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"Lasciando adesso che le vene crescano
in intrichi di rami melodiosi
inneggianti al destino che trascelse
te fra gli eletti a cingermi di luce…
In libertà di spazio ogni volume
di tensione repressa si modella
nel fervore del moto e mi dissanguo
di canto ‘vero’ ad esso che trascino
la mia squallida spoglia dentro l’orgia
dell’abbandono. O, senza tregua più,
dannata d’universo, o la perfetta
nudità della vita,
o implacabili ardori riplasmanti
la già morta materia: in te mi accolgo
risospinta dagli echi all’infinito."
(Alda Merini)
The Gay Games is the world's largest sporting and cultural event organized by and specifically for LGBT athletes, artists, musicians, and others. It welcomes participants of every sexual orientation and every skill level. Originally called the Gay Olympics, it was started in San Francisco in 1982, as the brainchild of Tom Waddell, whose goals were to promote the spirit of inclusion and participation, as well as the pursuit of personal growth in a sporting event. It retains many similarities with the Olympics, including the Gay Games flame which is lit at the opening ceremony.
The Gay Games is open to all who wish to participate, without regard to sexual orientation. There are no qualifying standards to compete in the Gay Games. It brings together people from all over the world, many from countries where homosexuality remains illegal and hidden.
The Federation of Gay Games (FGG) is the sanctioning body of the Gay Games. From its statement of concept and purpose:
The purpose of the Federation of Gay Games is to foster and augment the self-respect of lesbians and gay men throughout the world and to engender respect and understanding from the nongay world, primarily through an organized international participatory athletic and cultural event held every four years, and commonly known as the Gay Games.
Gay Games VIII were held in Cologne, Germany from July 31 to August 6, 2010.
Teresa & Rylan
[after they finished with their shopping, Teresa and Rylan make a pit stop at her apartment]
R. --- You got anything to drink in here?
T. --- Soda's are in the fridge. [she heads toward the back room] I'm gonna go put these bags away then I'll drive you back to your place.
R. --- Hey! ...Thanks for letting me stash the gifts here. You're a good friend, you know that!
_____
Part of F2K, Vol. 8
>>>Starting tomorrow (June 3rd) through Thursday (June 6th), there will be two scenes uploaded daily... hope you're ready!
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: I Do Not Condone Any Acts Of Vandalism Nor Do I Participate In Such Criminal Activity. I Am Simply An Observant and Take Photos Of This Graffiti You Have Come Across. ALSO I Will Not Condone Any Usage Of My Photos To Support Any Legal Matter Involving These Acts Of Vandalism Therefore YOU ARE NOT WELCOME TO VIEW OR TAKE THIS MATERIAL For ANY Purpose...
At the height of the Cold War NATO forces in Europe were on constant watch for the approach of Soviet aircraft. Virtually every day the Russians tested the efficiency of west’s radars and its ability to respond quickly to intrusions from the East. During the course of this tense 40-year stand-off UFOs were a headache for both sides. At the centre of this cat-and-mouse game were the crews who flew the fighter aircraft whose job it was to intercept unidentified aircraft and, if necessary, shoot them down. Every minute of every day, pairs of RAF crews were cockpit ready at airfields along Britain’s east coast ready to go when the order to “scramble” came.
One dark September night in 1970 Captain William Schaffner, a USAF pilot on exchange duties with the Royal Air Force, was scrambled from RAF Binbrook in Lincolnshire to intercept one such intruder. It was to be his last mission and the beginning of a mystery that would not be laid to rest until 2005, when the secret MoD report on the tragedy was finally released at the National Archives.
Schaffner, a 28-year-old father-of-two was an experienced pilot who had seen action in Vietnam. In the early hours of 9 September his wife and young family were told the RAF Lightning he had been flying had crashed into theNorth Sea. Lifeboats and coastguard rescue spent two days searching the choppy seas but could find no trace of him. And although the wreckage of the plane was eventually recovered from the sea largely intact, Captain Schaffner’s body was never found. The mysterious circumstances of his death would soon become the stuff legends are made of.
A RAF Board of Inquiry was held and a report produced but official secrecy was so endemic that the findings were kept on the secret list. As a result rumours spread about what had happened to Captain Schaffner. The wildest of all suggested he had been spirited from the cockpit of his aircraft as he closed on a UFO above theNorth Sea. The RAF crews had been purposely kept in the dark about the identity of the aircraft they had been scrambled to intercept. Was it one of theirs or one of ours? Or was it something much stranger? The fact that Schaffner died in tragic circumstances was the only definite fact at the time. But as the years passed it became the lynchpin around rumours and gossip that suggested Schaffner lost his life whilst pursuing a UFO.
The UFO connection came in 1992 when the Grimsby Evening News, published two sensational articles by assistant editor Pat Otter. As a cub reporter in 1970 Otter had covered the fruitless search for the pilot’s body. When the mystery was revived two decades later in a local book the paper received a call from a man claiming to be a member of the original RAF crash investigation team which examined the remains of the Lightning. Otter was later to claim he never believed the man’s story, but felt it was too good not to publish when he came up against a wall of official denials.
Otter’s source – who wished to remain anonymous – claimed there had been a dramatic increase in radar tracking of UFOs over the North Sea during the autumn of 1970 which led the RAF to mount a special operation. At8.17pmon 8 September radars in the Shetlands tracked an unidentified target above the North Sea and Lightning interceptors were scrambled from RAF Leuchars to engage. But before they could get near the UFO turned sharply, increased its speed to a fantastic 17,400 mph, and vanished from the radar screens. According to the “deep throat” source higher command levels within NATO were now alerted and aircraft from three squadrons were ordered to remain on patrol in case the “thing” returned. It did, and during the course of the night several UFOs were detected. Each time they shot away at high speed before the RAF could approach them.
In his book Alien Investigator, published in 1999, former police sergeant turned UFO detective Tony Dodd took Otter’s story even further. His own sources (again anonymous) claimed that several early warning systems and tracking stations, including RAF Fylingdales in the UK and NORAD HQ at Cheyenne Mountain in the USA were put on full alert and that it was “almost certain” that President Nixon was closely involved. Dodd even claimed that NORAD contacted the RAF specifically to request that Captain Schaffner – on an exchange posting to the RAF – should be scrambled.
According to both Otter and Dodd, Schaffner took off in Lightning XS-894 not long after he had returned from a training mission. The UFO was now being tracked on radar about ninety miles east ofWhitbyand Schaffner was quickly vectored onto it. The information about what happened next was taken from a transcript provided by the RAF “source” that purported to be describing the actual interchange between Schaffner and the radar controller at RAF Patrington on theYorkshirecoast. According to the transcript, Schaffner could see a bluish conical shape which was so bright he could hardly look at it. This UFO was accompanied by an object resembling a large glass football.
As Schaffner closed in, describing the object before him, he suddenly exclaimed:
“Wait a second, its turning…coming straight for me….am taking evasive action….”
At that point the controller lost contact and Schaffner’s radar plot merged with that of the UFO for a while before losing altitude and disappearing from the scope. Schaffner’s plane was found one month later on the bed of the North Sea with the cockpit still closed. There was no sign of the pilot’s body.
This is a literally fantastic case and one with massive political implications if any of it is true. It was also an event that resonated with other stories concerning mysterious “vanishings” that have become part of the UFO enigma. The death or disappearance of military pilots as a result of hostile action by UFOs has a long pedigree in the literature of the subject. The vanishing of Flight 19 off the Florida Keys and within the Bermuda Triangle in 1945 was used to striking effect by Steven Spielberg at the opening of his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind that was supposedly based on true-life UFO incidents. The UFO connection with this “mystery” has since been thoroughly debunked but there are other stories that have contributed to the body of belief and rumour. They include the death of USAF pilot Thomas Mantell whose aircraft crashed during an abortive chase of a ‘flying saucer’ over Kentucky in 1948, and the mysterious disappearance of pilot Frederick Valentich and his Cessna aircraft following a UFO encounter over the Bass Straight, Australia, in 1978.
But when examined closely the facts behind many of these classic mysteries rarely support the status they have achieved among UFOlogists. For the RAF Board of Inquiry report into the death of Captain Schaffner, finally declassified by the MoD in 2003, provides a far less sensational version of the events. It reveals how the UFO link with the case is the product of poor investigation and wishful thinking rather than hard fact. Pat Otter’s story, enthusiastically endorsed by Flying Saucer Review and Tony Dodd, exciting though it sounds, has no evidence to support it other than the fact that Captain Schaffner did exist and was killed in an aircraft accident in the North Sea.
Wat Phra That Doi Suthep is a Theravada Buddhist temple (wat) in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. The temple is often referred to as "Doi Suthep" although this is actually the name of the mountain where it's located. It is a sacred site to many Thai people. The temple is 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the city of Chiang Mai and situated at an elevation of 1,073 meters. From the temple, impressive views of downtown Chiang Mai can be seen.
Wat Phra That Doi Suthep is a gorgeously planned Wat with a story to tell about Buddhism. Once the Naga lined steps are surmounted (the longest Naga balustrade in Thailand), the first site one sees is the White elephant statue commemorating the story behind the Wat placement. The closest entrance to the inner ring is to the left, on the North side of the complex. The immediate view is one of the chedi towering 79 feet (24 meters). This gold plated spire is very typical of Northern Thailand chedi with its heightened redented octagonal base, ringed spire, smooth spire, and the tiered chatra (umbrella) at the top. The structure is greatly influenced by Sukhothai art; however, the chatra isn't a Thai influence, but rather an aspect that came from two centuries of Burmese occupation. The tiered and angular shape of the chedi is found all around Thailand is an aspect of Buddhist architecture. The tiers represent the level of heavens that one must ascend in order to achieve Nirvana as well as the hierarchy associated with a monarchy. The angular shape and sloping appearance are more related to the feeling that Thai architects wished to relate. In Threvada Buddhism, the main focus is to rid oneself of unwholesomeness, and to do that there is a focus on peace, lightness, and floating. If the chedi was just its plain shapes of an octagon and triangle, it would appear dense and static. The redented look, near parabolic slope, and golden cover of the chedi creates a feeling of weightlessness of the structure
This same concept can be seen with the Wihans. The weightlessness for the wihans and the surround structures comes primarily from the roof aesthetic. The aesthetic that comes into play here is the toying of geometry and separating similar shapes. This particular wihan has a two tiered roof with the different sections being at different angels. The lower tier is at a flatter angle to replicate a stouter more tense look, while the next tier is at a quite steep angle that creates a more elevated and relaxed look. This separation is to represent the freedom from attachment which is the ultimate goal of Buddhism. The white stucco and incredibly ornate pediment greatly assist with this lightweight feel and separation, but the roof provides the most dynamic movement of the building due to its size and composure. The pediments are typically the most decorated parts of the building that express the grandeur and status of the temple. At each corner of the roof tiers there's a flat ornamental Naga and the large pointed pieces at the peak of the roof are called chofas.
The same Buddhist theme from the exterior also makes its way to the interior with many different factors. The first is that the walls and columns all slant inward to the center of the building. This is to help with the structural integrity of the building, but to also make the feeling of the room ascending. The interior is also greatly decorated with murals all over the walls. The murals are typically the story of Buddha's life and travels but also include Hindu aspects as well. The inside is of the building is typically quite dark because the main lighting comes from the narrow vertical windows and the fact that the murals and all of the indoor decoration are darker materials. The narrowness of the windows is for structural concerns, but to also help with the ascension feel because they are actually trapezoids that are wider at the base. The interiors at Wat Phra That Doi Suthep contains myriads of Buddha statues that come in all different styles and materials just like the outside courtyard.
The layout of the complex shows bi axial symmetry around the chedi with the main and small wihans slightly off the east-west cardinal plane. The cardinal directions are important to Buddhism and it is said that if there isn't a body of water around, like in this case, then the main wihan should face the rising sun. This explains why the main wihan is on the west side of the complex. Outside of the square courtyard the placement and design of the surroundings is due to the topography of the mountaintop. The viewing spot to see Chiang Mai is a propped cantilever with around a 15-foot drop over the edge. Even looking at the wooden wihan and the monk's residence further down the hill, they both exist on the north-south plane pointing towards the chedi. Everything on the site points inward towards the iconic chedi indicating its significance to the wat [Wikipedia.org]
those ain't my bones unknown out there, not my teeth scattered out there like a broken necklace. mice ain't making a nest in my jacket elbow. sow bugs ain't sleeping under what's left of my shoes. blackbirds ain't playing tug of war with tufts of my hair. rattlesnakes ain't sleeping in my last resting place.
(Sesshu Foster, Atomik Aztex)
Title from a Radiohead song.... but also due to the fact that this totem pole does not serve the purpose it did in the past.
We live in a unique time when the past is still with us and the future is rapidly developing. At first glance, you might not notice what I am writing about. Pay attention to the buildings and the cars. These buildings were built around 1900, and the cars are less than 10 years old. That is, the difference is more than 100 years. Could the builders of these houses have imagined that such cars would be parked nearby?
Liverpool Pride is a weekend-long festival to celebrate LGBT culture held annually at the Pier Head and Gay Quarter in Liverpool City Centre, England. The event is held on the closest weekend to 2 August, in commemoration of the death of Michael Causer, the young gay man who was murdered in the city in 2008, and has grown to become one of the largest free Gay Pride festivals in Europe with 2013's audience numbers reaching up to 75,000 people