Circa 1942 - Block C at Bletchley Park in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire on 13 September 2021.

Grade II listed.

 

The following is from the Historic England website.

Name: Block C, Bletchley Park

Designation Type: Listing

Grade: II

List UID: 1404656

 

Summary

Block C, Bletchley Park. Spider block designed in 1941 to house Bletchley Park's Hollerith Section and operational from November 1942. GCHQ training school from 1946-1987.

 

Reasons for Designation

Block C at Bletchley Park is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Historic interest (code-breaking): a building that housed the Hollerith section (Bletchley’s punch card intelligence index, machinery and staff) which was key to the success of Bletchley Park’s Second World War code-breaking work, specifically recording decryption information for the German Enigma code; * Historic interest (the Information Age): a building highly significant in the development and use of machinery for mass data processing, where not only was the Hollerith system employed on a hitherto unprecedented scale but the machines and systems were secretly and constantly improved and adapted; * Form and fabric: a purpose-built and designed utilitarian structure which was hardened and soundproofed in order to protect the highly important machinery and data inside. It is one of the largest purpose-built buildings for tabulating machines in the world. Later alterations for a post-war GCHQ training school, while of lesser interest, are part of the story of the continuing intelligence use of the site at the end of the war; * Group value: with other contemporary buildings on site which collectively express the scale of the intelligence operation at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, some of which are designated.

 

History

Bletchley Park is a site of international historic significance for signals intelligence (Signit): a Second World War code-breaking hub and a highly significant site in the development of high-speed and mass data processing. The site retains a large number of historic buildings, many of which are listed, which collectively express the rapid technological developments on site through their fabric. Bletchley Park’s story, its historic fabric and significance has been written about in numerous publications including Winterbotham’s 1974 book The Ultra Secret, one of the first to reveal the significance of the wartime work here, and more recently English Heritage’s research report (2004). Therefore only a summary history will be provided here. Needless to say that Bletchley Park was a hugely significant Second World War intelligence ‘factory’ with nearly 9,000 people employed here by 1945 and it was here that the German Enigma code was famously broken.

 

In 1937 part of the Bletchley Park estate, centred on the Grade II Victorian mansion house, was bought by the Government to house combined intelligence services previously accommodated in London. This included members of the Secret Intelligence Service (the SIS, also known as MI6) as well as Foreign Office staff from the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS, renamed post-war as Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ). Initially operating from the mansion, additional accommodation was soon needed and a series of temporary wooden huts had been erected and fitted out by the summer of 1939.

 

Rapid expansion of the Bletchley Park complex led to plans being drawn up from mid 1941 onwards for a series of additional purpose-built and permanent blocks. While based on Ministry of Works temporary office block designs, each individual building was designed for its specific purpose in conjunction with the Bletchley staff. The first of these, Block A (Grade II) was operational in August 1942. Block C was planned in 1941 and was first occupied in November 1942. It was designed to accommodate the Hollerith Section, led by Freddie Freeburn of the British Tabulating Machine Company Ltd., previously housed in Hut 7 (demolished post-war). As the Hollerith machines were very noisy and operated day and night both Hut 7 and its successor, Block C, were located away from other accommodation on the eastern edge of the Bletchley Park site.

 

Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) was an American inventor who gave his name to his system of recording information on punched cards which was initially used to analyse US census data in 1890. His system allowed the analysis of vast amounts of data by machine therefore considerably speeding up a statistical process previously carried out by hand. In 1896 he founded the Tabulating Machine Company (which would become part of IBM in the 1920s). The Hollerith system was essentially an early form of computer processing.

 

Block C was purpose-designed and built to house the Hollerith machines and staff at Bletchley Park, providing an essential and central service supporting the whole of the GC&CS: the Hollerith system managed Bletchley’s punch card intelligence index and was therefore key to the success of its code-breaking work, specifically recording Enigma decryption information. The Enigma code machine enabled codes to be changed every 24 hours simply by resetting the wheels in the machine. The challenge for the staff of Bletchley Park was to break the code before the wheels were re-set. Using the Hollerith machines to analyse the decryption information (whereby the punch cards based on the coded messages would either block or allow electrical currents to pass through them) enabled the operators to limit the number of possible Enigma wheel-settings and therefore the number of solutions to each days’ Enigma code. In addition, the Hollerith section used its machinery to advise on Allied ciphers.

 

The Hollerith machines were also adapted on site. This was a critical part of the way that the research here was instantly applied and is a unique feature of Bletchley Park. Block C was therefore built to a particular specification. The scale of the building is an expression of the mass decryption attack that the machines enabled. The building also had to be sound-proofed, given the noise of the machines, provide accommodation for a number of different types of machines while also allowing enough daylight into the building for the operators and data analysts. The significance of the data and the machinery to Bletchley Park and to the war effort was such that the roof was also hardened in case of aerial attack. Some alterations, such as the addition of ventilators for the machinery, were made in 1943.

 

After the war Bletchley Park became a training facility used by the General Post Office, the Control Commission (responsible for monitoring post-war Germany) and was the home of an Emergency Teacher Training college (for fast-track training of teachers.) Block C became GCHQ’s training school and was altered accordingly with partition walls erected in the previously open-plan spurs to provide lecture and demonstration rooms, a cinema and projector room as well as student accommodation. GCHQ finally left the building in 1987 and it has been redundant since that time.

 

In 1992 the proposed demolition of some of the Second World War buildings prompted the establishment of the Bletchley Park Trust. The site now (2012) opens to the public as a museum and visitor attraction although not all buildings are accessible (and Block C is not at present).

 

Details

Block C is located on the eastern edge of the Bletchley Park complex, immediately adjacent to, and north of, the new main gate onto the site. It is a spider block and is single storey with the exception of a roof-top water tank room in the south-east corner. The building is steel framed and encased in buff English bond brickwork. The roof is a reinforced concrete slab, slightly cambered and covered in asphalt. A group of glazed roof lanterns in the centre of the building are additions of the immediate post-war GCHQ occupation. The building is currently mothballed and most windows are therefore boarded up externally although their scale and sloping red tiled cills remain visible externally. However, internal inspection confirms that in the main the windows are large, rectangular, multi-paned steel-framed casements, with internal sloping white-tiled cills. Rainwater goods are plain and unobtrusive. To the east are two covered bicycle shelters. These are lean-to structures with roofs supported on square-section concrete pillars and housing concrete bicycle racks.

 

The main entrance is off-centre in the south elevation and is approached by shallow concrete steps with simple metal hand rails. Solid wooden double-doors are inset into a metal-framed and glazed bay with yellow-tile detailing. Originally there were only four doorways, the main south entrance, pedestrian doors to Spur 2 (the administration spur) and the Spur 9 machine bay with a loading bay into Spur 5. Further pedestrian doors have been added and date to the immediate post-war period for example providing access to the ends of the other southern six spurs. There is also a further large entrance with double doors off-centre in the north elevation. Here the flanking panels have been infilled in Stretcher bond and there is also a rain canopy supported on brick piers.

 

In plan the building is arranged around a central north-south corridor off which are three pairs of west-east spurs in the south and centre of the building and an additional ‘E’-shaped arrangement of spurs with the arms running north-south at the north end of the building.

 

The main south entrance leads into a lobby with a further pair of double-doors opening into a large central ‘room’. This is the only surviving area of the largely open-plan form of the wartime block, although it has been altered by the addition of roof lanterns and a suspended ceiling. The roof of the interior is supported throughout on steel piers against the external walls and brick piers in the centre of the building, the latter have chamfered corners and are painted white (those in the main common room are now encased in wooden cladding and others have been incorporated into later partition walls). The concrete beam roof construction can be seen where suspended ceilings have not been added (such as in Spur 2). Original internal walls are Stretcher bond using plain flettons, also painted white. Most of the trusses are of steel construction although of differing forms. Internal wooden doors are either of solid form or have glazed lights, all with simple architraves, some with their original Bakelite handles. Post-war additions, where rooms have been created for student accommodation, have borrow-lights above onto the spur corridors. There are also some Bakelite switches and early cable trunking in parts. Cast iron radiators are found in many of the rooms and, as they appear on wartime photographs, are primary.

 

Off the central ‘room’ are six spurs. Spur 1, in the south-east corner, was the kitchen and sanitary spur, Spur 2 in the south-west corner was the administration spur. These spurs were originally subdivided to provide offices, kitchen and ablutions. Spur 2 is perhaps the most original in form of all of the spurs although some modifications were made when converted to GCHQ training accommodation in the 1940s. Spur 1 has additional reinforced concrete trusses supporting the roof level water tower. The post-war conversion of the toilets to bath and shower rooms here has altered the original arrangements. Spurs 3 (to the east) and 4 (to the west) were originally open-plan housing the card store for completed jobs, and the punch room and verifier bay respectively. They have also been subdivided for training accommodation although the original piers remain visible. Spur 5 (to the centre east) was partially open-plan in its original form and housed the new card store and a loading bay at its east end. Spur 6 was closed off from the central bay at its east end as it housed the engineering and maintenance facilities as well as two offices for senior engineers. These spurs have also been subdivided in the post-war period although again the original piers and limited number of original subdivisions of 1942 remain visible. The original spine corridor in the centre of the building, also Spurs 7, 8 and 9 in the north of the building (which were the main machine operation areas) have also been subdivided although again the original piers are visible. The roof of the northern spurs has failed in part allowing water to get into the building such that the suspended ceiling was collapsing at the time of designation

The results have been tabulated and the fans have spoken...your run away favorite Phoenix Customs Minifigure for 2014 was....Arachnid Hero!

 

Thank you to all of you who voted and sent in such nice comments the last two weeks, I'm glad you've enjoyed our customs this year!

 

Here's the results from the online voting:

 

1st Place - Arachnid Hero (52% of 1st Place votes, 23% - 2nd Place votes)

 

2nd Place - American Super Soldier (17% - 1st Place votes, 56% - 2nd Place Votes)

 

3rd Place - Kinetic Man (21% - 1st Place votes, 43% - 3rd Place votes)

 

4th Place - Pirate Assassin (5% - 1st Place votes, 21% - 3rd Place votes)

 

5th Place - Red Bird (5% - 1st Place votes, 43% - 4th Place votes)

  

One of the dials from a bombe in Hut 11 at Bletchely Park in Buckinghamshire. Bletchley was the home of codebreakers during World War II, most famously cracking the German Enigma and Lorenz codes. The bombe was a machine that helped sift out code options to make the task of the human codebreakers easier. The bombes were developed by Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman and engineered by Harold Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company in Letchworth. There was a video on how they worked... still don't have a clue. But do have great and renewed admiration for the codebreakers and the Wrens who looked after the bombes

For many years the Metropolitan District Railway (better known as the "District Railway"), formed to operate the southern sections of the "Inner Circle" railway in London in 1864 in connection with the Metropolitan Railway, 'sponsored' a railway map of London. This, that unsurprisingly gave some prominence to their services and rather less so to its competitors, ran to several editions and in various forms. The most common 'cased' versions are similar to this, the 6th edition, that is undated but that was published in c1908. This was after the takeover of the the company by American interests, its merger into the new Underground Electric Railways Group, and electrification. I suspect that the dowdy covers of the map, itself published by the London concern of Simpson, Low, Marston & Co Ltd., would have started to raise eyebrows back at the railway's head office by this date as publicity was a hot topic under the UERL and its publicity officer, Frank Pick.

 

The inner cover gives a tabulated description of the various District and associated railway's "lines' and although many of these services are still recognisable on today's maps of London railways others, both stations and services, have vanished or changed as the network has evolved. One interesting inscription on this cover is that of "F H Stingemore". Many of you will 'recognise' the name as he was for many years the 'designer' of the London tube map prior to the introduction of the Beck map after 1933. An LT employee he also drew maps for other other company publications and cartoons for staff magazines!

Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse in background; it was recently sold by the U.S. government in an auction where the two top bidders settled their competition with a coin toss.

When we still had film, Kodak reportedly claimed Portland Head Light was the second most photographed spot in the USA, after the Grand Canyon. Not sure how they tabulated that, but this light is instantly recognizable all over the world because it is perfect from all the millions of angles that photographers have found so far.

   

See where this picture was taken.

 

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Paris, France.The inspiration for Sacré Cœur's design originated on 4 September 1870, the day of the proclamation of the Third Republic, with a speech by Bishop Fournier attributing the defeat of French troops during the Franco-Prussian War to a divine punishment after "a century of moral decline" since the French Revolution, in the wake of the division in French society that arose in the decades following that revolution, between devout Catholics and legitimist royalists on one side, and democrats, secularists, socialists, and radicals on the other. This schism in the French social order became particularly pronounced after the 1870 withdrawal of the French military garrison protecting the Vatican in Rome to the front of the Franco-Prussian War by Napoleon III,the secular uprising of the Paris Commune of 1870-1871, and the subsequent 1871 defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart (also known as the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Sacratissimum Cor Iesu in Latin) is one of the most widely practiced and well-known Roman Catholic devotions, taking Jesus Christ′s physical heart as the representation of his divine love for humanity. This devotion is predominantly used in the Roman Catholic Church and in a modified way among some high-church Anglicans, Lutherans and Eastern Catholics. The devotion is especially concerned with what the Church deems to be the longsuffering love and compassion of the heart of Christ towards humanity. The popularization of this devotion in its modern form is derived from a Roman Catholic nun from France, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who said she learned the devotion from Jesus during a series of apparitions to her between 1673 and 1675, and later, in the 19th century, from the mystical revelations of another Roman Catholic nun in Portugal, Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart, a religious of the Good Shepherd, who requested in the name of Christ that Pope Leo XIII consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Predecessors to the modern devotion arose unmistakably in the Middle Ages in various facets of Catholic mysticism, particularly with Saint Gertrude the Great.The Sacred Heart is often depicted in Christian art as a flaming heart shining with divine light, pierced by the lance-wound, encircled by the crown of thorns, surmounted by a cross, and bleeding. Sometimes the image is shown shining within the bosom of Christ with his wounded hands pointing at the heart. The wounds and crown of thorns allude to the manner of Jesus' death, while the fire represents the transformative power of divine love. Historically the devotion to the Sacred Heart is an outgrowth of devotion to what is believed to be Christ's sacred humanity. During the first ten centuries of Christianity, there is nothing to indicate that any worship was rendered to the wounded Heart of Jesus. The revival of religious life and the zealous activity of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and Saint Francis of Assisi in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, together with the enthusiasm of the Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, gave a rise to devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ and particularly to practices in honour of the Sacred Wounds. Devotion to the Sacred Heart developed out of the devotion to the Holy Wounds, in particular to the Sacred Wound in the side of Jesus. The first indications of devotion to the Sacred Heart are found in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the fervent atmosphere of the Benedictine or Cistercian monasteries, in the world of Bernardine thought. But it is impossible to say with certainty what were its first texts or who were its first devotees. Saint Bernard (d. 1153) said that the piercing of Christ's side revealed his goodness and the charity of his heart for us. The earliest known hymn to the Sacred Heart, "Summi Regis Cor Aveto", is believed to have been written by the Norbertine Blessed herman Joseph (d.1241) of Cologne, Germany. The hymn begins: "I hail Thee kingly Heart most high." From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the devotion was propagated but it did not seem to have been embellished. It was everywhere practised by individuals and by different religious congregations, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Carthusians. Among the Franciscans the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has its champions in Saint Bonaventure (d. 1274) in his Vitis Mystica ("Mystic Vine"), B. John de la Verna, and the Franciscan Tertiary Saint Jean Eudes (1602–1680).Bonaventure wrote: "Who is there who would not love this wounded heart? Who would not love in return Him, who loves so much?” It was, nevertheless, a private, individual devotion of the mystical order. Nothing of a general movement had been inaugurated, except for similarities found in the devotion to the Five Holy Wounds by the Franciscans, in which the wound in Jesus's heart figured most prominently. In the sixteenth century, the devotion passed from the domain of mysticism into that of Christian asceticism. It was established as a devotion with prayers already formulated and special exercises, found in the writings of Lanspergius (d. 1539) of the Carthusians of Cologne, the Benedictine Louis de Blois (d. 1566) Abbot of Liessies in Hainaut, John of Avila (d. 1569), and Francis de Sales (d. 1622). The historical record from that time shows an early bringing to light of the devotion. Ascetic writers spoke of it, especially those of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was everywhere in evidence, largely due to the Franciscan devotion to the Five Wounds and to the Jesuits placing the image on the title-page of their books and on the walls of their churches. The first to establish the theological basis for the devotion was Polish Jesuit Kasper Drużbicki (1590-1662) in his book Meta cordium - Cor Jesu (The goal of hearts - Heart of Jesus). Not much later Jean Eudes wrote an Office, and promoted a feast for it. Père Eudes was the apostle of the Heart of Rayn, but in his devotion to the Immaculate Heart there was a share for the Heart of Jesus. Little by little, the devotion to the two Hearts became distinct, and on 31 August 1670 the first feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated in the Grand Seminary of Rennes. Coutances followed suit on October 20, a day with which the Eudist feast was from then on to be connected. The feast soon spread to other dioceses, and the devotion was likewise adopted in various religious communities. It gradually came into contact with the devotion begun by Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial, and the two merged. According to Thomas Merton, Saint Lutgarde (d.1246), a Cistercian mystic of Aywieres, Belgium, was one of the great precursors of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A contemporary of St. Francis, she "... entered upon the mystical life with a vision of the pierced Heart of the Saviour, and had concluded her mystical espousals with the Incarnate Word by an exchange of hearts with Him." Sources say that Christ came in a visitation to Lutgarde, offering her whatever gift of grace she should desire; she asked for a better grasp of Latin, that she might better understand the word of God and sing God's praise. Christ granted her request and Lutgarde’s mind was flooded with the riches of psalms, antiphons, readings, and responsories. However, a painful emptiness persisted. She returned to Christ, asking to return his gift, and wondering if she might, just possibly, exchange it for another. “And for what would you exchange it?” Christ asked. “Lord, said Lutgarde, I would exchange it for your Heart.” Christ then reached into Lutgarde and, removing her heart, replaced it with his own, at the same time hiding her heart within his breast. Saint Mechtilde of Helfta (d.1298) became an ardent devotee and promoter of Jesus’ heart after it was the subject of many of her visions. The idea of hearing the heartbeat of God was very important to medieval saints who nurtured devotion to the Sacred Heart.[11] Mechtilde reported that Jesus appeared to her in a vision and commanded her to love Him ardently, and to honor his sacred heart in the Blessed Sacrament as much as possible. He gave her his heart as a pledge of his love, as a place of refuge during her life and as her consolation at the hour of her death. From this time Mechtilde had an extraordinary devotion for the Sacred Heart, and said that if she had to write down all the favors and all the blessings which she had received by means of this devotion, a large book would not contain them. Saint Gertrude the Great was an early devotee of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Book 2 of the herald of Divine Love vividly describes Gertrude's visions, which show a considerable elaboration on the hitherto ill-defined veneration of Christ's heart. St Bernard articulated this in his commentary on the Song of Songs. The women of Helfta—Gertrude foremost, who surely knew Bernard's commentary, and to a somewhat lesser extent the two Mechthildes—experienced this devotion centrally in their mystical visions. Painting representing the apparitions of the Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque.

The most significant source for the devotion to the Sacred Heart in the form it is known today was Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690), a nun of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, who claimed to have received apparitions of Jesus Christ in the Burgundian French village of Paray-le-Monial, the first on 27 December 1673, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, and the final one 18 months later, revealing the form of the devotion, the chief features being reception of Holy Communion on the first Friday of each month, Eucharistic adoration during a "Holy hour" on Thursdays, and the celebration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart. She said that in her vision she was instructed to spend an hour every Thursday night to meditate on Jesus' Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. In probably June or July 1674, Sister Margaret Mary claimed that Jesus requested to be honored under the figure of his heart, also saying that, when he appeared radiant with love, he asked for a devotion of expiatory love: frequent reception of Communion, especially on the first Friday of the month, and the observance of the Holy hour. During the octave of Corpus Christi in 1675, probably on June 16, the vision known as the "great apparition" reportedly took place, where Jesus said: "Behold the Heart that has so loved men. ...Instead of gratitude I receive from the greater part (of humankind) only ingratitude," and asked Margaret Mary for a feast of reparation of the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, bidding her consult her confessor Father Claude de la Colombière, then superior of the small Jesuit house at Paray le Monial. Father de la Colombière directed Sister Margaret Mary to write an account of the apparition, which he discreetly circulated in France and England. After his death on 15 February 1682, his journal of spiritual retreats was found to contain a copy in his handwriting of the account that he had requested of Margaret Mary, together with a few reflections on the usefulness of the devotion. This journal, including the account – an "offering" to the Sacred Heart in which the devotion was explained – was published at Lyon in 1684. The little book was widely read, especially at Paray le Monial. Margaret Mary reported feeling "dreadful confusion" over the book's contents, but resolved to make the best of it, approving of the book for the spreading of her cherished devotion. Along with the Visitandines, priests, religious, and laymen espoused the devotion, particularly the Capuchins. The reported apparitions served as a catalyst for the promotion of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Jesuit Father Croiset wrote a book called The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Fr. Joseph de Gallifet, SJ, promoted the devotion. The mission of propagating the new devotion was especially confided to the religious of the Visitation and to the priests of the Society of Jesus. Window detail, All Saints Catholic Church, St. Peters, Missouri. On the night of 14 February 1876 a domestic servant Estelle Faguette lay in Pellevoisin dying of pulmonary tuberculosis, and reportedly saw the Virgin Mary. Four days later, during the fifth apparition, Estelle seemed to be healed instantaneously. Altogether she said she experienced fifteen apparitions in the course of 1876. On 9 September the apparition drew attention to a small piece of white cloth, a scapular resting over her chest. Faguette had seen it there before, as plain white cloth, but on this day it bore the red image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The following day the lady appeared again, saying she had come to encourage people to pray. The final and culminating vision took place on Friday 8 December 1876, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception: You will go yourself to the prelate and will present to him this copy that you have made. Tell him to do everything within his power to help you, and that nothing would be more pleasing to me than to see this livery on each of my children. They should all strive to make reparation for the outrages my Son is subjected to in the sacrament of his love. See the graces that will be poured forth on those who will wear it with confidence and help you to spread this devotion. Immediately following this last apparition, Estelle sought and was granted an audience with the Archbishop of Bourges, Monsignor de La Tour d'Auvergne. By 12 December 1876 she had received his permission to make and distribute copies of the Scapular of the Sacred Heart. Another source for the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was Sister Mary of the Divine Heart (1863–1899), the former countess of Droste zu Vischering and nun from the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, who reported to have received several interior locutions and visions of Jesus Christ. The first interior locution Maria Droste zu Vischering reported was during her youth spent with the family in the Castle of Darfeld, near Münster, Germany, and the last vision and private revelation was reported during her presence as Mother Superior in the Convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Porto, Portugal. Based on the messages she said she received in her revelations of Christ, on 10 June 1898 her confessor at the Good Shepherd monastery wrote to Pope Leo XIII stating that Sister Mary of the Divine Heart had received a message from Christ, requesting the pope to consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart. The pope initially attached no credence to it and took no action. However, on 6 January 1899 she sent another letter asking that in addition to the consecration, the first Fridays of the month be observed in honor of the Sacred Heart. Painting representing the vision received by Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart Droste zu Vischering. Jesus had revealed to her: "By the brightness of this light, peoples and nations will be illumined, and they will be warmed by its ardour." her second letter included: One might find it strange that Our Lord should ask for this consecration of the entire world and not content Himself with [that of] the Catholic Church. But his desire to reign, to be loved and glorified, and to set ablaze all hearts with his love and his mercy is so ardent that he wants Your Holiness to offer Him the hearts of all those who belong to Him by Baptism to facilitate their return to the true Church, and the hearts of those who have not yet received spiritual life by Holy Baptism, but for whom he has given his life and his Blood, and who are equally called to be one day children of the Holy Church, to hasten by this means their spiritual birth. In the letter she also referred to the recent illness of the pope and stated that Christ had assured her that Pope Leo XIII would live until he had performed the consecration to the Sacred Heart. Theologian Laurent Volken states that this had an emotional impact on Leo XIII, despite the theological issues concerning the consecration of non-Christians. Sister Mary of the Divine Heart died in her monastery in Portugal when the Church was singing the first vespers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on 8 June 1899. The following day, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1353 Pope Innocent VI instituted a Mass honoring the mystery of the Sacred Heart. After the death of Margaret Mary Alacoque on 17 October 1690, a short account of her life was published by Father Croiset in 1691 as an appendix to his book De la Dévotion au Sacré Cœur. In 1693 the Holy See imparted indulgences to the Confraternities of the Sacred Heart, and in 1697 granted the feast to the Visitandines with the Mass of the Five Wounds, but refused a feast common to all, with special Mass and Office. The devotion spread, particularly in religious communities. The Marseille plague in 1720 furnished perhaps the first occasion for a solemn consecration and public worship outside of religious communities. Other cities of southern Europe followed the example of Marseille. In 1726 Rome was again asked for a feast with a Mass and Office of its own; this was refused in 1729, but granted in 1765. In that year, at the request of the queen, the feast was received quasi-officially by the episcopate of France. In 1856, at the urgent entreaties of the French bishops, Pope Pius IX extended the feast to the Roman Catholic Church under the rite of double major. In 1889 it was raised by the Roman Catholic Church to the double rite of first class. After Pope Leo XIII received several letters from Sister Mary of the Divine Heart asking him to consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he commissioned a group of theologians to examine the petition on the basis of revelation and sacred tradition. The outcome of this investigation was positive, and so in the encyclical letter Annum sacrum (on 25 May 1899) he decreed that the consecration of the entire human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus should take place on 11 June 1899. The encyclical letter also encouraged the entire Roman Catholic episcopate to promote the First Friday Devotions, established June as the Month of the Sacred Heart, and included the Prayer of Consecration to the Sacred Heart. Pope Pius X decreed that the consecration of the human race performed by Leo XIII be renewed each year. Pius XI in his encyclical letter Miserentissimus Redemptor (on 8 May 1928) affirmed the Church's position with respect to Saint Margaret Mary's visions of Jesus Christ by stating that Jesus had "manifested Himself" to Saint Margaret and had "promised her that all those who rendered this honor to his Heart would be endowed with an abundance of heavenly graces." The encyclical refers several times to the conversation between Jesus and Saint Margaret Mary[21] and reaffirmed the importance of consecration and reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Pius XII, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Pius IX's institution of the Feast, instructed the entire Roman Catholic Church at length on the devotion to the Sacred Heart in his encyclical letter Haurietis aquas (on 15 May 1956). On 15 May 2006, Pope Benedict XVI sent a letter to Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, on the 50th Anniversary of the encyclical Haurietis aquas. In his letter to Father Kolvenbach, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the importance of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Roman Catholic acts of consecration, reparation, and devotion were introduced when the feast of the Sacred Heart was declared. In his papal bull Auctorem fidei, Pope Pius VI praised devotion to the Sacred Heart. Finally, Leo XIII in his encyclical Annum sacrum (25 May 1899), as well as on June 11, consecrated every human to the Sacred Heart. The idea of this act, which Leo XIII called "the great act" of his pontificate, had been proposed to him by a nun of the Good Shepherd from Oporto (Portugal) who said that she had supernaturally received it from Jesus. Since c. 1850, groups, congregations, and countries have consecrated themselves to the Sacred Heart. In 1873, by petition of president Gabriel García Moreno, Ecuador was the first country in the world to be consecrated to the Sacred Heart.

Peter Coudrin of France founded the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary on 24 December 1800. A religious order of the Roman Catholic Church, the order carried out missionary work in Hawaii. Mother Clelia Merloni from Forlì (Italy) founded the Congregation of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Viareggio, Italy, on 30 May 1894.

Worship of the Sacred Heart mainly consists of several hymns, the Salutation of the Sacred Heart, and the Litany of the Sacred Heart. It is common in Roman Catholic services and occasionally is to be found in Anglican services. The Feast of the Sacred Heart, in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar since 1856, is now a solemnity and is celebrated 19 days after Pentecost, which is always a Friday. The Enthronement of the Sacred Heart is a Roman Catholic ceremony in which a priest or head of a household consecrates the members of the household to the Sacred Heart. An image of the Sacred Heart that has been blessed, either a statue or a picture, is then placed in the home as a reminder. The practice of the Enthronement is based upon Pius XII's declaration that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is "the foundation on which to build the kingdom of God in the hearts of individuals, families, and nations." In the Roman Catholic tradition, the Sacred Heart has been closely associated with Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ. In his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, Pope Pius XI stated: "The spirit of expiation or reparation has always had the first and foremost place in the worship given to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus."[21] The Golden Arrow Prayer directly refers to the Sacred Heart.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart is sometimes seen in the Eastern Catholic Churches, where it remains a point of controversy and is seen as an example of liturgical Latinisation. The Feast of the Sacred Heart is a solemnity in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. It falls 19 days after Pentecost, on a Friday. The earliest possible date is 29 May, as in 1818 and 2285. The latest possible date is 2 July, as in 1943 and 2038. The devotion to the Sacred Heart is one of the most widely practiced and well-known Roman Catholic devotions, taking Jesus Christ's physical heart as the representation of his divine love for humanity. Saint John Eudes defended the mystical unity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary is based on the historical, theological, and spiritual links in Catholic devotions between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The joint devotion to the hearts was first formalized in the seventeenth century by Saint John Eudes who organized the scriptural, theological, and liturgical sources relating to the devotions and obtained the approbation of the Church, prior to the visions of Saint Marguerite Marie Alacoque. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the devotions grew, both jointly and individually, through the efforts of figures such as Saint Louis de Montfort who promoted Catholic Mariology and Saint Catherine Labouré's Miraculous Medal depicting the Heart of Jesus thorn-crowned and the Heart of Mary pierced with a sword.[30][31][32] The devotions and associated prayers grew into the twentieth century, e.g. in the Immaculata prayer of Saint Maximillian Kolbe and in the reported messages of Our Lady of Fatima saying that the Heart of Jesus wishes to be honored together with the Heart of Mary. Popes supported the individual and joint devotions to the hearts through the centuries. In the 1956 encyclical Haurietis aquas, Pope Pius XII encouraged the joint devotion to the hearts. In the 1979 encyclical Redemptor hominis, Pope John Paul II explained the theme of unity of Mary's Immaculate Heart with the Sacred Heart.[35] In his Angelus address on 15 September 1985, John Paul II coined the term The Alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, and in 1986 addressed the international conference on that topic held at Fátima, Portugal. The Sacred Heart has also been involved in and depicted in apparitions such as those to Saint Catherine Labouré in 1830, and appears on the Miraculous Medal,[40] where the Sacred Heart is crowned with thorns. The Immaculate Heart of Mary also appears on the medal, next to the Sacred Heart, but is pierced by a sword rather than being crowned with thorns. The M on the medal signifies the Blessed Virgin at the foot of the Cross when Jesus was being crucified. Religious imagery depicting the Sacred Heart is frequently featured in Roman Catholic, and sometimes in Anglican and Lutheran, homes. Sometimes images display beneath them a list of family members, indicating that the entire family is entrusted to the protection of Jesus in the Sacred Heart, from whom blessings on the home and the family members are sought. The prayer "O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in Thee" is often used. One particular image has been used as part of a set, along with an image of the Virgin Mary. In that image, Mary too was shown pointing to her Immaculate Heart. The dual images reflect an eternal binding of the two hearts. The Scapular of the Sacred Heart and the Scapular of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary are worn by Roman Catholics. Devotion to the Sacred Heart may be found in some Eastern Catholic Churches, but is a contentious issue. Those who favour purity of rite are opposed to the devotion, while those who are in favour of the devotion cite it as a point of commonality with their Latin Catholic brethren. Margaret Mary Alacoque said that in her apparitions Jesus promised these blessings to those who practice devotion to his Sacred Heart. The list was tabulated in 1863. In 1882 an American businessman spread the tabular form of the twelve promises throughout the world, in 238 languages. In 1890 Cardinal Adolph Perraud deplored this circulation of the promises in tabular form, which he said were different from the words and the meaning of the expressions used by Saint Margaret Mary, and wanted the promises to be published in their original words. I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life. I will give peace in their families. I will console them in all their troubles. I will be their refuge in life and especially in death. I will abundantly bless all their undertakings. Sinners shall find in my Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy. Tepid souls shall become fervent.

Fervent souls shall rise speedily to great perfection.

I will bless those places wherein the image of My Sacred Heart shall be exposed and venerated. I will give to priests the power to touch the most hardened hearts.

Persons who propagate this devotion shall have their names eternally written in my Heart. In the excess of the mercy of my Heart, I promise you that my all powerful love will grant to all those who will receive Communion on the First Fridays, for nine consecutive months, the grace of final repentance: they will not die in my displeasure, nor without receiving the sacraments; and my Heart will be their secure refuge in that last hour. Promises made to Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart

Blessed Sister Mary of the Divine Heart Droste zu Vischering said that in her mystical experiences Jesus Christ inspired her to build a shrine dedicated to his Sacred Heart. The imposing Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (also referred as Church of the Good Shepherd or Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) was built between 14 July 1957 and 21 April 1966, in the civil parish of Ermesinde in north Portugal, and consecrated to the Heart of Christ in fulfillment of the vow made by the nun. According to the writings of Sister Mary of the Divine Heart, Jesus had made this promise: "I will make it a place of graces. I will distribute copiously graces to all who live in this house [the Convent], those who live here now, those who will live here after, and even to their relatives." Jesus also promised her: "Know this, My daughter, that by the charity of My Heart I desire to pour out floods of graces through your heart over the hearts of others. This is why people will come to you with confidence; it will not be your personal qualities which will attract them, but Me. No one, even the most hardened sinner, will leave your presence without having received, in one way or another, consolation, relief, or a special grace." The body of Blessed Sister Mary of the Divine Heart, entombed for public veneration in the Church-Shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Ermesinde, was found incorrupt at its first exhumation.

The devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus also involve the Scapular of the Sacred Heart. Prior to the existence of a formal Roman Catholic devotional scapular, Margaret Mary Alacoque made and distributed badges bearing an image of the Heart of Jesus.In 1872 Pope Pius IX granted an indulgence for the badge. Following the claims by Estelle Faguette that the Virgin Mary had appeared to her in 1876 and requested a scapular of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a scapular of the proposed design was approved by the Congregation of Rites in 1900. It bears the representation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on one side and that of the Virgin Mary under the title of Mother of Mercy on the other side.

Eastern Orthodox Christians disapprove of the actual worship of the physical heart of Jesus as being a form of naturalism and Nestorianism; the Feast of the Sacred Heart has however been inserted in certain Calendars of Western Rite Orthodoxy.[47] Pope Pius XII's encyclical Haurietis aquas, in response to these criticisms, said that the Sacred Heart is venerated as belonging to the Divine Person of the Eternal Word and as "a symbolic image of his love and a witness of our redemption."

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Heart

My son has become fascinated with bitcoins, and so I had to get him a tangible one for Xmas. The public key is imprinted visibly on the tamper-evident holographic film, and the private key lies underneath. (Casascius)

 

I too was fascinated by digital cash back in college, and more specifically by the asymmetric mathematical transforms underlying public-key crypto and digital blind signatures.

 

I remembered a technical paper I wrote, but could not find it. A desktop search revealed an essay that I completely forgot, something that I had recovered from my archives of floppy discs (while I still could).

 

It is an article I wrote for the school newspaper in 1994. Ironically, Microsoft Word could not open this ancient Microsoft Word file format, but the free text editors could.

 

What a fun time capsule, below, with some choice naivetés…

 

I am trying to reconstruct what I was thinking. I was arguing that a bulletproof framework for digital cash (and what better testing ground) could be used to secure a digital container for executable code on a rental basis. So the expression of an idea — the specific code, or runtime service — is locked in a secure container. The idea would be to prevent copying instead of punishing after the fact.

 

Micro-currency and micro-code seem like similar exercises in regulating the single use of an issued number.

 

Now that the Bitcoin experiment is underway, do you know of anyone writing about it as an alternative framework for intellectual property (from digital art to code to governance tokens)?

  

IP and Digital Cash

@NORMAL:

Digital Cash and the “Intellectual Property” Oxymoron

By Steve Jurvetson

 

Many of us will soon be working in the information services or technology industries which are currently tangled in a bramble patch of intellectual property law. As the law struggles to find coherency and an internally-consistent logic for intellectual property (IP) protection, digital encryption technologies may provide a better solution — from the perspective of reducing litigation, exploiting the inherent benefits of an information-based business model, and preserving a free economy of ideas.

Bullet-proof digital cash technology, which is now emerging, can provide a protected “cryptographic container” for intellectual expressions, thereby preserving traditional notions of intellectual property that protect specific instantiations of an idea rather than the idea itself. For example, it seems reasonable that Intuit should be able to protect against the widespread duplication of their Quicken software (the expression of an idea), but they should not be able to patent the underlying idea of single-entry bookkeeping. There are strong economic incentives for digital cash to develop and for those techniques to be adapted for IP protection — to create a protected container or expression of an idea. The rapid march of information technology has strained the evolution of IP law, but rather than patching the law, information technology itself may provide a more coherent solution.

 

Information Wants To Be Free

Currently, IP law is enigmatic because it is expanding to a domain for which it was not initially intended. In developing the U.S. Constitution, Thomas Jefferson argued that ideas should freely transverse the globe, and that ideas were fundamentally different from material goods. He concluded that “Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.” The issues surrounding IP come into sharp focus as we shift to being more of an information-based economy.

The use of e-mail and local TV footage helps disseminate information around the globe and can be a force for democracy — as seen in the TV footage from Chechen, the use of modems in Prague during the Velvet Revolution, and the e-mail and TV from Tianammen Square. Even Gorbachev used a video camera to show what was happening after he was kidnapped. What appears to be an inherent force for democracy runs into problems when it becomes the subject of property.

As higher-level programming languages become more like natural languages, it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish the idea from the code. Language precedes thought, as Jean-Louis Gassée is fond of saying, and our language is the framework for the formulation and expression of our ideas. Restricting software will increasingly be indistinguishable from restricting freedom of speech.

An economy of ideas and human attention depends on the continuous and free exchange of ideas. Because of the associative nature of memory processes, no idea is detached from others. This begs the question, is intellectual property an oxymoron?

 

Intellectual Property Law is a Patch

John Perry Barlow, former Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder (with Mitch Kapor) of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argues that “Intellectual property law cannot be patched, retrofitted or expanded to contain digitized expression... Faith in law will not be an effective strategy for high-tech companies. Law adapts by continuous increments and at a pace second only to geology. Technology advances in lunging jerks. Real-world conditions will continue to change at a blinding pace, and the law will lag further behind, more profoundly confused. This mismatch may prove impossible to overcome.”

From its origins in the Industrial Revolution where the invention of tools took on a new importance, patent and copyright law has protected the physical conveyance of an idea, and not the idea itself. The physical expression is like a container for an idea. But with the emerging information superhighway, the “container” is becoming more ethereal, and it is disappearing altogether. Whether it’s e-mail today, or the future goods of the Information Age, the “expressions” of ideas will be voltage conditions darting around the net, very much like thoughts. The fleeting copy of an image in RAM is not very different that the fleeting image on the retina.

The digitization of all forms of information — from books to songs to images to multimedia — detaches information from the physical plane where IP law has always found definition and precedent. Patents cannot be granted for abstract ideas or algorithms, yet courts have recently upheld the patentability of software as long as it is operating a physical machine or causing a physical result. Copyright law is even more of a patch. The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 requires that works be fixed in a durable medium, and where an idea and its expression are inseparable, the merger doctrine dictates that the expression cannot be copyrighted. E-mail is not currently copyrightable because it is not a reduction to tangible form. So of course, there is a proposal to amend these copyright provisions. In recent rulings, Lotus won its case that Borland’s Quattro Pro spreadsheet copied elements of Lotus 123’s look and feel, yet Apple lost a similar case versus Microsoft and HP. As Professor Bagley points out in her new text, “It is difficult to reconcile under the total concept and feel test the results in the Apple and Lotus cases.” Given the inconsistencies and economic significance of these issues, it is no surprise that swarms of lawyers are studying to practice in the IP arena.

Back in the early days of Microsoft, Bill Gates wrote an inflammatory “Open Letter to Hobbyists” in which he alleged that “most of you steal your software ... and should be kicked out of any club meeting you show up at.” He presented the economic argument that piracy prevents proper profit streams and “prevents good software from being written.” Now we have Windows.

But seriously, if we continue to believe that the value of information is based on scarcity, as it is with physical objects, we will continue to patch laws that are contrary to the nature of information, which in many cases increases in value with distribution. Small, fast moving companies (like Netscape and Id) protect their ideas by getting to the marketplace quicker than their larger competitors who base their protection on fear and litigation.

The patent office is woefully understaffed and unable to judge the nuances of software. Comptons was initially granted a patent that covered virtually all multimedia technology. When they tried to collect royalties, Microsoft pushed the Patent Office to overturn the patent. In 1992, Software Advertising Corp received a patent for “displaying and integrating commercial advertisements with computer software.” That’s like patenting the concept of a radio commercial. In 1993, a DEC engineer received a patent on just two lines of machine code commonly used in object-oriented programming. CompuServe announced this month that they plan to collect royalties on the widely used GIF file format for images.

The Patent Office has issued well over 12,000 software patents, and a programmer can unknowingly be in violation of any them. Microsoft had to pay $120MM to STAC in February 1994 for violating their patent on data compression. The penalties can be costly, but so can a patent search. Many of the software patents don’t have the words “computer,” “software,” “program,” or “algorithm” in their abstracts. “Software patents turn every decision you make while writing a program into a legal risk,” says Richard Stallman, founder of the League for Programming Freedom. “They make writing a large program like crossing a minefield. Each step has a small chance of stepping on a patent and blowing you up.” The very notion of seventeen years of patent protection in the fast moving software industry seems absurd. MS-DOS did not exist seventeen years ago.

IP law faces the additional wrinkle of jurisdictional issues. Where has an Internet crime taken place? In the country or state in which the computer server resides? Many nations do not have the same intellectual property laws as the U.S. Even within the U.S., the law can be tough to enforce; for example, a group of music publishers sued CompuServe for the digital distribution of copyrighted music. A complication is that CompuServe has no knowledge of the activity since it occurs in the flood of bits transferring between its subscribers

The tension seen in making digital copies revolves around the issue of property. But unlike the theft of material goods, copying does not deprive the owner of their possessions. With digital piracy, it is less a clear ethical issue of theft, and more an abstract notion that you are undermining the business model of an artist or software developer. The distinction between ethics and laws often revolves around their enforceability. Before copy machines, it was hard to make a book, and so it was obvious and visible if someone was copying your work. In the digital age, copying is lightning fast and difficult to detect. Given ethical ambiguity, convenience, and anonymity, it is no wonder we see a cultural shift with regard to digital ethics.

 

Piracy, Plagiarism and Pilfering

We copy music. We are seldom diligent with our footnotes. We wonder where we’ve seen Strat-man’s PIE and the four slices before. We forward e-mail that may contain text from a copyrighted news publication. The SCBA estimates that 51% of satellite dishes have illegal descramblers. John Perry Barlow estimates that 90% of personal hard drives have some pirated software on them.

Or as last month’s Red Herring editorial points out, “this atmosphere of electronic piracy seems to have in turn spawned a freer attitude than ever toward good old-fashioned plagiarism.” Articles from major publications and WSJ columns appear and circulate widely on the Internet. Computer Pictures magazine replicated a complete article on multimedia databases from New Media magazine, and then publicly apologized.

Music and voice samples are an increasingly common art form, from 2 Live Crew to Negativland to local bands like Voice Farm and Consolidated. Peter Gabriel embraces the shift to repositioned content; “Traditionally, the artist has been the final arbiter of his work. He delivered it and it stood on its own. In the interactive world, artists will also be the suppliers of information and collage material, which people can either accept as is, or manipulate to create their own art. It’s part of the shift from skill-based work to decision-making and editing work.”

But many traditionalists resist the change. Museums are hesitant to embrace digital art because it is impossible to distinguish the original from a copy; according to a curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, “The art world is scared to death of this stuff.” The Digital Audio Tape debate also illustrated the paranoia; the music industry first insisted that these DAT recorders had to purposely introduce static into the digital copies they made, and then they settled for an embedded code that limited the number of successive copies that could be made from the a master source.

For a healthier reaction, look at the phenomenally successful business models of Mosaic/Netscape and Id Software, the twisted creator of Doom. Just as McAfee built a business on shareware, Netscape and Id encourage widespread free distribution of their product. But once you want support from Netscape, or the higher levels of the Doom game, then you have to pay. For industries with strong demand-side economies of scale, such as Netscape web browsers or Safe-TCL intelligent agents, the creators have exploited the economies of information distribution. Software products are especially susceptible to increasing returns with scale, as are networking products and most of the information technology industries.

Yet, the Software Publishers Association reports that 1993 worldwide losses to piracy of business application software totaled $7.45 billion. They also estimated that 89% of software units in Korea were counterfeit. And China has 29 factories, some state-owned, that press 75 million pirated CDs per year, largely for export. GATT will impose the U.S. notions of intellectual property on a world that sees the issue very differently.

Clearly there are strong economic incentives to protect intellectual property, and reasonable arguments can be made for software patents and digital copyright, but the complexities of legal enforcement will be outrun and potentially obviated by the relatively rapid developments of another technology, digital cash and cryptography.

 

Digital Cash and the IP Lock

Digital cash is in some ways an extreme example of digital “property” -- since it cannot be copied, it is possessed by one entity at a time, and it is static and non-perishable. If the techniques for protecting against pilferage and piracy work in the domain of cash, then they can be used to “protect” other properties by being embedded in them. If I wanted to copy-protect an “original” work of digital art, digital cash techniques can be used as the “container” to protect intellectual property in the old style. A bullet-proof digital cash scheme would inevitably be adapted by those who stand to gain from the current system. Such as Bill Gates.

Several companies are developing technologies for electronic commerce. On January 12, several High-Tech Club members attended the Cybermania conference on electronic commerce with the CEOs of Intuit, CyberCash, Enter TV and The Lightspan Partnership. According to Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit, the motivations for digital cash are anonymity and efficient small-transaction Internet commerce. Anonymity preserves our privacy in the age of increasingly intrusive “database marketing” based on credit card purchase patterns and other personal information. Of course, it also has tax-evasion implications. For Internet commerce, cash is more efficient and easier to use than a credit card for small transactions.

“A lot of people will spend nickels on the Internet,” says Dan Lynch of CyberCash. Banks will soon exchange your current cash for cyber-tokens, or a “bag of bits” which you can spend freely on the Internet. A competitor based in the Netherlands called DigiCash has a Web page with numerous articles on electronic money and fully functional demo of their technology. You can get some free cash from them and spend it at some of their allied vendors.

Digital cash is a compelling technology. Wired magazine calls it the “killer application for electronic networks which will change the global economy.” Handling and fraud costs for the paper money system are growing as digital color copiers and ATMs proliferate. Donald Gleason, President of the Smart Card Enterprise unit of Electronic Payment Services argues that “Cash is a nightmare. It costs money handlers in the U.S. alone approximately $60 billion a year to move the stuff... Bills and coinage will increasingly be replaced by some sort of electronic equivalent.” Even a Citibank VP, Sholom Rosen, agrees that “There are going to be winners and losers, but everybody is going to play.”

The digital cash schemes use a blind digital signature and a central repository to protect against piracy and privacy violations. On the privacy issue, the techniques used have been mathematically proven to be protected against privacy violations. The bank cannot trace how the cash is being used or who is using it. Embedded in these schemes are powerful digital cryptography techniques which have recently been spread in the commercial domain (RSA Data Security is a leader in this field and will be speaking to the High Tech Club on January 19).

To protect against piracy requires some extra work. As soon as I have a digital $5 bill on my Mac hard drive, I will want to make a copy, and I can. (Many companies have busted their picks trying to copy protect files from hackers. It will never work.). The difference is that I can only spend the $5 bill once. The copy is worthless. This is possible because every bill has a unique encrypted identifier. In spending the bill, my computer checks with the centralized repository which verifies that my particular $5 bill is still unspent. Once I spend it, it cannot be spent again. As with many electronic transactions today, the safety of the system depends on the integrity of a centralized computer, or what Dan Lynch calls “the big database in the sky.”

One of the most important limitations of the digital cash techniques is that they are tethered to a transaction between at least three parties — a buyer, seller and central repository. So, to use such a scheme to protect intellectual property, would require networked computers and “live” files that have to dial up and check in with the repository to be operational. There are many compelling applications for this, including voter registration, voting tabulation, and the registration of digital artwork originals.

When I asked Dan Lynch about the use of his technology for intellectual property protection, he agreed that the bits that now represent a $5 bill could be used for any number of things, from medical records to photographs. A digital photograph could hide a digital signature in its low-order bits, and it would be imperceptible to the user. But those bits could be used with a registry of proper image owners, and could be used to prove misappropriation or sampling of the image by others.

Technology author Steven Levy has been researching cryptography for Wired magazine, and he responded to my e-mail questions with the reply “You are on the right track in thinking that crypto can preserve IP. I know of several attempts to forward plans to do so.” Digital cash may provide a “crypto-container” to preserve traditional notions of intellectual property.

The transaction tether limits the short-term applicability of these schemes for software copy protection. They won’t work on an isolated computer. This certainly would slow its adoption for mobile computers since the wireless networking infrastructure is so nascent. But with Windows ’95 bundling network connectivity, soon most computers will be network-ready — at least for the Microsoft network. And now that Bill Gates is acquiring Intuit, instead of dollar bills, we will have Bill dollars.

The transaction tether is also a logistical headache with current slow networks, which may hinder its adoption for mass-market applications. For example, if someone forwards a copyrighted e-mail, the recipient may have to have their computer do the repository check before they could see the text of the e-mail. E-mail is slow enough today, but in the near future, these techniques of verifying IP permissions and paying appropriate royalties in digital cash could be background processes on a preemptive multitasking computer (Windows ’95 or Mac OS System 8). The digital cash schemes are consistent with other trends in software distribution and development — specifically software rental and object-oriented “applets” with nested royalty payments. They are also consistent with the document-centric vision of Open Doc and OLE.

The user of the future would start working on their stationary. When it’s clear they are doing some text entry, the word processor would be downloaded and rented for its current usage. Digital pennies would trickle back to the people who wrote or inspired the various portions of the core program. As you use other software applets, such as a spell-checker, it would be downloaded as needed. By renting applets, or potentially finer-grained software objects, the licensing royalties would be automatically tabulated and exchanged, and software piracy would require heroic efforts. Intellectual property would become precisely that — property in a market economy, under lock by its “creator,” and Bill Gates’ 1975 lament over software piracy may now be addressed 20 years later.

 

--------end of paper-----------

 

2013 & 2021 update: On further reflection, I was focused on executable code (where the runtime requires a cloud connect to authenticate, given the third party element of Digicash. (The blockchain fixed this). Verification has been a pain, but perhaps it's seamless in a web-services future. Cloud apps and digital cash depend on it, so why not the code itself.

 

It could verify the official owner of any unique bundle of pixels, in the sense that you can "own" a sufficiently large number, but not the essence of a work of art or derivative works (what we call NFTs today). Frankly, I'm not sure about non-interactive content in general, like pure video playback. "Fixing" software IP alone would be a big enough accomplishment.

It was a typical fall day in Toronto, overcast, but pleasant with colorful wet leaves littering the streets and sidewalks. I was returning from dropping our car off for servicing and walked past one of the more popular coffee shops in our neighborhood, the Rooster. (roostercoffeehouse.com/) On any given day you are likely to see people socializing on the patio which has a great view over the Don Valley toward the downtown skyline. Others are indoors chatting or working on a variety of personal projects. There are lots of creative types in our neighborhood which include writers, academics, artists and musicians. It is not unusual to see people on their laptops writing PhD theses, film scripts, books, etc.

 

Something about this man, sitting on the patio with his jacket and hat, nose buried in his reading material, intrigued me. I turned back and excused my interrupting him but introduced myself and my photo project, hoping he would agree to meet me and participate in the project. He did so without hesitation and asked a couple of reasonable questions about the project. Meet David.

 

Not wanting to disturb him too much I asked him to simply turn to simplify the background a bit and to face my camera directly. I took a few photos with minimal coaching to make sure he was in good eye contact with my lens. Satisfied that I had a decent portrait, I proceeded to answer a couple more questions of his about the project and to find out more about him. He explained that I had caught him in one of his favorite locations in Toronto: on the patio of the Rooster, sipping a quality coffee, reading, and admiring the beautiful view.

 

David, it turned out, lived just a block from me and is a retired high school math teacher. He is 63 and has been retired for about three years. His wife is still working but looking forward to her own retirement and to no longer facing two long daily commutes through Toronto traffic. She’s an art teacher. Our conversation moved into the topic of retirement and I discovered that David remains quite connected with his former profession through a Math Society and with alumni groups. Those, combined with his political activities and his synagogue go a long way to fill his time. He has an alumnus library card to the University of Toronto research library and uses it extensively. He was reading a math journal when I interrupted him. When I pointed out that he seems only half-retired since he’s still studying the math field he smiled and assured me that most of his reading is more for pleasure and not heavy work. It became clear that he also knows his way around the world of art and is a nature lover.

 

He happily accompanies his wife to art galleries in their spare time and she happily gives him the lead on nature walks. It didn’t take him long to fill his retirement with rewarding activities and he said he doesn’t have a lot of room in his schedule for more. He told me that the high school where he taught had a major fire soon after his retirement which he took as a “sign” that his retirement had been timely. When I asked what had been the most rewarding part of teaching he thought for a moment and said “I somehow had a gift for finding interesting guest speakers to come into my class which made things more interesting for the students than straight exercises. On one occasion I had an executive from the public transit come to the class and speak and I managed to turn that into a student project of doing a customer satisfaction survey on the transit service and it involved using math to tabulate their findings. Sharing my own resource discoveries with students was very rewarding.”

 

I found out that David was single for most of his life and only married three years ago at age 60. I commented “I guess you are a very patient man, and you waited until you found what you wanted.” A smile flickered on his face and he nodded. Part way through our conversation David said “It looks like this is going to be more than a two-minute chat. Why don’t you pull up a chair and relax?” What a lovely gesture. I did. When I asked him if he had any advice on life for the other project photographers he said “Connect with Nature, especially if you live in the city.” He pointed across the street at the changing trees, the park, and Toronto’s beautiful skyline. “That’s one reason I like this spot so much.”

 

Finally, twenty minutes later, it was time for me to go so I thanked him and told him how nice it was to meet him. Knowing that we are virtual neighbors, I said “I hope our paths cross again in the near future. Be sure to say hello.” His reply was “Well, Jeff, you know where to find me most weekday mornings: right here at the Rooster.”

 

Thank you David for the delightful chat and for participating in 100 Strangers. You are Stranger #655 in Round 7 of my project and seem to have mastered the art of retirement. We seemed to agree that there is no one way to retire but that each must fashion his own retirement to suit his or her interests and needs.

 

Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by the other photographers in our group at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page.

 

One year our principal got it into his head that it was a good idea to let the students evaluate the teachers. When the 25-question form came out the staff threatened revolt. I managed to get a copy before they were all burned and promptly made enough copies for all my students. As one of my classes was busy filling them out I overheard D. C. whisper to her friend, “I’d like to write a comment, but I don’t dare.” Her friend whispered back, “What?” D. C. then whispered, “I’d like to write, ‘He thinks he’s funny, but he’s not.’”

 

PS When I finished tabulating the responses the results proved that my teaching style had received mixed reviews. I had always told my colleagues that excellence in teaching was all well and good, but I preferred to raise mediocrity to an art form.

 

Photo taken at the Boston Marriott Quincy, Quincy, MA

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere and lowest in North America at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the endangered Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.

 

A series of Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most recently the Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains. A group of European Americans, trapped in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the gold fields of California, gave the valley its name, even though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, which was transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams. The valley later became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies. Tourism expanded in the 1920s when resorts were built around Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek. Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was substantially expanded and became a national park in 1994.

 

The natural environment of the area has been shaped largely by its geology. The valley is actually a graben with the oldest rocks being extensively metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old. Ancient, warm, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean. Additional sedimentation occurred until a subduction zone formed off the coast. The subduction uplifted the region out of the sea and created a line of volcanoes. Later the crust started to pull apart, creating the current Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of glacial periods, with lakes, such as Lake Manly.

 

Death Valley is the fifth-largest American national park and the largest in the contiguous United States. It is also larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, and nearly as large as Puerto Rico. In 2013, Death Valley National Park was designated as a dark sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association

 

There are two major valleys in the park, Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Both of these valleys were formed within the last few million years and both are bounded by north–south-trending mountain ranges. These and adjacent valleys follow the general trend of Basin and Range topography with one modification: there are parallel strike-slip faults that perpendicularly bound the central extent of Death Valley. The result of this shearing action is additional extension in the central part of Death Valley which causes a slight widening and more subsidence there.

 

Uplift of surrounding mountain ranges and subsidence of the valley floor are both occurring. The uplift on the Black Mountains is so fast that the alluvial fans (fan-shaped deposits at the mouth of canyons) there are small and steep compared to the huge alluvial fans coming off the Panamint Range. Fast uplift of a mountain range in an arid environment often does not allow its canyons enough time to cut a classic V-shape all the way down to the stream bed. Instead, a V-shape ends at a slot canyon halfway down, forming a 'wine glass canyon.' Sediment is deposited on a small and steep alluvial fan.

 

At 282 feet (86 m) below sea level at its lowest point, Badwater Basin on Death Valley's floor is the second-lowest depression in the Western Hemisphere (behind Laguna del Carbón in Argentina), while Mount Whitney, only 85 miles (137 km) to the west, rises to 14,505 feet (4,421 m) and is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. This topographic relief is the greatest elevation gradient in the contiguous United States and is the terminus point of the Great Basin's southwestern drainage.[8] Although the extreme lack of water in the Great Basin makes this distinction of little current practical use, it does mean that in wetter times the lake that once filled Death Valley (Lake Manly) was the last stop for water flowing in the region, meaning the water there was saturated in dissolved materials. Thus, the salt pans in Death Valley are among the largest in the world and are rich in minerals, such as borax and various salts and hydrates. The largest salt pan in the park extends 40 miles (64 km) from the Ashford Mill Site to the Salt Creek Hills, covering some 200 square miles (520 km2) of the valley floor. The best known playa in the park is the Racetrack, known for its moving rocks.

 

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Death Valley National Park has a hot desert climate (BWh). The plant hardiness zone at Badwater Basin is 9b with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of 28.0 °F (–2.2 °C).

 

Death Valley is the hottest and driest place in North America due to its lack of surface water and low relief. It is so frequently the hottest spot in the United States that many tabulations of the highest daily temperatures in the country omit Death Valley as a matter of course.

 

On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Greenland Ranch (now Furnace Creek) in Death Valley. This temperature stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded at the surface of the Earth. (A report of a temperature of 58 °C (136.4 °F) recorded in Libya in 1922 was later determined to be inaccurate.)[18] Daily summer temperatures of 120 °F (49 °C) or greater are common, as well as below freezing nightly temperatures in the winter. July is the hottest month, with an average high of 117 °F (47 °C) and an average low of 91 °F (33 °C). December is the coldest month, with an average high of 66 °F (19 °C) and an average low of 41 °F (5 °C). The record low is 15 °F (−9.4 °C). There are an average of 197.3 days annually with highs of 90 °F (32.2 °C) or higher and 146.9 days annually with highs of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or higher. Freezing temperatures of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower occur on an average of 8.6 days annually.

 

Several of the larger Death Valley springs derive their water from a regional aquifer, which extends as far east as southern Nevada and Utah. Much of the water in this aquifer has been there for many thousands of years, since the Pleistocene ice ages, when the climate was cooler and wetter. Today's drier climate does not provide enough precipitation to recharge the aquifer at the rate at which water is being withdrawn.

 

The highest range within the park is the Panamint Range, with Telescope Peak being its highest point at 11,049 feet (3,368 m). The Death Valley region is a transitional zone in the northernmost part of the Mojave Desert and consists of five mountain ranges removed from the Pacific Ocean. Three of these are significant barriers: the Sierra Nevada, the Argus Range, and the Panamint Range. Air masses tend to lose moisture as they are forced up over mountain ranges, in what climatologists call a rainshadow effect.

 

The exaggerated rain shadow effect for the Death Valley area makes it North America's driest spot, receiving about 1.5 inches (38 mm) of rainfall annually at Badwater, and some years fail to register any measurable rainfall.[20] Annual average precipitation varies from 1.92 inches (49 mm) overall below sea level to over 15 inches (380 mm) in the higher mountains that surround the valley. When rain does arrive it often does so in intense storms that cause flash floods which remodel the landscape and sometimes create very shallow ephemeral lakes.

 

The hot, dry climate makes it difficult for soil to form. Mass wasting, the down-slope movement of loose rock, is therefore the dominant erosive force in mountainous areas, resulting in "skeletonized" ranges (mountains with very little soil on them). Sand dunes in the park, while famous, are not nearly as widespread as their fame or the dryness of the area may suggest. The Mesquite Flat dune field is the most easily accessible from the paved road just east of Stovepipe Wells in the north-central part of the valley and is primarily made of quartz sand. Another dune field is just 10 miles (16 km) to the north but is instead mostly composed of travertine sand. The highest dunes in the park, and some of the highest in North America, are located in the Eureka Valley about 50 miles (80 km) to the north of Stovepipe Wells, while the Panamint Valley dunes and the Saline Valley dunes are located west and northwest of the town, respectively. The Ibex dune field is near the seldom-visited Ibex Hill in the southernmost part of the park, just south of the Saratoga Springs marshland. All the latter four dune fields are accessible only via unpaved roads. Prevailing winds in the winter come from the north, and prevailing winds in the summer come from the south. Thus, the overall position of the dune fields remains more or less fixed.

 

There are rare exceptions to the dry nature of the area. In 2005, an unusually wet winter created a 'lake' in the Badwater Basin and led to the greatest wildflower season in the park's history. In October 2015, a "1000 year flood event" with over three inches of rain caused major damage in Death Valley National Park. A similar widespread storm in August 2022 damaged pavement and deposited debris on nearly every road, trapping 1,000 residents and visitors overnight.

 

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

 

The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.

 

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.

 

Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.

 

The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.

 

Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.

 

The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.

 

The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.

 

After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.

 

Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.

  

The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.

During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.

 

During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.

 

In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.

 

From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.

 

One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.

 

After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.

 

In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.

 

The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

 

Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.

 

Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.

 

In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.

 

The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.

 

In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.

 

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.

 

At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.

 

Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.

 

In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

 

Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.

 

Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.

 

In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.

 

Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.

 

To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.

 

Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.

 

In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.

 

Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.

 

In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.

 

Dante's View

 

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.

 

A series of Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most recently the Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains. A group of European Americans, trapped in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the gold fields of California, gave the valley its name, even though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, which was transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams. The valley later became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies. Tourism expanded in the 1920s when resorts were built around Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek. Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was substantially expanded and became a national park in 1994.

 

The natural environment of the area has been shaped largely by its geology. The valley is actually a graben with the oldest rocks being extensively metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old. Ancient, warm, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean. Additional sedimentation occurred until a subduction zone formed off the coast. The subduction uplifted the region out of the sea and created a line of volcanoes. Later the crust started to pull apart, creating the current Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of glacial periods, with lakes, such as Lake Manly.

 

In 2013, Death Valley National Park was designated as a dark sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association.

 

Geographic setting

 

There are two major valleys in the park, Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Both of these valleys were formed within the last few million years and both are bounded by north-south-trending mountain ranges.[ These and adjacent valleys follow the general trend of Basin and Range topography with one modification: there are parallel strike-slip faults that perpendicularly bound the central extent of Death Valley. The result of this shearing action is additional extension in the central part of Death Valley which causes a slight widening and more subsidence there.

 

Uplift of surrounding mountain ranges and subsidence of the valley floor are both occurring. The uplift on the Black Mountains is so fast that the alluvial fans (fan-shaped deposits at the mouth of canyons) there are small and steep compared to the huge alluvial fans coming off the Panamint Range. Fast uplift of a mountain range in an arid environment often does not allow its canyons enough time to cut a classic V-shape all the way down to the stream bed. Instead, a V-shape ends at a slot canyon halfway down, forming a 'wine glass canyon. Sediment is deposited on a small and steep alluvial fan.

 

At 282 feet (86 m) below sea level at its lowest point,[Badwater Basin on Death Valley's floor is the second-lowest depression in the Western Hemisphere (behind Laguna del Carbón in Argentina), while Mount Whitney, only 85 miles (137 km) to the west, rises to 14,505 feet (4,421 m) and is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. This topographic relief is the greatest elevation gradient in the contiguous United States and is the terminus point of the Great Basin's southwestern drainage. Although the extreme lack of water in the Great Basin makes this distinction of little current practical use, it does mean that in wetter times the lake that once filled Death Valley (Lake Manly) was the last stop for water flowing in the region, meaning the water there was saturated in dissolved materials. Thus, the salt pans in Death Valley are among the largest in the world and are rich in minerals, such as borax and various salts and hydrates. The largest salt pan in the park extends 40 miles (64 km) from the Ashford Mill Site to the Salt Creek Hills, covering some 200 square miles (520 km2) of the valley floor. The best known playa in the park is the Racetrack, known for its moving rocks.

 

Climate

 

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Death Valley National Park has a hot desert climate (BWh). The plant hardiness zone at Badwater Basin is 9b with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of 27.3 °F (-2.6 °C).

 

Death Valley is the hottest and driest place in North America due to its lack of surface water and low relief. It is so frequently the hottest spot in the United States that many tabulations of the highest daily temperatures in the country omit Death Valley as a matter of course.

 

On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Greenland Ranch (now Furnace Creek) in Death Valley. This temperature stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded at the surface of the Earth. (A report of a temperature of 58 °C (136.4 °F) recorded in Libya in 1922 was later determined to be inaccurate.) Daily summer temperatures of 120 °F (49 °C) or greater are common, as well as below freezing nightly temperatures in the winter. July is the hottest month, with an average high of 117 °F (47 °C) and an average low of 91 °F (33 °C). December is the coldest month, with an average high of 66 °F (19 °C) and an average low of 41 °F (5 °C). The record low is 15 °F (−9.4 °C). There are an average of 197.3 days annually with highs of 90 °F (32.2 °C) or higher and 146.9 days annually with highs of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or higher. Freezing temperatures of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower occur on an average of 8.6 days annually.

 

Several of the larger Death Valley springs derive their water from a regional aquifer, which extends as far east as southern Nevada and Utah. Much of the water in this aquifer has been there for many thousands of years, since the Pleistocene ice ages, when the climate was cooler and wetter. Today's drier climate does not provide enough precipitation to recharge the aquifer at the rate at which water is being withdrawn.

 

The highest range within the park is the Panamint Range, with Telescope Peak being its highest point at 11,049 feet (3,368 m). The Death Valley region is a transitional zone in the northernmost part of the Mojave Desert and consists of five mountain ranges removed from the Pacific Ocean. Three of these are significant barriers: the Sierra Nevada, the Argus Range, and the Panamint Range. Air masses tend to lose moisture as they are forced up over mountain ranges, in what climatologists call a rainshadow effect.

 

The exaggerated rain shadow effect for the Death Valley area makes it North America's driest spot, receiving about 1.5 inches (38 mm) of rainfall annually at Badwater, and some years fail to register any measurable rainfall. Annual average precipitation varies from 1.92 inches (49 mm) overall below sea level to over 15 inches (380 mm) in the higher mountains that surround the valley. When rain does arrive it often does so in intense storms that cause flash floods which remodel the landscape and sometimes create very shallow ephemeral lakes.

 

The hot, dry climate makes it difficult for soil to form. Mass wasting, the down-slope movement of loose rock, is therefore the dominant erosive force in mountainous areas, resulting in "skeletonized" ranges (mountains with very little soil on them). Sand dunes in the park, while famous, are not nearly as widespread as their fame or the dryness of the area may suggest. The Mesquite Flat dune field is the most easily accessible from the paved road just east of Stovepipe Wells in the north-central part of the valley and is primarily made of quartz sand. Another dune field is just 10 miles (16 km) to the north but is instead mostly composed of travertine sand. The highest dunes in the park, and some of the highest in North America, are located in the Eureka Valley about 50 miles (80 km) to the north of Stovepipe Wells, while the Panamint Valley dunes and the Saline Valley dunes are located west and northwest of the town, respectively. The Ibex dune field is near the seldom-visited Ibex Hill in the southernmost part of the park, just south of the Saratoga Springs marshland. All the latter four dune fields are accessible only via unpaved roads. Prevailing winds in the winter come from the north, and prevailing winds in the summer come from the south. Thus, the overall position of the dune fields remains more or less fixed.

 

There are rare exceptions to the dry nature of the area. In 2005, an unusually wet winter created a 'lake' in the Badwater Basin and led to the greatest wildflower season in the park's history. In October 2015, a "1000 year flood event" with over three inches of rain caused major damage in Death Valley National Park.

 

(Wikpedia)

 

Dante's View is a viewpoint terrace at 1,669 m (5,476 ft) height, on the north side of Coffin Peak, along the crest of the Black Mountains, overlooking Death Valley. Dante's View is about 25 km (16 mi) south of Furnace Creek in Death Valley National Park.

 

Viewpoint

 

From the Dante's View parking lot, visitors can take several paths, one of which leads to the very brink of the edge, offering a dramatic panoramic view. Another path leads north 320 m (350 yd) to a rest area with picnic tables. The best time to visit Dante's View is in the cooler morning hours, when the sun is in the east. Dante's View has a perfect view for night time star viewing with telescopes.

 

General

 

Dante's View provides a panoramic view of the southern Death Valley basin. To the south, the Owlshead Mountains, 30 km (19 mi) away can be seen, and to the north, the Funeral Mountains 50 km (31 mi) distant, are visible beyond Furnace Creek. To the West, across Badwater Basin, the Panamint Range rises dramatically to Telescope Peak. To the east is found the Greenwater Range. On very clear days, the highest and lowest points in the contiguous 48 states of the United States: Mount Whitney 4,421 m (14,505 ft) high and Badwater −86 m (−282 ft) can be seen.

 

A part of the Devil's Golf Course is to the west-northwest, where it appears like a great sparkling ocean - instead it is solid halite salt. The crust of salt is 1 to 2 meters (1.1 to 2.2 yd) thick and changes form after rain in the winter season dissolves the salt, to be recrystallized as the water evaporates.

to the west-northwest, directly under Dante's View, is the Badwater Basin.

west across the Badwater Basin, lies the Panamint Range, with Trail Canyon, Death Valley Canyon and Hanaupah Canyon visible. At the crest of the Panamints, Telescope Peak 3,367 m (11,047 ft) is 20 km (12 mi) distant.

to the south, the Owlshead Mountains.

east is seen the Great Basin ranges of Nevada.

 

Etymology

 

Dante's View is named from Dante Alighieri, who wrote the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy), in which there are described the nine circles of Hell, the seven terraces of Purgatory and the nine spheres of Paradise.

 

In April 1926, some businessmen of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, informed of the touristic attractiveness of Death Valley, were trying to pick the best view of Death Valley. They had nearly chosen Chloride Cliff in the Funeral Mountains when the Deputy Sheriff of Greenwater, Charlie Brown, carried them from this peak a little distance to the Black Mountains. The group was immediately persuaded and promptly called this point Dante's View.

 

Geological

 

Dante's View is part of the Black Mountains, a part of Amargosa Range, that was geological Mesozoic volcanoes. These mountains were created when the surface of the earth was being stretched, forming a horst or a pulling force, forming grabens. The crust ruptured because of this force, and as a result, lava erupted and ended up deposited on top of the preceding sedimentary rock.

 

In popular culture

 

Dante's View was used as a filming location for the 1977 film Star Wars as the characters overlook the fictional Tatooine spaceport of Mos Eisley (which was added into the scene as a matte painting). That view point is Dante's View.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Der Death-Valley-Nationalpark ((dɛθ ˈvæli) (Tal des Todes) liegt in der Mojave-Wüste und ist der trockenste Nationalpark in den USA. Er liegt südöstlich der Sierra Nevada, zum größten Teil auf dem Gebiet Kaliforniens und zu einem kleineren Teil in Nevada. Die Region ist ein Hitzepol.

 

Der tiefste Punkt des Tales liegt 85,95 Meter unter dem Meeresspiegel. Es gibt zwei Haupttäler innerhalb des Parks, das Death Valley und das Panamint Valley. Beide Täler sind wenige Millionen Jahre alt. Das Death Valley ist von mehreren Gebirgen umschlossen, die höchste Gebirgskette bildet die Panamint Range mit dem 3366 m hohen Telescope Peak. 1933 wurde das Death Valley zum National Monument ernannt. 1994 wurde es, stark erweitert, zum Nationalpark aufgewertet. Eine kleine Enklave, Devils Hole weiter östlich in Nevada in der Nähe des Ash Meadows National Wildlife Preserve gelegen, gehört ebenfalls zum Park. Das ganze Schutzgebiet gehört zum 1984 begründeten Mojave and Colorado Deserts UNESCO-Biosphärenreservat.

 

Am 20. Februar 2011 wurde der Nationalpark als Lichtschutzgebiet von der International Dark Sky Association auch als International Dark Sky Park (IDSP, in Gold) anerkannt, und nennt sich seither auch Death Valley International Dark Sky Park. Es ist das weitaus größte solche Schutzgebiet der USA und das zweitgrößte weltweit (nach dem Wood Buffalo Dark Sky Reserve in Kanada).

 

Namensherkunft

 

Das Tal erhielt seinen Namen, nachdem 1849 zwei Gruppen von Reisenden mit insgesamt etwa 100 Wagen eine Abkürzung des Old Spanish Trail suchten und dabei in das Tal gerieten. Nachdem sie wochenlang keinen Ausweg aus dem Tal gefunden hatten und bereits gezwungen waren, mehrere ihrer Ochsen zu verspeisen (wobei sie das Holz ihrer Wagen als Brennholz verwendeten), ließen sie ihre restlichen Wagen zurück und verließen das Tal über den Wingate Pass. Dabei drehte sich eine der Frauen aus der Gruppe um und rief dem Tal ein „Goodbye, Death Valley“ hinterher.

 

Trotz einer weitverbreiteten Legende soll niemand aus der Gruppe bei der Taldurchquerung umgekommen sein, bis auf einen Greis namens Culverwell, der schon beim Betreten des Tales sterbensmatt gewesen war. Als Teilnehmer der Reisegruppe beschrieb William Lewis Manly in seinem autobiographischen Werk Death Valley in ’49 die Begebenheiten.

 

Geologie

 

Es gab in der Vergangenheit im Death Valley mindestens vier Perioden mit aktivem Vulkanismus, drei oder vier Perioden, in denen Sedimente abgelagert wurden, und einige plattentektonische Verschiebungen. Außerdem war die Gegend mindestens zweimal vergletschert.

 

Bodenschätze

 

Das Tal ist reich an Metallen, beispielsweise Gold und Silber, sowie an Mineralien wie Talkum und Borax. Viele Jahre lang arbeitete hier eine Minengesellschaft, die das Borax für die Seifenproduktion förderte. Das fertige Produkt wurde in großen Wagen, die jeweils mit 18 Mulis und zwei Pferden bespannt waren, aus dem Tal heraustransportiert. Daher stammt der Markenname 20-Mule-Team.

 

Klima

 

Obwohl das Tal des Todes nur wenige hundert Kilometer vom Pazifischen Ozean entfernt liegt, ist es eine der trockensten Gegenden der Erde. Dies liegt daran, dass sich die feuchten Winde auf ihrem Weg vom Pazifik an fünf Bergrücken abregnen, bevor sie über das Gebiet des Parks ziehen können. Das Death Valley ist außerdem eine der heißesten Gegenden Amerikas.

 

Am 10. Juli 1913 wurde bei Greenland Ranch (heute bekannt als Furnace Creek Ranch) vom National Weather Service eine Temperatur von 56,7 °C (134 °F) gemessen, welche die bisher höchste auf der Erde gemessene Temperatur darstellt. Jedoch führen einige Meteorologen dieses Ergebnis, gestützt durch neuere Untersuchungen, auf einen Beobachtungsfehler zurück. Während das Messergebnis von 1913 weiterhin offiziell als Hitze-Weltrekord anerkannt wird, ist die am 10. Juli 2021 von einem automatisierten Messsystem des National Weather Service in Furnace Creek gemessene Temperatur von 54,4 °C (130 °F) die bisher höchste unbestrittene auf der Erde gemessene Lufttemperatur. Einen Tag später meldete eine andere Messstation in Death Valley die bisher höchste Temperatur bei Nacht in der Geschichte Nordamerikas mit 42 °C (107,7 °F).

 

Am 12. Juli 2012 wurde im Death Valley mit 41,7 °C (107 °F) die damals höchste Nachttemperatur der Welt gemessen; dieser Wert wurde am 17. Juni 2017 in al-Chasab in Oman auf der Arabischen Halbinsel mit 44,2 °C (111,6 °F) überboten.

 

Besiedlung

 

Zu den wenigen ständigen Bewohnern des Death Valley gehört seit alters die kleine Kolonie der Timbisha Shoshone in der Nähe der Hotel-Oase von Furnace Creek. Die Timbishas sind die südlichste geschlossene Stammesgruppe der Western-Shoshone-Indianer.

 

Dante’s View

 

Oberhalb des Death Valley liegt der Aussichtspunkt Dante’s View in einer Höhe von 1669 m über dem Meeresspiegel. Er gehört wie Artists Palette zu den Black Mountains. Von dort aus kann man den zentralen Teil des Death Valley betrachten und hat einen Blick auf das Badwater Basin. Außerdem sieht man den Telescope Peak mit seinem 3366 Meter hohen Gipfel. Das Tal erstreckt sich von links (Süden) nach rechts (Norden); in seiner Mitte erkennt man einen ausgetrockneten Salzsee.

 

(Wikipedia)

©2009 Coertie! @ rockandrollgraphics.com

"Bettie in blue"

  

According to PLAYBOY magazine, Bettie Page is "the Queen of Pin-ups. the model of the century, yet she remains one of its best kept secrets."

 

Mention her name to most, you get blank stares. Mention her name to some, you get a knowing look that rocks the room! As more and more people are learning, Bettie Page is a timeless legend, and also a conundrum, even to herself.

 

For those who understand who Bettie Page was, no explanation is necessary; for those who don't, maybe no explanation is possible. Why? Because Bettie Page was and remains an underground phenomenon, a puzzling "bad girl next door" cult figure - sort of our collective guilty pleasure.

 

Since she was PLAYBOY'S Miss January of 1955, one might think her time has come and gone. Not so. Bettiemania is huge and growing. Fashion designers copy her. More and more supermodels are inspired by her style and heart-breaking great looks. How many hundred Bettie Page Web pages are there, out there? Since August 9, 2000 this site alone has tabulated 626 million hits. Fans can't get enough of her. Fans want her. And fans find her.

 

Naughty and nice, pinup extraordinaire Bettie Page was hot, is hot, and likely will remain so in perpetuity. That's who she is, too.

 

If they made a movie of her enigmatic life - and someone just has - few would believe it. Bettie Page grew up, poor, in Nashville, Tennessee. Her mother didn't want her. Her father molested her. She was an exceptional student. She was raised in the Church.

 

The girl with the trademarked black bangs, fabulous killer curves, and sweet smile, grew up loving movies, and dreamed of a film career. She should have been the next Marilyn Monroe. But her story is an impossible incursion of near misses, bad luck and lost opportunities. Full of contradictions, some have called her "The Dark Angel," for good reason, and for more reasons than one. Sometimes Bettie Page's puzzling persona both attracts us and repels us at the same time.

 

In New York she drifted innocently into modeling, posing for camera clubs. That beautiful smile "suggested forbidden fruit as well as apple pie," said PLAYBOY. The charm, the appeal, the danger, the allure of those sensational photos is beyond what words can convey.

 

Without imagining the consequences on any conscious level, Bettie found that her provocative cheesecake photographs during the period of 1950 through 1957 violated all manner of sexual taboos and finally invoked a United States Senate Committee investigation.

 

Bettie Page never gave interviews, not even when her silent photos were ubiquitous. And then this pin-ultimate pin-up was gone -- vanished from view. Like Garbo, like James Dean, like Jean Harlow. It was a mystery. Had she died? Was she hiding? No one knew. Fantastic rumors abounded. Nearly four decades passed.

 

Eleven years ago the truth was revealed. While battling some fierce inner demons, the legendary Bettie Page had quietly, secretly fled New York and given her life to Jesus Christ. And incredible as it may seem, as yet another riddle in her complicated life, all this time Bettie Page was completely oblivious of her own profound impact upon America's sexuality and pop culture, not to mention the thriving industry that had arisen around her celebrated image.

 

Two examples: Dave Stevens created a comic book hero called "The Rocketeer," with a love interest clearly inspired by Bettie Page; Disney adapted it as a vehicle for Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Connelly. And the noted artist Olivia, who has been painting Bettie for a quarter century, was the first to successfully integrate her fetish imagery for a high fashion licensee, Fiorucci Jeans.

 

Through the years, to protect the privacy she craved, when people would recognize her and ask if she was Bettie Page, she'd answer, "Who's that?"

 

Who, indeed. Complex, contradictory, extremely intelligent, exquisitely pretty, naughty or nice, not even Bettie Page herself can tell us who she is, exactly how she got that way, and what it all means. She's one pin-up no one can pin down, although the mystery fails to deter millions of us -- and millions to come -- from trying.

 

Hugh Hefner says Bettie's appearance in PLAYBOY was a milestone, and that "she became, in time, an American icon, her winning smile and effervescent personality apparent in every pose. A kinky connection was added by Irving Klaw's spanking, fetish and bondage photos, which became part of the Bettie Page mystique; they were playful parodies that are now perceived as the early inspiration for Madonna's excursions into the realm of sexual perversion."

 

Despite having worked with but a single competent photographer, despite having thousands of her photographs destroyed on purpose following the congressional hearings, and despite so many extant photos surviving only as inferior copies of the originals, the transcendent beauty and playful yet dangerous personality of Bettie Page trumps all else and continues to inspire documentary films, designers' fashions, artists' fetishes, and fans' fantasies.

 

Not it isn't what it sounds like.

 

We all like to see that our photos are looked at and appreciated. That's the reason some pay good money to have the 'Pro' feature. Running tabulation of 'views', showing how they accumulate, and which part of one's Flickr presence is viewed.

 

And it can be discouraging. With stats, one can see the small number of visits to one's photostream that have been made. (A tiny tiny fraction of total views.) And how many times albums are accessed (an even abysmally smaller number)

 

Views themselves are bogus, as large numbers of them are accumulated without ANY photo actually being looked at. The whole views / stats thing is irrelevant, even if vanity-stroking.

 

And we have an appreciation of numbers, particularly round ones. So I offer this...my 'achieving' five million total views. Means less than nothing...almost as little as getting a photo in Explore. It is all we have, which is pretty much nothing. But I'll keep my 'Pro' account, because I expect in 2017 the new owners of Yahoo's online businesses will begin making everyone pay something to be on Flickr. Just my guess.

 

I'll be going some days now without uploading anything new. Groups are very important to my Flickr life, and I have many photos which haven't been exposed in groups yet. I'm going to concentrate on getting that sort of caught up, and having my images actually LOOKED AT in the groups.

A pickup driver was seriously injured when he was struck by an elderly woman recklessly crossing the street. This is yet another reason why pickup trucks are unsafe and should be removed from the streets. The pedestrian (Mrs. Palmer) was not charged with any crime. She got off scot free, of course, and more than a little cocky besides because pedestrians think they are King of the Road.

 

The truth of course is quite different.

 

"Vehicles struck and killed 7,388 pedestrians in 2021, compared to 4,302 in 2010, according to federal crash data tabulated by The Hill. Pedestrian deaths rose by another 5 percent in the first half of 2022. "

 

thehill.com/policy/transportation/3976315-pedestrian-deat...

  

Hybrid Stable Diffusion:Photoshop technique

Interrupt the wedding series with one of my street shot at Siam Reap. Although children of Cambodia are not well off, but usually I found them to be resilient...

 

I've recently volunteer to judge for an online competition for a Non-profit Organisation that focus on the less privileged children, a cause that's close to my heart..... if some of my friends may recall, some of the images that I've taken at Siam Reap had deeply affected me... and wished that there's more that I could have done....

  

Although I've finished judging the competition, the results are not out yet cos I think they are still tabulating the score. Here's the link below that gave a short introduction of the judges, you can find my profile under the photography competition :)

 

wiki.vibha.org/Minnesota:Kalakaar_Judges_2010

Back in the autumn of 2008 a small group of folk who had 'met' by commenting on each others scanned archive photographs got together for the first time at Water Orton and Elford.

 

Many more of these events have taken place over the years, and it was fitting that the 5th anniversary gathering was blessed with good weather and our largest headcount

 

The 'bakers dozen' are seen here on the bridge at Winwick Junction near Warrington.

 

Other locations visited that day included Bank Quay, Arpley, Latchford, Fiddlers Ferry and Olive Mount Junction.

 

Special mentions to Jim who researched possible locations and tabulated the LBT - Fiddlers Ferry workings, Adrian who printed out the details of the trains that were running and David for supplying copious quantities of food and drink.

 

Long distance travel nominations were received from Hull, Workington via Devon and Kettering but these were all easily beaten by 'Headcode'. Robert came from Spain via Southend airport!!!

 

Great fun was had by all - left to right Richie B, cabsaab900, delticfan, tunnys pics, Headcode, Marra Man, robmcrorie, Nightshiftworker, Sydpix, fireman photter, David Hayes 77, Jim the Joker and me.

For an orbiting satellite to be used in navigation, tables must be prepared after firing with the help of special tracking telescopes. Tabulating the orbit of the navigational satellite, “a few-score observations, made from various points on the ground over a period of two or three weeks, should be enough. It is quite possible that the navigational satellite could also be used as a radar target by which long-distance self-navigating missiles would steer their course. When such a device has been built for missiles, it might also be used by airliners.” [Summarizing and Quoting from the text]

SmallSat Symposium agenda... and I am followed by the CEO of NewSpace Global, Mr. Dick Rocket. Seriously. =)

 

And a new report just came out tabulating that 2015 was a a banner year for venture investment in space companies, exceeding all prior years combined (FORTUNE)

 

The Jacquard head used replaceable punched cards to control a sequence of operations. It is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware. The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming and data entry. Charles Babbage knew of Jacquard looms and planned to use cards to store programs in his Analytical engine. In the late 19th century, Herman Hollerith took the idea of using punched cards to store information a step further when he created a punched card tabulating machine which he used to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census. A large, punched-card-based data processing industry developed in the first half of the twentieth century, dominated by the International Business Machine corporation (IBM), with its line of unit record equipment. The cards were used for data, however, with programming done by plugboards.

 

Some early computers, such as the 1944 IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I) received program instructions from a paper tape punched with holes, similar to Jacquard's string of cards. Later computers executed programs from higher-speed memory, though cards were commonly used to load the programs into memory. Punched cards remained in use in computing up until the mid 1980s. In Wikipedia

 

This specimen is in the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry

Power can significantly change a person's personality. Maybe even transform it. To fight hubris syndrome, we must begin by fighting our tendency to admire power.Power has always inspired writers. Hubris syndrome "- when power drives an individual mad - would also have transfigured a large number of historical personalities.

Hubris (/ˈhjuːbrɪs/, also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις) describes a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence.[1] In its ancient Greek context, it typically describes behavior that defies the norms of behavior or challenges the gods, and which in turn brings about the downfall, or nemesis, of the perpetrator of hubris.

The adjectival form of the noun hubris is "hubristic". Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer collateral consequences from the wrongful act. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities. Contrary to common expectations,[by whom?] hubris is not necessarily associated with high self-esteem but with highly fluctuating or variable self-esteem, and a gap between inflated self perception and a more modest reality. In ancient Greek, hubris referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser. The term had a strong sexual connotation, and the shame reflected upon the perpetrator as well. Violations of the law against hubris included what might today be termed assault and battery; sexual crimes; or the theft of public or sacred property. Two well-known cases are found in the speeches of Demosthenes, a prominent statesman and orator in ancient Greece. These two examples occurred when first Midias punched Demosthenes in the face in the theatre (Against Midias), and second when (in Against Conon) a defendant allegedly assaulted a man and crowed over the victim. Yet another example of hubris appears in Aeschines' Against Timarchus, where the defendant, Timarchus, is accused of breaking the law of hubris by submitting himself to prostitution and anal intercourse. Aeschines brought this suit against Timarchus to bar him from the rights of political office and his case succeeded. In ancient Athens, hubris was defined as the use of violence to shame the victim (this sense of hubris could also characterize rape. Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for that committer's own gratification: to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater. Crucial to this definition are the ancient Greek concepts of honour (τιμή, timē) and shame (αἰδώς, aidōs). The concept of honour included not only the exaltation of the one receiving honour, but also the shaming of the one overcome by the act of hubris. This concept of honour is akin to a zero-sum game. Rush Rehm simplifies this definition of hubris to the contemporary concept of "insolence, contempt, and excessive violence".In Greek mythology, when a figure's hubris offends the pagan gods of ancient Greece, it is usually punished; examples of such hubristic, sinful humans include Icarus, Phaethon, Arachne, Salmoneus, Niobe, Cassiopeia, and Tereus. The concept of hubris is not only derived from Greek philosophy - as it is found in Plato and Aristotle - but also from the theatre, where it allows us to tell the story of great epics, where success goes up to the head of the hero, who claims to rise to the rank of gods; it is then ruthlessly put in its place by Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance. The Greek hybris refers to the excesses and their disastrous consequences.

 

In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride combined with arrogance.[10] Hubris is often associated with a lack of humility. Sometimes a person's hubris is also associated with ignorance. The accusation of hubris often implies that suffering or punishment will follow, similar to the occasional pairing of hubris and nemesis in Greek mythology. The proverb "pride goeth (goes) before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (from the biblical Book of Proverbs, 16:18) is thought to sum up the modern use of hubris. Hubris is also referred to as "pride that blinds" because it often causes a committer of hubris to act in foolish ways that belie common sense.[11] In other words, the modern definition may be thought of as, "that pride that goes just before the fall."

Examples of hubris are often found in literature, most famously in John Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Lucifer attempts to compel the other angels to worship him, is cast into hell by God and the innocent angels, and proclaims: "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Victor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manifests hubris in his attempt to become a great scientist by creating life through technological means, but comes to regret his project. Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus portrays the eponymous character as a scholar whose arrogance and pride compel him to sign a deal with the Devil, and retain his haughtiness until his death and damnation, despite the fact that he could easily have repented had he chosen to do so.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris

 

Charisma, charm, the ability to inspire, persuasiveness, breadth of vision, willingness to take risks, grandiose aspirations and bold self-confidence—these qualities are often associated with successful leadership. Yet there is another side to this profile, for these very same qualities can be marked by impetuosity, a refusal to listen to or take advice and a particular form of incompetence when impulsivity, recklessness and frequent inattention to detail predominate. This can result in disastrous leadership and cause damage on a large scale. The attendant loss of capacity to make rational decisions is perceived by the general public to be more than ‘just making a mistake’. While they may use discarded medical or colloquial terms, such as ‘madness’ or ‘he's lost it’, to describe such behaviour, they instinctively sense a change of behaviour although their words do not adequately capture its essence. A common thread tying these elements together is hubris, or exaggerated pride, overwhelming self-confidence and contempt for others (Owen, 2006). How may we usefully think about a leader who hubristically abuses power, damaging the lives of others? Some see it as nothing more than the extreme manifestation of normal behaviour along a spectrum of narcissism. Others simply dismiss hubris as an occupational hazard of powerful leaders, politicians or leaders in business, the military and academia; an unattractive but understandable aspect of those who crave power. But the matter can be formulated differently so that it becomes appropriate to think of hubris in medical terms. It then becomes necessary first to rule out conditions such as bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder, in which grandiosity may be a prominent feature. From the medical perspective, a number of questions other than the practicalities of treatment can be raised. For example can physicians and psychiatrists help in identifying features of hubris and contribute to designing legislation, codes of practice and democratic processes to constrain some of its features? Can neuroscientists go further and discover through brain imaging and other techniques more about the presentations of abnormal personality? (Goodman et al., 2007).

 

We see the relevance of hubris by virtue of it being a trait or a propensity towards certain attitudes and behaviours. A certain level of hubris can indicate a shift in the behavioural pattern of a leader who then becomes no longer fully functional in terms of the powerful office held. First, several characteristics of hubris are easily thought of as adaptive behaviours either in a modified context or when present with slightly less intensity. The most illustrative such example is impulsivity, which can be adaptive in certain contexts. More detailed study of powerful leaders is needed to see whether it is mere impulsivity that leads to haphazard decision making, or whether some become impulsive because they inhabit a more emotional grandiose and isolated culture of decision making.

 

We believe that extreme hubristic behaviour is a syndrome, constituting a cluster of features (‘symptoms’) evoked by a specific trigger (power), and usually remitting when power fades. ‘Hubris syndrome’ is seen as an acquired condition, and therefore different from most personality disorders which are traditionally seen as persistent throughout adulthood. The key concept is that hubris syndrome is a disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years and with minimal constraint on the leader.

 

The ability to make swift decisions, sometimes based on little evidence, is of particular importance—arguably necessary—in a leader. Similarly, a thin-skinned person will not be able to stand the process of public scrutiny, attacks by opponents and back-stabbings from within, without some form of self-exultation and grand belief about their own mission and importance. Powerful leaders are a highly selected sample and many criteria of any syndrome based on hubris are those behaviours by which they are probably selected—they make up the pores of the filter through which such individuals must pass to achieve high office.

 

Hubris is associated in Greek mythology with Nemesis. The syndrome, however, develops irrespective of whether the individual's leadership is judged a success or failure; and it is not dependent on bad outcomes. For the purpose of clarity, given that these are retrospective judgements, we have determined that the syndrome is best confined to those who have no history of a major depressive illness that could conceivably be a manifestation of bipolar disorder.

 

Hubris is acquired, therefore, over a period. The full blown hubris, associated with holding considerable power in high office, may or may not be transient. There is a moving scale of hubris and no absolute cut-off in definition or the distinction from fully functional leadership. External events can influence the variation both in intensity and time of onset.

 

Dictators are particularly prone to hubris because there are few, if any, constraints on their behaviour. Here, this complex area is not covered but one of us has considered the matter elsewhere (Owen, 2008). Hitler's biographer, Ian Kershaw (1998, 2000), entitled his first volume 1889–1936 Hubris and the second 1936–1945 Nemesis. Stalin's hubris was not as marked or as progressive as Hitler's. As for Mussolini and Mao both had hubris but probably each also had bipolar disorder. Khrushchev was diagnosed as having hypomania and there is some evidence that Saddam Hussein had bipolar disease (Owen, 2008).

 

Being elected to high office for a democratic leader is a significant event. Subsequent election victories appear to increase the likelihood of hubristic behaviour becoming hubris syndrome. Facing a crisis situation such as a looming or actual war or facing potential financial disaster may further increase hubris. But only the more developed cases of hubris deserve classification as a syndrome exposed as an occupational hazard in those made vulnerable by circumstance.

 

Hubris syndrome and its characteristics

 

Unlike most personality disorders, which appear by early adulthood, we view hubris syndrome as developing only after power has been held for a period of time, and therefore manifesting at any age. In this regard, it follows a tradition which acknowledges the existence of pathological personality change, such as the four types in ICD-10: enduring personality change after trauma, psychiatric illness, chronic pain or unspecified type (ICD-10, 1994)—although ICD-10 implies that these four diagnoses are unlikely to improve.

 

Initially 14 symptoms constituting the hubristic syndrome were proposed (Owen, 2006). Now, we have shortened and tabulated these descriptions and mapped their broad affinities with the DSM IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder. These three personality disorders also appear in ICD-10, although narcissistic personality disorder is presented in an appendix as a provisional condition, whose clinical or scientific status is regarded as uncertain. ICD-10 considers narcissistic personality disorder to be sufficiently important to warrant more study, but that it is not yet ready for international acceptance. In practice, the correlations are less precise than the table suggests and the syndrome better described by the broader patterns and descriptions that the individual criteria encapsulate.

 

Establishing the diagnostic features of hubris syndrome

 

The nosology of psychiatric illness depends on traditional criteria for placing diagnoses in a biomedical framework (Robins and Guze, 1970). There are, however, other underpinnings—psychological or sociological—that can be applied. Validity for a psychiatric illness involves assessing five phases: (i) clinical description; (ii) laboratory studies; (iii) defining boundaries vis-a-vis other disorders; (iv) follow-up study; and (v) family study. While these phases are worth analysing, it has to be recognized that there are severe limitations in rigidly applying such criteria to hubris syndrome given that so few people exercise real power in any society and the frequency amongst those ‘at-risk’ is low. The potential importance of the syndrome derives, however, from the extensive damage that can be done by the small number of people who are affected. As an investigative strategy, it may be that studies such as neuroimaging, family studies, or careful personality assessments in more accessible subjects with hubristic qualities or narcissistic personality disorder from other vulnerable groups might inform the validation process.

 

Proposed clinical features

 

Hubris syndrome was formulated as a pattern of behaviour in a person who: (i) sees the world as a place for self-glorification through the use of power; (ii) has a tendency to take action primarily to enhance personal image; (iii) shows disproportionate concern for image and presentation; (iv) exhibits messianic zeal and exaltation in speech; (v) conflates self with nation or organization; (vi) uses the royal ‘we’ in conversation; (vii) shows excessive self-confidence; (viii) manifestly has contempt for others; (ix) shows accountability only to a higher court (history or God); (x) displays unshakeable belief that they will be vindicated in that court; (xi) loses contact with reality; (xii) resorts to restlessness, recklessness and impulsive actions; (xiii) allows moral rectitude to obviate consideration of practicality, cost or outcome; and (xiv) displays incompetence with disregard for nuts and bolts of policy making.

 

In defining the clinical features of any disorder, more is required than simply listing the symptoms. In the case of hubris syndrome, a context of substantial power is necessary, as well as a certain period of time in power—although the length has not been specified, varying in the cases described from 1 to 9 years. The condition may have predisposing personality characteristics but it is acquired, that is its appearance post-dates the acquisition of power.

 

Establishment of the clinical features should include the demonstration of criterion reliability, exploration of a preferred threshold for the minimum number of features that must be present, and the measurement of symptoms (e.g. their presence or absence, and a severity scale). This endeavour may also include a decision as to whether the 14 criteria suggested might usefully be revised.

 

To determine whether hubris syndrome can be characterized biologically will be very difficult. It is the nature of leaders who have the syndrome that they are resistant to the very idea that they can be ill, for this is a sign of weakness. Rather, they tend to cover up illness and so would be most unlikely to submit voluntarily to any testing, e.g. the completion of scales measuring anxiety, neuroticism and impulsivity. Also the numbers of people with the syndrome is likely to be so small preventing the realistic application of statistical analyses. It also needs to be remembered that leaders are prone to using performance-enhancing drugs fashionable at the time. Two heads of government, Eden and Kennedy, were on amphetamines in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 21st century hubristic leaders are likely to be amongst the first to use the new category of so-called cognition enhancers. Many neuroscientists believe that such drugs properly used can be taken without harm. The problem is a leader who takes these without medical supervision and in combination with other substances or in dosages substantially above those that are recommended. In 2008, Nature carried out an informal survey of its mainly scientific readers and found that one in five of 1400 responders were taking stimulants and wake-promoting agents such as methylphenidate and modafinil, or β-blockers for non-medical reasons (Maher, 2008).

 

In defining the boundaries, one of the more important questions may be to understand whether hubris syndrome is essentially the same as narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a subtype of NPD or a separate entity. As shown in Table 1, 7 of the 14 possible defining symptoms are also among the criteria for NPD in DSM-IV, and two correspond to those for antisocial personality and histrionic personality disorders (APD and HPD, respectively) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The five remaining symptoms are unique, in the sense they have not been classified elsewhere: (v) conflation of self with the nation or organization; (vi) use of the royal ‘we’; (x) an unshakable belief that a higher court (history or God) will provide vindication; (xii) restlessness, recklessness and impulsiveness; and (xiii) moral rectitude that overrides practicalities, cost and outcome.

 

academic.oup.com/brain/article/132/5/1396/354862/Hubris-s...

 

La Vie site cites the work of researcher Ian H. Robertson, who studied the effect of hubris on a fish species in Lake Tanganyka in Africa, on which the seizure of power triggers a hormonal reaction that changes their organism. The researcher explains that the situation is similar for humans, whose intelligence is multiplied tenfold by dopamine intake, but "too much dopamine will have harmful consequences. But absolute power floods the brain with dopamine. It also creates an addiction,"says the researcher. That is not all. Excessive self-confidence puts in place a mental mechanism that makes it impossible to assess oneself properly. The more you have a fair appreciation of your own qualities, the more modest you are. And you don't normally feel fit to become head of state,"explains Sebastian Dieguez, a neuroscience researcher at the University of Freiburg.

A friend of mind made an attempt at several distance world records on a recumbent trike over 12 hours - this is him and his wife at the very end. Waiting on certification, but our tabulation is that he did 207 miles in 11 hours and 45 minutes.

This copy of the BTC's "lighting standards" was passed to me by an ex-Underground colleague when he retired with a note reminding me that when he started work these were still, effectively "our Premises' Standard". One of the many work strands we collectively undertook over the years was the modernisation of 'Standards' to meet modern requirements and expectations.

 

As can be seen the Recommended Practices covered many aspects of the BTC's empire, these being British Railways, British Transport Docks and British Waterways Divisions and the the London Transport Executive. This would only survive a few more years before the BTC was abolished and the various 'Executives' went their own ways but, as with LT, these sorts of 'practices' were simply either carried forward or mandated into the new organisations. The sections covered include passenger stations, offices, workshops and depots, goods depots and yeards and docks, harbours and wharves - as well as canteens and staff mess rooms. They make great use of fluorescent lighting that had been developed extensively since the end of WW2 - and indeed London Underground had first trialled such in 1945, with the Central line openings of 1946 being the first stations fitted from new. Tungsten fittings are still called for in specific places as are mercury street lamps. As well as the text, giving tabulated information as to lighting levels, there are a series of illustrative photographs.

 

These four photographs show surface station platforms and start with a fine view of what is I suspect Glasgow Central station - the dedicated "Royal Scot" platform entrances and the advert for Mavara Tea being clues. I do like the apparently 'neon' tubular illuminated platofrm numbers!

 

The second platform, carefully lit so the glare hides the totems, looks to be one of the Southern's 'deco' style although I am not discounting one of say the LMSR's Wirral platforms. The other two show a station currently being reconstructed again - Gatwick Airport on the Brighton line. Not only does this show widespread use of the fluorescent lanterns that became 'standard' witht he station lettering on the diffuser - it shows a station that had the fittings fitted at right angles to the platform edge. This was less common as, certainly on LU, the lighting flood was seen as being best as being in line with the platform edge. I had ascribed the manufacturer of the Gatwick Airport lanterns to GEC as their 'Clearspace' but I have recently discovered that another manufacturer, Falks, seem to have made their Ionlite lanterns for this station.

Memorial Day stirs up memories in every Veteran

These Veterans have had a lifetime to relive the horrors of war that they witnessed long before there was a condition known as “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

They have spent a lifetime trying to suppress the painful memories of watching their comrades, their friends, die in service of the country. Even the passage of decades doesn’t make that a great deal easier when those memories come rushing to the surface.

There’s no practical way to tabulate the human story of each and every loss this country has suffered in every war ever fought. Reciting a bunch of numbers seems almost inhuman.

Because it isn’t about numbers; it’s about people.

Do you think you can spare a few minutes today to think about those fallen soldiers yourself? It isn’t the least you can do, but it’s pretty close.

This copy of the BTC's "lighting standards" was passed to me by an ex-Underground colleague when he retired with a note reminding me that when he started work these were still, effectively "our Premises' Standard". One of the many work strands we collectively undertook over the years was the modernisation of 'Standards' to meet modern requirements and expectations.

 

As can be seen the Recommended Practices covered many aspects of the BTC's empire, these being British Railways, British Transport Docks and British Waterways Divisions and the the London Transport Executive. This would only survive a few more years before the BTC was abolished and the various 'Executives' went their own ways but, as with LT, these sorts of 'practices' were simply either carried forward or mandated into the new organisations. The sections covered include passenger stations, offices, workshops and depots, goods depots and yeards and docks, harbours and wharves - as well as canteens and staff mess rooms. They make great use of fluorescent lighting that had been developed extensively since the end of WW2 - and indeed London Underground had first trialled such in 1945, with the Central line openings of 1946 being the first stations fitted from new. Tungsten fittings are still called for in specific places as are mercury street lamps. As well as the text, giving tabulated information as to lighting levels, there are a series of illustrative photographs.

 

The double page here shows lighting in a station forecourt, a passenger subway, an Underground station platform and an escalator shaft. The Underground station shown is Gants Hill on the Central line and that had opened with these fittings from new in 1947 - the image is of the eastbound platform from the headwall. The escalators - I think these may be Waterloo from the main line concourse? You can clearly see the 'Follwo the Lights" system that was used at various times to signpost interchange routes to various major termini across the Central area.

 

As for the forecourt and subway...

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased's family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

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North Toraja (or Toraja Utara) is a regency (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia, and the home of the Toraja ethnic group. The local government seat is in Rantepao which is also the center of Toraja culture. Formerly this regency was part of Tana Toraja Regency.

 

The Tana Toraja boundary was determined by the Dutch East Indies government in 1909. In 1926, Tana Toraja was under the administration of Bugis state, Luwu. The regentschap (or regency) status was given on October 8, 1946, the last regency given by the Dutch. Since 1984, Tana Toraja has been named as the second tourist destination after Bali by the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia. Since then, hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors have visited this regency. In addition, numerous Western anthropologists have come to Tana Toraja to study the indigenous culture and people of Toraja.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Tana Toraja is located on the Sulawesi island, 300 km north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. Its geographical location is between latitude of 2°-3° South and longitude 119°-120° East (center: 3°S 120°ECoordinates: 3°S 120°E). The area of the new North Toraja Regency is 1,151.47 km², about 2.5% of the total area of South Sulawesi province. The topography of Tana Toraja is mountainous; its minimum elevation is 150 m, while the maximum is 3,083 above the sea level.

 

Tana Toraja Regency (Indonesian for Torajaland or Land of the Toraja, abbreviated Tator) is a regency (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia, and home to the Toraja ethnic group. The local government seat is in Makale, while the center of Toraja culture is in Rantepao. But now, Tana Toraja has been divided to two regencies that consist of Tana Toraja with its capital at Makale and North toraja with its capital at Rantepao.

 

The Tana Toraja boundary was determined by the Dutch East Indies government in 1909. In 1926, Tana Toraja was under the administration of Bugis state, Luwu. The regentschap (or regency) status was given on 8 October 1946, the last regency given by the Dutch. Since 1984, Tana Toraja has been named as the second tourist destination after Bali by the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia. Since then, hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors have visited this regency. In addition, numerous Western anthropologists have come to Tana Toraja to study the indigenous culture and people of Toraja.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Tana Toraja is centrally placed in the island of Sulawesi, 300 km north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. It lies between latitude of 2°-3° South and longitude 119°-120° East (center: 3°S 120°ECoordinates: 3°S 120°E). The total area (since the separation of the new regency of North Toraja) is 2,054.30 km², about 4.4% of the total area of South Sulawesi province. The topography of Tana Toraja is mountainous; its minimum elevation is 150 m, while the maximum is 3,083 above the sea level.

 

ADMINISTRATION

Tana Toraja Regency in 2010 comprised nineteen administrative Districts (Kecamatan), tabulated below with their 2010 Census population.

 

The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognised this animistic belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word Toraja comes from the Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colourful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism development and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model—in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo—to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonisation and Christianisation, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders—such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi—than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups—the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognised in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to Christianity.

 

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognised religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognised, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalised as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin)—except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women—a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

Architecture in the style of a tongkonan is still very common. Various administration buildings were built in this style in recent years, e.g. the Kecamatan building in Rantepao.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolise some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolise fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. Torajan wood carvings are composed of numerous square panels, each of which can represent various things, for example buffaloes as a wish of wealth for the family; a knot and a box, symbolizing the hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony; aquatic animals, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

COGENDER VIEWS

Among the Saʼadan (eastern Toraja) in the island of Sulawesi (Celebes), Indonesia, there are homosexual male toburake tambolang shamans; although among their neighbors the Mamasa (western Toraja) there are instead only heterosexual female toburake shamanesses.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.

 

Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae, Talondo, Toala, and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages.

A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterised their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market.

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies—to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s—including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi—tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure—an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialised. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

In the train depot exhibit an old royal typewriter, keypunch, and tabulation machines at the Southeastern Railway Museum.

 

www.srmduluth.org/

travis air force base - fairfield, california

Yucca brevifolia is a plant species belonging to the genus Yucca. It is tree-like in habit, which is reflected in its common names: Joshua tree, yucca palm, tree yucca, and palm tree yucca.

 

This monocotyledonous tree is native to the arid Southwestern United States, specifically California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, and to northwestern Mexico (Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, and Sonora). It is confined mostly to the Mojave Desert between 400 and 1,800 m (1,300 and 5,900 ft) elevation. It thrives in the open grasslands of Queen Valley and Lost Horse Valley in Joshua Tree National Park. Other regions with large populations of the tree can be found northeast of Kingman, Arizona in Mohave County; and along U.S. 93 between the towns of Wickenburg and Wikieup, a route which has been designated the Joshua Tree Parkway of Arizona. A dense Joshua tree forest also existed on the Cima Dome in the Mojave National Preserve until the Dome fire of August 2020.

 

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere and lowest in North America at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the endangered Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.

 

A series of Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most recently the Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains. A group of European Americans, trapped in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the gold fields of California, gave the valley its name, even though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, which was transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams. The valley later became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies. Tourism expanded in the 1920s when resorts were built around Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek. Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was substantially expanded and became a national park in 1994.

 

The natural environment of the area has been shaped largely by its geology. The valley is actually a graben with the oldest rocks being extensively metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old. Ancient, warm, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean. Additional sedimentation occurred until a subduction zone formed off the coast. The subduction uplifted the region out of the sea and created a line of volcanoes. Later the crust started to pull apart, creating the current Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of glacial periods, with lakes, such as Lake Manly.

 

Death Valley is the fifth-largest American national park and the largest in the contiguous United States. It is also larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, and nearly as large as Puerto Rico. In 2013, Death Valley National Park was designated as a dark sky park by the International Dark-Sky Association

 

There are two major valleys in the park, Death Valley and Panamint Valley. Both of these valleys were formed within the last few million years and both are bounded by north–south-trending mountain ranges. These and adjacent valleys follow the general trend of Basin and Range topography with one modification: there are parallel strike-slip faults that perpendicularly bound the central extent of Death Valley. The result of this shearing action is additional extension in the central part of Death Valley which causes a slight widening and more subsidence there.

 

Uplift of surrounding mountain ranges and subsidence of the valley floor are both occurring. The uplift on the Black Mountains is so fast that the alluvial fans (fan-shaped deposits at the mouth of canyons) there are small and steep compared to the huge alluvial fans coming off the Panamint Range. Fast uplift of a mountain range in an arid environment often does not allow its canyons enough time to cut a classic V-shape all the way down to the stream bed. Instead, a V-shape ends at a slot canyon halfway down, forming a 'wine glass canyon.' Sediment is deposited on a small and steep alluvial fan.

 

At 282 feet (86 m) below sea level at its lowest point, Badwater Basin on Death Valley's floor is the second-lowest depression in the Western Hemisphere (behind Laguna del Carbón in Argentina), while Mount Whitney, only 85 miles (137 km) to the west, rises to 14,505 feet (4,421 m) and is the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States. This topographic relief is the greatest elevation gradient in the contiguous United States and is the terminus point of the Great Basin's southwestern drainage.[8] Although the extreme lack of water in the Great Basin makes this distinction of little current practical use, it does mean that in wetter times the lake that once filled Death Valley (Lake Manly) was the last stop for water flowing in the region, meaning the water there was saturated in dissolved materials. Thus, the salt pans in Death Valley are among the largest in the world and are rich in minerals, such as borax and various salts and hydrates. The largest salt pan in the park extends 40 miles (64 km) from the Ashford Mill Site to the Salt Creek Hills, covering some 200 square miles (520 km2) of the valley floor. The best known playa in the park is the Racetrack, known for its moving rocks.

 

According to the Köppen climate classification system, Death Valley National Park has a hot desert climate (BWh). The plant hardiness zone at Badwater Basin is 9b with an average annual extreme minimum temperature of 28.0 °F (–2.2 °C).

 

Death Valley is the hottest and driest place in North America due to its lack of surface water and low relief. It is so frequently the hottest spot in the United States that many tabulations of the highest daily temperatures in the country omit Death Valley as a matter of course.

 

On the afternoon of July 10, 1913, the United States Weather Bureau recorded a high temperature of 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Greenland Ranch (now Furnace Creek) in Death Valley. This temperature stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded at the surface of the Earth. (A report of a temperature of 58 °C (136.4 °F) recorded in Libya in 1922 was later determined to be inaccurate.)[18] Daily summer temperatures of 120 °F (49 °C) or greater are common, as well as below freezing nightly temperatures in the winter. July is the hottest month, with an average high of 117 °F (47 °C) and an average low of 91 °F (33 °C). December is the coldest month, with an average high of 66 °F (19 °C) and an average low of 41 °F (5 °C). The record low is 15 °F (−9.4 °C). There are an average of 197.3 days annually with highs of 90 °F (32.2 °C) or higher and 146.9 days annually with highs of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or higher. Freezing temperatures of 32 °F (0 °C) or lower occur on an average of 8.6 days annually.

 

Several of the larger Death Valley springs derive their water from a regional aquifer, which extends as far east as southern Nevada and Utah. Much of the water in this aquifer has been there for many thousands of years, since the Pleistocene ice ages, when the climate was cooler and wetter. Today's drier climate does not provide enough precipitation to recharge the aquifer at the rate at which water is being withdrawn.

 

The highest range within the park is the Panamint Range, with Telescope Peak being its highest point at 11,049 feet (3,368 m). The Death Valley region is a transitional zone in the northernmost part of the Mojave Desert and consists of five mountain ranges removed from the Pacific Ocean. Three of these are significant barriers: the Sierra Nevada, the Argus Range, and the Panamint Range. Air masses tend to lose moisture as they are forced up over mountain ranges, in what climatologists call a rainshadow effect.

 

The exaggerated rain shadow effect for the Death Valley area makes it North America's driest spot, receiving about 1.5 inches (38 mm) of rainfall annually at Badwater, and some years fail to register any measurable rainfall.[20] Annual average precipitation varies from 1.92 inches (49 mm) overall below sea level to over 15 inches (380 mm) in the higher mountains that surround the valley. When rain does arrive it often does so in intense storms that cause flash floods which remodel the landscape and sometimes create very shallow ephemeral lakes.

 

The hot, dry climate makes it difficult for soil to form. Mass wasting, the down-slope movement of loose rock, is therefore the dominant erosive force in mountainous areas, resulting in "skeletonized" ranges (mountains with very little soil on them). Sand dunes in the park, while famous, are not nearly as widespread as their fame or the dryness of the area may suggest. The Mesquite Flat dune field is the most easily accessible from the paved road just east of Stovepipe Wells in the north-central part of the valley and is primarily made of quartz sand. Another dune field is just 10 miles (16 km) to the north but is instead mostly composed of travertine sand. The highest dunes in the park, and some of the highest in North America, are located in the Eureka Valley about 50 miles (80 km) to the north of Stovepipe Wells, while the Panamint Valley dunes and the Saline Valley dunes are located west and northwest of the town, respectively. The Ibex dune field is near the seldom-visited Ibex Hill in the southernmost part of the park, just south of the Saratoga Springs marshland. All the latter four dune fields are accessible only via unpaved roads. Prevailing winds in the winter come from the north, and prevailing winds in the summer come from the south. Thus, the overall position of the dune fields remains more or less fixed.

 

There are rare exceptions to the dry nature of the area. In 2005, an unusually wet winter created a 'lake' in the Badwater Basin and led to the greatest wildflower season in the park's history. In October 2015, a "1000 year flood event" with over three inches of rain caused major damage in Death Valley National Park. A similar widespread storm in August 2022 damaged pavement and deposited debris on nearly every road, trapping 1,000 residents and visitors overnight.

 

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

 

The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.

 

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.

 

Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.

 

The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.

 

Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.

 

The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.

 

The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.

 

After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.

 

Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.

  

The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.

During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.

 

During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.

 

In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.

 

From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.

 

One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.

 

After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.

 

In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.

 

The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

 

Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.

 

Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.

 

In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.

 

The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.

 

In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.

 

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.

 

At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.

 

Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.

 

In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

 

Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.

 

Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.

 

In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.

 

Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.

 

To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.

 

Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.

 

In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.

 

Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.

 

In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.

 

Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.

 

One of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States that occurred in California was first of which was confirmed on January 26, 2020. Meaning, all of the early confirmed cases were persons who had recently travelled to China in Asia, as testing was restricted to this group. On this January 29, 2020, as disease containment protocols were still being developed, the U.S. Department of State evacuated 195 persons from Wuhan, China aboard a chartered flight to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, and in this process, it may have granted and conferred to escalated within the land and the US at cosmic. On February 5, 2020, the U.S. evacuated 345 more citizens from Hubei Province to two military bases in California, Travis Air Force Base in Solano County and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, where they were quarantined for 14 days. A state of emergency was largely declared in this state of the nation on March 4, 2020, and as of February 24, 2021, remains in effect. A mandatory statewide stay-at-home order was issued on March 19, 2020, due to increase, which was ended on January 25, 2021, allowing citizens to return to normal life. On April 6, 2021, the state announced plans to fully reopen the economy by June 15, 2021.

 

for Joani and Paula

BM-1 Puritan

The Puritan represented the highest development of the monitor type of warship ever constructed. It was heavily protected with steel armor and its low freeboard made it almost an impossible target. As a vessel for coast and harbor defense pure and simple it possessed capabilities of enormous value. The construction of the powerful monitor Puritan was the turning point in the history of the American navy. The best naval authorities were beginning to see the necessity of a warship that would not be compelled to cling close to the coast in time of war. A feeling was gradually growing that the honor and prestige of the United States demanded the construction of a modern type of cruising warship, able to carry the flag to foreign ports where its identity was unknown. The sentiment was of slow growth, but sure.

Puritan, a 4,912-ton seagoing monitor, was under construction at Greenpoint, New York, between 1863 and 1865. Originally intended to have two gun turrets, her designer, John Ericsson, recast her arrangement to feature only one turret. Puritan was launched in July 1864 but remained incomplete when work was stopped in 1865. During the years following the war, Puritan along with several other monitors suffered extensive deterioration with their combat value likewise decreasing.

In 1874-75 Secretary of the Navy George Robeson decided to carry out extensive repairs on Puritan and four monitors of the Miantonomoh class. Funds were not appropriated for new construction, but the condition of the ship's hulls particularly, necessitated building essentially new ships, bearing no real resemblance to the originals. A scandal resulted when the fact came to light that Robeson was paying for new ships with the old ones. The never finished PURITAN of the Civil War underwent the same kind of "rebuilding" as the four MIANTONOMOHs. All five of these ships had the superstructures, military mast, and tall stack which also identified the monitors built between 1881 and 1903. Her hull was apparently broken up in about 1874 when construction began on another monitor Puritan, which was officially listed as the old ship "rebuilt". It is important to realize that all of the "repaired" ships were actually completely modern ships of war bearing only a vague resemblance of the first ships of the name.

Although her original plans called for a single turret carrying 4 XX-inch Dahlgren smoothbores, the revised design of the "repaired" ship called for two turrets.

USS Puritan, a 6060-ton monitor, was built in the Roach ship-yard at Chester, Pennsylvania, and completed by the New York Navy Yard. Here length over all was 295 feet; breadth of beam, 6O feet ; depth, 20 feet 6 inches ; draft of water when launched, 6 feet 11 inches ; draft with guns, armor, coal, and engines on board ready for commission, 18 feet. Displacement when launched, 1,750 tons; displacement when down to her draft and in commission, 6,060 tons. Deducting the present weight of the ship without machinery, &c., 1,750 tons, there was left for armor, turrets, guns, machinery, coal, and other supplies, ready for commission, 4,310 gross tons.

With 500 tons of coal it is estimated that she would steam the following distances at the tabulated rates of speed, viz : With a speed of 14 knots, 1,545 nautical miles; of 12 knots, 2,266 nautical miles; of 10 knots, 3,331 nautical miles ; of 9 knots, 4,316 nautical miles ; of 7 knots, 6,477 nautical miles. On 400 tons of coal it is estimated she can steam from Portland, Me., to New Orleans and return at the rate of 9 knots per hour, and, in case of an emergency, can make a speed of 338 nautical miles in twenty-four hours, or at a rate of 14 knots per hour. That is at a speed which is two knots faster than any other American man-of-war, and equal to the best of her class in the world. During trials in 1884 her machinery proved a great success, and there is no doubt she will make 14 knots. She can carry 15- inch steel armor plate, with her guns, crew, and 400 tons of coal.

When on April 10, 1875, the Puritan was designed and contracted for, the armor then used on all similar vessels was made of iron, and was much lighter than that employed to-day. Roach saw the progress which was being made in Europe, and after the contract was signed he advised a change in the ship that enabled her to carry 40 per cent, more armor, gave her two knots more speed, permitted her to carry heavier guns, and yet increased her cost only about $25,000. Had this change not been made, this ship, in view of the modern improvements in heavy armor and in puns, would to-day have been worthless.

There, is no other armored vessel in the world with the same thickness of armor and weight of guns which has so light a draught of water. European vessels of the same speed, weight of armor and guns draw much more water, and can enter only a few of our harbors at high tide, while the Puritan can enter most of oilr harbors at almost any state of the tide, either to coal or to retreat from a more powerful enemy; and in any emergency she could leave most of our ports at once without waiting for the tide. No foreign vessel of her power has these advantages.

She has a double bottom, which, should the outside plating be broken, would by means of an inner skin and the eighty-four separate water-tight compartments still keep the vessel afloat. The advantages of the double-bottom system are shown in an accident to the Pilgrim, which is built on this plan. In 1884 she ran on the rocks below Hell Gate, and tore ? hole in her outer bottom about 40 feet in length, but the inner skin being intact she was saved, and brought her 400 passengers and a valuable cargo safely to wharf. She was put on the dry dock, repaired, and in two weeks was on her route again.

As the Puritan has a surface above the water line of but 2 feet 6 inches, her turrets alone are targets for an enemy's guns. This gives her a great advantage over other ships.

Commissioned in December 1896, she was actively employed off Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After that conflict, she served as a Naval Academy practice ship, a receiving ship and a naval militia training vessel. Decommissioned for the final time in April 1910, Puritan was subsequently used for target duties. The old monitor was sold in January 1922.

This vessel is considerably larger than those named, being two hundred and eighty-nine feet six inches long, slightly over sixty feet wide, and eighteen feet in mean draught, with a displacement of 6060 tons. She had an indicated horse-power of 3700 and a speed of 12.4 knots per hour. Like the Monadnock, she was fitted with a twin-screw, horizontal, triple-expansion engine, and can carry a coal-supply of four hundred tons. The belt of armor of this ship tapers from fourteen inches amidships to ten inches at the bow and six inches at the stern. Her turrets are barbetted, the barbettes being plated with fourteen inches of steel armor and the turrets with eight inches. Her protective deck is plated with two inches of steel armor.

Her main armament surpassed that of any of her fellow-vessels, being composed of four 12-inch breech-loading rifles, and six 4-inch rapid-fire guns. Her secondary armament includes six 6-pounder and two l-pounder rapid-fire guns and two Hotchkiss revolving cannon.

  

 

I thought I should share a list and tabulation of the relief "Stabler" tiles that exist on a handful of London Underground stations and that was given to me many years ago by a colleague at the Underground who was retiring.

 

The list was drawn up by the remarkable Desmond Croome who, at the time in 1988, was Development Manager (Buses) based at 55 Broadway. Desmond was one of the great historians of London Transport and went on to write, with fellow historian Alan Jackson, the seminal work "Rails Through The Clay". In 1986 Desmond and Mrs Croome, off their own bat, decided to enumerate the various designs of Stabler tiles that had been fitted to five stations that had been designed as part of the later stages of the 1935-40 "New Works Programme" of London Transport. This scheme, delayed and curtailed due to the outbreak of war, delivered the Bakerloo and Central line extensions (from 1939 and 1946 onwards respectively) along with major Central area reconstructions.

 

For several years the Underground's design of 'choice' in passageways and at platform level, was for plain 6" x6" tles manufactured by Carter's of Poole. Carter's also made the larger and more structural faience blocks found in sub-surface areas and ticket halls - again in varying shades of yellow, this largely due to contemporary glaze specificatons and firing temperatures. It appears that from around 1936/7 thought was given to relieving the rather flat look of this tiling but introduction of a small amount of visual 'interest' that would work with the tiling module as well as the development in post-1938 tube station platforms of the tiled frieze bands that include the station name in tube lined slip lettering.

 

As ever, the company would not have wanted anything too 'forced' or overtly like 'applied art' and so a tile that matched the specification of the generic filed pattern would be highly suitable. They turned to Harold Stabler, an acknowledged designer who had undertaken earlier work for the Underground Group, and who by chance - was part of the Adams, Carter & Stabler concern who ran the Poole based pottery where the tiles were made. Stabler chose 18 designs based on the heraldic symbols representing the ten Counties served by the London Passenger Transport Board, three of London buildings, three representing London Transport itself and two others - London's river and Thomas Lord of cricketing fame.

 

A series of models for moulding and approval were made and some of these survived into the LT Museum collection. However, Mr & Mrs Croome accounted for a total of 803 tiles that had been manufactured and were, in 1986, still on the stations they'd been applied to. These were the NWP reconstruction of Aldgate East, the escalator areas of St.Paul's (Post Office), the two new Bakerloo line tube stations of Swiss Cottage and St John's Wood and one of the Central line's eastern extension stations, Bethnal Green. Some had already been lost at St. Paul's.

 

In recent years all these stations have had major renovation programmes carried out due to their physical state and often poor condition. Of the five stations only St. Paul's has lost all its Stabler tiles during two earlier waves of reconstruction. Of the other four, all four have been almost wholly retiled with replica finishes, albeit with subtle changes to the layout pattern, and for these we at LU went down the route of commissioning a company in Shropshire to manufacture exact copies of the correct numbers of the various designs. At Swiss Cottage and St. Johns Wood all the tiles are renewed. At Bethnal Green we retained two original panels of tiling, including the extant Stablers, on each platform and renewed the rest. It is testiment to the retiling contractors that spotting the original panels is not that easy. At Aldgate East, where the walls were in perilous condition and much work had to be done to stabilise the fabric, all the platform walls are renewed - but the staircase return walls at either end still carry the originals that include Stablers. On the replacement walls we did count the numbers of each design and replace them 'like for like'.

 

As can be seen - not all stations carried all designs. Only Swiss Cottage and St. Johns Wood (now Jubilee line stations) carried a handful of Mr Lord. I was so tempted at Aldgate East to quietly introduce a spare Thomas Lord on to the wall to see if anyone ever noticed! When we did the renewals work much effort was made to try to salvage originals but it was difficult work as they were embedded in concrete mortar along with the tiles and even cutting them out was not easy. Some small number, often damaged before removal, did survive and were given to the LT Museum and other institutions.

 

This is a copy of an article from the Builder in 1939 showing the designs for the tiles. There has been over the years a rumour that two designs for the LCC tile existed - this is mentioned in the Frank Pick Exhibtion at the V&A in 1978 - but I have to say I agree with Mr Croome in that I have only ever seen the version shown here on stations.

NE corner of E. 79th and Linwood at Addison, Cleveland, OH

 

www.nhlink.net/ClevelandNeighborhoods/hough/Eyewitness2.htm

 

"On July 18, 1966, at dusk of a

steamy hot Monday, someone posted a sign outside the 79'ers bar, situated on the southeast corner of E.79th Street and Hough Avenue. The sign read, "No Water For Niggers". To make matters more difficult, the bar manager and a hired hand, who both happened to be white, patrolled the front of the bar, with shotguns, to show that they meant business. Hough's population was almost 90,000. Over 78,000 of whom were African-American. All living in an area that stretches from E.55th to E.105th Streets. Bordered on the north by Superior and south by Euclid Avenues. A crowd of over 300 people gathered at the crossroads in a matter of minutes.

 

The Cleveland Police Department arrived, in force, to diffuse the situation. However, the presence of the CPD only intensified the crowd's anger. Rocks and bottles began to take flight, someone fired a shot or lit a firecracker and police responded by firing volleys overhead to disperse the crowd.This tactic backfired setting off a wave of firebombings and arsons that spread west to 71st and east to 93rd Streets.

 

When firefighters arrived to put out the flames, snippers disrupted firefighter and police activities. Sporatic snipper fire, from various apartment and house windows, caused delays and even pull outs for safety's sake. This caused massive fire damage and heavy losses. The action also brought aggresive police response. Homes and apartments were busted into with Gestapo style search and seizure tactics. On the streets, police shot out the street lights for cover and began returning fire to suspected snipper positions. Joyce Arnett, a 26 year-old mother of three, was shot dead, when calling out a window, trying to get permission to go home and check on her children.

 

For six nights the disturbances continued.

 

On tuesday night, the arsons increased. Looting, which had begun Monday night, began to get out of control.Businesses along Hough, Wade Park and Lexington Avenues, were vandalized. Cleveland mayor, Ralph Locher, called in the National Guard to quell the disturbances. Initially, 1000 guardsmen were called into Hough.

 

Early Wednesday morning, Percy Giles, a 38 year-old off duty seaman, was shot and killed at E.86th Street and Hough Avenue. Police had reportedly been exchanging gunfire with snippers in the area. Giles was the second fatality of the disturbance. When the arsons and looting continued, another 700 guardsmen were called in.

 

Early Thursday, the arsons and violence spread beyond the Hough area. The University Party Center at 10626 Cedar Avenue, was tourched. Because of the disturbance at the party center, Henry Towns, a 22 year-old resident of Cedar, loaded his family into his automobile and attempted to flee the area. According to police, Towns attempted to crash a police roadblock and his 1957 convertable was riddled with bullets. When the smoke cleared, Diana, Town's 16 year-old wife and her three year-old son, Christopher Green, were critically wounded. The couples seven month-old son, Emanuel, and Mrs. Town's 12 year-old half brother, Ernest Williams, were wounded less seriously. Capt. James Pletcher of the National Guard was also wounded in the melee. Two police cars, responding to the incident, collided and four officers were injured.

 

Early Friday, 54 year-old, Sam Winchester was fatally wounded. The incident brought the death toll to three. The disturbances and arsons were reported as far south as Kinsman Road and as far north as St.Clair Avenue. In the nearby Murray Hill area, armed vigilante groups were formed. Rumors of Black marauders, invaiding thier neighborhood were circulated. The FBI was called in to check the possibility of outside agitators causing the problems.

 

Early Saturday, a group of vigilantes happened upon 29 year-old, Benoris Toney, who was sitting in his car in the parking lot of the Dougherty Lumber Co. at E.118th Street and Euclid. Toney was killed by a shotgun blast. That night, the disturbances officially ended with a report of a snipper shooting out a rear-view mirror of a National Guard jeep.

 

When the dust settled, four lives (all Black) had been lost and hundreds had been injured, some critically. Police had made 275 related arrests. Literally, blocks and blocks of homes, apartments and businesses along Lexington, Wade Park and Hough Avenues, were destroyed. Thousands of people were displaced. During the disturbances, tens of thousands lost electrical and telephone services. Utility workers were not allowed into the area, it was weeks before all service was restored. Over 240 fires, mostly arsons, were tabulated. Neighborhood businesses were dealt a death blow. Many never recovered from the week of disturbances."

According to the stencils on this car it was painted in June 1970 at the Burlington Northern's Delta shops (ex-GN). While the car clearly has the final version of the then-new-designs for the Burlington Northern lettering and BN logo, there are a couple of other things worth noting on this experimental paint job. The obvious one is the old NP initial and car number is still being used, instead of its new and already-assigned BN initial and number. Then take a look at the reflective, rectangular delineators along the bottom of the car side. There are seven of them, and instead of being solid white rectangles, they are rectangles made up of a series of angled white stripes—just like the nose stripes on the BN's diesel-locomotives. I'm not aware of any kind of official tabulation for just how many cars were repainted into BN cascade green that kept their old initials and numbers. I have seen many examples from each road, including CB&Q, GN, NP and SP&S. C&S and FW&D too. So either this was to specific plan, or the shops didn't have the renumbering guides yet, or they simply put the old initial and number back onto each of these cars as they saw fit to do at that time. In any event, these odd-ball BN cars are interesting in their own right and worth sharing in this forum.

© 2010, yohanes.budiyanto

 

Finally we are at the finale of SHANGHAI 777-777 with the final upload of Park Hyatt Shanghai. Pictured here is the framed view of the spectacular roof of sister Grand Hyatt and Shanghai skyline. On a clear day, the vista seen from the Bund facing rooms are breathtaking, I could literally sit there for hours..

 

The Shanghai Expo 2010 has just started. For those visiting Shanghai and finding places to stay, it's good to know that the city has many fine hotels to suit all preferences and budgets. For those who want something special, Shanghai 777-777 has given a preview of what to expect at Shanghai's top hotels. I personally think that Park Hyatt is the best overall hotel for first time guests, if money is no object. Staying here also means you could take claim to have stayed at the highest hotel in the world (before Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong opens late this year and reigns supreme)..

 

Despite being the clear winner and a personal favourite, Park Hyatt Shanghai is not perfect too. After completing the overall stays at 7 hotels for the project, I initially thought The Peninsula would have taken the throne because the service was exemplary and the technology is the very best the world has to offer. Only after tabulating all the scores that Park Hyatt was confirmed as the winner.

 

Unlike alot of other fellow hotel-junkies and wannabes who rely heavily on subjective reviews based on one major incident (one small glitch in service means bad hotel; and one free suite upgrade blindly makes it the best hotel), I have always scored the hotel based on several fixed categories across the board (i.e. 12 categories for Shanghai 777-777) as it is the most objective way to review a hotel despite still being subjective to my personal preferences on some aspects, e.g: design.

 

The Park Hyatt has been my personal favourite since my inaugural stay back in 2008; and while the overall stay and product was as amazing as before; I was quite disappointed with both the service and concept of its signature restaurant, 100 Century Avenue (the world's highest restaurant). Fortunately, the overall service on the rest of the stay was quite good so it only affected the overall score for service.

 

I was particularly impressed with GM Christophe Sadones' pursue for excellence and impeccable service. In the hospitality world, the success of great hotels depend on visionary and legendary GM at the helm. Together with Susanne Hatje (ex-GM Landmark MO, Hong Kong) and Michael Burchett (Conrad Bali), they not only clearly understand the basic concept and importance of customer service, but they are also some very humble human beings. Alot of hotel's GM nowadays seem to be living in their own sphere and appear to be cocky, chauvinistic and self-centred ignorant beasts. I've met a few along the way already..

 

Design is what I personally think the Peninsula suffers quite a bit as it displays more of ostentation, especially in its public spaces. The Park Hyatt, on the other hand, scores perfectly on design because it presents a subtle, unpretentious yet profoundly dramatic contemporary design in minimalist tone; and the end result is simply breathtaking. You could have mistaken it for a world class museum, if not better. It is all about simplicity, understated elegance and refined details.

  

More pictures of Park Hyatt Shanghai: here and here

 

So what's next? Coming up soon.. Seoul 서울 and my current #1 fave hotels of all time..

  

PERSONAL RATING:

1. Room: 100

2. Bathroom: 100

3. Bed: 100

4. Service: 80

5. In-room Tech: 95

6. In-room Amenities: 95

7. Architecture & Design: 100

8. Food: 85

9. View: 100

10. Pool: 95

11. Wellness: 85

12. Location: 90

13. Value: 95

 

Overall: 93.84

 

PARK HYATT SHANGHAI

上海柏悦酒店

100 Century Avenue

Pudong, Shanghai

 

General Manager: Christophe Sadones

Executive Chef: Jack Wetzel

Architect: Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF)

Interior Designer: Tony Chi

 

SHANGHAI 777-777

 

l #1. Park Hyatt l #2. The Peninsula l #3. The Puli Hotel & Spa l #4. Grand Hyatt l

l #5. Hyatt on the Bund l #6. Le Royal Meridien l #7. The St. Regis l

We Voted! Fingers crossed the new optical scan machines actually tabulate our vote...

 

Polls were light at 4:30, but we did have a little excitement. A woman had been misdirected to our poll and did not have transportation (she had been dropped off by her son and was supposed to walk home). The actual place she was supposed to vote was roughly three miles away! While we waited and completed our ballots, we heard the poll workers trying every tactic they could on multiple phones to get the election officials to allow her to vote where she was... apparently no dice. Finally, as we were leaving, one of the poll captains pulled us aside and asked us if we had time to "do a good deed" today. Who could say no to that?

 

So we loaded up with the lost voter and followed his directions to her correct polling place.

 

On the way there, our passenger shared that she was still undecided about the presidential race! We couldn't believe it. Yes, she watched the debates, and felt like it was the same kind of bickering she hears in her house from her kids. The ads are all negative, she said, and you don't know for sure if these guys will do 10% of what they claim they will do.

 

But, she thought she had the decisive info she needed: in the movie Deep Impact, the president was Morgan Freeman - so, she reasons, she knows what comes next with an African-American president.

 

Upon disembarking from our car and heading into the polls, she said that whichever candidate could ensure her ex-husband would be dropped in the Bermuda Triangle would get her vote.

 

Sigh.

Date: April 29, 2017

Author: lewislafontaine

  

One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.

 

Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own life. If you live your own life, you do not live the common life, which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products of the human race. There you live the endlessness of being, but not the becoming. Becoming belongs to the heights and is full of torment. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 267.

 

At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 266.

 

Because I also want my being other, I must become a Christ. I am made into Christ, I must suffer it. Thus the redeeming blood flows. Through the self-sacrifice my pleasure is changed and goes above into its higher principle. Love is sighted, but pleasure is blind. Both principles are one in the symbol of the flame. The principles strip themselves of human form. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 254.

 

If a God ceases being the way the zenith, he must fall secretly. The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 241.

 

From this we learn how the spirit of the depths considers the soul he sees her as a living and self-existing being, and with this he contradicts the spirit of this time for whom the soul is a thing dependent on man… ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.

 

Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.

 

The beginning of all things is love, but the being of things is life. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 327.

 

My I, you are a barbarian. I want to live with you; therefore I will carry you through an utterly medieval Hell, until you are capable of making living with you bearable. You should be the vessel and womb of life, therefore I shall purify you. The touchstone is being alone with oneself. This is the way. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 330.

 

I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 315.

 

If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 234.

 

I hold together what Christ has kept apart in himself and through his example in others, since the more the one half of my being strives toward the good, the more the other half journeys to Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 315.

 

The one eye of the Godhead is blind, the one ear of the Godhead is deaf, the order of its being is crossed by chaos. So be patient with the crippledness of the world and do not overvalue its consummate beauty. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 231.

 

Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true of your highest. Learn from the suffering of the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 241.

 

The devil is the sum of the darkness of human nature. He who lives in the light strives toward being the image of God; he who lives in the dark strives toward being the image of the devil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 322.

 

In the light of the possibilities revealed by intuition, man’s earthliness is certainly a lamentable imperfection; but this very imperfection is part of his innate being, of his reality. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Page 114.

 

In that “spiritualism” and “materialism” are statements on Being, they represent metaphysical judgments. ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101

 

… it would be an arbitrary limitation of the concept of God to assume that He is only good and so deprive evil of real being. If God is only good, everything is good…. ~Carl Jung, Letters II, 519

 

Thus the psyche is endowed with the dignity of a cosmic principle, which philosophically and in fact gives it a position coequal with the principle of physical being. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, Page 33.

 

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and consciously expressed by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being. ~Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self, Page 33

 

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 358.

 

Common is the view that spirit and psyche are essentially the same and can be separated only arbitrarily. Wundt takes spirit as “the inner being, regardless of any connection with an outer being. ~ Carl Jung, CW 9i, para. 386

 

I do not know for what reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know. Therefore I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual problem. But if an idea about it is offered to me – in dreams or in mythic traditions – I ought to take note of it. I even ought to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though it will forever remain a hypothesis that I know cannot be proved. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Pages 301-302.

 

Nature, the psyche, and life appear to me like divinity unfolded – and what more could I wish for? To me the supreme meaning of Being can consist only in the fact that it is, not that it is not or is no longer. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 276.

 

We know that Tom Thumbs, dactyls, and Cabiri… are personifications of creative forces… Thus the creative dwarfs toil away in secret; the phallus also working in darkness, begets a living being” ~Carl Jung, CW5, para. 180

 

When they [the mystics] descend into the depths of their own being they find ‘in their heart’ the image of the sun, they find their own life-force which they call the ‘sun’ for a legitimate and, I would say, a physical reason because our source of energy and life actually is sun. Our physiological life, regarded as an energy process, is entirely solar ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para. 176.

 

The God-image thrown up by a spontaneous act of creation is a living figure, a being that exists in its own right and there-fore confronts its ostensible creator autonomously… As proof of this it may be mentioned that the relation between the creator and the created is a dialectical. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 95-96.

 

Our age has shifted all emphasis to the here and now, and thus brought about a daemonization of man and his world. The phenomenon of dictators and all the misery they have wrought springs from the fact that man has been robbed of transcendence by the shortsightedness of the super-intellectuals. Like them, he has fallen a victim to unconsciousness. But man’s task is the exact opposite: to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Neither should he persist in his unconsciousness, nor remain identical with the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 326.

 

The God-image thrown up by a spontaneous act of creation is a living figure, a being that exists in its own right and there-fore confronts its ostensible creator autonomously… As proof of this it may be mentioned that the relation between the creator and the created is a dialectical. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, para. 95-96.

 

The world comes into being when man discovers it. But he only discovers it when he sacrifices his containment in the primal mother, the original state of unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Page 652.

 

We can find clear proof of this fact in the history of science itself. The so-called “mystical” experience of the French philosopher Descartes involved a . . . sudden revelation in which he saw in a flash the “order of all sciences”. The British author Robert Louis Stevenson had spent years looking for a story that would fit his “strong sense of man’s double being,” when the plot of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was suddenly revealed to him in a dream. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 25.

 

…a symbol of the unity of personality, a symbol of the self, where the war of opposites finds peace. In this way the primordial being becomes the distant goal of man’s self-development. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para293.

 

Spirit and matter may well be forms of one and the same transcendental being. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; ¶ 392.

 

Our unconscious, on the other hand, hides living water, spirit that has become nature, and that is why it is disturbed. Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But ‘the heart glows,’ and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. Dealing with the Unconscious has become a question of life for us. ~Carl Jung, CW, 9i, Para 50.

 

[The trickster] is a forerunner of the savior . . . . He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is his unconsciousness. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 472.

 

The attainment of wholenesss requires one to stake one’s whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 556.

 

This living being appears outwardly as the material body, but inwardly as a series of images of the vital activities taking place within it. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 619.

 

Our concern with the unconscious has become a vital question, a question of spiritual being or non-being. ~Carl Jung, CW 9, §§ 43–52.

 

For there is no coming into being and dying but in time. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dream Seminar, Page 101.

 

The four always expresses the coming into being of what is essentially human, the emergence of human consciousness. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 367.

 

We can distinguish no form of being that is not psychic in the first place. All other realities are derived from and indirectly revealed by it, actually with the artificial aid named science. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 59-63.

 

Only after I had written about pages in folio, it began to dawn on me that Christ-not the man but the divine being-was my secret goal. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 479-481.

 

A child, too, enters into this sublimity, and there detaches himself from this world and his manifold individuations more quickly than the aged. So easily does he become what you also are that he apparently vanishes. Sooner or later all the dead become what we also are. But in this reality we know little or nothing about that mode of being, and what shall we still know of this earth after death? ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 343.

 

This perfect being is a conception of an optimum of life, and it is symbolically represented as the all-round being. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture 10, Page 81.

 

The goal which the alchemist sets himself, however, is not a direct redemption of the human being, nor is it a propitiation of the Deity nor a defence against evil. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

 

It [Alchemy] is the idea of producing a perfect and complete being, a being which has a redeeming effect and which has many names: panacea, medicina catholica, the philosophers’ stone and innumerable other synonyms. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 143.

 

Without doubt, also, the realization of the opposite hidden in the unconscious, i.e. the ‘reversal’, signifies reunion with the unconscious laws of being, and the purpose of this reunion is the attainment of conscious life or, expressed in Chinese terms, the bringing about of the Tao. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Pages 95-96.

 

One source is the unconscious, which spontaneously produces such fantasies; the other source is life, which, if lived with complete devotion, brings an intuition of the self, the individual being. ~Carl Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 99.

 

And this being has body, soul and spirit, and is, therefore, the principle of life itself, as well as the principle of individuation. Its nature is spiritual, it cannot be seen, and it contains an invisible image. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 221.

 

Man as a spiritual being is made human by essence (hsing). The individual man possesses it. but it extends far beyond the limits of the individual. ~The Secret of the Golden Flower, Page 11.

 

Man is the mirror which God holds up before him, or the sense organ with which he apprehends his being.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 111-112.

 

These various formulations indicate the same being that we find in the Gnosis as the ethereal man, light and diaphanous, identical with gold, diamond, carbuncle, the Grail, and, in Indian philosophy, with the Purusha or personified as Christ or Buddha. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Page 118.

 

Yoga does not lead to the ego but to the knowledge that the ego is only a phenomenon, it is the face, skin or symptom of an incomprehensible being. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Page 136.

 

Kant himself emphasises that God, the Highest Being, is in no way affected by what we know about him. So the Yogin analyses what he knows about Buddha and takes the last word in the Mantra: “Aham” for this purpose. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 55.

 

We must know how the human psyche came into being for in the unconscious the old ways are always trodden again. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3Mar1939, Page 98.

 

Nirvana, for instance is a positive non-being, this is something which you cannot say anything about. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture III, 17May 1935, Pages 210.

 

The unconscious is a living being with its use, object, and goal, and is eternally looking for a way to reach that goal – a way which is not our personal one, but the human way, mankind’s way. ~ Carl Jung, Lecture VI 2June1934, Page 113.

 

The history of energetics is largely intuitive, it starts primitively as intuitions of archetypes, first they were beings, now they are mathematical formulas. ~Carl Jung, Lecture III, 4May1934, Page 100.

 

Anthropos: Original or primordial man, an archetypal image of wholeness in alchemy, religion and Gnostic philosophy. There is in the unconscious an already existing wholeness, the “homo totus” of the Western and the Chên-yên (true man) of Chinese alchemy, the round primordial being who represents the greater man within, the Anthropos, who is akin to God. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, par. 152.

 

The individual is all-important as he is the carrier of life, and his development and fulfillment are of paramount significance. It is vital for each living being to become its own entelechia and to grow into that which it was from the very beginning. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 19

 

Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence and his own spiritual and moral autonomy anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Page 258.

 

I cannot define for you what God is. I can only say that my work has proved empirically that the pattern of God exists in every man and that this pattern has at its disposal the greatest of all his energies for transformation and transfiguration of his natural being. Carl Jung, “Jung” Van der Post, Page 216.

 

“The Christian symbol is a living being that carries the seeds of further development in itself.” “its foundations remain the same eternally,” “Christianity must be interpreted anew in each aeon,” otherwise “it suffocates in traditionalism.” ~Carl Jung, Wounded Healer of the Soul, Page 149.

 

Consciousness is obviously the supreme quality: the destiny of the world is to achieve entry into human consciousness. Man is the being God has sought not only to show him the world, but because the Creator needs man to illuminate his creation. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 9.

 

As intelligent beings, however, we are dependent on human society; the unconscious is no substitute for reality. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 60.

 

The psyche is nothing different from the living being. It is the psychical aspect of the living being. It is even the psychical aspect of matter. It is a quality. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 27.

 

If God had foreseen his world, it would be a mere senseless machine and Man’s existence a useless freak. My intellect can envisage the latter possibility, but the whole of my being says ‘No’ to it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, 14Sept1960.

 

Only a mythical being has a range greater than man’s. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself? ~Carl Jung, MDR, Page 4.

 

Nobody has ever been entirely liberated from the opposites, because no living being could possibly attain to such a state, as nobody escapes pain and pleasure as long as he functions physiologically. He may have occasional ecstatic experiences when he gets the intuition of a complete liberation, f.i. in reaching the state of sat-chit-ananda. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 303.

 

I may say that I know what is infinite and eternal; I may even assert that I have experienced it; but that one could actually know it is impossible because man is neither an infinite nor an eternal being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 375-379.

 

But becoming Man, he becomes at the same time a definite being, which is this and not that. Thus the very first thing Christ must do is to sever himself from his shadow and call it the devil (sorry, but the Gnostics of Irenaeus already knew it!). ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 133-138

 

But theologians suffer from the fact that when they say “God,” then that God is. But when I say “God,” I know I have expressed my image of such a being and I am honestly not quite sure whether he is just like my image or not, even if I believe in God’s existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 151-154.

 

I know these moments of liberation come flashing out of the process, but I shun them because I always feel at such a moment that I have thrown off the burden of being human and that it will fall back on me with redoubled weight. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 235-238.

 

I hold the contrary view that there are certain experiences (of the most varied kinds) which we characterize by the attribute “divine” without being able to offer the slightest proof that they are caused by a Being with any definite qualities. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.

 

A complete life, unconditionally lived, is the work of the Holy Spirit. It leads us into all dangers and defeats, and into the light of knowledge, which is to say, into maximal consciousness. This is the aim of the incarnation as well as the Creation, which wants each being to attain its perfection. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 267-268.

 

Purusha as creator sacrifices himself in order to bring the world into being: God dissolves in his own creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 304-306.

 

What am I without this individual consciousness of mine? Even what I have called the “self” functions only by virtue of an ego which hears the voice of that greater being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 381.

 

To the former [Mathematician], number is a means of counting; to the latter [Psychology], it is a discovered entity capable of making individual statements if it is given a chance. In other words: in the former case number is a servant, in the latter case an autonomous being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 404-405

 

This can be expressed in other words by saying that there is a relativity of the psychic and physical categories-a relativity of being and of the seemingly axiomatic existence of time and space. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 445-449

 

After thinking all this over I have come to the conclusion that being “made in the likeness” applies not only to man but also to the Creator: he resembles man or is his likeness, which is to say that he is just as unconscious as man or even more unconscious, since according to the myth of the incarnatio he actually felt obliged to become man and offer himself to man as a sacrifice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 493-496

 

Words have become much too cheap. Being is more difficult and is therefore fondly replaced by verbalizing. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 502-503

 

Yet I should consider it an intellectual immorality to indulge in the belief that my view of a God is the universal, metaphysical Being of the confessions or “philosophies.” ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 525-526

 

We are not convinced that our thoughts are original beings that walk about in our brains, and we invent the idea that they are powerless without our gracious creative act; we invent this in order not to be too much influenced by our thoughts. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 82

 

After all, an animal is not just a thing with fur on it; it is a complete being. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 115

 

It is as though in men the animal likeness stopped at the spinal cord while in women it extends into the lower strata of the brain, or that man keeps the animal kingdom in him below the diaphragm, while in women it extends throughout her being. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 124

 

Writing is a difficult question, since it is not only a blessing but also a bad temptation because it tickles the devil of self-importance. If you want to write something, you have to be quite sure that the whole of your being wants this kind of expression. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 612-613

 

His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 623-624

 

The patient is permeated by what you are—by your real being—and pays little attention to what you say. ~Carl Jung, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, Pages 359-364

 

The self would be the preceding stage, a being that is more than man and that definitely manifests; that is the thinker of our thoughts, the doer of our deeds, the maker of our lives, yet it is still within the reach of human experience. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978

 

It [Self] is a restricted universality or a universal restrictedness, a paradox; so it is a relatively universal being and therefore doesn’t deserve to be called “God.” ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 977-978

 

So if you speak of individuation at all, it necessarily means the individuation of beings who are in the flesh, in the living body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 202

 

Children also contain a future personality within themselves, the being that they will be in the following years. ~Carl Jung, Children’s Dreams Seminar, Page 50.

 

But such a thing [Individuation] is only possible if the individual in every moment of existence fulfills his complete being, lives the primitive pattern, fulfills all the expectations that he was originally born with. ~Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 760-761

 

Only man as an individual being lives; the state is just a system, a mere machine for sorting and tabulating the masses. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Para 194

 

As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships and not to isolation. ~Carl Jung, CW 6, Para 758

 

Consciousness is a precondition of being. ~Carl Jung, CW 10, Para 528

 

Since the psychological condition of any unconscious content is one of potential reality, characterized by the polar opposites of “being” and “non-being,” it follows that the union of opposites must play a decisive role in the alchemical process. ~Carl Jung, CW 12, Para 557

 

But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 132-133

 

Mary is the bud which contains the becoming being that is undergoing transformation. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 3rd March 1939.

 

This potential man was not the biological man but the philosophical man, a peculiar being, which is also sometimes called anima. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 24 Feb 1939

 

Man is the mirror which God holds up to himself, or the sense organ with which he apprehends his being. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 112

 

But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I, Pages 132-133

 

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FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased's family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

___________________________________________

 

North Toraja (or Toraja Utara) is a regency (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia, and the home of the Toraja ethnic group. The local government seat is in Rantepao which is also the center of Toraja culture. Formerly this regency was part of Tana Toraja Regency.

 

The Tana Toraja boundary was determined by the Dutch East Indies government in 1909. In 1926, Tana Toraja was under the administration of Bugis state, Luwu. The regentschap (or regency) status was given on October 8, 1946, the last regency given by the Dutch. Since 1984, Tana Toraja has been named as the second tourist destination after Bali by the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia. Since then, hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors have visited this regency. In addition, numerous Western anthropologists have come to Tana Toraja to study the indigenous culture and people of Toraja.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Tana Toraja is located on the Sulawesi island, 300 km north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. Its geographical location is between latitude of 2°-3° South and longitude 119°-120° East (center: 3°S 120°ECoordinates: 3°S 120°E). The area of the new North Toraja Regency is 1,151.47 km², about 2.5% of the total area of South Sulawesi province. The topography of Tana Toraja is mountainous; its minimum elevation is 150 m, while the maximum is 3,083 above the sea level.

 

Tana Toraja Regency (Indonesian for Torajaland or Land of the Toraja, abbreviated Tator) is a regency (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia, and home to the Toraja ethnic group. The local government seat is in Makale, while the center of Toraja culture is in Rantepao. But now, Tana Toraja has been divided to two regencies that consist of Tana Toraja with its capital at Makale and North toraja with its capital at Rantepao.

 

The Tana Toraja boundary was determined by the Dutch East Indies government in 1909. In 1926, Tana Toraja was under the administration of Bugis state, Luwu. The regentschap (or regency) status was given on 8 October 1946, the last regency given by the Dutch. Since 1984, Tana Toraja has been named as the second tourist destination after Bali by the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia. Since then, hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors have visited this regency. In addition, numerous Western anthropologists have come to Tana Toraja to study the indigenous culture and people of Toraja.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Tana Toraja is centrally placed in the island of Sulawesi, 300 km north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. It lies between latitude of 2°-3° South and longitude 119°-120° East (center: 3°S 120°ECoordinates: 3°S 120°E). The total area (since the separation of the new regency of North Toraja) is 2,054.30 km², about 4.4% of the total area of South Sulawesi province. The topography of Tana Toraja is mountainous; its minimum elevation is 150 m, while the maximum is 3,083 above the sea level.

 

ADMINISTRATION

Tana Toraja Regency in 2010 comprised nineteen administrative Districts (Kecamatan), tabulated below with their 2010 Census population.

 

The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognised this animistic belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word Toraja comes from the Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colourful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism development and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model—in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo—to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonisation and Christianisation, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders—such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi—than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups—the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognised in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to Christianity.

 

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognised religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognised, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalised as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin)—except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women—a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

Architecture in the style of a tongkonan is still very common. Various administration buildings were built in this style in recent years, e.g. the Kecamatan building in Rantepao.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolise some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolise fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. Torajan wood carvings are composed of numerous square panels, each of which can represent various things, for example buffaloes as a wish of wealth for the family; a knot and a box, symbolizing the hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony; aquatic animals, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

COGENDER VIEWS

Among the Saʼadan (eastern Toraja) in the island of Sulawesi (Celebes), Indonesia, there are homosexual male toburake tambolang shamans; although among their neighbors the Mamasa (western Toraja) there are instead only heterosexual female toburake shamanesses.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.

 

Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae, Talondo, Toala, and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages.

A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterised their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market.

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies—to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s—including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi—tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure—an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialised. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased's family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

___________________________________________

 

North Toraja (or Toraja Utara) is a regency (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia, and the home of the Toraja ethnic group. The local government seat is in Rantepao which is also the center of Toraja culture. Formerly this regency was part of Tana Toraja Regency.

 

The Tana Toraja boundary was determined by the Dutch East Indies government in 1909. In 1926, Tana Toraja was under the administration of Bugis state, Luwu. The regentschap (or regency) status was given on October 8, 1946, the last regency given by the Dutch. Since 1984, Tana Toraja has been named as the second tourist destination after Bali by the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia. Since then, hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors have visited this regency. In addition, numerous Western anthropologists have come to Tana Toraja to study the indigenous culture and people of Toraja.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Tana Toraja is located on the Sulawesi island, 300 km north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. Its geographical location is between latitude of 2°-3° South and longitude 119°-120° East (center: 3°S 120°ECoordinates: 3°S 120°E). The area of the new North Toraja Regency is 1,151.47 km², about 2.5% of the total area of South Sulawesi province. The topography of Tana Toraja is mountainous; its minimum elevation is 150 m, while the maximum is 3,083 above the sea level.

 

Tana Toraja Regency (Indonesian for Torajaland or Land of the Toraja, abbreviated Tator) is a regency (kabupaten) of South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia, and home to the Toraja ethnic group. The local government seat is in Makale, while the center of Toraja culture is in Rantepao. But now, Tana Toraja has been divided to two regencies that consist of Tana Toraja with its capital at Makale and North toraja with its capital at Rantepao.

 

The Tana Toraja boundary was determined by the Dutch East Indies government in 1909. In 1926, Tana Toraja was under the administration of Bugis state, Luwu. The regentschap (or regency) status was given on 8 October 1946, the last regency given by the Dutch. Since 1984, Tana Toraja has been named as the second tourist destination after Bali by the Ministry of Tourism, Indonesia. Since then, hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors have visited this regency. In addition, numerous Western anthropologists have come to Tana Toraja to study the indigenous culture and people of Toraja.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Tana Toraja is centrally placed in the island of Sulawesi, 300 km north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. It lies between latitude of 2°-3° South and longitude 119°-120° East (center: 3°S 120°ECoordinates: 3°S 120°E). The total area (since the separation of the new regency of North Toraja) is 2,054.30 km², about 4.4% of the total area of South Sulawesi province. The topography of Tana Toraja is mountainous; its minimum elevation is 150 m, while the maximum is 3,083 above the sea level.

 

ADMINISTRATION

Tana Toraja Regency in 2010 comprised nineteen administrative Districts (Kecamatan), tabulated below with their 2010 Census population.

 

The Torajans are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognised this animistic belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word Toraja comes from the Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colourful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism development and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model—in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo—to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonisation and Christianisation, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders—such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi—than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups—the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognised in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to Christianity.

 

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognised religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognised, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalised as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin)—except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women—a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

Architecture in the style of a tongkonan is still very common. Various administration buildings were built in this style in recent years, e.g. the Kecamatan building in Rantepao.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolise some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolise fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. Torajan wood carvings are composed of numerous square panels, each of which can represent various things, for example buffaloes as a wish of wealth for the family; a knot and a box, symbolizing the hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony; aquatic animals, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

COGENDER VIEWS

Among the Saʼadan (eastern Toraja) in the island of Sulawesi (Celebes), Indonesia, there are homosexual male toburake tambolang shamans; although among their neighbors the Mamasa (western Toraja) there are instead only heterosexual female toburake shamanesses.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.

 

Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae, Talondo, Toala, and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages.

A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterised their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market.

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies—to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s—including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi—tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure—an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialised. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Chand Baori is said to be named after a local ruler called Raja Chanda.[4] However, no epigraphic evidence has been found regarding the construction of the Chand Baori or the adjoining Harshat Mata Temple. Based on similarities in style and carvings with the terraced temples of Paranagar and Mandore, the Baodi can be dated to 8th-9th century.[5] It was likely constructed before the temple.[6] The Chand Baori is one of the few stepwells that has "two classical periods of water building in a single setting". according to Morna Livingston in Steps to Water: The Ancient Stepwells of India[1]

 

The oldest parts of the step-well date from the 8th century onwards, An upper palace building was added to the site, which is viewed from the tabulated arches used by the Chauhan rulers and the cusped arches used by the Mughals. Access to these rooms is now blocked for tourists.[1]The upper stories with the columned arcade around it were built around the 18th century during the Mughal era.[7] The Mughals also added art galleries and a retaining wall around the well. Today,there are remains of old sculptures and carvings, which were suggested to be in the temple or in the various rooms.[1] The nearby Harshat Mata Temple was a pilgrimage site and formed a complex together with the well. Many of these stepwells, including Chand Baori, served multiple purposes including drawing water and religious or ceremonies activities.[3] This unique form of underground well-architecture remains constant from the 7th century in the existing monument.[3]Excavated stones of the temple are now kept by the Archaeological Survey of India in the arcades of the well. Chand Baori plays an important part of the main current of architectural activity in western India.

The judges are still reviewing the entries and tabulating the votes for the inaugural Bronze Builder challenge, but we’re ready to kick-off the next competition.

 

This month’s Bronze Builder seed part is....

 

Reddish Brown Cone 3 x 3 x 2!

 

This piece originally hails from The LEGO Movie’s 70812 Creative Ambush, where it appeared as Kebab Bob’s shawarma. Does this piece have a use other than a meat tornado? It’s up to you!

 

Don’t know what the Bronze Builder is?

 

Bronze Builder is a LUGOLA competition to build a new, original MOC using a special seed part. Follow along in our Flickr group Flickr group or with the tag #BronzeBuilderMay2017

  

. Thiên Bình : Nụ cười của họ là điển hình của những ai được phù trợ bởi thần Vệ nữ – nụ cười mềm mại, dịu dàng, ngọt ngào, pha chút bí hiểm.

 

Thậm chí sự cáu giận, xúc động cũng không làm hỏng, làm mất đi vẻ bình thản trên khuôn mặt của Thiên Bình. Miệng Thiên Bình thường có hình như cánh cung, môi hồng tươi.

 

Thiên Bình thường có thân hình đẹp

 

. Và đặc biệt, trong vẻ đẹp của đàn bà Thiên Bình có nét gì đó nam tính, còn ở đàn ông có nét nữ tính. Điều đó không có nghĩa là đàn bà Thiên Bình phải giống như lực sĩ, còn đàn ông – như các tiểu thư. Nhưng hình thức của họ quả là có ẩn hiện sắc thái của giới tính đối lập.

 

tính cách của Thiên Bình cũng mềm mại, dịu dàng và đáng yêu. Điều đó đúng, nhưng chỉ đúng một nửa.

 

Đó là lúc Thiên Bình ở trong tâm trạng thăng bằng. Còn lúc khác, họ bức xúc, dễ cáu, đồng bóng, bướng bỉnh, uất ức và hung dữ

 

. Rồi sau, Thiên Bình lại đi vào trạng thái thăng bằng, và họ lại dễ thương, thông minh, và tốt bụng.

 

=)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

  

- Nhiệm vụ của tháng 3 của tui đây :(( phòng tài vụ ơiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii :(( nhức đầu quá :((

 

Tasks on 4/2/2013 - A.Thu - ms 09725

 

Check the order of the counter cosmetics (essance, L'Oreal, ez'up, Lancome)

 

Tabulated information from interest on 4/1 - 4/2

 

Tax invoice your completed 5 of the counter in the cosmetic industry

 

Revenues and expenditures of the plaza in the third quarter

 

finance management

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- Tóc nối chĩ từ 8k đến 11k 1 tép

- click www.flickr.com/photos/80968463@N08/ để xem hình cuả rất nhìu khách

I spotted this bird on a seemingly unused building across from our hotel, near LAX. I took this photo where the bird was more or less visible, then a wider angle to emphasize how alone it was amid the dark windows and pattern that reminded me of a punch card. flic.kr/p/oouQWL

 

ultimately I made punch-card image from the windows and pasted the bird in at column 7, row 0. flic.kr/p/omuk33

 

This image has had 7586 views as of 9-Aug-2015, and its #79 in my top 100.

 

Four Injures, Five Structures Damaged in Hollywood Fire

 

HOLLYWOOD - Fast moving flames damaged five residential buildings and led to four persons sustaining injury in the Hollywood Studio District Friday morning.

 

The Los Angeles Fire Department was notified by a 9-1-1 caller at 9:08 AM on Friday, January 22, 2021 of a structure fire at 1245 North Bronson Avenue in Hollywood.

 

Firefighters arrived quickly to find a vacant and boarded one story home in a large unkempt lot, fully involved with fire, with flames extending to a vacant home on the same parcel.

 

Fire was simultaneously taking hold of the attic at an occupied two story Craftsman-style home on a neighboring property to the north, and yet another vacant home on the same parcel, behind that structure. Flames also threatened an occupied three story garden-style apartment building to the south.

 

The fierce and well-coordinated firefight by 97 firefighters under the command of Assistant Chief Dean Zipperman extinguished the flames in just 39 minutes.

 

Damage to the apartment building was kept largely superficial, with some broken windows and damage to a balcony. The effort of LAFD responders also largely limited fire within the attic of the Craftsman-style home.

 

The trio of other vacant structures, including the building of fire origin and the somewhat dilapidated buildings to the rear of each home, were destroyed by the flames, which also damaged at least one vehicle.

 

Three civilians and one firefighter sustained non-life threatening injuries related to the fire, with the three civilians taken to area hospitals for further care, including an adult male resident of the apartment building with burns to his arm, and a pair of adult females from the Craftsman-style home - one of whom sustained minor burn injury, and the other, who had no obvious injury, but was carried from the premises by passersby prior to LAFD arrival.

 

The firefighter, who sustained facial trauma at the peak of the firefight, was briefly assessed and treated at scene before returning quickly to the battle.

 

No other injuries were reported.

 

Fire loss to the five buildings, three of which were vacant, is still being tabulated. The cause of the greater alarm fire remains under active investigation.

 

For updated informtion regarding this incident, visit:

 

lafd.org/news/four-injured-five-structures-damaged-fire-h...

 

© Photo by Mike Meadows

 

LAFD Incident: 012221-0421

 

Connect with us: LAFD.ORG | News | Facebook | Instagram | Reddit | Twitter: @LAFD @LAFDtalk

A waterworn fossil coral pebble found on the a Lake Michigan beach.

The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The US Navy and US Army later produced machines to the same functional specification, but engineered differently.

The initial design of the bombe was produced in 1939 at the UK Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing, with an important refinement devised in 1940 by Gordon Welchman. The engineering design and construction was the work of Harold Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company. It was a substantial development from a device that had been designed in 1938 by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologist Marian Rejewski, and known as the "cryptologic bomb" (Polish: "bomba kryptologiczna").

The bombe was designed to discover some of the daily settings of the Enigma machines on the various German military networks: specifically, the set of rotors in use and their positions in the machine; the rotor core start positions for the message—the message key—and one of the wirings of the plugboard.