military presence, and attempts to suppress Celtic religious culture. There were major economic changes, including heavy taxes and money lending.

  

In 47 CE the Romans forced the Ireni to disarm, creating resentment. Prasutagus had been given a grant by the Romans, but the Romans then redefined this as a loan. When Prasutagus died in 60 CE, he left half his kingdom to the Emperor Nero to settle this debt.

  

The Romans arrived to collect, but instead of settling for half the kingdom, seized control of it. To humiliate the former rulers, the Romans beat Boudica publicly, raped their two daughters, seized the wealth of many Iceni and sold much of the royal family into slavery.

  

The Roman governor Suetonius turned his attention to attacking Wales, taking two-thirds of the Roman military in Britain. Boudica meanwhile met with the leaders of the Iceni, Trinovanti, Cornovii, Durotiges, and other tribes, who also had grievances against the Romans including grants that had been redefined as loans. They planned to revolt and drive out the Romans.

  

Led by Boudicca, about 100,000 British attacked Camulodunum (now Colchester), where the Roans had their main center of rule. With Suetonius and most of the Roman forces away, Camulodunum was not well-defended, and the Romans were drive out. he Procurator Decianus was forced to flee. Boudicca's army burned Camulodunum to the ground; only the Roman temple was left.

  

Immediately Boudicca's army turned to the largest city in the British Isles, Londinium (London). Suetonius strategically abandoned the city, and Boudicca's army burned Londinium and massacred the 25,000 inhabitants who had not fled. Archaeological evidence of a layer of burned ash shows the extent of the destruction.

  

Next, Boudicca and her army marched on Verulamium (St. Albans), a city largely populated by Britons who had cooperated with the Romans, and they were killed as the city was destroyed.

  

Boudicca's army had counted on seizing Roman food stores when the tribes abandoned their own fields to wage rebellion, but Suetonius had strategically seen to the burning of the Roman stores. Famine thus struck the victorious army, weakening them.

  

Boudicca fought one more battle, though its precise location is not sure. Boudicca's army attacked uphill, and, exhausted, hungry, was easy for the Romans to rout. Roman troops of 1,200 defeated Boudicca's army of 100,000, killing 80,000 to their own loss of 400.

  

What happened to Boudica is uncertain. It is said she returned to her home territory and took poison to avoid Roman capture.

 

- womenshistory.about.com/od/boudicca/p/boudicca.htm

 

September 3, 2017

237/365

 

"Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn't change the heart of others; it only changes yours." - Shannon L. Alder

otherwise known as peace sign up, index down!

this is from the archives.

glad i'm in a better place than i was then.

An old Cherokee Indian was speaking to his grandson:

 

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil--he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good -- he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too."

 

The grandson thought about it for a long minute, and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

 

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

 

Original photo "Mist Forest" by David Guerrero

Maker: Walker Evans (1903-1975)

Born: USA

Active: USA

Medium: print back

Size: 8" x 10"

Location: USA

 

Object No. 2017.849b

Shelf: A-4

 

Publication:

 

Other Collections:

 

Notes: In 1935 the groundbreaking African Negro Art exhibition was organized by The Museum of Modern Art. It was one of the first exhibitions in the United States to display African sculptures as works of art, rather than as ethnographic objects. Evans, then 32 years old, was commissioned by the museum to create a photographic portfolio of a selection of works from the exhibition of more than 600 sculptures. The large commission created a record of masterpieces in the exhibition and gave Evans the opportunity to build relationships with individuals at the Museum of Modern Art who would continue to encourage and promote his artistic endeavors. The commission comprised 17 portfolios, each with 477 photographs, and a typescript index. While the actual photography took about six weeks, often at night during the run of the exhibition, the printing, mounting, and collating of the prints took almost a year. Evans photographed many sculptures from more than one view, and the manner in which he pictured the works reflects his highly personal photographic style. He generally positioned the sculptures tightly within the frame with little space around them, and in many instances — as he did throughout his career — he cut the prints to specific dimensions to achieve the effect he desired. Born in St. Louis in 1903, Walker Evans was raised in Kenilworth, Chicago, and Toledo, Ohio. Educated at Andover and Williams College, Evans developed a love of contemporary literature — for James Joyce and T. S. Eliot — and for the French modernists, Charles Baudelaire and Gustave Flaubert. His passion for literature, coupled with a resentment of authority and academic conventionality, impelled Evans to abandon the classroom for the streets and cafés of Paris in 1926. He returned to New York the following year, intent on becoming a writer; but by 1928, he had taken up photography. At the request of Alfred H. Barr, Evans began photographing the African sculptures on display at the Museum of Modern Art in mid-April 1935, and by August he began work for the Resettlement Administration in Washington, D.C. This led to further work with the government, and Evans continued working until the museum project ended in April 1936.

 

To view our archive organized by themes and subjects, visit: OUR COLLECTIONS

 

For information about reproducing this image, visit: THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE

 

Eaton Square, Belgravia, seen on Christmas Day ...the year before last I think. Tara Raboomdeyay on her way to Mummy and Daddy's for Christmas luncheon, perhaps. No, no. Sneer not. Resentment of those who are materially better placed than one's self is a pretty futile employment of one's time on earth, I feel. And how can one, in all conscience, complain that others are better placed when one would instantly change places, or at least bank balances, with them if one could? The usual grumble is that theirs is unearned or inherited wealth. Quite possibly ...although I'm never quite sure how the grumbler thinks he knows. Gosh, I certainly wish I hadn't had to earn my money, and I didn't say no when I inherited a share of my parents' small estate. If I've anything left to leave to my descendents, which is looking increasingly unlikely, they're welcome to it as far as I'm concerned. Everyone benefits from inheritance and to complain about it is just, well, a little bit unintelligent. We build upon what our ancestors leave, both as individuals and as a society. If you whinge about inherited wealth you must, logically, advocate that the nation destroy its infrastructure every thirty years or so and start again from the Stone Age. What the whinger dislikes, of course, is that others have inherited more than he has. In other words it's a simple case of envy. As a matter of fact my late father lived in Eaton Square before the War. He was a valet.

Elias Hicks (March 19, 1748 – February 27, 1830) was a traveling Quaker preacher from Long Island, New York. In his ministry he promoted doctrines that embroiled him and his followers in a controversy which caused the first major schism within the Religious Society of Friends. Elias Hicks was the older cousin of the painter Edward Hicks, also a Quaker preacher.

 

Elias Hicks was born in Hempstead, New York, in 1748. He was a carpenter by trade and in his early twenties he became a Quaker like his father, John Hicks.

 

On January 2, 1771, Hicks married a fellow Quaker, Jemima Seaman, at the Westbury Meeting House and they had eleven children, only five of whom reached adulthood. Hicks eventually became a farmer, settling on his wife's parents' farm in Jericho, New York, in what is now known as the Elias Hicks House. There he and his wife provided, as did other Jericho Quakers, free board and lodging to any traveler on the Jericho Turnpike rather than have them seek accommodation in taverns for the night.

 

In 1778, Hicks helped to build the Friends Meeting house in Jericho which still remains a place of Quaker worship. Hicks preached actively in Quaker meeting and by 1778 he was acknowledged as a recorded minister. Hicks was regarded as a gifted speaker with a strong voice and dramatic flair.

 

Elias Hicks was one of the early Quaker abolitionists.In 1778, he and Phebe Dodge, his Quaker neighbor, manumitted their slaves. They were the first Quakers at Westbury Meeting to do so and, gradually following their example, all Westbury Quaker slaves were freed by 1799.

 

In 1794, Hicks was a founder of the Charity Society of Jerico and Westbury Meetings, established to give aid to local poor African Americans and provide their children with education. In 1811, Hicks wrote Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendents and in it he linked the moral issue of emancipation to the Quaker Peace Testimony, by stating that slavery was the product of war

 

He identified the economic reason for the perpetuation of slavery:

'Q. 10. By what class of the people is the slavery of the Africans and their descendants supported and encouraged? A. Principally by the purchasers and consumers of the produce of the slaves' labour; as the profits arising from the produce of their labour, is the only stimulus or inducement for making slaves'. and he advocated a consumer boycott of slave-produced goods to remove the economic reasons for its existence.

‘

Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendents gave the free produce movement its central argument. This movement promoted an embargo of all goods produced by slave labor, which were mainly cotton cloth and cane sugar, in favor of produce from the paid labor of free people. Though the free produce movement was not intended to be a religious response to slavery, most of the free produce stores were Quaker in origin, as with the first such store, that of Benjamin Lundy in Baltimore in 1826.

 

Hicks supported Lundy's scheme to assist the emigration of freed slaves to Haiti and in 1824, he hosted a meeting on how to facilitate this at his home in Jerico. In the late 1820s, he argued in favor of raising funds to buy slaves and settle them as free people in the American Southwest.

 

Hicks influenced the abolition of slavery in his home state, from the partial abolition of the 1799 Gradual Abolition Act to the 1817 Gradual Manumission in New York State Act which led to the final emancipation of all remaining slaves within the state on July 4, 1827.

 

Hicks considered 'obedience to the light within', the Inner Light, to be the most important principle of worship and the foundational principle of the Religious Society of Friends.

He discounted the virgin birth of Christ and denied the complete divinity of Christ, seeing Christ as the Son of God in the same sense that all people intrinsically are, but having achieved divinity through perfect obedience to the Inner Light.

 

Hicks also implicitly dismissed the concepts of atonement, original sin and the Devil and saw Hell as being a condition, not an existent place.

 

In 1824, Hicks set out his doctrinal standpoint in A Doctrinal Epistle Purporting To Be An Exposition Of Christian Doctrine, Respecting The Nature And Office Of Jesus Christ. At Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1826, Hicks said that the leading of the Inner Light was more authoritative than the text of the Bible.

 

'Now this seems to be so explained in the writings called the Scriptures, that we might gain a great deal of profitable instruction, if we would read them under the regulating influence of the spirit of God. But they can afford no instruction to those who read them in their own ability; for, if they depend on their own interpretation, they are as a dead letter, in so much, that those who profess to consider them the proper rule of faith and practice, will kill one another for the Scriptures' sake'.

 

Hicks' followers thought that Orthodox Friends were taking on evangelistic notions that were alien to traditional Quaker faith and practice. Both they and Hicks' views were also consistent with a freethought tradition already prevailing in the United States, particularly among deists of Quaker heritage, such as Thomas Paine.

 

The most original aspect of Hicks' theology was his rejection of the notion of the Devil as the source of human 'passions' or 'propensities'. Hicks stressed that basic urges, including all sexual passions, were neither implanted by an external evil nor were they the product of personal choice, but all were aspects of human nature as created by God. Hicks claimed, in his sermon Let Brotherly Love Continue at Byberry Friends Meeting in 1824 that:

'He gave us passions—if we may call them passions—in order that we might seek after those things which we need, and which we had a right to experience and know'.

 

Hicks taught that all wrongdoing and suffering occurred in the world not because human nature harbored evil 'propensities' but rather that they were a consequence of 'an excess in the indulgence of propensities',

 

This first split in Quakerism was not entirely due to Hicks’ ministry and internal divisions. It was, in part, a response within Quakerism to the influences of the Second Great Awakening, the revival of Protestant evangelism that began in the 1790s as a reaction to religious skepticism, deism and the liberal theology of Rational Christianity.

However, doctrinal tensions among Friends due to Hicks’ teachings had emerged as early as 1808 and as Hicks’ influence grew, prominent visiting English evangelical public Friends, including William Forster and Anna Braithwaite, were prompted to travel to New York State in the period from 1821 to 1827 to denounce his views. Their presence severely exacerbated the differences among American Quakers, differences that had been underscored by the 1819 split between the Unitarians and Congregationalists. The influence of Anna Braithwaite was especially strong. She visited the United States between 1823 and 1827 and published her Letters and observations relating to the controversy respecting the doctrines of Elias Hicks in 1824 in which she depicted Hicks as a radical eccentric.

 

Hicks felt obliged to respond and in the same year published a letter to his ally in Philadelphia Meeting, Dr. Edwin Atlee, in The Misrepresentations of Anna Braithwaite. This in turn was replied to by Braithwaite in A Letter from Anna Braithwaite to Elias Hicks, On the Nature of his Doctrines in 1825.

 

In 1819, Hicks had devoted much energy into influencing the meeting houses in Philadelphia and this was followed by years of intense organizational turmoil. Eventually, due to both external influences and constant internal strife, matters came to a head there in 1826. After the 1826 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, at which Hicks' sermon had stressed the importance of the Inner Light before Scripture, Quaker elders decided to visit each meeting house in the city to examine the doctrinal soundness of all ministers and elders. This caused great resentment that culminated at the following Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1827. Hicks was not present when the differences between the meeting houses ended in acrimony and division, precipitated by the inability of the Meeting to reach consensus on the appointment of a new clerk required to record its discernment.

 

Though the initial separation was intended to be temporary, by 1828 there were two independent Quaker groupings in the city, both claiming to be the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Other yearly meetings split along similar lines during subsequent years, including those in New York, Baltimore, Ohio and Indiana.

 

Those who followed Hicks became termed Hicksites and his critics termed Orthodox Friends, each faction considering itself to be the rightful expression of the legacy of the founder of the Friends, George Fox.

 

The split was also based on marked socioeconomic factors with Hicksite Friends being mostly poor and rural and with Orthodox Friends being mostly urban and middle-class. Many of the rural country Friends kept to Quaker traditions of 'plain speech' and 'plain dress', both long-abandoned by Quakers in the towns and cities.

 

The eventual division between Hicksites and the evangelical Orthodox Friends was both deep and long-lasting. Full reconciliation between them took decades to achieve, from the first steps in the 1920s until finally resolved in 1968.

 

In November 1829, the young Walt Whitman heard Hicks preach at Morrison's Hotel in Brooklyn, later recalling his "resonant, grave, melodious voice".

 

On June 24 1829, at the age of 81, Elias Hicks went on his final traveling ministry to western and central New York State, arriving home in Jericho on November 11, 1829. There, in January 1830, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and on February 14, 1830, he suffered an incapacitating secondary stroke. He died some two weeks later, his dying concern being that no cotton blanket, a product of slavery, should cover him on his deathbed.

 

Elias Hicks was interred in the Jericho Friends' Burial Ground as was earlier his wife, Jemima, who predeceased him on March 17, 1829.

Coptic Christians in Cairo Egypt living in El Zabaleen, or garbage city. For generations families would work together to collect all the rubbish from the streets of Cairo and take it back to their homes. They then sift and sort through all the items which are then sold on to merchants. 85% of all solid waste is thus recycled from the city.

 

Families used to own pigs that used to eat the organic waste but everyone of them was slaughtered during 2009 during the outbreak of the H1N1 'swine' flu, even though there were no cases reported in Egypt. It was the only country that carried out a mass cull, and was also reported that it was done in an inhumane manner. This increased tension and resentment with the Government.

.

Stand in solidarity with the ongoing movement in Jadavpur University! .;_;. 11ok.k(j/(}r()/J (T..z! l/Jen: /1c iifli.re) .

23 09.2014 .

Around one lakh students marched through the streets of Kolkata on tne 2Q:h of thts month, braving torrential r~ins. and r~5ts:ing the .

theats irom the ruling party, the Trinamool Congress. Hundreds of ~tudents have marched ar.d gafher~d tn soltdanty to t11e ongo1ng movement all o·Jer L1e world Students from JNU, DU and other uni'JersJties had demonstrated outs1de Banga Bhavo. ar:d tllen marched l~J Jantar Manlar on the 20'11 as a joint initiative of different organtsations and individuals. The spontaneous prote~A started by the students of Jadavpur University (JU) has turned into a larger movement in support of gender justice and campus den1ocracy. The protests started when a girl student from JU lod.ged a complaint of sexual harassment with the university authorities. JU does not have an elected GSCASH and the university set up an enquiry committee to look into the allegation. However, two members of the enquiry committee had been pressurizing the complainant to withdraw the·complaint. The students then rightly demanded removal of these committee members and constituting of a new enquiry to emure a free and fair probe. A peaceful protest stt-in continued for 6 days. The students continued the sit-in as the EC meeting was held on the 16th of September. On the night of 1tt. v.,rhen the students refused to end the protest till the VC assures ther.1 of constituting an impartial committee. the JU authorities resorted to Po!ice action to disburse the peaceful protest gathering. On16:hnight. West· Bengal Police, the RAF and Trinamool Congress goons entered the campus and beat up the students mercilessly. Girl students were targeted, beaten up and molested for protesting against a molestation case. Several students were hospitalised, including two in ICU and around 36 students were arrested. The brutal onslaught by Police and ru!ing party goons brought back the memories of 2005 when state machinery was used to suppress the then movement going on in JU. .

This attack on campus democracy and right to p~otest lit up a sp~rk and students from different universities and colleges from Kolkata .

kept joining the protest demanding the resignation of the·JU VC and a free and fair·probe in.to.the sexual harassmel'lt case. The .

movement has grown despite the cowardly attack on student leaders in Kolkata by the·ruling party ·continues unabated.· Student .

leaders from Rajabazar Science College, Scottish Church·College and other places. have· been beaten up and hosp~talised in an .

attempt to nip the protest against the state government. However, the movement has grown in 'th_e 'face ot. state sponsored terror and .

has snowballed into a mass resentment against. the TMC government. Three year· of the TMC rule·has g·iveh a free hand to the .

misyogenic-lumpen elements and sexual a.ssaults on women have been taking place aJI over the state. The rape cases in Park Street, .

Barasat andBirbhum are just a few examples. .

The response from the state government makes matter even worse. The TMC supremo has beer. saytng that each of these incidents is .

either a minor event or a drama staged to malign the image of the state. Chief Minister Mamta Banef)ee has been on record painting .

~rotestors·as Maoists involved in a conspiracy against her government. Recently, the Park Street rape survivor was not allowed to .

enter a restaurant in Kolkata. This does not come as a su~prise ~ec2use the ruling TMC claimed after the rape incident that the .

complainant is a prostitute who is complaining betause the deal weni wrong! In Vishwa Bharti-University, a girl from Sikkim complained .

of sexual harassment but instead of constituting an enquiry and punishing the perpetrators. the vr; .asked ber father to take some .

::-:cney and r.ot to pursue the complaint. TMC MP's have been giving open threats to rape the left activists to teach them a lesson .

Recently. the wife of a left activist was raped and paraded naked b.y TMC goons. The claims of Poriborton (change) ri~g hollow in the .

~ace of unprecedented rise in crime against women and suppression of democratic rights in West BengaL .

While different progressive organisations have .expressed their solidarity with the ongoing movement in JU, yesterday the. ABVP too communicated their support with the ongoing protest. Thanks to the discredited TMC and CPI (M), the BJP is today sensing an opening in West Bengal. The ABVP, before claiming to be with the protestors, must come clean on BJP/RSS's position on gender justice and campus democracy. Finance minister Arun Jaitely recently claimed that small incidents like the 1·6 December rape bring a bad name to the country an-d cause a· loss of mllllo'ns of dollars. RSS supremo Mohan Bhagvat claims that rape happens only in 'India', not in Bharat and one can avoid rape by being rn the 'laxman rekha$. The ABVP has never taken any position on the rape accused BJP Cabinet Minister Nihal Chand, who still is at the helm of affairs. The ABVP's national meet has decided to form vigilante groups in all major campus to "keep a watch on Muslim youths who try to lure Hindu women to pursue their agenda of love jihad." With such ridiculous position on questions of gender justice. the ABVP's claim of solidarity with the ongoing movement is only a comic relief. ABVP/SJP's track record on the question of campus democracy .is pathetic. We have seen that the BJP government tries to use police force to not allow any protest by JNU students. Lathi-charge on protestors outside the Israel embassy is a case in point. The JNUSU was not allowed to protest outside the Gujarat Bhavan a few months back. We have not yet forgotten the murder of Prof. Sabbarwal in Ujjan by ABVP activists. Recently, the Ujjain University VC was beaten up by ABVP goons for demandi11g support to the flood-effected students and people in Kashmir. Few years back the ABVP ransacked the History ,deoartment in OU and beat up the HoD for supporting the teaching a text .

written by Ramanujan. .

The ongoing movement is about fighting the patriarchal-sexist common sense established by the ruling classes. It is against the practice to silent any attempt to challenge the status-quo by using police force and goondas of the ruling party. This is a fight for right to dissent. right to protest and all progressive students must stand by the students of Kolkata in this difficult "battle.We appeal to all progressive students to join the protest demo on the 25th of September in Jantar Mantar at 4:00 pm, called under a common banner named "Campaign in solidarity with the students of Jadavpur Univ,ersity:Delhi Chapter". We also appeal to all to stand by the struggle waged by the students in HPU, where police has {:racked down heavily on students agitating ag~inst tne fee hike. We are sure tnat in the days to come. the student's movement will surge ahead. challenging the ruling class by bwld1ng a united and uncompromising struggle. .

Sd/-Fayaz, Vice President, OSF Lenin, Secretary, DSF .

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I don't hold a firm opinion on winter; it comes, it stays for 6 months and then it's gone. I walk out of the house, brush off the truck and drive to work. There's no thoughts of resentment of where I live. I happen to love Syracuse and it's clear interpretation of seasons.

What I do have an opinion on is Fall......If it weren't for Fall, I wouldn't bother with a camera.

Coptic Christians in Cairo Egypt living in El Zabaleen, or garbage city. For generations families would work together to collect all the rubbish from the streets of Cairo and take it back to their homes. They then sift and sort through all the items which are then sold on to merchants. 85% of all solid waste is thus recycled from the city.

 

Families used to own pigs that used to eat the organic waste but everyone of them was slaughtered during 2009 during the outbreak of the H1N1 'swine' flu, even though there were no cases reported in Egypt. It was the only country that carried out a mass cull, and was also reported that it was done in an inhumane manner. This increased tension and resentment with the Government.

FOR the past 36 years, since Barack Obama was ten, Hillary Clinton has been a regular visitor to Texas. And the local demographics are surely auspicious. Roughly 40% of Texas Democrats are Hispanic, and in the previous contests Mrs Clinton has accumulated twice as many Latino votes as Mr Obama.

 

Her ties to the state and its Hispanic community date to 1972, when she and her then boyfriend Bill Clinton spent the summer working on George McGovern's presidential campaign in San Antonio. Mrs Clinton registered and organised Latino voters, and they have not forgotten. “She stood for us then. We stand with her now!” said Leticia Van De Putte on February 13th, introducing Mrs Clinton at a rally in San Antonio. The crowd, split evenly between whites and Latinos, gave Mrs Clinton the kind of ecstatic reception normally reserved for Obama events.

But in Texas, Latinos may not be the firewall that the Clinton campaign needs. The Obama mystique transcends cultural barriers. “God bless you!” shouted Maria Pardo as Mr Obama wrapped up his own San Antonio rally a few days later. She explained in Spanish that Latinos need a president who does what he says. “He's got words that can reach to every corner of the world,” marvelled another Hispanic lady, “and the world is waiting for him.”

 

Rafael Anchia, a state representative from Dallas who supports Mr Obama, points out that younger Latinos are less committed to the Clinton brand than their parents. Like other young Americans, many are inspired by Mr Obama's story and charisma. And the idea that Hispanics would be reluctant to vote for a black candidate, as suggested by one of Mrs Clinton's pollsters, is overblown. The occasional Latino voter does admit to a sense of resentment or suspicion, but these are exceptions. “The reality that I experience on a daily basis, and Dallas is a pretty good laboratory for it, is that Latinos and African-Americans will work together and do work together,” says Mr Anchia.

 

Demography aside, the rules help Mr Obama. The Texas Democratic Party allots delegates to state senatorial districts based partly on Democratic turnout in the 2004 and 2006 elections. The idea was to encourage participation. But the result is that more liberal districts, which favour Mr Obama, have more delegates. That means that he could lose the popular vote but end up with more delegates than Mrs Clinton.

 

Also, Texas has an amazingly complicated way of divvying up the spoils. Of its 193 elected delegates, about two-thirds will be allotted mainly based on the results of the primary vote. The remainder are assigned partly based on caucuses—lengthy meetings, where speeches are made, held after the polls close on election day. This system gives an advantage to the candidate who is best organised on the ground. Mr Obama has always bested Mrs Clinton on that front, and has won in every caucus state but one.

 

A few weeks ago, Mrs Clinton had a healthy margin in Texas polls. The most recent ones show it has narrowed or even evaporated. But at least the candidate has confronted trouble in Texas before. In her memoir she reminisces about how the McGovern staffers would sometimes drive up to Austin for beers at Scholz Garten, a traditional Democratic hangout. There they spent hours “trying to figure out what else we could do in the face of ever-worsening poll numbers.” Mrs Clinton could use another pow-wow at Scholz's. But she will have to fight for a table. On February 19th, as the results from Wisconsin came in, the bar was overrun by a new set of bright young campaigners—Mr Obama's supporters. And Mr McGovern, of course, lost in a landslide.

    

ICU

By Fielding Edlow

Directed by Brian Shnipper

 

World Premiere production

Performances Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8:00pm, Sundays at 7:00pm

September 25 - October 31, 2015

 

Photos by Jeff Galfer

 

An obnoxious, caustic, oblivious New York family has to deal with their dying son and a complete stranger who insists on making an “amend.” Can they suppress their resentment toward each other––and toward their son’s irascible charge nurse––long enough to hear a cry for help?

 

Featuring Caroline Aaron, Shaun Anthony, Tony DeCarlo, Dagney Kerr, Ericka Kreutz, Joe Pacheco, Doug Sutherland

 

Producers: Tim Wright and Jennifer A. Skinner

Assistant Director: Sam Sonenshine

Stage Manager: Cassandra Scott

 

Set Design: Amanda Knehans

Lighting Designer: Ric Zimmerman

Costume Designer: Dianne Graebner

Sound Designer: Jeff Gardner

Props: Bethany Tucker

 

Location: Atwater Village Theatre, Theatre #4, 3269 Casitas Ave., LA CA 90039

That Summer Feeling - Jonathan Richman

 

When there's things to do not because you gotta

When you run for love not because you oughta

When you trust your friends with no reason notta

The joy I've named shall not be tamed

 

And that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

 

When the cool of the pond makes you drop down on it

When the smell of the lawn makes you flop down on it

When the teenage car gets the cop down on it

That time is here for one more year

 

And that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

 

If you've forgotten what I'm naming

You're gonna long to reclaim it one day

Because that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

And if you wait until your older

A sad resentment will smolder one day

And then that summer feeling is gonna haunt you

And that summer feeling's gonna taunt you

And then that summer feeling is gonna hurt you one day in your life

 

When even fourth grade starts looking good

Which you hated

And first grade's looking good too

Overrated

And you boys long for some little girl that you dated

Do you long for her or for the way you were?

That summer feeling is gonna haunt you the rest of your life

 

When the Oldsmobile has got the top down on it

When the catamaran has got the drop down on it

When the flat of the land has got the crop down on it

Some things look good before and some things never were

But that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

 

Well when your friends are in town and they got time for you

When you and them are hanging around and they don't ignore you

When you say what you will

And they still adore you

If thats not appealing, its that summer feeling

That summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

 

Its gonna haunt you

Its gonna taunt you

You're gonna want this feeling inside one more time

Its gonna haunt you

Its gonna taunt you

You're gonna want this feeling inside one more time

 

When you're hangin around the park with the water fountain

And there's the little girl with the dirty ankles

But she's on the swings where all the dust is kickin up

And you remember the ankle locket

And the way she flirted with you

For all this time how come?

Well that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

 

You'll throw away everything for it

 

When the playground that just was all dirt comes hauntin

And that little girl that called you a flirt

Memory comes tauntin

You pick these things apart they're not that appealin

You put them together and you'll get a certain feeling

That summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

 

"The Base That Never Was"

by Robert W. Wells

 

part 4

Saturday Evening Post Magazine

August 19, 1961

page 60

 

several thousand dollars had already been spent on plans for Upland.

 

When I went to Washington to ask questions about Bong, so many months had elapsed since the afternoon when the base was canceled that I was surprised how vividly that Friday was still remembered around the Pentagon. John M. Ferry, for example, recalled it at once as the day "we got a lot of static." A veteran of both World Wars, Ferry was special assistant for installations to Secretary Douglas and his successor, Secretary Dudley C. Sharp, and was responsible for construction of all Air Force bases during the Bong controversy.

 

"No one came right out and said they thought we were stupid when we canceled Bong," he said, "but they sure intimated it.”

 

He admitted it is now clear, with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, that Bong was a mistake. "I'm sorry we ever started the base," he told me. "But at the time we began it I thought we were doing the right thing. Maybe we should have shut it down sooner. If it wasn't very good judgment, you will have to attribute it to just one thing—the human fallibilities."

 

"How can we prevent such mistakes from happening?" I asked.

 

Ferry allowed himself a wry grin. "Get smarter people," he said.

 

If the future could have been predicted more accurately, the base would not have been begun or would have been canceled sooner, he said. "We started Bong for what we thought was a need that had to be filled. Then the need evaporated. Hindsight is easy. But foresight—foresight is so obscure. Who could have told us four years ago that we'd be building Minuteman right now?"

 

"Couldn't Bong have been used for missiles?" I asked.

 

"Missile sites are dispersed around—not necessarily on—existing Air Force bases. The personnel commute between the sites and the parent base. At Bong there wasn't yet a completed base on which missile installations could be centered. Besides, there are special problems in converting a base for missile use. The water table is important. The silo for a missile goes down 185 feet below ground."

 

Admitting that the decision to close the base was correct, hadn't there been a temptation in 1959 to let the work go on and avoid criticism?

 

"There would've been no criticism if we'd spent the rest of the money, because no one would have known it was being wasted," Ferry said. "It was an unpopular decision, closing the base; a courageous decision. But I'm convinced it was the right one. It was not easy. It really tore the secretary to have to make it, with the implications of all that money wasted."

 

I'd heard various versions of how the decision was made. Maj. Gen. Augustus M. Minton told me what happened. As Air Force director of civil engineering, he is responsible for spending $1,500,000,000 annually on construction projects.

 

While Bong was being planned and built, the general said, the possibility of canceling the base was discussed a half dozen times. On each occasion but the last it was decided the base was needed. Then, late in September, 1959, the question came up again. Lyle S. Garlock, Assistant Air Force Secretary for Financial Management, asked General Minton for recommendations on how to pare expenditures to meet the soaring cost of new programs, particularly missiles.

 

"I made several suggestions," the general said. "Bong was the biggest. I was told to find out how much we'd save if we closed the base out. Several of us flew to Wisconsin to inspect Bong. Secretary Douglas wanted to find out how far construction had gone.

 

"I came back and reported there were important potential savings. The grading had been done, but the big dollar cost was just ahead. They were almost ready to pour concrete on the runway. A delay of three or four weeks would mean we'd have another ten million dollars committed.

 

"Bong would have been in minimum operation by July 1, 1961. But by then we knew our manned-aircraft facilities would be cut back. We would be dedicating Bong at a time when we'd be announcing the closing out of other bases. It left us no alternative."

 

With the report from General Minton on his desk, Secretary Douglas discussed the matter with other top Air Force brass, asking for advice. By the Wednesday after the Saturday inspection trip, the word came back: Close Bong. Douglas advised Defense Secretary Neil H. McElroy. Then he announced the decision to Wisconsin congressmen and the press.

 

Reaction varied. Representative Flynn threatened to seek a court order to force resumption of construction. Reuss asked the Federal Aviation Agency to study conversion of Bong to an international jet airport, with helicopters ferrying passengers to Milwaukee and Chicago. The FAA let it be known that it had been ready to schedule hearings on whether to permit B-58's to use Bong at all. And those hearings, it was pointed out, would have given Bong critics, notably the airline spokesmen, a chance to speak up.

 

Within a week Douglas was in Racine, trying to explain what had happened. The decision to cancel Bong, he told a meeting there, had been "one of the most difficult and unsatisfactory ones" he'd ever been required to make.

 

"I wish the decision had been made sooner," he said. "But I am confident it is the right decision today in the interests of national defense."

 

In trimming the Air Force budget, Douglas explained, a number of "highly desirable" items had to be eliminated. One of these was the F-108 long-range fighter program, which cost the taxpayers seven times as much as had been spent at Bong, with $200,000,000 committed for development of a plane that probably never will be built.

 

Investigators for the House military-operations subcommittee reported some months later that FAA concern over Bong's potential interference with civilian flying played a larger role in the decision than the Air Force would admit. The FAA, which had not been in existence when the base was begun, said it told the Air Force about a month before the base was closed that the change from interceptors to bombers at Bong might create "intolerable airspace problems" in the Milwaukee-Chicago area.

 

Every Air Force official I asked, however, denied that the FAA's position played a determining role in the Bong decision. In any event, the decision was made. The base is closed. The problem now is: What can be done with it?

 

There has been no shortage of suggestions. It has been proposed that the nine square miles be used as a wild-goose refuge, a new state fairground, a Midwestern Disneyland, a national sports center with fifteen golf courses (but no squash courts), an airline maintenance center, a college campus. The one thing it can't be used for, everyone agrees, is farming. As a Wisconsin assemblyman put it, the Air Force has stripped off the topsoil and created a "big, flat surface where you can't raise anything but airplanes."

 

A land-use committee; appointed by Wisconsin's Gov. Gaylord Nelson, studied the matter. With bipartisan support, a bill was pushed through the state legislature enabling Wisconsin to purchase Bong or, if the area is bought by private interests, to control its redevelopment. A state corporation has been created, empowered to issue bonds and to buy or lease the 5500 acres. Governor Nelson and David Carley, director of the Wisconsin department of resource development, told me they view Bong as a potential blessing—in the long run.

 

"It's the biggest single piece of undeveloped land between here and Texas," Carley said. "It has a spur of the Soo Line Railroad. There's a four-lane express highway just four miles east." He envisions Bong as an industrial park, surrounded by recreation areas which would serve the most populous part of Wisconsin. If the state can acquire the base from the General Services Administration, the Federal agency charged with disposing of the property, Carley expects eventually to sell all but the park areas to private Beset or individuals, with strict zoning to make sure the redevelopment is orderly.

 

He considers it possible that Bong may eventually become a new Wisconsin city, its industrial area centered on a highway and the Soo spur line, with plenty of green space and housing developments on the outskirts.

 

Before such ambitious plans can be realized, the state and GSA must agree on a price. Negotiations are now under way. Details are still confidential, but it appears that Wisconsin may be able to obtain the nine square miles for about one third of the $1,700,000 the Air Force spent for the real estate alone. This would be less than the $860,000 which state and local highway departments are asking from the Air Force to restore roads and highways on the base.

 

Acquisition of the land is the first major hurdle in the state's plans to restore the Bong area to usefulness. Meanwhile, a similar plan to rehabilitate abandoned acreage is being tried at Malden, Missouri, where late in 1960 Malden Air Force Base was acquired from the Government by that city of 5000 persons. It has been converted into a 2800-acre industrial park. The Malden Industrial Development Commission, formed by local businessmen, is advertising the abandoned field as an ideal place to locate industry. The response has not yet been overwhelming, but Malden residents remain optimistic.

 

In the farming area around Bong there is skepticism that any ultimate good will come out of the $29,000,000 mistake. Resentment lingers, resentment over the wasted money, over the inconvenience caused both those who left the land and those who stayed behind, and over the uncertainty that has racked the area for so many years. And there is something else that hurts worst of all.

 

I encountered it again and again, perhaps most memorably on a recent drive around the town of Brighton. I stopped my car to ask a farmer how he felt about Bong now. He pushed back his battered hat, put one foot on the wooden fence around his farmyard and gazed off across the fields.

 

"I'll tell you the thing that gripes me most," he said. "It ain't the money. It ain't having to drive out of my way to get to town because they've blocked off the roads. It ain't even the extra taxes. It's just that I can't figure why they took all that good land and ruined it, when a few miles away there's gravel land not worth a hoot."

 

THE END

Brief History of Norfolk as a Penal Settlement.

As noted previously Norfolk was settled to provide flax fibre rope, flax sails and tree masts from Norfolk Island pine trees and also because it was uninhabited. It was also an island paradise with rich volcanic soils. Its only major drawback was its isolation and its lack of a good harbour. Its history falls into several phases.

Phase One- 1788-1814. This phase was run along the same lines as the settlement of Sydney. Both men and women convicts were quartered here. The women were to work making flax rope and sails and the men were to do the building, road making, land clearing, agriculture and stone masonry work. Some free settlers came too. The settlement was centred on Kingston (then called Sydney) and nearby Arthur’s Vale (watermill valley.) By 1806 the population had reached over 1,000 people. Then for financial reasons- the cost of sending supply ships from Sydney to Norfolk was too great- the evacuation of the island was ordered. Convicts and other settlers were moved to Van Diemen’s Land- hence the settlements there of New Norfolk and Norfolk Plains (later Longford.)

Phase Two- 1825-1855. This time the island was run as a total penitentiary for the worse offenders. There would be no escape from Norfolk Island. Conditions were harsh, severe and degrading. It was a place of extreme punishment. The worst commandant was Captain Turton. During the period 1840-44 conditions were slightly better. Free settlers were not encouraged to settle during this second phase but a few of the best behaved convicts were allowed to work small farms across the island. Massive government expenditure on the penitentiary meant that fine sandstone Georgian buildings were erected and like Port Arthur in Tasmania many of them still remain. A large prison was built in the 1840s, and the prison required large military barracks, large stores and Commissariat stores, officer headquarters, a large hospital etc and good quality homes for the prison and military officers on the island. Kingston remained the administration and shipping centre of the island.

Phase Three – 1856-. In the third phase some of the original stone buildings were dismantled or left to go to ruins. Some were burnt down or the stone re-used for other structures. But the major feature of this period was the introduction of 194 Pitcairn Islanders in 1856. Norfolk remained isolated and largely forgotten. At one stage the Governor of NSW (the British Crown representative in charge of the island) ordered that the Pitcairn Islanders could no longer reside in the former penal settlement buildings in Kingston. This was in 1908 just before the Commonwealth government took charge. The resentment of this change led to fires and some beautiful buildings being destroyed. In 1893 Norfolk got a telegraph office and an underwater cable link to the world via Canada. Soon it had a cable link to New Zealand and a cable station opened at Anson Bay in 1902. Once it became a territory of the new Australian federal government conditions improved a little. Shipping came irregularly but during World War Two the Australian government built an airstrip for defence reasons. Flights continued after the War and now the main linkage between Norfolk and Australia is by air. The federal government has also put more money into other facilities on the island including the Botanic Gardens, and all the restoration work at Kingston etc.

 

17.05.16. Jurija Gagarina, New Belgrade. Some of the "Brave New World" socialist housing Blocks 61, 62 and 63, built in the 1970s. Like most similar mass housing schemes, they are now a source of huge anger and resentment.

.....He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance,

self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride,

superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,

kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

 

Old Cherokee Story

When the routine bites hard

And ambitions are low

And the resentment rides high

But emotions wont grow

And were changing our ways,

Taking different roads

Then love, love will tear us apart again

 

Why is the bedroom so cold

Turned away on your side?

Is my timing that flawed,

Our respect run so dry?

Yet theres still this appeal

That weve kept through our lives

Love, love will tear us apart again

 

Do you cry out in your sleep

All my failings expose?

Get a taste in my mouth

As desperation takes hold

Is it something so good

Just cant function no more?

When love, love will tear us apart again

 

Ian Curtis… joy division

I've tried to sleep and away the memories, but it all comes back to me and i can’t deny how I have made. My life a tragedy

and i deserve what I have coming but I'm more than what I've done and i know hating me won’t break me or change what has begun. Navigator through my life each day more colors fade away and one step closer to the last, closer to the judgment day. Solitude is now my punishment for resentment everlasting

and for the selfish fake in me. I can’t change what has happened, but I wish I could forget andiI wish that I would care more, enough to wash away regret.

BG Annual Conference 2018 | November 8–10 | ZK/U – Center for Arts and Urbanistics

ambient-revolts.berlinergazette.de

 

The growing interconnectedness of everyone and everything is transforming our world into an unprecedented techno-social environment. The boundaries between atmosphere and politics are being suspended; already, tiny ruptures can cause cascade-like repercussions – think of cyber-attacks or stock market crashes, right-wing resentment or hashtag-based protest. Such ambient revolts are increasingly driven by artificial intelligence (AI) – involving human interaction but seemingly beyond human oversight. Set against this backdrop, the conference poses the questions: What are the techno-social logics of both regressive and repressive tendencies? What are emancipatory movements up against? What potential do micro-political acts have in day-to-day life? What regulations of automated systems at the macro level will enable democracy to emerge in the age of AI? The Berliner Gazette conference will explore these questions in the context of performances, lectures and workshops.

 

More info: projekte.berlinergazette.de/ambient-revolts/

 

Photo taken by Norman Posselt (berlinergazette.de / cc by nc)

BG Annual Conference 2018 | November 8–10 | ZK/U – Center for Arts and Urbanistics

ambient-revolts.berlinergazette.de

 

The growing interconnectedness of everyone and everything is transforming our world into an unprecedented techno-social environment. The boundaries between atmosphere and politics are being suspended; already, tiny ruptures can cause cascade-like repercussions – think of cyber-attacks or stock market crashes, right-wing resentment or hashtag-based protest. Such ambient revolts are increasingly driven by artificial intelligence (AI) – involving human interaction but seemingly beyond human oversight. Set against this backdrop, the conference poses the questions: What are the techno-social logics of both regressive and repressive tendencies? What are emancipatory movements up against? What potential do micro-political acts have in day-to-day life? What regulations of automated systems at the macro level will enable democracy to emerge in the age of AI? The Berliner Gazette conference will explore these questions in the context of performances, lectures and workshops.

 

More info: projekte.berlinergazette.de/ambient-revolts/

 

Photo taken by Norman Posselt (berlinergazette.de / cc by nc)

On May 22, 1965, Fr. Pedro Arrupe was elected superior general of the Society of Jesus, the first Basque to occupy this position since the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola. Comparisons of between the two men, however, extend beyond their common homeland. In the eighteen years of his service as superior general Arrupe oversaw a renewal of the Jesuits so profound that he is revered by many as a “second founder.”

 

Specifically, Arrupe lead the Jesuits through their landmark Thirty Second Congregation, a meeting of representatives from all over the Jesuit world, held from December 1974 to March 1975. He was instrumental in promoting the famous “fourth decree,” which defined the modern mission of the Jesuits in terms of “faith that does justice”. In the words of this decree, “Our faith in Jesus Christ and our mission to proclaim the Gospel demand of us a commitment to promote justice and enter into solidarity with the voiceless and the powerless.”

 

Arrupe’s belief that the gospel requires effective solidarity with a suffering world had roots in his early years as a priest. Before entering the Jesuits in 1927 he had studied medicine, but an experience of conversion had set him on a different course. After his ordination in 1936 he was assigned to Japan. On August 6, 1945, Arrupe was serving just four miles from the center of Hiroshima, close enough to be nearly blinded by the flash of the first atomic bomb and to feel the blast that sent the walls of the seminary crashing around him. The memory of that day and the suffering survivors whom he tended in the following weeks was present to him in each Mass he celebrated for the rest of his life.

 

The compassion evoked by this experience developed over time into a conviction that ministry to oppressed and suffering peoples must not remain on the personal level alone. It was necessary also to promote structural changes in the world to alleviate the sources of

oppression and violence. Thus, Arrupe was a pioneer in urging the combination of pastoral concern, biblical reflection, and social analysis.

 

Arrupe was aware that the Jesuits would suffer consequences for this new understanding of their mission, and he urged them to be prepared for criticism and even persecution. His concern was prophetic. Within three years, five Jesuits had laid down their lives in the pursuit of justice, and criticism was quick to follow. The Jesuits were accused of substituting politics for the gospel, and Arrupe was personally charged with leading the Society astray.

 

In 1981, after Arrupe suffered a disabling stroke, Pope John Paul II appointed a personal delegate to serve as interim superior of the Society. Arrupe’s own choice of vicar general was passed over, a fact perceived by many in the Society as a criticism of their beloved superior general. Arrupe himself never expressed any resentment. Two years later, with the election of his successor, he tendered his official resignation. Unable to speak without difficulty, he prepared a farewell statement that was read to the assembled brethren:

 

“In these eighteen years, my one ideal was to serve the Lord and his church…I thank the Lord for the great progress I have witnessed in the Society. Obviously there would be defects too - my own, to begin with - but it remains a fact that there was great progress, in personal conversion, in the apostolate, in concern for the poor, for refugees. And special mention must be made of the attitudes of loyalty and filial obedience shown toward the church and the Holy Father, particularly in these last years. For all of this, thanks be to God.”

 

Arrupe spent his final years entirely dependent on others for his daily care. Whereas he had once served God through bold and prophetic leadership, now it was through prayer and patient suffering. As always he set an example of the Ignatian discipline of “finding God in all things.” He died on February 5, 1991.

 

(This text is reprinted from:"All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time" by Robert Ellsberg (New York: Crossroad, 1997)

  

~ "Acceptance of others, their looks, their behaviors, their beliefs, brings you an inner peace and tranquillity instead of anger and resentment. "~

Anon

  

A tribute to Norway

  

"Flowers are like human beings . . . they thrive on a little

kindness."

 

Thanks very kindly for your gracious comment, views and invites. Much appreciated!.... Much appreciated. Peace and love be with you.

Namaste.

   

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

All rights reserved. Copyright © Aum Kleem All my images are protected under international authors copyright laws and may not be downloaded, reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without my written explicit permission.

________________________________________________________________________________________

 

An old Cherokee told his grandson "My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is Anger, Jealousy, Greed, Resentment, Inferiority, Lies, and Ego. The other is Good. It is Joy, Peace, Love, Hope, Kindness, Empathy, and Truth."

 

The boy thought about it and asked, "Grandpa, which wolf wins?"

 

The old man quietly replied, "The one you feed..."

  

Monument in the Milcombe chapel on the south side of St Mary's Bloxham to Sir John Thornycroft (d.1725).

 

When originally erected this monument was palced against the east winow of the chapel, effectively blocking a large part of it out, much to the resentment of the parishoners!

 

Thankfully G.E.Street came to the rescue a century and a half later and moved the memorial to it's present location, a blank wall opposite the altr, where it can't block any more light!

Book 13 Sea Swept by Nora Roberts

 

After years of reckless independence and fast living, Cameron Quinn is called home to help care for his adopted brother Seth, a troubled young boy not unlike Cameron once was. Cameron’s life changes overnight, as he has to learn to live with his brothers again.

Old rivalries and new resentments flare between the Quinn boys as they try to set aside their differences for Seth’s sake. Only Seth’s fate is in the hands of a tough but beautiful social worker. She alone has the power to bring the Quinns together – or tear them apart……

 

Book 14 Rising Tides by Nora Roberts

 

Ethan Quinn shares his late father’s passion for the ocean, and he is determined to make the family boat-building business a success. But he is also facing the most important challenges of his life…

There is his young brother Seth, who needs him more than ever. And then there is Grace, the woman he has always loved but never believed he could have. Beneath Ethan’s seemingly still waters lies a dark and painful past. He must learn to see beyond the shadows to accept who he is. Because through Ethan’s past lies the future – and his one chance at happiness…….

 

Book 15 Inner Harbour by Nora Roberts

 

Whilst still adjusting to looking after younger brother Seth, Phillip Quinn has done everything to make his life seem perfect. With his career on the fast track and a condo overlooking the Inner Harbour, Phillip’s life on the streets is firmly in the past. And Seth’s future also seems assured – until Dr Sybill Griffin shows up. Her cool reserve intrigues Phillip. He’s determined to uncover her motives, and while Sybill can’t deny her own growing feelings for the charismatic Quinn, the secret she hides has the power to threaten the life that the brothers have made for Seth, and destroy any chance that the two young lovers have at happiness…..

 

Book 16 Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts

 

The first ten years of Seth Quinn’s life had been a prison of fear, abuse and neglect. Ray Quinn had rescued him from all that. And, after their father’s death, Phillip, Ethan and Cameron Quinn had continued his good work, raising Seth as their own brother. Now an adult and a successful artist, Seth is happy to return home to Chesapeake Bay to the only real family he has ever known. Drusilla Whitcomb Banks is a newcomer in town, and from the first time he meets her, Seth realises that she is way out of his league. Despite the odds, Seth is determined to try. But their fledgling relationship faces another threat; for if Seth is ever to win a place in Dru’s affections, he must finally face up to his tragic past and the mother who sold him….

 

The above synopses are taken from the book covers. These four books form a quartet and deal with the lives and loves of four brothers living in Chesapeake Bay. They are definitely page-turners, I didn’t want to put them down.

The Liberation Monument ("Russian monument")

(Further pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)

Officially, one can find various names: (Russian) Liberation Monument, Russian War Memorial and Monument of the Red Army. The Viennese call the towering monument at the southern end of the Black Mountain Square (Schwarzenbergplatz) usually disparaging "Russian monument (Russendenkmal)".

The monument commemorating the 18,000 in the liberation of Vienna fallen soldiers of the Red Army was designed by Major Intazarin, the sculptures were created by Lieutenant Jakoviev. The overall direction of the yet in April 1945 ordered and as first monument building after the war completed structure had major Ing. Mikhail Scheinfeld. In the construction were temporarily 400 workers involved, 18 tons of bronze and 300 cubic meters of marble were used. The monument was on 19 August 1945 with the assistance of Karl Renner, Leopold Figl and Theodor Körner unveiled on then so designated Stalin Square.

On a in total 20 m high, marble-clad base, the lower part in the form of a five-pointed red star, decorated with flags and guard badges, stands the 12 m tall figure of a Red Army soldier. The soldier is wearing a gold helmet and the famous Russian submachine gun with rotary magazine. With his left hand he has the flag with the right hand he holds a round shield with the Soviet coat of arms. In the background arises a broad, eight meter high balustrade, at its end respectively one group of two fighting men is situated, a prime example of the style of socialist realism, which gradually has become an art-historical rarity.

One of the inscriptions in Russian only in the early 80s have been translated into German and is:

"Eternal glory to the heroes of the Red Army, killed in action against the German-fascist invaders for the freedom and independence of the peoples of Europe (Mikhalkov)".

Until 1956, there were also graves of Soviet soldiers in the area, and a Soviet tank stood before the monument.

The monument is in the custody of the City of Vienna. As is generally known, Austria is according to the detailed provisions of Article 19 of the State Treaty of 15 May 1955 committed war graves and war memorials of the Allied Powers on Austrian soil "to respect, to protect and to preserve".

Between 1945 and 1956 stood in front of the fountain on the former "Stalin Square" a Russian tank, which is now in the Museum of Military History.

=> Marschik/Spital, Vienna The Russians monument, architecture, history, conflicts, Vienna, 2005

=> Hannes Leidinger/Verena Moritz, Russian Vienna, Böhlau, Vienna, 2004, 182 f

Sometimes leads the memory to the bad experiences which have been made by Austrian people with the occupation forces - particularly the Soviet - ​​in the ten years of Allied occupation to open resentment against monuments such as the "Russian monument". Nevertheless - the greater the distance from the war and post-war period is, the more one had to give account about the fact how much innocent blood just the peoples of the former Soviet Union have sacrificed in the fight against Hitler's rule, and how little the Austrian people to its own liberation has contributed. Such thoughts have got to come to one's mind when one takes some time to decipher the Cyrillic letters of gold on a "Russian monument" - whether on that at Vienna Schwarzenberg Square or somewhere out in the vast realms of Lower Austria, where up to the Waldviertel (part of Lower Austria) little Soviet military cemeteries exist.

A survey by the Gallup Institute, published in the "standard" on 11th February 1992 shows that 71% of Viennes people do know the monument. A clear majority (59 %) is for the preservation of the monument. Only 9% of the 1,000 respondents agreed with the opinion that the monument should be eliminated as a remnant of Stalinism. So, have the Austrians made peace with the contemporary history?

Hochstrahlbrunnen

Before the liberation monument arises the to the occasion of the completion of the First Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline on 24th October 1873 in the presence of the emperor put into operation Hochstrahlbrunnen (high jet fountain), which should have been standing according to the original plans in front of the Votive Church, then opposite the New Town Hall. The builder of the aqueduct and the fountain, Anton Gabrielli, was a friend of astronomy. Accordingly, symbolizes the respective number of the jets of water the days of the year, the months, the days of the month, the days of the week and the hours of the day.

peter-diem.at/Monumente/russen.htm