View allAll Photos Tagged stutter
Rack never blurted; she always controlled her output. The effect was precise and Protestant, ‘I found out I am HIV positive a few days ago’
‘Oh Christ’, Ruin blurted, Catholic to the hilt.
Ruin was always an outlet for Rack, almost like a delinquent spokesperson, the stuttering utterer of the unspeakable. He had the ability to take the private into the realm of the universally available with consummate ease. She didn’t. It was something she greatly feared and something she instinctively grasped that early summer morning in 1988, in the 'Moondance Diner', on 6th Avenue and Grand. She knew she was making the personal public. She was undoing herself.
He possessed that strange gift, the one imposed and imprinted, like the mark of Cain, on the sexually molested child, of having no facility to recognise boundaries, no ability to be able to tell the personal and private apart from what could be made generally available. She knew that he was her surrogate broadcaster and momentarily shuddered at the stranger, whom she had spontaneously trusted, sitting opposite her. This understanding hung between them as they ordered breakfast.
Their opening was torturous and drove them scurrying apart. It was more than either of them could handle, Rack racked with regret for exposing this opening wound and Ruin incapable of carrying the story alone. Their rehabilitation was slow and arduous. It was a time when to speak these words was a declaration of the almost immediate dissolution of self. It was a time before the hope generated by the misnomered cocktails and the political agitation, which was to burgeon out of despair and become Act- Up. It was a time before anything could be done except grasp at straws. So, both started grasping and would occasionally find themselves in the same room drawn to the same possible panacea. Rack’s volition was desperation. Ruin’s was guilt. They acknowledged each other with some embarrassment and growing affection and more often than not turned away from each other and left separately. Ruin knew he loved Rack. Rack was not at all sure.
Dear Rack,
Just sending you back some words you once sent to me:
“I have often thought that writers do not write; they read what is already written and transcribe. So perhaps they are not complaining about ill health, lack of money, and rejection, but about the bondage of a calling that keeps them laboriously transcribing cryptic messages in rapidly disappearing ink, like the traces of a dream, year after year...."
Thinking of how romantic you are.... even if it is all so appalling to live through.
We seem to endure, and hopefully will continue to do so for a little while longer.
Love,
Ruin
Obama takes to the podium with a smile.
With the whirlwind of 1.8 million people stretching as far as the eye can see.
The Obama-rama
Alhambra, March 2011
My car hasn't been cooperating lately. It's been giving me headaches and stress. On top of that, I haven't been sleeping enough too.
League of Heroes: Ascent
Episode 3: Darkest Before Dawn - Part 2
“We interrupt our continuing coverage of the New Brickton prison break, it seems that we are getting an unexpected live feed from the madness in Midtown.” The news anchor stuttered, nervously shuffling through the stack of papers on the news desk. “Frank, can you switch us over…”
Static… and then the picture suddenly changed from the busy news room to a devastated street. A blonde woman, statuesque and menacing stares into a shaky camera lens.
“Good morning citizens of New Brickton. From this day forward, it will be remembered that you sent forth your champions to face Celedon the Destroyer… and I have found them wanting. They lie here now in pathetic heaps, driven before me and broken at my feet. Is this really the best you have to offer? I demand a challenge worthy of my strength! For every hour that I am unsatisfied, I will raise another block of this insignificant city! Your only other option is complete surrender. Death or servitude, I give you the gift of choice mortals. Your first hour begins now.”
The broadcast suddenly cuts to a rainbow test pattern. Unseen by the camera, a winged figure descends to the devastated street. Upon touching down on the pavement, she kneels over the motionless form of the Indestructible Man.
“Wake up! Please!” She shakes Fred’s seemingly lifeless body, “Fred, I don‘t know what’s happened to us, but I do know that you are still alive and I know that we need to get you and your friends out of here.”
This was built for the League of Lego Heroes Group… www.flickr.com/groups/llh/
the library project is a project creating a subtle dialogue about the issue of giving,lending and taking.as most of my pieces have a lifespan of a stutter in the street (either because of collectors or weather or the street cleaners), i thought i would try to embrace it and play around with the circumstances. before placing the pieces on the surface, i wrote(for the first edition, but later came up with alternate sentences) "i let you borrow my heart for a while,let others borrow it as well", and then placed the piece over the writing,covering it.
the pieces in this series are applied with double sided tape (which can be easily removed) with some unpeeled scraps of tape on the cardboard left for the borrower to replace anwhere.i think its great if someone wants to take it home, but it raises the conflict of the fact that its in the street for the art to be shared with the people using it.therfore, whoever dispatches the piece can replace it in it original location, or even better, a new location,making him/her part of the arts existence and making it even more part of the collective reality than it was before.
(best viewed large)
The window's open, it's the heart of the summer More people comin' lookin' for the number Mary Ellen sees them she has a little stutter, she yells
the library project is a project creating a subtle dialogue about the issue of giving,lending and taking.as most of my pieces have a lifespan of a stutter in the street (either because of collectors or weather or the street cleaners), i thought i would try to embrace it and play around with the circumstances. before placing the pieces on the surface, i wrote(for the first edition, but later came up with alternate sentences) "i let you borrow my heart for a while,let others borrow it as well", and then placed the piece over the writing,covering it.
the pieces in this series are applied with double sided tape (which can be easily removed) with some unpeeled scraps of tape on the cardboard left for the borrower to replace anwhere.i think its great if someone wants to take it home, but it raises the conflict of the fact that its in the street for the art to be shared with the people using it.therfore, whoever dispatches the piece can replace it in it original location, or even better, a new location,making him/her part of the arts existence and making it even more part of the collective reality than it was before.
(best viewed large)
The Postcard
A Shurey's postcard, on the back of which is printed:
'This beautiful Series of Fine Art Post Cards
is supplied free exclusively by Shurey's
Publications, comprising "Smart Novels",
"Yes or No", and "Dainty Novels".
The publications are obtainable throughout
Great Britain, the Colonies and Foreign
Countries'.
The claim of world-wide availability seems somewhat misplaced - can you imagine walking into a shop in, e.g. Port Saïd or Manila in the early 1900's and asking for a copy of 'Yes or No'?
Does anyone out there know what the ominous-looking box is for? If so, please let us know.
The Card was posted in Luton on Thursday the 16th. June 1910 to:
Miss Boston,
Brightwell,
Morden,
Surrey.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"The box came quite safely,
Dad fetched it on Saturday.
I should not get a pin Dear
as they are not worn now.
You are behind the times.
Leave it until you come
home, also your hat unless
you are hard up.
Dad, Mum and I went up to
the Hoo on Tuesday - we did
enjoy ourselves.
We will write a letter next
week.
Much love,
H."
Jack Sheppard
Jack Sheppard, also known as 'Honest Jack', who was born on the 4th. March 1702, was a notorious English thief and prison escapee of early 18th. century London.
Born into a poor family, he was apprenticed as a carpenter, but took to theft and burglary in 1723, with little more than a year of his training to complete.
He was arrested and imprisoned five times in 1724, but escaped four times from prison, making him a notorious public figure, and wildly popular with the poorer classes.
Ultimately, he was caught, convicted, and hanged at Tyburn, ending his brief criminal career after less than two years.
The inability of the notorious "Thief-Taker General" Jonathan Wild to control Sheppard, and injuries suffered by Wild at the hands of Sheppard's colleague Joseph "Blueskin" Blake led to Wild's downfall.
Sheppard was as renowned for his attempts to escape from prison as he was for his crimes. An autobiographical "Narrative", thought to have been ghostwritten by Daniel Defoe, was sold at his execution, quickly followed by popular plays.
The character of Macheath in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) was based on Sheppard, keeping him in the limelight for over 100 years.
He returned to public consciousness around 1840, when William Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel entitled Jack Sheppard, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The popularity of his tale, and the fear that others would be drawn to emulate his behaviour, led the authorities to refuse to license any plays in London with "Jack Sheppard" in the title for forty years.
Jack Sheppard - The Early Years
Sheppard was born in White's Row, in London's Spitalfields. He was baptised on the 5th. March, the day after he was born, at St Dunstan's, Stepney, suggesting a fear of infant mortality by his parents, perhaps because the newborn was weak or sickly.
His parents named him after an older brother, John, who had died before his birth. In life however, he was better known as Jack, or even "Gentleman Jack" or "Jack the Lad".
Jack had a second brother, Thomas, and a younger sister, Mary. Their father, a carpenter, died while Sheppard was young, and his sister died two years later.
Unable to support her family without her husband's income, Jack's mother sent him to Mr Garrett's School, a workhouse near St Helen's Bishopsgate, when he was six years old.
Jack was sent out as a parish apprentice to a cane-chair maker, taking a settlement of 20 shillings, but his new master soon died. He was sent out to a second cane-chair maker, but Sheppard was treated badly.
Finally, when Sheppard was 10, he went to work as a shop-boy for a wool draper who had a shop on the Strand. The draper was called William Kneebone. (... the origin of 'The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone'? ... Maybe not ...)
Sheppard's mother had been working for Kneebone since her husband's death. Kneebone taught Sheppard to read and write, and apprenticed him to a carpenter appropriately named Owen Wood, in Wych Street, off Drury Lane in Covent Garden. Sheppard signed his seven-year indenture on the 2nd. April 1717.
By 1722, Jack Sheppard was showing great promise as a carpenter. Aged 20, he was a small man, only 5'4" (1.63 m) and lightly built, but deceptively strong. He had a pale face with large, dark eyes, a wide mouth and a quick smile. Despite a slight stutter, his wit made him popular in the taverns of Drury Lane. He served five unblemished years of his apprenticeship, but then began to be led into crime.
Jack Sheppard's Criminal Career
Joseph Hayne, a button-moulder who owned a shop nearby, also ran a tavern named the Black Lion off Drury Lane, which he encouraged the local apprentices to frequent.
The Black Lion was visited by criminals such as Joseph "Blueskin" Blake, Sheppard's future partner in crime, and self-proclaimed "Thief-Taker General" Jonathan Wild, secretly the linchpin of a criminal empire across London and later Sheppard's implacable enemy.
According to Sheppard's autobiography, he had been an innocent until going to Hayne's tavern, but there began an attachment to strong drink and the affections of Elizabeth Lyon, a prostitute also known as Edgeworth Bess from her place of birth at Edgeworth in Middlesex.
In his History, Defoe records that:
"Bess was a main lodestone
in attracting of him up to this
Eminence of Guilt."
Such, Sheppard claimed, was the source of his later ruin. Peter Linebaugh offers a more romantic view:
"Sheppard's sudden transformation
was a liberation from the dull drudgery
of indentured labour.
He progressed from pious servitude to
self-confident rebellion and levelling."
Jack Sheppard threw himself into a hedonistic whirl of drinking and whoring. Inevitably, his carpentry suffered, and he became disobedient to his master.
With Edgeworth Bess's encouragement, Sheppard took to crime in order to augment his legitimate wages. His first recorded theft was in Spring 1723, when he engaged in petty shoplifting, stealing two silver spoons while on an errand for his master to the Rummer Tavern in Charing Cross.
Sheppard's misdeeds initially went undetected, and he moved on to larger crimes, often stealing goods from the houses where he was working.
Finally, he quit the employ of his master on the 2nd. August 1723, with less than two years of his apprenticeship left, although he continued to work as a journeyman carpenter. He progressed to burglary, falling in with criminals in Jonathan Wild's gang.
He moved to Fulham, living as husband and wife with Edgeworth Bess at Parsons Green, before moving to Piccadilly. When Bess was arrested and imprisoned at St. Giles's Roundhouse, the beadle, a Mr Brown, refused to let Sheppard visit, so he broke in and took her away.
Two Arrests and Two Escapes
Sheppard was first arrested after a burglary he committed with his brother, Tom, and his mistress, Bess, in Clare Market on the 5th. February 1724.
Tom, also a carpenter, had already been convicted once for stealing tools from his master the previous autumn and burned in the hand. Tom was arrested again on the 24th. April 1724. Afraid that he would be hanged this time, Tom informed on Jack, and a warrant was issued for Jack's arrest.
Jonathan Wild was aware of Sheppard's thefts, as Sheppard had fenced some stolen goods through one of Wild's men, William Field.
Wild asked another of his men, James Sykes (known as "Hell and Fury") to challenge Sheppard to a game of skittles at Redgate's public house near Seven Dials. Sykes betrayed Sheppard to a Mr Price, a constable from the parish of St. Giles, to gather the usual £40 reward for giving information leading to the conviction of a felon.
The magistrate, Justice Parry, had Sheppard imprisoned overnight on the top floor of St Giles's Roundhouse pending further questioning, but Sheppard escaped within three hours by breaking through the timber ceiling and lowering himself to the ground with a rope fashioned from bedclothes.
Still wearing irons, Sheppard coolly joined the crowd that had been attracted by the sounds of his breaking out. He distracted their attention by pointing to the shadows on the roof and shouting that he could see the escapee, and then swiftly departed.
On the 19th. May 1724, Sheppard was arrested for a second time, caught in the act of picking a pocket in Leicester Fields (near present-day Leicester Square). He was detained overnight in St Ann's Roundhouse in Soho and visited there the next day by Bess; however she was recognised as his wife, and locked in a cell with him.
They appeared before Justice Walters, who sent them to the New Prison in Clerkenwell, but they escaped from their cell within a matter of days. By the 25th. May, they had filed through their manacles. They removed a bar from the window and used their knotted bed-clothes to descend to ground level.
Finding themselves in the yard of the neighbouring Bridewell, they clambered over the 22-foot-high (6.7 m) prison gate to freedom. This feat was widely publicised, not least because Sheppard was only a small man, and Bess was a large, buxom woman.
Jack Sheppard's Third Arrest, Trial, and Third Escape
Sheppard's thieving abilities were admired by Jonathan Wild, who demanded that Sheppard surrender his stolen goods for Wild to fence, and so take the greater profits, but Sheppard refused.
Instead Jack began to work with Joseph "Blueskin" Blake, and they burgled Sheppard's former master, William Kneebone, on the 12th. July 1724. However Wild could not permit Sheppard to continue outside his control, and began to seek Sheppard's arrest.
Unfortunately for Sheppard, his fence, William Field, was one of Wild's men. After Sheppard had a brief foray with Blueskin as highwaymen on the Hampstead Road on the 19th. and 20th. July, Field informed on Sheppard to Wild.
Wild believed that Bess would know Sheppard's whereabouts, so he plied her with drinks at a brandy shop near Temple Bar until she betrayed him. Sheppard was arrested for a third time at Blueskin's mother's brandy shop in Rosemary Lane, east of the Tower of London on the 23rd. July by Wild's henchman, Quilt Arnold.
Sheppard was imprisoned in Newgate Prison pending his trial at the next Assize. He was prosecuted on three charges of theft at the Old Bailey, but was acquitted on the first two due to lack of evidence.
Kneebone, Wild and Field gave evidence against him on the third charge, the burglary of Kneebone's house. He was convicted on the 12th. August, the case "being plainly prov'd", and sentenced to death.
However, on the 31st. August, the very day when the death warrant arrived from the court in Windsor setting the 4th. September as the date for his execution, Sheppard escaped.
Having loosened an iron bar in a window used when talking to visitors, he was visited by Bess and Poll Maggott, who distracted the guards while he removed the bar. His slight build enabled him to climb through the resulting gap in the grille, and he was smuggled out of Newgate in women's clothing that his visitors had brought him.
He took a coach to Blackfriars Stairs, then a boat up the River Thames to the horse ferry in Westminster, near the warehouse where he hid his stolen goods, and made good his escape.
Jack Sheppard's Fourth Arrest and Final Escape
By this point, Sheppard was a hero to a segment of the population, being a cockney, non-violent, handsome and seemingly able to escape punishment for his crimes at will.
He spent a few days out of London, visiting a friend's family in Chipping Warden in Northamptonshire, but was soon back in town. He evaded capture by Wild and his men, but was arrested again on the 9th. September by a posse from Newgate as he hid out on Finchley Common, and was returned to the condemned cell at Newgate.
Jack's fame had increased with each escape, and he was visited in prison by the great, the good and the curious. His plans to escape in September were thwarted twice when the guards found files and other tools in his cell.
Jack was accordingly transferred to a strong-room in Newgate known as the "Castle", clapped in leg irons, and chained to two metal staples in the floor to prevent further escape attempts.
After demonstrating to his gaolers that these measures were insufficient, by showing them how he could use a small nail to unlock the horse padlock at will, he was bound more tightly and handcuffed. In his History, Defoe reports that Sheppard made light of his predicament, joking that:
"I am the Sheppard, and all the Gaolers
in the Town are my Flock, and I cannot
stir into the Country, but they are all at
my Heels Laughing after me".
Meanwhile, "Blueskin" Blake was arrested by Wild and his men on the 9th. October, and Tom, Jack's brother, was transported for robbery on the 10th. October 1724.
New court sessions began on the 14th. October, and Blueskin was tried on the 15th. October, with Field and Wild again giving evidence. Their accounts were not consistent with the evidence that they gave at Sheppard's trial, but Blueskin was convicted anyway.
Enraged, Blueskin attacked Wild in the courtroom, slashing his throat with a pocket-knife and causing an uproar. Wild was lucky to survive, and his grip over his criminal empire started to slip while he recuperated.
Taking advantage of the disturbance, which spread to Newgate Prison next door and continued into the night, Sheppard escaped for the fourth time. He unlocked his handcuffs and removed the chains.
Still encumbered by his leg irons, he attempted to climb up the chimney, but his path was blocked by an iron bar set into the brickwork. He removed the bar, and used it to break through the ceiling into the "Red Room" above the "Castle", a room which had last been used some seven years before to confine aristocratic Jacobite prisoners after the Battle of Preston.
Still wearing his leg irons as night fell, he then broke through six barred doors into the prison chapel, then to the roof of Newgate, 60 feet (20 m) above the ground. He went back down to his cell to get a blanket, then back to the roof of the prison, and used the blanket to reach the roof of an adjacent house, owned by William Bird, a turner.
He broke into Bird's house, and went down the stairs and out into the street at around midnight without disturbing the occupants. Escaping through the streets to the north and west, Sheppard hid in a cowshed in Tottenham (near modern Tottenham Court Road).
Spotted by the cowshed's owner, Sheppard told him that he had escaped from Bridewell Prison, having been imprisoned there for failing to support a (nonexistent) bastard son. Jack's leg irons remained in place for several days until he persuaded a passing shoemaker to accept the considerable sum of 20 shillings to bring a blacksmith's tools and help him remove them, telling him the same tale.
His manacles and leg irons were later recovered in the rooms of Kate Cook, one of Sheppard's mistresses. This latest escape astonished everyone. Daniel Defoe, working as a journalist, wrote an account for John Applebee, The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard. In his History, Defoe reports the belief in Newgate that the Devil came in person to assist Sheppard's escape.
The Final Capture of Jack Sheppard
Sheppard's final period of liberty lasted just two weeks. He disguised himself as a beggar and returned to the city. He broke into Rawlins brothers' pawnbroker's shop in Drury Lane on the night of the 29th. October 1724, taking a black silk suit, a silver sword, rings, watches, a wig, and other items.
He dressed himself as a dandy gentleman, and used the proceeds to spend a day and the following evening on the tiles with two mistresses. He was arrested a final time in the early morning of the 1st. November, blind drunk:
"In a handsome Suit of Black, with a
Diamond Ring and a carnelian ring
on his Finger, and a fine Light Tye
Peruke".
This time, Sheppard was placed in the Middle Stone Room, in the centre of Newgate next to the "Castle", where he could be observed at all times. He was also loaded with 300 pounds of iron weights. He was so celebrated that the gaolers charged high society visitors four shillings to see him:
"The Concourse of People of tolerable
Fashion to see him was exceeding Great,
he was always Chearful and Pleasant to a
Degree, as turning almost everything as
was said onto a Jest and Banter."
To a Reverend Wagstaffe who visited him, he said, according to Defoe:
"One file's worth all the Bibles
in the World".
The King's painter James Thornhill painted his portrait.
Several prominent people sent a petition to King George I, begging for his sentence of death to be commuted to transportation.
Sheppard came before Mr Justice Powis in the Court of King's Bench at Westminster Hall on the 10th. November. He was offered the chance to have his sentence reduced by informing on his associates, but he scorned the offer, and the death sentence was confirmed. The next day, Blueskin was hanged, and Sheppard was moved to the condemned cell.
The Execution of Jack Sheppard
The following Monday, 16th. November, Sheppard was taken to the gallows at Tyburn to be hanged. He had planned one more escape, but his pen-knife, intended to cut the ropes binding him on the way to the gallows, was found by a prison warder shortly before he left Newgate for the last time.
A joyous procession passed through the streets of London, with Sheppard's cart drawn along Holborn and Oxford Street accompanied by a mounted City Marshal and liveried Javelin Men.
The occasion was as much as anything a celebration of Sheppard's life, attended by crowds of up to 200,000 (one third of London's population). The procession halted at the City of Oxford tavern on Oxford Street, where Sheppard drank a pint of sack.
A carnival atmosphere pervaded Tyburn, where his "official" autobiography, published by Applebee and probably ghostwritten by Defoe, was on sale. Sheppard handed a paper to someone as he mounted the scaffold, perhaps as a symbolic endorsement of the account in the "Narrative".
Jack's slight build had aided his previous prison escapes, but it condemned him to a slow death by strangulation from the hangman's noose. After hanging for the prescribed 15 minutes, his body was cut down.
The crowd pressed forward to stop his body from being removed, fearing dissection; their actions inadvertently prevented Sheppard's friends from implementing a plan to take his body to a doctor in an attempt to revive him. His badly mauled remains were recovered later, and buried in the churchyard of St. Martin-in-the-Fields that evening.
Jack Sheppard's Legacy
There was a spectacular public reaction to Sheppard's deeds. He was even cited (favourably) as an example in newspapers, pamphlets, broadsheets, and ballads which were all devoted to his amazing exploits, and his story was adapted for the stage almost immediately.
Harlequin Sheppard, a pantomime by John Thurmond (subtitled "A Night Scene in Grotesque Characters"), opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on the 28th. November, only two weeks after Sheppard's hanging.
In a famous contemporary sermon, a London preacher drew on Sheppard's popular escapes as a way of holding his congregation's attention:
"Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks
of your hearts with the nail of repentance!
Burst asunder the fetters of your beloved
lusts! - mount the chimney of hope! - take
from thence the bar of good resolution! -
break through the stone wall of despair!"
The account of his life remained well-known through the Newgate Calendar, and a three-act farce was published but never produced. However when mixed with songs, it became The Quaker's Opera, later performed at Bartholomew Fair.
An imagined dialogue between Jack Sheppard and Julius Caesar was published in the British Journal on the 4th. December 1724, in which Sheppard favourably compares his virtues and exploits to those of Caesar.
The most prominent play based on Sheppard's life is John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728). Sheppard was the inspiration for the figure of Macheath; his nemesis, Peachum, is based on Jonathan Wild. The play was spectacularly popular, restoring the fortune that Gay had lost in the South Sea Bubble, and was produced regularly for over 100 years.
An unperformed but published play The Prison-Breaker was turned into The Quaker's Opera (in imitation of The Beggar's Opera) and performed at Bartholomew Fair in 1725 and 1728. Two centuries later The Beggar's Opera was the basis for The Threepenny Opera of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (1928).
Sheppard's tale may have been an inspiration for William Hogarth's 1747 series of 12 engravings, Industry and Idleness. These show the descent of an apprentice, Tom Idle, into crime and eventually to the gallows, beside the rise of his fellow apprentice, Francis Goodchild. Goodchild marries his master's daughter and takes over his business, becoming wealthy as a result, eventually emulating Dick Whittington to become Lord Mayor of London.
A melodrama, Jack Sheppard, The Housebreaker, or London in 1724, by W. T. Moncrieff was published in 1825.
More successful was William Harrison Ainsworth's third novel, entitled Jack Sheppard, which was originally published in Bentley's Miscellany from January 1839 with illustrations by George Cruikshank, overlapping with the final episodes of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.
An archetypal Newgate novel, it generally remains close to the facts of Sheppard's life, but portrays him as a swashbuckling hero. Like Hogarth's prints, the novel pairs the descent of the "idle" apprentice into crime with the rise of a typical melodramatic character, Thames Darrell, a foundling of aristocratic birth who defeats his evil uncle to recover his fortune.
Cruikshank's images perfectly complemented Ainsworth's tale - Thackeray wrote that:
"Mr Cruickshank really created the tale,
and Mr Ainsworth, as it were, only put
words to it."
The novel quickly became very popular: it was published in book form later that year, before the serialised version was completed, and even outsold early editions of Oliver Twist. Ainsworth's novel was adapted into a successful play by John Buckstone in October 1839 at the Adelphi Theatre.
Indeed, it seems likely that Cruikshank's illustrations were deliberately created in a form that would be easy to repeat as tableaux on stage. The play has been described as:
"The exemplary climax of the
pictorial novel dramatized
pictorially".
Jack Sheppard's story generated a form of cultural mania, embellished by pamphlets, prints, cartoons, plays and souvenirs, not repeated until George du Maurier's Trilby in 1895.
By early 1840, a cant song from Buckstone's play, "Nix My Dolly, Pals, Fake Away" was reported to be "deafening us in the streets". Public alarm at the possibility that young people would emulate Sheppard's behaviour led the Lord Chamberlain to ban, at least in London, the licensing of any plays with "Jack Sheppard" in the title for forty years.
The fear may not have been entirely unfounded: Courvousier, the valet of Lord William Russell, said in one of his several confessions that the book had inspired him to murder his master.
Frank and Jesse James wrote letters to the Kansas City Star signed "Jack Sheppard".
Burlesques of the story were written after the ban was lifted, including a popular Gaiety Theatre, London, piece called Little Jack Sheppard (1886) by Henry Pottinger Stephens and William Yardley, which starred Nellie Farren as Jack.
The Sheppard story has been revived three times on film in the 20th century: The Hairbreadth Escape of Jack Sheppard (1900), Jack Sheppard (1923), and Where's Jack? (1969), a British costume drama directed by James Clavell with Tommy Steele in the title role.
Jake Arnott features him in his 2017 novel The Fatal Tree.
In 1971 the British pop group Chicory Tip paid tribute to Sheppard in "Don't Hang Jack", the B-side to "I Love Onions". The song, apparently sung from the viewpoint of a witness in the courtroom, describes Jack's daring exploits as a thief, and futilely begs the judge to spare Sheppard because he was loved by the women of the town, and idolised by the lads who "made him their king."
In Jordy Rosenberg's 2018 novel Confessions of the Fox, a 21st-century academic discovers a manuscript containing Sheppard's "confessions", which tell the story of his childhood and his love affair with Edgeworth Bess, and make the unlikely revelation that he was a transgender man.
Charles Mackay in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds wrote:
"Whether it be that the multitude, feeling the
pangs of poverty, sympathise with the daring
and ingenious depredators who take away
the rich man's superfluity, or whether it be the
interest that mankind in general feel for the
records of perilous adventure, it is certain that
the populace of all countries look with admiration
upon great and successful thieves."
A Hungarian Cloudburst
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 16th. June 1910, a cloudburst in Hungary added to existing flood waters, killing 800 people in villages in the Kronstadt district, another 180 in Temesvar and 100 in Moldava.
Arizona and New Mexico
Also on that day, the United States Senate unanimously passed a bill extending statehood to the territories of Arizona and New Mexico.
Admission as a state still required adopting a proposed state constitution, subject then to the approval of Congress and the President, as well as other procedures.
For more information about this image and how it is made please visit the page for its set Did I Stutter?.
Accomplishments/Success/Victories (Not in chronological order)
•*Many Hours Of Classroom Teaching benefiting many students
•Large Portfolio Of Design Projects
•*Many Pen And Ink Sketches And Collected And Exhibited In Art Galleries
•Learning To Free Hand Draw
•Learning To Draft Well
•*Designing and Building
•*Hanging Drapes In So Many Houses In New York City
•Overcoming Stuttering
•Knowing Ted and Rhoda Brown the Radio Announcer Team in New York and Assisting Decorating Their Homes in Harrison, Westchester New York.
•*Being Audio Video Monitor And Stage Director In Junior High
•*Marching In The Columbus Day Parade In The High School Band
•*Being Elected Class Bank Representative
•Learning How To Read
•Being Taught How To Tie My Shoe Laces By A Blind Girl
•Receiving A Set Of Electric Trains From My Father
•Collecting Phonograph Records To Play On Phonograph Bought For Me By My Father
•Winning the Best Design Job upon Graduation from Pratt Inst.
•Being Tall Enough To Discourage Bully From Attacking Me
•Being Accepted As A Student By Pratt Institute
•Being Accepted As A Student By Yale University
•Completing All Math And Structural Design Courses
•Driving A Car By Myself
•Riding A Bike, Skating, And Skiing
•Going To Europe For The First Time
•Entering Rome By Rail
•Moving To Holland Ave Away From Simpson Street To “Real House”
•Building And Using My First Interior Play House
•Designing And Building My First Stage
•Designing And Installing Wrought Iron In My Room
•*Seeing My Designs For Lobbies Being Built
•*My First House Design For Frank Houser
•*Seeing My First Big Design Projects Being Built For James Talcott And The Bank Of Israel
•*My First Radio Broadcast At Pratt Institute
•*My First And Last Theatre Performance As An Actor At Pratt
•My Beach Pavilion Design Model Being Exhibited At Pratt
•*Being Asked By Earth Day Producers To Manage Production Of Both Earth Day Events In New York City And Helping John Mc Connel Get U Thant’s Signature To Proclaim Earth Day As An International Holiday And Appearing As Spokesman For The Project On All Three Media Networks, Magazines, News Papers And Professional Journals.
•Learning How To Swim At The YMCA
•Being Really Goods Friends With Senior Professional, Writers, Such As Gerald Popiel, Paul Weiss, Yvonne Illich, Otto Hula, Ara Ignatius, Friederich Kiesler, Forrest Wilson, Max Waldman, And Vincent Scully
•Having Been Taught By Famous Professionals Such As Phillip Johnson, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Paul Rudolph, Peter Millard, Sibyl Maholy Nage, Henry (Hank) Pfisterer, Buckminister Fuller, Mies Van Der Rohe, James Polchek, And Gerald Luss,
•Having Worked For Edward Durrell Stone And Morris Lapidus
•Having Professional Affiliations with World Famous Architects Such As Phillip Johnson, Paul Rudolf, Charles Moore, Gordon Bunshaft, Gio Ponte, Palo Soleri, Victor Lundy, and Friederich Kiesler.
•*Having Designed Many Builddings On The Campus Of The State University Of New York (SUNY) In Albany
•*Designed Exhibitions For The Bigelow Carpet Company
•*Having Been Invited To Teach the Climatology and Bio Climatic Design Courses Created by Victor Olgay Immediately Following His Untimely Death.
•Understanding Of the Key Principles of Design, Planning, Programming for Cities, Buildings, Furniture, Fashion, Music, Etc.
•*Design And Build Shop In Condado, Puerto Rico
•*Complete Island Wide Plan Of Public Libraries Under Direct Contract To The Department Of Education Of Puerto Rico And Dr Rafael Corrada
•*Design and Complete Grace English Lutheran Church Restoration in Santurce Puerto Rico after the Death of Its Pastor and Our Dear Friend, Gerald Bergen.
•*Research Pollution And Environmental Innovations In Germany Published By Architectural Record As “Pollution Architecture”
•*Founding Laboratories for Metaphoric Environments, Designing and Complete Building of Loft on 318 East 68 Street. Living And Working In The Loft Including Writing Prospectus And Many Program Proposals.
•*Designing Tennessee Indigenous Housing and Public Buildings for Construction on English Mountain and Sugar Tree Tennessee. And Belize, Honduras.
•Apply Successfully A Job Search Campaign Method From A Book Discovered By Christina
•*Gulf Oil Corporation Employs Me to Author Its Pollicies and Procedures for Building, Non-Oil Production, Pollicies and Procedures. John Wiley And Sons Later Contracted With Me To Publish This As Book Called ”Project Manuel Standards” (PMS)
•*Manage All Aspects Of The Design Build Process To Design And Construct Gulf Oil Corporation Computer, Office, Laboratory And Chemical Site Support Facilities As Designated Owner’s Representative For Gulf’s Special Projects Covering Houston, Victoria, Midland, And Odessa.
•Become Deciples And Active Yoga Members Doing Exercises And Changing Diet
•Stop Smoking After Three Week Of Abstinence On Paradise Island In The Caribbean
•Invited To B E Junior Partner Of Long Established A&E Firm (SRG)In Puerto Rico
•Successfully negotiate to minimize changes to my company’s (SRG) Design and Systems for the El Mundo Office Tower in San Juan Puerto Rico
•For The First Time Speak Publicly at San Juan’s Toast Master Club, thanks to the encouragement of Herb Warfel.
•*For Serge Chermayeff, Complete Sketches Diagramming Thought For His Study Of Complementarities For Cities And Campus Planning
•For Frederick Kiesler, Complete Construction Of A Model Of A Temple In Israel
•*Be Invited By Charles More To Create And Carry Out Lecture Series Authored By Me Called: ”Architecture The Making Of Metaphors” With Speakers Such As Turan Onat, Christopher Tunnard, Vincent Scully, Forrest Wilson, William J Gordon, Kent Bloomer, Charles More, It Was A T This Series That Robert Venturi Aired His Famous Treatise On Las Vegas.
The Proceedings Were Transcribed for Publication in Perspecta and was partially published In Main Currents in Modern Thought.
•*Monographs on Metaphors Published in Lebanon, Turkey, England, Finland, Saudi Arabia, And USA.
•Ordained As Minister Of The Gospel; First By Gospel Crusade Under Gerald Dirstine And Then By The Assemblies Of God Locally By Pastor Dan Betzer.
•*In Saudi Arabia Design Factories, Schools And Offices And Write Standard Building Codes And Engineering Procedures For The Arabian American Oil Company; For The Presidency Of Youth Welfare Over See The Construction Of A Sports Park; For The Ministry Of The Interior, Eleven Hosing Projects, For A Private Operations And Maintenance Company And Another Conglomerate All Business Development And Marketing Of Construction; For A Private Consulting Company Critique Design competitions For Banks And Ministerial Projects; For A&E Company Design And Set Up Reference Library; And For King Faisel University Teach Architecture For Five Years.
•*Found ICI University And Plant Many Underground Church Groups, Which Is Still Today In Operation.
•*For The Frizzell Architectural Design Company In Fort Myers Manage The Construction Of Three twenty five million dollar High Schools
•*For An Interior Design Company In Fort Myers Design Houses, Lobbies, And Assist Set Up Library Of Architectural And Contemporary Furniture.
•*Teach Interior Design At Edison Community College
•*Examine Plans for Residential Building Permits for the Lee County Development Services.
•*Invited To Lecture and Teach Building Construction, Architecture and Interior Design at Parsons School Of Design, Pratt Institute, University Of Houston, Ohio University, And University Of Petroleum and Minerals. Appointed Associate Professor By Texas A&M University
•*FM Broadcasting Announcing And All Commercial, Station Break, Voice Over Work For WlAE; Fm 93.7 Hartford, Connecticut; Owned By Paul Di Savino (WPAT; Paterson). Hold Third Class Broad Cast License.
•NCARB and License to Practice Architecture Awarded in 1971 In New York after Completing NCARB Exam in Puerto Rico.
I've burnt the blank page
until my stuttering stalls
and I've been talking to myself since the fall
I can hear strangers speak
from the door in the hall
and we both live on the other side of the wall
the men that I hear
they just want to make love
and the women, they make nothing at all
we don't speak face to face
because we're too into out of place
if my ears are ringing, then I'll heed the call
all my words are bound and backward
and all my tales are tall
I'm embarrassed that my syllables are small
only when I'm all surrounded
and surrendered to the silence
will the white noise leave me in a lull
I've burnt the blank page
until my stuttering stalls
and I've been talking to myself since the fall...
© Steve Skafte
JIROE / ROIDS / AROE.
BRIGHTON KEEPS CREATING IT..
Although we love graffiti very very much we often approach painting with the tongue firmly in the cheek. you won't see too many gothic horror themes or similar moody subjects. For no good reason we thought it might be nice to paint the atari animated, visual stuttering mantronix sampled channel 4 tv anchor.
We'll up a proper picture tomorrow.
A Giant Barred Frog, Mixophyes iteratus, from the Watagans National Park, New South Wales, Australia.
This is a relatively endangered frog which prefers larger, slow-flowing, rivers and streams in rainforest.
The population of this species in the Watagans is near southern limit for the distribution of this species (which currently occurs south at least to the Colo River in New South Wales). Several years ago, in the Watagans, after the impact of chytrid fungus, the species was very rare in this area. Nowadays however it is very common and is found right throughout the rainforest and wet sclerophyll forest sections of the Watagans National Park.
I tried to get the whirling prop blades of the Ford Trimotor to trigger my panorama arrow but this is the best I could do. It doesn't come close to Bill Smith's "PropJet" here. Maybe I wasn't close enough. I had an open cockpit window to work with!
www.flickr.com/photos/byzantiumbooks/29264377277/in/pool-...
DJ STV SLV (The Hood Internet): Luces y Mentiras
Joe: Stutter
Cheryl Cole: 3 Words (Feat. Will.I.Am)
Frou Frou: Let Go
Skee-Lo: I Wish
Corinne Bailey Rae: Paris Nights/New York Mornings
Lady GaGa: Love Game
Jay-Z: I Know (Feat. Pharrell Williams)
Justin Bieber: Baby
Taylor Swift: Fearless
Wiley: Never Be Your Woman (Feat. Emilie Sande)
Regina Spektor: Us
John Mayer: I Don't Trust Myself With Loving You (From WTLI)
Sade: Lovers Rock
Glee: Defying Gravity
I'm excited to tell you about my first blog give away-ever!
Megan at Studio M.M.E. Stutterings is kindly hosting the give away on her blog. Please show your support and enter in for a chance to win one of my 5"x7" pen and ink fine art prints!
for more info and to enter in for your chance to win go here: studiomme.blogspot.com/2009/07/blog-post.html
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no 707 H. Photo: Universal.
British actor Boris Karloff (1887-1969) is one of the true icons of the Horror cinema. He portrayed Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939), which resulted in his immense popularity. In the following decades, he worked in countless Horror films, but also in other genres, both in Europe and Hollywood.
Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in 1887 in London, England. Pratt himself stated that he was born in Dulwich, which is nearby in London. His parents were Edward John Pratt, Jr. and his third wife Eliza Sarah Millard. ‘Billy’ never knew his father. Edward Pratt had worked for the Indian Salt Revenue Service and had virtually abandoned his family in far-off England. Edward died when his son was still an infant and so Billy was raised by his mother. He was the youngest of nine children, and following his mother's death was brought up by his elder brothers and sisters. As a child, Billy performed each Christmas in plays staged by St. Mary Magdalene's Church. His first role was that of The Demon King in the pantomime Cinderella. Billy was bow-legged, had a lisp, and stuttered. He conquered his stutter, but not his lisp, which was noticeable throughout his career in the film industry. After his education at private schools, he attended King's College London where he took studies aimed at a career with the British Government's Consular Service. However, in 1909, the 22-year-old left university without graduating and sailed from Liverpool to Canada, where he worked as a farm labourer and did various odd itinerant jobs. In Canada, he began appearing in theatrical performances and chose the stage name Boris Karloff. Later, he claimed he chose ‘Boris’ because it sounded foreign and exotic, and that ‘Karloff’ was a family name. However, his daughter Sara Karloff publicly denied any knowledge of Slavic forebears, Karloff or otherwise. One reason for the name change was to prevent embarrassment to his family. He did not reunite with his family until he returned to Britain to make The Ghoul (T. Hayes Hunter, 1933), opposite Cedric Hardwicke. Karloff was distraught that his family would disapprove of his new, macabre claim to world fame. Instead, his brothers jostled for position around him and happily posed for publicity photographs. In 1911, Karloff joined the Jeanne Russell Company and later joined the Harry St. Clair Co. which performed in Minot, North Dakota, for a year in an opera house above a hardware store. While trying to establish his acting career, Karloff had to perform years of difficult manual labour in Canada and the U.S. to make ends meet. He was left with back problems from which he suffered for the rest of his life. In 1917, he arrived in Hollywood, where he went on to make dozens of silent films. Some of his first roles were in film serials, such as The Masked Rider (Aubrey M. Kennedy, 1919), in Chapter 2 of which he can be glimpsed onscreen for the first time, and The Hope Diamond Mystery (Stuart Paton, 1920). In these early roles, he was often cast as an exotic Arabian or Indian villain. Other silent films were The Deadlier Sex (Robert Thornby, 1920) with Blanche Sweet, Omar the Tentmaker (James Young, 1922), Dynamite Dan (Bruce Mitchell, 1924) and Tarzan and the Golden Lion (J.P. McGowan, 1927) in which James Pierce played Tarzan. In 1926 Karloff found a provocative role in The Bells (James Young, 1926), in which he played a sinister hypnotist opposite Lionel Barrymore. He worked with Barrymore again in his first sound film, the thriller The Unholy Night (Lionel Barrymore, 1929).
A key film which brought Boris Karloff recognition was The Criminal Code (Howard Hawks, 1931), a prison drama in which he reprised a dramatic part he had played on stage. With his characteristic short-cropped hair and menacing features, Karloff was a frightening sight to behold. Opposite Edward G. Robinson, Karloff played a key supporting part as an unethical newspaper reporter in Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931), a film about tabloid journalism which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. Karloff's role as Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931), based on the classic Mary Shelley book, propelled him to stardom. Wikipedia: “The bulky costume with four-inch platform boots made it an arduous role but the costume and extensive makeup produced the classic image. The costume was a job in itself for Karloff with the shoes weighing 11 pounds (5 kg) each.” The aura of mystery surrounding Karloff was highlighted in the opening credits, as he was listed as simply "?." The film was a commercial and critical success for Universal, and Karloff was instantly established as a hot property in Hollywood. Universal Studios was quick to acquire ownership of the copyright to the makeup format for the Frankenstein monster that Jack P. Pierce had designed. A year later, Karloff played another iconic character, Imhotep in The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1932). The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932) with Charles Laughton, and the starring role in MGM’s The Mask of Fu Manchu (Charles Brabin, 1932) quickly followed. Steve Vertlieb at The Thunder Child: “Wonderfully kinky, the film co-starred young Myrna Loy as the intoxicating, yet sadistic Fah Lo See, Fu Manchu's sexually perverse daughter. Filmed before Hollywood's infamous production code, the film joyously escaped the later scrutiny of The Hayes Office, and remains a fascinating example of pre-code extravagance.” These films all confirmed Karloff's new-found stardom. Horror had become his primary genre, and he gave a string of lauded performances in 1930s Universal Horror films. Karloff reprised the role of Frankenstein's monster in two other films, the sensational Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) and the less thrilling Son of Frankenstein (Rowland V. Lee, 1939), the latter also featuring Bela Lugosi. Steve Vertlieb about Bride of Frankenstein: “Whale delivered perhaps the greatest horror film of the decade and easily the most critically acclaimed rendition of Mary Shelley's novel ever released. The Bride of Frankenstein remains a work of sheer genius, a brilliantly conceived and realized take on loneliness, vanity, and madness. The cast of British character actors is simply superb.” While the long, creative partnership between Karloff and Lugosi never led to a close friendship, it produced some of the actors' most revered and enduring productions, beginning with The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ullmer, 1934). Follow-ups included The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935), the rarely seen, imaginative science fiction melodrama The Invisible Ray (Lambert Hillyer, 1936), and The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise, 1945). Karloff played a wide variety of roles in other genres besides Horror. He was memorably gunned down in a bowling alley in Howard Hawks' classic Scarface (1932) starring Paul Muni.. He played a religious First World War soldier in John Ford’s epic The Lost Patrol (1934) opposite Victor McLaglen. Between 1938 and 1940, Karloff starred in five films for Monogram Pictures, including Mr. Wong, Detective (William Nigh, 1938). During this period, he also starred with Basil Rathbone in Tower of London (Rowland V. Lee, 1939) as the murderous henchman of King Richard III, and with Margaret Lindsay in British Intelligence (Terry O. Morse, 1940). In 1944, he underwent a spinal operation to relieve his chronic arthritic condition.
Boris Karloff revisited the Frankenstein mythos in several later films, taking the starring role of the villainous Dr. Niemann in House of Frankenstein (Erle C. Kenton, 1944), in which the monster was played by Glenn Strange. He reprised the role of the ‘mad scientist’ in Frankenstein 1970 (Howard W. Koch, 1958) as Baron Victor von Frankenstein II, the grandson of the original creator. The finale reveals that the crippled Baron has given his face (i.e., Karloff's) to the monster. From 1945 to 1946, Boris Karloff appeared in three films for RKO produced by Val Lewton: Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson, 1945), The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise, 1945), and Bedlam (Mark Robson, 1946). Karloff had left Universal because he thought the Frankenstein franchise had run its course. Karloff was a frequent guest on radio programs. In 1949, he was the host and star of the radio and television anthology series Starring Boris Karloff. In 1950, he had his own weekly children's radio show in New York. He played children's music, told stories and riddles, and attracted many adult listeners as well. An enthusiastic performer, he returned to the Broadway stage in the original production of Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), in which he played a homicidal gangster enraged to be frequently mistaken for Karloff. In 1962, he reprised the role on television with Tony Randall and Tom Bosley. He also appeared as Captain Hook in the play Peter Pan with Jean Arthur. In 1955, he returned to the Broadway stage to portray the sympathetic Bishop Cauchon in Jean Anouilh's The Lark. Karloff regarded the production as the highlight of his long career. Julie Harris was his co-star as Joan of Arc in the celebrated play, recreated for live television in 1957 with Karloff, Harris and much of the original New York company intact. For his role, Karloff was nominated for a Tony Award. Karloff donned the monster make-up for the last time for a Halloween episode of the TV series Route 66 (1962), which also featured Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney, Jr. In the 1960s, Karloff appeared in several films for American International Pictures, including The Comedy of Terrors (Jacques Tourneur, 1963) with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, The Raven (Roger Corman, 1963), The Terror (Roger Corman, 1963) with Jack Nicholson, and Die, Monster, Die! (Daniel Haller, 1965). Another project for American International release was the frightening Italian horror classic, I tre volti della paura/Black Sabbath (Mario Bava, 1963), in which Karloff played a vampire with bone-chilling intensity. He also starred in British cult director Michael Reeves's second feature film, The Sorcerers (1966). He gained new popularity among the young generation when he narrated the animated TV film Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Chuck Jones, Ben Washam. 1966), and provided the voice of the Grinch. Karloff later received a Grammy Award for Best Recording For Children after the story was released as a record. Then he starred as a retired horror film actor in Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968), Steve Vertlieb: “Targets was a profoundly disturbing study of a young sniper holding a small Midwestern community, deep in the bible belt, terrifyingly at bay. The celebrated subplot concerned the philosophical dilemma of creating fanciful horrors on the screen, while the graphic, troubling reality was eclipsing the superficiality so tiredly repeated by Hollywood. Karloff co-starred, essentially as himself, an aged horror star named Byron Orlok, who wants simply to retire from the imagined horrors of a faded genre, only to come shockingly to grips with the depravity and genuine terror found on America's streets. Bogdanovich's first film as a director won praise from critics and audiences throughout the world community, and won its elder star the best, most respectful notices of his later career.”. In 1968, he played occult expert Professor Marsh in the British production Curse of the Crimson Altar (Vernon Sewell, 1968), which was the last Karloff film to be released during his lifetime. He ended his career by appearing in four low-budget Mexican horror films, which were released posthumously. While shooting his final films, Karloff suffered from emphysema. Only half of one lung was still functioning and he required oxygen between takes. he contracted bronchitis in 1968 and was hospitalized. In early 1969, he died of pneumonia at the King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, in Sussex, at the age of 81. Boris Karloff married five times and had one child, daughter Sara Karloff, by his fourth wife.
Sources: Steve Vertlieb (The Thunder Child), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius) Bertram Creek Regional Park, Kelowna (soty15)
(From Cornell's All About Birds):
"The dapper Spotted Sandpiper makes a great ambassador for the notoriously difficult-to-identify shorebirds. They occur all across North America, they are distinctive in both looks and actions, and they're handsome. They also have intriguing social lives in which females take the lead and males raise the young. With their richly spotted breeding plumage, teetering gait, stuttering wingbeats, and showy courtship dances, this bird is among the most notable and memorable shorebirds in North America.
Spotted Sandpipers are the most widespread sandpiper in North America, and they are common near most kinds of freshwater, including rivers and streams, as well as near the sea coast. Their range includes water bodies in otherwise arid parts of the continent, and it extends into the mountains, where they may occur upwards of 14,000 feet above sea level. Breeding territories generally need to have a shoreline, a semiopen area where the nest will be, and patches of dense vegetation for sheltering the chicks. Spotted Sandpipers spend the winter along the coasts of North America or on beaches, mangroves, rainforest, and cloud forest up to 6,000 feet elevation in Central and South America.
Cool Facts
• The Spotted Sandpiper is the most widespread breeding sandpiper in North America.
• Female Spotted Sandpipers sometimes practice an unusual breeding strategy called polyandry, where a female mates with up to four males, each of which then cares for a clutch of eggs. One female in Minnesota laid five clutches for three males in a month and a half. This odd arrangement does not happen everywhere and often they are monogamous, with the female pitching in to help a little.
• The female Spotted Sandpiper is the one who establishes and defends the territory. She arrives at the breeding grounds earlier than the male. In other species of migratory birds, where the male establishes the territory, he arrives earlier.
• The male takes the primary role in parental care, incubating the eggs and taking care of the young. One female may lay eggs for up to four different males at a time.
• Despite the gender roles, male Spotted Sandpipers have 10 times the testosterone that females have. However, that’s only in absolute terms. During the breeding season, females see a sevenfold increase in their testosterone levels, perhaps accounting for their aggression and the overall role reversal between male and female.
• The female may store sperm for up to one month. The eggs she lays for one male may be fathered by a different male in a previous mating.
• Its characteristic teetering motion has earned the Spotted Sandpiper many nicknames. Among them are teeter-peep, teeter-bob, jerk or perk bird, teeter-snipe, and tip-tail.
• The function of the teetering motion typical of this species has not been determined. Chicks teeter nearly as soon as they hatch from the egg. The teetering gets faster when the bird is nervous, but stops when the bird is alarmed, aggressive, or courting."
When I shoot with my LX100 set on iA (fully automatic) I often get some Stuttering at the outside of the image. It looks like a double exposure that is off just a bit. This happened when I shot this one, so I worked in Snapseed, PhotoToaster and TitleFX to make it “arty,” and to save the shot.
TERRA / Heft-Reihe
Reuben Robert Merliss / Kampfroboter
(The Stutterer)
cover: Karl Stephan
Moewig-Verlag
(München / Deutschland; 1960)
ex libris MTP
Stutter Rap (No Sleep til Bedtime), was a parody on Gangster Rap (No Sleet til Brooklyn), by the Beastie Boys. Morris Minor and the Majors, fronted by comedian Tony Hawks took the song to number 4 in 1988.
Ok, the record is naff, but the cover is the reason for this posting, a superb red 1950 moggie convertible, RVW 178, a car that is still around.
Available now @ Exposeur
Main Store - slurl.com/secondlife/Reek/178/209/23
Marketplace - marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/16816
In a mouse model of stuttering (lower panel), there are fewer astrocytes, shown in green, compared to controls (upper panel) in the corpus callosum, the area of the brain that enables the left and right hemispheres to communicate.
Researchers believe that stuttering — a potentially lifelong and debilitating speech disorder — stems from problems with the circuits in the brain that control speech, but precisely how and where these problems occur is unknown. Using a mouse model of stuttering, scientists report that a loss of cells in the brain called astrocytes are associated with stuttering. The mice had been engineered with a human gene mutation previously linked to stuttering. The study, which appeared online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers insights into the neurological deficits associated with stuttering.
Read more:
www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-mice-iden...
Credit: Tae-Un Han, Ph.D., National Institute on Deafness and Communication Disorders, NIH
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 11: Eric Dinallo, Emily Blunt and Lucy Fato attend the 2022 Freeing Voices, Changing Lives Gala at Guastavino's on July 11, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for American Institute for Stuttering)
"Porky stutters through the Elvis Presley classic, while a small crowd listens and giggles.
Porky's romantic line in the middle of the song is the icing on the Christmas cake.
The song was never a track on a Warner Brothers Looney Tunes Christmas album, with an official Porky Pig voice actor.
It has been attributed to several comedians over the years, since pretty much anybody who can do voices can do a Porky Pig impression. (That should be a job requirement.)
The song was done by voice actor Denny Brownlee on the John Boy and Billy radio show that aired for years in Birmingham on WZRR 99.5 FM. It's on the "John Boy & Billy Christmas Album," downloadable on iTunes.
The "official" artist is "Seymore Swine and the Squealers," after Warner Bros. threatened a legal smack down."
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 11: (L-R) Mark O’Malia, Mark O’Malia, Kristel Kubart and Emily Blunt appear onstage at the 2022 Freeing Voices, Changing Lives Gala at Guastavino's on July 11, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for American Institute for Stuttering)
A part of Vegetation series
I love how this set turned out. It is exactly how I wanted it to look. All the elements came together: good lighting, wide open space, and a willing beautiful subject. It was so much fun!
Special thanks to: Stephanie Kim and Susan Park
For this photo I've used:
Canon Elan II w/50mm 1.8, Expired Kodak 400 Film, Epson V330 scanner and Photoshop CS3
Commissioned by Lionel Cox in about 1935, it is not known who designed the boat-shaped building, but it was built by Mark Amy Limited.
Occupation
The Barge Aground was requisitioned by the German occupying forces in 1941 and used as a canteen by Machine Gun Battalion 16. The building was painted with camouflage. Many of the original contents were looted and shipped to Germany.
After the war, Lionel Cox returned to the Barge Aground and the building was restored as a beach chalet. He left the building to the Jersey Scouts Association in his will in 1955.
It was leased to a William Chalmers Kerr until 1971. Mr Kerr was a research psychologist from Glasgow University who specialised in speech disorders, particularly stuttering. The property was used as a clinic, with patients visiting from all around the world.
The site was used in the 1970s and 80s by the Scouts as a base for camping, in connection with the Westward Ho site on the opposite side of the road. It was then sold by the Jersey Scouts Association to the Public of the Island in 1997, who then let it to the Scouts Association for a time. The building was restored and refurbished as a holiday let by Jersey Heritage in around 2005.
Architectural assessment
The Barge Aground is the single surviving example of the beach chalets that once lined St Ouen’s Bay and is illustrative of the inter-war fashion for building places of fun.
Boundary
The parish boundary between St Ouen and St Peter was the old outlet stream from St Ouen's Pond. This now runs beneath the German anti-tank wall, which was built during the Occupation and had the effect of joining together the various lengths of seawall, which had been constructed during the 19th century, to stabilise the sand dunes and make access to the beach easier for horse-drawn carts.
L’Ouzière Slipway (La Montée de l’Ouzière), and its associated walls, were built about 1870. During the Occupation, like many slipways, it was blocked by fortification building – in this case twin 4.7cm anti-tank gun emplacements. Following the Liberation, one of these was removed to open up the slipway again. The scars left by the German blocking can be still seen, because the original setts or cobblestones had been set at an angle to give the horses hauling carts grip. This was not needed by motor lorries and tractors fitted with rubber tyres, and the replacement setts were laid flush.
Another victim of the German army in this area was the Conway tower built just after the 1779 invasion attempt. Standing to the south of the slip, the tower known variously as St Ouen’s No 3, St Ouen’s D, or the High Tower, was demolished as it got in the way of their more modern weapons. The tower had been sold by the War Department in July 1922 for the princely sum of £50.
Today this part of the bay, between L’Ouzière and Le Braye, is better known for sunbathing and surfing, but in the past it was generally referred to as Le Port, which means the ‘haven’. This is because in the 17th century it was called Le Port de la Mare, and was described as a roadstead – somewhere vessels could lie safely at anchor.
Invasions
The Channel Islands Pilot, published in 1870, informed ships’ masters that the anchorage which afforded good shelter in easterly winds was ‘about half a mile square ... off La Rocco tower’. This would explain why this part of the bay was selected in October 1651 by the Parliamentary forces, headed by Admiral Blake, to invade the island.
Sir George de Carteret, the Royalist leader, and the Island Militia spent three days watching and tracking the Parliamentary fleet, moving between St Ouen’s Bay and St Brelade’s Bay and back again, but by the time the Parliamentarians landed, many of the militia had gone home exhausted. There was a short clash on the beach, but it was the beginning of the end for the Royalist cause in the island, and within three months the last Royalists, penned up in Elizabeth Castle, surrendered and the island was under Parliamentary control.
Although the States had voted to set up what was supposed to have been some sort of defensive work with a cannon here in 1602, to protect the anchorage, Admiral Blake makes no mention of it in his account of the landing.
Two centuries later, in May 1779, while Britain was fighting the rebel American colonists, a French force of 1,500 soldiers, accompanied by a fleet of five warships and over 50 small landing craft, under the Prince of Nassau, attempted a landing here. They were thwarted by the falling tide and Moyse Corbet, the Lieut-Governor, who had 40 mounted troopers, another 400 infantry drawn from the 78th Regiment and militia, supported by some of the militia cannon. Unable to land, the French ships returned to Brittany. The scare caused the British Government to more than double the size of the garrison on the island.
La Caumine a Marie Best
The only building still standing from the period of the 1779 invasion is the St Peter’s Guardhouse, also known as La Caumine à Marie Best, or, because it is whitewashed for sailors to use as a navigation mark, the White Cottage. The guardhouse and magazine, with its vaulted roof, replaced an earlier gun position, probably the one mentioned in Colonel Legge’s 1679 report, known as the Middle Boulevard, which was destroyed in an explosion in 1765.
The guns were placed about 15 metres in front of the building. Its association with Marie Best dates from just after the Napoleonic War, when Marie Anne Best (1790-1832), the daughter of an English soldier called Adam, and Marguerite Carrel, moved into the disused guardhouse with her children to avoid a smallpox outbreak. Over the years, deprived of its military use, it fell into disrepair and later inhabitants let more windows into the walls.
Along with most of the coastal defensive structures, the War Department sold the building and land after the Great War. It was bought by William Gregory in November 1925. In May 1932 he sold the building to Captain J A, Hilton but kept the associated land. Captain Hilton’s widow donated the cottage to the National Trust for Jersey in 1975. Today it is the oldest surviving defensive building in the bay.
La Caumine à Marie Best’ caused a bit of a stir in 2011 when it was painted a pale green as part of the National Trust’s green awareness campaign, because some people thought it was an official navigation marker. The Jersey Coastguard issued a public notice to the effect that, according to the Admiralty Chart of the bay, the white building marked as the recognised navigation mark in the area is actually Big Vern’s Diner, just to the north. Normality returned in 2012 when the building was repainted white.
Just to the north of the Watersplash stood another of the Conway towers, St Ouen’s No 4. It was probably built after the 1779 invasion attempt and, like the others, it was armed with an 18-pounder carronade on a traversing platform mounted on the roof. At some stage in the middle of the 19th century it was undermined by the sea and collapsed.
The Watersplash was originally built before the Occupation, as a private home called Idaho, by Arthur Parker. In January 1948 it was bought by Harry Swanson, who renamed it and turned it into a nightclub. The Watersplash has become something of an island institution, for it was here that Jersey’s current surfing culture started.
Surfing centre
In 1923 Nigel Oxenden and a few friends started what was probably Europe’s first surf club, the Island Surf Club of Jersey. These first surfers were all body boarders - lying on their boards rather than standing up - but with the Occupation and the removal of the beach huts along the shore surfing faded away.
Surfing restarted in 1958, when three young South Africans came to work at Parkin’s Holiday Camp at Plémont. They built their own hollow boards and took them to St Ouen’s Bay, where, recognising the potential, Harry Swanson hired them as “South African Hawaiian Board Riders” and lifeguards. Tourists and locals flocked to watch, and the following year a group of young islanders formed the Jersey Surfboard Club, which is now said to be the oldest club in Europe. In 1962 the first Surf-Riding Championship at was held at the ‘Splash and in 1966 the World Surfing Championship was held here.
Another beach café integral to the history of Island surfing is El Tico. Opened in 1948, in 1965 it became the site for the Jersey Life Guard Station and Centre.
It was not only water sports that St Ouen’s Bay was known for; it has also been the venue for sand racing since before the Occupation. Its heyday was probably in the late 1950s and '60s, when thousands of spectators watched the events.
Before the Watersplash and El Tico existed, in the 1920s and 1930s, the dunes between them were dotted with beach huts. All of these were cleared by the Germans to create a military no-go zone. Just beyond El Tico, and just over the parish boundary in St Brelade, stood another Conway tower, La Tour de la Pierre Buttée, or St Ouen No 5. Built after the 1779 invasion attempt, like its neighbour it collapsed around 1850 having been severely damaged by storms.
Le Braye Slipway (La Montée du Braye), which leads to the beach, along with its flanking walls, were built around 1869 to the designs produced by the architects Philip Le Sueur and Philip Bree, who are better known as the architects who worked on St Helier Town Hall in 1872 and the Royal Court Building in 1877.
Le Braye means 'passage between the rocks'. Old maps show that there was a rocky outcrop on the dunes at this point, so does the name refer to this and the track on to the beach which went through them, or does it refer to the narrow passage between the rocks to the south of Le Rocco Tower?
Le Pulec
The precipitous cliffs of Les Landes end at the small inlet known as Le Pulec. Although the name has come to mean ‘stinking bay’ because of the smell caused by rotting vraic that gets piled up here, it actually comes from the Old Norse word for Pool. Access to the small inlet was made easier in 1858 when an access road and slipway on to the beach were built.
Vraic was especially important for the light soils of this part of the island. It could be put straight on to the land to improve the soil, or it could be left in stacks to dry. In 1710 the Seigneur of Vinchelez de Haut Manor leased a field to Jean de Carteret and Jean Le Cornu for drying vraic, for which he received two cabots of wheat and two hens a year. In order to prevent erosion of the shoreline by carts going on to the beach in the 1850s and 1860s, the States built a number of granite slipways with short flanking walls. Over the years further stretches of seawall were built until, during the Occupation, the Germans forces linked them all together behind a reinforced concrete anti-tank wall, two metres thick and six metres high.
Dominating Le Pulec to the south is the massive rock that gives the area its name, L’Etacquerel, which comes from the old Norse word for a heap or a stack of rock – stakkr. While most buildings and the haven lie in the lee of the massive rock, a small cottage called La Voûte, because of its vaulted roof, was built on the seaward side in the 1th century. A datestone in its gable is testament to the fact that Jean Hubert and Elizabeth Le Gresley were living there in 1753.
The Chamber of Commerce report of 1872 noted that the fishery here involved about 12 boats and 30 fishermen, who mainly went out for crab and lobster. Slipways had been built at either end of the haven in the mid-1860s, to allow the boats to be hauled to safety off the beach, but the report also made the recommendation that a small breakwater should be built, because boats at anchor were frequently damaged because of a lack of one. From the seaward side, access was along La Bouque - a narrow, safe passage about three-quarters of a mile long through the reefs.
It was here at L’Etacq that in the late 1820s Philip Hacquoil built three boats – all just over 30 feet (9½ metres) and about 14 or 15 tons. These were the Friends and the Dophin in 1825, and the Hope three years later. In 1831 the Dolphin, which was owned by Philip Perree and his son, was seized and condemned for smuggling.
Further to the south is an area known as La Saline, which is where salt was collected by evaporating seawater from very shallow pools. This was first mentioned in 1248. Access to the beach here was improved in 1856 when the slipway - La Montée de la Brequette - was built. Near the slip, a house was built just after the Great War, to look like an early 19th century fort, complete with loopholed walls. It took its name from the field behind it - Le Petit Fort. In recent years a modern house has been built, destroying the illusion.
Beyond La Saline the place names give a clue as to the characteristics of the area: Les Laveurs was where the waves surged up the beach washing the shingle, La Crabiére took its name from the offshore rocks where crabs were caught and, just over the parish boundary, by the southern end of St Ouen's Pond, L’Ouzière, which took its name from the English word ‘ooze’, because before the sea wall altered the make up of the beach, this area was quite muddy.
For a long time this northern half of the bay was thought to have protection enough from any attempted enemy landing from the reefs running down from L’Etacq. A French map of the island dated 1757 shows the only defensive structure in the bay was a redoubt holding four cannons, in the vicinity of La Tour Cârrée, or The Square Tower. The current building, which is more of a blockhouse with loopholes for musketry than a tower, was put up in 1778. The following year, three 24-pounder cannons - referred to as the North Battery - were placed in front of it. Today it is painted white and black on the seaward side, as a navigation mark, and since 2007 it has been part of the Jersey Heritage holiday lets scheme.
With the growing tension following the attempted landing in the bay in 1779, and the Battle of Jersey two years later, further batteries were built. Among these, close to where Lewis’s Tower now stands, was the Du Parcq Battery. Named after Jean du Parcq, the Rector of St Ouen, who, during an attempted French landing in 1779, brought down several artillery pieces to form a battery on the beach. Originally it had three small-calibre guns and two 8-pounders, but by 1787 these had been replaced by three 24-pounders on a wooden platform behind a turf rampart.
During the 1830s, following a report that highlighted the threat posed by ships carrying larger calibre guns, which could hold position beyond the reefs and bombard the coast, these batteries were replaced by three of the last Martello towers to be built in Europe – Kempt Tower, Lewis Tower and L’Etacq Tower. The work on all three was supervised by Colonel G G Lewis, the Commanding Officer of the Royal Engineers in the Island, but the actual construction was carried out by local builders.
L’Etacq Tower was demolished by the Germans in 1942 to make way for a bunker housing a 105mm coastal gun. Since 1980 this has housed Faulkener Fisheries' vivier. As it was situated on the point at L’Etacq overlooking the small haven, it was also known as Le Havre Tower. Built by John Benest in 1833 for £840, it was armed with a single 24-pounder gun set on a traversing platform on the roof, and was garrisoned by a sergeant and twelve men.
Like the other towers in the island, once Britain and France became allies in the 1850s it was allowed to fall into disrepair; the War Department actively began to get rid of them after the Great War.
Work on Lewis’s Tower started in May 1835, but the builder Jean Gruchy, stopped work in June when Philippe du Heaume, the Seigneur of the Fief of Morville and Robilliard, raised the Clameur de Haro. His claim was upheld, and he received 600 Francs compensation. Work resumed in July that year. By spring 1837 it was nearly finished, although the ground floor magazine needed to be completed, as did the water cistern.
Jean Gruchy received £780 for his work, but within two years the Royal Engineers were complaining that it was not weather-tight and requested that a coating of cement be applied to reduce the problem of damp. During the Occupation a concrete extension was added to house a searchlight as it was part of Resistance Nest Lewis Tower, which also included the nearby bunker, with its 105 mm gun and 4.7 cm Pak 36(t) anti-tank gun. The bunker is now home to the Channel Islands Military Museum.
As the amount of leisure time increased in the years after the Great War, the dunes around the bay became dotted with beach chalets of all descriptions. Most were cleared by the Germans, although the more substantial chalet, popularly known as the Barge Aground, because of its shape, still remains. More correctly known as ‘Seagull’ it was built for Mr G L Cox by Mark Amy Ltd in 1935. During the Occupation it was used as a canteen by the Germans, and from the 1970s until 2001 it was used by the island Scout Association. Since 2006 it has been self-catering holiday accommodation.
Shipwrecks
The rocks and reefs of this part of the bay have seen their fair share of shipwrecks. In 1859 the 113-ton racing schooner, belonging to the Royal Yacht Squadron, Alca sank off L’Etacq. Her owner Mr Delmé-Radcliffe, his guests and crew took to the boats. All 14 people on board were saved.
A more recent wreck was the 76-ton ketch Hanna, of Poole, which struck the reef a quarter of a mile off L’Etacq just before midnight on Saturday 19 November 1949. She was carrying a cargo of limestone from Brixham to St Helier. Her crew of three were rescued by the Lifeboat RNLB Elizabeth Rippon but the vessel was a total loss.
La Rocco
About half a mile straight out from Le Braye slip lies a natural outcrop of Jersey shale La Rocco - from Rocque Hou which means ‘the rocky islet’. The northern side of this islet is called La Joue, the ‘prow’, from the way it presented itself to the incoming swell. Because of its position, guarding the approach to the beach, La Rocco was selected as the site for the last of the Conway towers to be built in the island.
CoastMapStOuenS.png
In addition to the usual design, this tower also had a surrounding bulwark for four guns. Work started in 1796 but was hampered by lack of funds, and because of the low wages offered, local stonemasons were not too keen to be involved in the contract either. By 1798 the project had overrun its original budget and the Lieut-Governor had to come up with more money to complete the job. In May 1799 he had to take 15 stone masons to court to get them to complete the job. Finally, at a cost of over £8,000, the work was done and in May 1801 the tower was named after the Lieut-Governor, Lieutenant General Andrew Gordon [1]. Manned by a subaltern, a sergeant, two corporals, a drummer and 18 privates, its armament consisted of five 24-pounders.
It continued to be manned after 1815, and by 1848 a report shows that its armament had been upgraded to 32-pounders. It was abandoned in the 1850s following the improvement in relations with the French, and by 1896 the War Department proposed selling it. The States eventually bought it in July 1922 for £100, with the intention of creating a day-mark for shipping.
Occupation damage
The tower suffered considerable damage during the Occupation when a landmine on the southern side of the bulwark accidentally went off. The popular story is that the damage was caused by German gunnery. Whatever the real story, it was neglect and severe weather over the next few years that caused the extensive damage. A States report in November 1962 noted the damage and, with typical governmental alacrity, in October 1968 it was proposed that the States would pay 50% of the cost of repairs, if the public would pay the other half. A La Rocco Tower Appeal Committee was formed to raise the £17,500 required and, backed by the Jersey Evening Post, raised the money in just under 15 weeks. Rebuilding work began in the late spring of 1969 and was finished in 1972.
In the 1920s the tower was leased to Lady Houston, who used it as her ‘beach hut’. In 1931 she gave £100,000 towards the development of what was to become the Spitfire. In January 1806 the English vessel Adventure, on passage from Malta to London, was wrecked near La Rocco. Captain Watson and all his crew were saved but the ship was lost. The fates were not so kind in March 1861 when the 250-ton French vessel La Cultivateur, sailing from Dublin to Rouen, struck rocks off La Rocco and five of the nine-man crew, despite being able to swim, were drowned. It was not only ships that came to grief on La Rocco: in November 1940 a Dornier 17 crashed here while on a training flight and all four Luftwaffe personnel were killed.
Once completed, La Rocco tower became part of the fortification network in the bay. Just to the south of Le Braye, towards La Carrière, stood St Ouen’s No 6, also known as la Tour du Sud. Built by 1786, the tower was severely undermined by coastal erosion following a high spring tide and violent storm on 19 March 1847. By 1851 half the tower had collapsed, and what was left was used for target practice by the Militia artillery. Today no trace of the tower remains, although there is a marvellous photograph taken just before its destruction.
Quarry
Where the escarpment sweeps back to the coast there was a quarry - La Carrière - and it was here that one of the early gun positions in the bay was sited. In his 1685 report William Salt indicated that two demi-culverins were here. These cannon, which fired an 8-9lb shot, had a range of about a mile, although they were only really effective at up to a third of that distance.
The strategic importance of this area was recognised by the Germans, too, and two massive bunkers, a heavy machine gun position, a personnel shelter and a searchlight bunker were built into La Tête du Nièr Côte behind the anti-tank wall. Known as Resistance Point La Carrière, they are maintained and opened to the public by the Channel Island Occupation Society.
As part of this building work, the slipway known as La Charrière du Mont du Feu was demolished and blocked, although traces can still be seen in and around the anti-tank wall. The name commemorated the du Feu family who owned the land.
The shore alongside La Pulente slip, more properly known as La Montée du Sud, was known as Le Grand Havre, and beyond the slip was Le Petit Havre. While they may not look like harbours to us today, they were recognised landing points in the past. In 1299 records show that duty was collected on a cargo of wine unloaded here.
In 1309 court records mention a wreck at La Pulente, whose cargo was 32 pieces of iron, some verdigris, two barrels of ‘roker’ fish (Thornback Rays), 12 lb of chalk, some ginger, six measures of cinnamon, six measures of pepper (these three spices were valued at 40 livres), six lengths of strong white cotton cloth (dimity), 140 yards of canvas valued at 8 livres, one mast, small logs of timber and a hand wheel.
The fishery survey published in 1872 noted:
"There is but one boat, we found here three or four fishermen from town who frequently visited this bay and told us they considered it the best bay for fish, particularly whiting, but the sea was always very rough and dangerous".
This survey was undertaken just after La Montée du Sud had been completed. This allowed small boats to be hauled up from the beach and more boats began to be used here by the end of the century. The slip also allowed carts easier access to the vraicing area. Marks, such as La Merq de la Charrièrre, just below the slip, were set up among the rocks, which as the tide dropped and they became visible meant vraicing could begin. Sometimes the mark was a designated rock, sometimes it was an iron spike set in the top of a rock.
Like Le Pulec, La Pulente is derived from the Old Norse word for pool and endi the Norse word for end – so it means the pool at the end of the bay. In the 19th century a hotel was built here to cater for the growing number of visitors to the island. In the 1880s the landlord, Thomas Gibaut, was also one of the leaders of a smuggling gang who used the beach to land contraband before distributing it in Town. In June 1889, following a tip-off, the police intercepted a van carrying 20 barrels of illicit spirits in Devonshire Place, outside the home of Gibaut’s father. Inside the house they found another barrel. Altogether over 300 gallons of spirit was recovered.
The hotel was evacuated during the Occupation and partly demolished, before it was gutted of anything burnable during the last winter of the war. Rebuilt in 1946, the hotel to all extents and purposes became a public house.
Thursday 23 April 1896 must have been a slow news day in Guernsey as their newspaper, The Star, reported a nasty incident involving two men at La Pulente the previous Sunday. While riding their tandem, a cow had kicked their machine ‘rendering it useless, owing to half a dozen spokes being broken’. The traumatised pair had to walk to La Moye Station, carrying their machine with them in order to catch the train back to Town.
The following February The Star also reported the sad fate of John Syvret, who had fallen ‘40ft’ over the edge of the quarry at La Pulente to his death while going fishing. The rather unsympathetic headline read ‘A Ne’er-do-Well’s Sad End’. The headland John Syvret was walking over to get to the beach was L’Oeillière, which means peep hole. This could refer to a pierced rock or more probably some form of early lookout tower.
"Listen to what the landscape says,
And all that it fails to say, and what the clouds say, and the light,
Inveterate stutterer." - Charles Wright
The stuttering is from my frozen fingers. it's about 5 below now, about an hour after I took the photo. Fumbling around in the dark with bare fingers on tripod, exposed metal and camera controls just about did me in. It was sort of silly anyhow. I only had an 80-200 zoom, not long enough to do a really detailed closeup of the Moon. Rather than do something half-assed at the long end of the range, I zoomed back to 80mm and went for an impressionistic image of the moon in the trees with stars, cranking up the ISO to add a bit of pointillistic noise for atmosphere. I'm not sure it works, but for me it's a visual reminder of a really beautiful moment. After partially defrosting my fingers, T and I went back out in the icy darkness, no longer messing around with hardware, but just looking up at the cold, clear panorama of a magical winter sky with our own eyes.
It has been fun watching her make people stutter. I can't believe she's never really modeled before. Henna by rovinghorse at Roving Horse Henna.
TD: Up next is Regine! Tell us something about yourself Regine!
Regine: Uhm.. Uhm.. *stutters* I'm Regine, 20 years old, a college student taking up Mathematics. I can solve Math problems from algebra to calculus.
TD: Wow so you're definitely smart. Why did you join this contest even though you're already smart?
Regine: I.. I want to prove that I'm more than just a Math girl. I can show my other side too.
TD: That's nice to see you breaking out of your shell. What is your advantage from the other girls?
Regine: I.. I believe that in every challenge there's an solution. Hopefully I can calculate what the judges want for me to win.
TD: What a deep answer. Have you seen any competition so far?
Regine: Pa.. Paola is my competition because she's confident and has a pleasing personality.
TD: Thank you Regine and good luck on this!
Meet The Cast Video: youtu.be/nzIQhnzhmmc
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