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The 2001 film 'Black Hawk Down' told the story of a US military campaign in which country? | Black Hawk Down (2001) - IMDb
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160 elite U.S. soldiers drop into Somalia to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and find themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily-armed Somalis.
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Title: Black Hawk Down (2001)
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Won 2 Oscars. Another 8 wins & 37 nominations. See more awards »
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Storyline
Action/war drama based on the best-selling book detailing a near-disastrous mission in Somalia on October 3, 1993. On this date nearly 100 U.S. Army Rangers, commanded by Capt. Mike Steele, were dropped by helicopter deep into the capital city of Mogadishu to capture two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord. This led to a large and drawn-out firefight between the Army Ranges, US Special Forces, and hundreds of Somali gunmen; resulting in the destruction of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters. The film focuses on the heroic efforts of various Rangers to get to the downed black hawks, centering on SSG. Eversmann, leading the Ranger unit Chalk Four to the first black hawk crash site, Chief Warrant Officer Durant who was captured after being the only survivor of the second black hawk crash, as well as many others who were involved. Written by Matthew Patay: revised by Corbin L.
Reporting for Duty Christmas 2001 See more »
Genres:
Rated R for intense, realistic, graphic war violence, and for language | See all certifications »
Parents Guide:
18 January 2002 (USA) See more »
Also Known As:
La caída del halcón negro See more »
Filming Locations:
$193,021 (USA) (4 January 2002)
Gross:
Did You Know?
Trivia
The donkey that Sgt. Ed Yurek briefly pets almost didn't make it into the film because of budget cuts. In fact, during the rewriting and re-editing of the script, screenwriter Ken Nolan found a note by Ridley Scott saying, "I miss the donkey". The donkey was eventually kept. See more »
Goofs
when CPT Steele calls out SFC Hooten to point out the safety of his weapon, it is obvious that when Hooten turns around, the right side of his rifle is facing outward but when Steele's finger is pointing at the safety lever, the left side of the rifle is facing outward See more »
Quotes
See more »
Crazy Credits
There are no studio logos at the beginning and the only opening credit is the title. See more »
Connections
Courtesy of Reachout International Records, Inc. (R.O.I.R.)
By Arrangement with Ocean Park Music Group
Tells it like it is
26 November 2004 | by BettieTeese
(Australia) – See all my reviews
I'm not a fan of war movies usually,but when i sat down to watch Black Hawk Down,i couldn't turn it off.Heres a war movie which doesn't sugar coat.There is no crappy dialogue,no soppy love story tie ins,just the real deal,brutal battle scenes,the gruesome reality of war.Black Hawk Down is based on a true story,the bloody battle at Somalia and it leaves one drained.Its confronting,and exposes war in its true light-there's nothing glamorous to see.In two hours and a bit the viewer is able to imagine being there at the horrible battleground,and suffering like the soldiers did.It really makes you appreciate how lucky we are to be in a free country,relatively peaceful,and not having our lives threatened every second of the day.Everything about BHD is right; the setting of the film,the Somalians,the American soldiers going through hell,the brutality,the battle,the
fatalities.Not for the faint hearted,or weak stomached,but a truly powerful,compelling motion picture.Ridley Scott takes the viewer on an imaginative journey through Black Hawk Down and appeals to our emotions.A brutal,yet bearable war film.
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| Somalia |
Who was awarded the 100m Olympic Gold Medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 after the disqualification of Ben Johnson? | FILM; War, Without Any Answers - The New York Times
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FILM; War, Without Any Answers
By JAMIE MALANOWSKI
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Correction Appended
A WAR movie may or may not succeed as an entertainment vehicle, but it almost always serves the purpose of telling us how we're feeling -- or ought to feel -- about war itself: proud, sorrowful, ashamed, angry, resolute. The films usually are part of the times that produce them.
''The Longest Day,'' about the Allied landing in Normandy, made by the World War II generation during the cold war, told us that our cause was just and our men were heroic. Most of the Vietnam War films, like ''Platoon'' and ''Coming Home,'' and many World War I films, like ''Gallipoli'' and ''Paths of Glory,'' tell us about governments that have broken faith with their soldiers and wasted their courage. Appearing in a decade rife with spin, ''Saving Private Ryan'' told us that nothing was more authentic than a soldier's sacrifice. It is paradoxical, then, at a moment when America is at war and the country is feeling especially justified about its prosecution, that one of the central creative principles behind ''Black Hawk Down,'' a film whose production was bisected by Sept. 11, was the determination not to tell the audience how to feel.
''I don't want to give the audience any answers,'' says the film's director, Ridley Scott. ''I want them to go away and think, 'This isn't a movie movie.' It's as near to the edge of a documentary as I could make it.''
''Black Hawk Down'' tells the story of the Oct. 3, 1993, raid by Army Rangers and the elite Army Delta Force to capture two deputies of the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in Mogadishu, Somalia. Although the deputies were successfully captured, what had been planned as a quick-hitting, hopefully antiseptic strike turned into a hard-fought 15-hour gun battle in which perhaps 500 Somalis and 18 American soldiers were killed and two of the fearsome, seemingly invincible Black Hawk helicopters shot down. Troops were sent there mainly to help the United Nations make sure that food supplies sent to the famine-stricken nation were fairly distributed and not stolen by the gunmen. After the battle, President Bill Clinton ordered a withdrawal from Somalia within six months.
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The film, which opens on Dec. 28 in New York and Los Angeles, marks the third life for this story. The first was in the immediate news accounts and the reaction to them, which focused not only on the casualties, but also on how the body of a dead American soldier was stripped and dragged about the streets. The raid was seen by many as a debacle, and an example of America's irresolution. Later, Mark Bowden, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, re-examined the battle in scrupulous detail, first for his newspaper and then in his best-selling book, ''Black Hawk Down.'' His reporting focused squarely on the battle and the soldiers, depicting them as valorous, well-trained and successful in the face of terrible complications.
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''It goes to show you how context is everything,'' says Mr. Bowden. ''If tomorrow you read that we captured two of Osama bin Laden's key advisers and killed and wounded 1,000 of Al Qaeda, and in the process lost 18 men, you'd think they'd done a helluva job.''
The film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, bought the rights to the book while it was still in galleys. ''It was fascinating to get so deep inside a military operation,'' Mr. Bruckheimer says of his attraction to the material. ''And I was struck by the heroism of the young soldiers.'' Originally, Simon West was to direct, but when he became caught up with ''Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,'' Mr. Bruckheimer approached Mr. Scott.
''I thought this sounded like the ideal way to do a war film,'' said Mr. Scott, who had just completed ''Gladiator'' and ''Hannibal'' and was looking for a project more grounded in reality. ''And I thought, if you're going to do it, and it's going to be about war, it can't be sentimentalized in any form. That's why I wanted to take out of it all the usual references to home and family.''
Mr. Bowden's book revealed the personal information and histories of the soldiers sparingly, but the film cuts that information back even more. A 20-minute sequence before the raid differentiates the characters, but Mr. Scott metes this material out with a coffee spoon, not a trowel; this is not one of those platoon movies in which Louie speaks longingly of his girlfriend back in Flatbush or Tex dreams of owning a spread by the Rio Grande.
''It seemed to me that the film had to be an anatomy of the military process,'' says Mr. Scott. ''That's why there's no fat in the picture. The beginning is about, and only about, telling you background that you need to know for the raid. It's not about home, it's all about what we're going to do today, today, today. And then, through that tight focus, you can see that the picture is more about courage under fire, which is about functioning under fire. Real courage comes from people who are under fire and who function though under the pall of fear. The guy who is not afraid may not be wholly courageous. He may just be a lunatic.''
The story was compelling, but also enormously complicated. The raid followed a plan familiar to the troops: Black Hawk helicopters would drop the soldiers outside a building where they had been informed Aidid's men were staying. Some troops would seize the men while others guarded a perimeter. A convoy of Humvees would then rumble in from the outskirts of town and take everybody to safety. The operation was supposed to last an hour from start to finish; many men didn't even bother to carry canteens. But first one helicopter, and then another, was shot down. A pilot was dead; the other soldiers needed rescuing. The timing of the operation became disrupted. The convoy got misdirected. Aidid's supporters -- and this fight was in his stronghold -- rallied to the scene. The troops, by refusing to abandon the dead pilot, prolonged the fight, which led to the perception that the mission had failed.
''The biggest challenge with this film,'' says Mr. Scott, ''was getting all the through lines clear, so you can sit there and take it all in. When you read the book, you can actually read, put down, read, put down. You've got time to think, digest, distill. In this story, there were always 4 or 5 or 50 things happening at once, simultaneous action. The tendency on the part of the audience, when we cut from one scene to another, is to think in terms of sequence, in cause and effect. But it's not always like that. Complexity in a story is good, but density bores an audience. So we had to go through the screenplay, over and over again, to make sure people could understand what was happening.''
Further complicating the adaptation was the sheer number of soldiers who took part; about 100 protected the first downed helicopter, but a movie can't handle anywhere near that number of characters. People and events had to be conflated. Josh Hartnett, for example, plays Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann, and through his young and inexperienced eyes we get one perspective on the events. In reality, Sergeant Eversmann participated only in the beginning of the battle, and then was evacuated.
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The Army, which was highly cooperative with the filmmakers, had requests as well. Ewan MacGregor plays a character named Grimes, a company clerk seeing his first action. The story is true, but the soldier's name was John Stebbins, not Grimes.
''As it happened, Stebbins got in trouble with the law,'' explains Mr. Bowden, who wrote the original draft of the screenplay, which is now credited to Ken Nolan and Steven Zaillian. ''The Army asked us to change the name.'' Another character's name was changed, but for a very different reason. Eric Bana, an Australian actor, plays a Delta Force sergeant named Hoot. Because the Delta Force operates covertly, the Army thought it would be wiser not to have this man's identity on movie screens worldwide, even though his real name appears in the book. As it happens, the real Hoot seems astonishingly like a Hollywood creation.
''He's unbelievably fit,'' says Mr. Bruckheimer, ''wears these Oakley sunglasses all the time, lives in an apartment with no furniture, sleeps on the floor in a sleeping bag. And he has a medical degree. I assume he's there in Afghanistan now.''
Once the characters were delineated, there was a further complication. ''When I first saw them all standing together,'' says Mr. Scott, ''they were all in their uniforms, all with their helmets and goggles, and I broke out into a sweat. They all looked the same! The same! I said, 'We've got to write their names on their helmets,' and the military adviser, whose job it is to make sure we do everything authentically, said, 'Oh, no, we don't do that.' I said, 'Sorry, mate, they're going to have names on the helmets in this war.' ''
THE resemblance -- literally, the uniformity -- could have been combated by casting more well-known actors; familiar faces help audiences follow the action. But the filmmakers chose not to do that. ''You could have gotten better-known actors,'' says Mr. Bruckheimer, ''but it's hard to get guys that age who are well known. And if they are, it's because of television, which changes the reality of what you're presenting in a different way.''
In his effort to be authentic and unsentimental, Mr. Scott depicts combat graphically, including the ghastly consequences to a body when it is pierced by an antitank missile that does not explode. But he does from time to time turn away. If Americans remember anything of the raid itself, it is the terrible images of Somalis dragging around the corpse of an American soldier. The film depicts the event only to a point.
''They went for the clothing first, because it was valuable, and like a trophy,'' says Mr. Scott, who was not a military man but whose father was an officer with the Royal Engineers during World War II. ''I didn't think you needed to see anymore. Could you make it worse? Absolutely. But did those men have families? Yes. I didn't want anyone to go through that again.'' The judicious editing does not diminish the accuracy of the depiction.
''It was interesting to watch Ridley and Jerry work together,'' says Mr. Bowden. ''Ridley is a gritty director, often with a very dark view of things. And Jerry is like Norman Rockwell, always ready to tap into the familiar strains of emotion and affection.''
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The two men feel that they have had a beneficial effect on one another. ''We're both aware that he's got the reputation of being too sentimental, and I've got the reputation of being too dark,'' says Mr. Scott. ''So I tried to come to the center, and that meant trying just to be more realistic, more journalistic. Who are these guys? What do they really go through? Why are they really there?''
As in all war movies, these questions are eventually answered, though in keeping with the general thrust of the film, these epiphanies are tersely worded. ''Hoot says it,'' says Mr. Scott. ''It's all about the guy next to you. Once that bullet goes past your head, politics goes out the window, and it's really about the man next to you. And that's where this ethic of leaving no man behind comes from. I loved that idea.''
The most unexpected complication was, of course, Sept. 11. At the time of the attacks, the film was scheduled to be released next March. In the aftermath, Mr. Scott and Mr. Bruckheimer wondered whether this would be a film that audiences would be in a mood to see even then. One way they tried to fit the picture into the new context was by adding a postscript that suggested that Washington's decision to withdraw from Somalia after this battle, as well as its decision not to intervene with infantry in troubled places like Rwanda and Bosnia, was part of a reluctance to wage war that eventually emboldened America's enemies to attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
That postscript was dropped. Eventually, the filmmakers decided that the movie would find its audience. ''We concluded that this was a good time,'' says Mr. Scott. ''We saw that these soldiers were like the firefighters and the police officers and the rescue workers, in that they are all people who would go into burning buildings or under fire without thinking of themselves, but only about their duty.
''And from a filmmaking view, my duty was to the soldier who was there, to make the film as accurate as I can, to render the experience of face-to-face fighting as realistically as I can. That was my job.''
Correction: December 23, 2001, Sunday An article last Sunday about the film ''Black Hawk Down'' included an outdated screenplay credit. The screenplay is credited to Ken Nolan, no longer with Steven Zaillian.
| i don't know |
According to folklore, what was the name of the monster slain by 'Beowulf'? | Beowulf Monsters
THE MONSTERS OF BEOWULF
Grendel:
We don't hear much in the way of a physical description, and this is because it's what Grendel represents that is the horror for the original audience. His name is associated etymologically with "ground" or "bottom," but more importantly, consider the following:
He is a "lone-walker" -- not part of a comitatus.
He kills -- well, that's fine -- but at night?
He uses no weapon in battle -- while all other warriors practically have names for theirs.
He has no father -- while everyone else introduces himself as "son of" someone.
The poet says, rather oddly, that he won't settle the feud -- so he doesn't offer or accept wergild, or he can't approach the gift-seat.
The poet says, rather oddly, that he can't boast -- everyone else is expected to.
He is described repeatedly in terms of deprivation and negatives.
In the fight between Grendel and Beowulf, confusing pronouns as to who is gripping whose arm suggest a döppleganger effect -- a doubling. These two are two sides of the same coin, and the coin is "warrior." In other words, Grendel represents everything a warrior should not be, or functions as the cumulative opposite of all Anglo-Saxon warrior virtues.
Grendel's Mother:
We hear some material after the battle with Grendel that introduces the female perspective in roundabout ways, including Hrothgar's insistence that if Beowulf has a living mother, imagine how proud she'd be. We also hear, in a tangential story (the Finnsburg lai), about a grieving woman whose offspring have been murdered. So Grendel's mother's perspective is alluded to very obliquely. She snatches not skads of drunken warriors, but Hrothgar's favorite; so however arbitary that seems to have been in terms of her attack, she is functioning essentially in a blood-feud. Beowulf becomes the invader into her hall just as Grendel was in Heorot. Women in Anglo-Saxon culture are "peace-weavers" (because one can convince oneself that arranged marriages will prompt feuds to simmer down) and "cup-bearers" (because they fetch more booze for the men). That's it. Grendel's mother is the opposite of what that culture values in women.
The Dragon:
We keep hearing a term of 50 years mentioned: especially in reference to Beowulf's kingship and to the time the dragon has guarded its hoard. Beowulf is now the king -- the "ring-giver" who ideally distributes booty captured in battle to his thanes in accordance with their deserts. Good kings are ring-givers and bad kings (again we hear tangentially of a couple) are miserly. The dragon functions then as the opposite of a good king because it guards the trreasure but can do nothing with it. It represents malice, destruction, and greed -- the dark side of kingship. So it's another döppleganger situation in effect. Both the dragon and Beowulf die in this final battle, and the last images are those of waste and desolation.
Sea-Monsters:
When Beowulf is defending his reputation from Unferth's accusations in front of Hrothgar and the rest, he mentions having to fend off "niceras" -- sea-monsters. My Chaucerian and Medievalist college professor, Thomas J. Garbaty said in 1984 about these things: "Nicoras. What are they? I don't know. They're sea-monsters; they're bad. You gotta kill them."
--Michael Delahoyde
| Grendel |
Who was the Augustinian monk who is known as 'The Father Of Modern Genetics' because of his study of inheritance in peas? | SparkNotes: Beowulf: Character List
Character List
Analysis of Major Characters
Principal Characters
Beowulf - The protagonist of the epic, Beowulf is a Geatish hero who fights the monster Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a fire-breathing dragon. Beowulf’s boasts and encounters reveal him to be the strongest, ablest warrior around. In his youth, he personifies all of the best values of the heroic culture. In his old age, he proves a wise and effective ruler.
Read an in-depth analysis of Beowulf.
King Hrothgar - The king of the Danes. Hrothgar enjoys military success and prosperity until Grendel terrorizes his realm. A wise and aged ruler, Hrothgar represents a different kind of leadership from that exhibited by the youthful warrior Beowulf. He is a father figure to Beowulf and a model for the kind of king that Beowulf becomes.
Grendel - A demon descended from Cain, Grendel preys on Hrothgar’s warriors in the king’s mead-hall, Heorot. Because his ruthless and miserable existence is part of the retribution exacted by God for Cain’s murder of Abel, Grendel fits solidly within the ethos of vengeance that governs the world of the poem.
Read an in-depth analysis of Grendel.
Grendel’s mother - An unnamed swamp-hag, Grendel’s mother seems to possess fewer human qualities than Grendel, although her terrorization of Heorot is explained by her desire for vengeance—a human motivation.
The dragon - An ancient, powerful serpent, the dragon guards a horde of treasure in a hidden mound. Beowulf’s fight with the dragon constitutes the third and final part of the epic.
Other Danes
Shield Sheafson - The legendary Danish king from whom Hrothgar is descended, Shield Sheafson is the mythical founder who inaugurates a long line of Danish rulers and embodies the Danish tribe’s highest values of heroism and leadership. The poem opens with a brief account of his rise from orphan to warrior-king, concluding, “That was one good king” (11).
Beow - The second king listed in the genealogy of Danish rulers with which the poem begins. Beow is the son of Shield Sheafson and father of Halfdane. The narrator presents Beow as a gift from God to a people in need of a leader. He exemplifies the maxim, “Behavior that’s admired / is the path to power among people everywhere” (24–25).
Halfdane - The father of Hrothgar, Heorogar, Halga, and an unnamed daughter who married a king of the Swedes, Halfdane succeeded Beow as ruler of the Danes.
Wealhtheow - Hrothgar’s wife, the gracious queen of the Danes.
Unferth - A Danish warrior who is jealous of Beowulf, Unferth is unable or unwilling to fight Grendel, thus proving himself inferior to Beowulf.
Read an in-depth analysis of Unferth.
Hrethric - Hrothgar’s elder son, Hrethric stands to inherit the Danish throne, but Hrethric’s older cousin Hrothulf will prevent him from doing so. Beowulf offers to support the youngster’s prospect of becoming king by hosting him in Geatland and giving him guidance.
Hrothmund - The second son of Hrothgar.
Hrothulf - Hrothgar’s nephew, Hrothulf betrays and usurps his cousin, Hrethic, the rightful heir to the Danish throne. Hrothulf’s treachery contrasts with Beowulf’s loyalty to Hygelac in helping his son to the throne.
Aeschere - Hrothgar’s trusted adviser.
Other Geats
Hygelac - Beowulf’s uncle, king of the Geats, and husband of Hygd. Hygelac heartily welcomes Beowulf back from Denmark.
Hygd - Hygelac’s wife, the young, beautiful, and intelligent queen of the Geats. Hygd is contrasted with Queen Modthryth.
Wiglaf - A young kinsman and retainer of Beowulf who helps him in the fight against the dragon while all of the other warriors run away. Wiglaf adheres to the heroic code better than Beowulf’s other retainers, thereby proving himself a suitable successor to Beowulf.
Read an in-depth analysis of Wiglaf.
Ecgtheow - Beowulf’s father, Hygelac’s brother-in-law, and Hrothgar’s friend. Ecgtheow is dead by the time the story begins, but he lives on through the noble reputation that he made for himself during his life and in his dutiful son’s remembrances.
King Hrethel - The Geatish king who took Beowulf in as a ward after the death of Ecgtheow, Beowulf’s father.
Breca - Beowulf’s childhood friend, whom he defeated in a swimming match. Unferth alludes to the story of their contest, and Beowulf then relates it in detail.
Other Figures Mentioned
Sigemund - A figure from Norse mythology, famous for slaying a dragon. Sigemund’s story is told in praise of Beowulf and foreshadows Beowulf’s encounter with the dragon.
King Heremod - An evil king of legend. The scop, or bard, at Heorot discusses King Heremod as a figure who contrasts greatly with Beowulf.
Queen Modthryth - A wicked queen of legend who punishes anyone who looks at her the wrong way. Modthryth’s story is told in order to contrast her cruelty with Hygd’s gentle and reasonable behavior.
| i don't know |
In 1969, the 'Football War' was fought between Honduras and which neighbouring country? | Latin America: Honduras and El Salvador Football War
21,000 men
Conflict Summary:
During the early decades of the 20th century, thousands of Salvadorans migrated from their home country of El Salvador into neighboring Honduras. This was largely due to an oppressive government and the lure of cheap land. By 1969, approximately 350,000 Salvadorans were residing across the border. During the 1960s, their situation began to degrade as the government of General Oswaldo Lopez Arellano attempted to remain in power. In 1966, the large land owners in Honduras formed the National Federation of Farmers and Livestock-Farmers of Honduras with the goal of protecting their interests.
Pressuring the Arellano government, this group succeeded in launching a government propaganda campaign aimed at advancing their cause. This campaign had the secondary effect of boosting Honduran nationalism among the populace.
Flush with national pride, Hondurans began attacking Salvadoran immigrants and inflicting beatings, torture, and, in some cases, murder. In early 1969, tensions increased further with the passage of a land reform act in Honduras. This legislation confiscated land from Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed it among native-born Hondurans.
Stripped of their land, immigrant Salvadorans were forced to return to El Salvador. As tensions grew on both sides of the border, El Salvador began claiming the land taken from Salvadoran immigrants as its own. With the media in both nations inflaming the situation, the two countries met in a series of qualifying matches for the 1970 FIFA World Cup that June. The first game was played on June 6 in Tegucigalpa and resulted in a 1-0 Honduran victory. This was followed on June 15 by a game in San Salvador which El Salvador won 3-0.
Both games were surrounded by riot conditions and open displays of extreme national pride. The actions of the fans at the matches ultimately gave name to the conflict that would occur in July. On June 26, the day before the deciding match was played in Mexico (won 3-2 by El Salvador), El Salvador announced that it was severing diplomatic relations with Honduras. The government justified this action by stating that Honduras had taken no action to punish those who had committed crimes against Salvadoran immigrants.
As a result, the border between the two countries was locked down and border skirmishes began on a regular basis. Anticipating that a conflict was likely, both governments had been actively increasing their militaries. Blocked by a US arms embargo from directly purchasing weapons, they sought alternative means of acquiring equipment. This included purchasing World War II vintage fighters, such as F4U Corsairs and P-51 Mustangs , from private owners. As a result, the Football War was the last conflict to feature piston-engine fighters dueling one another.
Early on the morning of July 14, the Salvadoran air force began striking targets in Honduras. This was in conjunction with a major ground offensive which centered on the main road between the two countries. Salvadoran troops also moved against several Honduran islands in the Golfo de Fonseca. Though meeting opposition from the smaller Honduran army, the Salvadoran troops advanced steadily and captured the departmental capital of Nueva Ocotepeque. In the skies, the Hondurans fair better as their pilots quickly destroyed much of the Salvadoran air force.
Striking across the border, Honduran aircraft hit Salvadoran oil facilities and depots disrupting the flow of supplies to the front. With their logistical network badly damaged, the Salvadoran offensive began to bog down and came to a halt. On July 15, the Organization of American States met in an emergency session and demanded that El Salvador withdraw from Honduras. The government in San Salvador refused unless promised that reparations would be made to those Salvadorans who were displaced and that those who remained in Honduras would not be harmed.
Working diligently, the OAS was able to arrange a ceasefire on July 18 which took effect two days later. Still unsatisfied, El Salvador refused to withdraw its troops. Only when threatened with sanctions did the government of President Fidel Sanchez Hernandez relent. Finally departing Honduran territory on August 2, 1969, El Salvador received a promise from the Arellano government that those immigrants living in Honduras would be protected.
Aftermath
During the conflict, approximately 250 Honduran soldiers were killed as well as around 2,000 civilians. Combined Salvadoran casualties numbered around 2,000. Though the Salvadoran military had acquitted itself well, the conflict was essentially a loss for both countries. As a result of the fighting, around 130,000 Salvadoran immigrants attempted to return home. Their arrival in an already overpopulated country worked to destabilize the Salvadoran economy. In addition, the conflict effectively ended the operations of the Central American Common Market for twenty-two years. While the ceasefire was put in place on July 20, a final peace treaty would not be signed until October 30, 1980.
Selected Sources
| El Salvador |
"Who was the American writer and counterculture icon who coined the phrase ""Turn on, tune in, drop out""?" | Football War Honduras vs El Salvador | the Polynational War Memorial
Football War Honduras vs El Salvador
Years: 1969-1969
Honduras , El Salvador
Published prior to 2013 | Altered: 2014-08-10 19:03:00
The Football War (or Soccer War) was a short-lived war (only 6 days) fought by El Salvador and Honduras in 1969.
Existing tension between the two countries was inflamed by rioting during the second qualifying round for the 1970 Football World Cup. On July 14, 1969, the Salvadoran army launched an attack against Honduras. The Organization of American States negotiated a cease-fire which took effect on July 20, with the Salvadoran troops withdrawn in early August.
The two nations signed a peace treaty on October 30, 1980 to put the border dispute before the International Court of Justice.
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Source: excerpt from article in the open dictionary Wikipedia. Read Article
SOURCES: FATALITY DATA
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What is the name of the inn owned by the parents of 'Jim Hawkins' featured in Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Treasure Island'? | Treasure Island Analysis - eNotes.com
Treasure Island Analysis
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Admiral Benbow Inn
Admiral Benbow Inn. Public inn owned by Jim Hawkins’s parents near Black Hill Cove, an isolated and sheltered bay on Devon’s north coast, along the road to Bristol, that is an ideal place for smugglers to come ashore. Tucked between somber hills and the rocky cove, up whose cliffs the surf roars during storms, the inn is remote from even the nearest hamlet, Kitt’s Hole, and conveys an atmosphere of unrelieved loneliness and foreboding. The novel opens with a menacing figure appearing at the inn and demanding a room. Later unmasked as the pirate captain Billy Bones, he long overstays his welcome and so tyrannizes the inn that other guests leave, and Jim’s father weakens and dies an early death. Having chosen the Benbow Inn because of its isolation, Bones lives in daily fear of being discovered by fellow pirates; after they finally appear, he dies of apoplexy, and Jim and his mother flee the inn before the other pirates return—but not before they open his seachest and find a map of Treasure Island. Despite the fear Jim experiences at the inn, he later dreams of returning there while he is experiencing even worse dangers on Treasure Island.
Admiral Benbow Inn is aptly named after a late seventeenth century English admiral, John Benbow, who won renown for fighting pirates in the West Indies and for his heroic death in action against the French after the captains serving under him mutinied.
*Bristol
*Bristol. Busy port city in southwestern England where the expedition of the Hispaniola begins and ends. Bristol is also the home of the crafty one-legged pirate Long John Silver, who signs on for the voyage as ship’s cook. Silver owns a tavern in Bristol called the Spy-glass. While waiting for the Hispaniola to sail, he befriends Jim, accompanies him around Bristol’s docks and teaches him about ships and the sea. To Jim, Bristol is an exciting portal to the world outside, and he says though he “had lived by the shore all my life, I seemed never to have been near the sea till then.”
Hispaniola
Hispaniola. Ship on which Jim and his companions sail from England to Treasure Island and back. Apart from the fact that the Hispaniola is a sturdy two-hundred-ton schooner that sails well and initially has a crew of about twenty men, Stevenson describes little about the ship and even less about its voyages across the Atlantic, thereby avoiding details of navigation with which he was not familiar. Nevertheless, he makes the ship the setting for several of the novel’s most thrilling moments. Even before its voyage begins, the captain expresses concern about the trustworthiness of the crew—which has been assembled by Squire Trelawney—so Jim’s companions “garrison” the after part of the ship in case trouble develops.
A key moment at sea occurs when Jim innocently climbs inside a large apple barrel on deck and overhears the crew plotting mutiny. The mutiny itself occurs ashore, after the ship anchors off Treasure Island, and the mutineers seize the ship only after the captain’s party go ashore to hole up in an old stockade. From that point, the ship becomes a kind of albatross; it is almost useless to the mutineers, who cannot navigate it, and is of limited use to the captain’s party because of their small numbers. The latter choose to take their chances ashore, confident that a relief ship will eventually find them. Meanwhile, the mutineers plunder the ship’s stores, get drunk, and fight among themselves. Their recklessness later allows Jim to retake the ship single-handedly and even work it around to the opposite side of the island, where he beaches it and kills a mutineer in a desperate fight in the ship’s rigging.
Treasure Island
Treasure Island. Small, uninhabited island, located in or near the West Indies—the classic center of pirate activity. The novel’s plot is driven by a map of the island revealing where a pirate named Captain Flint buried the fabulous treasure that Jim and his companions cross the Atlantic to find. Indeed, Stevenson created the map before he wrote the novel around it.
About nine miles long and five miles wide, the island is “like a fat dragon standing up,” with fine, nearly landlocked harbors at each end. Names of the island’s features make it resemble a ship: Three prominent hills, spread out in a line, are called Fore-mast. Main-mast (also called Spy-glass), and Mizzen-mast. Other features include Haulbowline Head, Captain Kidd’s anchorage, and Skeleton Island in the south harbor.
Although the map itself provides exact latitude and longitude, Jim never reveals the island’s exact location to readers because “there is still treasure not yet lifted.” The general direction that the Hispaniola sails to reach the island and remarks at the end of Jim’s narrative about the “nearest port in Spanish America,” where there are “shore boats full of Negroes and Mexican Indians,” suggest that the island is in the Caribbean Sea off Mexico. However, few real islands exist in that region, and the fact that Jim finds a castaway who has been alone on Treasure Island for three years suggests that the island is distant from shipping lanes. It is thus probably best to dismiss questions about the island’s location and accept it as a wholly imaginary creation. Indeed, before embarking on the expedition, Jim spends hours poring over the map of the island and fantasizing about the “savages” and “dangerous animals” he will find there. What he does find is unrealistic topography and flora and fauna uncharacteristic of the West Indies. Apart from its hot climate, the island could be located almost anywhere.
Shortly after the Hispaniola reaches Treasure Island, its crew members separate into mutinous and loyalist parties, and the balance of the narrative traces their skirmishes and maneuverings around the island. The loyalists under Captain Smollett take possession of a well-fortified stockade built by Flint’s men over a freshwater spring, while the mutineers weaken themselves by camping in a feverish swamp.
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| Admiral Benbow |
In 1968, which American artist was shot and wounded by Valerie Solanis, an actress in one of his films? | Treasure Island Summary
Treasure Island Summary
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How It All Goes Down
At the start of Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins is living with his mother and father at their inn, the Admiral Benbow. Life is pretty ordinary – Jim's father is sick, which sucks, but other than that, there isn't much going on for him. Until, that is, a sunburned sailor singing, "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!" comes through the front door of the family establishment. This sailor calls himself a captain and demands a room. He proceeds to settle down at the Admiral Benbow Inn, drink a ton of whiskey, and tell terrifying stories about life on the high seas.
One day, after an old shipmate named Black Dog manages to track down the captain, he gets so worked up that he has a stroke. The captain starts hallucinating and raving about his old life as a pirate. Apparently, the captain isn't a captain at all: his name is Billy Bones, and he was second in command to someone named Captain Flint. Jim doesn't have much time to care about the captain's crazy talk, though: his father dies that same night.
The day after Jim's father's funeral, a blind man appears at the Inn looking for the captain. This man is Pew, and he orders that the captain meet his old shipmates at 10 o'clock that night. The blind man leaves, the captain jumps up, and then he falls over dead from a heart attack. After some shenanigans with Pew and a bunch of pirates who try to steal Billy Bones's sea chest, Jim comes away with a packet of papers from Billy Bones. He decides to bring the papers to Doctor Livesey, the local judge.
Jim finds Doctor Livesey at the squire's house (a squire is a local lord). The squire is Mr. Trelawney. Doctor Livesey and Squire Trelawney both agree that Captain Flint is a famous pirate and that Jim's packet of papers must contain a treasure map to Flint's fortune. Squire Trelawney offers to put up the money for a sailing voyage to the island shown on the map, since who doesn't want to go hunting for treasure? So it's decided: Squire Trelawney is going to go to a coastal town in England right away to hire a ship and a crew, and then Doctor Livesey will come down to accompany him on their quest. Jim gets to go, too, as cabin boy.
While Squire Trelawney is looking for a crew for their voyage, he finds a delightful man, an old cook with one leg named Long John Silver who willingly volunteers to help him choose his crew. Squire Trelawney is really impressed by Long John Silver's manner and intelligence, so he basically hands over the hiring duties to him. Squire Trelawney also finds a nice ship, the Hispaniola, and a captain, Captain Smollett. Squire Trelawney asks one of his servants, Mr. Blandly, to stay behind and send another ship after them in August if Mr. Blandly sees no signs of them before then.
And they're off! Jim is having the time of his life, even though he has to work hard. But things take a bad turn one night when Jim climbs down into an apple barrel on deck to get the last piece of fruit and finds himself falling asleep in the dark space. He wakes up to overhear Long John Silver talking to a young sailor, Dick Johnson, trying to persuade Dick to join Long John Silver and his men. Long John Silver knows exactly where the Hispaniola is heading, because he used to be part of Captain Flint's crew as well!
Jim realizes that the crew is just biding its time until they reach the island, when the sailors plan to rise up against Captain Smollett, kill all the non-pirates, and steal Captain Flint's treasure. As soon as the coast is clear, Jim climbs out of the barrel and runs and tells Captain Smollett, Doctor Livesey, and Squire Trelawney what he has overheard.
When the Hispaniola arrives at the island ( check out this map to get a sense of what it looks like), the mood of the crew is clearly growing ugly. But they don't actively mutiny (remember, the crew doesn't have the map, and they also don't have Captain Smollett's sailing skills). Captain Smollett offers them all a round of drinks and sends two-thirds of the crew onto the island to stretch their legs. When the crew is ashore, he and Doctor Livesey ambush the remaining six sailors (including Israel Hands, one of the leaders of the sailors) and lock them below decks. Then they go ashore to find a better place to set up headquarters, a place with fresh water (which the ship doesn't have) that can still be defended. They find an abandoned fort and set up there after a brief fight with a group of surprised crewmen.
Jim, meanwhile, has slipped ashore with the pirates and gone off exploring on his own. He is totally astonished to find a man on the island, Ben Gunn, who sailed with Captain Flint. Ben was marooned on the island three years earlier, so he's a little nutty, but he agrees to help Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey in exchange for a thousand British pounds, freedom, and some cheese. As Jim and Ben talk, they hear the sounds of a fight. Jim hurries through the forest to find that his friends have taken control of an old fort on the island. So he slips into the fort to tell them what he has discovered about Ben Gunn.
After a battle with the pirates, Jim sees Doctor Livesey head into the forest to consult with Ben Gunn. Jim hatches his own plan: he's going to find the tiny boat Ben Gunn mentioned to see if it might be helpful to them. Jim knows that he wouldn't be allowed to do this if he asked, but he slips away from the fort anyway and goes off to explore.
Jim finds the little boat and suddenly gets another great idea: he's going to set the Hispaniola adrift from its anchor so that the pirates can't control the ship. Jim rows out to the ship, cuts the line attaching it to its anchor, and watches it get caught in the current. There are only two men aboard the ship, Israel Hands and a man named O'Brien. The two are in the middle of a furious fight when the Hispaniola starts to move, so they don't react quickly enough to stop Jim.
Jim eventually manages to get on board the Hispaniola again. He sees that Israel Hands has murdered O'Brien, but he has also been badly injured. Israel Hands isn't strong enough to steer the ship by himself, so he and Jim strike a deal to bring the ship around to the secluded North Inlet of the island to beach it safely. Once they arrive at the North Inlet, Israel Hands tries to murder Jim, but Jim gets in a lucky shot, and Israel Hands falls dead into the sea below. Jim climbs down from the ship, wades to shore, and climbs back up to the fort.
It's now the middle of the night and too dark to see what is going on, so Jim is completely surprised to find the pirates, and not his friends, waiting at the fort. Long John Silver prevents the other pirates from killing Jim. Long John Silver is playing a complicated game: first of all, Long John Silver is confused. He can't figure out why Doctor Livesey and everyone just abandoned the fort, nor can he work out why Doctor Livesey gave Long John Silver the treasure map. But Long John Silver is dealing with dissatisfaction from his own pirate crew, who are angry that they haven't found the treasure and now the ship is gone. Long John Silver is sure the pirates are going to rise up against him if he shows his confusion or any sign of weakness. So he keeps Jim close to him – he wants Jim to stand as witness that he saved Jim's life if he ever comes to trial.
Doctor Livesey comes by the fort as part of their truce and treats the injured and sick pirates. Jim manages to get word to him that Long John Silver seems to be flipping sides and that Jim has beached the Hispaniola on the north end of the island. Doctor Livesey warns Long John Silver that there will be trouble if he goes to look for the treasure, and then Doctor Livesey heads off into the forest.
Long John Silver uses the treasure map to lead Jim and the remaining pirates (Dick Johnson, Tom Morgan, George Merry, and two more guys) to the place marked on the map. They find that the treasure has already been dug up! That's why Doctor Livesey was willing to give them the map – it isn't worth anything anymore. With this disappointment, the pirates turn on Long John Silver. They're about to charge, when suddenly three shots ring out from the forest. It's Doctor Livesey, Abraham Gray, and Ben Gunn. Knowing that the pirates were going to look for the treasure with Jim in tow, the three men decided to follow them through the forest to rescue Jim (and Long John Silver, since he helped save Jim's life). Three pirates survive the ambush (Dick Johnson, Tom Morgan, and a third) and run off into the forest.
And that's pretty much it. All that is left is wrapping up. It was Ben Gunn who dug up the treasure and moved it to his cave, two months before the Hispaniola even arrived at the island. They all carry the treasure back to the beached Hispaniola, leave some supplies for the pirates they are planning to abandon on the island (check out "What's Up With the Ending?" for more on this morally gray choice), and sail away. The only men left on the Hispaniola are Doctor Livesey, Squire Trelawney, Jim Hawkins, Abraham Gray, Ben Gunn, and Long John Silver. Long John Silver slips away from the ship as soon as they dock at a nearby port to restock their crew and supplies. Ben Gunn gets his thousand pounds as a reward for his help and then spends it all and winds up a beggar again. Abraham Gray, the loyal sailor, saves his money and starts a good life. And everyone else gets plenty of treasure. The end!
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In which country is 'Waitangi Day' celebrated as a public holiday on 6th February each year? | Waitangi Day in New Zealand
Home Calendar Holidays New Zealand Waitangi Day
Waitangi Day in New Zealand
Waitangi Day commemorates the first signing of New Zealand’s founding document – the Treaty at Waitangi in 1840. It is a public holiday in New Zealand on February 6 each year.
A haka is performed by Maori warriors as part of a Maori welcome or 'Whakatau'.
A haka is performed by Maori warriors as part of a Maori welcome or 'Whakatau'.
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What Do People Do?
Māori cultural performances, speeches from Māori and Pakeha (European) dignitaries, and a naval salute are all part of the official Waitangi Day celebrations at Waitangi, New Zealand. Waitangi Day is also a time when people publicly debate on issues such as national identity and multiculturalism.
Various activities and events are held at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds. It’s a day that bubbles with ceremonies, music, sports and fun. Waitangi Day itself has always involved performances and parades from the Royal New Zealand Navy and local cultural groups.
Public Life
Waitangi Day is a statutory public holiday in New Zealand. Schools, government offices and many businesses are closed.
Background
In 1840, representatives of the British Crown and over 500 Maori chiefs signed what is New Zealand’s founding document. The day was first officially commemorated in 1934, and it has been a public holiday since 1974.
Symbols
The Waitangi Treaty Grounds are home to 2 national icons:
'Te Whare Runanga', a carved Māori meeting house that commemorates the first signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Carvings in the house were produced by the local Ngapuhi tribe, but the building is represents all Māori tribes.
Ngatokimatawhaorua, one of the largest Māori waka (war canoe). It can seat a crew of up to 80 paddlers and 55 passengers.
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In which of the Marx Brothers' films did Groucho Marx play the character 'Rufus T. Firefly, Prime Minister of Freedonia'? | Waitangi Day, New Zealand : Treaty of Waitangi, February 6th, National Day, Waitangi Festivals and Celebrations
Home » Featured Events » Waitangi Day
Waitangi Day, New Zealand, 6th February 2010
Waitangi Day on the 6th February has been an annual public holiday since 1974 and commerates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document in 1840. It is generally regarded as a focus for debate on national identity and multiculturalism in New Zealand and is celebrated with a variety of events throughout the country.
The Treaty of Waitangi
The Waitangi Treaty Grounds is New Zealand's pre-eminent historic site, as it was here on 6th February 1840 that the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between Maori and the British Crown. On this date each year, New Zealanders of all ethnic backgrounds and creeds gather to commemorate the signing of the Treaty.
About the Treaty Grounds
The Treaty Grounds are part of the Waitangi National Trust estate, gifted to the nation in 1932. The grounds are open daily to the public from 9.00am (excluding Christmas Day). Features of the Treaty Grounds include:
The Treaty House - One of New Zealand's oldest and most visited historic homes
Te Whare Runanga - fully-carved Maori meeting house, representing all Iwi (regional tribes) in New Zealand
Ngatokimatawhaorua - one of the world's largest Maori ceremonial war canoes
The Naval flagstaff – marking the place where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed
Waitangi Visitor Centre – featuring audio visual shows and live cultural performances
Gift shop, artefacts gallery, cafe, parkland, guided tours and educational programmes.
Waitangi Day Events
Waitangi - Over 50,000 visitors are expected to attend the celebrations at Waitangi, which this year include:
Maori cultural performances
Speeches from Maori and Pakeha (European) dignitaries
A re-launch of the world's largest Maori ceremonial waka (war canoe)
Free three-day family festival of music, dance, sport, food and traditional Maori customs, including Ki-o-rahi, a Maori game that may be even older than rugby.
View more information about the Waitangi Day and Festival 2010, Waitangi .
Auckland – From 8:30 am in New Zealand's largest city, the national day is celebrated at the city's birthplace, Okahu Bay Domain. Free family-orientated festivities include:
Traditional powhiri (welcome) from Ngati Whatua o Orakei at Okahu Bay
Live entertainment by Cornerstone Roots, Six60, Herbs, Three Houses Down and 1814
Traditional food and art stalls, farm animals, a kids' entertainment stage and a large children's rides zone.
View more about Auckland's Waitangi Day celebrations .
Wellington – The free, family celebrations start at 10:00 am in Waitangi Park and include:
Blessing ceremony followed by musical performances from Congolese musician Sam Manzanza, The Wellington Pipe Band and Batucada (percussion group)
A powhiri (formal welcome) at midday by the Wellington Tenths Trust
Traditional kapa haka performances
Christchurch / Okains Bay / Akaroa – About 90 minutes from Christchurch, the main local sites of celebration are the Onuku Marae and Okains Bay. Events include:
A traditional Maori welcome onto Marae at 9:00 am
Two magnificent carved waka being paddled up the river
Colonial displays, exhibits, crafts, musket shooting, cross-cut sawing, vintage engines, steam engine, printing presses, children’s games, races, tug-o-war, traditional hangi lunch, sausage sizzle, refreshments, music and a garden bar.
To find Waitangi Day events in the area of New Zealand that you're visiting, simply search online to find more information – celebrations and festivals are held throughout the country.
Featured
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Which country declared independence from France after the 'August Revolution' of 1945? | The History Club: Vietnam Declares Independence: September 2, 1945
These are my thoughts about some of the events in history.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Vietnam Declares Independence: September 2, 1945
After more than six decades of French rule, the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam was formed by the Vietminh in 1945.
Vietnam lost her independence on August 25, 1883, after decades of resistance to Europeans, when the court at Hue recognized French protectorate in Tonkin and Annam in North and Central Vietnam respectively. The south, Cochin China was already under French sovereignty.
The French Impact
The French colonialists transformed many aspects in Vietnamese life. Extensive public works and road building was carried out. But the benefits of these developments did not reach the vast majority of the locals. Heavy taxing and usurious interest rated kept the rural population in constant debt. Even by 1940, the peasant population was more than 85% of the total.
Replacement of local village leaders by French trained Vietnamese officials removed the traditional village authority and the communal life style of the villages was also shattered. Introduction of French law which was administered by French judges, who were generally ignorant of local language and customs, was another death blow to the Vietnamese people.
Growth of Nationalism
Vietnamese people resisted the French after 1883, well into the 20th Century. A new chapter began with the growth of nationalist organizations. Some of these were Marxist oriented but the leading group, Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD-Vietnamese Nationalist Party) was not. In February 1930, an uprising by VNQDD was crushed by the French authorities. The decimation of these nationalists paved way for the Communists to fill the vacuum among the freedom fighters for a national organization.
The Communists were instrumental in forming the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam, commonly known as Viet Minh) a decade later. However, this group was an alliance of democrats, socialists, communists and other interested groups.
Japanese Intervention
In 1940, with France defeated and Vichy France in power, the Japanese were able to establish military bases in Northern Vietnam. Japan took complete control of Indochina on March 9, 1945, months after the liberation of France by the Allied forces. To the Viet Minh, the Japanese were just another invader, which was a fact epitomized by their slogan, “Neither the French, nor the Japanese as masters”.
August Revolution and Declaration of Independence
The same week the Japanese surrendered, the Viet Minh held a congress in Caobang, near the Chinese border, where a provisional government was formed. This government took control in Hanoi after some minor, scattered clashes with the Japanese troops and puppet militia on August 19. Soon the country was largely under the Viet Minh. The puppet ‘Emperor’ Bao Dai abdicated. Declaring his abdication in a remarkable document, it was stated that, “We cannot but regret the thought of our twenty years’ reign during which it was impossible for us to render any appreciable service to our country”. He ended by declaring, “Long live the independence of Vietnam! Long live the Democratic Republic!”
The government issued the declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945. It accused the French imperialists of depriving the Vietnamese of their liberties, imposing inhuman laws upon them, ruining the country’s resources, building more prisons than schools among other things. “They have drowned our revolution in blood”, it further stated. For these reasons, they broke off all ties to the French and stated that the leaders of the provisional government “…..solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country-and in fact it is so already”.
Long Road to Peace
Almost simultaneously, the British arrived in Cochin China and started to ‘restore order’ for the interests of France. In doing so, they even got the assistance of the Japanese troops remaining in the country, just days after the British and Japanese had stopped shooting each other in Burma, not so far away from Vietnam. By the end of the year, French troops were able to arrive take their colonial lands once again. France tried to defeat the viet minh both militarily and politically, even bringing in Bao Dai back, coaxing him to form a puppet national government to counter the Democratic Republic. The Viet Minh fought on for 8 years until the French met their nemesis at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. But, it was to take more than two more decades for Vietnam to see peace in the country when it was re-unified under the communist rule in 1975.
Sources
Primary Source- Vietnam: History, Documents and Opinions on a Major World Crisis ed. Marvin E. Gettleman. Fawcett Publications Inc. USA (1965).
From the above source, the following excerpts were also referred
Jumper, Roy and Normand, Marjorie Weiner, Vietnam: The Historical Background
Isaacs, Harold, Independence for Vietnam?
Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Sep. 2, 1945.
Abdication of Bao Dai, Emperor of Annam August, 1945.
Image: "Vo Nguyen Giap (left), the military leader and Ho Chi Minh (right) the political leader of Vietnamese independence struggle." In Ha Noi (1945). From Wikimedia Commons.
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| Vietnam |
Which Spanish poet and playwright, who was assassinated during the Spanish Civil War, wrote 'Blood Wedding' and 'The Curse Of The Butterflies'? | Ho Chi Minh's Declaration of Independence (1945) - Vietnam War
Vietnam War
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Ho Chi Minh’s Declaration of Independence (1945)
The August Revolution of 1945 saw Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh attempt to take control of Vietnam, following the Japanese surrender and withdrawal. On September 2nd Ho Chi Minh read a declaration of independence in Ba Dinh Square, Hanoi. Its opening lines drew on the American Declaration of Independence, written and signed 169 years earlier:
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: “All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.” Those are undeniable truths.
Nevertheless for more than 80 years the French imperialists, abusing the standard of liberty, equality, and fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.
In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.
They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Centre and the South of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.
They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered public opinion. They have practiced obscurantism against our people. To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.
In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our land. They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolised the issuing of bank-notes and the export trade.
They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty. They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly exploited our workers.
In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists violated Indochina’s territory to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them. From that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri province to the North of Vietnam, more than two million of our fellow-citizens died from starvation…
Notwithstanding all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the Japanese putsch of March 1945, the Viet Minh League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property…
After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French.
The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic.
For these reasons we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France. We repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Vietnam and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.
The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country.
We are convinced that the Allied nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam.
A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eight years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the fascists during these last years – such a people must be free and independent.
For these reasons we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country—and in fact is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilise all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.”
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In the poem 'The Raven' by Edgar Allen Poe, which word is repeatedly spoken by the titular bird? | The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe | Poetry Foundation
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
| Nevermore |
From which country did the USA purchase Nebraska in 1803? | The Philosophy of Composition | Poetry Foundation
The Philosophy of Composition
By Edgar Allan Poe
Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe was an editor, journalist, poet, literary critic, and short story writer. Known for his gothic tales and psychological dramas, his stories include “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In 1845 he published The Raven and Other Poems.
Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1809, the son of an actress. Orphaned in 1811, he moved to Richmond, Virginia, to live with his adoptive family. He briefly attended the University of Virginia before leaving to join the Army and attend West Point Military Academy; he was expelled from West Point after a year. Poe worked as a journalist and editor in New York, Baltimore, and Richmond. Despite his success as a writer, he lived in poverty. He suffered from alcoholism, depression, and possibly diabetes. In 1836 Poe married his cousin Virginia Clemm, and they remained together until her death from tuberculosis in 1847. After giving lectures in Norfolk and Richmond, Poe died in a Baltimore hospital in 1849; the cause of his death is not known.
In his essay “The Importance of the Single Effect in a Prose Tale,” Poe argued for his belief in “the unity of effect” in a short story. In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe turned his attention to poetry. The essay is a methodical account of how he came to write “The Raven.” He describes the deliberate choices he made in composing the poem, and the choices reveal his aesthetic. He advises brevity to communicate the essential “effect” of a piece. Beauty is the “province” of his work, and “melancholy . . . the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.” Poe discusses theme, setting, sound, and the merits of refrain. And, in the composition of “The Raven” in particular, he describes how he arrived at the figure of a raven instead of a parrot.
Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the mechanism of “Barnaby Rudge,” says—“By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his ‘Caleb Williams’ backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been done.”
I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of Godwin—and indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr. Dickens’ idea—but the author of “Caleb Williams” was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the denouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.
There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis—or one is suggested by an incident of the day—or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative—designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent.
I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping originality always in view—for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest—I say to myself, in the first place, “Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?” Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone—whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone—afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.
I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who would—that is to say, who could—detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to the world, I am much at a loss to say—but, perhaps, the autorial vanity has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most writers—poets in especial—prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy—an ecstatic intuition—and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought—at the true purposes seized only at the last moment—at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view—at the fully-matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable—at the cautious selections and rejections—at the painful erasures and interpolations—in a word, at the wheels and pinions—the tackle for scene-shifting—the step-ladders, and demon-traps—the cock’s feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.
I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common, in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions, having arisen pell-mell are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.
For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions, and, since the interest of an analysis or reconstruction, such as I have considered a desideratum, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in the thing analysed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part to show the modus operandi by which some one of my own works was put together. I select “ The Raven ” as most generally known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition—that the work proceeded step by step, to its completion, with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.
Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, the circumstance—or say the necessity—which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.
We commence, then, with this intention.
The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression—for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed. But since, ceteris paribus, no poet can afford to dispense with anything that may advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance the loss of unity which attends it. Here I say no, at once. What we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones—that is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For this reason, at least, one-half of the Paradise Lost is essentially prose—a succession of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with corresponding depressions—the whole being deprived, through the extremeness of its length, of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity of effect.
It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art—the limit of a single sitting—and that, although in certain classes of prose composition, such as Robinson Crusoe (demanding no unity), this limit may be advantageously overpassed, it can never properly be overpassed in a poem. Within this limit, the extent of a poem may be made to bear mathematical relation to its merit—in other words, to the excitement or elevation—again, in other words, to the degree of the true poetical effect which it is capable of inducing; for it is clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect—this, with one proviso—that a certain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the production of any effect at all.
Holding in view these considerations, as well as that degree of excitement which I deemed not above the popular, while not below the critical taste, I reached at once what I conceived the proper length for my intended poem—a length of about one hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight.
My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally appreciable. I should be carried too far out of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the slightest need of demonstration—the point, I mean, that Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. A few words, however, in elucidation of my real meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect—they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul—not of intellect, or of heart—upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the “beautiful.” Now I designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring from direct causes—that objects should be attained through means best adapted for their attainment—no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to is most readily attained in the poem. Now the object Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable to a certain extent in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a homeliness (the truly passionate will comprehend me), which are absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement or pleasurable elevation of the soul. It by no means follows, from anything here said, that passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do discords in music, by contrast—but the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone them into proper subservience to the predominant aim, and, secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, in that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the essence of the poem.
Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestation—and all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.
The length, the province, and the tone, being thus determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the poem—some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual artistic effects—or more properly points, in the theatrical sense—I did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been so universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used, the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone—both in sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity—of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so heighten the effect, by adhering in general to the monotone of sound, while I continually varied that of thought: that is to say, I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the variation of the application of the refrain—the refrain itself remaining for the most part, unvaried.
These points being settled, I next bethought me of the nature of my refrain. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied it was clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would have been an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application in any sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of the sentence would, of course, be the facility of the variation. This led me at once to a single word as the best refrain.
The question now arose as to the character of the word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was of course a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel in connection with r as the most producible consonant.
The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which I had pre-determined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word “Nevermore.” In fact it was the very first which presented itself.
The next desideratum was a pretext for the continuous use of the one word “nevermore.” In observing the difficulty which I had at once found in inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty arose solely from the preassumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken by a human being—I did not fail to perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately arose the idea of a non-reasoning creature capable of speech, and very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone.
I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven, the bird of ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word “Nevermore” at the conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object—supremeness or perfection at all points, I asked myself—“Of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death, was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length the answer here also is obvious—“When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”
I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his deceased mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word “Nevermore.” I had to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every turn the application of the word repeated, but the only intelligible mode of such combination is that of imagining the Raven employing the word in answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had been depending, that is to say, the effect of the variation of application. I saw that I could make the first query propounded by the lover—the first query to which the Raven should reply “Nevermore”—that I could make this first query a commonplace one, the second less so, the third still less, and so on, until at length the lover, startled from his original nonchalance by the melancholy character of the word itself, by its frequent repetition, and by a consideration of the ominous reputation of the fowl that uttered it, is at length excited to superstition, and wildly propounds queries of a far different character—queries whose solution he has passionately at heart—propounds them half in superstition and half in that species of despair which delights in self-torture—propounds them not altogether because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird (which reason assures him is merely repeating a lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences a frenzied pleasure in so modelling his questions as to receive from the expected “Nevermore” the most delicious because the most intolerable of sorrows. Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, more strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of the construction, I first established in my mind the climax or concluding query—that query to which “Nevermore” should be in the last place an answer—that query in reply to which this word “Nevermore” should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair.
Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning—at the end where all works of art should begin—for it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza:
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both
adore,
| i don't know |
Which title, deriving from the Latin word for 'leader', was given to the elected chief of state in the historical city- states of Venice and Genoa between the eighth and eighteenth centuries? | Venice view from the Bridge Foscari, to the Bridge Santa Margherita.
Gondola Punta e Basilica Salute.
Venice (
English
/ˈvɛnɪs/ VEN-iss ; Italian : Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] ; Venetian : Venesia) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region . It is situated across a group of 117 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by bridges. [2] These are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline, between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture , and artwork. [2] The lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a World Heritage Site . [2]
In 2009, 270,098 people resided in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; of whom around 60,000 [3] live in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the mainland), mostly in the large frazioni (roughly equivalent to "parishes" or " wards " in other countries) of Mestre and Marghera ; and 31,000 on other islands in the lagoon). Together with Padua and Treviso , the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), with a total population of 2,600,000. PATREVE is only a statistical metropolitan area without any degree of autonomy. [4]
The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC. [5] The city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice . Venice has been known as the "La Dominante," "Serenissima," "Queen of the Adriatic ," "City of Water," "City of Masks," "City of Bridges," "The Floating City," and "City of Canals."
The Republic of Venice was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance , and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto , as well as a very important center of commerce (especially silk, grain, and spice ) and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century. The City State of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center which gradually emerged from the 9th century to its peak in the 14th century. [6] This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history. [8] It is also known for its several important artistic movements, especially the Renaissance period . After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna , the Republic was annexed by the Austrian Empire , until it became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, following a referendum held as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence . Venice has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and it is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi .
Etymology
The name of the city, deriving from Latin forms Venetia and Venetiae, is most likely taken from "Venetia et Histria", the Roman name of Regio X of Roman Italy , but applied to the coastal part of the region that remained under Roman Empire outside of Gothic, Lombard, and Frankish control. The name Venetia, however, derives from the Roman name for the people known as the Veneti , and called by the Greeks Eneti (Ἐνετοί). The meaning of the word is uncertain, although there are other Indo-European tribes with similar-sounding names, such as the Celtic Veneti , Baltic Veneti , and the Slavic Wends . Linguists suggest that the name is based on an Indo-European root *wen ("love"), so that *wenetoi would mean "beloved", "lovable", or "friendly". A connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning the color 'sea-blue', is also possible. Supposed connections of Venetia with the Latin verb venire (to come), such as Marin Sanudo 's veni etiam ("Yet, I have come!"), the supposed cry of the first refugees to the Venetian lagoon from the mainland, or even with venia ("forgiveness") are fanciful . The alternative obsolete form is Vinegia [viˈnɛːdʒa] ; [9] ( Venetian : Venèxia [veˈnɛzja] ; Latin : Venetiae; Slovene : Benetke).
History
Origins
Although no surviving historical records deal directly with the founding of Venice, tradition and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees from Roman cities near Venice such as Padua , Aquileia , Treviso , Altino and Concordia (modern Portogruaro ) and from the undefended countryside, who were fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions. Some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen on the islands in the original marshy lagoons. They were referred to as incolae lacunae ("lagoon dwellers"). The traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giacomo on the islet of Rialto (Rivoalto, "High Shore") — said to have taken place at the stroke of noon on 25 March 421 (the Feast of the Annunciation ). [10]
Beginning as early as AD 166 to 168, the Quadi and Marcomanni destroyed the main center in the area, the current Oderzo . The Roman defences were again overthrown in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and, some 50 years later, by the Huns led by Attila . The last and most enduring immigration into the north of the Italian peninsula, that of the Lombards in 568, left the Eastern Roman Empire a small strip of coast in the current Veneto, including Venice. The Roman/Byzantine territory was organized as the Exarchate of Ravenna , administered from that ancient port and overseen by a viceroy (the Exarch ) appointed by the Emperor in Constantinople, but Ravenna and Venice were connected only by sea routes; and with the Venetians' isolated position came increasing autonomy. New ports were built, including those at Malamocco and Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. The tribuni maiores, the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the Lagoon, dated from c. 568.
The traditional first doge of Venice , Paolo Lucio Anafesto , was actually Exarch Paul , and his successor, Marcello Tegalliano , was Paul's magister militum (General: literally, "Master of Soldiers"). In 726 the soldiers and citizens of the Exarchate rose in a rebellion over the iconoclastic controversy at the urging of Pope Gregory II . The Exarch was murdered and many officials put to flight in the chaos. At about this time, the people of the lagoon elected their own leader for the first time, although the relationship of this to the uprisings is not clear. Ursus was the first of 117 " doges " (doge is the Venetian dialect development of the Latin dux ("leader"); the corresponding word in English is duke , in standard Italian duce .) Whatever his original views, Ursus supported Emperor Leo III 's successful military expedition to recover Ravenna, sending both men and ships. In recognition of this, Venice was "granted numerous privileges and concessions" and Ursus, who had personally taken the field, was confirmed by Leo as dux and given the added title of hypatus (Greek for " Consul ".)
In 751 the Lombard King Aistulf conquered most of the Exarchate of Ravenna, leaving Venice a lonely and increasingly autonomous Byzantine outpost. During this period, the seat of the local Byzantine governor (the "duke/dux", later "doge"), was situated in Malamocco . Settlement on the islands in the lagoon probably increased with the Lombard conquest of other Byzantine territories, as refugees sought asylum there. In 775/6 the episcopal seat of Olivolo ( San Pietro di Castello ; Helipolis) was created. During the reign of duke Agnello Particiaco (811–827) the ducal seat moved from Malamocco to the highly protected Rialto, the current location of Venice. The monastery of St Zachary and the first ducal palace and basilica of St. Mark , as well as a walled defense (civitatis murus) between Olivolo and Rialto, were subsequently built here.
Charlemagne sought to subdue the city to his own rule. He ordered the Pope to expel the Venetians from the Pentapolis along the Adriatic coast, and Charlemagne's own son Pepin of Italy , king of the Lombards under the authority of his father, embarked on a siege of Venice itself. This, however, proved a costly failure. The siege lasted six months, with Pepin's army ravaged by the diseases of the local swamps and eventually forced to withdraw (810). A few months later, Pepin himself died, apparently as a result of a disease contracted there. In the aftermath, an agreement between Charlemagne and the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus in 814 recognized Venice as Byzantine territory and granted the city trading rights along the Adriatic coast.
In 828 the new city's prestige increased with the acquisition of the claimed relics of St Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria , which were placed in the new basilica. (Winged lions, visible throughout Venice, symbolise St Mark.) The patriarchal seat also moved to Rialto. As the community continued to develop and as Byzantine power waned, its autonomy grew, leading to eventual independence.
Expansion
Piazza San Marco in Venice, with St Mark's Campanile and Basilica in the background.
These Horses of Saint Mark are a replica of the Triumphal Quadriga captured in Constantinople in 1204 and carried to Venice as a trophy.
From the 9th to the 12th century, Venice developed into a city state (an Italian thalassocracy or Repubblica Marinara : the other three of these were Genoa , Pisa , and Amalfi ). Its strategic position at the head of the Adriatic made Venetian naval and commercial power almost invulnerable. With the elimination of pirates along the Dalmatian coast , the city became a flourishing trade center between Western Europe and the rest of the world (especially the Byzantine Empire and Asia ) with a naval power protecting sea routes from Islamic piracy. [11]
The Republic of Venice seized a number of places on the eastern shores of the Adriatic before 1200, mostly for commercial reasons, because pirates based there were a menace to trade. The Doge already carried the titles of Duke of Dalmatia and Duke of Istria . Later mainland possessions, which extended across Lake Garda as far west as the Adda River , were known as the "Terraferma", and were acquired partly as a buffer against belligerent neighbours, partly to guarantee Alpine trade routes, and partly to ensure the supply of mainland wheat, on which the city depended. In building its maritime commercial empire, the Republic dominated the trade in salt, [3] acquired control of most of the islands in the Aegean , including Cyprus and Crete , and became a major power-broker in the Near East . By the standards of the time, Venice's stewardship of its mainland territories was relatively enlightened and the citizens of such towns as Bergamo , Brescia and Verona rallied to the defence of Venetian sovereignty when it was threatened by invaders.
Venice remained closely associated with Constantinople, being twice granted trading privileges in the Eastern Roman Empire, through the so-called Golden Bulls or "chrysobulls" in return for aiding the Eastern Empire to resist Norman and Turkish incursions. In the first chrysobull, Venice acknowledged its homage to the Empire; but not in the second, reflecting the decline of Byzantium and the rise of Venice's power. [3] [3]
Venice became an imperial power following the Fourth Crusade , which, having veered off course, culminated in 1204 by capturing and sacking Constantinople and establishing the Latin Empire . As a result of this conquest, considerable Byzantine plunder was brought back to Venice. This plunder included the gilt bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople , which were originally placed above the entrance to the cathedral of Venice, St Mark's Basilica , although the originals have been replaced with replicas and are now stored within the basilica. After the fall of Constantinople, the former Roman Empire was partitioned among the Latin crusaders and the Venetians. Venice subsequently carved out a sphere of influence in the Mediterranean known as the Duchy of the Archipelago , and captured Crete. [3]
The seizure of Constantinople proved as decisive a factor in ending the Byzantine Empire as the loss of the Anatolian themes after Manzikert . Although the Byzantines recovered control of the ravaged city a half-century later, the Byzantine Empire was terminally weakened, and existed as a ghost of its old self until Sultan Mehmet The Conqueror took the city in 1453 .
View of San Giorgio Maggiore Island from St. Mark's Campanile .
Situated on the Adriatic Sea, Venice always traded extensively with the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world . By the late 13th century, Venice was the most prosperous city in all of Europe. At the peak of its power and wealth, it had 36,000 sailors operating 3,300 ships, dominating Mediterranean commerce. Venice's leading families vied with each other to build the grandest palaces and support the work of the greatest and most talented artists. The city was governed by the Great Council , which was made up of members of the noble families of Venice. The Great Council appointed all public officials and elected a Senate of 200 to 300 individuals. Since this group was too large for efficient administration, a Council of Ten (also called the Ducal Council or the Signoria), controlled much of the administration of the city. One member of the great council was elected " Doge ", or duke, the chief executive, who usually held the title until his death; although several Doges were forced by pressure from their oligarchical peers to resign and retire into monastic seclusion when they were felt to have been discredited by political failure.
The Venetian government structure was similar in some ways to the republican system of ancient Rome, with an elected chief executive (the Doge), a senate-like assembly of nobles, and a mass of citizens with limited political power, who originally had the power to grant or withhold their approval of each newly elected Doge. Church and various private properties were tied to military service, although there was no knight tenure within the city itself. The Cavalieri di San Marco was the only order of chivalry ever instituted in Venice, and no citizen could accept or join a foreign order without the government's consent. Venice remained a republic throughout its independent period, and politics and the military were kept separate, except when on occasion the Doge personally headed the military. War was regarded as a continuation of commerce by other means (hence, the city's early production of large numbers of mercenaries for service elsewhere, and later its reliance on foreign mercenaries when the ruling class was preoccupied with commerce).
Francesco Guardi , The Grand Canal, 1760 ( Art Institute of Chicago ).
Photograph of Guardi's Regatta in Venice at the Frick Art Reference Library.
Although the people of Venice generally remained orthodox Roman Catholics, the state of Venice was notable for its freedom from religious fanaticism and executed nobody for religious heresy during the Counter-Reformation . This apparent lack of zeal contributed to Venice's frequent conflicts with the Papacy . In this context, the writings of the Anglican divine William Bedell are particularly illuminating. Venice was threatened with the interdict on a number of occasions, and twice suffered its imposition. The second, most noted, occasion was in 1606, by order of Pope Paul V .
Venetian ambassadors sent home still-extant secret reports of the politics and rumours of European courts, providing fascinating information to modern historians.
The newly invented German printing press spread rapidly throughout Europe in the 15th century, and Venice was quick to adopt it. By 1482, Venice was the printing capital of the world, and the leading printer was Aldus Manutius , who invented paperback books that could be carried in a saddlebag. His Aldine Editions included translations of nearly all the known Greek manuscripts of the era. [3]
Decline
The Grand Canal in Venice.
Venice's long decline started in the 15th century, when it first made an unsuccessful attempt to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans (1423–1430). It also sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the besieging Turks (1453). After Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet II , he declared war on Venice. The war lasted thirty years and cost Venice much of its eastern Mediterranean possessions. Next, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in 1492. Then Vasco da Gama of Portugal found a sea route to India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope during his first voyage of 1497–99, destroying Venice's land route monopoly. France, England and the Dutch Republic followed. Venice's oared galleys were at a disadvantage when it came to traversing the great oceans, and therefore Venice was left behind in the race for colonies.
The Black Death devastated Venice in 1348 and once again between 1575 and 1577. [3] In three years, the plague killed some 50,000 people. [3] In 1630, the Italian plague of 1629–31 killed a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens. [3] Venice began to lose its position as a center of international trade during the later part of the Renaissance as Portugal became Europe's principal intermediary in the trade with the East, striking at the very foundation of Venice's great wealth; while France and Spain fought for hegemony over Italy in the Italian Wars , marginalising its political influence. However, the Venetian empire was a major exporter of agricultural products, and until the mid-18th century, a significant manufacturing center.
Modern age
1870s panoramic view of Venice.
During the 18th century, Venice became perhaps the most elegant and refined city in Europe, greatly influencing art, architecture and literature. But the Republic lost its independence when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Venice on 12 May 1797 during the First Coalition . Napoleon was seen as something of a liberator by the city's Jewish population, although it can be argued they had lived with fewer restrictions in Venice. He removed the gates of the Ghetto and ended the restrictions on when and where Jews could live and travel in the city.
Venice became Austrian territory when Napoleon signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 12 October 1797. The Austrians took control of the city on 18 January 1798. But Venice was taken from Austria by the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805 and became part of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy ; however it was returned to Austria following Napoleon's defeat in 1814, when it became part of the Austrian-held Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia . In 1848–9, a revolt briefly re-established the Venetian Republic under Daniele Manin . In 1866, after the Third Italian War of Independence , Venice, along with the rest of the Veneto, became part of the newly created Kingdom of Italy .
During the Second World War , the historic city was largely free from attack, the only aggressive effort of note being Operation Bowler , a successful Royal Air Force precision strike on the German naval operations in the city in March 1945. The targets were destroyed with virtually no architectural damage inflicted on the city itself. [3] However the industrial areas in Mestre and Marghera and the railway lines to Padua, Trieste and Trento were repeatedly bombed . [3] On 29 April 1945, New Zealand troops under Freyberg of the Eighth Army reached Venice and relieved the city and the mainland, which were already in partisan hands. [4]
Subsidence
Acqua alta , or high water in Venice.
Venice and surroundings in false colour, from Terra . The picture is oriented with North at the top.
Subsidence , the gradual lowering of the surface of Venice, has led to the seasonal Acqua alta when much of the city's surface is occasionally covered at high tide.
Foundations
The buildings of Venice are constructed on closely spaced wooden piles . Most of these piles are still intact after centuries of submersion. The foundations rest on plates of Istrian limestone placed on top of the piles, [4] and buildings of brick or stone sit above these footings. The piles penetrate a softer layer of sand and mud until they reach a much harder layer of compressed clay .
Submerged by water, in oxygen-poor conditions, wood does not decay as rapidly as on the surface.
Most of these piles were made from trunks of alder trees, [4] a wood noted for its water resistance. [4] The alder came from the westernmost part of today's Slovenia (resulting in the barren land of the Kras region), in two regions of Croatia, Lika and Gorski kotar (resulting in the barren slopes of Velebit ) and south of Montenegro .
History
The city is often threatened by flood tides pushing in from the Adriatic between autumn and early spring. Six hundred years ago, Venetians protected themselves from land-based attacks by diverting all the major rivers flowing into the lagoon and thus preventing sediment from filling the area around the city. This created an ever-deeper lagoon environment.
In 1604, to defray the cost of flood relief, Venice introduced what could be considered the first example of a ' stamp tax '. When the revenue fell short of expectations in 1608, Venice introduced paper with the superscription 'AQ' and imprinted instructions, which was to be used for 'letters to officials'. At first, this was to be a temporary tax, but it remained in effect until the fall of the Republic in 1797. Shortly after the introduction of the tax, Spain produced similar paper for general taxation purposes, and the practice spread to other countries.
During the 20th century, when many artesian wells were sunk into the periphery of the lagoon to draw water for local industry, Venice began to subside . It was realised that extraction of water from the aquifer was the cause. The sinking has slowed markedly since artesian wells were banned in the 1960s. However, the city is still threatened by more frequent low-level floods (called Acqua alta, "high water") that creep to a height of several centimetres over its quays, regularly following certain tides. In many old houses, the former staircases used to unload goods are now flooded, rendering the former ground floor uninhabitable.
Studies indicate that the city continues sinking at a relatively slow rate of 1-2mm per annum; [4] [4] therefore, the state of alert has not been revoked. In May 2003, the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated the MOSE project (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico), an experimental model for evaluating the performance of hollow floatable gates; the idea is to fix a series of 78 hollow pontoons to the sea bed across the three entrances to the lagoon. When tides are predicted to rise above 110 centimetres, the pontoons will be filled with air, causing them to float and block the incoming water from the Adriatic Sea. This engineering work is due to be completed by 2016. [4]
Geography
Sestieri of Venice:
Cannaregio; Castello; Dorsoduro; San Marco; San Polo; Santa Croce.
The whole pensolon (municipality) is divided into 6 boroughs. One of these (the historic city) is divided into six areas called sestieri : Cannaregio , San Polo , Dorsoduro (including the Giudecca and Isola Sacca Fisola ), Santa Croce , San Marco (including San Giorgio Maggiore ) and Castello (including San Pietro di Castello and Sant'Elena ). Each sestiere was administered by a procurator and his staff. Nowadays each sestiere is a statistical and historical area without any degree of autonomy. The six fingers or flanges of the ferro on the bow of a gondola represent the six sestieri.
The sestieri are divided into parishes – initially 70 in 1033, but reduced under Napoleon and now numbering just 38. These parishes predate the sestieri, which were created in about 1170.
Other islands of the Venetian Lagoon do not form part of any of the sestieri, having historically enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.
Each sestiere has its own house numbering system. Each house has a unique number in the district, from one to several thousand, generally numbered from one corner of the area to another, but not usually in a readily understandable manner.
Climate
According to the Köppen climate classification , Venice has a Humid subtropical climate (Cfa), with cool winters and very warm summers. The 24-hour average in January is 3.3 °C (37.9 °F), and for July this figure is 23.0 °C (73.4 °F). Precipitation is spread relatively evenly throughout the year, and averages 748 millimetres (29.4 in).
Climate data for Venice (1971–2000)
Month
17.2 °C (63.0 °F)
Government
The legislative body of the municipality is the City Council (Consiglio Comunale), which is composed of 45 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee (Giunta Comunale), composed of 12 assessors nominated and presided over by a directly elected Mayor .
Venice was governed by center-left parties from the 1990s until the 2010s, when the mayor started to be elected directly. This is remarkable because Veneto has long been a conservative stronghold, with the coalition between the regionalist Lega Nord and the center-right Forza Italia winning absolute majorities of the electorate in many elections at communal, national, and regional levels.
After a corruption scandal that forced the center-left mayor Giorgio Orsoni to resign, Venice voted for the first time in June 2015 for a conservative directly-elected mayor: the center-right businessman Luigi Brugnaro won the election in the second round of voting with the 53% of the votes against the leftist magistrate and member of the Italian Senate Felice Casson , who led in the first round with 38% of the votes.
The municipality of Venice is subdivided into six administrative Boroughs (Municipalità). Each Borough is governed by a Council (Consiglio) and a President, elected contextually to the city Mayor. The urban organization is governed by the Italian Constitution (art. 114). The Boroughs have the power to advise the Mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the City Council; in addition they are supplied with autonomous funding to finance local activities. The Boroughs are:
Lagoon area:
Venezia (historic city)- Murano – Burano (also known as Venezia insulare); population: 69,136;
Lido – Pellestrina (also known as Venezia litorale); population: 21,664.
Mainland (terraferma), annexed with a Royal Decree, in 1926, to the municipality of Venezia:
Marghera ; population: 28;466.
After the 2015 elections, five of the six boroughs are governed by the Democratic Party and its allies, and one by the center-right mayoral majority.
Economy
Venice's economy has changed throughout history. Although there is little specific information about the earliest years, it is likely that an important source of the city's prosperity was the trade in slaves, captured in central Europe and sold to North Africa and the Levant. Venice's location at the head of the Adriatic, and directly south of the terminus of the Brenner Pass over the Alps, would have given it a distinct advantage as a middleman in this important trade. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance , Venice was a major center for commerce and trade, as it controlled a vast sea-empire, and became an extremely wealthy European city, a leader in political and economic affairs and a centre for trade and commerce. [31] From the 11th century until the 15th century, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were offered in Venice. Other ports such as Genoa , Pisa , Marseille , Ancona and Dubrovnik were hardly able to make any competition to the well organized transportation of pilgrims from Venice. This all changed by the 17th century, when Venice's trade empire was taken over by other countries such as Portugal, and its naval importance was reduced. In the 18th century, then, it became a major agricultural and industrial exporter. The 18th century's biggest industrial complex was the Venice Arsenal , and the Italian Army still uses it today (even though some space has been used for major theatrical and cultural productions, and spaces for art). [32] Today, Venice's economy is mainly based on tourism, shipbuilding (mainly done in the neighboring cities of Mestre and Porto Marghera ), services, trade and industrial exports. [31] Murano glass production in Murano and lace production in Burano are also highly important to the economy. [31]
Tourism
Piazza San Marco. Doge's Palace.
Venice is one of the most important tourist destinations in the world for its celebrated art and architecture. [33] The city has an average of 50,000 tourists a day (2007 estimate). [34] In 2006, it was the world's 28th most internationally visited city, with 2.927 million international arrivals that year. [36]
Travel poster from c. 1920 for Venice.
Tourism has been a major sector of Venetian industry since the 18th century, when it was a major center for the Grand Tour , with its beautiful cityscape, uniqueness, and rich musical and artistic cultural heritage. In the 19th century, it became a fashionable centre for the "rich and famous", often staying or dining at luxury establishments such as the Danieli Hotel and the Caffè Florian . It continued being a fashionable city in vogue right into the early 20th century. [33] In the 1980s, the Carnival of Venice was revived and the city has become a major centre of international conferences and festivals, such as the prestigious Venice Biennale and the Venice Film Festival , which attract visitors from all over the world for their theatrical, cultural, cinematic, artistic, and musical productions [33]
Today, there are numerous attractions in Venice, such as St Mark's Basilica , the Grand Canal , and the Piazza San Marco . The Lido di Venezia is also a popular international luxury destination, attracting thousands of actors, critics, celebrities, and mainly people in the cinematic industry. The city also relies heavily on the cruise business. [33] The Cruise Venice Committee has estimated that cruise ship passengers spend more than 150 million euros (US $193 million) annually in the city. [37]
Cruiseship passing bacino San Marco Venise
However, Venice's popularity as a major worldwide tourist destination has caused several problems, including the fact that the city can be very overcrowded at some points of the year. It is regarded by some as a tourist trap, and by others as a "living museum". [33] Unlike most other places in Western Europe, and the world, Venice has become widely known for its element of elegant decay . The competition for foreigners to buy homes in Venice has made prices rise so high that numerous inhabitants are forced to move to more affordable areas of Veneto and Italy, the most notable being Mestre .
The need to balance cruise tourism revenues with the protection of the city's fragile canals has seen the Italian Transport Ministry attempt to introduce a ban on large cruise ships visiting the city. The ban would only allow cruise ships smaller than 40,000-gross tons to enter Venice’s Giudecca Canal and St Mark's basin. [38] In January, a regional court scrapped the ban, but global cruise lines indicated that they would continue to respect it until a long-term solution for the protection of Venice is found. [39] The city considered a ban on wheeled suitcases , but settled on banning hard wheels for cargo from May 2015. [41]
Transportation
Giudecca canal. View from St Mark's Campanile .
Sandolo in a picture of Paolo Monti of 1965. Fondo Paolo Monti, BEIC .
Venice is built on an archipelago of 117 islands formed by 177 canals in a shallow lagoon, connected by 409 bridges. [42] In the old centre, the canals serve the function of roads, and almost every form of transport is on water or on foot. In the 19th century, a causeway to the mainland brought the Venezia Santa Lucia railway station to Venice, and the Ponte della Libertà road causeway and parking facilities (in Tronchetto island and in piazzale Roma) were built during the 20th century. Beyond the road and rail land entrances at the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city remains (as it was in centuries past) entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban car-free area . Venice is unique in Europe, in having remained a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.
The classical Venetian boat is the gondola , (plural: gondole) although it is now mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies, or as 'traghetti' (sing.: traghetto) to cross the Canale Grande in the absence of a nearby bridge. Many gondolas are lushly appointed with crushed velvet seats and Persian rugs. Less well-known is the smaller sandolo . At the front of each gondola that works in the city, there is a large piece of metal called the fèro (iron). Its shape has evolved through the centuries, as documented in many well-known paintings. Its form, topped by a likeness of the Doge's hat, became gradually standardized, and was then fixed by local law. It consists of six bars pointing forward representing the Sestieri of the city, and one that points backward representing the Giudecca .
Waterways
Rialto Bridge
Venice is a city of small islands, enhanced during the Middle Ages by the dredging of soils to raise the marshy ground above the tides. The resulting canals encouraged the flourishing of a nautical culture which proved central to the economy of the city. Today those canals still provide the means for transport of goods and people within the city.
The maze of canals threaded through the city requires the use of more than 400 bridges to permit the flow of foot traffic. In 2011, the city opened Ponte della Costituzione , the fourth bridge across the Grand Canal, connecting the Piazzale Roma bus terminal area with the Stazione Ferroviaria (train station), the others being the original Ponte di Rialto , the Ponte dell'Accademia , and the Ponte degli Scalzi .
Public transport
Azienda del Consorzio Trasporti Veneziano (ACTV) is a public company responsible for public transportation in Venice.
Lagoon area
The main public transportation means are motorised waterbuses ( vaporetti ) which ply regular routes along the Grand Canal and between the city's islands. The only gondole still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points without bridges.
The Venice People Mover (managed by ASM) is a cable -operated public transit system connecting Tronchetto island with Piazzale Roma. Water taxis are also active.
Lido and Pellestrina islands
Lido and Pellestrina are two islands forming a barrier between the southern Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea. In those islands, road traffic is allowed. There are bus services on islands and waterbus services linking islands with other islands (Venice, Murano , Burano ) and with the peninsula of Cavallino-Treporti .
Mainland
The mainland of Venice is composed of 5 boroughs: Mestre -Carpenedo, Marghera , Chirignago-Zelarino and Favaro Veneto. Mestre is the center and the most populated urban area of the mainland of Venice. There are several bus routes and two Translohr tramway lines . Several bus routes and one of the above tramway lines link the mainland with Piazzale Roma , the main bus station in Venice, via Ponte della Libertà , a road bridge connecting the mainland with the group of islands that comprise the historic center of Venice.
Trains
Venice has regional and national trains, including trains to Rome (3.5 hours) and Milan (2.5 hours). Treviso is 35 minutes away. Florence and Padua are two of the stops between Rome and Venice. There are two main stations:
The St Lucia station is a few steps away from a vaporetti stop in the historic city next to Piazzale Roma. As well as many more local trains, this station is the terminus of the Venice Simplon Orient Express from Paris and London.
The Mestre station is on the mainland, on the border between the boroughs of Mestre and Marghera.
Both stations are managed by Grandi Stazioni; they are linked by the Ponte della Libertà (Liberty Bridge) between the mainland and the islands.
Others small stations in the municipality are: Venezia Porto Marghera, Venezia Carpenedo, Venezia Mestre Ospedale, Venezia Mestre Porta Ovest.
Morning Impression along a Canal in Venice, Veneto, Italy. by Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky .(1896) The Di Rocco Wieler Private Collection, Toronto, Canada.
Airports
Venice is served by the Marco Polo International Airport (Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo ), named in honor of its noted citizen. The airport is on the mainland and was rebuilt away from the coast. Public transport from the airport takes one to:
Venice Piazzale Roma by ATVO (provincial company) buses [43] and by ACTV (city company) buses (route 5 aerobus); [44]
Venice, Lido and Murano by Alilaguna (private company) motor boats;
Mestre, the mainland and Venice Mestre railway station (convenient for connections to Milan , Padova , Trieste , Verona and the rest of Italy) by ACTV lines (route 15 and 45) [44] and by ATVO lines;
regional destinations (Treviso, Padua, the beach, ...) by ATVO buses and by Busitalia Sita Nord [45] buses (national company).
Some airlines market Treviso Airport in Treviso , 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Venice, as a Venice gateway. Some simply advertise flights to "Venice", while naming the actual airport only in small print. [47] There are public buses from the airport to Venice from this airport.
Venezia-Lido "Giovanni Nicelli", [48] a public airport suitable for smaller aircraft, is at the NE end of Lido di Venezia . It has a 994-metre grass runway.
Sport
The main football club in the city is FBC Unione Venezia , founded in 1907, who currently plays in the Lega Pro Prima Divisione . Their ground, the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo situated in Sant'Elena , is one of the oldest venues in Italy.
The local basketball team, Reyer Venezia Mestre , plays in the first national league, the Lega Basket Serie A .
Education
Venice is a major international centre for higher education. The city hosts the Ca' Foscari University of Venice , founded in 1868; the IUAV University of Venice , founded in 1926; the Venice International University , an international research center, founded in 1995 and located on the island of San Servolo ; [6] and the EIUC-European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation, located on the island of Lido di Venezia. [6]
Other Venetian institutions of higher education are: the "Accademia di Belle Arti" (Academy of Fine Arts), established in 1750, whose first Chairman was Giovanni Battista Piazzetta ; [6] and the " Benedetto Marcello " Conservatory of Music, which, established in 1876 as High School and Musical Society, later (1915) became "Liceo Musicale" and finally (1940), when its Director was Gian Francesco Malipiero , State Conservatory of Music. [6]
Demographics
140,000
+0.0%
The city was one of the largest in Europe in the High Middle Ages , with a population of 60,000 in AD 1000; 80,000 in 1200; and rising up to 110,000–180,000 in 1300. In the mid 1500s the city's population was 170,000, and by 1600 almost 200,000. [6] [6] [6] [6] [6]
In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; around 60,000 in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the Mainland); and 31,000 live on other islands in the lagoon), of whom 47.4% were male and 52.6% were female. Minors (children ages 18 and younger) were 14.36% of the population compared to pensioners who numbered 25.7%. This compared with the Italian average of 18.06% (minors) and 19.94% (pensioners). The average age of Venice residents was 46 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Venice declined by 0.2%, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.85%. [6] The population in the historic old city declined much faster: from about 120,000 in 1980 to about 60,000 in 2009. [8]
As of 2009, 91% of the population was Italian. The largest immigrant group came from other European nations: ( Romanians , the largest group: 3%, South Asia: 1.3%, and East Asia: 0.9%).
Venice is predominantly Roman Catholic (92.7% of resident population in the area of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Venice in 2012 [8] ), but because of the long-standing relationship with Constantinople , there is also a noticeable Orthodox presence, and as a result of immigration, there are now some Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist inhabitants. There is also a historic Jewish community in Venice. The Venetian Ghetto was the area in which Jews were compelled to live under the Venetian Republic. The word ghetto, originally Venetian , is now used in many languages. Shakespeare 's play The Merchant of Venice , written in the late 16th century, features Shylock , a Venetian Jew. The first complete and uncensored printed edition of the Talmud was printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg in 1523. In more modern times, Venice has an eruv , [8] used by the Jewish community.
Culture
Typical masks worn during the Carnival of Venice .
Cinema, media, and popular culture
Venice has been the setting or chosen location of numerous films, games, works of literature, music videos, novels, poems, television shows, and other cultural references.
In literature and adapted works
The city is a particularly popular setting for essays, novels, and other works of fictional or non-fictional literature. Examples of these include: Casanova 's autobiographical History of My Life, Ben Jonson 's Volpone (1605-6), Anne Rice 's Cry to Heaven (1982), Shakespeare 's Merchant of Venice (ca. 1596–1598) and Othello , Philippe Sollers ' Watteau in Venice , and Voltaire 's Candide . Additionally, Thomas Mann 's novella, Death in Venice (1912), was the basis for Benjamin Britten's opera Death in Venice .
Films
La Fenice operahouse in the city.
Venice has a rich and diverse architectural style , the most prominent of which is the Gothic style. Venetian Gothic architecture is a term given to a Venetian building style combining use of the Gothic lancet arch with Byzantine and Ottoman influences. The style originated in 14th-century Venice, where the confluence of Byzantine style from Constantinople met Arab influence from Moorish Spain . Chief examples of the style are the Doge's Palace and the Ca' d'Oro in the city. The city also has several Renaissance and Baroque buildings, including the Ca' Pesaro and the Ca' Rezzonico .
Music
The city of Venice in Italy has played an important role in the development of the music of Italy . The Venetian state – i.e., the medieval Maritime Republic of Venice – was often popularly called the "Republic of Music", and an anonymous Frenchman of the 17th century is said to have remarked that "In every home, someone is playing a musical instrument or singing. There is music everywhere." [8]
During the 16th century, Venice became one of the most important musical centers of Europe, marked by a characteristic style of composition (the Venetian school ) and the development of the Venetian polychoral style under composers such as Adrian Willaert , who worked at St Mark's Basilica . Venice was the early center of music printing; Ottaviano Petrucci began publishing music almost as soon as this technology was available, and his publishing enterprise helped to attract composers from all over Europe, especially from France and Flanders . By the end of the century, Venice was known for the splendor of its music, as exemplified in the "colossal style" of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli , which used multiple choruses and instrumental groups. Venice was also the home of many noted composers during the baroque period , such as Antonio Vivaldi , Ippolito Ciera , Giovanni Picchi , and Girolamo Dalla Casa , to name but a few.
Interior design
It can be argued that Venice produced the best and most refined rococo designs. At the time, Venice was in trouble. It had lost most of its maritime power, was lagging behind its rivals in political importance, and society had become decadent, with nobles wasting their money in gambling and partying. But Venice remained Italy's fashion capital, and was a serious contender to Paris in terms of wealth, architecture, luxury, taste, sophistication, trade, decoration, style, and design. Venetian rococo was well known as rich and luxurious, with usually very extravagant designs. Unique Venetian furniture pieces included the divani da portego, and long rococo couches and pozzetti, objects meant to be placed against the wall. Bedrooms of rich Venetians were usually sumptuous and grand, with rich damask, velvet, and silk drapery and curtains, and beautifully carved rococo beds with statues of putti , flowers and angels. Venice was especially known for its beautiful girandole mirrors, which remained among, if not the, finest in Europe. Chandeliers were usually very colourful, using Murano glass to make them look more vibrant and stand out from others, and precious stones and materials from abroad were used, since Venice still held a vast trade empire. Lacquer was very common, and many items of furniture were covered with it, the most noted being lacca povera (poor lacquer), in which allegories and images of social life were painted. Lacquerwork and Chinoiserie were particularly common in bureau cabinets. [8]
Fashion and shopping
Luxury shops and boutiques along the Rialto Bridge .
In the 14th century, many young Venetian men began wearing tight-fitting multicoloured hose, the designs on which indicated the Compagnie della Calza ("Trouser Club") to which they belonged. The Venetian Senate passed sumptuary laws , but these merely resulted in changes in fashion in order to circumvent the law. Dull garments were worn over colourful ones, which then were cut to show the hidden colours resulting in the wide spread of men's "slashed" fashions in the 15th century.
Today, Venice is a major fashion and shopping centre, not as important as Milan , Florence , and Rome, but on a par with Verona , Turin , Vicenza , Naples , and Genoa . Roberta di Camerino is the only major Italian fashion brand to be based in Venice. [58] Founded in 1945, it is renowned for its innovative handbags featuring hardware by Venetian artisans and often covered in locally woven velvet, and has been credited with creating the concept of the easily recognisable status bag . [58] Many of the fashion boutiques and jewelry shops in the city are located on or near the Rialto Bridge and in the Piazza San Marco . There are Louis Vuitton and Ermenegildo Zegna flagship stores in the city. If shopping for venetian and Italian food specialties and wine you can head to Mascari or Casa del Parmigiano near Rialto and I Tre Mercanti flagship store near Piazza San Marco .
Cuisine
Hot chocolate was a fashionable drink in Venice during the 1770s and 1780s.
Venetian cuisine is characterized by seafood, but also includes garden products from the islands of the lagoon, rice from the mainland, game, and polenta . Venice combines local traditions with influences stemming from age-old contacts with distant countries. These include sarde in saór (sardines marinated to preserve them for long voyages); bacalà mantecato (a recipe based on Norwegian stockfish and extra-virgin olive oil); bisàto (marinated eel); risi e bisi, rice, peas and (not smoked) bacon; [8] fegato alla veneziana, Venetian-style veal liver; risòto col néro de sépe (risotto with cuttlefish, blackened by their ink); cicchétti, refined and delicious tidbits (akin to tapas); antipasti (appetizers); and prosecco , an effervescent, mildly sweet wine.
In addition, Venice is known for the golden, oval-shaped cookies called baìcoli, and for other types of sweets, such as: pan del pescatore (bread of the fisherman); cookies with almonds and pistachio nuts; cookies with fried Venetian cream, or the bussolài ( butter biscuits and shortbread made in the shape of a ring or of an "S") from the island of Burano; the galàni or cróstoli ( angel wings ); [8] the frìtole (spherical doughnuts); the fregolòtta (a crumbly cake with almonds); a milk pudding called rosada; and cookies called zaléti, whose ingredients include yellow maize flour.
The dessert tiramisù is thought to have been invented in Treviso in the late 1960s, and is popular in the Veneto area.
Literature
Portrait of Giacomo Casanova.
Venice has long been a source of inspiration for authors, poets and playwrights as well as being at the forefront of the technical developing of printing and publishing.
Two of the most noted Venetian writers were Marco Polo in the Middle Ages and later Giacomo Casanova . Polo (1254–1324) was a merchant who voyaged to the Orient . His series of books, co-written by Rustichello da Pisa , titled Il Milione provided important knowledge of the lands east of Europe, from the Middle East to China, Japan and Russia. Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was a prolific writer and adventurer best remembered for his autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie (Story of My Life), which links his colourful lifestyle to the city of Venice.
Venetian playwrights followed the old Italian theatre tradition of Commedia dell'arte . Ruzante (1502–1542), Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) and Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) used the Venetian dialect extensively in their comedies.
book printed by Aldus Manutius.
Venice has also inspired writers from abroad. Shakespeare set Othello and The Merchant of Venice in the city. Thomas Mann wrote the novel Death in Venice , published in 1912. Venice inspired the poetry of Ezra Pound , who wrote his first literary work in the city. Pound died in 1972 and his remains are buried in Venice's cemetery island of San Michele . The French writer Philippe Sollers spent most of his life in Venice and published A Dictionary For Lovers Of Venice in 2004. Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), born in Zante , an island that at the time belonged to the Republic of Venice, was also a poet and revolutionary who wanted to see a free republic established in Venice following its fall to Napoleon . The city features prominently in Henry James' The Aspern Papers and The Wings of the Dove , and is also visited in Evelyn Waugh 's Brideshead Revisited and Marcel Proust 's In Search of Lost Time . Perhaps the most known children's book set in Venice is The Thief Lord, written by the German author Cornelia Funke .
Venice is also linked to the technological aspects of writing. The city was the location of one of Italy's earliest printing presses, established by Aldus Manutius (1449–1515). From this beginning Venice developed as an important typographic center and even as late as the 18th century was responsible for printing half of Italy's published books.
Art and printing
From the Gondola by John Singer Sargent .
An 18th-century view of Venice by Venetian artist Canaletto .
Venice, especially during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Baroque periods, was a major centre of art and developed a unique style known as the Venetian School . In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice, along with Florence and Rome, became one of the most important centres of art in Europe, and numerous wealthy Venetians became patrons of the arts. Venice at the time was a rich and prosperous Maritime Republic , which controlled a vast sea and trade empire. [59]
By the end of the 15th century, Venice had become the European capital of printing, being one of the first cities in Italy (after Subiaco and Rome) to have a printing press after those established in Germany, having 417 printers by 1500. The most important printing office was the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius , which in 1499 printed the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , considered the most beautiful book of the Renaissance , and established modern punctuation , the page format and italic type , and the first printed work of Aristotle .
In the 16th century, Venetian painting was developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina , who introduced the oil painting technique of the Van Eyck brothers. It is signified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour. Early masters were the Bellini and Vivarini families, followed by Giorgione and Titian , then Tintoretto and Veronese . In the early 16th century, there was rivalry in Venetian painting between the disegno and colorito techniques. [60]
Canvases (the common painting surface) originated in Venice during the early Renaissance. These early canvases were generally rough.
In the 18th century, Venetian painting had a revival with Tiepolo 's decorative painting and Canaletto 's and Guardi 's panoramic views.
Glass
A Venetian glass goblet .
Venice is known for its ornate glass-work, known as Venetian glass . It is world-renowned for being colourful, elaborate, and skilfully made.
Many of the important characteristics of these objects had been developed by the 13th century. Toward the end of that century, the center of the Venetian glass industry moved to Murano , an offshore island in Venice. The glass made there is known as Murano glass .
Byzantine craftsmen played an important role in the development of Venetian glass, an art form for which the city is well known. When Constantinople was sacked in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, some fleeing artisans came to Venice. This happened again when the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, supplying Venice with still more glassworkers. By the 16th century, Venetian artisans had gained even greater control over the color and transparency of their glass, and had mastered a variety of decorative techniques.
An ornate Murano glass chandelier .
Despite efforts to keep Venetian glassmaking techniques within Venice, they became known elsewhere, and Venetian-style glassware was produced in other Italian cities and other countries of Europe.
Some of the most important brands of glass in the world today are still produced in the historical glass factories on Murano. They are: Venini, Barovier & Toso, Pauly , Millevetri, Seguso. Barovier & Toso is considered one of the 100 oldest companies in the world, formed in 1295.
Festivals
Masks at Carnival of Venice.
The Carnival of Venice is held annually in the city, It lasts for around two weeks and ends on Shrove Tuesday . Venetian masks are worn.
The Venice Biennale is one of the most important events in the arts calendar. In 1895 an Esposizione biennale artistica nazionale (biennial exhibition of Italian art) was inaugurated. [61] The activities of the Biennale were interrupted by the war in September 1942, but resumed in 1948. [62]
The Festa del Redentore is held in mid July. It began as a feast to give thanks for the end of the plague of 1576. A bridge of barges is built connecting Giudecca to the rest of Venice, and fireworks play an important role.
The Venice Film Festival ( Italian Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia) is the oldest film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata in 1932 as the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the Lido . Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi. It is one of the world's most prestigious film festivals and is part of the Venice Biennale.
Foreign words of Venetian origin
Some words with a Venetian etymology include arsenal , ciao , ghetto , gondola , imbroglio , lagoon , lazaret , lido , Montenegro , quarantine , and regatta . The name " Venezuela " is a Spanish diminutive of Venice. Many additional places around the world are named after Venice, e.g., Venice, Los Angeles , home of Venice Beach, California .
Notable people
For people from Venice, see Category:People from Venice . Others closely associated with the city include:
Pietro Cesare Alberti (1608–1655), considered the first Italian-American, arriving in New Amsterdam in 1635.
Tomaso Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751), a baroque composer.
Claudio Ambrosini (9 April 1948), composer and conductor.
Pietro Bembo (20 May 1470 – 18 January 1547), cardinal and scholar.
Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516), a Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of painters.
Francesco Borgato (5 September 1990, Venice), is an Italian recording artist and dancer.
Marco Antonio Bragadin (d.1571), general, flayed alive by the Turks after a fierce resistance during the siege of Famagusta .
Elisabetta Caminèr Turra (1751–1796), writer.
Emilio Vedova (9 August 1919 – 25 October 2006), one of the most important modern painters of Italy.
Sebastiano Venier , (c. 1496 – 3 March 1578), Doge of Venice from 11 June 1577 to 1578.
Antonio Vivaldi (4 March 1678, 28 July (or 27), 1741, Vienna ), composer and violinist of the Baroque Era.
International relations
The City of Venice and the Central Association of Cities and Communities of Greece (KEDKE) established, in January 2000, in pursuance of the EC Regulations n. 2137/85, the European Economic Interest Grouping (E.E.I.G.) Marco Polo System to promote and realise European projects within transnational cultural and tourist field, particularly referred to the artistic and architectural heritage preservation and safeguard.
Twin towns and sister cities
Venice is twinned with:
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Rudy Hartono won the All England Open Championship seven years in a row from 1968 to 1974, in which sport? | Venice : definition of Venice and synonyms of Venice (English)
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, Venetian : Venexia [veˈnɛsja]; ( Latin : Venetia) is a city in northeast Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. [1] It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Venice is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. [1] The city in its entirety is listed as World Heritage Site , along with its lagoon. [1]
Venice is the capital of the Veneto region . In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; around 60,000 [2] in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the Mainland), mostly in the large frazioni of Mestre and Marghera ; 31,000 live on other islands in the lagoon). Together with Padua and Treviso , the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE) (population 1,600,000).
The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century B.C. [3] [4] The city historically was the capital of the Venetian Republic . Venice has been known as the "La Dominante", "Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic ", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", and "City of Canals". Luigi Barzini described it in The New York Times as "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man". [5] Venice has also been described by the Times Online as being one of Europe's most romantic cities. [6]
The Republic of Venice was a major maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance , and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto , as well as a very important center of commerce (especially silk, grain, and spice ) and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century. This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history. [7] It is also known for its several important artistic movements, especially the Renaissance period . Venice has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and it is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi .
Contents
See also: History of the Republic of Venice
Origins
While there are no historical records that deal directly with the obscure and peripheral origins of Venice, [8] tradition and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees from Roman cities near Venice such as Padua , Aquileia , Treviso , Altino and Concordia (modern Portogruaro ) and from the undefended countryside, who were fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions. [9] Some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen on the islands in the original marshy lagoons. They were referred to as incolae lacunae ("lagoon dwellers"). The traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giacomo at the islet of Rialto (Rivoalto, "High Shore"), which is said to have been at the stroke of noon on 25 March 421. [10] [11]
The last and most enduring immigration into the north of the Italian peninsula was that of the Lombards in 568, leaving the Eastern Roman Empire a small strip of coast in the current Veneto, and the main administrative and religious entities were therefore transferred to this remaining dominion, centered upon the Exarchate of Ravenna , the local representative of the Emperor in the East. The Venetian tradition of the islanders' aid to Belisarius was reported in early histories to explain the largely theoretical link to Ravenna, and to the Eastern Emperor. New ports were built, including those at Malamocco and Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. The tribuni maiores, the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the Lagoon, dated from c. 568. [12]
The Venetians offered asylum to the Exarch Paul , who was in flight from the Lombard Liutprand . [13] Byzantine domination of central and northern Italy was subsequently largely eliminated by the conquest of the Exarchate of Ravenna in 751 by Aistulf . During this period, the seat of the local Byzantine governor (the "duke/dux", later " doge ") was situated in Malamocco . Settlement on the islands in the lagoon probably increased in correspondence with the Lombard conquest of the Byzantine territories.
Sometime in the first decades of the eighth century, the people of the lagoon elected their first leader Ursus , who was confirmed by Byzantium and given the titles of hypatus and dux . [14] He was the first historical Doge of Venice .
In 775/776, the episcopal seat of Olivolo (Helipolis) was created. During the reign of duke Agnello Particiaco (811–827) the ducal seat was moved from Malamocco to the highly protected Rialto, the current location of Venice. The monastery of St. Zachary and the first ducal palace and basilica of St. Mark , as well as a walled defense (civitatis murus) between Olivolo and Rialto were subsequently built here. Winged lions, which may be seen throughout Venice, are a symbol for St. Mark.
Charlemagne was initially hostile to Venice and sought to subdue the city to his own rule. He ordered the Pope to expel the Venetians from the Pentapolis along the Adriatic coast, [15] and Charlemagne's own son Pepin of Italy , king of the Lombards under the authority of his father, embarked on a siege of Venice itself. This, however, proved a costly failure. The siege lasted six months, with Pepin's army ravaged by the diseases of the local swamps and eventually forced to withdraw. A few months later Pepin himself died, apparently as a result of a disease contracted there. In the aftermath, an agreement between Charlemagne and Nicephorus recognized Venice as Byzantine territory and recognized the city's trading rights along the Adriatic coast.
In 828, the new city's prestige was raised by the acquisition of the claimed relics of St. Mark the Evangelist from Alexandria, which were placed in the new basilica. The patriarchal seat was also moved to Rialto. As the community continued to develop and as Byzantine power waned, it led to the growth of autonomy and eventual independence.
Expansion
Piazza San Marco in Venice, with St Mark's Campanile and Basilica in the background
These Horses of Saint Mark are a replica of the Triumphal Quadriga captured in Constantinople in 1204 and carried to Venice as a trophy.
From the ninth to the twelfth century Venice developed into a city state (an Italian thalassocracy or Repubblica Marinara , the other three being Genoa , Pisa , and Amalfi ). Its strategic position at the head of the Adriatic made Venetian naval and commercial power almost invulnerable. With the elimination of pirates along the Dalmatian coast , the city became a flourishing trade center between Western Europe and the rest of the world (especially the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world ). In the 12th century the foundations of Venice's power were laid: the Venetian Arsenal was under construction in 1104; the last autocratic doge, Vital II Michele , died in 1172.
The Republic of Venice seized a number of places on the eastern shores of the Adriatic before 1200, mostly for commercial reasons, because pirates based there were a menace to trade. The Doge already carried the titles of Duke of Dalmatia and Duke of Istria . Later mainland possessions, which extended across Lake Garda as far west as the Adda River , were known as the "Terraferma", and were acquired partly as a buffer against belligerent neighbours, partly to guarantee Alpine trade routes, and partly to ensure the supply of mainland wheat, on which the city depended. In building its maritime commercial empire, the Republic dominated the trade in salt, [16] acquired control of most of the islands in the Aegean , including Cyprus and Crete , and became a major power-broker in the Near East . By the standards of the time, Venice's stewardship of its mainland territories was relatively enlightened and the citizens of such towns as Bergamo , Brescia and Verona rallied to the defence of Venetian sovereignty when it was threatened by invaders.
Venice remained closely associated with Constantinople, being twice granted trading privileges in the Eastern Roman Empire, through the so called Golden Bulls or 'chrysobulls' in return for aiding the Eastern Empire to resist Norman and Turkish incursions. In the first chrysobull Venice acknowledged its homage to the Empire but not in the second, reflecting the decline of Byzantium and the rise of Venice's power. [17] [18]
Venice became an imperial power following the Venetian-financed Fourth Crusade , which in 1204 seized and sacked Constantinople and established the Latin Empire . As a result of this conquest considerable Byzantine plunder was brought back to Venice. This plunder included the gilt bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople , which were originally placed above the entrance to St Mark's cathedral in Venice, although the originals have been replaced with replicas and the originals are now stored within the basilica. Following the fall of Constantinople the former Roman Empire was partitioned among the Latin crusaders and the Venetians. Venice subsequently carved out a sphere of influence in the Mediterranean known as the Duchy of the Archipelago , and seized Crete.
The seizure of Constantinople would ultimately prove as decisive a factor in ending the Byzantine Empire as the loss of the Anatolian themes after Manzikert . Though the Byzantines recovered control of the ravaged city a half century later, the Byzantine Empire was terminally weakened, and existed as a ghost of its old self until Sultan Mehmet The Conqueror took the city in 1453.
View of San Giorgio Maggiore Island from St. Mark's Campanile
Situated on the Adriatic Sea, Venice always traded with the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world extensively. By the late thirteenth century, Venice was the most prosperous city in all of Europe. At the peak of its power and wealth, it had 36,000 sailors operating 3,300 ships, dominating Mediterranean commerce. During this time, Venice's leading families vied with each other to build the grandest palaces and support the work of the greatest and most talented artists. The city was governed by the Great Council , which was made up of members of the noble families of Venice. The Great Council appointed all public officials and elected a Senate of 200 to 300 individuals. Since this group was too large for efficient administration, a Council of Ten (also called the Ducal Council or the Signoria), controlled much of the administration of the city. One member of the great council was elected " Doge ", or duke, the ceremonial head of the city, who normally held the title until his death.
The Venetian governmental structure was similar in some ways to the republican system of ancient Rome, with an elected chief executive (the Doge), a senate-like assembly of nobles, and a mass of citizens with limited political power, who originally had the power to grant or withhold their approval of each newly elected Doge. Church and various private properties were tied to military service, though there was no knight tenure within the city itself. The Cavalieri di San Marco was the only order of chivalry ever instituted in Venice, and no citizen could accept or join a foreign order without the government's consent. Venice remained a republic throughout its independent period and politics and the military were kept separate, except when on occasion the Doge personally headed the military. War was regarded as a continuation of commerce by other means (hence, the city's early production of large numbers of mercenaries for service elsewhere, and later its reliance on foreign mercenaries when the ruling class was preoccupied with commerce).
Francesco Guardi , The Grand Canal, 1760 ( Art Institute of Chicago )
The chief executive was the Doge, who theoretically held his elective office for life. In practice, several Doges were forced by pressure from their oligarchical peers to resign the office and retire into monastic seclusion when they were felt to have been discredited by perceived political failure.
Though the people of Venice generally remained orthodox Roman Catholics, the state of Venice was notable for its freedom from religious fanaticism and it enacted not a single execution for religious heresy during the Counter-Reformation . This apparent lack of zeal contributed to Venice's frequent conflicts with the Papacy . In this context, the writings of the Anglican Divine, William Bedell, are particularly illuminating. Venice was threatened with the interdict on a number of occasions and twice suffered its imposition. The second, most famous, occasion in 1606, by order of Pope Paul V .
Venetian ambassadors sent home still-extant secret reports of the politics and rumours of European courts, providing fascinating information to modern historians.
The newly invented German printing press spread rapidly throughout Europe in the fifteenth century, and Venice was quick to adopt it. By 1482 Venice was the printing capital of the world, and the leading printer was Aldus Manutius , who invented the concept of paperback books that could be carried in a saddlebag. His Aldine Editions included translations of nearly all the known Greek manuscripts of the era. [19]
Decline
Venice's long decline started in the 15th century, when it first made an unsuccessful attempt to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans (1423–1430). It also sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the besieging Turks (1453). After Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet II he declared war on Venice. The war lasted thirty years and cost Venice much of her eastern Mediterranean possessions. Next, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. Then Portugal found a sea route to India, destroying Venice’s land route monopoly. France, England and Holland followed them. Venice’s oared galleys were at a disadvantage when it came to traversing the great oceans, and therefore Venice was left behind in the race for colonies.
The Black Death devastated Venice in 1348 and once again between 1575 and 1577. [20] In three years the plague killed some 50,000 people. [21] In 1630, the plague killed a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens. [22] Venice began to lose its position as a center of international trade during the later part of the Renaissance as Portugal became Europe's principal intermediary in the trade with the East, striking at the very foundation of Venice's great wealth, while France and Spain fought for hegemony over Italy in the Italian Wars , marginalising its political influence. However, the Venetian empire was a major exporter of agricultural products and, until the mid-18th century, a significant manufacturing center.
Military and naval affairs
Historic map of Venice by Piri Reis
By 1303, crossbow practice had become compulsory in the city, with citizens training in groups. As weapons became more expensive and complex to operate, professional soldiers were assigned to help work merchant sailing ships and as rowers in galleys. The company of "Noble Bowmen" was recruited in the later 14th century from among the younger aristocracy and served aboard both war-galleys and as armed merchantmen, with the privilege of sharing the captain's cabin.
Though Venice was famous for its navy, its army was equally effective. In the 13th century, most Italian city states already were hiring mercenaries , but Venetian troops were still recruited from the lagoon, plus feudal levies from Dalmatia (the very famous Schiavoni or Oltremarini ) [23] and Istria. In times of emergency, all males between seventeen and sixty years were registered and their weapons were surveyed, with those called to actually fight being organized into companies of twelve. The register of 1338 estimated that 30,000 Venetian men were capable of bearing arms; many of these were skilled crossbowmen. As in other Italian cities, aristocrats and other wealthy men were cavalrymen while the city's conscripts fought as infantry .
By 1450, more than 3,000 Venetian merchant ships were in operation. Most of these could be converted when necessary into either warships or transports. The government required each merchant ship to carry a specified number of weapons (mostly crossbows and javelins ) and armour ; merchant passengers were also expected to be armed and to fight when necessary. A reserve of some 25 (later 100) war-galleys was maintained in the Arsenal . Galley slaves did not exist in medieval Venice, the oarsmen coming from the city itself or from its possessions, especially Dalmatia . Those from the city were chosen by lot from each parish, their families being supported by the remainder of the parish while the rowers were away. Debtors generally worked off their obligations rowing the galleys. Rowing skills were encouraged through races and regattas .
Early in the 15th century, as new mainland territories were expanded, the first standing army was organized, consisting of condottieri on contract. In its alliance with Florence in 1426, Venice agreed to supply 8,000 cavalry and 3,000 infantry in time of war, and 3,000 and 1,000 in peacetime. Later in that century, uniforms were adopted that featured red-and-white stripes, and a system of honors and pensions developed. Throughout the 15th century, Venetian land forces were almost always on the offensive and were regarded as the most effective in Italy, largely because of the tradition of all classes carrying arms in defense of the city and official encouragement of general military training.
Venice, by Bolognino Zaltieri, 1565.
The command structure in the army was different from that of the fleet. By ancient law, no nobleman could command more than twenty-five men (to prevent the possibility of sedition by private armies), and while the position of Captain General was introduced in the mid-14th century, he still had to answer to a civilian panel of twenty Savi or "wise men". Not only was efficiency not degraded, this policy saved Venice from the military takeovers that other Italian city states so often experienced. A civilian commissioner (not unlike a commissar ) accompanied each army to keep an eye on things, especially the mercenaries. The Venetian military tradition also was notably cautious; they were more interested in achieving success with a minimum expense of lives and money than in the pursuit of glory.
Modern age
A map of the sestiere of San Marco
The Republic lost independence when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Venice on 12 May 1797 during the First Coalition . The French conqueror brought to an end the most fascinating century of its history: during the 18th century Venice became perhaps the most elegant and refined city in Europe, greatly influencing art, architecture and literature. Napoleon was seen as something of a liberator by the city's Jewish population, although it can be argued they had lived with fewer restrictions in Venice. He removed the gates of the Ghetto and ended the restrictions on when and where Jews could live and travel in the city.
Venice became Austrian territory when Napoleon signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 12 October 1797. The Austrians took control of the city on 18 January 1798. It was taken from Austria by the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805 and became part of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy , but was returned to Austria following Napoleon's defeat in 1814, when it became part of the Austrian-held Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia . In 1848–1849 a revolt briefly reestablished the Venetian Republic under Daniele Manin . In 1866, following the Third Italian War of Independence , Venice, along with the rest of the Veneto, became part of the newly created Kingdom of Italy .
During the Second World War, the historic city was largely free from attack, the only aggressive effort of note being Operation Bowler , a precision strike on the German naval operations there in 1945. However the industrial areas in Mestre and Marghera and the railway lines to Padua, Trieste and Trento were repeatedly bombed . [24] On 29 April 1945 New Zealand troops under Freyberg reached Venice and relieved the city and the mainland, which were already in partisan hands. [25]
Subsidence
Further information: Acqua Alta
Acqua Alta or high water in Venice.
Venice and surroundings in false colour, from Terra . The picture is oriented with North at the top.
Foundations
The buildings of Venice are constructed on closely spaced wooden piles . Most of these piles are still intact after centuries of submersion. The foundations rest on the piles, and buildings of brick or stone sit above these footings. The piles penetrate a softer layer of sand and mud until they reach a much harder layer of compressed clay .
Submerged by water, in oxygen-poor conditions, wood does not decay as rapidly as on the surface. It is petrified as a result of the constant flow of mineral-rich water around and through it, so that it becomes a stone-like structure.[ citation needed ]
Most of these piles were made from trunks of alder trees, [26] a wood noted for its water resistance. [27] The alder came from the western-most part of today's Slovenia (resulting in the barren land of the Kras region), in two regions of Croatia, Lika and Gorski kotar (resulting in the barren slopes of Velebit ) and south of Montenegro .[ citation needed ] Leonid Grigoriev has stated that Russian larch was imported to build some of Venice's foundations. [28] Larch is also used in the production of Venice turpentine . [29]
History
The city is often threatened by flood tides pushing in from the Adriatic between autumn and early spring. Six hundred years ago, Venetians protected themselves from land-based attacks by diverting all the major rivers flowing into the lagoon and thus preventing sediment from filling the area around the city. This created an ever-deeper lagoon environment.
In 1604, to defray the cost of flood relief Venice introduced what could be considered the first example of a ' stamp tax '. When the revenue fell short of expectations in 1608, Venice introduced paper with the superscription 'AQ' and imprinted instructions, which was to be used for 'letters to officials'. At first, this was to be a temporary tax, but it remained in effect until the fall of the Republic in 1797. Shortly after the introduction of the tax, Spain produced similar paper for general taxation purposes, and the practice spread to other countries.
During the 20th century, when many artesian wells were sunk into the periphery of the lagoon to draw water for local industry, Venice began to subside . It was realised that extraction of water from the aquifer was the cause. The sinking has slowed markedly since artesian wells were banned in the 1960s. However, the city is still threatened by more frequent low-level floods (called Acqua alta, "high water") that creep to a height of several centimetres over its quays, regularly following certain tides. In many old houses the former staircases used to unload goods are now flooded, rendering the former ground floor uninhabitable.
Some recent studies have suggested that the city is no longer sinking, [30] [31] but this is not yet certain; therefore, a state of alert has not been revoked. In May 2003 the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated the MOSE project (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico), an experimental model for evaluating the performance of hollow floatable gates; the idea is to fix a series of 78 hollow pontoons to the sea bed across the three entrances to the lagoon. When tides are predicted to rise above 110 centimetres, the pontoons will be filled with air, causing them to float and block the incoming water from the Adriatic Sea. This engineering work is due to be completed by 2014. [32]
Panorama of the Giudecca Canal and the Saint Mark's Basin
Geography
The city is divided into six areas or " sestiere ". These are Cannaregio , San Polo , Dorsoduro (including the Giudecca and Isola Sacca Fisola ), Santa Croce , San Marco (including San Giorgio Maggiore ) and Castello (including San Pietro di Castello and Sant'Elena ). Each sestiere was administered by a procurator and his staff.
These districts consist of parishes – initially seventy in 1033, but reduced under Napoleon and now numbering just thirty-eight. These parishes predate the sestieri, which were created in about 1170.
Other islands of the Venetian Lagoon do not form part of any of the sestieri, having historically enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.
Each sestiere has its own house numbering system. Each house has a unique number in the district, from one to several thousand, generally numbered from one corner of the area to another, but not usually in a readily understandable manner.
At the front of the Gondolas that work in the city there is a large piece of metal intended as a likeness of the Doge's hat. On this sit six notches pointing forwards and one pointing backwards. Each of these represent one of the Sestieri (the one that points backward represents the Giudecca ).[ citation needed ]
Climate
According to the Köppen climate classification , Venice has a Humid subtropical climate (Cfa), with cool winters and very warm summers. The 24-hour average in January is 2.5 °C (36.5 °F), and for July this figure is 22.7 °C (72.9 °F). Precipitation is spread relatively evenly throughout the year, and averages 801 millimetres (31.5 in).
Climate data for Venice (1961–1990)
Month
Source: MeteoAM [33]
Economy
Venice's economy has changed throughout history. In the Middle-Ages and the Renaissance , Venice was a major centre for commerce and trade, as it controlled a vast sea-empire, and became an extremely wealthy European city, a leader in political and economic affairs and a centre for trade and commerce. [34] Since the 11th century until the 15th century pilgrimages to the Holy Land were offered in Venice. Other ports such as Genoa , Pisa , Marseille , Ancona and Dubrovnik were hardly able to make any competition to the well organized transportation of pilgrims from Venice. [35] [36] This all changed by the 17th century, when Venice's trade empire was taken over by other countries such as Portugal, and its naval importance was reduced. In the 18th century, then, it became a major agricultural and industrial exporter. The 18th century's biggest industrial complex was the Venice Arsenal , and the Italian Army still uses it today (even though some space has been used for major theatrical and cultural productions, and beautiful spaces for art). [37] Today, Venice's economy is mainly based on tourism, shipbuilding (mainly done in the neighbouring cities of Mestre and Porto Marghera ), services, trade and industrial exports. [34] Murano glass production in Murano and lace production in Burano are also highly important to the economy. [34]
Tourism
Piazza San Marco. Doge's Palace
Venice is one of the most important tourist destinations in the world, due to the city being one of the world's greatest and most beautiful cities of art. [38] The city has an average of 50,000 tourists a day (2007 estimate). [39] In 2006, it was the world's 28th most internationally visited city, with 2.927 million international arrivals that year. [40]
The Ponte dei Sospiri , the "Bridge of Sighs".
A gondola and a gondolier in the Grand Canal.
Tourism has been a major sector of Venetian industry since the 18th century, when it was a major center for the Grand Tour , due to its beautiful cityscape, uniqueness, and rich musical and artistic cultural heritage. In the 19th century, it became a fashionable centre for the rich and famous, often staying or dining at luxury establishments such as the Danieli Hotel and the Caffè Florian . It continued being a fashionable city in vogue right into the early 20th century. [38] In the 1980s, the Carnival of Venice was revived and the city has become a major centre of international conferences and festivals, such as the prestigious Venice Biennale and the Venice Film Festival , which attract visitors from all over the world for their theatrical, cultural, cinematic, artistic, and musical productions [38]
Today, there are numerous attractions in Venice, such as St Mark's Basilica , the Grand Canal , and the Piazza San Marco . The Lido di Venezia is also a popular international luxury destination, attracting thousands of actors, critics, celebrities, and mainly people in the cinematic industry. The city also relies heavily on the cruise business. [38]
However, Venice's popularity as a major worldwide tourist destination has caused several problems, including the fact that the city can be very overcrowded at some points of the year. It is regarded by some as a tourist trap, and by others as a 'living museum'. [38] Unlike most other places in Western Europe, and the world, Venice has become widely known for its element of elegant decay . The competition for foreigners to buy homes in Venice has made prices rise so highly that numerous inhabitants are forced to move to more affordable areas of Veneto and Italy , the most notable being Mestre .
Transport
Aerial view of Venice including the Ponte della Libertà bridge to the mainland
Venice is built on an archipelago of 117 islands formed by 177 canals in a shallow lagoon, connected by 409 bridges. [41] In the old centre, the canals serve the function of roads, and almost every form of transport is on water or on foot. In the 19th century a causeway to the mainland brought the Venezia Santa Lucia railway station to Venice, and the Ponte della Libertà road causeway and parking facilities were built during the twentieth century. Beyond the road/rail land entrances at the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city remains (as it was in centuries past) entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban car-free area . Venice is unique in Europe, in having remained a sizable functioning city in the twenty-first century entirely without motorcars or trucks.
Waterways
The classical Venetian boat is the gondola , although it is now mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies. Many gondolas are lushly appointed with crushed velvet seats and Persian rugs. Less well-known is the smaller sandolo . The main transportation means are motorised waterbuses ( vaporetti ), which ply regular routes along the major canals and between the city's islands, and private boats. The only gondolas still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points without bridges.
Public transport
Azienda Consorzio Trasporti Veneziano (ACTV) is the name of the public transport system in Venice. It combines land transportation, with buses, and canal travel, with water buses (vaporetti). In total, there are 25 routes that connect the city.
The Venice People Mover (managed by ASM) is a cable operated public transit system connecting Tronchetto island with Piazzale Roma. Water taxis are also active.
Morning Impression along a Canal in Venice, Veneto, Italy. by Rafail Sergeevich Levitsky .(1896) The Di Rocco Wieler Private Collection, Toronto, Canada
Airports
Venice is served by the Marco Polo International Airport , or Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo , named in honor of its famous citizen. The airport is on the mainland and was rebuilt away from the coast. From the Venice airport, it's possible to reach by public transport:
Venice Piazzale Roma by ATVO (provincial company) buses [42] and by ACTV (city company) buses (route 5 aerobus); [43]
Venice, Lido and Murano by Alilaguna (private company) boats;
Mestre, the mainland and Venice Mestre railways station (convenient for connections to Milan , Padova , Trieste , Verona and the rest of Italy) by ACTV lines (route 15 and 45) [43] and by ATVO lines;
regional destination (Treviso, Padua, beach, ...) by ATVO buses and by Busitalia Sita Nord [44] buses (national company).
Some airlines market Treviso Airport in Treviso , 30 km from Venice, as a Venice gateway. Some simply advertise flights to "Venice", while naming the actual airport only in small print. [45] To reach Venice from Treviso airport people can catch a public bus from the company ATVO.
Venezia Lido, [46] a public airport suitable for smaller aircraft, is found on the NE end of Lido di Venezia . It has a 1000-metre grass runway.
Trains
Venice is serviced by regional and national trains, which can connect the city to Rome in 3.5 hours and to Milan in 2.5 hours. Treviso is thirty-five minutes away. [47] Florence and Padua are two of the stops between Rome and Venice. The St. Lucia station is a few steps away from a vaporetti stop.
The station is the terminus and starting point of the Venice Simplon Orient Express from or to London Victoria and Paris.
Car
The maritime portion of Venice has no roads as such, being composed almost entirely of narrow footpaths, and laid out across islands connected by staired stone footbridges, making transportation impossible by almost anything with wheels (but wheeled suitcases are commonly pulled). Cars can reach the car/bus terminal via the Ponte della Libertà bridge that comes in from the northwest from Mestre . There are two parking lots that serve the city: Tronchetto and Piazzale Roma. A ferry to Lido leaves from the parking lot in Tronchetto, and it is served by public transportation in the form of vaporetti (boats) and buses.
Administrative subdivision
The whole comune (English: municipality) di Venezia is divided into 6 municipalità (English: boroughs):
1) Venezia (historic city)- Murano - Burano (Venezia insulare): 69.136
2) Lido - Pellestrina (Venezia litorale): 21.664
Mainland (terraferma):
A Royal Decree, in 1926, annexed mainland to the comune of Venezia.
Education
Venice is a major international centre for higher education. The city hosts Ca' Foscari University of Venice founded in 1868, Iuav University of Venice founded in 1926 and Venice International University an international research center founded in 1995 located on the island of San Servolo .
Demographics
In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in Venice's comune (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes the population of the whole Comune of Venezia; around 60,000 in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico); 176,000 in Terraferma (the Mainland); and 31,000 live on other islands in the lagoon), of whom 47.4% were male and 52.6% were female. Minors (children ages 18 and younger) totalled 14.36 percent of the population compared to pensioners who number 25.7 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Venice residents is 46 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Venice declined by 0.2 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.85 percent. [48] But the population in the historic old city declines at a significantly faster rate: from about 120,000 in 1980 to about 60,000 in 2009. [49]
As of 2009, 91% of the population was Italian. The largest immigrant group comes from other European nations ( Romanians , the largest group: 3%, South Asia: 1.3%, and East Asia: 0.9%). Venice is predominantly Roman Catholic, but because of the long standing relationship with Constantinople there is also a perceptible Orthodox presence, and due to immigration it now has some Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist inhabitants.
There is also a historic Jewish Community in Venice. The Venetian Ghetto was the area in which Jews were compelled to live under the Venetian Republic. It is from its name, in the Venetian language , that the word " ghetto ", used in many languages, is derived. William Shakespeare 's play The Merchant of Venice , probably written in the late 16th century, features Shylock , a Venetian Jew and his family. Venice also has an eruv , [50] built for and still used by the Jewish community.
Municipal administration
Party: Democratic Party
Venice's City Council is composed by 45 members.
Of six boroughs into which Venice is divided, five are governed by centre-left coalition and one by centre-right coalition.
The current mayor of Venice, Giorgio Orsoni , has been elected in March 2010. He has been also Assessore since 2000 to 2005 and councilior of the Venice Biennale since 2000 to 2003.
Culture
Typical masks worn during the Carnival of Venice .
Cinema and Venice in popular culture and media
Venice has been the setting or chosen location of numerous films, novels, poems and other cultural references. The city was a particularly popular setting for several novels, essays, and other works of fictional or non-fictional literature. Examples of these include Shakespeare 's Merchant of Venice and Othello , Ben Jonson 's Volpone , Voltaire 's Candide , Casanova 's autobiographical History of My Life, Anne Rice 's Cry to Heaven , and Philippe Sollers ' Watteau in Venice . Thomas Mann 's 1912 novella, Death in Venice , has served as the basis for an opera (Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice ), a film ( Visconti's Death in Venice ) and a cocktail ( Death in Venice ). The city has also been a setting for numerous other films, including three entries in the James Bond series: From Russia with Love , Moonraker and Casino Royale , and many others such as: 2010's The Tourist , Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn , Fellini's Casanova , Nicholas Roeg 's Don't Look Now , Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , A Little Romance , Lara Croft: Tomb Raider , and The Talented Mr. Ripley . The city has also been the setting for music videos such as Siouxsie and the Banshees ' Dear Prudence and Madonna 's Like a Virgin (song) , as well as in the video games Tomb Raider II and Assassin's Creed II .
Architecture
La Fenice operahouse in the city
Venice has a rich and diverse architectural style , the most famous of which is the Gothic style. Venetian Gothic architecture is a term given to a Venetian building style combining use of the Gothic lancet arch with Byzantine and Ottoman influences. The style originated in 14th-century Venice, where the confluence of Byzantine style from Constantinople met Arab influence from Moorish Spain . Chief examples of the style are the Doge's Palace and the Ca' d'Oro in the city. The city also has several Renaissance and Baroque buildings, including the Ca' Pesaro and the Ca' Rezzonico .
Music and the performing arts
See also: Venetian polychoral style , Music of Veneto , and Venetian School (music)
The city of Venice in Italy has played an important role in the development of the music of Italy . The Venetian state – i.e., the medieval Maritime Republic of Venice – was often popularly called the "Republic of Music", and an anonymous Frenchman of the 17th century is said to have remarked that "In every home, someone is playing a musical instrument or singing. There is music everywhere." [51]
During the 16th century, Venice became one of the most important musical centers of Europe, marked by a characteristic style of composition (the Venetian school ) and the development of the Venetian polychoral style under composers such as Adrian Willaert , who worked at St Mark's Basilica . Venice was the early center of music printing; Ottaviano Petrucci began publishing music almost as soon as this technology was available, and his publishing enterprise helped to attract composers from all over Europe, especially from France and Flanders . By the end of the century, Venice was famous for the splendor of its music, as exemplified in the "colossal style" of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli , which used multiple choruses and instrumental groups. Venice was also the home of many famous composers during the baroque period , such as Antonio Vivaldi , Ippolito Ciera , Giovanni Picchi , and Girolamo Dalla Casa , to name but a few.
Interior design
It can be argued that Venice produced the best and most refined Rococo designs. At the time, Venice was in a state of trouble. It had lost most of its maritime power, was lagging behind its rivals in political importance, and society had become decadent, with nobles wasting their money in gambling and partying. But Venice remained Italy's fashion capital, and was a serious contender to Paris in terms of wealth, architecture, luxury, taste, sophistication, trade, decoration, style, and design. [52] Venetian Rococo was well known for being rich and luxurious, with usually very extravagant designs. Unique Venetian furniture, such as the divani da portego, or long Rococo couches and pozzetti, objects meant to be placed against the wall. Venetian bedrooms were usually sumptuous and grand, with rich damask, velvet, and silk drapery and curtains, a beautifully carved Rococo beds with statues of putti, flowers and angels. [52] Venice was especially famous for its beautiful girandole mirrors, which remained among, if not, the finest in Europe. Chandeliers were usually very colourful, using Murano glass to make them look more vibrant and stand out from others, and precious stones and materials from abroad were used, since Venice still held a vast trade empire. Lacquer was very common, and many items of furniture were covered with it, the most famous being lacca povera (poor lacuqer), in which allegories and images of social life were painted. Lacquerwork and Chinoiserie were particularly common in bureau cabinets. [53]
Fashion and shopping
Luxury shops and boutiques along the Rialto Bridge .
In the 14th century, many young Venetian men began wearing tight-fitting multicoloured hose, the designs on which indicated the Compagnie della Calza ("Trouser Club") to which they belonged. The Venetian Senate passed sumptuary laws , but these merely resulted in changes in fashion in order to circumvent the law. Dull garments were worn over colourful ones, which then were cut to show the hidden colours resulting in the wide spread of men's "slashed" fashions in the 15th century.
Today, Venice is also a major fashion and shopping centre in Italy, not as important as Milan , Florence , or Rome, but par to Turin , Vicenza , Naples , and Genoa . Roberta di Camerino is the only major Italian fashion brand to be based out of Venice. [54] Founded in 1945, it is renowned for its innovative handbags featuring hardware by Venetian artisans and often covered in locally woven velvet, and has been credited with creating the concept of the easily recognisable status bag . [54] Many of the fashion boutiques and jewelry shops in the city are located in the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco . At the current time, there are Louis Vuitton and Ermenegildo Zegna flagship stores operating in the city.
Cuisine
Main articles: Venetian cuisine and Venetian wine
Hot chocolate was a fashionable drink in Venice during the 1770s and 1780s.
Venetian cuisine is characterized by seafood, but also includes garden products from the islands of the lagoon, rice from the mainland, game, and polenta . Venice combines local traditions with influences that are distant from millennial business contacts. These include sarde in saor, sardines marinated in order to preserve them for long voyages; risi e bisi, rice, peas and ham; fegato alla veneziana, Venetian-style liver; risotto with cuttlefish, blackened from the ink; cicchetti, refined and delicious tidbits (akin to tapas); antipasti, appetizers; and prosecco , an effervescent, mildly sweet wine.
In addition, Venice is famous for bisàto (marinated eel), for the golden, oval-shaped cookies called baicoli , and for different types of sweets such as: pan del pescatore (bread of the fisherman); cookies with almonds and pistachio nuts; cookies with fried Venetian cream or the bussolai ( butter biscuits and shortbread made in the shape of an "S" or ring) from the island of Burano; the crostoli also known as the chatter, lies, or galani; the fregolotta (a crumbly cake with almonds); milk pudding called rosada; and cookies of yellow semolina called zaléti.
Language
Main article: Venetian language
Venetian or the regional form Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, [55] mostly in Venice, but also the Veneto region of Italy , where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino , Friuli , Venezia Giulia , Istria , and some towns of Dalmatia , an area of six to seven million people. The language enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Venetian Republic , when it attained the status of a lingua franca in the Mediterranean .
Literature
Main article: Venetian literature
Portrait of Giacomo Casanova
Venice has long been a source of inspiration for authors, poets and playwrights as well as being at the forefront of the technical developing of printing and publishing.
Two of the most famous Venetian writers were Marco Polo in the Middle Ages and later Giacomo Casanova . Polo (1254–1324) was a merchant who voyaged to the Orient . His series of books, co-written by Rustichello da Pisa , titled Il Milione provided important knowledge of the lands east of Europe, from the Middle East, to China, Japan and Russia. Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was a prolific writer and famous adventurer best remembered for his autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie (Story of My Life), which links his colourful lifestyle to the city of Venice.
Venetian playwrights followed the old Italian theatre tradition of Commedia dell'Arte . Ruzante (1502–1542) and Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) used the Venetian dialect extensively in their comedies.
book printed by Aldus Manutius
Venice has also inspired writers from abroad. Shakespeare set Othello and The Merchant of Venice in the city. Thomas Mann authored the novel Death in Venice , published in 1912. Venice inspired the poetry of Ezra Pound , who wrote his first literary work in the city. Pound died in 1972 and his remains are buried in Venice's cemetery island of San Michele . The French writer Philippe Sollers spent most of his life in Venice and published A Dictionary For Lovers Of Venice in 2004. Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827) born in Zante , an island that at the time belonged to the Republic of Venice, was also a famous poet and revolutionary who wanted to see a free republic established in Venice following the fall to Napoleon . The city features prominently in Henry James' The Wings of the Dove and is also visited in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time .
Venice is also linked to the technical aspects of writing. The city was the location for one of Italy's earliest printing presses, established by Aldus Manutius (1449–1515).[ citation needed ] From this beginning Venice developed as an important typographic center and even as late as the 18th century was responsible for printing half of Italy's published books.[ citation needed ]
Art and printing
See also: Venetian School (art)
An 18th century view of Venice by Venetian artist Canaletto .
Venice, especially during the Middle-Ages , Renaissance and Baroque , was a major centre of art and developed a unique style known as the Venetian School . In the Middle-Ages and the Renaissance, Venice, along with Florence and Rome, became one of the most important centres of art in Europe, and numerous wealthy Venetians became patrons of the arts. Venice at the time was a rich and prosperous Maritime Republic , which controlled a vast sea and trade empire. [56]
By the end of the 15th century, Venice had become the European capital of printing, being one of the first cities in Italy (after Subiaco and Rome) to have a printing press after those established in Germany, having 417 printers by 1500. The most important printing office was the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius , which in 1499 printed the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , considered the most beautiful book of Renaissance , and established modern punctuation , the page format and italic type , and the first printed work of Aristotle .
In the sixteenth century Venetian painting was developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina , who introduced the oil painting technique of the van Eyck brothers. It is signified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour. Early masters where the Bellini and Vivarini families, followed by Giorgione and Titian , then Tintoretto and Veronese . In the early 16th century, also, there was rivalry between whether Venetian painting should use disegno or colorito. [57]
Canvases (the common painting surface) originated in Venice during the early renaissance. These early canvases were generally rough.
In the eighteenth century Venetian painting had a renaissance because of Tiepolo 's decorative painting and Canaletto 's and Guardi 's panoramic views.
Glass
A Venetian glass goblet
Venice is famous for its ornate glass-work, known as Venetian glass . It is world-renowned for being colourful, elaborate, and skilfully made.
Many of the important characteristics of these objects had been developed by the thirteenth century. Toward the end of that century, the center of the Venetian glass industry moved to Murano .
Byzantine craftsmen played an important role in the development of Venetian glass, an art form for which the city is well-known. When Constantinople was sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, some fleeing artisans came to Venice. This happened again when the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, supplying Venice with still more glassworkers. By the sixteenth century, Venetian artisans had gained even greater control over the color and transparency of their glass, and had mastered a variety of decorative techniques.
An ornate Murano glass chandelier .
Despite efforts to keep Venetian glassmaking techniques within Venice, they became known elsewhere, and Venetian-style glassware was produced in other Italian cities and other countries of Europe.
Some of the most important brands of glass in the world today are still produced in the historical glass factories on Murano. They are: Venini , Barovier & Toso, Pauly , Millevetri, Seguso. [58] Barovier & Toso is considered one of the 100 oldest companies in the world, formed in 1295.
One of the most renowned types of Venetian glasses are made in Murano , known as Murano glass , which has been a famous product of the Venetian island of Murano for centuries. Located off the shore of Venice, Italy, Murano was a commercial port as far back as the 7th century. By the 10th century it had become a well-known city of trade. Today Murano remains a destination for tourists and art and jewellery lovers alike.
Festivals
See also: Carnival of Venice and Venice Film Festival
The Carnival of Venice is held annually in the city, starting around two weeks before Ash Wednesday and ends on Shrove Tuesday . The carnival is closely associated with Venetian masks .
The Venice Biennale is one of the most important events in the arts calendar. During 1893 headed by the mayor of Venice, Riccardo Selvatico, the Venetian City Council passed a resolution on 19 April to set up an Esposizione biennale artistica nazionale (biennial exhibition of Italian art), to be inaugurated on 22 April 1895. [59] Following the outbreak of hostilities during the Second World War, the activities of the Biennale were interrupted in September 1942, but resumed in 1948. [60]
The Festa del Redentore is held in mid July. It began as a feast to give thanks for the end of the terrible plague of 1576. A bridge of barges is built connecting Giudecca to the rest of Venice, and fireworks play an important role.
The Venice Film Festival ( Italian Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia) is the oldest film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the Lido , Venice, Italy. Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi. It is one of the world's most prestigious film festivals and is part of the Venice Biennale.
Foreign words of Venetian origin
Words with a Venetian etymology include arsenal , ciao , ghetto , gondola , imbroglio , lagoon , lazaret , lido , Montenegro , quarantine , regatta . The name of Venezuela is a Spanish diminutive of Venice. Many other places around the world are named after Venice, e.g. Venice Beach .
Notable people
For people from Venice, see People from Venice . Others closely associated with the city include:
Ludovico de Luigi (November 1933), Venetian Surrealistic artist.
Giuseppe Sinopoli (2 November 1946 – 20 April 2001), conductor and composer.
Romano Scarpa (27 September 1927, Venice – 23 April 2005, Málaga), was one of the most famous Italian creators of Disney comics.
International relations
The City of Venice and the Central Association of Cities and Communities of Greece (KEDKE) established, in January 2000, in pursuance of the EC Regulations n. 2137/85, the European Economic Interest Grouping (E.E.I.G.) Marco Polo System to promote and realise European projects within transnational cultural and tourist field, particularly referred to the artistic and architectural heritage preservation and safeguard.
Twin towns and sister cities
Dubrovnik , Croatia, since 2012
Cooperation agreements
Venice has cooperation agreements with the Greek city of Thessaloniki , the German city of Nuremberg , signed on 25 September 1999, and the Turkish city of Istanbul , signed on 4 March 1993, within the framework of the 1991 Istanbul Declaration. It is also a Science and Technology Partnership City with Qingdao , China.
Etymology
The name is connected with the people known as the Veneti , perhaps the same as the Eneti (Ενετοί). The meaning of the word is uncertain. Connections with the Latin verb venire (to come) or venia are fanciful. A connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning 'sea-blue', is possible.
See also
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Zeebrugge disaster marked by memorial service 25 years on
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Bereaved families and survivors of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster gathered at a memorial service in Kent to mark its 25th anniversary.
The Herald of Free Enterprise was bound for the Port of Dover on 6 March 1987 when it capsized at Zeebrugge harbour in Belgium, killing 193 people.
A remembrance service was held at St Mary's Church in Dover, where a memorial window marks the tragedy.
Later, a rose garden was dedicated and flowers cast into the sea.
During the service, the names of the 193 people who died in the disaster were read out.
The service was attended by more than 250 bereaved family and friends, as well as some survivors of the tragedy.
The Bishop of Dover, the Right Reverend Trevor Willmott, said: "Although time has passed, the scars from that day, physical, emotional and spiritual, will remain until the end of our lives."
Memorial garden
The congregation was given stars on which to write messages. They will be transcribed into a book of remembrance.
Also at the service was the Reverend Ken Martin, from Felixstowe, Suffolk, who was the first chaplain to arrive at the Naval Station at Zeebrugge.
He said: "When I arrived there, I met a man who had lost his wife and son. The whole thing is as fresh today as it was back then. It was a very sad occasion and I can't believe it was 25 years ago."
The memorial garden on the seafront at Dover was created to mark the anniversary, with 25 white roses.
Later the garden was dedicated and floral tributes cast from the Prince of Wales pier in Dover to remember those who died.
| MS Herald of Free Enterprise |
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The church of Zeebrugge
Zeebrugge ( Dutch : Zeebrugge, French : Zeebruges, "Seabruges" in literal translation) is a village on the coast of Belgium and a subdivision of Bruges , for which it is the modern port. Zeebrugge serves as both the international Port of Bruges-Zeebrugge and a seafront resort with hotels, cafés and a beach.
Contents
6 References
Location
Located on the coast of the North Sea , the busiest sea in the world, its central location on the Belgian coast, short distance to Great Britain and close vicinity to densely populated industrialized cities makes Zeebrugge a crossroads for traffic from all directions. An expressway to Bruges connects Zeebrugge to the European motorway system; one can also get to and from Zeebrugge by train or tram .
The marina is Belgium's most important fishing port and the wholesale fish market located there is one of the largest in Europe.
Aside from being a passenger port with ferries to the United Kingdom , the harbour serves as the central port for Europe's automotive industry and is important for the import, handling and storage of energy products, agriculture products and other general cargo.
History
The harbour was the site of the Zeebrugge Raid on 23 April 1918, when the British Royal Navy put the German inland naval base at Bruges out of action. Admiral Roger Keyes planned and led the assault that stormed the German batteries and sank the ships in the harbour to block the entrance to the base for the last seven months of World War I .
Later, Zeebrugge's harbour was the scene of disaster when in 1987 the MS Herald of Free Enterprise passenger ferry capsized killing 193 people.
Passenger ferry routes
Up to date as of January 14, 2010
(Redirected to Bruges article)
Get out
Relatively cosmopolitan and bourgeois given its compact size, Bruges (official name in Dutch: Brugge [1] ) is one of the best preserved pre-motorised cities in Europe and offers the kind of charms rarely available elsewhere. Part of Flanders , the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium , Brugge is a postcard perfect stop on any tour of Europe.
Understand
Talk
The language of the region is Flemish (akin to Dutch), but Belgium's other official language, French, is also very widely spoken. English is common as well.
Weather
Even by Belgian standards, Bruges has a poor reputation for its weather. Compared to other western European cities like London and Paris, the weather in Bruges is colder and more damp. Even in July, average daily maximum temperatures struggle to exceed 21c (70F) and rainfall averages 8 inches a month. [2] After October, temperatures drop off quite rapidly and winter months are damp and chilly.
Get in
By plane
A large number of carriers offer direct flights to Brussels. Belgium's main airport has its own railway station. Bruges can easily be reached through the airports of Brussels, Charleroi (Brussels South) and Lille, so getting to Bruges by train is by far the easiest way. Only one change at one of the three main stations is needed and the entire connection takes about 1:20.
Brussels South (Charleroi) is primarily served by Ryanair. Getting to Bruges can either be done by train or by a special shuttle bus that makes the round trip Bruges - Brussels South 4 times a day. [3]
By train
Traveling to Brugge on Belgium 's excellent rail system is a natural choice. Trains to and from Brussels leave every 30 minutes during the day, and if you are traveling on the Eurostar that same day, there is no cost. Otherwise, buy a ticket when you get to the station. Luggage lockers are available from 6AM to 9:30PM. For more information on schedules, prices, and services visit the website of the NMBS/SNCB [4] .
By car
If you are planning a bus-tour: be aware buses and camping vehicles are not allowed intra muros. There is a perfect parking place for them on the south side of the city with a newly designed gangway bringing you directly into the heart of the town. It is in general a bad idea to venture inside with a car, as parking is limited and finding your way difficult. There are multistory car parks a five minute walk from the city centre. Nice city mini-buses cruise the town with high frequency, and in any case, the historical centre must be traversed on foot, by bicycle, by horse-drawn carriage or by boat to enjoy it.
By ferry
P&O Ferries operate a daily sailing every evening from Hull to Zeebrugge taking 12½ hours for the crossing. The fares also include the bus from the ferry terminal to Brugge railway station.
Norfolkline Ferries operates ferries from Dover to Dunkerque every 2 hours, from Dunkerque Brugge is only 75 km away, please consider this can only be done by driving as Norfolkline do not take foot passengers.
Norfolkline Ferries [5] sail 3 times a week from Rosyth , Scotland (near Edinburgh ) and Zeebrugge (near Brugge). The journey takes around 19 hours.
Get around
The historical center is not so big and thus quite walkable. The only mode of public transport inside city is bus. Buses are operated by the Flemish public transport company De Lijn [6] . Taxis on the market place and station cost about €10. Bicycles are easy to rent and make getting around the city very speedy, although the cobblestoned paths can make the rides a little bumpy and uncomfortable.
See
Once over the circling canal and inside the city walls, Bruges closes in around you with street after street of charming historic houses and a canal always nearby. In recent years, the city has turned so much towards tourism the locals sometimes complain they are living in Disney-land. The newly cleaned houses should however not confuse you; they are truly centuries old. And if you can get away from the chocolate-shops, you can visit some more quiet areas s.a. St. Anna, and imagine what life in the late middle ages must have been like.
The Bruges Card [7] provides discounts to most of the major attractions, and can be picked up at any of the hostels around town. The reduced rate cannot be used in conjunction with a student rate (both student and Bruges card rates are identical) and hence is most useful for older travellers.
Several Youth Hostels (Bauhaus), and probably the train station and tourist information, offer a useful map with some very interesting, 'non-tourist' places to see during the day and some unique places to visit at night. It provides a good way of getting an authentic feel for the town whilst avoiding the tourist honey-pots and allows you to find some hidden gems.
Some highlights:
Convent garden
Groeninge Museum, Dijver 12, B-8000, [8] . 7 days 9:30AM-5PM. Known as 'The city museum of Fine Arts', it houses a collection of artworks that span several centuries (14th-20th), focusing mainly on works by painters who lived and worked in Bruges. €8 / €6 (audioguide and ticket Arents House and Forum+ included in the entrance). (51.2061,3.22639) edit
Basilica of the Holy Blood (Heilige Bloed Basiliek), Burg 10, [9] . Apr-Sep 9:30AM-11:50AM & 2PM-5:50PM, Oct-Mar 10AM-11:50AM & 2PM-3:50PM. A beautiful church on the Burg square. It houses a relic - a vial of blood that is said to be that of Jesus - and was built in the Gothic style. Try and get there early so you can view the chapel when it is quiet and not filled with tourists. And don't forget to visit the chapel underneath, in heavy Romanesque style - a contrast to the lovely light Gothic above. Free. edit
Onze Lieve Vrouwkerk, Mariastraat. A fascinating church with architecture from the Romanesque and Gothic periods. In the east end of the church are very fine tombs of Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary of Burgundy - in contrasting Gothic and Renaissance styles, despite their superficial similarity. The church also houses one of the few Michelangelo sculptures outside of Italy, the "Madonna with child". Free. edit
Jerusalem church, [10] . In a quiet area of the city, a highly unusual church with octagonal tower built by the Adornes brothers, merchants of Italian extraction. It includes a fine black tournai marble tomb, late Gothic stained glass, and a tiny and rather spooky chapel containing an effigy of the dead Christ. The entrance fee also covers the Lace Museum in the former Adornes mansion, where you can see local women and girls learning this traditional craft. edit
The Begijnhof. Also known as the convent, between the centre of the station and the city, with white painted small houses and fine plane trees, is a quiet place to walk - groups are discouraged. edit
The Hospital of St John, [11] . 09:30 - 17:00, Closed Mondays. Sint-Janshospitaal contains a museum of six paintings by Hans Memling, within the early medieval hospital buildings. €6 with Bruges card / €8. edit
Choco-Story Museum, Wijnzakstraat 2 (Sint-Jansplein), ☎ 050/61.22.37, [12] . 10AM-5PM. This museum is a must see for chocolate enthusiasts as it describes chocolate's transition from cocoa into chocolate. Its low cost tasty exhibits make it well worth the time (and Belcolade's gently overt marketing). Be sure to stay for the chocolate making exhibition to get some excellent samplers. €5 with Bruges card / €6. (51.2107,3.22625) edit
Diamanthuis Museum, Katelijnestraat 43, ☎ 050 33 63 26, [13] . 10:30AM-5:30PM. Diamond museum has a large range of exhibits ranging from mining all the way to polishing and all the history in between. Everyday at 12:15 there is a live polishing demonstration. Individuals €6, Groups €4.5, Students €3. (51.2027,3.22569) edit
The Friet Museum, Vlamingstraat (opposite Academiestraat), [14] . Check out the world's only frites (fries or chips) museum which tells the story of the humble potato from South America and how it has evolved into a fry. Don't forget to try the tastiest fries cooked by the guy who cooked for the Belgian Royal Family. edit
Bruges is visited by a huge number of tourists and it sometimes becomes quite annoying, especially around the Markt and Burg squares. The important thing to remember, however, is that very few tourists venture far away from the main shopping area, so if you want some peace and quiet you should simply explore the many small cobbled streets away from the main squares.
Belfort
View of the Grote Markt from top of Belfort
Grote Markt and Belfry Climb, Grote Markt (the big square). 09:30 - 17:00, Closed Mondays. Climb the 366 steps to the top of the 83-metre high tower. Excellent views of the city, Grote Markt and hear the bells ring up close. €6 with Bruges card / €8. edit
Tour boats. It's essential to take a ride on one of the tour boats around the canals - the multilingual guides provide a potted history of the city in just a few minutes - at only a few Euros, it's the best introduction to Bruges. A boat tour will show you places which are otherwise unreachable, as not every canal runs next to a street. €6.5. edit
Horse drawn carts, Grote Markt. Carriages can be hired for a romantic 30 minute trip around the old city of Bruge. Carts can carry up to 5 passengers €34. edit
Cycle. There are many rental shops near the main square, shop around for the best prices. You can also rent right at the train station and get to the city center quickly; remember to return them by 7:30p. Cycle 5km to Damme, a picturesque village on the river with a windmill and excellent pancackes, and optionally follow on to the coast (another 15km). €7 for an entire day. edit
Snow and Ice sculpture festival, Station Bruges, [15] . Nov. 21 2008 - Jan. 25, 2009.. Every year from the end of November to January you can visit the Snow and Ice sculpture festival on the station-square of Bruges. The festival is built by an international team of 40 professional artists from no less than 300 tons of crystal clear ice and 400,000 kilos of fresh snow in a cooled hall where the temperature remains a constant -6°C. Don't forget to wear warm clothing! edit
Running. If you are a runner, try running the 7km circle around the old center. Walk along the canal and see all of the medieval gates that used to control the traffic in and out of Bruges. Simply stunning! edit
Compare the real Bruges to the one depicted in the movie "In Bruges".
Chocolate shops -- These are plentiful and the standard is always high, so too are the boutique-style beer shops. Plenty of arts and crafts too, with some excellent local artists. A fairly cheap option is Stef's on Breidelstraat (betweeen Markt and Burg). If you are willing to spend a little more, Chocolatier Van Oost on Wollestraat is a must for high-quality artisinal chocolate. Word on the street is, that you can get ANYTHING covered in chocolate and moulded.
The lacework is risky: if everything sold was produced locally, the entire town would be working in the lace industry! There is a school for lace though, where you can still get "the real thing".
Dumon -- Stephan Dumon Chocolatier [16] Excellent, very high end chocolate creations. They also make chocolate drinks. Three locations in Bruges. 11 Simon Stevinplein; 6 Eiermarkt; 6 Walstraat
Supermarket -- For those who do not wish to buy chocolate in the chocolate shops, the local supermarkets also sell a good variety of mass-produced chocolate at fairly low prices. For the frugal, you can buy 100-200 gram gourmet bars of chocolate for about €1 each. Good brands to buy are Côte-d'Or and Jacques, both are Belgian. If you don't want anything more than a sampling of the most famous Belgian beers, supermarkets (not night shops!) are probably your best choice. They even have gift packs with glasses.
Times -- Most European tourists come for the weekend, so shops are open Tuesday through Sunday, but many shops and museums are closed on Mondays. Be sure to plan ahead.
Square with restaurants
Restaurants are not always cheap or wonderful; sad to say that Belgian cuisine is a long way behind French in terms of variety, although mussels and frites or fricadellen, frites with mayonnaise are outstanding here. Stay away from the central market place ("Grote Markt") and the Burg Square (e.g. the Tom Pouce Restaurant) when eating. Tourists are easy victims here. One tactic used by tourist traps is to present items (e.g. bread) as if they were free with your meal, then charge you exorbitantly for them.
You will, however, find great food if you wander off the beaten track. Find a street with more locals than tourists and ask somebody. The locals will be glad to help.
A lot of places do not open until 1800hrs.
Brasserie Forestière, Academiestraat. Nice and calm restaurant, good food, not too expensive. Good menu for vegetarians. Meal of the day (soup, main dish, dessert or coffee/tea) costs € 11 although this is the cheapest menu it has little choice. edit
L'estaminet, at the Astrid Park. Good food, nice terrace, cool bartender. Try the renowned spaghetti for €8 or the delicious croque monsieur. edit
La Romagna, Braambergstraat 8. Excellent family-run Italian restaurant and pizzeria. Inexpensive. Good menu for vegetarians. edit
In't Nieuw Museum, Hooistraat 42, ☎ 050331280, [17] . Belgian grill restaurant, well off the tourist track. Excellent steaks, reasonable prices. edit
De Bottelier, Ezelstraat (close to Sint-Jacobsstraat). I live in Bruges and it has always been my favorite restaurant. Very reasonable prices and excellent food. Closed Sunday and Monday nights. edit
Tom's Diner, West Gistelhof 23. Fantastic upscale take on satisfying, home cooked food. Prices are reasonable, as well. edit
Kok au Vin, Ezelstraat 19/21. The Kok au Vin was memorable (both the entre AND the restaurant); the prices are reasonable for the high quality. Family owned and run. Reservations recommended. edit
Restaurant Aneth, [18] . With only 7 tables, we like to keep it small and cosy, with a personal touch. edit
Brasserie Medard, Sint-Amandsstraat 18. Huge deal for low budget: mountain of spaghetti with tomato sauce, cheese, mushrooms and meat for €3. Double it size adding just €2 extra. Unbeatable. Plus the owner looks a bit like Freddie Mercury edit
De Karmelieten. This restaurant belongs to the world's top 50 best restaurants edit
t' Gulden Flies, Mallebergplaats 17, ☎ 050-334709. 7PM-3AM. An excellent night restaurant. Small romantic restaurant east of the Burg with excellent food and reasonable prices. Menus from 16 €. edit
Bierbrasserie Cambrinus, Philipstockstraat 19, ☎ 050/33 23 28, [19] . Popular place with hearty food and great beer. Try the dark house brew and their €26 prix fixe "Menu van de Brouwer", which features several Trappist beers. Sometimes they also have Westvleteren available. edit
Le Pain Quotidien, 21 Philipstockstraat. A sort of fancy sandwich shop. Most of the food is organic, and the sandwiches (in particular the Tartine Bouef Basilic) are delicious. Somewhat expensive. edit
Maximiliaan van Oosterijk. Midrange restaurant offering plenty to eat including oysters and meat cooked several ways, plus of course frites. There is not much for vegetarians. edit
Grand Cafe Passage, Dweersstraaat 26, [20] . Attached to the Passage hotel/hostel (see below) is the atmospheric Grand Cafe, serving traditional Belgian cuisine and beers. Prices are slightly lower than the tourist traps and well worth it. Try the beef stew (very tender) or the ribs. edit
De Drie Zintuigen, Westmeers 29, ☎ 050-34-09-94. Off the beaten track but not far from all the bars, this lovely restaurant does more than moules et frites. Prices are about €30 a head and the atmosphere is nice too. edit
Brewery ‘De Halve Maan’, Walplein 26 8000 Brugge, Belgium, ☎ 050 33 26 97, [21] . Apr.-Oct. Mon-Fri, Sat 11-4PM and Sun. 11-5PM. Beer museum which offers a tour of the beer making process as well as tasting and a great view of the city from its tower. The tour lasts for 45 minutes and is a good way to get a feel for Belgian beer making. 5.50 Euro includes beer tasting. (51.2026,3.22416) edit
De Garre, 1, De Garre, ☎ 32 50 34 10 29. Hidden in a backyard, this pub offers a nice atmosphere and about 100 different kinds of beer, including home-brewed ones. The house beer is called 'Triple de Garre' and is 11% strong, a good way to start the night. (51.2085,3.22611) edit
't Brugs Beertje, Kemelstraat. This excellent pub (recommended in the CAMRA guide to the Benelux region) has hundreds of different beers and an authentic beer-cafe atmosphere. Clientele is majority tourists. The front bar is crowded; what looks like the door through to the restrooms opens on another bar area. In 2005 it was closed for most of July - this might be an annual occurrence. edit
Curiosa, (just off the main square), [22] . A good place for a lunch as well as a beer. edit
Art tavern 'De Kogge', Braambergstraat (near the fish market). A wonderful place to stop by for a few drinks. This family-run place is amazingly friendly, and with 6 beers on tap, as well as 20 more on offer, it is a great place to sample some beer along with the local crowd. The building was previously owned by the Guildhouse of the Cereal-Carriers (the owners will be happy to fill you in on the specifics!) edit
Vlissinghe tavern, Blekerstrat (on the way to the Jerusalem church). closed Mondays and Tuesdays. One of the less touristy bars, with a nice selection of draught and bottled beers. It's probably the oldest pub in Bruges dating from 1515. edit
The area just north of the performing arts center has various cafes, most with sufficient beer selections, such as Cafe Leffe.
The Druid's Cellar, St Amandsstraat 11/b, ☎ 050614144, [23] . A very nice cozy place to drink a beer and listen to some good music. The bar is located underground and actually gives the impression of a cellar. Usually plays rock music. The bar has a wide selection of drinks, from simple beer to 16 year old Bushmills whiskey. edit
Bean around the World, Genthof 5, ☎ 050703572. American coffee house in the center of Bruges - offers free American newspapers and WiFi to its customers edit
Sleep
Note that during the summer, Bruges is a very popular tourist destination; reservations are probably preferable.
Bonifacius [24] exclusive guesthouse in a historical house
De wilde Wingerd [25] "as it should be" guesthouse in the quiet part of the historical city
Passage [26] Very clean and quiet, centrally located Hotel/Hostel with a great restaurant-bar downstairs. The name "Passage" comes from the little alley-way right next to the building which you have to pass through in order to reach the reception. Prices for the hostel are around €14 and breakfast costs an extra €5.
Lybeer Travellers' Hostel [27] Spend a night, not a fortune! Located in the very city center. Member of the I-hostels network [28]
Hotel Tuilerieen [29] Famous hotel
Hotel Bauhaus [30] Good and cheap hostel/budget hotel with a cosy, popular bar
The Pand Hotel [31] is slightly expensive, but absolutely wonderful. Breakfast was great and rooms homey.
Hotel de Keiserhof, on a quiet street near the station, has inexpensive basic rooms from €25 per person and is not far from the centre. Basic breakfast is available.
NH Hotel Brugge [32] , good food and comfortable beds near to parking on the innner ring road, the concert hall and main bus station, it is a gentle walk from the centre in an attractive and completely modernised old building. The staff is obliging and helpful and food is excellent at all meals. Salads, main courses and desserts were all a delight, with the desserts scoring particularly high for attractive presentation. If there was a weak spot, it was the quality of the orange juice at breakfast. Rooms are spacious, perhaps 50m2 or more and the beds have crisp white sheets, duvets and comfortable matresses. Wireless internet in the rooms needs an Orange subscription but this is modestly priced compared to many hotels. However, some rooms did not seem to have good wi-fi reception. NH took over the hotel from Sofitel in 2007.
Hotel Salvators, St.-Salvatorskerkhof 17, Bruges, ☎ 050 33.19.21 ( [email protected] , fax: 050 33.94.64), [33] . Quirky art hotel in the centre of Bruges, next to St Salvators Church. This traditional Bruges townhouse has been thoughtfully renovated, with each of the rooms decorated in its own style. Some of the rooms have en-suite jacuzzi, and some sleep up to 5 people. The hotel offers internet access and cycle hire for guests. A friendly, relaxed place to stay in the heart of Bruges. From €70 per night for a double room. edit
Ridderspoor Holiday Flats [34] Holiday apartments on a quiet street two blocks from the city center. Flats include a bathroom and small kitchen and can accommodate 2-6 people. €60-100 per night depending on the number of people and length of stay. This is a great option for families, and allows you to eat some of your meals in to save money.
Hotel Asiris, a restored patrician residence in the shadow of the 15th century St-Gillis church, with 13 rooms, €EUR a single room, €60 a double room. You can also reserve a parking place for €4 / night. [35]
Hotel 't Voermanshuys, Oude Burg 14, ☎ +32 50 341396, [36] . checkin: 13:00; checkout: 11:30. Clean, spacious rooms in the centre of town. Very friendly staff and includes a substantial breakfast. €60 for a double with shared toilet/shower. edit
Hotel Prinsenhof, Ontvangersstraat 9, 8000 Bruges, ☎ +32 (0)50 342690 ( [email protected] , fax: +32 (0)50 342321), [37] . This elegant and friendly four star hotel is perfectly situated near the Grand Place & historic town centre of Bruges, with secure private parking. €155 upwards. edit
During the winter (November through March) a number of hotels offer a midweek promotion: 3 nights for the price of 2, if you arrive on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. Bookings can only be made through Bruges, Warm Winter Cheer [38]
Next to the numerous hotels and hostels that dot the city, there is also the nice option of choosing one of the little bed and breakfast such as:
Aquarius [40]
De Wilde Wingerd, Elf julistraat 37 (In the quiet historical part of the city), ☎ +32 475 59 51 49, [41] . checkin: 12h00; checkout: 10h00. Opened recently, and gives excellent value for money. They can host up to 11 people, ideal for families, ask to cook you their lobster meal 70-140€. edit
Hotel 't Zand, 't Zand 21, [42] . checkin: 15.00; checkout: 11.00. Hotel 't Zand is a small hotel with 19 rooms, which is situated in the very heart of unique Bruges. It is easily reached via the E40 (exit8) and you will find the hotel right opposite the main exit of the underground car-park "' t Zand". 105. edit
Hotel Floris Karos (Hotel Floris Karos), Hoefijzerlaan 37 B-8000 Bruges, ☎ 00 32 50 34 14 48, [43] . The 3 star Floris Karos hotel in Bruges is located a few minutes away from Bruges' ancient market square. 59. edit
Snuffel Backpacker Hostel, Ezelstraat 47-49, 8000 Bruges, Belgium, ☎ +32 (0)50 333133, [44] . checkout: 10AM. Snuffel Sleep Inn is friendly, a straight line from the central Markt and cheap. Breakfast is included and cheap internet available, with free wifi. And the bunk beds have ladders. €15. edit
Walwyck Hotel Brugge, Leeuwstraat 8 (next to Leeuwebrug), ☎ +32 50 616360, [45] . checkin: 2.00 PM; checkout: 12.00AM. The hotel is situeted whitin the oldest ramparts of the medieval city at 1.30 min walking distance from the market and the belfry, in the heart of the city, but in the middle of a green area. Double: €100, Single: €90 (Breakfast and taxes included). edit
Vrienden op de Fiets, 14 addresses for members making a cycling or walking tour through Belgium, [ http://www.vriendenopdefiets.nl
Art Hostel Brugge, Low Budget hostel Bruges - group accommodation [46]
Get out
The most popular day trips from Brugge are to Antwerp , Ghent , Ieper , Oostende , and Damme.
Damme is a small village near Brugge. Some of the riverboats go there on a half-day cruise. It's a very scenic trip, the landscapes are picturesque, and the village of Damme even more so. One can also go there by bike (special route) and by local bus. It takes about 15 minutes by bus and an hour by boat.
Ieper (Ypres) is an important site of Great War battles, cemeteries, monuments and traditions such as the Last Post (every evening). Very popular among old veterans and young boys interested in wars. About one hour by train, and a very scenic ride.
Oostende is the monumental beach resort which king Leopold II (1865-1909) built before his attention turned to destroying inner-city Brussels to build his new capital. The quintessential cosmopolitan 19th century beach resort, full of endearing villas that have been classified as official monuments. About 20 minutes by train.
Close by, about 10 minutes by tram towards Raversijde, you can find the Atlantic Wall [47] , two kilometers of trenches and galleries dating from both World Wars.
Antwerp and Ghent are great tourist destinations in their own right.
This is a usable article. It has information for getting in as well as some complete entries for restaurants and hotels. An adventurous person could use this article, but please plunge forward and help it grow!
Up to date as of January 14, 2010
From LoveToKnow 1911
"ZEEBRUGGE. - Among the British naval operations in the World War none created more interest than the attack on the Germans at Zeebrugge and Ostend, on the Belgian coast, in 1918. Ever since the German occupation of the Belgian coast, Zeebrugge had been a source of anxiety to the Dover Patrol. There the German torpedo craft and German submarines lay in a safe base only some 60 m. from the Straits, a danger to the Downs and a constant menace to British transports and trade in the Channel. Vice-Adml. Sir Reginald Bacon had contemplated an attack on it with monitors, but the Admiralty had disapproved, and it was not till the appointment of Rear-Adml. Sir Roger Keyes in Dec. 1917, that preparations were actually begun. The main object of the enterprise was to block the harbours of Zeebrugge and Ostend.
The actual harbour of Zeebrugge is small and is formed by a long curved mole on the western side, whose assault was an important part of the operation. This mole was r2 m. long, connected with the shore by a viaduct built on steel pillars. On the outside the western wall rose 27 ft. 10 in. above high water, with a ledge 2 ft. 9 in. wide running along it about 12 ft. above high water. The parapet on top was some 3 ft. wide with a drop of 4 ft. to a ledge 12 ft. wide which ran 161 ft. above the quay. The quay on the harbour side was 2 7 ft. wide, equipped in the usual way with cranes and three large sheds and shelters. At the outer end was a battery of 3 5.9-in. guns, and a narrower portion ran on to the lighthouse where 6 4-in. guns, were mounted.
The general plan of operations was simple. Three old cruisers," Iphigenia," Thetis "and" Intre p id "(all built about 1891), filled with cement, were to enter the harbour and be sunk at the entrance to the ship canal to Bruges. The" Vindictive,"supported by two auxiliary vessels" Iris II."and" Daffodil,"was to assault the mole on its outer and western side and by creating an impression that this was the main operation, divert the enemy's fire from the blocking ships. As Bruges was accessible by canal from Ostend, Ostend was to be blocked at the same time by the old cruisers" Brilliant "and" Sirius."The main obstacle to th3 enterprise lay in the powerful batteries. On the 40 m. of coast-line there were mounted 153 guns, including 6 15-in., 4 12-in., 33 1r-in., I 9.4-in., 23.8. 2-in., 73 5'9-in., 6 5-in., 11 4 . 7-in., and 52 4-in. The coast positively bristled with guns. Only 3 m. E. of the Zeebrugge canal stood the Kaiser Wilhelm II. battery (known at Dover as the Knocke) armed with 4 12-in. with a range of 41,000 yd. One and a quarter 1n. W. of Ostend was the Tirpitz battery with 4 r r-in: ranging 35, 000 yd., and 3 m. E. of the town was the Deutschland (old Jacobynessen) equipped with 4 15-in. ranging 43,500 yards.
The approach to the entrance of the ship canal at Zeebrugge was under the :fire of the Goeben battery of 4 8.2-in. guns at 1,000 yd., and the chance of success depended largely on an effective smoke screen.
The attack on the mole was to be made by the" Vindictive "(Capt. Alfred B. Carpenter), an old cruiser of 5,750 tons, 320 ft. long, 24 ft. draught specially fitted for the occasion, assisted by the" Iris II. "(Comm. Valentine Gibbs) and" Daffodil "(Lt. Harold G. Campbell), two Liverpool ferry boats of large capacity and light draught. The viaduct of the mole was to be blown up by two submarines, CI (Lt. Aubrey Newbold) and C3 (Lt. Richard D. Sandford). A strong body of 15 destroyers was attached to the Zeebrugge force under Capt. Wilfred Tomkinson (" Phoebe," North Star," Trident," Mansfield," Whirlwind," Myngs," Velox," Morris Moorsom Melpomene, "Tempest" and "Tetrarch" to escort the force and cover it to seaward; "Termagant," "Truculent" and "Manly" to screen the Zeebrugge monitors). A force of 18 coastal motor boats (55 ft. long, 3 ft. draught, 35 knots, 2 18-in. torpedoes) under Lt. Arthur E. Welman accompanied the expedition, of which 8 were allocated for the smoke screen, 5 to support the "Vindictive," and 4 to attack vessels inside the harbour. With them were 33 motor launches under Capt. Ralph Collins for smoke screens, and inshore rescue work. Out to seaward were the two monitors "Erebus" and "Terror" for bombarding the batteries. The Rear Admiral's flag flew in the destroyer "Warwick." The three old cruisers "Thetis" (Comm. R. S. Sneyd), "Intrepid" (Lt. Stuart Bonham-Carter) and "Iphigenia" (Lt. E. W. Billyard-Leake) were to act as blocking ships. The two latter were of 3,600 tons displacement, 300 ft. long x 431 ft. x 182 ft., and the "Thetis" was a little smaller (3,400 tons and 171 ft. draught).
A similar attempt was to be made at Ostend. There the blocking ships were to be the old cruisers "Brilliant" (Comm.
A. E. Godsal) and "Sirius" (Lt.-Comm. H. N. Hardy) of 3,600 tons. They were to be supported by five bombarding monitors ("Marshal Soult," "Lord Clive," "Prince Eugene," "General Crawford," M24 and M26) and covered by five British destroyers ("Swift," "Faulknor," "Matchless," "Mastiff" and "Afridi"), with three British destroyers and six French torpedo boats attending on the monitors ("Mentor," "Lightfoot," "Zubian," "Lestin," "Capitaine Mehl," "Francis Gamier," "Roux," "Bouclier"). Eighteen British motor launches under Comm. Hamilton Benn and four French were attached for smoke screen, inshore and rescue work, and the whole force was under Commodore Hubert Lynes.
The object of the attack on the mole at Zeebrugge was first to seize the battery at the seaward end and prevent it firing at the block ships, and then to demolish the structures on it as far as possible. The battery was 250 yd. from the lighthouse, and to` facilitate its seizure the "Vindictive" was to berth nearly abreast of it on the outer side of the wall. It was then to be stormed by three companies of bluejackets - A company under Lt.-Comm. Bayan Adams ("Princess Royal"), B under Lt. Arth. G. Chamberlain ("Neptune"), D under Lt.-Comm. G. N. Bradford; all under Lt.-Comm. Arthur Harrison ("Lion").
Some 150 yd. to shoreward of the battery and 400 yd. from the lighthouse there was a "fortified zone" of barbed wire and machine-guns. As this commanded the "Vindictive's" berth and would form a rallying point for reinforcements from landward, it was to be seized by four companies of Royal Marines - A (Chatham) under Maj. Chas. Eagles, B (Portsmouth) Capt. Ed. Bamford, C (Plymouth) Maj. Bernard Weller, and machine-guns under Capt. Chas. B. Conybeare.
The storming parties numbered 50 officers and 980 men of the Royal Navy, drawn chiefly from the Grand Fleet and the Nore, and 32 officers and 718 men of the Royal Marines. The seamen were under Capt. Henry C. Halahan and the marines under Lt.-Col. Bertram Elliot. Preparations began early in the year. The force was segregated in the Swin (Thames) and specially trained in all its various tasks. The blocking ships were stripped of all fittings and filled with rubble and concrete. The "Vindictive" in addition to her to 6-in. guns was given a special equipment of 2 7.5-in. howitzers (1 ford. and r aft), 1-in. howitzer (aft), r6 Stokes mortars, flame throwers, 16 Lewis guns, and 4 12-in. pompoms. The success of the attack depended largely on an effective smoke screen, and WingComm. F. A. Brock and 60 ratings were lent to the Dover command, where a small factory was set up to prepare the materials for it.
The lessons of history were not very favourable to the enterprise. Naval Constructor R. P. Hobson had tried to block Santiago in 1898. The Japanese had thrice attempted to block Port Arthur in 1904. None of these attempts had been wholly successful. Let us glance for a moment at the conditions under which the attack was to be made. The distance from Dover to Zeebrugge was 63 miles. This meant that the expedition must start in daylight to be off the port by midnight. The night must be dark and the wind on shore.
Twice the force was assembled and twice unfavourable conditions supervened. On the night of April 11-12, it was within 13 m. of its rallying point. Finally the night of April 22-23 was fixed for the attack. The main force started at 4 53 .M. on Monday, April 22. The bombardment was to begin at 11:20 P.M., simultaneously at Zeebrugge and Ostend. The smoke screen was to start at 11:40 P.M. The "Vindictive" was to reach the mole at midnight. The "Thetis" was to pass the end of the mole 25 minutes later. The last point of departure was at a point called G in lat. 51° 27' N., long. 2° 50' E. This and other points on the route were marked by buoys laid after careful triangulation by Capt. H. P. Douglas and Lt.-Comm. Francis E. Haselfoot. It was here, some 12 m. off Zeebrugge and Ostend, that the vessels took up their formation for attack. The "Vindictive," which had been towing the "Iris II." and "Daffodil," cast them off. The "Sirius" and "Brilliant" shaped course for Ostend, the "Thetis" and her companions eased down. The host of small craft dispersed for their various tasks. The night was overcast, with a light wind from the N.E., and a thick column of smoke soon began to roll down the coast, hiding everything.
Plan A Plan B As they approached the shore about 11:40 P.M. a great star shell soared into the sky, which was soon thick with them shining dimly through the eddies of the smoke. They were close to the harbour when a great disappointment overtook them. The wind, which had died away, shifted to the southward, greatly reducing the efficiency of the screen. The searchlights fastened on the vessels. At 11:56 the "Vindictive" emerged out of the smoke into the full glare of their beams. The mole could be seen 300 yd. on the port bow. Capt. Carpenter increased to full speed and approached it at an angle of 45°. A heavy fire was opened on her and she replied with her port 6-in. battery, the upper deck pompoms and the guns in the fore top. The storming parties drawn up ready to rush ashore lost both their leaders at this point. Col. Bertram Elliot, waiting to lead the Royals just abaft the bridge, was struck down by a shell which did fearful execution forward. Capt. H. C. Halahan at the head of the bluejackets amidships was killed by machine-gun fire.
At one minute past midnight, the ship came alongside the mole. It was intended to do this 300 yd. from the lighthouse abreast of the 4-in. battery, but the starboard anchor was hung up with a strong tide sluicing down the mole, and the ship was carried some 700 yd. from the lighthouse or nearly 400 yd. to landward of the intended spot. The port anchor was dropped and bowsed to with only a shackle (75 ft.) out. A further difficulty now arose. The rush of the 3-knot tide between the ship and mole created a heavy swell which threw the ship off the mole; only two of the 18 brows could reach the parapet, and the ship could not be kept into the mole. Swaying upward with the roll of the ship the two foremost brows came down scraping and grinding along the mole. The naval storming parties led by Lt.-Comm. Bryan Adams ran out along them, followed closely by the Royal Marines led by Capt. and Adj. A. R. Chater. As the seamen got to the wall they leapt down and tried to make the mole grapnels fast (for hauling the ship into the mole), but only one was got in place and a heavy roll broke it up.
This was a critical time, and it was four minutes past midnight when the little "Daffodil" came up and pushed the ship bodily into the mole. Two more brows were got into place and the landing parties got ashore. The "Vindictive's" guns had suffered heavily. The marine crew of the foremost 7.5-in. howitzer had all been killed or wounded. A naval crew from one of the 6-in. guns, which took its place, was almost entirely swept away. In the foretop the Royal Marines under Lt. Chas. Rigby had kept up a continuous fire with their pompoms and Lewis guns till two heavy shells got home on it, killing or disabling everyone there except Sergt. Norman Finch, who though severely wounded continued to fight his gun singlehanded till the top was wrecked by another shell. The "Iris II." with the Chatham company of Royal Marines and D company of seamen had suffered even more severely. She had gone alongside the mole about 150 yd. ahead of the "Vindictive." The swell broke up the scaling ladders. Lt. Claude Hawkings ("Erin"), who led the way, made a grapnel fast and was shot down on the mole. Lt.-Comm. G. N. Bradford ("Orion") got to the top of a derrick with a grapnel, leapt on to the mole, secured it and fell back shot into the water. Comm. Val. Gibbs fell, with both legs shot away. The grapnels tore away, and the "Iris II.," slipping her cable, dropped alongside the "Vindictive" to land her men across her. Here she again suffered heavily.
A big shell went through the upper deck and burst just where 56 marines were waiting to charge up the gangways, killing 49 and wounding seven. Another shell in the wardroom killed 4 officers and 26 men. The heavy swell made it difficult to get alongside the "Vindictive," and only a few men had got across when the siren sounded the retire.
To return to the landing on the mole. The 400 yd. or so by which the "Vindictive" overran her position had a considerable effect on the plan. The seamen, instead of dropping down on the battery, had to go back to it 400 yd. along the mole. The "fortified zone," instead of being between the "Vindictive" and the shore, was now between the "Vindictive" and the battery on the mole, increasing the difficulty of an assault.
The seamen of A and B companies under Lt.-Comm. B. F. Adams, got ashore, and dropping on to the ledge below the parapet made their way toward the lighthouse. They came to Zeebrugge r Ostend kc a lookout station which they captured. Here an iron ladder led down on the quay and three of the party went down it.
A machine-gun in the fortified zone was firing on them, and Lt.-Comm. Adams advanced towards it for some 40 yd. and after taking up a position returned to collect more men. Lieutenant-Commander Harrison, severely wounded in the head, arrived about this time and took charge. Lieutenant-Commander Adams met Maj. Weller who gave him reinforcements, but by the time he got back Lt.-Comm. Harrison had led a rush along the parapet, where he and several of his men were killed by machine-gun fire. Able seaman Mackenzie's courage here gained him a V.C., and able seaman Evans was seriously wounded and taken prisoner in trying to bring in Lt.-Comm. Harrison's body.
D Company was still in the "Iris II.," but the marines were forming up on the mole to make an assault.
They had been busy at first in the other direction. The first platoon to get ashore made to the right toward the shore and silenced a party of snipers near No. 2 shed. Captain Bamford (awarded the V.C.) joined them and they reached and held a point 200 yd. toward the shore. Another party of marines dropping straight to the mole had established a strong point by No. 3 shed close to the "Vindictive." About 12:20 a terrific roar and a great sheet of flame rose high above the din. The viaduct had gone up, and the mole was secure from landward side. Major Weller now received Lt.-Comm. Adams' request for reinforcements and sent a platoon and the remains of another to help him.
They advanced toward the lighthouse and reached the lookout station, where they were held up again by machine-gun fire. Lieutenant-Commander Adams and his men were some 40 or 50 yd. ahead. Nos. 5, 7 and 8 platoons were forming up under Capt. Bamford for an assault on the fortified zone. This was the position when the signal to retire blared out.
The demolition company (C Company of seamen) had got ashore under Lt.-Comm. Dickinson, but the storming parties were too close to permit of the sheds being blown up, and an attempt to blow up the destroyers was beaten back. The danger of the attack from landward had been removed by the destruction of the viaduct. Submarine CI had parted its tow and did not reach the scene in time. Lieutenant R. D. Sandford (awarded the V.C.) in C3 had sighted the viaduct about half a mile off, and running into the iron piers at oi knots had jammed the vessel with its 52 tons of amatol hard and fast. The fuze was lighted and the crew of six were pushing off in their little motor skiff when the propellor was torn off by fouling the submarine, and they had to take to the oars. A rain of bullets fell close to them, and struck down two oarsmen in succession. They were 3 00 yd. away when the viaduct went up, scattering huge pieces of iron and concrete around them.
Another bullet struck Lt. Sandford, but just at that moment the picket boat with his brother (Lieut.-Comm. Francis Sandford) came up and took them off. Meanwhile, in the "Vindictive," Capt. Carpenter had seen the block ships go in. The position of the storming party and of the ship was precarious. None of the mole anchors had grappled. The ship was being held into the mole by the "Daffodil," and if she were disabled it was practically certain that the men in the mole would not get back. He decided it was time to retire. His own siren was riddled through and through, but the order was passed to the "Daffodil," and the shriek of its siren rose above the din.
It was 12:50 A.M. The parties came gradually back, the marines retiring in perfect order, bringing their wounded with them. Capt. T. M. Palmer refused to leave the shore while any of his men were there, and joined the ranks of the missing. Wing-Comm. F. A. Brock, too, never returned. He was last seen fighting on the mole.
A hawser was passed from the "Vindictive," and at r:10 A.M. the "Daffodil" began to pull her bows off the mole. The hawser just held long enough to swing her bows round, and she got clear. The "Iris II." came under a heavy fire as she left the mole. A large shell carried away the port side of the bridge, mortally wounding Comm. V. Gibbs and Maj. Chas. Eagles.
Lieutenant Spencer, though seriously wounded, continued to con the ship and got her clear. Three more shells hit the ship and caused heavy casualties in the crowded decks, but Motor Launch 55 8 (Lt.-Comm. Lionel Chappell, with Capt. Ralph Collins on board) came up, and throwing a smoke screen round her helped her to get away.
To return to the blocking ships. With the "Thetis" leading they had rounded the lighthouse in a storm of shot and shell. The "Thetis" propeller fouled a net laid at the entrance to the harbour and carried it with her. Both engines brought up, and she grounded 300 yd. from the pierhead. She was under heavy fire, and as she appeared to be sinking, the order was given to abandon ship and blow the charges; they detonated and the ship sank. The crew manned the remaining cutter and pulled to ML526 (Lt. Hugh Littleton) which was lying near.
The "Intrepid" astern had come under heavy shrapnel fire from the guns as she approached the mole, but after rounding it escaped their attention. She had 87 officers and men in her instead of 54, as the surplus had contrived to stay on board rather than miss the fight. She ran right into the canal, and Lt. Bonham Carter went full speed ahead with the starboard engine and full speed astern with the port to turn her round. As the ship commenced to make stern way he blew the charges, and the crews got into two cutters which were picked up by the "Whirlwind" and a motor launch. Lt. Bonham Carter with two officers and four petty officers had got on a Carley raft and floated down the canal. ML582 (Lt. Percy T. Dean, awarded the V.C.) had come right into the canal behind the "Iphigenia," and under a heavy fire picked them up and took them off. All the crew except one were saved. In the "Iphigenia," like the "Intrepid," the engine room ratings had avoided being taken off, so as to be present at the fight. She came under shrapnel fire off the mole, and as she rounded it a star shell showed up the "Intrepid" heading for the canal and the "Thetis" aground. Two shells struck the ship on the starboard side. The canal was hidden by smoke. It lifted for a moment, and the captain, seeing he was heading for the western pier, went full speed astern, then ahead with the starboard engine, and with a barge in front of him drove into the canal. There was a gap between the "Intrepid" and the eastern bank; he steered into it, collided with the "Intrepid," rang the gong to signify the imminent blowing of the charges, went astern and then ahead. She grounded on the eastern bank and the charges were fired. The crew left the ship in the only cutter left under fire. ML282 (Lt. Percy T. Dean) was waiting and took the crew on board, and then making the cutter fast to his stem went out of harbour stern first at full speed. Heavy machine-gun fire was concentrated on her; two officers were dangerously wounded and two of the launch's crew of four killed, but she got clear.
The destroyers had been lying off the harbour, and the "Warwick" now picked up four motor launches, including ML282 overloaded and full of wounded with 'or men of the "Iphigenia" and "Intrepid." MLrro (Lt.-Comm. Dawbarn Young) had come under a heavy fire while trying to show the blockships the way in. She was struck by three shells, which killed or wounded half the crew and wrecked the engines. Her captain, hit in three places and mortally wounded, gave orders to the last, but died before reaching Dover. The "Warwick," "Phoebe" and "North Star" had been cruising off the mole to screen the force from torpedo attack. The destroyer "North Star" losing her bearings in the smoke had emerged from the smoke screen and coming under a heavy fire was reduced to a sinking condition. The "Phoebe" (Lt.-Comm. Hubert GoreLangton) attempted to tow her out, but the hawser was shot away once, and parted another time. She was therefore abandoned and sunk. By 1:30 it was all over and the force was on its way back to Dover. The "Vindictive" in terrible disarray arrived there soon after 8 A.M. on April 23. The "Iris II.," limping behind her, reached home at 2:45 P.M. Her commander had died that morning.
Meanwhile things had gone badly at Ostend. The blocking ships "Brilliant" (Comm. Alfred Godsal) and "Sirius" (Lt. Comm. Henry Hardy), escorted by the Harwich destroyers "Tempest" and "Tetrarch," arrived off the coast. The motor launches under Comm. Hamilton Benn were busy laying a smoke screen, supported by the "Faulknor" (flying Commodore Hubert Lyne's broad pendant), "Lightfoot," "Mastiff," "Afridi," "Swift" and "Matchless." The wind was blowing lightly from the N.W., but about 11:50 shifted to the S.W. and blew back the smoke screen. The low clouds and drizzle made visibility difficult, and the Stroom Bank buoy could not be seen at first. Thinking that the ships were perhaps too far to the northward, Comm. Godsal continued on his course for two minutes, when he sighted the Stroom Bank buoy to the N.E. and turned to pass to northward of it. It was not, however, in its normal position (approximately 1 m. W.N.W. of the entrance), but had been shifted about a mile to the eastward. Commander Godsal steered from the buoy for the supposed direction of the harbour. As he looked anxiously out for the pierheads at Ostend, breakers suddenly loomed up on the starboard bow, and before the ship could turn she was ashore. The "Sirius" behind her grounded too. Fire had been opened from shore, and both ships were accordingly blown up where they stranded about a mile east of the piers. ML276 (Lt. Roland Bourke) took off the "Brilliant's" crew, while ML283 (Lt. Keith Hoare) rescued the men from the "Sirius." A second attempt to close Ostend was made on the night of May 9-10 by Comm. Alfred Godsal in the "Vindictive" and Lt.-Comm. Hardy in the "Sappho," an old cruiser of the same class as the "Sirius." This time there was no preliminary bombardment but aircraft were cooperating. Conditions seemed favourable for the attempt. The sea was smooth, the night dark with wind from N.W., but hardly had the ships left Dunkirk when the "Sappho" blew out a manhole joint in her boiler and had to put back.
At I :30 A.M. the small craft went in to lay the smoke screen. News had previously come in that the Stroom Bank buoy had been removed, and Lt. W. R. Slayter went in a coastal motor boat to place a calcium flare in its old position. By :35 the smoke cloud was beginning to come down, and at 1:43 the order was given for the monitors to open fire. A roar of batteries answered from the shore. Two coastal motor boats, CMB24 and 30, dashed ahead and torpedoed the piers. But once again misfortune was to attend the attempt. As the "Vindictive" approached, a thick sea fog rolled up the coast, making it impossible to see anything at over 300 yd. Uncertain as to his position, Comm. Godsal steered to westward and then to eastward, and finally gave orders to CMB23 (Lt. Hon. Cecil Spencer) to light a million-candle flare. Though dimmed by the fog and drizzle, its glare revealed the entrance 200 yd. off. The "Vindictive" steered for it and the guns found her at once. The after control was demolished by a shell which killed everyone in it. The bridge was swept with bullets, and Comm. Godsal ordered everyone inside the conning tower. She was close to the eastern pier when a heavy shell burst close to the conning tower, which must have killed the commander for he was never seen again. Lt. Victor Crutchley took command and tried to turn her up the channel, but she grounded at an angle of about 25° to the pier and lay hard and fast. Engineer Lieutenant Wm. C. Bury blew the charges and she sank. The captain could not be found. ML254 (Lt. Geoff. Drummond, awarded the V.C.) came alongside under a fierce fire. His lieutenant and deck-hand were killed and he himself wounded in three places, but he managed to embark 39 officers and men, and then backing out of the entrance got clear and just managed to reach the "Warwick." Day was breaking and as the boat was badly damaged she was sunk. ML276 (Lt. Roland Bourke, awarded the V.C.) now returned to the "Vindictive," and after searching and shouting found Lt. Sir John Alleyne and two men, all badly wounded, clinging to a skiff. With three of his own crew killed or wounded Lt. Bourke managed to get out and reach the monitor "Prince Eugene" in safety.
This was the end of an enterprise for which no fewer than nine V.C.s were awarded. Its casualties amounted to a total of 637 killed, wounded and missing.
April 22-23
| i don't know |
Reaching a height of 8ft 11.1inches, which American, who died in 1940, is the tallest person ever to have lived, for which there is medical evidence? | US-Ukraine Business Council
Contributed by Taras Kuzio and Jennifer Moroney
United Press International (UPI), Washington, D.C., Tue, Dec 13, 2005
COMMENTARY: By Mark N. Katz, UPI Correspondent
Washington, D.C., Sunday, December 11, 2005
REMARKS: By Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary for
Democracy and Global Affairs, United States Department of State
Roundtable: The Orange Revolution: A Year After
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Washington, DC, Dec 5, 2005
Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D. in history, head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve, tells a story of
Anna, daughter of an eleventh-century ruler of Kyiv, and Queen of France.
By Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D, Head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve
Welcome to Ukraine magazine, Pages 44-47
Kyiv, Ukraine, Issue 4 (35), November 2005
========================================================
1 . UKRAINE NEEDS AN ECONOMIC PLAN
"If we, as Ukrainians, are as smart as it seems we are,
then we should make an effort not to be so poor."
COMMENTARY: Katerina Panova
Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec 07 2005
Both President Viktor Yushchenko and the government have, with impressive
thoroughness, started paying attention to the messages they've been sending
to businesspeople.
Last week, both Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov reassured
participants in an Economist-sponsored roundtable that reprivatization is
over with for good, that private property is sacred and untouchable, and
that protecting the rights of investors will be the government's key
operating principle.
Besides the generalities, some very concrete promises were also made: to
cancel all indisputable VAT claims until the end of the year, lower tax
rates, and reduce regulatory pressure.
Yekhanurov even admitted that he meets with business representatives a
minimum of twice a week - not just to flirt with them, but to understand the
logic behind the way they work. At the same time, he complained that no one
was yet taking a systematic view of things - each businessman comes only on
behalf of his own problems.
But it's hard to blame entrepreneurs for not hitting the government with
complex demands, given that the government itself hasn't formulated rules of
the game for business, with an eye towards developing the country's economy.
It's worth mentioning that during the independence era, Ukraine has more
than once tried to formulate such a program. There was President Leonid
Kuchma's 1994 report, "On the Road to Radical Economic Reforms," Valeriy
Pustovoytenko's plan for Ukraine through 2010, and Viktor Yanukovych's
strategy for economic and social development through 2015 - and that's far
from a full list.
However, all these fine starts somehow or other ended up as just piecemeal
projects, lacking any methodology. It's possible that what's at fault is the
lack of continuity of power in Ukraine: governments often change, and
instead of finishing the work of its predecessors, the new team prefers to
invent the wheel anew.
The business climate also suffers from this lack of consistency. Native
entrepreneurs need to know what conditions they're going to work under for
the next several years. And foreign investors find it problematic to invest
money in this country given its hazy economic situation.
After an almost two-year lull in Ukraine, there should now appear a
strategic plan - it's expected that Yushchenko will speak out about it in a
message to the Rada this January.
Judging from the pronouncements that the president and the prime minister
have made, it's clear that they're planning to liberalize the Ukrainian
economy. The main proof of this is Yushchenko's intriguing statement
that in the next three months a capital amnesty will be declared.
The idea is ambitious, but in light of the upcoming parliament elections
it's fantastic - it's hard to see how parliament deputies will approve the
necessary legislation, since in the eyes of the electorate such a move would
amount to "letting the oligarchs off the hook."
And the president didn't explain how he's going to motivate people to come
clean who are doing business off the books. The advantage they'll get from
legalization is doubtful, and as soon as it occurs, they're going to have to
pay 13 percent on their declared capital. The prime minister also still
hasn't been able to say how this notorious amnesty is going to be realized.
He did, however, explain in the most straightforward way that no one should
count on essential changes in tax legislation - because of the elections,
parliament simply won't have time to effect them, or to include them in the
2007 budget.
The obvious conclusion is that the government is hampered in its plans to
develop the country's economy by the election. The election is an enemy of
long-term planning, because it doesn't bring fast results.
At the same time, elections are part of the burden of democracy, and they
don't hamper Western politicians from drafting long-term economic policies
and resorting to unpopular methods in the interests of future progress.
But if the government can't allow itself to make its stand on liberalizing
the economy or to trust the market's invisible hand, then it can approach
the problem from the other side.
It can define priorities, and make developing them a long-term project.
Such priorities might be serious investments in the government's transport
potential, or in agricultural innovations.
If we, as Ukrainians, are as smart as it seems we are, then we should
make an effort not to be so poor. -30-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Katerina Panova is a reporter for Korrespondent magazine, in which
this article first appeared. Translated from Russian by Andrey Slivka.
[ return to index ] [The Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
2 . RADICAL REFORM NEEDED IN UKRAINE IMPOSSIBLE AT
PRESENT SAYS PRIME MINISTER YURIY YEKHANUROV
No pension, housing, public utility, health care, tax or administrative-
territorial reforms now and we cannot dare to begin structural reform.
Interfax, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, December 12, 2005
KYIV - It will be impossible to carry out radical reform in Ukraine
in the near future, Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov said in an
interview published in the Monday issue of Ekonomicheskiye
Izvestia.
"I think that Ukraine is prepared for reform, but the main problem
is reform technique. I have studied our constitution closely and have
realized that no reform can be achieved in the near future. Their
implementation would prove impossible," he said.
The time to have implemented reform was last spring, when the
authorities enjoyed "a colossal amount of confidence," Yekhanurov
said, adding that this window of opportunity had now been missed..
Ukraine will not be able to push through pensions or housing and
public utility reforms in the foreseeable future, the premier said. "Nor
will there be any health care or administrative-territorial reforms in
the near future and we cannot dare to begin structural reform.
We want to make the transformations painless. We are against
surgery, we want therapy, therefore we will develop slowly," he said.
Tax reform will not be quick either, Yekhanurov said, saying that
such reform may be possible in 2008.
Ukraine should use common sense in the development of the economy
and authorities' attitude to business, Yekhanurov said. Common sense
means that the government should not pressurize, but instead regulate
the solution of problems which economic entities are unable to solve on
their own," he said. -30-
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3 . UKRAINE GUARANTEES RUSSIAN GAS DELIVERIES TO EUROPE
Associated Press, Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, December 12, 2005
KIEV, Ukraine - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko promised Monday
that Ukraine will guarantee Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe, as
Moscow and Kiev bicker over gas prices in a dispute that could disrupt
supplies westward. The European Union gets almost half of its gas imports
from Russia, mostly piped through Ukraine.
"Ukraine has given a state guarantee that the transit will be secured, and
this guarantee is unconditional," Yushchenko said, according to his office.
Moscow has proposed more than tripling the price of gas from the current
US$50 per 1,000 cubic meters, a proposal rejected by Ukraine.
Ukraine was "ready to pay for gas exclusively on a market basis, however
with a gradual transition period," Yushchenko said, adding that he hoped
Russia would respond.
Ukrainian officials had earlier warned that if the price went above US$95
per 1,000 cubic meters, Ukrainian factories would stop being profitable.
The latest round of negotiations were underway in Moscow, and Yushchenko
expressed hope that "a mutually beneficial resolution" would be found. He
said that Ukraine's Fuel and Energy Minister, Ivan Plachkov, went to the
meeting armed with "a packet of proposals."
Amid late-night negotiations in Moscow, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted
Russia's Ministry of Industry and Energy as saying that the two sides "hope
to reach an agreement on the question of gas before the end of the year." No
one could be reached at the ministry for comment late Monday night.
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4 . GAZPROM THREAT TO CUT SUPPLIES OF GAS TO EUROPE
By Tom Warner in Kiev, Financial Times
London, UK, Mon, December 12 2005
Russia's Gazprom on Monday threatened to reduce supplies to Europe next
year unless Ukraine agrees to pay market prices for its gas. Ukraine takes
some gas Russia exports via pipeline in lieu of transit payments.
Alexander Medvedev, the Gazprom executive in charge of exports, said
that if no agreement was reached by the new year, Gazprom would limit
the volume of gas crossing the Russia-Ukraine border from January 1 to
the amount contracted by its other European customers and excluding
any portion for Ukraine.
If Ukraine maintains it has the right to continue taking a portion of the
gas as payment for transit, Gazprom would regard that as "unsanctioned
removal of gas or, in other words, theft". "Ukraine would be fully
responsible for reduction of supplies to Europe", he said.
Russia has been demanding higher prices from most of its former satellites
in eastern Europe but this dispute is more serious because Ukraine's
pipelines carry about 20 per cent of the European Union's gas supply and
about 80 per cent of Russia's gas exports.
Ivan Plachkov, Ukraine's energy minister, was in Moscow on Monday for
talks with Viktor Khristenko, Russia's deputy prime minister for energy, and
Alexey Miller Gazprom chairman .
A contract signed in 2003 gives Ukraine the right to take about 18 per cent
of the Russian gas that transits through its pipelines. Russia wants a new
agreement that would see Ukraine make cash payments at "European" prices,
which would, in effect, lower transit costs.
Ukraine says the contract cannot be changed without its consent but the
threat of a cut-off could force it to reconsider. Ukraine gets about 30 per
cent of its gas through the gas-for-transit barter deal and also imports
another 45 per cent from Turkmenistan via Russia.
Last week, a Ukrainian presidential administration official said Russia's
naval base in Sevastopol could, in turn, be asked to pay "European" rents.
Russian officials said the base's contract was not negotiable. -30-
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5 . BUILDING COMPANIES CAUSE SECOND 2005 BOND BOOM
ANALYSIS: By Roman Bryl, Ukraine Analyst
IntelliNews-Ukraine This Week, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec 12, 2005
About 15 issuers make UAH 1.3bn bonds emissions
during last days of 2005 -----
During the last days of this year Ukraine will once again experience a boom
on the bond market. More than 15 issuers unveiled plans to make bonds
emissions. These issues will total UAH 1.35bn (USD 270mn) in December.
During the last 11 months the State Commission for Securities and Stock
Exchange (SCSSE) registered 233 bond emissions worth UAH 6.2bn
(USD 1.24bn).
To remind you Ukraine experienced the sharp increase of activity on local
bond market in H1/05. The total volume of bonds issued exceeded more than
3-fold the H1. Along with large amount of corporate bonds issues, this
summer we observed series of big municipal bonds issues.
SCSSE reported that 136 bonds issues were registered in H1 worth USD
613mn. June 2005 became the most active month for bond emissions with
USD 146.9mn of bonds issued.
Market conditions not good for bond placements -----
Nevertheless, the supply of bonds scheduled in December will exceed by
2-fold demand for them, some experts considered. The demand is low
because recently more profitable alternatives for investment appeared.
For example, interest rates for deposits are higher that for bonds.
Moreover, this situation resulted in a 17% rise of bonds' yield, but still
this was not enough to attract investors to bonds.
Besides liquidity on the interbank marked and the end of financial year
moved some banks to disperse their high risk and low profitability
securities, including bonds. The situation with oversupply on the bonds
market will, probably last until the beginning of 2006, when banks and
investment companies revise their investment plans.
Three municipalities to issue UAH 200mn bonds in December -----
In spite such situation on the market, issuers did not postpone their
emissions. For example, 3 municipalities plan to issue about UAH 200mn
bonds in December or in the beginning of 2006. That will be debut
emissions for Cherkassy and Vinnitsa (UAH 5mn and UAH 20mn
respectively).
Odessa municipality tries to restore its good credit reputation after
default in 1997 -----
Odessa intends to issue of municipal bonds worth UAH 150mn. The bonds
have 2-5 years maturity period and interest rate of 12-14%. The emission will
have several series: A series worth UAH 5mn and B series of UAH 70mn will be
placed for 3 years with 13% interest rate; period of circulation of UAH 30mn
C series bonds with 14% of interest rate will mature in 5 years.
UkrSibbank will stand as an underwriter of the emission. However, it is not
clear whether the bank will be the only the underwriter. Odessa municipality
still did not make the final decision regarding the numbers of underwriters.
When Odessa unveiled its plans to issue bonds investors gave positive
outlook on these securities. But taking into consideration current situation
on the market the bonds yield should be not less than 15% to attract
investors. These are bad news for Odessa officials that battle to restore
good credit reputation of the municipality.
To remind you in 1997 Odessa issued 1-year UAH 61mn bonds with 50%
interest rate. But in next year the municipality failed to pay off bonds.
On Jul 15, 2005 Odessa informed about its intention to issue UAH 300mn
bonds, but FinMin banned the emission because of the previous default.
After several months of consultations FinMin finally allowed Odessa to
issue bonds, but demanded to cut its volume 2-fold.
Banks also continue to be active on bond market -----
Besides municipalities building companies and banks will be the major
issuers in December. Banks will issue about UAH 220mn bonds during
this month. Forum Bank plans to place its UAH 100mn bonds on Dec
14, which have 3-years maturity period and 11.5% interest rate.
On this date Alfa-BankUkraine also scheduled the placement of UAH 50mn,
5-year bonds with 13% of interest rate. And finally Ukrsotsbank in the mid
of December will issue UAH 70mn bonds with 12% of interest rate. The
bonds have 3-year maturity period.
The building companies presently main players on bond market
Plan to issue UAH 900mn bonds in December
However, building companies will be the biggest bonds issuers this month.
The total amount of bonds they plan to issue is UAH 900mn (USD 180mn).
Kovcheg to issue UAH 300mn to unnamed specific investors -----
Kovcheg company will make the largest emission among building companies.
It will amount UAH 300mn and will be one of the largest among private
companies in Ukraine.
The bonds have 4-year maturity and 8% interest rate. The funds attracted the
company will use to finance building projects in Kyiv Pechersk district.
Kovcheg will not use underwriter's services, which makes us believe that the
bonds will be sold to specific investors.
The names of such investors were not disclosed. Thus, this may mean a
hidden capital increase. However, there is not enough reliable information
to prove this suggestion.
In 2001 Kovcheg issued 9-year bonds worth USD 40mn. The company
was founded in 2001 and it was involved in leasing office areas and buildings.
Besides Kovcheg 4 other building companies plan to
make big bond emissions -----
Besides Kovcheg another building company Komfort-Invest plans to issue
bonds worth UAH 150mn. Securities will be issued by 3 series: K and L
series of UAH 25mn each with 14% and 16% interest rates each. The third
series M bonds will be worth UAH 100mn with 22% interest rate. All bonds
will have 6-year maturity period.
In the next 30 days Avantar building company will make UAH 140mn bond
emission to attract funds for building 2 residential houses. The
circulation period of the bonds will be 30 months. Other 2 companies Novy
Striymaterialy and ParM will make similar emissions worth UAH 100mn each.
The bonds will mature in 10 years.
Building companies are the first corporation to boost
corporate bond market in 2006 -----
The activity of building companies on the bond market shows the new trend
that differs from the original of bond boom of the mid 2005. Municipalities
and banks were the main issuers then.
Presently the corporations took the lead. It is expected that they will
continue to increase the amounts of their bonds emission in 2006. Bonds
issues still continue to be the most effective way for corporations to
attract funds. Undeveloped stock market in Ukraine does not allow
companies to raise funds, for example, by means of IPO.
At the same time present oversupply on the bond market does not allow
companies to lower interest rates on bonds. In mid 2005 IntelliNews
predicted that interest rates would fall below 10% average by the end of
2006 or in the beginning of 2007.
Such low interest rates will indicated that Ukrainian bond market is almost
completely formed. Current situation on the market confirms our forecast
that interest rates of bonds will not drop in the next 1-1.5 years.
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6 . AES UKRAINE TO INVEST US 100 MILLION IN AES
KYIVOBLENERHO AND AES RIVNEOBLENERHO BY 2011
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, December 12, 2005
KYIV - The AES Ukraine power distribution company intends to invest USD
100 million in its regional power distribution companies AES Kyivoblenerho
and AES Rivneoblenerho by the year 2011. AES Ukraine's Director Larry
Levsley [Garry Levesley] announced this at a press conference.
AES Ukraine plans to invest UAH 100 million in AES Kyivoblenerho and
UAH 55 million in AES Rivneoblenerho in 2006.
According to Levsley, a large proportion of the money will be spent on
development and modernization of the regional power distribution companies'
networks.
According to him, the AES Ukraine is presently agreeing the investment
programs of the companies with the Fuel and Energy Ministry.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the International Finance Corporation
has provided a loan of USD 50 million to AES Ukraine.
AES Ukraine owns the AES Kyivoblenerho and AES Rivneoblenerho regional
power distribution companies.
AES Washington Holdings B.V., which is a subsidiary of the AES Silk Road
company (United States), bought 75% + 1 share in each of Kyivoblenerho and
Rivneoblenerho from the State Property Fund in 2001. The companies were
renamed AES Kyivoblenerho and AES Rivneenerho following their purchase.
The AES corporation operates 113 power generating facilities and 17 power
distribution companies in 27 countries. AES Silk Road is one of the world's
largest producers and suppliers of electricity
At the end of the first half of 2004, AES' net revenues in Ukraine amounted
to UAH 0.5 billion while its net profit amounted to over UAH 65 million. The
corporation serves over 1.2 million consumers over an area of 50,000 square
meters in Ukraine. -30-
FOOTNOTE: AES is a long-time active member of the Ukraine-United
States Business Council headquartered in Washington, D.C.
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7 . AES UKRAINE REACHES SOFTWARE-LICENSING AGREEMENT
WITH MICROSOFT UKRAINE
Microsoft says deal is largest in Ukrainian energy industry
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, December 12, 2005
KYIV - AES Ukraine, which owns the AES Kyivoblenerho and AES
Rivneoblenerho regional power distribution companies, has signed an
agreement with the Microsoft Ukraine company on legalization of software.
AES Ukraine's Director Larry Levsley [Garry Levesley] announced this
at a press conference.
According to Levsley, the company and Microsoft Ukraine signed two
corporate agreements under which AES Ukraine acquired licenses to all
the Microsoft software products that will be used in AES Kyivoblenerho
and AES Rivneoblenerho. The relevant project is intended for three years.
According to Microsoft Ukraine's Director-General Valerii Lanovenko, this is
the largest deal in the Ukrainian energy industry.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, AES Washington Holdings B.V., which
is a subsidiary of the AES Silk Road company (USA), bought 75% stakes in
each of Kyivoblenerho and Rivneoblenerho from the State Property Fund in
2001. The companies were renamed AES Kyivoblenerho and AES Rivneenerho
following their purchase.
The AES corporation operates 113 power generating facilities and 17 power
distribution companies in 27 countries. AES Silk Road is one of the world's
largest producers and suppliers of electricity.
At the end of the first half of 2004, AES' net revenues in Ukraine amounted
to UAH 0.5 billion while its net profit amounted to over UAH 65 million. It
serves over 1.2 million consumers over an area of 50,000 square meters in
Ukraine. -30-
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8 . ADVANCED DIGITAL BROADCAST (ADB) ESTABLISHES NEW
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE IN KHARKOV, UKRAINE
ADB now has five R&D Centres located in Europe
PRESS RELEASE: Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB)
Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, December 12th, 2005
GENEVA - Advanced Digital Broadcast, a leading supplier of digital TV
systems and software solutions for interactive television, announced today
that it has established a new Research and Development (R&D) Centre in
Kharkov, Ukraine. ADB now has five R&D Centres located in Europe.
"The rapid growth of ADB's Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) business requires
extensive and high-quality engineering resources", comments Philippe
Lambinet, CEO of ADB. "ADB Group's average sales growth in the last two
years has exceeded 50% per annum; this growth of our business, combined
with our increasing coverage of all technical areas of digital TV,
necessitates sustained growth of our engineering teams".
Mr. Oleg Rudenko, current professor at the Kharkov National University of
Radio Electronics (KNURE) has been named Managing Director of ADB
Ukraine.
"ADB believes that Prof. Rudenko's broad experience and knowledge of the
local scientific community is a key asset to the company", comments Prof.
Dr. Janusz Szajna, ADB's Executive Vice President and President of ADB
Poland. "Prof. Rudenko is the ideal person to build and lead an excellent,
highly specialised and well-educated team of engineers.
ADB intends to replicate the same successful processes in Kharov as
pioneered in Zielona Gora, which is now universally recognised as one of the
best R&D centres in the industry."
"Kharkov, Ukraine's second largest city holds rich engineering resources and
boasts a tradition of impressive scientific and university based research,"
adds Mr. Krzysztof Kolbuszewski, Chief Technical Officer of ADB. "This
tradition comes from a high concentration of space research centres, which
the former Soviet Union had located in Kharkov.
It represents a massive source of highly educated individuals with superior
knowledge of mathematics and physics that is imperative to the development
of advanced software products".
Building on its success of over 10 years experience in designing and
developing digital television equipment, ADB intends to create an extremely
innovative team of young, uniquely talented programmers and electronic
engineers. These new members will concentrate mainly on highly advanced
technology, such as new solutions for IPTV. -30-
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9 . LARGE RUSSIAN RETAILER PYATEROCHKA PLANS MAJOR
BOOST IN ITS OPERATIONS IN UKRAINE DURING 2006
Russia's largest food & nonfood products retailer to open 30 new stores
RosBusinessConsulting (RBC), Moscow, Russia, Mon, Dec 12, 2005
MOSCOW - Pyaterochka plans to open no less than 30 stores in Ukraine
by August 2006, the company's memorandum stated. In July 2004 the
food retailer sold a franchise in Ukraine, and there are 11 stores operating
in the country at the moment.
The retailer intends to promote its brand in Kazakhstan as well, where it
currently has 25 stores. The number of its own and franchise stores
increased by 26 and 69 percent respectively in January-September 2005.
As of October 1, 2005 Pyaterochka, the largest retailer of food and
nonfood products in Russia, had 652 stores, 155 of which were located
in St. Petersburg and 148 in Moscow. -30-
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10 . UKRAINE: EPAM PLANS SOFTWARE OUTSOURCING CENTERS
Two regional development units will be targeted at clients in the European
Union and the U.S., the New Jersey-based company said.
By W. David Gardner, TechWeb News, USA, Tue, Dec 6, 2005
NEW JERSEY - EPAM Systems, which operates several software
outsourcing centers in Central and Eastern Europe, has announced it
plans to establish several centers in Ukraine.
In reports sent by the company Tuesday, EPAM said it plans to recruit at
least 200 employees in the former Soviet Union state and to establish a
headquarters in Kiev. Two regional development centers in Ukraine will be
targeted at clients in the European Union and the U.S.
"Ukraine has a large and very talented pool of software engineers," said
Karl Robb, EPAM executive VP of Global Operations, in a statement. "The
traditional focus and strength of the education system, which has been very
well-maintained since the break up of the Soviet Union, combined with
Ukraine's deep legacy in defense and high-technology industries provides a
greater than average supply of first-class engineers with experience in
complex software development."
EPAM maintains its U.S. headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, and
European headquarters in Budapest. The firm's co-founder and CEO
Arkadiy Dobkin left his native Soviet Union several years ago and
emmigrated to the U.S. where he held several technical positions in
American companies. EPAM Systems was established in 1993 in Princeton.
Interest in software outsourcing in Ukraine has been increasing since the
country began democratic reforms in recent months. In the past, political
turmoil in the area proved problematic for at least one U.S. company that
had sent work to a Ukrainian outsourcing company. -30-
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11 . UKRAINE VINEYARD SOARS ON MODERISATION DRIVE
Grape harvest yield four times above national average
By Angela Drujinina, Central & Eastern Europe FoodIndustry.com
Montpellier, France, Tuesday, December 12, 2005
UKRAINE - Modernisation has helped one of Ukraine's biggest wineries to
a grape harvest yield four times above the national average, demonstrating
how it is possible to add that personal touch and remain competitive.
Tavria-1, a vineyard that belongs to wine group Tavria, managed to gather
125-130 centners of grapes per hectare this year, well above the national
average of 28. The vineyard's 'experimental' vines achieved 405 centners.
"Such high indexes were not only achieved by respecting the correct
technology, but also by correctly protecting plants against diseases and
pests, and using the latest science and specialised machines," said Natalya
Tsarulikova, chief agronomist of Tavria-1.
Tavria uses intensive planting, with a crop density between 3,900 and 5,500
bushes, It also uses drip irrigation, a process developed in Israel and
known to save on water, and has developed a system for adding fertilisers
and microelements directly through this drip irrigation system.
The system is used for a range of Tavria grape varieties, including
sauvignon, merlot and chardonnay. It is also used on grapes for cognac
production.
Tavria-1, which through Tavria forms part of Ukraine's First National
Winemaking Holding, said the quality of this year's harvest had been
excellent. "The sugar content of the grapes was about 20-25 per cent, which
was the highest index both among Tavria farms and in Ukraine as a whole,"
Tsarulikova said.
The Tavria-2 vineyard also put in a good performance this year. "The sugar
content was in average 21.2 per cent, while the average [in Ukraine] is only
17 per cent," said vineyard director Alexandr Feodosov.
"Taking into account the fact that in average, the harvest from one hectare
is not more than 50 centner/hectare, we can consider the harvest of the
season 2004-2005 successful both from the point of view of quality and of
quantity."
Tavria's director, A. Sidorenko, said: "One more reason for our success is
that we never forget about people, about stimulation, about their importance
as professionals. So, we are not 'fighting' for the harvest, we are just
getting prepared for it and we use the time, equipment and resources
correctly.
"These technologies give us competitiveness in view of Ukraine entering the
World Trade Organisation, and help us to get prepared for admission to
European Union." Tavria is already one of Ukraine's biggest winemakers with
2,600ha of agricultural land.
The group's owner, the First National Winemaking Holding, works under
another corporation called Logos, which is the exclusive representative of
French cognac specialist Remy Cointreau in Ukraine. -30-
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12 . UKRAINE: IN TWO YEARS THE MARKET FOR FRESH SALAD
COULD INCREASE 50 TIMES
Dr. Lee says Ukrainian salad market has only begun to develop.
Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP)
Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, December 9, 2005
KYIV - The international practical seminar "Salads of Ukraine 2006" was
held on December 8, 2005 at Kyiv National Agrarian University; more than
100 produce business specialists from 5 countries participated in this
event. The participants received valuable and exclusive information about
the potential of fresh salads market development.
Representatives from Ukrainian, Russian, Dutch, Moldavian and Georgian
companies took part in the seminar. The companies OLVITA and RIJK
ZWAAN UKRAINE and Kyiv National Agrarian University organized the
event in conjunction with the Agricultural Marketing Project.
OLVITA is one of the most dynamically developing companies in the
Ukrainian produce business. First and foremost, it is know for frozen
vegetables, fruits and berries sold under the "Olvita" trademark. But,
OLVITA has recently entered the market of fresh salads with its very
own trademark, as this market is considered to be very attractive.
The company enjoys a complex of modern storage facilities for effective
long-term produce storage. This is why OLVITA is now able to participate
in the wholesale trading of fresh fruits and vegetables where there is a
great demand from Ukrainian supermarkets.
Yuri Boguslavskiy, OLVITA Director, indicated they plan to significantly
increase storage capacity for fresh produce. In addition, they plan to build
a complex for the post harvest handling and packing of salads, which will be
supplied by farmers from different regions throughout Ukraine.
During the seminar professionals shared information about the specifics of
production technologies, handling, storage and packaging of fresh salads,
which are popular worldwide. Dr. Robert Lee, Director of the Agricultural
Marketing Project, stated the size of the world salad market is about $10.5
billion.
China produces more than half of the gross volume and the USA and China
combined provide for about 70% of the world's salad production. The
Ukrainian salad market has only started to develop and in Dr. Lee's opinion,
it will grow dynamically in the near future.
"Even if Ukrainians eat half the salads of people in the US, this market
will reach the volume of 300,000 tons, compared to 6,000 tons of salads
produced now in the country", Dr. Lee stated.
We would like to point out that there are professional producers of fresh
salads in Ukraine and the number is growing each year, despite of the fact
that salad production is a complicated business. Ukraine also exports fresh
salads to Russia.
The climate of our country lets farmers produce salads in different regions
throughout the entire season. This is why the potential to increase salad
production is not limited by the interior market.
According to evaluations of the Agricultural Marketing Project, in the next
five years the size of Ukrainian salad market could increase up to between
$50-60 million and this creates fantastic opportunities for farmers and
other market players. -30-
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13 . CZECH EMPLOYMENT OFFICES MIGHT APPEAR IN UKRAINE
Over 100,000 Ukrainians work either legally or illegally in Czech Republic
CTK, Prague, Czech, Republic, Monday, Dec 12, 2005
PRAGUE - The Czech Interior Ministry is planning to open employment
offices in Ukraine in the future that would recruit workers for Czech
companies, according to a series of its proposals, according to the daily
Hospodarske noviny that has these proposals at its disposal.
The paper writes today that the proposals are designed to radically change
the approach to foreign workers. They testify that the authorities' attitude
to foreigners who work in the Czech Republic illegally is changing, it says.
While foreign workers were labelled as criminals in the past, authorities
are beginning to view them as exploited victims of people trafficking, it
adds.
The very first proposal would radically change the current practice that
allows criminal elements and the "clients" labour agencies offering illegal
refugees as cheap workforce to Czech firms, to make profits on their ill
fate.
The Interior Ministry intends to introduce "the Portuguese model," under
which the Czech Interior Ministry would try to establish Czech employment
offices, for instance at its embassy in Ukraine. These offices would not
only recruit employees for work in the Czech Republic, but would also ensure
their transportation and accommodation.
Thousands of the current illegal foreign workers would thus surfaced from
the grey economy and the "clients," who take away most of the money they
earn in the Czech Republic for similar services, would be pushed out of the
running.
"Illegal employment of foreigners is on such a wide-scale in the country
that mere repressive measures will not help eliminate it," Jakub Svec from
the Interior Ministry says regarding the ministry's new strategy. The
government will discuss the new proposals next year.
According to estimates, more than 100,000 Ukrainians work either legally or
illegally in the 10-million Czech Republic at present.
The most resourceful Ukrainians who fled Ukraine due to its poverty and low
salaries have established "client" agencies in the Czech Republic in the
past years to exploit their compatriots who came later and have no chance of
getting work there without their help. (vv/t/pv)
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14 . MIGRATION TO IRELAND UNDERMINING THE ECONOMIC
AND SOCIAL FABRIC OF LATVIA
Author of 'The Mushroom Covenant' warns of 'brain drain' in Latvia
Latvia filling some of its own low paying jobs with Ukrainians
Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland, Mon, Dec 12, 2005
Migration to Ireland is undermining the economic and social fabric of
Latvia, one of that country's authors has said.
Laima Muktupavela left her family in Latvia in 2001 to work on a mushroom
farm in Co Meath, where she and a group of Latvian colleagues earned
GBP125 a month and worked for several weeks at a time.
On returning home, she wrote a best-selling book, "The Mushroom
Covenant," based on the experience of Latvian immigrants in Ireland.
Muktupavela (43) said yesterday that a "brain drain" from Latvia is
hindering her country's development and leading to the break-up of families,
particularly in rural areas, as many of those who travel to Ireland and
other EU states opt not to return home.
"This book is like a bible in Latvian homes because every family has
somebody who left Latvia to work in Ireland," she said.
"We have very small salaries in Latvia, and these people left Latvia because
they need to have a normal life. They thank God that Ireland can help. But
people who go to Ireland, many thousands don't come back to Latvia.
That is a very big problem."
One effect of this trend is that Latvia is having to fill some of its own
low-paying jobs with immigrants from Ukraine and Belarus.
"We have a very small population - around two million - and if thousands
and thousands of educated, energetic Latvians leave Latvia, our employers
can't find workers here."
She added: "We were the first wave of Latvians [ in Ireland] in 2001, but
now many Latvians live there. Now I see that Latvians are building the
economies of other countries like Ireland."
Ms Muktupavela said she was the only one from a group of 11 Latvians who
returned home. This exodus depresses rural communities in particular, she
said, with many children living with their grandparents indefinitely, and in
some cases living alone.
"The father of my children took care of mine, and it was hard on them. But
one girl had four children in Latvia. She came to Ireland and then divorced
because she stayed in Ireland."
Ms Muktupavela said she and her colleagues lived together in a three-room
house while working on the mushroom farm. As she was the only
English-speaker among the group, she represented the workers in dealings
with their employer.
"I asked him different questions. I asked him about taxes and salaries and
why we were earning so little compared to Irish people. We cut the first
mushroom at 6am and the last at 8pm. For me that was a very bad memory.
"On Christmas Day, we got up at 5am, because the owner said we had
to supply the supermarkets with the mushrooms. When I asked could we
have more money for that work, he said: 'If you ask questions, you can
go home.'"
There are between 30,000 and 40,000 Latvians living in Ireland. -30-
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15 . CRIMEAN TARTARS CALL KYIV TO RESTORE THEIR RIGHTS
Voices calling for Kyiv to recognize the deportation as genocide
RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service/Interfax
Prague, Czech Republic, Monday, December 12, 2005
SIMFEROPOL - Members of the Crimean Tatar Congress gathered in the
main Crimean city Simferopol said yesterday that Ukraine's integration with
the West should not go forward until Kyiv restores Tatar rights.
Congressional delegates, issuing a statement at the end of the three-day
session, accused Ukrainian authorities of disregarding the rights of Crimean
Tatars, who were deported en masse by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1944.
RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service reported that congress member Timur
Dagci was among the voices calling for Kyiv to recognize the deportation
as genocide:
"Our problem -- the problem of Stalin's genocide of the Crimean Tatar
people -- is an undeniable fact, so I believe all countries, the United
Nations, and the European Union will recognize it and will decide that it
was indeed genocide," Dagci said.
Many Tatars have since returned to Crimea, but have been unable to
reclaim valuable land and property that was theirs before the deportations.
The Tatar Congress delegates called on the Council of Europe and the
European Union to make Ukraine's possible membership in the EU and
World Trade Organization contingent on their recognition of Crimean
Tatar rights. -30-
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Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.
========================================================
16 . FIRST LADY MEETS UKRAINIAN FEDERATION OF AMERICA
LEADERS & U.S. MEDICAL EXPERTS ON MEDICAL COOPERATION
Blood safety, hemophilia diagnosing, prevention of virus infections, HIV
Press office of President Victor Yushchenko of Ukraine
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 6 December 2005
KYIV - Kateryna Yushchenko, Head of the Supervisory Council of the
Ukraine 3000 Charitable Foundation, met with a group of U.S. citizens
that are interested in medical cooperation with the foundation.
Zhenya Chernyak, Chair of the Ukrainian Federation of America, Vira
Andrushchuk, President of the Ukrainian Federation of America, Evhen
Movchan, President of the Medical Institute, Charles Doerthy [Dougherty],
former U.S. Congressman, Roksolana Gorbova, Vice-president of the the
World Federation of Ukrainian Medical Association, Vira Pavlyuk, Hospital
to Hospital Project Coordinator, Valentyn Snisar, Deputy Health Minister,
Yuriy Derpak, Chief Doctor of the road station of blood transfusion of the
South-Western Railway were present at the meeting.
The participants of the meeting discussed ways to cooperate in the fields of
'blood safety', hemophilia diagnosing and treatment, and prevention of virus
infections and HIV. They also spoke about projects to train Ukrainian
doctors by applying modern technologies and methods. Then they
considered ways to implement the Hospital to Hospital program.
Following the meeting the American delegation went to the station of blood
transfusion of the South-Western Railway, and Yuriy Derpak showed them
round the facility. The guests suggested they should launch their first
project at this station to spread their experience throughout the country.
On December 6, the delegation is scheduled to visit Kharkiv to introduce
some new technologies in medical education. -30-
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17 . BENEFIT CONCERT-CHRISTMAS: UKRAINIAN ORPHANAGES:
Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 7:00 P.M. Falls Church, Virginia
Victor Visotsky, Falls Church, Virginia, Monday, Dec 12, 2005
FALLS CHURCH, Virginia, A concert that will benefit more than 900
children in 4 orphanages and T.B. Sanitarium in Ukraine will be held
on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. at 103 W. Columbia
Street in Falls Church, Virginia.
In program will feature The Washington Balalaika Society Slavic
Male Chorus and the Youth Group of the New Life Church
Do not miss this opportunity to be blessed by helping orphanages!
WHEN: Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 7:00 PM
WHERE: 103 W. Columbia Street, Falls Church, VA 22046
COST: Free Admission, An Offering will be taken. All proceeds
will be used for helping children. Contributions (tax deductible)
of any amount will be joyfully accepted.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Victor Visotsky, Tel. 571-594-4658. http://www.newlifedc.org
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18 . CHIEF RABBI OF UKRAINE AND FJC MAKE HEADWAY ON
RESTITUTION OF JEWISH RELIGIOUS PROPERTY
Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS (FJC)
Moscow, New York, Friday, December 9 2005
KIEV, Ukraine - Yesterday, the Ukraine State Department for Religious
Affairs hosted a meeting between Department Director Igor Bondarchuk and
national Jewish leaders - Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Azriel Chaikin and the
Chairman of the Board for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine,
Rabbi Meir Stambler. The Deputy Director of this department, Nikolayi
Novichenko, also took part in the conversation.
The two parties discussed several pressing issues regarding the activity of
the Chief Rabbinate of Ukraine and that of the FJC Ukraine, as well as
problems concerning the development of Jewish religious life in the country.
Mr. Bondarchuk assured the Jewish leaders of the support and cooperation
that Ukraine's religious organizations enjoy concerning the free development
of religious communal life.
The participants also addressed problems regarding the restitution of
religious property to Ukraine's Jewish communities. Igor Bondarchuk
promised to thoroughly consider this issue and to assist in returning Jewish
religious property back to its original owners.
Rabbi Chaikin and Rabbi Meir Stambler informed Igor Bondarchuk and his
deputy of the multitude of public Chanukah events that will soon take place
in Jewish communities across Ukraine.
They also spoke about the festive campaigns being led by the Chief Rabbinate
and the FJC Ukraine, including the distribution of 60,000 parcels containing
Chanukah Menorahs and holiday booklets, which are to be delivered to Jewish
homes throughout the country.
The officials from the Department for Religious Affairs expressed heartfelt
congratulations to Rabbi Chaikin, Rabbi Stambler and all Jews of Ukraine on
the approaching holiday. As the meeting drew to an end, the Jewish leaders
presented a Chanukah Menorah to the Department's Director and wished the
officials all the best in their work and their other deeds. -30-
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19 . ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE (ADL) TO U.S. HOUSE
DELAY GRANTING UKRAINE NORMAL TRADE RELATIONS
The university MAUP, actively promotes anti-Semitism
Anti-Defamation League (ADL), New York, NY, Tue, Dec 6, 2005
NEW YORK - The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has urged the U.S.
House of Representatives to delay approval of Ukraine's graduation from the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974, thus continuing to deny it Permanent
Normal Trade Relations, while anti-Semitism persists at worrying levels.
The Jackson-Vanik Amendment was passed in 1974 to pressure the former
Soviet Union, which had imposed a "diploma tax" for Jews who sought to
emigrate, to end the "diploma tax" and eliminate barriers to free
emigration.
The Amendment links U.S. trade benefits, now known as Normal Trade
Relations (NTR), to the emigration and human rights policies of Communist
or formerly Communist countries.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:
"We expect more from democratic states than we do from totalitarian ones.
This year alone has seen a steep increase in acts of violence and vandalism
against Jews across Ukraine. There have been attempts to ban everything from
Jewish organizations to Jewish holy texts. The university MAUP, with more
than 50,000 students enrolled, actively promotes anti-Semitism of the most
vicious kind.
While we recognize that Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko has issued a
statement against anti-Semitism, we believe the government must go beyond
words and take the kind of strong action we expect from a democracy. Until
then there is no reason for the House of Representatives to agree to remove
Ukraine from Jackson-Vanik and grant beneficial trading status.
We should remember that it was the struggle against anti-Semitism which
inspired Jackson-Vanik in the first place. That struggle is not over."
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading
organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that
counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry. -30-
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========================================================
20 . WHY I HATE BEING THE TALLEST MAN IN THE WORLD
Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk stands 8ft 4 ins tall
"I'm the tallest man but I often feel one of the most helpless.
This life is for smaller people."
Exclusive From Will Stewart In Podoliantsy, Ukraine
Mirror.co.uk, Online Edition of The Daily Mirror
London, United Kingdom, 12 December 2005
PODOLIANTSY, Ukraine - HE IS the world's most reluctant record
breaker. But Leonid Stadnyk's credentials are plain for all to see.
Standing at 8ft 4ins he is the tallest man on the planet. And still growing.
But the official record - as defined by the Guinness World Records - goes
to a Mongolian man by the name of Xi Shun, who is a whole seven inches
shorter.
The reason? Quite simply Leonid, 35, - who lives in the village of
Podoliantsy in Ukraine - hates his height and doesn't want to be famous
because of it.
In his small three-room home there is no bell, but the bark of his dogs
brings him outside as if in slow motion. He contorts his vast frame to get
through his front door - and as he straightens up again his head towers
above the apple tree and seems for a moment to disappear into the murky
clouds.
His handshake, unintentionally, almost crushes my knuckles. "I don't want or
need the fame this would bring so I have no desire to be in this Guinness
book," says Leonid softly and seriously, shaking his large head.
"To me, my height is a curse, a punishment from God, not something to
celebrate." He even shuns looking at himself in the mirror.
And here is why the Guinness records people are in such a pickle. They
have written to Leonid asking to check his vital statistic, but he's not
interested. "I refuse to be measured all the time," he fumes. "Why should
I? What is to be gained from it? "I have more important things to do, like
getting through the survival course that is our life in Ukraine."
That's despite being on course, within a few years, to be the tallest person
ever. This record is held American Robert Pershing Wadlow, who reached
8ft 11in before his death in 1940. "It's true I am still growing," explains
a mournful Leonid. "It is a terrible nuisance to me."
Unable to verify his measurements, the 2006 Guinness edition can do little
else than name Xi Shun as the world's tallest man. "At the moment, we still
have the Mongolian guy as the record holder," explains a Guinness
spokeswoman patiently.
"We have contacted Stadnyk, but he seems very shy. He doesn't want us
around. So we have to stick to what we have." At school, ironically, the
Ukrainian was just about the smallest boy in his class. They used to call
him the Soviet equivalent of "titch". Academically, though, he was streets
ahead of his peers.
His life could have been so different if ham-fisted Soviet surgeons had not
bungled the operation on a benign brain tumour when he was 12. The surgery
cranked into overdrive his pituitary gland, which is responsible for
generating the hormones that stimulate growth. His condition, gigantism,
makes him grow at roughly a foot every three years.
It means he has size 27 shoes, which have to be specially made for his feet,
now some 17 inches in length. His gargantuan palms measure more than a foot
in diameter. And before he had a bed made to measure, he had to join two
together.
There is a sadness and a loneliness about this gentle giant. He blames his
height for many of the woes blighting his life in this downtrodden village.
"I was a vet and loved my work," he says, smiling a huge smile at the
memory. "But gradually I found that I couldn't get the shoes I needed in
winter to protect me from the frostbite. I couldn't keep on with this work."
Reluctantly, he gave up his job at the Yuri Gagarin Collective Farm - named
after another small man who became a giant, the 5ft 2 first man in space.
He worked instead on the family smallholding, growing fruit and vegetables
and tending the cows, pigs, horse and hens. "Stooping from my height to
pull up the weeds is not easy. It puts a lot of strain on my back.
"I'm the tallest man but I often feel one of the most helpless. This life is
for smaller people."
He remains deeply attached to his 63-year-old mother Halyna, who is now
disabled after suffering a serious hip injury. He spends his week working
his 1.8 hectare smallholding from before dawn until well after dusk. Even
so, the family cannot afford the medical costs to get her treated.
Locals say there have been women in his life - though if there is anyone
special now he is keeping quiet about her. Women supposedly like big men,
but there's no evidence of it here.
"I have a lot of acquaintances but no true good friends," he admits
honestly. "My mother is the closest person in the world to me. Maybe our
village is too small to meet more people, but I think it's because I'm so
different.
"If I could have one wish in my life, it would be that my mother could be
cured of her pain. "But if I could have two wishes, the second would be that
I could be just a normal size."
He'd love to come down from his tower, which he feels imprisons him. "This
world is not made for people my height. I dream about being the same size as
normal people. Alas, I know it can never happen."
LEONID'S GIANT APPETITE
Leonid says he eats roughly 20 per cent more than the average man - and
drinks twice as much.
Breakfast: Semolina and pumpkin porridge and four fried eggs cooked
by his mother.
Lunch: A huge bowl of Ukrainian borscht plus a dozen or so potatoes
grown in his smallholding.
Evening meal: Golubtsy, a local dish made from stewed cabbage rolls
stuffed with meat and rice. "This is my favourite," he says. -30-
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21 . EUROPE FEATURES: UKRAINE'S ORANGE REVOLUTION
OUTSIDE VIEW: COMMENTARY
Contributed by Taras Kuzio and Jennifer Moroney
United Press International (UPI), Washington, D.C., Tue, Dec 13, 2005
WASHINGTON, DC, - Almost a year after Viktor Yushchenko became
president of Ukraine last January -- following his election as a pro-reform,
pro-Western candidate -- the nation faces tough new challenges as it moves
closer to its goal of integrating into the Euro-Atlantic community.
Yushchenko came to power after losing a first presidential election that was
riddled with fraud. The reformist Orange Revolution sparked street
demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in favor of
Yushchenko, leading to a second election that he won.
But the president`s problems today won`t be solved by demonstrations,
rallies and speeches. He must govern while grappling with challenges greater
than any Ukraine has faced since it won independence from the Soviet Union
in 1991. To solve these problems, eloquent words and cheering crowds are no
substitute for the eloquence of action.
The Orange Revolution and Yushchenko`s election enabled Ukraine to resume
its transition to democracy and a market economy, an effort that stalled
under the semi-authoritarian and corrupt former President Leonid Kuchma.
Now greater effort needs to be undertaken in this area.
To show the Ukrainian people that the revolution has changed their lives and
not just their government, Yushchenko and his government need to
institutionalize freedom of the press, democratize the state and build on
the rebirth of civil society. A key step in this direction will take place
in January, when Ukraine will change from a Soviet-type presidential system
to a parliamentary system commonly found in much of Europe.
Once the parliamentary system is in place, Ukraine needs to ensure it holds
a free and fair parliamentary election in 2006. This would prove to the
watching world that the nation is fully committed to a democratic path.
As Ukraine implements the rule of law, it also needs to speed up the
campaign against corruption and organized crime. This should include holding
accountable those high-ranking Kuchma officials implicated in abuse of
office, election fraud and the killing of journalist Georgy Gongadze.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a sharp reprimand
to Ukraine for failing to bring high-ranking officials from the Kuchma
regime to justice. This was followed by a European Court of Human Rights
ruling that said Ukrainian authorities failed to protect the life of
Gongadze and mishandled the investigation into his kidnapping and murder
five years ago. The ability of the Ukrainian courts to bring those
responsible for Gongadze`s murder to justice will be closely monitored.
With the election of Yushchenko, Ukraine has a chance to join NATO and
eventually the European Union. After the latest NATO-Ukraine Commission
meeting in Vilnius in late October, Ukrainian leaders now have five months
in which to encourage the United States and NATO to invite Ukraine into
NATO`s accession process -- known as MAP (Membership Action Plan) --
in mid 2006. If the invitation is extended, Ukraine would join current MAP
members Croatia, Albania and Macedonia.
A particularly bright spot for Ukraine is the positive and proactive
relationship of the Ukrainian armed forces with the U.S. Department of
Defense. In this regard, the United States has been working to help Ukraine
to achieve its defense reform, military professionalization, and
capacity-building goals. Much of this activity is focused on eventually
bringing Ukraine in line with the NATO membership criteria.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is now an advocate of Ukrainian
NATO membership. Such membership would serve a step toward European
Union membership, which could realistically come during a second term for
President Yushchenko after 2010 if he wins re-election.
Under former President Kuchma, relations between Ukraine and the European
Union were unproductive. This was mostly because the Ukrainian government
was unwilling to implement the necessary political and economic reforms
required to entice the EU into offering Ukraine an associate agreement,
which is a half-step to full EU membership. Under the current regime, which
is more committed to Euro-Atlantic integration, real progress is likely.
Ukraine`s democratic revolution followed Georgia`s a year earlier and
Serbia`s in 2000. Yet, of all three revolutions, it is Ukraine`s that has
the best chance to succeed in building on these democratic breakthroughs and
consolidating a democratic market economy.
The outcome of the 2006 elections is as important as the process. An
invitation to join NATO and eventual integration into the European Union
is not likely to occur if pro-reform forces fail to win a parliamentary
majority.
To win NATO and eventually EU membership, the Orange Revolution
coalition will have to unite under a common goal -- Euro-Atlantic
integration by way of staunch political and economic reforms in Ukraine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Taras Kuzio is a visiting professor in international affairs at George
Washington University and the author of 'Ukraine: Perestroika to
Independence.' Jennifer Moroney is a political scientist at the RAND
Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.)
(United Press International`s 'Outside View' commentaries are written by
outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The
views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press
International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original
submissions are invited.)
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22 . POLICY WATCH: NO MORE COLOR REVOLUTIONS?
COMMENTARY: By Mark N. Katz, UPI Correspondent
Washington, D.C., Sunday, December 11, 2005
WASHINGTON - Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution, Ukraine's 2004 Orange
Revolution and Kyrgyzstan's 2005 Tulip Revolution resulted in new leaders
who advocated democracy rising to power in all three of these post-Soviet
states.
The success of these three democratic "color revolutions" (as they
have become known) also led to expectations that similar ones might
oust ex-communist leaders elsewhere in the former USSR.
But after the staging of elections with results favorable to the
authoritarian regimes in Azerbaijan in November and Kazakhstan in
December, it appears increasingly unlikely there will be any more color
revolutions any time soon. The post-Soviet authoritarian rulers have
become more adept at thwarting them.
The three color revolutions so far occurred as a result of widespread
protest over falsified election results in these countries.
Factors contributing to these protests were:
1) the presence of non-governmental organizations promoting
democratization both from the West and recently democratized countries;
2) the ability of these groups to conduct exit polls that credibly
challenged the results announced by the regimes;
3) the ability of the foreign and domestic media to focus national and
international attention on these protests; and
4) the inability of authoritarian regimes to prevent widespread protest
from erupting combined with an unwillingness to take forceful action to
suppress it.
Increasingly fearful of being ousted in a similar manner, other ex-communist
authoritarian rulers have taken steps to prevent these factors from
occurring in their countries. They have placed tighter limits on the ability
of foreign and domestic NGOs to engage in democracy promotion.
They have also acted to prevent independent exit polls from being conducted
on election day. They have limited the ability of foreign journalists to
enter their countries or moving about in them without government
surveillance. They have dealt even more forcefully with local journalists
criticizing the conduct of elections.
Finally, they have imposed greater restrictions on the ability of the public
to protest election results, and have been quicker to use force to prevent
protests from becoming too large for them to suppress quickly and easily.
The Putin administration has taken advantage of other post-Soviet
authoritarian leaders' fears of color revolutions. Until recently, many of
these regimes had reacted to Russia's often crude efforts to dominate them
politically and economically by turning to the United States for protection.
The Kremlin, however, has actively promoted these regimes' fears the United
States is the instigator of democratic revolution. And indeed, many of these
regimes have turned back toward Moscow for protection from what they see
as a greater threat from Washington. While they see Moscow as wanting to
dominate them, this is preferable to post-Soviet authoritarian leaders than
being ousted.
But while the Kremlin and other post-Soviet authoritarian regimes claim
America is the instigator of the color revolutions, this is simply not true.
The U.S. government does not have the power to order hundreds of
thousands of protesters to take to the streets for days or weeks in
inclement weather.
It was popular outrage in these countries over fraudulent election results
that did this. Western NGOs and media, and even the U.S. government,
publicized and facilitated this to some extent, but did not cause it.
Limiting and controlling the presence of Western non-governmental
organizations and media may indeed result in the Kremlin and its
authoritarian allies elsewhere in the former Soviet Union being able to
prevent further democratic revolutions. But this will not end the popular
discontent over fraudulent election results and authoritarian rule that is
the principal cause of them.
The suppression of peaceful democratic revolutionary movements may not
lead to the stability of authoritarian regimes, but instead to the rise of
revolutionary movements that are neither peaceful nor democratic. The
Russians have been unable to suppress a few thousand such revolutionaries
in Chechnya. It is highly doubtful that they could suppress Islamic
revolutionary movements that could rise up any country in Central Asia,
much less all of it.
If the net result of Moscow's efforts to suppress the impetus for democratic
revolution in the Muslim republics of the former USSR is to increase the
prospects for Islamic revolution in them, the Kremlin may well come to
regret what it is doing now. -30-
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Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George
Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
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23 . THE ORANGE REVOLUTION: PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
REMARKS: By Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary for
Democracy and Global Affairs, United States Department of State
Roundtable: The Orange Revolution: A Year After
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Washington, DC, Dec 5, 2005
Thank you Leon [Leon Aron, AIE] for that introduction, and thanks to
you and your staff for organizing this roundtable. It is a pleasure for me
to be back at the American Enterprise Institute. I would like to recognize
Anders Aslund of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
Taras Kuzio of George Washington University, who along with Leon
will contribute to what I am sure will be a very insightful panel
discussion.
Thomas Jefferson once said "We are not to expect to be translated from
despotism to liberty in a featherbed." Then, and now, a stable, prosperous,
orderly democracy is not something that any people can create in short order
and without arduous toils. At times -- indeed frequently -- the obstacles
can seem daunting and even insurmountable. But if you step back and look at
the sweep of history, especially modern history, it becomes clear that this
process often succeeds.
Haltingly, in fits and spurts, democracy, liberty and the rule of law have
taken hold in country after country. Such was the process in our own
nation -- we weren't perfect at the creation -- and such is the nature of
Ukraine. But the democratic evolution there is quite promising.
A year ago Saturday, the Supreme Court of Ukraine, acting on the clear
signal from the people of Ukraine, nullified a flawed election, upheld the
rule of law, and cleared the path that led to a true expression of the will
of the Ukrainian people. It marked a turning point in a stunning series of
events that would culminate in the inauguration of President Viktor
Yushchenko.
I had the honor of accompanying then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who
led the American delegation to the inauguration. The atmosphere on that
unforgettable day was truly electric. Thousands of people had lined the
streets, many of whom had camped out. Orange banners, caps, and scarves
were everywhere. There was joy and euphoria that Ukrainians finally had
swept away the last vestiges of authoritarian rule and corruption, and
emerged as strong stakeholders in building a new, democratic Ukraine.
The atmosphere was both exciting and auspicious when President Yushchenko
made an official visit to the United States in April of this year. Congress
gave him the honor of an address to a joint session, which I also attended.
Yushchenko expressed gratitude for being invited to speak from the same
rostrum as great leaders like Winston Churchill and Lech Walesa.
He noted that "The Orange Revolution gave evidence that Ukraine is an
advanced European nation, sharing the great values of the Euro-Atlantic
civilization. Its citizens stand ready to guard their rights and freedoms...
For us, a European future is a powerful incentive to attain high political,
social and economic standards."
He was also received at the White House by President Bush, where the
two leaders launched a strategic partnership. President Bush noted that
Yushchenko was the first foreign leader he called after his inaugural
address last January, and said "You are a friend of our country and you
are an inspiration to all who love liberty."
The New Century Agenda Joint Statement by Presidents Bush and Yushchenko
focuses on concrete areas for cooperation. These include promoting democracy
and freedom, fighting terrorism, combating weapons proliferation, supporting
Ukraine's NATO aspirations, strengthening economic reform to increase
prosperity, combating trafficking in persons, and cooperating to fight HIV/
AIDS.
One year later, the Orange Revolution and its promise continue to inspire
Ukrainians and others. Much progress has been made. The Orange Revolution
brought together Ukrainians with diverse political views, but who were
united by the understanding that without a truly free democracy, their
voices would not be heard. Their unity was decisive. The tremendous
diversity among the Orange Revolutionaries also meant that as the political
process developed, differences would have to be addressed.
There has been much discussion about the breakup of the Orange Coalition
since the government was dismissed in September. Some question the stability
and future of Ukraine's democratic trajectory. Others see a chance to
rekindle the excitement and dynamism associated with the Orange Revolution.
Events of the past year remind us that we need to have realistic
expectations. No country has made the transition from Communism to
democracy and a market economy without some turmoil. This is normal, as
the emerging democracies in new Europe showed in the 1990s. Coalitions,
parties, alliances and individual players rise and fall -- this is part of
the very nature of the evolution of democracy.
Ukraine has encountered difficulties in turning from the exhilaration of the
Orange Revolution to the hard work of transforming Ukraine into a modern,
European state. But it is important to acknowledge the progress Ukraine has
made over the past year.
Today, the Ukrainian people have a sense of ownership in their country that
did not exist before the Orange Revolution. They understand the power of
democracy and freedom, and they are exercising that power every day.
Particularly impressive has been the development of civil society.
Today, Ukrainian civil society is rich and diverse, featuring hundreds of
groups, institutions and associations, which deal with a broad range of
national and local issues. During my most recent visit, I had an opportunity
to meet with some of the activists, who are using their new freedoms to
unleash their talents and creativity in ways designed to solve problems, and
empower people. It is, of course, the existence of a vibrant civil society
that is a key ingredient of a stable and mature democracy.
Ukraine has made significant progress in democratizing, and the world will
be closely watching the March Rada elections -- a real test of the Orange
Revolution's democratic gains. It is important the campaign and election-day
vote be free and fair, meeting international standards.
The success of these elections is doubly important as Ukraine has become an
important player in, and role model for, building democracy in the region.
Events in Ukraine have been an inspiration for those who still live under
governments that are not in power with the consent of the governed.
Ukraine is already actively promoting democracy abroad. This summer, the
presidents of Ukraine and Georgia signed the Borjomi Declaration, which
calls for leaders of countries within the Baltic-Black Sea-Caspian area to
create a Community of Democratic Choice.
They called on participants to commit to "freeing our region from all
remaining lines of division, from violations of human rights, from frozen
conflicts, opening a new era of democracy."
On December 2, I had the honor to represent the United States at the
inaugural session of the Community for Democratic Choice forum in Kiev.
Representatives from 23 countries, including nine heads of state, came to
this Summit to affirm their commitment to working together to consolidate
the democratic process through internal reform, and a sharing of best
practices with one another.
There will be follow-on meetings held throughout the region to develop and
implement action plans. This project, which the United States strongly
supports, is an excellent example of a region coming together on its own
initiative to take action -- in the spirit of the Community of Democracies,
and in response to the call for such action at the ministerial in Chile
earlier this year.
The prospects for democracy and freedom reaching Belarus are significantly
enhanced by international cooperation and aid involving Ukraine We are also
pleased that Ukraine continues to be committed to fighting terrorism, and
has expressed interest in assisting Iraq in training and reconstruction
projects. Moreover, we have valued Ukraine's role and contributions to many
international peacekeeping missions.
Together we have made good progress on our non-proliferation agenda, and
welcome Ukraine as a key partner in preventing illegal arms exports.
Ukraine's recent ratification of the IAEA Additional Protocol is highly
commendable. The U.S. led the initiative to offer Ukraine Intensified
Dialogue on NATO Membership Aspirations. Ukraine's relationship with
NATO now depends on Ukraine -- its ability to forge domestic support for
NATO membership and its willingness to meet NATO's performance-based
standards.
Following the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has renewed its commitment to
fighting corruption and strengthening rule of law. Some of the work in this
area goes hand-in-hand with streamlining and clarifying rules of investment,
so that abuses like the tainted privatizations of the Kuchma years will not
happen again, and that future steps toward a market economy will be taken on
a transparent basis. Fighting corruption is not easy -- but it is essential.
Indeed, one of the key characteristics of the Orange Revolution was that it
sought to bring in a new, clean team. Living up to those expectations is
critical to demonstrate to the Ukrainian people the differences between the
old and new government.
Ukraine has also reinvigorated efforts to join the WTO. It is a reflection
of Ukraine's commitment to participate fully in the community of democracies
and market economies. It is an important indication of Ukraine's desire to
base its economy on a system based on internationally accepted rules.
Toward that end, the Rada has passed legislation that will strengthen
protection of intellectual property rights and reduce barriers to trade.
Other pieces of legislation needed to join the WTO have faced stiffer
opposition by protectionist interests. We still need to see more progress
before Ukraine will be ready to join, but we are working closely with
Ukraine to realize that goal at the earliest possible date.
Ukraine now has law enforcement dedicated to fighting trafficking in
persons. Senior Ukrainian government officials, including Ukraine's First
Lady, have raised awareness of this key rule of law and human rights issue
by speaking out against trafficking. We are encouraging Ukraine to keep up
the pressure by ensuring convicted traffickers receive sentences that
adequately reflect the heinous nature of this crime.
An important part of my trip to Kiev last week was bringing together
American medical professionals, under the leadership of Representative
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, with Ukrainian counterparts and government ministers,
to determine how we can further assist the children victims of the Chernobyl
disaster. The United States has already provided more than $52 million worth
of humanitarian assistance, and we plan an additional $15 million shipment
next year.
There is also a strong desire on the part of private American citizens to
help. I visited the Kiev Clinical Children's and Maternal Hospital, together
with the Congressman and physicians, and heard directly from the Ukrainian
doctors about their training and equipment needs, which we will seek to
address through this public-private partnership.
The U.S. stands ready to assist Ukraine in all its efforts towards a better
future. Free and fair parliamentary and local elections in March 2006,
continued progress on economic reforms, and vigorous anti-corruption efforts
are crucial. These are important initiatives that must be seen through to
success: Ukraine's goal of joining NATO and the WTO are dependent on
progress in these areas.
We have every expectation that they will succeed, and that the inspiring
democratic transformation there will continue. When I spoke here at AEI,
almost a year ago to the day, about events in Ukraine, I quoted the famous
Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.
There is a monument dedicated to the Ukrainian people and him near Dupont
Circle and he continues to serve as a symbol of the quest for Ukrainian
freedom. "Will there be truth among people?" Shevchenko wrote 144 years
ago, "There must be, otherwise the sun will rise and set on fire the whole
land."
Today, to a greater extent than anytime in recent history there is indeed
truth among the people of Ukraine. While hurdles to progress may at times
seem insurmountable, as we look back to Ukraine before the Orange
Revolution we can see very significant progress. It is my hope and
expectation that this evolution will continue. -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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========================================================
24 . ANNA OF KYIV, QUEEN OF FRANCE
Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D. in history, head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve, tells a story of
Anna, daughter of an eleventh-century ruler of Kyiv, and Queen of France.
By Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D, Head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve
Welcome to Ukraine magazine, Pages 44-47
Kyiv, Ukraine, Issue 4 (35), November 2005
A monument to the eleventh-century French queen, Anna (Anne) of Kyiv,
daughter of Grand Duke Yaroslav I, was erected in the town of Senlisse on
June 22 2005. Among the guests of honour at the unveiling ceremony were
President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko, UNESCO Director General
Koichiro Matsuura, and Mayor of Senlisse, Hartun Daien.
President Yushchenko said at the ceremony that it was an important event in
the development of cultural relations between France and Ukraine, and
evidence of the fact that "Ukraine and France met in the ancient town of
Senlisse in order to erect still another bridge between the histories of our
two countries."
ANNA OF KYIV, QUEEN OF FRANCE
Among the rulers of the state usually referred to by historians as Kyivan
Rus (or in more recent times, and in Ukraine in particular, as Rus-Ukraine),
Grand Prince Yaroslav I the Wise (978-1054) who, in the words of a
chronicle, ruled, as "the sole sovereign of the land of the Rus" from 1036
until his death in 1054, is considered to be one of the most significant
figures.
At the start of his reign in Novgorod, where he had been placed by his
father, Volodymyr, the ruler of Kyiv, and thus titular head of Kyivan Rus,
Yaroslav, defied his father and superior, and Volodymyr threatened war, but
the preparations for the war were aborted because of Volodymyr's sudden
death.
Yaroslav proceeded to consolidate his power by eliminating all other
pretenders to the throne of Kyiv, among who were his next of kin. Once he
secured his position of the sole ruler of the Land of Rus, he concentrated
on making the country he ruled a major power in Eastern Europe.
The status of the city of Kyiv was raised to that of a major European
capital, and its magnificence was marvelled at and described in laudatory
terms by foreign west European travellers.
Yaroslav fought and drove off numerous nomads of the steppes whose
disruptive raids were put an effective end to during his reign. He
encouraged construction of churches modelled on the best Byzantine
landmarks, he promoted learning and the arts.
Discarding the practice of having many wives and concubines (his father was
said to run a harem of 300 women), he seemed, in his years as the sole
Kyivan ruler, to be content with one wife, a Swedish princess, by whom he
had many children, nine of whom survived into adulthood.
Proving to be a prolific father as he was a wise ruler, he was naturally
concerned with arranging their future and he successfully had his children
married to foreign princes and princesses. Arguably, the most successful
arrangement was the marriage of his daughter Anna (Anne) to the then king of
France, Henry I*.
According to the Annals of the City of Maux, France, in the year 1048, a
French embassage, led by the Bishop of the city of Maux Gautier and minister
of the French Court Gasseline de Chalignac, arrived in Kyiv with a mission
of arranging marriage of the king of France Henry I with Anna, one of the
daughters of Grand Duke Yaroslav I.
PROPOSALS AND ALLIANCES
Why Anne? Why Kyiv, which was quite a distance away from France? There
is no consensus among the historians as to why the king of France wanted
to marry a princess from the ruling house of Kyivan Rus, the state that had
no political or economic relations with France, and that was situated at the
outskirts of Europe.
Several reasons are quoted as possible motivations for a French king's wish
to marry a princess from such a far away, alien country. The Roman Pope had
issued an edict that banned marriage between close relatives (in fact, all
the cousins seven times removed were included into the ban), both the
inbreeding adverse effects which had become visible, and religious grounds
being the possible grounds for the edict.
A more plausible explanation involves the rising power and might of the
Kyivan state alliance with which could come in handy one way or the other.
Henry I, feeling rather insecure on his throne, could have wanted to
establish links with a dynasty that claimed several princesses of the royal
blood, Byzantine and Swedish - it would add glamour to his own Capetian
dynasty, Byzantium still ranking very high in the early medieval Europe.
Henry, a widower after his first wife's death (she was Mathilde, a niece of
the German Emperor Henry I) could also have wanted to bring new, fresh blood
into the veins of his successors. He could have been told about Anna's
beauty and other attractive qualities such as literacy and sapience by the
Bishop of the City of Chalon-sur-Marne Roget who had visited Kyiv some time
before (this visit is mentioned in a gloss on the margin of the
twelfth-century Psalter of Odalric).
Anna who was twenty one when the French embassage arrived, had been earlier
proposed in marriage to the German Emperor Henry I - the one whose niece had
been married to the French King - but the marriage negotiations had fallen
through.
Henry could have been aware of that circumstance too and he, maybe a
romantic, might have had a good reason to go ahead and marry a golden-haired
girl from an exotic land. Such a marriage would also be a good way of
spiting the German emperor and establishing a link that would be helpful in
possible future confrontations resulting from the emperor's expansionist
policies.
Whatever the reasons, Henry must have found it to be a good bargain to marry
Anna, a young, well-read and beautiful woman, whose lineage was even more
illustrious than that of the French king himself. As a matter of fact, it
was quite unclear who was doing favour to who - France to Kyiv or Kyiv to
France, the latter being much more likely.
Yaroslav's wife was Ingegerd, the daughter of the Swedish king Olaf (she was
rechristened Iryna after marriage); their son Izyaslav was married to
Gertruda, the sister of the Polish king Kazimir; their son Svyatoslav was
married to the sister of the Bishop of Trier, Burchart; their son Vsevolod
was married to a daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX; their
daughter Yelizaveta was married to Harald the Brave, an intrepid Viking with
a valid claim for the Norwegian throne which became his in 1047; their
daughter Anastasiya was married to Andrew I, the king of Hungary. To marry
into a family with such royal connections was, no doubt, to acquire a great
asset.
Anna arrived in France in the late autumn of 1048. Her wedding and
coronation took place in May 1049, the Holy Trinity Day, in the Cathedral of
the city of Rheims, long the site of the coronation of French kings. During
the coronation ceremony, which was conducted by the Archbishop of Rheims
Guy de Chatilion, Anna took her oath placing her hand on the Gospel that she
had brought from Kyiv.
This Gospel since then was used in the coronation ceremonies of the French
kings all down the line until Louis XIY. The last French king to take an
oath with his hand on this Gospel was Charles X (as king of France -
1824-1830). At present the book is kept in safety at the central library of
the city of Rheims.
Little is known of how Anna was received at the French court, or how soon
she learned the French language. Some tension could have arisen when Anna
failed to produce an heir who was much desired. She prayed hard, addressing
herself to God and to St Vincent, the patron saint of the French, asking for
the boon of a son.
She pledged to found a monastery if she was granted her request. And
finally, either thanks to her fervent prayers, or more likely to the
untiring efforts of her forty-five year old husband (rather an advanced age
by the eleventh-century standards) in 1053, she gave birth to her first-born
son who was christened Philip (one of the possible motivations that
determined the name of the child was Anna's lineage - her grandfather
Volodymyr, converted to Christianity, married a Byzantine princess, who
was a representative of the Byzantine Macedonian dynasty that claimed its
descent from the Macedonian king Philip).
In 1060 Henry I died leaving the throne to Philip who was only seven years
old then. Anna became the regent ruling the country in the name of her son.
And she did found a monastery dedicated to St Vincent in Senlisse, not far
from Paris.
Only a chapel has survived. There is a monument to Anne of Rus that stands
next to the chapel with an inscription on the pedestal that says, Anne of
Rus, Queen of France, Founder of this Church in 1066.
Philip was not her only child. Her son Robert died in adolescence, and her
son Hugh (Hugues) joined the first Crusades. He was also the founder of the
Orleans branch of the French royal house. The Capetian dynasty ruled in the
direct line until 1328, and, through its Valois, Orleans and Angouleme
branches, it lasted until the year 1589, when after the death of Henry III,
the first of the Bourbons became king.
Anna must have taken a certain part in running the affairs of the state
since some of the official documents of the times of her husband Henry I and
her son Philip bear her signature. One document, dating from 1063, the
charter of an abbey, bears her signature done in the Cyrillic, that is, Anna
the Queen, with the Cyrillic script used to render the French word.
An arranged marriage can hardly be a union of love, respect and duty being
more likely feelings, and it is not at all surprising that Anna fell in love
while still married to Henry. Her paramour was Raul III Peronn, Count of
Crepis and Valois, who was the first to succumb to the charms of the fair
queen.
Raul, a married man, was a descendant of Charlemagne and a powerful feudal
lord to be reckoned with. Pope Nicholas II, learning of the queens'
extramarital affair, sent her a message, admonishing her and reminding her
of her obligations and responsibility before God, her husband and her
children.
But even after the death of her husband, there must have been some obstacles
on her way to a second marriage and the enterprising and lovesick Raul
abducted her during a hunt in a forest in the vicinity of Senlisse, and
announced his marriage to Anna.
The next pope, Alexander II refused to recognize this marriage and insisted
that Raul's marriage to Agnes of Baraban remain valid. When Raul persisted,
the pope excommunicated him, but the count did not "return into the bosom of
his family" as he was urged to do, and lived with his beloved Anna until his
death in 1074.
Anna's regency officially ended in 1067 when Philip was fourteen and thought
fit to rule on his own. That means that Anna remained regent after she had
consorted with Raul. In 1071 Philip married Berthe of France and the
available evidence suggests that Anna was forced to leave the court
altogether and retire to her estates of Vernin of Chateaunef-sur-Loire.
There is some evidence that after the death of Raul she returned to the
court and was even engaged to a certain extent in the affairs of the state -
the document that confirms royal privileges to the Nunnery of the Virgin
bears her signature and she is referred to in it as "Mother of King Philip."
It is not known when Anna died or where she was buried. According to some
historians she returned to Kyiv to die; others claim that she died in France
and was buried in the Vilier Abbey not far from Forte-Aleps. Philip died in
1108 was buried in the Abbey of Saint Benut-sur-Loire. His tomb is still
extent.
In 1848, Antoine Marie Philippe Louis d'Orleans Duc de Montpensier
(1824-1890), the fifth son of the last king of France Louis Philippe came to
Russia on the invitation of Alexander III, tsar of Russia, to attend the
coronation ceremony.
He visited Kyiv and went to the Cathedral of Holy Sophia (Wisdom) of Kyiv
to worship and to pay homage to Grand Duke Yaroslav I who was buried in
the cathedral after his death in 1054.
The Grand Duke was Duc de Montpensier's distant ancestor through the
French Queen Anna of Rus. In 2001, another scion of the French royal family,
Charles Philippe Prince d'Orleans, went to the Holy Sophia Cathedral to pay
homage to the ruler of Kyiv who was one of his forbears.
The sarcophagus with the remains of Grand Duke Yaroslav still stands in
the side nave of the Holy Sophia Cathedral, a palpable link that unites the
histories of France and Ukraine. -30
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The reign of the King of France Henry I (c. 1008 - died Aug. 2, 1060) was
marked by struggles against rebellious vassals.The son of Robert II the
Pious and grandson of Hugh Capet, founder of the Capetian dynasty, Henry
was anointed king at Reims (1026) in his father's lifetime, following the
death of his elder brother Hugh.
His mother, Constance, however, favoured his younger brother Robert for the
throne, and civil war broke out on King Robert II's death (1031). The
younger Robert was given Burgundy in 1032, after Henry had sought refuge
with Robert, Duke of Normandy. From 1033 to 1043 Henry struggled with his
feudatories, notably Eudes of Blois and his brother Robert. In 1055, as the
result of an agreement made by Robert II, the county of Sens came to the
crown as the sole territorial gain of Henry's reign.
Henry helped William (the future William I of England), Robert's successor
as duke of Normandy, to quell his rebellious vassals at the Battle of
Val-aux-Dunes (1047), but he was thereafter usually at war with him - a
notable defeat for the king being that at Varaville (1058). Henry tried to
resist papal interference but could not prevent Pope Leo IX from holding a
council at Reims (1049). Philip, elder son of Henry's marriage to his second
wife, Anne of Kyiv, a Rus princess, was crowned in 1059.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The article is illustrated with pictures taken from the book Istorychni
Romany (Historical novels), by A. Ladynsky published in 1984. Artists -
Yevhen Kapustin and Yuliya Alekseyeva. Photos are from Nadiya
Nikitenko's archive.
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Which Roman Emperor was married to Livia Drusilla for 51 years? | US-Ukraine Business Council
Contributed by Taras Kuzio and Jennifer Moroney
United Press International (UPI), Washington, D.C., Tue, Dec 13, 2005
COMMENTARY: By Mark N. Katz, UPI Correspondent
Washington, D.C., Sunday, December 11, 2005
REMARKS: By Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary for
Democracy and Global Affairs, United States Department of State
Roundtable: The Orange Revolution: A Year After
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Washington, DC, Dec 5, 2005
Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D. in history, head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve, tells a story of
Anna, daughter of an eleventh-century ruler of Kyiv, and Queen of France.
By Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D, Head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve
Welcome to Ukraine magazine, Pages 44-47
Kyiv, Ukraine, Issue 4 (35), November 2005
========================================================
1 . UKRAINE NEEDS AN ECONOMIC PLAN
"If we, as Ukrainians, are as smart as it seems we are,
then we should make an effort not to be so poor."
COMMENTARY: Katerina Panova
Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec 07 2005
Both President Viktor Yushchenko and the government have, with impressive
thoroughness, started paying attention to the messages they've been sending
to businesspeople.
Last week, both Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov reassured
participants in an Economist-sponsored roundtable that reprivatization is
over with for good, that private property is sacred and untouchable, and
that protecting the rights of investors will be the government's key
operating principle.
Besides the generalities, some very concrete promises were also made: to
cancel all indisputable VAT claims until the end of the year, lower tax
rates, and reduce regulatory pressure.
Yekhanurov even admitted that he meets with business representatives a
minimum of twice a week - not just to flirt with them, but to understand the
logic behind the way they work. At the same time, he complained that no one
was yet taking a systematic view of things - each businessman comes only on
behalf of his own problems.
But it's hard to blame entrepreneurs for not hitting the government with
complex demands, given that the government itself hasn't formulated rules of
the game for business, with an eye towards developing the country's economy.
It's worth mentioning that during the independence era, Ukraine has more
than once tried to formulate such a program. There was President Leonid
Kuchma's 1994 report, "On the Road to Radical Economic Reforms," Valeriy
Pustovoytenko's plan for Ukraine through 2010, and Viktor Yanukovych's
strategy for economic and social development through 2015 - and that's far
from a full list.
However, all these fine starts somehow or other ended up as just piecemeal
projects, lacking any methodology. It's possible that what's at fault is the
lack of continuity of power in Ukraine: governments often change, and
instead of finishing the work of its predecessors, the new team prefers to
invent the wheel anew.
The business climate also suffers from this lack of consistency. Native
entrepreneurs need to know what conditions they're going to work under for
the next several years. And foreign investors find it problematic to invest
money in this country given its hazy economic situation.
After an almost two-year lull in Ukraine, there should now appear a
strategic plan - it's expected that Yushchenko will speak out about it in a
message to the Rada this January.
Judging from the pronouncements that the president and the prime minister
have made, it's clear that they're planning to liberalize the Ukrainian
economy. The main proof of this is Yushchenko's intriguing statement
that in the next three months a capital amnesty will be declared.
The idea is ambitious, but in light of the upcoming parliament elections
it's fantastic - it's hard to see how parliament deputies will approve the
necessary legislation, since in the eyes of the electorate such a move would
amount to "letting the oligarchs off the hook."
And the president didn't explain how he's going to motivate people to come
clean who are doing business off the books. The advantage they'll get from
legalization is doubtful, and as soon as it occurs, they're going to have to
pay 13 percent on their declared capital. The prime minister also still
hasn't been able to say how this notorious amnesty is going to be realized.
He did, however, explain in the most straightforward way that no one should
count on essential changes in tax legislation - because of the elections,
parliament simply won't have time to effect them, or to include them in the
2007 budget.
The obvious conclusion is that the government is hampered in its plans to
develop the country's economy by the election. The election is an enemy of
long-term planning, because it doesn't bring fast results.
At the same time, elections are part of the burden of democracy, and they
don't hamper Western politicians from drafting long-term economic policies
and resorting to unpopular methods in the interests of future progress.
But if the government can't allow itself to make its stand on liberalizing
the economy or to trust the market's invisible hand, then it can approach
the problem from the other side.
It can define priorities, and make developing them a long-term project.
Such priorities might be serious investments in the government's transport
potential, or in agricultural innovations.
If we, as Ukrainians, are as smart as it seems we are, then we should
make an effort not to be so poor. -30-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Katerina Panova is a reporter for Korrespondent magazine, in which
this article first appeared. Translated from Russian by Andrey Slivka.
[ return to index ] [The Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
2 . RADICAL REFORM NEEDED IN UKRAINE IMPOSSIBLE AT
PRESENT SAYS PRIME MINISTER YURIY YEKHANUROV
No pension, housing, public utility, health care, tax or administrative-
territorial reforms now and we cannot dare to begin structural reform.
Interfax, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, December 12, 2005
KYIV - It will be impossible to carry out radical reform in Ukraine
in the near future, Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov said in an
interview published in the Monday issue of Ekonomicheskiye
Izvestia.
"I think that Ukraine is prepared for reform, but the main problem
is reform technique. I have studied our constitution closely and have
realized that no reform can be achieved in the near future. Their
implementation would prove impossible," he said.
The time to have implemented reform was last spring, when the
authorities enjoyed "a colossal amount of confidence," Yekhanurov
said, adding that this window of opportunity had now been missed..
Ukraine will not be able to push through pensions or housing and
public utility reforms in the foreseeable future, the premier said. "Nor
will there be any health care or administrative-territorial reforms in
the near future and we cannot dare to begin structural reform.
We want to make the transformations painless. We are against
surgery, we want therapy, therefore we will develop slowly," he said.
Tax reform will not be quick either, Yekhanurov said, saying that
such reform may be possible in 2008.
Ukraine should use common sense in the development of the economy
and authorities' attitude to business, Yekhanurov said. Common sense
means that the government should not pressurize, but instead regulate
the solution of problems which economic entities are unable to solve on
their own," he said. -30-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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3 . UKRAINE GUARANTEES RUSSIAN GAS DELIVERIES TO EUROPE
Associated Press, Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, December 12, 2005
KIEV, Ukraine - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko promised Monday
that Ukraine will guarantee Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe, as
Moscow and Kiev bicker over gas prices in a dispute that could disrupt
supplies westward. The European Union gets almost half of its gas imports
from Russia, mostly piped through Ukraine.
"Ukraine has given a state guarantee that the transit will be secured, and
this guarantee is unconditional," Yushchenko said, according to his office.
Moscow has proposed more than tripling the price of gas from the current
US$50 per 1,000 cubic meters, a proposal rejected by Ukraine.
Ukraine was "ready to pay for gas exclusively on a market basis, however
with a gradual transition period," Yushchenko said, adding that he hoped
Russia would respond.
Ukrainian officials had earlier warned that if the price went above US$95
per 1,000 cubic meters, Ukrainian factories would stop being profitable.
The latest round of negotiations were underway in Moscow, and Yushchenko
expressed hope that "a mutually beneficial resolution" would be found. He
said that Ukraine's Fuel and Energy Minister, Ivan Plachkov, went to the
meeting armed with "a packet of proposals."
Amid late-night negotiations in Moscow, the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted
Russia's Ministry of Industry and Energy as saying that the two sides "hope
to reach an agreement on the question of gas before the end of the year." No
one could be reached at the ministry for comment late Monday night.
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4 . GAZPROM THREAT TO CUT SUPPLIES OF GAS TO EUROPE
By Tom Warner in Kiev, Financial Times
London, UK, Mon, December 12 2005
Russia's Gazprom on Monday threatened to reduce supplies to Europe next
year unless Ukraine agrees to pay market prices for its gas. Ukraine takes
some gas Russia exports via pipeline in lieu of transit payments.
Alexander Medvedev, the Gazprom executive in charge of exports, said
that if no agreement was reached by the new year, Gazprom would limit
the volume of gas crossing the Russia-Ukraine border from January 1 to
the amount contracted by its other European customers and excluding
any portion for Ukraine.
If Ukraine maintains it has the right to continue taking a portion of the
gas as payment for transit, Gazprom would regard that as "unsanctioned
removal of gas or, in other words, theft". "Ukraine would be fully
responsible for reduction of supplies to Europe", he said.
Russia has been demanding higher prices from most of its former satellites
in eastern Europe but this dispute is more serious because Ukraine's
pipelines carry about 20 per cent of the European Union's gas supply and
about 80 per cent of Russia's gas exports.
Ivan Plachkov, Ukraine's energy minister, was in Moscow on Monday for
talks with Viktor Khristenko, Russia's deputy prime minister for energy, and
Alexey Miller Gazprom chairman .
A contract signed in 2003 gives Ukraine the right to take about 18 per cent
of the Russian gas that transits through its pipelines. Russia wants a new
agreement that would see Ukraine make cash payments at "European" prices,
which would, in effect, lower transit costs.
Ukraine says the contract cannot be changed without its consent but the
threat of a cut-off could force it to reconsider. Ukraine gets about 30 per
cent of its gas through the gas-for-transit barter deal and also imports
another 45 per cent from Turkmenistan via Russia.
Last week, a Ukrainian presidential administration official said Russia's
naval base in Sevastopol could, in turn, be asked to pay "European" rents.
Russian officials said the base's contract was not negotiable. -30-
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5 . BUILDING COMPANIES CAUSE SECOND 2005 BOND BOOM
ANALYSIS: By Roman Bryl, Ukraine Analyst
IntelliNews-Ukraine This Week, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec 12, 2005
About 15 issuers make UAH 1.3bn bonds emissions
during last days of 2005 -----
During the last days of this year Ukraine will once again experience a boom
on the bond market. More than 15 issuers unveiled plans to make bonds
emissions. These issues will total UAH 1.35bn (USD 270mn) in December.
During the last 11 months the State Commission for Securities and Stock
Exchange (SCSSE) registered 233 bond emissions worth UAH 6.2bn
(USD 1.24bn).
To remind you Ukraine experienced the sharp increase of activity on local
bond market in H1/05. The total volume of bonds issued exceeded more than
3-fold the H1. Along with large amount of corporate bonds issues, this
summer we observed series of big municipal bonds issues.
SCSSE reported that 136 bonds issues were registered in H1 worth USD
613mn. June 2005 became the most active month for bond emissions with
USD 146.9mn of bonds issued.
Market conditions not good for bond placements -----
Nevertheless, the supply of bonds scheduled in December will exceed by
2-fold demand for them, some experts considered. The demand is low
because recently more profitable alternatives for investment appeared.
For example, interest rates for deposits are higher that for bonds.
Moreover, this situation resulted in a 17% rise of bonds' yield, but still
this was not enough to attract investors to bonds.
Besides liquidity on the interbank marked and the end of financial year
moved some banks to disperse their high risk and low profitability
securities, including bonds. The situation with oversupply on the bonds
market will, probably last until the beginning of 2006, when banks and
investment companies revise their investment plans.
Three municipalities to issue UAH 200mn bonds in December -----
In spite such situation on the market, issuers did not postpone their
emissions. For example, 3 municipalities plan to issue about UAH 200mn
bonds in December or in the beginning of 2006. That will be debut
emissions for Cherkassy and Vinnitsa (UAH 5mn and UAH 20mn
respectively).
Odessa municipality tries to restore its good credit reputation after
default in 1997 -----
Odessa intends to issue of municipal bonds worth UAH 150mn. The bonds
have 2-5 years maturity period and interest rate of 12-14%. The emission will
have several series: A series worth UAH 5mn and B series of UAH 70mn will be
placed for 3 years with 13% interest rate; period of circulation of UAH 30mn
C series bonds with 14% of interest rate will mature in 5 years.
UkrSibbank will stand as an underwriter of the emission. However, it is not
clear whether the bank will be the only the underwriter. Odessa municipality
still did not make the final decision regarding the numbers of underwriters.
When Odessa unveiled its plans to issue bonds investors gave positive
outlook on these securities. But taking into consideration current situation
on the market the bonds yield should be not less than 15% to attract
investors. These are bad news for Odessa officials that battle to restore
good credit reputation of the municipality.
To remind you in 1997 Odessa issued 1-year UAH 61mn bonds with 50%
interest rate. But in next year the municipality failed to pay off bonds.
On Jul 15, 2005 Odessa informed about its intention to issue UAH 300mn
bonds, but FinMin banned the emission because of the previous default.
After several months of consultations FinMin finally allowed Odessa to
issue bonds, but demanded to cut its volume 2-fold.
Banks also continue to be active on bond market -----
Besides municipalities building companies and banks will be the major
issuers in December. Banks will issue about UAH 220mn bonds during
this month. Forum Bank plans to place its UAH 100mn bonds on Dec
14, which have 3-years maturity period and 11.5% interest rate.
On this date Alfa-BankUkraine also scheduled the placement of UAH 50mn,
5-year bonds with 13% of interest rate. And finally Ukrsotsbank in the mid
of December will issue UAH 70mn bonds with 12% of interest rate. The
bonds have 3-year maturity period.
The building companies presently main players on bond market
Plan to issue UAH 900mn bonds in December
However, building companies will be the biggest bonds issuers this month.
The total amount of bonds they plan to issue is UAH 900mn (USD 180mn).
Kovcheg to issue UAH 300mn to unnamed specific investors -----
Kovcheg company will make the largest emission among building companies.
It will amount UAH 300mn and will be one of the largest among private
companies in Ukraine.
The bonds have 4-year maturity and 8% interest rate. The funds attracted the
company will use to finance building projects in Kyiv Pechersk district.
Kovcheg will not use underwriter's services, which makes us believe that the
bonds will be sold to specific investors.
The names of such investors were not disclosed. Thus, this may mean a
hidden capital increase. However, there is not enough reliable information
to prove this suggestion.
In 2001 Kovcheg issued 9-year bonds worth USD 40mn. The company
was founded in 2001 and it was involved in leasing office areas and buildings.
Besides Kovcheg 4 other building companies plan to
make big bond emissions -----
Besides Kovcheg another building company Komfort-Invest plans to issue
bonds worth UAH 150mn. Securities will be issued by 3 series: K and L
series of UAH 25mn each with 14% and 16% interest rates each. The third
series M bonds will be worth UAH 100mn with 22% interest rate. All bonds
will have 6-year maturity period.
In the next 30 days Avantar building company will make UAH 140mn bond
emission to attract funds for building 2 residential houses. The
circulation period of the bonds will be 30 months. Other 2 companies Novy
Striymaterialy and ParM will make similar emissions worth UAH 100mn each.
The bonds will mature in 10 years.
Building companies are the first corporation to boost
corporate bond market in 2006 -----
The activity of building companies on the bond market shows the new trend
that differs from the original of bond boom of the mid 2005. Municipalities
and banks were the main issuers then.
Presently the corporations took the lead. It is expected that they will
continue to increase the amounts of their bonds emission in 2006. Bonds
issues still continue to be the most effective way for corporations to
attract funds. Undeveloped stock market in Ukraine does not allow
companies to raise funds, for example, by means of IPO.
At the same time present oversupply on the bond market does not allow
companies to lower interest rates on bonds. In mid 2005 IntelliNews
predicted that interest rates would fall below 10% average by the end of
2006 or in the beginning of 2007.
Such low interest rates will indicated that Ukrainian bond market is almost
completely formed. Current situation on the market confirms our forecast
that interest rates of bonds will not drop in the next 1-1.5 years.
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6 . AES UKRAINE TO INVEST US 100 MILLION IN AES
KYIVOBLENERHO AND AES RIVNEOBLENERHO BY 2011
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, December 12, 2005
KYIV - The AES Ukraine power distribution company intends to invest USD
100 million in its regional power distribution companies AES Kyivoblenerho
and AES Rivneoblenerho by the year 2011. AES Ukraine's Director Larry
Levsley [Garry Levesley] announced this at a press conference.
AES Ukraine plans to invest UAH 100 million in AES Kyivoblenerho and
UAH 55 million in AES Rivneoblenerho in 2006.
According to Levsley, a large proportion of the money will be spent on
development and modernization of the regional power distribution companies'
networks.
According to him, the AES Ukraine is presently agreeing the investment
programs of the companies with the Fuel and Energy Ministry.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the International Finance Corporation
has provided a loan of USD 50 million to AES Ukraine.
AES Ukraine owns the AES Kyivoblenerho and AES Rivneoblenerho regional
power distribution companies.
AES Washington Holdings B.V., which is a subsidiary of the AES Silk Road
company (United States), bought 75% + 1 share in each of Kyivoblenerho and
Rivneoblenerho from the State Property Fund in 2001. The companies were
renamed AES Kyivoblenerho and AES Rivneenerho following their purchase.
The AES corporation operates 113 power generating facilities and 17 power
distribution companies in 27 countries. AES Silk Road is one of the world's
largest producers and suppliers of electricity
At the end of the first half of 2004, AES' net revenues in Ukraine amounted
to UAH 0.5 billion while its net profit amounted to over UAH 65 million. The
corporation serves over 1.2 million consumers over an area of 50,000 square
meters in Ukraine. -30-
FOOTNOTE: AES is a long-time active member of the Ukraine-United
States Business Council headquartered in Washington, D.C.
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7 . AES UKRAINE REACHES SOFTWARE-LICENSING AGREEMENT
WITH MICROSOFT UKRAINE
Microsoft says deal is largest in Ukrainian energy industry
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, December 12, 2005
KYIV - AES Ukraine, which owns the AES Kyivoblenerho and AES
Rivneoblenerho regional power distribution companies, has signed an
agreement with the Microsoft Ukraine company on legalization of software.
AES Ukraine's Director Larry Levsley [Garry Levesley] announced this
at a press conference.
According to Levsley, the company and Microsoft Ukraine signed two
corporate agreements under which AES Ukraine acquired licenses to all
the Microsoft software products that will be used in AES Kyivoblenerho
and AES Rivneoblenerho. The relevant project is intended for three years.
According to Microsoft Ukraine's Director-General Valerii Lanovenko, this is
the largest deal in the Ukrainian energy industry.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, AES Washington Holdings B.V., which
is a subsidiary of the AES Silk Road company (USA), bought 75% stakes in
each of Kyivoblenerho and Rivneoblenerho from the State Property Fund in
2001. The companies were renamed AES Kyivoblenerho and AES Rivneenerho
following their purchase.
The AES corporation operates 113 power generating facilities and 17 power
distribution companies in 27 countries. AES Silk Road is one of the world's
largest producers and suppliers of electricity.
At the end of the first half of 2004, AES' net revenues in Ukraine amounted
to UAH 0.5 billion while its net profit amounted to over UAH 65 million. It
serves over 1.2 million consumers over an area of 50,000 square meters in
Ukraine. -30-
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8 . ADVANCED DIGITAL BROADCAST (ADB) ESTABLISHES NEW
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE IN KHARKOV, UKRAINE
ADB now has five R&D Centres located in Europe
PRESS RELEASE: Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB)
Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, December 12th, 2005
GENEVA - Advanced Digital Broadcast, a leading supplier of digital TV
systems and software solutions for interactive television, announced today
that it has established a new Research and Development (R&D) Centre in
Kharkov, Ukraine. ADB now has five R&D Centres located in Europe.
"The rapid growth of ADB's Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) business requires
extensive and high-quality engineering resources", comments Philippe
Lambinet, CEO of ADB. "ADB Group's average sales growth in the last two
years has exceeded 50% per annum; this growth of our business, combined
with our increasing coverage of all technical areas of digital TV,
necessitates sustained growth of our engineering teams".
Mr. Oleg Rudenko, current professor at the Kharkov National University of
Radio Electronics (KNURE) has been named Managing Director of ADB
Ukraine.
"ADB believes that Prof. Rudenko's broad experience and knowledge of the
local scientific community is a key asset to the company", comments Prof.
Dr. Janusz Szajna, ADB's Executive Vice President and President of ADB
Poland. "Prof. Rudenko is the ideal person to build and lead an excellent,
highly specialised and well-educated team of engineers.
ADB intends to replicate the same successful processes in Kharov as
pioneered in Zielona Gora, which is now universally recognised as one of the
best R&D centres in the industry."
"Kharkov, Ukraine's second largest city holds rich engineering resources and
boasts a tradition of impressive scientific and university based research,"
adds Mr. Krzysztof Kolbuszewski, Chief Technical Officer of ADB. "This
tradition comes from a high concentration of space research centres, which
the former Soviet Union had located in Kharkov.
It represents a massive source of highly educated individuals with superior
knowledge of mathematics and physics that is imperative to the development
of advanced software products".
Building on its success of over 10 years experience in designing and
developing digital television equipment, ADB intends to create an extremely
innovative team of young, uniquely talented programmers and electronic
engineers. These new members will concentrate mainly on highly advanced
technology, such as new solutions for IPTV. -30-
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9 . LARGE RUSSIAN RETAILER PYATEROCHKA PLANS MAJOR
BOOST IN ITS OPERATIONS IN UKRAINE DURING 2006
Russia's largest food & nonfood products retailer to open 30 new stores
RosBusinessConsulting (RBC), Moscow, Russia, Mon, Dec 12, 2005
MOSCOW - Pyaterochka plans to open no less than 30 stores in Ukraine
by August 2006, the company's memorandum stated. In July 2004 the
food retailer sold a franchise in Ukraine, and there are 11 stores operating
in the country at the moment.
The retailer intends to promote its brand in Kazakhstan as well, where it
currently has 25 stores. The number of its own and franchise stores
increased by 26 and 69 percent respectively in January-September 2005.
As of October 1, 2005 Pyaterochka, the largest retailer of food and
nonfood products in Russia, had 652 stores, 155 of which were located
in St. Petersburg and 148 in Moscow. -30-
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10 . UKRAINE: EPAM PLANS SOFTWARE OUTSOURCING CENTERS
Two regional development units will be targeted at clients in the European
Union and the U.S., the New Jersey-based company said.
By W. David Gardner, TechWeb News, USA, Tue, Dec 6, 2005
NEW JERSEY - EPAM Systems, which operates several software
outsourcing centers in Central and Eastern Europe, has announced it
plans to establish several centers in Ukraine.
In reports sent by the company Tuesday, EPAM said it plans to recruit at
least 200 employees in the former Soviet Union state and to establish a
headquarters in Kiev. Two regional development centers in Ukraine will be
targeted at clients in the European Union and the U.S.
"Ukraine has a large and very talented pool of software engineers," said
Karl Robb, EPAM executive VP of Global Operations, in a statement. "The
traditional focus and strength of the education system, which has been very
well-maintained since the break up of the Soviet Union, combined with
Ukraine's deep legacy in defense and high-technology industries provides a
greater than average supply of first-class engineers with experience in
complex software development."
EPAM maintains its U.S. headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, and
European headquarters in Budapest. The firm's co-founder and CEO
Arkadiy Dobkin left his native Soviet Union several years ago and
emmigrated to the U.S. where he held several technical positions in
American companies. EPAM Systems was established in 1993 in Princeton.
Interest in software outsourcing in Ukraine has been increasing since the
country began democratic reforms in recent months. In the past, political
turmoil in the area proved problematic for at least one U.S. company that
had sent work to a Ukrainian outsourcing company. -30-
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11 . UKRAINE VINEYARD SOARS ON MODERISATION DRIVE
Grape harvest yield four times above national average
By Angela Drujinina, Central & Eastern Europe FoodIndustry.com
Montpellier, France, Tuesday, December 12, 2005
UKRAINE - Modernisation has helped one of Ukraine's biggest wineries to
a grape harvest yield four times above the national average, demonstrating
how it is possible to add that personal touch and remain competitive.
Tavria-1, a vineyard that belongs to wine group Tavria, managed to gather
125-130 centners of grapes per hectare this year, well above the national
average of 28. The vineyard's 'experimental' vines achieved 405 centners.
"Such high indexes were not only achieved by respecting the correct
technology, but also by correctly protecting plants against diseases and
pests, and using the latest science and specialised machines," said Natalya
Tsarulikova, chief agronomist of Tavria-1.
Tavria uses intensive planting, with a crop density between 3,900 and 5,500
bushes, It also uses drip irrigation, a process developed in Israel and
known to save on water, and has developed a system for adding fertilisers
and microelements directly through this drip irrigation system.
The system is used for a range of Tavria grape varieties, including
sauvignon, merlot and chardonnay. It is also used on grapes for cognac
production.
Tavria-1, which through Tavria forms part of Ukraine's First National
Winemaking Holding, said the quality of this year's harvest had been
excellent. "The sugar content of the grapes was about 20-25 per cent, which
was the highest index both among Tavria farms and in Ukraine as a whole,"
Tsarulikova said.
The Tavria-2 vineyard also put in a good performance this year. "The sugar
content was in average 21.2 per cent, while the average [in Ukraine] is only
17 per cent," said vineyard director Alexandr Feodosov.
"Taking into account the fact that in average, the harvest from one hectare
is not more than 50 centner/hectare, we can consider the harvest of the
season 2004-2005 successful both from the point of view of quality and of
quantity."
Tavria's director, A. Sidorenko, said: "One more reason for our success is
that we never forget about people, about stimulation, about their importance
as professionals. So, we are not 'fighting' for the harvest, we are just
getting prepared for it and we use the time, equipment and resources
correctly.
"These technologies give us competitiveness in view of Ukraine entering the
World Trade Organisation, and help us to get prepared for admission to
European Union." Tavria is already one of Ukraine's biggest winemakers with
2,600ha of agricultural land.
The group's owner, the First National Winemaking Holding, works under
another corporation called Logos, which is the exclusive representative of
French cognac specialist Remy Cointreau in Ukraine. -30-
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12 . UKRAINE: IN TWO YEARS THE MARKET FOR FRESH SALAD
COULD INCREASE 50 TIMES
Dr. Lee says Ukrainian salad market has only begun to develop.
Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP)
Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, December 9, 2005
KYIV - The international practical seminar "Salads of Ukraine 2006" was
held on December 8, 2005 at Kyiv National Agrarian University; more than
100 produce business specialists from 5 countries participated in this
event. The participants received valuable and exclusive information about
the potential of fresh salads market development.
Representatives from Ukrainian, Russian, Dutch, Moldavian and Georgian
companies took part in the seminar. The companies OLVITA and RIJK
ZWAAN UKRAINE and Kyiv National Agrarian University organized the
event in conjunction with the Agricultural Marketing Project.
OLVITA is one of the most dynamically developing companies in the
Ukrainian produce business. First and foremost, it is know for frozen
vegetables, fruits and berries sold under the "Olvita" trademark. But,
OLVITA has recently entered the market of fresh salads with its very
own trademark, as this market is considered to be very attractive.
The company enjoys a complex of modern storage facilities for effective
long-term produce storage. This is why OLVITA is now able to participate
in the wholesale trading of fresh fruits and vegetables where there is a
great demand from Ukrainian supermarkets.
Yuri Boguslavskiy, OLVITA Director, indicated they plan to significantly
increase storage capacity for fresh produce. In addition, they plan to build
a complex for the post harvest handling and packing of salads, which will be
supplied by farmers from different regions throughout Ukraine.
During the seminar professionals shared information about the specifics of
production technologies, handling, storage and packaging of fresh salads,
which are popular worldwide. Dr. Robert Lee, Director of the Agricultural
Marketing Project, stated the size of the world salad market is about $10.5
billion.
China produces more than half of the gross volume and the USA and China
combined provide for about 70% of the world's salad production. The
Ukrainian salad market has only started to develop and in Dr. Lee's opinion,
it will grow dynamically in the near future.
"Even if Ukrainians eat half the salads of people in the US, this market
will reach the volume of 300,000 tons, compared to 6,000 tons of salads
produced now in the country", Dr. Lee stated.
We would like to point out that there are professional producers of fresh
salads in Ukraine and the number is growing each year, despite of the fact
that salad production is a complicated business. Ukraine also exports fresh
salads to Russia.
The climate of our country lets farmers produce salads in different regions
throughout the entire season. This is why the potential to increase salad
production is not limited by the interior market.
According to evaluations of the Agricultural Marketing Project, in the next
five years the size of Ukrainian salad market could increase up to between
$50-60 million and this creates fantastic opportunities for farmers and
other market players. -30-
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13 . CZECH EMPLOYMENT OFFICES MIGHT APPEAR IN UKRAINE
Over 100,000 Ukrainians work either legally or illegally in Czech Republic
CTK, Prague, Czech, Republic, Monday, Dec 12, 2005
PRAGUE - The Czech Interior Ministry is planning to open employment
offices in Ukraine in the future that would recruit workers for Czech
companies, according to a series of its proposals, according to the daily
Hospodarske noviny that has these proposals at its disposal.
The paper writes today that the proposals are designed to radically change
the approach to foreign workers. They testify that the authorities' attitude
to foreigners who work in the Czech Republic illegally is changing, it says.
While foreign workers were labelled as criminals in the past, authorities
are beginning to view them as exploited victims of people trafficking, it
adds.
The very first proposal would radically change the current practice that
allows criminal elements and the "clients" labour agencies offering illegal
refugees as cheap workforce to Czech firms, to make profits on their ill
fate.
The Interior Ministry intends to introduce "the Portuguese model," under
which the Czech Interior Ministry would try to establish Czech employment
offices, for instance at its embassy in Ukraine. These offices would not
only recruit employees for work in the Czech Republic, but would also ensure
their transportation and accommodation.
Thousands of the current illegal foreign workers would thus surfaced from
the grey economy and the "clients," who take away most of the money they
earn in the Czech Republic for similar services, would be pushed out of the
running.
"Illegal employment of foreigners is on such a wide-scale in the country
that mere repressive measures will not help eliminate it," Jakub Svec from
the Interior Ministry says regarding the ministry's new strategy. The
government will discuss the new proposals next year.
According to estimates, more than 100,000 Ukrainians work either legally or
illegally in the 10-million Czech Republic at present.
The most resourceful Ukrainians who fled Ukraine due to its poverty and low
salaries have established "client" agencies in the Czech Republic in the
past years to exploit their compatriots who came later and have no chance of
getting work there without their help. (vv/t/pv)
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14 . MIGRATION TO IRELAND UNDERMINING THE ECONOMIC
AND SOCIAL FABRIC OF LATVIA
Author of 'The Mushroom Covenant' warns of 'brain drain' in Latvia
Latvia filling some of its own low paying jobs with Ukrainians
Ruadhan Mac Cormaic, Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland, Mon, Dec 12, 2005
Migration to Ireland is undermining the economic and social fabric of
Latvia, one of that country's authors has said.
Laima Muktupavela left her family in Latvia in 2001 to work on a mushroom
farm in Co Meath, where she and a group of Latvian colleagues earned
GBP125 a month and worked for several weeks at a time.
On returning home, she wrote a best-selling book, "The Mushroom
Covenant," based on the experience of Latvian immigrants in Ireland.
Muktupavela (43) said yesterday that a "brain drain" from Latvia is
hindering her country's development and leading to the break-up of families,
particularly in rural areas, as many of those who travel to Ireland and
other EU states opt not to return home.
"This book is like a bible in Latvian homes because every family has
somebody who left Latvia to work in Ireland," she said.
"We have very small salaries in Latvia, and these people left Latvia because
they need to have a normal life. They thank God that Ireland can help. But
people who go to Ireland, many thousands don't come back to Latvia.
That is a very big problem."
One effect of this trend is that Latvia is having to fill some of its own
low-paying jobs with immigrants from Ukraine and Belarus.
"We have a very small population - around two million - and if thousands
and thousands of educated, energetic Latvians leave Latvia, our employers
can't find workers here."
She added: "We were the first wave of Latvians [ in Ireland] in 2001, but
now many Latvians live there. Now I see that Latvians are building the
economies of other countries like Ireland."
Ms Muktupavela said she was the only one from a group of 11 Latvians who
returned home. This exodus depresses rural communities in particular, she
said, with many children living with their grandparents indefinitely, and in
some cases living alone.
"The father of my children took care of mine, and it was hard on them. But
one girl had four children in Latvia. She came to Ireland and then divorced
because she stayed in Ireland."
Ms Muktupavela said she and her colleagues lived together in a three-room
house while working on the mushroom farm. As she was the only
English-speaker among the group, she represented the workers in dealings
with their employer.
"I asked him different questions. I asked him about taxes and salaries and
why we were earning so little compared to Irish people. We cut the first
mushroom at 6am and the last at 8pm. For me that was a very bad memory.
"On Christmas Day, we got up at 5am, because the owner said we had
to supply the supermarkets with the mushrooms. When I asked could we
have more money for that work, he said: 'If you ask questions, you can
go home.'"
There are between 30,000 and 40,000 Latvians living in Ireland. -30-
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15 . CRIMEAN TARTARS CALL KYIV TO RESTORE THEIR RIGHTS
Voices calling for Kyiv to recognize the deportation as genocide
RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service/Interfax
Prague, Czech Republic, Monday, December 12, 2005
SIMFEROPOL - Members of the Crimean Tatar Congress gathered in the
main Crimean city Simferopol said yesterday that Ukraine's integration with
the West should not go forward until Kyiv restores Tatar rights.
Congressional delegates, issuing a statement at the end of the three-day
session, accused Ukrainian authorities of disregarding the rights of Crimean
Tatars, who were deported en masse by Soviet leader Josef Stalin in 1944.
RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service reported that congress member Timur
Dagci was among the voices calling for Kyiv to recognize the deportation
as genocide:
"Our problem -- the problem of Stalin's genocide of the Crimean Tatar
people -- is an undeniable fact, so I believe all countries, the United
Nations, and the European Union will recognize it and will decide that it
was indeed genocide," Dagci said.
Many Tatars have since returned to Crimea, but have been unable to
reclaim valuable land and property that was theirs before the deportations.
The Tatar Congress delegates called on the Council of Europe and the
European Union to make Ukraine's possible membership in the EU and
World Trade Organization contingent on their recognition of Crimean
Tatar rights. -30-
[ return to index ] [The Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
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Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.
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16 . FIRST LADY MEETS UKRAINIAN FEDERATION OF AMERICA
LEADERS & U.S. MEDICAL EXPERTS ON MEDICAL COOPERATION
Blood safety, hemophilia diagnosing, prevention of virus infections, HIV
Press office of President Victor Yushchenko of Ukraine
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 6 December 2005
KYIV - Kateryna Yushchenko, Head of the Supervisory Council of the
Ukraine 3000 Charitable Foundation, met with a group of U.S. citizens
that are interested in medical cooperation with the foundation.
Zhenya Chernyak, Chair of the Ukrainian Federation of America, Vira
Andrushchuk, President of the Ukrainian Federation of America, Evhen
Movchan, President of the Medical Institute, Charles Doerthy [Dougherty],
former U.S. Congressman, Roksolana Gorbova, Vice-president of the the
World Federation of Ukrainian Medical Association, Vira Pavlyuk, Hospital
to Hospital Project Coordinator, Valentyn Snisar, Deputy Health Minister,
Yuriy Derpak, Chief Doctor of the road station of blood transfusion of the
South-Western Railway were present at the meeting.
The participants of the meeting discussed ways to cooperate in the fields of
'blood safety', hemophilia diagnosing and treatment, and prevention of virus
infections and HIV. They also spoke about projects to train Ukrainian
doctors by applying modern technologies and methods. Then they
considered ways to implement the Hospital to Hospital program.
Following the meeting the American delegation went to the station of blood
transfusion of the South-Western Railway, and Yuriy Derpak showed them
round the facility. The guests suggested they should launch their first
project at this station to spread their experience throughout the country.
On December 6, the delegation is scheduled to visit Kharkiv to introduce
some new technologies in medical education. -30-
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17 . BENEFIT CONCERT-CHRISTMAS: UKRAINIAN ORPHANAGES:
Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 7:00 P.M. Falls Church, Virginia
Victor Visotsky, Falls Church, Virginia, Monday, Dec 12, 2005
FALLS CHURCH, Virginia, A concert that will benefit more than 900
children in 4 orphanages and T.B. Sanitarium in Ukraine will be held
on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. at 103 W. Columbia
Street in Falls Church, Virginia.
In program will feature The Washington Balalaika Society Slavic
Male Chorus and the Youth Group of the New Life Church
Do not miss this opportunity to be blessed by helping orphanages!
WHEN: Wednesday, December 14, 2005, 7:00 PM
WHERE: 103 W. Columbia Street, Falls Church, VA 22046
COST: Free Admission, An Offering will be taken. All proceeds
will be used for helping children. Contributions (tax deductible)
of any amount will be joyfully accepted.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Victor Visotsky, Tel. 571-594-4658. http://www.newlifedc.org
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18 . CHIEF RABBI OF UKRAINE AND FJC MAKE HEADWAY ON
RESTITUTION OF JEWISH RELIGIOUS PROPERTY
Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS (FJC)
Moscow, New York, Friday, December 9 2005
KIEV, Ukraine - Yesterday, the Ukraine State Department for Religious
Affairs hosted a meeting between Department Director Igor Bondarchuk and
national Jewish leaders - Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Azriel Chaikin and the
Chairman of the Board for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine,
Rabbi Meir Stambler. The Deputy Director of this department, Nikolayi
Novichenko, also took part in the conversation.
The two parties discussed several pressing issues regarding the activity of
the Chief Rabbinate of Ukraine and that of the FJC Ukraine, as well as
problems concerning the development of Jewish religious life in the country.
Mr. Bondarchuk assured the Jewish leaders of the support and cooperation
that Ukraine's religious organizations enjoy concerning the free development
of religious communal life.
The participants also addressed problems regarding the restitution of
religious property to Ukraine's Jewish communities. Igor Bondarchuk
promised to thoroughly consider this issue and to assist in returning Jewish
religious property back to its original owners.
Rabbi Chaikin and Rabbi Meir Stambler informed Igor Bondarchuk and his
deputy of the multitude of public Chanukah events that will soon take place
in Jewish communities across Ukraine.
They also spoke about the festive campaigns being led by the Chief Rabbinate
and the FJC Ukraine, including the distribution of 60,000 parcels containing
Chanukah Menorahs and holiday booklets, which are to be delivered to Jewish
homes throughout the country.
The officials from the Department for Religious Affairs expressed heartfelt
congratulations to Rabbi Chaikin, Rabbi Stambler and all Jews of Ukraine on
the approaching holiday. As the meeting drew to an end, the Jewish leaders
presented a Chanukah Menorah to the Department's Director and wished the
officials all the best in their work and their other deeds. -30-
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19 . ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE (ADL) TO U.S. HOUSE
DELAY GRANTING UKRAINE NORMAL TRADE RELATIONS
The university MAUP, actively promotes anti-Semitism
Anti-Defamation League (ADL), New York, NY, Tue, Dec 6, 2005
NEW YORK - The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has urged the U.S.
House of Representatives to delay approval of Ukraine's graduation from the
Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974, thus continuing to deny it Permanent
Normal Trade Relations, while anti-Semitism persists at worrying levels.
The Jackson-Vanik Amendment was passed in 1974 to pressure the former
Soviet Union, which had imposed a "diploma tax" for Jews who sought to
emigrate, to end the "diploma tax" and eliminate barriers to free
emigration.
The Amendment links U.S. trade benefits, now known as Normal Trade
Relations (NTR), to the emigration and human rights policies of Communist
or formerly Communist countries.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:
"We expect more from democratic states than we do from totalitarian ones.
This year alone has seen a steep increase in acts of violence and vandalism
against Jews across Ukraine. There have been attempts to ban everything from
Jewish organizations to Jewish holy texts. The university MAUP, with more
than 50,000 students enrolled, actively promotes anti-Semitism of the most
vicious kind.
While we recognize that Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko has issued a
statement against anti-Semitism, we believe the government must go beyond
words and take the kind of strong action we expect from a democracy. Until
then there is no reason for the House of Representatives to agree to remove
Ukraine from Jackson-Vanik and grant beneficial trading status.
We should remember that it was the struggle against anti-Semitism which
inspired Jackson-Vanik in the first place. That struggle is not over."
The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading
organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that
counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry. -30-
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20 . WHY I HATE BEING THE TALLEST MAN IN THE WORLD
Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk stands 8ft 4 ins tall
"I'm the tallest man but I often feel one of the most helpless.
This life is for smaller people."
Exclusive From Will Stewart In Podoliantsy, Ukraine
Mirror.co.uk, Online Edition of The Daily Mirror
London, United Kingdom, 12 December 2005
PODOLIANTSY, Ukraine - HE IS the world's most reluctant record
breaker. But Leonid Stadnyk's credentials are plain for all to see.
Standing at 8ft 4ins he is the tallest man on the planet. And still growing.
But the official record - as defined by the Guinness World Records - goes
to a Mongolian man by the name of Xi Shun, who is a whole seven inches
shorter.
The reason? Quite simply Leonid, 35, - who lives in the village of
Podoliantsy in Ukraine - hates his height and doesn't want to be famous
because of it.
In his small three-room home there is no bell, but the bark of his dogs
brings him outside as if in slow motion. He contorts his vast frame to get
through his front door - and as he straightens up again his head towers
above the apple tree and seems for a moment to disappear into the murky
clouds.
His handshake, unintentionally, almost crushes my knuckles. "I don't want or
need the fame this would bring so I have no desire to be in this Guinness
book," says Leonid softly and seriously, shaking his large head.
"To me, my height is a curse, a punishment from God, not something to
celebrate." He even shuns looking at himself in the mirror.
And here is why the Guinness records people are in such a pickle. They
have written to Leonid asking to check his vital statistic, but he's not
interested. "I refuse to be measured all the time," he fumes. "Why should
I? What is to be gained from it? "I have more important things to do, like
getting through the survival course that is our life in Ukraine."
That's despite being on course, within a few years, to be the tallest person
ever. This record is held American Robert Pershing Wadlow, who reached
8ft 11in before his death in 1940. "It's true I am still growing," explains
a mournful Leonid. "It is a terrible nuisance to me."
Unable to verify his measurements, the 2006 Guinness edition can do little
else than name Xi Shun as the world's tallest man. "At the moment, we still
have the Mongolian guy as the record holder," explains a Guinness
spokeswoman patiently.
"We have contacted Stadnyk, but he seems very shy. He doesn't want us
around. So we have to stick to what we have." At school, ironically, the
Ukrainian was just about the smallest boy in his class. They used to call
him the Soviet equivalent of "titch". Academically, though, he was streets
ahead of his peers.
His life could have been so different if ham-fisted Soviet surgeons had not
bungled the operation on a benign brain tumour when he was 12. The surgery
cranked into overdrive his pituitary gland, which is responsible for
generating the hormones that stimulate growth. His condition, gigantism,
makes him grow at roughly a foot every three years.
It means he has size 27 shoes, which have to be specially made for his feet,
now some 17 inches in length. His gargantuan palms measure more than a foot
in diameter. And before he had a bed made to measure, he had to join two
together.
There is a sadness and a loneliness about this gentle giant. He blames his
height for many of the woes blighting his life in this downtrodden village.
"I was a vet and loved my work," he says, smiling a huge smile at the
memory. "But gradually I found that I couldn't get the shoes I needed in
winter to protect me from the frostbite. I couldn't keep on with this work."
Reluctantly, he gave up his job at the Yuri Gagarin Collective Farm - named
after another small man who became a giant, the 5ft 2 first man in space.
He worked instead on the family smallholding, growing fruit and vegetables
and tending the cows, pigs, horse and hens. "Stooping from my height to
pull up the weeds is not easy. It puts a lot of strain on my back.
"I'm the tallest man but I often feel one of the most helpless. This life is
for smaller people."
He remains deeply attached to his 63-year-old mother Halyna, who is now
disabled after suffering a serious hip injury. He spends his week working
his 1.8 hectare smallholding from before dawn until well after dusk. Even
so, the family cannot afford the medical costs to get her treated.
Locals say there have been women in his life - though if there is anyone
special now he is keeping quiet about her. Women supposedly like big men,
but there's no evidence of it here.
"I have a lot of acquaintances but no true good friends," he admits
honestly. "My mother is the closest person in the world to me. Maybe our
village is too small to meet more people, but I think it's because I'm so
different.
"If I could have one wish in my life, it would be that my mother could be
cured of her pain. "But if I could have two wishes, the second would be that
I could be just a normal size."
He'd love to come down from his tower, which he feels imprisons him. "This
world is not made for people my height. I dream about being the same size as
normal people. Alas, I know it can never happen."
LEONID'S GIANT APPETITE
Leonid says he eats roughly 20 per cent more than the average man - and
drinks twice as much.
Breakfast: Semolina and pumpkin porridge and four fried eggs cooked
by his mother.
Lunch: A huge bowl of Ukrainian borscht plus a dozen or so potatoes
grown in his smallholding.
Evening meal: Golubtsy, a local dish made from stewed cabbage rolls
stuffed with meat and rice. "This is my favourite," he says. -30-
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21 . EUROPE FEATURES: UKRAINE'S ORANGE REVOLUTION
OUTSIDE VIEW: COMMENTARY
Contributed by Taras Kuzio and Jennifer Moroney
United Press International (UPI), Washington, D.C., Tue, Dec 13, 2005
WASHINGTON, DC, - Almost a year after Viktor Yushchenko became
president of Ukraine last January -- following his election as a pro-reform,
pro-Western candidate -- the nation faces tough new challenges as it moves
closer to its goal of integrating into the Euro-Atlantic community.
Yushchenko came to power after losing a first presidential election that was
riddled with fraud. The reformist Orange Revolution sparked street
demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in favor of
Yushchenko, leading to a second election that he won.
But the president`s problems today won`t be solved by demonstrations,
rallies and speeches. He must govern while grappling with challenges greater
than any Ukraine has faced since it won independence from the Soviet Union
in 1991. To solve these problems, eloquent words and cheering crowds are no
substitute for the eloquence of action.
The Orange Revolution and Yushchenko`s election enabled Ukraine to resume
its transition to democracy and a market economy, an effort that stalled
under the semi-authoritarian and corrupt former President Leonid Kuchma.
Now greater effort needs to be undertaken in this area.
To show the Ukrainian people that the revolution has changed their lives and
not just their government, Yushchenko and his government need to
institutionalize freedom of the press, democratize the state and build on
the rebirth of civil society. A key step in this direction will take place
in January, when Ukraine will change from a Soviet-type presidential system
to a parliamentary system commonly found in much of Europe.
Once the parliamentary system is in place, Ukraine needs to ensure it holds
a free and fair parliamentary election in 2006. This would prove to the
watching world that the nation is fully committed to a democratic path.
As Ukraine implements the rule of law, it also needs to speed up the
campaign against corruption and organized crime. This should include holding
accountable those high-ranking Kuchma officials implicated in abuse of
office, election fraud and the killing of journalist Georgy Gongadze.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a sharp reprimand
to Ukraine for failing to bring high-ranking officials from the Kuchma
regime to justice. This was followed by a European Court of Human Rights
ruling that said Ukrainian authorities failed to protect the life of
Gongadze and mishandled the investigation into his kidnapping and murder
five years ago. The ability of the Ukrainian courts to bring those
responsible for Gongadze`s murder to justice will be closely monitored.
With the election of Yushchenko, Ukraine has a chance to join NATO and
eventually the European Union. After the latest NATO-Ukraine Commission
meeting in Vilnius in late October, Ukrainian leaders now have five months
in which to encourage the United States and NATO to invite Ukraine into
NATO`s accession process -- known as MAP (Membership Action Plan) --
in mid 2006. If the invitation is extended, Ukraine would join current MAP
members Croatia, Albania and Macedonia.
A particularly bright spot for Ukraine is the positive and proactive
relationship of the Ukrainian armed forces with the U.S. Department of
Defense. In this regard, the United States has been working to help Ukraine
to achieve its defense reform, military professionalization, and
capacity-building goals. Much of this activity is focused on eventually
bringing Ukraine in line with the NATO membership criteria.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is now an advocate of Ukrainian
NATO membership. Such membership would serve a step toward European
Union membership, which could realistically come during a second term for
President Yushchenko after 2010 if he wins re-election.
Under former President Kuchma, relations between Ukraine and the European
Union were unproductive. This was mostly because the Ukrainian government
was unwilling to implement the necessary political and economic reforms
required to entice the EU into offering Ukraine an associate agreement,
which is a half-step to full EU membership. Under the current regime, which
is more committed to Euro-Atlantic integration, real progress is likely.
Ukraine`s democratic revolution followed Georgia`s a year earlier and
Serbia`s in 2000. Yet, of all three revolutions, it is Ukraine`s that has
the best chance to succeed in building on these democratic breakthroughs and
consolidating a democratic market economy.
The outcome of the 2006 elections is as important as the process. An
invitation to join NATO and eventual integration into the European Union
is not likely to occur if pro-reform forces fail to win a parliamentary
majority.
To win NATO and eventually EU membership, the Orange Revolution
coalition will have to unite under a common goal -- Euro-Atlantic
integration by way of staunch political and economic reforms in Ukraine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Taras Kuzio is a visiting professor in international affairs at George
Washington University and the author of 'Ukraine: Perestroika to
Independence.' Jennifer Moroney is a political scientist at the RAND
Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.)
(United Press International`s 'Outside View' commentaries are written by
outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The
views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press
International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original
submissions are invited.)
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22 . POLICY WATCH: NO MORE COLOR REVOLUTIONS?
COMMENTARY: By Mark N. Katz, UPI Correspondent
Washington, D.C., Sunday, December 11, 2005
WASHINGTON - Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution, Ukraine's 2004 Orange
Revolution and Kyrgyzstan's 2005 Tulip Revolution resulted in new leaders
who advocated democracy rising to power in all three of these post-Soviet
states.
The success of these three democratic "color revolutions" (as they
have become known) also led to expectations that similar ones might
oust ex-communist leaders elsewhere in the former USSR.
But after the staging of elections with results favorable to the
authoritarian regimes in Azerbaijan in November and Kazakhstan in
December, it appears increasingly unlikely there will be any more color
revolutions any time soon. The post-Soviet authoritarian rulers have
become more adept at thwarting them.
The three color revolutions so far occurred as a result of widespread
protest over falsified election results in these countries.
Factors contributing to these protests were:
1) the presence of non-governmental organizations promoting
democratization both from the West and recently democratized countries;
2) the ability of these groups to conduct exit polls that credibly
challenged the results announced by the regimes;
3) the ability of the foreign and domestic media to focus national and
international attention on these protests; and
4) the inability of authoritarian regimes to prevent widespread protest
from erupting combined with an unwillingness to take forceful action to
suppress it.
Increasingly fearful of being ousted in a similar manner, other ex-communist
authoritarian rulers have taken steps to prevent these factors from
occurring in their countries. They have placed tighter limits on the ability
of foreign and domestic NGOs to engage in democracy promotion.
They have also acted to prevent independent exit polls from being conducted
on election day. They have limited the ability of foreign journalists to
enter their countries or moving about in them without government
surveillance. They have dealt even more forcefully with local journalists
criticizing the conduct of elections.
Finally, they have imposed greater restrictions on the ability of the public
to protest election results, and have been quicker to use force to prevent
protests from becoming too large for them to suppress quickly and easily.
The Putin administration has taken advantage of other post-Soviet
authoritarian leaders' fears of color revolutions. Until recently, many of
these regimes had reacted to Russia's often crude efforts to dominate them
politically and economically by turning to the United States for protection.
The Kremlin, however, has actively promoted these regimes' fears the United
States is the instigator of democratic revolution. And indeed, many of these
regimes have turned back toward Moscow for protection from what they see
as a greater threat from Washington. While they see Moscow as wanting to
dominate them, this is preferable to post-Soviet authoritarian leaders than
being ousted.
But while the Kremlin and other post-Soviet authoritarian regimes claim
America is the instigator of the color revolutions, this is simply not true.
The U.S. government does not have the power to order hundreds of
thousands of protesters to take to the streets for days or weeks in
inclement weather.
It was popular outrage in these countries over fraudulent election results
that did this. Western NGOs and media, and even the U.S. government,
publicized and facilitated this to some extent, but did not cause it.
Limiting and controlling the presence of Western non-governmental
organizations and media may indeed result in the Kremlin and its
authoritarian allies elsewhere in the former Soviet Union being able to
prevent further democratic revolutions. But this will not end the popular
discontent over fraudulent election results and authoritarian rule that is
the principal cause of them.
The suppression of peaceful democratic revolutionary movements may not
lead to the stability of authoritarian regimes, but instead to the rise of
revolutionary movements that are neither peaceful nor democratic. The
Russians have been unable to suppress a few thousand such revolutionaries
in Chechnya. It is highly doubtful that they could suppress Islamic
revolutionary movements that could rise up any country in Central Asia,
much less all of it.
If the net result of Moscow's efforts to suppress the impetus for democratic
revolution in the Muslim republics of the former USSR is to increase the
prospects for Islamic revolution in them, the Kremlin may well come to
regret what it is doing now. -30-
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Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at George
Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
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23 . THE ORANGE REVOLUTION: PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
REMARKS: By Paula J. Dobriansky, Under Secretary for
Democracy and Global Affairs, United States Department of State
Roundtable: The Orange Revolution: A Year After
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Washington, DC, Dec 5, 2005
Thank you Leon [Leon Aron, AIE] for that introduction, and thanks to
you and your staff for organizing this roundtable. It is a pleasure for me
to be back at the American Enterprise Institute. I would like to recognize
Anders Aslund of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
Taras Kuzio of George Washington University, who along with Leon
will contribute to what I am sure will be a very insightful panel
discussion.
Thomas Jefferson once said "We are not to expect to be translated from
despotism to liberty in a featherbed." Then, and now, a stable, prosperous,
orderly democracy is not something that any people can create in short order
and without arduous toils. At times -- indeed frequently -- the obstacles
can seem daunting and even insurmountable. But if you step back and look at
the sweep of history, especially modern history, it becomes clear that this
process often succeeds.
Haltingly, in fits and spurts, democracy, liberty and the rule of law have
taken hold in country after country. Such was the process in our own
nation -- we weren't perfect at the creation -- and such is the nature of
Ukraine. But the democratic evolution there is quite promising.
A year ago Saturday, the Supreme Court of Ukraine, acting on the clear
signal from the people of Ukraine, nullified a flawed election, upheld the
rule of law, and cleared the path that led to a true expression of the will
of the Ukrainian people. It marked a turning point in a stunning series of
events that would culminate in the inauguration of President Viktor
Yushchenko.
I had the honor of accompanying then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who
led the American delegation to the inauguration. The atmosphere on that
unforgettable day was truly electric. Thousands of people had lined the
streets, many of whom had camped out. Orange banners, caps, and scarves
were everywhere. There was joy and euphoria that Ukrainians finally had
swept away the last vestiges of authoritarian rule and corruption, and
emerged as strong stakeholders in building a new, democratic Ukraine.
The atmosphere was both exciting and auspicious when President Yushchenko
made an official visit to the United States in April of this year. Congress
gave him the honor of an address to a joint session, which I also attended.
Yushchenko expressed gratitude for being invited to speak from the same
rostrum as great leaders like Winston Churchill and Lech Walesa.
He noted that "The Orange Revolution gave evidence that Ukraine is an
advanced European nation, sharing the great values of the Euro-Atlantic
civilization. Its citizens stand ready to guard their rights and freedoms...
For us, a European future is a powerful incentive to attain high political,
social and economic standards."
He was also received at the White House by President Bush, where the
two leaders launched a strategic partnership. President Bush noted that
Yushchenko was the first foreign leader he called after his inaugural
address last January, and said "You are a friend of our country and you
are an inspiration to all who love liberty."
The New Century Agenda Joint Statement by Presidents Bush and Yushchenko
focuses on concrete areas for cooperation. These include promoting democracy
and freedom, fighting terrorism, combating weapons proliferation, supporting
Ukraine's NATO aspirations, strengthening economic reform to increase
prosperity, combating trafficking in persons, and cooperating to fight HIV/
AIDS.
One year later, the Orange Revolution and its promise continue to inspire
Ukrainians and others. Much progress has been made. The Orange Revolution
brought together Ukrainians with diverse political views, but who were
united by the understanding that without a truly free democracy, their
voices would not be heard. Their unity was decisive. The tremendous
diversity among the Orange Revolutionaries also meant that as the political
process developed, differences would have to be addressed.
There has been much discussion about the breakup of the Orange Coalition
since the government was dismissed in September. Some question the stability
and future of Ukraine's democratic trajectory. Others see a chance to
rekindle the excitement and dynamism associated with the Orange Revolution.
Events of the past year remind us that we need to have realistic
expectations. No country has made the transition from Communism to
democracy and a market economy without some turmoil. This is normal, as
the emerging democracies in new Europe showed in the 1990s. Coalitions,
parties, alliances and individual players rise and fall -- this is part of
the very nature of the evolution of democracy.
Ukraine has encountered difficulties in turning from the exhilaration of the
Orange Revolution to the hard work of transforming Ukraine into a modern,
European state. But it is important to acknowledge the progress Ukraine has
made over the past year.
Today, the Ukrainian people have a sense of ownership in their country that
did not exist before the Orange Revolution. They understand the power of
democracy and freedom, and they are exercising that power every day.
Particularly impressive has been the development of civil society.
Today, Ukrainian civil society is rich and diverse, featuring hundreds of
groups, institutions and associations, which deal with a broad range of
national and local issues. During my most recent visit, I had an opportunity
to meet with some of the activists, who are using their new freedoms to
unleash their talents and creativity in ways designed to solve problems, and
empower people. It is, of course, the existence of a vibrant civil society
that is a key ingredient of a stable and mature democracy.
Ukraine has made significant progress in democratizing, and the world will
be closely watching the March Rada elections -- a real test of the Orange
Revolution's democratic gains. It is important the campaign and election-day
vote be free and fair, meeting international standards.
The success of these elections is doubly important as Ukraine has become an
important player in, and role model for, building democracy in the region.
Events in Ukraine have been an inspiration for those who still live under
governments that are not in power with the consent of the governed.
Ukraine is already actively promoting democracy abroad. This summer, the
presidents of Ukraine and Georgia signed the Borjomi Declaration, which
calls for leaders of countries within the Baltic-Black Sea-Caspian area to
create a Community of Democratic Choice.
They called on participants to commit to "freeing our region from all
remaining lines of division, from violations of human rights, from frozen
conflicts, opening a new era of democracy."
On December 2, I had the honor to represent the United States at the
inaugural session of the Community for Democratic Choice forum in Kiev.
Representatives from 23 countries, including nine heads of state, came to
this Summit to affirm their commitment to working together to consolidate
the democratic process through internal reform, and a sharing of best
practices with one another.
There will be follow-on meetings held throughout the region to develop and
implement action plans. This project, which the United States strongly
supports, is an excellent example of a region coming together on its own
initiative to take action -- in the spirit of the Community of Democracies,
and in response to the call for such action at the ministerial in Chile
earlier this year.
The prospects for democracy and freedom reaching Belarus are significantly
enhanced by international cooperation and aid involving Ukraine We are also
pleased that Ukraine continues to be committed to fighting terrorism, and
has expressed interest in assisting Iraq in training and reconstruction
projects. Moreover, we have valued Ukraine's role and contributions to many
international peacekeeping missions.
Together we have made good progress on our non-proliferation agenda, and
welcome Ukraine as a key partner in preventing illegal arms exports.
Ukraine's recent ratification of the IAEA Additional Protocol is highly
commendable. The U.S. led the initiative to offer Ukraine Intensified
Dialogue on NATO Membership Aspirations. Ukraine's relationship with
NATO now depends on Ukraine -- its ability to forge domestic support for
NATO membership and its willingness to meet NATO's performance-based
standards.
Following the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has renewed its commitment to
fighting corruption and strengthening rule of law. Some of the work in this
area goes hand-in-hand with streamlining and clarifying rules of investment,
so that abuses like the tainted privatizations of the Kuchma years will not
happen again, and that future steps toward a market economy will be taken on
a transparent basis. Fighting corruption is not easy -- but it is essential.
Indeed, one of the key characteristics of the Orange Revolution was that it
sought to bring in a new, clean team. Living up to those expectations is
critical to demonstrate to the Ukrainian people the differences between the
old and new government.
Ukraine has also reinvigorated efforts to join the WTO. It is a reflection
of Ukraine's commitment to participate fully in the community of democracies
and market economies. It is an important indication of Ukraine's desire to
base its economy on a system based on internationally accepted rules.
Toward that end, the Rada has passed legislation that will strengthen
protection of intellectual property rights and reduce barriers to trade.
Other pieces of legislation needed to join the WTO have faced stiffer
opposition by protectionist interests. We still need to see more progress
before Ukraine will be ready to join, but we are working closely with
Ukraine to realize that goal at the earliest possible date.
Ukraine now has law enforcement dedicated to fighting trafficking in
persons. Senior Ukrainian government officials, including Ukraine's First
Lady, have raised awareness of this key rule of law and human rights issue
by speaking out against trafficking. We are encouraging Ukraine to keep up
the pressure by ensuring convicted traffickers receive sentences that
adequately reflect the heinous nature of this crime.
An important part of my trip to Kiev last week was bringing together
American medical professionals, under the leadership of Representative
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, with Ukrainian counterparts and government ministers,
to determine how we can further assist the children victims of the Chernobyl
disaster. The United States has already provided more than $52 million worth
of humanitarian assistance, and we plan an additional $15 million shipment
next year.
There is also a strong desire on the part of private American citizens to
help. I visited the Kiev Clinical Children's and Maternal Hospital, together
with the Congressman and physicians, and heard directly from the Ukrainian
doctors about their training and equipment needs, which we will seek to
address through this public-private partnership.
The U.S. stands ready to assist Ukraine in all its efforts towards a better
future. Free and fair parliamentary and local elections in March 2006,
continued progress on economic reforms, and vigorous anti-corruption efforts
are crucial. These are important initiatives that must be seen through to
success: Ukraine's goal of joining NATO and the WTO are dependent on
progress in these areas.
We have every expectation that they will succeed, and that the inspiring
democratic transformation there will continue. When I spoke here at AEI,
almost a year ago to the day, about events in Ukraine, I quoted the famous
Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.
There is a monument dedicated to the Ukrainian people and him near Dupont
Circle and he continues to serve as a symbol of the quest for Ukrainian
freedom. "Will there be truth among people?" Shevchenko wrote 144 years
ago, "There must be, otherwise the sun will rise and set on fire the whole
land."
Today, to a greater extent than anytime in recent history there is indeed
truth among the people of Ukraine. While hurdles to progress may at times
seem insurmountable, as we look back to Ukraine before the Orange
Revolution we can see very significant progress. It is my hope and
expectation that this evolution will continue. -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ return to index ] [The Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================
24 . ANNA OF KYIV, QUEEN OF FRANCE
Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D. in history, head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve, tells a story of
Anna, daughter of an eleventh-century ruler of Kyiv, and Queen of France.
By Nadiya Nikitenko, Ph. D, Head of the Historical Research
Department of the Sofiya Kyivska National Preserve
Welcome to Ukraine magazine, Pages 44-47
Kyiv, Ukraine, Issue 4 (35), November 2005
A monument to the eleventh-century French queen, Anna (Anne) of Kyiv,
daughter of Grand Duke Yaroslav I, was erected in the town of Senlisse on
June 22 2005. Among the guests of honour at the unveiling ceremony were
President of Ukraine Victor Yushchenko, UNESCO Director General
Koichiro Matsuura, and Mayor of Senlisse, Hartun Daien.
President Yushchenko said at the ceremony that it was an important event in
the development of cultural relations between France and Ukraine, and
evidence of the fact that "Ukraine and France met in the ancient town of
Senlisse in order to erect still another bridge between the histories of our
two countries."
ANNA OF KYIV, QUEEN OF FRANCE
Among the rulers of the state usually referred to by historians as Kyivan
Rus (or in more recent times, and in Ukraine in particular, as Rus-Ukraine),
Grand Prince Yaroslav I the Wise (978-1054) who, in the words of a
chronicle, ruled, as "the sole sovereign of the land of the Rus" from 1036
until his death in 1054, is considered to be one of the most significant
figures.
At the start of his reign in Novgorod, where he had been placed by his
father, Volodymyr, the ruler of Kyiv, and thus titular head of Kyivan Rus,
Yaroslav, defied his father and superior, and Volodymyr threatened war, but
the preparations for the war were aborted because of Volodymyr's sudden
death.
Yaroslav proceeded to consolidate his power by eliminating all other
pretenders to the throne of Kyiv, among who were his next of kin. Once he
secured his position of the sole ruler of the Land of Rus, he concentrated
on making the country he ruled a major power in Eastern Europe.
The status of the city of Kyiv was raised to that of a major European
capital, and its magnificence was marvelled at and described in laudatory
terms by foreign west European travellers.
Yaroslav fought and drove off numerous nomads of the steppes whose
disruptive raids were put an effective end to during his reign. He
encouraged construction of churches modelled on the best Byzantine
landmarks, he promoted learning and the arts.
Discarding the practice of having many wives and concubines (his father was
said to run a harem of 300 women), he seemed, in his years as the sole
Kyivan ruler, to be content with one wife, a Swedish princess, by whom he
had many children, nine of whom survived into adulthood.
Proving to be a prolific father as he was a wise ruler, he was naturally
concerned with arranging their future and he successfully had his children
married to foreign princes and princesses. Arguably, the most successful
arrangement was the marriage of his daughter Anna (Anne) to the then king of
France, Henry I*.
According to the Annals of the City of Maux, France, in the year 1048, a
French embassage, led by the Bishop of the city of Maux Gautier and minister
of the French Court Gasseline de Chalignac, arrived in Kyiv with a mission
of arranging marriage of the king of France Henry I with Anna, one of the
daughters of Grand Duke Yaroslav I.
PROPOSALS AND ALLIANCES
Why Anne? Why Kyiv, which was quite a distance away from France? There
is no consensus among the historians as to why the king of France wanted
to marry a princess from the ruling house of Kyivan Rus, the state that had
no political or economic relations with France, and that was situated at the
outskirts of Europe.
Several reasons are quoted as possible motivations for a French king's wish
to marry a princess from such a far away, alien country. The Roman Pope had
issued an edict that banned marriage between close relatives (in fact, all
the cousins seven times removed were included into the ban), both the
inbreeding adverse effects which had become visible, and religious grounds
being the possible grounds for the edict.
A more plausible explanation involves the rising power and might of the
Kyivan state alliance with which could come in handy one way or the other.
Henry I, feeling rather insecure on his throne, could have wanted to
establish links with a dynasty that claimed several princesses of the royal
blood, Byzantine and Swedish - it would add glamour to his own Capetian
dynasty, Byzantium still ranking very high in the early medieval Europe.
Henry, a widower after his first wife's death (she was Mathilde, a niece of
the German Emperor Henry I) could also have wanted to bring new, fresh blood
into the veins of his successors. He could have been told about Anna's
beauty and other attractive qualities such as literacy and sapience by the
Bishop of the City of Chalon-sur-Marne Roget who had visited Kyiv some time
before (this visit is mentioned in a gloss on the margin of the
twelfth-century Psalter of Odalric).
Anna who was twenty one when the French embassage arrived, had been earlier
proposed in marriage to the German Emperor Henry I - the one whose niece had
been married to the French King - but the marriage negotiations had fallen
through.
Henry could have been aware of that circumstance too and he, maybe a
romantic, might have had a good reason to go ahead and marry a golden-haired
girl from an exotic land. Such a marriage would also be a good way of
spiting the German emperor and establishing a link that would be helpful in
possible future confrontations resulting from the emperor's expansionist
policies.
Whatever the reasons, Henry must have found it to be a good bargain to marry
Anna, a young, well-read and beautiful woman, whose lineage was even more
illustrious than that of the French king himself. As a matter of fact, it
was quite unclear who was doing favour to who - France to Kyiv or Kyiv to
France, the latter being much more likely.
Yaroslav's wife was Ingegerd, the daughter of the Swedish king Olaf (she was
rechristened Iryna after marriage); their son Izyaslav was married to
Gertruda, the sister of the Polish king Kazimir; their son Svyatoslav was
married to the sister of the Bishop of Trier, Burchart; their son Vsevolod
was married to a daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine IX; their
daughter Yelizaveta was married to Harald the Brave, an intrepid Viking with
a valid claim for the Norwegian throne which became his in 1047; their
daughter Anastasiya was married to Andrew I, the king of Hungary. To marry
into a family with such royal connections was, no doubt, to acquire a great
asset.
Anna arrived in France in the late autumn of 1048. Her wedding and
coronation took place in May 1049, the Holy Trinity Day, in the Cathedral of
the city of Rheims, long the site of the coronation of French kings. During
the coronation ceremony, which was conducted by the Archbishop of Rheims
Guy de Chatilion, Anna took her oath placing her hand on the Gospel that she
had brought from Kyiv.
This Gospel since then was used in the coronation ceremonies of the French
kings all down the line until Louis XIY. The last French king to take an
oath with his hand on this Gospel was Charles X (as king of France -
1824-1830). At present the book is kept in safety at the central library of
the city of Rheims.
Little is known of how Anna was received at the French court, or how soon
she learned the French language. Some tension could have arisen when Anna
failed to produce an heir who was much desired. She prayed hard, addressing
herself to God and to St Vincent, the patron saint of the French, asking for
the boon of a son.
She pledged to found a monastery if she was granted her request. And
finally, either thanks to her fervent prayers, or more likely to the
untiring efforts of her forty-five year old husband (rather an advanced age
by the eleventh-century standards) in 1053, she gave birth to her first-born
son who was christened Philip (one of the possible motivations that
determined the name of the child was Anna's lineage - her grandfather
Volodymyr, converted to Christianity, married a Byzantine princess, who
was a representative of the Byzantine Macedonian dynasty that claimed its
descent from the Macedonian king Philip).
In 1060 Henry I died leaving the throne to Philip who was only seven years
old then. Anna became the regent ruling the country in the name of her son.
And she did found a monastery dedicated to St Vincent in Senlisse, not far
from Paris.
Only a chapel has survived. There is a monument to Anne of Rus that stands
next to the chapel with an inscription on the pedestal that says, Anne of
Rus, Queen of France, Founder of this Church in 1066.
Philip was not her only child. Her son Robert died in adolescence, and her
son Hugh (Hugues) joined the first Crusades. He was also the founder of the
Orleans branch of the French royal house. The Capetian dynasty ruled in the
direct line until 1328, and, through its Valois, Orleans and Angouleme
branches, it lasted until the year 1589, when after the death of Henry III,
the first of the Bourbons became king.
Anna must have taken a certain part in running the affairs of the state
since some of the official documents of the times of her husband Henry I and
her son Philip bear her signature. One document, dating from 1063, the
charter of an abbey, bears her signature done in the Cyrillic, that is, Anna
the Queen, with the Cyrillic script used to render the French word.
An arranged marriage can hardly be a union of love, respect and duty being
more likely feelings, and it is not at all surprising that Anna fell in love
while still married to Henry. Her paramour was Raul III Peronn, Count of
Crepis and Valois, who was the first to succumb to the charms of the fair
queen.
Raul, a married man, was a descendant of Charlemagne and a powerful feudal
lord to be reckoned with. Pope Nicholas II, learning of the queens'
extramarital affair, sent her a message, admonishing her and reminding her
of her obligations and responsibility before God, her husband and her
children.
But even after the death of her husband, there must have been some obstacles
on her way to a second marriage and the enterprising and lovesick Raul
abducted her during a hunt in a forest in the vicinity of Senlisse, and
announced his marriage to Anna.
The next pope, Alexander II refused to recognize this marriage and insisted
that Raul's marriage to Agnes of Baraban remain valid. When Raul persisted,
the pope excommunicated him, but the count did not "return into the bosom of
his family" as he was urged to do, and lived with his beloved Anna until his
death in 1074.
Anna's regency officially ended in 1067 when Philip was fourteen and thought
fit to rule on his own. That means that Anna remained regent after she had
consorted with Raul. In 1071 Philip married Berthe of France and the
available evidence suggests that Anna was forced to leave the court
altogether and retire to her estates of Vernin of Chateaunef-sur-Loire.
There is some evidence that after the death of Raul she returned to the
court and was even engaged to a certain extent in the affairs of the state -
the document that confirms royal privileges to the Nunnery of the Virgin
bears her signature and she is referred to in it as "Mother of King Philip."
It is not known when Anna died or where she was buried. According to some
historians she returned to Kyiv to die; others claim that she died in France
and was buried in the Vilier Abbey not far from Forte-Aleps. Philip died in
1108 was buried in the Abbey of Saint Benut-sur-Loire. His tomb is still
extent.
In 1848, Antoine Marie Philippe Louis d'Orleans Duc de Montpensier
(1824-1890), the fifth son of the last king of France Louis Philippe came to
Russia on the invitation of Alexander III, tsar of Russia, to attend the
coronation ceremony.
He visited Kyiv and went to the Cathedral of Holy Sophia (Wisdom) of Kyiv
to worship and to pay homage to Grand Duke Yaroslav I who was buried in
the cathedral after his death in 1054.
The Grand Duke was Duc de Montpensier's distant ancestor through the
French Queen Anna of Rus. In 2001, another scion of the French royal family,
Charles Philippe Prince d'Orleans, went to the Holy Sophia Cathedral to pay
homage to the ruler of Kyiv who was one of his forbears.
The sarcophagus with the remains of Grand Duke Yaroslav still stands in
the side nave of the Holy Sophia Cathedral, a palpable link that unites the
histories of France and Ukraine. -30
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The reign of the King of France Henry I (c. 1008 - died Aug. 2, 1060) was
marked by struggles against rebellious vassals.The son of Robert II the
Pious and grandson of Hugh Capet, founder of the Capetian dynasty, Henry
was anointed king at Reims (1026) in his father's lifetime, following the
death of his elder brother Hugh.
His mother, Constance, however, favoured his younger brother Robert for the
throne, and civil war broke out on King Robert II's death (1031). The
younger Robert was given Burgundy in 1032, after Henry had sought refuge
with Robert, Duke of Normandy. From 1033 to 1043 Henry struggled with his
feudatories, notably Eudes of Blois and his brother Robert. In 1055, as the
result of an agreement made by Robert II, the county of Sens came to the
crown as the sole territorial gain of Henry's reign.
Henry helped William (the future William I of England), Robert's successor
as duke of Normandy, to quell his rebellious vassals at the Battle of
Val-aux-Dunes (1047), but he was thereafter usually at war with him - a
notable defeat for the king being that at Varaville (1058). Henry tried to
resist papal interference but could not prevent Pope Leo IX from holding a
council at Reims (1049). Philip, elder son of Henry's marriage to his second
wife, Anne of Kyiv, a Rus princess, was crowned in 1059.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The article is illustrated with pictures taken from the book Istorychni
Romany (Historical novels), by A. Ladynsky published in 1984. Artists -
Yevhen Kapustin and Yuliya Alekseyeva. Photos are from Nadiya
Nikitenko's archive.
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On which instrument was Django Reinhardt considered a virtuoso performer? | Swing de Paris [Box Set] - Django Reinhardt | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic
Swing de Paris [Box Set]
AllMusic Rating
google+
AllMusic Review by AllMusic
Released in 2003, this four-disc box set presents many of the finest recordings by the Belgian-born performer Django Reinhardt, considered by many to be the greatest jazz guitarist of all time. Drawing from sessions cut between 1934 and '52, the compilation features Reinhardt playing with his lauded pre-WWII ensemble, the Quintette du Hot Club de France, which included his brother, Joseph, and, most notably, violin virtuoso Stephane Grappelli. While the deft, nearly telepathic interplay between Reinhardt and Grappelli is the collection's main attraction, SWING DE PARIS also finds the innovative and amazingly agile six-stringer sitting in with American jazz luminaries such as saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and bandleader Glenn Miller. Although the anthology faces stiff competition from other Reinhardt compilations, SWING DE PARIS stands out with its sheer number of tracks (103) and its wide range of material.
Track Listing - Disc 1
| Guitar |
The Ligurian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea are both arms of which larger sea? | DJANGO REINHARDT | THE GYPSY GODFATHER OF HOT JAZZ GUITAR | The Selvedge Yard
DJANGO REINHARDT | THE GYPSY GODFATHER OF HOT JAZZ GUITAR
*
If you’re a guitarist, or just an avid fan of music history, you may be aware of two mythical icons who are the equivalent to the Holy Grail of guitar. In the world of Blues, Robert Johnson imediately comes to mind– legend has it, Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his Blues guitar chops. And in the world of Jazz guitar, there is no one more revered and influential as the one and only Hot Jazz hero, Django Reinhardt.
Django had only two operable fingers on his fretting hand (he was badly burned in a fire at age 18), which is unbelievable when you listen to the recordings of him noodling up and down the neck. But it wasn’t the novelty of his playing with two fingers that made him a sensation– Django’s techniques and tone are legendary, and still cited as a major influence by the world’s best guitarists, past and present. His early and unfortunate passing at the age of 43 yrs old (1910-1953), forever cemented his icon status.
*
Gypsy Jazz Guitar virtuoso, Django Reinhardt. Here you get a good look at his crippled left hand.
*
“Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived, an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B.B. King, Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Handsome, charismatic, childlike, and unpredictable, Reinhardt was a character out of a picaresque novel. Born in a gypsy caravan at a crossroads in Belgium, he was almost killed in a freak fire that burned half of his body and left his left hand twisted into a claw. But with this maimed left hand flying over the frets and his right hand plucking at dizzying speed, Django became Europe’s most famous jazz musician, commanding exorbitant fees—and spending the money as fast as he made it.”
__________________________________________________________________
*
1934, France — Django Reinhardt (1910-1953) and Stephane Grappelli, of the Quintet de Hot Club de France. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS
*
“Amazingly, several of the Gypsy guitarists who came along after Django played with just two fingers in an effort to get the tone he had—guitarists like Jacques Montagne. Even today, players like John Jorgenson or Sam Miltich will every now and then play a song with two fingers for fun, and they are able to do it, but four fingers is certainly better.”
Django Reinhardt, 1942.
*
Django Reinhardt’s family were musical gypsies that camped in the outskirts near Paris. Young Django first played the violin and then moved on to the Gypsy banjo-guitar, learning to play from his father– who had seven brothers who were all musicians. Early on, Django had trouble getting gigs because cabaret owners were afraid he’d steal the silverware. As a Gypsy in French society, he was considered beneath the French and African Americans playing Jazz in clubs. It’s unknown how much education Django received while growing up. He didn’t learn to write until Stéphane Grappelli (violinist and long-time musical partner) taught him, most likely in the late 1930s, and it’s thought that he never learned to read books or music.
*
Late 1940s, Paris, France — Django Reinhardt (the greatest guitarist) and Edith Piaf (regarded as the greatest French singer, and cultural icon) — Image by © Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis
*
Sometime around 1929, things began falling into place for Django– he put down the gypsy banjo-guitar, and picked up the six-string guitar. He began playing with Stéphane Grappelli (before they officially formed the Quintette du Hot Club de France) and Jazz soon replaced the traditional Musette music Django had grown up on. Then a fellow guitarist, Emile Savitry, invited him up to his apartment to hear American jazz recordings by Duke Ellington, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and notably Louis Armstrong’s “Indian Cradle Song.” When Django heard it he broke down, held his head in his hands and exclaimed in the Romani language, “Ach moune,” which means, “My brother.”
*
“Right away, he understood Armstrong. Right away, he preferred Armstrong’s formidable playing over the erudite technique of the orchestra of Duke Ellington. Guided by an instinct of astounding precision, he was able to judge these musicians, almost instantly.”
Django Reinhardt & Duke Ellington
*
“The Quintette du Hot Club de France happened by accident. Django was playing with Stéphane Grappelli in a fourteen-piece orchestra for tea dances at the Hotel Claridge on the Champs-Élysées. It was a kind of stilted affair that included waltzing, and Django’s dance band alternated with a tango band. Grappelli actually played in both of these bands. At one point he broke a string on his violin and stepped backstage to restring and tune up. As he was tuning up, he played a little jazz ditty that Django echoed, and they began jamming together. The next thing they knew they had a rhythm guitarist joining in, and a bass player, and the band built up by accident from this experience.”
— Michael Dregni
*
1934, France — Django Reinhardt (1910-1953) and Stephane Grappelli, of the Quintet de Hot Club de France, 1934 was the year the Quintet was formed.
*
“During that time, jazz was having a hard time gaining acceptance, so they had some difficulties getting recorded for a couple of years. And once jazz did gain appeal, it was considered to be horn music, drum music, or piano music. So when Django and Grappelli came along, recreating the music people were used to hearing come out of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet—only on strings—it was an odd thing to accept at the time.”
*
“While he (Django) was certainly appreciated, he was also considered to be a bit of a novelty because he was a guitarist, which was not a solo instrument in those days. Some said that he didn’t know much about jazz in those early days, but they did hear something special in his playing. The members of the Hot Club wanted to find Frenchmen they could support so they could prove to others that the French could play jazz as well as the Americans, and in Grappelli and Django, they believe they found that.”
*
*
“While it’s certainly true that Django’s technique was astonishing, the observation is too rarely made that technique was not the point.”
“Django composed – on the spot, new music nobody (including Django himself) had ever heard before. Like most string players, I’ve met and heard plenty of people who astonished me with their facility, but I’ve never encountered anybody who did that to his extent.”
“He seemed to regard the guitar as a somewhat-necessary annoyance in the process of exposing what was happening in his head. Stories abound of his continuing to play pretty much the same stuff as more and more strings broke; since in those days “metal” strings, as he referred to them, were somewhat rare and hard to find if you weren’t in a major city, he is reputed at one point to have played a week’s gig at a rural hotel wherein he closed the week with only two strings remaining.”
“He was, I think, an incomparable genius, and light-years beyond “Guitar Hero” status. Don’t try to think about how he did it, just listen and forget that he was producing those sounds from a guitar.”
–Rob De Witt
Many thanks for your comments, Rob ~ JP
*
Read more on Django here and here and here
*
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In 1937, Salvador Dali designed a sofa in the shape of the lips of which famous Hollywood actress? | Sofa.com | A History of Culture in 100 Sofas (and other furniture) - 1. Salvador Dali’s Mae West lips sofa (1937)
A History of Culture in 100 Sofas (and other furniture) - 1. Salvador Dali’s Mae West lips sofa (1937)
19.12.2014 by Andrew Nixon
A History of Culture in 100 Sofas (and other furniture) - 1. Salvador Dali’s Mae West lips sofa (1937)
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Here at sofa.com we believe that not enough attention has been paid by scholars to the role of sofas , chairs and beds in the history of culture – after all, we spend a huge proportion of our lives in one or other of them. That’s why we’ve invited Andrew Nixon, editor of the leading culture blog The Dabbler , to create a new series looking at iconic, influential and unique items of furniture that have made our culture what it is. In this first instalment, he examines a sofa designed by the surrealist artist Salvador Dali...
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing”, said Salvador Dali, once. When it came to producing furniture designs, what the great surrealist and self-publicist liked to imitate most was the face of the Hollywood bombshell Mae West.
At the Dali Museum in Figures, Spain, there is an entire room composed to look like the actress. If you peep through a specially-angled lens you’ll see Mae’s visage framed in a wavy-blonde doorway, with two photographs that cleverly make the eyes, a nose-shaped fireplace, and finally the plump, red, pouting sofa of the mouth.
And what a sofa it is. Never mind the floppy clocks and long-legged elephants, I’d argue that the Mae West seat is Salvador Dali’s finest work, being audacious, witty, aesthetically-pleasing and instantly recognizable. It’s surely his most famous object (except perhaps for the gloriously silly lobster telephone ) and while ‘iconic’ is an overused word, it fits here.
The face of Mae West
Mae West was just Dali’s sort of muse: curvaceous, bawdy, highly controversial and a lot of fun. As a comic writer and actress in movies she was notorious for pushing the boundaries of decency and frequently fell foul of the censor. This of course only helped increase her fame (she once quipped: "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it") and her popularity, especially with the male audience: in World War II Allied aircrew called their lifejackets "Mae Wests" due to their resemblance, when inflated, to her buxom figure.
It is hardly surprising then, that the mischievous and erotica-obsessed Salvador Dali was drawn to her. In 1934-35 he created a painting based on a photograph of the actress called The Face of Mae West which may be used as a surrealistic apartment. In it, West’s facial features became elements in a living room: the eyes were framed pictures, the nose was a fireplace and the lips a voluptuous sofa. At that point however it was just a surreal painting rather than an actual design.
A surrealist paradise
The chance for Dali to turn his sofa idea into physical reality came a few years later, when he was working under the patronage of the wealthy collector and poet Edward James. James was a great enthusiast for the surrealist movement and an important figure in it – there’s even a portrait by Magritte of him looking into a mirror at the back of his own head.
At the time when Dali visited the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, James happened to be in the process of renovating Monckton House on his West Dean estate in Sussex. Discovering that Dali was rather broke, James offered to pay him a salary in return for his entire artistic output for a year, and together the two of them began working on turning Monckton House into a surrealist interior designer’s paradise. The Mae West sofa - based on Dali’s painting - arose from their collaboration.
Surrealist interor at Monckton House
The £62k sofa
There were actually five sofas produced in 1938, all of which James kept, with ownership passing to the Edward James Foundation after his death in 1984. Two were subsequently sold and when one of those was auctioned by Christie’s in 2003 it fetched an impressive £62,140.
The successful bidder was anonymous – but whoever they are, they’re unlikely to be using it for sitting on to watch the telly. Despite the inviting-looking red satin fabric, the Mae West sofa is not, apparently, very comfy: Dali claimed that he partly based the design on a cluster of particularly uncomfortable rocks near the seaside resort of Cadaques.
So, as visually splendid as it might be, lacking any practical use in the home I don’t suppose Dali’s Mae West lips piece would qualify for the sofa.com sofa portfolio . But for its audacity, its perfect encapsulation of the funny side of the Surrealist movement, and its demonstration of just how far you can separate a piece of furniture’s value from its function, it is worthy of its place as the opening entry in our History of Culture in 100 Sofas (and other furniture).
Mae West room at the Dali Museum
A History of Culture in 100 Sofas (and other furniture) - 1. Salvador Dali’s Mae West Lips sofa
What: Wood and red satin sofa, 86.5 x 183 x 81.5 cm
When: 1937
Why it’s culturally significant: The high point of cheeky surrealist wit
Next: John and Yoko's 'Lie-In' Protest Bed
| Mae West |
From which country does 'Limburger' cheese come? | 1000+ images about The INIMITABLE Mae West on Pinterest | Brooches, Playwright and Lady
Ruby, diamond, and pearl LIPS brooch by Salvador Dali, 1949 - inspired by Mae West - "Mae West's come-hither smile inspired this 1949 brooch. "Poets of the ages, of all lands, write of ruby lips and teeth like pearls." -Dali"
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In which city does the Jacques Cartier Bridge span the St. Lawrence River? | Jacques-Cartier Bridge - Québec
Jacques-Cartier Bridge
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Jacques-Cartier Bridge
Jacques-Cartier Bridge
The Jacques-Cartier Bridge is a steel bridge of total length of 2687 metres crossing the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal Island to the south shore at Longueuil. Its longest span is of more than 334 metres. The bridge crosses Sainte-Helene Island in the centre of the river, where off-ramps allow access to the Parc Jean-Drapeau and La Ronde amusement park.
It was opened on May 14, 1930. Originally named the Montreal Harbour Bridge, the bridge was renamed in 1934 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Jacques Cartier's discovery of Canada.
The bridge was a toll bridge from its opening until 1962 and a toll plaza was located on the southern approach. The toll plaza area now houses the offices of the corporation that owns and operates the structure and the nearby Champlain Bridge. Tokens were issued for part of the period that tolls were collected.
The bridge was designed as a road, tramway, and pedestrian bridge; however tramway tracks were installed but never used. The roadway was expanded in 1956 and 1959 to include the space allocated to the tramway tracks, adding an extra lane of traffic in each direction. The two sidewalks were outside the bridge proper.
Today the five-lane highway bridge is 3,400 m (11,236 ft) in length, including the approach viaducts. There are approximately 35 million vehicle crossings annually making it the second busiest bridge in Canada that is operated by the Federal Bridge Corporation Limited, the first being Champlain Bridge, just a few kilometres upstream. However, Jacques-Cartier Bridge is the third busiest bridge in Canada overall after the Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver, connecting Surrey to Coquitlam. Its daily traffic is of around one hundred vehicles.
The bridge was built by Philip Louis Pratley (1884-1958), Canada’s foremost designer of long-span highway bridges in the first half of the 20th century. P.L. Pratley created a number of exceptional works that have become Canadian landmarks. During his career as a consulting engineer in Montréal he used the latest design theories and structural materials to build elegant, state-of-the-art structures. Several of his outstanding bridges have become widely recognized as symbols of their cities, including the Lions Gate in Vancouver, the Jacques-Cartier in Montreal, and the Angus L. Macdonald in Halifax. His monumental projects link the highways of the nation from coast to coast.
Panoramic view of Jacques-Cartier Bridge. Photo : © V. Petrovsky
Jacques-Cartier Bridge at dusk. Photo : © V. Petrovsky
Jacques-Cartier Bridge is a five lanes bridge. Photo : © V. Petrovsky
During the summer season, the bridge is regularly completely closed to vehicular traffic for the fireworks competition held at La Ronde. It becomes foot traffic only, sometimes drawing crowds of 50,000 people or even more. Photo : © V. Petrovsky
In 2004, a suicide prevention barrier was installed. Until then the bridge saw an average of 10 suicides a year., one of the highest rates in the world. Photo : © V. Petrovsky
To accommodate large ships using the new St. Lawrence Seaway, the span over the east channel of the river (the Warren truss) was raised an additional 80 feet (to 120 feet) in 1957 and 1958. Traffic flow over the bridge was uninterrupted by this construction, through the installation of two Bailey bridges. Photo : © V. Petrovsky
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Which cross was the symbol of both Joan of Arc and of the Free French Forces during World War II? | Articles | Encyclopédie du patrimoine culturel de l'Amérique française – histoire, culture, religion, héritage
Quebec City’s Cantilever Bridge
par L'Hébreux, Michel
The Pont de Québec [Bridge] has left its mark on the history of transportation and engineering in Canada. It is the world's longest cantilever bridge, with 549 metres of clear span between its main pillars; it exceeds the Firth of Forth Bridge near Edinburgh, Scotland, by 28 metres. At the beginning of the 20th century, the promoters of the Quebec Bridge project described the endeavour as the future eighth wonder of the world, particularly because its construction represented such a colossal challenge for the era. In fact, this feat of civil engineering was accomplished with great difficulty, and that, only after decades of expectation and two unsuccessful attempts that caused the death of 89 workers. The Quebec Bridge was, at last, successfully completed on September 20th, 1917, as over 125,000 spectators watched enthusiastically. Today it is considered as a world-class engineering masterpiece and has been designated as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and a National Historic Site of Canada.
Article disponible en français : Pont de Québec
The Dramatic Initial Phase of the Construction of the Quebec Bridge
On October 2nd, 1900, during a grandiose ceremony, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, then Prime Minister of Canada, laid the first stone for the northern pillar of the Quebec Bridge. Accompanied by Simon-Napoléon Parent, mayor of Quebec City and president of the Quebec Bridge & Railway Co. that would be helping with the bridge project; Laurier launched the construction project, which would be supervised by the Phoenix Bridge Co. of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
During the building of the superstructure, which was started in the summer of 1905, problems multiplied quickly. Workers found it difficult to align the various component parts and realized that a number of sections were bending. These troubling difficulties raised certain concerns, but Theodore Cooper, the chief engineer, who was supervising the construction from his New York City office, remained reassuring. Since Cooper was widely trusted and considered an expert, the young, inexperienced engineer whom the American had entrusted to monitor the work forged on ahead. However, on August 29th, 1907, while about 100 workers were busy erecting the iron structure, with only 20 or so minutes left in their shift, a catastrophe occurred. A terrible noise that could be heard many kilometres away filled the air and the entire southern segment of the bridge, all 391 metres of it collapsed onto the shore and into the river, causing the death of 76 people.
In the months that followed, a commission of inquiry would establish that the collapse of the bridge was due to fundamental errors in the blueprint design, combined with a lack of judgment on the part of Theodore Cooper. Cooper had modified the original blueprints by increasing the distance between the main pillars from 488 to 549 metres without revising his other calculations. The pretext he gave was that he wanted to facilitate construction of the pillars and protect them from ice during the winter, but his main objective may well have been to make the Quebec Bridge the world's longest cantilever bridge, without taking the necessary precautions.
The Second Phase: Construction Begins Anew under the Auspices of the Canadian Government
In 1908, the Canadian government took over reconstruction of the bridge, since the structure constituted an essential link between Quebec City and the Transcontinental Railway which, in those days, still passed through Lévis on the other side of the St. Lawrence River. The government appointed a committee made up of three engineers and told them to draw up new specifications. After a dispute which led to the resignation of the committee chairman, responsibility for constructing the bridge was left in the hands of the St. Lawrence Bridge Co., the product of a consortium involving the Dominion Bridge Co. of Lachine, Quebec and the Canadian Bridge Co. of Walkerville, Ontario.
Blueprints were prepared by the St. Lawrence Bridge Co. under the supervision of the engineering committee. Extremely strict norms were followed in order to ensure that no error would find its way into the project this time. For instance, in the new plans, the figure specifying the required quantity of steel was nearly the double of that of the first bridge. Although the construction plan remained the same-specifying a 987-meter-long cantilever bridge with a 195-metre suspension span-the president of St. Lawrence Bridge, Phelps Johnson, improved on the original design by creating a new system known as the K-truss bracing system, a truss geometry resulting in a more effective, elegant structure, easier to build than the bridge in the blueprint proposed by the engineering committee.
The anchorage arm and the north-south cantilever were built between 1913 and 1916. Then, on September 11th, 1916, the time came to raise the central span that had been constructed in Sillery Cove, which was intended to join the two cantilever arms and finish the building of the bridge. Over 100,000 people gathered in Quebec City to celebrate the big day. However, during the raising of the 5,000-ton span, a dreadful cracking sound was suddenly heard and the span began to twist and sag and then it sunk into the depths of the river with a terrible crash. Thirteen people lost their lives and fourteen more were wounded in this second tragedy, which was attributed to the defective casting of a cruciform support of the central span.
These two tragedies would remain etched in shared memory of the community, as events that were almost as great as, if not greater than the feat of engineering that it took to build the bridge.
Third phase: the Successful Completion of the Bridge
Finally, the following year, on September 20th, 1917, before an immense crowd estimated at 125,000 people that had come from all four corners of Canada and the United States, the central span was erected without a hitch. Quebec City was decked out in all its finery for the occasion and a number of demonstrations of joy erupted throughout the town, as workers, engineers and the general population celebrated the successful completion of this great marvel of civil engineering.
An Indispensable Rail and Road Link from the North to the South Bank of the St. Lawrence River
At this point, the dream that Quebec City had kept alive for so many years finally came true and the city became a national-level transportation crossroads. As of 1917, the bridge put Quebec City and its region into direct contact with the south shore of the St. Lawrence River and the United States, a link that brought the city 11 railway companies whose lines up until that time had only run along the south banks of the river. The new bridge advantageous in that it shortened the rail distances between Quebec City and Halifax, as well as Winnipeg, by several hundred kilometres.
In addition, as of 1929, a 4.27-metre-wide motor lane was added to the two rail lines running on the bridge. This new addition made it possible for cars to cross the bridge as well. Until 1949, flaggers directed traffic on the bridge and collectors gathered money from the drivers. Then as cars and trucks gradually began to crowd out railways, in keeping with the prevailing trend, the government ordered the motor lane to be expanded and removed one of the rail lines. Quebec's premier, Maurice Duplessis, officially opened this renovated version of the Quebec Bridge on May 25th, 1952.
A Thrilling Engineering Feat for all Concerned
During the time of its construction, the Quebec Bridge enjoyed significant international fame and influence. Highly renowned foreign engineers, such as Eiffel, Brownlee, Serrell, Cooper, and several others took an interest in the bridge or played various roles in its construction. It should also be pointed out that, in 1916, at the time of the first attempt to raise the central span; Japan delegated 200 engineers to attend this world première. For the occasion, over 100,000 people from all over Canada and even from the United States also assembled on both shores of the St. Lawrence River in order to be eye witnesses to this feat of engineering. Newspapers reported that never before had such a crowd been seen in Quebec City and that the hotels could not accommodate the visitors who, and so most of spent the night camping in the open air. In 1917, 125,000 people looked on as the central span of the Quebec Bridge was successfully erected.
The Quebec Bridge is still mentioned today in international engineering publications as the best illustration of the cantilever bridge technique, and of course, as the longest bridge of its kind in the world. This influence and renown is due to the courage and tenacity of the Quebecois who saw this great project to its completion, in spite of all the obstacles that arose along the way.
The Practical Uses and the Heritage Value of the Quebec Bridge
The wholesale involvement of various politicians at the beginning of the 20th century made it possible to complete the bridge that, for 50 years, Quebecois had been waiting for. At the time it was a structure that was being called the grand public work of the Confederation. It was a sign of the times and of the international importance of this feat that the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII, King of England) came to officially open the Quebec Bridge in 1919.
The bridge provided Quebec City and the surround area with a direct link to the south banks of the St. Lawrence River, as well as to the United States. Earlier, during the mid-19th century, the railroad had brought great prosperity to Lévis, where the Grand Trunk Railway Company had pushed for the construction of reception facilities for immigrants, as well as a number of hotels to accommodate travellers in transit. Railroad-related activities required a large workforce, and so, the population of Lévis considerably increased. Momentum shifted with the building of the Quebec Bridge, and as a consequence, the arrival of transcontinental railway companies greatly boosted the development of Quebec City, which, in addition to being the provincial capital, it had a larger population than Lévis.
Classed as a masterpiece of civil engineering at the time of its successful completion, the Quebec Bridge has continued to be awarded recognition. (NOTE 1) In 1987, it was designated an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers and by the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering. Only four works of civil engineering have ever received such an honour throughout the entire world. At the end of January 1996, it was the Canadian government's turn to honour the Quebec Bridge by declaring it a National Historic Site, thus recognizing it as the most important work in the history of Canadian civil engineering.
The Present and Future of the Quebec Bridge
To a certain extent, the Quebec Bridge is to Quebec City what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris or the Statue of Liberty to New York City, even though the bridge's status as a tourist attraction is hardly comparable. The three structures have acquired a symbolic value for the local populations, whose sense of identity is tied to these landmarks. (NOTE 2)
In October 2001, an architectural lighting project designed to cause the bridge's colour to vary according to the rhythm of the St. Lawrence River's tides was completed. Unfortunately, the finished product was considered a disappointment given the unimpressive lighting effects and the high expectations that the project had raised. Its designers hope to have the opportunity to improve their lighting system, so as to better showcase this masterpiece of engineering.
Over the last 20 years, the Quebec Bridge has been having serious corrosion problems. In 1987, the Coalition pour la Sauvegarde et la Mise en Valeur du Pont de Québec [Coalition for safeguarding and Maintaining the Quebec Bridge] was created. And so, after several years efforts, the group managed to convince the three main entities responsible for the bridge's maintenance (the governments of Canada and Quebec and the Canadian National Railway Company) to sign two successive restoration agreements. In 1993, the Canadian government sold the Quebec Bridge and various railway right-of-way corridors situated throughout the country to a then crown corporation now known as Canadian National for the nominal fee of $1. In return, the company promised to completely restore the bridge. However, in 1995, the federal government privatized Canadian National, and as a consequence, a new 10-year tripartite agreement had to be renegotiated. Unfortunately, when the agreement lapsed in 2005, only 40 percent of the bridge had been repainted and made rust free. As it happened, Canadian National refused to invest any more money in bridge renovations, and so, work was interrupted. Faced with the deadlock that ensued in spite of intense negotiations, in 2007, the Canadian government vowed to initiate legal proceedings against Canadian National, in order to force the company to finish the repair work that it had begun on the Quebec Bridge.
This conflict reflects a profound difference of opinion concerning the heritage value of the Quebec Bridge. On the one hand, a private company having taken over ownership of a very valuable community facility refuses to invest a penny more to restore the splendour of yesteryear and to guarantee that the work will last for years to come. On the other hand, a coalition of individuals and organizations is pressuring the company (as are the governments in Ottawa and Quebec City) to protect and enhance this masterpiece of civil engineering, so that future generations can also benefit from this unique heritage.
It can only be hoped that this latest episode in the stormy history of the Quebec Bridge will end happily. Particularly because the bridge has the potential to once again become a large-scale attraction to be treasured by the regional tourist industry-provided that it is protected and enhanced as it should be.
Michel L'Hébreux
NOTES
Note 1: This is a good place to mention that the Seven Wonders of the World were designated during ancient times by a Greek named Philo of Byzantium who did so about three centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. Of the seven wonders identified at that time, only the pyramids of Egypt have lasted to this day. The Quebec Bridge has therefore never been officially categorized as a Wonder of the World.
Note 2: It should be pointed out that including its approach spans the Quebec Bridge is the equivalent in length to three times the height of the Eiffel Tower and that it weighs nearly nine and a half times more than the French landmark. In Canada, the Jacques Cartier Bridge, completed in 1929, ranks 13th among all cantilever bridges with its 334.37-metre main span.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L'Hébreux, Michel, Le pont de Québec, Sillery, Éditions Septentrion, 2001, 255 p.
L'Hébreux, Michel, Ce sera le plus grand pont du monde, Montréal, Éditions Les 400 coups, 2005, 32 p.
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What type of creature was Amaltheia, who suckled the infant Zeus in a cave on Crete? | AMALTHEA (Amaltheia) - Goat Nurse of Zeus in Greek Mythology
Translation
Rear, Nurse (amaltheuô)
AMALTHEIA (Amalthea) was the she-goat nurse of the god Zeus who nourished him with milk in a cave on Mount Dikte (Dicte) in Krete (Crete). When the god reached maturity he created his thunder-shield (the aigis) from her hide and the horn of plenty (cornucopia or keras amaltheias) from her crown. According to some Amaltheia was a nymphe rather than a goat.
Amaltheia was placed amongst the stars as the constellation Capra--the stellar group surrounding Capella on the arm (ôlenê) of the Auriga the Charioteer. The "goat on the arm" no doubt represented the stormy aigis-shield of Zeus which in classical art was sometimes depicted as a tasselled hide slung across his arm. The rising of Capella marked the onset of stormy weather for the Greeks. The word aigis means both "stormy weather" and "goat-skin" in ancient Greek which explains the close connection between the two in myth.
FAMILY OF AMALTHEA
[1.2] KOURETE OLENOS (Hyginus Astronomica 2.13)
[2.1] HELIOS (Hyginus Astronomica 2.13)
OFFSPRING
[1.1] TWO KIDS (Hyginus Astronomica 2.16)
ENCYCLOPEDIA
AMALTHEIA (Amaltheia). The nurse of the infant Zeus after his birth in Crete. The ancients themselves appear to have been as uncertain about the etymology of the name as about the real nature of Amaltheia. Hesychius derives it from the verb amaltheuein, to nourish or to enrich ; others from amalthaktos, i. c. firm or hard; and others again from amalê and theia, according to which it would signify the divine goat, or the tender goddess. The common derivation is from amelgein, to milk or suck. According to some traditions Amaltheia is the goat who suckled the infant Jove (Hygin. Poet. Astr. ii. 13; Arat. Phaen. 163; Callim. Hymn. in Jov. 49), and who was afterwards rewarded for this service by being placed among the stars. (Comp. Apollod. i. 1. § 6.) According to another set of traditions Amaltheia was a nymph, and daughter of Oceanus, Helios, Haemonius, or of the Cretan king Melisseus (Schol. ad Hom. II. xxi. 194; Eratosth. Catast. 13; Apollod. ii. 7. § 5; Lactant. Instit. i. 22; Hygin. l. c., and Fab. 139, where he calls the nymph Adamanteia),and is said to have fed Zeus with the milk of a goat. When this goat once broke off one of her horns, the nymph Amaltheia filled it with fresh herbs and fruit and gave it to Zeus, who transplaced it together with the goat among the stars. (Ovid, Fast. v. 115, &c.) According to other accounts Zeus himself broke off one of the horns of the goat Amaltheia, gave it to the daughters of Melisseus, and endowed it with such powers that whenever the possessor wished, it would instantaneously become filled with whatever might be desired. (Apollod. l. c.; Schol. ad Callim. l. c.) This is the story about the origin of the celebrated horn of Amaltheia, commonly called the horn of plenty or cornucopia, which plays such a prominent part in the stories of Greece, and which was used in later times as the symbol of plenty in general. (Strab. x. p. 458, iii. p. 151; Diod. iv. 35.) Diodorus (iii. 68) gives an account of Amaltheia, which differs from all the other traditions. According to him the Libyan king Ammon married Amaltheia, a maiden of extraordinary beauty, and gave her a very fertile tract of land which had the form of a bull's horn, and received from its queen the name of the horn of Amaltheia. This account, however, is only one of the many specimens of a rationalistic interpretation of the ancient mythus. The horn appears to be one of the most ancient and simplest vessels for drinking, and thus we find the story of Amaltheia giving Zeus to drink from a horn represented in an ancient work of art still extant. (Galeria Giustiniani, ii. p. 61.) The horn of plenty was frequently given as an attribute to the representations of Tyche or Fortuna. (Paus. iv. 30. § 4, vii. 26. § 3.)
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
ALTERNATE NAMES
Goat of the Lower Arm (ôlenê)
CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES
AMALTHEA WET-NURSE OF ZEUS
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 4 - 5 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Rhea, when she was heavy with Zeus, went off to Krete (Crete) and gave birth to him there in a cave on Mount Dikte (Dicte). She put him in the care of both the Kouretes (Curetes) and the nymphs Adrasteia and Ide (Ida), daughters of Melisseus. These Nymphai (Nymphs) nursed the baby with the milk of Amaltheia (Amalthea), while the armed Kouretes stood guard over him in the cave, banging their spears against their shields to prevent Kronos (Cronus) from hearing the infant's voice."
Callimachus, Hymn 1 to Zeus 42 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"[The Nymphe Neda carries the infant Zeus from his birth-place in Arkadia (Arcadia) to his nurses and protectors in Krete (Crete) :] When the Nymphe [Neda], carrying thee, O Father Zeus, toward Knosos (Cnossus) . . . But thee, O Zeus, the companions of Kyrbantes (Corybantes) took to their arms, even the Diktaian Meliai (Melian Nymphs of Dicte), and Adrasteia laid thee to rest in a cradle of gold, and thou didst suck the rich teat of the she-goat Amaltheia (Amalthea), and thereto eat the sweet honey-comb."
Aratus, Phaenomena 162 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek astronomical poem C3rd B.C.) :
"The holy Goat (Aix), that, as legend tells, gave the breast to Zeus. Her the interpreters of Zeus call the Olenian Goat."
Strabo, Geography 8. 7. 5 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The story is told that Zeus was nursed by a goat there [Aegion (Aegium) in Akhaia (Achaea)], just as Aratos [3rd B.C. poet] says : ‘Sacred goat, which, in story, didst hold thy breast o'er Zeus’; and he goes on to say that ‘the interpreters call her the Olenian goat of Zeus,’ thus clearly indicating that the place is near Olene (Olenus)."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 70. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"The Kouretes (Curetes) bore him [the infant Zeus] off to a certain cave where they gave him over to the Nymphai (Nymphs), with the command that they should minister to his every need And the Nymphai nurtured the child on a mixture of honey and milk and gave him upbringing at the udder of the goat which was named Amaltheia (Amalthea) . . . To the goat (aig-) [Amaltheia] which suckled him Zeus also accorded certain honours, and in particular took from it a surname, being called Aigiokhos (Aegis-bearing)."
Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 36 (trans. Celoria) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"When Rhea, fearing Kronos (Cronus), hid Zeus in the Kretan (Cretan) cavern, a goat [Amaltheia] offered her udder and gave him nourishment. By the will of Rhea a Golden Dog (Kuon Khryseos) guarded the goat. After Zeus drove out the Titanes and deprived Kronos (Cronus) of power, he changed the goat into an immortal, there is a representation of her among the stars to this day. He ordered the Golden Dog to guard this sacred spot in Krete (Crete)."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 139 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"After Opis [Rhea] had borne Jove [Zeus] by Saturn [Kronos (Cronus)] . . . Juno [Hera], however, took Jove to the island of Crete, and Amalthea, the child's nurse, hung him in a cradle from a tree, so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea. And lest the cries of the baby be heard, she summoned youths and gave them small brazen shields and spears, and bade them go around the tree making a noise. In Greek they are called Curetes."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 13 :
"On his [the constellation Auriga's] arm the goat [constellation] Capra stands, and in his left hand the [constellation] Kids seem to be placed. They tell this story about him. A certain Olenus, son of Vulcanus [Hephaistos (Hephaestus)], had two daughters, the nymphae (nymphs) Aex and Helice, who were nurses of Jove [Zeus]. Others have said that certain cities were named from them--Olenus in Aulis, Helice in the Peloponnesus (Peloponnese), and Aex in Haemonia--about which Homer writes in the second book of the Iliad.
But Parmeniscus say that a certain Melisseus was king in Crete, and to his daughters Jove [Zeus] was brought to nurse. Since they did not have milk, they furnished him a she-goat, Amalthea by name, who is said to have reared him. She often bore twin kids, and at the very time that Jove was brought to her to nurse, had borne a pair. And so because of the kindness of the mother, the kids, too were placed among the constellations. Cleostratus of Tenedos [astronomer C5th B.C.] is said to have first pointed out these kids among the stars.
But Musaeus says Jove [Zeus] was nursed by Themis and the nympha Amalthea, to whom he was given by Ops [Rhea], his mother. Now Amalthea had as a pet a certain goat which is said to have nursed Jove.
Some have called Aex [a Gorgon] the daughter of Sol [Helios], who surpassed many in beauty of body, but in contrast to this beauty, had a most horrible face. Terrified by it, the Titanes begged Terra (Earth) [Gaia] to hide her body, and Terra is said to have hidden her in a cave in the island of Crete. Later she became nurse of Jove [Zeus], as we have said before. But when Jupiter [Zeus], confident in his youth, was preparing for war against the Titanes, oracular reply was given to him that if he wished to win, he should carry on the war protected with the skin of a goat, aigos, and the head of the Gorgon. The Greeks call this the aegis. When this was done, as we have shown above, Jupiter, overcoming the Titanes, gained possession of the kingdom. Covering the remaining bones of the goat with a skin, he gave life to them and memorialised them, picturing them with stars. Afterwards he gave to Minerva [Athena] the aegis with which he had been protected."
Ovid, Fasti 5. 111 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"On the first night I can see the star that serviced Jupiter's [Zeus'] cradle. The rainy sign of Olenian Capella is born. Heaven is her reward for giving milk. Naiad Amalthea, famous on Cretan Ida, hid Jupiter, it is said, in the forest. She possessed the lovely mother of two young goats, a glorious sight among Dicte's flocks, with soaring horns curled round her back and an udder suitable for the nurse of Jupiter. She gave the god milk, but snapped her horn on a tree and was severed from half her loveliness. The Nympha picked the horn up, ringed it with fresh herbs, and took it fruit-filled to Jupiter's lips. When he controlled the sky and sat on his father's throne and nothing surpasses unconquered Jove, he made stars of the nurse and the nurse's fruitful horn, which bears even now its mistress' name."
Ovid, Fasti 3. 439 ff :
"A she-goat stands there [in the shrine of young Jove at Rome], too : the Cretan Nymphae (Nymphs), they say, fed Jove [Zeus] and the goat gave the infant milk."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 27. 290 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"He [Pan] once was mountain-ranging shepherd of the goat Amaltheia my [Zeus's] nurse, who gave me milk; save him."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 28. 312 ff :
"A little cave once was the home of Zeus, where the sacred goat [Amaltheia] played the nurse to him with her milky udder for a makeshift, and cleverly let him suck the strange milk, when the noise of shaken shields [of the guardian Kouretes (Curetes)] resounded beaten on the back with tumbling steel to hide the little child with their clanging. Their help allowed Rheia to wrap up that stone of deceit, and gave it to Kronos (Cronus) for a meal in place of Kronides (Cronides) [Zeus]."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 46. 14 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"The cave in the rock of Dikte (Dicte) with its flashing helmets, ask the Korybantes (Corybantes) [Kouretes (Curetes)] too, where little Zeus used to play, when he sucked the nourishing pap of goat Amaltheia and grew strong in spirit, but never drank Rheia's milk."
Suidas s.v. Amaltheias keras (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek Lexicon C10th A.D.) :
"Amaltheia was the nurse of Zeus, [her name deriving] from malassesthai, ‘to be softened.’"
THE AEGIS - HIDE OF AMALTHEA
Amaltheia was sometimes equated with the elder Gorgon of the Titanomakhia from whose hide Zeus crafted his aigis"storm-shield".
Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 13 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Some have called Aex [a Gorgon] the daughter of Sol [Helios], who surpassed many in beauty of body, but in contrast to this beauty, had a most horrible face . . . But when Jupiter [Zeus], confident in his youth, was preparing for war against the Titanes, oracular reply was given to him that if he wished to win, he should carry on the war protected with the skin of a goat, aigos, and the head of the Gorgon. The Greeks call this the aegis. When this was done, as we have shown above, Jupiter, overcoming the Titanes, gained possession of the kingdom . . . Afterwards he gave to Minerva [Athena] the aegis with which he had been protected."
THE CORNUCOPIA - HORN OF AMALTHEA
The cornucopia or horn of plenty was created from the horn of the goat Amaltheia. It was an icon of the gods Ploutos (Plutus), Haides, Eirene (Irene) and Tykhe (Tyche).
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 148 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"[The river-god] Akhelous (Achelous) retrieved his horn [which was torn off by Herakles in a wrestling-match] by trading Herakles the horn of Amaltheia for it. Amaltheia, a daughter of Haimonios (Haemonius), had the horn of a bull, which, according to Pherekydes [Greek mythographer C5th B.C.], could provide bounteous amounts of food or drink, whichever one wished for."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 35. 3 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"Herakles joined battle with Akheloos (Achelous), the river assuming the form of a bull, and as breaking off in the struggle one of his horns, which he gave to the Aitolians (Aetolians). This they call the ‘Horn of Amaltheia,’ and represent it as filled with a great quantity of every kind of autumn fruit such as grapes and apples and the like, the poets signifying in this obscure manner by the horn of Akheloos the stream which ran through the canal, and by the apples and pomegranates and grapes the fruitful land which was watered by the river and the multitude of its fruit-bearing plants."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 6. 25. 4 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"Here [in Elis] Sosipolis too is worshipped in a small shrine on the left of the sanctuary of Tykhe (Tyche, Fortune). The god is painted according to his appearance in a dream: in age a boy, wrapped in a star-spangled robe, and in one hand holding the horn of Amaltheia."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 7. 26. 8 :
"I remember observing at Aigeira [in Akhaia (Achaea)] a building in which was an image of Tykhe (Tyche, Fortune) carrying the horn of Amaltheia."
Ovid, Fasti 5. 111 (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"She [the goat nurse of Zeus] gave the god milk, but snapped her horn on a tree and was severed from half her loveliness. The Nympha picked the horn up, ringed it with fresh herbs, and took it fruit-filled to Jupiter's [Zeus'] lips. When he controlled the sky . . . he made stars of the nurse and the nurse's fruitful horn, which bears even now its mistress' name [Amaltheia]."
Suidas s.v. Amaltheias keras (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek lexicon C10th A.D.) :
"Amaltheias keras (Horn of Amaltheia) : [Applied] to those who are living in plenty and steering a straight course and are flourishing. In Myths : ‘there where life for me is a horn of the goat Amaltheia.’ For Amaltheia was the nurse of Zeus, [her name deriving] from malassesthai, ‘to be softened.’"
AMALTHEA & THE CONSTELLATION CAPRA
Aratus, Phaenomena 162 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek astronomical poem C3rd B.C.) :
"The holy [constellation] Goat (Aix), that, as legend tells, gave the breast to Zeus. Her the interpreters of Zeus call the Olenian Goat. Large is she and bright."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 2. 13. 6 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"On the market-place [of Phlios in Sikyonia (Sicyonia)] is a votive offering, a bronze she-goat for the most part covered with gold. The following is the reason why it has received honours among the Phliasians. The constellation which they call the Goat on its rising causes continual damage to the vines. In order that they may suffer nothing unpleasant from it, the Phliasians pay honours to the bronze goat on the market-place and adorn the image with gold."
Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 36 (trans. Celoria) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"He [Zeus] changed the goat [his nurse] into an immortal, there is a representation of her among the stars to this day."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 13 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"On his [the constellation Charioteer] the goat Capra stands, and in his left hand the Kids seem to be placed. They tell this story about him . . . Parmeniscus say that . . . [Jupier-Zeus was fed the milk of a] she-goat, Amalthea by name, who is said to have reared him. She often bore twin kids, and at the very time that Jove was brought to her to nurse, had borne a pair. And so because of the kindness of the mother, the kids, too were placed among the constellations. Cleostratus of Tenedos [astronomer C5th B.C.] is said to have first pointed out these kids among the stars. But Musaeus says . . . [Zeus made his aigis out of the skin of the goat and later] covering the remaining bones of the goat with a skin, he gave life to them and memorialised them, picturing them with stars."
Ovid, Fasti 5. 111 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"On the first night I can see the star that serviced Jupiter's [Zeus'] cradle. The rainy sign of Olenian Capella is born. Heaven is her reward for giving milk . . . When he controlled the sky and sat on his father's throne . . . he made stars of the nurse."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 23. 280 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"[Okeanos (Oceanus) threatens to divert his streams through heaven :] ‘I will swallow the shining Goat, the nurse of Zeus.’"
Suidas s.v. Aiges (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek lexicon C10th A.D.) :
"Aiges (Goats) : Large waves, in the common tongue. Also epaigizo (I goat up), in place of ‘I blow forcefully.’ When the star of the goat shines the winds blow forcefully, hence the [phrase], ‘wild, goating up.’"
SOURCES
| Goat (disambiguation) |
Which Soviet politician and diplomat was the principal Soviet signatory of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939? | CURETES (Kouretes) & DACTYLS (Dactyls) - Greek Demi-Gods of the War Dance & Metalworking
Youths (kouros)
Fingers (daktylos)
THE KOURETES DAKTYLOI (Curetes, Dactyls) were three, five, or nine rustic daimones (spirits) appointed by Rhea to guard the infant god Zeus in a cave on Mount Ida in Krete (Crete). To keep the boy hidden from his cannibalistic father Kronos (Cronus), they drowned out his cries with a frenzied dance of clashing spear and shield. The Kouretes were gods of the wild mountainside, inventors of the rustic arts of metalworking, shepherding, hunting and beekeeping. They were also the first armoured warriors and gods of the orgiastic war-dance performed by the youths of Krete (Crete) and Euboia (Euboea).
The five Daktyloi (Dactyls) ("fingers") were usually regarded as identical to the Kouretes. These also had an equal number of sisters named Hekaterides (Hecaterides), who together appeared to have represented all ten fingers of the human hand--daktyloi being the Greek word for "fingers". The male and female Daktyloi were also joined in marriage, perhaps imagined as a harmonious "finger to finger" folding of the hands, and from this union were born the rustic Satyroi (Satyrs), Oreiades (Oreads) and tribes of Kouretes (Curetes) (the first Kretan men). These younger Kouretes were hundred in number, they married their sister Meliai (Meliae) (Ash-Tree Nymphs) and from their branches fashioned the first spears.
The Kouretes were closely identified with, if not the same as, a number of other rustic daimones--namely, the Korybantes Euboioi (Euboean Corybantes), the Korybantes Samothrakioi (Samothracian Corybantes), the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri), as well as Hoplodamos and his Gigantes, and the Kourete Anytos (Curete Anytus).
One of the Kouretes, Pyrrhikhos (Pyrrhichus), was sometimes identified with Seilenos (Silenus), the elderly satyr companion of Dionysos. Another, Melisseus , appears to be have been connected with Aristaios (Aristaeus), discoverer of honey.
The Daktyloi (Dactyls) were occassionally identified with the Telkhines (Telchines) of Rhodes. Nonnus in his Dionysiaca lists two of the Telkhines Damnameneus and Skelmis, which are names applied to Daktyloi by Hesiod.
FAMILY OF THE CURETES & DACTYLS
PARENTS OF DAKTYLOI
[2.1] HEKATEROS (Homerica Fragments, Strabo 10.3.7)
[2.2] ANKHIALE (Argonautica 1.1122)
[1.1] Blood of OURANOS & GAIA ? (Theogony 176, Bacchylides Frag 52)
[1.2] Shower of Rain & GAIA (Metamorphoses 4.282)
[1.3] GAIA (Greek Lyric V Anonymous Frag 985, Strabo 10.3.9, Diodorus Siculus 5.65.1, Dionysiaca 13.135 & 14.23)
[2.2] THE DAKTYLOI x5 & THE HEKATERIDES x5 (Strabo 10.3.19-22)
[2.3] THE DAKTYLOI x5 (Diodorus Siculus 5.65.1)
[3.1] KRONOS (Strabo 10.3.19)
[1.1] KELMIS, DAMNAMENEUS, DELAS, SKYTHES (Hesiod Idaean Dactyls Frag 1)
[1.2] KELMIS, DAMNAMENEUS (Strabo 10.3.22)
[1.3] SKELMIS (Callimachus Frag 105)
[1.4] KELMIS (Ovid Metamorphoses 4.281)
[1.5] SKELMIS, DAMNAMENEUS, LYKOS (Dionysiaca 14.36)
[2.1] MELISSEUS (Apollodorus 1.4-5, Diodorus Siculus 5.60.2, Hyginus Astronomica 2.13)
[2.2] MELISSEUS , DAMNEUS, IDAIOS, PRYMNEUS, MIMAS, AKMON, OKYTHOOS (Dionysiaca 13.135 & 14.23)
[3.1] PYRRHIKHOS (Pausanias 3.25.2)
[3.2] PYRRHIKHOS , IDAIOS, KYRBAS (Dionysiaca 14.23)
[4.1] TITIAS, KYLLENOS [these may be Kabeiroi] (Argonautica 1.1122)
[5.1] HERAKLES (Strabo 10.3.30, Diodorus Siculus 5.64.3)
[5.2] HERAKLES , PAIONAIOS, IASIOS, IDAS (Pausanias 5.7.6)
OFFSPRING OF DAKTYLOI
OFFSPRING OF KOURETES
[1.1] THE DAKTYLOI (Men) x100 (Strabo 10.3.22)
*The Daimones Daktyloi-Kouretes Daimones fathered the first one hundred men of Krete. The names used to describe fathers and sons were frequently interchanged, some accounts say the Kourete-Daimones fathered the Daktyl-Men, others that the Daktylos-Daimones fathered the Kourete-Men.
However the general understanding was that the Daimones (called Daktyloi and Kouretes), fathered an early race of men (also called Daktyloi and Kouretes). These might have been the Silver Race of Men described by Hesiod.
ENCYCLOPEDIA
CURE′TES (Kouretês). Rhea, concealed from Cronos, gave birth to Zeus in a cave of mount Dicte, and whom she entrusted to the Curetes and the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, the daughters of Melisseus. They fed him with milk of the goat Amaltheia, and the bees of the mountain provided him with honey. (Apollod. i. 1. § 6; Callim. l. c. ; Diod. v. 70; comp. Athen. xi. 70; Ov. Fast. v. 115.)
DA′CTYLI (Daktuloi), the Dactyls of mount Ida in Phrygia, fabulous beings to whom the discovery of iron and the art of working it by means of fire was ascribed. Their name Dactyls, that is, Fingers, is accounted for in various ways; by their number being five or ten, or by the fact of their serving Rhea just as the fingers serve the hand, or by the story of their having lived at the foot (en daktulois) of mount Ida. (Pollux, ii. 4; Strab. x. p. 473; Diod. v. 64.) Most of our authorities describe Phrygia as the original seat of the Dactyls. (Diod. xvii. 7; Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 1126; Strab. l. c.) There they were connected with the worship of Rhea. They are sometimes confounded or identified with the Curetes, Corybantes, Cabeiri, and Telchines; or they are described as the fathers of the Cabeiri and Corybantes. (Strab. x. p. 466; Schol. ad Arat. 33; Serv. ad Virg. Georg. iv. 153.) This confusion with the Cabeiri also accounts for Samothrace being in some accounts described as their residence (Diod. v. 64; comp. Arnob. adv. Gent. iii. 41); and Diodorus states, on the authority of Cretan historians, that the Dactyls had been occupied in incantations and other magic pursuits; that thereby they excited great wonder in Samothrace, and that Orpheus was their disciple in these things. Their connexion or identification with the Curetes even led to their being regarded as the same as the Roman Penates. (Arnob. iii. 40.) According to a tradition in Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. i. p. 362) the Dactyls did not discover the iron in the Phrygian Ida, but in the island of Cyprus; and others again transfer them to mount Ida in Crete, although the ancient traditions of the latter island scarcely contain any traces of early working in metal there. (Apollon. Rhod. i. 1129; Plin. H. N. vii. 57.) Their number appears to have originally been three: Celmis (the smelter), Damnameneus (the hammer), and Acmon (the anvil). (Schol. ad Apollon. l. c.). To these others were subsequently added, such as Scythes, the Phrygian, who invented the smelting of iron (Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 362), Heracles (Strab. l. c.), and Delas. (Euseb. Praep. Evang. x. p. 475.) Apollonius Rhodius mentions the hero Titias and Cyllenus as the principal Dactyls, and a local tradition of Elis mentioned, besides Heracles, Paconius, Epimedes, Jasius, and Idas or Acesidas as Dactyls; but these seem to have been beings altogether different from the Idaean Dactyls, for to judge from their names, they must have been healing divinities. (Paus. v. 7. § 4, 14. § 5, 8. § 1, vi. 21. § 5; Strab. viii. p. 355.) Their number is also stated to have been five, ten (five male and five female ones), fifty-two, or even one hundred. The tradition which assigns to them the Cretan Ida as their habitation, describes them as the earliest inhabitants of Crete, and as having gone thither with Mygdon (or Minos) from Phrygia, and as having discovered the iron in mount Berecynthus. (Diod. v. 64; Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 16.) With regard to the real nature of the Dactyls, they seem to be no more than the mythical representatives of the discoverers of iron and of the art of smelting metals with the aid of fire, for the importance of this art is sufficiently great for the ancients to ascribe its invention to supernatural beings. The original notion of the Dactyls was afterwards extended, and they are said to have discovered various other things which are useful or pleasing to man ; thus they are reported to have introduced music from Phrygia into Greece, to have invented rhythm, especially the dactylic rhythm. (Plut. de Mus. 5 ; Diomedes, p. 474, ed. Putsch; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 360.) They were in general looked upon as mysterious sorcerers, and are therefore also described as the inventors of the Ephesian incantation formulae; and persons when suddenly frightened used to pronounce the names of the Dactyls as words of magic power. (Plut. de Fac. in Orb. Lun. 30.)
TI′TIAS (Titias), one of the Idaean Dactyls, or according to others, a Mariandynian hero, is called a son of Zeus and Mariandynus. (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 1126.) On his expedition against the Amazons, Heracles assisted the Mariandyni against the Bebryces, and during the struggle, Priolaus, the leader of the Mariandyni, fell. During the funeral games Heracles conquered Titias, who is called the father of Barynus, while others call Priolaus and Mariandynus sons of Titias. (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. ii. 780, ad Aeschyl. Pers. 933 ; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 987.)
EPIME′DIES (Epimêdês), one of the Curetes. (Paus. v. 7. § 4, 14. § 5).
Source: Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
ALTERNATE NAMES & EPITHETS
PARENTAGE OF THE CURETES & DACTYS
I. BORN OF THE EARTH
The Kouretes (Curetes) and Daktyloi (Dactyls) were described as earth-born (gigantes) warriors sprung fully grown from the ground, arrayed in armour and armed with weapons.
The name Gigantes was also used to describe a certain tribe of giants which waged war on the gods. Hesiod in his Theogoony may be referring to either in the passage quoted below, though in the structure of his saga, the appearance of the Kouretes here makes more sense.
Hesiod, Theogony 176 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"Then the son [Kronos (Cronus)] from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's [Ouranos (Uranus), the Heaven's] members and cast them away to fall behind him. And not vainly did they fall from his hand; for all the bloody drops that gushed forth Gaia (Gaea, the Earth) received, and as the seasons moved round she bare the strong Erinyes and the great Gigantes (Giants) with gleaming armour [probably the Kouretes (Curetes)] and the Nymphai whom they call Meliai (Meliae) [probably the nymphs who nursed Zeus] all over the boundless earth."
[N.B. It is quite fitting that the nurses and protectors of the infant Zeus were born from the blood of the castration of Ouranos, for the god was destined to avenge their father by deposing and imprisoning Kronos.]
Bacchylides, Fragment 52 (from Tzetzes on Theogony) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.) :
"From the blood that flowed from the genitals [of Ouranos (Uranus) the Sky] three Erinyes (Furies) were born first in the earth, Teisephone (Tisiphone), Megaira (Megaera) and Alekto (Alecto) with them; and along with them the four famous Telkhines (Telchines)."
[N.B. the Telkhines were often identified with the Kouretes (Curetes), protectors of the infant Zeus.]
Greek Lyric V Anonymous, Fragment 985 (from Hippolytus, Refutation of all the Heresies) (Greek lyric B.C.) :
"Ge (Gaea, the Earth), say the Greeks, was the first to produce man, having won that fine privilege, wishing to be mother not of senseless plants nor of unreasoning beasts but of a civilised, god-loving creature. But it is hard to discover, he says, whether Boiotian Alalkomeneus on the shore of the Kephissian (Cephisian) lake was the first of men to appear, or if it was the Kouretes Idaio (Idaean Curetes)i, divine race, or the Phrygian Korybantes (Corybantes) that the sun first saw shooting up tree-like."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"Nine Kouretes (Curetes). Some writers of myths relate that these gods were born of the Gaia (Gaea, the Earth)."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"And the author of Phoronis speaks of the Kouretes (Curetes) . . . as earth-born (gigantes)."
Ovid, Metamorphoses 4. 282 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The Curetes, sprung from a sharp shower [of rain]."
[N.B. Ovid is probably describing their birth from the bloody shower of rain which fell to the earth at the castration of Ouranos the Sky.]
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 14. 23 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls), dwellers on a rocky crag, earthborn Korybantes (Corybantes), a generation which grew up for Rheia selfmade out of the ground in the olden time."
II. SONS OF ANCHIALE (ANKHIALE)
Ankhiale (Anchiale) is described in the Argonautica as the mother of the Daktyloi (Dactyls). Some commentaries however believe she is Rhea, who in her labour with Zeus, clutches hold of Gaia the earth and prays for assistance. In sympathy Gaia (Gaea) births a clutch of fully-grown armed warriors, the Kouretes-Daktyloi (Curetes-Dactyls), to protect her and her infant.
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 1122 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"The many Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls) of Krete (Crete). They were borne in the Diktaion (Dictaean) cave by the Nymphe Ankhiale (Anchiale) as she clutched the earth of Oaxos [in Krete (Crete)] with both her hands."
III. OTHER VERSIONS
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Further, some call the Korybantes (Corybantes) sons of Kronos (Cronus)."
HUMAN SONS OF THE DACTYLS & CURETES
The Daimones Daktyloi (Dactyls) or Kouretes (Curetes) and the Nymphai Hekaterides (Hecaterides) were apparently the parents of the first hundred men to inhabit Krete (Crete). These sons were also called Kouretes and Daktyloi. The accounts are somewhat confused, as ancient authors use one or the other name to alternatively describe daimon-fathers and mortal sons.
Hesiod, Fragments of Unknown Position 6 (from Strabo) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"Hesiod [or rather a work attributed to him] says that five daughters were born to Hekateros (Hecaterus) and the daughter of Phoroneus, ‘But of them were born the divine mountain Nymphai (Nymphs) and the tribe of worthless, helpless Satyroi (Satyrs), and the divine Kouretes (Curetes), sportive dancers.’"
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"[Early inhabitants of the island of Crete:] After the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls), according to accounts we have, there were nine Kouretes (Curetes). Some writers of myths relate that these gods were born of Gaia (Gaea, the Earth), but according to others, they were descended from the Daktyloi Idaioi."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 22 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"And they [some writers] suspect that both the Kouretes (Curetes) and the Korybantes (Corybantes) were offspring of the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls); at any rate, the first hundred men born in Krete (Crete) were called Idaian Daktyloi, they say, and these were born of nine Kouretes, for each of these begot ten children who were called Idaian Daktyloi."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 :
"Some call the Kouretes (Curetes) ‘Kretes,’ and say that the Kretes (Cretans) were the first people to don brazen armour in Euboia (Euboea), and that on this account they were also called ‘Khalkidians’ (Chalcidians, of the Bronze)." [N.B. Khalidians means both "of Khalkis," a town in Euboia, and "of the bronze."]
CURETES PROTECTORS OF THE INFANT ZEUS
Thaletas, Fragment 10 (from Scholiast on Pindar) (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric II) (Greek lyric C7th B.C.) :
"The dance in armour was first invented and danced by the Kouretes (Curetes)."
Corinna, Fragment 654 (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric IV) (Greek lyric C6th B.C.) :
"The Koureites (Curetes) hid the holy babe of the goddess [Rhea] in a cave without the knowledge of crooked-witted Kronos (Cronus), when blessed Rhea stole him and won great honour from the immortals."
Euripides, Bacchae 120 ff (trans. Vellacott) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.) :
"O secret chamber the Kouretes (Curetes) knew! O holy cavern in the Kretan (Cretan) glade where Zeus was cradled, where for our delight the triple-crested Korybantes (Corybantes) drew tight the round drum-skin, till its wild beat made rapturous rhythm to the breathing sweetness of Phrygian flutes! Then divine Rhea found the drum could give her Bacchic airs completeness."
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 4- 5 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Rhea, when she was heavy with Zeus, went off to Krete (Crete) and gave birth to him there in a cave on Mount Dikte (Dicte). She put him in the care of both the Kouretes (Curetes) and the Nymphai (Nymphs) Adrasteia and Ide (Ida), daughters of Melisseus. These Nymphai nursed the baby with the milk of Amaltheia, while the armed Kouretes stood guard over him in the cave, banging their spears against their shields to prevent Kronos (Cronus) from hearing the infant’s voice."
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2. 1231 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"In the days when he ruled the Titanes in Olympos and Zeus was still a child, tended in the Kretan (Cretan) cave by the Kouretes (Curetes) of Ida."
Callimachus, Hymn 1 to Zeus 42 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"When the Nymphe [Neda], carrying thee, O Father Zeus [i.e. from Arkadia where he was born to be handed over to his protectors and nurses in Krete], toward Knosos (Cnossus) . . . But thee, O Zeus, the companions of Kyrbantes (Corybantes) took to their arms, even the Diktaian Meliai (Dictaean Meliae), and Adrasteia laid thee to rest in a cradle of gold, and thou didst suck the rich teat of the she-goat Amaltheia, and thereto eat the sweet honey-comb . . . And lustily round thee danced the Kouretes (Curetes) a war-dance, beating their armour, that Kronos (Cronus) might hear with his ears the din of the shield, but not thine infant noise."
Aratus, Phaenomena 27 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek astronomical poem C3rd B.C.) :
"In olden days he [Zeus] played as a child in fragrant Dikton (Dicte), near the hill of Ida, they set him in a cave and nurtured him for the space of a year, what time the Diktaioi Kouretes (Dictaean Curetes) were deceiving Kronos (Cronus)."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"And we are told that [the Kouretes (Curetes)], when Rhea, the mother of Zeus, entrusted him to them unbeknown to Kronos (Cronus) his father, they took him under their care and saw to his nurture . . . The myth the Kretans (Cretans) relate runs like this: when the Kouretes were young men, the Titanes (TItans), as they are called, were still living. These Titanes had their dwelling in the land about Knosos (Cnossus)."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 :
"The Kouretes (Curetes) also invented swords and helmets and the war-dance, by means of which they raised a great alarum and deceived Kronos (Cronus)."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 70. 1 :
"When she [Rhea] had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Ide, as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Kronos (Cronus), entrusted the rearing of him to the Kouretes (Curetes) of Mt Ide (Ida). The Kouretes bore him off to a certain cave where they gave him over to the Nymphai (Nymphs) [Ida and Adrasteia], with the command that they should minister to his every need And the Nymphai nurtured the child on a mixture of honey and milk and gave him upbringing at the udder of the goat which was named Amaltheia.
And many evidences of the birth and upbringing of this god remain to this day on the island. For instance, when he was being carried away, while still an infant, by the Kouretes, they say that the umbilical cord (omphalos) fell from him near the river known as Triton [in Krete], and that this spot has been made sacred and has been called Omphalos after that incident, while in like manner the plain about it is known as Omphaleion (Omphalus). And on Mount Ide (Ida), where the god was nurtured, bot the cave in which he spent his days has been made sacred to him, and the meadows about it, which lie upon the ridges of the mountain, have in like manner been consecrated to him. But he most astonishing of all that which the myth relates has to do with the bees, and we should not omit to mention it: The god, they say, wishing to preserve an immortal memorial of his close association with the bees, changed the colour of them, making it like copper with the gleam of gold, and since the region lay at a very great altitude, where fierce winds blew about it and heavy snows fell, he made the bees insensible to such things and unaffected by them, since they must range over the most wintry stretches."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 60. 2 :
"Those [Kouretes (Curetes)] who had received Zeus from his mother Rhea and had nurtured him in the mountains of Ide (Ida) in Krete (Crete)."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 11 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Kouretes (Curetes), young men who executed movements in armour, accompanied by dancing, as they set forth the mythical story of the birth of Zeus; in this they introduced Kronos (Cronus) as accustomed to swallow his children immediately after their birth, and Rhea as trying to keep her travail secret and, when the child was born, to get it out of the way and save its life by every means in her power; and to accomplish this it is said that she took as helpers the Kouretes, who, by surrounding the goddess with tambourines and similar noisy instruments and with war-dance and uproar, were supposed to strike terror into Kronos and without his knowledge to steal his child away; and that, according to tradition, Zeus was actually reared by them with the same diligence; consequently the Kouretes, either because, being young, that is ‘youths,’ they performed this service, or because they ‘reared’ Zeus ‘in his youth’ (for both explanations are given), were accorded this appellation."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 :
"In the Kretan (Cretan) accounts the Kouretes (Curetes) are called ‘rearers of Zeus,’ and ‘protectors of Zeus,’ having been summoned from Phrygia to Krete (Crete) by Rhea. Some say that, of the nine Telkhines (Telchines) who lived in Rhodes, those who accompanied Rhea to Krete and ‘reared’ Zeus 'in his youth' were named Kouretes."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 4. 33. 1 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"The Messenians have their share in the story: for they too say that the god [the infant Zeus] was brought up among them and that his nurses were Ithome and Neda . . . These Nymphai are said to have bathed Zeus here, after he was stolen by the Kouretes (Curetes) owing to the danger that threatened from his father, and it is said that it [i.e. the fountain Klepsydra (Clepsydra) on Mount Ithome in Messenia] has its name from the Kouretes' theft."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 7. 6 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Daktyloi (Dactyls) of Ida, who are the same as those called Kouretes (Curetes)."
Oppian, Cynegetica 3. 7 (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd A.D.) :
"The Kouretes (Curetes) were the nurses of the infant Zeus, the mighty son of Kronos (Cronus), what time Rhea concealed his birth and carried away the newly-born child from Kronos, his sire implacable, and placed him in the vales of Krete (Crete). And when the son of Ouranos (Uranus) beheld the lusty young child he transformed the first glorious guardians of Zeus and in vengeance made the Kouretes wild beasts. And since by the devising of the god Kronos exchanged their human shape and put upon them the form of Lions, thenceforth by the boon of Zeus they greatly lord it over the wild beasts which dwell upon the hills, and under the yoke they draw the terrible swift car of Rhea who lightens the pangs of birth."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 139 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"After Opis [Rhea] had borne Jove [Zeus] by Saturn [Kronos (Cronus)], Juno [Hera] asked her to give him to her, since Saturn and cast Orcus [Haides] under Tartarus, and Neptunus [Poseidon] under the sea, because he knew that his son would rob him of the kingdom. When he had asked Opis for what she had borne, in order to devour it, Opis showed him a stone wrapped up like a baby; Saturnus [Kronos] devoured it. When he realized what he had done, he started to hunt for Jove throughout the earth. Juno [Hera], however, took Jove [Zeus] to the island of Crete, and Amalthea, the child’s nurse, hung him in a cradle from a tree, so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea. And lest the cries of the baby be heard, she summoned youths and gave them small brazen shields and spears, and bade them go around the tree making a noise. In Greek they are called Curetes; others call them Corybantes; these in Italy, however are called Lares."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 20 :
"They [the Argonauts in the rites of the Mysteries of Samothrake] seized shields and spears, and dispersed them by the noise, after the manner of the Curetes."
Ovid, Fasti 4. 207 ff (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"Why the Great Goddess [Rhea-Kybele (Cybele)] loves incessant din? . . . [When] Jove [Zeus] was born [to Rhea]: a stone, concealed in cloth, settled in the god's [Kronos' (Cronus')] gullet; so the father was fated to be tricked. For a long time steep Ida booms its clanging noise so the wordless infant may wail safely. Shields or empty helmets are pounded with sticks, the Curetes' or Corybantes' task. The truth hid. The ancient event's copied today: her acolytes shake brass and rumbling hides. They hammer cymbals, not helmets, and drums, not shields; the flute makes Phrygian tunes as before."
Virgil, Georgics 4. 149 ff (trans. Fairclough) (Roman bucolic C1st B.C.) :
"Qualities which Jove [Zeus] himself has given bees, I will unfold--even the reward for which they followed the tuneful sounds and clashing bronzes of the Curetes, and fed the king of heaven within the cave of Dicte."
Virgil, Georgics 4. 62 ff :
"Scatter the scents I prescribe [to attract bees to a man-made hive]--bruised balm, and the honeywort's lowly herb; raise a tinkling sound, and shake the Mighty Mother's cymbals round about [i.e. like the clashing of the Kouretes (Curetes)]. Of themselves they settle on the scented resting places; of themselves, after their wont, will hide far within their cradling cells."
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7. 204 (trans. Rackham) (Roman encyclopedia C1st A.D.) :
"[On inventions :] The Curetes taught dancing in armour, Pyrrhus the Pyrrhic dance; both of these were in Crete."
Statius, Thebaid 4. 782 ff (trans. Mozley) (Roman epic C1st A.D.) :
"The Berecyntian mother [Rhea], while she bids the Curetes leap in excited dance around the infant Thunderer [Zeus]; their cymbals clash in emulous frenzy, but [Mount] Ide resounds with his loud wailings."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 8. 178 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"Now Hera left the shieldbeswingled cave of the Diktaian (Dictaean) rock [in Krete (Crete) where the Kouretes (Curetes) danced with clashing shields and spears]."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 14. 23 ff :
"The Idaian Daktyloi (Idaean Dactyls), dwellers on a rocky crag, earthborn Korybantes (Corybantes), a generation which grew up for Rheia selfmade out of the ground in the olden time. These had surrounded Zeus a newborn babe in the cavern which fostered his breeding, and danced about him shield in hand, the deceivers, raising wild songs which echoed among the rocks and maddened the air--the noise of the clanging brass resounded in the ears of Kronos (Cronus) high among the clouds, and concealed the infancy of Kronion (Cronion) [Zeus] with drummings."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 28. 252 ff :
"The pyrrhic dance [of the Kouretes (Curetes)] raised a noise in the ears of Kronos (Cronus), and clanged sword on shield on Mount Ida, and rang out a valiant din to deceive the enemy, as he screened the stealthy nurture of growing Zeus . . . [The Kourete Akmon (Curete Acmon)] holding Korybantic (Corybantic) shield, which had often held in its hollow baby Zeus asleep among the mountains: yes, a little cave once was the home of Zeus, where the sacred goat [Amaltheia] played the nurse to him with her milky udder for a makeshift, and cleverly let him suck the strange milk, when the noise of shaken shields resounded beaten on the back with tumbling steel to hide the little child with their clanging. Their help allowed Rheia to wrap up that stone of deceit, and gave it to Kronos for a meal in place of Kronides (Cronides) [Zeus] . . .
Mimas . . . swinging a capering sword, the dancer-at-arms skipping in dead earnest with knowling leaps; as once the pyrrhic dance raised a noise in the ears of Kronos, and clanged sword on shield on Mount Ida, and rang out a valiant din to deceive the enemy, as he screened the stealthy nurture of growing Zeus . . . Akmon with brilliant helmet moved his restless circling feet in knowing leaps. He fought unshakeable like the hammer-beaten anvil of his name, holding Korybantic shield, which had often held in its hollow baby Zeus asleep among the mountains: yes, a little cave once was the home of Zeus, where the sacred goat [Amaltheia] played the nurse to him with her milky udder for a makeshift, and cleverly let him suck the strange milk, when the noise of shaken shields resounded beaten on the back with tumbling steel to hide the little child with their clanging. Their help allowed Rheia to wrap up that stone of deceit, and gave it to Kronos for a meal in place of Kronides [Zeus]."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 46. 14 ff :
"The cave in the rock of Dikte (Dicte) with its flashing helmets, ask the Korybantes (Corybantes) [Kouretes (Curetes)] too, where little Zeus used to play, when he sucked the nourishing pap of goat Amaltheia and grew strong in spirit, but never drank Rheia's milk."
DACTYLS INVENTORS OF SMELTING & METALWORKING
Homerica, The Idaean Dactyls Fragment 1 (from Clement, Stromateis 1. 16. 75) (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) :
"Kelmis (Celmis), again, and Damnameneus, the first of the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls), discovered iron in Kypros (Cyprus); but bronze-smelting was discovered by Delas, another Idaian, thought Hesiod calls him Skythes (Scythes)."
Homerica, The Idaean Dactyls Frag 1 (from Pliny, Natural History 7. 56, 197) :
"Hesiod says that those who are called the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls) taught the smelting and tempering of iron in Krete (Crete) [on Mount Ida]."
Callimachus, Fragment 105 (from Eusebius Praep. Ev. 3.8) (trans. Trypanis) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
"Not yet the polished work of Skelmis (Scelmis) [the Daktylos (Dactyl) inventor of working bronze] wert thou [the cult of statue of Athena of Lindos in Rhodes], but still according to ancient custom only a board unpolished by the carvers knife [a primitive wooden statue]."
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7. 197 (trans. Rackham) (Roman encyclopedia C1st A.D.) :
“[On inventions :] He who showed how to melt and work copper, Theophrastus [Greek philosopher C4th-3rd B.C.] holds that it was the Phrygian Delas . . . The forging of iron Hesiod ascribes to the Dactyli (Dactyls) of Ida in Crete."
DACTYLS FOUNDERS OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 64. 3 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"And writers tell us that one of them [the Daktyloi (Dactyls)] was named Herakles (Heracles), and excelling as he did in fame, he established the Olympic Games, and that the men of a later period thought, because the name was the same, that it was the son of Alkmene (Alcmena) [i.e. the Herakles of the Twelve Labours] who had founded the institution of the Olympic Games. And evidences of this, they tell us, are found in the fact that many women even to this day take their incantations from this god and make amulets in his name, on the ground that he was a wizard and practised the arts of initiatory rites; but they add that these things were indeed very far removed from the habits ofhte Herakles who was born of Alkmene."
Strabo, Geography 8. 3. 30 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"What is more, the Olympian Games are an invention of theirs [the Daktyloi (Dactyls)]; and it was they who celebrated the first Olympiads, for one should disregard the ancient stories both of the founding of the temple and of the establishment of the games--some alleging that it was Herakles (Heracles), one of the Idaian Daktyloi, who was the originator of both, and others, that it was Herakles the son of Alkmene (Alcmena) and Zeus, who also was the first to contend in the games and win the victory; for such stories are told in many ways, and not much faith is to be put in them."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 7. 6 - 10 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"As for the Olympic Games, the most learned antiquarians of Elis say that Kronos (Cronus) was the first king of heaven, and that in his honour a temple was built in Olympia by the man of that age, who were named the Golden Race. When Zeus was born, Rhea entrusted the guardianship of her son to the Daktyloi (Dactyls) of Ida, who are the same as those called Kouretes (Curetes). They came from Kretan (Cretan) Ida--Herakles (Heracles), Paionaios (Paeonaeus), Epimedes, Iasios (Iasius) and Idas. Herakles being the eldest, matched his brothers, as a game, in a running-race, and crowned the winner with a branch of wild olive, of which they had such a copious supply that they slept on heaps of its leaves while still green. It is said to have been introduced into Greece by Herakles from the land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of Boreas (the North Wind) . . . Herakles of Ida, therefore, has the reputation of being the first to have held, on the occasion I mentioned, the games, and to have called them Oympic. So he established the custom of holding them every fifth year,, because he and his brothers were five in number.
Now some say that Zeus wrestled here with Kronos (Cronus) himself for the throne, while others say that he held the games in honour of his victory over Kronos. The record of victors include Apollon, who outran Hermes and beat Ares at boxing . . .
Later on there came from Krete (Crete) Klymenos (Clymenus), the son of Kardys (Cardys), about fifty years after the flood came upon the Greeks in the time of Deukalion. He was descended from Herakles of Ida; he held the games at Olympia and set up an latar in honour of Herakles, his ancestor, and the other Kouretes (Curetes), giving to Herakles the surname of Parastates (Assistant)."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 13. 8 :
"The altar of Olympic Zeus [at Olympia] . . . Some say it was built by [the Daktylos (Dactyl)] Herakles Idaios [Idaean Heracles]."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 2. 2 :
"The Olympic games . . . are traced back to a time earlier than the human race, the story being that Kronos (Cronus) and Zeus wrestled there, and that the Kouretes (Curetes) [Daktyloi (Dactyls)] were the first to race at Olympia."
Suidas s.v. Allos houtos Herakles (trans. Suda On Line) (Byzantine Greek lexicon C10th A.D.) :
"Allos houtos Herakles (This man is another Herakles) : Applied to those accomplishing something by force. Something proverbial said first about Theseus or about the Herakles [who was one] of the Daktylos Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls) or about the son of Alkmene (Alcmena) because of the older [ones of this name]."
METAMORPHOSIS OF THE CURETES & DACTYLS
Some say the Kouretes (Curetes) were metamorphosed by Kronos (Cronus) into lions as punishment for helping Rhea hide Zeus. In another story the Daktylos Kelmis (Dactyl Celmis) was said to have been turned to stone.
Oppian, Cynegetica 3. 7 (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd A.D.) :
"When [Kronos (Cronus)] the son of Ouranos (Uranus) beheld the lusty young child [Zeus] he transformed the first glorious guardians of Zeus and in vengeance made the Kouretes (Curetes) wild beasts. And since by the devising of the god Kronos exchanged their human shape and put upon them the form of Lions, thenceforth by the boon of Zeus they greatly lord it over the wild beasts which dwell upon the hills, and under the yoke they draw the terrible swift car of Rhea who lightens the pangs of birth."
Ovid, Metamorphoses 4. 281 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The tale of Celmis hard granite now but once the truest friend of infant Jove [Zeus]."
CURETES & DACTYLS MYTHS MISCELLANY
I. CURETES ADVISERS OF KING MINOS
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 18 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Minos's son Glaukos (Glaucus), while he was still a to the chased a mouse and landed in a vat of honey, where he died. When he failed to appear, Minos launched a vast search for him, and sought divinations concerning his whereabouts. The Kouretes (Curetes) told Minos that he owned a tri-colored cow in his herds, and that the man who could most accurately describe the cows colour would also give him back his son alive."
[N.B. The Kouretes, especially Melisseus the Honey-Man, were closely associated with honey.]
II. CURETES & THE KIDNAPPING OF EPAPHUS
This story was an attempt to translate the Egyptian story of Osiris and Set into Greek mythology. The Titanes (Titans) rather than the benevolent Kouretes (Curetes) are usually the villians. The Kouretes in this story might also here have be identified with the malignant Telkhines.
Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2. 5 - 9 (trans. Aldrich) (Greek mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
"Hera asked the Kouretes (Curetes) to kidnap the child [Epaphos], which they did. When Zeus found this out, he slew the Kouretes, while Io set out to find their baby."
III. CORYBANTES PROTECTORS OF DIONYSUS
See the section "Curetes, Corybantes & Dactyls in Nonnus" below.
IV. DACTYLS INVENTORS OF MUSIC
Plutarch, On Music (trans. Campbell, Vol. Greek Lyric II) (Greek historian C2nd to 3rd A.D.) :
"Olympos was the first to introduce instrumental music to Greece along with the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls)."
V. DACTYLS OF RHEA-CYBELE
These daimones are more properly the Phrygian Korybantes (Corybantes) of the Asiatic Kybele (Cybele).
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 1122 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"Then, crowned with oak-leaved, they [the Argonauts on Mount Dindymon] began the sacrificial rites, invoking the Mother Dindymene [Rhea-Kybele], most worshipful, who dwells in Phrygia; and with her, Titias and Kyllenos (Cyllenus). For these two are singled out as dispensers of doom and assessors to the Mother Idaie [Rhea-Kybele] from the many Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls) of Krete (Crete). They were borne in the Diktaion (Dictaean) cave by the Nymphe Ankhiale (Anchiale) as she clutched the earth of Oaxos [in Krete] with both her hands."
DIODORUS SICULUS ON CURETES, DACTYLS & CORYBANTES
I. DACTYLS OF PHRYGIA & CRETE
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 64. 3 - 5 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
"The first of these gods [native to Krete (Crete)] of whom tradition has left a record made their home in Krete about Mount Ide (Ida) and were called Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls). These, according to one tradition, were one hundred in number, but others say that there were only ten to receive this name, corresponding in number to the fingers (daktyloi) of the hands.
But some historians, and Ephoros is one of them, record that the Daktyloi Idaioi were in fact born on the Mt Ide (Ida) which is in Phrygia and passed over to Europe together with Mygdon; and since they were wizards (gonta), they practised charms and initiatory rites and mysteries, and in the course of a sojourn in Samothrake they amazed the natives of that island not a little by their skill in such matters. And it was at this time, we are further told, that Orpheus, who was endowed with an exceptional gift of poesy and song, also became a pupil of theirs, and he was subsequently the first to introduce initiatory rites and Mysteries to the Greeks.
However this may be, the Daktyloi Idaioi of Krete, so tradition tells us, discovered both the use of fire and what the metals copper and iron are, as well as the means of working them, this being done in the territory of the city of Aptera at Berekynthos (Berecynthus) [in Eastern Mysia], as it is called; and since they were looked upon as the originators of great blessings for the race of men, they were accorded immortal honours. [cont.]
II. DACTYLS FOUNDERS OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 64. 6 :
"And writers tell us that one of them [the Daktyloi (Dactyls)] was named Herakles (Heracles), and excelling as he did in fame, he established the Olympic Games, and that the men of a later period thought, because the name was the same, that it was the son of Alkmene (Alcmena) [i.e. the Herakles of the Twelve Labours] who had founded the institution of the Olympic Games. And evidences of this, they tell us, are found in the fact that many women even to this day take their incantations from this god and make amulets in his name, on the ground that he was a wizard and practised the arts of initiatory rites; but they add that these things were indeed very far removed from the habits of the Herakles who was born of Alkmene. [cont]
III. CURETES OF CRETE
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 65. 1 - 66. 1 :
"After the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls), according to accounts we have, there were nine Kouretes (Curetes). Some writers of myths relate that these gods were born of Gaia (the Earth), but according to others, they were descended from the Daktyloi Idaioi. Their home they made in mountainous places which were thickly wooded and full of ravines, and which, in a word, provided a natural shelter and coverage, since it had not yet been discovered how to build houses. And since these Kouretes excelled in wisdom they discovered many things which are of use to men generally; so, for instance, they were the first to gather sheep into flocks, to domesticate the several other kinds of animals which men fatten, and to discover the making of honey. In the same manner they introduced the art of shooting with the bow and the ways of hunting animals, and they showed mankind how to live and associate together in a common life, and they were the originators of concord and, so to speak, of orderly behaviour. The Kouretes also invented swords and helmets and the war-dance, by means of which they raised a great alarum and deceived Kronos (Cronus). And we are told that, when Rhea, the mother of Zeus, entrusted him to them unbeknown to Kronos his father, they took him under their care and saw to his nurture . . .
The myth the Kretans (Cretans) relate runs like this: when the Kouretes were young men, the Titanes (Titans), as they are called, were still living. These Titanes had their dwelling in the land about Knosos (Cnossus)."
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 70. 1 :
"When she [Rhea] had given birth to Zeus, concealed him in Ide (Ida), as it is called, and, without the knowledge of Kronos (Cronus), entrusted the rearing of him to the Kouretes (Curetes) of Mount Ide (Ida). The Kouretes bore him off to a certain cave where they gave him over to the Nymphai (Nymphs), with the command that they should minister to his every need And the Nymphai nurtured the child on a mixture of honey and milk and gave him upbringing at the udder of the goat which was named Amaltheia. And many evidences of the birth and upbringing of this god remain to this day on the island. For instance, when he was being carried away, while still an infant, by the Kouretes, they say that the umbilical cord (omphalos) fell from him near the river known as Triton [in Krete (Crete)], and that this spot has been made sacred and has been called Omphalos after that incident, while in like manner the plain about it is known as Omphaleion."
IV. CURETES OF THE CARIAN CHERSONNESE
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 60. 2 :
"Not long after Kherronessos (Cherronnesus) had ruled [the Chersonnese opposite Rhodes], five Kouretes (Curetes) passed over to it from Krete (Crete), and these were descendants of [or perhaps the same as] those who had received Zeus from his mother Rhea and had nurtured him in the mountains of Ide in Krete, And sailing to the Kherronesos with a notable expedition they expelled the Karians who dwelt there, and settling down in the land divided it into five parts, each of them founding a city which he named after himself . . .
Triopas, one of the sons of Helios (the Sun) and Rhodos (Rhode), who was a fugitive because of the murder of his brother Tenages, came to the Kherronesos. And after he had been purified there of the murder by [the Kourete (Curete)] Melisseus the kin, he sailed to Thessalia (Thessaly)."
V. ORIGIN OF THE PHRYGIAN CORYBANTES
The orgiastic attendants and human devotees of Rhea-Kybele (Cybele) were named Korybantes (Corybantes) after Korybas son of Kybele, according to Diodorus Siculus.
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 48. 2 :
"Iasion married Kybele (Cybele) and begat Korybas (Corybas). And after Iasion had been removed into the circle of the gods, Dardanos (Dardanus) and Kybele and Korybas conveyed to Asia the sacred rites of the Mother of the Gods and removed with them to Phrygia. Thereupon Kybele, joining herself to the first Olympos [Mountain in Phrygia], begat Alke (Alce) and called the goddess Kybele after herself; and Korybas gave the name of Korybantes (Corybantes) to all who, in celebrating the rites of his mother, acted like men possessed, and married Thebe, the daughter of Kilix (Cilix). In like manner he also transferred the flute from Samothrake to Phrygia and to Lyrnessos the lyre which Hermes gave and which at a later time Akhilleus (Achilles) took for himself when he sacked that city."
STRABO ON CURETES, DACTYLS & CORYBANTES
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE CURETES
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 7 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"[7] The accounts [of the Daimones called Kouretes (Curetes)] which are more remotely related, however, to the present subject [the Kouretes tribe of Aitolia (Aetolia)], but are wrongly, on account of the identity of the names, brought into the same connection by the historians--I mean those accounts which, although they are called Curetan History and History of the Curetes, just as if they were the history of those Kouretes [the tribe] who lived in Aitolia and Akarnania (Acarnania), not only are different from that history, but are more like the accounts of the Satyroi (Satyrs), Silenoi (Silens), Bakkhai (Bacchae), and Tityroi (Tityri); for the Kouretes, like these, are called Daimones or ministers of gods by those who have handed down to us the Kretan (Cretan) and the Phrygian traditions, which are interwoven with certain sacred rites, some mystical, the others connected in part with the rearing of the child Zeus in Krete and in part with the Orgia in honor of the Mother of the Gods [Rhea-Kybele (Cybele)] which are celebrated in Phrygia and in the region of the Trojan Ida. But the variation in these accounts is so small that, whereas some represent the Korybantes (Corybantes), the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri), the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls), and the Telkhines (Telchines) as identical with the Kouretes, others represent them as all kinsmen of one another and differentiate only certain small matters in which they differ in respect to one another; but, roughly speaking and in general, they represent them, one and all, as a kind of inspired people and as subject to Bacchic frenzy, and, in the guise of ministers, as inspiring terror at the celebration of the sacred rites by means of war-dances, accompanied by uproar and noise and cymbals and drums and arms, and also by flute and outcry; and consequently these rites are in a way regarded as having a common relationship, I mean these and those of the Samothrakians and those in Lemnos and in several other places, because the divine ministers are called the same. However, every investigation of this kind pertains to theology, and is not foreign to the speculation of the philosopher. [cont.]
II. ETYMOLOGY OF THE NAME CURETES
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 8 :
"[8] But since also the historians, because of the identity of name of the Kouretes (Curetes), have classed together things that are unlike, neither should I myself shrink from discussing them at greater length, by way of digression, adding such account of their physical habits as is appropriate to history. And yet some historians even wish to assimilate their physical habits with those others, and perhaps there is something plausible in their undertaking. For instance, they say that the Kouretes (Curetes) [tribe] of Aitolia (Aetolia) got this name because, like ‘girls’ (kourai), they wore women's clothes, for, they add, there was a fashion of this kind among the Greeks, and the Ionians were called ‘tunic-trailing,’ and the soldiers of Leonidas were ‘dressing their hair’ when they were to go forth to battle, so that the Persians, it is said, conceived a contempt for them, though in the battle they marvelled at them. Speaking generally, the art of caring for the hair consists both in its nurture and in the way it is cut, and both are given special attention by ‘girls’ and ‘youths’; so that there are several ways in which it is easy to derive an etymology of the word kouretes. It is reasonable to suppose, also, that the war-dance was first introduced by persons who were trained in this particular way in the matter of hair and dress, these being called Kouretes, and that this dance afforded a pretext to those also who were more warlike than the rest and spent their life under arms, so that they too came to be called by the same name, Kouretes--I mean the Kouretes [tribes] in Euboia, Aitolia, and Akarnania. And indeed Homer applied this name to young soldiers . . .
So much for the etymology of the word kouretes. The war-dance was a soldiers' dance; and this is plainly indicated both by the ‘Pyrrhic dance,’ and by Pyrrikhos (Pyrrhichus), who is said to be the founder of this kind of training for young men, as also by the treatises on military affairs. [cont.]
III. THE ORGIASTIC DANCES
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 9 - 10 :
"[9] But I must now investigate how it comes about that so many names have been used of one and the same thing, and the theological element contained in their history. Now this is common both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, to perform their sacred rites in connection with the relaxation of a festival, these rites being performed sometimes with religious frenzy, sometimes without it; sometimes with music, sometimes not; and sometimes in secret, sometimes openly. And it is in accordance with the dictates of nature that this should be so, for, in the first place, the relaxation draws the mind away from human occupations and turns the real mind towards that which is divine; and, secondly, the religious frenzy seems to afford a kind of divine inspiration and to be very like that of the soothsayer; and, thirdly, the secrecy with which the sacred rites are concealed induces reverence for the divine, since it imitates the nature of the divine, which is to avoid being perceived by our human senses; and, fourthly, music, which includes dancing as well as rhythm and melody, at the same time, by the delight it affords and by its artistic beauty, brings us in touch with the divine, and this for the following reason; for although it has been well said that human beings then act most like the gods when they are doing good to others, yet one might better say, when they are happy; and such happiness consists of rejoicing, celebrating festivals, pursuing philosophy, and engaging in music; for, if music is perverted when musicians turn their art to sensual delights at symposiums and in orchestric and scenic performances and the like, we should not lay the blame upon music itself, but should rather examine the nature of our system of education, since this is based on music.
[10] And on this account Plato, and even before his time the Pythagoreians, called philosophy music; and they say that the universe is constituted in accordance with harmony, assuming that every form of music is the work of the gods. And in this sense, also, the Mousai (Muses) are goddesses, and Apollon is leader of the Mousai, and poetry as a whole is laudatory of the gods. And by the same course of reasoning they also attribute to music the upbuilding of morals, believing that everything which tends to correct the mind is close to the gods. Now most of the Greeks assigned to Dionysos, Apollon, Hekate (Hecate), the Mousai, and above all to Demeter, everything of an orgiastic or Bacchic or choral nature, as well as the mystic element in initiations; and they give the name ‘Iakkhos’ (Iacchus) not only to Dionysos but also to the leader-in-chief of the mysteries, who is the Daimon of Demeter. And branch-bearing, choral dancing, and initiations are common elements in the worship of these gods. As for the Mousai and Apollon, the Mousai preside over the choruses, whereas Apollon presides both over these and the rites of divination. But all educated men, and especially the musicians, are ministers of the Mousai; and both these and those who have to do with divination are ministers of Apollon; and the initiated and torch-bearers and hierophants, of Demeter; and the Silenoi and Satyroi (Satyrs) and Bakkhai (Bacchae), and also the Lenai (Lenae) and Thyiai (Thyiades) and Mimallones and Naïdes (Naiads) and Nymphai (Nymphs) and the beings called Tityroi, of Dionysos. [cont.]
IV. DANCE OF THE CRETAN CURETES
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 11 :
"[11] In Krete (Crete), not only these rites, but in particular those sacred to Zeus, were performed along with orgiastic worship and with the kind of ministers who were in the service of Dionysos, I mean the Satyroi (Satyrs). These ministers they called Kouretes (Curetes), young men who executed movements in armour, accompanied by dancing, as they set forth the mythical story of the birth of Zeus; in this they introduced Kronos (Cronus) as accustomed to swallow his children immediately after their birth, and Rhea as trying to keep her travail secret and, when the child was born, to get it out of the way and save its life by every means in her power; and to accomplish this it is said that she took as helpers the Kouretes, who, by surrounding the goddess with tambourines and similar noisy instruments and with war-dance and uproar, were supposed to strike terror into Kronos and without his knowledge to steal his child away; and that, according to tradition, Zeus was actually reared by them with the same diligence; consequently the Kouretes, either because, being young, that is ‘youths,’ they performed this service, or because they ‘reared’ Zeus ‘in his youth’ (kouros) (for both explanations are given), were accorded this appellation, as if they were Satyroi, so to speak, in the service of Zeus. Such, then, were the Greeks in the matter of orgiastic worship. [cont.]
V. DANCE OF THE PHRYGIAN CORYBANTES
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 12 :
"[12] But as for the Berekyntes (Berecynthians), a tribe of Phrygians, and the Phrygians in general, and those of the Trojans who live round Ida, they too hold Rhea in honor and worship her with orgies, calling her Mother of the gods and Agdistis and Phrygia the Great Goddess, and also, from the places where she is worshipped, Idaia and Dindymene and Sipylene and Pessinuntis and Kybele (Cybele) and Kybebe (Cybebe). The Greeks use the same name Kouretes (Curetes) for the ministers of the goddess, not taking the name, however, from the same mythical story, but regarding them as a different set of Kouretes, helpers as it were, analogous to the Satyroi (Satyrs); and the same they also call Korybantes (Corybantes). [cont.]
VI. DANCES OF THE PHRYGIAN & CRETAN CURETES
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 13 :
"[13] The poets bear witness to such views as I have suggested. For instance, when Pindar [Greek C5th B.C.], in the dithyramb which begins with these words, ‘In earlier times there marched the lay of the dithyrambs long drawn out,’ mentions the hymns sung in honor of Dionysos, both the ancient and the later ones, and then, passing on from these, says, ‘To perform the prelude in thy honor, great Mother, the whirling of cymbals is at hand, and among them, also, the clanging of castanets, and the torch that blazeth beneath the tawny pine-trees,’ he bears witness to the common relationship between the rites exhibited in the worship of Dionysos among the Greeks and those in the worship of the Mother of the gods among the Phrygians, for he makes these rites closely akin to one another.
And Euripides [Greek C5th B.C.] does likewise, in his Bakkhai (Bacchae), citing the Lydian usages at the same time with those of Phrygia, because of their similarity : ‘But ye who left Mount Tmolos, fortress of Lydia, revel-band of mine, women whom I brought from the land of barbarians as my assistants and travelling companions, uplift the tambourines native to Phrygian cities, inventions of mine and mother Rhea.’
And again, ‘happy he who, blest man, initiated in the mystic rites, is pure in his life, . . . who, preserving the righteous orgies of the great mother Kybele (Cybele), and brandishing the thyrsos on high, and wreathed with ivy, doth worship Dionysos. Come, ye Bakkhai (Bacchae), come, ye Bakkhai, bringing down Bromios, god the child of god, out of the Phrygian mountains into the broad highways of Greece.’
And again, in the following verses he connects the Kretan usages also with the Phrygian : ‘O thou hiding-bower of the Kouretes (Curetes), and sacred haunts of Krete (Crete) that gave birth to Zeus, where for me the triple-crested Korybantes in their caverns invented this hide-stretched circlet, and blent its Bacchic revelry with the high-pitched, sweet-sounding breath of Phrygian flutes, and in Rhea's hands placed its resounding noise, to accompany the shouts of the Bakkhai (Bacchae), and from Mother Rhea frenzied Satyroi (Satyrs) obtained it and joined it to the choral dances of the Trieterides, in whom Dionysus takes delight.’
And in the Palamedes the Chorus says, ‘Thysa, daughter of Dionysos, who on Ida rejoices with his dear mother in the Iacchic revels of tambourines.’ [cont.]
VII. DAEMON INVENTORS OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 14 - 15 :
"[14] And when they bring Seilenos (Silenus) and Marsyas and Olympos (Olympus) into one and the same connection, and make them the historical inventors of flutes, they again, a second time, connect the Dionysiac and the Phrygian rites; and they often in a confused manner drum on Ida and Olympos as the same mountain. Now there are four peaks of Ida called Olympos, near Antandria; and there is also the Mysian Olympos, which indeed borders on Ida, but is not the same. At any rate, Sophokles (Sophocles) [C5th B.C.], in his Polyxena, representing Menelaus as in haste to set sail from Troy, but Agamemnon as wishing to remain behind for a short time for the sake of propitiating Athena, introduces Menelaüs as saying, ‘But do thou, here remaining, somewhere in the Idaean land collect flocks of Olympos and offer them in sacrifice.’
[15] They invented names appropriate to the flute, and to the noises made by castanets, cymbals, and drums, and to their acclamations and shouts of ‘eu-ah,’ and stampings of the feet; and they also invented some of the names by which to designate the ministers, choral dancers, and attendants upon the sacred rites, I mean Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) and Korybantes (Corybantes) and Panes and Satyroi (Satyrs) and Tityroi, and they called the god Bakkhos (Bacchus), and Rhea Kybele (Cybele) or Kybebe or Dindymene according to the places where she was worshipped. Sabazios also belongs to the Phrygian group and in a way is the child of the Mother, since he too transmitted the rites of Dionysos. [cont.]
VIII. THE THRACIAN ORGIIES & ORGIASTIC MUSIC
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 16 - 18 :
"[16] Also resembling these rites are the Kotytian (Cottytian) and the Bendideian rites practiced among the Thracians, among whom the Orphic rites had their beginning. Now the Kotys (Cotys) who is worshipped among the Edonians, and also the instruments used in her rites, are mentioned by Aiskhylos (Aeschylus) [tragedian C5th B.C.]; for he says, ‘O adorable Kotys among the Edonians, and ye who hold mountain-ranging instruments;’ and he mentions immediately afterwards the attendants of Dionysos: ‘one, holding in his hands the bombyces, toilsome work of the turner's chisel, fills full the fingered melody, the call that brings on frenzy, while another causes to resound the bronze-bound cotylae’ and again, ‘stringed instruments raise their shrill cry, and frightful mimickers from some place unseen bellow like bulls, and the semblance of drums, as of subterranean thunder, rolls along, a terrifying sound’; for these rites resemble the Phrygian rites, and it is at least not unlikely that, just as the Phrygians themselves were colonists from Thrake (Thrace), so also their sacred rites were borrowed from there. Also when they identify Dionysos and the Edonian Lykourgos (Lycurgus), they hint at the homogeneity of their sacred rites.
[17] From its melody and rhythm and instruments, all Thrakian music has been considered to be Asiatic. And this is clear, first, from the places where the Mousai (Muses) have been worshipped, for Pieria and Olympos and Pimpla and Leibethron were in ancient times Thrakian (Thracian) places and mountains, though they are now held by the Makedonians; and again, Helikon (Helicon) was consecrated to the Mousai by the Thrakians who settled in Boiotia, the same who consecrated the cave of the nymphs called Leibethrides. And again, those who devoted their attention to the music of early times are called Thrakians, I mean Orpheus, Musaios (Musaeus), and Thamyris; and Eumolpos (Eumolpus), too, got his name from there. And those writers who have consecrated the whole of Asia, as far as India, to Dionysos, derive the greater part of music from there. And one writer says, ‘striking the Asiatic cithara’; another calls flutes ‘Berekyntian’ and ‘Phrygian’; and some of the instruments have been called by barbarian names, nablas, sambyce, barbitos, magadis, and several others.
[18] Just as in all other respects the Athenians continue to be hospitable to things foreign, so also in their worship of the gods; for they welcomed so many of the foreign rites that they were ridiculed therefore by comic writers; and among these were the Thrakian and Phrygian rites. For instance, the Bendideian rites are mentioned by Plato [philosopher C4th B.C.], and the Phrygian by Demosthenes [statesman C4th B.C.], when he casts the reproach upon Aeskhines' (Aeschines') mother and Aeskhines himself that he was with her when she conducted initiations, that he joined her in leading the Dionysiac march, and that many a time he cried out ‘euoe saboe,’ and ‘hyes attes, attes hyes’; for these words are in the ritual of Sabazios and the Mother [Kybele (Cybele)]. [cont.]
IX. PARENTAGE & CONNECTION BETWEEN CURETES, DACTYLS & OTHERS DAEMONES
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 - 22 :
"[19-22] Further, one might also find, in addition to these facts concerning these Daimones and their various names, that they were called, not only ministers of gods, but also gods themselves. For instance,
(A) Hesiod [poet C8th to 7th B.C.] says that five daughters were born to Hekateros (Hecaterus) and the daughter of Phoroneus, ‘from whom sprang the mountain-ranging Nymphai, goddesses, and the breed of Satyroi, (Satyrs) creatures worthless and unfit for work, and also the Kouretes (Curetes), sportive gods, dancers.’
(B) And the author of Phoronis [Greek epic C7th or C6th B.C.?] speaks of the Kouretes (Curetes) as flute-players and Phrygians; and others as earth-born and wearing brazen shields.
(C) Some call the Korybantes (Corybantes), and not the Kouretes, Phrygians, but the Kouretes ‘Kretes’ (Cretans), and say that the Kretes were the first people to don brazen armour in Euboia (Euboea), and that on this account they were also called Khalkidians (Chalcidians);
(D) Still others say that the Korybantes, who came from Baktriana (Bactriana)--some say from among the Kolkhians (Colchians)--, were given as armed ministers to Rhea by the Titanes (Titans).
(E) But in the Kretan (Cretan) accounts the Kouretes (Curetes) are called rearers of Zeus, and protectors of Zeus, having been summoned from Phrygia to Krete (Crete) by Rhea.
(F) Some say that, of the nine Telkhines (Telchines) who lived in Rhodes, those who accompanied Rhea to Krete and reared Zeus in his youth (kouros) were named Kouretes; and that Kyrbas (Cyrbas), a comrade of these, who was the founder of Hierapytna [in Krete], afforded a pretext to the Prasians for saying among the Rhodians that the Korybantes were certain Daimones, sons of Athena and Helios (the Sun).
(G) Further, some call the Korybantes (Corybantes) sons of Kronos (Cronus), but others say that the Korybantes were sons of Zeus and Kalliope (Calliope) and were identical with the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri), and that these went off to Samothrake, which in earlier times was called Melite, and that their rites were mystical.
(H) But though the Skepsian [Demetrius of Scepsis C2nd B.C.], who compiled these myths, does not accept the last statement, on the ground that no mystic story of the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) is told in Samothrake, still he cites also the opinion of Stesimbrotos the Thasian that the sacred rites in Samothrake were performed in honor of the Kabeiroi: and the Skepsian says that they were called Kabeiroi after the mountain Kabeiros (Cabirus) in Berekyntia (Berecyntia).
(I) Some, however, believe that the Kouretes (Curetes) were the same as the Korybantes and were ministers of Hekate (Hecate). [See the separate entries Korybantes Samothrakioi and Kabeiroi .]
(J) But the Skepsian [C2nd B.C.] again states, in opposition to the words of Euripides, that the rites of Rhea were not sanctioned or in vogue in Krete (Crete), but only in Phrygia and the Troad, and that those who say otherwise are dealing in myths rather than in history, though perhaps the identity of the place-names contributed to their making this mistake. For instance, Ida is not only a Trojan, but also a Kretan, mountain; and Dikte (Dicte) is a place in Skepsia (Scepsia) [in the Troad] and also a mountain in Krete; and Pytna, after which the city Hierapytna [in Krete] was named, is a peak of [Trojan] Ida. And there is a Hippokorona in the territory of Adramyttion [in the Troad] and a Hippokoronion in Krete. And Samonion is the eastern promontory of the island and a plain in the territory of Neandria and in that of the Alexandreians.
(K) Akousilaüs (Acusilaus) [C5th B.C.], the Argive, calls Kadmilos (Cadmilus) the son of Kabeiro (Cabeiro) and Hephaistos (Hephaestus), and Kadmilos the father of three Kabeiroi (Cabeiri), and these the fathers of the Nymphai (Nymphs) called Kabeirides (Cabeirides) [see entry on the Kabeiroi ].
(L) Pherekydes (Pherecydes) [mythographer C5th B.C.] says that nine Kyrbantes (Corybantes) were sprung from Apollon and Rhetia, and that they took up their abode in Samothrake [see the entry on the Korybantes Samothrakioi ]; and that three Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) and three Nymphai (Nymphs) called Kabeirides (Cabeirides) were the children of Kabeiro, the daughter of Proteus, and Hephaistos, and that sacred rites were instituted in honor of each triad. Now it has so happened that the Kabeiroi are most honored in Imbros and Lemnos, but they are also honored in separate cities of the Troad; their names, however, are kept secret.
(M) Herodotos (Herodotus) [historian C5th B.C.] says that there were temples of the Kabeiroi in Memphis, as also of Hephaistos, but that Kambyses (Cambyses) [historical figure] destroyed them [actually of Egyptian Ptah and his sons].
(O) The places where these deities were worshipped are uninhabited, both the Korybanteion (Corybanteum) in Hamaxitia [in the Troad] in the territory now belonging to the Alexandreians near Sminthion, and Korybissa (Corybissa) in Skepsia in the neighborhood of the river Eurëeis [in the Troad] and of the village which bears the same name and also of the winter torrent Aithalöeis.
(P) The Skepsian [C2nd B.C.] says that it is probable that the Kouretes (Curetes) and the Korybantes were the same, being those who had been accepted as young men, or youths, for the war-dance in connection with the holy rites of the Mother of the gods, and also as korybantes from the fact that they ‘walked with a butting of their heads’ in a dancing way. These are called by the poet betarmones: ‘’Come now, all ye that are the best betarmones of the Phaiakes (Phaeacians).’
And because the Korybantes are inclined to dancing and to religious frenzy, we say of those who are stirred with frenzy that they are ‘korybantising.’
(Q) Some writers say that the name Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls) was given to the first settlers of the lower slopes of Mt. Ida, for the lower slopes of mountains are called ‘feet,’ and the summits ‘heads’; accordingly, the several extremities of Ida (all of which are sacred to the Mother of the gods) were called Daktyloi [meaning ‘fingers’].
(R) Sophokles (Sophocles) [tragedian C5th B.C.] thinks that the first male Daktyloi (Dactyls) were five in number, who were the first to discover and to work iron, as well as many other things which are useful for the purposes of life, and that their sisters were five in number, and that they were called Daktyloi from their number.
(S) But different writers tell the myth in different ways, joining difficulty to difficulty; and both the names and numbers they use are different; and they name one of them Kelmis (Celmis) and others Damnameneus and Herakles (Heracles) and Akmon (Acmon).
(T) Some call them natives of Ida, others settlers; but all agree that iron was first worked by these on Ida; and all have assumed that they were wizards and attendants of the Mother of the gods, and that they lived in Phrygia about Ida; and they use the term Phrygia for the Troad because, after Troy was sacked, the Phrygians, whose territory bordered on the Troad, got the mastery over it. And they suspect that both the Kouretes and the Korybantes were offspring of the Daktyloi Idaioi; at any rate, the first hundred men born in Krete were called Idaean Daktyloi, they say, and as offspring of these were born nine Kouretes, and each of these begot ten children who were called Daktyloi Idaioi. [cont]
X. SUMMARY
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 23 :
[23] I have been led on to discuss these people rather at length, although I am not in the least fond of myths, because the facts in their case border on the province of theology. And theology as a whole must examine early opinions and myths, since the ancients expressed enigmatically the physical notions which they entertained concerning the facts and always added the mythical element to their accounts. Now it is not easy to solve with accuracy all the enigmas, but if the multitude of myths be set before us, some agreeing and others contradicting one another, one might be able more readily to conjecture out of them what the truth is. For instance, men probably speak in their myths about the mountain-roaming of religious zealots and of gods themselves, and about their religious frenzies, for the same reason that they are prompted to believe that the gods dwell in the skies and show forethought, among their other interests, for prognostication by signs. Now seeking for metals, and hunting, and searching for the things that are useful for the purposes of life, are manifestly closely related to mountain-roaming, whereas juggling and magic are closely related to religious frenzies, worship, and divination. And such also is devotion to the arts, in particular to the Dionysiac and Orphic arts. But enough on this subject."
XI. ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Strabo, Geography 14. 1. 20 :
"On the same coast [of Ephesos (Ephesus), Asia Minor], . . . is also Ortygia . . . here is the mythical scene of the birth [i.e. Leto gave birth to Apollon and Artemis here] . . . Above the grove lies Mount Solmissos, where, it is said, the Kouretes (Curetes) stationed themselves, and with the din of their arms frightened Hera out of her wits when she was jealously spying on Leto, and when they helped Leto to conceal from Hera the birth of her children [Apollon and Leto] . . . A general festival is held there annually; and by a certain custom the youths vie for honor, particularly in the splendor of their banquets there. At that time, also, a special college of the Kouretes holds symposiums and performs certain mystic sacrifices."
Strabo, Geography 7 Fragment 50 :
"The Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) [of Samothrake] . . . the Kyrbantes (Corybantes) and Korybantes, and likewise the Kouretes (Curetes) and the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls), are identified with them."
NONNUS ON CURETES, DACTYLS & CORYBANTES
I. CORYBANTES PROTECTORS OF THE INFANT DIONYSUS
The Korybantes (Corybantes) as protectors of the infant Dionysos appears to be a myth of late antiquity. It may derive from the Euboian tradition where Aristaios (Aristaeus) and his brothers took care the young god. These Daimones were later identified with the Kouretes (Curetes).
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 9. 160 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
"The goddess [Rhea] took care of him [the baby Dionysos on Mount Kybele (Cybele) in Phrygia]; and while he was yet a boy, she set him to drive a car drawn by ravening lions. Within that godwelcoming courtyard, the tripping Korybantes (Corybantes) [i.e. Kouretes (Curetes)] would surround Dionysos with their childcherishing dance, and clash their swords, and strike their shields with rebounding steel in alternate movements, to conceal the growing boyhood of Dionysos; and as the boy listened to the fostering noise of the shields he grew up under the care of the Korybantes like his father [Zeus]."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 13. 135 ff :
"The Euboian battalions were ruled by shield-bearing Korybantes (Corybantes), guardians of Dionysos in his growing days: who in the Phrygian gulf beside mountain-ranging Rheia surrounded Bakkhos (Bacchus) still a child with their drumskins. They found him once, a horned baby, covered with a cloak the colour of purple wine, lying among the rocks where Ino had left him in charge of Mystis the mother Korymbos (Corymbus). All these came then from the famous island: Prymneus, and Mimas Waddlefoot, and Akmon (Acmon) the forester, Damneus and Okythoos (Ocythous) the shielfman; and with them came flash-helm Melisseus as comrade to Idaios (Idaeus), whom ther father Sokos (Socus) under the insane goad of impiety had once cast out of the brinegirt country along with Kombe (Combe) the mother of seven [Korybantes (Corybantes)]. They escaped and passed to Knossian soil, and again went on their travels from Krete (Crete) to Phrygia, and from Phrygia to Athens; where they remained as foreign settlers and hearthguests until Kekrops (Cecrops) destroyed Sokos with avenging blade of justice; then leaving the land of brineflooded Marathon turned their steps homewards to the sacred soil of the Abantes, the earthborn stock of the ancient Kouretes (Curetes), whose life is the tune of pipes, whose life is goodly noise of beaten swords, whose heart is set upon rhythmic circling of the feet and the shield-wise dancing. To the army came also warrior sons of the Abantes [the men of Euboia] . . . Seven captains armed this host, but all of one temper for war: with blazing altar they propitiated the tenants of the Zodiac path, committing their campaign to the planets of equal number."
[N.B. The story of Sokos (Socus) appears to be a distinctly Euboian tale. It is more likely that these "Korybantes" were the Euboian god Aristaios (Aristaeus), and his brothers, who in local myth cared for the infant Dionysos. The names given, however, are those of the Kouretes. Nonnus (or his source) is perhaps conflating two unrelated traditions.]
II. CORYBANTES, CURETES, & DACTYLS IN THE INDIAN WAR OF DIONYSUS
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 13. 35 ff :
"[The goddess Rheia summoned the rustic divinities to the army of Dionysos for his campaign against the Indians :] At once Rheia Allmother sent out her messenger to gather the host, the dancer before her loverattle timbrel, to proclaim the warfare of Lyaios (Lyaeus) under arms. [The Kourete (Curete)] Pyrrhikhos (Pyrrhichus), gathering a varied army for Dionysos, scoured all the settlements of the eternal word; all the races of Europe and the nations of the Asiatic land he brought to rendezvous in the land of the livedainty Lydians."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 13. 135 ff :
"The Euboian battalions [who joined Dionysos' army in the Indian War] were ruled by shield-bearing Korybantes (Corybantes) . . . All these came then from the famous island : Prymneus, and Mimas Waddlefoot, and Akmon the forester, Damneus and Okythoos (Ocythous) the shielfman; and with them came flash-helm Melisseus as comrade to Idaios . . . To the army came also warrior sons of the Abantes [the men of Euboia (Euboea)] . . . Seven captains armed this host, but all of one temper for war : with blazing altar they propitiated the tenants of the Zodiac path, committing their campaign to the planets of equal number."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 14. 17 ff :
"[The goddess Rheia summoned gods to join Dionysos in his war against the Indians :] First from the firepeak rock of Lemnos the two Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) in arms answered the stormy call answered the stormy call beside the mystic torch of Samos [Samothrake], two sons of Hephaistos (Hephaestus) whom Thrakian Kabeiro (Thracian Cabeiro) had borne to the heavenly smith, Alkon (Alcon) and Eurymedon well skilled at the forge, who bore their mother's tribal name.
From Krete (Crete) came grim warriors to join them, the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls), dwellers on a rocky crag, earthborn Korybantes (Corybantes), a generation which grew up for Rheia selfmade out of the ground in the olden time. These had surrounded Zeus a newborn babe in the cavern which fostered his breeding, and danced about him shield in hand, the deceivers, raising wild songs which echoed among the rocks and maddened the air--the noise of the clanging brass resounded in the ears of Kronos (Cronus) high among the clouds, and concealed the infancy of Kronion (Cronion) [Zeus] with drummings. The chief and leader of the dancing Korybantes was Pyrrhikhos (Pyrrhichus) and shake-a-shield Idaios (Idaeus); and with them came Knossian Kyrbas (Cnossian Cyrbas), and armed his motley troops, their namefellow.
The spiteful Telkhines (Telchines) also came also to the Indian War, gathering out of the cavernous deeps of the sea. Lykos (Lycus) came, shaking with his long arm a very long spear; Skelmis came, following Damnameneus, guiding the seachariot of his father Poseidon. These were wanderers who had left Tlepolemos's land [Rhodes] and taken to the sea, furious daimones of the waters, who long ago had been cut off from their father's land by Thrinax with Makareus (Macareus) and glorious Auges sons of Helios; driven from their nursing-mother they took up the water of Styx with their spiteful hands, and made barren the soil of fruitful Rhodes, by drenching the fields with water of Tartaros."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 14. 247 ff :
"As soon as Dionysos had donned the well-wrought golden gear of war in the Korybantian (Corybantian) courtyard, he left the peaceful precincts of danceloving Rheia and went past Meionia . . . The Korybantes (Corybantes) were busy about the bright manger of the panthers, passing the yokestraps over their necks, and entrusted their lions to ivybound harness when they had fastened this threatening bit in their mouths."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 14. 386 ff :
"At the mouth of the Astakid (Astacid) lake many a son of India was cut up by the steel of the Kouretes (Curetes). The warriors surrounded the battalions of the foe with blow for blow, and imitated the rhythms of the armour-dance in the wheeling movements of their feet."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 15. 65 ff :
"The Orgies (Orgia) of the carryshield Korybantes (Corybantes), twirling their steps for the dance-in-armour, and all in a whirl the shields were beaten by alternate thump of hand or the plunging of iron."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 27. 120 ff :
"[Deriades addresses his Indian troops :] ‘Disarm me the Korybantes (Corybantes) also and lead them captive.’"
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 28. 275 ff :
"[During the course of a battle between the Dionysos' army and the Indians :] The dancers of battle, the Korybantes Diktaioi (Dictaean Corybantes), joined in the battle. [The Kourete (Curete)] Damneus fought and pursued the enemy tribes. On the plain the warcry sounded. [The Kourete] Prymneus succoured the excited Bakkhai (Bacchae) women, like a fair wind which blows astern and saves the mariner riding with the gales; full welcome he came to the army, as [Dioskouros (Dioscuri)] Polydeukes brings calm to buffeted ships when he puts to sleep the heavy billows of the galebreeding sea.
[The Kourete] Okythoos (Ocythous) with light quick step scared away the warriors. Many he slew with speedy fate, bringing down one with spear in stand-up fight, one with a shot at a distant view, cutting down another with horrid knife; another still running onwards and flying like to the breezes the furious pursuer caught, plying his knees and feet quick as the wind--as good a runner as Iphiklos, who used to skim the untrodden calm touching only the surface with the soles of his feet, and passed over a cornfield without bending the tops of the ears with his travelling footsteps. Okythoos was like him windfoot.
[The Kourete] Mimas was in the thick of the fray, making a dance of battle with woven paces and frightening the host, swinging a capering sword, the dancer-at-arms skipping in dead earnest with knowling leaps; as once the pyrrhic dance raised a noise in the ears of Kronos (Cronus), and clanged sword on shield on Mount Ida, and rang out a valiant din to deceive the enemy, as he screened the stealthy nurture of growing Zeus. So mailclad Mimas brandished his spear in air in mimicry of the dance-at-arms, as he cut down the heads of his foes, an iron harvest of battle; so he offered the firstfruits of the enemy to witnessing Bakkhos (Bacchus) with Indianslaying axe and doublebiting sword; so he poured his libation of blood and gore to Dionysos, instead of the sacrifice of cattle and the wonted drinkoffering of wine.
Beside Okythoos, [the Kourete] Akmon (Acmon) with brilliant helmet moved his restless circling feet in knowing leaps. He fought unshakeable like the hammer-beaten anvil of his name, holding Korybantic shield, which had often held in its hollow baby Zeus asleep among the mountains: yes, a little cave once was the home of Zeus, where the sacred goat [Amaltheia] played the nurse to him with her milky udder for a makeshift, and cleverly let him suck the strange milk, when the noise of shaken shields resounded beaten on the back with tumbling steel to hide the little child with their clanging. Their help allowed Rheia to wrap up that stone of deceit, and gave it to Kronos (Cronus) for a meal in place of Kronides (Cronides) [Zeus].
Sharpsighted [Kourete] Idaios (Idaeus) entered the revels of war, that dance of battle turning his intricate steps, incessantly shaken with the mad passion for Indian carnage.
[The Kourete] Melisseus also scared all the dusky host with boldness unshaken. True to his name, he imitated the bee up in arms with her terrible sting. Morrheus hurled a hurtling stone against he quick Kourete who faces him, but he missed Melisseus, he missed him--for it is not seemly that a Korybante should be killed with a millstone.
So the dancers of cruel war fought all together as one. Round the car of Deriades they gathered in a ring of shields, beating their armour, and surrounded the tower in rhythmic battle and shieldbearing dance. And the noise mounted through the air to the palace of Zeus, and the fairfooted Horai (Horae, Seasons) trembled at the turmoil of both armies."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 29. 215 ff :
"[In the war of Dionysos against the Indians :] The Korybantes Diktaioi (Dictaean Corybantes) joined battle, shaking the plumes of their highcrested helmets, rushing madly into the fray. Their naked swords rang on their beaten shields in emulation, along with resounding leaps; they imitated the rhythm of the dance-at-arms with quick circling movements of their feet, a revel in the battlefield. The Indian nation was ravaged by the steel of those mountaineer herdsmen, the Kouretes (Curetes). Many a man fell headlong into the dust when the heard the bellow of the heavy-thumping oxhides."
Nonnus, Dionysiaca 29. 284 ff :
"The loverattle Korybantes (Corybantes) beating their hands on both sides of the rounded skin, the tinkling cymbals."
CULT OF CURETES, DACTYLS & CORYBANTES IN GREECE
I. PYRRHICHUS (PYRRHIKHOS) Town in Lacedaimonia (Southern Greece)
A god named Pyrrhikhos was worshipped in the name-sake town. He was Seilenos-Pyrrhikos, the Satyr-Kourete.
Pausanias, Description of Greece 3. 25. 2 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"Others say that Silenos (Silenus) came from Malea [Cape in Lakedaimonia] and settled here [Pyrrhikhos (Pyrrhichus) in Lakedomainia]. That Silenos was brought up in Malea is clear from these words in an ode of Pindar : ‘The mighty one, the dancer, whom the mount of Malea nurtured, husband of Nais, Silenos.’ Not that Pindar said his name was Pyrrhikhos (Pyrrhichus); that is a statement from the men of Malea. At Pyrrhikhos there is a well in the market-place, considered to be the gift of Silenos. If this were to fail, they would be short of water."
II. BRASIAE (BRASIAI) Town in Lacedaimonia (Southern Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 3. 24. 5 :
"There is a small promontory at Brasiai (Brasiae) [in Lakedaimonia], which projects gently into the sea; on it stand bronze figures, not more than a foot high, with caps on their heads. I am not sure whether they consider them to be Dioskouroi (Dioscuri) or Korybantes (Corybantes) [Kouretes (Curetes)]. They are three in number; a statue of Athene makes a fourth."
III. MESSENE Chief City of Messenia (Southern Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 4. 31. 9 :
"The Messenians [at Messene] have a . . . hall of the Kouretes (Curetes), where they make burnt offerings of every kind of living creature, thrusting into the flames not only cattle and goats, but finally birds as well."
IV. OLYMPIA Sanctuary in Elis (Southern Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 14. 7 :
"After this stands an altar of Herakles surnamed Parastates (Assistant) [at Olympia]; there are also altars of the [Daktyloi (Dactyls)] brothers of Herakles (Heracles)--Epimedes, Idas, Paionaios (Paeonaeus), and Iasos (Iasus); I am aware, however, that the altar of Idas is called by others the altar of Akesidas (Acesidas)."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 5. 14. 9 :
"Near the treasury of the Sikyonians [at Olympia] is an altar of Herakles (Heracles), either one of the Kouretes (Curetes), or the son of Alkmena (Alcmena), for both accounts are given."
V. ELIS Chief City of Elis (Southern Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 6. 23. 3 :
"There are also in the gymnasium [at Elis] altars of the gods, of Herakles Idaios (Idaean Heracles), surnamed Parastates (Comrade)."
VI. MEGALOPOLIS Chief City of Arcadia (Southern Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 31. 1 :
"[At Megalopolis, Arkadia (Arcadia)] is an enclosure sacred to the Great Goddesses (Megalai Theai) . . . By the side of Demeter there is also a Herakles (Heracles) about a cubit high. This Herakles, says Onomakritos (Onomacritus) in his poem, is one of those called Idaioi Daktyloi (Idaean Dactyls)."
VII. Near ACACESIUM (AKAKESION) Town in Arcadia (Southern Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 37. 1 :
"[From Akakesion (Acacesium) in Arkadia] it is four stades to the sanctuary of Despoine (Despoena) . . . On both sides of the throne [of the goddess] are images. By the side of Demeter stands Artemis . . . By the image of Despoine stands Anytos (Anytus), represented as a man in armour. Those about the sanctuary say that Despoine was brought up by Anytos, who was one of the Titanes [or Kouretes (Curetes)], as they are called. The story of the Kouretes is represented under the images [in the sanctuary], and that of the Korybantes (Corybantes), a different race from the Kouretes, carved in relief upon the base, I know, but pass them by."
VIII. MYCALESSUS (MYKALESSOS) Village in Boeotia (Central Greece)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 19. 5 :
"[At Mykallessos (Mycalessus) in Boiotia] is a sanctuary of Mykalessian Demeter. They say that each nigh it is shut up and opended again by Herakles (Heracles), and that Herakles is one of what are called Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls)."
Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 27. 6 :
"The Boiotians were not unacquainted with this name of Herakles [a Daktylos (Dactyl)], seeing as they themselves say that the sanctuary of Demeter Mykalessia has been entrusted to the Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls)."
IX. EUBOEA (EUBOIA) Island (Central Greece)
The Kouretes (Curetes) were important gods of Euboia. The dance of the Kouretes was probably in a similar manner to that of Krete.
X. CRETE (KRETE) Island (Greek Aegean)
The war-dance of the Kouretes (Curetes) was performed by Kretan (Cretan) youths re-enacting the story of the infancy of Zeus. It was an orgiastic rite, similar to the Korybantic dances of Kybele (Cybele) in Phrygia.
Plato, Laws 796b (trans. Lamb) (Greek philosopher C4th B.C.) :
"Nor should we omit such mimic dances as are fitting for use by our choirs,--for instance, the sword-dance of the Kouretes (Curetes) here in Krete (Crete), and that of the Dioskouroi (Dioscuri) in Lakedaimon (Lacedaemon); and at Athens, too, our Virgin-Lady [Athena] gladdened by the pastime of the dance deemed it not seemly to sport with empty hands, but rather to tread the measure vested in full panoply. These examples it would well become the boys and girls to copy . . . alike for service in war and for use at festivals." [I.e. The armed warrior dance was a feature of cults of the Kouretes, Dioskouroi and Athena.]
Strabo, Geography 10. 4. 16 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The lawgiver [historical law-maker of Krete (Crete)] commanded the boys to attend the Troops . . . he commanded that from boyhood they should grow up accustomed to arms and toils, so as to scorn heat, cold, marches over rugged and steep roads, and blows received in gymnasiums or regular battles; and that they should practise, not only archery, but also the war-dance, which was invented and made known by the Kouretes (Curetes) at first, and later, also, by the man who arranged the dance that was named after him, I mean the Pyrrhikhos (Pyrrhichus) dance, so that not even their sports were without a share in activities that were useful for warfare."
XII. SAMOTHRACE & LEMNOS Islands (Greek Aegean)
Two closely related groups of gods named Korybantes (Corybantes) and Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) were worshipped on the islands of Lemnos and Samothrake respectively. The Mystery religions gave these more distinct identity and their own genealogies. See separate entries Kabeiroi and Korybantes Samothrakioi .
CULT OF CURETES, DACTYLS & CORYBANTES IN ANATOLIA
I. MYSIA & PHRYGIA Regions of Anatolia
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1. 1122 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
"Then, crowned with oak-leaved, they [the Argonauts on Mount Dindymon] began the sacrificial rites, invoking the Mother Dindymene [Rhea], most worshipful, who dwells in Phrygia; and with her, Titias and Kyllenos (Cyllenus). For these two are singled out as dispensers of doom and assessors to the Mother Idaie [Rhea] from the many Daktyloi Idaioi (Idaean Dactyls)."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 7 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"The Kouretes (Curetes) are called Daimones or ministers of gods . . . which are interwoven with certain sacred rites . . . [such as] the Orgies (Orgia) in honor of the Mother of the Gods [Rhea-Kybele (Cybele)] which are celebrated in Phrygia [including Mysia and the Troad] and in the region of the Trojan Ida . . . They represent them as a kind of inspired people and as subject to Bacchic frenzy, and, in the guise of ministers, as inspiring terror at the celebration of the sacred rites by means of war-dances, accompanied by uproar and noise and cymbals and drums and arms, and also by flute and outcry."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 12 :
"But as for the Berekyntes (Berecynthians), a tribe of Phrygians, and the Phrygians in general, and those of the Trojans who live round Ida, they too hold Rhea in honor and worship her with orgies, calling her Mother of the gods and Agdistis and Phrygia the Great Goddess, and also, from the places where she is worshipped, Idaia and Dindymene and Sipylene and Pessinuntis and Kybele (Cybele) and Kybebe (Cybebe). The Greeks use the same name Kouretes (Curetes) for the ministers of the goddess, not taking the name, however, from the same mythical story, but regarding them as a different set of Kouretes, helpers as it were, analogous to the Satyroi (Satyrs); and the same they also call Korybantes (Corybantes)."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 - 21 :
"But the Skepsian again states . . . that the rites of Rhea were nin vogue . . . only in Phrygia and the Troad."
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 - 21 :
"Now it has so happened that the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) are most honored in Imbros and Lemnos, but they [or related deities such as Daktyloi (Dactyls)] are also honored in separate cities of the Troad; their names, however, are kept secret."
II. HAMAXITIA & CORYBISSA (KORYBISSA) Towns in the Troad (Anatolia)
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 - 21 :
"The places where these deities [the Korybantes (Corybantes)] were worshipped are uninhabited, both the Korybanteion (Corybanteum) in Hamaxitia [in the Troad] in the territory now belonging to the Alexandreians near Sminthion, and Korybissa (Corybissa) in Skepsia in the neighborhood of the river Eurëeis [in the Troad] and of the village which bears the same name and also of the winter torrent Aithalöeis."
III. BERECYNTHIA (BEREKYNTIA) Town in Phrygia (Anatolia)
Strabo, Geography 10. 3. 19 - 21 :
"The Skepsian . . . cites also the opinion of Stesimbrotos the Thasian that the sacred rites in Samothrake were performed in honor of the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri): and the Skepsian says that they were called Kabeiroi after the mountain Kabeiros (Cabirus) in Berekyntia (Berecynthia)."
Statius, Thebaid 4. 782 ff (trans. Mozley) (Roman epic C1st A.D.) :
"The Berecyntian mother [Rhea], while she bids the Curetes leap in excited dance around the infant Thunderer [Zeus]; their cymbals clash in emulous frenzy, but [Mount] Ide resounds with his loud wailings."
IV. PESSINUS (PESSINOS) & ANCYRA (ANKYRA) Cities in Phrygia (Anatolia)
Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 4. 5 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
"The land [of Pessinos and Ankyra (Ancyri) in Phrygia] they dwell in was, they say, in ancient times sacred to the Kabeiroi (Cabeiri) [or Korybantes (Corybantes)]."
V. MT SOLMISSOS Mountain in Caria (Karia) (Anatolia)
Strabo, Geography 14. 1. 20 (trans. Jones) (Greek geographer C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :
"On the same coast [of Ephesos (Ephesus), Asia Minor], . . . is also Ortygia . . . here is the mythical scene of the birth [i.e. Leto gave birth to Apollon and Artemis here] . . . Above the grove lies Mount Solmissos, where, it is said, the Kouretes (Curetes) stationed themselves, and with the din of their arms frightened Hera out of her wits when she was jealously spying on Leto, and when they helped Leto to conceal from Hera the birth of her children [Apollon and Leto] . . . A general festival is held there annually; and by a certain custom the youths vie for honor, particularly in the splendor of their banquets there. At that time, also, a special college of the Kouretes [youths who perform the shield-classhing rites of the Kouretes] holds symposiums and performs certain mystic sacrifices."
NAMES OF INDIVIDUAL CURETES, DACTYLS & CORYBANTES
Greek Name
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Nutria is the name given to the sought-after fur of which rodent? | The Nutria, a Rodent Promoted as ‘Guilt-Free Fur’ - The New York Times
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Is Their Pest Your Clean Conscience?
ANNA JANE GROSSMAN
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Xiomara del Carmen helped Ana Lodriguss prepare for a nutria fashion show in New Orleans. Credit Jennifer Zdon for The New York Times
TREATING nutria as a kind of “guilt free” fur is tough when you’re cutting the pelt and fur gets caught in your eyes. That’s what Micha Michelle Melancon, a fashion designer in New Orleans, found out when she was making a cloak from what is commonly known as a swamp rat.
“This is an animal,” Ms. Melancon said, after her work space became filled with fluffy piles of excess fur. “A soft, furry, once-living-and-breathing being.”
But unlike other soft and furry animals, nutria is being rebranded as a socially acceptable and environmentally friendly alternative way to wear fur. The effort culminates this Sunday, when Ms. Melancon and about 20 designers take part in a “righteous fur” fashion show at the House of Yes, an art space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Fluffy hats, muffs, leg warmers and even a wedding dress will be paraded down the runway, in a show expected to draw about 150 people. Don’t look for any celebrities in the front row. A reporter from National Geographic and someone who works at Marc Jacobs are among the expected V.I.P.’s.
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Aura Fedora wore a nutria shawl designed by Jessica Radcliffe. Credit Jennifer Zdon for The New York Times
But Nutria-palooza, as the show is being called, is not just about fashion. The main sponsor is the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, a nonprofit conservation group in Thibodaux, La., that works to preserve the 4.2-million-acre swamp in southern Louisiana that is being threatened by the furry critter.
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As any resident of Louisiana knows, nutria is a herbivorous rodent, about half the size of a beaver, that is native to South America. The animals were shipped to fur farmers in the United States as early as the 19th century, and some eventually escaped into the Louisiana swamps. At first, the population was kept in check by fur trappers and a marketplace that prized the exotic fur. Hollywood starlets like Greta Garbo were fans of nutria coats.
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But when the fur market started to founder in the 1980s, the nutria population soared and started to endanger the fragile ecosystem. The invasive rodent eats away the bottom of the plants that hold the coastal wetlands together.
In 2002, Louisiana started paying trappers and hunters $5 for every nutria killed. The effort to control the nutria population had some success, with bounty hunters killing about 400,000 animals last year. But the carcasses were simply discarded or left to rot in the swamp.
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Billy Reid used nutria in his recent collection. Credit Mimi Ritzen Crawford/Getty Images
That’s when Cree McCree, an environmentalist and designer from New Orleans, came up with her fashion idea. Instead of wasting all that fur, she wanted to market nutria as a “guilt-free fur that belongs on the runway instead of at the bottom of the bayou,” she said.
“If they’re being killed anyway,” she added, “then why not make something beautiful out of them?”
Last year, using a grant from the estuary foundation, Ms. McCree founded Righteous Fur, a line of products made with the carcasses’ leftovers. That not only includes the soft brown fur, but also the animal’s signature orange teeth, which she caps with sterling silver and sells as necklaces for $85.
Ms. McCree has held three nutria fashion shows in New Orleans in the last year, but the New York event, she said, will help push her campaign to the next level.
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Nutria have been destroying plants vital to Louisiana swamps. Credit Robin Loznak, The News-Review, via Associated Press
Indeed, nutria has been having a moment. Designers like Billy Reid (who recently won a major fashion award; see Front Row, Page 4), Michael Kors and Oscar de la Renta have incorporated nutria lining or trim in recent collections, and the fur has shown up on Etsy, the online store that specializes in handmade and vintage crafts, in the form of merkins — triangular patches sewn onto flesh-colored panties.
The New York show will highlight creative uses of nutria fur. Alicia Zenobia, a young designer working in Brooklyn and New Orleans, will present a cocktail dress trimmed with strips of nutria and tiny bejeweled skulls made of clay. Her model will wear a black-and-white wig that looks like Cruella De Vil’s hair.
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José Luis Rodriguez, a Venezuelan dancer who makes leather accessories in Louisiana, will show an evening gown and shoulder bag made with a patchwork of nutria hides. And Dana Embree, a costume designer in New Orleans who has worked on several movies and television shows, plans to go retro with a 1960s-style mini brocade halter dress with fur collar and gloves.
“I’m not like a PETA person, but still, I had to take a deep breath now and then,” Ms. Embree said. “I’d never worked with something that had eye holes.”
Despite the nature of the fashion show, no PETA protests are expected. But that’s probably because nutria is still on the fringes. Advocates of nutria fur, meanwhile, are sticking to their eco-friendly message: it’s a fur coat, yes, but the animal had a cage-free life and an organic diet.
Jessica Radcliffe, a New Orleans dollmaker and performance artist, won’t use leather in her work but has made several nutria stoles. “I personally don’t want to be in a position where I have to kill an animal,” she said. “But if it’s them or us, I don’t want to be a lily-livered sissy about it.”
Correction: December 9, 2010
A picture caption on Nov. 18 with an article about the use of nutria pelts in fashion misspelled the given name of a fashion designer. She is Xiomara del Carmen, not Ziomara.
Correction: December 2, 2010
An article on Nov. 18 about the use of nutria pelts in fashion misidentified the conservation group in Thibodaux, La., that was the main sponsor of a nutria fashion show on Nov. 21. It is the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program — not the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary Foundation, a separate group.
A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2010, on Page E9 of the New York edition with the headline: Nutria-Palooza: Is Their Pest Your Clean Conscience?. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe
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Which was the last football club from outside Western Europe top win the European Cup? | Meat from a 20-lb swamp rat: taste test / Boing Boing
Meat from a 20-lb swamp rat: taste test
By Chris Metzler
Rodents of Unusual Size do exist. We know because we just ate one. Here's how it happened.
Jeff Springer, Quinn Costello, and I are making a documentary, Rodents of Unusual Size , about the legions of 20 pound swamp rats that are eating away the fragile coastal wetlands of Louisiana. These giant rodents, known as nutria, were imported from Argentina in the 1930’s for their fur by the guy who invented Tabasco sauce, among many others. But after a series of unfortunate events the nutria escaped into the wild and the nutria population exploded.
Since nutria are vegetarians at heart they have proceeded to feast on the roots of wetland plants and have transformed much of the Bayou into high salinity wastelands. These "dead zones" no longer provide a functional buffer against hurricanes and also threaten the biodiversity that supports migratory bird and plant life.
To do battle with this invasive species the Louisiana Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries has encouraged folks to do their part by eating these free-range rodents. Let’s say that, even with famed Louisiana chefs like Paul Prudhomme taking a stab at swamp rat sausages, tamales, jerky and other creations, people have been reluctant to embrace nutria for human consumption.
But while on location filming we kept hearing stories about the nutria’s delicious, low fat, high protein meat and coastal residents who celebrated the nutria as tasting “better than steak.” So we thought, gators like to snack on nutria, why not us?
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After-all we are offering artisanally prepared nutria meat as one of the rewards as part of our Kickstarter fundraising campaign and we couldn’t unleash it onto the world without giving it a try.
The anticipation was huge. Would it be “better than steak” as one of our interviewees swore it would? Would it taste like a swamp rabbit? Would it even be edible?
You can check out our thoughts and impressions in our video review .
Some hearty hunters bagged 8 nutrias for us and we had them processed by a butcher who was legendary for his skills at making nutria not only palatable, but delectable.
Three ways to prepare the meat did battle in our scientifically rigorous taste test: Snack Stix, sausage on a bun (with a touch of Tabasco sauce) and nutria jambalaya.
Nutria Snack Stix - This curious item runs about 6” to 7” in length. They are basically like a thicker Slim Jim minus the snap. Overall, what you're going to notice on the first bite is a strong smoky natural meat flavor, but one that is well countered by the Cajun seasonings and a moderate amount of heat that builds up with each chew.
They have a fresh pepperoni like kick with an oily surface feel. The stix have some flexibility to them and don’t easily crack open with any amount of bending. Chewing was easy and there isn’t a high degree of saltiness.
We decided that the mixture of the flavors helped to make the nutria meat palatable but the addition of the spices seemed to be hiding the actual flavor of the meat. Our findings were inconclusive.
Nutria Cajun Sausage - These chunky links tasted wild and exotic. The slight garlic and cayenne flavors percolated on the tongue, but were quickly overwhelmed by a taste we have to describe as the flavor of the “swamp”. One of us thought it tasted like a morgue, while another tasted a hint of walnuts. You’re definitely in unique flavor country here as the true taste of the nutria meat really came out, for a perplexing culinary experience.
This item provides a nice real meat flavor for a medium grind sausage that can work well on the grill if its tended carefully, but given the meat’s natural leaness you have to watch that it doesn’t get too dry. If we were to try it again we’d choose to boil it in water or an Abita beer, bratwurst style.
Nutria Jambalaya - Like a film crew, the nutria meat seems to work best in collaboration. It really shined in this dish as it easily took on all of the spices & flavors associated with Louisiana cooking. The long simmer and slow cooking time resulted in a soft, moist meat and a jambalaya with a light tanginess and a smoky background in each bite.
We’re not convinced eating nutria meat will ever go mainstream, as heck look at those big orange teeth and long rat like tail. Nonetheless, nutria can be quite tasty. It truly is the other OTHER white meat.
If you are interested in scoring some nutria meat for yourself or checking out some clips from the film, you can visit the ongoing Kickstarter campaign for Rodents of Unusual Size here:
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The actress Isabella Rossellini, who appeared in the 2006 films 'The Architect' and 'Infamous', is the daughter of which famous actress? | Isabella Rossellini - IMDb
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Actress | Director | Writer
Isabella Rossellini, the Italian actress and model who has made her home in America since 1979 and holds dual Italian and American citizenship, was born cinema royalty when she made her debut on June 18, 1952 in Rome. She is the daughter of two legends, three-time Oscar-winning Swedish-born actress Ingrid Bergman and neo-realist master Italian ... See full bio »
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2016 Shut Eye (TV Series)
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2013 The Blacklist (TV Series)
Floriana Campo
2009 The Phantom (TV Mini-Series)
Dr. Bella Lithia
2008-2009 Green Porno (TV Series)
Male Whale / Male Bee
2006 Filthy Gorgeous (TV Movie)
Antonia
1997 Chicago Hope (TV Series)
Prof. Marina Giannini
1997 Ceremony of Innocence (Video Game)
Sabine Strohem (voice)
1993 Fallen Angels (TV Series)
Babe Lonsdale
1990 Ivory Hunters (TV Movie)
Maria DiConti
2015 Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno Live (TV Movie documentary) (monologues written by)
2013 Mammas (TV Series short) (10 episodes)
2010 Seduce Me (TV Series)
2008 Green Porno (TV Series) (writer - 8 episodes)
2010 Seduce Me (TV Series) (producer)
2008-2009 Green Porno (TV Series) (producer - 10 episodes)
2001 My Voyage to Italy (Documentary) (still photographer)
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1972 Augustine of Hippo (TV Movie) (assistant costumes)
1972 Blaise Pascal (TV Movie) (assistant costumes)
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1988 Red Riding Hood (performer: "You Won't Be Here in the Morning")
1986 Blue Velvet (performer: "Blue Star", "Blue Velvet")
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1992 Rossellini visto da Rossellini (Documentary) (footage courtesy of)
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2015 Good Morning America (TV Series)
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2015 Made in Hollywood (TV Series)
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2015 Entertainment Tonight (TV Series)
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2013 C à vous (TV Series)
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2012 Bergmans video (TV Mini-Series documentary)
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2011 CBS News Sunday Morning (TV Series documentary)
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2010 Seduce Me (TV Series)
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2009 The Hour (TV Series)
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2006-2009 Il était une fois... (TV Series documentary)
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2009 Green Porno (TV Series)
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2008 Rachael Ray (TV Series)
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2008 Jimmy Kimmel Live! (TV Series)
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2008 Festival Updates (TV Series)
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2006 Iconoclasts (TV Series documentary)
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2006 Discovery Atlas (TV Series documentary)
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2006 Richard & Judy (TV Series)
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2002 Leute heute (TV Series documentary)
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1999-2000 Mundo VIP (TV Series)
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2000 Nulle part ailleurs (TV Series)
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1999 Boulevard Bio (TV Series)
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1999 Wild City (TV Movie documentary)
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1999 Intimate Portrait (TV Series documentary)
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1998 World Fashion Premiere from Paris (TV Movie documentary)
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1997 La nuit des Césars (TV Series documentary)
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1996 Omnibus (TV Series documentary)
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1996 Ingrid Bergman Remembered (TV Movie documentary)
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1995 Lauren Hutton and... (TV Series)
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1995 Showbiz Today (TV Series)
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1991 The Fifth Annual Genesis Awards (TV Movie documentary)
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1990 Arena (TV Series documentary)
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1988 No Frank in Lumberton (TV Movie documentary)
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1986 Domenica in (TV Series)
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1976 Film 2016 (TV Series)
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2015 Entertainment Tonight (TV Series)
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2014 The Greatest 80s Movies (TV Movie documentary)
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2005 80s (TV Series documentary)
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The name of which famous opera house is Italian for 'The Staircase'? | Isabella Rossellini
Isabella Rossellini
Nationality: Italy
Executive summary: Blue Velvet, Big Night
Isabella Rossellini was a child of cinema royalty. Her mother, actress Ingrid Bergman , starred in Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Hitchcock 's Spellbound. Her father, Roberto Rossellini, was an Italian screenwriter, director, and producer, whose most beloved films include Germania anno zero (Germany Year Zero) and Roma, citt� aperta (Open City). Born thirty minutes before her fraternal twin sister, Isabella grew to resemble her famous mother. She injured her back at the age of 13, and was completely bedridden for almost a year. She has also suffered from scoliosis (progressive curvature of the spine).
She began her career as a journalist for RAI Television in Italy, but was assigned purely fluff features and soon grew bored. She then appeared as a regular on an Italian sketch comedy show, where she met a photographer who convinced her she was more a model than a comedienne. But despite great success as a model, she eventually returned to acting.
Her first film was her mother's A Matter of Time, and she was first noticed by American audiences in White Nights with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines . In her most famous role, she was beaten by Dennis Hopper and rescued by Kyle MacLachlan in David Lynch 's masterpiece of small-town sadomasochism, Blue Velvet. She lived with Lynch for five years.
From 1982-96, she was the celebrity face of Lanc�me cosmetics, but the company ended the arrangement, fearing that Rossellini was too old to be seen as attractive. She has continued making films, including Wild at Heart with Nicolas Cage , Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner , and Roger Dodger with Campbell Scott . She has also played the fierce aunt Katya on TV's Alias with Jennifer Garner .
Father: Roberto Rossellini (film director, b. 1906, d. 1977 heart attack)
Sister: Pia Lindstrom (drama critic, half-sister)
Sister: Isotta Rosselini (twin, professor of Italian literature, Columbia University)
Brother: Renzo Rossellini (film producer)
Father: Lars Schmidt (stepfather, married Bergman in 1958, theatrical producer)
Husband: Martin Scorsese (film director, m. 1979, div. 1982)
Husband: Jonathan Wiedemann (model, m. 1983, div. 1986, one child)
Daughter: Elettra Rossellini (b. 1983, with Wiedemann, model)
Boyfriend: David Lynch (filmmaker, cohabited 1986-91)
Son: Roberto Rossellini (b. 1993, adopted)
Boyfriend: Gary Oldman (engaged Jul-1994, sep. 1996)
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Which French soldier was the Supreme Allied Commander at the end of World War I? | First World War.com - Primary Documents - John Pershing on Foch's Appointment as Allied Supreme Commander, 1 September 1919
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Primary Documents - John Pershing on Foch's Appointment as Allied Supreme Commander, 1 September 1919
Reproduced below is the official reaction - from his despatch of September 1919 - of U.S. Commander-in-Chief General John Pershing , to news of the decision to transfer supreme military command of Allied forces on the Western Front to Ferdinand Foch .
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The decision to transfer overall command to Foch was taken by Allied government representatives at Doullens on 26 March in the wake of the onset of the powerful German Spring Offensive which was launched five days earlier and which inflicted serious reverses upon the British Army. It was thus in a period of crisis that Foch was handed his (ultimately highly successful) leading role.
Pershing's reaction to the news was, in spite of the potential for subsequent disagreements (which actually transpired), positive. He recognised the need for a unified Allied strategy in the face of the current concerted German offensive.
Click here to read the text of his address to Foch on the matter on 28 March. Click here to read British Prime Minister David Lloyd George's official statement on the subject. Click here to read a follow-up statement by Lloyd George on the same subject dated 9 April 1918.
John Pershing on Foch's Appointment as Allied Supreme Commander
In the latter part of January, 1918, joint note No. 12, presented by the military representatives with the supreme war council, was approved by the council.
This note concluded that France would be safe during 1918 only under certain conditions, namely:
(a) That the strength of the British and French troops in France are continuously kept up to their present total strength and that they receive the expected reinforcements of not less than two American divisions per month.
The first German offensive of 1918, beginning March 21st, overran all resistance during the initial period of the attack. Within eight days the enemy had completely crossed the old Somme battlefield and had swept everything before him to a depth of some fifty-six kilometres.
For a few days the loss of the railroad centre of Amiens appeared imminent. The offensive made such inroads upon French and British reserves that defeat stared them in the face unless the new American troops should prove more immediately available than even the most optimistic had dared to hope.
On March 27th the military representatives with the supreme war council prepared their joint note No. 18. This note repeated the previously quoted statement from joint note No. 12, and continued:
The battle which is developing at the present moment in France, and which can extend to the other theatres of operations, may very quickly place the Allied armies in a serious situation from the point of view of effectives, and the military representatives are from this moment of opinion that the above-detailed condition can no longer be maintained, and they consider as a general proposition that the new situation requires new decisions.
The military representatives are of opinion that it is highly desirable that the American Government should assist the allied armies as soon as possible by permitting in principle the temporary service of American units in allied army corps and divisions. Such reinforcements must, however, be obtained from other units than those American divisions which are now operating with the French, and the units so temporarily employed must eventually be returned to the American army.
The military representatives are of the opinion that from the present time, in execution of the foregoing, and until otherwise directed by the supreme war council, only American infantry and machine-gun units, organized as that government may decide, be brought to France, and that all agreements or conventions hitherto made in conflict with this decision be modified accordingly.
The Secretary of War, who was in France at this time, General Bliss, the American military representative with the supreme war council, and I at once conferred on the terms of this note, with the result that the secretary recommended to the President that joint note No. 18 be approved in the following sense:
The purpose of the American Government is to render the fullest cooperation and aid, and therefore the recommendation of the military representatives with regard to the preferential transportation of American infantry and machine-gun units in the present emergency is approved.
Such units, when transported, will be under the direction of the commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, and will be assigned for training and use by him in his discretion.
He will use these and all other military forces of the United States under his command in such manner as to render the greatest military assistance, keeping in mind always the determination of this government to have its various military forces collected, as speedily as their training and the military situation permit, into an independent American army, acting in concert with the armies of Great Britain and France, and all arrangements made by him for their temporary training and service will be made with that end in view.
When, on March 21, 1918, the German army on the western front began its series of offensives, it was by far the most formidable force the world had ever seen.
In fighting men and guns it had a great superiority, but this was of less importance than the advantage in morale, in experience, in training for mobile warfare, and in unity of command.
Ever since the collapse of the Russian armies and the crisis on the Italian front in the fall of 1917, German armies were being assembled and trained for the great campaign which was to end the war before America's effort could be brought to bear. Germany's best troops, her most successful generals, and all the experience gained in three years of war were mobilized for the supreme effort.
The first blow fell on the right of the British armies, including the junction of the British and French forces. Only the prompt cooperation of the French and British general headquarters stemmed the tide.
The reason for this objective was obvious and strikingly illustrated the necessity for having someone with sufficient authority over all the Allied armies to meet such an emergency. The lack of complete cooperation among the Allies on the western front had been appreciated and the question of preparation to meet a crisis had already received attention by the supreme war council.
A plan had been adopted by which each of the Allies would furnish a certain number of divisions for a general reserve to be under the direction of the military representatives of the supreme war council of which General Foch was then the senior member. But when the time came to meet the German offensive in March these reserves were not found available and the plan failed.
This situation resulted in a conference for the immediate consideration of the question of having an Allied commander-in-chief. After much discussion during which my view favouring such action was clearly stated, an agreement was reached and General Foch was selected.
His appointment as such was made April 3rd and was approved for the United States by the President on April 16th. The terms of the agreement under which General Foch exercised his authority were as follows:
Beauvais, April 3, 1918
General Foch is charged by the British, French, and American Governments with the coordination of the action of the allied armies on the western front; to this end there is conferred on him all the powers necessary for its effective realization. To the same end, the British, French, and American Governments confide in General Foch the strategic direction of military operations.
The commander-in-chief of the British, French, and American armies will exercise to the fullest extent the tactical direction of their armies.
Each commander-in-chief will have the right to appeal to his government, if in his opinion his army is placed in danger by the instructions received from General Foch.
The grave crisis precipitated by the first German offensive caused me to make a hurried visit to General Foch's head-quarters at Bombon, during which all our combatant forces were placed at his disposal.
The acceptance of this offer meant the dispersion of our troops along the Allied front and a consequent delay in building up a distinctive American force in Lorraine, but the serious situation of the Allies demanded this divergence from our plans.
Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923
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Bon Scott was the lead singer of which rock group until his death in 1980? | World War I military leaders
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World War I military leaders
This page contains brief biographical summaries of some significant World War I military leaders. Click or tap a link to open or close profiles. These profiles have been written by Alpha History authors.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Ottoman Empire)
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) was a prominent Ottoman military commander of World War I. Born in Salonica, Mustafa Kemal was the son of a civil servant, who encouraged him to enter one of the empire’s military academies. He graduated in 1905, received an officer’s commission and was given his first posting. In 1908 Kemal participated in the ‘Young Turk’ revolution, which replaced the Ottoman sultanate with a constitutional ruler. He later served in the empire’s unsuccessful wars against Italy (1911-12) and the Balkan League (1912-1913). When the Ottomans entered World War I in late 1914, Kemal, by now a colonel, was tasked with defending the Dardanelles from a probable Allied landing. Though short of men and equipment, Kemal’s astute analysis of both the terrain and Allied military objectives allowed him to organise a robust yet well planned defence of the peninsula. The victory at Gallipoli revived Ottoman hopes of keeping the empire together, while Kemal was promoted and given more significant command postings. Between 1916 and 1918 he served against the Russians in the Caucasus, against British imperial forces in Palestine and as an envoy to Germany. By 1918 Kemal was convinced that the Allies would win the war, so his interests turned towards securing the future of his homeland. Kemal is best known for his leadership of the Turkish War of Independence (1919-22) and his long tenure as Turkey’s first republican president. The surname Ataturk, meaning ‘father of the Turks’, was bestowed on him in 1934.
General Erich von Falkenhayn (Germany)
General Erich von Falkenhayn (1861-1922) was Germany’s Chief of General Staff (commander in chief of the military) for the first half of World War I. A lifelong soldier, the Prussian-born Falkenhayn served in colonial China during the Boxer Rebellion; after this he returned to Germany and worked as a staff officer, involved in military planning and logistics. Like others of his generation, Falkenhayn was a militarist who believed that a great European war was inevitable and that Germany should prepare accordingly. This attitude earned him the favouritism of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was behind Falkenhayn’s surprise 1912 promotion to major-general and Prussian minister of war. In September 1914 Falkenhayn replaced von Moltke as the Chief of General Staff, after the failure of the Schlieffen offensive. Recognising the great difficulties along the Western Front, Falkenhayn instead focused in the east, where he hoped to force Russia to sign a separate armistice. He also initiated the assault against French positions at Verdun, the failure of this campaign leading to his replacement in August 1916. Falkenhayn remained in the war, serving as a commander in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Historians consider Falkenhayn to be a true figure of the old regime: conservative, authoritarian and militaristic – but nevertheless a skilled general, more competent and innovative than many of his contemporaries.
Marshal Ferdinand Foch (France)
Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929) was an important French general, perhaps best known for repelling German advances in both 1914 and 1918. Born in southern France near the Spanish border, Foch served in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and remained in the army after the French defeat. He completed further studies, obtained a lieutenant’s commission and began to make a name for himself as a military strategist. Foch’s writings on strategy drew heavily on Prussian ideas and contributed to a transformation of French military thinking in the first years of the 1900s. Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Foch was given command of the Ninth Army which halted the German Schlieffen advance at the first Battle of the Marne. For much of the war Foch worked closely with British commanders, who mostly held him in high regard; their most notable collaboration was at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, however the heavy casualties there resulted in Foch’s deployment away from the Western Front. He returned to active service in France in 1918, when he coordinated a successful response to the German Spring Offensive. In mid-1918 Foch was given the titles ‘Supreme Commander of Allied Forces’ and ‘Marshal of France’; in November he oversaw armistice negotiations with the Germans. During the Paris peace conferences Foch urged a full Allied occupation of the German Rhineland; when this was denied he condemned the Versailles treaty as a failure, considering it an “armistice for 20 years”. Foch was later hailed as a war hero and showered with honours and titles, however historians have been more sanguine about both his strategic approach and his effectiveness.
Field Marshal Sir John French (Britain)
Field Marshal Sir John French (1852-1925) was the commander-in-chief of British forces in continental Europe for the first half of World War I. Born into a military family, French enlisted in the Royal Navy but an abject fear of heights forced his transfer into the army. He received an officer’s commission in the Irish Hussars and participated in colonial campaigns in Africa. French also served as a major-general in the Second Boer War in South Africa, where he was commended for his decisive but calm leadership. He was later promoted to full general, then to field marshal, and contributed to British military reforms and organisation prior to the outbreak of World War I. In 1914 he was appointed commander of the British Expeditionary Force in northern France. French proved unsuited to this mission. At first thinking the war would be over within months, on arriving in Europe he became despondent and pessimistic about the chances of victory. Sir John had little confidence in either French generals or their men and was reluctant to commit British forces to French-planned operations. His inability to work with French commanders led to criticisms at home and Sir John’s resignation and replacement with Haig in December 1915. Recalled to England, French was given the less important task of organising home defence. Apart from providing occasional advice to the government, he played no further part in the war on the Western Front. His tarnished reputation was only recovered by the higher losses suffered by Haig and other generals, after French’s removal.
General Sir Douglas Haig (Britain)
“Sadly, many commanders were not aware of the true conditions at the front… Senior commanders such as Haig were located in chateaus well behind the lines, because in modern war that was the only place to exert control… There is no doubt that some of the British generals were not up to the task of command; studied in isolation, catastrophes such as the Somme and Passchendaele are stark evidence of the generals’ inability to grasp modern command and control problems. [But] as the British generals encountered the stiff learning curve of war, they, unlike the donkeys they are often accused of being, embraced evolving technology and new weapons systems.”
Tim Cook, historian
General Sir Douglas Haig. Ridiculed and parodied in film and television, Haig is often portrayed as elitist and incompetent, though neither was true. Born into an affluent family, Haig had from a young age set his sights on a military career. He saw service in the Sudan, the Boer War and a colonial regiment in India, before returning to England in 1911. He was viewed as a specialist in military training, discipline and battlefield strategies; he also served briefly as aide-de-camp to King George V. By the outbreak of the war Haig was a lieutenant-general; he was given command of forces at Mons and Ypres, where he acquitted himself well. By the end of 1915 Haig was given command of the entire British Expeditionary Force, and ordered to begin planning a major offensive at the Somme River for the summer of 1916. It is the Battle of the Somme for which Haig is best known, particularly its disastrous opening day. Despite meticulous planning and preparation, and one of the longest and most ferocious artillery barrages of the war, almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed, making it the worst single day in British military history. Haig’s tactics at the Somme, Passchendaele and Amiens were ultimately successful, though they came at enormous human cost. Some, including prime minister David Lloyd George, condemned Haig for persisting with infantry advances on strongly held German positions – a criticism echoed by many historians. Others more sympathetic to Haig suggest that he was placed under extreme pressure by French losses at Verdun, which denied him any effective French support in 1916. Whatever the reality, Haig was feted by the British government after the war: he was given a 100,000 pound pension and elevated to the peerage.
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (Germany)
Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg. Hindenburg was born into one of Prussia’s most distinguished families in 1847. Like many scions of the 19th century Prussian elite, he began military training at a young age and received a commission in time to serve in the Austro-Prussian War (1866). The young Hindenburg was also present at Versailles for the formal unification of the German Empire, a moment he later called one of the proudest in his life. He served in the military for 45 years, rising to the rank of general before retiring to his sizeable estate in 1911. But the 66-year-old Hindenburg was recalled in 1914, given command of the Eighth Army and tasked with defending East Prussia from a Russian offensive. His leadership on the Eastern Front produced great victories between 1914 and 1916, though Hindenburg’s talented subordinates and the incompetent bungling of Russian commanders also contributed to these. In mid-1916 Hindenburg was appointed as Chief of the German General Staff, replacing Erich von Falkenhayn, who had been discredited by his lack of progress at Verdun. Hindenburg became Germany’s military commander, though many important command decisions were in fact made by his deputy Erich von Ludendorff. From late 1916 both men exerted considerable influence over the government; Germany became a de facto military dictatorship. Two of Hindenburg’s decisions contributed to Germany’s capitulation in 1918. He was largely responsible for the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, imposed over the objections of civilian politicians; this antagonised the Americans and contributed to their entry to the war in 1917. Hindenburg also ordered the redeployment of German agricultural workers to the industrial sector, a move which increased military production significantly but worsened Germany’s food shortages. Despite these blunders Hindenburg remained as chief of staff until early 1919 and enjoyed considerable popularity among the German people. He was elected president of the German republic in 1925, by a people nostalgic for nationalism, strong leadership and military strength. It was as president that Hindenburg committed his greatest folly: appointing Adolf Hitler as chancellor of the republic in January 1933.
General Joseph Joffre (France)
General Joseph Joffre. The French commander-in-chief for the first half of the war, Joffre was the son of a wine-growing family who left the vineyards to become a career military officer. He served in the Franco-Prussian War in the early 1870s then spent many years in colonial postings. In 1911 he was given command of the French army, despite having a background in engineering. Joffre initiated a review of French military strategy and introduced Plan XVII (1913), which was largely concerned with the recapture of Alsace and Lorraine. It also placed a low priority on defending the French-Belgian border, since Joffre and his fellow commanders believed – wrongly as it turned out – that the Germans would not risk bringing the British into any war by invading Belgium. But while Plan XVII was quickly shown to be flawed, Joffre’s leadership was enhanced by his response to the Schlieffen Plan; it was largely because of Joffre that French forces were able to halt the German advance at the Battle of the Marne in September 1914. Joffre’s reputation took a battering in 1915-16, however, after a series of costly and unsuccessful offensives against German-held lines. In early 1916, as Joffre and Sir Douglas Haig began planning a joint Anglo-French offensive, the Germans attacked French positions at Verdun. French generals were unable to formulate an effective response to the German assault at Verdun, and with the French army at risk of annihilation, Joffre began to show signs of strain. In December 1916 he was replaced as commander-in-chief by Robert Nivelle, who spoke fluent English and was therefore better equipped to work alongside the British. Joffre was given several advisory or diplomatic roles well away from the Western Front. Despite his failures as a military commander, in his retirement Joffre was given several ceremonial roles and a succession of honours.
General Erich Ludendorff (Germany)
General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937) was a German officer, famous for his staunch militarism and his service as Paul von Hindenburg’s second in command. Ludendorff was born in Prussia, the son of a local landowner. His excellence as a student earned Ludendorff a scholarship to a local military academy, after which he received a lieutenant’s commission. He proved an exceptional young officer, receiving numerous commendations, rising through the ranks and being seconded to the General Staff. Ludendorff as an exceptional organiser, known in particular for his ability to plan large operations; from 1911 one of his roles was to assist with the logistics and preparations for the Schlieffen Plan. In 1914 Ludendorff was sent to assist Hindenburg with defending East Prussia from the Russians. This marked the beginning of a long partnership, during which time Ludendorff served as Hindenburg’s chief of staff, then quartermaster-general of the Germany army. Many historians consider Ludendorff to have been the main source of strategic and logistical ideas in this partnership, with Hindenburg the popular figurehead. Among the wartime policies shaped by Ludendorff were the introduction of military control over the German economy, Germany’s move towards unrestricted submarine warfare and the development of the 1918 Spring Offensive. After the failure of this offensive Ludendorff became depressed and resigned to the inevitability of surrender – however after the war he became a leading proponent of the Dolchstosslegende, or ‘stab in the back theory’, which argued that the German military had been betrayed rather than defeated. For a time in the early 1920s Ludendorff was a fervent supporter of Adolf Hitler and the fledgling Nazi movement.
General Helmuth von Moltke (Germany)
Helmuth von Moltke (1848-1916) was head of the German military between 1906 and 1914, so was largely responsible for Germany’s war preparations. Born into a privileged family, von Moltke was named after his prominent uncle, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, who had served for three decades as Chief of General Staff in the newly unified Germany. The younger von Moltke enlisted in the Prussian army as a teenager and fought in the 1870-71 war with France. He later served on the staff of his famous uncle, then as an aide to Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1906 von Moltke was selected to replace von Schlieffen as Chief of General Staff, probably at the kaiser’s insistence; his appointment surprised some, as von Moltke had leapfrogged several better equipped candidates. His tenure as Chief of General Staff was no less controversial. Some historians assert that von Moltke condemned the Schlieffen Plan to failure by downsizing it and depriving it of men and equipment; others suggest it failed because of unforeseen operational and communications difficulties once the attack had commenced. Discredited and in poor health, von Moltke was replaced as Chief of General Staff by Falkenhayn in October 1914. He played no significant part in the war thereafter and died in late 1916.
General John Monash (Australia)
General Sir John Monash (1865-1931) was an Australian general who proved to be one of the most innovative military commanders of the war. Ironically, Monash was more German than British: he was born in Melbourne but both his parents were German immigrants who had Anglicised their name from ‘Monasch’ and who still spoke German in the family home. Unlike most other high-ranking officers Monash did not graduate from a military academy; he instead completed a university degree in civil engineering while undertaking part-time military service. Monash joined the army full-time with the outbreak of war and commanded a unit in Gallipoli, where he demonstrated initiative and adaptability. Unlike some other generals Monash held the men under his command in high regard: he was an effective communicator and motivator, as well as a supreme organiser. The successful withdrawal from Gallipoli, which was achieved in near-secrecy and with minimal loss of life, was largely the product of Monash’s leadership. In mid-1917 Monash arrived on the Western Front. He served for a year as a divisional commander, leading a series of successful, if costly campaigns. In May 1918 he was promoted and given command of all five Australian divisions on the Western Front. Monash’s calm demeanour and attention to detail earned him the confidence of his fellow officers and the men in his command; an attempt to confect his dismissal by war correspondent Charles Bean and newspaper proprietor Keith Murdoch failed largely because of his popularity. Monash believed in coordinating all available forces – infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft – to increase the likelihood of victory. He employed these tactics in several battles in mid-1918, most notably the successful Battle of Amiens in August, which turned the tide of the war in Europe. Monash was hailed by many as the greatest general of any army on the Western Front, and he was knighted by King George V just days after the victory at Amiens.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (Russia)
Nicholas Nikolaevich (1856-1929) was a Russian royal and the country’s military commander-in-chief for the first 12 months of the war. A grand duke of the Romanov family, Nikolaevich was a grandson of Tsar Alexander I and the son of a prominent military commander. Like many other young royals, the teenage Nikolaevich was given training as a cavalry officer and encouraged to become a career military officer. Commissioned in 1872, Nikolaevich participated in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) where he served with distinction. His military service thereafter was as a St Petersburg staff officer, concerned with training, logistics and planning. During the 1905 Russian Revolution Nikolaevich was called upon by his cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, to restore order through martial law; he defiantly refused. In 1914 the tsar appointed Nikolaevich commander of all Russian armies in Europe. Nikolaevich was liked and respected, both by his generals and the enlisted ranks, but he was unprepared for the enormity of this task. He had not seen combat for more than 30 years and had no experience of commanding an army in the field. With no clear strategic plan of his own, Nikolaevich simply refereed debates between his generals, while serving as a figurehead. In August 1915 the tsar sacked Nikolaevich and assumed command of the armies himself, a move that would have its own disastrous consequences. He later led a Russian army in the Caucasus, with some success, before fleeing Russia after the revolution of 1919.
General John J. Pershing (USA)
General John J. Pershing (1860-1948) was probably the best known American general of World War I. Born to a farming family in Missouri, Pershing worked as a teacher before accepting a position at the prestigious West Point military academy. His superiors there were impressed with Pershing’s leadership skills, particularly his decisiveness and firmness with other cadets. After graduating from West Point, Pershing received a lieutenant’s commission and saw combat in several campaigns against Native Americans, in the Spanish-American War (1898) and in the Philippines. He also rose through the ranks, becoming a brigadier general in 1905. In early 1917 US president Woodrow Wilson appointed Pershing as commander of the American Expeditionary Force to Europe, promoting him to full general. Pershing arrived on the Western Front in mid-1917 and began planning the deployment of American forces. Their first significant use was at the Battle of Hamel, where Americans served under British and Australian officers, the first time US troops had been given to foreign command. By the spring of 1918 Pershing, who now had several US divisions at his disposal, reclaimed command of all American troops in Europe. He led several American divisions at the second Battle of the Marne (July-August 1918) and also at Meuse-Argonne (September 1918). The Marne produced an Allied victory, however the Argonne offensive was disastrous for Pershing, who repeated many of the same mistakes made by Allied generals in 1915 and 1916. Pershing also insisted that American soldiers continue fighting after the signing of the November 11th armistice, an order that resulted in more than 200 deaths and 3,000 serious injuries. Back in America, Pershing was hailed as a war hero and promoted to General of the Armies, a de facto six-star generalship. Historians, however, have been more divided over Pershing’s role, both as a military leader and his contribution to the outcomes of World War I.
Marshal Philippe Petain (France)
Marshal Philippe Petain (1856-1951) was one of France’s most important military commanders of World War I. The son of a farmer, the teenaged Petain opted for a military career, joining the French army as an officer cadet. His early service was unremarkable; it took him almost 15 years to reach the rank of captain. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Petain was already nearing his 60s and was considering retirement, however he was made a general and given important command positions on the Western Front. Petain was more cautious and defensive than some other Allied commanders. He did not believe that heavy artillery and machine-guns could be overcome by massed infantry charges; artillery, he argued, could only be countered with artillery. In 1916 Petain was given command of French forces at Verdun; for a year his men held off the German offensive, though both sides suffered enormous casualties. The following year Petain was appointed commander-in-chief of the entire French army, though by 1918 he was technically outranked by Foch, who exercised command of all Allied armies. Petain emerged from the war with an enhanced reputation: he was one of the few Allied generals who had achieved more successes than failures, but without the record of needless slaughter so common on the Western Front. Petain was later discredited by his four-year presidency of the Nazi-aligned Vichy French republic, for which he spent the last years of his life in prison.
General Sir Henry Wilson
General Sir Henry Wilson (1864-1922) was a senior British military commander and government advisor. Wilson was of Irish birth but was a loyal Briton, refusing to support Irish independence or republicanism. Like many British officers, Wilson had risen through the ranks during service in the colonies. He saw combat as a major during the second Boer War, before returning to England and working in both officer training and military operations. By the outbreak of World War I, Wilson had reached the rank of major-general. In 1914 he was deployed to the continent as a liaison with the French, a role Wilson performed well, in part because of his ability to speak their language. He also held corps command positions along the Western Front, though not at any major battles. Wilson was later appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff, a position he held until 1922. He was assassinated by Irish republican terrorists later that same year.
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This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, Jim Southey and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation:
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To mark the centenary of World War I, Alpha History authors live-tweet press reports on the war - as they appeared 100 years ago.
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What was the name of the secret police force run by former Haitian President Papa Doc Duvalier? | Former Haiti president Duvalier dies - BBC News
BBC News
Former Haiti president Duvalier dies
4 October 2014
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Media captionJean-Claude Duvalier was a controversial figure, as Tom Esslemont explains
Haiti's former ruler Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier has died of a heart attack in the capital Port-au-Prince aged 63, official sources say.
Duvalier was just 19 when in 1971 he inherited the title of "president-for-life" from his father, the notorious Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier.
He was accused of corruption, human rights abuses and repression in his rule, which ended in a 1986 uprising.
After years of exile in France, he returned to Haiti in 2011.
His death was announced by Haiti's health minister, and the ex-leader's attorney Reynold Georges confirmed he died at home on Saturday.
Lavish wedding
At the time of his swearing in, Jean-Claude Duvalier was the youngest president in the world.
Initially it seemed that there could be a significant move away from his father's harsh regime, underpinned as it was by Haiti's notorious secret police, the Tontons Macoutes, says BBC world affairs correspondent Mike Wooldridge.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption For some time, Jean-Claude Duvalier was the youngest president in the world
He moved closer to the Americans, from whom his father had been estranged. US businesses moved in and he allowed limited press freedom.
But Jean-Claude Duvalier lived lavishly. His state-sponsored wedding reportedly cost $5m in 1980, while most of the people in his ravaged nation endured the worst poverty in the Western hemisphere.
Repression continued, too, and amid massive unrest in 1986 he fled to France.
Human rights groups say thousands of political prisoners were tortured or killed under his rule, and he was accused of massive corruption.
He described his return to Haiti - a year after it was devastated by a major earthquake, as a gesture of solidarity to the nation.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption His unexpected return to Haiti saw him arrested and charged, but the case against him stalled
But he was arrested and charged, and although released he finally appeared in court in February 2013, where in an emotionally-charged hearing in front of some of his alleged victims, he denied responsibility for abuses carried out during his time as president.
Judges ruled he could face crimes against humanity charges, but the case had stalled some time before he died.
Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier
Image copyright AP
Image caption Jean-Claude Duvalier, pictured here in 1980, ruled Haiti with an iron fist for 15 years
Took over presidency aged just 19 when his father, Haiti's authoritarian leader Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, died in 1971
Called himself "president-for-life" and ruled with an iron fist, aided by a brutal private militia known as the Tontons Macoutes
Accused of corruption and human rights abuses that prompted more than 100,000 Haitians to flee the country during his presidency
Ruled for 15 years before outbreak of popular protests led him to flee to France in 1986
Asked Haitian people for forgiveness for "errors" made during his rule in a 2007 radio interview
Returned to Haiti in 2011 as it was supposed to hold run-off elections to choose successor to outgoing President Rene Preval
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Who patented the electric, or dry razor in 1928? | Ex-Haiti dictator 'Baby Doc' Duvalier dead at 63 | Alternet
Ex-Haiti dictator 'Baby Doc' Duvalier dead at 63
Former Haitian president Jean-Claude Duvalier "Baby Doc" greets people on March 29, 2011 in Port au Prince
Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who ruled the impoverished Caribbean nation with an iron fist from 1971 until his ouster in 1986, died of a heart attack. He was 63.
The death of Baby Doc, as he was commonly known, marks the end of a dark chapter for a desperate country plundered first by his ruthless father -- Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a physician-turned-populist politician -- before being further ravaged by his son.
An estimated 30,000 people were killed during the reign of the Duvalier father and son, rights activists say.
Baby Doc returned to Haiti in 2011, after 25 years of exile, but victims, opponents and activists never saw him face justice.
Despite that, reaction to his death was muted on the streets of Haiti.
President Michel Martelly, on Twitter, called him "an authentic son of Haiti" and sent his "sincere condolences to the family and to the nation."
"Love and reconciliation must always prevail over our internal quarrels. May he rest in peace," wrote Martelly, who said he was paying tribute to the former president "despite our quarrels and our differences."
Baby Doc's death in the capital Port-au-Prince was announced by the health minister, Florence Guillaume Duperval, who said the cause appeared to be a massive heart attack.
"The family phoned us this morning asking us to send a (medical) helicopter," she told AFP.
"They tried to administer first aid to him on the scene, but he died" a short time later, she said.
- Intrigue and paranoia -
Supporters of former Haitian president Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier demonstrate outside court on January 18, 2011
The younger Duvalier came to power when he was just 19 years old, and for a decade-and-a-half ruled as Haiti's self-proclaimed "president for life."
Like his father, Baby Doc allowed little room for dissent, barring opposition, clamping down on dissidents, rubber-stamping his own laws and pocketing government revenue.
And like his father, he made liberal use of the dreaded Tonton Macoutes, a secret police force loyal to the Duvalier family.
The notorious sunglass-wearing Macoutes terrorized Haitians, arresting and torturing untold numbers of political opponents, thousands of whom vanished without ever being accounted for.
Born in Port-au-Prince on July 3, 1951, the young Duvalier watched the intrigue and paranoia escalate in his father's 14-year government, which began in 1957 and saw waves of arrests, executions, bombings and 11 failed coups.
At the age of 11, he survived an attack that killed three of his bodyguards.
In 1986, he was forced into exile in a popular uprising, as pro-democracy forces rallied in the streets amid international condemnation of the rampant human rights abuses during his regime.
Baby Doc fled Haiti for a life of luxury in France, thanks to the hundreds of millions of dollars allegedly pilfered from the coffers of the most impoverished country in the Americas.
He was said in reports to have looted as much as $300 million before being forced to flee.
Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier speaks at press conference on January 21, 2011
In the late 1990s, former political prisoners brought charges of "crimes against humanity" against Baby Doc in a Paris court, claiming they were tortured over a period of years, but the lawsuit later foundered.
In 2007, Duvalier called on Haitians to forgive him for "mistakes" committed during his rule, even as the government in power at the time insisted he face trial.
After his return, he was charged in a slow-moving prosecution on corruption and embezzlement allegations dating to his years in power.
Efforts to bring him to justice became tangled in legal motions and appeals, and proved unsuccessful in the end.
- Divisive figure -
Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch, who helped victims build their criminal case against Duvalier, lamented that the former dictator never paid for his crimes.
"Duvalier's rule was marked by systematic human rights violations. Hundreds of political prisoners held in a network of prisons died from mistreatment or were victims of extrajudicial killings," Brody said.
"Duvalier's government repeatedly closed independent newspapers and radio stations. Journalists were beaten, in some cases tortured, jailed, and forced to leave the country."
Meanwhile, much of the money looted by Duvalier from Haiti's treasury reportedly was frittered away on a lavish lifestyle filled with fancy homes, jewelry and cars.
Baby Doc returned to Haiti on January 16, 2011 in what he said was a gesture of solidarity with a nation that had been devastated the year before by a massive earthquake, which leveled much of Port-au-Prince and claimed more than 100,000 lives.
The day after his unexpected return, police arrested him on charges of embezzlement. In February 2013, he pleaded not guilty to charges of corruption and human rights abuses.
Other than his brief jailing shortly after his arrival, he remained free for the rest of his life.
"Duvalier's death deprives Haitians of what could have been the most important human rights trial in the country's history," said Brody.
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Which Frenchman was Formula One World Champion three times in the 1980's? | Ranking the Top 10 Drivers of the 1980s | Bleacher Report
Ranking the Top 10 Drivers of the 1980s
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In his column for BBC Sport on Monday, David Coulthard said that with Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso , Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen driving close to the top of their potential, we are now in a "golden era" of F1 driving.
While I admit it is currently a great time to be an F1 fan, I grew up watching the sport back in the 1980s when names such as Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet slipped off the tongue.
So, here are my top 10 drivers of my favourite era of the sport – the 1980s.
10. Gilles Villeneuve
A true legend of the sport. Villeneuve was quick and fearless and stood for everything Ferrari epitomised.
Although Villeneuve’s most memorable season was in 1979 when he was pipped to the title by teammate Jody Scheckter, he also won twice in 1981, and may well have achieved his ambition of becoming an F1 champion had it not been for his tragic death at the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder in 1982.
9. Keke Rosberg
Rosberg chats to team boss Frank Williams in 1982
A late starter to Formula One, Rosberg made his debut at the age of 29 in 1978, but he made little impact until a bizarre 1982 season saw him clinch the drivers’ title despite winning only once, his maiden F1 victory coming late in the season at the Swiss Grand Prix.
Rosberg would win four more times before his retirement at the end of the 1986 season, but his next best championship finish was only third in 1985.
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8. Rene Arnoux
A true driver of the 1980s, Frenchman Arnoux’s career spanned no fewer than 12 Formula 1 seasons from 1978 to 1989.
His first victory came at the 1980 Brazilian Grand Prix driving for Renault, and he won again in the very next race in South Africa but a lack of reliability prevented him from challenging for the title.
His best season came in 1983 when he won three times en route to third in the drivers’ standings behind Nelson Piquet and Alain Prost.
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7. Gerhard Berger
Austrian Berger competed in Formula One for 14 seasons from 1984 to 1997 and although he will best be remembered as Ayrton Senna’s perfect teammate at McLaren, much of his best work came behind the wheel of a Ferrari in the 1980s.
Berger actually scored his first victory for Benetton in the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix before joining Ferrari for the 1987 season, ending the season on a high with wins in Japan and Australia.
Five podiums and one victory saw him finish third in a 1988 championship season utterly dominated by the McLarens of Senna and Alain Prost, but the 1989 season was a disaster with 12 retirements and just one victory in Portugal.
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A veteran of 14 seasons in Formula One, Italian Michele Alboreto is best known for his five seasons spent with his beloved Ferrari from 1984-1988.
Alboreto won his first race and the last ever at Las Vegas for Tyrrell in 1982 and won again in America, this time in Detroit, the following season.
In his debut season for Ferrari, Alboreto took victory in the third round at Zolder, becoming the first Italian to win a grand prix for Ferrari since Ludovico Scarfiotti in 1966.
Three podiums followed before his most successful season in the sport when he finished runner-up behind Alain Prost with two victories and six podium finishes.
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A double world champion, Lauda retired from Formula 1 after a disastrous 1979 season that saw him score just four points. But needing money to shore up his new airline, Lauda returned to the sport in 1982 with McLaren.
He won twice in his first season back at America and Britain, but it was the 1984 season that confirmed his status as a legend of the sport as he won his third drivers’ title by just half a point after an epic battle with teammate Alain Prost.
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4. Nigel Mansell
Mansell’s career in F1 spanned 15 seasons from 1980-1995. Although he finally achieved his goal of winning the world title in his dominant Williams FW14B in 1992, it is for his battles with Alain Prost and Williams teammate Nelson Piquet in the last years of the 80s for which he is best remembered.
Having recorded five grand prix wins in 1986 the season came down to the wire in the final race at Adelaide with Mansell only needing to finish third in order to clinch the title.
But a spectacular left rear tyre blow out with 19 laps to go put Mansell out of the race and Prost won the race to snatch the title by two points. Mansell again finished runner-up in 1987 after an accident in practice for the Japanese Grand Prix put him out of the remaining two races.
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Senna’s legacy as a great of the sport was secured even before his second and third title wins in the 90s.
The Brazilian shot to prominence in the monsoon-like conditions of the 1984 Monaco Grand Prix where a masterful drive in his uncompetitive Toleman saw him finish second behind future rival Alain Prost although he was catching the Frenchman at four seconds a lap when the race was stopped after 31 laps.
Senna moved to the JPS Lotus team in 1985 and scored six wins for the team in his three seasons. But it is for his epic battles with teammate Prost at McLaren in 1988 and 1989 that Senna is best remembered.
The Brazilian won his first title with a masterful drive in Japan after stalling on the grid in 1988 before controversially losing out at the same venue a year later. It all happened after the pair collided at the chicane with Senna disqualified after winning the race after rejoining the circuit via a slip road.
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2. Nelson Piquet
Piquet won every one of his three world drivers’ titles in the 1980s and it could easily have been four. The Brazilian was leading the 1980 championship going into the final two rounds of the season but back-to-back retirements and back-to-back wins for Alan Jones gave the Aussie the title.
He made amends in 1981 by overturning a seventeen point deficit to Carlos Reutemann with six races remaining to clinch his first title.
Piquet won his second title in the beautiful Brabham BT52 after a long battle with Alain Prost saw him clinch third and the points he needed in the season finale in South Africa, and he sealed his third and final title in 1987 after a tight season-long battle with Williams teammate Nigel Mansell.
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1. Alain Prost
Without doubt the most consistent and statistically most successful driver of the 1980s was the brilliant Alain Prost.
The Frenchman made his F1 debut for McLaren in 1980 before three successful seasons for Renault, winning nine times and finishing second in the 1983 just two points behind Nelson Piquet. The 1984 season was even closer, Prost edged out by half a point by teammate Niki Lauda but he dominated in 1985 to secure his first title before pipping Nigel Mansell the following season.
Prost’s battles with teammate Ayrton Senna had audiences gripped towards the end of the decade with the Frenchman losing out in 1988 before edging his great rival in controversial circumstances the following year.
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Which author created the characters 'Veruca Salt', 'Augustus Sloop' and 'Arthur Slugworth'? | Profiles | Formula One Art & Genius
Formula One Art & Genius
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Profiles
The story of Formula One is a saga of men striving for perfection in controlling a car at speed, in skating on the edge of adhesion and becoming one with their machines. These profiles reveal a part of that story, for some of the best ever to drive in the F1 series.
Mario Andretti
Mario Andretti won just about everything there is to win in motorsport, from the Indy and Daytona 500s, the USAC and IndyCar championships, Sebring and Le Mans (almost), to the F1 World Championship itself. Growing up in the shadows of Monza, this naturalized American legend epitomizes the Formula One saga.
Jim Clark
Scotsman Jimmy Clark may have been the most naturally talented driver to have graced the Formula One stage. A personal favorite, he remains one of the all-time best statistically almost 50 years after his death. Whether Clark, a private and soft-spoken man, would have prospered in the modern era of F1 sponsorship and downforce will never be known, but his absence ended a time of relative innocence in Formula One. As Chris Amon said in 1968, “If it could happen to him, what chance did the rest of us have?”
Juan Manuel Fangio
Known simply as “The Maestro,” this shy Argentine stood for decades as a standard of Grand Prix excellence that most believed could never be matched. While he drove in an era of different cars and values, Fangio’s sheer talent dominated F1 racing without regard to the technical qualities of his rides, and in a very real sense saved Formula One after the 1955 tragedy at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Emerson Fittipaldi
Brazil’s first Formula One World Champion, Emerson Fittipaldi ignited a South American passion for F1 that extends to today. As a young driver, “Emmo” was a charismatic two-time champion with Lotus and McLaren, but suffered a long string of disappointing seasons in his own car before making a successful move to the U.S. IndyCar series in the 1980s.
Niki Lauda
Niki Lauda is a classic F1 combination of courage and calculation. This three-time World Champion survived one of the worst, fiery crashes ever seen in Formula One only to walk away from a near-certain 4th title in 1976. His triumphant second career in the mid-1980s with McLaren saw Lauda as the elder statesman of F1 and the tutor of young Alain Prost.
Nigel Mansell
Nigel Mansell salvaged his F1 career by mortgaging his home, illustrating the determination that on the track earned him the sobriquet “Il Leone” from the Tifosi and the enduring allegiance of British Formula One fans. Perhaps Mansell’s crowning achievement was his back-to-back championships in F1 and IndyCar, a feat sure never to be repeated. But for a brush of the wall in the closing laps of the 1993 Indianapolis 500, Mansell came within a hair’s breadth of becoming just the 4th Formula One World Champion in history to drink the fabled milk of Indy.
Nelson Piquet
Nelson Piquet’s remarkable Formula One career included three World Championships with two different teams, highlighted by some fantastic duels between the Brazilian, Alain Prost and Nigel Mansell. A master at testing and car development, Piquet remained a title-contending force in Grand Prix motor racing for more than a decade.
Alain Prost
Frenchman Alain Prost was a four-time F1 world champion — three times in the turbocharged McLaren-Honda of the mid-1980s — but his legacy may forever remain in the shadow of teammates Niki Lauda and Ayrton Senna. Nicknamed “The Professor,” Prost missed another title by a margin of just 1/2 point (to Lauda in 1984) and, until finally bested by Michael Schumacher in the 2002 season, posted the most GP wins of any Formula One driver in history.
Michael Schumacher
Michael Schumacher never had a real chance to test his mettle against the legendary Senna or Prost, yet his exuberant passion, quickness and dominance made him the all-time leader in Formula One. By triumphantly regaining the World Championship for the prancing horse at Ferrari, seven-time World Champion “Schumi” established a legacy of excellence ranking with the immortals of F1. Schumacher elicited strong emotions, both love and hatred, from Formula One fans. He dominated the new century with a winning streak that literally rewrote the F1 record book, but rarely pulled away from confrontation on the track, either.
Ayrton Senna
Tamburello will forever be remembered as the final corner in Aryton Senna’s glorious F1 career. Just as his genius, artistry and aggressiveness marked him as a the brightest star of Formula One for a decade, so too did his untimely death usher in a renewed concern for driver safety. Senna’s last race was the 1994 San Marino GP, where he crashed and died — after taking his final pole — while leading the race on lap seven, the only F1 World Champion ever to perish during a Grand Prix. A highly religious man, Senna ironically had a premonition the evening before the race that he would die.
Jackie Stewart
Jackie Stewart’s career spanned the classic and modern eras of Formula One. This three-time World Champion with the trademark tartan helmet held the record for most GP wins (27) for more than a decade, and his business acumen made him a sponsor’s dream in the transition to today’s highly commercial, big-budget F1 motor racing. A fixture for years on American television racing broadcasts, Stewart later founded a Grand Prix organization — named after himself like so many others — that after several iterations became the current Red Bull Racing F1 team.
Sebastian Vettel
Sebastian Vettel vaulted into the role of Formula One Wunderkind in the 21st century. Combining an infectious smile with brilliant racecraft and a massive will to win, young Seb took the F1 circus by storm in 2010 and, four World Championships later, shows few signs of letting go.
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In which month of 1066 was the Battle of Hastings? | 1066 and the Norman Conquest | English Heritage
1066 and the Norman Conquest
Schools and 1066
1066 and the Norman Conquest
1066 was a momentous year for England. The death of the elderly English king, Edward the Confessor, on 5 January set off a chain of events that would lead, on 14 October, to the Battle of Hastings. In the years that followed, the Normans had a profound impact on the country they had conquered.
Discover more here about the Battle of Hastings itself and its consequences, and find out where you can see some of the spectacular castles and great abbeys the Normans built across the land.
Norman Places to Visit
You can see some of the best-preserved Norman architecture in England at English Heritage sites, including great castles and magnificent abbeys. Follow the links below to find out more about some of our most spectacular Norman sites, or explore our map to discover more Norman places to visit near you.
Built by a Norman baron, Richmond has more surviving 11th-century architecture than any other castle in England.
Schools and 1066
We've got lots of ways to help you bring the story of the Norman Conquest to life.
Discover our 1066 teaching resources and teachers kits which you can use in the classroom or at one of our many Norman places across the country.
You can also book a free educational visit to one of our historic places and allow your students to stand in the places where history happened.
From the simple and affordable club to fine steel-bladed swords, we take a closer look at one of England's most famous battles and the weapons used by the Normans and Saxons.
The Norman Impact
After the Battle of Hastings, William built Battle Abbey on the site of the battle to mark his great victory and atone for the bloodshed. On Christmas day 1066 he was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.
The overthrow of the Saxon kingdom of England by William the Conqueror and his Norman knights was to transform the country they had conquered, from how it was organised and governed to its language and customs – and perhaps most visibly today, its architecture.
| October |
Which is the second largest of the Orkney Islands? | Battle of Hastings - British History - HISTORY.com
Battle of Hastings
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Introduction
On October 14, 1066, at the Battle of Hastings in England, King Harold II (c.1022-66) of England was defeated by the Norman forces of William the Conqueror (c.1028-87). By the end of the bloody, all-day battle, Harold was dead and his forces were destroyed. He was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, as the battle changed the course of history and established the Normans as the rulers of England, which in turn brought about a significant cultural transformation.
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William the Conqueror: Background
William was the son of Robert I, duke of Normandy, and his mistress Herleva (also called Arlette), a tanner’s daughter from Falaise. The duke, who had no other sons, designated William his heir, and with his death in 1035 William became duke of Normandy.
Did You Know?
William, an Old French name composed of Germanic elements (“wil,” meaning desire, and “helm,” meaning protection), was introduced to England by William the Conqueror and quickly became extremely popular. By the 13th century, it was the most common given name among English men.
William was of Viking origin. Though he spoke a dialect of French and grew up in Normandy, a fiefdom loyal to the French kingdom, he and other Normans descended from Scandinavian invaders. One of William’s relatives, Rollo, pillaged northern France with fellow Viking raiders in the late ninth and early 10th centuries, eventually accepting his own territory (Normandy, named for the Norsemen who controlled it) in exchange for peace.
Just over two weeks before the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, William had invaded England, claiming his right to the English throne. In 1051, William is believed to have visited England and met with his cousin Edward the Confessor, the childless English king. According to Norman historians, Edward promised to make William his heir. On his deathbed, however, Edward granted the kingdom to Harold Godwineson (or Godwinson), head of the leading noble family in England and more powerful than the king himself. In January 1066, King Edward died, and Harold Godwineson was proclaimed King Harold II. William immediately disputed his claim.
Battle of Hastings: October 14, 1066
On September 28, 1066, William landed in England at Pevensey, on Britain’s southeast coast, with thousands of troops and cavalry. Seizing Pevensey, he then marched to Hastings, where he paused to organize his forces. On October 13, Harold arrived near Hastings with his army, and the next day, October 14, William led his forces out to battle, which ended in a decisive victory against Harold’s men. Harold was killed–shot in the eye with an arrow, according to legend–and his forces were destroyed
Battle of Hastings: Aftermath
After his victory at the Battle of Hastings, William marched on London and received the city’s submission. On Christmas Day of 1066, he was crowned the first Norman king of England, in Westminster Abbey, and the Anglo-Saxon phase of English history came to an end.
French became the language of the king’s court and gradually blended with the Anglo-Saxon tongue to give birth to modern English. (Illiterate like most nobles of his time, William spoke no English when he ascended the throne and failed to master it despite his efforts. Thanks to the Norman invasion, French was spoken in England’s courts for centuries and completely transformed the English language, infusing it with new words.) William I proved an effective king of England, and the “Domesday Book,” a great census of the lands and people of England, was among his notable achievements.
Upon the death of William I in 1087, his son, William Rufus (c.1056-1100), became William II, the second Norman king of England.
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What was the first name of the character played by Connie Booth in 'Fawlty Towers'? | Fawlty Towers characters - British Comedy Guide
Manager. Played by: John Cleese
Rude, snobbish, obtuse and with little patience, entering the hospitality industry was probably never the best move for Basil Fawlty. He is constantly frustrated by his wife and the guests who he considers a nuisance to the smooth running of his hotel. He'd dearly love to attract a higher class of clientele, but his own behaviour and knack of getting into sticky situations will forever be his downfall.
Sybil Fawlty
Played by: Prunella Scales
Sybil is Basil's nemesis. She's domineering and controlling, has a fiery temper, but manages to keep her cool much of the time. She takes a more pragmatic, collected and considered approach to the business and the hotel industry than Basil, although her lack of ambition does frustrate him.
Manuel
Waiter. Played by: Andrew Sachs
Manuel is Fawlty Towers' waiter, bell-boy, porter, and all-round dogsbody. Basil has hired him - with the intention of teaching him English - because he's cheap, but any attempt at having him do something useful is thwarted due to Basil's only rudimentary grasp of 'classical' Spanish, rather than the contemporary dialect Manuel is fluent in. However, even were he fluent in English, Manuel probably wouldn't be an awful lot more useful...
Polly
AKA: Polly Sherman. Waitress. Played by: Connie Booth
Polly is the only member of Fawlty Towers' staff with a sign of ability or competence, and so the part-time waitress ends up doing almost everything. When not struggling to calm down Basil, placate Sybil or instruct Manuel, she can often be found doodling sketches, of which she sells enough "to keep me in waitressing".
| Polly |
'Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by' are words from the first verse of which Christmas carol? | Connie Booth - The TV IV
Connie Booth
January 31, 1944 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Notable Roles
Awards
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Connie Booth is an American actress and writer best known for her work in the 1960s and 70s with her ex-husband, John Cleese , both on his show Monty Python's Flying Circus and on their sitcom, which they co-created, co-wrote, and co-starred in, Fawlty Towers .
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4 Memorable Moments
Biography
Connie Booth was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1944 to a Wall Street mogul and an actress. She, too, began acting on stage and moved to New York to try her hand at Broadway. While a waitress in the 1960s, she met John Cleese , who had been travelling in America as part of a revue and had stayed on there. She and Cleese were married, and she moved with him back to England.
While Cleese started work in Monty Python's Flying Circus , Booth was a constant fixture at the sets. She was well-liked by the other members of Monty Python , in part because, during the recording of the earliest episodes, her distinctive laugh was one of the few they heard from the studio audience. They later had her play several supporting roles, both in the series and in their first original film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as a witch accused of turning a man into a newt.
Feeling that he wasn't spending enough time with her and with their daughter Cynthia—born in 1971—Cleese left the show before its fourth season. They collaborated on a film, Romance with a Double Bass. Cleese demanded that his next project also be in collaboration with Booth. The BBC agreed, and together they wrote and created Fawlty Towers . Besides writing every episode together, Cleese played hotel manager Basil Fawlty , and Booth played the waitress, Polly Sherman . The response to the show was at first underwhelming, but by the time of the rebroadcast of the first season , it had become a cult smash hit.
In 1978, Cleese and Booth suffered a painful divorce after ten years of marriage. Around the same time, vicious rumors were spreading regarding her pay for her work on Fawlty Towers. Despite this, Cleese and Booth would collaborate again on a second season of Fawlty Towers before going their separate ways.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, she found other work in British films and TV, often playing an American. During this time, she avoided any association with Fawlty Towers and shunned interviews about it. She was also the victim of more rumors, which she denied—this time that she was a lesbian and had had an illicit affair with Cleese's sister.
At the start of the 21st century, she retired from acting and went into relative seclusion as a psychotherapist. She now lives in a small English town with her husband, theater critic John Lahr, and spends most of her time counselling new mothers—particularly those from foreign countries, just as she once was.
Roles
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In which classic 'western' does 'Marshal Will Kane' marry 'Amy Fowler' and turn in his badge, only for events to change on the arrival of a train? | High Noon Reviews & Ratings - IMDb
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6 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
the best American made western
14 July 2008
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
just seen it again after 10 or more years. I forgot how good it is. Not your typical American western. a great story of a mans inner struggle with himself. he gotta fight him, he doesn't have a choice. People of Hadleyville don't get that, his wife don't get it, but we get it. a great performance from all of the actors, music great, camera great, editing great. simply a great film. when you wanna see a great western this one is the one to rent. it doesn't have Indians but it has a real story that makes you wanna grab your gun and go help Marshall Kane. I guess that the true moral of the story is that you can count only on yourself when the going gets tough. Loved the ending, not a word spoken, a great exit, of a great actor on the last scene of a great film. a 10 for me.
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10 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
One brave man holds his ground.
23 April 2005
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
This is an incredible film. it transcends the Western genre and even 50 years later is still relevant. We all face situations where we choose to take the easy way out. Confrontation is not easy. In this movie Gary Cooper's character is torn between duty to his wife and the sense of duty he feels, not so much to the town, but to himself. He knows whatever choice he makes his life will be forever altered. Cooper's decision to stand and fight rather than live on the run ,is played out intensely over the real time setting of the movie. By the end of the film both Gary Cooper's and Grace Kelly's character have changed in their fundamental beliefs. She, a devout Quaker, has committed murder to save the man she loves. He, who believed the people of the town he protected for so long, finds out he was really alone the whole time. You can view this film in the political climate of the day, but you would miss so much about the character of the human race. In this age where character development and plot have given way to special effects and sex and violence, High Noon makes us take a critical look at what we believe in and what we feel is worth "losing it all" for. A great film, not to be missed.
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10 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
A great,suspense filled western.
from United States
3 December 2002
What we have here,in High Noon is the classic western,with a masterfully placed element of suspense.There are many ingredients you can use to create suspense,and one of the best of them is time.Filmed in almost real time,High Noon has to be the most uniquely made western ever.Gary Cooper gives us a more realistic hero.He very successfully proves that even the best of heroes can be afraid,because,after all,he is as human as the rest of us.What I also loved is the continuous playing of the movie's theme song,very faintly in the background as hero walked alone in the street.There are many debates as to the greatest western ever,and even I have trouble settling the matter in my own mind,but rest assured that High Noon should rank near the top on anyone's list.Classic!
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11 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Low Tide
19 July 2011
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
In the opening scenes of this turgid dud, Sheriff Will (Cooper) is burdened by marriage to the most mind-numbingly dumb wife. Grace Kelly portrays the Quaker airhead. The flimsy conflict immediately becomes about whether Gary Cooper or his wife's viewpoint will win out. If you think Kelly's underwritten storyline holds even a prayer of potential, well... only the Teleltubbies has less conflict than this movie. Gary Cooper, always a thuddingly dull actor, gives easily his most boring performance.
The story is a thinly veiled allegory of the McCarthy hearings which would be fine if it did something artful with it. Instead it showcases heroics with Will as Foreman's proxy. Most people would not be comfortable shouting "I'M SO VERY Modest and Heroic" like this. No matter how many times I've watched, I never care where its dull, obvious story takes me. Invariably, viewers who don't like having to search for a pesky hidden message declare this a masterpiece. Director Zinneman made his name with stuff this dry.
A classic to give classics a bad name.
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Drama masked in western
13 October 2016
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Drama masked in western. There's no chasing and just a little bit of gunfire, nothing like western movies we are used to.
Movie is almost in real time. 85 minutes of movie covers about 2 hours in little town that awaits return of notorious killer that dodged hanging and now is coming to take revenge on the man who arrested him and send him to gallows.
There is almost no action at all during whole movie, plot is based on what is happening inside the people involved, psychologically and emotionally.
Really good drama.
19 June 2013
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
It may be sacrilegious for a fan of classic movies and Westerns such as myself to speak any ill of High Noon, but I have to admit that I think the script is a little clunky and Gary Cooper is not the most charismatic or believable actor. That said, the story and directing are undoubtedly top- notch. Without preaching or engaging in bravado, Marshal Will Kane embodies the notion that a person should do what is right even when it is difficult and unpopular. Katy Jurado plays Kane's former lover and one of the most intriguing female characters in any classic Western. She easily upstages the better-known Grace Kelly, and is an unpredictable and edgy counterpoint to the straight-laced Kane.
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Watching High Noon at High Noon
4 April 2013
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
High Noon is the movie that John Wayne didn't like. 'This is the most Un-American movie ever made!' He quoted about the film. He later teamed up with director Howard Hawks to make the great Rio Bravo (1959) as a counter-response. Neither Hawks nor John Wayne liked that Western, which was embraced by film critics. Both director and star felt that the film's defeatist spirit severely deviated from their idea of what the Real West was all about. The biggest complains that Wayne had, was the Marshall putting the United States marshal's badge under his foot and stepping on it. Walking away from his job, as the Marshall did, was inconceivable to Wayne's commitment to responsibility and public office. In my opinion, it's a great western direct by Fred Zinnemann, starring Gary Cooper as Marshall Will Cane. John Wayne was a fool. I never liked his over-acting, and he played up the big "military man" persona even though he dodged the draft. Props to him for popularizing the Western genre, but he was wrong with this. Still, I agree with some things he says about the film. I believe that the good, honest American people should had stand by and shouldn't left Will Cane go out alone to face the gunmen that were not only threatening him but the peacefulness of the town itself. Wayne thought an American town would stand up with Cooper against the bad guys. I agree. The pacifism that the film was mistaken as Communists message as the communist were promoting pacifism in the U.S at the time. I really doubt that. The movie contains highest praise of free society, free speech, hence of all iron and noble American values in the first place! It's a story of heroism. Released at an unfortunate time, got falsely misinterpreted as anti-McCarthy propaganda, which it never was meant to. Honestly, I don't see how the movie is anti-blacklisting and communist baiting. The movie has nothing to do with it, or anything similar to those courts. While I hate McCarthy trials, I just can't see this movie being an allegory for the McCarthy hearings. John Wayne, on the other hand, was a supporter of the Hollywood blacklisting and the hunt for communists. There's nothing left-wing or anti-American about it. The film is in nearly real time, the film tells the story of a town marshal forced to face a gang of killers by himself based on John W. Cunningham's pulp short story, "The Tin Star". This movie was cool because it was an hour and a half long movie and the time in the movie was also about an hour and a half. Movie starts when it's a little before 11am and ends a little after noon. The background tempo and the music beat takes the place of the clock ticking with each 4 counts of the beat, sounds like a countdown was amazing. Will has just married pacifist Quaker Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) and turned in his badge. He intends to become a storekeeper elsewhere. Suddenly, the town learns that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), a criminal Kane brought to justice is due to arrive on the noon train and leaves Marshall to deal with him. The acting in the film is great. It's hard to think that Gary Cooper had a bleeding ulcer at the time of filming because you can't tell. Very powerful. Each character even the baddies are given their moment. The Lon Cheney JR character seems the most tragic. Also this marks the debut of Lee Van Cleef in film and in Western. Lee Van Cleef's face looks so tough he could dull a Gillette razor just by staring at it. Grace Kelly also gives the film, her own spin. The age different between Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly was alarming and bit disturbing if you think about it. It's still a love story as well. What Amy Fowler does in the end moved me more deeply than any other moment in film. She had to go against her beliefs. She stands by him because he is her husband, and she is his wife. The movie in a way, is a celebration of the institution of marriage. The theme song of High Noon, 'Do not forsake me, My Darling" written by Dimitri Tiomkin, lyrics by Ned Washington and sung by Tex Ritter, is awesome. This movie is how I first became aware of Tex Ritter. It's an unforgettable song. I seem to hear an honesty in Tex Ritter's voice that is unequaled. The movie also has an excellent and highly suggestive play with imagery. In one scene, the camera focus on a certain chair. It's the chair in which the villain Frank Miller sat in when he was sentenced to jail and now he's coming back. The movie center theme has endured for years because its essential truth endures: we can never really know for sure who's got our back. Sooner or later most of us find ourselves in a position, to one degree or another, where we realize that everybody else has troubles too, and we're just going to have to figure things out for ourselves alone.
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Hilterbrant
3 January 2013
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
High Noon was a pretty good movie, in my opinion. It was full of action and kept you wondering what was going to happen next. The cast list was very good, for this movie. Marshal Kane, played by Gary Cooper, and his wife Amy Kane, played by Grace Kelly, had a good chemistry on set that was noticeable. Also, leading up to the climax was suspenseful. Even though I could tell what was about to happen, in some parts of the movie, it was still exciting.
Gary Cooper showed how much he loved his town. You could also tell that Grace Kelly cared too; she just couldn't bear to see anything bad happen. Katy Jurado did a good job at being fierce and showing no sadness in her decision to leave.
The music in this movie won an academy award! For each plot twist the music changed and it set the mood for what was about to happen. It helped me understand more of what was happening. The way the cameras were mostly focused on an individual person, or just that persons face. I think they should have shown more of what was around the characters.
I think theme of this movie was to tell the viewers that violence is not an option. The movie showed that you shouldn't seek revenge over something that happened a while ago. Also that you should stand up for what you believe in or to stand up for something you love.
The best part of the movie was when Amy and Marshal Kane got married. Her dress was really pretty and everyone was celebrating for them. Another good part of the movie was when Amy Kane decided to get off of the train with Katy to help Marshal and be with him. Eventually she was put in the same situation as Marshal, and was put at gunpoint. She did the best she could to get the criminal off of her, and was saved by her husband.
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That Western !!!
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
High noon Movie Review:
Who would ever think that on their own wedding day an old foe would come to kill you? That's what happened in this old classic western. Will Kane the marshal in town was ready to move on with his life when he decided to marry Amy. But of course, his heroic ways came back when a telegram came in that Frank Miller his old foe he put away in prison for murder had been freed and is coming right for the town. With Amy's self centered attitude she did not agree with her newly husband going to risk his life for a town he no longer-ed served. Amy decides shes going to the train station and leaving at noon. Who would believe that the person you love would just walk away and leave you in the dust? Alone Will Kane tries to find more help, but who wants to die right? The town people we're frightened and some are on Miller's side. And it didn't help Harvey being envious that Kane came back to town to be Marshal again. It doesn't help when Kane visits the hotel and finds Amy sitting there. Thinking she came back to stick it out by his side and Amy thinking Kane is going to hop out town they both ended up in disappointment. Kane goes to tell his previous love Helen to get out of town. Knowing that she was close friends with his old foe Miller.
With Kane searching for help still, one of the town people Jimmy asks nothing but to join. But Kane won't let him. Not realizing he needs it as its getting closer to noon. Going to the town's church pleading for them to not let some crooks come take over again. Seems like Kane is on his own now.
Meanwhile his wife realized that Kane still cared for Helen and both of them decide to go out. What a shock both of his loves are leaving him together. Kane only gets the farewell good bye look you always see surprisingly from Helen. If this movie doesn't describe how selfish people are to help someone who risked his life everyday for them. I don't know what does. But its time, noon was here the town was locked away in hiding. Frank Miller and his guys come in to town destroying windows making his call to Kane that he is here. With guns drawn it begins, you can't stop Marshal Kane as he kills one of Miller's guys. Shots echoed and Amy finally realized that she can't be widow and runs off the train back to her husband. Another down as Kane gets stuck in the barn with a fire starting. But everyone knows you can't stop the hero. Even when Kane gets shot. Well you can say his wife Amy meant she was not going to be a widow and kills a guy. Miller should of known not to mess with the one he loves as he takes Amy hostage. Marshal Kane saved the town as he took Miller down. And Will and Amy Kane leave town for good. This movie was of course one of the best classics I have watched!
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Western Films
from United States
15 December 2012
The 'High Noon" movie is a western story of a man who had too much pride to run. Marshal Will Kane finds out on his wedding day that one of the men he put in prison is returning to town with his gang to seek their revenge. In spite of this new information, Marshal stands strong and independent, like a true western man ready to retaliate, if necessary.
The Marshal obviously had his life on the line; however it was extremely odd that no townsmen would help him or even stick up for him. Nevertheless, the townspeople tried to get him to leave instead. Through all of this, Marshal stays to face Miller and protect the townspeople, who are so dreadfully afraid of Miller. Although the plot line was extremely cliché for a western, the fact that the movie claimed all popular genres was definitely a plus, such as comedy (somewhat), suspense, and even romance. Grace Kelly, who played Amy Fowler Kane, Marshal Kane's wife, certainly add that softness (romance) to the movie. She was that girl in every movie, all the guys drool over.
Throughout the entire movie, the most interesting character was Ms. Ramirez. She claimed her role as an actor and made it her own. She captured my eye with her strong personality bursting through the screen, almost as if no effort was placed or even had to be developed to capture this characters true emotions. One scene that fascinated me the most was when Ms. Ramirez told Miss Kane that she should be helping her husband and fighting with him, instead of running off without him. This scene stood out because it presented Ms. Ramirez true character.
I would recommend this movie to anyone, who likes westerns and who loves romance and action movies with a passion, if not, don't watch it.
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| High Noon |
Who was the US President when Clement Attlee was the UK Prime Minister? | Western: Media Resources Center UCB
Images of Native Americans bibliography
The Alamo (1960)
Directed by John Wayne. Cast: John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Laurence Harvey, Frankie Avalon, Patrick Wayne, Richard Boone, Linda Cristal, Joan O'BrienFilm depicts a pivotal event in American history - the battle of the Alamo when 185 "Texans" stood against a 7,000-man Mexican army. The battle ended in the smaller forces' defeat, but lasted long enough to insure the eventual independence of Texas. 202 min. DVD X1033
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Alamo (2004)
Directed by John Lee Hancock. Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Dennis Quaid, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson, Jordi Molla, Emilio Echevarria, Marc Blucas, Leon Rippy. Retells the story of the historic 1836 battle in the Texan War of Independence. Facing 4,000 Mexican troops, 186 Texan soldiers and volunteers - including William Travis, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie - retreat within the walls of the Alamo, a Franciscan mission that was converted into a military fort. Once inside, the men prepare themselves for what will be a bloody battle to the death. U.S. General Sam Houston leads the charge from the outside. The Texans held the fort for 13 days under siege by General Santa Anna. 136 min. DVD 3008
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The American Cinema: The Western
Cast: clips and critical commentary on films from John Ford's seminal Stagecoach (1939), Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) through the work of Arthur Penn, Sam Peckinpah, and other important directors, the program traces the aesthetic evolution of the Western film as well as the sociological importance of the genre. 1994. 55 min. DVD 371; vhs Video/C 3712
The American West of John Ford .
John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda offer personal anecdotes from their experiences working with director John Ford. Includes interviews with Ford, as well as lengthy clips from his classic westerns and a discussion of his various works. Features Andy Devine in a special cameo role. 1971. 60 min. Video/C MM532
Annie Oakley (The Golden Years of Television)
Cast: Gail Davis, Jimmy Hawkins, Kenneth MacDonald, Brad Johnson, Robert B. Williams. Contents: Sharpshooting Annie (28 min.) -- Hardrock Trail (26 min.) Two episodes from the 1950's television adventure series about the legendary sharpshooter, Annie Oakley. In the first program Annie solves a robbery of money raised for charity taken by the manager of "Bill's Wonder Show." In the second program Vic Carver escapes jail and sets out to get revenge on the man who got him locked up, Annie's Uncle Luke, but Annie hatches a plot to send Uncle Luke out of town and away from trouble ... she thinks. Program originally telecast the 1950's. 55 min. Video/C 6786
Appaloosa(2008)
Directed by Ed Harris. Cast: Jeremy Irons, Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger, Timothy Spall, Lance Henriksen, Tom Bower, James Gammon. 1880s, the American West. Randall Bragg is a rich landowner who is wanted for murdering the town marshal. Lawman Virgil Cole and his deputy Everett Hitch are two friends who are hired to defend a lawless town from the murderous rancher. Their efforts become complicated and their friendship is tested when a young widow arrives in town. Based on the novel by Robert B. Parker. Special features: Commentary by director Ed Harris and screenwriter/producer Robert Knott ; Additional scenes with selectable Ed Harris/Robert Knott commentary ; 4 featurettes: bringing the characters of Appaloosa to life, Historic accuracy of Appaloosa, The town of Appaloosa; Dean Semler's return to the western. 115 min. DVD X3786
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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford(2007)
Directed by Andrew Dominik. Cast: Brad Pitt, Mary-Louise Parker, Brooklynn Proulx, Dustin Bollinger, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Sam Shepard, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Schneider. Everyone in 1880s America knows Jesse James. He's the nation's most notorious criminal and is being hunted by the law in 10 states. He's also the land's greatest hero, lauded as a Robin Hood by the public. No one knows of Robert Ford, at least not yet. But the ambitious 19-year-old aims to change that. He befriends Jesse and rides with his gang. And if that doesn't bring Ford fame, he will have to find a deadlier way. Friendship becomes rivalry and the quest for fame becomes obsession. Based on the novel by Ron Hansen. 159 min. DVD 9280
Walker, Michael. "The Westerns of Delmer Daves." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Wicking, Christopher. "Interview with Delmer Daves." Screen 1969 10: 55-66
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The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1969)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Cast: Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David Warner, Strother Martin, Slim Pickens, L.Q. Jones, Peter Whitney, R.G. Armstrong. Left to die by his two prospecting partners, Cable Hogue starts his long walk across the parched Arizona landscape. After a few dry days, he can barely crawl but then he finds something more precious than gold: a water hole. Hogue settles in and makes his fortune selling water to thirsty travelers, and patiently waits for the desert rats who betrayed him to drop by for a drink. 122 min. DVD 5015; vhs 999:916
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)
Director, Maggie Greenwald. Cast: Cast: Suzy Amis, Bo Hopkins, Ian McKellen, David Chung, Rene Auberjonois, Carrie Snodgress. Based on a true story, this is the tale of Josephine Monaghan, a young woman of the mid-19th century who is thrown out of her parents' home after being seduced by the family's portrait photographer and giving birth to an illegitimate child. Josephine quickly learns that young, female, pretty, and alone are a bad combination for life in the wild west. In her desperation to survive, Josephine disguises herself as "Jo", a young man, and struggles to make a life for herself in a dingy frontier mining town. Can "Little Jo" live and love without revealing his/her secret? David Chung plays an old west Chinese miner (Tinman Wong) who is rescued from a lynch mob by Little Jo (Suzy Amis). The pair end up as lovers. 122 min. DVD 2308
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Bend of the River (1952)
Directed by Anthony Mann. Cast: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julia Adams, Rock Hudson, Lori Nelson, Jay C. Flippen. Glyn McLyntock has taken a job leading settlers west. He is helped by Emerson Cole, a man with a shady past whom McLyntock saves from a lynching. The homesteaders set up home a few days from Portland, but when McLyntock goes to collect their winter supplies he finds a town gone gold crazy. Can he get the food back to the settlers, and can he still count on Cole? 92 min. DVD 9919
Anthony Mann bibliography
The Big Country(1958)
Directed by William Wyler. Cast: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Charles Bickford, Chuck Connors, Alfonso Bedoya. A sea captain trades the expanse of the oceans for the open range of the West and grows to regret his choice as he and his neighbor feud over water rights. Peace is achieved only after the deaths of both family heads. From the novel by Donald Hamilton. 168 min. DVD X3165
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Big Sky(1952)
Directed by Howard Hawks. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt, Arthur Hunnicutt. Jim Deakins is a frontiersman and Indian trader who is making a perilous journey with a group of other men up the Missouri River to get a large haul of furs from friendly Blackfoot Indians. The problem is that they have to get through hostile Indian territory first and they find that they have seriously underestimated the difficulties they will undergo. The large body of men who started the journey are gradually whittled down until only a hardy few, like Deakins, are left. Based upon the novel The big sky by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. 122 min. DVD X6437
Howard Hawks bibliography
The Big Trail(1930)
Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall, Tyrone Power. A band of hardy pioneers makes its perilous way along the Oregon Trail, braving bison, treacherous river crossings, blizzards and Indian attacks. This is the first starring role for John Wayne, playing a young scout who leads the wagon train. Special features: Disc 1. Fox Grandeur 70mm version of The big trail; commentary with film historian/author Richard Schnickel; featurettes: The creation of John Wayne, Raoul Walsh, a man in his time, The big vision: the Grandeur process; The making of The big trail; photo gallery. Disc 2. Academy aspect ratio version of The big trail. 122 min. DVD X5340
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Directed by Mel Brooks. Cast: Mel Brooks, Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens, David Huddleston, Claude Ennis Starrett Jr., Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman. In this spoof on western films the new sheriff and his sidekick, retired gunfighter Waco Kid, protect the town of Rock Ridge from the men who want to run the railroad through the town. DVD includes a new, exclusive 55-minute interview with Mel Brooks. 148 min. DVD 891
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The Bronze Buckeroo (1939)
Directed by Richard C. Kahn. Cast: Herbert Jeffrey, Lucius Brooks, Artie Young, F.E. Miller, Spencer Williams, Jr., Clarence Brooks. Bob Blake and his boys arrive at Joe Jackson's ranch to find him missing. While Slim cheats Dusty out of his money using ventriloquism and marked cards, Blake tries to find Jackson. Learning that Thorne and his gang are holding him prisoner, he and his men trail them. When Thorne's gang gets the drop on them, Slim puts his ventriloquism to work. Filmed with an all Black cast and crew. 56 min. DVD 4995; vhs 999:2211
UC users only
Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
Directed by Budd Boetticher. Cast: Randolph Scott, Craig Stevens, Barry Kelley, Jennifer Holden. On his way home to West Texas, Tom Buchanan rides into the Californian border town of Agry, and into a feud between several members of the Agry family. In helping out a Mexican seeking revenge on one of them, Buchanan finds himself against the whole family. 79 min. DVD X572
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Dibb, Mike. "A Time and a place: Budd Boetticher and the western." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Budd Boetticher: The western. a BFI Education department dossier. [London, British Film Institute, 1969?] (Pacific Film Archive PN1998.3.B63 K57 1969)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: studies of authorship within the western Bloomington, Indiana University Press [1970, c1969] (MOFF: PN1995.9.W4 K5; PFA : PN1995.9.W4 K5 1970)
Wicking, Christopher. "Budd Boetticher." Screen 1969 10: 9-31
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Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or, Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)
Directed by Robert Altman. Cast: Paul Newman, Joel Grey, Geraldine Chaplin, Burt Lancaster, Frank Kaquitts. Chronicles the travels and adventures of Buffalo Bill Cody, the legendary Western adventurer. Although Buffalo Bill had fought Indians and Civil War battles, nothing could prepare him for his newest challenge: show business! His "Wild West Show" was hugely popular, Cast: stunt-riders, battle recreations and a beautiful sharpshooter, Annie Oakley. But when Bill signed a former enemy, Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, for a featured role in the show, a clash of cultures reverberated far beyond the boundaries of their sprawling outdoor theater. 123 min. DVD 4269; vhs 999:1641
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Directed by George Roy Hill. Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, Strother Martin, Jeff Corey, Henry Jones. One of the most successful Westerns ever made, this film captures the legend of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and their bandit companions known as "the hole-in-the-wall" gang. 110 min. DVD 7833
National Film Registry Selection
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." In: Best American screenplays. First series : complete screenplays / edited by Sam Thomas ; foreword by Frank Capra. New York : Crown Publishers, c1986. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1997.A1 B36 1986)
Goldman, William. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." In: William Goldman : four screenplays with essays. New York : Applause Books, c1995. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PS3557.O384 A6 1995)
By the Sun's Rays (1914)
Directed by Tod Browning. Murdock MacQuarrie, Lon Chaney, Seymour Hastings, Agnes Vernon. DVD 2214
Calamity Jane (1953)
Directed by David Butler. Cast: Doris Day, Howard Keel, Allyn McLerie, Philip Carey, Dick Wesson. In this musical-comedy set in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Calamity Jane is a calamity at love --she's too busy cracking a bullwhip to pay much mind to dresses and perfume. But then one of her boasts requires that she go to Chicago to recruit an actress for the Golden Garter stage. When the actress arrives, the lady in question appears to be a more feminine rival for the favors of Jane's male friends...including her friendly enemy Wild Bill Hickok. 101 min. DVD 8882
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Bates, Anna Louise. "Calamity Jane and the Social Construction of Gender in the 1930s and 1950s." Popular Culture Review, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 69-81, Summer 2005
McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. "Carrying Concealed Weapons: Gendered Makeover in Calamity Jane." Journal of Popular Film & Television, Winter2007, Vol. 34 Issue 4, p179-187, 9p
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Rainey, Buck. "James Butler (Wild Bill) Hickok." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
Savoy, Eric. "'That Ain't All She Ain't': Doris Day and Queer Performativity." In: Out takes : essays on queer theory and film / edited by Ellis Hanson. Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 1999. Main (Gardner) Stacks; PFA PN1995.9.H55 O88 1999)
Williamson, J. W. "Hillbilly Gals And American Burlesque." Southern Quarterly; Summer1994, Vol. 32 Issue 4, p84-96, 13p
Canyon Passage (1946)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Cast: Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward, Patricia Roc, Ward Bond, Hoagy Carmichael, Lloyd Bridges, Andy Devine. Businessman Logan Stuart is torn between his love of two very different women in 1850's Oregon and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line. 92 min. DVD X6575
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Cat Ballou(1965)
Director Elliot Silverstein. Cast: Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman, Nat King Cole, Stubby Kaye. Cat(herine) Balou's family farm is being threatened by the railroad. She hires a has-been gunfighter Kid Shelleen, but finds him to be the drunkest gunfighter in the West. When her father is killed by the railroad magnate's gunman, she vowes to fight on. 96 min. DVD X857
Academy Award: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Lee Marvin)
Golden Globes - Best Motion Picture Actor - Musical/Comedy (Lee Marvin)
British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards - Best Foreign Actor (Lee Marvin)
National Board of Review, USA - Best Actor (Lee Marvin)
Allison, Deborah. "Title Sequences in the Western Genre: The Iconography of Action." Quarterly Review of Film & Video; Mar2008, Vol. 25 Issue 2, p107-115, 9p
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Turner, Matthew. "Cowboys and Comedy: The Simultaneous Deconstruction and Reinforcement of Generic Conventions in the Western Parody." In: Hollywood's West : the American frontier in film, television, and history / edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor. Imprint Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, c2005. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 H58 2005)
Chato's Land (1971)
Directed by Michael Winner. Cast: Charles Bronson, Jack Palance, James Whitmore, Ralph Waite, Richard Jordan, Victor French, Richard Basehart. Chato, a half-breed Apache, kills a vicious sheriff in self defense and then finds himself on the run from a posse, but the odds shift in Chato's favor when he leads his pursuers into Apache territory, where the harsh, cruel land can kill as surely as a gunman's bullet. Using his sharp wits, raw courage and ferocious determination, Chato exacts his brutal revenge, as the hunters become the hunted. 93 min. 999:1959
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Sal Mineo, Ricardo Montalban, Dolores Del Rio, Gilbert Roland, Arthur Kennedy, James Stewart. True life story of three hundred starving Cheyenne men, women and children, forcibly resettled in the barren wastelands of Oklahoma, who set out in the Autumn of 1878 on a desperate 1500-mile trek back to their Yellowstone homeland. 158 min. DVD 5658
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Cheyenne Social Club (1970)
Directed by Gene Kelly. Cast: James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Shirley Jones, Sue Ane Langdon, Elaine Devry. Saddle-weary Texan cowboys are surprised to find they've inherited a Wyoming brothel and must defend it against a gun-wieding gang. 102 min. DVD 6171
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Cimarron (1931)
Directed by Wesley Ruggles. Cast: Richard Dix, Irene Dunne, Estelle Taylor, Nance O'Neil, William Collier, Jr., Rosco Ates, George E. Stone, Stanley Fields, Robert McWade, Edna May Oliver, Nancy Dover, Eugene Jackson. Epic western about the Cravat family settling the Oklahoma prairie, opening with the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. Yancy Cravat is a newspaperman and lawyer who helps found the town of Osage. An adventurer, he finds town-life stifling and seeks his thrills even further into the frontier. His wife ends up becoming a town leader when his absences leave her no other choice. Based on the novel by Edna Ferber. 123 min. DVD X6366; DVD 5091
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Cisco Kid. Vol. 1, Quarterhorse (TV, 1950). The Postmaster (1956). (195?)
"Here's adventure! Here's romance! Here's O. Henry's famous Robin Hood of the Old West." Here's typical, sappy, "Frito Bandito" stereotyping from 1950's TV! Starring Duncan Ronaldo and Leo Carillo (as befuddled sidekick Pancho). In this first television series to be produced in color, The Cisco Kid as the "Robin Hood of the Old West", stops treachery with incredible stunts and ingenuity with help from his sidekick, Pancho. In Quarterhouse Cisco recovers a valuable stolen racing horse. In The Postmaster a U.S. postal inspector who is investigating robberies is murdered and Cisco must unravel a mystery to apprehend the killer. Starring Leo Carrillo, Duncan Renaldo, Virginia Herrick, Tris Coffin (1st work). Leo Carrillo, Duncan Renaldo, Maris Wrixon, Edward Keane (2nd work). 999:1354
The Cisco Kid
Cast: Duncan Renaldo (Cisco Kid), Leo Carrillo. The Cisco Kid was well known to audiences from numerous films long before the television series. The Cisco Kid and his English-mangling sidekick Pancho traveled the old west in the grand tradition of righting wrongs and fighting injustice wherever they found it, ending each episode with the exclamations, "Hey, Poncho, Hey, Cisco!". Segment from a television program originally produced 1950-1956. DVD 9645
Comanche Station (1960)
Directed by Budd Boetticher. Cast: Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Akins, Skip Homeier. Loner Cody trades with the Comanches to get a white girl released. He is joined on his way back to the girl's husband by an outlaw and his sidekicks. It turns out there is a large reward for the return of the girl, and with the Indians on the warpath and the outlaw being an old enemy of Cody's, things are set for several showdowns. 73 min. DVD X572
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Kitses, Demetrius John. Budd Boetticher: The western. a BFI Education department dossier. [London, British Film Institute, 1969?] (Pacific Film Archive PN1998.3.B63 K57 1969)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: studies of authorship within the western Bloomington, Indiana University Press [1970, c1969] (MOFF: PN1995.9.W4 K5; PFA : PN1995.9.W4 K5 1970)
Wicking, Christopher. "Budd Boetticher." Screen 1969 10: 9-31
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Cowboy (1958)
Directed by Delmer Daves. Cast: Glenn Ford, Jack Lemmon, Anna Kashfi, Brian Donlevy, Dick York, Victor Manuel Mendosa, Richard Jaeckel, James Westerfield. Tempers flare and fists fly in this action-packed sagebrush classic based on the real-life adventures of a tenderfoot turned tough cattleman. Based on the book "My reminiscences as a cowboy" by Frank Harris. 92 min. DVD 4272
Walker, Michael. "The Westerns of Delmer Daves." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Wicking, Christopher. "Interview with Delmer Daves." Screen 1969 10: 55-66
Academy Awards - Best Picture; Best Director (Kevin Costner)
Directors Guild of America, USA - Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures
Golden Globes - Best Motion Picture - Drama; Best Director; Best Screenplay
National Board of Review, USA - Best Film; Best Director
National Film Registry Selection
Dark Command(1940)
Director, Raoul Walsh. Cast: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Walter Pidgeon, Roy Rogers, George (Gabby) Hayes, Marjorie Main, Porter Hall, Raymond Walburn. Set in pre-Civil War Lawrence, Kansas where tensions about slavery ran high, this film tells a fictionalized version of the story of the raider William Clarke Quantrill. Bob Seton runs for Federal Marshall of Kansas and defeats William Cantrell. Cantrell responds by stealing Seton's girl and manipulating her into marrying him. Seton later exposes Cantrell and his band of guerillas who have been raiding both Union and Confederate lines. Based on the novel The dark command / by W.R. Burnett. 94 min. DVD X4452; vhs 999:3826
McNiven, Roger. "The Western Landscape of Raoul Walsh." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, Fall75, Issue 15, p50-55, 6p
Days of Heaven(1996)
Directed by Terrence Malick. Cast: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz. A moving story about two men who love the same woman. A fugitive from the slums of Chicago finds himself pitted against a shy, rich Texan for the love of Abby. 93 min. DVD 7436
National Film Registry Selection
Dead Man's Bounty (aka Summer Love)(Poland, 2006)
Directed by Piotr Uklanski. Cast: Boguslaw Linda, Karel Roden, Katarzyna Figura, Val Kilmer. A stranger rides into a small town carrying the corpse of a wanted man. Hoping to collect a reward, the mysterious outsider loses the dead man--and potential bounty money--in a gambling game with the town's drunken sheriff. Later, despite the fact that he lost the game, the stranger vows to keep the corpse at all costs. The first Polish Western. 94 min. DVD X3308
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Dead Man's Walk(TV, 1996)
Cast: David Arquette, Jonny Lee Miller, F. Murray Abraham, Keith Carradine, Patricia Childress, Brian Dennehy, Edward James Olmos, Eric Schweig, Harry Dean Stanton. The prequel to Lonesome Dove is set in the Texas Republic in the early 1840s, a time when Anglo, Hispanic, and Commanche cultures were in fierce conflict. Shows Gus and Call on a deadly trail to Santa Fe facing the rigors of nature and the elements, as well as outlaws, bandits, and the notorious Commanche warrior Buffalo Hump. Teleplay by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana; directed Yves Simoneau. 283 min. DVD 6147
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Deadwood (TV series)
Created by David Milch. Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane, Molly Parker, Jim Beaver, Brad Dourif, John Hawkes, Paula Malcomson, Leon Rippy, William Sanderson. SEE TV videography
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Decision at Sundown (1957)
Directed by Budd Boetticher. Cast: Randolph Scott, John Carroll, Karen Steele, Valerie French, Noah Berry. Bart Allison and his pal Sam have come to Sundown seeking vengeance on Tate Kimbrough, who has betrayed Bart's wife. He finds Kimbrough and warns him he is going to kill him but gets pinned down in the livery stable with his friend Sam by Kimbrough's stooge Sheriff and his men. When Sam is shot in the back after being told he could leave safely, some of the townsmen change sides and disarm the Sheriff's men forcing him to face Allison alone. Taking care of the Sheriff, Allison injures his gun hand and must now face Kimbrough left-handed. 77 min. DVD X572
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Kitses, Demetrius John. Budd Boetticher: The western. a BFI Education department dossier. [London, British Film Institute, 1969?] (Pacific Film Archive PN1998.3.B63 K57 1969)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: studies of authorship within the western Bloomington, Indiana University Press [1970, c1969] (MOFF: PN1995.9.W4 K5; PFA : PN1995.9.W4 K5 1970)
Wicking, Christopher. "Budd Boetticher." Screen 1969 10: 9-31
UC users only
Destry Rides Again (1939)
Directed by George Marshall. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart, Brian Donlevy, Mischa Auer, Una Merkel. A tongue-in-cheek western set in the frontier town of Bottleneck about a lawman with an aversion to guns and a cabaret girl at the Bloody Gulch Saloon. 95 min. DVD 5092; also DVD X2067; vhs 999:914
Jacobowitz, Florence. "The Dietrich Westerns: Destry Rides Again and Rancho Notorious." In: The Book of Westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. pp: 88-98. New York: Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Devil's Doorway (1949)
Directed by Anthony Mann. Cast: Robert Taylor, Louis Calhern, Paula Raymond, Marshall Thompson, James Mitchell, Edgar Buchanan. Lance Poole, a Shoshone Indian, returns to his home in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, having won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the Civil War. Despite his honorable war record, Lance is shunned by the white townspeople, who bear a grudge against him and his father because of their hold on the richest land in the region. Notable as one of the earliest films sympathetic to Native Americans. 84 min. DVD X6561
Anthony Mann bibliography
Dodge City (1939)
Directed by Michael Curtiz. Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Ann Sheridan, Bruce Cabot, Frank McHugh, Alan Hale, John Litel, Henry Travers, Henry O'Neill, Victor Jory, William Lundigan, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams. Dodge City, a wide-open cattle town needs a fearless honest Marshal. A guy like Wade Hatton, who helped bring the railroad in. It may not help that he fancies Abbie Irving, who won't have anything to do with him since he had to shoot her brother. But that's the West. 100 min. DVD 4017
Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver. A historical drama that tells the story of a young frontier leader, his spirited wife, and their struggles in the backwoods of New York state. Based on the novel by Walter D. Edmonds. 103 min. DVD 4090; vhs 999:699
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Duel in the Sun (1946)
Directed by King Vidor. Cast: Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton, Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore, Herbert Marshall, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Charles Bickford. When her father is hanged for shooting his wife and her lover, half-breed Pearl Chevez goes to live with distant relatives in Texas. Welcomed by Laura Belle and her elder lawyer son Jesse, she meets with hostility from the ranch-owner himself, wheelchair-bound Senator, and with lustful interest from womanising unruly younger brother Lewt. Almost at once, already existing family tensions are exacerbated by her presence and the way she is physically drawn to Lewt. 138 min. DVD 6689
Anthony Mann bibliography
The Fighting Kentuckian (1949)
Directed by Vincent McEveety. Cast: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Cesar Romero, Sarita Montiel. Following Napoleon's Waterloo defeat and the exile of his officers and their families from France, the U.S.Congress, in 1817, granted four townships in the Alabama territory to the exiles. A regiment of Kentucky riflemen travels through the French settlement. Their leader John Breen falls in love with a general's lovely daughter, and locks horns with a rival suitor who has a nefarious land-grabbing scheme up his sleeve. The courtship battle escalates into a full-scale frontier war. 102 min. DVD X5686
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Firecreek (1968)
Directed by Vincent McEveety. Cast: James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gary Lockwood, Dean Jagger, Ed Begley, Jay C. Flippen, Inger Stevens. An outlaw preys on small towns, and a $2-a-month lawman must find the courage to stop him. 104 min. DVD 6171
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Directed by Sergio Leone. Cast: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, John Wels, W. Lukschy, S. Rupp, Joe Edger. The first of the "spaghetti westerns" Cast: a lean, cold-eyed, cobra-quick gunslinger, a cynical enigmatic loner, the first of the "anti-heroes." 99 min. DVD 4545; vhs 999:276
Clint Eastwood bibliography
Fort Apache (1948)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Pedro Armendariz, Ward Bond. In this drama of war on the American frontier between the Apache Indians and the U.S. Cavalry, a military martinet assumes command of a desert fort where his rigid leadership creates dissension and conflict among his family and staff. 127 min. DVD 5669
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Forty Guns (1957)
Directed by Samuel Fuller. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Dean Jagger, John Ericson, Gene Barry. Tougher-than-nails landowner Jessica Drummond has ruled over her county in Arizona with such power that even the local sheriff won't stand up to her. And when gunslinger-turned-U.S. marshal Griff Bonnell and his brothers seek to restore law and order, they meet with harsh resistance, that is until Jessica falls in love with Bonnell. But when the man's brother is murdered and the two families become bitter enemies, Jessica's loyalty is divided, and Bonnell faces his biggest moral dilemma : how to avenge his brother's death and still maintain his vow of non-violence. 79 min. DVD 4036
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
4 for Texas (1963)
Directed by Robert Aldrich. Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Anita Ekberg, Ursula Andress, Charles Bronson, Victor Buono, The Three Stooges. Two gamblers vie for supremacy at the card tables of 1870s Galveston. Though they'd as soon cut each other's throats than cooperate, Zack and Joe are forced to unite against a pair of common enemies: crooked banker Harvey Burden and cold-blooded outlaw/hired-gun Matson. 116 min. DVD 7901
Robert Aldrich bibliography
The Frisco Kid (1979)
Directed by Robert Aldrich. Cast: Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford. A innocent Polish rabbi travels through 1850s America toward his new congregation and wife in San Francisco. Along the way, he forms an uneasy alliance with an inept bank robber and the two cut a pratfall-filled path across the wild west. 119 min. DVD 5972
Robert Aldrich bibliography
The Furies (1950)
Directed by Anthony Mann. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland, Thomas Gomez, Beulah Bondi, Albert Dekker, John Bromfield, Wallace Ford, Blanche Yurka, Louis Jean Heydt, Frank Ferguson, Charles Evans, Movita Casteneda, Craig Kelly, Myrna Dell. "Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck) is her father's daughter. And what a father! T.C. Jeffords is a cross between King Lear and Captain Bligh. Walter Huston, in his last role, manages to make this egomaniacal tyrant both frightening and likeable. He handily blows nominal leading man and Noir veteran Wendell Corey off this screen, but Stanwyck, in one of her last great performances, matches him in flamboyance and audacity. When he remarries (jilting daughter for Easterner Judith Anderson's fortune) Stanwyck disfigures his new bride with a well thrown scissors! When he hangs her Mexican lover (Gilbert Roland) she embarks on a relentless campaign to ruin him. The film seems to revel in the mutual ruthlessness of father and daughter. It also boasts a vicious turn by Thomas Gomez as "El Tigre, T.C... Jeffords' chief pistolero who is eager to throw the rope over Gilbert Roland's neck. Gomez was fresh from his greatest role in Abraham Polonsky's "Force of Evil." So in love are father and daughter, that although Stanwyck ultimately gains the upper hand and the ability to crush her father, she can't bring herself to do it. That job is outsourced to Gilbert Roland's vengeful, seemingly insane mother who guns the robber baron down in the street. " [Shepler, Michael. " Sagebrush Noir ." Special features: Audio commentary featuring film historian Jim Kitses (Horizons West); The movies: "Action speaks louder than words," a 1967 television interview with director Anthony Mann; A rare, 1931 on-camera interview with Walter Huston, made for the movie theater series "Intimate interviews"; New video interview with Nina Mann, daughter of Anthony Mann; Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos; Theatrical trailer; Plus, a booklet featuring a new essay by renowned critic Robin Wood and a 1957 "Cahiers due cinema" interview with Mann. 109 min. DVD 9943
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The Gambler: The Adventure Continues (TV, 1983)
Directed by Dick Lowry. Cast: Kenny Rogers, Bruce Boxleitner, Linda Evans, Johnny Crawford, Harold Gould. Brady, his son Jeremiah, and Billy Montana are traveling to a gambling event in San Francisco when they encounter the vicious McCourt gang. As ransom, the gang takes young Jeremiah hostage. Brady and Billy embark on a quest to rescue him and form a small gang of their own along the way. 190 min. DVD 9654
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Garden of Evil (1954)
Directed by Henry Hathaway. Cast: Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, Hugh Marlow, Cameron Mitchell, Rita Moreno, Víctor Manuel Mendoza. When a ship carrying three American fortune hunters strands them in Mexico, fate deals them a great hand - from the bottom of the deck. In exchange for a fat payday, they must journey into the heart of evil to rescue a trapped miner. With death surrounding them and murderous Apache warriors at their heels, it will take all their cunning, ingenuity and bravery to escape with their reward, as well as their lives. Special features: Audio commentary by film and music historians John Morgan, Nick Redman, Steven Smith and William Stromberg; isolated score track; "Travels of a gunslinger: the making of Garden of evil" featurette; "Henry Hathaway: when the going gets tough..." featurette; restoration comparison; original theatrical trailer; interactive pressbook; advertising gallery; still gallery. 100 min. DVD X3178
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
"Henry Hathaway." In: The Hollywood professionals / by Kingsley Canham ... [et al.] London : Tantivy Press; New York : A.S. Barnes, 1973. Main (Gardner) Stacks)PN1998.A2 H64 1973
Henry Hathaway / edited and annotated by Rudy Behlmer ; interviews conducted by Polly Platt. Hathaway, Henry, 1898-1985. Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2001. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; PFA PN1998.3.H373 A5 2001)
Go West (1940)
Directed by Edward Buzzell. Cast: Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx, John Carroll, Diana Lewis, Tony Martin, Virginia Grey, Margaret Dumont, Douglass Dumbrille. It's 1870 and the Marx Brothers are out to get rich in Dead Man's Gulch. Highlights include the $1 scam, the stagecoach ride, Chico and Harpo bellying up to the bar and the train-chase finale. Special features: Side A: vintage shorts: Pete Smith specialty Quicker 'n a wink; Fitzpatrick traveltalk, Cavalcade of San Francisco; the cartoon, The milky way; Leo is on the air radio promo. Side B: vintage short Flicker memories and vintage cartoon Officer Pooch, audio musical; outtake: Where there's music; Theatrical trailers.
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Gehring, Wes D. "Everyone's Going West." In: Parody as film genre : "never give a saga an even break". / Wes D. Gehring ; foreword by Scott R. Olson. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1999. ( Full-text online [UCB users only]; Print Main (Gardner) Stacks; Moffitt PN1995.9.C55 G426 1999
Marx Brothers bibliography
Golden Saddles, Silver Spurs)
This documentary traces the history of the B-Western from it's silent movie origins to its demise in the early 1950s, when television began to bring this genre into homes on a regular weekly basis. The film contains a large number of scenes from early silents and seldom seen films, as well as old photographs of the stars and one-sheet advertisements for lost films. Featuring: Rex Allen, Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, Gene Autry, Ward Bond, William Boyd, Walter Brennan, Johnny Mack Brown, Yakima Canutt, Harry Carey, Andy Devine, Dale Evans, John Ford, Clark Gable, Hoot Gibson, William S. Hart, Raymond Hatton, George 'Gabby' Hayes, Herb Jeffries, Ben Johnson, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Jane Russell, Randolph Scott, John Wayne. 2003. 94 min. DVD 8574
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Directed by Sergio Leone. Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffre. During the American Civil War, three men seek hidden loot. With greed as their sole motivation, they overcome anything that gets in their way - including each other. 162 min. DVD 4546; vhs 999:832:1&2
Clint Eastwood bibliography
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
Director, John Sturges. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Jo Van Fleet, John Ireland. Based on historical events in Tombstone, Arizona this film explores the relationship between two of the West's most celebrated legends -- Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. When Earp saves Holliday from mob violence, the foes become friends and join forces to rid the West of the Clanton gang, which culminates in the legendary gunfight. 122 min. DVD X902
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Barra, Allen. "Hollywood Gunfighter." In: Inventing Wyatt Earp : his life and many legends / Allen Barra. New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, c1998. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; and Bancroft F786.E18 B371 1998)
Blake, Michael F. Hollywood and the O.K. Corral : portrayals of the gunfight and Wyatt Earp Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2007. (MAIN: PN1995.9.W4 B583 2007)
Cohen, Hubert I. "Wyatt Earp at the O. K. Corral: Six Versions." The Journal of American Culture. Jun 2003. Vol. 26, Iss. 2; p. 204 (20 pages)
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Corkin, Stanley "Modernization Theory, Political Discord, and Intervention: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Magnificent Seven, and The Alamo." In: Cowboys as cold warriors : the Western and U.S. history / Stanley Corkin. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2004. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 C65 2004)
Gallafent, Edward. "Four tombstones 1946-1994." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Hughes, Howard. "'That'll be the Day' - 'The Searchers' (1956)." In: Stagecoach to tombstone : the filmgoers' guide to the great westerns / Howard Hughes. London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; 2008. ( Full-text available online [UCB users only]; print: Moffitt PN1995.9.W4 H833 2008)
Hutton, Paul Andrew. "Showdown at the Hollywood Corral: Wyatt Earp and the Movies." Montana: The Magazine of Western History , Vol. 45, No. 3, Popular Culture Issue (Summer, 1995), pp. 2-31
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Lott, M. Ray "O.K. Corral." In: Police on screen : Hollywood cops, detectives, marshals and rangers / M. Ray Lott. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2006. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.P57 L68 2006)
Rainey, Buck. "Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
Simmon, Scott. "Concerning the Weary Legs of Wyatt Earp: The Classic Western According to Shakespeare." Literature/Film Quarterly. 1996. Vol. 24, Iss. 2; pg. 114, 14 pgs
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The Gunfighter (1950)
Directed by Henry King. Cast: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell, Jean Parker, Karl Malden, Skip Homeier, Anthony Ross, Verna Felton, Ellen Corby, Richard Jaeckel. Though his appetite for bloodletting is over, Jimmy Ringo (Peck) is forced to stay on the run from young gunners determined to shoot the great man down. After killing an upstart in self-defense, he escapes from the boy's vengeful brothers to the nearby town of Cayenne. There, he hopes to convince his estranged wife to resume their life together, but his arrival causes a sensation. With more young bucks gunning for him, Ringo's fate lies in the hands of the sheriff, his old bandit partner. Special features: "Arthur Miller: painter with light" featurette; "The western grows up" featurette; restoration comparison; original theatrical trailer; advertising gallery; still gallery. 85 min. DVD X3177
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Gunman's Walk (1950)
Directed by Phil Karlson. Cast: Van Heflin, Tab Hunter, Kathryn Grant, James Darren, Mickey Shaughnessy. "Rancher Lee Hackett is one of the old breed, used to making his own laws and settling things with a gun. He has tried to make his two sons in his own image, and with the elder he has more than succeeded, to the extent that he is accused of murdering a half-breed. But his younger son is different, eschewing the old rules and even becoming drawn to the sister of the murdered man. Lee starts to find that his way of doing things is no longer working." [IMDB] Based on the story by Ric Hardman. 95 min. DVD X4963
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The Hanging Tree (1959)
Directed by Delmer Daves. Cast: Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden, Ben Piazza. A doctor arrives in an 1870's Montana mining camp to practice medicine. As skilled with a six gun as with a scalpel, he will need both. A tragic past shadows his days and the treachery of a mob clouds his future. A determined immigrant, a shifty-eyed miner, and a hellfire preacher figure prominently in his showdown with fate. Based on the novel by Dorothy M. Johnson. 107 min. DVD X6570
Walker, Michael. "The Westerns of Delmer Daves." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Wicking, Christopher. "Interview with Delmer Daves." Screen 1969 10: 55-66
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Harlem Rides the Range (1939)
Directed by Richard Kahn. Cast: Herbert Jeffrey, Lucius Brooks, Flournoy E. Miller, Artie Young, Spencer Williams, Clarence Brooks, Tom Southern. In this all-black cast western melodrama, a gun slinging cowboy saves the uranium mine of his girlfriend's father. 58 min. DVD X4192; DVD X4870; vhs 999:1167
Batiste, Stephanie Leigh ""Harlem rides the range" : expansion, modernity, and Negro success." In: Darkening mirrors : imperial representation in Depression-era African American performance / Stephanie Leigh Batiste. Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 2011. (Main (Gardner) Stacks New books E185.625 .B375 2011)
Dempsey, Mary A. "The bronze buckaroo rides again." American Visions, Aug97, Vol. 12 Issue 4, p22, 4p
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Heartland (1979)
Directed by Richard Pearce. Cast: Rip Torn, Conchata Ferrell, Barry Primus, Lilia Skala, Megan Folsom, Amy Wright, Jerry Hardin, Mary Boylan. Based on true events, tells the story of widow Elinore Pruitt and her seven-year-old daughter who travel in 1910 by train to face two great unknowns-- a strange land and life with a man they have never met. Elinore has contracted by mail to keep house for Clyde Stewart, a rancher living in the remote frontier near Burntfork, Wyoming. Captivated by the vast landscape, Elinore acts quickly on her secret passion: to homestead a piece of land of her own. But fulfilling her year's contract with Clyde may be as challenging as the oncoming winter-- a winter of devastating blizzards, famine and isolation. 96 min. DVD 4274
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
High Noon (1959)
Directed by Fred Zinnemann. Cast: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney, Jr. A retired marshal's wedding is interrupted when he learns that an outlaw he helped send to jail will return to town on the noon train to seek revenge. The townspeople are unwilling to help the marshal, so, reluctantly, he takes up his badge and guns again. This alienates his new bride, a Quaker woman who is opposed to any kind of violence. 84 min. DVD 958; vhs 999:15
Clint Eastwood bibliography
Hombre (1967)
Directed by Martin Ritt. Cast: Paul Newman, Frederic March, Richard Boone, Diane Cilento, Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Rush, Martin Balsam. John Russell, disdained by his "respectable" fellow stagecoach passengers because he was raised by Indians, becomes their only hope for survival when they are set upon by outlaws. Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard. 111 min. DVD X3941
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Miller, Gabriel. The films of Martin Ritt : fanfare for the common man Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c2000. (MAIN: PN1998.3.R578 M55 2000)
Miller, Gabriel. "The death of the western hero: Martin Ritt's "Hud" and "Hombre."" Film Criticism, 1996, Vol. 20 Issue 3, p34-51, 18p
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Ritt, Martin. Martin Ritt : interviews Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c2002. [MAIN: PN1998.3.R578 A5 2002]
Wanat, Matt. "Captive Subjects: Point Of View And Initiation In Hombre." Western American Literature, Fall2008, Vol. 43 Issue 3, p279-304, 26p
Whitaker, Sheila. The films of Martin Ritt. [London], British Film Institute, 1972. (NRLF (UCB) PN1998.A3 R5371)
Hondo (1953)
Directed by John Farrow. Cast: John Wayne, Geraldine Page, Ward Bond, Michael Pate, James Arness. Hondo Lane, a dispatch rider for the cavalry, encounters Angie Lowe, a woman living alone with her young son in the midst of hostile Apache territory. She presumes she is safe because the Apaches, under their chief Vittorio, have always left them alone. Later Hondo has a run-in with Angie's good-for-nothing husband and is forced to kill him. When Vittorio captures Hondo to save his life, Angie tells the Apache chief that he is her husband. In order to protect her from a forced marriage with one of the Apaches, Hondo reluctantly goes along with the lie. Based on the novel "The gift of Cochise," by Louis L'Amour. Special features: Special introduction by Leonard Maltin; Commentary by Leonard Maltin, Western Historian Frank Thompson, and actor Lee Aaker ; featurettes: "The Making of Hondo," "Profile: James Edward Grant," "The John Wayne Stock Company: Ward Bond" ; Wrap up with Leonard Matlin ; From the Batjac vaults ; The Apache ; Photo gallery. 83 min. DVD X6401
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
How the West Was Won (1962)
Directed by John Ford (segment "The Civil War"); Henry Hathaway (segments "The Rivers", "The Plains", "The Outlaws"); George Marshall (segment "The Railroad"); Richard Thorpe (uncredited) (transitional historical sequences). Cast: Carroll Baker, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee J. Cobb, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Eli Wallach, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy. An epic western adventure spanning three generations, the breadth of a wild, unsettled country, and fifty of the most excitingly turbulent years of this nation's history. 165 min. DVD 307; VHS 999:920:1&2
John Ford bibliography
"Henry Hathaway." In: The Hollywood professionals / by Kingsley Canham ... [et al.] London : Tantivy Press; New York : A.S. Barnes, 1973. Main (Gardner) Stacks)PN1998.A2 H64 1973
Henry Hathaway / edited and annotated by Rudy Behlmer ; interviews conducted by Polly Platt. Hathaway, Henry, 1898-1985. Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2001. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; PFA PN1998.3.H373 A5 2001)
Hud (1963)
Directed by Martin Ritt. Cast: Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, Brandon de Wilde, Whit Bissell, Crahan Denton. Hud Bannon has always preferred drinking, fighting and womanizing to the very traditional ways of his father and cares more for himself than he does his young nephew, father, or even their understanding housekeeper. When disease threatens the cattle on the Bannon Ranch, the conflict between Hud and his old-line father reaches an all time high. Based on the novel Horseman pass by, by Larry McMurtry. 111 min. DVD X3896
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Gallafent, Edward. "Not with a bang: the end of the West in Lonely are the brave, The Misfits and Hud." In: The Book of Westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. pp: 88-98. New York: Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Miller, Gabriel. The films of Martin Ritt : fanfare for the common man Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c2000. (MAIN: PN1998.3.R578 M55 2000)
Miller, Gabriel. "The death of the western hero: Martin Ritt's "Hud" and "Hombre."" Film Criticism, 1996, Vol. 20 Issue 3, p34-51, 18p
Rainey, Buck. "The James-Dalton Gang." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Directed by Nicholas Ray. Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Ernest Borgnine, Mercedes McCambridge, Ward Bond. Bitter hatred leads to persecution when a pastoral valley is threatened by plans for a new railroad. Johnny Guitar, adept with a gun as well as a guitar, becomes involved with the proprietress of a gambling saloon, who is scheming to build a town out of grazing land. 110 min. DVD X4749; vhs 999:557
National Film Registry Selection
Jubal (1956)
Directed by by Delmer Daves. Cast: Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger, Charles Bronson, Valerie French, Felicia Farr. Found injured by rancher Shep Horgan, Jubal Troop is offered a job as cowhand and soon gains Shep's trust. Mae Horgan, feeling she's been trapped into marriage with Shep, takes a shine to Jubal, although he is more interested in Naomi Hoktor who is travelling with a wagon train camped on Shep's land. Pinky, until now top hand and used to Mae's favours himself, doesn't think much of the new deal and trouble is inevitable. Based upon a novel by Paul I. Wellman. 101 min. DVD X6363; vhs 999:3874
Walker, Michael. "The Westerns of Delmer Daves." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Wicking, Christopher. "Interview with Delmer Daves." Screen 1969 10: 55-66
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Junior Bonner (1972)
Directed by by Sam Peckinpah. Cast: Steve McQueen, Robert Preston, Ben Johnson, Ida Lupino, Joe Don Baker. A rowdy modern-day western about a young, drifting rodeo star who decides to raise money for his father's ranch by challenging a formidable bull. 100 min. DVD 4273
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Coyne, Michael. "Dysfunctional Family Structures in Classical Westerns, 1956-1961: The Gunfighter, Shane, The Searchers, and The Last Sunset." In: The crowded prairie : American national identity in the Hollywood western / Michael Coyne. London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; [New York : distributed by St. Martin's Press], 1997. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.W4 C69 1997)
Robert Aldrich bibliography
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
Directed by John Sturges. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman. The wife of U.S. Marshal Matt Morgan is raped and murdered. The killers leave behind a distinctive saddle, that Morgan recognizes as belonging to his old friend Craig Belden, now cattle baron in the town of Gun Hill. Belden is sympathetic, until it transpires that one of the murderers is his own son Rick, whom he refuses to hand over. Morgan is determined to capture Rick and take him away by the 9.00 train; but he is trapped in the town alone, with Belden and all his men now looking to kill him. 94 min. DVD X902; DVD X6446
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Lawless Breed (1953)
Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Audie Murphy, Brian Donlevy, Marguerite Chapman, Scott Brady, Tony Curtis, Richard Arlen, Richard Long, James Best. After being released from prison, ex-gunfighter John Wesley Hardin hopes to have his autobiography published in order to rehabilitate his tarnished reputation. 83 min. DVD X6575
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Left-Handed Gun (1958)
Directed by Arthur Penn. Cast: Paul Newman, Lita Milan, John Dehner, Hurd Hatfield, James Congdon, James Best, Colin Keith-Johnston, John Dierkes, Bob Anderson, Wally Brown. His name: William Bonney. His legend: Billy the Kid, the fabled gunslinger. The West had never before seen the likes of this Brooklyn-born desperado, a troubled teen who wrote his name in blood on history's pages. Based on the play "The left handed gun" by Gore Vidal. 102 min. DVD X2596
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Arthur Penn : interviews / edited by Michael Chaiken and Paul Cronin. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c2008. (Moffitt PN1998.3.P4525 A3 2008_
Bignell, Jonathan. "Method Westerns: The Left-Handed Gun and One-Eyed Jacks." In: In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Bolas, Terry "The Left Handed Gun" Screen (1969) 10(1): 15-23
Orr, John. "Terrence Malick and Arthur Penn: The Western Re-Myth." In: The cinema of Terrence Malick : poetic visions of America / edited by Hannah Patterson. London ; New York : Wallflower, 2003. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1998.3.M3388 C56 2003)
Wood, Robin. Arthur Penn. London, Studio Vista, 1967 [i.e. 1968]. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1998.A3 P43 W6)
Let Freedom Ring (1939)
Directed by Jack Conway. Cast: Nelson Eddy, Virginia Bruce, Victor McLaglen, Lionel Barrymore. A song-spangled western set in 1868, in which a lawyer (Eddy) returns to a small hometown and fights corruption brought in by the railroad. 100 min. vhs 999:3950
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Little Big Horn (1951)
Directed by Charles Marquis Warren. Cast: Lloyd Bridges, John Ireland, Marie Windsor, Reed Hadley, Jim Davis, Hugh O'Brian. A cavalry patrol discovers a horde of Indians ready to ambush Custer's 7th Cavalry. They set out to warn Gen. Custer that he is about to embark on a suicidal mission. 86 min. DVD X6576
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Little Big Man (1970)
Directed by Arthur Penn. Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Martin Balsam, Jeff Corey, Chief Dan George, Faye Dunaway, Richard Mulligan. Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) is 121 years old. And he's done it all. He's been a full-fledged Cheyenne, an Indian fighter, a snake oil merchant, master gunman, drinking buddy of wild Bill Hickok, colleague of Buffalo Bill, and is the only survivor of Custer's Last Stand. Crabb is either the Old West's most neglected hero or the biggest liar ever to cross the Mississippi. Little Big Man is Jack Crabb's story. In their article, "The Hollywood Indian in Little Big Man: A Revisionist View," Margo Kasdan and Susan Tavernetti comment: " In Little Big Man, Arthur Penn directed a film that inverts the mythologies of American frontier history usually presented in the western genre, and, in particular, the story of the westward expansion. The film combines established generic conventions--the post-Civil War period, Great Plains setting, conflict between whites and Indians--with a reconsideration of western history, a revisionist treatment of legendary figures of the time, of the western hero, and of Native Americans in a comic and ironic tone. This combination makes the film distinctive (while at the same time sows the seeds for such contemporary westerns as Dances with Wolves). (Film & History, xxiii (1993), 70). Based on the novel Little Big Man by Thomas Berger (Main Stack PS3552.Be63.L5; Moffitt PS3552.E719.L5)140 min. DVD 1738; vhs 999:420
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The Lone Ranger (TV series, 1956)
Two episodes. Cast: Clayton Moore, Jay Silverheels. In Message to Fort Apache, directed by William J. Thiele, the Lone Ranger and Tonto join forces with the U.S. Army to halt the flow of guns to hostile Indians; in The Frightened Woman, directed by Oscar Rudolph, after witnessing a robbery, a pretty widow is the target of the bandit's vengeance. 55 min. vhs 999:1357
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Lone Ranger
The lone surviving Texas Ranger (Clayton Moore), was nursed back to health by the Indian Tonto (Jay Silverheels). The two rode their horses throughout the West doing good while living off a silver mine which supplied them with income and bullets. Disc 3. Side B. 1949-1956, 6 episodes, 30 min. each DVD 2860
Lone Star (1951)
Directed by Vincent Sherman. Cast: Broderick Crawford, Lionel Barrymore, Ava Gardner, Clark Gable. Will Texas be independent or a U.S. state? Ex-President Andrew Jackson recruits cattleman Devereaux Burke to travel through hostile Indian land, find Texas hero Sam Houston and persuade him to support annexation. In exchange, Burke will gain a contract to sell beef to U.S. forces during the war with Mexico sure to follow statehood. 94 min. DVD X6563
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The Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
Directed by David Miller. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau Carroll O'Connor, William Schallert, Gena Rowlands, George Kennedy, Karl Swenson, Bill Mims. In order to free his best friend Bondi, itinerant cowboy and drifter Jack Burns lets himself be imprisoned only to find out that Bondi does not want to escape. Burns breaks out on his own and he and his faithful horse Whisky race up a mountaintop to freedom with the authorities in pursuit chasing him with helicopters and jeeps. 1 hr. 48 min. DVD X2452
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Gallafent, Edward. "Not with a bang: the end of the West in Lonely are the brave, The Misfits and Hud." In: The Book of Westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. pp: 88-98. New York: Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Skerry, Philip J. "The Western film: a sense of an ending." New Orleans Review, 1990, Vol. 17 Issue 3, p13-17, 5p
The Lonesome Dove (TV, 1988)
Directed by Simon Wincer. Cast: Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Angelica Huston, Danny Glover, Diane Lane. Two former Texas Rangers leave the South Texas town of Lonesome Dove on an epic 2500-mile cattle drive to the lush ranch country of Montana. Special features: interview with Larry McMurtry; interview with Suzanne de Passe; western historical trivia game; trailer; cast and crew information; production notes; scene access; interactive menus. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. 360 min. DVD 6145
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The Long Riders (1980)
Directed by Walter Hill. Cast: David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine, James Keach, Stacy Keach, Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid, Christopher Guest, Nicholas Guest. This portrayal of the Jesse James gang is a rapidfire succession of thrilling moments -- the bandits' lightning attacks on banks, trains and stagecoaches ; their hairbreadth escapes from the law ; Jesse's jubilant wedding celebration ; and the tragic Great Northfield, Minnesota raid. 99 min. DVD X6614
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Lust for Gold (1949)
Directed by S. Sylvan Simon. Cast: Glenn Ford, Ida Lupino, Gig Young, William Prince, Edgar Buchanan. Fortune seeker Barry Storm stumbles onto some clues that may lead him to the fabulous Lost Durchman Mine, but others have tried and been murdered. Based on the book "Thunder Gods Gold" by Barry Storm. 90 min. DVD 6145
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A Man Called Horse (1970)
Directed by Elliot Silverstein. Cast: Richard Harris, Dame Judith Anderson, Jean Gascon, Manu Tupou, Corinna Tsopei. An English aristocrat is taken prisoner by a tribe of American Sioux Indians and given to the chief's aging mother as a servant. Gradually, he embraces the tribe's way of life and falls in love with the chief's sister. The constant threat of ambush by a rival tribe and rigors of survival now fill the days of this man called "Horse." He is eventually given a chance to prove his worthiness and be accepted into the tribe. But in order to be accepted with honor as an equal within the tribe, he must endure the Sun Vow. Based on a story by Dorothy M. Johnson. 115 min. DVD DVD X882
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The Man From Colorado (1948)
Directed by Henry Levin. Cast: Glenn Ford, William Holden, Ellen Drew, Ray Collins, Edgar Buchanan, Jerome Courtland, James Millican, Jim Bannon, Wm. "Bill" Phillips. A sadistic Civil War vet , now a judge, teeters on the brink of insanity-- and a town is on the edge of revolt. Only one man, the marshall, stands between them in this powerful western which delves into the devasting psychological effects of war. 98 min. DVD X6444
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The Man From Laramie (1958)
Directed by Anthony Mann. Cast: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O'Donnell, Alex Nicol, Aline MacMahon. Stewart stars as a driven man determined to get frontier justice in this gripping film about the sabotage and savagery of the wild west. Based on the story by Thomas T. Flynn. 103 min. DVD X6169
Anthony Mann bibliography
Man of the West (1958)
Directed by Anthony Mann. Cast: Gary Cooper, Julie London, Lee J. Cobb, Arthur O'Connell, Jack Lord. When the train he is on gets robbed, Link Jones (Cooper) finds himself unwillingly reunited with his old gang. Dock Tobin (Cobb), the gang's sadistic, half-crazed patriarch, was like a father to Link some twenty years past and welcomes him back. To survive, Link must take up his old ways - his killing ways. 100 min. DVD 9927; vhs 999:897
Anthony Mann bibliography
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond O'Brien, Andy Devine, Ken Murray. "Senator Ranse Stoddard returns to the city of Shinbone in the Wild West, to go to the funeral of his friend, Tom Doniphon. To a journalist, who's wondering what the senator is doing in Shinbone, he tells how his career started as "the man who shot Liberty Valance". As a lawyer he came to Shinbone to bring law and order to the west by means of law books. When the stagecoach is held up by outlaws, he is savagely beaten by Liberty Valance. He survives the attack and is nursed by his future wife, Hallie. Hallie is being wooed by a local rancher, Tom Doniphon. Ranse teaches the people of Shinbone to read and write, all the while trying to find a way of bringing Valance to justice. He finally takes up a gun and faces Valance in a menacing shootout. [ IMDB ] 123 min. DVD 8321; DVD 959
National Film Registry Selection
Meek's Cutoff (2010)
Directed by Kelly Reichardt. Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan. A wagon train of three families has hired mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a shortcut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plains desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Over the coming days, the emigrants face the scourges of hunger, thirst, and their own lack of faith in each other's instincts for survival. When they encounter a Native American, they must choose between following their guide or an 'enemy.' 104 min. DVD X6567
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The Missouri Breaks (1976)
Directed by Arthur Penn. Cast: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Kathleen Lloyd, Frederic Forrest, Harry Dean Stanton, John McLiam, John Ryan, Sam Gilman. Horse thief Tom Logan has set his sights on the horses and daughter of rancher David Braxton. However, Braxton has hired the infamous Lee Clayton to make sure that his possessions are safe and that any horse thief is stopped in his tracks. 126 min. DVD 5032
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Arthur Penn : interviews / edited by Michael Chaiken and Paul Cronin. Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c2008. (Moffitt PN1998.3.P4525 A3 2008_
Gallagher, Jag. " Buffalo Bill and the Indians & the Missouri Breaks." Film Criticism, Summer76, Vol. 1 Issue 2, p37-39, 3p
Orr, John. "Terrence Malick and Arthur Penn: The Western Re-Myth." In: The cinema of Terrence Malick : poetic visions of America / edited by Hannah Patterson. London ; New York : Wallflower, 2003. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1998.3.M3388 C56 2003)
Wood, Robin. Arthur Penn. London, Studio Vista, 1967 [i.e. 1968]. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1998.A3 P43 W6)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, Cathy Downs, Walter Brennan, Tim Holt, Cathy Downs. Wyatt Earp becomes Marshal of Tombstone in order to avenge the murder of his youngest brother. He is helped by Clementine, "Doc" Holliday and Chihuahua and finally kills old man Clanton and his sons in a gunfight at the O.K. Corral.117 min. DVD 2290
National Film Registry Selection
Barra, Allen. "Hollywood Gunfighter." In: Inventing Wyatt Earp : his life and many legends / Allen Barra. New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, c1998. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; and Bancroft F786.E18 B371 1998)
Blake, Michael F. Hollywood and the O.K. Corral : portrayals of the gunfight and Wyatt Earp Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2007. (MAIN: PN1995.9.W4 B583 2007)
Cohen, Hubert I. "Wyatt Earp at the O. K. Corral: Six Versions." The Journal of American Culture. Jun 2003. Vol. 26, Iss. 2; p. 204 (20 pages)
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Gallafent, Edward. "Four tombstones 1946-1994." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Hutton, Paul Andrew. "Showdown at the Hollywood Corral: Wyatt Earp and the Movies." Montana: The Magazine of Western History , Vol. 45, No. 3, Popular Culture Issue (Summer, 1995), pp. 2-31
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Lott, M. Ray "O.K. Corral." In: Police on screen : Hollywood cops, detectives, marshals and rangers / M. Ray Lott. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2006. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.P57 L68 2006)
Rainey, Buck. "Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
Simmon, Scott. "Concerning the Weary Legs of Wyatt Earp: The Classic Western According to Shakespeare." Literature/Film Quarterly. 1996. Vol. 24, Iss. 2; pg. 114, 14 pgs
National Film Registry Selection
Once Upon a Time Sergio Leone
With "A Fistful of Dollars" in 1964, the Italian film director, Sergio Leone, inaugurated the classic movie genre that came to be known as the spaghetti western. This program explores Leone's directorial career while underscoring his personal approach and commenting on the influences upon his art. Footage from the celebrated filmmaker's final interview, previously unpublished letters and photographs and interviews with actors and family members projects a colorful image of both the man and his methods. Dist.: Films Media Group . 58 min. Video/C 7385
One-eyed Jacks (1960)
Directed by Marlon Brando. Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Larry Duran, Sam Gilman, Timothy Carey, Miriam Colon, Elisha Cook, Rudolph Acosta, Joan Petrone, Tom Webb, Ray Teal, John Dierkes, Philip Ahn, Margarita Cordova, Hank Worden, Clem Harvey, William Forrest, Mina Martinez, Pina Pellicer. Johnny Rio, betrayed by his best friend, returns to seek vengence after serving five years in a Mexican prison. After years of obsessed hatred the film concludes with a blazing showdown 141 min. DVD 4466
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Bignell, Jonathan. "Method Westerns: The Left-Handed Gun and One-Eyed Jacks." In: In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Hughes, Howard. "'I Seen the Other Side of your Face' - 'One-Eyed Jacks' (1961)." In: Stagecoach to tombstone : the filmgoers' guide to the great westerns / Howard Hughes. London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; 2008. ( Full-text available online [UCB users only]; print Moffitt PN1995.9.W4 H833 2008)
The Outlaw (1943)
Directed by Howard Hughes. Cast: Jack Beutel, Jane Russell, Walter Huston, Thomas Mitchell. Howard Hughes shocked the film world with this high-voltage western adventure that featured the steamy screen debut of voluptuous Jane Russell. The first release of the film in 1941 caused so much indignation that the picture was withdrawn for over five years before its general release. Presents a provocative retelling of the sagebrush saga of Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday - and their heated rivalry for the love of the sultry Rio - explodes in a gripping and unforgettable climax as their fateful destinies collide with the legendary Sheriff Pat Garrett. 117 min. DVD 1296
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Doherty, Thomas. "Shootout over The Outlaw." In: Hollywood's Censor : Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration New York : Columbia University Press, c2007. pp. 251-263 ( Full text available online [UCB users only]: Print: Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.62 .D64 2007)
Leff, Leonard J. "The Outlaw and The Postman Always Rings Twice." In: The dame in the kimono : hollywood, censorship, and the production code Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, c2001. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; PFA PN1995.62 .L4 2001)
Pauly, Thomas H. "Howard Hughes and His Western: The Maverick and 'The Outlaw'." Journal of Popular Film, 1978, Vol. 6 Issue 4, p350-369, 20p
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Skinner, James M. "The Tussle with Russell: 'The Outlaw' as a Landmark in American Film." North Dakota Quarterly; 1981 49(1): 4-12, 9p.
Wittern-Keller, Laura. "The First Amendment Resurfaces, 1946-1950." In: Freedom of the screen : legal challenges to state film censorship, 1915-1981 / Laura Wittern-Keller. Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, c2008. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.62 .W58 2008)
Banned Films
The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976)
Directed by Clint Eastwood. Cast: Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney, John Vernon, Sam Bottoms, Will Sampson. A peaceful farmer turns Confederate renegade to avenge the deaths of his wife and child at the hands of bandits-turned-Union sympathizers. Based on the novel Gone to Texas by Forrest Carter. Special features: 2 documentaries: 1999 Hell Hath no fury: The making of Outlaw Josey Wales and 1976's Eastwood; introduction by Clint Eastwood; production notes; theatrical trailers. 136 min. DVD X2517
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The Paleface (1921)
Directed by and starring Buster Keaton. Keaton is mistaken by the Indians for an unscrupulous oil-promoter. 20 min. DVD 254; vhs 999:910
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Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Cast: James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Jason Robards. Outlaw Pat Garrett puts on a badge and stalks his best friend across the vast New Mexican desert in this classic portrayal of a western legend. 122 min. DVD 5017
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Pocket Money (1972)
Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Paul Newman, Lee Marvin, Strother Martin, Hector Elizondo. Cowboy Jim Kane's bank loan is due. So is his next alimony payment. And the Appaloosas he brought in from Mexico have been slapped into quarantine. What Jim needs is some pocket money which gets the otherwise honest cowboy mixed up in some shady dealings with a crooked rancher. Based on the novel "Jim Kane" by J.P.S. Brown. 100 min. DVD X2603
McNiven, Roger. "The Western Landscape of Raoul Walsh." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, Fall75, Issue 15, p50-55, 6p
Pursued (1947)
Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Teresa Wright, Robert Mitchum, Judith Anderson, Dean Jagger. "This film advanced the career of Robert Mitchum, a new star, and one who had already had a background in noir with the classic "Out of the Past" as well as in other noir-tinged works as "Undercurrent", "Crossfire" and "When Strangers Marry." Along with "The Furies," "Pursued" qualifies as one of the few Freudian Westerns in that the protagonist, Jeff Callam, has been adapted and raised by the Callams following the unsolved mass murder of his family. He is plagued by nightmares involving gunfire and flashing spurs but he can never clearly see the faces of his parent's killers. In the course of the film he loses a coin toss with his step-brother and goes off to fight in the Spanish American War. On returning, he is forced to kill his step-brother in a gunfight and finds himself tormented by what he sees as an unnatural love for his step-sister. Combined with his recurring nightmares, Jeff proves a very modern figure, very like a shell-shocked G.I. returning from World War II. James Wong Howe, who had the same year, shot the classic noir boxing film, "Body and Soul," with John Garfield, brought a dark brooding look to the film, with the night scenes providing a visual portrait of the protagonist's inner torment." [Shepler, Michael. " Sagebrush Noir ." 105 min. DVD X795
McNiven, Roger. "The Western Landscape of Raoul Walsh." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, Fall75, Issue 15, p50-55, 6p
The Phantom of the West (1931)
Directed by D. Ross Lederman. Cast: Tom Tyler, Kermit Mayard, William Desmond, Dorothy Gulliver. A 10 episode Mascot Serial. An escaped convict tells rancher Jim Lester that the real murderer of his father is hiding in a nearby town. A mysterious Phantom starts terrorizing the town, asking "Will you talk or must seven men pay for one man's crime?" Will the Phantom finally discover the identity of the killer? 161 min. DVD 7939
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Rawhide (1951)
Directed by Henry Hathaway. Cast: Tyrone Power, Susan Hayward, Hugh Marlowe, Dean Jagger, Edgar Buchanan, Jack Elam. A gang of outlaws seize a stage coach way-station, kill the station manager and hold the surviving man and woman captive while they await the arrival of a gold shipment. Special features: Susan Hayward: Hollywood's straight shooter featurette; shoot it in Lone Pine! featurette; restoration comparison; original theatrical trailer; interactive pressbook; advertising gallery; still gallery. 87 min. DVD X3176
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"Henry Hathaway." In: The Hollywood professionals / by Kingsley Canham ... [et al.] London : Tantivy Press; New York : A.S. Barnes, 1973. Main (Gardner) Stacks)PN1998.A2 H64 1973
Henry Hathaway / edited and annotated by Rudy Behlmer ; interviews conducted by Polly Platt. Hathaway, Henry, 1898-1985. Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2001. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; PFA PN1998.3.H373 A5 2001)
Manon, Hugh S. "Henry Hathaway's Rawhide and the Hermetic Frontiers of Film Noir." Film & History, Sep2003, Vol. 33 Issue 2, p36-47, 12p
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Red River (1948)
Directed by Howard Hawks. Cast: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Walter Brennan, Joanne Dru, Coleen Gray, John Ireland, Noah Beery, Jr., Harry Carey, Sr., Harry Carey, Jr., Paul Fix. With no market for his herd, the master of a vast cattle ranch and his son decide to head the first cattle drive over the now famous Chisholm Trail, past the Red River, into Missouri. The path is filled with hardship and the drive looks hopeless as the men struggle to prevail.34 min. DVD 351; DVD X6152; VHS 999:414
Rainey, Buck. "The James-Dalton Gang." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
Rhythm on the Range (1936)
Directed by Norman Taurog. Cast: Bing Crosby, Frances Farmer, Bob Burns, Martha Raye. After performing in a rodeo at Madison Square Garden, cowboy Jeff Larrabee is heading back West with his prize bull, Cuddles, when his tranquility is shattered. There's a runaway in his boxcar: pretty New York heiress Doris Halliday. Doris is fed up with the big city and hankering for romance and the great outdoors. But Jeff's a hard-to-win kind of guy. 88 min. Video/C 999:3857
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Ride Lonesome (1959)
Directed by Budd Boetticher. Cast: Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts, James Best, Lee Van Cleef, James Coburn. A wanted murderer, Billy John, is captured by Ben Brigade, a bounty hunter, who intends to take him to Santa Cruz to be hanged. Brigade stops at a staging post, where he saves the manager's wife from an Indian attack, and enlists the help of two outlaws to continue his journey more safely. However, the Indian attacks persist, the outlaws plan to take Billy for themselves, tempted by the offer of amnesty for his captor, and Billy's brother Frank is in hot pursuit to rescue him. But Brigade has plans of his own ... 73 min. DVD X572
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Kitses, Demetrius John. Budd Boetticher: The western. a BFI Education department dossier. [London, British Film Institute, 1969?] (Pacific Film Archive PN1998.3.B63 K57 1969)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: studies of authorship within the western Bloomington, Indiana University Press [1970, c1969] (MOFF: PN1995.9.W4 K5; PFA : PN1995.9.W4 K5 1970)
Wicking, Christopher. "Budd Boetticher." Screen 1969 10: 9-31
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Ride the High Country (1962)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Cast: Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Mariette Hartley, Ron Starr, Edgar Buchanan, R.G. Armstrong, Jonie Jackson. Two retired lawmen help transport gold from a mining camp to the bank, but one has ideas of his own for the gold. 93 min. DVD 5014; vhs 999:175
National Film Registry Selection
Rim Fire (1949)
Directed by B. Reeves Eason. Cast: James Millican, Reed Hadley, Mary Beth Hughes, Henry Hull, Fuzzy Knight. An undercover army officer investigating the theft of army gold shipments takes a job as deputy in a small town that's being terrorized by what they believe is the ghost of a gambler who was wrongly convicted and hanged for those robberies. 63 min. DVD X6576
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Rio Bravo (1959)
Directed by Howard Hawks. Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, John Russell. A Texas border sheriff fights off hired gunmen to keep a murderer in custody. 141 min. DVD 4270
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Rio Grande (1950)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr., Chill Wills, J. Carrol Naish, Victor McLaughlin, Claude Jarman, Jr. A vivid look at the gentlemanly spirit of the Calvary stationed on the Mexican border during the post-Civil War days and the difficult relationship between an estranged father and his son. 105 min. DVD 300
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Rio Lobo (1970)
Directed by Howard Hawks. Cast: John Wayne, Jorge Rivero, Jennifer O'Neill, Jack Elam, Victor French, Susana Dosamantes. A spectacular robbery of a Union pay train by Confederate guerillas leads to the train's colonel befriending the leaders of the robbery when the war ends. Together, they seek the Union traitors responsible for a string of Confederate train robberies. 114 min. DVD X4602
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Roy Colt and Winchester Jack (Roy Colt e Winchester Jack) (Italy, 1970)
Directed by Mario Bava. Cast: Brett Halsey, Charles Southwood, Marilù Tolo, Teodoro Corrà, Isa Miranda. Two outlaws compete with each other over a treasure map that will lead them to buried gold while one of them is in league with a sadistic priest-turned-crime lord, while a young Native American girl helps both outlaws and plays both sides against each other. 85 min. DVD X1440
Roy Rogers
Springtime in the Sierras(1947)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, Andy Devine, Jane Frazee, Chester Conklin, Bob Nolan, Sons of the Pioneers. Someone is illegally killing deer and other protected wildlife and making a fortune selling the meat. When a kindly old man, who has devoted his life to protecting animals, is murdered, Roy Rogers and his portly comic sidekick (Andy Devine) swing into action. 75 min. DVD 7912
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The Gay Ranchero (1948)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, Tito Guizar, Jane Frazee, Andy Devine, Estelita Rodriquez, Sons of the Pioneers. Crooks want to gain control of a private airport, and aren't above sabotage and murder to get what they want. Riding to the rescue is sheriff Rogers, who is aided by Latino-flyboy Nicci Lopez (Tito Guizar). Roy gets to warble several tunes both by himself and with heroine Jane Frazee, while Tito Guizar solos on "You Belong to My Heart" and "Granada." 55 min. DVD 7912
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Grand Canyon Trail(1948)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, Jane Frazee, Andy Devine, Robert Livingston, Roy Barcroft, Charles Coleman, Foy Willing, Riders of the Purple Sage. Filmed in color at the majestic location of the title, Grand Canyon Trail stars Roy Rogers as a rancher going up against crooked mining engineer Regan, who has conned the eastern owner into believing that his mine is worthless. But his pretty secretary, Carol Martin is suspicious and travels to the ghost town masquerading as the boss' daughter. Rancher Rogers and his hired hands -- Foy Willing & the Riders of the Purple Sage in their first Rogers Western -- have all invested in the mine, courtesy of hayseed blacksmith "Cookie" Bullfincher (Andy Devine), and are doing a bit of digging themselves. Roy and the Riders capture the gang and Regan, whom Carol dispatches with a well-appointed rock. In between the action, Roy and the Riders perform "Everything's Going My Way," "Grand Canyon Trail" and "Colorado Joe." 66 min. DVD 7912
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The Far Frontier (1948)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, Gail Davis, Andy Devine, Francis Ford, Roy Barcroft, Clayton Moore, Foy Willing, Riders of the Purple Sage. Roy rides to the rescue of his boyhood friend, a victim of amnesia, who has been manipulated by a ruthless gang of smugglers. Old reliable heavy Roy Barcroft plays Bart Carroll, the head bad guy, who'll mow down anyone -- friend and foe alike -- to avoid capture. Gail Davis, TV's Annie Oakley, plays Rogers' romantic interest, while "Lone Ranger" Clayton Moore appears sans mask. 53 min. DVD 7912
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Home in Oklahoma (1946)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Carol Hughes, George "Gabby" Hayes, George Meeker, Sons of the Pioneers. After a rancher is murdered and his fortune inherited by a young boy, a frontier newspaper editor teams up with a big-city journalist to hunt the killer. Following the trail of clues like a Sagebrush Sherlock, Rogers exposes a rival rancher as the culprit. Musical highlights include Roy and Dale's rendition of the novelty tune "Miguelito." 72 min. DVD 7912
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My Pal Trigger (1946)
Directed by Frank McDonald. Cast: Roy Rogers, George "Gabby" Hayes, Dale Evans, Jack Holt, Bob Nolan and The Sons of the Pioneers. This gentle, tuneful western is one of cowboy crooner Roy Rogers' best and most successful films; it is also his personal favorite. The fanciful tale tells how Rogers obtained his magnificent horse Trigger and begins with horse trader Rogers as he prepares to breed his best mare with his best friend's glorious Palomino stallion. Trouble comes in the form of a villainous gambler who has similar plans for his own mare. He attempts to rustle the stud, but the attempt fails, the stallion escapes and breeds with Roger's mare. Angrily, the gambler shows up and shoots the beautiful horse, leaving Rogers to shoulder the blame. Fortunately, Roy and his impregnated mare flee. Later she gives birth to Trigger who helps Rogers get revenge after he grows up. 79 min. DVD 7912
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Roll on Texas Moon(1946)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers and Trigger, George "Gabby" Hayes, Dale Evans, Bob Nolan and The Sons of the Pioneers. Roll on Texas Moon was the first of 26 Roy Rogers vehicles directed by fast-action specialist William Witney. The plot concerns a deadly feud between cattle ranchers and sheepherders, with the villains playing both ends down the middle. Working on behalf of the cattlemen, Rogers tries to avoid an all-out range war, finding time to champion the cause of gorgeous sheep rancher Jill Delaney (Dale Evans). 68 min. DVD 7912
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Apache Rose (1947)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Olin Howland, George Meeker, John Laurenz, Russ Vincent, Sons of the Pioneers. The Vegas family own an oil rich ranch and Calhoun is after the mineral rights. He gets Carlos Vega to run up huge gambling debts, and when Carlos' sister arrives, Calhoun tries to have her killed. Roy ultimately finds a clue that leads him to Calhouns' offshore gambling ship. 76 min. DVD 7912
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Bells of San Angelo (1947)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Andy Devine, John McGuire, Bob Nolan, Sons of the Pioneers, David Sharpe. The Bells of San Angelo was the second Republic Roy Rogers western to be filmed in the "new" Trucolor process (actually the old Magnacolor process). Set in the modern west, the story involves a silver-smuggling racket headed by rotten Rex Gridley. In a novel scripting touch, Roy Rogers doesn't outwit the villains-and in fact is soundly beaten by the bad guys halfway through the film. It's up to heroine Lee Madison (Dale Evans), a writer of fanciful cowboy novels, to save the day! 75 min. DVD 7912
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Young Bill Hickok (1940)
Directed by Joseph Kane. Cast: Roy Rogers, George "Gabby" Hayes, Helen Parrish, Onslow Stevens, Joan Woodbury, Sons of the Pioneers. Roy Rogers champions the cause of Easterner Sylvia Clark, who is in danger of losing her father's ranch to crooked land speculators. Roy tries to deal with the villains through legal channels, but they spoil things by resorting to strong-arm tactics. Making our hero's task all the more difficult is that the principal heavy is woman, one Vera Martin --and just try to catch Roy Rogers punching out a female! 53 min. DVD 7912
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Sunset Serenade [(1942)
Directed by William Witney. Cast: Roy Rogers, George "Gabby" Hayes, Jacqueline Wells, John Milton, Sally Payne, Monte Blue. During the Civil War, a European agent plans to seize western territory and control of California's wealth by forcing the state to break away from the Union. Young Wild Bill Hickok (Rogers) as a relay station agent assisted by Calamity Jane, overpowers the foreign agents. 53 min. DVD 7912
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Heart of the Golden West (1942)
Directed by Joseph Kane. Cast: Roy Rogers, Smiley Burnette, George "Gabby" Hayes, Ruth Terry, Bob Nolan, WAlter Catlett, Paul Harvey, Sons of the Pioneers. In this fast-paced comedy-Western Roy persuades an eccentric steamboat owner to transport ranchers cattle to market. The surrounding ranchers would otherwise be forced to ship their cattle with crooked trucking company operator Ross Lambert 54 min. DVD 7912
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King of the Cowboys (1943)
Directed by Joseph Kane. Cast: Roy Rogers, Smiley Burnette, Trigger, Peggy Moran, Gerald Mohr, James Bush, Lloyd Corrigan, Dorthea Kent, Russell Hicks, Irving Bacon, Yakima Canutt, Sons of the Pioneers. Roy playes himself, a rodeo star assigned by the governor, Russell Hicks, to investigate a series of warehouse bombings. With sidekick Frog Millhouse in tow, Roy infiltrates the Merry Makers, a touring tent show whose phony mind reader, Maurice , is the chief operative for a sabotage ring run by the governor's secretary. 56 min. DVD 7912
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Silver Spurs (1943)
Directed by Joseph Kane. Cast: Roy Rogers, John Carradine, Smiley Burnette, Phyllis Brooks, Bob Nolan, Yakima Canutt, Sons of the Pioneers. This Roy Rogers musical western gets off to a grim start when rancher Jerry Johnson is murdered by resort-hotel operator Lucky Miller. It's all part of Lucky's scheme to take financial advantage of a railroad right-of-way construction project. Conspiring with the villain is Johnson's mail-order bride Mary Hardigan --or is she? No matter: the main plot complication concerns the efforts by Miller to frame Roy Rogers, Johnson's ranch foreman, for the murder. 54 min. DVD 7912
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The Yellow Rose of Texas (1944)
Directed by Joseph Kane. Cast: Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Bob Nolan, Grant Withers, Harry Shannon, George Cleveland, Sons of the Pioneers. Rogers plays a frontier insurance investigator who is assigned to locate a company payroll stolen several years earlier. Working undercover, Roy poses as a singer on a river showboat named "Yellow Rose of Texas." The showboat's owner, Betty Weston (Dale Evans), is the daughter of the man who was arrested for the robbery. She's convinced that her dad is innocent, and Roy proves that she's right by capturing the genuine culprit. 56 min. DVD 7912
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The Roy Rogers Show (TV)
Cast: Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Pat Brady, Minerva Urecal, Francis McDonald, John Doucette, Bill Catching, Paul Fierro, Al Ferguson. Contents: Phantom rustlers (27 min.) -- Pat Brady, outlaw (27 min.) Two episodes from the 1950's television Western series staring the "singing cowboy" Roy Rogers who was joined by his wife Dale Evans, his horse Trigger, and his bumbling sidekick Pat Brady. In Phantom rustlers Roy and Dale go after cattle rustlers who are preying on the small ranchers. In Pat Bracy, outlaw, Brady poses as an outlaw for a photograph and winds up being mistaken for the real thing so his accusers can collect the bounty. Program originally telecast the 1950's. Segments from a television program originally produced 1951-1957.54 min. Video/C 6787
The Roy Rogers Show
Cast: Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Pat Brady. A segment from the television program from the Double R Ranch featuring "The king of the cowboys" Roy, his "smartest horse in the movies" Trigger, "the queen of the cowgirls" Dale Evans, her horse Buttermilk, their dog Bullet, and even Pat's jeep Nellybelle. Segment from a television program originally produced 1951-1957. DVD 9645
Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Directed by Leo McCarey, Cast: Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, Zasu Pitts, Leila Hyams. A stuffy British butler, Marmaduke Ruggles, is traded in a poker game from an English Duke to a wealthy and rowdy American, Egbert Floud. Ruggles' new home is Red Gap, Washington, where he is introduced by Egbert as "Colonel" Ruggles. The town ladies are quite taken by the sophisticated servant in disguise as he enamors them with fictitious stories of battles gone by. Ruggles proves his newfound patriotism in one of the best scenes of the film, his recitation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in the Silver Dollar Saloon. The dream of freedom leads him to open his own restaurant, where one of his first customers is the Duke, who has come to reclaim his former servant. 90 min.DVD X4206
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Adíos Sabata (Indio Black, sai che ti dico: Sei un gran figlio di--) (Italy, 1971)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini (aka Frank Kramer). Cast: Yul Brynner, Dean Reed, Pedro Sanchez, Gerard Herter, Sal Borgese, Franco Fantasia, Gianni Rizzo. Mexican revolutionaries, determined to be free of European tyranny, hire gunslinger Sabata (Yul Brynner) to rob a transport of Austrian gold in order to buy weapons and shame the brutal Colonel Skimmel, ruler of the local garrison. The robery goes well until the gang discovers that Skimmel has tricked them and kept the gold for himself. 105 min. DVD X3532
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Rustlers Alley (1937 )
Directed by Nate Watt. Cast: William Boyd, George Hayes, Russell Hayden, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Ankrum. Hopalong Cassidy, Windy and Lucky find lots of action when the local bank is robbed, cattle stolen and a gang of rustlers try to buy up ranches in the valley. 59 min. vhs 999:3946
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Return of Sabata (E tornato Sabata ... hai chiuso un'altra volta) (Italy, 1971)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini (aka Frank Kramer). Cast: Lee Van Cleef, William Berger, Reiner Schöne, Giampiero Albertino, Pedro Sanchez, Annabelle Incontraram, Jacqueline Alexandre, Nick Jordan, Karis Vassili, Steffen Zacharias, Gianni Rizzo. The McClintocks "own" the town of Hobsonville, but Sabata refuses to pay their outrageous taxes and seeks his own kind of revenge. 106 min. DVD X3531
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Little Big Horn (1951)
Directed by Charles Marquis Warren. Cast: Lloyd Bridges, John Ireland, Marie Windsor, Reed Hadley, Jim Davis, Hugh O'Brian. A cavalry patrol discovers a horde of Indians ready to ambush Custer's 7th Cavalry. They set out to warn Gen. Custer that he is about to embark on a suicidal mission. 86 min. DVD X6576
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Searchers (1956)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Natalie Wood, Ward Bond. A Civil War veteran on the trail of a Comanche raiding party that kidnapped his dead brother's daughters. 119 min. DVD 264; VHS 999:69
National Film Registry Selection
Seven Men From Now (1956)
Directed by Budd Boetticher. Cast: Randolph Scott, Gail Russell, Lee Marvin, Walter Reed, John Larch. A former sheriff, haunted by the loss of his wife in a Wells Fargo robbery, hunts for the seven men responsible for her death. Along the way, he assists a couple travelling west from Kansas City to California, and is forced to deal with another former outlaw he had once sent to prison. Special features: Commentary soundtrack by film historian James Kitses; excerpts from featurette "Budd Boetticher, an American original"; featurette "The John Wayne Stock Company: Gail Russell"; featurette on the filming location "Lone Pine"; original theatrical trailer; Batjac trailer; photo gallery; credits. 78 min. DVD X6562
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Dibb, Mike. "A Time and a place: Budd Boetticher and the western." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Budd Boetticher: The western. a BFI Education department dossier. [London, British Film Institute, 1969?] (Pacific Film Archive PN1998.3.B63 K57 1969)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: studies of authorship within the western Bloomington, Indiana University Press [1970, c1969] (MOFF: PN1995.9.W4 K5; PFA : PN1995.9.W4 K5 1970)
Wicking, Christopher. "Budd Boetticher." Screen 1969 10: 9-31
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Shane (1953)
Directed by George Stevens. Cast: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon De Wilde, Jack Palance, Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan. A drifter and retired gunfighter assists a homestead family terrorized by an aging cattleman and his hired gun. 117 min. DVD 4261; vhs 999:541
National Film Registry Selection
Shanghai Noon (2000)
Directed by Tom Dey. Cast: Jackie Chan, Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu, Roger Yuan. Two cultures collide when East meets West in this stunt-filled, action-adventure comedy. Chinese Imperial Guard Chan goes West to rescue the beautiful kidnapped Princess Pei Pei. There he meets up with laid-back outlaw cowboy dude Roy O'Bannon: the best mismatch ever made in the rough and tumble Old West. 110 min. DVD 726
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She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1946)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: John Wayne, Joanne Dru, John Agar, Ben Johnson, Harry Carey, Jr. Captain Nathan Brittles, a veteran of the winning of the West, was only days away from retirement. But 265 cavalrymen lie dead at Little Big Horn, and the prairie is again dark with buffalo. Convinced these are omens of victory, the Cheyenne set out to recover their lost glory, and Captain Brittles suddenly has one more job to do. 93 min. DVD 2479
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The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958)
Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Jayne Mansfield, Kenneth More, Henry Hull, Bruce Cabot, Ronald Squire. A comedy/Western about a refined English gentleman who becomes sheriff of the toughest town this side of Tombstone and the blonde saloon owner who taught him how. Based on a short story by Jacob Hay. 56 min. DVD 133
McNiven, Roger. "The Western Landscape of Raoul Walsh." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, Fall75, Issue 15, p50-55, 6p
The Shootist (1976)
Directed by Don Siegel. Cast: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, Bill McKinney, James Stewart. A terminally ill gunfighter seeks to retire quietly but is embroiled in one last valiant battle and dies with honor. 100 min. DVD DVD 8321; vhs 999:915
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Sky Lode (1954)
Directed by Allan Dwan. Cast: John Payne, Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea. Dan Ballard's Fourth of July wedding to Rose is interrupted by the arrival of four men who claim to be U.S. Marshals with a warrant to arrest him for murder and robbery. Ballard denies the charges, and as their leader is the brother of the dead man he decides to make a stand. His erstwhile friends start to desert him until only Rose and an earlier flame, saloon girl Dolly, are left. 81 min. DVD X6574
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Soldier Blue (1970)
Directed by Ralph Nelson. Cast: Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, Donald Pleasence. A paymaster's detachment of the U.S. cavalry is attacked by Indians seeking gold, and two white survivors trek through the desert. 105 min. DVD 6753; vhs 999:460
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Something New (silent, 1920)
Directed by Bert Van Tuyle. Cast: Nell Shipman, Bert Van Tuyle, L. M. Wells, William McCormack. A thrilling and hilarious Western where the hero comes to the rescue of the kidnapped girl -- in a 1920 Maxwell sedan! Chased by bandits on horseback across rocky terrain, they survive some of the most amazing (and real) stunts ever attempted in a roadster. 60 min. 999:2635
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The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
Directed by Henry Hathaway. Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Martha Hyer, Michael Anderson, Jr., Earl Holliman, Jeremy Slate, James Gregory, Paul Fix, George Kennedy, Dennis Hopper. The day that Katie Elder is buried, her four sons return home to Clearwater, Texas, to pay their last respects. It is a he-man story, as well as, a drama of the maternal influence of Katie Elder, her sacrifice, love and incredible valor. The hopes and aspirations for her sons are movingly communicated from beginning to conclusion. Based upon a story by Talbot Jennings. 121 min. DVD 8320
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"Henry Hathaway." In: The Hollywood professionals / by Kingsley Canham ... [et al.] London : Tantivy Press; New York : A.S. Barnes, 1973. Main (Gardner) Stacks)PN1998.A2 H64 1973
Henry Hathaway / edited and annotated by Rudy Behlmer ; interviews conducted by Polly Platt. Hathaway, Henry, 1898-1985. Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2001. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; PFA PN1998.3.H373 A5 2001)
Hughes, Howard. "'Ain't You Got No Respect for your Elders?' - 'The Sons of Katie Elder' (1965)." In: Stagecoach to tombstone : the filmgoers' guide to the great westerns / Howard Hughes. London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; 2008. ( Full-text available online [UCB users only]; print Moffitt PN1995.9.W4 H833 2008)
The Spaghetti West
Celebrates the history of the Spaghetti Western - the wildly popular but brutal cinema classics of the 1960s created by Italy's finest filmmakers. Featuring narrations by Spaghetti Western director Sergio Leone and actor Robert Forster, plus interviews with legendary composer Ennio Morricone, director Alex Cox, and a host of others who pioneered this vibrant film movement. 2007. 56 min. DVD 8318
Clint Eastwood bibliography
Stagecoach (1939)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Andy Devine, John Carradine. Nine passengers board a Cheyenne-bound stagecoach, each with an urgent reason for the journey, each determined to live through the dangerous trip through Indian territory. Special features on DVD 5630: Special features (Disc 1): Commentary by biographer of John Ford, Scott Eyman. (Disc 2): Feature length American Masters retrospective profile "John Ford/John Wayne: the filmmaker and the legend," new documentary "Stagecoach: a story of redemption," audio-only bonus: Radio adaptation with Claire Trevor and Randolph Scott. 98 min. DVD 5630; DVD 98; VHS 999:94
National Film Registry Selection
Nichols, Dudley. Stagecoach: a film by John Ford and Dudley Nichols. London (47 Dean St, W.1), Lorrimer Publishing Ltd, 1971. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1997 .N481)
"Stage Coach." In: Twenty best film plays, edited by John Gassner and Dudley Nichols. New York, Crown Publishers [1943] (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1887.A1 G32)
Streets of Laredo (TV, 1995)
Directed by Joe Sargent. Cast: James Garner, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, Randy Quaid, Ned Beatty, Wes Studi, Charles Martin Smith, George Carlin, Alexis Cruz, Kevin Conway, James Gammon, Sonia Braga. A vicious new breed of killer is stalking the west Texas plains. And only an old-fashioned kind of lawman can stop him. In this sequel to Lonesome Dove, legendary Texas Ranger Woodrow Call is pitted against his deadliest adversary ever. Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry. 224 min. DVD 6146
McNiven, Roger. "The Western Landscape of Raoul Walsh." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, Fall75, Issue 15, p50-55, 6p
The Tall T (1957)
Directed by Budd Boetticher. Cast: Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Arthur Hunnicutt. Having lost his horse in a bet, Pat Brennan hitches a ride with a stagecoach carrying newlyweds, Willard and Doretta Mims. At the next station the coach and its passengers fall into the hands of a trio of outlaws headed by a man named Usher. When Usher learns that Doretta is the daughter of a rich copper-mine owner, he decides to hold her for ransom. Tension build over the next 24 hours as Usher awaits a response to his demands and as a romantic attachment grows between Brennan and Doretta. 78 min. DVD X572
National Film Registry Selection
Kitses, Demetrius John. Budd Boetticher: The western. a BFI Education department dossier. [London, British Film Institute, 1969?] (Pacific Film Archive PN1998.3.B63 K57 1969)
Kitses, Demetrius John. Horizons West; Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: studies of authorship within the western Bloomington, Indiana University Press [1970, c1969](MOFF: PN1995.9.W4 K5; PFA : PN1995.9.W4 K5 1970)
Wicking, Christopher. "Budd Boetticher." Screen 1969 10: 9-31
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Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969)
Directed by Abraham Polonsky. Cast: Robert Redford, Katharine Ross, Robert Blake, Susan Clark, Barry Sullivan. A modern western classic based on the true story of a Pauite Indian, named Willie Boy, and his bride who become the objects of the last great Western manhunt after he kills her father in a "marriage by capture". As the pressure builds, the events explode in the tragic deaths of Lola and Willie and a turning point for Sheriff Cooper. 98 min. vhs 999:1447
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The Terror of Tinytown (1938)
Directed by Sam Newfield. Cast: Billy Curtis, Yvonne Moray, Little Billy, Billy Platt, Fern McDill, Sam Newfield. A cast of midgets conduct the traditional rudiments of westerns, riding Shetland ponies and hauling the villain beneath the swinging doors of the saloon. 62 min. DVD X531
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The Texas Rangers (1936 )
Directed by King Vidor. Cast: Fred MacMurray, Jack Oakie, Jean Parker, Lloyd Nolan, Edward Ellis, Bennie Bartlett. MacMurray and Oakie play two devil-may-care outlaws who roam the Texas frontier. Their days are numbered, however, when the Texas Rangers sweep through to bring law and order. The two decide to join the Rangers in order to stay one jump ahead of the law, but as they become heroes, they are suddenly in conflict --with themselves and their old partners in crime. 99 min. DVD X6575; vhs 999:3951
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
They Died with Their Boots On (1941)
Directed by Raoul Walsh. Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Arthur Kennedy, Charley Grapewin, Gene Lockhart, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Ridges, John Litel, Walter Hampden, Sydney Greenstreet, Regis Toomey, Hattie McDaniel. Tells the story of General George Armstrong Custer (1839 0 1876)from the time he enters West Point military academy, through the American Civil War and finally to his last days in the battle of Little Big Horn (June 25-26, 1876). 117 min. DVD 4019
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McNiven, Roger. "The Western Landscape of Raoul Walsh." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, Fall75, Issue 15, p50-55, 6p
Niemi, Robert. "They Died with Their Boots On." In: History in the media : film and television Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, c2006. (MAIN: PN1995.9.H5 N54 2006)
Pearson, Roberta E. "Custer's Still the Hero: Textual Stability and Transformation." Journal of Film & Video; Spring-Fall95, Vol. 47 Issue 1-3, p82-97, 16p<
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Three Godfathers (1948)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, Harry Carey Jr., Ward Bond, Mae Marsh, Jane Darwell, Ben Johnson. John Ford's Western retelling of the Biblical Three Wise Men tale remains a scenic and thematic masterpiece. Fugitive bank robbers Robert, William and Pedro stand at a desert grave. Caring for the newborn infant of the woman they just buried will ruin any chance of escape. But they won't go back on their promise to her; they won't abandon little Robert William Pedro. 106 min. DVD 5670
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3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Directed by Delmer Daves. Cast: Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr. As other volunteers quit or are killed, a rancher is left alone to deal with the responsibility of putting a captured outlaw aboard a Fort Yuma-bound train. 92 min. DVD 9255
Miller, Cynthia. "3:10 to Yuma." Kansas History Summer2009, Vol. 32 Issue 2, p127 2p. A HREF="http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=43608861&site=ehost-live">
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Walker, Michael. "The Westerns of Delmer Daves." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Wicking, Christopher. "Interview with Delmer Daves." Screen 1969 10: 55-66
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3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Directed by James Mangold. Cast: Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Logan Lerman, Dallas Roberts, Ben Foster, Peter Fonda, Vinessa Shaw, Alan Tudyk, Luce Rains, Gretchen Mol, Lennie Loftin, Rio Alexander, Johnny Whitworth. Arizona in the late 1800s. Infamous outlaw Ben Wade and his vicious gang of thieves and murderers have plagued the Southern Railroad. When Wade is captured, Civil War veteran Dan Evans, struggling to survive on his drought-plagued ranch, volunteers to deliver him alive to the train that will take the killer to trial. On the trail, Evans and Wade, each from very different worlds, begin to earn each other's respect. But with Wade's outfit on their trail, and dangers at every turn, the mission soon becomes a violent, impossible journey toward each man's destiny. Special features: Audio commentary with director James Mangold; "Destination Yuma:" making-of documentary; "An epic explored" featurette; "Outlaws, gangs and posses" featurette; deleted scenes. 122 min. DVD 9285
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Tin Star (1957)
Directed by Anthony Mann. Cast: Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, Betsy Palmer, Michel Ray, Neville Brand, John McIntire. Tacitum marshal-turned-bounty hunter Morg Hickman rides into a small town where new sheriff Ben Owens is the sole representative of the law. Sensing that the boy could use some seasoning, Hickman makes it his mission to teach the sheriff how to protect himself against the criminal element. The older Hickman and the younger Owens find they are kindred spirits in their dedication. Using the lessons learned, Owens proves his worth by taking on the town hothead. 92 min. DVD X6445
Anthony Mann bibliography
Tom Horn (1980)
Director, William Wiard. Cast: Steve McQueen, Linda Evans, Richard Farnsworth, Slim Pickens. When he rode into Wyoming in 1900, Tom Horn was already a legend. He was as successful at wiping out rustlers as he had been at everything else he'd tried. But the West was changing, and a free spirit like Horn was a liability to the men who had hired him. Based on the true story, Tom Horn presents a harsher, less romantic vision of the West, but one that remains true to the frontier's raging spirit. 97 mn. DVD 5083
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Tombstone (1993)
Directed by George P. Cosmatos. Cast: Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Michael Biehn, Powers Boothe, Robert Burke, Dana Delany, Sam Elliott, Stephen Lang, Terry O'Quinn, Joanna Pacula, Bill Paxton, Jason Priestley, Michael Rooker, Jon Tenney, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Billy Zane, Billy Bob Thornton, Charlton Heston, Robert Mitchum. A band of outlaws who call themselves The Cowboys are creating a path of destruction to the mining town of Tombstone. Wyatt Earp is coaxed out of semi-retirement, teaming up with Doc Holliday to restore law and order to Tombstone, culminating in a shootout at the OK Corral. 130 min. DVD X4778
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Barra, Allen. "Hollywood Gunfighter." In: Inventing Wyatt Earp : his life and many legends / Allen Barra. New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, c1998. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; and Bancroft F786.E18 B371 1998)
Blake, Michael F. Hollywood and the O.K. Corral : portrayals of the gunfight and Wyatt Earp Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2007. (MAIN: PN1995.9.W4 B583 2007)
Cohen, Hubert I. "Wyatt Earp at the O. K. Corral: Six Versions." The Journal of American Culture. Jun 2003. Vol. 26, Iss. 2; p. 204 (20 pages)
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Gallafent, Edward. "Four tombstones 1946-1994." In: The book of westerns / edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye. New York : Continuum, 1996. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Moffitt PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996; Bancroft PN1995.9.W4.B66 1996)
Hughes, Howard. "'I'm Your Huckleberry' - 'Tombstone' (1993)." In: Stagecoach to tombstone : the filmgoers' guide to the great westerns / Howard Hughes. London ; New York : I.B. Tauris ; 2008. ( Full-text available online [UCB users only]; print Moffitt PN1995.9.W4 H833 2008)
Hutton, Paul Andrew. "Showdown at the Hollywood Corral: Wyatt Earp and the Movies." Montana: The Magazine of Western History , Vol. 45, No. 3, Popular Culture Issue (Summer, 1995), pp. 2-31
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Lott, M. Ray "O.K. Corral." In: Police on screen : Hollywood cops, detectives, marshals and rangers / M. Ray Lott. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2006. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1995.9.P57 L68 2006)
Luhr, William. "The scarred woman behind the gun: gender, race, and history in recent westerns: Tombstone (1993) and The unforgiven (1992)." Bilingual Review, January/April 1995, Vol. 20, p37-44, 8p
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Rainey, Buck. "Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
Simmon, Scott. "Concerning the Weary Legs of Wyatt Earp: The Classic Western According to Shakespeare." Literature/Film Quarterly. 1996. Vol. 24, Iss. 2; pg. 114, 14 pgs
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El Topo (Mexico, 1971)
Directed by Alexandro Jodorowsky. Cast: Alexandro Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Mara Lorenzio, David Silva, Paula Romo, Jacqueline Luis, Robert John, Hector Martinez, Juan Jose Gurrola, Victor Fosado, Agustin Isunza. First part of the film follows El Topo, a gunfighter and his seven year old son on their journey across the desert as they come upon a massacre and hunt down the killers. The second part shows the death of El Topo, and the rise of his son to fill his place. Non-US format DVD. 119 min. DVD X6107; DVD 2955 (PAL format)
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True Grit (2010)
Directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, Hailee Steinfeld, Dakin Matthews, Elizabeth Marvel. Mattie Ross is determined to avenge her father's blood by capturing Tom Chaney, the man who shot and killed him for two pieces of gold. Just fourteen, she enlists the help of Rooster Cogburn, a one-eyed, trigger-happy U.S. Marshal with an affinity for drinking, and hardened Texas Ranger LaBoeuf to track the fleeing Chaney. Despite their differences, their ruthless determination leads them on a perilous adventure that can only have one outcome: retribution. Based on the book True grit by Charles Portis. 110 min. DVD X5992
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True Grit (1969)
Directed by Henry Hathaway. Cast: John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Kim Darby, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, Strother Martin. U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn is hired by a 14-year-old girl to kill the man who murdered her father and stole the family nest egg. She also accepts the help of a Texas Ranger, who is intent on the reward, and accompanies them both on the quest. Special DVD features: Commentary by Jeb Rosebrook, Bob Boze Bell and J. Stuart Rosebrook; True writing; working with the Duke; "Aspen gold:" the locations of True grit; "The law and the lawless;" theatrical trailer. 128 min. DVD 8319
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Belton, John. "John Wayne: As Sure As The Turning O' The Earth." Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television, Winter72/73, Issue 7, p25-28, 4p,
"Henry Hathaway." In: The Hollywood professionals / by Kingsley Canham ... [et al.] London : Tantivy Press; New York : A.S. Barnes, 1973. Main (Gardner) Stacks)PN1998.A2 H64 1973
Henry Hathaway / edited and annotated by Rudy Behlmer ; interviews conducted by Polly Platt. Hathaway, Henry, 1898-1985. Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2001. (Main (Gardner) Stacks; PFA PN1998.3.H373 A5 2001)
"Henry Hathaway." In: The Hollywood professionals / by Kingsley Canham ... [et al.] London : Tantivy Press; New York : A.S. Barnes, 1973. Main (Gardner) Stacks)PN1998.A2 H64 1973
The True Story of Jesse James (1957)
Directed by Nicholas Ray. Cast: Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Hope Lange, Agnes Moorehead. Famed fifties director Nicholas Ray retells the Jesse James saga, starring Robert Wagner as the legendary bank robber. As Jesse James attempts to evade the law, those who know him best -- his brother Frank, wife and mother (Agnes Moorehead) -- ponder the question, "What turned this simple farmboy to a life of lawlessness?" And as Jesse continues his ride into notoriety, the key events in his life are scrutinized in a desperate attempt to close in on him for good. 92 min. DVD X3159
Rainey, Buck. "The James-Dalton Gang." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
Two Mules for Sister Sara (1969)
Directed by Don Siegel. Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Clint Eastwood, Manolo Fabregas, Alberto Morin, Armando Silvestre, John Kelly, David Estuardo, Ada Carrasco, Poncho Cordoba. A plains drifter cowboy single-handedly rescues a local nun from a gang of attackers. After meeting a band of Mexican revolutionaries, who are resisting the French occupation of Mexico, the cowboy and Sister Sara decide to join forces with the freedom fighters and set off on a deadly mission to capture the enemy's garrison. But along the way the soft spoken hero discovers that the nun is not what she seems. 114 min. DVD X3222
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Two Rode Together (1961 )
Directed by John Ford. Cast: James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Shirley Jones, Linda Cristal, Andy Devine, John McIntire, Henry Brandon. The US Army is under pressure from the desperate relatives of white prisoners of the Comanches to secure their rescue. A cynical and corrupt marshal, Guthrie McCabe, is persuaded by an army lieutenant to assist in the negotiations with the Comanches. The triumphant return of two captives, a boy and a woman, results in tragic consequences. Based on a novel Comanche captives by Will Cook. 114 min. DVD X6689
Palmer, R. Barton. "An untypical typicality: screening Owen Wister's The Virginian." In: Nineteenth-century American fiction on screen / edited by R. Barton Palmer. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007. (Main (Gardner) Stacks PN1997.85 .N54 2007)
The Virginian (2000)
Directed by Bill Pullman. Cast: Bill Pullman, Diane Lane, John Savage, Harris Yulin, Colm Feore, Dennis Weaver. A dramatization of Owen Wister's epic tale of one man's journey into the untamed territory of Wyoming, where he is caught between his love for a woman and his quest for justice. With remarkable character depth and vivid descriptive passages, The Virginian stands not only as the first great novel of American Western literature, but as a testament to the eternal struggle between good and evil in humanity, and a revealing study of the forces that guide the combatants on both sides. Made for television. 95 min. 999:3607
John Ford bibliography
The War Wagon (1967)
Directed by Burt Kennedy. Cast: John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Howard Keel, Robert Walker, Keenan Wynn, Bruce Cabot, Joanna Barnes. Taw Jackson is a rancher who is dead set on capturing an iron-clad stagecoach belonging to cattle baron West Catlin, the man who stole his fortune and good name years before. To pull off the heist, Jackson puts together a crew that includes an old character, a half-civilized Indian, a young drunk, and a cocky gunfighter. 101 min. DVD X4457
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Warlock (1959)
Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Cast: Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels, Wallace Ford, Tom Drake, Richard Arlen, DeForest Kelley, Regis Toomey, Vaughn Taylor, Don Bendoe, Whit Bissell, Bartlett Robinson. The citizens of Warlock hire a professional gunman to protect the town from a vicious outlaw gang that is terrorizing its citizens. Based on the novel by Oakley Hall. 121 min. DVD X6425
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Way Out West (1937)
Directed by James Horne. Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Thelma Todd, Zasu Pitts. Desert prospectors search for the daughter of a late friend who had struck it rich before his death. Also features a 1932 Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts short entitled Red Noses. 86 min. DVD X308; vhs 999:3853
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Gehring, Wes D. "Everyone's Going West." In: "Parody as film genre : "never give a saga an even break"" / Wes D. Gehring ; foreword by Scott R. Olson. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1999. ( Full-text online [UCB users only]; Print Main (Gardner) Stacks; Moffitt PN1995.9.C55 G426 1999
The Westerner (1940)
Directed by William Wyler. Cast: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Doris Davenport, Fred Stone, Dana Andrews. A lone cowboy rides into a Texas border town and courageously faces the ruthless self-appointed men who dispense justice, including the infamous "Judge" Roy Bean. 100 min. DVD 3460
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Wild Bill (1995)
Directed by Walter Hill. Cast: Jeff Bridges, Ellen Barkin, John Hurt, Diane Lane, Keith Carradine, Christina Applegate, Bruce Dern, James Gammon, David Arquette, Marjoe Gortner. Jeff Bridges portrays Wild Bill Hickok, the hard-drinking, quick-shooting gunslinger, who lived on the edge. Presented in stunning visual style and lightning-fast pace, the film centers around the explosive confrontation between Hickok and a mysterious stranger who has arrived in Deadwood, South Dakota, announcing that he will not leave until Hickok is dead. 115 min. DVD 2207
Rainey, Buck. "James Butler (Wild Bill) Hickok." In: Western gunslingers in fact and on film : Hollywood's famous lawmen and outlaws / by Buck Rainey. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Company, c1998. (Bancroft PN1995.9.W4 R35 1997)
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez, Ben Johnson, Emilio Fernandez, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones. The brutal story of violent men who lived during the Mexican revolution in the year 1913. It portrays a band of magnificent losers in a dying lawless West. 145 min. DVD 5016 (2 discs), DVD 576 (1 disc)
National Film Registry Selection
The Will Penny (1968)
Directed by Tom Gries. Cast: Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett, Donald Pleasence, Lee Majors, Bruce Dern, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Clifton James, Anthony Zerbe. Will Penny, an aging, out of work cowboy, is left in the desert to die by a ruthless gang of outlaws. A beautiful young woman and her son, on her way to join her husband, stops to help him and nurses him back to health. Suddenly, Will sees a lifestyle he's never known as he falls in love with her, but the gang is on its way to finish him off. 109 min. DVD X5292
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Winchester '73 (1950)
Directed by Anthony Mann. Cast: James Stewart, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Millard Mitchell, Charles Drake, John McIntire, Will Geer, Jay C. Flippen. In a marksmanship contest, Lin McAdam (Stewart) wins a prized Winchester rifle, which is immediately stolen by the runner-up, Dutch Henry Brown (McNally.) This "story of a rifle" then follows McAdams' pursuit, and the rifle as it changes hands, until a final showdown and shoot-out on a rocky mountain precipice. 93 min. DVD 9918
Anthony Mann bibliography
Yellow Sky (1949)
Directed by William A. Wellman. Cast: Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter, Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur, Harry Morgan. A gang of outlaws enters what seems to be the ghost town of Yellow Sky where they meet a prospector and his granddaughter who falls in love with the gang's leader. Realizing that they have gold, the robbers hatch a plan to take it, but one robber turns against them. Based on a story by W.R. Burnett. 98 min. DVD X3613
UC users only
Blue Blazes (1918)
Directed by William S. Hart. Cast: Wlliam S. Hart, Maude George, Robert McKim, Gertrude Claire, Robert Gordon, Hart Hoxie. Rawden, a lumberjack in the North woods, fights with crooked dance hall owner 'Ladyfingers' Hilgard over the affections of Babette DuFresne. 60 min. DVD X4782
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Broncho Billy's Sentence (1915)
Directed by Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson. Cast: "Bronco Billy" Anderson, True Boardman, Ernest Van Pelt, Carl Stockdale, Evelyn Selbie, Harry Todd. The sixth in a series of rare silent films from the early film-making period of 1911-1915. In this one-reeler Western a wounded robber is taken in by a preacher and his wife, repents, and returns the money he stole. Special feature: Broncho Billy's NIles, California: then and now: Views of Niles as it was in Broncho Billy's day and in our own, set to the tune of Nell Wright Slaughter's "The Broncho Billy rag" (1914). DVD 8450
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Bucking Broadway (1917)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: Harry Carey, Molly Malone, L. M. Wells, Pegg Vester, William Gettinger. On a ranch in the depths of Wyoming, a cowboy, Cheyenne Harry, and the owner's daughter, Helen Clayton, are on their way to get engaged when a horse dealer abducts the girl. Listening only to his heart, Cheyenne Harry jumps on the first train to New York. Lost in the Big Apple, the frontiersman triggers a Homeric battle. His wild imaginings are worthy of those of Peter Sellers in The Party!
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Frank Borzage Early Films
Presents the first three 1915/16 Western movies by and with Frank Borzage. Contents: The pitch o' chance / cinematographer, L. Guy Wilky ; director/script, Frank Borzage (1915, 25 min.) -- The pilgrim / script, Edward A. Kaufman, Frank Borzage ; cinematographer, L. Guy Wilky ; director, Frank Borzage. (1916, 28 min.) -- Nugget Jim's pardner (aka: The calibre of man ; working title: That good for nothing kid) / cinematographer, L. Guy Wilky ; director/writer, Frank Borzage (1916, 25 min.) DVD X782
The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch(1912)
Directed by D.W. Griffith. Cast: Dorothy Bernard, Christy Cabanne, Harry Hyde, Wilfred Lucas, Charles Hill Mailes, Alfred Paget, Blanche Sweet, Charles West 162 min. 999:568
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Golden Saddles, Silver Spurs)
This documentary traces the history of the B-Western from it's silent movie origins to its demise in the early 1950s, when television began to bring this genre into homes on a regular weekly basis. The film contains a large number of scenes from early silents and seldom seen films, as well as old photographs of the stars and one-sheet advertisements for lost films. Featuring: Rex Allen, Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, Gene Autry, Ward Bond, William Boyd, Walter Brennan, Johnny Mack Brown, Yakima Canutt, Harry Carey, Andy Devine, Dale Evans, John Ford, Clark Gable, Hoot Gibson, William S. Hart, Raymond Hatton, George 'Gabby' Hayes, Herb Jeffries, Ben Johnson, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Jane Russell, Randolph Scott, John Wayne. 2003. 94 min. DVD 8574
Great Train Robbery (1903)
Directed by Edwin S. Porter. Four men assault and tie up the clerk at the train station, then rob the train, take all the money and shoot a passenger while escaping. A little girl discovers the clerk and gives notice to the sheriff, who with his men goes in pursuit of the bandits. 12 min. On DVD 277; vhs 999:1006
National Film Registry Selection
Heart of an Indian (aka The Indian Massacre) (1912)
Directed by Thomas Ince. Cast: Francis Ford (The Indian Chief), Ann Little, Grace Cunard, William Eagle Shirt."When Indians attack a white settlement, a brave kidnaps a white baby to give to his wife as a replacement for their dead baby. The white mother goes to the Indian camp to look for her child and is captured by the Indians who plan to torture her. The settlers attack the Indian camp, destroying it completely and killing the braves, while the Indian wife returns the baby to the white woman and allows her to escape. The Indian wife mourns her baby at its grave, unaware of the destruction of the Indian camp." [ IMDB ] 20 min. DVD 9450
Hell's Hinges (1916)
Directed by Charles Swickard, William S. Hart (uncredited), Clifford Smith. Cast: William S. Hart, Clara Williams, Jack Standing, Alfred Hollingsworth. "When Reverend Robert Henley and his sister Faith arrive in the town of Hell's Hinges, saloon owner Silk Miller and his cohorts sense danger to their evil ways. They hire gunman Blaze Tracy to run the minister out of town. But Blaze finds something in Faith Henley that turns him around, and soon Silk Miller and his compadres have Blaze to deal with." [IMDB] 64 min. DVD 360
National Film Registry Selection
Iola's Promise (1912)
Directed by D.W. Griffith. Cast: Dorothy Bernard William J. Butler, Arthur V. Johnson, Charles Hill Mailes, Claire McDowell, George Nichols, Alfred Paget, Mary Pickford, Josef Swickard, Henry B. Walthall, Charles West. 999:568
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Iron Horse (1924)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Charles Edward Bull, Cyril Chadwick. One of the earliest westerns, this film is a dramatization of the monumental "joining of the rails" in the late 1800's. One man's vision of a coast-to-coast railroad is realized by his son, who overcomes impossible odds to unite the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railways. Special DVD features: Newly created score composed and conducted by Christopher Caliendo ; audio commentary by author and film historian Robert Birchard; "Scoring the past: 'The iron horse' sessions with Christopher Calienda" featurette; restoration comparison; vintage program gallery; advertising gallery; still gallery. International version (133 min.) -- U.S. version (149 min.). 133 min. DVD 9375; vhs 999:3502
John Ford bibliography
The Lonedale Operator (1911)
Directed by D.W. Griffith. Cast: Francis J. Grandon, Joseph Graybill, Dell Henderson, Wilfred Lucas, George Nichols, Blanche Sweet, Charles West. One of the earliest examples of Griffith's experiments in filmmaking. When the railroad payroll is held up, the girl telegrapher's wire for help sets off a race against time to save her. 13 min. DVD X4560; also DVD 361; vhs 999:570
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Movies Go West
Hal Angus, of the original Essanay Film Manufacturing Company western unit, revisits the studio and location sites and reminisces about the early days between 1909-1916 when Gilbert M. Anderson produced and starred in hundreds of westerns. He points out that in the role of Broncho Billy, Gilbert Anderson created the prototype of the movie cowboy hero and established the format of the classic American movie western. 14 min. Video/C MM892
Out West (1921/22)
Directed and written by Buster Keaton, Roscoe Arbuckle. Cast: Keaton, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Al St. John. Arbuckle arrives in Buster Keaton's wild West saloon, foils a holdup in progress and becomes involved in several gun battles. 14 min. DVD 669; vhs 999:912
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The Railway of Death (Le Railway de la mort)(France, 1912)
Directed by Jean Durand. Cast: Joë Hamman, Max Dhartigny, Ernest Bourbon. When gold is discovered the first man there gets to stake his claim. Joe and another man race each other, which involves a thrilling episode on a train. 17 min. DVD X5733
A Romance of the Western Hills (1910)
Directed by D.W. Griffith. Cast: Mary Pickford, Alfred Paget, Arthur V. Johnson. DVD 1374; vhs 999:592
The Silent Man (1917)
Directed by William S. Hart. Cast: William S. Hart, Vola Vale, Robert McKim, Dorcas Mathews, George Nichols, J.P. Lockney, Gertrude Claire, Milton L. Ross, Harold Goodwin. After years of toil, a lone prospector finally strikes it rich only to have his claim stolen by ruthless criminals in town. The prospector decides to regain his wealth by becoming a crook himself and stealing it back. 59 min. DVD X4782
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Short Films of Tom Mix. Volume I
Five short films starring Tom Mix who was Hollywood's first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed. Contents: Bear of a story (1916) -- Stage-coach driver & the girl (aka. Stage-coach driver and the girl) (1915) -- How Weary goes wooing (aka. How Weary went wooing, How Weary goes the wooing) (1915) -- Using his brain (1915) -- Sage Brush Tom (1915) 52 min. DVD X5550
The Short Films of Tom Mix. Volume II
Five short films starring Tom Mix who was Hollywood's first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed. Contents: Roping a bride (1915) -- Never again (1915) -- Local color (1913) -- An Angelic attitude (1916) -- Fighting for gold [excerpt, 2 reels] (1919). 69 min. DVD X5551
Something New(1920)
Directed by Nell Shipman and Bert Van Tuyle. Cast: Nell Shipman, Bert Van Tuyle, L.M. Wells. A thrilling and hilarious Western where the hero comes to the rescue of the kidnapped girl -- in a 1920 Maxwell sedan! Chased by bandits on horseback across rocky terrain, they survive some of the most amazing (and real) stunts ever attempted in a roadster. 57 min. DVD X5661; DVD 8194; vhs 999:2635
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Squaw Man (1914)
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille; co-director, Oscar C. Apfel. Cast: Dustin Farnum, Art Acord, Cecil B. DeMille, Cecilia de Mille, 'Baby' Carmen De Rue, William Elmer, Mrs. A.W. Filson, Haidee Fuller, Winifred Kingston, Foster Knox, Red Wing, Joseph Singleton, Monroe Salisbury, Hal Roach, Fred Montague, Richard L'Estrange, Dick La Reno. Captain Wynnegate flees England and heads out West after accepting the blame for embezzling charity funds though knowing that his cousin Sir Henry is guilty. Afer many lonely months he marries an Indain girl who eventually dies. Into the ruins of his second shattered life steps the secret love he left behind in England, with news that could reconcile him with his ignoble past. Written, produced and directed by Cecil B. De Mille, the Squaw Man was reported to be the first feature length film shot in Hollywood. He later made two remakes of the film (1918, 1931). 81 min. DVD 6117
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
The Squaw's Love (silent, 1911)
Directed by D.W. Griffith. Cast: Kate Bruce, William J. Butler, Donald Crisp, Dark Cloud, Grace Henderson, Wilfred Lucas, Claire McDowell, Mabel Normand, Wild Flower, Alfred Paget, Dorothy West. vhs 999:573
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Three Bad Men (1926)
Directed by John Ford. Cast: George O'Brien, Olive Borden, Lou Tellegen, Tom Santschi. When a trio of bandits discovers a young woman whose father was murdered by a ruthless gang, the "Three Bad Men" go from being partners in crime to comrades in chivalry. An outstanding example of the silent western and one of John Ford's earliest triumphs. 92 min. DVD 9392
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Treasures of American Film Archives, 5. The West, 1898-1938
Celebrates the American West as it was recorded and imagined in the first decades of motion pictures. Brings together silent and early sound films--narrative shorts and features, documentaries, promotional films, newsreel stories, and travelogues--showcasing the American West as it was recorded and imagined from 1898 to 1938.
Program 1: The tourists (1912) (6 min.) -- The sergeant (1910) (16 min.) -- Salomy Jane (1914) (87 min.) -- Sunshine gatherers (1921) (10 min.) -- Deschutes driftwood (1916) (10 min.) -- The "promised land" barred to "hoboes" (1936) (2 min.) -- Last of the line (1914) (26 min.) -- The Indian-detour (1914) (16 min.) -- Native Americans in newsreels (1921-1938) (5 min.) -- We can take it (1935) (21 min.). Cast Al Jennings, Beatriz Michelena, Bill Tilghman, Clara Bow, Mabel Normand, Richard Dix, Tom Mix. DVD X6631
Program 2: Over silent paths (1910) (16 min.) -- Life on the Circle Ranch in California (1912) (12 min.) -- Broncho Billy and the schoolmistress (1912) (14 min.) -- How the cowboy makes his lariat (1917) (3 min.) -- Mexican filibusters (1911) (16 min.) -- The better man (1912) (12 min.) -- Ammunition smuggling on the Mexican border (1914) (41 min.) -- Lake Tahoe, land of the sky (1916) (6 min.) -- Mantrap (1926) (71 min.) -- The golden west (1938) (8 min.). DVD X6632
Program 3: The lady of the dugout (1918) (64 min.) -- From Passing of the Oklahoma outlaw (1915) (13 min.) -- The girl ranchers (1913) (14 min.) -- Legal advice (1916) (13 min.) -- From Womanhandled (1925) (55 min.) -- Beauty spots in America: Castle Hot Springs, Arizona (1916) (6 min.) -- Romance of water (1931) (10 min.) -- A new miracle in the desert (1935) (1 min.) -- The west in promotion travelogues (1898-1920) (22 min.). DVD X6633
Tumbleweeds (1925)
Directed by King Baggot. Cast: Wm. [i.e. William] S. Hart, Barbara Bedford, Lucien Littlefield, J. Gordon Russell, Richard R. Niell, Jack Murphy. Thousands of homesteaders in covered wagons anxiously await the cannon shot that will launch the Oklahoma Land Rush - the greatest land give-away in history. Cattleman Don Carver intends to win the magnificent Box K Ranch. Crooked speculators covet the property and frame Dan for claim-jumping. Arrested by the U.S. Calvalry, Carver must find a way to break out of the stockade, if he is to get back into the race. Film is notable for its beautifully designed intercards, magnificent location shots and realistic costumes and sets. Originally released as a motion picture in 1925 ; re-released by Astor Pictures in 1939 with music and William S. Hart's prologue announcing his retirement from pictures. Special feature: 1939 prologue by William S. Hart: "From Horseshoe Ranch at Newhall, Cal. William S. Hart, tells us the story of his greatest picture". 74 min. DVD X4877
Credits and other information from the Internet Movie Database
Wild and Woolly(1917)
Director, John Emerson. Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Eileen Percy, Walter Bytell. Jeff Hillington is the extremely naive son of a wealthy Eastern family --he loves the old west so much he romanticizes its glories. When his father sends him to Arizona on business, Jeff expects it to be the place he read about in dime-store novels, and to appease him, the townsfolk put on a wild west show that turns real. 47 min. DVD X1992
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Which British poet was announced in July as the winner of the 2012 PEN/Pinter Prize? | Poet James Fenton wins Pen Pinter Prize - BBC News
BBC News
Poet James Fenton wins Pen Pinter Prize
16 June 2015
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British poet and journalist James Fenton has won the Pen Pinter Prize, which celebrates champions of free speech.
Established in honour of playwright Harold Pinter, it is given to a writer who casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world.
Organisers English Pen praised Fenton as "one of the finest poets of his generation".
He will receive his award at a ceremony on 6 October at the British Library.
The prize will be jointly awarded to an international writer who has faced persecution.
The second winner - who will be chosen jointly by Fenton and English Pen - will be announced at the October ceremony.
'Spoken truth to power'
Fenton, who held the chair of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1994-1999, has written several collections of poetry and opera librettos.
Throughout his long and distinguished career, James Fenton has spoken truth to power - forcefully, fearlessly, and beautifully
Maureen Freely, President of English Pen
As a former war correspondent, many of his poems deal with the experience of war and its impact.
One of Fenton's most acclaimed works, The Memory of War (1982), is a collection of poems that drew on his time as a reporter in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s.
Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter's widow, said Fenton was "a worthy winner" of the prize.
"James Fenton is a writer who Harold Pinter much admired for all his work, but particularly for his ability to write brilliant political poetry, she said.
"This is an art which was very important to Harold not only for the poetry but also as part of the essential process of speaking up fearlessly: Which is the basis on which the Pen Pinter Prize is founded."
Maureen Freely, president of English Pen, added: "Throughout his long and distinguished career, James Fenton has spoken truth to power - forcefully, fearlessly, and beautifully."
Fenton said he felt greatly honoured to be awarded the prize: "In particular, I am happy to be connected in this way with Harold Pinter, whose writings I have long admired."
Previous winners of the Pinter Prize include Tom Stoppard, Carol Ann Duffy, Hanif Kureishi and last year's winner, Salman Rushdie.
| Carol Ann Duffy |
Which constellation is named after the daughter of Cassiopeia who was chained to a rock to be eaten by the sea monster Cetus? | Poet James Fenton wins Pen Pinter Prize - BBC News
BBC News
Poet James Fenton wins Pen Pinter Prize
16 June 2015
Read more about sharing.
Close share panel
British poet and journalist James Fenton has won the Pen Pinter Prize, which celebrates champions of free speech.
Established in honour of playwright Harold Pinter, it is given to a writer who casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world.
Organisers English Pen praised Fenton as "one of the finest poets of his generation".
He will receive his award at a ceremony on 6 October at the British Library.
The prize will be jointly awarded to an international writer who has faced persecution.
The second winner - who will be chosen jointly by Fenton and English Pen - will be announced at the October ceremony.
'Spoken truth to power'
Fenton, who held the chair of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1994-1999, has written several collections of poetry and opera librettos.
Throughout his long and distinguished career, James Fenton has spoken truth to power - forcefully, fearlessly, and beautifully
Maureen Freely, President of English Pen
As a former war correspondent, many of his poems deal with the experience of war and its impact.
One of Fenton's most acclaimed works, The Memory of War (1982), is a collection of poems that drew on his time as a reporter in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s.
Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter's widow, said Fenton was "a worthy winner" of the prize.
"James Fenton is a writer who Harold Pinter much admired for all his work, but particularly for his ability to write brilliant political poetry, she said.
"This is an art which was very important to Harold not only for the poetry but also as part of the essential process of speaking up fearlessly: Which is the basis on which the Pen Pinter Prize is founded."
Maureen Freely, president of English Pen, added: "Throughout his long and distinguished career, James Fenton has spoken truth to power - forcefully, fearlessly, and beautifully."
Fenton said he felt greatly honoured to be awarded the prize: "In particular, I am happy to be connected in this way with Harold Pinter, whose writings I have long admired."
Previous winners of the Pinter Prize include Tom Stoppard, Carol Ann Duffy, Hanif Kureishi and last year's winner, Salman Rushdie.
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'Point Guard' and 'Centre' are positions in which sport? | Basketball Position Roles Explained | iSport.com
Basketball Position Roles Explained
A basketball team consists of five players on the floor at all times. They are:
A point guard
A power forward
A center
As their names would suggest, the two guards, the two forwards, and the center have completely different responsibilities on the floor. To fully understand competitive basketball, it’s essential to know each position’s role within a team’s offense and defense.
Point Guard
The point guard is the floor leader on offense. He sets the tone by bringing the ball upcourt, calling plays, and directing the offense. More than any other player on the floor, he must understand each player’s personal strengths and role on the floor. He needs to be a good ball-distributor and have the vision to see a player getting open.
Main Characteristics
The point guard must also control the tempo of the game and be able to run the fast break after receiving a quick outlet pass:
The point guard’s often the quickest player on the floor, and he should be able to dribble-penetrate to the basket.
He and the coach need to communicate clearly, and the point guard should act like the “coach” on the court.
In addition, he needs to handle the various personalities on the team in order to be constructive and positive at all times.
Defensively, the point guard must be able to slow down the opposing team’s ball-handler. The point guard rarely receives the most difficult defensive assignment. However, the point guard should be able to stop the ball or steer the ball-handler into a trapping situation.
Shooting Guard
As the name suggests, the shooting guard must be a good shooter from short and long range. In addition, the shooting guard must also be versatile enough to handle some of the point guard’s ball-handling duties, while also filling the lane on the fast break like a wing player. For this reason, the shooting guard is typically an athletic and talented scorer.
Main Characteristics
If you’re having trouble finding a position, develop your overall game and your coach will find a position for you. Once you’re given a home on the floor, you can work on the specific responsibilities of that position.
A shooting guard should be a competent passer that can distribute the ball to teammates setting up in the low post. He must also be able to receive a pass from a teammate and find an open shot with a quick release. The best shooting guards can fire from long range, forcing the defense to spread out.
The shooting guard must also guard the opponent’s best perimeter scorer. He’s usually easier to substitute for than the point guard, which means he often spends more energy on the defensive end guarding a skilled offensive player.
Small Forward
The small forward is usually required to be a jack-of-all-trades, and for that reason he’s often the best athlete on the floor. The small forward is a perimeter player who can play down low when necessary. In addition, he’s a ball-handler who can get inside and attack the rim. He must have a strong mid-range offensive game, but the ability to knock down a shot from three-point range is a huge plus.
Main Characteristics
A quick first step is a small forward’s best friend. If he can quickly get to the basket or fill the lane on the fast break, he can be a huge asset to his team. At the same time, the small forward must be physical enough to absorb contact when getting into the lane on dribble-penetration. The small forward must also be a good foul shooter because of the contact he usually draws from bigger players.
Defensively, the small forward should be able to guard both larger and smaller players. On pick-and-rolls and fast breaks, the small forward will have to switch to guard someone else’s man. He must be versatile enough to hold his own no matter whom he ends up guarding.
Power Forward
The big men on the court — centers and power forwards — have more specialized roles. The power forward often makes his biggest contributions without having the ball in his hands. He sets screens, boxes out, and plays solid defense. He must be an intimidator in the paint and keep offensive penetrators away from the basket.
Main Characteristics
Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Retired Hall of Fame NBA Center
The power forward must be able to establish position on the low block, and have the offensive moves and quick footwork to put the ball in the basket. In addition, he should be a good enough passer to find the open man or a cutter, especially when his path to the basket is blocked. He’s generally the player who takes care of the little things, like setting up teammates and setting screens.
The power forward’s most important responsibility, however, is cleaning up the glass and creating extra possessions on offense. He has to be able to move other men with his body and jump high for the rebound. Lastly, the power forward should be a good foul shooter, because he will draw contact on both ends of the court.
Center
The center is usually the tallest man on the floor and the player closest to the basket. For these reasons, he’s frequently the most important man on the floor. Generally, centers are the focal point of the offense and can facilitate every other player’s offensive game with solid screens and crisp passing.
A center who has quick feet and a strong upper body can dominate the low block and open up the entire offense for everyone else. However, the center might be more instrumental on defense:
A center who can block shots and intimidate players flashing into the paint can change the entire game.
He must be able to guard the opposing center and provide help when other offensive players attack the basket.
A dominant center makes for a game-changing player. It’s important to remember that some of the best centers aren’t very tall and some of the tallest players aren’t centers. It’s more essential for the center to have the disposition and desire to own the painted area than it is for him to be the tallest player on the floor.
Versatility
Some basketball players were born to play specific positions and some players develop the skills over time for certain positions. A player who can fill in at multiple positions is a valuable asset to a coach and his teammates, and he’s hard to keep off the floor.
At the same time, even if you have a specific position that you always play, it’s important to develop your overall game. A point guard who can box out to get a rebound, or a center who can dribble, will help the team win.
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Which car manufacturer makes the 'Yeti' model? | 10 Greatest NBA Point Guards of All Time
10 Greatest NBA Point Guards of All Time
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Steve Nash drives to the basket. | Harry How/Getty Images
The point guard best captures the imagination of the weekend warrior , accommodating all shapes and sizes — from 5-foot-3 Tyrone “Mugsey” Bouges and doughboy Khalid El-Amin to the 6-foot-9 force that was Magic Johnson. An elite point guard can completely dominate the game without even scoring.
The best point men are typically pass-first team players who subjugate their own offensive talent to get teammates involved in the flow of the basketball game. For that reason, assist totals are a leading indicator of point guard play. With that, here’s our take on the top 10 NBA point guards of all time.
Honorable Mention: Steve Nash will go down as one of the most efficient offensive players in the history of basketball. While the tail end of Nash’s career — with the Los Angeles Lakers — was marred by nagging injuries in conjunction with a monstrous contract, we’ll always remember him for his playing days with the Phoenix Suns; a run that single-handedly popularized the constant pick and roll you see today.
10. Kevin Johnson
Armed with a deadly first step and high-top fade, Kevin Johnson worked his signature crossover dribble to perfection. Classic KJ would go rope-a-dope, where he would hesitate and lean to his left, just before crossing back over to the right and exploding into the paint.
As a finisher, 6-foot-1 Kevin had the hops to give the business to all comers at the rim, including Hakeem Olajuwon. In Phoenix, little people everywhere prevailed, as No. 7 climbed the ladder to throw down a thunderous jam upon The Dream’s neck . For the majority of his 13-year career , KJ sparked a high-octane offense in the Valley of the Sun, with 6,711 career assists, three All-Star nominations, and one NBA Finals appearance.
At the height of his powers, KJ joined the ranks of Isiah Thomas, Magic, and Oscar Robertson as the only point guards in history who were automatic for 20 points and 10 assists each night. In 1991, Kevin, the eventual mayor of Sacramento, slapped together 22 points, 10 assists, and four rebounds per game.
9. Chris Paul
CP3 is one of the best point guards ever | Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
At the tender age of 31, Chris Paul has already thrown his name into the ring as one of the all-time greats at point guard. As he honed his skills at Wake Forest, Paul emerged as another product of the ACC point guard blueprint that preached intelligence, heart, and above all else, the pick and roll. As a member of Lob City, Paul has mastered the art of feeding both Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan at the front of the rim for hammer dunks.
At 6-foot and 175 pounds, Paul has always been deceptively quick. On the perimeter, he can be impossible to contain, as he barrels into the lane at will to either set the table for a cutting big man, kick the ball out to sharpshooter J.J. Redick for an open three, or even finish himself with either hand at the rim.
In half-court sets, Paul has also mastered the art of the step-back three, where he feints a drive, delivers a forearm shiver, and fades behind the arc to knock down clutch jumpers, firing up the Staples Center crowd. For his career, Paul has averaged nearly 19 points, 10 assists, and 2.3 steals per game.
8. Jason Kidd
Jason Kidd is so focused right now | Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Similar to Magic Johnson, Jason Kidd did not need to score a point to dominate the game. Once nicknamed Ason, for his lack of a “J” (or jumpshot), Kidd’s career has been nothing short of remarkable.
In all, he closed out his 19-year career with one NBA championship, two Olympic gold medals, 10 All-Star game appearances, 1,988 three-point conversions, 12,091 assists (second of all time), and 2,684 steals (second of all time). As a triple-double machine, Kidd was a stat sheet stuffer, who finished among the all-time leaders for point guards in every significant statistical category.
In his prime, Kidd was a speed demon who arguably starred as the league’s fastest end-to-end performer. He was at his best in a freelance, up-tempo game, where he could turn on the jets and find the right man at the right place in transition. Over time, Kidd aged gracefully into the elder Mavericks statesmen, who facilitated half-court sets and even added a consistent three-point shot to his offensive arsenal.
7. Walt “Clyde” Frazier
Walt “Clyde” Frazier was just too cool for school. As a Knick, Frazier owned New York in the ’70s on the strength of his well-coiffed afro, mutton-chop sideburns, tailored suits, fur coats, fedora hats, Rolls Royce cars, and two NBA Championships. Frazier was the charismatic leader of a Knicks Dream Team, which included fellow and future Hall of Famers Dave DeBusschere, Jerry Lucas, Willis Reed, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, and Zen Master Phil Jackson amongst its ranks.
At lead guard, only the calm, cool, and collected Frazier could put this cast of characters in check. Frazier put on a show in the clinching Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals versus the Los Angeles Lakers. Beneath the bright lights of Madison Square Garden, Frazier paced his Knicks to the tune of 36 points and 19 assists.
6. Gary Payton
Gary Payton handles the ball. | Otto Gruele Jr./Getty Images
Gary Payton was the greatest defensive point guard of all time. Nicknamed “The Glove,” Payton initially earned recognition as a ball hawk for his ability to shut down the likes of Kevin Johnson, John Stockton, and Steve Nash. With his wiry strength, physical style of play, and non-stop trash talk, Payton also starred as the rare athlete who could get into the head of the great Michael Jordan.
In the 1996 NBA Finals, Payton harassed Jordan into a subpar performance (by his Airness’s standards). Payton held Jordan to 23, 26, and 22 points in the final three games of the series. As a member of the Seattle SuperSonics, Payton was the mastermind behind bang-bang alley-oop plays to “Man-Child” Shawn Kemp. In addition to the flair for the dramatic, Payton was fundamentally sound, as he thrived in the post to cook opponents with head fakes, turnaround jumpers, and a lethal drop step toward the goal.
During the 1999-2000 season , GP put it all together to average 24 points, nine assists, and seven boards per game in one of the greatest statistical performances in NBA history. In the twilight of his career, Payton finally rode off into the sunset as an NBA champion with the 2006 Miami Heat.
5. John Stockton
As far as style was concerned, John Stockton was the anti-Clyde Frazier. With his choir boy looks and comb-over haircut, Stockton appeared equally ready to either prepare your income taxes or throw on a pair of butt-hugger shorts and school all comers out on the basketball floor. As a professional, Stockton was most notable for the economic efficiency of his game.
As the NBA’s all-time assist leader (15,806 career assists), he played the angles to perfection, never committed to pounding the ball unnecessarily, and he appeared to always instinctively make the right decision at the right time. Stock’s limited use of steps made for a deceptively fast floor general who often blew right past defenders out on the perimeter, despite his apparent lack of raw athleticism.
As the ultimate scrapper, No. 12 would scratch, claw, grab, and battle his way into position on each and every possession. On the pick and roll, Stockton hooked up with Karl “The Mailman” Malone for an ongoing montage of pretty-boy hand-behind-the-head dunks, and-one layups, and mid-range jump shots. To keep defenses honest, Stockton would sometimes curl off the Malone screen and fake the pass to The Mailman before stepping back behind the arc and knocking down a three from deep.
4. Bob Cousy
Bob Cousy speaks his mind| Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
At first, nobody wanted Bob Cousy. As a young journeyman, he forced himself upon the Boston Celtics after he refused to report to the Tri Cities Blackhawks. After the Chicago Stags organization folded, Cousy signed on with the 1950 Celtics for $9,000 in salary. At the time, Celtics brass and head honcho Red Auerbach doubted that Cousy’s “local yokel” style and gimmicks could translate into success at the professional level.
Cousy, of course, went on to serve as the original building block for a budding dynasty. By his second season, he earned the nickname “Houdini of the Hardwood,” as he dazzled fans with his slick ball-handling, no-look passes, and 20 points-per-game average. After his sophomore campaign, “The Cooz” went on to lead the NBA in assists for eight consecutive seasons between 1953 and 1960.
In 1959, Cousy slapped together 20 points, nine rebounds, and six assists per game, as the primary spark plug for Auerbach’s high-octane offense. The Celtic Tradition now prides itself upon team play and winning championships. Between 1957 and 1963, Cousy joined forces with The Great Bill Russell to bring home six NBA Championships in seven years.
3. Isiah Thomas
Isiah Thomas left the game as one of the greats | MICHAEL E. SAMOJEDEN/AFP/Getty Images
Despite his baby face and radiant smile, Isiah Thomas was the Baddest of the Bad Boys. In Detroit, he was the ringleader for a collection of goons who thrived upon intimidation, dust ups, and rough-and-tumble play. The group, in its prime, gave both Jordan and Scottie Pippen fits as Detroit enforced the Jordan Rules, which called for Piston enforcers to close out on drives in the paint and slam the more athletic Bulls players into the basketball support.
For years, many notable basketball historians had rightfully speculated that bad blood between Detroit and Chicago ultimately kept Thomas off the 1992 Dream Team. However, he did win back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990, between the Lakers, Celtics, and Bulls dynasties. In true point guard form, he looked to get the likes of Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer, and Mark Aguirre involved throughout the first three quarters of each game. As a passer, Thomas averaged 9.3 assists per game throughout his 13-year career .
In 1985, he led the NBA with 1,123 assists, or 13.9 dimes per game. As a scorer, Thomas often waited until crunch time to dominate. In the fourth quarter, he was especially notable for scoring points in bunches off an array of jumpers, dribble drives, and baby hooks. Thomas, again, was the ultimate link between championship dynasties in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
As a young buck, he averaged 26 points per game in an ’85 playoff run that ended against Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics. In defeat, Thomas infamously had his inbounds pass stolen by Bird, who flipped a pass to Dennis Johnson for the clinching lay-up.
Three short seasons later, Thomas also hobbled his way to a sensational 25 points in one quarter against Magic Johnson and the LA Lakers, en route to a 1988 NBA Finals loss. After winning two titles, the Bad Boy run came to a crashing halt in Chicago. In 1991, Thomas refused to shake hands with the Bulls and led his Pistons off the Chicago Stadium floor after being swept out of the playoffs.
2. Oscar Robertson
Oscar Robertson walks onto the floor. | Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
Oscar Robertson was a force. Over the course of 14 seasons between the Cincinnati Royals and Milwaukee Bucks, Robertson put up unbelievable numbers to dominate the NBA. For his part, the Big O has ranked as a single-season leader in points, assists, free-throw attempts, free-throw percentage, and minutes played.
As the ultimate measure of his all-around game and end-to-end play, he tallied a record 181 triple-doubles, which included a remarkable 1962 run , where he averaged 31 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists per game. As a young star, Robertson did everything for the moribund Cincinnati Royals franchise. Through his first five years as a professional, Robertson averaged more than 30 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists per contest.
After a 1970 trade to the Milwaukee Bucks, he was finally able to showcase his skills to the benefit of a winning program. Teamed up with a young Lew Alcindor, Robertson helped lead his Milwaukee Bucks to a 4-0 NBA Finals sweep over the Baltimore Bullets that season.
1. Magic Johnson
There’s only one Magic | Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
At 6-foot-9, Magic Johnson starred as the only NBA athlete who could perform at a high level at all five positions. As a rookie in Game 6 of the 1980 Finals, the Magic Man subbed in for an injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to record 42 points, 15 rebounds, and seven assists. As a backdrop, Magic’s all-around performance came against Julius Erving’s Philadelphia 76ers, and clinched the first of his five titles with the Los Angeles Lakers.
From there, assistant coach Pat Riley was ultimately promoted as head coach, and Showtime was born on the West Coast. In Showtime, Magic was a one-man fast break who could crash the boards, control the basketball, and push the tempo. In the open court, Magic often fed the likes of Big Game James Worthy, Byron Scott, A.C. Green, and Michael Cooper with pinpoint no-look passes for easy buckets.
Magic’s uptempo style and Hollywood marquee showmanship made for the perfect contrast in heated battles between the Lakers and Celtics. Between 1983 and 1987, Magic’s Lakers won two out of three heated NBA Finals matchups against the Boston Celtics, who were a dynasty in their own right. As a winner and consummate team player, Magic closed out his career with 10,141 assists (now fifth of all time) and claimed five NBA titles.
Statistics courtesy of Basketball-Reference .
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The Rugby League club Hunslet is based in which city? | Hunslet R.L.F.C.
Hunslet R.L.F.C.
For the original club founded in 1883 and dissolved in 1973, see Hunslet F.C. (rugby league) .
Hunslet R.L.F.C.
Hunslet Rugby League Football Club
Nickname(s)
League 1
Hunslet R.L.F.C. is a professional rugby league club in Hunslet , Leeds , West Yorkshire, England, which plays in Championship One . Founded in 1973 as New Hunslet, a replacement for the original Hunslet F.C. , they became Hunslet in 1979 and played as Hunslet Hawks between 1995 and 2016.
Contents
History
1973-1996: New club
In July 1973, the original Hunslet club was wound up because no suitable new location could be found that was financially viable. The £300,000 proceeds of the sale of Parkside were distributed to shareholders.
Due to the efforts of their former Great Britain forward Geoff Gunney (MBE) , local businessmen and supporters the club managed to reform as New Hunslet for the 1973–74 season and moved to the Leeds Greyhound Stadium and erected iron American football posts. The resurrected club had a new badge depicting a rising phoenix to symbolise their rebirth. In 1974, New Hunslet adopted green and white as team colours because the traditional myrtle, white and flame colours were still registered to the former Parkside-based club, and they would not release them. The stay at the greyhound stadium was cut short when the owners closed the ground and arranged to demolish everything on the site.
In 1978, coach Bill Ramsey put a lot of pressure on the RFL and finally got permission to use the traditional colours. The club reverted to Hunslet for the 1979–80 season. With the closure of the Greyhound stadium, the next ground to host Hunslet was Mount Pleasant , Batley, for two seasons, before Hunslet moved to Leeds United ‘s Elland Road football stadium then owned by Leeds City Council. After leaving Elland Road, Hunslet had a brief spell at Bramley .
On 19 November 1995, the club, now known as Hunslet Hawks, moved to the South Leeds Stadium , only about half a mile from Parkside. On that day, Leigh were the guests at Hunslet’s first home game for twenty-two years. They then narrowly missed out on promotion from Division Two in 1996. [1] Coach Steve Ferres left to join Huddersfield and David Plange took over as player-coach.
1996-2009: Summer era
Old crest
In 1997 the Hawks played in the first (and last) Challenge Cup Plate Final losing 60-14 to Hull Kingston Rovers . It was the Hawks first appearance at Wembley Stadium since 1965. Also in 1997, the Hawks were promoted to the First Division as champions. [1]
In 1999 as a possible merger between Hunslet and Bramley was debated. [2] In 1999 Hunslet won the Northern Ford Premiership Grand Final against Dewsbury, 12–11, at Headingley. [1] After that game the Hawks were denied entry to Super League by the Rugby Football League who cited a document called Framing the Future as justification. This caused a number of players to leave the club and for the average attendance to fall by more than 1,200 to 800. A link-up with Leeds Rhinos saw Plange go to Headingley as Academy coach.
Paul March was the player/coach at Hunslet, joining midway through the 2009 season following the resignation of Graeme Hallas . March guided Hunslet to a 6th-place finish and a play-off spot in Championship 1. Hunslet travelled to Blackpool in the first week of the play-offs winning, 18–21, to set up an elimination semi-final against Oldham in which Hunslet were comfortably beaten, 54–30.
2010-present: Promotions and silverware
In 2010 Paul March led Hunslet to their first silverware for over 11 years by securing the Co-operative Championship 1 title, and subsequent survival in 2011.
In 2012, Barry Eaton took over as coach. In 2014 Hunslet won the Grand Final after extra time against Oldham, thus gaining promotion to the Championship. Barry Eaton left in late January 2016 to join Leeds Rhinos and was replaced by his assistant coach and former Hunslet Hawks player Matt Bramald. Bramald left the club at the end of the 2016 season having completed his contract. He was replaced by former Hunslet player James Coyle .
Hunslet Hawks returned to their original name of Hunslet RLFC for the 2017 season following an overwhelming fan vote in favour of their original name. Fans were then asked to choose between the clubs’ original ‘Rampant Lion’ crest and the ‘Phoenix Rising’ crest adopted by the club in 1973 when the club was reformed. Fans voted 54% to 46% in favour of the lion.
Stadiums
1973-1980: Leeds Greyhound Stadium
The new Hunslet clubs first ground was the Elland Road Greyhound Stadium in Beeston after they were told they could not play at Parkside. American football posts were erected to be used as goal posts.
1980-1982: Mount Pleasant
In 1982, the greyhound stadium closed and Hunslet were left homeless. There only option was to move out of Leeds and ground share with Batley for two seasons while they searched for a permanent home in Leeds.
1983-1995: Elland Road
In 1983, after leaving Batley, Hunslet negotiated a deal with Leeds City Council to play at Leeds United ‘s Elland Road , which the council owned at the time. This was their permanent home ground until they had the opportunity to return to play in Hunslet for the first time since the original Hunslet club had been dissolved.
1995-present: South Leeds Stadium
The grandstand at the South Leeds Stadium
Hunslet moved into the South Leeds Stadium after it was built in 1995. The stadium is used to host athletics and also has a swimming pool and other facilities the club can use. The stadium has one main stand that accommodates the grounds 5,000 capacity.
Past coaches
Players earning international caps while at Hunslet
Frank Davies won a cap for Wales while at Hunslet in 1978 against England
Robert ‘Iain’ Higgins won caps for Scotland while at London Broncos, and Hunslet 1997…2001 1-cap + 1-cap (sub)
Charlie Wabo won caps for Papua New Guinea while at Hunslet
Michael Mark won caps for Papua New Guinea while at Hunslet
Neil Lowe won caps for Scotland while at Hunslet
Lee Hanlan won caps for Ireland while at Hunslet
Other notable players
These players have either; won Challenge Cup , Rugby Football League Championship , Yorkshire Cup , Yorkshire League , have received a Testimonial match , were international representatives before, or after, their time at Hunslet, or are notable outside of rugby league.
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On which island in 1191 did King Richard I marry Berengaria? | Berengaria of Navarre
Berengaria of Navarre
Queen of England, Spouse of Richard I
Berengaria of Navarre, Queen Consort of Richard I Lionheart of England. © 2011 Clipart.com
Married May 12, 1191 to Richard I of England
Died December 23, 1230
Occupation: Queen of England - Queen consort of Richard I of England, Richard the Lionhearted
Known for: the only Queen of England never to set foot on the soil of England while Queen
About Berengaria of Navarre:
Berengaria was the daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre, called Sancho the wise, and Blanche of Castile.
Richard I of England had been betrothed to Princess Alice of France, sister of King Phillip IV. But Richard's father, Henry II, had made Alice his mistress, and church rules therefore forbid the marriage of Alice and Richard.
Berengaria was chosen as wife to Richard I by Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine . The marriage with Berengaria would bring a dowry that would help Richard finance his efforts in the Third Crusade.
Eleanor, though almost 70 years old, traveled over the Pyrenees to escort Berengaria to Sicily. In Sicily, Eleanor's daughter and Richard's sister, Joan of England , embarked with Berengaria to join Richard in the Holy Land.
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But the ship carrying Joan and Berengaria was wrecked off the shore of Cyprus. The ruler, Isaac Comnenus, took them prisoner. Richard and part of his army landed in Cyprus to free them, and Isaac foolishly attacked. Richard freed his bride and his sister, defeated and captured Comnenus, and took control of Cyprus.
Berengaria and Richard were married on May 12, 1191, and set off together to Acre in Palestine. Berengaria left the Holy Land for Poitou, France, and when Richard was on his way back to Europe in 1192, he was captured and then held prisoner in Germany until 1194, when his mother arranged for his ransom.
Berengaria and Richard had no children. Richard is widely believed to have been a homosexual, and though he had at least one illegitimate child, it is believed that the marriage with Berengaria was little more than a formality. When he returned from captivity, their relationship was so bad that a priest went so far as to order Richard to reconcile with his wife.
After Richard's death, Berengaria as dowager queen retired to LeMans in Maine. King John, Richard's brother, seized much of her property and refused to repay her. Berengaria lived in virtual poverty during John's lifetime. She sent to England to complain that her pension was not being paid. Eleanor and Pope Innocent III each intervened, but John never did pay her most of what was owed to her. John's son, Henry III, finally did pay much of the overdue debts.
Berengaria died in 1230, soon after founding Pietas Dei at Espau, a Cistercian monastery.
Bibliography:
Ann Trindade. Berengaria: In Search of Richard's Queen. 1999. ( buy at Amazon ) [1851824340]
More women's history biographies, by name:
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What sort of animal is 'Marty' in the 'Madagascar' series of animated films? | Berenguela de Navarra, Reina consorte de Inglaterra (c.1167 - 1230) - Genealogy
Berenguela de Navarra, Reina consorte de Inglaterra
Lithuanian: Berengarija Navarietė, Anglijos Karalienė
Birthdate:
in Abbey de Espans, Sarthe, France
Place of Burial:
Abbey de Espans, Sarthe, France
Immediate Family:
Queen consort of England, Queen of England (without ever visited England)
Managed by:
Circa 1167 - Pampeluna, Navarra, Spain
Death:
Dec 23 1230 - Abbey de Espans, Sarthe, France
Father:
Sancho Vi Rey De Navarra. 1150 1194
Siblings:
Blanca De Navarra, Sancho De Navarra
Husband:
After Dec 23 1230 - Abbey de Espans, Sarthe Francia
Parents:
Sancho Vi (El Sabio) Rey De Navarra, Sancha Rey De Navarra I (nacida Alfonso)
Siblings:
...Navarra, Ramiro Sánchez De Navarra Infante De Navarra Y Obispo De Pamplona, Constanza Sánchez De Navarra, Blanca, Champagne (nacida Sánch...
Husband:
Circa 1167 - Pampeluna, Navarra, Spain
Death:
Dec 23 1230 - Abbey de Espans, Sarthe, France
Parents:
...e Sage King Of Navarre The /wise/ Le Sage "the Wise" Called The Wise (El Sabio) Sancho Vi (The Wise) De Navarra, Sancha Of Nava...
Siblings:
...d The Strong (El Fuerte In Spanish Santxo Azkarra In Basque) Or The Prudent. His Retirement At The End Of His Life Has Given Rise To The ...
Circa 1167 - Pampeluna, Navarra, Spain
Death:
Dec 23 1230 - Abbey de Espans, Sarthe, France
Husband:
...;the Lion Hearted" King Of England,ricardo I "corazón De León",richard D'angleterre,richard The Lionheart,coeur De Li...
Son:
About Berengaria of Navarre, Queen consort of England
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Berengaria of Navarre (Spanish: Berenguela, French: Bérengère; c. 1165-1170 – 23 December 1230) was Queen of the English as the wife of King Richard I of England. She was the eldest daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre and Sancha of Castile.
Marriage
Berengaria married Richard I of England on 12 May 1191 and was crowned the same day by the Archbishop of Bordeaux and Bishops of Evreux and Bayonne. As is the case with many of the medieval queens consort of the Kingdom of England, relatively little is known of her life. It seems that she and Richard did in fact meet once, years before their marriage, and writers of the time liked to claim that there was an attraction between them at that time. Richard had been betrothed many years earlier to Princess Alys, sister of King Philip II of France. Alys, however, may have been the mistress of Richard's own father, King Henry II, and some said the mother of Henry's illegitimate child; a marriage between Richard and Alys would therefore be technically impossible for religious reasons of affinity. Richard terminated his betrothal to Alys in 1190 while at Messina.
He had Berengaria brought to him by his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Since Richard was already on the Third Crusade, having wasted no time in setting off after his coronation, the two women had a long and difficult journey to catch up with him. They arrived in Sicily during Lent (when the marriage could not take place) in 1191 and were joined by Richard's sister Joan, the widowed Queen of Sicily. En route to the Holy Land, the ship carrying Berengaria and Joan went aground off the coast of Cyprus, and they were threatened by the island's ruler, Isaac Comnenus. Richard came to their rescue, captured the island, overthrew Comnenus, and married Berengaria in the Chapel of St. George at Limassol.
Queen consort
Whether the marriage was ever even consummated is a matter for conjecture. In any case, Richard certainly took his new wife with him for the first part of the crusade. They returned separately, but Richard was captured and imprisoned. Berengaria remained in Europe, attempting to raise money for his ransom. After his release, Richard returned to England and was not joined by his wife. The marriage was childless, and Berengaria was thought to be barren.
When Richard returned to England, he had to regain all the territory that had either been lost by his brother John or taken by King Philip of France. His focus was on his kingdom, not his queen. Richard was ordered by Pope Celestine III to reunite with Berengaria and to show fidelity to her in future. Richard obeyed and took Berengaria to church every week thereafter. When he died in 1199, she was greatly distressed, perhaps more so at being deliberately overlooked as Queen of England and Cyprus. Some historians believe that Berengaria honestly loved her husband, while Richard's feelings for her were merely formal, as the marriage was a political rather than a romantic union.
Queen dowager
Berengaria never visited England during King Richard's lifetime; during the entirety of their marriage, Richard spent less than six months in England. There is evidence, however, that she may have done so in the years following his death. The traditional description of her as "the only English queen never to set foot in the country" would still be literally true, as she did not visit England during the time she was Richard's consort. She certainly sent envoys to England several times, mainly to inquire about the pension she was due as dowager queen and Richard's widow, which King John failed to pay. Although Queen Eleanor intervened and Pope Innocent III threatened him with an interdict if he did not pay Berengaria what was due, King John still owed her more than £4000 when he died. During the reign of his son Henry III of England, however, her payments were made as they were supposed to be.
Berengaria eventually settled in Le Mans, one of her dower properties. She was a benefactress of the abbey of L'Epau, entered the conventual life, and was buried in the abbey. A skeleton thought to be hers was discovered in 1960 during the restoration of the abbey.
Berengaria of Navarre, Queen consort of England's Timeline
1167
| i don't know |
What was the signature song of Edith Piaf - she wrote the lyrics - and the title of a 207 film about her? | Song of the Day: La Vie en rose by Édith Piaf | The Dancing Rest
Song of the Day: La Vie en rose by Édith Piaf
“La Vie en rose” was the signature song of French singer Édith Piaf, written in 1945, popularized in 1946, and released as a single in 1947.
Lyrics:
Des yeux qui font baisser les miens
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche
Voila le portrait sans retouche
De l’homme auquel, j’appartiens
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose
Il me dit des mots d’amour
Des mots de tous les jours
Et a me fait quelque chose
Il est entr dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause
C’est lui pour moi
Moi pour lui dans la vie
Il me l’a dit, l’a jur pour la vie
Et, ds que je l’apercois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bate
Des nuits d’amour ne plus en finir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Des enuis des chagrins, des phases
Heureux, heureux a en mourir
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose
Il me dit des mots d’amour
Des mots de tous les jours
Et a me fait quelque chose
Il est entr dans mon Coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause
C’est toi pour moi
Moi pour toi dans la vie
Il me l’a dit, m’a jur pour la vie
Et, ds que je l’apercois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat
the cause of which I recognise.
It’s him for me, me for him in life
He said that to me, swore to me forever.
And as soon as I see him
So do I feel in me
My heart which beats
Song history
The song’s title can be translated as “Life in Rosy Hues” or “Life Through Rose-Colored Glasses”; its literal meaning is “Life in Pink”.
The lyrics of the song were written by Édith Piaf herself, and the melody was composed by Marguerite Monnot and Louis Guglielmi, known as Louiguy. Originally, the song was registered as being written by Louiguy only, since at the time Piaf did not have necessary qualifications to be able to copyright her work with SACEM. Words “Quand il me prend dans ses bras…” (“When he takes me in his arms…”) came to her mind one evening in 1944, when she was standing in front of an American man. That gave the base for the rest of lyrics. Piaf offered the song to Marianne Michel, who slightly modified the lyrics, changing “les choses” (“things”) for “la vie” (“life”). English lyrics for the song were later written by Mack David.
Initially, Piaf’s peers and songwriting team did not think the song would be successful, finding it weaker than the rest of her repertoire. Having listened to their advice, the singer put the song aside, only to change her mind the next year. The song was performed live in concert for the first time in 1946. It became a favorite with audiences. “La Vie en rose” was the song that made Piaf internationally famous, with its lyrics telling about retaken love and appealing to those who had survived the difficult wartime.
“La Vie en rose” was released on a 10″ single in 1947 by Columbia Records, a division of EMI, with “Un refrain courait dans la rue” making the B-side. It met with a warm reception and sold a million copies in the USA. It was the biggest-selling single of 1948 in Italy, and the ninth biggest-selling single in Brazil in 1949. Piaf performed the song in the 1948 French movie Neuf garçons, un coeur. The first of Piaf’s albums to include “La Vie en rose” was the 10″ Chansons parisiennes, released in 1950. The song appeared on most of Piaf’s subsequent albums, and on numerous greatest hits compilations. The song went on to become Piaf’s signature song and her trademark hit, sitting with “Milord” and “Non, je ne regrette rien” among her best-known and most recognizable tunes. Encouraged by its success, Piaf wrote 80 more songs in her career.
The song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.
Two films about Piaf named after the song’s title have been produced. The first one, a 1998 documentary, used archive footage and interviews with Raquel Bitton, and was narrated by Bebe Neuwirth. The 2007 biographical feature film La Vie en rose won Marion Cotillardan Academy Award for Best Actress for portraying Piaf in the film from childhood until her death at 47.
As music in films
Operation: Rabbit (1952) – instrumental only (uncredited)
Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (1953) – hummed by a mischievous Daffy Duck
By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953) – instrumental only
Sabrina (1954) – as Sabrina Fairchild’s song
Noches de Casablanca (1963) – sung by Sara Montiel
The Cheap Detective (1978) – however, Eileen Brennan’s character, Betty DeBoop, doesn’t sing the words, and just sings “La la la la la la la en rose”
Bull Durham (1988)
A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (1998)
Summer of Sam (1999)
View from the Top (2003)
Love Me If You Dare (2003)
Something’s Gotta Give Deleted Scene (2003)
Modigliani (2004)
A World Without Thieves (2004)
Valiant (2005)
La Vie en rose (2007)
Mister Lonely (2007)
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009)
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Monte Carlo (2011)
As music in other media
“La Vie en rose” appeared in the television show I Love Lucy in the episode entitled “Hollywood Anniversary”, right before Desi Arnaz sang the song “The Anniversary Waltz”. The episode was filmed and aired in 1955.
Barbara Feldon sang “La Vie en rose” in a 1966 episode of Get Smart entitled “Casablanca”.
The song appeared in the television show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, in the episode entitled “Pheromone, My Lovely” (1993).
“La Vie en rose” appeared in an episode of Relic Hunter entitled “Memories of Montmarte”.
In “Cold Stones”, the 76th episode of The Sopranos, Rosalie Aprile hums a throaty version of the song to comfort Carmela Soprano. The episode was aired in May 2006.
In the 2006 Egyptian film The Yacoubian Building, chanteuse Christine (Youssra) includes “La Vie en rose” in her repertoire, singing it on at least one occasion for Zaki el Dessouki (Adel Imam).
In the 1954 movie ‘Sabrina’ this song is mentioned and played many times throughout the movie. Actress Audrey Hepburn even sang part of this song.
Steampunk chanteuse Veronique Chevalier does a parody version – which turns out to be about a battle with slugs.
In the 2003 romantic comedy Something’s Gotta Give, the song is played several times during scenes of Paris, and actor Jack Nicholson (Harry Sanborn) sings it during the closing credit roll.
In the first season of The Voice (Australia), Rachael Leahcar performed “La Vie en rose” as her blind audition, receiving a standing ovation from the in-studio audience and the four celebrity coaches.
Bosom Buddies sang la vie en rose on episode 4 of Britain’s got Talent series 7 and received a standing ovation. The two males sang as females shocking all in the audience with Simon Cowell likening the pair to Geri Halliwell and Victoria Beckham, stating the difference being Bosom Buddies can sing.
Other mentions
Ian Fleming references the song in his first James Bond novel Casino Royale, when Bond is eating with Vesper Lynd, and again in his fourth novel Diamonds Are Forever, when Bond chooses to skip it on the record player as it has “painful memories”.
The Avengers BBC TV series used this song as an episode title. It was played repeatedly in a house in which Emma Peel was held against her will by an enemy agent she had seduced and betrayed by utilizing the song.
Lyrics from the song are quoted in Albert Cohen’s 1968 novel Belle du Seigneur (chapter LVI).
La Vie en Rose was the name of a spaceship in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ, as well as an episode title of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory.
In the 1990s anime Di Gi Charat, the name Rabi~en~Rose is based in “La Vie en rose”.
“La Vie en rose” is mentioned in John Boyne’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, published in 2006.
Canadian singer/songwriter Avril Lavigne has a tattoo saying ‘La Vie en rose’
Édith Piaf
| La Vie en rose |
Who presents the BBC arts series 'Imagine'? | Maria Morlino - YouTube
Maria Morlino
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La Vie En Rose -
"La Vie en rose" (French pronunciation: [la vi ɑ̃ ʁoz]) was the signature song of French singer Édith Piaf, written in 1945,[1] popularized in 1946, and released as a single in 1947.
Contents 1 Song history 2 Track listing 3 Chart performance 4 References in popular culture 4.1 As music in films 4.2 As music in other media 4.3 Other mentions 5 Cover versions 6 References
Song history
The song's title can be translated as "Life in Rosy Hues" or "Life Through Rose-Colored Glasses"; its literal meaning is "Life in Pink".[2]
The melody of the song was composed by Louis Guglielmi, known as Louiguy, and the lyrics were written by Édith Piaf herself. Originally, the song was registered as being written by Louiguy only, since at the time Piaf did not have necessary qualifications to be able to copyright her work with SACEM.[3] Words "Quand il me tient dans ses bras..." ("When he takes me in his arms...") came to her mind one evening in 1944, when she was standing in front of an American man.[4] That gave the base for the rest of lyrics. Piaf offered the song to Marianne Michel, who slightly modified the lyrics, changing "les choses" ("things") for "la vie" ("life"). English lyrics for the song were later written by Mack David.[5]
Initially, Piaf's peers and songwriting team did not think the song would be successful, finding it weaker than the rest of her repertoire. Having listened to their advice, the singer put the song aside, only to change her mind the next year. The song was performed live in concert for the first time in 1946. It became a favorite with audiences.[3] "La Vie en rose" was the song that made Piaf internationally famous, with its lyrics telling about retaken love and appealing to those who had survived the difficult wartime.[6]
"La Vie en rose" was released on a 10" single in 1947 by Columbia Records, a division of EMI, with "Un refrain courait dans la rue" making the B-side. It met with a warm reception and sold a million copies in the USA.[7] It was the biggest-selling single of 1948 in Italy, and the ninth biggest-selling single in Brazil in 1949.[8] Piaf performed the song in the 1948 French movie Neuf garçons, un coeur. The first of Piaf's albums to include "La Vie en rose" was the 10" Chansons parisiennes, released in 1950. The song appeared on most of Piaf's subsequent albums, and on numerous greatest hits compilations. The song went on to become Piaf's signature song and her trademark hit, sitting with "Milord" and "Non, je ne regrette rien" among her best-known and most recognizable tunes. Encouraged by its success, Piaf wrote 80 more songs in her career.[3]
The song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.[9] Show less
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"Which Press Secretary to Margaret Thatcher was described by John Biffen MP as "" a rough-spoken Yorkshire Rasputin""?" | Lord Biffen - Telegraph
Lord Biffen
Lord Biffen: ‘I did not come into politics to be a kamikaze pilot’
12:01AM BST 15 Aug 2007
The Lord Biffen, who died yesterday aged 76, was reckoned by many to be the cleverest Conservative of them all; an independent spirit previously close to Enoch Powell, he adorned Margaret Thatcher's government without ever being a true believer.
Diffident, rumpled and complex, John Biffen was a surprise addition to her shadow cabinet prior to the 1979 election. He proved an austere Chief Secretary to the Treasury and an uncomfortable Trade Secretary, but an outstanding Leader of the House.
Universally known as "Biffo", his geniality, independence and wit made him "the most popular boy in the school", and Biffen proved the most successful Leader of the Commons since the war. His qualities at the dispatch box contrasted vividly with those of his leader: he was sensitive and he was funny.
He uniquely managed to discomfit the unshakeable Socialist Dennis Skinner by telling him: "We grammar school boys must stick together." And when he married, after reaching the age of 48 as a confirmed bachelor, he took in good part Michael Foot's congratulations on "your own personal U-turn".
Biffen was never easy to typecast. He began as a nationalist: his head in the clouds, his feet in the mud of North Shropshire. He had a puritanical distrust of party "fat cats", and, while sharing Mrs Thatcher's instincts on issues such as monetarism and Europe, he disdained her acolytes for seeking to turn Toryism into a "raucous political faction".
He also possessed a vivid sense of history. The morning after the October 1984 Brighton bombing which severely wounded two Cabinet colleagues, Biffen observed to shaken representatives as they walked to the conference centre: "This must be the most serious attack on the Constitution since the Cato Street conspiracy."
Lacking zeal in a government of zealots, Biffen once said: "I did not come into politics to be a kamikaze pilot." Yet he began staking out a position that Mrs Thatcher could not accept.
Concerned at the headlong pace of the changes she was forcing through, he declared himself a "consolidator". And his days were numbered when he called, in a Weekend World interview, for a "balanced ticket" - interpreted in Number 10 as a desire to see and hear less of Mrs Thatcher and more of her ministers.
Her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, notoriously chararacterised Biffen to the Lobby as a "semi-detached member of the Cabinet" and a "licensed court jester"; and after comfortably winning the 1987 election, Mrs Thatcher sacked him.
Ingham insisted the words were his own, not the prime minister's, and reporters at the briefing had that impression; Biffen berated Ingham as "a rough-spoken Yorkshire Rasputin who is manipulating government" and as "the sewer, not the sewage."
Biffen - who admitted possessing a "keenly developed sense of meanness" - was not the easiest of Cabinet colleagues. He came to dislike Mrs Thatcher's "self-righteous-ness", and felt obliged to tell the truth as he saw it.
He opposed her determination to ban trades unions from GCHQ, expressed doubts about the Falklands expedition and publicly criticised spending cuts. After he was sacked, he described Mrs Thatcher's style as "Stalinist", promising not to make life easier for her.
Nor did he. He criticised the Poll Tax, voted to reform the Official Secrets Act and opposed the tax cuts in Nigel Lawson's 1988 "give-away" Budget. He feared an onset of inflation, saying: "I have deep affection for stability, partly because it favours the poor; in times of instability it is always the rich who are more fleet of foot."
Biffen's espousal of Powell-ite views on immigration and the economy (he was known as Powell's "John the Baptist") anchored him firmly to the backbenches during Edward Heath's leadership and beyond. Ironically, given his later hostility towards her, he was rescued by Mrs Thatcher.
She promoted him to the shadow cabinet in 1976 as energy spokesman, but bouts of depressive illness - eventually conquered by medication - forced him to stand down. Her decision to recall him as the election neared was an act of faith.
But he would have lacked the stamina for the highest office; he spoke of experiencing "mind-numbing terror and absolute funk" over his responsibilities. In 2000 he suffered total renal failure and spent the last years of his life on dialysis.
Biffen's constituents appreciated his idiosyncracy, good temper and assiduity. And at Westminster he had few enemies, save eventually Mrs Thatcher - whom he branded "a tigress surrounded by hamsters" - and Lawson.
William John Biffen was born at Combwich, Somerset, on November 3 1930, the son of a tenant farmer. He was educated at Combwich village school and Dr Morgan's School, Bridgwater, winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, where, after National Service as a clerk in the Royal Engineers, he took a First in History.
Spurning academic life in America in the hope of breaking into politics, he joined Tube Investments as a management trainee in 1953, moving in 1960 to the Economist Intelligence Unit.
After fighting Richard Crossman at Coventry East in 1959, Biffen joined the Bow Group, then reckoned on the Left of the party. In 1961 he was unexpectedly selected to fight a by-election at Oswestry after the sitting member, David Ormsby Gore, was appointed ambassador to Washington; Biffen was the only contender to show knowledge of the Common Market.
He held the seat, redrawn in 1983 as Shropshire North, until his retirement from the House with a life peerage in 1997.
When Mrs Thatcher came to power she appointed him Chief Secretary to the Treasury as "axeman" under Sir Geoffrey Howe; Biffen promised "three more years of austerity". After two, she made him Trade Secretary, a post that would have better suited a man who enjoyed going abroad.
In the reshuffle following Lord Carrington's resignation after Argentina invaded the Falklands, she moved him to Lord President of the Council (subsequently Lord Privy Seal) and Leader of the House.
For five years he gave a textbook demonstration of how the Leader should represent the government to the Commons and the Commons to the government, though Mrs Thatcher inevitably was not amused by the latter.
His criticisms did not end with Mrs Thatcher's departure. He blamed John Major for the way Britain had entered the Exchange Rate Mechanism when he was Chancellor, and was one of the key rebels during the long and contentious debates in 1992-93 over the Maastricht Treaty.
Biffen was at various times a director of Glynwed International, J Bibby & Sons, the Rockware Group and Barlow International. He was a trustee of the London Clinic from 1994 to 2002 and was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Shropshire in 1993.
He was the author of Inside the House of Commons (1989) and Inside Westminster (1996).
John Biffen married, in 1979, Sarah Wood (née Drew), one of his secretaries. She survives him with a stepson and a stepdaughter.
| Bernard Ingham |
Great Victoria Street railway station serves the centre of which UK city? | Lord Biffen - Telegraph
Lord Biffen
Lord Biffen: ‘I did not come into politics to be a kamikaze pilot’
12:01AM BST 15 Aug 2007
Comments
The Lord Biffen, who died yesterday aged 76, was reckoned by many to be the cleverest Conservative of them all; an independent spirit previously close to Enoch Powell, he adorned Margaret Thatcher's government without ever being a true believer.
Diffident, rumpled and complex, John Biffen was a surprise addition to her shadow cabinet prior to the 1979 election. He proved an austere Chief Secretary to the Treasury and an uncomfortable Trade Secretary, but an outstanding Leader of the House.
Universally known as "Biffo", his geniality, independence and wit made him "the most popular boy in the school", and Biffen proved the most successful Leader of the Commons since the war. His qualities at the dispatch box contrasted vividly with those of his leader: he was sensitive and he was funny.
He uniquely managed to discomfit the unshakeable Socialist Dennis Skinner by telling him: "We grammar school boys must stick together." And when he married, after reaching the age of 48 as a confirmed bachelor, he took in good part Michael Foot's congratulations on "your own personal U-turn".
Biffen was never easy to typecast. He began as a nationalist: his head in the clouds, his feet in the mud of North Shropshire. He had a puritanical distrust of party "fat cats", and, while sharing Mrs Thatcher's instincts on issues such as monetarism and Europe, he disdained her acolytes for seeking to turn Toryism into a "raucous political faction".
He also possessed a vivid sense of history. The morning after the October 1984 Brighton bombing which severely wounded two Cabinet colleagues, Biffen observed to shaken representatives as they walked to the conference centre: "This must be the most serious attack on the Constitution since the Cato Street conspiracy."
Lacking zeal in a government of zealots, Biffen once said: "I did not come into politics to be a kamikaze pilot." Yet he began staking out a position that Mrs Thatcher could not accept.
Concerned at the headlong pace of the changes she was forcing through, he declared himself a "consolidator". And his days were numbered when he called, in a Weekend World interview, for a "balanced ticket" - interpreted in Number 10 as a desire to see and hear less of Mrs Thatcher and more of her ministers.
Her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, notoriously chararacterised Biffen to the Lobby as a "semi-detached member of the Cabinet" and a "licensed court jester"; and after comfortably winning the 1987 election, Mrs Thatcher sacked him.
Ingham insisted the words were his own, not the prime minister's, and reporters at the briefing had that impression; Biffen berated Ingham as "a rough-spoken Yorkshire Rasputin who is manipulating government" and as "the sewer, not the sewage."
Biffen - who admitted possessing a "keenly developed sense of meanness" - was not the easiest of Cabinet colleagues. He came to dislike Mrs Thatcher's "self-righteous-ness", and felt obliged to tell the truth as he saw it.
He opposed her determination to ban trades unions from GCHQ, expressed doubts about the Falklands expedition and publicly criticised spending cuts. After he was sacked, he described Mrs Thatcher's style as "Stalinist", promising not to make life easier for her.
Nor did he. He criticised the Poll Tax, voted to reform the Official Secrets Act and opposed the tax cuts in Nigel Lawson's 1988 "give-away" Budget. He feared an onset of inflation, saying: "I have deep affection for stability, partly because it favours the poor; in times of instability it is always the rich who are more fleet of foot."
Biffen's espousal of Powell-ite views on immigration and the economy (he was known as Powell's "John the Baptist") anchored him firmly to the backbenches during Edward Heath's leadership and beyond. Ironically, given his later hostility towards her, he was rescued by Mrs Thatcher.
She promoted him to the shadow cabinet in 1976 as energy spokesman, but bouts of depressive illness - eventually conquered by medication - forced him to stand down. Her decision to recall him as the election neared was an act of faith.
But he would have lacked the stamina for the highest office; he spoke of experiencing "mind-numbing terror and absolute funk" over his responsibilities. In 2000 he suffered total renal failure and spent the last years of his life on dialysis.
Biffen's constituents appreciated his idiosyncracy, good temper and assiduity. And at Westminster he had few enemies, save eventually Mrs Thatcher - whom he branded "a tigress surrounded by hamsters" - and Lawson.
William John Biffen was born at Combwich, Somerset, on November 3 1930, the son of a tenant farmer. He was educated at Combwich village school and Dr Morgan's School, Bridgwater, winning a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, where, after National Service as a clerk in the Royal Engineers, he took a First in History.
Spurning academic life in America in the hope of breaking into politics, he joined Tube Investments as a management trainee in 1953, moving in 1960 to the Economist Intelligence Unit.
After fighting Richard Crossman at Coventry East in 1959, Biffen joined the Bow Group, then reckoned on the Left of the party. In 1961 he was unexpectedly selected to fight a by-election at Oswestry after the sitting member, David Ormsby Gore, was appointed ambassador to Washington; Biffen was the only contender to show knowledge of the Common Market.
He held the seat, redrawn in 1983 as Shropshire North, until his retirement from the House with a life peerage in 1997.
When Mrs Thatcher came to power she appointed him Chief Secretary to the Treasury as "axeman" under Sir Geoffrey Howe; Biffen promised "three more years of austerity". After two, she made him Trade Secretary, a post that would have better suited a man who enjoyed going abroad.
In the reshuffle following Lord Carrington's resignation after Argentina invaded the Falklands, she moved him to Lord President of the Council (subsequently Lord Privy Seal) and Leader of the House.
For five years he gave a textbook demonstration of how the Leader should represent the government to the Commons and the Commons to the government, though Mrs Thatcher inevitably was not amused by the latter.
His criticisms did not end with Mrs Thatcher's departure. He blamed John Major for the way Britain had entered the Exchange Rate Mechanism when he was Chancellor, and was one of the key rebels during the long and contentious debates in 1992-93 over the Maastricht Treaty.
Biffen was at various times a director of Glynwed International, J Bibby & Sons, the Rockware Group and Barlow International. He was a trustee of the London Clinic from 1994 to 2002 and was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Shropshire in 1993.
He was the author of Inside the House of Commons (1989) and Inside Westminster (1996).
John Biffen married, in 1979, Sarah Wood (née Drew), one of his secretaries. She survives him with a stepson and a stepdaughter.
| i don't know |
Which opera, set in 1930 Seville, opens in a factory where workers make cigarettes all day? | Tobacco TimeLine
Return to: Tobacco Lesson 01
IN THE BEGINNING . . .
Huron Indian myth has it that in ancient times, when the land was barren and the people were starving, the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled over the world, everywhere her right hand touched the soil, there grew potatoes. And everywhere her left hand touched the soil, there grew corn. And when the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose, there grew tobacco . . .
TOBACCO TIMELINE
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since August 31, 1999.
Copyright 1997 Gene Borio , the Tobacco BBS (212-982-4645. WebPage: http://www.tobacco.org.) Original Tobacco BBS material may be reprinted in any non-commercial venue if accompanied by this credit, with hyperlinks intact.
SOURCES: Thanks to tobacco researcher Larry Breed (LB) for his contributions. He recently found a little tome called "This Smoking World" (1927), and shared some of its events (TSW). I am also beginning to incorporate events referenced in Richard Kluger's monumental Ashes to Ashes (RK), The American Tobacco Story (ATS), Corti's "A History of Smoking (1931), Elizabeth Whelan's A Smoking Gun, and Susan Wagner's Cigarette Country (1971). Another important source is Bill Drake's wonderful The European Experience With Native American Tobacco (BD)
Copyright @ 1999. Vernellia R. Randall
All Rights Reserved.
The sacred origin of tobacco and the first pipe (Schoolcraft)
c. 6000 BC: Experts believe the tobacco plant, as we know it today, begins growing in the Americas.
c. 1 BCE: Experts believe American inhabitants begin finding ways to use tobacco, including smoking (via a number of variations), chewing and in enemas (which were probably hallucinogenic).
c. 1 CE: Tobacco was "nearly everywhere" in the Americas. (American Heritage Book of Indians, p.41).
600-1000 CE: UAXACTUN, GUATEMALA. First pictorial record of smoking:
A pottery vessel found here dates from before the 11th century. On it a Maya is depicted smoking a roll of tobacco leaves tied with a string. The Mayan term for smoking was sik'ar
Introduction:
The Chiapas Gift, or The Indians' Revenge?
1492-10-12: Columbus Discovers Tobacco; "Certain Dried Leaves" Are Given as Gifts, Thrown Away.
On this bright morning Columbus and his men set foot on the New World for the first time, landing on the beach of the island he named "San Salvador." The indigenous Arawaks, possibly thinking the strange visitors divine, offer gifts. Columbus wrote in his journal, "the natives brought fruit, wooden spears, and certain dried leaves which gave off a distinct fragrance." As each item seemed much-prized; Columbus accepted the gifts and ordered them brought back to the ship. The fruit was eaten; the pungent "dried leaves" were thrown away.
1492-11: Jerez and Torres Discover Smoking; Jerez Becomes First European Smoker
Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, in Cuba searching for the Khan of Cathay (China), are credited with first observing smoking. They reported that the natives wrapped dried tobacco leaves in palm or maize "in the manner of a musket formed of paper." After lighting one end, they commenced "drinking" the smoke through the other. Jerez became a confirmed smoker, and is thought to be the first outside of the Americas. He brought the habit back to his hometown, but the smoke billowing from his mouth and nose so frightened his neighbors he was imprisoned by the holy inquisitors for 7 years. By the time he was released, smoking was a Spanish craze.
1497: Robert Pane, who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493, writes the first report of native tobacco use to appear in Europe.
1518: MEXICO: JUAN DE GRIJALVA lands in Yucatan, observes cigarette smoking by natives (ATS)
1519: MEXICO: CORTEZ conquers AZTEC capitol, finds Mexican natives smoking perfumed reed cigarettes.(ATS)
1530: MEXICO: BERNARDINO DE SAHAGUN, missionary in Mexico, distinguishes between sweet commercial tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) and coarse Nicotiana rustica.(ATS)
1531: SANTO DOMINGO: European cultivation of tobacco begins
1534: CUBA, SANTO DOMINGO: "Tall tobacco"--sweet, broadleaved Nicotiana tabacum--is transplanted from Central American mainland to Cuba and Santo Domingo.(ATS)
1548: BRAZIL: Portuguese cultivate tobacco for commercial export.
1554: ANTWERP: 'Cruydeboeck' presents first illustration of tobacco. (LB)
1535: CANADA: Jacques Cartier encounters natives on the island of Montreal who use tobacco.
1556: FRANCE: Tobacco is introduced. Thevet transplants Nicotiana tabacum from Brazil, describes tobacco as a creature comfort. (ATS)
1558: PORTUGAL: Tobacco is introduced.
1559: SPAIN: Tobacco is introduced.
1560: PORTUGAL, FRANCE: Jean Nicot de Villemain, France's ambassador to Portugal, writes of tobacco's medicinal properties, describing it as a panacea. Nicot sends rustica plants to French court.
1564 or 1565: ENGLAND: Tobacco is introduced by Sir John Hawkins and/or his crew. For the next twenty years in England, tobacco is used cheifly by sailors, including those employed by Sir Francis Drake.
1566: FRANCE: Nicot sends snuff to Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, to treat her migraine headaches. She later decrees tobacco be termed Herba Regina
1568: FRANCE: Andre Thevet provides first description of tobacco use. In Brazil, he wrote, the people smoke it and it cleans the "superfluous humours of the brain". Thevet smoked it himself. (LB)
1570: Claimed first botanical book on tobacco written by Pena and Lobel of London.(TSW)
1571: SPAIN: MEDICINE: Monardes, a doctor in Seville, reports on the latest craze among Spanish doctors--the wonders of the tobacco plant, which herbalists are growing all over Spain. Monardes lists 36 maladies tobacco cures.
1573: ENGLAND: Sir Francis Drake returns from Americas with 'Nicotina tobacum'. (LB)
1575: MEXICO: LEGISLATION: Roman Catholic Church passes a law against smoking in any place of worship in the Spanish Colonies
1577: ENGLAND: MEDICINE: Frampton translates Monardes into English. European doctors look for new cures--tobacco is recommended for toothache, falling fingernails, worms, halitosis, lockjaw & cancer
1580: CUBA: European cultivation of tobacco begins
1580: TURKEY: Tobacco arrives (AHS)
1580: POLAND: Tobacco arrives (AHS)
1585: ENGLAND: Sir Francis Drake introduces smoking to Sir Walter Raleigh (BD)
1586: Ralph Lane, first governor of Virginia, teaches Sir Walter Raleigh to smoke the long-stemmed clay pipe Lane is credited with inventing (BD).(TSW)
1586: GERMANY: 'De plantis epitome utilissima' offers one of first cautions to use of tobacco, calling it a "violent herb". (LB)
1586: ENGLAND: Tobacco Arrives in English Society. In July 1586, some of the Virginia colonists returned to England and disembarked at Plymouth smoking tobacco from pipes, which caused a sensation. William Camden (1551-1623) a contemporary witness, reports that "These men who were thus brought back were the first that I know of that brought into England that Indian plant which they call Tabacca and Nicotia, or Tobacco" Tobacco in the Elizabethan age was known as "sotweed." (BD)
1587: ANTWERP: First published work totally on tobacco, 'De herbe panacea', with numerous recipies and claims of cures. (LB)
1590: LITERATURE: Spenser's Fairy Queen: earliest poetical allusion to tobacco in English literature. (Book III, Canto VI, 32).
1595: ENGLAND: Tabacco, the first book in the English language devoted to the subject of tobacco, is published
1595 (approx.): Matoaka is born to Chief Powhatan. She is given the nickname Pocahontas--"Frisky," "Playful One" or "Mischief"
1596: LITERATURE: Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humor is acted on the 25th of November, 1596, and printed in 1601. In Act III, Scene 2, Bobadilla (pro) and Cob (con) argue about tobacco. (BD)
Seventeenth Century--"The Great Age of the Pipe"
When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers therefore are the founders of human civilization. -- Daniel Webster. 1782-1852.
Tobacco comes into use as "Country Money" or "Country Pay" in the colonies. Tobacco continues to be used as a monetary standard--literally a "cash crop"-- throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries, lasting twice as long as the gold standard.
So prominent is the place that tobacco occupies in the early records of the middle Southern States, that its cultivation and commercial associations may be said to form the basis of their history. It was the direct source of their wealth, and became for a while the representative of gold and silver; the standard value of other merchantable products; and this tradition was further preserved by the stamping of a tobacco-leaf upon the old continental money used in the Revolution. --19th century historian (DB)
1600s: Popes ban smoking in holy places. Pope Urban VIII (1623-44) threatens excommunication for those who smoke or take snuff in holy places.
1600: BRAZIL: European cultivation of tobacco begins
1600: ENGLAND: Sir Walter Raleigh persuades Queen Elizabeth to try smoking
1601: TURKEY: Smoking is introduced, and rapidly takes hold while clerics denounce it. "Puffing in each other's faces, they made the streets and markets stink," writes historian Ibrahim Pecevi.
1602: ENGLAND: Publication of Worke of Chimney Sweepers by anonymous author identified as 'Philaretes' states that illness of chimney sweepers is caused by soot and that tobacco may have similar effects. (LB)
1602: ENGLAND: Roger Markecke writes A Defense of Tobacco, in response to Chimneysweeps (LB)
1603: ENGLAND: Physicians are upset that tobacco used by people without physician prescription; complain to King James I.(TSW)
1604: ENGLAND: King James I writes "A Counterblaste to Tobacco"
1604: ENGLAND: King James I increases import tax on tobacco 4,000%
1605: ENGLAND: Debate between King James I and Dr. Cheynell.(TSW)
1606: SPAIN: King Philip Ill decrees that tobacco may only be grown in specific locations--including Cuba, Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Sale of tobacco to foreigners is punishable by death.
1606+: ADVERTISING: ENGLAND: America and advertising begin to grow together. One of the first products heavily marketed is America itself. Richard Hofstadter called the Virginia Company's recruitment effort for its new colony, "one of the first concerted and sustained advertising campaigns in the history of the modern world." The out-of-place, out-of-work "gentlemen" in an overpopulated England were sold quite a bill of goods about the bountiful land and riches to be had in the New World. Daniel J. Boorstin has mused whether "there was a kind of natural selection here of those people who were willing to believe in advertising."
1607: JAMESTOWN saga begins
1610: ENGLAND: Sir Francis Bacon writes that tobacco use is increasing and that it is a custom hard to quit. (LB)
1610: ENGLAND: Edmond Gardiner publishes William Barclay's The Trial of Tobacco and provides a text of recipies and medicinal preparations. BArclay defends tobacco as a medicine but condemns casual use(LB)
1612: CHINA: Imperial edict forbidding the planting and use tobacco.(TSW)
1612: JAMESTOWN: John Rolfe raises Virginia's first commercial crop of "tall tobacco."
1614: SPAIN: King Philip III establishes Seville as tobacco center of the world.
Attempting to prevent a tobacco glut, Philip requires all tobacco grown in the Spanish New World to be shipped to a central location, Seville, Spain. Seville becomes the world center for the production of cigars. European cigarette use begins here, as beggars patch together tobacco from used cigars, and roll them in paper(papeletes). Spanish and Portuguese sailors spread the practice to Russia and the Levant.
1613-89: RUSSIA: Tobacco prohibition under the early Romanoffs (AHS)
1614-04: JAMESTOWN: John Rolfe and Pocahontas (Rebecca) are married
1614: ENGLAND: First sale of native Virginia tobacco in England; Virginia colony enters world tobacco market, under English protection
1614: ENGLAND: "[T]here be 7000 shops, in and about London, that doth vent Tobacco" -- The Honestie of this Age, Prooving by good circumstance that the world was never honest till now, by Barnabee Rych Gentleman (BD)
1614: LITERATURE: Nepenthes, or the Vertues of Tabacco, by William Barclay; Edinburgh, 1614. Touts tobacco's medicinal qualities, and recommends exclusively tobacco of American origin (BD)
1614: ENGLAND: King James I makes the import of tobacco a Royal monopoly, available for a yearly fee of £14,000.
1616-06-03: JAMESTOWN: John Rolfe and Pocahontas arrive in London
1617: Dr. William Vaughn writes:
Tobacco that outlandish weede
It spends the braine and spoiles the seede
It dulls the spirite, it dims the sight
It robs a woman of her right
1617: MONGOLIA: Emperor places dealth penalty on using tobacco.(TSW)
1618-48: THE THIRTY YEARS WAR accounts for the extension of smoking. (AHS)
1618-48: ENGLAND: SIR WALTER RALEIGH, popularizer of tobacco in England, is beheaded for treason.
1619: ENGLAND: An unhappy King James I incorporates British pipe makers.(TSW)
1619: JAMESTOWN: First Africans brought into Virginia. John Rolfe writes in his diary, About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars. They were needed for the booming tobacco crop, but had been baptized, so as Christians could not be enslaved for life, but only indentured like English colonists-- for5-7 years
1619: JAMESTOWN: First shipment of wives for settlers arrives. Future husbands had to pay for his prospective mate's passage (120 lbs. of tobacco).
1619: ECONOMY: Tobacco begins being used as currency. It will continue to be so used for 200 years in Virginia, for 150 years in Maryland, adjusting to the vagaries of shifting values and varying qualities. (see 1727, "Tobacco Notes")
1619-12-04: BERKELEY, VA: The very first American THANKSGIVING celebrated a good tobacco crop. The holiday was abandoned after the Indian Massacre of 1622.
1620: ENGLAND: 40,000 lbs of tobacco are imported from Virginia. (LB)
1620: BUSINESS: Trade agreement between the Crown & Virginia Company bans commercial tobacco growing in England, in return for a 1 shilling/lb. duty on Virginia tobacco.
1620 (about): JAPAN: Prohibition in Japan (AHS)
1621: Sixty future wives arrive in Virginia and sell for 150 pounds of tobacco each. Price up since 1619.(TSW)
1621: ENGLAND: Tobias Venner publishes "A briefe and accurate treatise, comcerning....tobacco" claiming medicinal properties, but condeming use for pleasure. (LB)
1624: REGULATION: POPE URBAN VIII threatens excommunication for snuff users; sneezing is thought too close to sexual ecstasy
1624: ENGLAND establishes a royal tobacco monopoly.
1628: REGULATION: SHAH SEFI punishes two merchants for selling tobacco by pouring hot lead down their throat.(TSW)
1629: FRANCE: RICHELIEU puts a tax on smoking.(AHS)
1630: SWEDEN learns to smoke.(AHS)
1631: AGRICULTURE: European cultivation of tobacco begins in Maryland
1632: REGULATION: MASSACHUSETTS forbids public smoking
1633: AGRICULTURE: CONNECTICUT Settled; first tobacco crop raised in Windsor.
1633: REGULATION: TURKEY: Sultan Murad IV orders tobacco users executed as infidels. As many as 18 a day were executed. Some historians consider the ban an anti-plague measure, some a fire-prevention measure.
1634: REGULATION: RUSSIA: Czar Alexis creates penalties for smoking: 1st offense is whipping, a slit nose, and trasportation to Siberia. 2nd offense is execution.(TSW) (BD)
1634: REGULATION: EUROPE: Greek Church claims that it was tobacco smoke that intoxicated Noah and so bans tobacco use.(TSW)
1635: REGULATION: FRANCE: King allows sale of tobaccco only following prescription by physician.(TSW)
1636: BUSINESS: SPAIN: Tabacalera, the oldest tobacco company in the world, is created.
1637: REGULATION: FRANCE: King Louis XIII enjoys snuff and repeals restricions on its use.(TSW)
1638: REGULATION: CHINA: Use or distribution of tobacco is made a crime punishable by decapitation. Snuff, introduced by the Jesuits in the mid-17th century, soon became quite popular, from the court on down, and remained so during much of the Qing dynasty (mid-17th century - 1912.)
1639: REGULATION: NEW YORK CITY: Governor Kieft bans smoking in New Amsterdam
1640: Greenwich Village, NY is known to Native Americans as (var.) Sapponckanican-- "tobacco fields," or "land where the tobacco grows."
In 1629, Niewu Amsterdam's Gov. Wouter Van Twiller appropriated a farm belonging to the Dutch West India Company in the Bossen Bouwery ("Farm in the woods") area of Manhattan island, and began growing tobacco. The first Dutch references to the Indians' name for the area appear around 1640.
1642: POPE URBAN VIII'S Bull against smoking in the churches in Seville. (AHS)
1647: REGULATION: TURKEY: Tobacco ban is lifted. Pecevi writes that tobaco has now joined coffee, wine and opium as one of the four "cushions on the sofa of pleasure."
1647: REGULATION: Colony of Connecticut bans public smoking: citizens may smoke only once a day, "and then not in company with any other."
1648: Smoking generally prohibited. Writers now hostile to it. (AHS)
1650: REGULATION: Colony of Connecticut General Court orders -- no smoking by person under age of 21, no smoking except with physicians order.(TSW)
1650: Spread of smoking in Austria. (AHS)
1650: REGULATION: Pope Innocent X's Bull against smoking in St Peter's, Rome.(AHS)
1657: REGULATION: Prohibition in Switzerland.(AHS)
1659: ITALY: VENICE establishes the first tobacco appalto.
. . . a contract whereby the exclusive right to import, manufacture, and trade in tobacco was farmed out [by the state] to a private person for a certain consideration
(AHS)
1660: ITALY: Pope ALEXANDER VII farms out tobacco monopolies
1660: ENGLAND: THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY The court of Charles II returns to London from exile in Paris, bringing the French court's snuffing practice with them; snuff becomes an aristocratic form of tobacco use. During Charles' reign (1660-1685), the growing of tobacco in England, except for small lots in physic gardens, is forbidden so as to preserve the taxes coming in from Virginian imports..
1660: The Navigation Act mandates that 7 enumerated items--one of which was tobacco--may only be shipped to England or its colonies.
1661: VIRGINIA Assembly begins institutionalizing slavery, making it de jure.
1665: HEALTH: EUROPE: THE GREAT PLAGUE Smoking tobacco is thought to have a protective effect.
1665: HEALTH: ENGLAND: Samuel Pepys describes a Royal Society experiment in which a cat quickly dies when fed "a drop of distilled oil of tobacco."
1666: AGRICULTURE: Maryland faces oversupply; bans production of tobacco for one year.
1670: AUSTRIA: COUNT KHEVENHILLER's appalto is established.
1674: RUSSIA: Smoking Can Carry the Death Penalty.
1674: FRANCE: LOUIS XIV establishes a tobacco monopoly.
1675: REGULATION: SWITZERLAND: The Berne town council establishes a special Chambres de Tabac to deal with smokers, who face the same dire penalties as adulterers.
1676: RUSSIA: the smoking ban is lifted.
1676: TAXES: Heavy taxes levied in tobacco by Virginia Governor BERKELEY lead to BACON'S REBELLION, a foretaste of American Revolution. (ATS)
1679: Abraham a Santa Clara and the plague in Vienna.
1689-1725: RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT's advocacy of smoking.
1693: ENGLAND: Smoking banned in Commons chamber: "no member do presume to take tobacco in the gallery of the House or at a committee table"
1698: RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT establishes a trade monopoly with the English, against Church wishes.
1699: LOUIS XIV and his physician, FAGON, oppose smoking.
The Eighteenth Century--Snuff holds sway
ENGLAND: George III's wife known as "Snuffy Charlotte"
FRANCE: Napoleon said to have used 7 lb. of snuff per month
1700: REGULATION: RUSSIA: Peter the Great smokes and repeals bans on smoking.(TSW)
1701: HEALTH: MEDICINE: Nicholas Andryde Boisregard warns that young people taking too much tobacco have trembling, unsteady hands, staggering feet and suffer a withering of "their noble parts."
I701-40: PRUSSIA: Tobacco councils of Frederick I and Frederick William I. (AHS)
1705: VIRGINIA Assembly passes a law legalizing lifelong slavery. . . . all servants imported and brought into this country, by sea or land, who were not christians in their native country . . . shall be . . . slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to christianity afterwards."
1713: LEGISLATION: Inspection regulations passed to keep up standards of Virginia leaf exports (not effective until 1730). (ATS)
1724: REGULATION: Pope Benedict XIII learns to smoke and repeals papal bulls against clerical smoking.(TSW)
1727: ECONOMY: "Tobacco notes" Become Legal Tender in Virginia. Tobacco Notes attesting to quality and quantity of one's tobacco kept in public warehouses are authorized as legal tender in Virginia. Used as units of monetary exchange throughout 18th Century. The notes are more convenient than the acutal leaf, which had been in use as money for over a century.
1730: LEGISLATION: Virginia Inspection Acts come into effect, standardizing and regulating tobacco sales and exports to prevent the export of "trash tobacco"--shipments diluted with leaves and household sweepings, which were debasing the value of Virginia tobacco. Inspection warehouses were empowered to verify weight and kind and kind of tobacco.
1730: VIRGINIA: BUSINESS: First American tobacco factories begun in Virginia--small snuff mills
1747: LEGISLATION: Maryland passes its own Maryland Inspection Act to control quality of exports.
1750: RHODE ISLAND BUSINESS: Gilbert Stuart builds snuff mill in Rhode Island, ships his products in dried animal bladders
1755.10: Virginia's tobacco crop fails because of extended drought conditions.
1758: LEGISLATION: Virginia Assembly passes wildly unpopular "Two Penny Act," forbidding payment in percentage of tobacco crop to some public officials, such as the Anglican clergy. The crop was small at this period, making tobacco a seller's market. The law mandating a regular salary for these officials severely cut the clergy's real income.
1759: GEORGE WASHINGTON, having gained 17,000 acres of farmland and 286 slaves from his new wife, MARTHA DANDRIDGE CUSTIS (these added to his own 30 slaves), harvests his first tobacco crop. The British market is unimpressed with its quality, and by 1761, Washington is deeply in debt.
1753: SWEDEN: Swedish Botanist Carolus Linnaeus names the plant genus, nicotiana. and describes two species, nicotiana rustica. and nicotiana tabacum."
1760: BUSINESS: Pierre Lorillard establishes a "manufactory" in New York City for processing pipe tobacco, cigars, and snuff. P. Lorillard is the oldest tobacco company in the US.
1761: HEALTH: ENGLAND: John Hill performs perhaps first clinical study of tobacco effects, warns snuff users they are vulnerable to cancers of the nose.
1761: HEALTH: ENGLAND: Dr. Percival Pott notes incidence of cancer of the scrotum among chimneysweeps, theorizing a connection between cancer and exposure to soot.
1762: General Israel Putnam introduces cigar-smoking to the US. After a British campaign in Cuba, "Old Put" returns with three donkey-loads of Havana cigars; introduces the customers of his Connecticut brewery and tavern to cigar smoking (BD)
1763: Patrick Henry argues a tobacco case, the "Parson's Cause."
The clergy had been paid in tobacco until a late 1750s Virginia law which decreed they should be paid in currency at the fixed rate of 2 cent/lb. When tobacco began selling for 6 cents/lb, the clergy protested, and the law was vetoed by the Crown. The old Virginia law was still sometimes adhered to, however, and some clergy sued their parishes. Henry defended one such parish (Hanover County) in court. He berated England's interference in domestic matters, and convinced the jury to give the plaintiff/clergyman only one penny in damages.
1771-12-17: REGULATION: FRANCE: French official is condemned to be hanged for admitting foreign tobacco into the country.
1776: AMERICAN REVOLUTION Along "Tobacco Coast" (the Chesapeake), the Revolutionary War was variously known as "The Tobacco War." Growers had found themselves perpetually in debt to British merchants; by 1776, growers owed the mercantile houses millions of pounds. British tobacco taxes are a further grievance. Tobacco helps finance the Revolution by serving as collateral for loans from France.
1780-1781: VIRGINIA: "TOBACCO WAR" waged by Lord Cornwallis to destroy basis of America's credit abroad (ATS)
1781: Thomas Jefferson suggests tobacco cultivation in the "western country on the Mississippi." (ATS)
1788: BUSINESS: Spanish NEW ORLEANS opened for export of tobacco by Americans in Mississippi valley. (ATS)
1789-1799: FRENCH REVOLUTION French masses begin to take to the cigarito, as the form of tobacco use least like the aristocratic snuff. The hated tobacco monopoly is abolished (to be resurrected by Napoleon)
1791: HEALTH: ENGLAND: London physician John Hill reports cases in which use of snuff caused nasal cancers
1794: TAXES: The U.S Congress passes its first tax on tobacco. The tax of 8 cents applies only to snuff, not the more plebian chewing or smoking tobacco. The tax is 60% of snuff's usual selling price.
1795: HEALTH: Sammuel Thomas von Soemmering of Maine reports on cancers of the lip in pipe smokers
1798. HEALTH: Famed physician Benjamin Rush writes on the medical dangers of tobacco and claims that smoking or chewing tobacco leads to drunkenness.
1798. The United States Marine Hospital Service is established. The service will become the Public Health Service in 1912 and had been made part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1953.
The Nineteenth Century--The Age of the Cigar
1800: CANADA: Tobacco begins being commercially grown.
1805: LEWIS AND CLARK explore Northwest, using gifts of tobacco as "life insurance."
1810: CONNECTICUT: Cuban cigar-roller brought to Suffield to train local workers. (ATS)
1820: American traders open the Santa Fe trail, find ladies of that city smoking "seegaritos." (ATS)
1826: ENGLAND is importing 26 pounds of cigars a year. The cigar becomes so popular that within four years, England will be importing 250,000 pounds of cigars a year.
1826: MEDICINE: The purified form of the nicotine compound is obtained
1828: GERMANY: Heidelberg students Ludwig Reimann and Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt write exhaustive dissertations on the pharmacology of nicotine, concluding it is a "dangerous poison."
1830s: First organized anti-tobacco movement in US begins as adjunct to the temperance movement. Tobacco use is considered to dry out the mouth, "creating a morbid or diseased thirst" which only liquor could quench..
1830: PRUSSIA: Prussian Government enacts a law that cigars , in public, be smoked in a sort of wire-mesh contraption designed to prevent sparks setting fire to ladies' "crinolines" and hoop skirts. (BD)
1832: TURKEY: Invention of the paper-rolled cigarette? While Southwest Indians, Aztecs and Mayans had used hollow reeds, cane or maize to fashion cylindrical tobacco-holders, and Sevillians had rolled cigar-scraps in thrown-away paper (papeletes), an Egyptian artilleryman [in the Turk/Egyptian war] is credited with the invention of the cigarette as we know it. In the siege of Acre, the Egyptian's cannon crew had improved their rate of fire by rolling the gunpowder in paper tubes. For this, he and his crew were rewarded with a pound of tobacco. Their sole pipe was broken, however, so they took to rolling the pipe tobacco in the paper. The invention spread among both Egyptian and Turkish soldiers. And thus . . . (Good-Bye to All That, 1970)
1832: AGRICULTURE: TUCK patents curing method for Virginia leaf.
1839: AGRICULTURE: NORTH CAROLINA: SLADE "yallercure" presages flue-cured Bright tobacco. Charcoal used in flue-curing for the first time in North Carolina. Not only cheaper, its intense heat turns the thinner, low-nicotine Piedmont leaf a brilliant golden color. This results in the classic American "Bright leaf" variety, which is so mild it virtually invites a smoker to inhale it.(RK), (ATS)
1836: USA: Samuel Green of the New England Almanack and Farmers Friend writes that tobacco is an insectide, a poison, a fillthy habit, and can kill a man. (LB)
1842: Opium War. Treaty of Nanjing forces China to accept opium from British traders
1843: FRANCE: SEITA monopoly begins manufacture of cigarettes.
1843: MEDICINE: The correct molecular formula of nicotine is established
1845: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS writes to the Rev. Samuel H. Cox: "In my early youth I was addicted to the use of tobacco in two of its mysteries, smoking and chewing. I was warned by a medical friend of the pernicious operation of this habit upon the stomach and the nerves.''
1845: ART: Prosper Merimee's novel, Carmen, about a cigarette girl in an Andalusian factory, is published
1846-1848: MEXICAN WAR US soldiers bring back from the Southwest a taste for the darker, richer tobacco favored in Latin countries, leading to an explosive increase in the use of the cigar. (The South remains firmly attached to chewing tobacco.)
1847: ENGLAND: Philip Morris opens shop; sells hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes.
1848: GERMANY: REGULATION: Abolition of the last restrictions in Berlin (AHS)
1848: ITALY: "Tobacco War" erupts as Italians protest AUSTRIAN control of the tobacco monopoly.
1849: BUSINESS: J.E. Liggett and Brother is established in St. Louis, Mo., by John Edmund Liggett
1852:Washington Duke, a young tobacco farmer, builds a modest, two-story home near Durham, NC, for himself and his new bride. The house, and the log structure which served as a "tobacco factory" after the Civil War may still be seen at the Duke Homestead Museum.
1852: Matches are introduced, making smoking more convenient.
1853-1856: EUROPE: CRIMEAN WAR British soldiers learn how cheap and convenient the cigarettes ("Papirossi") used by their Turkish allies are, and bring the practise back to England. The story goes that the English captured a Russian train loaded with provisions--including cigarette, and from there--
1854: ENGLAND: BUSINESS: London tobacconist Philip Morris begins making his own cigarettes. Old Bond Street soon becomes the center of the retail tobacco trade.
1854: FRIEDRICH TIEDEMANN writes the first exhaustive treatment on tobacco.
1856-1857: ENGLAND: A running debate among readers about the health effects of tobacco runs in the British medical journal, Lancet. The argument runs as much along moral as medical lines, with little substantiation.(RK)
1856-1857: ENGLAND: The country's first cigarette factory is opened by Crimean vet Robert Gloag, manufacturing "Sweet Threes" (GTAT)
1857: BUSINESS: James Buchanan "Buck" Duke is born to Washington "Wash" Duke, an independent farmer who hated the plantation class, opposed slavery, and raised food and a little tobacco.
1859: Reverend George Trask publishes tract "Thoughts and stories for American Lads: Uncle Toby's anti-tobacco advice to his nephew Billy Bruce". He writes, "Physicians tell us that twenty thousand or more in our own land are killed by [tobacco] every year (LB)
1860: The Census for Virginia and North Carolina list 348 tobacco factories, virtually all producing chewing tobacco. Only 6 list smoking tobacco as a side-product (which is manufactured from scraps left over from plug production).
1860: BUSINESS: Manufactured cigarettes appear. A popular early brand is Bull Durham.
1860: BUSINESS: MARKETING: Lorillard wraps $100 bills at random in packages of cigarette tobacco named "Century," in order to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the firm (BD)
1861-1865: USA: THE CIVIL WAR: Tobacco is given with rations by both North and South; many Northerners are introduced to tobacco this way. During Sherman's march, Union soldiers now attracted to the mild, sweet "bright" tobacco of the South, raided warehouses--including Washington Duke's--for some chew on the way home. Some bright made it all the way back. Bright tobacco becomes the rage in the North.
1862: First federal USA tax on tobacco; instituted to help pay for the Civil War, yields about three million dollars.(TSW)
1863: SUMATRA: Nienhuys creates Indonesian tobacco industry Dutch businessman Jacobus Nienhuys travels to Sumatra seeking to buy tobacco, but finds poor growing and production facilities; his efforts to rectify the situation are credited with establishing the indonesian tobacco industry.
1863: US Mandates Cigar Boxes. Congress passes a law calling for manufacturers to create cigar boxes on which IRS agents can paste Civil War excise tax stamps. The beginning of "cigar box art."
1864: AGRICULTURE: WHITE BURLEY first cultivated in Ohio Valley; highly absorbent, chlorophyll-deficient new leaf proves ideal for sweetened chewing tobacco.
1864: BUSINESS: 1st American cigarette factory opens and produces almost 20 million cigarettes.
1864: First tax levied on cigarettes.
1865-70: NEW YORK CITY: Demand for exotic Turkish cigarettes grows in New York City; skilled European rollers imported by New York tobacco shops. (ATS)
1868: UK: Parliament passes the Railway Bill of 1868, which mandates smoke-free cars to prevent injury to non-smokers.
1873: BUSINESS: Philip Morris dies. (Yes, that Philip Morris)
1873: Myers Brothers and Co. markets "Love" tobacco with them of North-South Civil War reconcilliation.
1874: BUSINESS: Washington Duke, with his sons Benjamin N. Duke and James Buchanan Duke, builds his first tobacco factory
1875: BUSINESS: Allen and Ginter offer a reward of $75,000 for cigarette rolling machine. (LB)
1875: BUSINESS: R. J. Reynolds founds R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to produce chewing tobacco, soon producing brands like Brown's Mule, Golden Rain, Dixie's Delight, Yellow Rose, Purity.
1875: BUSINESS: Richmond, VA: Allen & Ginter cigarette brands ("Richmond Straight Cut No. 1," "Pet") begin using picture cards to stiffen the pack and give the buyer a premium. Some themes: "Fifty Scenes of Perilous Occupations," "Flags of All Nations," boxers, actresses, famous battles, etc. The cards are a huge hit.(RK)
1875: ART: Georges Bizet's opera, Carmen, based on Merimee's novel about a cigarette girl in an Andalusian factory, opens.
1876: CENNTENNIAL CELEBRATION: PHILADELPHIA: Allen & Ginter's cigarette displays are so impressive that some writers thought the Philadelphia exposition marked the birth of the cigarette as well as the telephone. (CC)
1876: Benson & Hedges receives its first royal warrant from Edward VII, Prince of Wales.
1878: BUSINESS: J.E. Liggett & Brother incorporates as Liggett & Myers Company. By 1885 Liggett is world's largest plug tobacco manufacturer; doesn't make cigarettes until the 1890's
1878: BUSINESS: Trading cards and coupons begin being widely used in cigarette packs. Edward Bok suggested to a manufacturer that the blank "cardboard stiffeners" in the "cigarette sandwich', might have biographies on one side and pictures on the other. The American News Company-distributed Marquis of Lorne cigarettes were the first to have the new picture cards in each pack (GTAT)
c.1880s: USA: Women's Christian Temperance Movement publishes a "Leaflet for Mothers' Meetings" titled "Narcotics", by Lida B. Ingalls. Discusses evils of tobacco, especially cigarettes. Cigarettes are "doing more to-day to undermine the constitution of our young men and boys than any other one evil" (p. 7). (LB)
c.1880s: ADVERTISING: Improvements in transportation, manufacturing volume, and packaging lead to the ability to sell the same branded product nationwide. What can be sold nationwide can and must be advertised nationwide. Advertising agencies sprout like wildflowers. The most advertised product throughout most of the 19th century: elixirs and patent medicines of the "cancer cure" variety.
c.1880s: ENGLAND: BUSINESS: Mssrs. Richard Benson and William Hedges open a tobacconist shop near Philip Morris in London.(RK)
1880s. JB Duke's aggressive saleman Edward Featherston Small hires a cigarette saleswoman, Mrs. Leonard.
In .St. Louis, when retailers ignored him, Small advertised for a saleswoman. A petite, thin-lipped widow, a Mrs. Leonard, applied for the job and was accepted. This little stunt gave the Dukes thousands of dollars of free publicity in the local newspapers.
(CC)
1880: Bonsack machine granted first cigarette machine patent
. Duke's factory produces 9.8 million cigarettes, 1.5 % of the total market.
1883: BUSINESS: Oscar Hammerstien receives patent on cigar rolling machine.(TSW)
1884: BUSINESS: Duke heads to New York City to take his tobacco business national and form a cartel that eventually becomes the American Tobacco Co. Duke buys 2 Bonsack machines. , getting one of them to produce 120,000 cigarettes in 10 hours by the end of the year. In this year Duke produces 744 million cigarettes, more than the national total in 1883. Duke's airtight contracts with Bonsack allow him to undersell all competitors.
1886: USA Patent received for machine to manufacture plug tobacco. (LB)
1886: Tampa, FL: Don Vicente Martinez Ybor opens his first cigar factory. Others follow. Within a few years, Ybor city will become the cigar capital of the US.
1886: JB Duke targets women with "Cameo" brand.
1887: PALESTINE: A traveler reports that the Arabs of the Syrian Desert get giddy and headaches from a few whiffs of tobacco. They smoke a local plant 'Hyoscyamus'. (LB)
1887: USA: Advice from the cigar and tobacco price list of M. Breitweiser and Brothers of Buffalo, Item #5 -- "If you think smoking injurious to your health, stop smoking in the morning". (LB)
1887: USA: Two men held pipe smoking contest that lasted one and a half hours. Victory was declared when one man filled his pipe for the tenth time, his oppenent did not. (LB)
1887: His contracts with Bonsack unknown to his competitors, Buck Duke slashes prices, sparking a price war he knew he'd win.
1889: SCIENCE: Nicotine and nerve cells reported on. Langley and Dickinson publish landmark studies on the effects of nicotine on the ganglia; they hypothesize that there are receptors and transmitters that respond to stimulation by specific chemicals. (RK)
1889: USA: ADVERTISING: Buck Duke spends an unheard-of $800,000 in billboard and newspaper advertising.
1889-04-23: BUSINESS: The five leading cigarette firms, including W. Duke Sons & Company, form the American Tobacco Company. It's president is Buck Duke.
c.1890s: USA: Women's Christian Temperance Movement publishes "Narcotics", by E. B. Ingalls. Pamphlet discusses evils of numerous drugs, tobacco, cocaine, ginger, hashish, and headache medicines. Offers 16 suggestions to workers. (LB)
c.1890s: INDONESIA: BUSINESS: "Kretek" cigarettes invented. The story is that Noto Semito of Kudus was desperate to cure his asthma. He rolled tobacco mixed with crushed cloves in dried corn leaves--and cured his respiratory ailments. He then Began manufacturing clove cigarettes under the name BAL TIGA (Three Balls). He became a millionaire, but competition was so fierce he eventurally died penniless in 1953.
1890: Peak of chewing tobacco consumption in V. S., three pounds per capita. (ATS)
1890: "Tobacco" appears in the US Pharmacopoeia, an official government listing of drugs.
1890s: SCIENCE: Pure nicotine is first synthesized.
1890: 26 states and territories have outlawed the sale of cigarettes to minors (age of a "minor" in a particulary state could be anything from 14-24.)
1890: BUSINESS: Dukes establish the American Tobacco Company, which will soon monopolize the entire US tobacco industry. ATC will be dissolved in Anti-Trust action in 1911.
1890: LITERATURE: My Lady Nicotine, Sir James Barrie, London
1892: REGULATION: Reformers petition Congress to prohibit the manufacture, importation and sale of cigarettes. The Senate Committee on Epidemic Diseases, while agreeing that cigarettes are a public health hazard, finds that only the states have the authority to act. The committee urges the petitioners to seek redress from state legislatures.
1892: BUSINESS: Book matches are invented, but are a technological failure. Since the striking surface was inside the book, all the matches caught fire often. By 1912, the technology would be perfected.
1893: REGULATION: The state of Washington bans the sale and use of cigarettes. The law is overturned on constitutional grounds as a restraint of free trade.
1894: BUSINESS: By now, Philip Morris has passed from the troubled Morris family, and is controlled by the Thompson family (RK).
1894: BUSINESS: Brown & Williamson formed as a partnership in Winston-Salem, making mostly plug, snuff and pipe tobacco. (RK).
1894: LITERATURE: Under Two Flags by Ouida (Louise de la Ramee). Cigarette, the waif heroine "Rides like an Arab, Smokes like a Zouave." Cigarette is describes as "Enfant de L'armee, Femme de la Fume, Soldat de la France."
1896: REGULATION: Smoking banned in the House; chewing still allowed
1898: SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR: Congress raises taxes on cigarettes 200%
1898: IN COURT: Tennessee Supreme Court upholds a total ban on cigarettes, ruling they are "not legitimate articles of commerce, because wholly noxious and deleterious to health. Their use is always harmful."
1899: Lucy Payne Gaston, who claims that young men who smoke develop a distinguishable "cigarette face," founds the Chicago Anti-Cigarette League, which grows by 1911 to the Anti-Cigarette League of America, and by 1919 to the Anti-Cigarette League of the World.
1899: The Senate Finance Committee, in secret session, rolls back the wartime excise tax on cigarettes.(RK)
1899: BUSINESS: Liggett & Myers taken into Duke's Tobacco Trust. Duke has finally won the Bull Durham brand of chew.
1899: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company incorporates..
Twentieth Century--The Rise of the Cigarette
1900-1950: Growing Pains
1900: LEGISLATION: Washington, Iowa, Tennessee and North Dakota have outlawed the sale of cigarettes.
1900: STATISTICS: 4.4 billion cigarettes are sold this year. The anit-cigarette movement has destroyed many smaller companies. Buck Duke is selling 9 out of 10 cigarettes in the US.
1900: REGULATION: US Supreme Court uphold's Tennessee's ban on cigarette sales. One Justice, repeating a popular notion of the day, says, "there are many [cigarettes] whose tobacco has been mixed with opium or some other drug, and whose wrapper has been saturated in a solution of arsenic.".
1900: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds reluctantly folds his company into Duke's Tobacco Trust
1901: REGULATION: Strong anti-cigarette activity in 43 of the 45 states. "[O]nly Wyoming and Louisiana had paid no attention to the cigarette controversy, while the other forty-three states either already had anti-cigarette laws on the books, were considering new or tougher anti-cigarette laws, or were the scenes of heavy anti- cigarette activity" (Dillow, 1981:10).
1901: ENGLAND: END OF AN AGE: QUEEN VICTORIA DIES. Edward VII, the tobacco-hating queen's son and successor, gathers friends together in a large drawing room at Buckingham Palace. He enters the room with a lit cigar in his hand and announces, "Gentlemen, you may smoke."
1901: BUSINESS: Duke fuses his Continental Tobacco and American Tobacco companies into Consolidated Tobacco.
1901: BUSINESS: UK: Duke's Consolidated buys the British Ogden tobacco firm, signalling a raid on the British industry.
1901: BUSINESS: UK: Imperial is born. The largest British tobacco companies unite to combat Duke's take-over, forming the Bristol-based Imperial Tobacco Group.
1902: BUSINESS: In an end to the war, Imperial and American agree to stay in their own countries, and unite to form the British American Tobacco Company (BAT) to sell both companies' brands abroad.
1901: 3.5 billion cigarettes smoked; 6 billion cigars sold
1905: POLITICS: Indiana legislature bribery attempt is exposed, leading to passage of total cigarette ban
1905: U.S. warships head to Nicaragua on behalf of William Albers, a Amaerican accused of evading tobacco taxes
1905: REGULATION: "Tobacco" does not appear in the US Pharmacopoeia, an official government listing of drugs. "The removal of tobacco from the Pharmacopoeia was the price that had to be paid to get the support of tobacco state legislators for the Food and Drug Act of 1906. The elimination of the word tobacco automatically removed the leaf from FDA supervision."--Smoking and Politics: Policymaking and the Federal Bureaucracy Fritschler, A. Lee. 1969, p. 37
1906 BUSINESS: Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company is formed
1906 BUSINESS: R.J. Reynolds introduces Prince Albert pipe tobacco
1906-06-30: FEDERAL FOOD AND DRUGS ACT of 1906 prohibits sale of adulterated foods and drugs, and mandates honest statement of contents on labels. Food and Drug Administration begins. Originally, nicotine is on the list of drugs; after tobacco industry lobbying efforts, nicotine is removed from the list.
Definition of a drug includes medicines and preparations listed in U.S. Pharmacoepia or National Formulary.
1914 interpretation advised that tobacco be included only when used to cure, mitigate, or prevent disease.
1907: REGULATION: Teddy Roosevelt's Justice Department files anti-trust charges against American Tobacco.
1907: REGULATION: WASHINGTON passes a law making it illegal to "manufacture, sell, exchange, barter, dispose of or give away any cigarettes, cigarette paper or cigarette wrappers."
1907-01-26: REGULATION: THE TILLMAN ACT. Congress enacts law prohibiting campaign contributions by corporations to candidates for national posts. However, no restrictions were placed on the individuals who owned or managed the corporations.
1907: Business owners are refusing to hire smokers. On August 8, the New York Times writes: "Business ... is doing what all the anti-cigarette specialists could not do."
1908: CANADA: LEGISLATION: The Tobacco Restraint Act passed. Bans sales of cigarettes to those under 16; never enforced.
1908: ENGLAND: Legislation to prohibit the sales of tobacco to under 16s -- based on the belief that smoking stunts children¹s growth
1908: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds release, Prince Albert pipe tobacco, "the Joy Smoke.", catapulting Reynolds to a national market. (RK)
1909: 15 states have passed legislation banning the sale of cigarettes.
1909: SPORTS: Baseball great Honus Wagner orders American Tobacco Company take his picture off their "Sweet Caporal" cigarette packs, fearing they would lead children to smoke. The shortage makes the Honus Wagner card the most valuable of all time, worth close to $500,000.
1910: THE STATE OF TOBACCO: Per capita cigarette consumption: 94/year. Per capita cigar consumption: 77/year. (International Smoking Statistice) Because of the heavy use of the inexpensive cigarette by immigrants, New York still accounts for 25% of all cigarette sales. A New York Times editorial praises the Non Smokers Protective League, saying anything that could be done to allay "the general and indiscriminate use of tobacco in public places, hotels, restaurants, and railroad cars, will receive the approval of everybody whose approval is worth having." (RK)
1910: TAXES: Federal tax revenues from tobacco products are $58 million, 13% from cigarettes.
1911: BUSINESS: THE INDUSTRY IN 1911:
Duke's American Tobacco Co. controls 92% of the world's tobacco business.
Leading National Brand: Fatima, (first popular brand to be sold in 20-unit packs; 15 cents) from Liggett & Myers, a Turkish/domestic blend. Most popular in Eastern urban areas. Other Turkish/domesitc competitors: Omar (ATC); Zubelda (Lorillard); Even the straight domestic brands were seasoned with a sprinkling of Turkish, like Sweet Caporals (originally made for F.S. Kinney and later for American Tobacco)
Leading Brand in Southeast: Piedmont, an all-Bright leaf brand.
Leading Brand in New Orleans: Home Run, (5 cents for 20) an all-Burley leaf brand.
1911: Tobacco -growing is allowed in England for the first time in more than 250 years.
1911-08-3: PUBLISHING: LIFE MAGAZINE's cover features a diapered baby girl smoking one of her mother's cigarettes. The caption: "My Lady Nicotine."
1911-05-29: "Trustbusters" break up American Tobacco Co. US Supreme Court dissolves Duke's trust as a monopoly and in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890). The major companies to emerge are: American Tobacco Co., R.J. Reynolds, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company (Durham, NC), Lorillard and BAT. RJ Reynolds says, "Now watch me give Buck Duke hell."
Liggett & Myers was given about 28 per cent of the cigarette market:
Piedmont
Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it.
It satisfies no normal need. I like it.
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean.
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.
--Graham Lee Hemminger, Penn State Froth, Tobacco
c. 1915: OPINION: Release of poster with quote from biologist Davis Starr Jordan, "The boy who smokes cigarettes need not be anxious about his future, he has none" (LB)
1916: Henry Ford publishes anti-cigarette pamphlet titled "The Case against the Little White Slaver". (LB)
1916: BUSINESS: To compete with the phenomenal success of RJR's Camel, American introduces Lucky Strike, the name revived from an 1871 pipe tobacco brand that referenced the Gold Rush days. On the package, the motto: "It's Toasted!" (like all other cigarettes.) .
1917: BUSINESS: There are now 3 standard brands of cigarettes on the US market: Lucky Strike, Camel and Chesterfield.
1917: BUSINESS: American Tobacco unleashes an ad campaign for Lucky Strike aimed at women: "Avoid that future shadow," warns one ad, comparing ladies' jowls.
1917-18: WORLD WAR I Cigarette rations determined by market share, a great boost to Camel, which had over a third of the domestic market.
Virtually an entire generation return from the war addicted to cigarettes.
Turkish leaf is unavailable; American tobacco farmers get up to 70 cents/pound.
Those opposed to sending cigarettes to the doughboys are accused of being traitors.
According to General John J. Pershing:
You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer tobacco as much as bullets.
Tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration; we must have thousands of tons without delay.
1918: War Department buys the entire output of Bull Durham tobacco. Bull Durham advertises, "When our boys light up, the Huns will light out."
1918: Frederick J. Pack publishes his "Tobaco and Human Efficiency," the most comprehensive compilation of anti-cigarette opinion to date. (RK)
1919: HEALTH: Washington University medical student Alton Ochsner is summoned to observe lung cancer surgery--something, he is told, he may never see again. He doesn't see another case for 17 years. Then he sees 8 in six months--all smokers who had picked up the habit in WW I.
1919: Richard Joshua (R.J.) Reynolds, 68, dies.
1919: The 18th Admendment ratified by states. (LB)
1919: Evangelist Billy Sunday declares "Prohibition is won; now for tobacco". The success of alcohol prohibition suggusted to some the possibility of tobacco prohibition (LB)
1919: Lucy Payne Gaston's tactics are attracting lawsuits; she is asked to resign from Anti-Cigarettel League of the World.
1919: BUSINESS: George Whelan Tobacco Products picks up tiny Philip Morris & Company, Ltd. Inc, including PM's brands Cambridge, Oxford Blues, English Ovals, Players, and Marlboro
1919: BUSINESS: Manufactured cigarettes surpass smoking tobacco in poundage of tobacco consumed. (RK)
1919: BUSINESS: ADVERTINSING: Lorillard unsuccessfully targets women with its Helmar and Murad brands. (RK)
1920: THE STATE OF TOBACCO: Per capita cigarette consumption: 419/year. Per capita cigar consumption: 80/year. (International Smoking Statistice)
1920-06-11: Republican party leaders, meeting in the "smoke-filled room" (Suite 408-10 of Chicago's Blackstone Hotel) engineered the presidential nomination of Warren G. Harding.
1921: BUSINESS: RJR spends $8 million in advertising, mostly on Camel; inaugurates the "I'd Walk a Mile for a Camel" slogan. (RK)
1921: TAXES: State tobacco taxation begins. Iowa becomes the first state to add its own cigarette tax (2 cents a pack) onto federal excise levy (6 cents).(RK)
1922: REGULATION: 15 states have banned the sale, manufacture, possession, advertising and/or use of cigarettes.
1922: BUSINESS: RJR takes Industry leadership. from American for first time.(RK)
1922: BUSINESS: Manufactured cigarettes surpass plug in poundage of tobacco consumed to become US's highest grossing tobacco product. (RK)
1922: OPINION: "Is There a Cigarette War Coming?" in Atlantic magazine says, "scientific truth" has found "that the claims of those who inveigh aginst tobacco are wholy without foundation has been proved time and again by famous chemists, physicians, toxicologists, physiologists, and experts of every nation and clime." (RK)
1922: PEOPLE: Lucy Payne Gaston runs for President of the U.S. against "cigarette face" Warren G. Harding, whom she asks to quit smoking. Within two years they both will be dead, he of a stroke mid-term, she of throat cancer. (There is no record of her ever having smoked.)
1923: BUSINESS: Camel has 45% of the US market.
1923: NEW JERSEY: A Secaucus teacher's attempt to get her job back after being fired for cigarette smoking reaches the state Supreme Court, but fails
1923: ARTS: "Confessions of Zeno" by Italo Svevo
1923: BUSINESS: Camel has over 40% of the US market.
1924: Lucy Payne Gaston dies of throat cancer.
1924: STATISTICS: 73 billion cigarettes sold in US
1924: BUSINESS: Philip Morris introduces Marlboro, a women's cigarette that is "Mild as May"
1924: Durham, NC: James B. Duke creates Duke University.
Duke gives an endowment to Trinity College. Under provisions of the fund, Trinity becomes Duke University
1925: HEALTH: Lung cancer death rate is 1.7 per 100,000 (US Census Bureau)(RK).
1925: BUSINESS: Philip Morris' Marlboro, "Mild as May," targets "decent, respectable" women. "Has smoking any more to do with a woman's morals than has the color of her hair?" A 1927 ad reads, "Women quickly develop discerning taste. That is why Marlboros now ride in so many limousines, attend so many bridge parties, and repose in so many handbags."
1925: BUSINESS: Helen Hayes, Al Jolson and Amelia Earhart endorse Luckies
1925: BUSINESS: Both Percival Hill and Buck Duke die by end of the year; Duke was 69. George Washington Hill becomes President of American Tobacco Co. Becomes known for creating the slogans, "Reach for a Lucky" and "With men who know tobacco best, it's Luckies two to one"
1925: SOCIETY: Women's college Bryn Mawr lifts its ban on smoking.
1925: OPINION: "American Mercury" magazine: "A dispassionate review of the [scientific] findings compels the conclusion that the cigarette is tobacco in its mildest form, and that tobacco, used moderately by people in normal health, does not appreciably impair either the mental efficiency or the physical condition." (RK)
1926: BUSINESS: P. Lorillard introduces Old Gold cigarettes with expensive campaigns. John Held Flappers, Petty girls, comic-strip style illustrations and "Not a Cough in a Carload" helped the brand capture 7% of the market by 1930.
1926: BUSINESS: Lloyd (Spud) Hughes' menthol Spud Brand and recipe sold to Axton-Fisher Tobacco Co., which markets it nationally.
1926: BUSINESS: ADVERTISING: Liggett & Myers' Chesterfield targets women for second-hand smoke in "Blow some my way" ad.
1927: LEGISLATION: Kansas is the last state to drop its ban on cigarette sales.
1927: BUSINESS: PR Firm Hill and Knowlton established.
1927: BUSINESS: British American Tobacco (BATCo) acquires Brown & Williamson, and introduces the 15-cent-pack Raleigh. Raleigh soon reintroduces the concept of coupons for merchandise.
1927: ADVERTISING: Luckies target women
A sensation is created when George Washington Hill aims Lucky Strike advertising campaign at women for the first time, using testimonials from female movie stars and singers. Soon Lucky Strike has 38% of the American market. Smoking initiation rates among adolescent females triple between 1925-1935.
1928: HEALTH: Lombard & Doering examine 217 Mass. cancer victims, comparing age, gender, economic status, diet, smoking and drinking. Their New England Journal of Medicine report finds overall cancer rates only slightly less for nonsmokers, but finds 34 of 35 site-specific (lung, lips, cheek, jaw) cancer sufferers are heavy smokers.(RK).
1929: HEALTH: Statistician Frederick Hoffman in the "American Review of Tuberculosis" finds "There is no definite evidence that smoking habits are a direct contributory cause toward malignant growths in the lungs."(RK).
1929-Spring: ADVERTISING: Edward Bernays mounts a "freedom march" of smoking debutantes/fashion models who walk down Fifth Avenue during the Easter parade dressed as Statues of Liberty and holding aloft their cigarettes as "torches of freedom."
1929: BUSINESS: Whelan's Tobacco Products Corporation crashes shortly before the market; Philip Morris is picked up by Rube Ellis, who calls in Leonard McKitterick to help run it. (RK).
1929: BUSINESS: Philip Morris buys a factory in Richmond, Virginia, and finally begins manufacturing its own cigarettes.
1930: BRAND CONSUMPTION:
1947: Why Do We Smoke Cigarettes? from The Psychology of Everyday Living by Ernest Dichter
1948: HEALTH: The Journal of the American Medical Association argues, "more can be said in behalf of smoking as a form of escape from tension than against it . . . there does not seem to be any preponderance of evidence that would indicate the abolition of the use of tobacco as a substance contrary to the public health."
1948: HEALTH: Lung cancer has grown 5 times faster than other cancers since 1938; behind stomach cancer, it is now the most common form of the disease.
1949: LEGISLATION: Agricultural Adjustment Act is passed again, this time authorizing price supports.
1949: STATISTICS: 44-47% of all adult Americans smoke; over 50% of men, and about 33% of women.
Twentieth Century--The Rise of the Cigarette
1950 + : The Battle is Joined
The Fifties
When the decade begins, 2% of cigarettes are filter tip; by 1960, 50% of cigarettes are filter tips.
1950: BRAND CONSUMPTION:
1954-01-04: BUSINESS: Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) announced in a nationwide 2-page ad, A FRANK STATEMENT TO CIGARETTE SMOKERS
The ads were placed in 448 newspapers across the nation, reaching a circulation of 43,245,000 in 258 cities.
TIRC's first scientific director was noted cancer scientist Dr. Clarence Cook Little, former head of the National Cancer Institute (soon to become the American Cancer Society). Little's life work lay in the genetic origins of cancer; he tended to disregard environmental factors.
1954-04: BUSINESS: TIRC releases A SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE CIGARETTE CONTROVERSY, a booklet quoting 36 scientists questioning smoking's link to health problems.
(The booklet) was sent to 176,800 doctors, general practitioners and specialists . . . (plus) deans of medical and dental colleges . . . a press distribution of 15,000 . . . 114 key publishers and media heads . . . . days in advance, key press, network, wire services and columnist contacts were alerted by phone and in person . . . and . . . hand-delivered (with) special placement to media in Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. The story was carried by hundreds of papers and radio stations throughout the country . . . . staff-written stories (were) developed with the help of Hill & Knowlton, Inc. field offices. (Hill & Knowlton memo, May 3, 1954.)
1954: BUSINESS: RJR introduces its Winston filter tips brand, emphasizing taste, not health.
1954: BUSINESS: Philip Morris buys Benson & Hedges, and in the bargain gets its president, Joseph Cullman III
1954: ADVERTISING: Life Magazine runs ads for L&M featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Rosalind Russell testimonials for the brand's new "miracle product," the "alpha cellulose" filter that is "just what the doctor ordered." These ads will figure prominently in the Cipollone trial 30 years later.
1954: ADVERTISING: Marlboro Cowboy created for Philip Morris by Chicago ad agency Leo Burnett. "Delivers the Goods on Flavor" ran the slogan in newspaper ads. Design of the campaign credited to John Landry of PM. At the time Marlboro had one quarter of 1% of the American market.
1955: REGULATION: FTC publishes rules prohibiting references to the "throat, larynx, lungs, nose, or other parts of the body" or to "digestion, energy, nerves, or doctors."
1955: BUSINESS: MARKET SHARE: American Tobacco is still #1 in US, with 33% of the market. Philip Morris is sixth.
1955: TV: CBS' "See It Now" airs first TV show linking cigarette smoking with lung cancer and other diseases. (For the first time on TV, Edward R. Murrow is not seen smoking. He had not quit; he felt it was "too late" to stop. Murrow died of lung cancer in 1965.)
1955: LITIGATION: Rose Cipollone, now 30, switches from Chesterfield to L&Ms.)
1956: HEALTH: Lung cancer death rate among white males is 31.0 in 100,000, resulting in 29,000 deaths.
1956: BUSINESS: P. Lorillard discontinues use of "Micronite" filter in its Kent cigarettes.
1956: BUSINESS: RJR's Salem, the first filter-tipped menthol cigarette is introduced
1957: PEOPLE: DR. EVARTS GRAHAM dies of lung cancer. He wrote to DR. ALTON OCHSNER 2 weeks before his death, "Because of your long friendship, you will be interested in knowing that they found that I have cancer in both my lungs. As you know I stopped smoking several years ago but after having smoked much as I did for years, too much damage had been done."
1957-07-12: Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney issues "Joint Report of Study Group on Smoking and Health," stating that, "prolonged cigarette smoking was a causative factor in the etiology of lung cancer," the first time the Public Health Service had taken a position on the subject.
1957-03: MEDIA: READERS DIGEST article links smoking with lung cancer, discloses that the tar and nicotine yields of the filter brands had been rising steadily for several years and now approximated the level of the older and presumably more hazardous unfiltered brands. (RK)
1957-07: MEDIA: READERS DIGEST article rates tar/nicotine levels. RJR's filterless Camel, for example, yielded 31 mg. of tar and 2.8 mg. of nicotine per cigarette compared with 32.6 mg. and 2.6 mg. per Winston. Marlboro has one of the worst; in response, Leo Burnett goes into 2 years of the unsuccessful "settleback" campaign--Marlboro men in relaxed poses.
1957: MEDIA: Ad agency BBDO drops READERS DIGEST over tobacco article.
Barry McCarthy, onetime executive at Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, said that in the 1950's, probably 1957, he was the account supervisor on the Reader's Digest business when the Digest ran one of its many anti-cigarette articles. American Tobacco, maker of Lucky Strike, was a major client at the same time. The article enraged J. T. Ross, American's public relations man, and he got the client to insist that B.B.D.O. decide between the magazine and the tobacco company. Since the latter billed $30 million or so, which was huge by 1950's standards, and the Digest a couple of million, the agency relucantly dropped the Digest
--NYT, April 7, 1988; Advertising; RJR Flap Not the First In Cigarette Ad History By Philip H. Dougherty
1957: REGULATION: Pope Pius Xii suggests that the Jesuit order give up smoking.
There were only 33,000 jesuits in the world at that point, so the industry was not worried about losing this handful of smokers. They feared that the Pope or other church leaders might ask, as a magazine headline once put it, "When are Cigs a Sin?"--E. Whelan, "A Smoking Gun"
1957: REGULATION: Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act is amended. The manufacturer must bear the burden of demonstrating the product is safe and effective. Products previously on the market, those "generally recognized among experts as safe," or "natural constituents of food" are exempt.
1957-07: REGULATION: BLATNICK HEARING: First testimony presented to Congress on smoking and health; Blatnick's subcommittee dismantled. After hearing that filtered cigarettes deliver about as much tar and nicotine as unfiltered due to the stronger tobaccos used, Minnesota congressman John Blatnick's subcommitte moves to grant the FTC injunctive powers over deceptive cigarette advertising. The House strips Blatnick of his chairmanship and dissolves the subcommittee.
1957-03-01: INDUSTRY RESEARCH: At the cooperative British tobacco industry Tobacco Research Council laboratory at Harrogate, an internal report by Batco refers to cancer by the code name, zephyr: "As a result of several statistical surveys, the idea has arisen that there is a causal relation between zephyr and tobacco smoking, particularly cigarette smoking,"
1957: HEALTH: The British Medical Research Council issues "Tobacco Smoking and Cancer of Lung," which states that "... a major part of the increase [in lung cancer] is associated with tobacco smoking, particularly in the form of cigarettes" and that "the relationship is one of direct cause and effect."
1957: HEALTH: In the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Winea J. Simpson asked what effects smoking might have on the unborn child. The incidence of premature births and of all the complications that go with prematurity was twice as great for smoking mothers as it was for nonsmoking mothers. Simpson's paper confirmed that children of smokers are not only born early, but also weigh less and are more likely to be stillborn or die within one month of birth. (ASG)
1957-12: LITIGATION: Green v. American Tobacco Co. Filed. The case will not conclude until 1970--12 years after Green's death.
1958-02-20: REGULATION: Blatnik Commission report is delivered to Congress. "The cigarette manufacturers have deceived the American public through their advertising of filter-tip cigarettes . . . Without specifically claiming that the filter tip removes the agents alleged to contribute to heart disease or lung cancer, the advertising has emphasized such claims as 'clean smoking,' 'snowy white,' 'pure,' 'miracle tip,' '20,000 filter traps,' 'gives you more of what you changed to a filter for' and other phrases implying health protection, when actually most filter cigarettes produce as much or more nicotine and tar as cigarettes without filters. . . The Federal Trade Commission has failed in its statutory duty to 'prevent deceptive acts or practices' in filter-cigarette advertising."
False And Misleading Advertising (Filter-tip Cigarettes). Twentieth Report By The Committee On Government Operations Shortly after, Blatnik's
1958: Roy Norr and the Reverend Ben-David found The Reporter On Smoking And Health newsletter
1958: BUSINESS: Tobacco Institute Formed
1958: DOCUMENTS: Senior PM scientist J.E. Lincoln writes to Ross Millhiser, then-Philip Morris vice president and later vice chairman: "This compound [benzopyrene] must be removed from Marlboro and Parliament or sharply reduced. We do this not because we think it is harmful but simply because those who are in a better position to know than ourselves suspect it may be harmful." Four months later he wrote "that law and morality coincided . . . Act on the doctrine of uncertainty and get the benzpyrene (sic), etc., out of the cigarettes." Lincoln later became PM vice president of research. (AP)
1958-06: DOCUMENTS: "REPORT ON VISIT TO U.S.A. AND CANADA," 17th of April to 12th May 1958," by H. R. Bentley, D. G. I. Felton, and W. W. Reid, produced by B.A.T. Company, Ltd. 3 British-American Tobacco Co. scientists, after visiting the United States and discussing smoking research with 35 tobacco industry scientists and officials, write: "With one exception (H.S.N. Greene), the individuals whom we met believed that smoking causes lung cancer if by 'causation' we mean any chain of events which leads finally to lung cancer and which involves smoking as an indispensable link. In the U.S.A. only Berkson, apparently, is now prepared to doubt the statistical evidence and his reasoning is nowhere thought to be sound."
1959-11: HEALTH: Dr Burney publishes an article in JAMA confirming the position of the Public Health Service on cigarettes' causitive relation to lung cancer.
1959-Fall: The "Vanguard Issue." Vanguard was a tobaccoless smoke introduced in the Fall of 1959. The product's creator, Bantop Products Corporation of Bay Shore, Long Island, immediately ran into problems advertising it. Bantop claimed the tobacco industry conspired to prevent its "Now Smoke Without Fear" ads. In the New York metropolitan area, for example, only one newspaper would accept the ads. (ASG)
1980: 13TH Surgeon General's ReporT: The Health Consequences of Smoking for Women: A Report of the Surgeon General
1980: LITIGATION: Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation v. Public Service Commission of New York. US Supreme Court sets guidleines for the regulation of commercial speech:
1. For an ad to be protected by the First Amendment, the advertsing must be lawful, and not misleading
2. Given that, for an ad to be banned, the state's interest must be "substantial;"
3. The ban must "directly advance" the state's interest; and
4. The ban must be no more extensive than necessary to further the state's interest
1981: 14TH Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking -- The Changing Cigarette: A Report of the Surgeon General
.
1981: CONSUMPTION: Annual consumption peaks at 640 billion cigarettes, 60% of which are low-tar brands. .
1981: LITIGATION: Rose Cipollone loses a lobe of her right lung to cancer; continues to smoke cigarettes.
1981: LITIGATION: CBS Chicago news commentator Walter Jacobsen accuses Brown & Williamson of engaging in a lurid advertising campaign to get young people to smoke.
1980: BUSINESS: MARKET SHARE: American Tobacco's share of the US market has fallen to 11%.
1980: ENTERTAINMENT: Superman II: Lois Lane lights up. In fifty years of comic book appearnces, Lois Lane never smoked. For a reported payment of $42,000, the company purchases 22 exposures of the Marlboro logo in the movie featuring the children's comic book hero, and Lois Lane, strong role model for teenage girls, gets a Marlboro pack on her desk and begins chain smoking Marlboro Lights. At one point in the film, a character is tossed into a van with a large Marlboro sign on its side, and in the climactic scene the superhero battles amid a maze of Marlboro billboards before zooming off in triumph, leaving in his wake a solitary taxi with a Marloro sign on top. The New York State Journal of Medicine published an article titled "Superman and the Marlboro Woman: The Lungs of Lois Lane." Thoughout the 80s, "Superman II" is frequently re-run on TV in prime time.
1981: BUSINESS: Hamish Maxwell, 57, becomes CEO of Philip Morris (1981-1991), succeeding George Weissman
1981: Insurance companies begin offering discounts for nonsmokers on life insurance premiums
1981: Stanton Glantz at UCSF receives a copy of "Death in the West"
1981: INDUSTRY RESEARCH: 1981 PM study investigates the link between pricing and smoking levels
1982: 15TH Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking -- Cancer: A Report of the Surgeon General
1982: BUSINESS: Harrods' (department store) name goes on a a cigarette; this is one of the first instances of tobacco companies "renting names" of other companies (See "Harley Davidson" cigarettes) (LB).
1982: HEALTH: Surgeon General's Report (Koop) finds possibility that second-hand smoke may cause lung cancer.
1982: LITIGATION: Rose Cipollone loses her right lung to cancer; continues to sneak cigarettes.
1982: LEGISLATION: Congress passes the No Net Cost Tobacco Program Act, requiring the government's Commodity Credit Corporation, which pays for the government tobacco purchases, to recover all the money it spends on the price-support program. Now taxpayers no longer pay for losses incurred by the program, though they still pay about $16 million a year in administrative costs to run it
1983: 16TH Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking: Cardiovascualr Disease; A report of the Surgeon General Cites smoking as a major cause of coronary heart disease
1983: LITIGATION: Cipollone suit filed; Rose finally quits smoking.
1983: BUSINESS: US Tobacco introduces Skoal Bandits -- a starter product, with the tobacco contained in a pouch like a tea bag.
1983: REGULATION: San Francisco passes first strong workplace smoking restrictions, banning smoking in private workplaces
1983-06-06: MEDIA: Newsweek runs a 4 page article, "Showdown on Smoking" on the nonsmokers' rights movement. Issues before & after carried 7-10 pages of cigarette ads. The June 6 issue carried none. Estimated loss of revenue as a result of publishing the article: $1 million. --Larry C. White, "Merchants of Death."
1983: BUSINESS: Philip Morris overtakes RJR to become the #1 tobacco co. in the US in sales.
1983: USA: BUSINESS: The creative director of a New York advertising agency spoke of working on tobacco advertisements, "We were trying very hard to influence kids who were 14 to start smoking". (Medical J of Australia, 5 March 1983, p.237). (LB)
1984: 17TH Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking: Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease, A Report of the Surgeon General Cites smoking as a major cause of chronic obstructive lung disease.
1984: The Advocacy Institute, which pioneered the use of electronic media for tobacco control advocacy through the creation of the Smoking Control Advocacy Resource (SCARCNet), is founded
1984: UK: British Medical Association uses black edged postcards to notify MPs of smoking related deaths
1984: CESSATION: FDA approves nicotine gum as a "new drug" and quit-smoking aid
1984: LITIGATION: Rose Cipollone dies of lung cancer at 58.
1984: REGULATION: Tobacco industry is required to turn over a general list of cigarette additives annually to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Smoking and Health. The List is then locked in a safe. Disclosure to any other party is a crime. OSH allowed to study the list, but lacks funds.
1985: HEALTH: Lung cancer surpasses breast cancer as #1 killer of women.
1985: Stanford MBA student Joe Tye's 5 year old daughter becomes so delighted with a Marlboro billboard, she begins squealing with delight and says, "Look Daddy, horses!" Tye later founds STAT (Stop Teenage Addiction to Tobacco).
1985: LITIGATION: Brown & Williamson sues CBS and Chicago news commentator Walter Jacobsen for libel for his 1981 commentary. B&W wins a $3.05 million verdict--the largest libel award ever paid by a news organization.
1985: BUSINESS: Philip Morris buys food and coffee giant General Foods (Post's cereal, Jell-O, Maxwell House Coffee for $5.6 billion.
1985: BUSINESS: Philip Morris buys food and coffee giant General Foods (Post's cereal, Jell-O, Maxwell House Coffee for $5.6 billion.
1985: BUSINESS: Philip Morris begins publishing Philip Morris Magazine (1985-1992)
1985: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds Industries buys food products company Nabisco Brands for $4.9B; renames itself RJR/Nabisco.. Ex-Standard Brands/Nabisco head Ross Johnson takes control of company.
1985: BUSINESS: A tobacco trade journal reports on the job of the tobacco "flavourist" and chemist. One job of the flavourist is to "ensure high satisfaction from an adequate level of nicotine per puff". One job of the chemist is "to ensure adequate levels of nicotine and tar in the smoke". (World Tobacco, March 1987, pp. 97-103).
1985-01-17: BUSINESS: B&W lawyer J. Kendrick Wells writes "Re: Document Retention" memo in reference to "removing the deadwood."
1985: SOCIETY: Ritz-Carlton Boston hosts a cigar-smoker private dinner party for 20 gentlemen. It soon becomes a regular event in Ritz-Carltons across the country..
1986: 19TH Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking, A Report of the Surgeon General (C. Everett Koop) finds smokeless tobacco to be cancer-causing, and addictive
1986: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds Industries, Inc. becomes RJR Nabisco Inc.
1986: BUSINESS: Philip Morris sells off Seven-Up.
1986: BUSINESS: Ex-Philip Morris CEO GEORGE WEISSMAN, begins reign as chairman of Lincoln Center (NYC).
1986: USA: The CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE of the Library of Congress wrote a 19 page document titled "The proposed prohibition on advertising tobacco products: A constitutional analysis". It concluded that (a) commercial speech does not have the same protection under law as non-commercial speech, (b) Congress had the authority to regulate tobacco advertising and (c) Congress had the authority to completely prohibit tobacco advertising under the conditions set in the Central Hudson case and/or the Posadas case. (LB)
1986-07: RJR Heir Turns Against Tobacco. The grandson of tobacco company founder RJ Reynolds, PATRICK REYNOLDS, speaks against tobacco at a House Congresional hearing chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman; he advocates a complete ban of tobacco advertising, and recounts his memories of watching his father, RJ REYNOLDS, JR., die from emphysema.
1986: UK: BUSINESS: IMPERIAL GROUP is purchased by HANSON TRUST PLC
1986: LITIGATION: U.S. Tobacco wins SEAN MARSEE trial in Oklahoma, the only smokeless-tobacco liability case ever tried.
1987: REGULATION: Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole refuses to ban smoking completely on airplanes, despite a unanimous recommendation from the National Academy of Scientists and Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
1987: BANS: Congress bans smoking on domestic flights of less than two hours. Takes effect in 1988.
1987: BANS: Beverly Hills, CA and Aspen, CO ban smoking in restuarants
1987: Department of Health and Human Services goes smoke-free.
1987: ADVERTISING: Joe Camel's USA Debut. A North Carolina advertising agency uses Joe Camel to celebrate "Old Joe's" 75th anniversary.
1987: JAPAN: A tobacco trade journal reports on a group of Japanese "smoke lovers" who participated in a panel discussion on smoking. One panelist said, "The life expectancy of Japanese is said to be the world's longest now, and why must we be so timidly concerned about health? Let's enjoy life and smoking" (World Tobacco, Sept 87, p.18). (LB)
1987: JAPAN: The Tokyo Customs Office attributes the increase in cigarette imports to the permeation of promotional activities of the suppliers of foreign tobacco products. (World Tobacco, Sept 87, p.7).(LB)
1987: BUSINESS: Ross Johnson attempts a leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco.
1987: BUSINESS: Introduction of "Go to Hell" cigarettes. Each pack comes with two messages, first, "I like'em and I'm going to smoke'em", second, "Cheaper than psychiatry, better than a nervous breakdown". (Tobacco International, p.31). (LB)
1988: 20TH Surgeon General's Report: The Health Consequences of Smoking: Nicotine Addiction, A Report of the Surgeon General (C. Everett Koop) calls nicotine "a powerfully addicting drug." In 618-page summary of over 2,000 studies of nicotine and its effects on the body, Koop declares, "It is now clear that . . . cigarettes and other form of tobacco are addicting and that actions of nicotine provide the pharmacologic basic of tobacco addiction," .
1988: BUSINESS: Philip Morris report, "Smoking Among High School Seniors" suggests fewer youngsters were smoking in the early 1980s because participation in athletic programs was increasing.
1989: BUSINESS: RJR releases Premier, its smokeless cigarette, for test-marketing.
1989: BUSINESS: PM spends $300,000 test-marketing a version of its Next brand called "De-Nic," which contained only .1mg nicotine. The Kansas City Star reported that apparently the major market for Philip Morris¹ ³De-Nic² cigarettes was tobacco researchers, who ran out and bought them for use in studies in which it was found that though they tasted ³very similar² to regular cigarettes, and were smoked in much the same way, smokers¹ brain waves did not change as they do with nicotine cigarettes.
1988: BUSINESS: Philip Morris acquires Kraft, Inc. for $12.9 billion
1988: ADVERTISING: McCann-Erickson ad agency creates "Smooth Character" line for Joe Camel campaign.
1988-01-06: LITIGATION: Merrell Williams begins work for lawfirm Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs analyzing secret Brown & Williamson tobacco documents.
1988: DOCUMENTS: .Cipollone trial reveals "Motives and Incentives in Ciragette Smoking," a 1972 confidential report prepared by the Philip Morris Research Center of Richmond, Virginia. It reads in part, The cigarette should be conceived not as a product but as a package. The product is nicotine. . . . Think of the cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine. . . . Think of a puff of smoke as the vehicle of nicotine. . . . Smoke is beyond question the most optimized vehicle of nicotine and the cigarette the most optimized dispenser of smoke.
1988: LITIGATION: New Jersey Judge Lee H. Sarokin, presiding over the Cipollone trial, says he has found evidence of a conspiracy by 3 tobacco companies that is vast in its scope, devious in its purpose, and devastating in its results.
1988-04-07: CESSATION: First World No-Tobacco Day, sponsored by World Health Organization as part of WHO's 40th anniversary.
1988-06: LITIGATION: Liggett Group (L&M, Chesterfield) ordered to pay Antonio Cipollone $400,000 in compensatory damages for its contribution to his wife's death. In the years before the 1966 warning labels, Liggett found to have given Cipollone an express warranty its products were safe. First ever financial award in a liability suit against a tobacco company; award later overturned on technicality; plaintiffs, out of money, drop case
1988-Fall: BUSINESS: Ross Johnson informs RJR Nabisco board he intends to lead a management buy-out, and purchase the company for $17 billion. The ensuing debacle will become the largest LBO ever, with Henry Kravitz' KKR emerging the winner in 1989, paying a record $24.9 billion.
1988-11-17: Great American Smokeout; ex-Winston model David Goerlitz quits smoking after 24 years.
1988-12 to 1993-03:Jeffrey Wigand works at Brown & Williamson.
1988-89: CANADA: LEGISLATION: Federal laws are enacted to prohibit tobacco advertising and ensure smoke-free workplaces. Cigarette packs must carry one of four specified health warnings: "Smoking reduces life expectancy;" "Smoking is the major cause of lung cancer;" "Smoking is a major cause of heart disease;" or "Smoking during pregnancy can harm the baby." (NCTH)
1989: 21st Surgeon General's Report: Reducing the Health Consequences of Smoking, 25 Years of Progress, a Report of the Surgeon General
1989: , 1989
1989: ADVERTISING: Saatchi and Saatchi design Northwest Airlines' Smoke-free Skies campaign; RJ Reynolds withdraws its Oreo account, which Saatchi had had for 18 years.
1989: BUSINESS: Marlboro has 25% of the American market
1989: BUSINESS: RJR abandons Premier, its smokeless cigarette, after unsuccessful test-marketing in Arizona and Missouri.
1989: BUSINESS: KKR buys RJR Nabisco for $29.6B.
1989: CANADA: The government requires cigarette manufacturers to list the additives and amounts for each brand. RJ Reynolds temporarily withdraws its brands, and reformulates them so they are different from their US versions. Philip Morris withdraws its cigarettes from the Canadian market entirely.
1989: UAR: Dubai Islamic Bank in the United Arab Emirates has banned smoking by staff and customers because Islam forbids harming the body. (Reuters, 27 July 19189). (LB)
Newport
24.09 billion
1990: LITIGATION: Mississippi jury rules that cigarettes killed Nathan Horton, but does not award damages, finding both Horton and American Tobacco shared culpability equally.
1990: Ben & Jerry's joins RJR/Nabisco boycott by dropping Oreo cookies from its ice cream.
1990: USA: Ellis Milan, president of the Retail Tobacco Distributors of America said, "President George Bush often talks of 1,000 points of light. I'd like to think those points of light are coming from the glowing ends of cigars, cigarettes and pipes across the country, and symbolize the cornerstone of this nation -- tobacco"(LB)
1990: PEOPLE: HAMISH MAXWELL, CEO of PHILIP MORRIS and a heavy smoker, undergoes a quadruple bypass.
1990-01-01: Smoking is banned on all domestic flights of less than 6 hours, except to Alaska or Hawaii. Smoking is also banned on interstate buses.
1990: BUSINESS: The Uptown Fiasco. RJR begins test-marketing "Uptown" cigarettes targetting blacks. Health and Human Services secretary Louis Sullivan, along with many black civic and religious leaders denounce the cigarette. RJR cancels the cigarette.
1990-02: BUSINESS: Marketing firm Spector M. Marketors, under contract for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company developed plans to promote "Dakota" brand cigarettes to the "virile female," including 18- through 20-year-old women
1990-08-22: RUSSIA: Scores of angry smokers block street near Moscow's Red Square for hours in protest of summer-long cigarette shortage
1990: INDIA: A tobacco trade journal reports that India is selling its first cigarette specifically aimed at women, MS Special Filters, "the sort of market targeting that can get you pilloried in the US." (World Tobacco, March 1990, p. 11). (LB)
1990: PEOPLE: Philip Morris CEO Hamish Maxwell, a heavy smoker, undergoes quadruple bypass surgery.
1990: NYC Passes Tobacco Sampling Law. Prohibits giveaway or discounted distribution of tobacco products in public places and at public events. Exempts tobacco retailers in their stores and wholesalers or manufacturers.
1991: LITIGATION: Mildred Wiley, a nonsmoker, dies of lung cancer at 56. Her husband, Philip of Marion, Indiana, will bring a suit that in December, 1995 will be the first to establish second hand smoke as a workplace injury eligible for workers' compensation.
1991: LITIGATION: Grady Carter is diagnosed with lung cancer.
1991-02-07: AUSTRALIA: The AFCO Case: Federal court examines ETS studies, finds data valid
1991: ADVERTISING: Joe Camel's own line of merchandise is touted by RJR as bringing in $40 Million/year in advertising billings.
1991: ADVERTISING: JAMA publishes 2 noted studies of Joe Camel and kids:
One finds that 91% of 6 year olds can match Joe Camel to his product (cigarettes), and is as recognized by preschoolers as Mickey Mouse
The other study, by Joe DiFranza, finds that since the inception of the Joe Camel campaign in 1987, Camel's share of the under-18 market had risen from 0.5% to 32.8%.
1991: ADVERTISING: Saatchi and Saatchi unit Campbell Mithun tests a campaign for Kool that featured a cartoon smoking penguin wearing shades, a buzzcut and Day-Glo sneakers.
1991: BRITAIN: The British government will no longer provide financial aid to tobacco companies in developing countries. (AP, 9 Feb 1991). (LB)
1991: BUSINESS: Johns Hopkins University announces that it will sell all its $5.3 million worth of tobacco stock. (LB)
1991: BUSINESS: Marlboro Medium is introduced
1991: BUSINESS: PM Chairman Hamish Maxwell (1981-1991) retires. Michael A. Miles (1991-1994) becomes chairman & CEO, the first non-tobacco man to do so.
1991: SPORTS: Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan asks sports fans to boycott events sponsored by tobacco companies, and urges promotors to shun tobacco money. His plea is ignored.
1992: 23rd Surgeon General's Report: Smoking in the Americas: A Report of the Surgeon General
1992: STATISTICS: Per-capita consumption of cigarettes stands at 7 per day among adult Americans
1992: CESSATION: Nicotine patch is introduced.
1992: Smokmg and Health in the Amencas A 1992 Report of the Surgeon General, in Collaborahon with the Pan Amencan Health Organization
1992: LITIGATION: Supreme Court rules that the 1965 warning label law does not shield tobacco companies from suits accusing them of deceiving the public about the health effects of smoking.
1992: LEGISLATION: NYC passes Vending Machine Law. Bans distribution of tobacco products through vending machines except those placed at least 25 feet from the door of a tavern.
1992: LEGISLATION: NY State passes Adolescent Tobacco Use Prevention Act. Prohibits free distribution of tobacco products to the public, tobacco sales through vending machines or to minors. Requires merchants to post signs saying no sales to minors and to ask for age identification of anyone under 25. Allows parent of a minor who purchased tobacco to bring a complaint against the vendor.
1992: LITIGATION: U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., begins criminal probe of industry.
1992: ENTERTAINMENT: Pinkerton Tobacco Co., under pressure from the FTC, agrees to cease advertising its products on TV during the "Red Man Pulling Series.".
1992: BUSINESS: Philip Morris Magazine folds
1992-Fall: MEDIA: Marvin Shanken publishes first issue of Cigar Aficionado
1992: BUSINESS: Marlboro Adventure Team contest is introduced. Philip Morris has called the MAT one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history.
1992: BUSINESS: Financial World ranks Marlboro the world's No. 1 most valuable brand (value: $31.2 billion)
1992-04: "Marlbor Man" Wayne McLaren asks Philip Morris to limit its advertising. Dying of lung cancer, McLaren appears at PM's annual shareholders meeting in Richmond, VA, and asks the company to voluntarily limit its advertsing. Chairman Michael Miles responds: We're certainly sorry to hear about your medical problem. Without knowing your medical history, I don't think I can comment any further.
1992-05: AUSTRALIA: LITIGATION: ETS: Leisel Sholem wins $50,000 in second-hand smoke suit, based on knowledge about ETS between 1975 and 1986.
1992-07-22: "Marlbor Man" Wayne McLaren, 51, dies of lung cancer.
1993: Incoming President Bill CLINTON bans smoking in the White House.
1993: BUSINESS: US Tobacco introduces Cherry-flavored Skoal long-cut.
1993: VERMONT is the first state in the nation to ban indoor smoking.
1993: US POST OFFICE bans smoking in its facilities.
1993: BUSINESS: Philip Morris is the nation's #2 advertiser, behind Proctor and Gamble.
1993: BUSINESS: Cigarette promotional expenditures reach $6.03 billion, an increase of 15.4 percent over 1992.
1993: BUSINESS: Financial World ranks Marlboro the world's No. 1 most valuable brand (value: $39.5 billion)
1993: BUSINESS: Philip Morris buys RJR Nabisco's North American cold cereal operation.
1993: BUSINESS: Con-Agra's Charles Harper becomes CEO of RJR
1993: BUSINESS: UST introduces low-nicotine, cherry-flavored Skoal Long Cut
1993: CANADA: LEGISLATION: Federal law is enacted to raise the legal age for buying tobacco to 18. (NCTH)
1993-01 FRANCE: LEGISLATION: Tobacco advertising is banned; Grand Prix auto race canceled because of tobacco advertising. In February, Grand Prix is re-instated, without direct tobacco advertising; drivers still allowed to wear sponsors' colors.
1993: SOUTH AFRICA: First tobacco control law passed--bans sale of cigarettes to those under 16; largely ignored
1993-01: HEALTH: Environmental Protection Agency declares cigarette smoke a Class-A carcinogen.
1993-04-02: BUSINESS: "Marlboro Friday"--PM Slashes Marlboro Prices
1993-07-15: USA: Tobacco BBS goes online(LB)
1993-09-29: LITIGATION: Wyatt, Tarant files suit against Merrell Williams over "secret" tobacco papers.
1993: LEGISLATION: NYC passes Tobacco Product Regulation Act. Bans out-of-package tobacco sales. Places age restrictions on handling. Prohibits sale of tobacco products to minors. Requires one public health message for every four tobacco ads appearing on city property. Bans use of tobacco products on school property.
1994: 24th Surgeon General's Report: Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People: A Report of the Surgeon General
1994: OSHA proposes severe workplace smoking restrictions.
1994: MEDIA: Frank Blethen's Seattle (Wash.) Times becomes the largest US newspaper to refuse tobacco advertising.
"These ads were designed to kill our readers," said Times president H. Mason Sizemore, "so we decided to refuse them."
1994: BANS: McDonald's bans smoking in all 11,000 of its restaurants
1994: BANS: Dept. of Defense imposes restrictions on smoking at all US military bases worldwide
1994: BUSINESS: Financial World ranks Marlboro the world's No. 2 most valuable brand behind Coca-Cola (value: $33 billion)
1994: BUSINESS: Philip Morris sends out an estimated 19 million Marlboro promotional items; briefly becomes #3 mail order house in the US
1994: CANADA: LEGISLATION: Bigger and stronger warning messages are required on cigarette packs: (NCTH)
"Cigarettes are addictive;"
Tobacco Use Among U.S. Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups
1998-05-02: LITIGATION: NEW YORK: A New York State Judge places The TOBACCO INSTITUTE and the COUNCIL FOR TOBACCO RESEARCH under temporary receivership, in response to a state suit charging the organizations abused their tax-exempt status under New York law, where they were incorporated, by acting as tobacco -funded "fronts" that serve "as propaganda arms of the industry."
1998-05-08: LITIGATION: MINNESOTA: Tobacco makes $6.1B settlement with Minnesota and Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The industry agrees to the dissolution of the Council for Tobacco Research.
1998-05-27: LITIGATION: WYNN: Alabama Circuit Judge William Wynn, files suit seeking to revoke the charters of the nation's five major cigarette companies. Wynn called for the criminal enforcement of tobacco companies' misdemeanors, and upon finding that the companies have broken the law, that the state should revoke the companies' charters to do business in Alabama.
1998-06-10: LITIGATION: WIDDICK Trial: Largest damages in tobacco litigation history are awarded. Jury finds for Widdick, orders B&W to pay almost $1 million. This is Norwood S. Wilner's 2nd win against B&W.
1998-06-17: LEGISLATION: On a procedural vote, US Senate kills McCain tobacco bill.
1998-06-22: LITIGATION: CARTER OVERTURNED. Florida's 1st District Court of Appeal votes 3-0 to overturn the Carter decision, ruling it had been filed a week too late.
1998-07-17: LITIGATION: Federal Judge William Osteen overturns 1993 EPA secondhand smoke report. Here's the decision
1998-08: TRAVEL: RENAISSANCE CRUISES claims the distinction of launching the world's first smoke-free ship: the "R1," in which only crew may smoke--in a room off limits to passengers. It tours the Mediterranean.
1998-08-13: LITIGATION: WIDDICK: A Florida appeals court rules that the Widdick trial was held in the wrong county.
1998-08-14: LITIGATION: 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overturns the 4/25/97 Osteen ruling, throws out FDA regulations. Here's the decision
1998-10-19: LITIGATION: BROWN v. PHILIP MORRIS, et. al. filed. The national civil rights class action lawsuit on behalf of African American smokers of mentholated cigarette brands was filed in Federal District Court in Philadelphia, PA.
1998-11-16: LITIGATION: An agreement is announced between state attorneys general and tobacco companies to settle lawsuits.
1998-11-23: LITIGATION: Attorneys General of 46 states and 5 territories sign agreement with tobacco companies to settle lawsuits.
1998-12-18: AGRICULTURE: Flue-cured tobacco gets an 18 percent quota cut, shocking industry analysts.
1999-01: LITIGATION: BOLIVIA files suit against the tobacco industry in a Texas court.
1999-01-21: AGRICULTURE: 4 major tobacco companies agree to set up a $5.15 billion trust fund for growers.
1999-01-27: LITIGATION: VENEZUELA files suit against the tobacco industry in a Miami court.
1999-02-04: AGRICULTURE: Tobacco companies agree to give growers $5.15 billion to compensate them for lost income because of the AG settlement.
1999-02-07: UK: Britain's royal family orders the removal of its seal of approval from Gallaher's Benson and Hedges cigarettes. The company is given till the year 2000 to remove the royal crest.
1999-02-09: LITIGATION: HENLEY V. PHILIP MORRIS: Patricia Henley wins $1.5 million from Philip Morris for medical costs, pain and suffering..
1999-02-10: LITIGATION: HENLEY V. PHILIP MORRIS: Patricia Henley wins $51.5 million in punitive damages.
1999-03-09: BUSINESS: RJ Reynolds announces that it will sell its international tobacco unit to Japan Tobacco for $8 billion and split its US tobacco and food businesses.
1999-03-30: LITIGATION: JOANN WILLIAMS-BRANCH V. PHILIP MORRIS: Jury returns $81 Million verdict against PM, giving Jesse Branch's family about $800,000 in compensatory damages and $79.5 million punitive damages.
1999-04-26: The Supreme Court agrees to decide whether to give the Food and Drug Administration jurisdiction over tobacco. The Court agrees to hear a Clinton administration appeal.
1999-05: BUSINESS: RJR Nabisco sells its international tobacco arm to Japan Tobacco for $7.8 billion.
1999-05-10: LITIGATION: KARNEY VS. Philip Morris, et.al.: A jury in Memphis, TN, finds for the defense in a trial that consolidated the suits of 3 plaintiffs: Bobby Newcomb, James W. Karney and Florence Bruch (McDaniel). Jurors found RJR 30% responsible for Newcomb's lung cancer, and B&W 20% responsible, but Tennessee law requires damages only if a company is found more than 50% responsible.
1999-05-13: LITIGATION: STEELE VS. BROWN & WILLIAMSON: A federal jury in Kansas City, Mo., finds the company was not at fault in the case of Charles Steele, a smoker who died of lung cancer in 1995.
1999-05-23: ENTERTAINMENT: RUPERT MURDOCH's Fox Network runs "Independence Day," the world's most expensive cigar commercial--and popular kid favorite--in prime time. Fox also produced the film (cigar product placement by Feature This).
1999-05-27: BUSINESS: PHILIP MORRIS board member Rupert Murdoch's Fox Entertainment Group announces that it will launch a new Web-cable property called The Health Network.
1999-06-15: BUSINESS: RJR NABISCO Split is completed. The stock of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "RJR."
1999-07-07: LITIGATION: ENGLE jurors rule that smoking causes diseases such as lung cancer and that U.S. cigarette makers hid the dangers of their products from the public.
Appendices
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
1933: The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.
Tobacco farmers were being ruined as the market dropped, manufacturers hid their purchase plans and banks charged interest rates of up to 37%. 25% of all families in North Carolina were on relief as farmers appealed to the sympathetic Roosevelt administration. The Agricultural Adjustment Act guarantees price supports in exchange for limiting production via allotments and quotas; so long as farmers didn't grow past their seasonally allotted acreage, the government would buy the unsold tobacco. The plan is dependent on close communication with manufacturers, and their upcoming buying needs. The bill has undergone many amendments over the years, the most important being the 1938 bill authorizing marketing quotas and the 1949 act authorizing price supports.
1935: The Tobacco Inspection Act is enacted by Congress. This act established the framework for development of official tobacco grade standards, authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to designate tobacco auction markets where tobacco growers would receive mandatory inspection of each lot of tobacco to determine its grade and type, and provided for the distribution of daily price reports showing the current average price for each grade. The Agricultural Marketing Service's Tobacco Division was established to provide these services to the industry. (Other authorizing legislation: The Tobacco Adjustment Act; Public Law 99-198, Section 1161; The Naval Stores Act
1938: AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT is passed again, this time authorizing marketing quotas.
1949: AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT is passed again, this time authorizing price supports.
1965: The FEDERAL CIGARETTE LABELING AND ADVERTISING ACT is passed, requiring health warnings on cigarette packages only.
1971: UK Government bans cigarette advertisements on radio
1971-04-01: The Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act had been passed in 1969; The bill as signed into law by Richard Nixon on April 1, 1971 had been the result of over a year of fierce wrangling among the tobacco companies, broadcasters (who stood to lose a great deal of advertising income), the FTC, the FCC and Congress.
1973: Congress amended the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act to ban TV and radio advertising of little cigars.
1982: Congress passes the No Net Cost Tobacco Program Act, requiring the government's Commodity Credit Corporation, which pays for the government tobacco purchases, to recover all the money it spends on quota enforcement, price supports, and leaf grading programs. Now taxpayers no longer pay for losses incurred by the program, though they still pay about $16 million a year in administrative costs to run it.
1984: The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act was amended to require that one of the four warning labels listed below appears in a specific format on cigarette packages and in most related advertising.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May Complicate Pregnancy.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, and Low Birth Weight.
SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide.
1985: Tobacco Improvement Act of 1985. Price supports for tobacco were reduced by this legislation and domestic tobacco manufacturers were required to purchase existing loan stocks. In addition, the price support and quota formulas were revised in an effort to generate more market-oriented price and production levels.
1986: Comprehensive Smokeless Tobacco Health Education Act of 1986 extended the broadcast advertising ban to smokeless tobacco products.
1995: It is still legal to advertise cigars, pipe tobacco and hard liquor on TV.
In 1494, Romano Pane, the friar who accompanied Columbus, reported that the Indians also used tobacco by reducing it to a powder that "they take through a cane half a cubit long: one end of this they place in the nose, and the other upon the powder."
--from The Facts About Smoking, Consumer Reports Books, 1991
The Arawak tribe of the Caribbean smoked both cigars and used the tobago, a soapstone pipe. In the North, Native Americans wrapped tobacco in corn husks or stuffed it into hollow reeds to smoke.
1588: Hariot on Tobacco in Virginia
"There is an herb called uppowoc, which sows itself. In the West Indies it has several names, according to the different places where it grows and is used, but the Spaniards generally call it tobacco. Its leaves are dried, made into powder, and then smoked by being sucked through clay pipes into the stomach and head. The fumes purge superfluous phlegm and gross humors from the body by opening all the pores and passages. Thus its use not only preserves the body, but if there are any obstructions it breaks them up. By this means the natives keep in excellent health, without many of the grievous diseases which often afflict us in England.
"This uppówoc is so highly valued by them that they think their gods are delighted with it. Sometimes they make holy fires and cast the powder into them as a sacrifice. If there is a storm on the waters, they throw it up into the air and into the water to pacify their gods. Also, when they set up a new weir for fish, they pour uppówoc into it. And if they escape from danger, they also throw the powder up into the air. This is alwavs done with strange gestures and stamping, sometimes dancing, clapping of hands, holding hands up, and staring up into the heavens. During this performance they chatter strange words and utter meaningless noises.
"While we were there we used to suck in the smoke as they did, and now that we are back in England we still do so. We have found many rare and wonderful proofs of the uppówoc's virtues, which would themselves require a volume to relate. There is sufficient evidence in the fact that it is used by so many men and women of great calling, as well as by some learned physicians."
--Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, directed to the investors, farmers, and well-wishers of the project of colonizing and planting there. Imprinted at London in 1588.
Hariot was part of a group sent by Sir Walter Raleigh to establish the first English colony in the New World. He spent a year on Roanoke Island, 1585-1586.
Most of the members of the party fitfully searched around for gold, and complained "because they could not find in Virginia any English cities, or fine houses, or their accustomed dainty food, or any soft beds of down or feathers." But Hariot, who would be recognised in later years as a preeminent scientist, took accurate stock of the land and its bounties, and is reputed to have carried back with him on Sir Francis Drake's ship two strange plants: tobacco, and the potato.
The piece quoted above is part of a compendium of "commodities" he wrote to help maintain interest in Raleigh's doomed attempts to make money out of his expeditions to the New World--the English explorations then were very much commercial ventures.
After Hariot's return to England, he met and became great friends with Raleigh, and was his main contact with the outside world during the 13 years Raleigh spent in the Tower of London (where he grew his own tobacco).
Raleigh was beheaded in 1618, and reportedly had a pipeful just before going to the gallows.
Hariot suffered terribly from a "cancerous ulcer of the nose" from 1615 till his death 6 years later at the age of 61.
1590: LITERATURE: Spenser's Fairy Queen: earliest poetical allusion to tobacco in English literature. Belphoebe includes tobacco with other medicinal herbs gathered to heal Timais (Book III, Canto VI, 32).
Into the woods thenceforth in haste shee went,
To seeke for hearties that mote him remedy;
For she of hearties had great intendiment,
Taught of the Nymphe which from her infancy
Her nourced had in trew nobility:
There, whether yet divine Tobacco were,
Or Panachea, or Polygony,
She fownd, and brought it to her patient deare
Who al this while lay bleding out his hart-blood scare.
1595: ENGLAND: The first book in the English language devoted to the subject of tobacco is published
The first book in the English language devoted to the subject of tobacco was anonymously published in 1595, by Anthony Chute. It has the simple title "Tabacco," and contains an illustration of an Englishman smoking a clay pipe. In this little work for laymen, the author earnestly urged smokers not to abuse the kindly weed, upheld its medicinal uses, and suggested that physicians were trying to keep smoking a secret among themselves. The reason was, he said, that a moderate use of the pipe was of such value in preserving health that it was likely to make physicians unnecessary!-- from Early Literature of TOBACCO by George Arents
1604: "A Counterblaste to Tobacco"
"Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." -- James I of England, "A Counterblaste to Tobacco."
In his treatise, James also noted that autopsies found smokers' "inward parts" were "infected with an oily kind of soot." James also said if he ever had the Devil to dinner, he'd offer him a pipe.
With regards to second-hand smoke, James said, " "The wife must either take up smoking or resolve to live in a perpetual stinking torment."
On the other hand, James' was the first government to find taxes on tobacco to be enormously profitable. Trying to stamp out smoking, he first increased taxes on tobacco 4,000%, from 2 pence/pound to six shillings, 8 pence/pound. That stopped people from buying tobacco, but dried up the funds that had been coming into the Treasury. James then slashed taxes down to 2 shillings/pound and watched the money pour in. Other governments were quick to learn the same lesson.
From George Arents:
In 1604, there was published [in England], anonymously, the most famous of all tracts opposing the social use of tobacco, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, by King James.
The king reiterated his contempt for those who daily used a drug for pleasure, scorned the acceptance of a habit adopted from unbaptized barbarians [Indians in the Americas], bewailed the cost of what he called this "precious stink," and repeated some of the tales of hoor then used to frighten smokers. Among other things, he reminded his readers that some great tobacco-takers were found, upon dissection, to have lungs and brains covered by fine, black soot, obviously the result of smoking!
I should like to make a brief digression here to point out that, as James' subjects didn't accept his advice, he promptly raised the tobacco duty by four thousand percent. But within two years he found it profitable to reduce the duty and lease of monopoly of that tax. Thus he received a large income from the sale of the very thing he professed most to despise.
As a result of the high duty placed upon tobacco (a duty which was continually advanced during James' and Charles I's reign), a state arose similar to our own, during prohibition days. The common phrases and conditions of that era are also applicable to the tobacco trade in London then; the commodity was "free of duty"; sold by smugglers as "right off the ship"; the dandies knew where the best stuff was to be secretly had; domestic tobacco was doctored to give it the semblance of "Spanish," and the wide advertising smoking received, because of the campaign against it, induced many men and women, who had never smoked before, to take up the custom.
-- George Arents, "Early Literature of Tobacco," privately printed for distribution at The Library of Congress, 1938. In April 1938 the Books, Manuscripts and Drawings Relating to Tobacco from the collection of Arents were on exhibition at the Library of Congress.
1607: Jamestown
Though fitful attempts had been made before, the lasting "plantation" of English culture in the Americas starts here. The first permanent English colony was established in 1607, when the Virginia Company landed another ill-prepared group of adventurers in Jamestown. This sad colony--wracked by malaria epidemics, Indian attacks, intrique, laziness, torture, starvation and goulish cannibalism--could well have failed also, but was arguably saved not just by Pocahontas, but by her husband John Rolfe's cultivation of the desperate colony's only substantial resource: tobacco.
Without the success of Jamestown, the dominant culture south and west of New England could well be Spanish.
For more details, read the History of Jamestown
1847: LONDON: Philip Morris Opens Shop; sells hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes.
1880: Bonsack Machine is awarded patent
1880: 21-year-old Virginian James Albert Bonsack is granted a patent for his cigarette-rolling machine.
The cigarette market was small then; cigarettes were expensive and hand-rolled by the cigarette girls. Most manufacturers didn't see a use for that many cigarettes.
The Bonsack machine had been seen and discarded by the established cigarette manufacturers. In 1883, 27-year-old Buck Duke leased the Bonsack machine on a favored contract. By 1887, once Duke and Bonsack's mechanics had finished tinkering with it, it was capable of reliably rolling 120,000 cigarettes in 10 hours.
This not only takes the cigarette business out of the hands of the cigarette girls, it means that cigarettes can be made cheaply enough to satisfy a mass market.
But the market didn't exist. If he wanted to unload his stockpiling cigarettes, Duke had to create the market, and he used unique and spectacular promotions and advertising campaigns to do it.
The pressures created by the invention of the Bonsack machine led not only to the widespread use of cigarettes as America's favored form of tobacco, but to the modern era of mass-market advertising and promotion.
1902: Tiny Philip Morris sets up a corporation in New York to sell its British brands, including Philip Morris, Blues, Cambridge, Derby, and one named after the street its London factory was on, Marlborough.
Marlboro is targeted towards women, and features a red tip to hide lipstick marks.
1905: POLITICS: Indiana legislature bribery attempt is exposed, leading to passage of total cigarette ban
In 1905, a clumsy attempt at bribery virtually forced the Indiana legislature into prohibiting cigarettes. The measure had been passed by the Senate with the intention of embarrassing certain reform leaders in the House; the House as a whole was expected to hoot it down. However, right before the vote, Representative Ananias Baker dramatically held aloft a sealed envelope and announced that it had been given to him by a lobbyist from the Tobacco Trust, with instructions to vote against the bill, He opened it with a flourish: five $20 bills dropped out. The display seemed to confirm a prediction by the state's largest tobacco dealer, reported in an Indianapolis newspaper a few days earlier, that the trust would "buy up the whole House" before it would permit passage of the bill. Baker left his colleagues little choice but to vote for the bill, lest they be suspected of having been influenced by similar envelopes. --Smithsonian, July 1989; "In the 1800s, antismoking was a burning issue" by Cassandra Tate
1913: Finally freed from the ATC, RJ Reynolds introduces Camel cigarette brand
The massive, months-long "The Camels are Coming" campaign builds anticipation for Camels. Camel, like Prince Albert before it, consisted of a then-unique blend of 3 tobaccos, piedmont Bright, a flavored and sweetened burley from Kentucky, and 10% Turkish leaf. The half-price brand (10 cents for 20) is an instant hit, gaining 33% of the market by 1917, and 45% by 1923. Soon after, the American Tobacco Company introduces Lucky Strike and Liggett & Myers introduces Chesterfield, each with similar blends. The "modern" cigarette has arrived.
1911: Dr. Charles Pease states position of the NonSmokers' Protective League of America
In a letter to the New York Times dated November 10, 1911, he writes:
The right of each person to breathe and enjoy fresh and pure air--air uncontaminated by unhealthful or disagreeable odors and fumes is a constitutional right, and cannot be taken away by legislatures or courts, much less by individuals pursuing their own thoughtless or selfish indulgence.
1950: Morton Levin publishes first major study definitively linking smoking to lung cancer
Levin was then the director of Cancer Control for the New York State Department of Health. His epidemiological survey of Buffalo patients between 1938 and 1950 appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association. His shocking and controversial conclusion: smokers were statistically twice as likely to develop lung cancer as non-smokers.
1952: Hollingsworth & Vose gets 100% indemnity agreement from Lorillard on filters
1952: East Walpole, Massachusettes-based manufacturer Hollingsworth & Vose Co. writes a "100 percent indemnity agreement" into its contract with Lorillard. Hollingsworth supplied asbestos-laden material for filters used in Lorillard's Kent cigarettes. The agreement required Lorillard to pay all legal costs and damages stemming from lawsuits over the filter's health effects.
1954-01-04 Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) Announced.
Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) announces in a nationwide 2-page ad, A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers
The ads were placed in 448 newspapers across the nation, reaching a circulation of 43,245,000 in 258 cities.
TIRC's first scientific director noted cancer scientist Dr. Clarence Cook Little, former head of the National Cancer Institute (soon to become the American Cancer Society). Little's life work lay in the genetic origins of cancer; he tended to disregard environmental factors.
From the complaint filed by the state of Florida in its 1995 lawsuit against tobacco companies:
59. In response to the publication of Dr. Wynder's study in 1953, the presidents of the leading tobacco manufacturers, including American Tobacco Co., R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, U.S. Tobacco Co., Lorillard, and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation- ration, hired the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton, Inc., to deal with the "health scare" presented by smoking. Acting in concert, at a public relations strategy meeting, the participants decided to organize a committee to be specifically charged with the "public relations" function. . . . As a result of these efforts, the Tobacco Institute Research Committee ("TIRC"), an entity later known as The Council for Tobacco Research ("CTR"), was formed.
60. The TIRC immediately ran a full-page promotion in more than 400 newspapers aimed at an estimated 43 million Americans. That piece was entitled "A Frank Statement To Cigarette Smokers" . . .
A FRANK STATEMENT TO CIGARETTE SMOKERS:
RECENT REPORTS on experiments with mice have given wide publicity to a theory that cigarette smoking is in some way linked with lung cancer in human beings.
Although conducted by doctors of professional standing, these experiments are not regarded as conclusive in the field of cancer research. However, we do not believe results are inconclusive, should be disregarded or lightly dismissed. At the same time, we feel it is in the public interest to call attention to the fact that eminent doctors and research scientists have publicly questioned the claimed significance of these experiments.
Distinguished authorities point out:
That medical research of recent years indicates many possible causes of lung cancer.
That there is no agreement among the authorities regarding what the cause is.
That there is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes.
That statistics purporting to link cigarette smoking with the disease could apply with equal force to any one of many other aspects of modern life. Indeed the validity of the statistics themselves is questioned by numerous scientists.
We accept an interest in people's health as a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business
We believe the products we make are not injurious to health.
We always have and always will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to safeguard the public health.
For more than 300 years tobacco has given solace, relaxation, and enjoyment to mankind. At one time or another during those years critics have held it responsible for practically every disease of the human body. One by one these charges have been abandoned for lack of evidence.
Regardless of the record of the past, the fact that cigarette smoking today should even be suspected as a cause of a serious disease is a matter of deep concern to us.
Many people have asked us what we are doing to meet the public's concern aroused by the recent reports. Here is the answer:
We are pledging aid and assistance to the research effort into all phases of tobacco use and health. This joint financial aid will of course be in addition to what is already being contributed by individual companies.
For this purpose we are establishing a joint industry group consisting initially of the undersigned. This group will be known as TOBACCO INDUSTRY RESEARCH COMMITTEE.
In charge of the research activities of the Committee will be a scientist of unimpeachable integrity and national repute. In addition there will be an Advisory Board of scientists disinterested in the cigarette industry. A group of distinguished men from medicine, science, and education will be invited to serve on this Board. These scientists will advise the Committee on its research activities.
This statement is being issued because we believe the people are entitled to know where we stand on this matter and what we intend to do about it.
*******
From The Facts about Smoking(Consumer Reports Books
The [tobacco] industry also created the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC). Although the stated purpose of the TIRC was to encourage research on smoking, its chief accomplishment was to put forward the idea that scientists themselves held differing opinions about whether or not smoking was dangerous. For example, in 1954, a front-page article in The New York Times reported that a majority of doctors and scientists attending the American Cancer Society meeting believed that smoking caused cancer, but in the third paragraph of the article a representative of the TIRC is quoted as saying that the poll was "biased, unscientific and filled with shortcomings." In 1954, when Drs. Graham and Wynder reported that tobacco tar painted onto the skin of mice caused cancer, the TIRC countered with: "Doctors and scientists have often stressed the many pitfalls present in all attempts to apply flatly to humans any findings resulting from animal experiments. " Whatever the validity of the TIRC's criticisms, they served to encourage skepticism in the public's mind about scientific reports of the dangers of smoking. The tobacco industry also established the Tobacco Institute, whose avowed purpose was to promote "public understanding of the smoking and health controversy and . . . knowledge of the historic role of tobacco and its place in the national economy." In the first issue of Tobacco News, the institute's president said: "The Institute and this publication believe that the American people want and are entitled to accurate, factual, interesting information about this business [tobacco] which is so important in the economic bloodstream of the nation and such a tranquilizer in our personal lives."
*******
From PR Watch:
Hill & Knowlton's role is described as follows in a 1994 lawsuit, State of Mississippi vs. the Tobacco Cartel:
The presidents of the leading tobacco manufacturers ... hired the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton .... As a result of these efforts, the Tobacco Institute Research Committee (TIRC), an entity later know as The Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), was formed.
The Tobacco Industry Research Committee immediately ran a full-page promotion in more than 400 newspapers ... entitled "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers."... The participating tobacco companies recognized their "special responsibility" to the public, and promised to learn the facts about smoking and health ... to sponsor independent research on the subject .... to cooperate closely with public health officials ....
After thus beginning to lull the public into a false sense of security concerning smoking and health, the Tobacco Industry Research Committee continued to act as a front for tobacco industry interests. Despite the initial public statements and posturing, ... there was a coordinated, industry-wide strategy designed actively to mislead and confuse the public about the true dangers associated with smoking cigarettes. Rather than work for the good of the public health, ... the tobacco trade association, refuted, undermined, and neutralized information coming from the scientific and medical community.
There is no question that the tobacco industry knew what scientists were learning about tobacco. The TIRC maintained a library with cross-indexed medical and scientific papers from 2,500 medical journals; as well as press clippings, government reports and other documents. TIRC employees culled this library for scientific data with inconclusive or contrary results regarding tobacco and the harm to human health. These were compiled into a carefully selected 18-page booklet, titled "A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy," which was mailed to over 200,000 people, including doctors, members of Congress and the news media.
*******
From Merchants of Death: by Larry C. White
The year 1954 marked the beginning of the cigarette Big Lie. It was in this year that the cigarette companies got together to plot the strategies that would keep them viable far into the future, strategies that still guide their response to the fact that their products kill 10 percent of their customers.
Speaking frankly to investors in June of 1954, O. Parker McComas, then president of Philip Morris, said that the health problem must be taken seriously--that is, "carefully evaluated for its effect on industry public relations, as well as its effect on the consumer market." Therefore, he said, Philip Morns had joined with "practically all elements of industry" to form the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. There were great expectations for the TIRC: "We hope that the work of TIRC will open new vistas not only in research, but in liaison between industry and the scientific world." As for the nature of the TIRC, McComas said that it was similar to other industries' organizations such as the American Meat Institute, the American Petroleum Institute, and so on.
This was not for consumption by the general public, of course. An ad was run in newspapers across the country on January 4, 1954, that announced the formation of the TIRC and touted the committee's objectivity. "In charge of the research activities of the Committee will be a scientist of unimpeachable integrity and national repute. In addition, there will be an Advisory Board of scientists disinterestedin the cigarette industry. A group of distinguished men from medicine, science, and education will be invited to serve on this Board. These scientists will advise the Committee on its research activities."
***
There would be no pro-cigarette studies funded by the committee--fakes would be too easily discredited. Instead, research would be done around the periphery--keeping scientists busy on incidental issues, diverting attention from the main point: the link between cigarettes and disease. For example, one of the committee's first priorities was funding of studies on why people smoke. Another favored area for research was whether some people have a genetic predisposition to cancer. This could keep scientists busy indefinitely.
Still, it was obvious that independent scientists would continue to investigate the health effects of smoking. . . The basic public relations strategy was to emphasize the few studies that did not prove that smoking caused disease. What could never be mentioned was that a study that does not prove a relationship between smoking and disease cannot logically prove the opposite--that no relationship exists. . . With the advent of the TIRC, the cigarette companies could say that no one spent more on research on smoking and health than they did. Most important, the TIRC would serve the function of creating a controversy. The current name of the committee is the Council for Tobacco Research and it still serves the function of making it seem like there is a valid difference of opinion among scientists about whether smoking is dangerous.
The value of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee to the industry was revealed only a few months after its creation. At a meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in early June of 1954, the American Cancer Society announced that a majority of cancer researchers, chest surgeons, and pathologists believed that smoking might lead to lung cancer. This news was carried on the front page of The New York Times on June 7, 1954. But, unlike pre-1954 articles that had allowed the news to stand alone, this article included in its third paragraph a denunciation of the statement.
Timothy V. Hartnett, chairman of the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, called the poll of doctors "biased, unscientific and filled with shortcomings."
***
In February of 1956, Dr. Evarts A. Graham reported on another study in which he had painted mice with tobacco tars. He had been criticized for his earlier study of this kind because he had used only one type of mouse. In this new study he used other strains and also painted rabbits' ears with the tars. Again, he induced cancer.
This time the industry was ready for him--thanks to the Tobacco Industry Research Committee. When newspapers reported Dr. Graham's study they also reported the response of the TIRC: "Doctors and scientists have often stressed the many pitfalls present in all attempts to apply flatly to humans any findings resulting from animal experiments." To a scientist, the response was worthless, but it was enough to cast doubt in the public's mind. Most important for the industry, the TIRC provided smokers with some ammunition, some arguments that justified their not quitting.
1963-07-17: LITIGATION: B&W's General Counsel Addison Yeaman writes in a memo, "Moreover, nicotine is addictive. We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the release of stress mechanisms."
In context, Yeaman was concerned about the upcoming Surgeon General's report, and was writing of "the so-called 'beneficial effects of nicotine': 1) enhancing effect on the pituitary-adrenal response to stress; 2) regulation of body weight."
Moreover, nicotine is addictive. We are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in the release of stress mechanisms. But cigarettes -- we will assume the Surgeon General's Committee to say -- despite the beneficent effect of nicotine, have certain unattractive side effects: 1) They cause, or predispose to, lung cancer. 2) They contribute to certain cardiovascular disorders. 3) They may well be truly causative in emphysema, etc., etc. We challenge those charges and we have assumed our obligation to determine their truth or falsity by creating the new Tobacco Research Foundation. In the meantime (we say) here is our triple, or quadruple or quintuple filter, capable of removing whatever constituent of smoke is currently suspect while delivering full flavor -- and incidentally -- a nice jolt of nicotine. And if we are the first to be able to make and sustain that claim, what price Kent?
1964-01-11: First Surgeon General's Report released.
From Smoking and Health:
Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men; the magnitude of the effect of cigarette smoking far outweighs all other factors... Cigarette smoking is much more important than occupational exposures in the causation of lung cancer in the general population ... Cigarette smoking is the most important of the causes of chronic bronchitis in the United States, and increases the risk of dying from chronic bronchitis and emphysema ... Although the causative role of cigarette smoking in deaths from coronary disease is not proven the Committee considers it more prudent from the public health viewpoint to assume that the established association has causative meaning than to suspend judgment until no uncertainty remains.
President John F. Kennedy had won the 1960 Presidential election by only 0.1 percent of the vote. His vice-president, Lyndon Johnson had successfully delivered the crucial Southern vote. Kennedy had an ambitious program to implement, and was fully aware many congressional committees were dominated by tobacco state legislators.
Yet the 1962 Royal College of Physicians' Report increased public pressure on Kennedy to take a public stand. At a press conference on May 23, 1962, Kennedy said in reply to a question on the subject, "That matter is sensitive enough and the stock market is in sufficient difficulaty without my giving you an answer which isnot based on complete information, which I don't have, and, therefore, perhaps I will be glad to respond to that question in more detail next week."
Kennedy soon acceded to American health groups' long-standing request to create a Presidential Commission to study the matter.
Surgeon General Luther Terry worked closely with the tobacco industry on the commission. The industry was presented with a list of 150 "outstanding medical scientists" and were allowed to cross out any names they wished. Terry remembers only 3 or 4 were so eliminated. Industry views were made known to the committee members.
The scientists worked for a year in a sub-basement of the Nataional Library of Medicine in Bethesday, MD., and when their report was to be printed, it received the same clasification as a state secret.
On a carefully-chosen Saturday morning (to prevent a disastrous slide on Wall St.), January 11, 1964, at 9 AM, 200 reporters were physically locked into the State Department's auditorium to hear a two hour briefing by surgeon general Dr. Luther L. Terry and a panel of experts. The top-secret measures were felt necessary because of the bold and closely-guarded conclusion reached in a brown paperback book the reporters received titled Smoking and Health.
When the press conference was over, the reporters ran madly to the telephones. In 1964, in a country where over 50% of adult males smoked, a multi-billion dollar industry seemed to hang by the book's astounding verdict: smoking causes cancer.
Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action.
At the time, 46% of all Americans smoked; smoking was accepted in offices, airplanes and elevators, and TV programs were sponsored by cigarette brands.
Within 3 months of Terry's report, cigarette consumption had dropped 20%, but, as was the pattern in England following the Royal Physicians' Report, was soon to climb back with a vengeance.
"It was a very dramatic and courageous thing to do," said Joseph Califano, the top domestic policy aide to then-President Johnson.
But the Johnson Administration had enough wars--domestic and foreign--to fight. The Administration didn't want to pull its resources from poverty and civil rights to undertake action which would undoubtedly entail severe social, economic and regional disruptions. "We wanted to get schools integrated, the voters' rights act passed, fair housing passed. And all of those things required us to take on the whole phalanx of Southern states," Califano said.
Smoking rates since 1965, from National Health Interview Surveys compiled by the U.S. Office on Smoking and Health.
% US Adult Smokers in: % ALL % Men % Women
1965 42.4 51.9 33.9
1990 25.5 28.4 22.8
1991 25.7 28.1 23.5
1964: Industry writer suggests tobacco control advocates have psychiatric certification that they are not sufering from pyrophobia and suppressed fear of the 'big fire' or atom bomb
1964: USA: In response to the release of the Report to the Surgeon General in Jan. 1964, "World Tobacco" magazine published a two page article (pp. 19-20) titled "International perspective on smoking and health" in the March 1964 issue. It ended with a review of the 25 years of research conducted by Dr. H. Aschenbenner of W. Germany, the Secretary General of the International Association of Scientific Tobacco Research whose work suggusts that "before reports on smoking and health are taken seriously, those making the reports should have psychiatric certification that they are not sufering from pyrophobia (fear of fire)". His works "have proven that tobacco antagonism often springs from a morbid (and often unconscious) pyrophobia -- a phenomena whose many manifestations include suppressed fear of the 'big fire' or atom bomb" -- contributed by Larry Breed
The Surgeon General's Advisory Committee:
Dr. Terry acted as chairman
Dr. James M. Hundley, assistant surgeon general, acted as vice chairman.
The members, announced on October 27, 1962, were:
Dr. Stanhope Bayne-Jones, former dean, Yale School of Medicine
Dr. Walter J. Burdette, head of the Department of Surgery, University of Utah School of Medicine
William G. Cochran, professor of Statistics, Harvard University
Dr. Emmanuel Farber, chairman, Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh
Louis F. Fieser, professor of Organic Chemistry, Harvard University
Dr. Jacob Furth, professor of Pathology, Columbia University
Dr. John B. Hickam, chairman, Department of Internal Medicine, Indiana University
Dr. Charles LeMaistre, professor of Internal Medicine, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School
Dr. Leonard M. Schuman, professor of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota School of Public Health
Dr. Maurice H. Seevers, chairman, Department of Pharmacology, University of Michigan.
1966-01-01: Health warnings on Cigarette Packs begin
In order to adhere to the recently passed Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, cigarette packages begin to carry labels which read: "Caution--cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health."
1967: John Banzhaf convinces FCC to apply TV Fairness Doctrine to cigarette ads, and to allow anti-smoking grups to respond to cigarette advertisements on TV.
Noted commercials include one in which a young boy is seen smoking his dad's discarded cigarette, a light-hearted Gene Kelly spot, and a heartfelt plea by William Talman, who played the prosecuting attorney in the Perry Mason TV series:
I have lung cancer. Take some advice about smoking and losing from someone who's been doing both for years. If you haven't smoked, don't start. If you do smoke--quit. Don't be a loser.
Talman died before the commercial aired.
Cigarette consumption declines each year for the next 4 years, for the first time in a century when cigarette consumption rose almost yearly. Some credit these commercials with helping as many as 10,000,000 Americans quit smoking between 1967 and 1970.
When the federal government moved to ban TV cigarette advertising, the industry did not fight it. Many credit their acquiescence to these commercials
1970s: Cigarettes are the most heavily advertised product in America; magazines and newspapers stop covering tobacco issues in depth.
In a survey of leading national magazines, the Columbia Jounalism Revue in 1978 is unable to find a single article in 7 years of publication that would have given readers an clear notion of the nature and extent of the medical and social havoc being wreaked by the cigarette-smoking habit . . . one must conclude that advertising revenue can indeed silence the editors of American magazines.
1971-01-02: TV Cigarette Ads Banned
January 2, 1971. Delayed for one day to allow a final glut of Super Bowl ads, the Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969, which included a nationwide ban on tobacco advertising on television and radio, went into effect at midnight. Fairness Doctrine anti-smoking ads also disappear. Cigarette sales begin rebounding from their four year decline.
The bill also required an updated warning on cigarette packages: "Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health."
The tobacco industry is reputed to have been hard-hit by the counter-ads required by 1967's Fairness Doctrine, which undoubtedly influenced their acceptance of this legislation. Feeling betrayed, advertising, broadcasting and publishing interests fought a losing battle.
The industry's advertising expenditures decreased over the next two years, but the industry soon found other venues in which to market: sports promotion, point-of-sales promotions, and increased use of the print medium.
RJ Reynolds' top-selling Winston brand, which had been eclipsed in the 60s by Philip Morris' Marlboro, was particularly hard-hit. While the sales impact of the Marlboro cowboy translated into print beautifully, Winston's identifier was a catchy if notedly ungrammatical jingle, "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should."
Reynolds never found an effective visual substitute for their jingle.
Throughout the 70s Reynolds became distracted with myriad diversification missteps, and developed business practices which led to shelves full of stale Winstons.
Philip Morris quickly became the number one tobacco company in the US, and its Marlboro brand became the number one best-selling cigarette..
1971: UK: Second British Royal College of Physicians of London Report, Smoking and Health Now
From Smoking and Health Now:
The suffering and shortening of life resulting from smoking cigarettes have become increasingly clear as the evidence accumulates. Cigarette smoking is now as important a cause of death as were the great epidemic diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and tuberculosis that affected previous generations in this country. Once the causes had been established they were gradually brought under control ... But despite all the publicity of the dangers of cigarette smoking people seem unwilling to accept the facts and many of those who do are unwilling or unable to act upon them.
1977: 1st Great American Smokeout
1976: TV: Death in the West--The Marlboro Story made by Peter Taylor and Director Martin Smith for Thames Television
The film, contrasting Marlboro promotions with interviews with cowboy smokers dying of lung ailments, was shown in Britain, but legal problems erupted with Philip Morris. In an out-of-court settlement, Thames turned over all copies save one to PM. The sole remaining copy was to stay sealed in Thames' vault, and terms of the settlement were to remain secret. The film was sent to Stanton Glantz in 1982, and soon after was shown all over the USA.
1977: UK: Royal College of Physicians of London third report, Smoking or Health
From Smoking or Health:
Deaths from coronary heart disease are responsible for about half of the total excess deaths among cigarette smokers and are numerically greater than the excess deaths from either lung cancer or chronic bronchitis... That the association between smoking and heart disease is largely one of cause and effect is supported by its strength and consistency, its independence of the other risk factors, its enhancement in those smokers who inhale, and by the progressive lessening of the risk in those who give up.
1979-01: Report of the US Surgeon-General, Dr Julius B. Richmond.
Cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in both men and women... is a significant causative factor in cancer of the larynx... is a significant causal factor in the development of oral cancer... is a causal factor in the development of cancer of the esophagus... is related to cancer of the pancreas... is one of the three major independent risk factors for heart attack... and sudden cardiac death in adult men and women... a major risk factor in arteriosclerotic peripheral vascular disease... a cause of chronic obstructive lung disease... increases the risk of fetal death through maternal complications... contributes to the risk of their infants being victims of the 'sudden infant death syndrome' [cot death].6
1980: US Surgeon General special report: The Health Consequences of Smoking for Women
The rise in lung cancer death rates is currently much steeper in women than in men. It is projected that ... the lung cancer death rate will surpass that of breast cancer in the early 1980s... The risk of spontaneous abortion, fetal death, and neonatal death increases directly with increasing levels of maternal smoking during pregnancy.
1984: Louganis, Olympics, Tobacco
From "Merchants of Death" by Larry C. White:
Take the case of Olympic diver Greg Louganis. He trained for the 1984 Olympics (where he was to win two gold medals) at the Mission Viejo training center in southern California. Mission Viejo had been the home of the top American swimmers and divers, including Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics.
The swimming club, and the town in which it is located, is owned by a subsidiary of Philip Morris called the Mission Viejo Realty Group.
Greg Louganis was born in 1960. By the time he was eight years old he had started to smoke. He said to a congressional committee studying cigarette advertising, "Smoking was more of a way of rebelling than something I enjoyed. I thought I was cool and that it would make me more grown up--like my parents who both smoked. I thought that my neighborhood pals would accept me if I joined the guys every day outside school to sneak a smoke. By the time I was in junior high, I was hooked on these deadly products, and I was willing to risk whatever future I might have had as a diver and an athlete, all to get my daily fix of those little tobacco sticks. I know now from reading the statistics on nicotine addiction and smoking habits that 85 to 90 percent of smokers start before or during their teenage years. As a diver I kept rationalizing that I didn't need a great amount of wind to succeed, just power and strength."
Louganis continued to smoke until he was twenty-three, even though he had to do it surreptitiously: "My diving coach at the time, Dr. Sammy Lee, would never coach me again if he ever found out that I had even contemplated the idea of smoking cigarettes." But then one day he had a personal epiphany that enabled him to quit smoking: "I had been practicing at the Mission Viejo facility one day and on the way out I noticed this twelve-year-old kid smoking. When I asked him why, he said that he wanted to be just like me! He knew I smoked and he figured that it did not seem to affect my diving performance, so he thought it must be all fight to smoke. At that point I began to question what I was doing, and I quit smoking. I realized that in a way I was a 'Marlboro Man' of sons .... "
Louganis later told me, "After I quit I wanted to tell every twelveyear-old that I had quit." So he started doing volunteer work for the American Cancer Society. According to his manager, Jim Babbitt, the Mission Viejo executives were not very happy about this: "They grimaced when the ACS was mentioned."
And they warned Louganis to "keep a low profile." "1 was very disappointed," he says. "Number one, I was acting as an individual and I don't feel that it was right for the company to have the power to say, 'Don't say this, it's against what our company is selling.' Maybe they could say that I was biting the hand that fed me, but I believe that there is a higher value."
Louganis's activities that the Mission Viejo executives and their masters at Philip Morris on Park Avenue found so displeasing reached a crescendo in January of 1984. In that Olympic year, Louganis was asked by the American Cancer Society to be national chairman of its annual Great American Smokeout. Babbitt was very enthusiastic. He told me, "I was pushing for it heavily. I thought this would have made Greg a hero in other areas than diving. It would have been a real coup for him, a great move for Greg and his career. And, after all, he's told me that he considers quitting smoking the greatest accomplishment of his life." An athlete of his stature in that position would have a major effect on the image of smoking among young people.
But it was not to be. Babbitt got the message from the public relations department of Mission Viejo. If Greg were to accept the honorary position from the American Cancer Society, he would be barred from training at Mission Viejo. "It was done very subtly, very polished. But also very definite." Louganis's coach, Ron O'Brien, was the best in the world. The diver could not contemplate competing in the Olympics without his guidance. But O'Brien worked for Mission Viejo.
Babbitt says the threat of Louganis's being sent away from Mission Viejo, away from his coach, was the sports world's equivalent of saying, "I'll kill your mother." And it didn't stop there. Two of the public relations people told Babbitt that if Louganis accepted the Cancer Society invitation, they too would be fired. "Heads would roll," Babbitt says.
Both Louganis and Babbitt agreed that there was really no choice. The diver declined the honorary position so that he could go to the Olympics. Of course, he could not explain why, at the time, since even this would have been considered a hostile act.
The most ironic footnote to this story is that after his great success in Los Angeles in the 1984 Olympics, his first offers for endorsement contracts came from tobacco companies, and a PM subsidiary. Louganis rejected them without discussion.
[Note: the only major endorsement Louganis landed was from swimwear manufacturer Speedo. Their association continues today. Speedo appears to be aware that Louganis has AIDS.]
1991-02-07: AUSTRALIA: The AFCO Case: Federal Court examines 1986 ETS studies, finds data valid
Transcripts:
THE 1991 AFCO Decision ...there is a strong public interest in the respondent being prevented from making the statement that there is little evidence and nothing which proves that cigarette smoke causes disease in non-smokers. Active smokers are likely to be misled or deceived by the statement into believing that theirsmoking does not prejudice the health of non-smokers, particularly small children. Non-smokers are likely to be deceived or misled by the statement into believing that cigarette smoke does not affect their own health or the health of their children. These are serious matters. -- Justice Trevor Morling, Australian Federal Court, February 7, 1991
In 1986, the Tobacco Institute of Australia ran newspaper ads that claimed there was "little evidence and nothing which proves scientifically that cigarette smoke causes disease in nonsmokers."
The Australian Federation of Consumer Organizations (AFCO) brought suit in Australian Federal Court under the Trade Practices Act.
Heavy guns and major resources of both sides were thrown into the case, which lasted 30 months. 320 reports were presented, including evidence from noted ETS-critic and Cato Institute lecturer Gary Huber (The financial connection between Huber's work and the tobacco industry was not revealed until Business Week broke the story in 1994).
The main evidence for the plaintiffs were reports from 1986 by the US Surgeon General, the National Research Council (US), the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) and the Froggatt inquiry into health and smoking (Britain).
The court found that even in 1986 there was "overwhelming evidence" that ETS triggers respiratory attacks in children, and "compelling scientific evidence that cigarette smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers."
In a 211-page judgement, the court found that the TIA's advertised statement breached the Trade Practices Act and was likely to mislead people on the effects of ETS. Justice Trevor Morling granted an injunction which prevented the Tobacco Institute from running similar ads.
The Journal of the American Medical Association said in reference to the case,
"It is not surprising that the tobacco industry, which for decades has continued to obfuscate the causal link between smoking and disease despite massive evidence, should feel threatened by studies that show that nonsmokers may be harmed and killed by their products. After all, in 1991, the evidence that ETS causes lung cancer was reviewed and found, by a federal court in Australia, to be 'compelling.' And it's not surprising that scientist-editors at JAMA, who have read the evidence on both sides, believe that ETS is a great danger to nonsmokers and are depressed by industry tactics. . .
"It is interesting that the judge in the Australian case was generally critical of the narrow approach of the statistical experts called by the Tobacco Institute of Australia, and their tendency to be 'overcritical' of parts of every study while sometimes demanding "unattainable standards" of proof of causation. He was more favorably impressed by the broader approach of the epidemiologists, who stressed the importance of the pattern that emerged from all these studies -- studies 'supported by strong biological plausibility.'"
1994-04-14: Seven Tobacco Company executives begin testimony in Congressional hearings
The officers who appeared before Henry Waxman's (D-CA) Committee beginning April 14, 1994, were:
William Campbell, CEO, Philip Morris
James Johnston, CEO, RJR Tobacco Co
Joseph Taddeo, President, U.S. Tobacco Co
Andrew Tisch, CEO, Lorillard Tobacc
Thomas Sandefur, CEO, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co
Ed Horrigan, CEO, Liggett Group
Donald Johnston, CEO, American Tobacco Co.
The following was the most famous exchange (April 15, 1994):
REP. WYDEN: Let me ask you first, and I'd like to just go down the row, whether each of you believes that nicotine is not addictive. I've heard virtually all of you touch on it--yes or no, do you believe nicotine is not addictive?
WILLIAM I. CAMPBELL (Philip Morris): I believe that nicotine is not addictive, yes.
REP. WYDEN: Mr. Johnston...
JAMES JOHNSTON (RJReynolds): Uh, Congressman, cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the classic definition of addiction. There is no intoxication--
REP. WYDEN: We'll take that as a no. And again, time is short, if you can just, I think each of you believe nicotine is not addictive, I'd just like to have this for the record.
JOSEPH TADDEO (US Tobacco): "I don't believe that nicotine or our products are addictive."
ANDREW TISCH (P Lorillard): I believe that nicotine is not addictive.
EDWARD HORRIGAN (Ligget Group): I believe that nicotine is not addictive.
THOMAS SANDEFUR (Brown & Williamson): I believe that nicotine is not addictive.
DONALD JOHNSTON (American Tobacco Co.): And I too believe that nicotine is not addictive.
1994-05-31: FTC Clears Joe Camel
1994-05-31: the FTC votes 3-2 not to file a complaint that the R.J. Reynolds "Joe Camel" advertising campaign encourages children to buy cigarettes. Two commissioners issued strongly dissenting opinions.
"Although it may seem intuitive to some that the Joe Camel advertising campaign would lead more children to smoke or lead children to smoke more, the evidence to support that intuition is not there," a commission statement said.
Commissioners Mary L. Azcuenaga, Deborah Owen and Roscoe Starek III voted against taking any further action. Dennis Yao and Chairwoman Janet Steiger issued strongly dissenting statemtents:
"I have reason to believe that the Camel campaign induced underage people to start smoking and that proceedings against such ads would be in the interest of the public," Steiger said.
Yao said, "There is evidence that the carton character has appeal to minors and that Camel has increased its market share among minors. There is also evidence that the decade-and-a-half decrease in smoking among minors has slowed down in the time since the Joe Camel campaign began."
The FTC's province was to determine not if the ads encouraged kids to smoke, but whether the ads encouraged kids to do something illegal--_buy_ cigarettes.
The Commissioners were forced to act under pressure from attorneys general of 27 states (who urged a ban in Sept. of 1993), the Surgeon General Antonia Novello, and the entire FTC staff (in August of 1993) urging them to ban Joe Camel.
The FTC seemed unwilling to address First Amendment legal issues that are, in the words of one observer, "on the periphery of settled law . . . I think it's an ugly baby that showed up on their doorstep. They don't know what to do with it."
While the decision was pending--with 2 Commissioners having already voted to ban, and the others hanging fire--another observer, Art Amolsch, publisher of the newsletter FTC:Watch, said, "It is a volatile issue, and I have a feeling there are some commissioners who would prefer not to vote, not to go on the record on this."
Had the FTC voted against the campaign, the matter would then have been turned over to an Administrative law judge, leading to a case that probably would have dragged on for years.
Fred Danzig, editor of the trade weekly Advertising Age, said, "We long ago called for RJR to kill the campaign on their own . . . Whether they're right or wrong is hardly the issue anymore because the public perception is that RJR is trying to lure kids to cigarette smoking simply by using a cartoon character."
Some issues that keep the pot stirring:
In 1991, 3 years into the campaign, over half of 3-6 year olds recognized Joe Camel, more than recognized Mickey Mouse or Ronald McDonald. 91% of six-year-olds match Joe Camel with his product, and Camel's share of the kid market had jumped by a factor of 50.
Nicholas Price, the British creator of the image (for an adult magazine in France in 1974), has said he is "mortified" that the character is being used to target kids.
After a 15 year decline, youth smoking rose in 1988--the first full year of the Joe Camel campaign.
1995-07-21 Two reports find alarming increases in cigarette smoking among minors in the US:
Trends in Smoking Initiation Among Adolescents and Young Adults -- United States, 1980-1989 (CDC)
The Monitoring the Future Study (Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. This study covers the years 1991-1994)
| Carmen |
What sort of animal is 'Pumbaa' in 'The Lion King' film and stage show? | Georges Bizet Carmen
English
A square in Seville. On the right, the door of a tobacco factory. At the back of the stage there is a bridge which can be crossed, spanning the whole width of the stage. Access to the bridge from the stage is by a curved staircase, which curves to the right above the tobacco factory door. There is an entrance from under the bridge. On the left, in the foreground, is a guardhouse. In front of the guardhouse there is a little covered balcony, with two or three steps up to it. In a rack, near the guardhouse, are the dragoons' lances with their red and yellow pennants. When the curtain rises we see about fifteen soldiers (dragoons of the Alcala regiment) grouped in front of the guardhouse. Some sit smoking, others lean on the balustrade. Passers-by in the square -- people in a hurry, people on business, come and go, meet, greet, or jostle each other, etc.
SC�NE PREMIERE (SCENE I)
Morales, Micaela, Soldiers, Passers-by
The corporal I have come to see is called
Don Jos� ... Do you now him too?
MORALES
Don Jose? Oh yes, of course we do.
MICAELA
You do? Then tell me is he now with you here?
MORALES
He never was a corporal in our platoon, dear.
MICAELA
And so, he's not in there?
MORALES
No, dearest charmer, he's not in there;
But very soon he will be here.
He will be here the moment that the new guard
Relieves the guard that's due to go off duty.
ALL
He will be here the moment that the new guard
Relieves the guard that's due to go off duty.
MORALES
While you wait for his arrival,
Would you care, my lovely child,
Would you care to take the trouble,
To step inside here awhile?
MICAELA
Once again we'll have to try
Observing passers-by pass by!
All around here,
People wander, etc.
Bugles and fifes can be heard very faintly in the distance, playing a military march. The new guard is arriving. The officer comes out of the guardhouse. A bugle call on stage. The soldiers go to take their lances and line up in front of the guardhouse. The passers-by form a group on the right to watch the changing of the guard. The sound of the military march comes nearer and nearer ... The new guard finally enters from the left and crosses the bridge. First two fifes and a bugle. Then a troop of little urchins taking very long steps to keep pace with the dragoons -- the children should be as small as possible. Lieutenant Zuniga and Corporal Don Jos� behind the children, then the dragoons with their lances.
SC�NE II (SCENE II)
The above, Don Jos�, Lieutenant Zuniga
No. 2. March and Chorus of Urchins
With the guard that comes on duty
We are marching, here we are!
Sound trumpet, sound very loudly!
Ta ra ta ta, ta ra ta ta.
We are proper little soldiers,
Heads well up we march along,
We keep in step with the music,
Left! Right! We're never wrong. (shouted)
Shoulders well back when we're marching,
Chest well out, we're on parade,
Arms held, like this, from the shoulder,
With the fingers down the side.
With the guard that comes on duty
We are marching. Here we are!
Sound trumpet, sound very loudly!
Ta ra ta ta, ta ra ta ta.
ZUNIGA
(spoken over the last bars of the chorus)
Halt! At ease!
The new guard lines up on the right, facing the old guard. As soon as the urchins, who have stopped on the right in front of the curious onlookers, stop singing, the officers salute with their swords and begin to speak in low voices. Sentries are changed.
SC�NE III (SCENE III)
Yes, sir. Don Jos� Lizzarabengoa is my name.
ZUNIGA
Lizzarabengoa ... Oh, it was you who killed ...
DON JOS�
No, it wasn't like that ... a lad from Alava picked a quarrel with me ... it wasn't my intention ... I had to leave home ... I became a soldier.
ZUNIGA
Aha! Now I understand why ...
The factory bell rings.
There goes the factory bell, sir. Now you can judge for yourself ...
SC�NE IV (SCENE IV)
Don Jos�, Soldiers, Young Men and Cigarette Girls
The square begins to fill with young men who come and stand where the girls will pass. The soldiers come out of the Guard house. Don Jos� sits down busying himself with repairing the
chain of his saber and pays no attention to the young men and the townspeople entering.
Love's a bird that will live in freedom,
That no man ever learned to tame
And in vain men may call and call her
If she's no mind to play their game!
They'll find nothing they do will tempt her,
The one tries charm, the other's dumb!
And that other's the one I fancy,
He may not talk, but he's the one!
Oh love was born to gipsy life,
A life that's free, that is as free as air;
You may not love me, yet I love you,
But if I love you, then you take care!
But this bird that you thought you'd taken
Has flapped her wings and flown away;
When love's gone then you sit there waiting,
You give up waiting, down she'll fly!
All around you she'll fly so quickly,
She's there, she's gone, she's back in view,
Think you've caught her and she'll escape you,
Think you've escaped and she's caught you!
Oh love was born to gipsy life,
A life that's free, that is as free as air,
You may not love me, yet I love you;
But if I love you, then you take care!
N.5. Sc�ne (N.5. Scene)
Carmen! Like your shadow we follow you!
Carmen! Oh be kind and answer us do!
The young men surround Carmen. She looks at them one after the other, leaves the circle they have formed around her, and then goes straight up to Don Jos�, who is still busying himself with the chain for his priming pin. She takes an acacia flower from her corsage and thows it at Don Jos�.
Oh love was born to gipsy life,
A life that's free, that is as free as air,
You may not love me, yet I love you;
But if I love you, then you take care!
SC�NE VI (SCENE VI)
Carmen goes into the factory. The young men leave to the right and the left. The lieutenant, who had been chatting with some factory girls during the scene, leaves them and follows the soldiers into the guardhouse. Don Jos� remains alone.
Micaela enters.
And then ... Oh, no, I dare not,
And then ... there's something else I bring you
Worth more than all your pay, and which for any son
Will have a value all its own.
DON JOS�
This other something, you must tell me
What it is ...
Yes, I'll tell you now.
What I received from her I now will give to you.
As we both were returning home from church this morning,
Taking my arm gently in hers:
"Now go," your mother said, "to the town;
It isn't very far there, and when you reach Sevilla,
You look for my dear son, my Jos�, my own boy!
Say his mother never forgets him,
Has him night and day in her mind ...
Though he did wrong, yet she forgives him,
And that she hopes that he'll return.
All I've said now be sure you tell him,
Just as though I were there to see;
And then the kiss that I give you now,
With my love give to him from me."
DON JOS� (very moved)
Then it's true she forgives me!
MICA�LA
And she sends you a kiss.
Jos�, I give it you as she then gave it to me.
Micaela stands on tiptoe and gives Jos� an unselfconsciously maternal kiss. Don Jos�, very moved, lets her kiss him.
DON JOS� (very moved)
She's there before my eyes! ... And there's the village I remember!
Oh happy days now gone by! Oh land that I held so dear!
You fill my heart with strength and give me courage.
Oh memory so dear,
My mother standing there, that village I remember.
She's there before my eyes ...
(etc.)
She's there before his eyes ...
(etc.)
(to himself, looking towards the factory)
Who knows of what demon I should have been the prey!
(pulling himself together)
Even from far my Mother breaks the charm
(impulsively)
And by the kiss that she has sent me
She drives the danger off and keeps her son from harm!
MICA�LA (straightfowardly)
But what demon and what harm? I do not understand ...
Tell me what do you mean?
DON JOS�
Let's talk of you, dear Micaela;
So will you be back there today?
MICA�LA
Yes, by this evening ... I'll see your mother in the morning.
DON JOS� (eagerly)
Well when you do, remember ... Tell her from me
How much I love her and revere her,
How true my repentance today.
I'd like her, though we are parted,
To be proud of her boy!
All I've said now be sure you tell her,
Just as though she were here to see!
And then the kiss that I give you now,
With my love give to her from me!
(He kisses her.)
I promise that I will ... and with love from her son,
Jos�, I'll give it to her as you would like it done.
Reprise of Duet.
No, no ... I'll come back, I'd rather ... I'll come back, I'll come back ...
(She runs out.)
SC�NE VIII (SCENE VIII)
Don Jos�, Cigarette Girls, Zuniga, Soldiers
"Eh bien! Qu'est-ce qui arrive?...Au secours! Au secours"
DON JOS�
Yes, Mother, I'll do what you want ... I'll marry Mica�la, and as for that gipsy with her witch's flowers ...
Just as he is going to take out the flower from his tunic, there is a great uproar in the factory. Zuniga enters followed by soldiers.
Now then, now then, what's going on?
The Cigarette Girls rush out half-undressed.
Come and help! Can't you hear the row?
Come and help! Separate them now.
FIRST GROUP OF WOMEN
Carmen's the one to blame!
SECOND GROUP OF WOMEN
No, no, it wasn't her fault!
FIRST GROUP
"Why d'you want to ride a donkey?
You'd look better on a broom!"
SECOND GROUP
"If you ever need a donkey
For a certain little journey,
He'll serve you for such a ride."
FIRST GROUP
"When they take you to the jail
You can ride there like a lady,
Two police behind the donkey,
Swatting flies upon your tail!"
ALL THE WOMEN
Thereupon each of the pair,
Grabbed a great handful of hair,
Grabbed the other by the hair!
ZUNIGA
To hell with them and their palaver!
(to Don Jos�)
You there, Jos�, just take a couple of men,
Go inside and find out who is causing the row there!
Don Jos� takes two men with him and goes into the factory. Meanwhile the women struggle and argue.
Carmen's the one to blame!
SECOND GROUP OF WOMEN
No, no, it wasn't her fault!
etc.
On the word of a Basque.
ZUNIGA
Have you anything to say?
Speak. I'm waiting.
N. 8. Song and Melodrama
Instead of answering, Carmen begins to hum "Tra la la la la."
Tra la, la, la, la, la, la, la,
Though you beat me or burn me, I've nothing to say,
Tra la, la, la, la, la, la, la,
For I'll brave all your fire and your steel -- even heaven!
It isn't songs that I'm asking for, but an answer.
Tra la, la, la, la, la, la, la,
I've a secret to keep and I'll keep it my way!
Tra la, la, la, la, la, la, la,
There's another I love, though you kill me I'll love him.
ZUNIGA (spoken)
Aha! so that's the line we're taking!
(to Don Jos�)
One thing's quite clear, isn't it, that there has been a knifing, and that she was the one who used the knife!
At this moment five or six women from the right succeed in breaking through the line of soldiers and rush to the center of the stage, shouting "Yes, yes! It was her!" Carmen goes to attack the woman closest to her; Don Jos� prevents her. The soldiers drive off all the women and this time right off the stage. Some soldiers remain in sight, guarding access to the square.
Hey! Hey! You're certainly free with your hands.
(to the soldiers)
A moment of silence. Carmen hums in the most impertinent manner as she watches Zuniga.
A SOLDIER (bringing a piece of rope)
The rope, Se�or.
ZUNIGA (to Don Jos�; spoken)
Go and bind those two pretty hands.
Carmen, without the least resistance, smiles as she holds out her hands to Don Jos�.
ZUNIGA
It really is a pity, because she's attractive! But attractive though you may be, you will go to prison all the same. You can sing your gipsy songs there, and the jailer will tell you what he thinks of them.
Carmen's hands are tied. She is made to sit on a bench in front of the guardhouse. She sits quite still, looking down.
I will go and write out the order.
(to Don Jos�)
And you can take her.
(He goes out.)
SC�NE X (SCENE X)
Carmen, Don Jos� (Carmen, Don Jos� )
A moment's silence. Carmen raises her eyes and looks at Don Jos�. He turns his back and walks off a few steps. Then he comes back toward Carmen, who watches him all the time.
Close by the walls of Sevilla,
Lives my old friend Lillas Pastia,
I'll go there to dance the Seguidille
And to drink Manzanilla,
I will go and visit Lillas Pastia!
Yes, but alone it's very boring!
Real pleasures are for two to share ...
So to provide amusement for me
I'll take my latest lover there ...
My latest love! ... No, that is over.
Last night I showed him to the door ...
My wounded heart wants consoling,
My heart is waiting free as air ..
Tho' I have dozens of admirers
I don't know any who will do;
And here we are, tomorrow's Sunday,
If I am loved ... I will love too.
Who wants my heart ... free for the taking ...
You have arrived at the right time,
I'll not stay any longer waiting,
With my new love I'll go along ...
Close by the walls of Sevilla,
Lives my old friend Lillas Pastia,
I'll go there to dance the Seguidille
And to drink Manzanilla,
Yes, on Sunday I will visit Lillas Pastia!
DON JOS�
Be quiet, you have been told you must not speak to me.
CARMEN
I didn't speak to you ... I sing for my own pleasure,
And I'm thinking ... It's surely not forbidden to think.
I think of a certain Dragoon,
Who loves me, whom in return,
Yes, in return, I well may learn to love!
DON JOS�
But my Dragoon is no swaggering Captain,
Nor Lieutenant, oh no, he's only a Corporal;
But that's good enough for a gipsy girl,
I've decided to make do with him!
DON JOS�
(untying the rope around Carmen's hands)
Carmen, I am drunk when I hear you,
If I weaken, just to be near you,
Do you promise you will be true,
And if I love you Carmen, Carmen
you'll love me too ...
At Lillas Pastia's, you'll keep your word?
Carmen ... you'll keep your word ...
Yes, there we will dance the Seguidilla,
And we will drink Manzanilla,
Close by the walls of Sevilla,
With my old friend Lillas Pastia,
There we will dance the Seguiidilla
And we will drink Manzanilla.
Tra la la la la la la la la la la la.
(spoken)
The Lieutenant! ... Take care!
Don Jos� moves away from Carmen, who goes and sits on her bench again, her hands behind her back. Zuniga returns.
SC�NE XI (SCENE XI)
The same, the Lieutenant, then Workers, Soldiers and Townspeople.
N. 10. Finale (N. 10. Finale)
(� Don Jos�)
Here's the order, now go, and mind now how you guard her!
CARMEN
On the way I'll give you a shove,
With the strength that I know I have
So that over you go ... the rest you leave to me.
She takes her place between two dragoons, Jos� behind her. Meantime the women and townspeople gradualy return, kept at a distance by the dragoons. Carmen crosses the stage from left to right, toward the bridge.
(humming and laughing in Zuniga's face)
Oh love that was born to gipsy life,
A life that's free, that is as free as air;
You may not love me, yet I love you;
If I love you, then you take care!
When she arrives at the bridge, Carmen pushes Jos�, who lets himself be pushed over. Confusion, chaos. Carmen escapes. When she reaches the center of the bridge, she stops for a moment and throws the rope over the parapet of the bridge before running off, while the Cigarette Girls surround Zuniga, roaring with laughter.
The triangles they used to play
Would set the gypsy rhythms tingling,
Till roused by their metallic jingling
The gypsy girls began to sway.
Their tambourines took up the theme,
While mad guitars in rhythm beating
Were unrelentingly repeating
This very song, this same refrain!
Tra la la la la la la.
The gypsies dance during the refrain. Mercedes and Frasquita join in the chorus with Carmen.
The copper and the silver rings
Would shine against the dusky faces;
The red and orange of their dresses
Would go swirling upon the wind;
And soon the dance was under way.
It started slowly with the singing,
Then gaining speed and wildly spinning,
It whirled away, away, away, away!
Tra la la la la la la.
MERC�D�S ET FRASQUITA
Tra la la la la la la.
CARMEN
The gypsy men with hands awhirl,
Beat out a rhythm mad, demonic,
Intoxicating with their music
And by the rhythm of the song,
Demented and with passion burning,
They were swept away, wildly spinning,
In a whirlwind borne along!
Tra la la la la la la.
ALL THREE
Tra la la la la la la.
The dance grows very fast and passionate. Carmen dances too and falls onto a bench breathless as the last notes of the orchestra die away. Lillas Pastia now begins to hover round the officers, rather embarrassed.
Dialogue
And a blow that was faier,
Fell the bull to the ground!
Hurrah! Long live the Torero!
Hurrah! Long live Escamillo! ...
FRASQUITA (spoken)
I know him ... it's Escamillo, the great Torero of Grenada who promises to become as renowned as Montes!
ZUNIGA (spoken)
I say! We must make him come in here .. and drink to him! (to an officer) Tell him to come in!
PASTIA (spoken; pleading)
Se�ores, please ... I have told you ...
ZUNIGA (spoken)
Have the goodness to leave us alone, Lillas Pastia, and bring us something to drink ...
The officer signals to Zuniga that the Torero has accepted the invitation.
ZUNIGA (spoken)
Enter Escamillo and his friends.
CHORUS
Hurrah! Long live the Torero!
Hurrah! Long live Escamillo!
SC�NE II (SCENE II)
The above, Escamillo
Ah! If I may, let me say;
(to Mercedes and Frasquita)
If you want to be off - away!
But you won't find me in theparty.
I will not go ... I will not go!
DANCAIRO
Carmen, my darling, you must go.
You wouldn't surely have the heart
To stay and leave us in the cart!
FRASQUITA, MERCEDES
Ah! But Carmen, say you'll go!
CARMEN
I tell you no! I tell you no!
DANCAIRO
But at least tell us why, Carmen, you answer no!
THE OTHER FOUR
Tell us why, tell us why, tell us why, tell us why!
CARMEN
Oh yes, of course I'll tell you why;
THE OTHER FOUR
Go on, go on, go on, go on!
CARMEN
The reason is just now that I ...
THE OTHER FOUR
Well then, well then, well then, well then!
CARMEN
... find that I am in love ...!
BOTH MEN (astounded)
Now I will dance only for you,
And you will see, my lord ...
How I can make the music I need for my dancing.
So take your seat, Don Jos�. We are starting!
La la la la ...
She makes Don Jos� sit down. Dancing and humming, she accompanies herself on the castanets. Don Jos� watches her, entranced. Soon in the distance the sound of bugles is heard. Don Jos� listens. He thinks he might have heard the bugles, but Carmen's castanets click so loudly that he is not sure. Don Jos� goes up to Carmen and takes her by the arms, forcing her to stop.
DON JOS�
Please, will you stop, Carmen, please, will you stopa a moment.
CARMEN (astonished)
And what for, may I ask?
DON JOS�
I am certain, out there ...
Yes, there goes the retreat, I hear our bugles calling ...
Can you not hear them too?
CARMEN (happily)
Bravo! I've tried my hardest, but nothing's more depressing
Than to dance witout music ... Hurrah then for the music
That has dropped from the blue!
La la la la ...
She begins to sing again in rhythm with the bugles off-stage ... She returns to her dance and Don Jos� to watching her. The sound of the bugles comes nearer ... nearer ... passing under the windows of the inn ... Then moves away, becoming fainter and fainter. Don Jos� again tries to tear himself away from Carmen ... He takes her by the arms and forces her to stop once more.
DON JOS�
But you don't understand, Carmen ...
Retreat is sounding!
I must be there for roll call in barracks tonight!
(The sound of the bugles stops suddenly.)
CARMEN (stupefied and looking at Don Jos�, who is putting on his pouch and belt)
Back to barracks! For the night!
(exploding)
Ah! How could I be so stupid!
I tore myself to pieces, no matter what it cost,
To entertain se�or! And I sang! And I danced!
I thought, Heaven forgive me,
I was almost in love!
Ta ra ta ta... my God, there go the bugles!
He's off, he's taken fright!
Off you fly, you canary!
(furiously throwing his cap at him)
Here! take your old cap, your sabre and your pouch too,
And get out them, my lad, go on back to your quarters!
DON JOS� (sadly)
It's wrong of you, Carmen, to treat me like a fool!
I do not want to go, for up till now no woman,
till I set eyes on you,
No woman yet, till I set eyes on you,
Had ever touched my ehart and made me care so deeply!
CARMEN (mimicking Don Jos�'s passionate tone)
He does not want to go, for up till now no woman,
Till he set eyes on me,
No woman yet, till he set eyes on me,
Had ever touched his heart and made him care so deeply.
Ta ra ta ta... "My God, there go the bugles!
I am sure I shall be late!" And then he panics! He flies!
There you are! There's his love!
DON JOS�
And so you don't believe
That I'm in love?
Into the hills where none would find you!
Into the hills we both would ride!
We both would ride - were you in love!
Up there you need answer to no one;
No orders there, no Captain you need to obey,
Up there no retreat will be sounded,
Roughly remnding lovers to be on their way!
Sky up above, and open spaces,
For one's home all the world, and for law each goes his way!
Best of all, like wine to the senses,
The life that's free! The life that's free!
DON JOS�
Oh God! Carmen! Be quiet!
CARMEN
Into the hills, were you in love,
Into the hills we both would ride!
Into the hills we both would ride!
Galloping through the countryside,
You on your horse with me so close behind you,
Just like a gypsy bride, were you in love!
DON JOS�
Carmen! Enough, enough! Be quiet! My God!
Carmen have pity!
Oh my God! Spare me!
Ah no more I say!
CARMEN
Into the hills you'll come with me,
You love me, so you'll come with me.
Into the hills take me away!
DON JOS� (violently tearing himself away from Carmen's embrace)
No! I will not hear any more!
To leave the Dragoons ... and desert ...
That's dishonor ... and degradation!
DON JOS� (leaping to his sword)
By God! You're asking for trouble.
(Zuniga begins to draw his sabre.)
CARMEN (throwing herself between them)
You jealous fool!
(calling)
Help! Help!
Dancairo, Remendado, Mercedes, Frasquita, and the gypsies appear from all sides. Carmen indicates Zuniga to the gypsies with a sign; Danciro and Remendado run to him, disarming him.
CARMEN (in a mocking voice to Zuniga)
My fine Se�or, it's true
I fear, that love has played a nasty trick on you!
You choose a tactless time
At which to reappear! And so, you force us, we're afraid,
Since we don't want to be betrayed,
To order you at least ... an hour's detention.
DANCAIRO AND REMENDADO
(pistols in hand, politely to Zuniga)
My dear sir, we're about to leave this house; please come with us ...
Carmen, Don Jos�, Dancairo, Remendado, Frasquita, Mercedes, Smugglers
No 18 Introduction: "�coute, compagnon, �coute...Notre metier est bon"
The curtain rises on rocks ... A picturesque and wild spot ... completely deserted. Dark night. After a few moments, a smuggler appears above on the rocks, then another, and another. Smugglers appear here and there, climbing down the rocks. The men are carrying large bales on their shoulders.
Les Contrebandiers
Be careful, be careful, do not let them hear you,
Fortune's waiting, waiting down below,
One mistake now, and we are done for,
And so be careful how you go!
Frasquita, Mercedes, Carmen, Don Jos�, Remendado, Dancairo
Our kind of life can bring a fair reward,
To follow it you need to have
The courage that will dare, though!
Danger is there, you'll find it all around,
It's down below, it's up above,
It's everywhere, who cares though!
On we go straight ahead, unafraid of the flood,
Unafraid of the storm,
Unafraid of the soldier who's waiting below,
And we'll challenge the stranger!
Unafraid we go on straight ahead!
All
Be careful, be careful, do not let them hear you,
Fortune's waiting, waiting down below,
One mistake now, and we are done for,
And so be careful how you go!
SC�NE II (SCENE II)
The same, except for Dancairo and Remendado
Dialogue
During the following scene, some of the gypsies light a fire, near which Mercedes and Frasquita come and sit; the rest roll themselves up in their cloaks, lie down and sleep.
So there we are; now say, my beauties,
Say what's to be, come tell us of the future.
Say who you know will let us down!
Say who you know will be our own!
Reply, reply, reply, reply!
There I see a lover who's bold,
He's young and we shan't have a carriage.
Frasquita
Well, mine's very rich and he's old;
All the same, he's talking of marriage!
Mercedes (proudly)
I am riding there on his horse
And off to the hills he will sweep me!
Frasquita
I live in a castle of course,
And there like a queen he will keep me!
Mercedes
I'll have love, and love without end,
Every day a riot of pleasure!
Frasquita (joyfully)
More gold than I know how to spend,
Jewelry, pearls, diamonds, treasure!
My lover is soon made a chief,
He's followed by hundreds of fine men!
Frasquita
And mine... and mine... oh! it's past all belief ...
(wildly)
Yes he dies! Ah! All his wealth will be mine then!
Frasquita, Mercedes
Come say once more, now say my beauties,
Say what's to be, come tell us of the future.
Say who you know will let us down!
Say who you know will be our own!
(They start to look at the cards again.)
Frasquita
Let's see - it is my turn to try.
(She begins to turn up the cards)
Diamond! Spade! It's death!
I can see ... I'm the first.
(pointing to the sleeping Don Jos�)
Then I see him ... there for us both, it's death!
(in a low voice, shuffling the cards)
You never can escape their unrelenting answer,
However hard you try!
You only waste your time, because the cards are honest
And will not tell a lie!
If in the book of fate your happiness is written,
then deal and have no fear,
For every card you turn, to look into your future,
Will show good fortune there.
But if you are to die, the terrifying sentence
Is written there on high,
Though you deal twenty times ... the cards will show no mercy -
They still repeat: "You die!"
(turning the cards again)
And there ... and there ... each time: "You die!"
Frasquita, Merc�d�s
So there we are; now say, my beauties,
Say what's to be, come tell us of the future.
Say who you know will let us down!
Say who you know will be our own!
Reply, reply!
You die! You die! There's no escape!
You die! You die! Again you die!
Each time: you die! Again! Again!
Dancairo and Remendado re-enter.
SC�NE III (SCENE III)
Carmen, Don Jos�, Frasquita, Mercedes, Dancairo, Remendado
Dialogue
Leave our three guards for us to deal with!
They're only human and love to please,
With ladies they love to be gallant;
So you let us go on in front!
Carmen, Frasquita, Mercedes, Chorus of Gypsies
Leave our three guards for us to deal with!
So you let us go on in front!
Carmen
My young guard will be so blind!
Mercedes
My young guard will be so fond!
Frasquita
Oh yes, the guard will do anything we want!
Carmen, Frasquita, Mercedes, and the Men
Leave our three guards for us to deal with!
They're only human and love to please,
With ladies they love to be gallant;
So you let us go on in front!
Carmen, Frasquita, Mercedes
No need to fight if we are clever;
It only means having his arm
Around our waist - getting together
While he enjoys using his charm.
If it's a smile that he is after,
Oh well, why not: he'll have that too!
Carmen, Frasquita, Mercedes, Chorus of Gypsies
And already we can assure you,
Our contraband all will get through.
Carmen, Frasquita, Mercedes, Chorus
Come along! Get on! Come along!
Leave our three guards for us to deal with!
All exit. Micaela enters.
I shall meet that creature at last
Whose wicked cunning I can see,
Led astray to crime and dishonor
That man who means the world to me!
A dangerous woman and a beauty!
Yet I will never be afraid!
I'll tell her the truth when I face her,
Ah! For you are there protecting me ...
I said there was nothing could scare me, etc.
She disappears behind the bales. At the same time, Escamillo enters holding his hat in his hand.
SC�NE IV (SCENE IV)
Escamillo, then Don Jos�
Don Jos� (his knife in his hand)
Who goes there? Reply!
Delighted, my dear friend! So I take your place with her.
They take up positions a certain distance apart.
Escamillo
I know the guard you use, the Navarraise;
That, I warn you now as a friend,
Won't be any help ...
(Don Jos�, without replying, sets upon the Torero.)
Take it easy!
I wanted to be sure you were warned.
(They fight. Escamillo, very calm, merely defends himself.)
Don Jos�
You're not fighting, you cheat.
Escamillo
At any game of knives,
I'm far too sharp for you.
Don Jos�
That we shall see!
A very fast and lively hand-to-hand fight. Don Jos� is at the mercy of the Torero, who does not strike him.
Escamillo
Your life rests with me, but the truth is
My proper trade is to strike down the bull,
And not to butcher fellow humans!
They start fighting again. Escamillo slips and falls on the grass. Don Jos� is about to strike him. Carmen and Dancairo rush in.
(grabbing Don Jos�'s arm)
Hola, Jos�! ...
(Remendado, Mercedes, Frasquita, and the smugglers return during this time.)
Escamillo (getting up)
Ah! What pleasure it gives me
That it was you, Carmen, who came in time to save me.
Carmen
Escamillo (to Don Jos�)
As for you, soldier boy,
The game's not yet decided, we'll fight to win the lady:
So when you want to try again, you name the day.
Dancairo (intervening)
Alright! Alright! Leave it till later,
Come, for we must be off.
(to Escamillo)
And you, my friend, goodnight!
Escamillo
Before I go, at least you'll concede me the right
To invite you, one and all, to see me in Sevilla,
For there I am intending to shine at the fight,
(looking at Carmen)
Those who love me will come.
(coldly to Don Jos�, who made a threatening gesture)
My friend, don't get excited!
(to Carmen)
That is all, all I've to say, ... yes I've no
more to do except bid you goodnight.
Don Jos� turns to attack Escamillo, but Danciaro and Remendado hold him back. Escamillo goes off very slowly.
Don Jos� (to Carmen, menacingly, but suppressed)
Better take care, Carmen, I won't stand any more ...
(Carmen replies to Don Jos� with a shrug of her shoulders and moves away.)
Dancairo
We're starting, we're starting ... it's time to go ...
Chorus
We're starting, we're starting ... it's time to go ...
Carmen
Stop! Look, there is someone there, trying to hide!
(Micaela is brought in.)
You tell me to follow her ...
So that you can then run away
To that other man you want.
No! No: I won't -
For me death before I leave you!
No, Carmen, I'll never go, not I!
For our lives are bound together,
Bound together, till we die!
Micaela
Don Jos�, it's your mother
Who entreats you not to stay,
And what binds your lives together,
Jos�, you must break today!
Chorus
It is death unless you leave her.
Jos�! You must go away,
And what binds your lives together,
You must break or you will die.
Don Jos� (to Mica�la)
Let me be! For I know I am damned!
Chorus
Don Jos� (to Carmen)
You are mine, daughter of Satan!
I will make you yield again
To the destiny that made us
That welded your fate to mine!
For me death before I leave you,
No, Carmen, I'll never go, not I!
Frasquita, Mercedes, Remendado, Dancairo, Choeur
Ah! Be careful! Be careful, Don Jos�!
Micaela (with authority)
I've one more word to say and I won't speak again.
Your mother is ill! She's ill and she's dying!
And your mother would never want to die without pardoning you!
Don Jos�
My mother! ... She'e going to die! ...
Micaela
Rest assured ... I'm going, but we'll meet again!
(He leads Micaela off.)
Escamillo (off stage from far away)
Toreador, on guard now!
Do not forget that, when you draw your sword,
Two dark eyes look down,
And love is your reward.
Don Jos� stops upstage among the rocks. Watching Carmen, who is listening, he hesitates, then after a moment:
Don Jos�
Micaela, let's go!
Carmen leans, listening, on the rocks. The gypsies have taken up their bales and start off.
END OF ACT III
Entr'acte
A square in Seville. At the back of the stage, the walls of the old arenas. The entrance to the bullring is closed by a long canvass curtain. It is the day of the bull-fight. The square is very busy. Water-sellers, orange-sellers, fan-sellers, etc.
SC�NE I (SCENE I)
Zuniga, Andr�s, Frasquita, Merc�d�s, etc., then Carmen and Escamillo
Shouts are heard offstage, fanfares, etc. It is the arrival of the Cuadrilla.
Chorus
Here they are, here come the Cuadrilla,
The Cuadrilla of the Toreros!
How the lances shine in the sunlight!
Now up, up go your sombreros!
Here they are, here come the Cuadrilla,
The Cuadrlla of the Toreros!
(Procession of the Cuadrilla. The Policemen - the Alguazils - enter.)
Marching in and ready to chase us,
Here they come to push us about,
Policemen with their ugly faces.
Get out! Get out! Get out! Get out!
(The Chulos and Banderilleros enter.)
As they're marching by let us cheer them.
Give a cheer for the brave Chulos!
Bravo! Bravo! How we admire them!
There they go, the brave Chulos!
Look there the Banderilleros,
And oh! how arrogant their bearing!
What haughty looks! And how the sun picks out
The gold-embroidered silk they're wearing
Upon their costumes for the fight!
There go the Banderilleros!
And here is another Cuadrilla.
Look there, the Picadors! They look so grand!
They will goad the bull with their lances
Till the blood is staining the sand!
The Torero! The Torero!
(Escamillo finally appears and with him Carmen, radiant and stunningly dressed.)
Escamillo, blade of Granada,
Toreador, best of them all
He's the one who will end the drama,
He will strike and the bull will fall!
Long live our Escamillo!
I am not the sort to be frightened by him,
I have stayed, since I have something to say.
Mercedes
Carmen, believe me, be careful!
Carmen
Frasquita
Be careful!
The mayor and the policemen enter the bullring. Behind the mayor's procession, the Cuadrilla procession begins to move again into the bullring. The crowd follows ... The orchestra plays the motif "Here they are, here come the Cuadrilla," and the crowd withdraws to reveal Don Jos�. Carmen remains alone, as she planned. The two watch while the crowd dissipates and the march motive diminishes in the orchestra. On the last notes, Carmen and Don Jos� are alone facing one another.
SC�NE II (SCENE II)
Carmen, Don Jos�
They came just now to warn me
That you were not far off, that you were sure to stay;
And they told me my life itself might be in danger;
But I am brave! And I shall not run away!
Don Jos�
I offer you no threat! I beg you, I implore you!
All that has passed, Carmen, is forgotten!
Yes, we'll begin again
Start our life again together
Far from here, away from Spain.
Carmen
What you ask can never happen!
Carmen never yet has lied!
Her mind is made up completely,
For her and you ... it's the end.
To you I've never lied! For us both it's the end.
Don Jos�
Carmen, you have your life before you,
O my Carmen, oh, let me save you,
Save you, for I adore you,
Then you will have saved me, too!
Carmen
No, for I know it is time now,
And I know I'm going to die;
but if I live or if you kill me,
I'll not give in to you, not I.
Don Jos�
Carmen, you have your life before you,
O my Carmen, oh let me save you,
Save you, for I adore you,
Then you will have saved me too!
Carmen
But why waste your time adoring
Someone who's no longer free?
No use your saying: "I adore you!"
You will get no more from me.
You waste your time,
I'll give in no more,
Not to you!
Don Jos� (in anguish)
Then you don't love me at all?
(Carmen does not answer, so Don Jos� repeats, in despair:)
Then you don't love me at all!
Carmen (calmly)
No, I don't love you at all.
Don Jos� (passionately)
But I still love you, more than ever,
Carmen! I tell you I adore you!
Carmen
Oh what's the good of that? A lot of useless words!
Don Jos�
Carmen, I tell you I adore you,
Alright, if that is what you want,
I'll stay a bandit here, and I'll do all you ask ...
All, do you hear, but don't desert me now,
O my Carmen! Ah! Do recall,
You must recall the past, how much in love we both were!
You cannot leave me now, Carmen!
You cannot leave me now!
Carmen
Carmen will never give way!
Free she was born, and free she will die!
Chorus and Fanfare
Bravo! What a fight to remember!
Dripping blood on the sand
See, the bull they have goaded
Returns back to the charge ...
Viva! Bravo! Oh Bravo!
Oh bravo, Torero, oh bravo, Torero!
Both Carmen and Jos� listen to the cheering in silence. Carmen, when she hears the final shouts herself, lets out a cry of "Ah!" in pride and joy. Don Jos� does not once take his eyes off her. As the chorus finishes, Carmen moves toward the bullring.
Don Jos� (barring her way)
Where are you going?...
You remember this ring - the ring that once you gave me ...
Take it!
Don Jos� (drawing his knife, moves in on Carmen)
Well, then! Be damned!
(Carmen retreats ... Don Jos� pursues her ... Fanfares and shouts in the arena.)
Chorus
Do not forget that when you draw your sword,
Two dark eyes look down,
And love is your reward.
(Jos� has stabbed Carmen ... She falls dead. Jos� kneels beside her ... The curtain to the arena opens. The crowd comes out of the bullring.)
Don Jos� (rising)
You can take me away ... I am the one who killed her.
(Escamillo appears on the steps of bullring surrounded by the crowd, who cheers him. Among the crowd are Frasquita, Merc�d�s, and Zuniga. Escamillo sees Carmen lying on the ground, dead.)
Ah! Carmen! My Carmen ... I adore you!
Curtain
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George Entwistle was announced in July as the next Director-General of which organisation? | George Entwistle named as new BBC director general | Radio Times
George Entwistle named as new BBC director general
The former Director of BBC Vision will replace the outgoing Mark Thompson later this year
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Susanna Lazarus and Chloe Oliver
10:43 AM, 04 July 2012
George Entwistle has been announced as the next director general of the BBC, after a final round of interviews took place in London yesterday. Entwistle, who is currently director of BBC Vision will take over from Mark Thompson later this year.
Entwistle began his career as a writer and magazine editor before joining the BBC in 1989 as a Broadcast Journalism trainee. Following a spell as assistant producer on Panorama, he went on to become editor of BBC Two’s flagship programme Newsnight in 2001, starting the day before the 9/11 attacks for which the show won five RTS Awards.
Described as a "loyal BBC soldier" he has held numerous positions within the BBC, including Head and Commissioning Editor of TV Current Affairs, Acting Controller of BBC4 before being appointed director of BBC Vision last year. Overseeing the commission of programmes including Call The Midwife, Birdsong and Frozen Planet, he recently suffered criticism following the BBC's maligned coverage of the Diamond Jubilee.
It is understood that a shortlist of four candidates were each grilled in 90 minute sessions conducted by the BBC Trust chairman, Lord Patten, and his deputy, Dianne Coyle yesterday. Those also believed to have made it through to the final round were Caroline Thomson, the BBC chief operating officer, and Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards. Despite speculation surrounding the fourth candidate bidding to succeed Thompson, their name is as yet unknown.
Following today's appointment George Entwistle said, "I’m delighted the Chairman and Trustees think I’m the right person for the job. Mark Thompson will be a tough act to follow. But it’s a privilege to be asked to lead the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world and a privilege to be able to continue to serve our audiences in this new role."
Outgoing Mark Thompson added: "I think this is a brilliant appointment. George has shown himself to be an outstanding leader with an intuitive understanding of public sector broadcasting. He has a formidable track record as a programme maker and in recent years has also shown his calibre as a leader. I wish him and the BBC every success in the years to come."
Thompson has served as DG since May 2004, having previously worked as BBC’s Director of Television and Chief Executive of Channel 4. He announced his departure in March 2012 and will step down from the role after the London 2012 Olympic Games.
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The constellation Mensa was created in the eighteenth century and named in honour of which African mountain? | George Entwistle Becomes Director-General Of BBC | The Huffington Post
George Entwistle Becomes Director-General Of BBC
04/07/2012 10:55 | Updated 04 July 2012
George Entwistle, currently Director of BBC Vision, is to replace Mark Thompson as the Director-General of the BBC, the BBC Trust announced on Wednesday.
The 49-year-old former director of Newsnight has a background in Current Affairs, as deputy editor of BBC One's sceience show Tomorrow's World. He also launched the Culture Show for BBC Two.
He will take over from Thompson on a salary of £450,000 in the autumn.
George Entwistle is the BBC's new director-general
As the BBC's vision director Entwistle was in charge of commissioning, producing and broadcasting across the broadcasting network's TV shows and the web.
Entwistle was seen as a controversial choice because of his part in organising the BBC's much criticised Diamond Jubilee coverage.
George Entwistle said: "I'm delighted that the Chairman and Trustees have decided I'm the right person for the job. And I'm very excited about all that lies ahead. I love the BBC and it's a privilege to be asked to lead it into the next stage of its creative life."
Mark Thompson said: "I think this is a brilliant appointment. George has shown himself to be an outstanding leader with an intuitive understanding of public sector broadcasting. He has a formidable track record as a programme maker and in recent years has also shown his calibre as a leader. I wish him and the BBC every success in the years to come."
BBC Trust head Lord Patten said: "George is a creative leader for a creative organisation.
"His experience of making and delivering great programmes that audiences love - built up through many years of working for the Corporation - will prove invaluable as he and his team work to ensure the BBC remains the greatest broadcaster in the world."
Entwistle joined the BBC in 1989 as a Broadcast Journalism trainee. He lives in London and has two children.
George Entwistle twitter reaction
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Guillermo is the Spanish for which male name? | Name Guillermo - The Meaning Of The Name
The Meaning Of The Name
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Name: Guillermo
Gender: Male
Usage: Guillermo, of Biblical origin, is a very popular first name. It is more often used as a boy (male) name.
People having the name Guillermo are in general originating from Cuba, France, Spain, United Kingdom, United States of America.
For another variant of the name Guillermo across the world, see William .
Meaning:
William
Please feel free to read what others say about this name and to share your comments if you have more information.
N.B. Sometimes it happens that another name has the same meaning. There is nothing surprising in this: both names have the same origin or the same numbers of numerology.
To test the compatibility of this name with another, enter a name
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The Growth number corresponding to this first name is 4.
Interpretation:
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Popularity of the Name
The name Guillermo is ranked on the 1,689th position of the most used names. It means that this name is very frequently used.
We estimate that there are at least 261400 persons in the world having this name which is around 0.004% of the population. The name Guillermo has nine characters. It means that it is relatively long-length, compared to the other names in our database.
The graph below represents the number of people who were given the name Guillermo for each year since 1900 in the U.S.A.:
The name day of Guillermo is 25 June.
For other names check our
Name Day Calendar
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"""We may not know, we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear"" are words from the second verse of which Easter hymn?" | Guillermo - Name Meaning, What does Guillermo mean?
What does Guillermo mean?
Guillermo
[ gu iller-mo] as a name for boys is an Old German name, and the name Guillermo means "determined protector". Guillermo is a Spanish form of Guillaume (Old German): French variation of William .
Associated with: determined (faithful), protector (defender).
Variations
3 relations via Guillaume, William: Gillermo , Guglielmo and Guilherme .
Creative forms:
Guillermo Olivier (G.O.), ..
How popular is Guillermo?
Guillermo is a very prominent first name for men (#379 out of 1220, Top 31%) and also a very prominent last name for both adults and children (#11647 out of 150436, Top 8%). (2000 U.S. Demographics)
Guillermo reached its apex rank of #352 in the U.S. in the year 1996, and is at #660 currently. (Top 2000 Names, 2015)
Which version is better?
with its source forms and related boy names. The only other popular variation form of Guillermo (#660 in 2015) is William (#5 in 2015). Adoption of these forms of Guillermo was widespread among parents during 1880-1889 (usage of 7.7%) and is now significantly lower (usage 0.9%, 89% less).
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In which classic film is businessman 'George Bailey' on the brink of suicide when 'Clarence Oldbody' shows him what the world would have been like without him? | It's a Wonderful Life (1946) - IMDb
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It's a Wonderful Life ( 1946 )
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An angel is sent from Heaven to help a desperately frustrated businessman by showing him what life would have been like if he had never existed.
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Title: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
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Nominated for 5 Oscars. Another 6 wins & 1 nomination. See more awards »
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Storyline
George Bailey has spent his entire life giving of himself to the people of Bedford Falls. He has always longed to travel but never had the opportunity in order to prevent rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town. All that prevents him from doing so is George's modest building and loan company, which was founded by his generous father. But on Christmas Eve, George's Uncle Billy loses the business's $8,000 while intending to deposit it in the bank. Potter finds the misplaced money and hides it from Billy. When the bank examiner discovers the shortage later that night, George realizes that he will be held responsible and sent to jail and the company will collapse, finally allowing Potter to take over the town. Thinking of his wife, their young children, and others he loves will be better off with him dead, he contemplates suicide. But the prayers of his loved ones result in a gentle angel named Clarence coming to earth to help George, with the promise of earning his ... Written by alfiehitchie
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Trivia
Joseph Walker was the original cinematographer, while Joseph F. Biroc was the assistant. When Frank Capra asked Walker to continue shooting as the sun went down on James Stewart wandering through the streets of Bedford Falls, Walker refused. Capra then asked Biroc if he could shoot the scene, and Biroc replied, "I can." Walker was released by Capra, the scene was shot and Biroc was upped to Cinematographer. Both Walker and Biroc share credits on the film, Biroc listed above Walker. See more »
Goofs
'The Bells of Saint Mary's" (1945) had just been released to the first-run, big-city theatre circuit, and would not have been playing the neighborhood, small-town theatre circuit this early. See more »
Quotes
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Which Yorkshire town between Scarborough and Bridlington is at the eastern end of the Cleveland Way and the northern end of the Yorkshire Wolds Way? | The Hays Code - Promoting the Values of America's Cultural Golden Age (1930-1966), Through Appreciation of Classic Film, TV, Music, and Books
Promoting the Values of America's Cultural Golden Age (1930-1966), Through Appreciation of Classic Film, TV, Music, and Books
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14/06/28 at 3.46pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
Regarding the study of history, it is often said that if one does not remember the past, one is condemned to repeat it. In Alfred Hitchock’s Vertigo (1958), the “Master of Suspense” weaves a tale of a romantic tragedy that enlarges upon this theme. It shows that whether one knows it or not, the past pervades all we are and all we do. The shadows of the past may catch us unaware, or we may obsess over them and mould the present to fit the past. In either case, the film embodies the observation of the author William Faulkner that “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In so doing, the male protagonist is caught in a whirlwind of revolving terror and romance, fulfillment and disappointment. Despite its limited standing at the time of its release, this film that stands true to the Hays Code era endures in modern times as one of the most revered films ever from any era.
A. THE PLOT: A MULTI-LAYERED ROMANTIC TRAGEDY AND MYSTERY
The protagonist of Vertigo is John “Scotty” Ferguson, a middle aged police detective played by the timeless and ever versatile actor James Stewart. The story starts with a dramatic police chase in which Scotty witnesses a colleague fall off the roof of a tall building to his death. Though he is saved from a similar fate, Scotty develops a severe case of acrophobia, causing him to experience vertigo at even moderate heights and thus to retire from the police force. As a lifelong bachelor, Scott’s career was his life. His premature retirement left a hole in his existence. A former fiancé named Midge, played by Barbara Bel Geddes, starts to hover over Scotty, a figure from his college days, providing social and psychological support for Scotty as he tries to recover.
However, it is another figure from his long-gone college days, Galvin Elster, who rouses Scotty out of his retirement by asking Scotty to follow his much younger “wife,” Madeline Elster, an icy but seductive blonde portrayed by Kim Novak. The historic city of San Francisco provides the backdrop for Scotty’s quest. According to Elster, the old San Francisco seemed to be fading, yet Madeline was seemingly possessed by the spirit of her long-gone great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdez. In repeated trances, Madeline would go visit various places of significance to Carlotta, unaware of their role in her ancestor’s life. Scotty follows her as she goes to a flower shop, the grave site of Carlotta, a museum with a portrait of Carlotta, a hotel that once was Carlotta’s house, and the San Francisco Bay. Scotty gradually learns that Madeline’s peculiar actions conform with the true story of Carlotta Valdez, who it turns out had gone insane and committed suicide after she had a child to a rich married man who “cast her away” and kept her baby. She apparently had committed suicide by jumping into the Bay.
Scotty surreptitiously observes Madeline visits all of these sites, some of them multiple times, by the time he sees her also jump into the Bay. After he jumps in to save her, he drags her unconscious body to safety and back to his apartment until she can recover. During this process he gradually, and unavoidably, falls in love with Madeline. She initially reacts with polite restraint, but Scotty continues his private detective duties and pursues Madeline relentlessly. As he at one point tells her, “Once you‘ve saved someone, you‘re responsible for them forever.” Madeline eventually reciprocates Scotty’s love, engaging in a passionate embrace before the tumultuous waves of the Bay. Nonetheless, Madeline’s Carlotta-like suicidal tendencies ultimately overcome her, leading her to a remote Spanish mission site 100 miles south of the city. Though Scotty leads her to the site to try to help her “break free from the past” by completing a mysterious dream of hers involving the mission site, she breaks free from him. As she climbs to the top of a church tower that he cannot reach because of his acrophobia, she apparently jumps off of the church and plunges to her death.
Scotty is understandably heartbroken. The affectionate attentions of his old friend Midge can’t snap Scotty out of a severe depression. Still, as Midge told Scotty, “whether you know it or not, I’m here.” After getting to the point where he can finally walk and speak, he visits the sites of his former romance with Madeline, in a trance of his own in which he hopes to relive the past. He finally spots a tawdry young redheaded woman who reminds him of Madeline, even though Madeline was a polished blonde. He then follows the redhead, known as Judy Barton, to her hotel and ask her unwelcome questions about her past. Judy initially seems offended by Scotty’s forward nature and obvious comparison of her to an unspecified past love, but she eventually relents and has a mysteriously silent dinner with Scotty. Despite the eeriness of their encounters, Judy continues to see Scotty, even at the expense of her job as a retail clerk.
At this time in the film, more than half-way through, the viewer learns the reason for Judy’s willingness to continue to see Scotty: She actually is the same person who fell in love with Scotty as Madeline Elster. Judy had agreed to pretend to be Gavin Elster’s wife so that she could spin the (as it turned out) fabricated tale of Madeline’s possession and suicidal tendencies, all as a cover for Gavin Elster’s murder of the real Madeline Elster. Scotty was merely the unwitting tool in this murder, serving as a witness for “Madeline’s” insanity who effectively enabled Gavin Elster’s escape. Though Judy at one time plans to cut off her affair with Scotty, she realizes that her love for him is strong enough to penetrate the past, causing her to continue the charade.
During this time, Scotty remains fooled, thinking that Judy is a different person. Nevertheless, his constant encounters with Judy fuel his obsession to “change her” into Madeline. Over her resistance, Scotty insists on remaking Judy into Madeline, first by getting her the exact same gray dress, shoes, and black dinner dress as Madeline, then by overpowering her into having the same hairstyle as Madeline. Only after he succeeds in “changing her” into Madeline does Scotty truly fall in love with Judy. Whereas he previously couldn’t even bring himself to kiss the redheaded Judy of his obsessions, after the conversion he had no trouble in picking up where he had left off and passionately embracing the Madeline-like Judy. Despite her resistance, Judy reveals an inner-conflict and seems to enjoy the rekindling of her romance with the same man of her prior romance, even as she hopes to keep him in the dark about their very real past.
The completion of Judy’s transformation into Madeline is a climactic scene of sorts for Scotty, Judy, and the viewers of the film. As Judy finally walks into the room with Scotty, her hair fixed into place like Madeline’s and wearing the icy gray suit, she looks longing and desperate at the transfixed Scotty, slowly walking towards him. Scotty firmly and finally embraces and kisses her. The neon lights of the surrounding buildings flash on them, as the camera spins around and the dramatic music sounds. The swirling camera shows first the immediate background, but it then shows the background of the same mission site where Scotty last embraced Madeline. At that very moment, the object of his obsession having been realized, Scotty has finally returned to that moment of happiness in his past, ready to pick up where he and Madeline left off.
Ever the ex-police detective, however, Scotty cannot be deluded for long. Recognizing a necklace as Gavin Elster’s knock-off from the Carlotta Valdez museum portrait, he figures out Judy’s deception as the former Madeline. His former obsession to remake Judy turns into an obsession to confront Judy with her deception. This new obsession is aggravated by his new feelings of having been wronged by Judy in quest of her relationship with Gavin Elster. While keeping his epiphany to himself, Scotty takes Judy to the old Spanish mission south of the city. He tells her both that he has to do something to “be free from the past” and that he “wants her to be Madeline for awhile.” He then forces Judy up the stairs of the same church where Madeline appeared to have committed suicide. (At it turned out, Gavin Elster had hidden at the top of the church tower, where he know the acrophobic Scott would not venture, and threw the real Madeline downward to her death.) He finally reveals to her that he knows her deception, chastising her for letting Gavin Elster mould her into the blonde seductress who had stolen Scotty’s heart the first time. “You were a very apt pupil,” he tells her.
At this point, Scotty hopes to finally become “free of the past.” The freedom he sought appeared to involve freedom from his acrophobia, attained by the traumatic but purposeful scaling of the high church tower. His hoped for freedom also seemed to be consist of freedom from the spell of the person he thought was Madeline. It is not clear how far he intended to force his confrontation with Judy, as her palpable fright suggests a fear that Scotty would murder her by throwing her off of the tower, just as Elster had done with his real Madeline. Before this could happen, Judy earnestly pleads to Scotty to believe her love for him, past, present, and future. Her genuineness ultimately seems to convince Scotty. At the moment when they both stood ready to be both “free of the past” and finally in real love with one another, a nun wanders out of the darkness and into the picture as she hears their voices, almost as if she were a ghost, perhaps the ghost of the real murdered Madeline Elster. Judy reacts with the fright of someone haunted by her past sins, jumping off of the roof to her death. Scotty treads slowly to the edge of the ledge, looking downward towards the body of his true long-lost-but-finally-found-and-now-lost-again love. He extends his arms out hopelessly. With that powerful and unforgettable visual, without any further explication, the film ends.
B. COMING TO TERMS WITH VERTIGO
Vertigo succeeds because of its presentation on several levels. Of course there is the acting of the actors. James Stewart is compelling as the heartbroken detective, exuding a sense of sympathy, as well an obsessiveness that is at odds with his usual nice guy demeanor. Kim Novak is enticing in the dual-role of polished entranced seductress and tawdry red-headed wayward mistress. Additionally, there is the memorable score by composer Bernard Hermann. This score evokes the best of the Romantic-Classical German composer Richard Wagner’s best orchestral works, leading the audience along with a mood-driven blend of strings and woodwinds, along with occasional brass and subtle percussion.
Moreover, the Technicolor visuals are truly striking. Hitchcock weaves his tale against the stunning backdrop of late 1950s San Francisco and surrounding parts of northern California. He treats us to a colorful widescreen VistaVision view of the hilly landscape, the city’s architecture, the bay’s charm, and the countryside’s majestic ancient splendor, including the ancient sequoia trees. Hitchcock also incorporates limited special effects that are frequent enough to be memorable without being too common as to lose effectiveness. In this area, a beginning animation sequence with the opening titles foreshadows the cyclical and chaotic nature of the plot, with geometric shapes spiraling around with dizzying effect. Another partially animated sequence puts at mid-film shows Scotty’s head propelling through space and time, followed by his full body in the free-floating predicament of Madeline’s body after her first death, adding to the despair of the nightmare he was having. Additionally, at various times throughout the film, Hitchock uses a novel camera technique, zooming in as the camera is moved back, portraying the confusion inherent in Scotty’s vertigo and overall predicament. All these elements add to a work that simultaneously evokes great beauty and consternation.
All these traits would have slight importance, however, if it were not for the haunting greatness of Vertigo’s piercing plot. At the most basic level, Vertigo is a great mystery, tale of suspense, and love story. It has the mystery of unexplained behavior, the promise and tragedy of unexpected and truncated love, and as many twists and turns in the plot as two hours of film can contain. Though not a conventional whodunnit murder mystery or drama about frustrated romance, this film is in large part a psychological thriller about depicting cryptic behavior and trying to explain it.
Despite its unconventional qualities, Vertigo fits within the Hays Code cannon of great classic films in several respects. As noted further below, far from the chaotic viewpoint of the post-Hays Code era, it reflects a belief in the centrality of the past that would rival the philosophy of the classical English conservative Edmund Burke. It does so using in the lead role none other than James Stewart, the most stellar exemplar of traditional American values on the silver screen. In telling its tale of suspense, mystery, and romance, unlike in his work Psycho of two years later, Hitchcock uses a minimum of violence. In fact, he depicts three deaths in two hours with no blood or gore or anything to suggest glorification of violence. The film, as befits the standards of the era, also uses no objectionable profanity of any sort. Similarly, in depicting the romance between Scotty and Madeline/Judy, the film shows no nudity or overt acts of sex but instead shows raw love that adds to, rather than distracts from, the plot. This makes the romance more romantic. Although the romance between Scotty and Madeline initially seems adulterous, it turns out not to be so when it is later revealed that Kim Novak’s character was not in fact married to Gavin Elster or anyone else.
Indeed, it is because of Vertigo’s thematic aspects that the film achieves it ultimate greatness. In conjunction with the visuals and music, the film illustrates the force that the past can exert on the present and future, with such dizzying force as to evoke true vertigo. The acrophobia induced by Scotty’s tragic police chase manifests itself repeatedly in the ensuing years, from moments in his friend’s apartment to the attempted first climb up the church stairs at the old Spanish mission. The isolation and insanity of Carlotta Valdez in the 1850s recurs in the isolation and supposed insanity of Madeline Elster in the 1950s. The frustrated love of Scotty for Madeline leads to his obsessive quest to win Judy and then remake her in Madeline’s image before trying to relive the love of his life. The rejection of Scotty by Midge in the course of their brief engagement after college turns into a middle-age mutual friendship between the two, buttressed by an unrequited romantic infatuation of Midge towards Scotty. The almost forgotten college-age friendship between Scotty and Gavin Elster reemerged years later. And the evil deed of Judy in assisting Gavin in his church tower scheme to murder Gavin’s wife leads to her own demise. And this demise occurs at the top of the same church tower after Scotty transforms Judy into the same person that Gavin had transformed her into previously. All these characters in some way tried to be “free of the past,” but instead the past resurfaced always, though in unexpected ways.
All these whirlwind crosscurrents illustrate some essential truths about both the film and real life. The past is the foundation for everything we do. Sometimes we may obsessively try to relive the past in the present. Other times when we least expect it, the past will emerge again in the future, haunting us against our wishes. Our family histories can influence our identities. Our associations can define our actions. And our actions and associations become etched into our souls. People from the past disappear and come back again. Events from the past repeat themselves. The past people and events may not recur in the same manner, as there are many variations in how they manifest themselves. But if we try to be truly “free from the past,” we are embarking on a futile quest. And if we try to relive the past, we may succeed, but we may also get more than we asked for. If we are ever free, it is only because our past allows us to be so. History always hovers over us in everything we do. That’s why the past is truly never dead, in this world or the next.
14/05/12 at 7.40pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
Most people are familiar with the television series Dragnet starring Jack Webb. In both incarnations from the 1950s in black-and-white and from the late 1960s and early 1970s in color, the TV series attracted a sizable following with its no-nonsense documentary style of detective work from the vantage point of the Los Angeles Police Department. Less well-known is the 1954 Warner Bros. Technicolor film, also starring the late-great Jack Webb. Produced at the height of the early television Dragnet craze of the early 1950s, this film deserves respect on several levels: as a depiction of 1950s law enforcement, as a film noir style tale of suspense, and as a Hays Code era morality tale of accountability and redemption.
This 1954 film version of Dragnet has Sgt. Joe Friday (played by Jack Webb) working out of the now-abolished Intelligence Division of the LAPD, along with his then-partner Ofc. Frank Smith (played by Ben Alexander). They work under a Captain played by Richard Boone (later of “Have Gun Will Travel” fame on television). Friday and Smith also work closely with Homicide Division and the District Attorney’s Office as they try to solve the murder of a low-level organized crime figure named Miller Starkie, who at the start of the film is ambushed in a field. From the beginning, Friday “knows” that an organized crime ring is behind the killing. The police mine their extensive database of information about known hoodlums and their associates. Based on this information they identify the likely killers, but they struggle to put the pieces together that would establish the motive and proof that the notorious gang leaders were responsible. Because the DA’s Office can’t prove what Friday suspects, the tension between police and prosecutors boils over, as the DA reluctantly demands the initial release of the suspects.
At first, Friday and Smith hit a dead end. Despite lengthy and intense questioning at an isolated floor of a local hotel, all suspects and people close to them initially refuse to cooperate. Friday seems to get a break when a museum custodian steps forward as an eyewitness who saw Davit at the field at the time of the murder. But the police and prosecution fail to convince a grand jury to indict the gang leaders after the custodian eyewitness, fearing retaliation, pretends a failure of memory.
Nonetheless, the pieces eventually seem to fall in place to implicate gang leaders Max Troy (played by Stacy Harris) and Chester Davit. The widow of murder victim Starkie, an invalid alcoholic (played by Virginia Gregg) who previously had no use for police officers, turns over Starkie’s workbook of unpaid gambling debts owed to the syndicate. Interviews with some of the people in the workbook show that Starkie had been keeping some of his collections for himself and not turning it over, thus revealing the reason for hit slaying.
Then, an undercover policewoman’s surveillance of a hoodlum restaurant hangout associated with Max Troy leads to the recovery of a box of bullets used by the killer and admittedly placed by Troy in the restaurant owner’s car. Finally, after learning that Davit has been killed (presumably by an even higher-up figure in the gang) in Cleveland, Davit’s formerly hostile widow also cooperates with Friday and leads him to the murder weapon, implicating Troy and her husband in the killing. When asked if she would finally come downtown to give a statement, she replies, “On my hands and knees.”
With one of the two suspects now deceased, Friday and Smith turn their focus again to Max Troy. After going back to the DA’s Office, the deputy prosecutor tells Friday, “You got him.” However, other forces intervened before the police could apprehend their villain. Troy, who had been suffering throughout the film from unspecified stomach ailments, had been undergoing treatment at a Catholic hospital. When they tried to make contact with him at the hospital, Friday and Smith learn that Troy had cancer and that he died on the operating table. After a doctor told them the news, the doctor asked them if Troy had been a friend of theirs. Friday replied, “No, we hardly knew him.” As they walk outside the hospital and into the rain, Friday discards a written statement that Troy previously used to invoke his right to remain silent, as the rain washes away Troy’s signature.
This film contains many of the characteristics that make the Dragnet television series so memorable. Besides the main quirky wisecracking characters of Friday and his partner, this film uses many of the same loyal and familiar character actors who appeared in many of Jack Webb’s television series. These notable character actors and actresses include as Stacy Harris (as Max Troy), Vic Perin (as the deputy DA), Virginia Gregg (as Starkie’s widow), Herb Vigran (as an inquisitive grand juror), Harry Bartell (as “Tex,” a police colleague who digs up evidence from the crime scene), and Olan Soule (as the forensic chemist with the police department). In using these familiar figures, the film uses the same face-paced style of dialogue, as well as Friday’s trademark dry wit and insults of the criminal element. (For instance, Friday tells a hoodlum at a card-playing club who is about to stand up and attack him: “Unless you’re growing, sit down!”)
Furthermore, the film embodies the same hard-boiled realism that was the foundation of the television series. As Friday narrates in his understated way, viewers see a real case unfold. The real case reflects the grittiness of the criminal underworld, with its senseless violence and intrusion into everyday business activities, from light gambling to restaurants. Throughout the process of trying to solve the crime, the film shows the monotony, disappointment, and excitement of everyday police work, though this time in the context of an unusual division of the police force (an Intelligence Division) that often did not come up in regular “Dragnet” television episodes. Legal restrictions that protect criminal suspects are scrutinized disapprovingly. Aggressive surveillance techniques are used throughout, including “bumper-to-bumper tail,“ a near-round-the-clock following of the suspects during their daily routines when out in public and frequent humiliating public searches of them. No one action solves the crime. The solution comes piece-by-piece and step-by-step, and not usually in even portions.
As part of the realism of the film, the characters of all sorts show periodic displays of humanity. The police characters have a personal repoire that suggests that they are having at least some fun with each other throughout the stressful grind of business. Interspersed throughout are light-hearted banter about bad reactions from combinations of food at lunch, off-beat discussion of undercover attire, and indulgence in jazz music. These parts of the film provide welcome breaks in the tension of the story and add to the humanity of the good characters. Although there is no love story pivotal to the plot in this film, Sgt. Friday does show some understated tenderness towards the undercover police woman, Grace Downey (played by Ann Robinson). Similarly, the personal relations and tribulations experienced by the criminal characters suggest at least some sympathy, as with the cancerous stomach problems of Max Troy and the sorrow of the newly widowed Mrs. Starkie and Mrs. Davit.
Moreover, the general Dragnet structure not surprisingly turns out to be a great framework for a Hays Code morality tale, on several levels. An act of evil occurs at the start of the film, and a whole team of dedicated professionals dedicate themselves to the detection and punishment of those responsible for Starkie’s murder. Despite the film’s realism, blood and gore are only suggested and not explicit, and bad language is virtually nonexistent. (Although some of the means used by the Intelligence Division may seem heavy-handed, in a post-9/11 world, much of this pre-Warren Count intelligence mindset has renewed acceptability.) The cowardice and selfishness of ordinary people threatens to thwart the fight against evil. But in the end even formerly corrupt players cooperate, and the crime is solved.
Although other forces cause the downfall of the killers, the killers nonetheless do not get away with their crime and in fact face a more ultimate judgment than they would have faced from the legal system. In the process, the widow of the victim and the widow of one of the killers achieve a sort of redemption by joining the fight after years of suspicion, even if on their “hands and knees.” Even the killers themselves reveal some hope at end-of-life redemption, despite their careers as criminals. As a surveilled phone conversation reveals, upon his collapse Davit states, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” And in a similar but more symbolic and understated fashion, the film’s ending moments make a similar point about the other killer. After Troy’s passing at the All Saints Hospital, Troy’s signature upon his misbegotten legal form is washed away by the rain. This final scene suggests that Troy’s earthly sins were also being washed away after his passing.
Dragnet the film should get more attention and respect than it does. 1950s law and order, Jack Webb-style, makes for a compelling mystery about the hard-won triumph of good over evil, as well as the prospect for redemption by even those who abet or practice evil.
14/05/10 at 3.45pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
One of the greatest purposes of art is to inspire. Movies especially have the capability of serving that high purpose of art. Here is the newly revised and expanded The Hays Code Hall of Fame of the greatest inspirational classic films, with links (in the near future) to further discussions of these great works:
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) (directed by Frank Capra) (starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore) (Liberty Films)
Going My Way (1944) (directed by Leo McCarey) (starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzpatrick) (Paramount)
Meet John Doe (1941) (directed by Frank Capra) (starring Gary Cooper) (Frank Capra Productions)
Casablanca (1942) (directed by Michael Curtiz) (starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Raines) (Warner Bros)
How Green Was My Valley (1941) (directed by John Ford) (starring Donald Crisp, Maureen O’Hara, Walter Pidgeon, and Roddy McDowell) (20th Century Fox)
Harvey (1950) (directed by Henry Koster) (starring James Stewart, Josephine Hull, and Peggy Dow) (Universal)
On the Waterfront (1954) (directed by Elia Kazan) (starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, and Rod Steiger) (Columbia)
Marty (1955) (directed by Delbert Mann) (starring Ernest Borgnine) (United Artists)
Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939) (starring Robert Donat and Greer Garson)
You Can’t Take It With You (1938) (starring Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, and James Stewart) (Columbia)
Kings Row (1942) (starring Ronald Reagan and Robert Cummings) (Warner Bros.)
Best Years of Our Lives (1946) (directed by William Wyler) (starring Fredric March) (MGM)
A Hole in the Head (1959) (directed by Frank Capra) (starring Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Eddie Hodges, and Carolyn Jones) (United Artists)
The Band Wagon (1953) (directed by Vincent Minelli) (starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and Oscar Levante) (MGM)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) (directed by Frank Capra) (starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur) (Columbia)
Rio Bravo (1959) (directed by Howard Hawks) (starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, and Rick Nelson) (Warner Bros.)
Knute Rockne, All American (1940) (directed by Lloyd Bacon) (starring Pat O’Brien and Ronald Reagan) (Warner Bros.)
Easter Parade (1948) (directed by Charles Walters) (starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland) (MGM)
Thunder Bay (1953) (directed by Anthony Mann) (starring James Stewart, Joann Dru, and Dan Duryea) (Universal)
The Jazz Singer (1927) (directed by Alan Crosland) (starring Al Jolson and May McAlvoy) (Warner Bros.)
The Glenn Miller Story (1954) (directed by Anthony Mann) (starring James Stewart and June Allyson) (Universal)
The Days of Wine and Roses (1962) (directed by Blake Edwards) (starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick) (Warner Bros.)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940) (directed by Ernest Lubitsch) (starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullivan, and Frank Morgan) (MGM)
Sing, You Sinners (1938) (directed by Wesley Ruggles) (starring Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, and Elizabeth Patterson) (Paramount)
The Bells of St. Marys’ (1945) (directed by Leo McCarey) (starring Bing Crosby, Donna Reed, and Henry Travers) (RKO)
-30- (1959) (directed by Jack Webb) (starring Jack Webb and Joseph Conrad) (Warner Bros.)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (directed by Michael Curtiz) (starring James Cagney, Joan Lesley, and Walter Huston) (Warner Bros.)
The Singing Kid (1936) (directed by William Keighley) (starring Al Jolson, Beverly Roberts, Sybil Jason, and Edward Everett Horton) (Warner Bros.)
Of course, many more films from the Golden Age of American culture qualify as distinguished works of inspiration, and those works will also be highlighted and discussed in this site.
14/04/14 at 7.58pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
Anyone, of any age, who sometimes needs an encouraging word about the lonely road of life should know the works of beloved Golden Age film director Frank Capra. Anyone who at all appreciates the works of Frank Capra should meet the characters and story in the film “Meet John Doe” (1941).
Frank Capra’s best known works show an all-American “good guy” overcome long odds in prevailing over hard luck and determined opposition. Films such as “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946), “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), and “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936) reflect this formula. “Meet John Doe” fits squarely within this category of Capra films. As one of Capra’s few independently produced films, it suffered an eventual lapse in its copyright and perhaps a corresponding lapse in promotional efforts. It thus is not as widely known as many of Capra‘s other great works. That is a shame. “Meet John Doe” reflects some of the same themes as these and other Capra works, but it does so through a more generalized and ordinary hero who epitomizes the nickname “John Doe.“ Through this different type of hero, it also uses a more realistically dark tone and ostensibly religious fervor than the other Capra works. This quality causes the film to briskly move towards a rousingly emotional and profound conclusion that should move even the most jaded viewer.
All things considered, the film deserves more recognition as a unique work of inspiration within the venerable canon of Frank Capra’s works. In this review, The Hays Code reevaluates the story and meaning of this great work, one of the best showcases of the values of the Hays Code era. Here’s to the John Does of the world!
A. Plot Summary
The main character in “Meet John Doe” is indeed known as John Doe, but his actual name is John Willoughby, sometimes referred to as “Long John” Willoughby. Played by the genuine, understated Gary Cooper, he is a former professional minor league baseball player who was sidelined by an injury. During with the Great Depression, he became a homeless wanderer who drifts with his friend, fellow hobo, harmonica-player known as “The Colonel,” played by veteran character actor Walter Brennan. John finds a way out of starvation by answering a call from desperate newspaper reporter Ann Mitchell, played by Barbara Stanwyck. In the course of a protest against unfairness in society turned into a publicity stunt, Mitchell had published a made-up letter purportedly sent in by a man signed “John Doe,” threatening to commit suicide on Christmas Eve by jumping off of City Hall. The letter struck a chord with the public and led Mitchell to try to find someone who could pass as the actual “John Doe,” without telling the public of the initial deception. Gary Cooper as John Willoughby won the “role” over the competition of many other starving aspirants.
In this role, John Willoughby is an everyman who well wears the mantle of “John Doe,” representing the resentments and aspirations of a people collectively down on its luck. To capitalize on his fame, the businessman and publisher of the newspaper his letters and stories appeared in, D.B. Norton (played by Edward Arnold), arranges to have John Doe give a nationwide radio address. Mitchell writes his speech, rejecting an angry approach and instead deciding to ask listeners to “love thy neighbor” and band together with the other “John Does” of the world. He urges his listeners to project the spirit of Christmas Day across the entire calendar year. Only then will the meek truly inherit the Earth. John goes through with the speech, starting nervously and then gaining confidence in his stirring everyman delivery. In doing so, he also rejected an offer from a competing newspaperman to expose the whole enterprise as a fraud to collect a large sum of money upfront. A romance between John and Ann Mitchell begins to emerge, but John and the Colonel try to flee the limelight and return to their formerly carefree hobo existence. When John and the Colonel had fled and were eating at a local diner, a thankful comment from a John Doe fan at a local diner convinces John to follow through with what had become a grassroots populist cultural movement. “John Doe Societies” sprouted up, extolling the virtues of the simple approach of loving ones neighbors.
D.B. Norton decided to try to exploit the John Doe clubs by co-opting them in his scheme to win elected political office and impose an “Iron Fist” on the American people. He arranges to have a massive John Doe Convention, which was to resemble a national political convention of the sort that nominates the major parties’ presidential candidates every four years. John Doe, however, has other ideas for the grassroots movement and rejects any attempt to highjack the John Doe movement for such dictatorial political purposes. While starting to speak at the John Doe Convention, D.B. Norton arrives and starkly denounces John Doe as a fraud who, in the initial letter to the newspaper, never had any intention of committing suicide but was trying to seek publicity. As John Doe reluctantly acknowledges his initial deceit, thuggish security guards payed off by Norton cut off power to John’s microphone, as hecklers and newspapers denounce him as a fraud. Never finishing his speech, he walks away deflated in disgrace.
With the John Doe movement at an apparent end, John goes back to being a destitute wanderer. Then he comes up with the idea of completing the once-fictitious plan of committing suicide on Christmas Eve by jumping off of City Hall. When about to make a fatal jump, several different people, anticipating that John might follow through on the earlier suicidal threat, confront him. First, D.B. Norton and his goons try to stop him, recognizing that an actual suicide might revive an honest John Doe Movement. Norton tries to do this by claiming that any forms of identification and suicide note on his person would be removed after jumping and his death would be for naught. Ann Mitchell, however, also arrives and confronts John Doe. In a powerful emotional speech that combines her character’s love for John as a person with her love for his movement, she reminds John that one man (not named but obviously referring to Jesus) died almost 2000 years before for humanity so that John Doe would not have to do so. In speaking of the venerable John Doe movement, she stated, “If it’s worth dying for, then it’s worth living for.” When a group of people led by the founder of a John Doe club (the same man who spoke up earlier at the diner) also comes forward and expresses renewed faith in the movement and the man, John Doe walks back from the brink of suicide and carries Mitchell away. A newspaperman present ends the film by saying, “There you are, Norton. The People! Try and lick that?”
B. Themes and Analysis
Like many other Capra films, “Meet John Doe” reflects the optimism that eventually good people can triumph and their heroes will prevail against overwhelming obstacles. Like Capra’s other films, this one also shows the susceptibility of the people to fickleness and manipulation. Here it shows that after the “John Does of the world” start their movement, boss D.B. Norton quickly turns the people again John Doe. Only with time and effort do the currents of popular opinion possibly right themselves.
In contrast to Capra’s other films, however, “Meet John Doe” explores these themes through a hero who better qualifies as an “Everyman,” a true John Doe who could be anyone. Gary Cooper’s character, John Willoughby, is not an offbeat poet like Longfellow Deeds in “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.” He is not a United States Senator like Jefferson Smith in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” He is also not a gifted business and community leader firmly rooted in his small town’s middle or upper class like George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Instead, John Willoughby is a homeless and penniless drifter without a family and for a long time without a job. Early in the film he even faints at the sight of a plate of decent food. Though he fell into a public relations whirlwind somewhat similar to Senator Jefferson Smith, his stature was without the benefit of any formal position in society or government, depending instead of a highly vulnerable position within a makeshift grassroots movement.
As a hero from the John Does of the world, Gary Cooper’s John Doe character shows the extraordinary deeds that even (or perhaps especially) ordinary people can accomplish when faced with adversity. They might be out of a job or even not sure where their next meal will come from, but they often have a homespun wisdom that is far superior to arcane sophistication. In relying on that homespun wisdom, they can move mountains, at least when they band together.
Though Capra’s other works have their own political and cultural dimensions, “Meet John Doe” explores those dimensions with greater philosophical depth. “Mr. Smith” deals with an ordinary citizen who gains unexpected political position and combats the forces of traditional political corruption who use their power for personal financial gain at the expense of the public interest. “John Doe” touches on this issue on the margins, as when one of the follow-up John Doe newspaper pieces protests corruption in dispensing state “relief,” or welfare funds. But here the protagonist’s foes, led by D.B. Norton, have grander designs for a fascist style dictatorship that combines special interests of both Big Business and Big Labor, with Norton as the leading figure to be at the helm. This aspect of the film comes through most clearly in the scene at Norton’s house where John Doe interrupts his meeting before going to the John Doe Convention. Here Norton makes his statement about imposing an “Iron Fist” on the people. When confronted by John, Norton also makes his paternalist comment that he knows better than the people about what is best for them.
John Doe, and Frank Capra, disagreed. In the context of their times, they had much to disagree with. The world events of the day, including in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, revealed the danger of the very real D.B. Norton’s of the world. These D.B. Nortons of real life were paternalistic politicians who wanted to micromanage the economy and political system. Nazis overran Germany. Fascists overran Italy. The two then combined to overrun all of continental Europe. At the same time, the Soviet Communists were imposing their iron fist on most of the East. Although obviously not to the same degree, even at home Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal tried to impose Washington-based centralized planning on a large and diverse United States, taking advantage of the desperation of the people in the course of the Great Depression. “Meet John Doe” recognized that much of this political authoritarianism was an excuse for personal political ambition and financial gain at the expense of the pubic interest.
The political side of “Meet John Doe” is augmented by its cultural message about the importance of ordinary people banding together in their everyday life. Ultimately rejecting angry messages about resentments, John Doe and Ann Mitchell relied on simple everyday actions as a way to lift up the human race, rather than centralized political solutions. Not wanting to be co-opted by any political forces, John Doe encouraged people to serve humanity by looking after their neighbors and family members. His message implicitly was that, in the chaos and hopelessness of the Great Depression, people should look to themselves and their neighbors rather than the government to improve their lot in life. In a modern age where many societal difficulties seem to be beyond the reach of any political solutions, this message should have resonance for the “John Does” of the modern age as well.
Finally, aside from its considerable political and cultural dimensions, “Meet John Doe” has an unmistakable religious element in its parallels to the life and message of Jesus. Like Jesus, John Doe spread a message of hope and love, only to be betrayed by people referred to in the film as “the Pontius Pilates of the world.” Then battered down and beaten by the Establishment, John Doe faces death. Although John Doe did not face execution in the traditional sense, his suicidal plan seems to him as if it were the only remaining option because of the forces of D.B. Norton. In a ragged condition that physically resembles his time as a homeless hobo but reveals a more despondent condition emotionally, he appears to reach his wit’s end. Then, when Barbara Stanwyck’s Ann Mitchell arrives on scene, she powerfully tells John that suicide is not the only option, because Jesus already died to give people like him a chance. This message is confirmed by the arrival of the members of the John Doe clubs, who had doubted their leader because of the made-up letter to the newspaper but who concluded that their hero was forgiven and redeemed. Though he obviously was not Jesus, John Doe’s path of rise and fall and redemption had clear parallels to Christ, and Christian values lead to his, and presumably society’s, redemption.
All these heavy political, cultural, and religious messages give “Meet John Doe” at times a distinctly dark undertone, even compared to Capra’s other works. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” can be unsettling in showing the forces of corruption, but the hero’s very personal survival is not at stake and the future of our democracy does not appear to be jeopardized by the prospect of dictatorship. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey also goes to the brink of suicide, but Clarence the Angel appears and first suspends and then wipes out that tragedy before the prospect of suicide becomes more than a thought in the hero’s mind. In “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” we see many destitute people waiting in the hotel, but our hero is not one of them or does not really have the prospect of becoming one of them. But in “Meet John Doe,” our hero at the outset is out of work and starving. He comes to prominence because of a letter threatening suicide. His enemies threaten to manipulate a decent grassroots movement as part of a quest to impose an authoritarian dictatorship. Those enemies also drive John Doe to personal ruin and finally to the edge of City Hall seconds away from suicide.
Perhaps this pervasive darkness is a reason the film is not as prominent in the Capra canon of great films. But this darkness also makes the film seem disturbingly real. More importantly, the obstacles that John Doe faces makes his eventual triumph over those obstacles more intensely meaningful. It is because of this intenseness that we should all know and appreciate the tragedy and triumph of “John Doe” Willoughby. All of the John Does of the world may suffer greatly. All of the John Does of the world have something to teach everyone else. And as John Willoughby says in the film, all the John Does of the world if they band together are ultimately the hope of the Earth.
And so, here’s to Frank Capra and his darkly hopeful film, “Meet John Doe.” And here’s to the John Does of the world, of every age, of every era, and of every walk of life.
14/03/29 at 2.40pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
From about 1938 until 1945, the Big Bands were all the rage in popular music. Before that period, these bands developed their style and gained popularity. After this period, their influence remained as popular music evolved. But within their period of dominance, groups led by Glenn Miler, Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Artie Shaw, Harry James, and many others were at the forefront of popular music. But because the period of their ascendancy was less than a decade, their importance to classic American culture is often overlooked. Here, The Hays Code tries to give them their due as the type of music that made Jazz respectable and gave popular music a more refined instrumentation.
Glenn Miller
The Big Bands emphasized the instrumental aspect of music. As such, they often had no vocals, as in the famous Glenn Miller hits “In the Mood“ and “Moonlight Serenade.” Other times they had vocals that were perhaps an equal but not a dominant part of the music, such as in “Sentimental Journey” by Les Brown and his Band of Renown and “And the Angels Sing” by Benny Goodman. With either variety, the music consisted of a developed type of jazz, with well-arranged and well-blended sections for the different instrument groups. Trumpets, trombones, clarinets, drums, saxophones, pianos, and eventually strings all had prominent roles in the melodies and harmonies. Vocalists, when included in any given piece, functioned as if they were another type of instrument but not the central attraction. For instance, the Glenn Miller Orchestra had “The Modernaires” as their house vocal group, but they did not participate in every piece, and when they did participate they did not necessarily sing during the majority of the piece.
The style of the Big Bands was unmistakably “jazzy” in the type of material, frequently using syncopation in their arrangements and sometimes using hipster slang in vocals, as in “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar.” Nonetheless, they often performed well-developed standards of the Great American Songbook, as with Glenn Miller’s version of Harold Arlen‘s “That Old Black Magic” and Benny Goodman’s version of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart‘s “There’s a Small Hotel.” Big Bands also often performed vocal-less, instrument-only versions of well-known Songbook standards such as Artie Shaw’s rendition of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” and Benny Goodman’s rendition of Harold Arlen’s “Get Happy.” Big Band versions of Songbook standards often gave those standards a new lease on life that inspired later versions, such as those by Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald during their solo careers. Whichever types of pieces were done by the Big Bands, they tended to bring a smoothness to their swinging quality. They thus created a type of respectable jazz, in contrast to Ragtime and the louder, weirder, and more obnoxious versions of earlier 20th Century jazz and blues from the likes of W.C. Handy and others.
Benny Goodman
After World War II, changing tastes and economic arrangements led to the decline of the Big Bands. The American and British public tended to prefer music dominated by single personalities in the form of star solo vocalists. Nonetheless, at least through the mid-1960s, adult contemporary music often had numerically reduced Big Band-like groups as back-up to the featured star vocalists. Big Band-era veteran background performers, such as Nelson Riddle and Billy May, served as arrangers for singing stars such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole. The singing stars themselves often got their start as side vocalists for the Big Bands in the early 1940s. Frank Sinatra sang with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Doris Day sang with Les Brown. Peggy Lee sang with Benny Goodman. The resulting arrangement was the consistent use of lush and refined instrumentation to accompany prominent singers of this era. Although not with the same numerical strength or central role in the music, brass, woodwinds, and strings gave these solo singers a large part of their subtly and smoothness. They enabled the singers to give the work of the Great American Songbook from the 1920s onward another new lease on life.
Tommy Dorsey
Although the Big Band Era itself lasted less than a decade, the era should be respected not only for its contribution to later enhancement of the Great American Songbook but also for serving as a great type of music in and of itself. Modern revivals of Big Bands continue to give ballrooms and other dance venues their respectably swinging repertoire. And digitally enhanced versions of Big Band Era recordings remain, deserving of frequent replaying by members of all generations who appreciate the relaxing qualities of the best and most respectable instrumental jazz music produced by Western Civilization.
14/03/15 at 5.52pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
Figures in Popular Culture since the 1970s seem to have an almost universal allegiance to the liberal wing of the political and social spectrum. From Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand to Oprah Winfrey and Matt Damon, liberal figures have reigned in Hollywood. When movies and music have a political message, they almost always would be characterized as liberal. Even when movies and music are not predominantly intended as political tools, they tend to reflect a liberal worldview, about internationalism, about the family, about business, and about the broad category of “social issues.” They also delight in gratuitously mocking Republican political figures. Conservative themes essentially are nowhere to be found in major Hollywood productions. The rare conservative figures in Popular Culture are either shunned or silenced. As a result, the large percentage of the general population that is conservative is left out by this distorted and imbalanced culture.
James Stewart
Conservatism and Political Balance in the Golden Age of Hollywood
The Golden Age of film and music did not suffer from this one-sided ideological slant. Conservatives and Republicans were important figures in movies and music, including actors, actresses, singers, directors, and producers. Liberals and Democrats also were well represented in the leading cultural figures of this era. Consequently, major works routinely displayed no overt political or social bias. Works that did reflect any political or social perspective could be described as sympathetic to both conservative and liberal themes, though conservative themes somewhat predominated.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, the ranks of Hollywood Republicans included MGM executive producer Louis B. Mayer, independent producer David O. Selznick, director Frank Capra, and director Cecil B. DeMille. It included actors and actresses in droves: James Stewart, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Shirley Temple, George Murphy, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Fred MacMurray, William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, and Adolph Menjou.
Ronald Reagan, in King’s Row
There were also those who started as Democrats, often of a moderately conservative variety, but who became conservative Republicans with the passage of time. That group included actors John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Frank Sinatra, Charlton Heston, and James Cagney. There were also certain prominent figures who, though generally Republican during this time period, had an independent streak that led them to support some Democrats such as FDR. This group included director John Ford, Warner Brothers executive Jack Warner, and singer/actor Al Jolson.
Liberal figures during this time period coexisted with the conservatives. Hollywood Golden Age liberals included Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Orson Welles, Gregory Peck, Paul Newman, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Durante, Bobby Darin, Andy Griffith, and Peter Lawford. Also in this category were screenwriters Paddy Cheyevsky and Robert Riskin, a key collaborator with Republican director Frank Capra.
The result of this overall blend was a full generation of movies and other works that reflected the values of the era, and that further stands as a cultural canon for modern generations that are conservative and are alienated by the bias of modern Popular Culture. But because the classic works of the Golden Age do not contain blatant political propaganda, they also should not alienate the more liberal element of the population who nonetheless has an interest in classic culture.
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby
Traditional Values in Golden Age Film
Perhaps more than any other theme of the era, Golden Age movies reflect a steadfast belief in God and respect for religion. This value was part of the Hays Production Code itself. It is represented certainly in classics with religious events depicted as central events in the plot, such as Ben Hur and The Ten Commandmants. It is represented in films that have clerical figures as central characters, such as Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary’s, Boys‘ Town, and On the Waterfront. It is also represented in classics not overly religious in their plots, such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Marty, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.
Works of culture from the Golden Age also embody the value of American patriotism. Indeed, this patriotism was reflected so broadly as to indicate its universal, non-partisan appeal. As with respect for God, the value of patriotism was also reflected in the Hays Production Code. Golden Age films could have patriotism as a central part of their plot, as with Yankee Doodle Dandy or This is the Army, but they could have patriotism as an essential subtext, as with Casablanca, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Searchers. Nonetheless, classic movies from this era do not minimize the costs of war or the dangers that corruption poses to domestic democracy. For instance, The Best Years of Our Lives, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Bridge Over the River Kwai all clearly depict the high human costs of war, in both physical and psychological terms.
Besides respect for God and Country, Golden Age classic movies embodied the paramount values of persistence, resilience, and innovation. This value applied in personal, business, and artistic pursuits. Almost all of Frank Capra’s works reflect these values. Besides his classics such as It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, similar themes are in the lesser-known Frank Sinatra-starring film A Hole in the Head. As with the latter film, such non-Capra-directed James Stewart works as Thunder Bay (regarding offshore oil drilling) and You Gotta Stay Happy stand as odes to persistence in business and professional pursuits. Going My Way shows the way in the context of a nonprofit entity headed by a pioneering musical priest. King’s Row and The Best Years of Our Lives show these values for people beset by physical or psychological disabilities. Additionally, this era produced many odes to resilience in the area of artistic innovation. For instance, biographical films of this type included The Glenn Miller Story, Rhapsody in Blue, and The Jolson Story. The non-biographical Easter Parade stands for a similar proposition. These works, and the many ones with similar themes, reflected the viewpoint that, in America, anything is possible with hard work, God’s help, fresh thinking, and a little good luck.
Moreover, classic films of Hollywood’s Golden Age embody the value of respect for the family, whether in times of adversity or otherwise. This is apparent from the earliest of the “talkies,” The Jazz Singer, in 1927, where Al Jolson’s character struggles to reconcile his unconventional career path with the love of his mother. The message carries through to the twice-made movie from both the 1930s and 1950s, A Star Is Born, where the rising star young wife comforts and tries to nurture her fading alcoholic husband. The value of family permeates the Frank Capra works It’s a Wonderful Life, where the thought of the protagonist’s family helps to pull him back from the brink of suicide, and in A Hole in the Head, where the entrepreneurial single parent played by Frank Sinatra refuses the temptation to dump his son for the whims of a free-spirited girlfriend. Other films from the Golden Era use the cohesive family simply as a forum for comedy and drama about everyday life, as in the Andy Hardy series featuring Mickey Rooney, The Father of the Bride, and the Ma and Pa Kettle series of films.
Fred Astaire
Finally, films from this cultural canon reflect the essential dignity of humanity, regardless of class, race, or individual failings. Films expressed this value in both the content of their themes and the manner of their presentation. For thematic expressions of this value, Captains Courageous, Meet John Doe, and It’s A Wonderful Life serve as outstanding examples. On the other hand, virtually any Golden Age movie, or piece of music, can exemplify the presentational type of this value. This is because the gracefulness and energy of ordinary life permeates the culture of the era. Men wore suits in public and hats when outside, while women wore dresses of some sort. Elegance was commonplace, but even plainness could be dignified. One need only look at any of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers RKO musicals to see dignified elegance. One need only look any of the MGM musicals from the era to see either type of dignity.
The Golden Age of film and music may have ended with the abolition of the Hays Production Code and the rise of the counterculture. However, this great body of work stands as a monument ready to be studied by all future generations. Both well-known classics and little-known rarities are a treasure trove and a time capsule that represents the era. In future postings, The Hays Code will explore in greater depth the works of the Golden Age specifically as expressions of the values of that era, as well as expressions of the conservative values of many in the modern age who are the keepers of the flame.
14/03/09 at 11.13pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
Musical films have the unique ability to tell a story. They do so with music as a central element for its own sake, as well as a means to further the plot. In the Golden Age of American culture, musicals were a primary medium for some of the greatest songwriters and performers in history. Here is The Hays Code Hall of Fame of the Golden Age’s greatest musical films:
Going My Way (1944) (directed by Leo McCarey) (starring Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzpatrick)
Swing Time (1936) (directed by George Stevens) (starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) (music by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields)
Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) (directed by Vincent Minnelli) (starring Judy Garland, Mary Astor, and Tom Drake)
Shall We Dance (1937) (directed by Mark Sandrich) (starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) (music by George and Ira Gershwin)
Holiday Inn (1942) (directed by Mark Sandrich) (starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire) (music by Irving Berlin)
The Jazz Singer (1927) (directed by Alan Crosland) (starring Al Jolson, May McAvoy, and Warner Oland)
Top Hat (1935) (directed by Mark Sandrich) (starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) (music by Irving Berlin)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) (directed by Michael Curtiz) (starring James Cagney and Joan Leslie) (music by George M. Cohan)
High Society (1956) (directed by Charles Walters) (starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelley, and Frank Sinatra) (music by Cole Porter)
Easter Parade (1948) (directed by Charles Walters) (starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland) (music by Irving Berlin)
The Band Wagon (1953) (directed by Vincent Minelli) (starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and Oscar Levant) (music by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz)
Pal Joey (1957) (directed by George Sidney) (starring Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, and Rita Hayworth) (music by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart)
My Fair Lady (1964) (directed by George Cukor) (starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn) (music by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner)
Singing in the Rain (1952) (directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Doneen) (starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor)
The Glenn Miller Story (1954) (directed by Anthony Mann) (starring James Stewart and June Allyson) (music by Glenn Miller)
Rhapsody in Blue (1945) (directed by Irving Rapper) (starring Robert Alda and Joan Leslie) (music by George and Ira Gershwin)
An American in Paris (1951) (directed by Vincent Minnelli) (starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, and Oscar Levant)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950) (directed by George Sidney) (starring Betty Hutton and Harold Keel) (music by Irving Berlin)
Wizard of Oz (1939) (directed by Victor Fleming) (starring Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, and Ray Bolger)
Follow the Fleet (1936) (directed by Mark Sandrich) (starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Randolph Scott, and Harriet Hilliard) (music by Irving Berlin)
14/03/09 at 3.09pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
The Hays Production Code was a written document jointly produced by the major motion picture studios of the Golden Era. The Code set forth basic principles and specific applications of those principles. The association of producers used the Code to offer guidance during the production process of individual films. They also denied distribution approval for films that were not consistent with the Code.
Film is a uniquely powerful medium. With its visual and audial capacity to depict vivid slices of life, it can inspire, haunt, instruct, inform, amuse, depress, distract, model, and simply entertain like nothing else. With this power, film can serve distinctly good or evil roles in the life of a society and culture.
As noted very eloquently in the Code’s preamble, film producers “recognize[d] their responsibility to the public because of this trust and because entertainment and art are important influences in the life of a nation.” “[T]hough regarding motion pictures primarily as entertainment without any explicit purpose of teaching or propaganda, [producers knew] that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment [was]directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking.”
In general terms, the Code enforced the social and moral values of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Under this Code, films did not portray gratuitous violence or sex. Crime could not be glorified. Animals could not be treated violently. Racial stereotypes had to be minimized. All religious faiths and nationalities were to be treated respectfully. Gratuitous profanity was unacceptable. Mature subjects could be presented, as long as it was done so with subtlety and taste.
The films from the major studios in the Golden Age of the 1930s to the early 1960s largely complied with both the letter and spirit of the Hays Production Code. The result was an incomparable historic body of work that embodies the era and stands as a collective monument of creative, inspirational, and creative art.
It’s also important to recognize that the Hays Code was not imposed by the government, federal, state, or local. It was a voluntary effort at industry self-regulation. It would not have worked so well as an exercise in government censorship. Rather, it was a tool to both reflect and embody the collective consciousness and conscience of society.
It is the unabashed position of TheHaysCode.com that the Hays Production Code stands for a set of values that should not be mocked but should be revered in the study of classic culture and should also be embodied in contemporary life and culture. TheHaysCode.com will interpret the cultural values in not only classic film, but also TV, music, and books. It will celebrate those values and the works that embodied them.
14/03/09 at 2.43pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
The text of the Hays Production Code of 1930 to 1966, including additions and revisions, is now posted on the section of The Hays Code website specifically devoted to the Hays Production Code itself. Go to http://thehayscode.com/?page_id=47 . More analysis of the textual code and its applications to film will follow on this website in the future. Stay tuned.
14/03/08 at 9.43pm / by The Hays Code / 0 Comment
The Hays Code is now on the web, at www.thehayscode.com . Check back for updates. As always, promoting the Golden Age of film, TV, music, and books, and the values they represent. Quality and decency are always in style. And remember to follow on Twitter at @TheHaysCode.
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"In 1969 which MP was described by Stratton Mills MP as ""Fidel Castro in a miniskirt""?" | Left Behind by Good Friday | Jacobin
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Left Behind by Good Friday
Bernadette Devlin on her early activism and why the Good Friday Agreement brought some peace, but little justice.
by Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey
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In 1969 Bernadette Devlin traveled to the United States on a fundraising tour. At age twenty-two, she was the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster and already a veteran of the Northern Irish Civil Rights Movement and the radical student group People’s Democracy.
Whisked through New York by a police force blissfully unaware of her revolutionary politics, she appeared on
Johnny Carson Show
and received the key to New York City from Mayor John Lindsay.
But soon the conservative Irish America that had brought Devlin to the country had to reckon with her radical politics. She felt a deep affinity with black America, whose struggle had inspired her own in the Six Counties, and insisted on visiting Black Panthers and other militants. Before long she was comparing Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley’s police force to the Royal Ulster Constabulary who persecuted Catholics in Northern Ireland.
A Marxist and an internationalist, Devlin excoriated the Irish-American community, a significant funder of radicalism in Ireland, for not seeing the struggle of their black compatriots as worthy of the same support. By the end of the tour, Unionist politician William Stratton Mills, sent to America to counter her message, was warning of her association with socialism. “She is Fidel Castro in a miniskirt,” he said.
Back in Ireland, Devlin would go on to witness Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British paratroopers killed fourteen unarmed civilians marching for civil rights in Derry. Denied the right to respond in the House of Commons to Tory home secretary Reginauld Maulding’s claims that they had been acting in self-defense, Devlin punched him in the face . It was, she said, “a proletarian protest”.
In the following years, Devlin remained active in the Six Counties, first with the Irish Republican Socialist Party and then as a leading spokesperson for the Smash the H-Blocks campaign during the early-1980s hunger strikes. Today she works as an antiracist organizer in South Tyrone.
Devlin recently spoke with
Jacobin
issue editor Ronan Burtenshaw about her experiences in Irish politics, her perspective on the Good Friday Agreement, and whether today’s left-wing movements bear any resemblance to the ones she helped lead in the 1960s.
What were your formative experiences in radical politics? As a child, did you have much of a connection with 1916 and republicanism?
I didn’t grow up having an intellectual concept of being a republican or a socialist. I grew up knowing that I was dirt poor, but I didn’t have an intellectual framework for understanding it.
My father was a trade unionist. I have no recollection of him drilling trade unionism into us as kids. But I have the clearest memory of him planting flowers in our garden and then planting a small coin. We watched the flowers grow and he dug up the coin. He showed us that if you plant flowers, they grow. But if you plant money in the soil, it doesn’t. Money only grows when you plant it on the backs of working people. My father died when I was nine but I never forgot that.
From my mother I got a sense of human solidarity that, oddly enough, I think came from Catholicism. In fact, the point at which I left the Church was not when I decided there wasn’t a God, but when I decided I couldn’t see that compassion in this organization.
I wouldn’t have known it growing up, but, because of the year it is — with people going back over the history of 1916 — somebody contacted me the other day to tell me that they had done archival research and it turns out my maternal grandmother was in Cumann na mBan , the women’s armed brigade. She never spoke about — such must have been her disappointment with the revolution’s outcome.
You are remembered by many for your activism in the Civil Rights Movement and your election to Westminster in 1969 at age twenty-one. What is your memory of the People’s Democracy period?
When I’m asked about the People’s Democracy period, I can’t help but laugh. It was crazy and brilliant. The chaotic creativity of large numbers of people who were thinking and taking action at the darkest of times. Madness and sanity at the same time, and out of that, ways forward appeared.
The dynamism of the mass movement came out of attempts to create democratic frameworks, often in simplistic ways that meant decisions could change every half hour. Someone would call a meeting and take a decision, then the minority that didn’t like it gathered more people and organized an even bigger meeting to change it. Then the new minority would do the same. But by the end of the night you had ten times more people than had been involved at the start of the day.
People’s Democracy is under-appreciated now in terms of its importance as a crack of light, moving ideas forward and radicalizing the Civil Rights Movement. It won an election long before Sinn Féin was heard of in that arena. In fact, when Sinn Féin moved into electoralism they originally actually got no bigger vote shares than the students managed in 1969 or later when I was reelected.
You can criticize People’s Democracy structurally but it was an amazing time. It was a forerunner, in its own way, to what we’re seeing today.
So you see the 1960s spirit in today’s left movements?
Yes, I saw it when I was in Greece last summer and in the Right2Water campaign in Ireland, certainly in the Occupy movement, and all the young people around Jeremy Corbyn . I have to say these movements seem to me, from the outside, more serious than the one I was involved in, but that might just be because I’m not at the party in the same way!
It is also more difficult to do it now. The 1960s were a time when everything was being liberated. You had youth movements, movements in music, gender, and sexuality, there was a global trend towards opening up society. Now movements are trying to fight back or hang on to ground won during the victories of the 1960s and ’70s.
Yet the struggle is being taken on. And I see a great similarity in how scared society today is of its youth. It helps that many veterans of the old fights are still around. So you get “sixties kids” like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn bringing their memory, their experience, and the madness they picked up from those times. Part of change is defeat and setback but to see that tide rising again while the people who rode the last wave are still here and active is important.
Much of the political terrain you operate in now is determined by the Good Friday Agreement and peace process in Northern Ireland. Can you describe your criticisms of the situation in the Six Counties?
In my view, the fundamental narrative of the peace process is false. You can make criticisms of that without wanting a return to violence. The end of the war has opened up opportunities that did not exist previously — people can discuss politics in a way they weren’t able to before.
But that was not possible in the decade following the peace process. Particularly for the new generation the starting point is different. And we should say, too, that Sinn Féin is more progressive than the political forces which went before them in government in Northern Ireland. That is a step forward.
But the peace process was built on allowing each faction to interpret ambiguities as they wanted. Maybe they thought this was a good thing in the short term, to end the war, but each side has clashing interpretations of the agreement and that will have to be reckoned with at some point in the future.
When it is reckoned with, today’s narrative will carry with it a lot of problems. For instance, take the idea that the Irish Republican Army bombed its way to the table. This myth was tolerated by the state for a number of years and fueled by them in their “flattery” about how sophisticated the IRA had been and so on. It gave a credence to the republican position that what little was won was won militarily.
Those in the dissident camp then can believe and say “we didn’t get much, Sinn Féin let us down, but if we had fought on militarily we could have achieved more.” In reality, this is not the case. But it leads apolitical people who have gained nothing from the struggle into a logical conclusion — not because they are stupid, but because of the logic underpinning the process — that there is some value in continuing some aspect of the armed insurrection.
To understand the peace process you have to see that the people who have gained the most from it are the educated professional classes, and their children, on both sides of the sectarian divide. There is now a shared interest among the middle classes in defending what they have gained — on the back of struggle by others.
How much of a role do you think this middle-class consensus plays in propping up the peace process? Does the imposition of austerity on working-class communities have a potential to undermine it?
We now have two parties in government who are representing the middle classes and who benefit from the status quo, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party. They are kept apart by the sectarian nature of the peace process and its institutions, which divides things between two communities.
Then we have a layer of people below who have been left out completely and are becoming disillusioned. But, because of the underlying sectarian logic, not just of the institutions but of the story told to put this all together, this feeling is pushing the Catholic and Protestant working class further apart, not closer. At the same time, the two parties in government tell their constituencies “we’ve won” while they cut corporate tax rate and introduce austerity measures.
Sinn Féin have moved further and further to accommodate this new reality and, in doing so, created a dynamic they largely don’t see. They are losing the trust and the support of the people who once voted for them, the Catholic working class.
Those people have been replaced by the Catholic middle class which most benefited from the peace process. These are former Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) voters. They have a vested interest in stability and participation in the state, so they now support Sinn Féin.
But many who fought in the democratic and the armed struggle perceive themselves to be no better off. The economic and social system we have has consigned them to is continued welfare, poor education, and now austerity. Yet their opposition to this is described as “dissidence” and dismissed.
Meanwhile, I am seeing things come full circle. I have lived to see food banks in Dungannon, where I work. When we were young and angry enough to be marching here against poverty in the 1960s, there was nobody living on food banks. The social housing waiting list in this town is now greater than it was when the Dungannon Housing Action movement started.
And yet, at exactly the same time, the Catholic middle class has never been better off. They were brought in from the cold in the first years of the peace process when there was the security of state jobs. There weren’t jobs for the working class, in many cases, but there was welfare.
The situation has reached such a stage now, though, that even that is under attack. The Tories don’t feel that they need it. Why would they? People want peace and are willing to comply. The flip side of this is that for many people poverty will be written in as a condition of the peace.
The politicians have organized this year so that we will have our election first and the welfare reforms planned under the Tory Fresh Start agreement second. This is because everyone knows the depth of these reforms. We in the North are headed for a period of poverty that will scare people. I see it because of where I’m working.
Sinn Féin will be unable to mitigate against that when it hits the ground. They will be able to say the British government cheated us, but that won’t be enough.
What do you think led Sinn Féin to that point? Is there any chance they could take a leftward turn, bringing their Northern politics closer to the ones they espouse in the South?
I remember my last serious conversation with Gerry Adams on the peace process in the 1990s. I asked him then, “What is your Plan B if this doesn’t work?” He didn’t have one. It was clear that this was the only game in town. We are seeing the effects of that now because even if they wanted to stand up to austerity they couldn’t do it.
I missed a key point in that conversation. At the time, I thought, “This is a high-risk, short-term strategy.” In fact, it wasn’t that. It was a low-risk, long-term strategy. The two sides had fought to an impasse and that impasse was being set up as the new normal.
The British policy was to demilitarize but also to demobilize and demoralize the resistance to its government. Sinn Féin became the mechanism by which that could be done. The peace process, which was supposed to last four or five years, is now almost twenty years old and is not finished yet.
For Sinn Féin the problem is one faced by a lot of electoral parties. You organize a mass movement and you oppose the political system, but to create a space to advance the struggle at a certain point you go into elections. If you win, you become part of that political system and that imposes its own logic.
In order to advance the struggle you have to defend your position, but to defend this position you think you have to make sure a majority votes for you. The end result is that while you got into elections to say what needed to be said, you ended up saying what needed to be said to keep your elected position.
Today, many in Sinn Féin believe that if Martin McGuinness was first minister up here and Gerry Adams was part of a government in Dublin then they would be nine-tenths of the way to their goal. This way of thinking is focused on institutions. It is first and foremost nationalist, with republicanism and democracy far behind.
It will be difficult for Sinn Féin to continue to manage this contradiction in their party. At the same time that they are losing people in the North, workers in the South are turning to them. But Ireland is too small in the long term for one party to be able to be a middle-class party of respectable politics in the North and a working-class party of resistance in the South. There will come a time when that isn’t possible, and I don’t think it is far away.
The task of socialists is not to hammer Sinn Féin because of their positions in the North or to exclude them from progressive movements because their “hands aren’t clean” in the North. Instead we should try to hold them to the progressive positions they adopt against austerity and push that side of the contradiction.
How should we understand “loyalism”? What are its characteristics? What is it out to achieve in the twenty-first century?
Loyalism is clearly differentiated in the North from Unionism. Unionists are middle class; they believe that their interests are best served by maintaining the current situation, British control of this part of the island. They’re like Falkland Islanders, in that sense.
Loyalism’s hallmark is that it represents the poor. Loyalists are working class or unemployed. As the American system disgracefully refers to some of its poorest people as “white trash,” loyalists are perceived within British nationalism as an underclass.
Many from loyalist communities have internalized that themselves. When I work with people from that background I’m often surprised that they will set on the table first, “Okay, so, we know we are no good.” I have talked to young loyalists who say, “We know we are scum.”
I don’t understand any human being starting a conversation saying that they are not human. I ask them why they start that way. There is a clear lack of self-esteem and also a loss of confidence.
If you think about the “dissidence” in poor nationalist communities among people who gained nothing from the struggle despite giving so much, the sense in the loyalist community is that they actually lost. They lost to everybody despite unwavering loyalty to the regime, even to those who challenged it by force. The anger in loyalist communities is fueled by them still not having the price of a loaf and seeing Martin McGuinness up running the country.
Loyalists are acutely aware of the swaggering new rich on the Catholic side. You saw this during the recent flag protests here, where the first response was to mock the way loyalist people said the word “fleg.” The attitude among some was, “You can’t even spell it or say it right, but I am inside City Hall looking out at you.”
This is why I have always believed that this whole process is further sectarianizing the North. The infrastructure of the peace was sectarian itself and continues to reproduce the problem. The result of that is that, while there is some competition between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the United States for poor whites, or between Jeremy Corbyn and the UK Independence Party in Britain, the loyalist community is stuck without such an avenue.
Loyalist politics is based on British nationalism and, for the same reason that Irish nationalism has aligned itself with progressive struggles, British nationalism is compelled to be reactionary. But that is only part of the history of Ulster Protestants. They have been denied other parts of their history, such as the radical struggles of the Presbyterians or the labor movement. Regaining that won’t happen in history class. It will only happen by fighting in your corner and discovering that someone else was here before you.
2015 saw successes for both Podemos in Spain, a new left party with a more populist discourse, and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, who is much more aligned with the traditional left. What is your opinion of the new movements we’re seeing challenging austerity in Europe and what can we learn from them?
When you’re building left-wing movements you have to take into account the context. In Britain there is a long tradition of class politics, much more so than in Irish politics. People understand the idea of “the working class.” It is part of the history of the debate about power.
That’s not to say that because they know the words they understand the music. I don’t think they necessarily have a clearer understanding of the nature of capitalism. By comparison, Spain has a recent history of fascist dictatorship, so the language of democracy still has an energy and dynamism that it is lacking in other places.
But I think you need to ask, “What are people fundamentally taking about?” The demand, it seems to me, is for people to have control over their lives. That is what should take us to where we need to go: the argument for collective ownership of the means of production. If we don’t have this, we don’t have the power to determine how our society develops.
The reality of capitalism today is that a few hundred people who control the major multinational corporations effectively control the destiny of the world. They control our ability to survive.
I think there is a degree of realization that this is the case, not only in the United States and Europe, but in the rebellions in the Middle East and elsewhere. The political systems we have are not capable of dealing with the underlying economic realities.
When people place demands on their government for improvements in conditions, the response from the government is “we don’t have the money.” Governments, of course, don’t earn any money, they rely on their ability to tax to generate it. But governments are no longer able to do this because the wealth that they need to respond to popular pressures and real need is in the hands of increasingly powerful people outside of their control.
The cracks we are seeing in politics are reflective of people saying, “We don’t know how to fix this, but we know it is broken. We need to be doing something else.” Each of us has to fight in the corner where we are but we have to recognize that we cannot beat them one country at a time. We can’t even beat them in one country without the solidarity of others. This is an international struggle.
That will be an increasingly important point as they struggle to maintain control. Capitalism would kill you without batting an eyelid, so how do we organize against it together?
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| Bernadette Devlin McAliskey |
Who also writes using the pseudonym 'Richard Bachman'? | Project MUSE - Maintaining the Cause in the Land of the Free: Ulster Unionists and US Involvement in the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1968-72
Maintaining the Cause in the Land of the Free:
Ulster Unionists and US Involvement in the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1968-72
Andrew Wilson (bio)
From the beginning of the Northern Ireland "Troubles," Irish nationalists have received vital support from America. 1 In the mid-1970s John Hume helped to create the congressional Friends of Ireland, a powerful political network which pressured the British government and worked for a constitutional-nationalist agenda on Capitol Hill. In addition, millions of dollars and substantial supplies of US weapons were channeled to the IRA and played a key role in sustaining its campaign of violence. While this Irish-American connection has been the focus of extensive media and scholarly analysis, there has been virtually nothing written about the small, but fiercely determined, unionist support network in the US. 2 The following article aims to shed light on this previously neglected dimension of Ulster unionism by outlining the various initiatives that unionists took to counteract Irish-American nationalism in the early 1970s. It examines the major challenges faced by unionists in presenting their perspective in the US and assesses the degree to which their objectives were achieved. [End Page 212]
Ulster Unionists and America, 1945–68
Unlike Irish nationalists, unionists have little constituency from which they can draw support in the US. Although over 250,000 Ulster Protestants migrated to America in the eighteenth century, and though most of the 44 million who claimed Irish ancestry in the 1990 census were Protestant, the vast majority are assimilated and have little or no interest in the politics of their ancestral homeland. 3 Nevertheless, there was a small network of Ulster Protestant/unionist organizations active in the US after World War II which provided the leadership and membership of new groups that emerged in response to the outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s.
The Orange Order is the oldest surviving fraternal organization in America which has been overwhelmingly shaped by Ulster Protestants and their descendants. The first lodges were formed in eastern cities in the early nineteenth century and became closely associated with the Anglo-American nativist reaction against the growing numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants. As in Ireland, the annual "Twelfth" commemorations of King William of Orange's victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 were often occasions for conflict. The 1831 parade in Philadelphia, for example, ignited pitched battles between Orangemen and Catholic protesters. The worst violence occurred at the New York parades in 1870 and 1871, during which seventy people died and over one hundred were injured. 4
In 1870 the Loyal Orange Institution of the United States of America (LOI) was formed to administer the network of lodges which had emerged throughout the country. Within a few decades the LOI claimed over one hundred lodges in twenty-one states and nearly 70,000 members. The LOI's vibrancy was reflected in its ability to host the annual convention of the Imperial Grand Orange Council of the World in New York in 1900. 5 [End Page 213]
By the first decades of the twentieth century, however, American Orangeism experienced a steady decline in activism and membership. In the 1920s a bitter internal feud led to the emergence of two rival bodies, each claiming to be the Supreme Grand Lodge. Although this schism was eventually healed, one historian concludes that the "injuries sustained" made the "institution in America incapable of recovering its original vitality and strength." 6 Other analysts make the obvious point that "the scope for an organization devoted to maintenance of British constitutional and cultural forms was severely limited in the American republic." 7 Leaders of the LOI were also perplexed by the inability of brethren to pass enthusiasm for Orangeism to their children—a point later encapsulated in a statement by New York Orangeman Derek Mills, who, when asked to comment about the health of his organization, lamented, "When we get together now, if we get together . . . , we're like a bunch of old ladies, sitting around chatting. We get together to see who's died since the last meeting." 8
Yet, despite all the challenges and difficulties, the Orange Order continued to survive. In the early 1990s it claimed 31 lodges and 600 members, of whom about 40 percent were from Northern Ireland. 9 Until recently, a focus of their social calendar was the annual Labor Day "Twelfth" celebration held at the Orange Order's retirement home in Hatboro', Pennsylvania. The event usually culminated in a parade around the grounds by Orangemen sporting sashes and lodge banners, and with a pipe or flute band playing the usual selection of loyalist tunes. 10 [End Page 214]
While the American Orange Institution's official position was not to "involve itself in any type of politics with sister jurisdictions," it nevertheless provided an important source of support for the various strands of Ulster unionism. From the late 1960s many of the unionist activists in America were prominent figures in the Orange Order. Visiting unionist politicians also frequently used the US lodges to hold meetings and to appeal for support. The Reverend Martin Smyth, MP, for example, made numerous trips to America in his capacity as Imperial Grand Master of the Orange Order. During these visits he took every opportunity to present the unionist perspective and to keep the stateside brethren informed of the latest political developments in Northern Ireland. 11 Not surprisingly, The Sash, the LOI's quarterly newspaper, was fervently unionist, regularly launching scathing attacks on the IRA and its Irish-American support network.
Unionists also attracted some support from Americans who were interested in their ancestral roots. In 1889 the Scotch-Irish Society of America was founded to promote the history and culture of the eighteenth-century immigrants from Ulster. A central element in the agenda of the organization was to emphasize the difference between these earlier Protestant immigrants and the Catholic Irish who came in large numbers during and after the Great Famine. 12 But while the first annual conventions of the society attracted thousands of delegates, and while affiliates were established in eight states, interest in the organization fell dramatically by the end of the nineteenth century. 13 The Pennsylvania Scotch-Irish Society was the only group that survived into the twentieth century. By 1961, despite many years of difficulties, its activities expanded nationwide, and it became the Scotch-Irish Society of the United States. 14 [End Page 215]
Although primarily interested in promoting history and culture, the Scotch-Irish Society maintained a traditional association with Ulster unionism. In the early twentieth century its leaders strongly opposed Home Rule and made Sir Edward Carson and James Craig honorary members. During World War I the society sent donations to help wounded members of the Ulster Volunteer Force and later maintained close contact with Basil Brooke and other leaders of the Stormont government. Additionally, there were always members for whom the initial interest in their Scotch-Irish heritage became a catalyst for supporting the unionist cause in America. Thus, when the "Troubles" erupted in Northern Ireland, leaders of the Scotch-Irish Society were among the first to defend the Stormont government with a campaign of local media appearances and letters to newspapers. 15
The Ulster-Irish Society (UIS) was the only other unionist organization active in the decades after World War II. Founded in 1927 by Ulster Protestants in New York City, the UIS developed into a vibrant social and cultural network, helping Northern Ireland immigrants to find work and adjust to life in the Big Apple. Although total membership never reached more than a few hundred, the Ulster Club in Kearney, New Jersey, was a very active affiliate, and branches formed in Illinois, California, and Michigan. 16
The society tried to support the unionist cause whenever possible. It organized protests against the Irish-American anti-partition campaigns in the early 1950s, taking every opportunity to remind Americans about Éire's neutrality during World War II and about Eamon de Valera's message of condolence at the German Embassy in Dublin after Hitler's death, and emphasizing the important role that Northern Ireland had played in the Allied victory. UIS activists also kept in close communication with Stormont leaders and organized receptions, media contacts, and logistical support whenever they came to New York. 17 [End Page 216]
There was considerable cooperation and cross-membership between the three "Ulster" organizations. Bill Best, for example, a Belfast native who owned a travel agency in New York, was president of the Ulster-Irish Society and became grand master of the LOI. All three groups also suffered from similar problems. The challenges presented by Scotch-Irish assimilation were compounded by tougher immigration laws that drastically reduced the number of Irish natives entering the United States throughout most of the twentieth century. The vast majority of those who were able to gain admission came from the Irish Republic or were Catholics from Northern Ireland, driven into exile by the lack of opportunities for the nationalist minority under the Stormont regime. Most Ulster Protestants who migrated to North America tended to settle in Canada. 18
For the small number of Ulster Protestants who did come to the US, the Irish cultural environment they found was generally a "cold house" for anyone with unionist sensitivities. Many aspects of what one unionist commentator describes as the "faux Irishness" in America, from bars to St. Patrick's Day parades, were decidedly nationalist in tone. 19 It was easier for most in this environment to suppress their unionism and to get on with life. Thus, when journalist Wendy Martin interviewed Ulster Protestant immigrants in the early 1970s, it was hardly surprising that she found that most were hesitant to even talk about the "Troubles" and simply wanted to be left in peace. 20
Unionists and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, 1969–70
In the decades after World War II political developments in Northern Ireland were rarely covered in the American media. The formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in [End Page 217] 1967, however, and its campaign to end anti-Catholic discrimination led to an unprecedented focus on communal divisions in the province. In an effort to make the Irish situation more comprehensible to Americans, media reports constantly tried to explain the NICRA in the context of the African-American civil-rights campaign. Catholics were described as "White Negroes," the attitudes of Protestant extremists were portrayed as similar to the racism of poor whites in the Deep South, and the Orange Order was often compared to the Ku Klux Klan. 21 Given such a negative framework of analysis, editorial opinion and commentaries generally displayed little sympathy for unionism or the Northern Ireland government.
Anger among unionists at their negative portrayal in the US media was compounded by the activities of NICRA support groups. The American Congress for Irish Freedom (ACIF), in particular, had launched an extensive publicity campaign against the Special Powers Act, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the Northern Ireland government's civil-rights record. Unionist leaders were especially infuriated by the ACIF's attempts to discourage American firms from investing in Ulster because of what they alleged was "systematic anti-Catholic discrimination in the workplace." Prime Minister Terence O'Neill had attracted a considerable number of US companies to the province, and there was growing alarm that this success might be undermined. In early April 1969, Robert Porter, the Northern Ireland minister for home affairs, issued a scathing attack against the ACIF, accusing it of grossly distorting and misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to "vilify and denigrate the government." 22 Shortly afterward Terence O'Neill embarked on an impromptu trip to the US, trying to defend his government's record and to repair whatever damage the ACIF campaign was having on investment and the tourist industry in Northern Ireland. 23 [End Page 218]
O'Neill had been a frequent visitor to the US during his term in office, and at a meeting with Lyndon Johnson in 1964 he became the first Ulster premier to be officially received at the White House. Unionists failed to capitalize on this meeting, however, and never developed a significant network of contacts or friends in Washington. 24 Nevertheless, in July 1969, James Chichester-Clark, the new prime minister of Northern Ireland, announced that he would lead a major unionist offensive against Irish-American groups and try to influence US political leaders. 25 At a lavish news conference in Belfast the Ulster Unionist Party launched a financial appeal to support a sustained campaign to "counter adverse propaganda and tell the world the truth about Ulster." 26
Although the deepening political crisis in Northern Ireland prevented Chicester-Clark from leaving the province, the need for unionist action was made imperative when Bernadette Devlin, the most internationally recognizable and dynamic figure in the civil- rights movement, launched a publicity and fund-raising tour of the US in August 1969. Ever since her election to the British parliament at the age of twenty-one, the American media had continually portrayed her as an "Irish Joan of Arc"—a feisty, mini-skirted heroine, courageously battling injustice. 27 When Devlin arrived in the US on 21 August, one analyst described how journalists "lunged at her with undisguised passion, falling on her every word." 28 Press reports in Ireland described the warm reception that she had received at the United Nations and from New York Mayor John Lindsay, the large crowds attending her rallies, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars rolling into her campaign treasury.
Stormont officials were deeply alarmed at the reports from America. Even though deep divisions within the Unionist Party had complicated plans for a publicity drive, Minister of Commerce Roy [End Page 219] Bradford announced that a "truth squad" would soon be dispatched across the Atlantic to take on Devlin and to present the government's case. 29 On 29 August, after hastily coordinating an itinerary with the Ulster-Irish Society and the Orange Order, Robin Bailie, a member of the Stormont parliament, and William Stratton Mills, a member of the British House of Commons, arrived in New York to spearhead the Unionist Party's first coordinated US publicity offensive of the "Troubles." 30
The two unionist leaders attracted plenty of media attention. The New York Times ran daily reports on their activities, and both made frequent appearances on metropolitan TV and radio programs, usually fielding called-in questions and debating Irish-American activists. 31 Bailie and Stratton Mills also spoke at gatherings of the Ulster-Irish Society and held a rally with hundreds of Orangemen at the Hatboro' Home in Pennsylvania. 32 The climax of the campaign came with a nationally televised debate between Stratton Mills and Devlin—a program that was subsequently rebroadcast in Ireland. The encounter was marked by heated exchanges between the two politicians and by vain attempts by the moderator to maintain order. There were scuffles and jeering in the audience, equally composed of Devlin supporters seated beneath an Irish Tricolor and members of the Ulster-Irish Society clustered around a Union Jack. 33 While both sides claimed victory, neutral observers were left with an understandable sense of bewilderment. Irish Times television critic Ken Gray, for example, felt that the debate "consisted of long-winded accusation and counter-accusation on relatively minor points"; he lamented that "for American audiences it can only have been confirmation of traditional suspicions that all the Irish, north [End Page 220] and south, Catholic and Protestant, are more than a little round the bend." 34
Although Bailie and Stratton Mills tried to publicize Stormont's recent civil-rights reforms, their principal objective was to destroy Bernadette Devlin's image in America. The strategy they employed, while far from subtle and often loose with the facts, had some success in tapping into American anticommunist sentiment. At all of their press conferences and meetings the "truth squad" leaders emphasized Devlin's left-wing politics, repeatedly describing her as "Fidel Castro in a mini-skirt." They also tried to convince the American media and US audiences that People's Democracy was "a weird mélange of Communists, Trotskyites, Socialists, Maoists, Castroites, assorted leftists, and revolutionaries." 35 To reinforce the point, they distributed a glossy brochure entitled Ulster: The Facts, featuring a front-page photo of Devlin breaking paving stones for ammunition during riots in Derry. 36
By the end of her tour some major metropolitan newspapers had reassessed their "saintly" view of Devlin and denounced her "radical politics." The Detroit News described her as a "rabble rouser" and "mini-skirted Danny the Red," while the Chicago Tribune condemned her association with the "barefoot bluejean brigade" and suggested that her actions would only help "communists and other subversives who regard the religious conflict as a pretext for turning all of Ireland into Britain's Cuba." 37 While much of this criticism stemmed from Devlin's highly publicized confrontations with conservative Irish Americans, unionists were quick to give credit to the "truth squad's" efforts. A Belfast News Letter editorial writer gloated:
When people are on a winning wicket, it is prudent to make the most of it. That she has not done so would seem to indicate hopes disappointed. This is hardly surprising. Miss Devlin's brand of propaganda, like Hitler's, runs its course until its falsity is exposed and it is [End Page 221] seen for what it is worth. It is this point at which the M.P. for Mid-Ulster stands today. Her stock has slumped, and even Irish-Americans, traditionally so generous to the cause of the 'oul sod,' have on this occasion tightened their purse-strings. By doing so, they have passed a silent vote of no confidence in her campaign. 38
Like "establishment" unionists in the Stormont government, Ian Paisley, the central figure in the loyalist reaction to the civil-rights movement, was incensed by reports of Devlin's trip to the US. But when he heard that Bailie and Stratton Mills were also attacking him as a "troublemaker" and a "divisive influence in the unionist community," the firebrand preacher determined to counter the "lying slanders" against him by launching his own publicity and fund-raising campaign. Never one for understatement, Paisley, at a Belfast news conference on 23 August, announced that he was heading to America to conduct "one of the most important missions for Ulster ever undertaken." 39
From the early 1960s Paisley's fervent preaching had won him numerous admirers among American fundamentalists. One of the most prominent was the Reverend Carl McIntire, head of the ultra-conservative International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) in New Jersey, and a fierce opponent of the ecumenical movement. By the mid-1960s McIntire's blend of fundamentalist Christianity and right-wing politics had attracted a large popular following. Donations from his supporters helped to create a multimillion-dollar ministry based on a publishing house and radio broadcasts which aired daily on over six hundred stations throughout the US. 40
Paisley's influence made McIntire a fiery supporter of the loyalist cause. As a guest speaker at militant rallies in Belfast's Ulster Hall, he castigated the reformism of the O'Neill administration and denounced the NICRA as similar to the "black revolutionaries in the US who burned American cities." 41 When Bernadette Devlin arrived in New York, McIntire used his radio broadcasts to condemn [End Page 222] her as a "mini-skirted Marxist" who was "using the religious tension in Northern Ireland to help bring about a communist revolution." He also kept Paisley closely informed of her activities and statements, encouraging him to come over immediately and "set the record straight." 42
Paisley was hoping for a face-to-face media confrontation with either Devlin or the "truth squad," but by the time that he arrived in Philadelphia on 6 September, both his adversaries had returned to Northern Ireland. Undeterred, at an airport press reception, accompanied by McIntire and a group of about one hundred and fifty supporters waving Ulster flags and anti-Devlin placards, Paisley announced that his publicity campaign would continue. 43 The next day he held forth on a phone-in program on one of McIntire's radio affiliates, delivering his customary savaging of political opponents and raising $5,000 for "Protestants who had suffered financial setbacks as a result of the violence in Northern Ireland." 44
Paisley also held a rally and fund-raiser at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Its president, Bob Jones, Jr., was in many ways the archetypical "Bible Belt" fundamentalist. Politically ultra-conservative and prone to fierce theological conflicts with evangelicals whom he felt were too liberal, Jones led a college infamous for its refusal to accept African-American students and then, when federal legislation made this illegal, for maintaining a ban on interracial dating. At the same time, however, Jones was a noted connoisseur of art and spent years acquiring a superb collection of Italian baroque paintings for BJU's gallery. He was also a gifted Shakespearean actor, once turning down a contract with Warner Brothers Studios, and he developed a renowned program of theatrical and operatic productions on campus. 45
Jones first met Ian Paisley in 1962 at an anti-ecumenical protest in Amsterdam. He was immediately impressed by the Ulsterman's "commitment to the gospel" and soon regarded him as "one of the [End Page 223] greatest living preachers." 46 The Amsterdam meeting was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Paisley became a frequent speaker at Bob Jones University, eventually joined its board of trustees, and, from this position, established contacts with influential southern politicians, such as Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. Jones was also a regular visitor to Northern Ireland. In 1966 he traveled to Belfast to confer an honorary doctorate on Paisley. During the trip his distaste for popery was reinforced when he was pelted with stones by a hostile Catholic crowd during an evangelical crusade in Armagh city. 47 The following year Jones delivered the keynote speech at the dedication ceremony for Paisley's Martyrs' Memorial Church, for which $48,000 had been raised in the US. 48
Like Carl McIntire, Jones fully embraced Paisley's politico-religious vision. He condemned the mainstream Irish Protestant churches as "full of apostasy" and believed that the Northern Ireland conflict was "due to satanic hatred of the gospel and of God's people." 49 In one of his most colorful outbursts, delivered after "pressure from a Fenian Irish priest" led the State Department to cancel Paisley's US visa in 1982, Jones described Alexander Haig as "a monster in human flesh and a demon-possessed instrument to destroy America." He then asked his students to pray that "the Lord will smite him, hip and thigh, bone and marrow, heart and lungs, and all there is to him, and He shall destroy him quickly and utterly." 50
Support from Jones, McIntire, and other fundamentalists could not prevent the drop in media interest in Paisley's US tour when the prospect of a showdown with Bernadette Devlin failed to materialize. The few reports that appeared were mostly negative, focusing on Mayor Lindsay's refusal to meet with Paisley and on the vociferous Irish-American protests at some of his appearances. The "Big [End Page 224] Man's" fund-raising, which he claimed had netted $20,000, also fell short of initial projections. 51
Yet in spite of the mixed results of this trip, Paisley continued to make regular visits to the US to promote his theological and political beliefs. His zealous Protestantism always attracted a network of born-again Christian admirers, some of whom formed the congregations for several branches of his Free Presbyterian Church in America. 52 And there has always been a small but devoted cadre of supporters who, like Jones and McIntire, were initially attracted by his fire-and-brimstone fundamentalism and then endorsed his brand of unionist politics. 53
Unionists and America, 1970–72
The early 1970s saw a major increase in Irish-American involvement in Northern Ireland. The Irish Northern Aid Committee (Noraid), formed in April 1970, became an important source of financial support for the Irish republican movement. Noraid also launched anti-unionist and anti-British publicity campaigns that increased in effectiveness as the nationalist community was perceived to be the target of state repression, particularly with the introduction of internment (9 August 1971) and the events of Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972). In addition, clandestine Irish-American gun-running cells began sending supplies of weapons which significantly increased the IRA's military capabilities. 54
Unionists reserved particular scorn for Noraid activists. They were constantly vilified for supporting "a campaign of murder [End Page 225] against the Protestant community from the safety of their homes across the Atlantic." Irish-American politicians were also castigated as ignorant of the political realities in Ulster and primarily motivated by cynical opportunism aimed at securing electoral support. In October 1971, for example, when Senator Edward Kennedy introduced a congressional resolution calling for the removal of British troops and Irish unification, the enraged unionist response set the standard for over two decades of reaction to Irish-American political involvement. Prime Minister Brian Faulkner condemned Kennedy for swallowing "the hoary old propaganda of the IRA" and accused him of playing "American politics with Ulster people's lives." 55 There were also plenty of references to Chappaquiddick and suggestions that the senator would be better employed in sorting out his own problems than in initiating his "unwanted interference in the internal affairs of the UK." 56 A front-page editorial in the Belfast News Letter captured the essence of unionist opinion by proclaiming that the Scotch-Irish had "carved out a nation years before the departure of the Kennedys and the Famine Irish from the shores of County Wexford," and then concluding,
Of all Senator Edward Kennedy's indiscretions—and they are too well remembered to recall here—his dabbling in the affairs of the United Kingdom is most mischievous and dangerous. His lack of knowledge of the situation in Ulster might be excused, but to presume to advise, indeed to direct, from that position is to display again the foolish arrogance for which he has established a reputation and the facility to misjudge which was characteristic of his father. . . . Kennedy has succeeded only in exposing to the world his ignorance, his vanity, and, worst of all, his prejudice. 57 [End Page 226]
While Unionist Party officials continually issued statements attacking Irish-American involvement, a few were convinced that nurturing a grassroots-support network in the US could be an effective way to get their views across. Although, as noted earlier, the prospects for such a network were extremely limited, there were a few individuals willing to stand up and challenge Irish America. The Reverend Charles Reynolds in New York, from a fiercely unionist background in Belfast, was the most active and outspoken. Reynolds, who married an American missionary whom he met while serving with the Royal Air Force Regiment in India during World War II, first came to the US in the late 1940s. In 1957, after returning from five years of missionary work in India, he became associate pastor of a Methodist church in Manchester, Connecticut. The congregation had a sizeable contingent of textile workers from Northern Ireland who had been brought over by the local Cheney Silk Mills. They helped to maintain an active British Legion Club, an Orange Hall, and an Ulster Pipe Band which led the town's annual celebration of "the Twelfth." 58 Reynolds, a fervent Orangeman, was initiated into the Royal Black Preceptory in Manchester before moving to Attleboro, Massachusetts, to become pastor of the Methodist congregation there. After six years of service he was transferred to New York to administer the headquarters of Ludhiana Christian Medical College. 59
In New York, Reynolds became active in the Ulster-Irish Society and eventually rose to prominence as a vocal critic of Irish-American support for the NICRA. Officials at Unionist Party headquarters in Belfast, who sent him information on the latest political developments, tried to support his efforts whenever possible. Reynolds also made frequent trips to Northern Ireland, met with politicians and Stormont ministers, and encouraged them to bring the unionist case to the US. In August 1971, for example, he helped to arrange for John Taylor, minister for home affairs, to come to New York to participate [End Page 227] in a number of television debates with Irish-American nationalist leaders. 60 In September he hosted the Reverend Martin Smyth and the Reverend Ernest Long, joining them in a confrontation with Noraid supporters outside the court where deportation proceedings were being held against the noted IRA commander Joe Cahill. 61
The weakness of the Ulster-Irish Society, combined with his deep alarm at the rising levels of Irish-American activism, spurred Reynolds to establish the Northern Ireland Service Council (NISC) in October 1971. The principal objectives of this group were to support and encourage more unionist publicity trips to the US, to coordinate activities between "societies in the US with Ulster/Scottish-Irish ethnic origin," to raise and disburse funds, and to serve as a relief agency "for emergency situations in Northern Ireland." 62 At its peak the NISC listed over one hundred members. Most were originally from, or had ancestral links to, Northern Ireland and had been involved with the UIS and the Orange Order. There were a few, however, whose surnames—such as De Angelis, Jacono, and Singerman—reflected New York's cosmopolitanism. 63
Reynolds encouraged activists in the NISC to campaign against what he saw as a "nationalist bias" in the US media. In addition to making appearances on local television and radio, he coordinated a relentless pro-unionist letter-writing campaign to media executives, newspaper editors, and political commentators on Irish affairs. It was often the case that much of this correspondence was ignored and had little impact, but there were occasional successes. On 11 October 1971, for example, the New York Times printed one of Reynolds's letters warning Americans to ignore appeals for financial contributions from Noraid because donations would be used to support the "senseless slaughter and carnage being perpetrated by the IRA." 64 [End Page 228]
The NISC had a limited budget to pay for general administration, rooms for meetings, visits by unionists to New York, and its yearly banquet. Most of the financial resources of the group came from membership dues and donations from supporters in various parts of the US, as well as through occasional mail solicitations to members of the Orange Order. 65 While the NISC rarely had more than a few hundred dollars in its treasury, it sometimes bought advertising space in Northern Ireland newspapers to support the Unionist Party at election time. 66 Reynolds also established a Protestant Relief Fund to send money to the Grand Orange Lodge in Belfast for distribution to "victims of republican violence." Collections were taken at the Orange Home's "Twelfth" celebrations, and some individual lodges and activists sent donations to the appeal. 67 This financial drive was quickly ended, however, when Reynolds became concerned that some funds might end up in the hands of loyalist paramilitaries. 68
Reynolds tried to coordinate activities with, and encourage the formation of, other unionist groups in the US. One of his few successes was with Harry Bennison and the Ulster American Loyalists (UAL) in California. Bennison, who left Belfast in 1967 to work as a ship's designer in New York, had moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s to take a job with a firm of naval architects. He began socializing with a group of Ulster Protestant exiles who, like himself, had been recruited by shipping companies or were employed in the West Coast aerospace industry. 69 Many in the group were frustrated at the lack of unionist voices in the local media and were alarmed by Noraid activities in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In an effort to challenge what they saw as the "pervasive nationalist influence in [End Page 229] California," they formed the Ulster American Loyalists (UAL) in early 1972. 70
The UAL held monthly meetings at Bennison's home, usually attracting between fifty and seventy activists. They mixed strategy sessions and political seminars on Northern Ireland with barbecues and socializing. 71 There was so much initial interest that Bill Irwin, a friend of Bennison and fellow Ulster exile, formed a second chapter in San Francisco. The organization also began publishing a small paper, the UAL Newsletter, which contained updates on activities, news from Northern Ireland, articles on Scotch-Irish history, and fierce editorial attacks on the IRA and Noraid. 72
The UAL's activities were basically similar to those of the NISC. Bennison opposed Irish-American nationalists on local television and radio; directed letter-writing campaigns to the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle; senta constant stream of telegrams to political leaders in Washington, London, and Belfast; and occasionally organized counterdemonstrations against Noraid events. 73 The UAL's political stance, however, tended to be more militant than that of the NISC. In a 1972 letter to the Los Angeles Times, for example, Bennison maintained that the UDA was formed "to protect the lives and heritage of the vast majority of Northern Ireland people against left-wing IRA terrorism." He then made the following comment on two bomb attacks in Dublin that were linked to loyalist paramilitaries: "After hundreds of explosions in Northern Ireland, if it took just two to make the government of the Republic take action against the IRA, then so be it. For four years the IRA has mounted its murderous attacks against Northern Ireland and then returned to the sanctuary of the Republic!" 74
In the months after its formation the UAL forged links with the Orange Order, loyalist groups in Canada, and some members of the Northern Ireland Association—a small political and social group in Burbank, California, composed of both Protestant and Catholic [End Page 230] immigrants. 75 Bennison, who knew Charles Reynolds when he was in New York, also began coordinating activities with the NISC. Both men then made connections with the Ulster Protestant Association (UPA) in Philadelphia, a group composed of about one hundred members, many of whom were Paisleyites. Sam Calderwood, the leading figure in the UPA, came from the staunchly loyalist Lower Shankill area of Belfast and had personal connections with some prominent paramilitary leaders. 76
The first opportunity for these new unionist support groups to work together came in late February 1972 when congressional hearings were held on Senator Edward Kennedy's Northern Ireland resolutions. Charles Reynolds felt that it was essential for unionists to be heard in Washington and helped to arrange for a delegation from Belfast to appear before the committee. Bill Henderson, a member of the Unionist Party's executive committee and publisher of the Belfast News Letter, led a group which included Patrick Macrory, chairman of a committee which had recently proposed sweeping reforms of local government in Northern Ireland, and David Smyth, a director of the party's research department. Reynolds returned from India to help arrange media appearances for the group in New York and to organize submissions from the American unionists. 77 Under Reynolds's direction each member of the unionist delegation tried to refute the nationalist presentations. Bill Henderson focused on the human consequences of IRA violence and tried to link it to international Marxist revolution. Reynolds defended the Stormont government, blaming Catholics for "sowing the seeds of division in the Ulster community" because they "sulked in sullen silence and suspicion" instead of fully participating in Northern Ireland's institutions. Patrick Macrory emphasized that the government was committed to making sweeping reforms which would effectively address Catholic grievances, while Harry Bennison defended internment as "an unfortunate but necessary" response to IRA violence and justified [End Page 231] it by reference to the US government's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. 78
The members of the unionist delegation, in public statements at least, were convinced that they had effectively countered the nationalist testimony. Bill Henderson later asserted, "I am satisfied that we got Ulster's case put firmly across and, from the public comment they made, influential members of the sub-committee were obviously impressed." 79 Brian Faulkner lavished praise on the American unionist groups and later expressed his gratitude in the following telegram to Charles Reynolds:
At a time when Northern Ireland is undergoing one of the gravest crises in its history, it is of immense encouragement to me and my colleagues in government . . . to know there are representatives like you and Bill Best and organizations such as the Northern Ireland Service Council and Ulster-Irish Society prepared to do so much to defend our constitution against the many-faced enemies seeking to destroy the fabric of democracy. . . . May I say with deep sincerity how much I personally appreciate your dedication and unselfishness in leaving your work in India to return specially to the US to help so successfully in rebutting the anti-Ulster testimony at the Washington hearings. Reports reaching me indicate that the mission, although small numerically, lacked nothing in cogency and effectiveness and, overall, did a splendid job in counter-balancing the record. We are most fortunate to have men of the character, caliber, and ability of you and Bill and your organizations projecting the authoritative side of Northern Ireland's case so many thousands of miles away. 80
Despite Faulkner's glowing assessment, press reports suggest more modest results from the unionist presentation. The Times of London, for example, claimed that the unionist submissions had limited impact, as they were given on the last day of the proceedings, following two days of nationalist testimony, and that many neutral observers had already left Capitol Hill. In addition, Bill Henderson [End Page 232] was criticized for engaging in "fruitless and occasionally acrimonious exchanges" with committee members that delayed the other unionist presentations until late in the afternoon. 81
American unionists had barely time to assess their impact in Washington when the British government, in the midst of the most violent year in the "Troubles," prorogued Stormont and imposed direct rule from Westminster. As in Northern Ireland, most members of the US unionist network were embittered by what they saw as Edward Heath's betrayal of their prime minister. Charles Reynolds and his associates immediately offered their support to Faulkner and persuaded him to come to America in late June to defend his administration and to explain the unionist case to the media.
Faulkner, who presided over the introduction of internment and Bloody Sunday, was a hated figure among Irish-American nationalists. To avoid as many protests as possible, Reynolds, who directed Faulkner's agenda, had to take a series of "security precautions." When the former prime minister departed from London, it was leaked to the press that he would fly directly to New York. But to avoid demonstrators who were waiting at JFK airport, Faulkner flew to Los Angeles, where Harry Bennison and the UAL organized media appearances and receptions with local dignitaries. After Faulkner had spent a few days on the West Coast, it was announced that he would be flying straight to New York. But again, to avoid protesters, a short stopover was organized in Philadelphia, where members of the UPA greeted him at the airport and arranged a press conference. While these tactics helped to confuse Irish-American demonstrators, US agents who were providing security for Faulkner were livid with Reynolds for deliberately misleading them about the flight itinerary. 82
Faulkner's eventual arrival in New York generated extensive media coverage. He gave a succession of press interviews, spoke with the editorial boards of the city's major newspapers, and appeared on the nationwide breakfast talk-show "Good Morning [End Page 233] America." During one interview with an evening radio call-in show in Philadelphia, Reynolds alerted Sam Calderwood and got members of the UPA to block the lines to the station with their questions, thus ensuring that Faulkner had time to fully explain his views and to receive supportive responses. Although Faulkner managed to sidestep Noraid demonstrators with several Indiana Jones-like escapes through freight elevators, underground garages, and back exits, the protests significantly disrupted his public appearances. An important news conference at the New York Press Club had to be canceled following a bomb threat, and an Irish Catholic waitress disrupted a business luncheon by shouting obscenities while Lucy Faulkner was addressing the invited guests.
In this atmosphere of continuing protests and bomb threats, Reynolds concluded Faulkner's trip with a gala banquet on 1 July 1972 at the Biltmore Hotel. Over one hundred members of the NISC, the Ulster-Irish Society, and the Orange Order attended an event which culminated in a rousing call by Faulkner for continued unionist activism in America, followed by a piper playing a lament to commemorate the anniversary of the sacrifice of the 36th Ulster Division at the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, an event with enormous significance in unionist historical memory.
Conclusion
The lament at the Biltmore might just as well have been for unionist efforts to put their case across in America, for Faulkner's visit marked the pinnacle of transatlantic publicity initiatives in this period and would not be matched for over a decade. Throughout most of the 1970s and 1980s, while they were always quick to issue scathing condemnations of Irish-American involvement, unionists did virtually nothing to present an alternative perspective on Northern Ireland affairs in the US. Within the Official Unionist Party only the Reverend Martin Smyth and deputy leader Harold McCusker tried to bring their message to America, but their trips were sporadic and given virtually no support from Glengall Street. Even Ian Paisley usually focused on his pastoral duties while in the US and rarely engaged in exclusively political initiatives. The few campaigns that unionists did organize were mostly spontaneous responses to [End Page 234] fears that American public opinion was rising in support of Irish republicanism. A classic example of this was the joint OUP-DUP "Operation USA" tour in 1982, launched in an attempt to counteract the sympathy generated for Bobby Sands and other hunger strikers who had died in the Maze Prison. 83
There are many reasons, aside from the lack of a constituency, why there was no developed strategy to sell unionism in the US. Both the OUP and DUP operated on modest budgets, and there was little available cash to sustain ongoing transatlantic publicity campaigns. Leaders of both parties usually felt that their limited resources were better spent on electoral campaigns at home. They also believed that if unionist perspectives had to be presented outside Northern Ireland, it was vastly more important to target British officials in London rather than political leaders in Washington. In addition, many unionists felt that trying to engage Irish Americans at the grassroots was a waste of time because of their "implacable hostility and pervasive nationalism." Appearing at a public forum in any city with a large Irish activist community would have been a daunting prospect for even the most fearless unionist.
It was also the case that, while there were plenty of policy issues over which they disagreed with British ministers, unionists felt that the British government was looking after most of their concerns in America. The British Embassy in Washington and the British Information Service in New York used their considerable resources to counteract the political influence of Irish America. The Anglo-American "special relationship" generally ensured that the US government kept out of Northern Ireland affairs, while federal law-enforcement agencies vigorously pursued Irish-American gun-runners and helped to apprehend IRA fugitives.
With little encouragement from the political parties in Northern Ireland, and with few unionists coming over, membership of the support groups in America quickly declined. By the mid-1970s the unionist "network" had been reduced to a few individuals mostly operating in isolation. The effectiveness of American unionism was further reduced as political divisions between activists mirrored the splits between unionists in Northern Ireland. Within the NISC, [End Page 235] for example, some members strongly disagreed with Charles Reynolds's continued support for Brian Faulkner, particularly after his acceptance of power-sharing in the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973. In addition, Reynolds's distaste for Ian Paisley (he compared him to Hitler and blamed him for destroying unionist unity) blocked what slim potential there might have been for joint action with Bob Jones and company.
Faced with the disintegration of the groups that they had created, the leaders of American unionism struggled to maintain their activities. Harry Bennison continued to appear in local media for a few years but increasingly devoted his energies to promoting the Orange Order in California. In 1998 he was instrumental in establishing Ulster-Scots LOL 1690 in Los Angeles, the first new American lodge to be instituted in over twenty years. 84
When the UPA fell apart in the mid-1970s, Sam Calderwood joined with Harold Alexander, a fellow Belfast native and resident of Philadelphia, in promoting political independence as a solution to Northern Ireland's problems. In 1979 they helped to organize a US tour by loyalist paramilitary leaders to explain details of this plan and to secure help from Irish-American lawyers in drafting a constitution and bill of rights for the proposed new state. When this effort attracted little interest, Calderwood faded from prominence and subsequently focused on activities linked to Philadelphia's British Legion Club. 85
Of all the early leaders of American unionist groups, Charles Reynolds remained the most active politically. Despite the steady decline in NISC membership, his commentary and letter-writing [End Page 236] campaigns never diminished. In the mid-1970s he also began bringing small groups of Americans on tours of Northern Ireland, partly to expose participants to unionism and "undermine negative Irish-American propaganda." In addition, Reynolds preserved close personal ties with leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party and played an important role in encouraging them to break out of their traditional isolationism and to launch an engagement with the Clinton administration that would become the high-water mark of all unionist efforts in America.
The UUP's American initiatives were driven by the Clinton administration's increasing involvement after 1992 in the Northern Ireland "peace process." Most unionists believed that the initial US policies, particularly the granting of a visa to Gerry Adams, came in response to powerful Irish-American lobbyists who were sympathetic to Sinn Féin. While some unionists, mostly in the DUP, reacted in the expected way, condemning Clinton, in one memorable instance, as a "draft-dodging, IRA-loving pest," a progressive faction within the UUP concluded that unionism had no alternative but to try to counter the Irish-American lobby and to provide Washington with a more "balanced" political perspective.
Clinton officials strongly encouraged the UUP progressives to come to America, make their case, and see for themselves that the White House had no hidden nationalist agenda. Nancy Soderberg, responsible for Irish affairs on the National Security Council, was concerned that the unfavorable unionist perception of the administration would ultimately weaken Clinton's ability to advance a comprehensive peace deal. There was also an assumption that regular unionist visits could help to erode provincialism and expose them to "American opinions on compromise and talking to one's enemies." 86
David Trimble, after becoming UUP leader in 1995, led a continuous stream of unionist delegations to Washington, where they were given an extraordinary level of access to Clinton and other top officials in the White House. Eventually, with the financial support of Ulster businessman Tony Cully-Foster, the UUP established a permanent office in the capitol to coordinate their trips, lobby Congress, [End Page 237] and present unionist viewpoints to the media. Trimble and his supporters even tried to bring their message to Irish-American audiences through a campaign of attending previously taboo social gatherings and appearing at public debates in New York, Boston, and Chicago.
Even though these UUP initiatives were conducted at an unprecedented level of intensity, the results were mixed. Unionist delegations failed to make a noticeable impact on lawmakers in Congress, and editorial opinion in major US newspapers generally remained critical of unionist positions, although David Trimble was given considerable praise for his role in the making of the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998. 87 More positively, the UUP's access to the White House allowed unionist concerns to be brought directly to the Clinton administration and perhaps contributed to a more nuanced approach to Northern Ireland. Additionally, in explaining their views at grassroots Irish-American forums, UUP leaders forced some nationalist listeners to reassess traditional assumptions about the fragility of unionist culture. Although some of these gatherings generated fiercely hostile exchanges, and though there were few conversions, the intensity of unionist presentations debunked the misconception of some Irish Americans that "unionists are a transplanted political flower which will whither once the English gardener has gone." 88
The Bush administration, while maintaining a special envoy and paying lip service to supporting the "peace process," relegated Northern Ireland well down its list of priorities. Consequently, the UUP, seeing less need for missions to Washington, drastically reduced its transatlantic campaign—a process further accelerated by the deep internal struggles within the party over the implementation [End Page 238] of the Good Friday Agreement. In the past few years UUP leaders have reverted to the traditional approach of reacting to Irish-American involvement from afar. As a result, those in the US interested in Northern Ireland affairs, and who retain the potential to have a significant influence on the province, are not hearing unionist views directly, and the American political arena has been left open almost exclusively to Sinn Féin.
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Renzo Piano is the architect of a new main building, due to open in 2015, for the Whitney Museum of American Art in the meatpacking district of which city? | The Building | Whitney Museum of American Art
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The Building
Designed by architect Renzo Piano and situated between the High Line and the Hudson River, the Whitney's building in the Meatpacking District vastly increases the Museum’s exhibition and programming space, offering the most expansive display ever of its unsurpassed collection of modern and contemporary American art.
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Designed by architect Renzo Piano, the Whitney's building in the Meatpacking District includes approximately 50,000 square feet of indoor galleries and 13,000 square feet of outdoor exhibition space and terraces facing the High Line. An expansive gallery for special exhibitions is approximately 18,000 square feet in area, making it the largest column-free museum gallery in New York City. Additional exhibition space includes a lobby gallery (accessible free of charge), two floors for the permanent collection, and a special exhibitions gallery on the top floor.
According to Mr. Piano, “The design for the new museum emerges equally from a close study of the Whitney’s needs and from a response to this remarkable site. We wanted to draw on its vitality and at the same time enhance its rich character. The first big gesture, then, is the cantilevered entrance, which transforms the area outside the building into a large, sheltered public space. At this gathering place beneath the High Line, visitors will see through the building entrance and the large windows on the west side to the Hudson River beyond. Here, all at once, you have the water, the park, the powerful industrial structures and the exciting mix of people, brought together and focused by this new building and the experience of art.”
The dramatically cantilevered entrance along Gansevoort Street shelters an 8,500-square-foot outdoor plaza or “largo,” a public gathering space steps away from the southern entrance to the High Line. The building also includes an education center offering state-of-the-art classrooms; a multi-use black box theater for film, video, and performance with an adjacent outdoor gallery; a 170-seat theater with stunning views of the Hudson River; and a Works on Paper Study Center, Conservation Lab, and Library Reading Room. The classrooms, theater, and study center are all firsts for the Whitney.
A retail shop on the ground-floor level contributes to the busy street life of the area. A ground-floor restaurant and top-floor cafe are operated by renowned restaurateur Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group.
Mr. Piano’s design takes a strong and strikingly asymmetrical form—one that responds to the industrial character of the neighboring loft buildings and overhead railway while asserting a contemporary, sculptural presence. The upper stories of the building overlook the Hudson River on its west, and step back gracefully from the elevated High Line Park to its east.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is presenting exhibitions and educational programming at the Whitney’s uptown building for a period of eight years, with the possibility of extending the agreement for a longer term.
Project Team
Owner’s Rep: Gardiner & Theobald, Inc.
Design Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Executive Architect: Cooper, Robertson & Partners
MEP Engineer: Jaros, Baum & Bolles
Lighting/Daylighting Engineer: Ove Arup & Partners
Structural Engineer: Robert Silman Associates
Construction Manager: Turner Construction, LLC
Landscape Architect: Mathews Nielsen
About Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1937, into a family of builders. In his home city he has strong roots, sentimental and cultural, with its historic center, the port, the sea, and with his father's trade. During his time at university, the Milan Polytechnic, he worked in the studio of Franco Albini. He graduated in 1964 and then began to work with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters. Between 1965 and 1970 he traveled extensively in America and Britain. In 1971, he founded the studio Piano & Rogers with Richard Rogers, and together they won the competition for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the city where he now lives. From the early 70s until the 90s, he collaborated with the engineer Peter Rice, forming Atelier Piano & Rice, between 1977 and 1981. Finally, in 1981, he established Renzo Piano Building Workshop, with a hundred people working in Paris, Genoa, and New York.
The Neighborhood
The building engages the Whitney directly with the bustling community of artists, galleries, educators, entrepreneurs, and residents of the Meatpacking District, Chelsea, and Greenwich Village, where the Museum was founded by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1930.
The new Whitney is located in the Meatpacking District at 99 Gansevoort Street, at the southern entrance to the High Line.
The Meatpacking District
The Meatpacking District is a twenty-square-block neighborhood on the far West Side of Manhattan. Surrounding the meatpacking plants just north of Gansevoort Street are some of New York’s most notable restaurants, bars, fashion boutiques, clubs, and hotels. The neighborhood is bordered to the north and east by Chelsea, renowned for its art galleries, cultural organizations, and educational institutions. To the south is the West Village and its nineteenth-century townhouses, charming streets, and unique shops. To the west is the Hudson River.
The High Line
The High Line is New York City’s newest and most unique public park. Located thirty feet above street level on a 1930s freight railway, the High Line runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 34th Street in Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen. It features an integrated landscape combining meandering concrete pathways with naturalistic plantings.
The Whitney has one of the most expansive member discount programs of any museum in New York City.
Project History
The Whitney presents its ULURP application at the City Planning Commission’s July 2008 public hearing.
June 30, 2008
Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer recommends approval of the project’s ULURPapplication stating, “The application meets the required findings, satisfies important public policy goals, has the support of the affected community, and will facilitate the development of a highly anticipated new public park as well as enhance the ability of an important art institution to serve the public.”
May 22, 2008
At its May 2008 board meeting, Community Board 2 unanimously votes to approve the Whitney’s new building project proposal and its associated zoning actions.
May 15, 2008
The Zoning & Housing Committee of Community Board 2 unanimously votes in support of the Whitney’s new building project proposal and its associated zoning actions. The formal resolution thanks the Whitney “for starting this project by establishing a strong relationship with the surrounding community and Community Board.”
May 5, 2008
The Whitney’s new building project receives certification from the New York City Planning Commission, beginning the formal zoning process of public review known asULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure) by the local Community Board, Borough President, Department of City Planning, and the City Council.
April 30, 2008
The Whitney releases the initial building designs at a public information session hosted by Community Board 2 .
Support the New Whitney
The campaign for the new Whitney goes far beyond the creation of a new museum facility that showcases and safeguards the Museum’s irreplaceable collection. It is an investment in future generations of artists and the growing audiences who will engage with their work.
The campaign commenced quietly in January 2007 with extraordinary support from the Board of Trustees. The American Art Foundation, under President Leonard A. Lauder, launched the campaign with a transformational leadership gift of $125 million for endowment, helping to secure our future operations in the Museum downtown. The City of New York, whose partnership and commitment made it possible to purchase the land for the Museum, also appropriated funds for the construction of the new building. The State of New York provided significant and early support of the architectural design. The campaign’s success to date is also the result of the many individuals who have been so generous with their early support. With this extraordinary leadership start, the Museum broke ground on May 24, 2011 and began the transformation of the Whitney, and of the downtown cultural scene.
A project of this scale succeeds only when each of us does their part. Each gift brings us closer to realizing the new Whitney—a museum committed to art, artists, and audiences in dynamic interaction. This is an opportunity that comes but once in a generation. Please join in transforming one of our nation’s great museums and be a part of shaping the future of contemporary art in New York.
$760 million (100%) of Project Goal Has Been Raised
$665 million through fundraising
$95 million through the sale of real estate assets on Madison Avenue
Fundraising Goals
New Building Project Costs ($422 million)
Within over 200,000 square feet, the Museum has increased its gallery space by 60% and tripled its total space.
Endowment ($225 million)
Increasing the endowment is critical to securing the financial foundation of the Whitney’s new home.
Capacity-Building ($113 million)
Providing support to ensure dynamic artistic and educational programming is essential while building the Museum downtown.
Ways To Give
The Whitney is tremendously grateful to its donors, whose support will help maintain the vitality, renown, and success of the Whitney as the defining museum of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art for generations to come.
For more information about the campaign and donor opportunities, please contact:
Whitney Museum of American Art
Campaign Office
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Featured Videos
Whitney Stories: Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano, architect of the Whitney’s new home, articulates the philosophy behind the building’s design.
To activate closed captioning on this video, play the video. A CC button will appear on the player controls, and will give you the option to display captions in English. For more information, visit the accessibility page .
Whitney Stories: Donna De Salvo
In this Whitney Stories video, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs Donna De Salvo discusses how the curatorial process informed the building’s architecture, and notes a hope for the future: that artists will reinvent its aspirational spaces in the years to come.
To activate closed captioning on this video, play the video. A CC button will appear on the player controls, and will give you the option to display captions in English. For more information, visit the accessibility page .
Time-Lapse: Building the New Whitney
October 2011–April 2014. The Whitney’s new building opened to the public on May 1, 2015. Watch it rise from the ground up in this time-lapse video.
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Which horse, ridden by Brian Fletcher, won the Scottish Grand National in 1974? | Renzo Piano Building Workshop - Projects - By Type - The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort
The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
New York, U.S.A Ph. Nic Lehoux
2007-2015
The Whitney Museum at Gansevoort
New York, U.S.A
The Whitney Museum is building itself a new home in downtown Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Opened on May 1st, 2015, the project substantially enlarges the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, enabling the first comprehensive view of the Museum’s growing collection, which today comprises more than 19,000 works of modern and contemporary American art.
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More Info
Founded in 1930, the Whitney moved to its current Madison Avenue home, designed by Marcel Breuer, in 1966. At the time, its collection numbered some 2,000 pieces of 20th-century American art, so its nearly 100-fold expansion needs space to flourish. The new museum is to be situated in New York’s vibrant Meatpacking District. Fronting onto Gansevoort Street, the site lies between the Hudson and the High Line, Manhattan’s recently completed elevated urban park, built on a disused elevated spur of the 1930s New York Central Railroad.
Clad in pale blue-grey enamel steel panels, the new, eight-storey building is powerfully asymmetrical, with the bulk of the full-height museum to the west, Hudson-side, with tiers of lighter terraces and glazed walkways stepping down to the High Line, embracing it into the project.
The Museum is entered via a dramatically cantilevered plaza, or ‘largo’, a public space that serves as a kind of decompression chamber between street and museum, a shared space, with views to the Hudson and the High Line entrance just a few steps away. Accessed from the ‘largo’, the main entrance lobby also serves as a public gallery – nearly a thousand square feet (100 sq. m) of free-entry exhibition space.
Level three houses a 170-retractible seat theatre with double-height views over the Hudson River, along with technical spaces and offices.
Some 50,000 sq. ft (4 650 sq. m) of gallery space is distributed over levels five, six, seven and eight, the fifth level boasting a 18,000 sq ft (1670 sq. m), column-free gallery – making it the largest open-plan museum gallery in New York City. This gallery is reserved for temporary exhibitions and its expansive volume will enable the display of really large works of contemporary art. The permanent collection is exhibited on two floors, level six and seven. These two floors also step back towards the west to create 13,000 sq ft (1 200 sq. m) of outdoor sculpture terraces.
Museum offices, education centre, conservation laboratories and library reading room are situated north of the building’s core on levels three to seven, including a multi-use theatre for film, video and performance on level five.
Finally, on the top floor is the ‘studio’ gallery and a café, naturally lit by a skylight system in saw-tooth configuration.
The new Whitney opened on May 1st, 2015.
New Building for Whitney Museum of American Art set to open on May 1st
15 days lefts before the official opening of the new Whitney Museum scheduled on May 1st. Situated between the High Line and the Hudson River in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, the new building will substantially enlarge the Whitney’s exhibition and programming space, enabling the first comprehensive view of the Museum’s growing collection, which today comprises more than 19,000 works of modern and contemporary American art.
According to Pritzker Prize-wining architect Renzo Piano, “The design for the new museum emerges equally from a close study of the Whitney’s needs and from a response to this remarkable site. We wanted to draw on its vitality and at the same time enhance its rich character."
Some 50,000 sq. ft of gallery space is distributed over levels five, six, seven and eight, the fifth level boasting a 18,000 sq. ft, column-free gallery – making it the largest open-plan museum gallery in New York City. This gallery is reserved for temporary exhibitions and its expansive volume will enable the display of really large works of contemporary art. The permanent collection is exhibited on two floors, level six and seven. These two floors also step back towards the west to create 13,000 sq ft of outdoor sculpture terraces. Museum offices, education centre, conservation laboratories and library reading room are situated north of the building’s core on levels three to seven, including a multi-use theatre for film, video and performance on level five.
“We are creating an environment in which visitors will be encouraged to connect deeply with art through an irreplaceable first-hand experience” said Adam D. Weinberg, The Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director.
See the project here : http://bit.ly/1ArEM1U
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"""She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalot"" is spoken by which Arthurian Knight at the end of Tennyson's poem?" | SparkNotes: Tennyson’s Poetry: “The Lady of Shalott”
“The Lady of Shalott”
“The Lady of Shalott”, page 2
page 1 of 3
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road runs by
To many-tower’d Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro’ the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
By the margin, willow veil’d,
Slide the heavy barges trail’d
By slow horses; and unhail’d
The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d
Skimming down to Camelot:
But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shalott?
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower’d Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers “ ’Tis the fairy
Lady of Shalott.”
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving thro’ a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower’d Camelot;
And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shalott.
But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
“I am half sick of shadows,” said
The Lady of Shalott.
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon’d baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn’d like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro’ the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash’d into the crystal mirror,
“Tirra lirra,” by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower’d Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance—
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right—
The leaves upon her falling light—
Thro’ the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken’d wholly,
Turn’d to tower’d Camelot.
For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross’d themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”
Summary
Part I: The poem begins with a description of a river and a road that pass through long fields of barley and rye before reaching the town of Camelot. The people of the town travel along the road and look toward an island called Shalott, which lies further down the river. The island of Shalott contains several plants and flowers, including lilies, aspens, and willows. On the island, a woman known as the Lady of Shalott is imprisoned within a building made of “four gray walls and four gray towers.”
Both “heavy barges” and light open boats sail along the edge of the river to Camelot. But has anyone seen or heard of the lady who lives on the island in the river? Only the reapers who harvest the barley hear the echo of her singing. At night, the tired reaper listens to her singing and whispers that he hears her: “ ‘Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.”
Part II: The Lady of Shalott weaves a magic, colorful web. She has heard a voice whisper that a curse will befall her if she looks down to Camelot, and she does not know what this curse would be. Thus, she concentrates solely on her weaving, never lifting her eyes.
However, as she weaves, a mirror hangs before her. In the mirror, she sees “shadows of the world,” including the highway road, which also passes through the fields, the eddies in the river, and the peasants of the town. Occasionally, she also sees a group of damsels, an abbot (church official), a young shepherd, or a page dressed in crimson. She sometimes sights a pair of knights riding by, though she has no loyal knight of her own to court her. Nonetheless, she enjoys her solitary weaving, though she expresses frustration with the world of shadows when she glimpses a funeral procession or a pair of newlyweds in the mirror.
Part III: A knight in brass armor (“brazen greaves”) comes riding through the fields of barley beside Shalott; the sun shines on his armor and makes it sparkle. As he rides, the gems on his horse’s bridle glitter like a constellation of stars, and the bells on the bridle ring. The knight hangs a bugle from his sash, and his armor makes ringing noises as he gallops alongside the remote island of Shalott.
In the “blue, unclouded weather,” the jewels on the knight’s saddle shine, making him look like a meteor in the purple sky. His forehead glows in the sunlight, and his black curly hair flows out from under his helmet. As he passes by the river, his image flashes into the Lady of Shalott’s mirror and he sings out “tirra lirra.” Upon seeing and hearing this knight, the Lady stops weaving her web and abandons her loom. The web flies out from the loom, and the mirror cracks, and the Lady announces the arrival of her doom: “The curse is come upon me.”
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In which county was Laszlo Biro, the inventor of the ballpoint pen, born? | 1000+ ideas about The Lady Of Shalott on Pinterest | John William Waterhouse, William Waterhouse and King Arthur
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Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott - is an 1888 oil-on-canvas painting by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse in Tate Britain in London. The work is a scene from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1832 poem of the same name, in which the poet describes the plight of a young woman, loosely based on Elaine of Astolat from medieval Arthurian legend, who yearned with an unrequited love for the knight Sir Lancelot, isolated under an undisclosed curse in a tower near King Arthur's Camelot.
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Which small people from an isolated Atlantic island does 'Willy Wonka' invite to work in his chocolate factory? | Oompa-Loompa | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
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once upon a time Oompa-Loompas are known for their short stature, green hair, orange skin and white lederhosen but after the great recession they dispersed and farted everywhere. In early editions of the novel, Oompa-Loompas are shown as African pygmies. Following growing controversy and criticism, in later editions of the book, Oompa-Loompas are white skinned and golden haired. Oompa Lompas come from Loompaland, which is a region of Loompa, a small isolated island in the Atlantic Ocean. The Oompa-Loompas would end up being preyed upon or attacked by wicked Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers and Snozzwangers, which also lived there. Willy Wonka ended up inviting them to work at the Factory and get away from their natural predators. In the book, Oompa-Loompas are the only people Willy Wonka will allow to work in his Factory, because of the risk of industrial espionage committed by his candy-making rivals. Oompa-Loompas are only knee-high, with astonishing haircuts , and are paid in their favorite food, cacao beans, which were extremely rare in their island. Oompa-Loompas insist on maintaining their native clothing: men wear skins, women wear leaves, and children wear nothing (in the 1971 film, the Oompa Loompas wore striped shirts and baggy lederhosen, in the 2005 film, the Oompa Loompas wore tribal clothing in their native Loompaland and typical factory worker uniforms in the factory). In the 1971 film the male Oompa-Loompas are seen working in the factory, in the 2005 film only three female worker, a secretary Mr. Wonka addresses as Doris (when the Great Glass Elevator passes through the administration offices) is seen, though in Quentin Blake's illustrations both male and female Oompa-Loompas are shown rolling away Violet Beauregarde after her transformation into a blueberry. Presumably the females remain in the village seen briefly from the Great Glass Elevator.
Oompa Loompas in Red
Oompa-Loompas are also mischievous, love practical jokes, singing and are very good at improvising according to Willy Wonka. As each bad child makes his/her exit, the Oompa-Loompas sing moralising songs accompanied by a drum beat, and tend to speak in rhyme.
In the 2005 film production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp , Kenyan - Indian actor Deep Roy played all 165 Oompa Loompas. Deep Roy took pilates and dance classes to prepare for the role.
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Complete the name of the Roam Catholic diocese 'Hexham and ......'? | Roald Dahl Psychobiography – William Todd Schultz
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Roald Dahl Psychobiography
This is an essay published in the journal Biography in, I believe, 1998. It was titled, in a seizure of alliteration, “Finding Fate’s Father.” It focuses on Roald Dahl’s history of loss and the writing of the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Roald Dahl thought quite a lot of chocolate. Growing up, he lived near a plant whose emissions he happily sniffed. An otherwise dreary English Public School experience was at intervals partially redeemed by the nearby Cadbury Company: Dahl and his lucky classmates sometimes got to taste-test experimental chocolates. They rated them and wrote out their reactions. Dahl liked to imagine himself “working in one of [those] labs and suddenly I would come up with something so absolutely unbearably delicious that I would grab it in my hand and go rushing along the corridor and right into the office of the great Mr. Cadbury himself”—who would then leap from his chair crying, “You got it! We’ll sweep the world with this one!” (1984, p. 148-149). Foreshadowings of Willy Wonka’s wonderful chocolate factory appear even in Dahl’s first major book for children, James and the Giant Peach, when the impossibly massive fruit runs over just such an establishment on its way to thrilling adventures at sea.
Of course, Dahl eventually got around to writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and there his fascination with everything chocolate found its fullest expression. The book was a great success, inspiring a film for which Dahl wrote the screenplay along with uncredited others (Treglown, 1994). Dahl himself traces the novel’s origin to the Cadbury experience, retrospectively concluding that “I have no doubt at all that, thirty-five years later, when I was looking for a plot for my second book for children, I remembered those little cardboard boxes and the newly-invented chocolates inside them, and I began to write a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (p. 149). But what else might have motivated him? For instance, what accounts for the superlative charisma–and menace–of Willy Wonka, or for the unhappy, almost grisly accidents that befall so many of the children, with the exception of Charlie? It is to those questions that this paper is addressed. But first, a brief summary of the book seems in order, especially since the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, so familiar by now to so many parents, departs in important respects from the text that inspired it. (Just two such differences: the book contains no bewilderingly lurking Slugworth figure; and in the book, but not the movie, Charlie has a father, albeit a rather feckless and irrelevant one).
The book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a meditation on what Artaud called the “marginality of fate,” and in Charlie’s case, the almost providential intervention of chance. Our hero, Charlie Bucket, is the only child of a desperately poor family. His father works long hours screwing caps on tubes of toothpaste (until he loses his job and resorts to shoveling snow). The father’s wages support not only Charlie and his mother, but also both sets of invalid grandparents. The house isn’t large enough for so many people, and there isn’t enough money to buy proper food for them all. They eat “bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch, and cabbage soup for supper” (p. 7). Sundays are better because then everyone is allowed a second helping. The family goes “from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies” (p. 7), and Charlie’s bones bristle beneath the skin of his face. Adding insult to injury, there stands within sight of Charlie’s home an enormous chocolate factory—the biggest in the world, run by the cleverest chocolate maker in the world. The factory scents the air, for half a mile in every direction, with the “heavy rich smell of melting chocolate” (p. 9). That factory bewitches the family; it seems both nemesis and temptation, a symbol of everything dreaded and desired. Grandpa Joe in particular spends many an evening sharing his associations to the factory with Charlie–how its founder Willy Wonka (always described in superlatives) invented ice cream that doesn’t run in the sun and gum that never loses its taste, how the building (bricks, cement, and all) was constructed of light and dark chocolate, how nobody seems ever to go in and nobody seems ever to go out, and how the workers, known only by the shadows appearing behind windows at night, are no taller than Grandpa Joe’s knee.
Then one day, Charlie’s wish—to go inside this most edible of factories and see what it is like—becomes at least remotely possible. Wonka inexplicably decides to admit five children for a visit. These lucky five will be selected by Fate: Wonka has hidden five golden tickets inside the wrapping of five ordinary bars of chocolate. Charlie figures there isn’t much hope; he gets just one bar a year, for his birthday. The family contents itself with following the drama in the papers. Four slightly despicable children find tickets, Charlie’s birthday passes disappointingly when his wrapping reveals no gold, and the family continues to starve. But one day, Charlie discovers a dollar in the gutter, and buys two chocolate bars from a fat shopkeeper. The first bar he eats; the second, a Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight, explodes in a brilliant flash of gold. In an instant, Charlie is lucky ticket holder number five, feeling a “peculiar floating sensation coming over him, . . . his heart thumping away loudly somewhere in his throat” (p. 51).
The big day arrives. The other four children bring both their mother and father to the factory with them; Charlie brings Grandpa Joe. The factory doesn’t disappoint; it’s even more spectacular than imagined, and so is Wonka, a kind of troll-like figure with mixed motives. “Please don’t wander off by yourselves,” he says. “I shouldn’t like to lose any of you at this stage of the proceedings! Oh, dear me, no” (p. 64). But as the tour proceeds, children do get “lost.” Gluttonous Augustus Gloop falls into a chocolate river. Violet Beauregarde eats gum she shouldn’t and swells up like a blueberry. Spoiled Veruca Salt gets identified as a “bad nut” and is taken away by squirrels to the garbage chute. Mike Teavee, whose very name reveals his vice, is reduced to a tiny TV image. Only Charlie escapes doom, and consequently wins what had been a sort of survival contest all along. As Wonka explains, “I decided to invite five children to the factory, and the one I liked best at the end of the day would be the winner.” He stresses: “I have to have a child. I want a good sensible loving child, one to whom I can tell all my most precious candy-making secrets—while I am still alive.” So Charlie inherits the chocolate factory. Wonka invites his whole family to move in at once. At first the grandparents refuse to go, but Charlie and Wonka won’t take no for an answer. “Please don’t be frightened,” Charlie says. “It’s quite safe. And we’re going to the most wonderful place in the world!” (p. 161).
So, in a broad sense, the book reads like a morality fable: Charlie, the good child, wins the prize just by being himself, and the bad children meet with terrible ends which seem strangely prefigured. Their “accidents” hardly appear accidental, however; Fate functions like a kind of externalized superego handing down fiats. Even when the bad kids do weirdly re-emerge in the end, they don’t remain dead or dematerialized, but carry with them enduring stigmata (Violet gets de-juiced but she’s still purple in the face; shrunken Mike Teavee is overstretched, “ten feet tall and thin as a wire”). But on close examination, other aspects of the text seem less easily interpretable. For instance, what has Charlie really won? Only the factory, or something more, though less material? And what about the accident theme? Why does Dahl see fit to “kill off” the undeserving children rather than simply humiliating them, or otherwise rejecting their vices? Finally, another as-yet-unmentioned detail deserves special attention too: the factory’s basically claustral architecture. The reader is repeatedly introduced to various tubes, corridors, enclosures, and passageways which the visitors must push and shove through (the word “push” is used three different times and in three separate contexts between pages 64-68). In what follows, I suggest answers to these three questions which derive both from Dahl’s life-history, and from his extra-literary preoccupations at the time he wrote the book.
What Does Charlie Win?
In some ways that question may seem unnecessarily obscure. After all, we know full well what Charlie wins: the chocolate factory and everything else that goes with it, including, one assumes, fame and fortune and comfort for his heretofore dirt-poor, starving family. I think more is at play, though. Charlie’s gain may be psychological and emotional, not just material.
The expression of sincere, honest emotion apparently was not one of Dahl’s strengths, either in his life or in his work (see Treglown, 1994). When such emotional expression appears in his fiction, therefore, it comes as something of a surprise, the reader being much more prepared for sarcasm or nonsense. Emotional expression in Dahl suggests unique information, then, in reference to Alexander’s (1988) “indicators of saliency”—a set of textual markers indicative of psychologically important material. In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, the Chocolate Factory’s slightly belated (and in my view, far less satisfying) sequel, one passage does leap out, so to speak. The Bucket family finds itself riding in Wonka’s elevator/spacecraft, and anticipating an increase in altitude (since, as Wonka puts it, “we must go up before we can come down,” p. 4). The grandparents aren’t sure they like that idea, nor are they sure they like Wonka much either. So Charlie leans over and whispers to the doubting matriarchs: “Please, don’t spoil everything. Mr. Wonka is a fantastic man. He’s my friend. I love him” (p. 4). The intensity of feeling conveyed by the last three words is startling in context. Wonka had warmed to Charlie towards the end of the first book, but there his warmth seemed qualified by the fact that he wanted, most of all, to find an heir. So although the sentence “I love him” may not be terribly consistent considering what we know about Charlie and Wonka, the depth of devotion does ring true if seen as coming from Dahl himself. My sense is that with Wonka, Charlie–and Dahl–win a father.
In fact, Dahl’s real-life father, Harald Dahl, died of pneumonia when Dahl was three, just two months after the death of Dahl’s seven-year old sister, Astri, from appendicitis. According to Dahl, Harald “did not care much whether he lived or died” and, apparently wanting to join Astri in heaven, refused to fight the illness (1984, p. 20). Dahl concluded, somewhat tersely: “So he died. He was fifty-seven years old.” It’s hard not to be struck by the incompleteness of Dahl’s account, which occurs in the first installment of his autobiography, a book called Boy. He spends just two paragraphs on this most catastrophic of events, and then moves matter-of-factly on to lighter fare. Considering how Dahl “had always found it impossible to talk to anyone about his feelings,” and tended, in difficult times, to say “nothing of what he was going through” (Treglown, 1994, p. 147), perhaps it isn’t at all surprising that in Boy he ends up avoiding discussion of the psychological effects—short and long term—of his father’s (and sister’s) death. Still, the effects may be evident elsewhere. For example, although he doesn’t push the point (and isn’t prone towards psychobiography), Dahl’s biographer, Treglown, refers to a subsequent searching out of “surrogate fathers,” including Charles Marsh, a self-made multimillionaire oil tycoon and art collector (Treglown, 1994, p. 6).
Treglown sees, not Harald, but Roald Dahl in Wonka—citing both a similarity “between Dahl’s third-person narrative voice and Mr. Wonka’s own hectic, exaggerated way of talking,” and Wonka’s Dahl-like way with dismissive criticism (p. 155). One might also note how Dahl dreamed of being an inventor (and in fact was one; see below), and “longed to be powerful enough to be able to conquer illness” (Treglown, 1994, p. 136): In Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Wonka actually brings Charlie’s grandparents back from the dead, a talent Dahl might have put to excellent use, considering the many losses he endured. Holding that Wonka is Dahl seems reasonable so far as it goes (although Treglown himself labels such a facile conclusion “naive”). But if one looks beyond the superficial characteristics, a different, more compelling role for Wonka begins to suggest itself: fictional father.
Charlie’s father serves essentially no function in the world of either book; he is very nearly irrelevant (the film version drops the character altogether, at no expense to the story). He almost never utters a line of dialogue (except to read verbatim newspaper descriptions of each new lucky winner). He decides not to accompany Charlie to the factory (figuring Grandpa Joe to be more “deserving”), and he winds up unemployed and unable to support the family. When Charlie finds the money and later wins the golden ticket, he tells his mother, not his father, about it. I have already noted the fact that all the ticket winners except for Charlie arrive on the big day accompanied by bothparents. Charlie of course has only Grandpa Joe, and although Joe doubtlessly does deserve the honor—considering how nightly he regaled Charlie with stories of Wonka’s factory—the absence of mom and dad makes Charlie out to be something of an orphan; the effect is to mark him as parentless in a metaphoric sense. Wonka therefore responds to Charlie differently, not only because he is the one good kid, but because he lacks (figuratively) a father, and because Wonka’s “real purpose [is] to find an heir,” or son (Treglown, 1994, p. 151). Or, as Wonka himself explains, “I have to have a child” (p. 157).
In a certain way of reading the situation, Wonka really can’t give the factory to any of the other children, since to do so would amount to making their visible parents (and guardians) the beneficiaries. And while he tends with relish to demean the other children and their escorts on occasion, Wonka singles Charlie out for paternal concern. At one point, for example, while the group floats along in the same chocolate river that took Augustus Gloop, Wonka dips a large mug in the water and hands it, full, to Charlie. “Drink this,” he [says]. “It’ll do you good! You look starved to death!. . . Hasn’t there been anything to eat in your house lately?” (p. 88). Charlie brings the mug to his lips, “and as the rich warm creamy chocolate ran down his throat and into his empty tummy, his whole body from head to toe began to tingle with pleasure, and a feeling of intense happiness spread over him” (much like the “peculiar floating sensation” he got upon finding the golden ticket; p. 89). This may be Wonka’s single expression of unironic kindness and thoughtfulness in the entire book; and Charlie’s deeply satisfying response marks it as especially meaningful psychologically.
In the end, Charlie alone survives the war of attrition. Wonka first feigns surprise (in fact, he “had a hunch, right from the beginning,” that Charlie would win), but that quickly gives way to rejoicing: “I’m absolutely delighted! It couldn’t be better! How wonderful this is!” (p. 149). He goes on revealingly to explain: “I’m an old man. I’m much older than you think. I can’t go on forever. I’ve got no children of my own, no family at all. . . I decided to invite five children to the factory, and the one I liked best at the end of the day would be the winner” (p. 157). Notice how this cancels the conceit of chance (a fact I consider in more detail later.) Wonka chose Charlie from the start, and the “accidents” weren’t accidents at all, but disappearances of a sort. So Wonka picks an “orphan” heir who becomes the child he needs; and Charlie finds a fabulous father, as (in fantasy) does the truly fatherless Dahl. But there’s more: immediately after Wonka tells Charlie what he’s won, he takes Charlie and Grandpa Joe into the great glass elevator, which travels, shudderingly, through a thin corridor, then explodes like a rocket through the factory’s glass ceiling—“We’re through! We’re out!” shouts Wonka. The craft hangs in mid-air, sunshine pours in, and the town lies spread out below like a picture postcard. Now the message, intentional or not, seems unmistakeable. Charlie has been reborn, at least psychologically. Just after being introduced to the kind of father he needs, he finds himself transported into a different realm, with a different perspective, bathed in light. One half-expects Charlie to be slapped on the bottom.
This interpretation isn’t necessarily at odds with Treglown’s suggestion that Wonka is Dahl. In Wonka, Dahl may have managed to blend his ideal self—inventor, orchestrator of chance, master of life and death, imp extraordinaire—with a wonderfully amusing, occasionally even maternal, father-image. And Wonka’s ability to resurrect the dead, which we learn of in the second book, provides some additional corroboration, considering that loss plagued Dahl throughout his life. Conjuring up a character who, Orpheus-like, enters the underworld and zaps the unliving back to their original form seems like the best sort of wish-fulfillment. Although it’s unclear how much of the Wonka screenplay was actually written by Dahl, especially given the film world’s penchant for script-doctoring and audience-driven filming, one isolated line brings things into a kind of focus. In a very peripheral little subplot, a minor character whose wealthy husband has been kidnapped urges investigators, “All I want is to have Harald back!” Dahl may have felt much the same. It’s impossible to imagine him writing such a line without thinking of his father.
The Fiction of Accident
Dahl’s life was incredibly accident-beset (the back cover of the paperback edition of the Treglown biography refers to a surfeit of “shocking personal tragedy”). One wonders how he even survived, physically and psychologically, let alone how he prospered in the face of repeated, often devastating, trauma. As if to underscore the importance of the theme, Boy begins with an accident that occurred even before Dahl was born: when Harald was 14 he fell off a roof, broke his left arm, then lost that arm due to medical incompetence. (In the event, his father claimed to have suffered just one inconvenience: he found it impossible to cut the top off a boiled egg [1984, p. 12]). When Dahl was nine, his older sister took the family on a car ride which proved much more eventful than anyone had anticipated: she crashed the car into a hedge, causing Dahl’s nose to be “cut almost clean off [his] face, . . . hanging on only by a single small thread of skin” (1984, p. 103). Many years later, in Fall of 1939, RAF fighter-pilot Dahl made a forced landing in the North African desert; the plane struck a boulder, Dahl’s skull got fractured, and his nose, already having been singled out for punishment, was driven back into his face. He crawled from the cockpit, rolled out of danger, and was “picked up, bleeding profusely, by British soldiers patrolling nearby” (Treglown, 1994, p. 43). In perhaps the most important disaster of all, for present purposes at least, Dahl’s four-month-old son, Theo—“to whom Dahl was unambiguously devoted”—got hit by a cab as a nanny pushed his carriage across a street. The child’s skull was broken in several places, and doctors did not expect him to live (he did, although with lasting neurological impairments; see Treglown, 1994, p. 137-138). The accident occurred at the same time Dahl was working on the first Charlie book, and Dahl in fact dedicates Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Theo.
Maybe not unexpectedly, then, accidents of different kinds play an enduring part in Dahl’s fiction—from the very first page of his first major work, James and the Giant Peach, in which James’ parents get eaten (rather randomly) by a rhino, of all things, to his penultimate book for children, The Witches, where the little hero’s parents die in an icy, Christmas-time car crash. The first sentence of Danny the Champion of the World informs us that mom died when Danny was only four months old. Because this theme recurs with such frequency, in life and fiction alike, it warrants extra attention. Accident becomes something of a leitmotif, in other words. Although an entire essay might be devoted to this theme alone, tracing its appearance throughout Dahl’s ouvre, I focus here on what has to be the most accident-perfused book of all, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Why did accidents figure so prominently in that story, and what psychological function may they have served?
First there’s the matter of the children’s “disappearances,” and their mock gruesome nature. That particular plot detail raised immediate controversy. Dahl’s editor at Knopf, Virginia Fowler, had her doubts, calling Veruca Salt’s disposal down a garbage shaft especially “crude” and “revolting,” too much on the “adult level” (Treglown, 1994). But then, Dahl’s obvious point is a moral one, and his tendency always is to increase discomfort, to provoke and disarm his young readers. Besides which, the kids’ departures are not merely gratuitous or unnecessary in context. Indeed, Dahl seems to want, among other things, to write a cautionary tale. The kids are done in by their own vileness, their respective fates metaphorically apt. Augustus Gloop “drowns” in chocolate, Mike Teavee becomes a TV image, et cetera. But there’s something beyond just this, something a bit more oblique at work. For apart from whatever social comment Dahl may have intended, the book’s tone at times betrays a kind of pervading menace. Something like vengeance lurks behind Wonka’s pleasure over each demise, a motive Gene Wilder as Wonka exploits in the film version of the book. Repeatedly Wilder/Wonka stands by indifferently while children exit in ways that would be easily preventable. Why doesn’t Wonka/Dahl see to it that the kids stay safe? Why aren’t the parents actively punished instead? Should children really be forced to pay for their moral failings?
My aim is not to raise issue with the book’s plot, least of all to pass judgment on Dahl’s authorial choices, which I tend to find entertainingly ribald, in fact (as do most of his readers, apparently, judging from his sales success). Rather, I want to ask a different question. Why did Dahl make these children pay so excessively? What did he get out of it?
One answer lies in his history of loss. Dahl had been forced to watch good children meet with undeserved catastrophe–his sister died at age seven, his infant son suffered brain damage. (Later, when Charlie had long been completed, Dahl’s own daughter died at the same age as did his sister, and left him almost mad with grief). In Charlie, Dahl exacts his revenge on fate. He corrects the waywardness of chance. If Dahl did in fact identify with Wonka (as Treglown suggests), and if, simultaneously, Wonka played the part of surrogate father to him, then Wonka’s orchestration of “death,” and his utter mastery over it in the sequel, allow Dahl imaginatively to turn the tables on loss—to dictate its caprice rather than be dictated to by it. True, Dahl’s heroes do repeatedly lose their parents, and so he did replay that theme in part to discharge his own grief, most likely, surrounding the loss of Harald Dahl. But apart from that, when he actively discards characters, as he does in Charlie with the children, he becomes judge, invents his own just world, an alternate reality where only bad kids meet with disaster, and good kids, kids who have done nothing wrong, triumph.
To the extent that Wonka is a father, Dahl would have to be Charlie too, the boy who “desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying” out of life, who longed “more than anything else” for chocolate—chocolate signifying Wonka/Father. In this network of identifications, the way every author has of inserting bits and pieces of his own self into his characters, Wonka provides Dahl with an even headier power: as all artists ultimately do, Dahl becomes god of his imaginary world. It is he, not dumb reality, who decides which children prosper, and which perish. He defines the world he prefers, one in which bad kids, not good ones, meet with bad ends.
And so the departures of Augustus Gloop and his ilk, so gruesome, so bizarre, so easily preventable, serve as Dahl’s effort to impose justice. Any anger, resentment, or sense of injustice Dahl may have felt in response to the various losses he endured—again his tendency was not to talk directly about his feelings—found expression in the fashion with which he punished his readers’ imagined peers. Augustus Gloop is a “repulsive boy,” his mother a “revolting woman”; Veruca, “even worse than the fat boy,” is in need of “a real good spanking”; Violet is “despicable” and “beastly”; and what if Mike Teavee can’t be stretched back to his original size? “It serves him right.” Clearly, such kids don’t deserve justice. Their behavior hardly merits even mercy. In Wonka’s just world, they simply get their just desserts, the poetic sort Wonka decrees; this in utter contrast to the real world, where loss bluntly arrives, leaving survivors no option but to wonder why? why him/her? why not someone else, someone more deserving of death? Unless, of course, survivors happen to possess a gift for constructing worlds. Unless, in other words, the survivor is an artist, like Dahl.
The disappearance of children is not unique to Charlie. In The Witches, too, Dahl begins with a strikingly similar scenario. Five kids, including, interestingly enough, a “Harald” (spelled just like Dahl’s father’s name), either disappear or get transformed (like Violet or Mike Teevea), all because of nefarious actions undertaken by local witches. It so happens that witches particularly enjoy turning a child into some creature all grownups hate–a slug, which the grownups unknowingly smash; a flea which gets powdered; or a pheasant who is shot from the sky, then plucked and roasted and eaten for supper. In fact, witches often make grownups eat their own children–by turning them into hot dogs.
Eventually Dahl introduces the book’s chief story line concerning a vast consortium of witches plotting to transform all the children of England–whom they uniformly despise–into mice. How? By lacing chocolate with a special formula—the “Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker.” The witches will open sweets shops from which they plan to dispense the doctored candies, aided by a scheme resembling Wonka’s, no less: on a certain day they are to announce in the windows of their shops a “Great Gala Opening with free sweets and chocs to every child” (p. 78). The orphaned hero and his cigar-smoking, witch-savvy grandmother get wind of the plan, and work to undermine it.
The grandmother character is an especially interesting sort of hybrid, part Wonka, as it turns out, and part Harald Dahl. Wonka carries a “gold-topped walking cane” (p. 61); Grandmother thumps around the house with her “gold-topped cane” (p. 46). Grandmother’s eyes are “bright as two stars” (p. 123); Wonka’s eyes are “marvelously bright. . . sparkling and twinkling at you all the time,” rather like stars (p. 61). Grandmother gets through life with a missing thumb (we never learn which one); Harald Dahl lost his left arm. At one point Grandmother comes down with pneumonia; Harald Dahl died of pneumonia. Such convergences serve to underscore the saliency of Dahl’s identifications. Harald, Wonka, and Grandmother seem to spring from deep, and deeply felt, roots. The repetitions over a large span of years reveal how Dahl continued, whether consciously or not, to rework the same psychological material, apparently trying to make metaphorical sense of it.
In the book’s most poignant passage (which Dahl sets off with italics), our hero, who has since been turned into a mouse himself, wonders why his transformation doesn’t depress him. “What’s so wonderful about being a little boy anyway?” he asks. “I know that mice get hunted and they sometimes get poisoned or caught in traps. But little boys sometimes get killed, too. Little boys can be run over by motorcars [just like Theo] or they can die of some awful illness” (p. 112)—just like Dahl’s daughter, sister, and father did. In her review of The Witches, Erica Jong calls the book “a parable about the fear of death as separation and a child’s mourning for the loss of his parents. . . It’s a curious sort of tale but an honest one, which deals with matters of crucial importance to children: smallness, the existence of evil in the world. . .” (p. 45).
In another paper I identified what I called an “Orpheus Complex” in writers stricken by loss, a personality dynamic which had serendipitous effects on creativity (Schultz, 1996). In at least one detail Dahl seems to conform to that prototype: he “rewrote” trauma in the service of psychological needs, both to discharge lingering grief and to repair fate’s damage. Charlie‘s controlled “accidents” no doubt made for a much more habitable world, however imaginary it may have been. Unfortunately, and inevitably, creation’s pleasures would not last. A matter of days after he sent off a revised draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl’s seven year-old daughter Olivia died of measles. Cruelly enough, just when Dahl seemingly had beaten back reality by dropping a different world into its place, reality returned with a vengeance of its own. Fate seems to have been Dahl’s nemesis.
In the language of script theorist Silvan Tomkins, the unforeseen trauma motif may well represent one of Dahl’s “nuclear” scripts, insofar as Dahl evinced an “unwillingness to renounce or mourn,” along with an “inability to recover what [had] become lost,” or to purify or integrate what had grown intolerably conflicted (Tomkins, 1987, p. 197). In Tomkins’ system, we are all self-dramatizers engaged in a constant dramaturgical process of constructing personal worlds from the earliest weeks of life. One tends repeatedly to edit life’s most salient “happenings” into one or more core scripts. Nuclear scripts, few in number and especially complex, are marked by the following features: something good turns bad; negative affect predominates; efforts are made to reverse, rehearse, avoid, undo, or repair the damage; and a process of psychological magnification ensues in which affect-laden scenes are interconnected as one half-consciously perceives similarities between what seem to be different experiences. The nuclearity of a script is established by its constellating power, in other words, and its persistence as a potent, hauntingly recurrent problem. It isn’t only repeatedly expressed, but grows in scope and form, proliferates much like a cancer metastasizes (see, for these and additional criteria of nuclear scripts, Carlson 1988 & 1981). The losses of his sister and father might have served, for Dahl, as originating events. Something good—an intact family—became suddenly bad, and Dahl, as an adult writer of fiction, recurrently scripted and organized the damage via imaginative retellings. His heroes grapple with loss, and manage, in variously idealized ways, to triumph, either by finding a substitute parent more potent than the original, or by becoming the architects of their own fate.
Claustra
One final feature of Charlie’s marvellous universe deserves attention, this being the frequent depiction of what personologist Henry Murray called “claustral” spaces (enclosed, womb-resembling): tunnels, corridors, valves, tubes, pipes, and the like, through which the characters continuously get pushed and pulled. References of this sort are so plentiful, in fact, that it isn’t possible to do them justice without becoming tedious, but by way of a greatly truncated summary: Crowds at the gate push to get in. Wonka ushers the children through, promising that “it’s nice and warm inside” (p. 64). They reach the first of many corridors, “so wide that a car could easily have been driven along it,” its walls “pale pink,” the lighting “soft and pleasant” (p. 65). “How lovely and warm,” whispers Charlie. It turns out that all the passages slope downward, leading to rooms larger than football fields, deep beneath the surface. “But down here,” Wonka explains, “underneath the ground, I’ve got all the space I want. There’s no limit–so long as I hollow it out” (p. 67).
A great deal of “pushing and shoving” ensues as the group hustles and bustles along towards the “nerve center,” where “enormous pipes” dangle down from the ceiling and drain into the chocolate river. Augustus, of course, gets stuck in a pipe (“It’s a wonder to me,” says Mr. Gloop, “how that pipe is big enough for him to go through it”): “The watchers below could see the chocolate swishing around the boy, and they could see it building up behind him in a solid mass, pushing against the blockage. The pressure was terrific. Something had to give. Something did give, and that something was Augustus” (p. 80). Wonka drolly explains: “Augustus has gone on a little journey, that’s all. A most interesting little journey” (p. 80). The group boards a boat of a glistening pink color, made of pink glass. The boat leads to “some kind of a dark tunnel” which turns out to be a “gigantic pipe,” the boat “rocketing along at a furious pace” (p. 91). They disbark at the “Inventing Room”—where Wonka’s ideas are born—with pipes running all over the ceilings and walls. Wonka takes no small pride in introducing the gum machine, which rumbles, and steams, and shakes most frighteningly, then emits “a monstrous mighty groan, and at the same moment a tiny drawer popped out of the side of the machine, and in the drawer there lay something so small and thin and grey that everyone thought it must be a mistake” (p. 98-99)–as some children apparently are. Shortly thereafter, Violet disappears down a garbage chute. “Endless pink corridors” follow (p. 110), and the claustral imagery continues up until the great glass elevator—with a button reading “UP AND OUT”—announces Charlie’s psychological rebirth. Even the famous Oompa-Loompas who inhabit this vast claustral enclosure seem like fetuses or young children. “They are very small, . . . tiny people, people no taller than my knee,” Grandpa Joe explains (p. 22).
In charting the path taken, it seems that the group proceeds downward at an ever-increasing slope, reaches what Dahl calls the nerve center, the heart of the entire factory—the great chocolate room with a chocolate river—until, at last, Charlie explodes into a great light. The resemblance to the birth-process couldn’t be more obvious (although, in certain respects, the factory sounds a bit like the unconscious, as well). Even lowly Augustus gets reborn. But the chief impulse represented throughout Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has less to do with birth, it appears, than with the effort to seek enclosure, to return to the womb, in other words. Characters are constantly pushing and shoving, squeezing into smaller and smaller spaces, seeking that warmly pink, pleasant containment.
James and the Giant Peach, written just prior to the Charlie book, provides continuity of theme. There orphaned James crawls into a hole in the side of a peach which turns out, on further exploration, to be not only a hole, but a tunnel: “The tunnel was damp and murky, and all around him there was the curious bittersweet smell of fresh peach. . . The walls were wet and sticky, and the peach juice was dripping from the ceiling” (p. 25). James rides this mobile womb en route to strange adventures at sea and elsewhere.
As with other elements already discussed, Dahl’s fictional world here has a counterpart in life. Like Wonka, Dahl sought out womb-like spaces and objects. His home’s garden shed became a writing hut, where he kept, among other fetishes, a heavy ball made out of the wrappings of chocolate bars. As Treglown describes it, “For much of his life, he was to spend several hours of every morning and afternoon. . . snugly wrapped in a sleeping bag, sitting in an old arm chair, his feet on a trunk which was filled with blocks of wood and tied to the leg of the chair, to prevent it from slipping. Here he transported himself back to his earliest infancy. Even beyond” (p. 111). Dahl speaks of his “secret side, which comes out. . . only after [I have] closed the door of [my] workroom and [am] completely alone. It is then that [I] slip into another world altogether, a world where [my] imagination takes over and [I] find myself [in] a kind of trance” (Dahl, 1977, p. 196). “It’s small and tight and dark and the curtains are always drawn and it’s a kind of womb–you go up here and you disappear and get lost,” Dahl ventures (quoted in Treglown, p. 111). Following Theo’s accident in America, Dahl insists the family return to England, “where he could escape into the security of his shed” (Treglown, p. 141). It is in that shed, that womb, that Dahl wrote much of the Charliestory. The book’s claustral imagery, then, can be seen as a kind of recapitulation of his working environment. He writes from a womb of the womb.
Murray described various claustral complexes, the first of which—the simple claustral complex—is “constellated about the wish to reinstate the conditions similar to those prevailing before birth,” and is “organized by an unconscious desire to re-experience the state of being that existed before birth” (p. 363). Claustral spaces are typically small, warm, dark, secluded, safe, private or concealing. As illustrations Murray mentions, among other possibilities, a hut, a sound-proof den, and tunnels (he even quotes one subject declaring, “I loved to build tunnels” [p. 366]). In terms that directly recall Dahl’s writing hut, Murray describes how “a subject with this complex is attracted to, seeks, or if not found, builds such objects, and is inclined to enter them and remain in them for some time, secluded from others. . . The subject gets a fixation on his habitation or sanctuary and hates to leave it or to move to another house” (p. 364). Dahl had adapted his “marvelous, isolated, quiet” shed to write in; he rarely was disturbed there. Treglown notes how, under the sway of a similar impulse, Dahl as a child used to hide up a tree in order to write his diary; at Repton, his English Pulic School, he had sought isolation in a photography darkroom (Treglown, 1994, p. 111). Claustral complexes also express themselves, Murray found, through the “cathection” (i.e., the strong attraction) of both death and the past—topics to which Dahl devoted much of his writing. Treglown depicts Dahl employing the shed in order to “commemorate, and fantasize about, his past” (p. 111). On a side table he accumulated shards of himself—his father’s paper knife, souvenirs from North Africa, his own femur and fragments of his spine, saved from operations. As described above, Dahl valued the hut because it allowed him the chance to “disappear” and “get lost,” and when he wrote, he felt himself slipping into another world, entering a kind of trancelike state. Similarly, those who seek claustra desire to lose individual identity by merging with the infinite, and by separating from others–a motive Murray termed the “cathection of Nirvana.”
So it appears a good case can be made for rooting the Charlie book’s profusion of womb metaphors in features of Dahl’s personality, in his tendency, perhaps born of trauma, to seek succorance, avoid harm, and effectively lose himself in claustral spaces like the writing hut. In the act of creation, the metaphor of the womb encircled his imagination, while the hut enclosed him physically, entranced him. That aside, another, more immediate variable may also have directed his attention towards tubes, valves, tunnels, and the like. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the dates with much precision, Dahl sent a revised draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory off to Knopf over two years after Theo’s accident, which occurred in Fall, 1960. Towards the end of August, 1960—according to Treglown’s dates—Dahl had finished the first draft of a story called “Charlie’s Chocolate Boy,” on which available biographical materials shed very little light (although judging from the title alone, it must have differed significantly from the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). All things considered, we don’t know precisely how much of the specific content of the Charlie book took form after—as opposed to before—the accident to Dahl’s son. We are, nonetheless, safe in asserting that Dahl worked on a significant portion of the Charlie book after the accident.
And so, the question arises: How might Theo’s accident have prefigured Dahl’s use of claustral imagery?
One result of Theo’s injuries was that he developed hydrocephalus. In order to drain the build-up of cerebrospinal fluid, surgeons ran a thin tube with a one-way valve from his head into a vein, where the fluid got dispersed into the bloodstream (see Treglown, 1994, p. 138). But maddeningly, and at great threat to Theo’s life, this tube constantly clogged; each time that happened, another operation was required to change the tube and valve. Dahl “studied the problem incessantly,” according to Treglown, and eventually, in cooperation with a neurosurgical consultant named Kenneth Till, he designed a prototype device. Free experiments were carried out by engineering firms with which a friend of Dahl’s had connections, and in June 1962—several months before Dahl delivered his revised draft of Charlie—the Dahl-Till Valve was inserted into a child’s head. As Treglown notes, “Some people still have it in their heads today” (p. 144).
Considering that Theo’s clogged valve became a source of extreme anxiety for Dahl, his one son’s life partly dependent on a solution to its problem, it seems unsurprising that valves, tubes, tunnels and passageways—not to mention glorious inventions and inventing rooms—made for a large portion of Wonka’s world. Dahl had dreamed of being an inventor, and at the most propitious time imaginable both became one and invented one, in the figure of Wonka. And as for the claustral imagery, all the tight spaces and clogged passageways–those details take on new meaning in light of Dahl’s activities at the time. Even Augustus Gloop’s predicament seems weirdly poignant in context. “He’s blocked the whole pipe,” Grandpa Joe exclaims; “Smash the pipe,” implores Mrs. Gloop. Such utterances might have been Dahl’s own, given his fixation on the blockage, and his frustration with the original valve. Claustral themes, therefore, seem perfectly expectable for two very different reasons: one deeply unconscious and personological, and the other immediate and situational and, to a greater degree, conscious. The womb provided great relief, as constellating nuclear script, and as a palliative for presently felt fear.
Final Remarks
From a psychobiographical perspective, Charlie may represent Dahl’s exemplary work. It provides a kind of allegorical summary of many of the topics Dahl returned to throughout the history of his life in writing–the search for a father replacement, the effort to master fate, and the need to find succorance and avoid harm through the pursuit of claustral spaces. Each of these themes might deserve to be called nuclear scripts, although thoroughly demonstrating that fact would require a paper all its own. In any case, as T.S. Eliot put it in his dissertation, “No really ‘vital’ character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author: On the contrary, it may be a sort of parasitic growth upon the author’s personality, developed by internal necessity” (quoted in Albright, 1994, p. 33). “To raise a crop you fight the bugs, shoo the birds, and pull the weeds,” poet Gary Snyder writes; but the wild keeps “flying, creeping, burrowing in. . . Yet wild nature cannot be called unproductive, and no plant in the almost endless mosaics of micro and macro communities is ever out of place” (p. 79). Internal necessity certainly seems to have played no small part in Dahl’s constructions, and wildness had its way of burrowing in–not unproductively. Dahl must have felt compelled, whether he knew it or not, to revisit the same territory over and over again, either for the sake of simple repetition–that is to say neurotically, to no benefit–or else in an unconsciously-rooted effort at mastery of turbulent emotions, a reparation of psychological damage. The fact that Dahl returned to Wonka in order to write a sequel–something he did not do for any other book, despite monetary incentive–suggests that he may have had unfinished business to attend to. That being so, it would be hard to make an argument on behalf of Charlie’s successfully restitutive effect.
Freud apparently told H.D. that dreams sometimes revealed a “corner,” a point of convergence between vectors (Lohser & Newton, 1996). Of course, to Freud, writing represented a kind of day-dreaming, and the written work a dream, condensed and displaced. In Charlie Dahl dreamed a father who made a world that was fair and wonderful. Wonka’s fervid inventiveness rendered loss unimaginable, or at least easily overcome. For once, reality made sense; chance only masqueraded as chance, and accidents were all well rehearsed. The disappearances–“shocking” as they are–point not towards a world unrestrained so much as a kind of just universe watchfully maintained. In the end, predictability reigns supreme, not inscrutability. Beyond the normal ordering intrinsic to any fiction, Dahl inserts a sort of authorial double–Wonka–who scripts events that Dahl invents. Chance, therefore, doesn’t stand a chance, pulverized both by a fictional author, and by an author of a fictional author–Dahl. If ever Dahl lost control, then Wonka would not–and vice versa. It’s hard to imagine a less capricious universe.
REFERENCES
Albright, D. (1994). “Literary and psychological models of the self.” In, U. Neisser & R. Fivush (eds.), The Remembered Self. New York: Cambridge.
Alexander, I. (1988). “Personality, psychological assessment, and psychobiography.” Journal of personality, 56(1).
Carlson, R. (1981). “Studies in script theory: I. Adult analogs of a childhood nuclear scene.” Journal of personality and social psychology, 40(3), 501- 510.
Carlson, R. (1988). “Exemplary lives: The uses of psychobiography fo theory development.” Journal of personality, 56(1), 105-138.
Dahl, R. (1983). The Witches. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Dahl, R. (1961/1988). James and the Giant Peach. New York: Puffin Books.
Dahl, R. (1977/1988). The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More. New York: Puffin Books.
Dahl, R. (1984). Boy. New York: Penguin.
Dahl, R. (1972/1988). Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. New York: Puffin Books.
Dahl, R. (1964/1988). Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: Puffin Books.
Jong, E. (1983). “The boy who became a mouse.” New York Times Book Review, November 13.
Lohser, B. & Newton, P. (1996). Unorthodox Freud: The View From the Couch. New York: Guilford.
Murray, H. (1938/1953). Explorations in Personality: A Clinical and Experimental Study of Fifty Men of College Age. New York: Oxford.
Schultz, W.T. (1996). “An ‘Orpheus Complex’ in two writers-of-loss.” Biography: An interdisciplinary quarterly, 19(4), 371-393.
Snyder, G. (1990). The Practice of the Wild. San Francisco: North Point Press.
Treglown, J. (1994). Roald Dahl: A Biography. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.
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Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror who supported him at the Battle of Hastings, was Bishop of ....., where? | BBC - Odo Bishop of Bayeaux was the tyrannical Earl of Kent
Odo Bishop of Bayeaux was the tyrannical Earl of Kent
Bishop Odo feasting with the Normans before the battle
Odo, Earl of Kent, is one of the least popular figures in Kent's history.
The son of Herluin of Conteville and Herleva of Falaise, Odo was William of Normandy's half-brother.
His exact date of birth is unknown, but was probably around 1035, meaning he was considerably underage when William made him Bishop of Bayeux in 1049.
This was a political appointment if ever there was one, and an indication towards William's future habit of "keeping things in the family".
The Conquest
It is believed Odo commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry
Odo was involved in the Norman invasion of England right from the start, as a trusted associate of William. He is said to have contributed 100 ships to the invasion fleet, and the Bayeux Tapestry, that most amazing monument to the Norman victory at Hastings in 1066, shows Odo active in battle.
In fact the Tapestry gives Odo a prominent role in the campaign - in one scene before the battle it shows William listening to Odo in council, implying Odo was the architect of the invasion. Whilst this representation is undoubtedly an exaggeration - probably due to the fact that it was Odo himself who commissioned the tapestry - nevertheless, he was certainly an important figure in the conquest.
Success at the Battle of Hastings and the death of King Harold may have secured William the kingdom, but by no means were the English totally subdued - the spirit of resistance they displayed at Hastings was still very much alive, and the following years were ones of unrest and turmoil, for which Odo was partly responsible.
To deal with this simmering resentment and secure his hold on the new kingdom, William placed his most loyal and trusted associates in strategic positions across the country. In fact, he tried to "keep things in the family" whenever possible, often relying on his relatives to rule in his name, as other Norman dukes and princely families had done before him. And this is how Odo arrived in Kent.
Securing the kingdom
Dover Castle was the "lock and key of England"
William reorganised his new kingdom, destroying some of the sprawling earldoms of his predecessor's day, but also creating several new ones, like Kent, so that the country was surrounded by a series of protective strongholds. Then, as now, the Kent coastline was vitally important in terms of security, and so William made the loyal Odo Earl of Kent, and gave him custody of Dover castle - the "lock and key" of England.
Odo became a huge landowner in Kent, holding 184 lordships in the county. He also held manors in 12 other counties, which gave him £3,000 a year, and the Domesday Book shows him to be the richest tenant-in-chief in the kingdom by far.
"Destitute of virtue"
Odo was an infamous figure in 11th Century England: "ambitious", "rapacious", "greedy", "ruthless", "arrogant", "tyrannical" and "destitute of virtue" are just some of the words that have been used to describe him. He was certainly not the most popular of rulers, either in Kent or elsewhere, and was almost universally portrayed in a negative light by contemporary chroniclers. Orderic Vitalis, a chronicler monk, creates an unattractive image of Odo as a regent who abused his responsibilities, oppressing the poor and unfairly seizing England's wealth and land.
Odo destroyed and plundered the landowners of Kent, amassing a huge fortune in both land and gold. He forcibly seized lands for his friends and family - one chronicler called him a "ravening wolf", and the Domesday Book, argues historian David Bates, reveals "numerous instances of apparently unjust acquisitions". In Dover, Odo confiscated homes and even the Old Guildhall for his household, and he allowed one of his tenants to build a mill at the harbour entrance in Dover, which had a devastating impact on shipping.
Making enemies in Kent
Odo quarrelled with the Archbishop of Canterbury
Odo's tyrannical behaviour made him many enemies in Kent, and it was only a matter of months before his severity drove the county into open revolt in 1067. This revolt, the first major rising under the Normans, was focused around Dover, the centre of Odo's oppressions. The Kentish rebels appealed to Eustace of Boulogne for help, and together they launched a failed attempt on Dover castle. Eustace had been involved in a quarrel with the citizens of Dover on a previous occasion, and so the rebels' appeal to him suggests just how desperate they were to be liberated from Odo.
Odo's position as Earl of Kent brought him - almost inevitably - into conflict with the Archbishop of Canterbury, another strong landholder in the area. The Archbishop Lanfranc resented Odo's encroachments upon his "patch", and this personal feud eventually made its way into the law courts, with the two men vying for control of Kentish land at trials like that of Penenden Heath, which lasted for three days.
The feud even led to bloodshed, and the Earl Waltheof, a client of Lanfranc, was beheaded by a group of men led by Odo. Though this dispute had roots in controversies which predated the Norman invasion, it is still symptomatic of Odo's character, and desire to eradicate competing authorities within his Earldom of Kent.
Odo certainly seems to have had a great desire for power. His main powerbase was in Kent, but as Count Palatine he possessed power over all other earls and magnates in England. He was one of William's most trusted deputies, and in the king's absence acted as regent, alongside William fitz Obern until 1071 and later alone.
Odo seems to have carried out his tasks with relish, creating resentment across the country. Orderic Vitalis said that Odo and fitz Obern "oppressed all the inhabitants of high and lower degree" and "heaped shameful burdens upon them".
Power-hungry
Odo left Rochester to jeers from his Kentish subjects
Not even satisfied with this authority, however, in 1082 Odo made a bid to purchase the papacy, causing a split with William, who arrested his half-brother himself. Odo was tried and imprisoned for sedition, and only released following William's death.
But a leopard never changes its spots, and Odo was soon causing trouble again, leading a revolt against the new King - William Rufus. Again Kent suffered at Odo's hands, as the revolt was played out on Kentish soil. Odo and his supporters ravaged the royal possessions in the county, as well as those of Lanfranc, but Rufus soon crushed the rebellion, which ended with siege of Rochester Castle, and Odo was exiled from England for good.
Effective but unpopular
There was no other Earl of Kent after Odo: despite his tyrannical behaviour and the unrest he created, Odo had served his purpose, securing the county and defending the coast while the Norman kingdom was still vulnerable in its infancy. Odo's final split with William should not disguise the fact that he was almost indispensable to his half-brother's government.
And yet, in Kent, Odo's ruthlessness and arrogance won him only enemies. The legend of his final surrender at Rochester is perhaps the most fitting testimony to his unpopularity in Kent. As he left Rochester castle the jeers of his English subjects demanded the hangman's noose - Odo's harsh rule had left a bitter taste amongst the men of Kent.
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| Bayeux |
Which island, which gives its name to an area in the Shipping Forecast, lies halfway between Orkney and Shetland? | 1000+ images about 1066 Bayeux Tapestry on Pinterest | William turner, Stitches and England
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The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth—not an actual tapestry—nearly 70 metres (230 ft) long, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings. It is likely that it was commissioned by Bishop Odo, William's half-brother, and made in England—not Bayeux—in the 1070s.
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'Wherever You Are' last year's Christmas number one is by 'Military Wives and .......', who? | Wherever You Are - Military Wives - Piano Solo - YouTube
Wherever You Are - Military Wives - Piano Solo
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Uploaded on Dec 23, 2011
Me playing this year's Christmas Number 1 - Wherever You Are - by the Military Wives on piano. The Military Wives choir grew its fanbase through the BBC series The Choir: Military Wives, led by choir master Gareth Malone.
This song was written by Paul Mealor (who also composed for the Royal Wedding) for The Royal British Legion's Festival of Remembrance. The lyrics are taken from letters to and from the wives to their husbands in Afghanistan.
I love this song, and worked it out by ear. Hope you like it!
Matt Walker: @_mattwalker
| Gareth Malone |
What was the first name of the handyman played by Paul Henry in the t.v. soap 'Crossroads'? | In My Dreams by Military Wives on Apple Music
11 Songs
Album Review
Like Rage Against the Machine two years before them, the Military Wives upset the X-Factor applecart by snatching the Christmas number one slot ahead of 2011 winners Little Mix, selling over half-a-million copies in the process. Buoyed by its massive success, the Devon-based choir, who shot to fame after appearing in the BBC's fourth series of Gareth Malone's The Choir, now attempt to prolong their unexpected 15 minutes of fame with a full-length album, In My Dreams. Like male vocal trio the Soldiers' ventures into the pop world, it appears churlish to criticize a record with such obvious good intentions. But while their chart-topping single "Wherever You Are," an emotive love poem composed from letters its members had written to their partners in Afghanistan, managed to tug at the heart-strings without descending into schmaltz; the same can't be said for the rest of the record. Best-known for his choral work at last year's Royal Wedding, Paul Mealor's second original composition, the title track, is an elegant, rousing hymn which is spoiled by the overwrought vocals of X-Factor finalist and acting serviceman Jonjo Kerr; Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways" and wedding favorite "Up Where We Belong" are treated to sickly sweet orchestral arrangements; while their choral rendition of U2's "With or Without You" pales in comparison next to Scala & Kolacny Bros' similar reworking. A gentle acoustic version of Carole King's "You've Got a Friend" and a touching solo performance of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" suggest things could have been different. But while In My Dreams is one of those albums that will sell by the bucket-load for Mother's Day, it's unlikely to be played again once the novelty has worn off. ~ Jon O'Brien, Rovi
Customer Reviews
by Totallythebest
Shut up!! This is an amazing charity, and the music brings people closer to the ones that are fighting for the country! All I can say is that you haven't got anyone in your family that's in the military so you are just one ****!! Hope iTunes deletes your comment!!
Fab!
by sarahann38
A fantastic album by a group of amazing, extra - ordinary women. A lump comes to my throat whenever I listen to them!
It's a real shame that some nasty people feel the need to slag off other people who are doing good in the world. Can these nasty people sing and do better than the Military Wives? I think not! Leave them alone then!
Fabulous
by PugImmortal
This album is absolutely beautiful. I am a 41 year old male with no connection to the military but the emotion behind the songs is so deep and inspirational. Long may they sing so beautifully.
Biography
Formed: 2009 in Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshi
Genre: Vocal
Years Active: '00s, '10s
The Military Wives were a collective of U.K.-based choirs, some of which were born out of the fourth series of the Gareth Malone-fronted TV documentary series The Choir, which aired in late 2011. Following the deployment of her husband to Afghanistan in 2009, Nicky Clarke contacted Malone with news of her intention to set up a choir in Catterick, North Yorkshire. The resulting formation of the Military WAGS Choir provided an opportunity for servicemen's wives, affiliates, and girlfriends -- as well...
Top Albums and Songs by Military Wives
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Who wrote the music for the ballet 'The Three Cornered Hat'? | Lopez-Cobos/Cincinnati SO - Falla: The Three Cornered Hat (and oTher Spanish works) - Amazon.com Music
Falla: The Three Cornered Hat (and oTher Spanish works)
Audio CD, July 9, 2006
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Falla: The Three Cornered Hat (and oTher Spanish works)
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Product Details
Audio CD (July 9, 2006)
Number of Discs: 1
By Ronald D. Pemstein on March 4, 2010
Format: Audio CD
The Three-Cornered Hat is a ballet that captures Spanish folk music with all its rhythms. Do not be put off by the sharp drum beats and soprano verses that start the ballet because it soon develops into lively dances. Jesus Lopez-Cobos understands Spanish music and this album also includes deFalla's Homage to to Debussy and Dukas as well as parts of La Vida Breve(the Brief Life). If you appreciate Spanish music, this mid-price album by the Cincinatti Symphony is hard to beat.
By NUC MED TECH on November 20, 2013
Format: Audio CD
11-20-2013 I suppose thwre are three types of ballet musicscores. Notin order of importance, mind you, but rather ofdiscsussion. They are #1) RAVEL AND DEBUSSY, ETAL, #20 "50/50" BALLET MUSICAND GRAND BALETT.
RAVEL AND DEBUSSY BOTH WROTE ORCHESTRAL BALLET MUSIC THAT REALLYIS MORE SYMPGHONIC AND INTENDED FOR THE CONCERT HALL, RATHER THAN THE THEATER. INCLUDED ARE STRAVINSKY And others, notably Russians. the "ballets of Raveland Debussy are so instrumentally interesting, we wouldrather listen to the orchestran follow the choreography, which usually pales in comparison. When was the last time, for thise of you in and around the big cities of the globe,say or heard of a fully staged Daphnis, or "Ma Merel'Oye?" I aghree, It has been too long and I wouldloveto travel to Seattle to see a staged Ravel or Debussy work. What a treat that would be.
The "50/50" category is my idea for, well, the 2 big scores I just mentioned. While these twore nor really 50% each stage and orchestralperfomances, at least they DO get somedancing in for the audience. Perhaps they are the better of the first two types. But, THE best ballets are the fully staged ones, often with Choreography 100 years old or greater. Included are Prokofiev's and Tchaikovsky's biggies---"Romeo, etc., Cinderella, "swan Lake," "Sleeping beauty ," and "Nutcracker". These are the top of the heap ballets according to audience popularity. My 24 year old baby-girl and I will always emember,the night I took her to the San Francisco Ballet's full production of "Swan Lake," myall timefavorite. At the 1st intermission, I took her, hand-in-hand down to peer into the orchestra pit and see someinstrumentsupclose. She was about 9 years old and was wearing her pure whiteHoly Communion dress, complete with a white veil, sort of like a white mantilla and, naturaly, she had white gloves. I had my best suit on and as we turned to walk back to our seats, I noticed an elderly lady starring at us with the warmest smile of the day, as if to say, How sweet, Daddy and his little girl." She just beamed at my little girl,. The next time I will be that pleased will be on her wedding day. Sorry for the tripdown emeory lane, (L. O. L. )
Back to the music. Jesus Lopexz Cobos is a one cd composer, uin my library, but with a Chicagosym. and a Berlin Phil. recording of this musicas well. They all have a good feel for Manuel de Falla, but Lopez is perhaps the closer of the trio to the particular rhythmsand accents. However, I haven't sampledmen like Navarro, de Burgos, or even Ansermet of Giulini in detail. A nice winter project for meand could lead to an exspanded study of the 20th Century Spanard in general. Lopez-Cobos runs off the Balletin 36+minutes with an alert and efferfesant Cincinnati Sym. Orch., the one Paavo Jarvi would inherit and drive to further aclaim in the recording stuio as well in live, hallperformances, some on sensational Super Audio sound. One of THE best being his exciting and driven Sibelius Sym. #2Critic David Hurwitz loved it, and sodo I. Everyone MUST own a copy as an example of terrific and early SACD technology. I use it as a sort of benchmark, particularly in comparison to other Sibelius coming out in Sa. LIKE ANY REASLLY GOOD BALLET SCAORE "EL SOMBRERO" CONTAINS VERY GOOD "FILLER" SEGMENTS IN THE MUSIC, LITTLE SECTIONS TO FILL IN THE GAPS BETWEEN FEATURED DANCE SETS,LIKE RECTATIVE OR DIALOG BETWEEN ARIAS OR SCENES IN OPERA. STILL, WE GO OR LISTEN TO THE CD'S FOR THE BIG NUMBERS, THE ARIA'S. Falla knew how to write very nice filler music, and it is some of the theater'sbest stuff. Still, the 4 dances of Part I, totaling just under 7 1/2 minutes are splendid, but the whole of Part II is a combination of six dances and each of them.
******* I have just noticed that this recording is done in a manner that I am unable to followenough to analyze and so, I'll have to break off my review. I amvery sorry,but I had acoupleofstrokes,bigtime, between 2006and the end of 2012,but I don't know when. I didn't notice anything and my Neurologist said I wouldnot have,anyway. So, gradually, I'vebeen loosing some of compreshension abilities since about 2005 and I'm currently retireed/disabled and trying to get by on what I do have left in my "marble Inventory." (L. O. L. )
So,in summation, this is a good de Falla disc, but one needs to sampleother one's out there. However, good luck, and once again I apologize for my limitations. happy Listeningand, as always best wishes, God Bless You, Tony.
| Manuel de Falla |
Which P.G. Wodehouse character has a surname that begins with a 'silent P'? | Manuel de Falla- Bio, Albums, Pictures – Naxos Classical Music.
Classical Music Home > Manuel de Falla
MANUEL DE FALLA
(1876 - 1946)
The music of Spain has exercised an exotic fascination, but often in forms adapted by foreign composers. Manuel de Falla is representative of a group of Spanish composers who won international recognition. He was born in 1876 in Cádiz, where he first studied, moving later to Madrid and then to Paris, returning to Madrid when war broke out in 1914. Strongly influenced by the traditional Andalusian cante jondo, he settled in Granada, where his friends included the poet Federico García Lorca. The Civil War of 1936 found de Falla neutral in the struggle, but in 1939 he moved to Buenos Aires. There, he continued work on his ambitious stage work Atlántida, which remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1946.
Stage Works
Manuel de Falla helped to support his family in Madrid after a change in their fortunes by composing zarzuelas, typically Spanish musical comedies. His first substantial stage work was the lyric drama La vida breve (‘The Short Life’), completed in 1905 and first staged in Nice in 1913. The ballet El amor brujo (‘Love the Magician’), with its ghostly story of gypsy jealousy, was first staged in Madrid two years later. The ballet El sombrero de tres picos (‘The Three-Cornered Hat’) reached its final form for its London production under the impresario Diaghilev in 1919. The puppet opera El retablo de maese Pedro (‘Master Peter’s Puppet Show’), based on an episode in the classical Cervantes novel Don Quixote, was completed in 1922. There are popular orchestral suites from the first three of these four works.
Orchestral Music
In addition to the concert version of El amor brujo and two suites from El sombrero de tres picos made by the composer, Manuel de Falla wrote an evocatively beautiful work for solo piano and orchestra under the title Noches en los jardines de España (‘Nights in the Gardens of Spain’), completed in 1915.
Vocal Music
In 1915 de Falla also completed his arrangement of seven Spanish folk songs, Siete canciones populares españolas, now familiar not only in the original vocal version but in other arrangements (particularly an effective arrangement for violin and piano).
Chamber Music
Among chamber works by de Falla may be included the Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello, which makes use of the early keyboard instrument that had played an important part in his puppet opera El retablo de Maese Pedro.
Piano Music
Piano works occupy a less important element among the compositions of Manuel de Falla, although the four Spanish Pieces and the early Serenata Andaluza offer pieces in characteristically Spanish musical idiom.
Box Set Release
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'4.50 From Paddington' and 'Murder At The Vicarage' are novels featuring which detective? | Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: 4:50 from Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery
Format: Mass Market Paperback | Verified Purchase
I'm not going to give you a synopsis of the book, you can get that anywhere and it doesn't belong in a book review at Amazon. This is an actual review.
That said, I really enjoyed this one. Is it old fashioned? Sure. Does that make it boring? Absolutely not. In fact, it makes it all the more interesting. Like all of her books, it's a window into the past. Before modern day forensics there were actual brains that solved crimes. Imagine that!
The murder takes place within the first few pages, which is not always the case with Christie books. Most of the time it takes a while before we get there (e.g., Death on the Nile). The pace is near perfect; it doesn't move too fast, nor too slow. Books with too fast a pace become confusing and too slow a pace puts readers to sleep. This one is just enough that you can digest what is going on without being overwhelmed. Speaking of which, though there are a number of characters each are introduced in such a way that you can absorb who they are without it being shoved in your face. Some books worry too much about details all the way down to their life history. Not for Christie, she gets right to the point.
As for the mystery part itself, the ending isn't the typical predictable kind (I can't think of any Christie novels that are). I think most will be fully surprised. It's also worth noting that it isn't cheesy either. Or at least, I don't think so.
One thing worth noting, Miss Marple isn't in the book much. This is a surprise to me. I expected her to be the main character, but she was not. She is credited with the mystery, as well she should be, but if you're a fan of hers, be prepared to not see her as often as you would expect.
All in all this is an exceptional book! I highly recommend it to anyone who likes film noir in addition to the obvious, that being other mystery type books.
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Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
Agatha Christie writes mysteries that tax the reader's ability to solve. This is another of those. Every time I began to get strong suspicions about one of the characters, he gets murdered. Even as the list of suspects dwindles down, most readers will be more often wrong that right as to who the murderer is. The reader may not be too well pleased to discover who the murderer is and how he is exposed, but the story itself is a pleasant read without today's emphasis on sex, violence and foul language. It is just a story of a typical upper class English family, some eccentric, some not, some likeable characters, some not, and a nice mixture of greed, devotion and murder. Well, maybe not a typical English family.
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Poor Dame Agatha! When she started writing her mysteries in the 1920's she had no idea that she would still be cranking them out fifty years later. If she had, she wouldn't have made her two detectives (Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple) so old to start with. On the other hand, she got to explore the advantages and disadvantages of old age in a way not often found in mystery novels.
Although I like Hercule, I must admit that I prefer Christie books and stories that feature that gentle-but-shrewd old lady Miss Jane Marple. I think that they are more autobiographical since Christie was an old style English gentlewoman herself and since she spent a great deal of time as a child with her beloved "Grannie-Auntie." Her observations of this grandparent and her many old lady friends gave the author a deep insight into the wide knowledge of human nature that even an apparently sheltered woman acquires over a long life of dealing with family, friends, servants, and "tradesmen." Those who have the luxury of TIME may see things overlooked by those who are busy with careers and young families.
In this book, the plot is driven by the fact that Miss Marple KNOWS that her friend Elspeth McGillicuddy is a woman with honesty, common sense, and NO imagination. Thus while everyone else dismisses Mrs. McGillicuddy's story of having witnessed a murder, Miss Marple simply starts figuring out how and where the body was disposed of and then goes looking for it. But by this time (mid-1950's) Jane Marple is a very old lady indeed and needs help in the physical task of snooping around.
Enter the fascinating character of Lucy Eyelesbarrow, a brilliant young University graduate who deserts her academic field (mathematics) to take up the less prestigious, but more varied and more lucrative field of domestic engineering. For a very large sum, she will move into your house and do anything that needs to be done. She cooks, cleans, cares for children and elderly, and generally takes the burden of day-to-day living completely off your shoulders. There is no woman in the world who wouldn't LOVE to have a Lucy Eyelesbarrow around. However, she only takes temporary assignments and she doesn't come cheap. All Miss Marple has to do is arrange for Lucy to be employed at the estate where she suspects the missing body is hidden and the ultra-efficient domestic diva takes it from there.
I'm sure that Dame Agatha enjoyed creating Lucy. She liked studying mathematics herself and once said that she thought she would have been a good math teacher if she hadn't gotten married and become a writer. I also think that the two delightful teen-aged boys who play a pivotal role in the mystery were probably modeled after her beloved grandson Mathew and his friends.
It's a fine, well-plotted story with lots of off-beat characters and it kept me guessing until the end. If you want to commit murder, make damned certain Miss Marple doesn't get wind of it!
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Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
I've never read much Agatha Christie, and don't really know why. Now that I have a Kindle, I plan to stock up on this author whenever I see a good price ! According to the blurb at the end of the book, Christie is the "most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare." That fact alone is proof that she has a universal appeal.
I won't recap much of the plot here, as the product description is sufficient for that purpose (and I certainly would not want to leak any spoilers.) The action commences immediately, and the murder occurs within the first pages of the book. But, there is no body, and the witness, the doddering spinster Elspeth McGillicuddy, is not considered credible by the authorities. However, she convinces her good friend, Miss Marple, that she did indeed witness the strangulation of a woman in a passing train. Miss Marple does a bit of preliminary sleuthing to determine where the body might have been tossed off the train. Then she hires a competent younger woman, Lucy Eyelesbarrow (her new understudy perhaps?), to take the house manager position at the estate of the Crackenthorpe family. The estate is near the railway line where Miss Marple presumes that the body would have been disposed of.
We meet the Crackenthorpe family members, all of whom seem to be waiting for the patriarch to kick off so they can get their hands on their share of the estate. Christie has a fine way of sketching out new characters with a brief, succinct description that provides you just enough information to decide how they fit into the picture that she is painting. None of the Crackenthorpes are particularly admirable, with the exception of Emily who seems to be trying to hold the whole estate together single handedly. Other murders start to pile up, but since Christie didn't stir up much sympathy towards those victims, their passing is not tragic.
A lot of Miss Marple's sleuthing appears to occur offstage, and when she finally swoops in to reveal the true murderer, it all seems a bit forced and hurried. However, up until then I found the mystery quite engaging, and the comings and goings of all the characters kept me turning the pages (or rather hitting the forward button) rapidly.
One aspect of Christie's writing that I especially enjoy is the interesting names - Griselda, Eyelesbarrow, McGillicuddy, Wimborne, Quimper, Crackenthorpe, et al. The unique names help you to remember the many characters that inhabit the book.
I will certainly be looking for more in the Miss Marple series, and am sure that I am well on my way to becoming an Agatha Christie fan
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Format: Paperback | Verified Purchase
Instead of taking the night train to Memphis the elderly Mrs McGillicuddy took the 450 from Paddington. Suddenly a train running parallel to her train reveals a murder in progress! A dark headed man is strangling to death a woman. Mrs M. returns home to report the foul deed to the local constables. She then tells the tale to Miss Marple the greatest old lady in all of English murder fiction. The story revolves around the dark secrets of a large old English family the Crackenthorpes who live at Rutherfurd Hall. Among the members of the family are":
Old Mr Cracenthorpe a sour man who hates his sons and doesn t want them to reap the material benefits which would accrue to them in his will.
Harold-The son who is a prosperous businessman in London
Alfred-The black sheep of the family who has been involved in petty crime.
Cedrick-An artist who lives abroad but has come home to visit.
Miss Marple puts her amateur sleuthing niece Lucy Eyelesbarrow to work doing domestic chores for the family. Lucy discovers the corpse of the murdered woman in an old barn on the estate.
Dr. Quimper is the local physician who hankers for Emma ';s hand. She is the only sister of the three living Crackenthorpe sons.
Bryan Eastley is the widower of the other Crackenthorpe daughter who has died. His young son is Alexander.
The plot is clear and Christie keeps the number of characters small enough to stay clear in the mind of the reader. This novel features a great
ending as Miss Marple solves the crime. A good read for a stormy night or to peruse during a vacation. Christie wrote the novel in 1957.
Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
I'm a long-time Agatha Christie fan and it's been a while since I've read one of hers. I enjoy the British pace, which allows a reader to saunter along as opposed to all the American fiction which is hell-bent for the cliff, but in a couple of places, this was a bit too slow for me. Could be that I'm getting older and rushing about, even mentally, isn't as appealing as it once was, but my attention span is shorter than it once was, too. As always, Christie does an awesome job with her characters and I completely enjoyed 4:50 from Paddington. I got to "visit" with my British pals and the lovely countryside, as well as got to meet some new, wonderful characters. I enjoyed this very much. Going to go purchase another!
Format: Kindle Edition | Verified Purchase
Even though Miss Marple really has a limited role in this book, I really enjoyed it. Lucy Eylesbarrow was a great character and I do wish we saw more of any in another book - an in particular, I wish we knew who she marries! The setting is pure Agatha Christie, with a country setting, big house, shady family members or people who seem to have their own interests at heart and might be willing to do away with a fellow man (or woman) to get where they want to be. It's not my favorite Agatha Christie, but it's got a good story, interesting people.
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I always enjoy Agatha Christie mysteries and Miss Marple stories are among my favorites. I love the golden age of British mysteries because they focus more on studies of character and social class and interesting settings, rather than explicit violence or gritty sexuality. I also appreciate how Agatha Christie really does lay out the clues so the reader can try to determine for themselves who the guilty party is, without feeling like the author cheated by using a "Deus Ex Machina" to solve the crime. While this isn't the very finest example of her work, The 4:50 from Paddington is a great read.
| Miss Marple |
Cassiterite is a major ore of which metal? | The Murder at the Vicarage : Agatha Christie : 9780007208425
The Murder at the Vicarage
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A facsimile first edition hardback of the Miss Marple books, published to mark the 75th anniversary of her first appearance and to celebrate her new-found success on television. When The Murder at the Vicarage was published in October 1930, little did the literary world realise that Agatha Christie, already famous for her early Poirot titles, was introducing a character who would become the best-loved female sleuth of all time. The 14 Marple books would appear at intervals over the next 49 years, with Miss Marple's Final Cases published in 1979, three years after Agatha's death. To mark the 75th anniversary of Miss Marple's first appearance, and to celebrate her renewed fortunes as a primetime television star, this collection of facsimile first editions will be the perfect way to enjoy these books in their original form - 12 novels and two short story collections. Reproducing the original typesetting and formats from the first editions from the Christie family's own archive copies, these books sport the original covers which have been painstakingly restored from the best available copies, reflecting five decades of iconic cover design. show more
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For her performance in which film did Meryl Streep win the Best Actress 'Oscar' earlier this year? | Meryl Streep - Biography - IMDb
Meryl Streep
Biography
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Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trade Mark (3) | Trivia (119) | Personal Quotes (51) | Salary (16)
Overview (3)
5' 6" (1.68 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Considered by many critics to be the greatest living actress, Meryl Streep has been nominated for the Academy Award an astonishing 19 times, and has won it three times. Meryl was born Mary Louise Streep in 1949 in Summit, New Jersey, to Mary Wolf (Wilkinson), a commercial artist, and Harry William Streep, Jr., a pharmaceutical executive. Her father was of German and Swiss-German descent, and her mother had English, Irish, and German ancestry.
Meryl's early performing ambitions leaned toward the opera. She became interested in acting while a student at Vassar and upon graduation she enrolled in the Yale School of Drama. She gave an outstanding performance in her first film role, Julia (1977), and the next year she was nominated for her first Oscar for her role in The Deer Hunter (1978). She went on to win the Academy Award for her performances in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Sophie's Choice (1982), in which she gave a heart-wrenching portrayal of an inmate mother in a Nazi death camp.
A perfectionist in her craft and meticulous and painstaking in her preparation for her roles, Meryl turned out a string of highly acclaimed performances over the next decade in great films like Silkwood (1983); Out of Africa (1985); Ironweed (1987); and A Cry in the Dark (1988). Her career declined slightly in the early 1990s as a result of her inability to find suitable parts, but she shot back to the top in 1995 with her performance as Clint Eastwood 's married lover in The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and as the prodigal daughter in Marvin's Room (1996). In 1998 she made her first venture into the area of producing, and was the executive producer for the moving ...First Do No Harm (1997). A realist when she talks about her future years in film, she remarked that "...no matter what happens, my work will stand..."
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tom McDonough
Spouse (1)
( 30 September 1978 - present) (4 children)
Trade Mark (3)
Known for being a perfectionist when preparing for roles
Known for her ability to master almost any accent
She frequently plays real-life characters: Julia Child , Ethel Rosenberg , Karen Silkwood , Karen Blixen , 'Roberta Guasppari', 'Lindy Chamberlain', Susan Orlean , and 'Margaret Thatcher'.
Trivia (119)
In September 1999, named Best Modern Actress in an Entertainment Weekly online poll, substantially beating out runner-up Michelle Pfeiffer .
Learned to play the violin, by practicing 6 hours a day for 8 weeks, for her role in Music of the Heart (1999).
Has a fear of helicopters.
Listed as one of 12 "Promising New Actors of 1977" in John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 29.
In October 1997, ranked #24 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
Educated at Yale University. Studied Drama.
Graduated from Vassar College in 1971.
Was romantically involved with actor John Cazale for a 2 years, culminating with his death at age 42 in 1978 from lung cancer. She is very reluctant to discuss the relationship with anyone. The couple had been sharing a loft at 146 Franklin Street in Manhattan's Tribeca district.
Graduated from Bernards High School.
Before making it big, she was a waitress at The Hotel Somerset in Somerville, New Jersey, USA.
Was a cheerleader and homecoming queen in high school.
She left her just-claimed Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) on the back of a toilet during the 1979 festivities.
Replaced Madonna for the lead in Music of the Heart (1999).
In 2001, her son, Henry W. Gummer ("Hank") was a student at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
In 2000, named an Officer of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Born at 8:05 a.m. EDT.
Tennessee Williams wanted her for a film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" in the 1980s. When Streep proved unavailable, the project was refashioned for television and the role of Blanche given to Ann-Margret .
Has a deviated septum, which she refuses to have fixed.
The children's TV series Sesame Street (1969) has featured a character named "Meryl Sheep" in her honor.
Was originally supposed to play the role of Iris Hineman is the film Minority Report (2002), but had to back out. She was replaced by Lois Smith .
Her character Karen Silkwood from her 1983 film Silkwood (1983) was ranked #47 on the American Film Institute Heroes list of the 100 years of The Greatest Screen Heroes and Villians.
Presented Paul McCartney with the 1990 Grammy Lifetime Achievement award. Attended The Beatles concert at Shea Stadium in 1965 with an "I love Paul" sign, which she mentioned when presenting the award to McCartney.
Older sister of Harry Streep and Dana Streep .
Spent a year as a transfer student at Dartmouth College where she participated in theater.
Originally applied to Law School but slept in on the morning of her interview and took it as a sign she was destined for other things.
Sigourney Weaver and Christine Estabrook were fellow classmates at Yale Drama School.
Back at the Drama school, she and Sigourney Weaver appeared in a play staged in a swimming pool together. The play was called 'The Frogs.'.
May 27, 2004 was proclaimed "Meryl Streep Day" by Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields. [May 2004]
She was voted the 37th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
As a young actor, she performed at the Yale Repertory Theater with Christopher Lloyd .
According to Katharine Hepburn 's official biographer A. Scott Berg, Meryl Streep was her least favorite modern actress on screen: "Click, click, click," she said, referring to the wheels turning inside Streep's head.
Has only been turned down for four roles: Michelle Straton in American Gigolo (1980), Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams (1985), Miss Kenton in The Remains of the Day (1993), and Elizabeth I in Elizabeth (1998).
She often works with Academy award-winning director Mike Nichols .
Mentioned by first name only (with two-time co-star Jack Nicholson ) in Michael Crichton 's 2004 novel "State of Fear.".
Tony Nominee in 1976 as Best Actress (Featured Role - Play) for Tennessee Williams ' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton.".
Premiere Magazine ranked her as #46 on a list of the Greatest Movie Stars of All Time in their Stars in Our Constellation feature (2005).
Took serious singing lessons. At age 12, she studied to become an opera singer.
Acting career began on the stage.
Is the second of 4 consecutive winners of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to have the initials "M.S.". The others are: Maggie Smith - California Suite (1978), Mary Steenburgen - Melvin and Howard (1980), and Maureen Stapleton - Reds (1981).
Received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Middlebury College during her nephew's graduation in 2004.
She attended Harding Township Middle School, in Harding, New Jersey for 1 or 2 years
Sold her New York City townhouse for $9.1 million in February 2006. She was forced to slash the asking price for the eight-bedroom Manhattan property from $12 million to secure a sale. Streep bought the house for $2.2 million in 1995, according to the New York Post.
Early in her career, Streep received a letter from Bette Davis , whom most critics and cinema historians rank as the greatest American movie actress ever. Davis told Streep that she felt that she was her successor as the premier American actress. Davis, a double winner who was nominated 10 times for an Academy Award, all of them Best Actress nods, set the record for most acting nominations with her tenth in 1963 for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), a record later surpassed by Katharine Hepburn with her 11th nomination (and 3rd win) for The Lion in Winter (1968). Hepburn extended her record with her 12th nomination (and fourth win) for On Golden Pond (1981).
Her performance as "Sophie Zawistowska" in Sophie's Choice (1982) is ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
Her performance as "Karen Silkwood" in Silkwood (1983) is ranked #71 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
Her husband, Don Gummer , is a sculptor.
Her father was a drug company exec; her mother, an artist-turned-housewife who kept an art studio behind the house. Her father loved to play the piano and her mother to sing. Meryl was given singing lessons at a young age. Her mother died in 2001 and her father in 2004.
Son Henry Gummer is an actor, filmmaker and co-founder of a rock band. Daughter Mary Willa, whose stage name is Mamie Gummer , is an off-Broadway actress.
Friend of Jill Clayburgh . First met in their roles as mothers.
The longest she has gone without an Oscar nomination is five years, between Postcards from the Edge (1990) and The Bridges of Madison County (1995).
Robert De Niro said she is his favorite actress to work with.
Was nominated for Best Actress in 1988 along with Cher . When Cher was announced, just before the cameras cut away from the other four actresses, Streep could be seen springing to her feet in delight and applauding for Cher. During her acceptance speech, Cher thanked Streep personally (addressing her as Mary Louise Streep), as they had worked together on Cher's first film, Silkwood (1983). As the camera briefly cut away to Streep sitting in the audience, she blew Cher a kiss.
Considered for the role of Evita Peron in Evita (1996).
Donated her wardrobe from The Devil Wears Prada (2006) to a charity auction.
Uses music, most often Classical, to get into character.
Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS).
Nominated for a 2007 Drama Desk Award for her performance in "Mother Courage and Her Children" (Outstanding Actress in a Play).
Daughter of Mary Streep and Harry Streep (a pharmaceutical executive).
Her accumulation of 19 Oscar nominations (3 wins) was accomplished over a period of only 36 years. Bette Davis scored 10 nominations (2 wins) over 28 years (all leading roles). Katharine Hepburn garnered 12 nominations (4 wins) after a relatively lengthy 48 years (all leading roles).
Occasionally mistaken for friend Glenn Close , Streep was pregnant with her fourth child while shopping in a Los Angeles baby store where the staff lavished her with huge amounts of baby paraphernalia. Just as she was about to leave they whispered, "We loved you in Fatal Attraction (1987)".
Elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2007 for her services to arts and entertainment (inaugural election). Official induction ceremonies held in May 2008.
She and her daughter Mamie Gummer portrayed the same role at different ages in Evening (2007).
In 2007, she ranked #6 on Entertainment Weekly's 'The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood'.
Nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award for "The One and Only Shrek" (Best Spoken Word Album For Children).
Has said she is a great fan of actor Leonardo DiCaprio .
With the announcement of the 66th Annual Golden Globe Award nominations and receiving two nominations, the actress surpassed Jack Lemmon's count of 22 nominations and is now, besides holding the record for most Oscar nominations, the actor with the most Golden Globe nominations of all time with a total of 29 nominations.
She was a close friend of late actress Natasha Richardson .
She attended Natasha Richardson 's funeral along with husband Don Gummer .
Signs cheques with her real name - Mary Louise Gummer.
She was ranked #87 on Ellen DeGeneres ' most sexy movie actors list. (2009).
She was awarded honorary Princeton degree in June 2009.
She gained as much as 15 pounds while filming the Julie & Julia (2009) movie.
Her fans call themselves "Streepers".
In the stage show of Fame, though other actors are mentioned in song lyrics, she is the only actress to have her name in a song title. The song is called "Think of Meryl Streep" and takes place after Carmen kisses Nick when he asks her how she relaxes, and Serena (who wants Nick for herself) sees them.
Studied acting with Michael Howard in New York City.
Through the television series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr. (2010), she learned that she is a distant relative of director Mike Nichols .
Lives in New York City and Salisbury, Connecticut.
She presented leadership award to ex-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt on March 2010.
Landed the breakthrough role of Linda in The Deer Hunter (1978) after Robert De Niro had seen her playing Dunyasha in Anton Chekhov 's "The Cherry Orchard" at Manhattan's Lincoln Center (1977). Streep had been playing opposite Irene Worth , Raul Julia and Mary Beth Hurt .
On her 60th birthday, her husband brought her a toaster and one of her daughters brought her a rocking chair. Despite having to work until late on the day, her children cooked her a birthday meal when she returned.
Attended Emily Blunt and John Krasinski 's wedding with her husband, Don Gummer .
Kept the sunglasses she wore in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and used them again during the "Money Money Money" sequence in Mamma Mia! (2008).
As of 2015 she is still the most Oscar-nominated actress with 19 nominations.
She was awarded the 2010 National Medal of the Arts for her services to drama.
Recipient of the 2011 Kennedy Center Honors, along with Barbara Cook , Neil Diamond , Yo-Yo Ma , and Sonny Rollins .
Was considered for the part of Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979).
Is one of only four thespians to be nominated for acting honors by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences over five decades - 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s. Along with Laurence Olivier (1930s-1970s), Paul Newman (1950s, 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s) and Katherine Hepburn (1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1980s).
Referenced in "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Your Horoscope for Today".
Claimed to have had a photographic memory when she was younger, which allowed her to memorize her lines after one reading.
Spokesperson for the Center for Reproductive Rights' Draw the Line campaign. The Center for Reproductive Rights is a global legal organization dedicated to advancing women's reproductive health, self-determination and dignity as basic human rights.
Gave birth to her 1st child at age 30, a son Henry Wolfe Gummer (aka Henry Gummer ) on November 13, 1979. Child's father is her husband, Don Gummer .
Gave birth to her 2nd child at age 34, a daughter Mary Willa Gummer (aka Mamie Gummer ) on August 3, 1983. Child's father is her husband, Don Gummer .
Gave birth to her 3rd child at age 36, a daughter Grace Jane Gummer (aka Grace Gummer ) on May 9, 1986. Child's father is her husband, Don Gummer .
Gave birth to her 4th child at age 41, a daughter Louisa Jacobson Gummer on June 12, 1991. Child's father is her husband, Don Gummer .
As of 2015, she has the most Academy award nominations.
In 2013, she presented the Best Actor Oscar to Daniel Day-Lewis for Lincoln (2012). The previous year, she had received her third Oscar (second for Best Actress) for The Iron Lady (2011), and she give Lewis his third Best Actor Oscar. Both won their third Oscar for playing a Head of Government of a different nationality: Streep was an American actress playing a British Prime Minister, while Day-Lewis is a British actor playing an American President. In addition, Day-Lewis was not the only actor playing Abraham Lincoln that year. The part was played in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) by Benjamin Walker , who was married to Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer .
Was a finalist for the role of Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979), but the part went to good friend and classmate Sigourney Weaver instead. However, Streep later got to make her own contribution to the character. Many of the special effects for Alien 3 (1992) were created in England, after the cast; including Weaver; had returned home to the U.S. The filmmakers needed a prosthetic cast of Ripley's head for some shots, so rather than call back Weaver, they used an available cast of Streep that had been made for a previous project and was still floating around the studio.
Her father was of German and Swiss-German descent, and his patrilineal ancestors had originally been surnamed "Streeb". Her mother had English, German, Irish, Scots-Irish (Northern Irish), and remote French, ancestry, and was descended from early settlers in Pennsylvania. One of Meryl's maternal great-grandmothers, Mary Agnes McFadden, was born in Ireland.
Acting mentors were Jean Arthur and Joseph Papp .
London, UK: To begin promoting the film, The Iron Lady (2011). [November 2011]
As of 2014, has appeared in five films that nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Julia (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Out of Africa (1985), The Hours (2002). Winners in the category are The Deer Hunter (1978), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Out of Africa (1985).
Is one of 6 actresses to have been pregnant at the time of winning the Academy Award; the others are Eva Marie Saint , Patricia Neal , Catherine Zeta-Jones , Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman . Neal is the only to have not accepted her award in person as a result of her pregnancy. Streep was 5 months pregnant with her daughter Mamie Gummer when she won the Best Actress Oscar for Sophie's Choice (1982).
Was the 82nd actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) at The 52nd Annual Academy Awards (1980) on April 14, 1980.
In 2013, David Letterman revealed that the director Harmony Korine had been banned from appearing on Letterman's show during the late 1990s when Letterman personally caught Korine rifling through Meryl Streep's purse in a dressing room. Streep and Korine had both been scheduled to appear on Letterman's show that night, but only Streep did.
According to biographer Diana Maychick when companion John Cazale was too weak to read the newspapers, Streep read the paper to him imitating well-known broadcaster Warner Wolf's voice.
Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama 24 November 2014.
Meryl Streep sings in Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986), and Postcards from the Edge (1990), all of which were directed by Mike Nichols .
Donated her entire salary for The Iron Lady (2011) to the Women's History Museum.
Ever since her first Oscar nomination, 63 actresses have been one of her four co-nominees in the same category, spanning an age gap of 81 years (five generations) from Katharine Hepburn to Emma Stone . Among them, 11 actresses were co-nominated twice: Cate Blanchett , Debra Winger , Helen Mirren , Jane Alexander , Jessica Lange , Judi Dench , Julianne Moore , Kate Winslet , Kathy Bates , Sandra Bullock and Winona Ryder . So far, Meryl Streep 's greatest rival, with 3 Oscar co-nominations, is still Glenn Close .
Is a democrat.
Her role in Music of the Heart (1999) is the only performance for which Wes Craven directed an actor to an Oscar nomination.
Is one of 13 actresses who won their Best Supporting Actress Oscars in a movie that also won the Best Picture Oscar (she won for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)). The others are Hattie McDaniel for Gone with the Wind (1939), Teresa Wright for Mrs. Miniver (1942), Celeste Holm for Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Mercedes McCambridge for All the King's Men (1949), Donna Reed for From Here to Eternity (1953), Eva Marie Saint for On the Waterfront (1954), Rita Moreno for West Side Story (1961), Juliette Binoche for The English Patient (1996), Judi Dench for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Jennifer Connelly for A Beautiful Mind (2001), Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago (2002) and Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave (2013).
She won an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011), making her one of 18 actors to win the Award for playing a real person who was still alive at the evening of the Award ceremony (as of 2015). The other sixteen actors and their respective performances are: Spencer Tracy for playing Father Edward Flanagan in Boys Town (1938), Gary Cooper for playing Alvin C. York in Sergeant York (1941), Patty Duke for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962), Jason Robards for playing Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men (1976), Robert De Niro for playing Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980), Sissy Spacek for playing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)_, Jeremy Irons for playing Claus Von Bullow in Reversal of Fortune (1990), Susan Sarandon for playing Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking (1995), Geoffrey Rush for playing David Helfgott in Shine (1996), Julia Roberts for playing Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich (2000), Jennifer Connelly for playing Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind (2001), Jim Broadbent for playing John Bayley in Iris (2001), Helen Mirren for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006), Sandra Bullock for playing Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side (2009), Melissa Leo for playing Alice Eklund-Ward in The Fighter (2010), Christian Bale for playing Dickie Eklund in The Fighter (2010) and Eddie Redmayne for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything (2014).
President of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival in 2016.
Her daughter, Grace Gummer , stars as Nora Ephron in Good Girls Revolt (2015). Streep starred in three films written by Ephron: Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986) and Julie & Julia (2009).
Campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election.
Personal Quotes (51)
[ Entertainment Tonight (1981)] I had it (smoking), it stinks.
[in 1978] I'm looking forward to bigger parts in the future, but I'm not doing soft-core scripts where the character emerges in half-light, half-dressed.
[on her Lifetime Achievement Award from the AFI] I don't want to spit in the eye of good fortune, but it was weird. I felt like I'd butted in line in front of Lucille Ball , Audrey Hepburn , Katharine Hepburn . Hello? How did this happen? I was only the sixth woman to receive it, but they found 26 men to give it to. I thought that was embarrassing.
[on her view of acting back in college] I thought it was really fun, you've got to understand, but I didn't think it was a serious way to conduct your life. You know, I had a sense of mission. I was a true child of the '60s.
I love doing comedy, but people just don't give me enough of a chance. It's one of the reasons I enjoy The Manchurian Candidate (2004) so much. It's because I actually get a chance to be funny.
Let's face it, we were all once 3-year-olds who stood in the middle of the living room and everybody thought we were so adorable. Only some of us grow up and get paid for it.
[accepting an Emmy for Angels in America (2003)] You know, there are some days when I myself think I'm overrated, but not today.
Someone once said that sometimes studio heads don't want to cast films with the image of their first wife in the role. It's just rather unpleasant for them. So they like the idea of the new one.
[on her role in The Manchurian Candidate (2004)] I loved being someone so certain. Because certainty is just so attractive in people. To me, it's a completely bogus position - for me. Because, you know, I'm listening to every side. But it's so nice not to have to listen to all the different sides. To be so clear and on your track and sure. It's a fabulous thing. Unfortunately, it leads to fanaticism.
I think I was wired for family. You know how they say people are wired for religion, or wired for this or that? I always knew I would like to, if I could find the right person, have a family. I can't imagine living single.
I get nervous calling myself an artist. I feel I'm more like an interpreter or a violinist, you know.
[on winning the 1983 Best Actress Oscar for Sophie's Choice (1982)] Oh boy, no matter how much you try to imagine what this is like, it's just so incredibly thrilling right down your toes.
But ... in my own experience of male and female directors, people have a much, much harder time taking a direct command from a woman. It's somehow very difficult for people.
I mean, come on; when you have people writing these things, that you're the greatest thing that ever ate scenery, you're dead. You're fucking dead. How can you even presume to begin a new character? It's a killer.
It's a lesson I learned in drama school: the teacher asks, how do you be the queen? And everybody says, 'Oh it's about posture and authority.' And they said, no, it's about how the air in the room shifts when you walk in. And that's everyone else's work.
I really, really depend on the other actors for the confirmation of who I think I am," she says. "And so it's important to me to work with good people that are not worried about how they look. You know. Real actors. They're your blood.
[part of Emmy acceptance speech for Angels in America (2003)] Glenn Close is my friend so I know she'll forgive me, Helen Mirren is an acting god, and no one has put a better performance on film than Judy Davis in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (2001). The only one in the group is Emma Thompson , who will hold a grudge for the rest of her life. But who cares?
[accepting the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical 2007] "I think I've worked with everyone in the room! I have!"
[on her struggles as an actress earlier in her career] It's hard to negotiate the present landscape with a brain and a female body.
[on winning a Golden Globe for Adaptation. (2002)]. I've been nominated 789 times and I was getting settled over there for a long winter's nap....I didn't have anything prepared because it's been since the Pleistocene Era that I won anything.
It would be nice to have a woman President. I think half the Senate should be women, half of Parliament, half the ruling mullahs. But that will never happen, darling!
[on Dustin Hoffman ] He's energized and the greatest combination of the generous and the selfish that ever lived. He wants to be the greatest actor who ever was.
I try to lead as ordinary a life as I can. You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.
I don't know what I'd do without my husband. I'd be dead, emotionally at least, if I hadn't met him. He's the greatest.
Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother, with your father. It's everything. And it's where you learn everything.
[on her marriage] There's no road map on how to raise a family: it's always an enormous negotiation. But I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can't imagine eschewing one for the other.
[on life as a young actress] When I was 20 I busked to afford accommodation. One night I hadn't earned enough, I actually slept in the open in Green Park [in London]. The view was of the Ritz Hotel and I vowed I'd stay there one day. And I have.
I hate the [Oscar] campaigning thing. It's unseemly. You should be honored for something. It shouldn't be for whose campaign was better.
[February 2009 about her appearance] My daughters had helped me to stop worrying about my appearance over the years. I wasted so many years thinking I wasn't pretty enough and why didn't I have Jessica Lange 's body or someone else's legs? What a waste of time.
[in 2009] I've been nominated for an Oscar 15 times and won twice, but it still feels like it's happening to someone else. I wish I could feel it more.
[on Natasha Richardson 's tragic death] Tash was the warm sun in the center of a large constellation of family, friends, all of those lucky enough to know her - she is irreplaceable in our lives; she gave us so much, so generously - her legacy is the love that connects us all.
If you've been married for a long time you love without looking.
My greatest culinary triumph was when I was falling in love with my husband. We were on the coast of Maine in a cabin and I made an apple pie...just whipped it up, without a recipe or anything..just the perfect pastry. I've never been able to do it again - and he asks for it often!
Turning 60 was important to everyone else. It was a big number, to me it was, 'Well yeah, that comes after 59', and I don't even want to look it in the eye.
[on portraying Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011)] The prospect of exploring the swathe cut through history by this remarkable woman is a daunting and exciting challenge. I am trying to approach the role with as much zeal, fervor and attention to detail as the real Lady Thatcher possesses - I can only hope my stamina will begin to approach her own.
[1994, on if she's bothered when one of her films don't do well at the box-office] I'm horribly disappointed when people don't see what I consider some of my best work. Yeah, I'm very sad. But I know that I have a video life. Most of my fans are home with their children waiting for my films to come out on video. But I'm disappointed because certain things should be seen on the big screen. I was very proud of A Cry in the Dark (1988), but it wasn't distributed widely enough for people to have seen it on the big screen.
[1994, on career choices] What affects your career choices are the three interesting scripts you get in a year, two of which you're wrong for, one you think you might want to do if you're real lucky. You can't possibly plot what's going to be available, what's going to be written, who's going to think of it, and if it will come to you or not.
[2008] One of the most important keys to acting is curiosity. I am curious to the point of being nosy. What that means is you want to devour lives. You're eager to put on their shoes and wear their clothes and have them become a part of you. All people contain mystery, and when you act, you want to plumb that mystery until everything is known to you.
[on The Iron Lady (2011)] It was one of those rare, rare films where I was grateful to be an actor and grateful for the privilege of being able to look at a life deeply with empathy.
It took a lot out of me, but it was a privilege to play her ( Margaret Thatcher ), it really was. I still don't agree with a lot of her policies. But I feel she believed in them and that they came from an honest conviction, and that she wasn't a cosmetic politician just changing make-up to suit the times.
[on Margaret Thatcher ] We on the Left didn't like her policies but secretly we were thrilled that a woman had made it, and we thought, "Wow, if it can happen there in England, it could happen here." But we're still waiting in America.
[on Margaret Thatcher ] She's still an incredibly divisive figure, but you miss her clarity today. It was all very clear and up front, and I loved that eagerness to mix it up and to make it about ideas. Today it's all about feelings. You know, "How do I come off?" and, "Does this seem OK?" You want people who are willing to find a solution. I admire the fact that she was a "love-me-or-hate-me" kind of leader who said: "This is what I stand for." It's a hard thing to do and no one's doing that now.
[on what appealed to her about playing Margaret Thatcher] Women and power, and diminishment of power, and loss of power. And reconciliation with your life where you come to a point where you've lived most of it, and it's behind you. I have always liked and been intrigued by older people and the idea that behind them lives every human trauma, drama, glory, jokes, love.
[on Margaret Thatcher ] I consider all the roles I play a privilege but this one was special because there are such vehement opinions about her. People seemed to look at her as an icon or a monster and I just wanted to locate the human being inside those caricatures that we've seen over so many years. And to investigate myself what it must have been like for her.
[responding to those who have criticized the emphasis placed on Margaret Thatcher's frail and confused old age] Some people have said it's shameful to portray this part of a life. But the corollary of that is that, if you think that debility, delicacy, dementia are shameful, if you think that the ebbing of a life is something that should be shut away, if you think that people need to be defended from these images then - yes - then you'll think it's a shameful thing.
I was never engaged to John Cazale . We lived together for three years until he died of bone cancer.
[on avoiding cosmetic surgery] I really understand the chagrin that accompanies aging, especially for a woman, but I think people look funny when they freeze their faces. In Los Angeles there's a lot of that. I pick up on the part that doesn't move on a face. I'm immediately drawn to it and that is the opposite of what you're intending. You pull focus on the area that's been worked on.
I gotta thank everybody in England that let me come and trample over their history.
[on her college life] A kid who had read only seven books in high school and was now face-to-face with class valedictorians and full time intellectuals, girls whose idea of a Saturday night was an extra chunk of free time to conduct a biology experiment.
I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.
[her Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech] Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year, so I have to read. Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said: You and all of us in this room really belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places. I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island; Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids in Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Italy. And Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in London no, in Ireland I do believe, and she's here nominated for playing a girl in small-town from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all of the nicest people, is Canadian, and Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, and is here playing an Indian raised in Tasmania. So, Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. They gave me three seconds to say this, so: An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that. Breathtaking, compassionate work. But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can't get it out of my head, because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose. OK., this brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call him on the carpet for every outrage. That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our Constitution. So, I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we're gonna need them going forward, and they'll need us to safeguard the truth. One more thing: Once, when I was standing around on the set one day, whining about something - you know we were gonna work through supper or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, "Isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?" Yeah, it is, and we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight. As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art.
Salary (16)
| Iron Lady |
For which film did Woody Allen win the 'Oscar' for Best Original Screenplay earlier this year? | Oscars 2015: Is Meryl Streep any match for Katharine Hepburn? - Telegraph
Oscars
Oscars 2015: Is Meryl Streep any match for Katharine Hepburn?
Katharine Hepburn or Meryl Streep - which Oscar-winning legend is the greatest? Two Telegraph writers explain why Hepburn and Streep deserve all the plaudits
Meryl Streep could equal Katharine Hepburn's 4 Oscars this weekend if she wins for Into the Woods Photo: Rex Features/Getty Images
By Hannah Betts , and Tim Robey
7:05AM GMT 21 Feb 2015
Comments
If Meryl Streep is named Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards on Sunday – for her heavily made-up turn as a singing witch in Into the Woods , no less – she will match Katharine Hepburn’s record haul of four Oscars. But which one deserves the title of our greatest actress?
KATHARINE HEPBURN
by Hannah Betts
Anyone who imagines that Katharine Hepburn could ever be eclipsed is – to use Hepburn-esque language – a fool. She was simply awesome, as the thousands currently flocking to the BFI Southbank’s Hepburn season would passionately endorse.
Hepburn may have won four Oscars over her 60-year career, but attended the ceremony only once, to present a gong to someone else – a typically Hepburnian gesture. In 1999, she was named the greatest star in Hollywood history by the American Film Institute, and so she remains. Meryls may come and go, but Kate towers immortal.
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21 Feb 2015
A class act as an actor and a human being, Hepburn was a born grafter. When her career took a nose in the late Thirties, she engineered her own triumphant return in The Philadelphia Story (1940), designed to reveal the tender side of her patrician persona.
Her on-screen wrangling with her partner of 26 years, Spencer Tracy, introduced a new kind of woman into the world: the “modern woman”, no less – spirited, assertive, proto-feminist. At an age when her peers were going into retirement, she took on epic professional challenges: Shakespeare seasons, performing her own stunts, and the near-death experience that was The African Queen (1951).
As an individual, she was no less bold. The public was forced to learn to love her for her bluntness, standoffishness, and boyish style, and love her they did. Hepburn was the woman who wore the trousers, literally and metaphorically. Even if Streep does win her fourth Oscar, she will not – and could never – come near. HB
First screen role
The melodrama A Bill of Divorcement (1932).
Breakthrough film
See above. Variety declared: “She has a vital something that sets her apart from the picture galaxy.” Her performance secured her instant stardom and a contract with RKO.
First Oscar nod
Morning Glory (1934), the story of a naive young actress’s journey to stardom.
Greatest Oscar moment
Didn’t pick up her own gongs, only attending in 1974 to present an award to MGM producer Lawrence Weingarten. Flew in the face of convention by winning three of her four Oscars in her sixties and seventies.
Should have won for
Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940) and The African Queen (1951), according to BFI curator Hannah McGill. Hepburn herself would have said she deserved a gong for Sidney Lumet’s version of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962). Little girls of all ages would cry: “Jo March in Little Women (1933)”.
Most iconic role
The Philadelphia Story, the vehicle she devised to win back America’s heart, in which haughty heiress Tracy Lord auditions a pack of admirers while revealing her softer side.
Best on-screen chemistry
Sparring with real-life love Spencer Tracy, with whom she made nine films, including Woman of the Year (1942) and Adam’s Rib (1949).
Greatest scene
Her Oscar-winning performance as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (1968) – an icon embodied by an icon.
Greatest look
Looking divine in a virginal white robe as Cary Grant deems her a chill goddess in The Philadelphia Story. That said, as McGill notes: “Her best look was off-screen – slacks, mannish shoes and a big smile – and always utterly elegant nonetheless.”
Unlikeliest moment
The closing scene of Woman of the Year (1942), rewritten to her immense disapproval to make her character seem submissive to her husband. Closely followed by turns as an uneducated mountain girl, Chinese peasant, comedic Soviet pilot, and the lead in a musical life of Coco Chanel.
Greatest off-screen line
On being introduced to Jane Fonda on the set of On Golden Pond (1981), Hepburn declared: “I don’t like you.” Fonda recalled: “It was a terrible moment… someone only a notch below God was damning me.”
Most feminist moment
Not only did she regularly kick male co-star ass, she played a female aviator, a suffragist (like her mother), dressed in boy-drag and kissed a woman. When a studio had her slacks confiscated in an effort to persuade her into a skirt, she stalked the set in her underwear until they were returned.
Harshest critic
Dorothy Parker on Hepburn’s Broadway appearance in The Lake in 1934: “Katharine Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.” When Hepburn vied for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, producer David O Selznick remarked: “I can’t see Rhett Butler chasing you for 12 years.”
MERYL STREEP by Tim Robey
Meryl Streep in Silkwood
“‘Meryl Streep was nominated for a Golden Globe’ is a fancy way of saying ‘It’s December’,” quipped some wag on Twitter when her first awards attention for Into the Woods was noted.
After 19 Oscar nominations, it’s easy to take Streep for granted: we all know the woman can act. Her genius for it is some kind of given, so much so that she faces an uphill struggle to prove each performance worthy of the latest laurel, rather than merely being an additional instalment of Streep-adulation in generalised form.
Around her nominations for Doubt (in 2008) and Julie & Julia (2009), the talk was all of whether and when Streep would take a third Oscar, adding to her existing trophies for Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Sophie’s Choice (1982). She deserved a third, many agreed, but maybe not for those. Maybe not even for The Iron Lady (2011), though she got it.
These are the standards Streep has set herself, by being one of the few film stars of modern times – Daniel Day-Lewis, Julianne Moore and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman are others – whose stardom feels built on a what-next quality in their acting, a serial flaunting of their formidable technique. Like the shark that has to swim constantly, Streep must keep transforming and outdoing herself, or her star may risk slipping in the firmament.
In the UK, we have our dames, Helen Mirren and Judi Dench. Streep is Hollywood’s dame – legendary as the only woman over 60 with the box-office draw to commandeer vehicles and ring the tills. Something like a Devil Wears Prada can be built around her, but only on the condition it lets her strut her stuff, whip up something next-level, add a vital new portrait to the gallery.
Some complain of Streep “doing a Streep”, as if it only required a switch to be flipped. But there’s both wild largesse and minute calibration to her best acting. She can be subtle and monumental, powerhouse and pointillist, all at once. TR
First screen role
Streep appeared in a terrible wig and way down the bill of Julia (1977), a biopic about Hollywood radical Lillian Hellman, played by Jane Fonda. Most of Streep’s scenes were left on the cutting-room floor.
Breakthrough film
She played opposite Robert De Niro in the harrowing Vietnam epic, The Deer Hunter (1979).
First Oscar nod
She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for The Deer Hunter, but lost out to Maggie Smith (in California Suite). She triumphed the following year, winning Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs Kramer.
Greatest Oscar moment
In recent years, Streep – for four decades a hallowed presence at the Academy Awards – has been thanked in other people’s acceptance speeches more times than God. She namechecked the Lord herself when she won Best Actress for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, saying: “I want to thank God – Harvey Weinstein.”
Should have won for
Well, take your pick - she’s been nominated a record 19 times: Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Bridges of Madison County (1995). However, she was inexplicably overlooked for The Hours (2003), playing a modern-day Mrs Dalloway opposite Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman, who won for her Virginia Woolf.
Most iconic role
She wowed baby boomers with Sophie’s Choice (1982), about the trauma of Holocaust survival. Generation Y-ers, however, think fondly of her goofy performance in Death Becomes Her (1992), a black comedy about eternal life in which Streep ends up wearing her head back to front.
Best on-screen chemistry
Supremely comfortable in mid-life romantic comedies, she and Tommy Lee Jones sizzled (eventually) in Hope Springs (2012), about a long-married couple who seek marriage guidance to learn how to be intimate with each other again. There were sparks between her and Alec Baldwin in It’s Complicated (2009).
Greatest scene
For all her serious roles, Streep was never more devastating than in the “blue sweater” scene in The Devil Wears Prada, when, as the demanding editor-in-chief of a high-fashion magazine, she delivers a deadly monologue about why the fashion industry is a serious business (“What you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean…”).
Greatest look
The midnight grey cloak she wore to standson the Cobb in Lyme Regis, looking out to see, in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981). That, or her Prada power-dressing in Devil Wears...
Unlikeliest moment
Her cliff-edge rendition of The Winner Takes It All in Mamma Mia: The Movie (2008) is unexpectedly affecting; she recorded her vocal in one take, too. Take that, Agnetha.
Greatest off-screen line
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Galena is a major ore of which metal? | Galena Mineral | Uses and Properties
Galena
The primary ore of lead that is sometimes mined for its silver content
Galena: Photograph of a nice cubic galena crystal with adjacent calcite crystals. The galena crystal is about two inches on a side. Collected from the Sweetwater Mine, Reynolds County, Missouri. Specimen and photo by Arkenstone / www.iRocks.com .
What is Galena?
Galena is a lead sulfide mineral with a chemical composition of PbS. It is the world's primary ore of lead and is mined from a large number of deposits in many countries. It is found in igneous and metamorphic rocks in medium- to low-temperature hydrothermal veins. In sedimentary rocks it occurs as veins, breccia cements, isolated grains, and as replacements of limestone and dolostone .
Galena is very easy to identify. Freshly broken pieces exhibit perfect cleavage in three directions that intersect at 90 degrees. It has a distinct silver color and a bright metallic luster. Galena tarnishes to a dull gray. Because lead is a primary element in galena, the mineral has a high specific gravity (7.4 to 7.6) that is immediately noticed when picking up even small pieces. Galena is soft with a Mohs hardness of 2.5+ and produces a gray to black streak . Crystals are common and they usually are cubes, octahedrons, or modifications.
Structure of galena: Galena has a chemical composition of PbS. That means it contains an equal number of lead and sulfide ions. The ions are arranged in a cubic pattern that repeats in all directions. This structure is what causes crystals of galena to have a cubic habit and causes galena to break in three directions at right angles.
Physical Properties of Galena
Uses
An ore of lead
Argentiferous galena: Argentiferous galena from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Specimen is approximately 2-1/2 inches (6.4 centimeters) across. Argentiferous galena has a silver content that is often high enough for the galena to be mined as an ore of silver. Some galena mines receive more revenue from their silver than from their lead production.
Argentiferous Galena - The Silver Ore
The typical specimen of galena is about 86.6% lead and 13.4% sulfur by weight. However, some specimens of galena contain up to a few percent silver by weight. They are called "argentiferous galena" because of their silver content. In these specimens, silver can substitute for lead in the atomic structure of the galena, or it can occur in tiny grains of silver minerals included in the galena.
Silver within the galena disrupts the crystal structure, which often causes the galena to have curved cleavage faces. This tiny bit of knowledge can be a powerful prospecting tool. In addition to silver, galena can contain minor amounts of antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, copper , and zinc . Sometimes selenium substitutes for sulfur in galena.
Cleavage fragments of galena: One of the most diagnostic properties of galena is its ability to break by cleavage in three directions that intersect at right angles. This forms cleavage fragments that are cubic and rectangular in shape. This photo shows pieces of crushed galena that clearly exhibit the right angle cleavage. This characteristic cleavage is caused by the mineral's cubic internal structure as shown above. Photo © iStockphoto / Tyler Boyes.
Galena value: Some mines produce more revenue from the silver content of their galena than from the lead content. Assume that we have a mine that produces argentiferous galena with an average composition of 86% lead, 13% sulfur and just 1% silver (as shown in the diagram on the left).
If the silver price is $25 per troy ounce and the lead price is $1 per avoirdupois pound, the value of the lead in one ton of ore will be $1720, while the value of the silver in that same ton of ore will be $7292 (as shown in the diagram on the right).
The small amount of silver has a huge impact on revenue because at the prices assumed, silver is 364 times more valuable than an equal weight of lead. It is easy to understand why mining companies get excited by argentiferous galena! Even though galena is the ore being removed and lead makes up the bulk of the product, these mines are often called "silver mines."
Related: The Many Uses of Silver
Smelting metals: Galena is one of the easiest ores to smelt. It can simply be placed in a fire and then lead can be recovered from under the ashes when the fire goes out. Archaeologists have found evidence that lead was smelted as early as 6500 BC in what is now Turkey [1]. Small amounts of silver were refined from lead by the Romans about 2000 years ago [2]. Public domain image by Georgius Agricola .
Smelting Galena
Galena is very easy to smelt. If rocks that contain galena are placed in a fire, lead can be collected from below the ashes after the fire burns out. People have taken advantage of this simple smelting for thousands of years. Archaeologists have found lead beads and statues in Turkey that date back to about 6500 BC [1]. Lead is probably the first metal to have been processed from an ore. The ancient Romans made lead pipe and used it as indoor plumbing. (Plumbum is the Latin word for lead. The word "plumbing" and our use of "Pb" as the chemical symbol for lead come from the ancient Romans.)
The ancient Greeks and Romans were able to separate silver from lead about 2000 years ago [2]. Many of the Roman lead ingots were inscribed "Ex Arg" or "Ex Argent" to signify that the silver had been removed from the lead. The Greeks were able to desilver lead to a 0.02 percent silver content and the Romans to a 0.01 percent silver content [3]. It is surprising that they were able to realize that the lead contained silver and amazing that they were able to develop such an efficient method of refining!
Galena Information
[1] Lead Fact Sheet : General Information and History, Stanford University, General Health and Safety Program, last accessed July 2016.
[2] On the Nature of Metals (De Re Metallica): Georgius Agricola, 1556. Translated by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover, republished by Farlang.com.
[3] Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology: John F. Healy, Oxford University Press, page 324, 1999.
[4] 'Heavy Metal' Snow : Carolyn Jones Otten, press release of Washington University of St. Louis, February 2004.
Alteration of Galena
Galena weathers easily. Fresh surfaces of galena tarnish rapidly from a silver metallic luster to a dull gray to dull black color. When exposed to the elements or buried in soil, galena quickly weathers to anglesite, cerussite, pyromorphite, or another lead mineral. These minerals are often used in prospecting. When they are found at the surface, they often reveal that galena is present below.
Does It Really "Snow" Galena on Venus?
The planet Venus has an inhospitable environment where volcanoes vent superheated gases into the atmosphere. Sulfur and lead are among the gases erupted from the volcanoes on Venus . They remain in the gaseous phase until they are high enough in the atmosphere to condense.
In 2004, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis provided plausible evidence that "heavy metal snow" - which is most likely a combination of lead sulfide (galena) and bismuth sulfide - falls on the higher elevations of Venus [4].
Galena crystal radio: One of the most interesting uses of galena was in early crystal radios. The operation of these radios required alternating current to be converted into a pulsing direct current. For that to occur, a semiconductor material was used to limit the flow of electricity to one direction. The alternating current flowed through a wire, known as a cat's whisker, into a semiconductor crystal, which was usually a crystal of galena, which only allowed flow in a single direction. Image © iStockphoto / Greg_H.
Uses of Galena
Galena is a very important mineral because it serves as an ore for most of the world's lead production. It is also a significant ore of silver. Galena has very few uses beyond its service as an ore, but that should not diminish its importance to society.
The number one use of lead today is in the lead-acid batteries that are used to start automobiles. The typical auto battery contains about twenty pounds of lead and must be replaced every four or five years. There are billions of these batteries in the United States alone. Lead-acid batteries are also used as standby power supplies for computer networks, communication facilities, and other critical systems. Lead is also one of the metals used in energy storage systems associated with power generation and hybrid vehicles.
The best way to learn about minerals is to study with a collection of small specimens that you can handle, examine, and observe their properties. Inexpensive mineral collections are available in the Geology.com Store .
Lead Safety
Many uses of lead and lead compounds have been discontinued or significantly reduced over the past few decades in response to health concerns. Some of these uses include lead in residential paints, motor vehicle fuels, solder, ammunition, fishing weights, ceramic glazes, pesticides, cosmetics, glass, plastics, alloys and many other products. For this reason, many schools have removed galena from student mineral kits and have replaced it with a mineral with a lower level of concern.
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Who was the first Italian boxer to be World Heavyweight Champion? | Education and Resources - The Lead Mining Museum
Education and Resources
Home > Education and Resources
The Museum of Lead Mining’s aim is to preserve the heritage of this important lead mining region, which encompassed Wanlockhead and Leadhills.
In order to achieve this, we provide a unique, entertaining and educational experience and we can tailor make our tours to suit your educational needs.
We welcome a variety of groups from Schools, Universities, Corporate Days Out and Coach Tour Companies, just to name a few. So why not get in touch with us and we can start your Wanlockhead Experience…
Galena
Galena [PbS] or lead sulphide is the main source of lead [Pb]. It is widespread in the district and is found along with the common vein minerals such as quartz, calcite, barytes and dolomite. Galena has been the most important commercial mineral found in the locality. It was the basis of the Lead Mining industry which was of economic significance, especially during the 18th and 19th Centuries. The Galena crystal group on the left, is an example which was found at Leadhills in the Glengonnar Mine.
Galena is the natural mineral form of lead sulfide. It is the most important lead ore mineral.Galena is one of the most abundant and widely distributed sulfide minerals. It crystallizes in the cubic crystal system often showing octahedral forms. It is often associated with the minerals sphalerite, calcite and fluorite.
Lead Ore Deposits
Galena deposits often contain significant amounts of silver as included silver sulfide mineral phases or as limited solid solution within the galena structure. These argentiferous galenas have long been the most important ore of silver in mining. In addition zinc, cadmium, antimony, arsenic and bismuth also occur in variable amounts in lead ores.
Selenium substitutes for sulfur in the structure constituting a solid solution series. The lead telluride mineral altaite has the same crystal structure as galena. Within the weathering or oxidation zone galena alters to anglesite (lead sulfate) or cerussite (lead carbonate). Galena exposed to acid mine drainage can be oxidized to anglesite by naturally occurring bacteria and archaea, in a process similar to bioleaching.
Galena deposits are found in Wales, Germany, France, Romania, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Scotland, Ireland, England, Australia, and Mexico. Noted deposits include those at Freiberg, Saxony; Cornwall,The Mendips, Somerset, Derbyshire, and Cumberland, England; the Sullivan Mine of British Columbia; and Broken Hill, Australia. Galena also occurs at Mount Hermon in Northern Israel.
In the United States, it occurs most notably in the Mississippi Valley type deposits of the Lead Belt in southeastern Missouri, and in the Driftless Area of Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. The economic importance of galena to the early history of the Driftless Area was so great that one of the towns in the region was named Galena, Illinois.
Galena also was a major mineral of the zinc-lead mines of the tri-state district around Joplin in southwestern Missouri and the adjoining areas of Kansas and Oklahoma. Galena is also an important ore mineral in the silver mining regions of Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Montana. Of the latter, the Coeur d’Alene district of northern Idaho was most prominent. Galena is the official state mineral of the U. S. states of Missouri and Wisconsin.The largest documented single crystal of galena measured 25 x 25 x 25cm3.
Galena Uses
One of the earliest uses of galena was as kohl, which in Ancient Egypt, was applied around the eyes to reduce the glare of the desert sun and to repel flies, which were a potential source of disease.Galena is a semiconductor with a small bandgap of about 0.4 eV which found use in early wireless communication systems.
For example, it was used as the crystal in crystal radio sets, in which it was used as a point-contact diode to detect the radio signals. The galena crystal was used with a safety pin or similar sharp wire, which was known as a “cat’s whisker”. Making such wireless sets was a popular home hobby in the Britain during the 1930s. Derbyshire was one of the main areas where Galena was mined. Scientists that were linked to this application are Karl Ferdinand Braun and Sir Jagdish Bose.
In modern wireless communication systems, galena detectors have been replaced by more reliable semiconductor devices, though silicon point-contact microwave detectors still exist in the market.
Chalcopyrite
Chalcopyrite is a copper iron sulfide mineral that crystallizes in the tetragonal system. It has the chemical composition CuFeS2.It has a brassy to golden yellow color and a hardness of 3.5 to 4 on the Mohs scale. Its streak is diagnostic as green tinged black.On exposure to air, chalcopyrite oxidises to a variety of oxides, hydroxides and sulfates. Associated copper minerals include the sulfides bornite (Cu5FeS4), chalcocite (Cu2S), covellite (CuS), digenite (Cu9S5); carbonates such as malachite and azurite, and rarely oxides such as cuprite (Cu2O). Chalcopyrite is rarely found in association with native copper.
Identification
Chalcopyrite is often confused with pyrite, although the latter has a cubic and not a tetragonal crystal system. Further, chalcopyrite is often massive, rarely crystalline, and less brittle. Chalcopyrite is also a darker yellow in color, with a greenish tinge and diagnostic greasy luster.Due to its color and high copper content, chalcopyrite has often been referred to as “yellow copper”.
Chemistry
Natural chalcopyrite has no solid solution series with any other sulfide minerals. There is limited substitution of Zn with Cu despite chalcopyrite having the same crystal structure as sphalerite.However, it is often contaminated by a variety of other trace elements such as Co, Ni, Mn, Zn and Sn substituting for Cu and Fe. Se, Fe and As substitute for sulfur, and trace amounts of Ag, Au, Pt, Pd, Pb, V, Cr, In, Al and Sb are reported.It is likely many of these elements are present in finely intergrown minerals within the chalcopyrite crystal, for instance lamellae of arsenopyrite representing As, molybdenite representing Mo, etc
Sphalerite
Sphalerite ((Zn,Fe)S) is a mineral that is the chief ore of zinc. It consists largely of zinc sulfide in crystalline form but almost always contains variable iron. When iron content is high it is an opaque black variety, marmatite. It is usually found in association with galena, pyrite, and other sulfides along with calcite, dolomite, and fluorite. Miners have also been known to refer to sphalerite as zinc blende, mock lead, false galena and black-jack.
The mineral crystallizes in the cubic crystal system. In the crystal structure, zinc and sulfur atoms are tetrahedrally coordinated. The structure is closely related to the structure of diamond. The hexagonal analog is known as the wurtzite structure. The lattice constant for zinc sulfide in the zincblende crystal structure is 0.596 nm, calculated from geometry and ionic radii of 0.074 nm (zinc) and 0.184 nm (sulfide). It forms ABCABC layers.
Its color is usually yellow,brown, or gray to gray-black, and it may be shiny or dull. Its luster is adamantine, resinous to submetallic for high iron varieties. It has a yellow or light brown streak, a hardness of 3.5 – 4, and a specific gravity of 3.9-4.1. Some specimens have a red iridescence within the gray-black crystals; these are called “ruby sphalerite.” The pale yellow and red varieties have very little iron and are translucent. The darker more opaque varieties contain more iron. Some specimens are also fluorescent in ultraviolet light. The refractive index of sphalerite (as measured via sodium light, 589.3 nm) is 2.37. Sphalerite crystallizes in the isometric crystal system and possesses perfect dodecahedral cleavage. Gemmy, pale specimens from Franklin, New Jersey are highly fluorescent orange and/or blue under longwave ultraviolet light and are known as cleiophane, an almost pure ZnS variety.
Crystals of suitable size and transparency have been fashioned into gemstones, usually featuring the brilliant cut to best display sphalerite’s high dispersion of 0.156 (B-G interval)—over three times that of diamond. Freshly cut gems are lively with an adamantine luster and could conceivably be mistaken for a fancy-colored diamond in passing, but due to sphalerite’s softness and fragility the gems are best left unset as collector’s or museum pieces (although some have been set into pendants). Collectors may pay a premium for stones over one carat (200 mg), as clean crystals are usually quite small. Gem-quality material is usually a yellowish to honey brown, red to orange, or green; the two most important sources are the Chivera mine, Cananea, Sonora, Mexico; and the Picos de Europa, Cordillera Cantabrica, near Santander on Spain’s northern coast.
Gold
The chemical symbol for gold is Au, from the Latin aurum, which means ‘shining dawn’. Aurora was the Roman goddess of dawn which links to the warm, yellow colour of gold. Gold and Copper are the only two non white coloured metals.
Gold and copper were the first metals to be discovered by man, around 5000BC, and together with silver these three metals are found in the metallic state in the earth’s crust. Gold is still mined in its metallic form in over 60 countries around the world.
Gold is referred to as a precious and a noble metal. Gold has an excellent chemical stability with a high resistance to corrosion and oxidation. However, this is just one of the many properties that gold possesses, which when considered in combination with each other have led to a number of exciting and often unique industrial applications.
The purity of gold is measured in Carats. A Carat was originally a unit of mass (weight) based on the Carob seed or bean which was used by ancient merchants in the Middle East. The Carat is still used for the weight of gem stones where 1 carat = 200mg. For gold is is used to measure the purity where pure gold is 24 carats.
The following table shows the range from pure gold at 24 Carats to less pure at 9 Carats.
Carats
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'The Dead Of Jericho' and 'Last Bus To Woodstock' are novels featuring which detective? | Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse
Last Bus to Woodstock (1975)
Created by
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Morse (left) as played by John Thaw in the television adaptation, with Lewis (right) as played by Kevin Whately.
Inspector Morse is a fictional character in the eponymous series of detective novels by British author Colin Dexter, as well as the 33-episode 1987–2000 television adaptation of the same name, in which the character was portrayed by John Thaw. Morse is a senior CID (Criminal Investigation Department) officer with the Thames Valley Police in Oxford, UK. With a Jaguar car (originally a Lancia), a thirst for British real ale and a penchant for music (especially opera and Wagner), poetry, art, classics, classic cars, and cryptic crossword puzzles, Morse presents a likeable persona, despite his sullen temperament.
Name and family
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Morse's first name, "Endeavour", was kept a secret until the end of Death is Now My Neighbour (traditionally Morse claimed that he should be called "Morse" or joked that his first name was "Inspector"). In the series it is noted that his reticence about his Christian name led to a public school (Stamford School, where Colin Dexter and his brother were both pupils) nickname of "Pagan". The origin of his name is the vessel HMS Endeavour, as Morse's mother was a Quaker (Quakers have a tradition of "virtue names") and his father was a fan of Captain James Cook. The author of the Morse novels, Colin Dexter, is a fan of cryptic crosswords, and Morse is named after champion solver Jeremy Morse, one of Dexter's arch-rivals as a clue-writer in the crossword world.
During the episode "Cherubim and Seraphim", it is learned that Morse's parents divorced when he was 12. He remained with his mother until her death three years later, when he had to return to his father. He had a dreadful relationship with his stepmother, Gwen, and claimed he only read poetry to annoy her and that her petty bullying almost drove him to suicide. He has a half-sister, Joyce, with whom he is on better terms, and was devastated when Joyce's daughter, Marilyn, took her own life.
Habits and personality
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Morse is ostensibly the embodiment of white, male, upper-middle-class Britishness, with a set of prejudices and assumptions to match. He may thus be considered a late example of the gentleman detective, a staple of British detective fiction. This background is in sharp juxtaposition to the working class origins of his assistant, Lewis (named for another rival clue-writer, Mrs. B. Lewis); in the novels, Lewis is Welsh, but this was altered to a northern English (Geordie) background in the TV series. He is also middle-aged in the books.
Morse's relationships with authority, the establishment, bastions of power and the status quo are markedly ambiguous, as sometimes are his relations with women. Morse is frequently portrayed in the act of patronising women characters, to the extent that some feminist critics have argued that Morse is a misogynist. Fundamentally, however, he is portrayed as a compassionate and egalitarian figure.
Morse is an extremely intelligent individual. He dislikes spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, demonstrated by the fact that in every personal or private document written to him he manages to point out at least one spelling mistake. He claims his approach to crime-solving is deductive and one of his key tenets is that "there is a 50 per cent chance that the last person to see the victim alive was the murderer". In reality, it is the pathologists who deduce; Morse uses immense intuition and his fantastic memory to get to the killer.
Career
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Although details of Morse's career are deliberately kept vague, it is hinted that as a schoolboy he won a scholarship to study at St John's College, Oxford. He lost the scholarship as the result of poor academic performance, which in turn resulted from a failed love affair (mentioned in the series at the end of "The Last Enemy" and in the novel The Riddle of the Third Mile). Forced to leave the University, he entered the Army, and on leaving it, joined the police. He often reflects on renowned scholars (such as A. E. Housman) who, like himself, failed to get academic degrees from Oxford.
Novels
The novels in the series are:
Last Bus to Woodstock (1975)
Last Seen Wearing (1976)
The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (1977)
Service of All the Dead (1979)
The Dead of Jericho (1981)
The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983)
The Secret of Annexe 3 (1986)
The Wench is Dead (1989)
The Jewel That Was Ours (1991)
The Way Through the Woods (1992)
The Daughters of Cain (1994)
Death is Now My Neighbour (1996)
The Remorseful Day (1999)
Inspector Morse also appears in several stories in Dexter's short story collection, Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories (1993, expanded edition 1994).
Dexter killed off Morse in his last book, The Remorseful Day. Morse dies in hospital from complications of his neglected diabetes, a disease Colin Dexter shares.
Television
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The Inspector Morse novels were made into a TV series (also called Inspector Morse) for the British TV channel ITV. The series was made by Zenith Productions for Central (a company later acquired by Carlton) and comprises 33 two-hour episodes (100 minutes excluding commercials)—20 more episodes than there are novels—produced between 1987 and 2000. The last episode was adapted from the final novel, The Remorseful Day, in which as previously stated Morse dies. As of May 2011 a prequel is being planned for British ITV, with author Colin Dexter's participation, which will portray a young Morse at Oxford.
Radio
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An occasional BBC Radio 4 series (for the Saturday Play) was made starring the voices of John Shrapnel as Morse and Robert Glenister as Lewis. The series was written by Guy Meredith and directed by Ned Chaillet. Episodes included: The Wench is Dead (23 March 1992); Last Seen Wearing (28 May 1994); and The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn (10 February 1996).
Theatre
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Which colour completes the title of the 1970 number one by 'Christie', '.......... River'? | Colin Dexter
Colin Dexter
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"She writes so well and I'm sure Inspector Morse would have enjoyed this."
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Who was the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Hephaestus? | Greek Gods: Hephaestus - YouTube
Greek Gods: Hephaestus
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Published on Sep 18, 2013
Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes.Hephaestus' Roman equivalent is Vulcan. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and Hera, the king and queen of the gods.
As a smithing god, Hephaestus made all the weapons of the gods in Olympus. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, and was worshiped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly Athens. The cult of Hephaestus was based in Lemnos. Hephaestus' symbols are a smith's hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs.
A description of Hephaestus by William Smith. Go to LearnOutLoud.com to download this and more Greek Mythology on mp3.
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In which country was Alexander Dubcek First Secretary of the Communist Party in 1968-1969? | Hephaestus | God of War Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
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Hephaestus (Hēphaistos) was a Greek god, whose Roman equivalent was Vulcanus , though in Roman Mythology he is not considered to be the "Fallen" god and has a higher status than his Greek counterpart. His mother was Hera , who gave birth to him either alone or with Zeus . He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire, and volcanoes. He served as the blacksmith of the gods, and he was worshiped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly in Athens .
The center of his cult was in Lemnos . Hephaestus' symbols are a smith's hammer, an anvil and a pair of tongs , although sometimes he is portrayed holding an axe. Hephaestus is the only Olympian God to have been exiled from Olympus and return. In a Homeric version of Hephaestus' myth, Hera, mortified to have such a grotesque offspring, promptly threw him from Mount Olympus . He fell nine days and nights and landed in the ocean. Hephaestus, being the most unfaltering of the gods, was given Aphrodite 's hand in marriage by Zeus in order to prevent conflict over her between the other gods. However, this did not stop her from having secret affairs with other men, be it mortal or god. It was Ares she was attracted to the most, something that Helios told Hephaestus after catching them in an affair.
Hephaestus created an invisible net and hung it above his bed, making sure it was completely hidden. Then he told his wife that he was going on a trip. The moment her husband was gone, Aphrodite invited Ares for a visit. The lovers went to bed, but the net fell on them while they were making love. It was impossible for the couple either to escape or to separate. The more they tried, the more they became tangled. Hephaestus then invited the other gods to see their shameful position, in further mockery. Naked and damp, their limbs entangled in each other's and in the golden web that held them. After publicly humiliating them, Aphrodite and Hephaestus' relationship became bitter, and Hephaestus grew to dislike Ares even more.
In the God of War Series
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Before his elder brother Ares' death, and Kratos opening Pandora's Box , Hephaestus was the most prized craftsmen of all Olympus, and was rewarded with marriage to Aphrodite. Hephaestus' deformed appearance may be due to being brutally attacked by Zeus after the King of the Gods was filled with the Evil Fear, and became enraged with Kratos' retrieval of the Box.
Chains of Olympus
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Hephaestus was mentioned as the creator of the Gauntlet of Zeus . It is said in the description of the item that Zeus demanded him to craft a weapon that would bind the Titans to the very walls of Tartarus . Thus was created the Gauntlet of Zeus.
God of War III
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When Kratos traveled through the underworld after being dislodged from Gaia , he stumbled upon Hephaestus in his forge . After exchanging insults, Hephaestus revealed that although Zeus was the one to imprison him. Kratos was in fact the true source of his torment, though Kratos insists he did the Smith God no wrong and that he is after only one Olympian. "Well, as long as it's one Olympian," chuckled Hephaestus. When Kratos inquired about the Flame of Olympus , Hephaestus told of how everyone on Olympus knew and respected it. He continued to warn Kratos, saying that it was powerful enough to kill both man and god. When Kratos insisted upon knowing its location, Hephaestus sarcastically replied by stating that if Kratos could find his way out of the Underworld , he could find the Flame as well. "You have been truly helpful, Hephaestus," Kratos sarcastically replied back.
Second Encounter
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After killing Hades , Kratos returned to the forge, informing the Smith God of his triumph over the God of the Underworld. The Smith God chuckled, "Dead? Hades deserved to suffer, though I thought his death would be impossible." "Olympians overestimate themselves," said Kratos. Hephaestus replied, laughing, "Interesting. I will keep that in mind, Spartan." Kratos looked at a Hyperion Gate nearby, but the Smith God told him, "You need the soul of a God to use the Hyperion Gates, Kratos. And that one has not been used for centuries. I'm sure it's broken; otherwise I would have seen my beautiful...You know Kratos, I wasn't always like this: a monster!" Hephaestus then regaled Kratos with his past life as the prized craftsman of the gods, but concluded by stating that his perfect life ended when Kratos killed Ares. Furthermore, the girl whom he considered his daughter, Pandora, had been taken away from him by Zeus, never to return. He had tried to recreate her in the forge ever since, but failed time and time again. He asked Kratos to retrieve Pandora for him, but Kratos dismissed his request, stating he had other concerns, although Hephaestus tried to persuade Kratos again by reminding the Ghost of Sparta about his own role as a father. Kratos, visibly touched, paused for a moment, before leaving the Forge.
Third Encounter
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Kratos returned to Hephaestus through the Hyperion Gate connecting the Forge with Aphrodite's bedchamber. At first Hephaestus believed it to be his wife, before recoiling at the sight of Kratos. He asked humorously if Aphrodite had "conquered another God of War". Kratos called that a question Hephaestus should ask his wife, demanding to know the whereabouts of the Labyrinth, to which Hephaestus expressed some confusion as he thought Kratos was only searching for the Flame of Olympus. He quickly realized that Pandora was being held in the Labyrinth and that Kratos intended to use her as a means of destroying the Flame . Hephaestus angrily told Kratos to stay away from Pandora, citing that he was the reason both of them were imprisoned, to which Kratos retorted that he did them no wrong. Hephaestus countered, saying it was because he opened the box, but Kratos replied that he "did what had to be done", at which point Hephaestus began to unfold a bigger picture: The Evils from the first Titanomachy could not easily be contained. That is why Hephaestus forged Pandora's Box in a power greater than the Gods: the Flame of Olympus. As the raw metal took its shape, he realized that the flame was the safest and only place to protect it.
To open the Box, he forged a key that took on its own life and took the form of a teenage girl; neither living nor dead. Dubbed Pandora , the two would grow to love each other as father and daughter. Aware that Zeus would take Pandora from him, Hephaestus hid the girl away and lied to Zeus, saying the safest place to keep the Box was on top of Cronos' back. After Kratos used the box to kill Ares, Zeus, driven by madness and fear, angrily battered Hephaestus until he revealed his deceit, despite the fact that Zeus had actually aided Kratos on his quest to retrieve the box from Pandora's Temple. Zeus subsequently took Pandora from her father, and sent him to the Underworld. Hephaestus then desperately attempted to dissuade Kratos from finding Pandora, but the Ghost of Sparta claimed that nothing would stop him from destroying Zeus. Running out of options, Hephaestus decided to kill Kratos. The smith god first faked wanting to help him, and told the Spartan to travel to the Pit of Tartarus in order to find the Omphalos Stone , so that he could make a weapon for Kratos. Kratos initially did not want a new weapon, stating he already had plenty, but Hephaestus insisted the weapon he would create would be a "special" one that would "give him the retribution he deserved". However, when Kratos entered the door that led toward Tartarus, Hephaestus sealed the door shut, snickering out loud.
Final Encounter
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Whilst on his quest, Kratos battled the Titan Cronos , and slew him, taking the Omphalos Stone from his body. Returning to Hephaestus, Kratos was furious, as he believed the Smith God had sent him on a suicide mission. Hephaestus pleaded innocence, claiming that he knew the Ghost of Sparta could handle himself. After completing the Nemesis Whip , Hephaestus tried electrocuting Kratos with his Ring in a final attempt to kill him, shouting, "Here is your retribution!"
Kratos managed to shake off the effect and kill Hephaestus by impaling him on his own anvil. In his dying words, the smith god pleaded with Kratos to spare his daughter, as well as begging for Pandora's forgiveness, after which he passed away. Kratos appeared to bear no ill will towards Hephaestus for this betrayal however, as he later told Pandora that Hephaestus had done what any father should: protect his child.
Powers and Abilities
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Hephaestus, as a god was immortal, and possessed regeneration and super strength, as well as the ability to shapeshift, although clearly to a lesser extent than the other deities. He was also a masterful blacksmith, forging powerful artifacts such as Pandora's Box and the Gauntlet of Zeus . Even after his fall from grace, Hephaestus retained his skill, being able to make several flawless statues in Pandora's likeness (albeit unable to breathe life into them as he had with the original), and forging the Nemesis Whip out of nothing but the Omphalos Stone and his bare hands in very short notice. As the god of fire, Hephaestus is completely immune to the element. During his conversations with Kratos, Hephaestus can be seen sitting in molten, boiling lava, without so much as flinching. During his battle against Kratos, it was revealed that he can discharge electric charges from his ring. But even being a god, he was killed off far easier than the other gods, of whom most had been weakened by extreme power or killed by divine weaponry. (It is possible that the anvil which impaled and killed Hephaestus was considered a godly weapon/item. This would explain why it was able to kill Hephaestus, a God.)
Personality
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Out of all the Gods Of Olympus, Hephaestus was the most benevolent besides Athena. Hephaestus loved the things he forged and created, with his most cherished creation being Pandora, whom he came to love as his own daughter. However, Hephaestus had very low self-esteem due to the fact that his mother Hera hated him despite bragging of his talent, and also because his wife Aphrodite cheated on him with Ares and then Kratos. Hephaestus was most likely infected with the evils Misery and/or Deceit after Kratos opened Pandora's Box to destroy Ares and after Zeus brutally beat him and kidnapped Pandora.
Gallery
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Rip Torn , who provided Hephaestus' voice, ironically voiced Zeus in the Disney movie, Hercules.
Judging from his constant depression over Pandora and two attempts at killing Kratos, Hephaestus was most likely infected with the evils Misery and Deceit from Pandora's box. Albeit he showed no intent to deceive or betray the warrior until Kratos became a threat to his daughter's life, intentionally or not. His sadness also might have been caused by Zeus' brutal and merciless punishment for keeping Pandora and taking her away from him. He also lied to Kratos that he would help him destroy Zeus and asked him to bring him the Omphalos Stone so that a new weapon could be built. This however was merely a suicide mission so he would protect Pandora from Kratos.
Interestingly, no significant event happens upon the death of Hephaestus, though he was the god of volcanoes, smithery, forging, and similar things dealing with fire. The GoW Community theorized his death triggered the eruption of volcanoes.
In a way, Hephaestus himself was indirectly responsible for bringing about his own demise, as Pandora's Box was designed to forever contain the evils of the Titanomachy, and yet, he created Pandora as a key to retrieve the box. Whatever reason compelled him to create a means, while it was never meant to be opened again is unknown. Hephaestus blaming Kratos for his suffering is therefore a meaningless argument.
Similar to Gaia, Hephaestus first aided Kratos—in this case by crafting him a new weapon—only to turn his back on him.
Helios informed Hephaestus about Ares and Aphrodite's affair in Greek Mythology, hence Hephaestus remark on Aphrodite having conquered another god of war.
Kratos seemed to have little to no lingering animosity over the Smith God's betrayal, later telling Pandora that Hephaestus died doing what any father should do: protecting the life of his child. This meant that Kratos completely understood why Hephaestus tried to kill Kratos in the first place and Kratos would have done the same in that situation.
Kratos and Hephaestus have similar lives, as both had a family, both were attacked by their father, Zeus, both would do anything to protect their children, both treated Pandora like a daughter, and both were cast down from Olympus.
Hephaestsus' right eye is horribly scarred, most likely as a result of being tortured by Zeus.
The fact that he was killed off so easily by Kratos, by stabbing him on his own anvil, might implied that Zeus removed certain of his godly abilities after his betrayal, as similar to what he had done to Prometheus.
During Kratos' third encounter with Hephaestus, he warned him to stay away from Pandora, which is strange because when Kratos met the Smith God for the second time, Hephaestus asked Kratos to rescue Pandora. Perhaps the change of heart occurred after Hephaestus realized the reason why he was searching for the Labyrinth and Pandora: to destroy the Flame of Olympus, which will require the sacrifice of Pandora's life in the process.
In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was born ugly and cast down from Olympus for this reason. In the God of War mythos, however, Hephaestus was once handsome but this was changed when he was tortured and deformed by Zeus.
Interestingly, the Smith God had nothing to do with the creation of the Gods' most powerful weapon, the Blade of Olympus .
Hephaestus' power over electricity seems to be a common trait from his family. His father (Zeus), uncle (Poseidon) and grandfather (Cronos) all possess this ability.
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Who was the Greek equivalent of the Roman goddess Venus? | Roman Goddess Venus
Roman Goddess Venus
Areas of Influence: Venus was the Roman Goddess and love, beauty and seduction.
The latter is suggested by the root word for her name "venes" which forms the root of the word venenum (poison) suggesting love potions and charms.
This Goddess also represented motherhood, domesticity and prosperity. It is perhaps for this reason, that brides to be made offerings to her and why mosaics with images of this Goddess were often found in the home.
In earlier times she was the fertility Goddess of gardens, vineyards and humans. Later she took on aspects of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite and the Etruscan Deity Turan.
She was more powerful and revered than her Greek counterpart as she was considered to be one of the divine ancestors of Rome.
Julius Caesar claimed that he was descended from this Goddess and dedicated a temple to her in Rome for ensuring his military success.
The Goddess of Love was also the patron of the normal, everyday wine with Jupiter responsible for the sacred wine used in the offerings to the Gods.
Her name is also linked to the tiny pre-historic Goddesses found throughout Europe including the famous Venus of Willendorf.
Origins and Genealogy: In Roman mythology she was the daughter of Jupiter and mother of the hero Aeneas. She took many lovers including Mars the God of war and Vulcan.
Strengths: Love, sexuality and beauty.
Weaknesses: Vanity and jealousy.
Symbolism
Often shown holding a mirror. This led to the Venus sign, a circle with a cross underneath which is used to symbolize females.
In art she was shown as a beautiful, young Goddess.
For pictures of this goddess including the famous painting Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli and photo's of ancient statues please follow the link.
Sacred Animals: Snake.
Sacred Birds: Dove, swallow and swan.
Sacred Plants: Aloe, wood anemone, apple, benzoin, maidenhair fern, heather, sweet marjaram, myrtle, parsley, quince, sandlewood and rose.
Festivals: The main festival to this Goddess were held on 18th August, 1st April and 26th September.
Greek Equivalent: Aphrodite
Venus Archetype
The Lover
Represents passion and selfless devotion to another person. It also extends to the things that make our hearts sing, like music art or nature.
The shadow aspect is obsessive passion that completely takes over and negatively impacts on your health and self esteem.
The Roman Goddess of Love took on many of the roles of Aphrodite and was said to have numerous lovers.
How To Work With These Archetypes
The Lover
You may be drawn to this Goddess if you are looking to attract a new lover or re-ignite the fire in an existing relationship. This Goddess can also be a useful tool to discover what you are passionate about in life.
On the shadow side you need to ask whether the amount of energy and time you are putting into relationships or projects is excessive? If this continues for too long you are likely to suffer from stress and physical ill health.
| Aphrodite |
Which musical instrument completes the title of the 1968 top ten hit by the 'Lemon Pipers', 'Green ........'? | Venus, Goddess of Love and Beauty
Venus, Goddess of Love and Beauty
Venus, Goddess of Love and Beauty
Venus Anadyomene, Roman, 2nd century c.e. De Agostini / Archivio J. Lange / Getty Images
By Patti Wigington
Updated May 11, 2016.
The Roman equivalent of Aphrodite , Venus was a goddess of love and beauty. Originally, she was believed to be associated with gardens and fruitfulness, but later took on all the aspects of Aphrodite from the Greek traditions. She is considered by many to be the ancestor of the Roman people, and was the lover of the god Vulcan , as well as of the warrior god Mars.
Worship and Celebration
The earliest known temple to Venus was dedicated on the Aventine hill in Rome, around 295 b.c.e. However, her cult was based in the city of Lavinium, and her temple there became the home of a festival known as the Vinalia Rustica. A later temple was dedicated after the defeat of the Roman army near Lake Trasimine during the Second Punic War.
Venus appears to have been very popular amongst the plebian class of Roman society, as evidenced by the existence of temples in areas of the city which were traditionally plebian rather than patrician. A cult to her aspect of Venus Erycina existed near Rome's Colline gate; in this guise, Venus was a goddess primarily of fertility.
Another cult honoring Venus Verticordia also existed between the Aventine hill and Circus Maximus.
As often found in Roman gods and goddesses, Venus existed in many different incarnations. As Venus Victrix, she took on the aspect of warrior, and as Venus Genetrix, she was known as the mother of the Roman civilization. During the reign of Julius Caesar, a number of cults were started on her behalf, since Caesar claimed that the family of the Julii were directly descended from Venus. She is also recognized as a goddess of fortune, as Venus Felix.
Brittany Garcia of Ancient History Encyclopedia says, "Venus' month was April (the beginning of spring and fertility) when most of her festivals were held. On the first of April a festival was held in honor of Venus Verticordia called Veneralia. On the 23rd, Vinalia Urbana was held which was a wine festival belonging to both Venus (goddess of profane wine) and Jupiter. Vinalia Rusticia was held on August 10th. It was Venus' oldest festival and associated with her form as Venus Obsequens. September 26th was the date for the festival of Venus Genetrix, the mother and protector of Rome."
The Lovers of Venus
Similar to Aphrodite, Venus took a number of lovers, both mortal and divine. She bore children with Mars, the god of war , but doesn’t seem to have been particularly maternal in nature. In addition to Mars, Venus had children with her husband, Vulcan, and when conflated with Aphrodite, is commonly believed to be the mother of Priapus , conceived during a fling with the god Bacchus (or one of Venus' other lovers).
Scholars have noted that Venus doesn't have many myths of her own, and that many of her stories are borrowed from the tales of Aphrodite.
Venus in Art and Literature
Venus is nearly always portrayed as young and lovely. Throughout the Classical period, a number of statues of Venus were produced by different artists. The statue Aphrodite of Milos, better known as the Venus de Milo, depicts the goddess as classically beautiful, with womanly curves and a knowing smile. This statue is believed to have been done by Alexandros of Antioch, around 100 b.c.e.
During the European Renaissance period and beyond, it became fashionable for upper class ladies to pose as Venus for paintings or sculptures. One of the best known is that of Pauline Bonaparte Borghese, younger sister of Napoleon. Antonio Canova sculpted her as Venus Victrix, reclined on a lounge, and although Canova wanted to sculpt her in a robe, Pauline apparently insisted on being portrayed nude.
Chaucer wrote regularly of Venus, and she appears in a number of his poems, as well as in The Knight's Tale, in which Palamon compares his lover, Emily, to the goddess. In fact, Chaucer uses the turbulent relationship between Mars and Venus to represent Palamon, the warrior, and Emily, the lovely maiden in the flower garden.
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Which Welshman was proclaimed Prince of Wales by his supporters on September 16th 1400? | Page One of Owain Glyndwr
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four
The date - 16th of September 2000. The place - Machynlleth the ancient capital of Wales.
For what seemed to be a few short hours, Machynlleth was seemingly the capital of Wales once again, as Welsh men, women and children from every corner of Wales and the World could be seen converging on the ancient place.
What was the reason for their convergence, Could it be that once again they were answering a rallying call to arms from arguably the most famous Welshman of all time; Owain Glyndwr. Surely it could not be so, for it was over 600 years to the very day, at his mansion of Sycarth in north east Wales that Owain had first declared his intentions of going to war. But perhaps this mystical figure of Welsh history was to reappear once again and, as he had previously, lead the Nation in one more bid for independence
No dear visitor, despite the fact that nearly all there would have answered the call, that was not to be the case. Under the fluttering battle flags used by Owain's army: the Golden Lion and me: the Red Dragon, those that had gathered there were this time on a more peaceful mission. That was to dedicate a monument to Owain's memory.
So this time, as there had been in previous times, there was to be none of the depravities of war, no blood of the nation's manhood to again mix with the soil of the land, none to grieve the loss of their loved ones.
Now I hear you ask why erect a monument to Owain anyway? Well having being hoisted aloft by his men on the 18 September 1400, I the Red Dragon of Wales, shall attempt to tell you of the man: this Owain Glyndwr.
The muddy waters of time seem to have clouded my actual recollections of Owain's birth, but I do remember that he was born at Trefgarn Owain near St. Davids in Pembrokeshire. On two accounts could he claim the right to the "Royal" Crown of Wales, His mother, a small framed woman, was a direct descendent of the Royal house of Deheubarth: while his father was of a direct line to those Princes of northern Powys who had once lived at the castle of Dinas Bran, high above the present town of Llangollen.
Owain returned home to Sycarth from the Scottish war, there towards the end of 1386 he married the daughter of Sir David Hanmer: a judge in the Court of the King's bench. Owain was Lord of the fertile rich lands of both Cynllaith Owain and Glyn Dyfrdwy and his mansion on the banks of the river Cynllaith, was something to behold. The door of the mansion was always open to anyone who cared to call, for there was always a welcome at his table. The house itself built with oak, stood on high ground and had an unheard of feature for those days, chimneys which carried away the smoke from the central room. There were spacious sleeping quarters for both the family and servants, for Owain rarely treated his servants as such, they were more family friends. Outside was a very large pigeon-house and a fishpond which contained many a fine fish.
To the right and rear of the mansion stood a large copse which contained a Heronry who's birds, despite causing havoc with the fish in the pond, were allowed to reside in the tree's for they often as not provided meat for the table. Down by the riverside, giving shelter from the sun on a warm lazy summers day, alder and willow overhung the river; underneath which on a late afternoon large trout could be seen as they rose to take a fly. However, among this tranquil scene things were not as they first seemed, for there was treachery and deceit in the air. By the time the rigor's of winter in year of 1400 had set in, there had been both a bloody campaign and heavy defeat.
Nevertheless when the year 1401 arrived in Wales the tide changed for it heralded victory after victory for a few years and may have continued, had it not been for the tide of change occurring once more. Then as always there was, down through the centuries in this small nation of ours, defeat; always that final bitter and utter bloody defeat that cost so many lives.
As a young man Owain was an adventurous and would roam the countryside, much to the consternation of his parents. Many times his father's servants undertook the task of searching for him in a bid to return him to his home. When Owain the young Lord of Glyn Dyfrdwy reached adulthood he was taken to London by his father, there installed in the "Inns of Court" where his father hoped he would learn the profession of law. It was not to be, for he soon became disillusioned with the task he took up the force of arms. He was esquire to Fitzalan the Earl of Arundal, indeed when English forces invaded Scotland in the August of 1385 he fought alongside Fitzalan in the army of Richard II king of England; earning himself a much envied reputation with his tenacity and skill of arms.
Prior to 1400 Owain had been having an ongoing dispute with the Lord Reginald Grey of Ruthin, there had even been several representations to parliament in 1399 regarding the situation. However, they had been to no avail, as the lord Reginald was a close confidant of the king; Henry of Lancaster. The situation came to head at Evesham where the king had summoned a general muster before beginning his campaign against the Scot's. Owain's summons to attend the muster was entrusted to Lord Grey, which he withheld until it was to late for Owain to obey. When Owain heard that Henry had marched north for Scotland, so the fires of war had been prepared.
September 1400, as the king marches home from Scotland, Owain knowing he faced the possibility of death for treason; resolves to put and end to his dispute with Grey with an act of war. Having called for his family to meet at Sycarth, he sat in council prepared to hear their views. Among those gathered that fateful day of September 16th 1400 were his sons, his wife's brothers and the Dean of St. Asaph cathedral. From early dawn that morning the pro's and con's of declaring war were debated, then as a cock crowed heralding the noon of the day so a cousin of Owain's drew forth his sword, swearing fealty he called out for the Lord of Glyn Dyfrdwy to become Prince of Wales. All that were there that day so proclaimed, so the die was cast and the fires of war were lit. Within hours the assembled host had armed themselves and then set out to right what Owain considered to be the wrong doings of Lord Grey.
September 18th, Owain and his men attack Grey's castle of Ruthin, but find that the castle is well defended: he and his men are repelled. In frustration the little town lying in the lee of the castle's walls is fired. It was while marching north, down the vale of the Clwydd, away from the castle and town, that I became the rallying point for the men of Wales.
One of Owain's men, on turning to look back up the vale, saw the smoke from the fires of Ruthin forming the shape of a dragon in the late afternoon sky. His shout of Look a dragon for Owain and Owain is for Wales quickly produced a rather sketchy Red Dragon on a motley background of green and white. Tied to a willow cut from a tree near the water's edge, I was hoisted aloft there to fly alongside Owain's battle flag of a golden lion on a white back ground. They say it was a fine sight the Lion and the Dragon fluttering in the wind that late Autumn day.
As to the campaign itself, well it was a complete disaster. Having rampaged around northeast Wales for eight days, during which time the English settlements of Ruthin, Denbigh, Rhuddlan, Flint, Harwarden and Holt were attacked and destroyed, there was very little else achieved, for the castles at all the places were left in intact. On the 24th of September Owain suffered a devastating blow.
Having left the town of Oswestry aflame on the 22nd Owain had advanced south with the the intention of doing the same to Welshpool. However, to the west of his intended target he decided to camp on the banks of the river Vyrnwy for a short while before advancing on the town. It was while he and his men lay at rest that the encampment was attacked by armour clad forces forces from Shropshire, Staffordshire and Warickshire, under the command of Hugh Burell. It was a bloody conflict with the river running red with blood, much of it the blood of Owain's men. Soon his men ran and scattered to the four corners of Wales. As for Owain, he and a small band took to the hills. It seemed to everyone that the rebellion was over, The king however, was not so sure. Whilst continuing to march south, he sent a message to the citizens of Shrewsbury warning them of the Welsh that lived in their midst.
Graphics by Ole R.D. Copyright © 1999-2005 / All Rights Reserved
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| Owain Glyndŵr |
Manhattan is surrounded by three rivers, the East, Harlem and which other | BBC - History - The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr (pictures, video, facts & news)
The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr
The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr
1400-1416
Owain Glyndŵr (Owain Glyndyfrdwy, Owain of the Valley of the Dee) was, on his father's side, heir to the dynasty of Powys Fadog. On his mother's side, he represented what was left of the claims of the descendants of the Lord Rhys of Deheubarth.
Memorial to Owain Glyndwr in the grounds of Plas Machynlleth (BBC)
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The coming of the Tudors
More information about: The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr
The male line of the Gwynedd dynasty became extinct with the death of Owain Lawgoch in 1378. Thereafter, to the extent that a Welsh claimant to the title of Prince of Wales did exist, it was Owain Glyndŵr.
Glyndŵr's background
Born in about 1350, Glyndŵr held at Glyndyfrdwy near Corwen, and Sycharth near Chirk, remnants of the patrimony of his ancestors.
Glyndŵr was a man of the borderland. Sycharth is only a mile from the English border. His family lived under the shadow of the great marcher aristocrats, the Fitzalan lords of Chirk and Oswestry.
Glyndŵr married into a leading Marcher family. He spent time in London and in the army of the King of England; indeed he could appear to have been the epitome of an assimilated Welshman.
Yet he was clearly well versed in the legendary lore of his people. The poets delighted in the hospitality of Sycharth and they, being deeply versed in genealogy, seemed to be grooming him for the role of the deliverer of the Welsh. Shakespeare's portrait of him in Henry IV combined these two facets of his character with great skill.
The context of the revolt
The year 1399 saw the dethronement of Richard II and the seizure of the throne by Henry IV - the lord of Brecon, Monmouth, Kidwelly and Ogmore - although Edmund Mortimer, the leading lord of the March, had a better claim to be the heir of Richard II.
In the early years of his reign, Henry had difficulty in consolidating his authority and was opposed by leading magnates, including the Mortimers and the powerful Percy family of Northumberland. Many of the Welsh gentry had close links with Richard II, and the usurpation weakened their allegiance to the English crown.
Revolt
The immediate spark for revolt seems to have been the king's unwillingness to mediate fairly in a dispute between Glyndŵr and his neighbour, Reginald Grey of the Ruthin marcher lordship. On 16 September 1400, a group of Glyndŵr's supporters proclaimed him Prince of Wales at Glyndyfrdwy. They attacked English settlements in north-east Wales and then melted away into the mountains.
Nothing then happened until his allies, the Tudor family of Anglesey, occupied Conwy Castle at Easter 1401. A few months later, Glyndŵr defeated a force on Pumlumon, and enthusiasm for him became apparent over much of Wales.
The king led several campaigns against him, but his orthodox strategy made little headway against Glyndŵr's guerrilla tactics. His campaigns were hindered by such appalling weather that some believed Glyndŵr had influence over the elemental forces of nature.
In an act of frustration, parliament passed the Penal Code, which prohibited the rebellious Welsh from gathering together, gaining access to office, carrying arms and dwelling in fortified towns, with the same restrictions being imposed upon Englishmen married to Welsh women.
Growing success
In 1402 Owain Glyndŵr's old enemy, Grey of Ruthin, fell into Glyndŵr's hands, as did the sole adult male of the Mortimer family. In 1404 Glyndŵr captured the castles of Aberystwyth and Harlech, sealed an agreement with the French and held a parliament at Machynlleth, where he was perhaps crowned Prince of Wales in the presence of envoys from France, Scotland and Castile.
French assistance arrived in 1405 when virtually the whole of Wales, beyond the environs of royal-held castles, acknowledged the authority of Glyndŵr.
Declining fortunes
Although 1405 represented the climax of Owain Glyndŵr's power, the year had its setbacks. The French contribution proved disappointing. Defeats at Grosmont Castle and at Pwllmelyn near Usk undermined Glyndŵr's authority in the south east. By 1406 his main hope was further assistance from France. That March he wrote to the King of France offering to transfer the allegiance of Wales from the Pope in Rome, recognised by England, to the Pope in Avignon, recognised by France.
The letter, written at Pennal near Machynlleth, sought recognition of St David's as an archbishopric with authority over the other bishops of Wales and several of those of England. It called for the appointment of clerics fluent in Welsh, the establishment of two universities in Wales and the retention in the country of the revenues of Welsh churches. The 'usurper', Henry IV, should be excommunicated and the Welsh should have receive full remission for any sins they might commit in the struggle against him.
The French did not respond. Henry IV's son, later Henry V, proved an effective military leader. Aberystwyth Castle was lost in 1408 and Harlech Castle in 1409.
Thereafter, Glyndŵr was a fugitive in the mountains. He probably died in about 1416 at Kentchurch on the Herefordshire border at the home of his daughter Alys. The location of his grave has proved a matter of much speculation.
The outcome of the revolt
Glyndŵr's revolt proved devastating for the people of Wales. Chroniclers reported that Glyndŵr 'brought all things to waste' and the English king 'proclaimed havoc in Wales'. It was accompanied by an extensive destruction considered characteristic of peasant revolts - which in some senses it was.
It can also be considered a civil war, for not all Welshmen were prepared to abandon their allegiance to the English crown. At least a generation passed before the economy began recovering. The Welsh gentry, many of whom had supported Glyndŵr, came to the conclusion that their future lay in co-operation with the English authorities.
350 years passed before the significance of the revolt was fully realised. From the late 18th century onwards, Glyndŵr was increasingly recognised as the greatest hero in the history of the Welsh people and his revolt seen as central to the growth of the sense of Welsh nationality.
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What is the full name of the disease in pigs SVD? | Swine Vesicular Disease (SVD) - Managing Pig Health and Treating Pig Dieases on ThePigSite.com - The Pig Site
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Swine Vesicular Disease (SVD)
(549) Although the virus which causes swine vesicular disease (SVD) virus is different from that causing foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) it produces a disease in pigs that is clinically indistinguishable from FMD. So if you are concerned about SVD in your pigs read also the FMD section.
Should you be concerned about SVD?
If your pig farm is in the UK, mainland Europe or S.E. Asia you should be aware of the possibility of it becoming infected with SVD, however low the risk might be. The herd will probably be slaughtered if it gets infected.
If your pig herd is in Ireland, where SVD has never occurred and which does not import pig meat products, the risk is extremely low. It is just conceivable that it could be brought in on an inadequately disinfected pig lorry returning from mainland Europe where the virus periodically circulates.
If you farm in North or South America, or Australia or New Zealand, the risk of your pig farm becoming infected with SVD or FMD is virtually nil.
Importance of SVD
Although clinically SVD is similar to FMD it causes little impact on productivity. Often it can be so mild that the pigs do not appear lame particularly if they are on straw bedding. What is more, it is strictly a disease of pigs and does not infect cattle, goats, sheep or other species. Why then is it regarded as so important that governments, such as those in the EU, bring in costly slaughter and eradication policies? It is for the very reason first stated, namely, that it is clinically indistinguishable from FMD. They are afraid that if SVD became widespread in the pig populations of FMD free and fringe areas that pig farmers and pig veterinarians may become accustomed to seeing vesicles on pigs noses and feet and not report them or even consider FMD.
One could argue that an expensive slaughter policy is unnecessary, that SVD could be made notifiable (i.e. any pigs with vesicles would have to be reported to the authorities) and that accurate rapid tests (e.g. ELISAs and PCRs) could be available in all diagnostic laboratories, but such an argument would be academic. The fact is that most governments in free and fringe areas would adopt a slaughter and eradication policy if there were a risk of contamination. If you farm in such an area you have to live with such a policy.
Clinical signs
SVD does not infect or affect cattle, sheep, goats or any species other than the pigs. So, unlike FMD, if you keep other livestock they will not be affected.
Clinical signs of SVD are much the same as FMD so read that section.
If there is no slaughter policy and pigs are not killed some may lose the claws off some of their toes. SVD does not usually cause abortion and boars are not sufficiently lame to stop serving sows. Mortality among all age groups is low.
The pigs recover completely in 2-3 weeks but you may see bruises under the claws which gradually move down under the horn as it grows (about 2mm per week). See chapter 10.
In fringe areas (e.g. in the EU) it is a serious problem because the herd will almost certainly be compulsorily slaughtered and although compensation is likely to be paid, the farm cannot be restocked for at least three months. This is twice as long as for FMD because the SVD virus is much tougher and survives longer. Furthermore, after that time small numbers of susceptible pigs may have to be introduced onto the farm to act as sentinels. If there is still residual virus in the premises these sentinels are likely to come down with disease and the farm will have to be emptied and disinfected again.
The pig farm is a long time out of production even if the sentinels do not develop disease but if they do it is even longer with all the financial hardship that this will cause. So-called recrudescences on farms which had been slaughtered out, disinfected and later restocked, were a major problem in the early days of the SVD eradication programmes in Europe.
Diagnosis
This is the same as for suspected FMD. Read the FMD section. SVD cannot be distinguished from FMD on clinical grounds so to confirm the presumptive diagnosis, samples have to be sent without delay to an appropriate laboratory.
Management control and prevention
Vaccination - There is only one main serotype of SVD and theoretically it should be possible to produce an effective vaccine but in endemic areas the disease is too mild to warrant it. Vaccination is not allowed in fringe areas because it might mask the disease and go undiagnosed.
Other precautions
Countries in free and fringe areas apply strictly-enforced national preventative measures against the introduction of SVD. The main features of these measures are control over the importation of pigs and of pig meat products from counties in which SVD occurs. Pig meat products are particularly dangerous because, unlike the FMD virus, SVD virus is tough and survives rigor mortis. If infected pig meat gets into the food chain there is a risk of uncooked waste being eaten by pigs which could trigger off an outbreak. To prevent this many countries have brought in cooked waste feed policies which forbid the feeding of animal products to pigs unless they have been processed through a licensed processing plant.
If the disease does enter a free or fringe area, a slaughter policy is implemented similar to that described for FMD. All diseased and in-contact pigs are slaughtered. A standstill on animal movement is usually imposed and tracings are carried out to check possible spread of the disease through previous contacts.
If you farm in the EU which is an SVD-risk region you should keep in mind the possibility (small though it may be) of contamination of your herd and you should take simple appropriate precautions.
The greatest risk is from contaminated pig lorries returning from Italy where the disease is still present. The virus survives well in lorries and pigs can become infected by mouth or via skin abrasions. The lorry collecting your pigs for slaughter is the obvious danger.
You should not feed pig meat products.
Windborne spread does not occur in SVD so the simple precautions outlined later in this chapter should be effective.
| Swine vesicular disease |
Which novel by Dickens features Mr Wackford Squeers' Academy in the village of Dotheboys near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire? | Controlling disease in farm animals - GOV.UK
GOV.UK
Controlling disease in farm animals
From:
First published:
18 September 2012
How to prevent infections through biosecurity measures, quarantine procedures and what to do if disease breaks out on your farm.
Contents
Further information
Introduction
Disease outbreaks among farm animals can cause significant economic damage. However, you can limit the impact through preventative and control measures.
You must ensure that you follow biosecurity procedures, such as cleaning and disinfecting premises and vehicles. If there is an outbreak, government contingency plans will be followed. These plans include designating affected premises, setting up protection and surveillance zones, and controls on livestock movements.
This guide explains the special measures which apply in cases affecting poultry - such as avian influenza or ‘bird flu’ - and to the treatment of fresh meat, milk and milk products in affected areas.
This guide also outlines ways to reduce the risk of animal diseases being transmitted to humans, including procedures to protect visitors on open farms.
For contact details of your local Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency ( AHVLA ) use the postcode search tool on the AHVLA website .
Biosecurity and disease control
Biosecurity measures can help prevent the spread of farmed diseases - including notifiable diseases - across the UK. They also protect agricultural workers and visitors. Different biosecurity procedures apply to animals on farms and to animals being moved, for example to markets and agricultural shows.
Disease control through biosecurity focuses on controlling and reducing movements of animals, people and vehicles to and from areas where livestock is kept.
On-farm biosecurity measures include:
cleaning and disinfecting protective clothing and vehicles before and after contact with animals
use of disposable protective clothing
During an outbreak, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ( Defra ) will usually impose restrictions on animal movements, and suspend agricultural markets and shows. Standard biosecurity measures at markets and shows are based on the ‘clean in, clean off’ principle, eg:
banning vehicles, equipment and clothing contaminated with animal excreta - except vehicle interiors and protective clothing taken off site for laundering
cleaning contamination from clothes before leaving animal areas
cleaning and disinfecting boots before leaving animal areas
You should check the health status of livestock before buying or selling animals. New animals should be kept separate from existing stock on first arrival.
Read about routine good hygiene and biosecurity measures in the guide on disease prevention .
Biosecurity for specific livestock species
There are also some biosecurity measures that you need to be aware of for specific animals.
Cattle
Cattle biosecurity measures follow general principles of controlling stock movement, and disinfecting vehicles and clothes belonging to people travelling between sites.
Related measures to control foot and mouth disease include covering disinfectant footbaths between uses so they are not diluted by rain. You should also prevent cattle from coming into contact with animals that cannot develop the disease, but can transmit infected material - for example, dogs, cats, poultry and foxes.
You can limit bovine tuberculosis transmission by deterring badgers from entering properties - for example with yard dogs, water jets or pigs - and ensuring that feed containers are sealed to prevent contamination.
Other control measures include the control of fallen stock - animals that die on your farm because of accident or disease. These control measures are of particular relevance to the control of bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Carcasses are classed as animal by-products and must be disposed of under the rules of the National Fallen Stock Scheme or by an approved private contractor.
See the guide on fallen stock .
Pigs
Pig biosecurity procedures must be of a high standard to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as swine influenza. Pig farmers should:
prohibit unnecessary visitors to the farm
cleanse and disinfect any shared equipment before it enters and after it leaves your premises
make sure that personnel in contact with pigs at different premises take standard precautions, such as cleaning and disinfecting boots and clothing
prevent people with flu-like symptoms coming into contact with pigs
Find out about how to control the spread of swine flu on the Defra website .
Sheep and goats
Sheep and goat biosecurity control follows the general principles of controlling movements of people and livestock, as well as disinfecting vehicles, equipment, clothing and footwear. Diseases of sheep and goats may not always be apparent in the early stages, so stock keepers should regularly monitor their animals for signs of illness.
As with cattle, fallen sheep and goats should be treated as animal by-products and disposed of using standard fallen stock procedures.
Read about disease prevention and control for sheep and goats in the guide on sheep and goat health .
Poultry
Poultry farmers can increase the biosecurity of flocks through standard control measures, such as washing hands after handling birds and disinfecting boots when travelling between farms.
Poultry-specific measures include:
use of disposable protective clothing where practicable
providing clean drinking water and food - preferably indoors to prevent contamination by wild animals
isolating new birds
having a plan for bringing a flock indoors if necessary
cleaning and disinfecting housing at the end of each cycle
Commercial poultry farmers should also follow salmonella control principles as part of the National Control Programme ( NCP ) for the disease. This involves providing Defra with the registration details of your business and the number of birds and flocks you have. You must also comply with sampling procedures, eg boot and sock swabs.
Read about biosecurity measures for poultry farmers in the guide on poultry health .
Deer
Biosecurity measures specific to deer - whether farmed, park or wild - include health monitoring for notifiable diseases such as:
foot and mouth disease
bluetongue
epizootic haemorrhagic virus disease
It is also important to limit or prevent contact of deer with neighbouring livestock, and to be aware of the health status of any animals bought or sold.
Read about deer health and disease prevention in the guide on deer health, welfare and movement .
Disinfectant procedures for animal diseases
Disinfection is one of the main biosecurity measures to control the spread of animal diseases. Equipment, vehicles, protective clothing and footwear must all be cleaned and disinfected before and after contact with farm animals. Disinfectants can also be used as biosecurity barriers for vehicles and people at farm entrances.
Before disinfecting structures such as sheds, you should clean them with detergents to remove organic matter and oily films.
Disinfectants should be applied under low pressure, for example from a backpack sprayer.
Download guidance on cleaning stores, sheds and silos from the Health & Safety Executive ( HSE ) website (PDF, 75K) .
List of approved disinfectants
The AHVLA maintains a list of approved disinfectants for use in farming. The information provided includes supplier addresses and statutory dilution rates for use during control orders for:
foot and mouth disease
Find a list of approved disinfectants on the Defra website .
Disinfecting livestock vehicles
There are special procedures which apply when disinfecting vehicles used to transport farm animals. For example, you must:
clean and disinfect vehicles as soon as possible after use involving animals
clean wheel arches and mud flaps
Drivers of empty, dirty vehicles leaving markets or slaughterhouses must complete a form to declare where their vehicles will be taken for cleaning.
Find out about cleaning and disinfection of livestock vehicles on the Defra website .
Disinfectants and worker safety
You must ensure that farm workers use disinfectants safely, according to the agricultural Control of Substances Hazardous to Health regulations.
As well as exposure to disinfectants, these cover hazards from cleaning - for example dust from animals - diseases such as leptospirosis, and cleaning in confined spaces.
Find out how to use pesticides safely on the HSE website .
Exotic disease control contingency plans
Exotic diseases are those not normally found in the UK, such as avian influenza and zoonoses. By contrast, endemic diseases - such as tuberculosis in cattle - are always present. Both types are notifiable to the AHVLA .
Defra has prepared a framework contingency plan to control exotic animal diseases with significant health or economic impact, eg:
foot and mouth disease
The government’s contingency plan includes:
an alert system for signs of notifiable diseases
a notification map of disease outbreaks
strategic, tactical and operational procedures
a National Disease Control Centre coordinating role
If you notice signs of any notifiable disease in your livestock, you must report them immediately to your local AHVLA office.
Avian notifiable measures
Poultry farmers should be alert for signs of notifiable avian diseases, eg avian influenza (bird flu) and Newcastle disease, and should report signs immediately to their vet and local AHVLA office.
For contact details of your local AHVLA office use the postcode search tool on the Defra website .
If avian influenza is subsequently confirmed on the premises, Defra will order measures such as:
destruction of birds and eggs on commercial premises
disinfection of buildings
Download avian influenza control measures information from the Defra website (PDF, 573K) .
Importing birds from abroad
Imports of live poultry and hatching eggs are controlled by the AHVLA through the Trade Control and Expert System ( TRACES ), which issues animal health certificates and related documentation. All such imports must be accompanied by an animal health certificate.
Birds imported from approved third countries outside the EU must be quarantined for 30 days in an approved centre.
You can read about quarantine procedures for captive birds imported into the UK on the Defra website .
Poultry Health Scheme
UK poultry producers must be members of the Poultry Health Scheme for at least six weeks before they can export more than 20 birds or hatching eggs to EU countries.
Read about the poultry health scheme in the guide on poultry health .
Control of fresh meat during an animal disease outbreak
Fresh meat products are subject to special control measures during outbreaks of animal diseases, under the Products of Animal Origin (Disease Control) (England) Regulations 2008.
The regulations cover the following diseases:
African swine fever
swine vesicular disease
Separate regulations apply to cases of foot and mouth disease and avian influenza.
The AHVLA officers can designate premises as affected by disease. Alternatively, the food business operator - the person responsible for compliance with the requirements of food laws - can apply for a designation.
Meat from establishments where a disease outbreak is suspected or confirmed may not enter the human food chain. Instead, it must be disposed of by slaughterhouses as a Category 2 animal by-product, ie high-risk material containing potential contamination.
See the guide on dealing with animal by-products .
Meat from protection and surveillance zones
Meat from animals in protection or surveillance zones is classed as ‘restricted meat’. It must be kept separate from other meat products, and is subject to special hygiene and labelling regulations.
See the guide on disease notification and restrictions .
Meat and milk hygiene measures during outbreaks
Special hygiene measures apply to meat and milk food products during outbreaks of animal diseases.
Meat hygiene measures
‘Restricted meat’ is meat from animals within the designated protection or surveillance zones. Such meat must:
be marked as ‘restricted meat’
be kept separately from other meat at all times
be transported separately and only to designated premises
not be traded or sold in the UK
not be traded with other EU states
not be exported from the EU
Restricted meat can be transported to a designated treatment centre for an approved treatment to make it safe. After treatment, the meat is considered normal and the restricted markings can be removed.
Milk hygiene measures
During disease outbreaks, milk and milk products from affected areas cannot be sold for human consumption or exported.
If cattle show signs of disease, their milk and milk products must be treated and disposed of as Category 2 animal by-products ( ABPs ). The products must be collected and transported in leak-proof covered vehicles and kept separately from other ABPs .
See the guide on dealing with animal by-products .
Restocking cattle herds and sheep flocks
Restocking herds after an outbreak of disease requires careful planning, assessment of health records and compliance with livestock movement regulations. This helps reduce the possibility of a recurrence of the disease.
Restocking cattle herds
If you are buying or selling a cattle herd, you should:
develop a herd health plan with a vet
assess (if buying) or provide (if selling) written evidence of outbreaks among the herd
check the herd’s tuberculosis testing records
establish that importers have complied with the relevant regulations
If you are selling a sheep flock or buying a replacement one, you should:
comply with livestock movement regulations
develop a flock health plan with your vet
provide (if selling) or assess (if buying) written evidence of any diseases within the flock
consider the possibility of scrapie, with reference to the National Scrapie Plan
comply with all import regulations
Download Defra ’s guidance on restocking sheep flocks from the ADLib website (PDF, 32K) .
Protecting employees from infection at work
Farming and food processing businesses should take steps to protect their employees from zoonoses - diseases transmissible from animals to humans. There are about 40 potential zoonoses in the UK. Most are mild and tend to clear up naturally. However, some can cause serious health problems and are notifiable, which means you must report them to your local AHVLA office.
For contact details of your local AHVLA Office use the postcode search tool on the AHVLA website .
Notifiable zoonoses include:
orf - skin disease of sheep
ringworm
Preventative health measures on farms include hand-washing facilities - these are especially important for visitors and open farms.
Protection from bovine tuberculosis
There are three main ways by which bovine tuberculosis ( TB ) can be transmitted to humans:
drinking raw milk from cows with ‘disseminated TB ’ - cows with TB that has spread outside the lungs or which have TB lesions on udders
close proximity to animals with TB lesions in the lungs or infected cattle carcasses
infection through cuts or abrasions in the skin
You can also take steps to protect stored feed from being contaminated by badgers that are infected with TB .
Organisations that can help
You can get further information and advice on controlling disease in farmed animals from the following organisations.
The AHVLA is an executive agency of Defra . It is responsible for ensuring farmed animals in England and Wales are healthy, free of disease and properly cared for.
Find out about the role of the HSE in the agricultural sector on the HSE website .
The Food Standards Agency helps farmers and producers ensure the safety of products entering the human food chain.
Find out how farmers and growers can maintain the safety of food products on the Food Standards Agency website .
Defra helps the farming industry to operate as efficiently as possible. Defra administers European support policies that provide around £3 billion to UK agriculture. Defra oversees a number of agencies that work with farmers, supervise imports and exports of crops, and implement pest and disease controls. You can call the Defra Helpline on Telephone 08459 33 55 77.
In England, the Farm Advisory System advises farmers about cross compliance. For further information, call the Cross Compliance Helpline on Telephone 0845 345 1302.
Alternatively, find information on cross compliance requirements on the Cross Compliance website .
The National Farmers Union ( NFU ) represents the farmers and growers of England and Wales. It aims to promote successful and socially responsible agriculture and horticulture, while ensuring the long-term viability of rural communities.
You can phone NFU Callfirst Helpline on Telephone 0870 845 8458, or find out about the NFU ’s work on the NFU website .
Further information
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Whose yacht was the Handicap Winner of the 1969 Sydney to Hobart Race? | Sydney to Hobart yacht race
Sydney to Hobart yacht race
Sydney to Hobart yacht race
Garry Wotherspoon
Sydney Harbour and boat races have gone together for a long time. One writer, referring to 'what may fairly be termed the national sport of the colony, boat-racing', has left us with a lyrical description of a typical race day on the harbour:
… the glancing waters, fresh with the breeze that prevailed throughout the day, were studded by a thousand boats of every description, all freighted with life and gaiety; and round the harbour, from every point commanding a view of the course prescribed for the contesting boats, gay parties were assembled. [1]
This was 26 January, Foundation Day (also known as Anniversary Day, now called Australia Day) in 1848, and it showed the sense of adventure and exhilaration associated with yachting that has continued to be felt on Sydney Harbour.
The most famous race that has emerged is the Sydney to Hobart, as it is locally known. The race covers 628 nautical miles, starting from Sydney Harbour at 1 pm on Boxing Day (26 December), as it has done for over six decades. It has been held every year since 1945, with the inaugural fleet of nine yachts growing to a record 371 starters in the 50th race in 1994 – the largest fleet in the world for a Category 1 Ocean Race. In 2007, 82 yachts took part.
Postwar celebration
It all began in 1945, when a group of Sydney yachtsmen started planning for a post-World War II cruise to Hobart. Captain John Illingworth, who was a British Royal Navy officer stationed in Sydney at the time, had been a keen racing yachtsman in Britain before the war. He bought the 39-foot (11.8-metre) Rani, and joined them.
Because of weather conditions, the race is rarely without incident: in the first, several of the boats were briefly 'lost' during the race, among them Rani, although it did complete the course to take both 'line' (first over the line) and 'handicap' (corrected time for type of yacht) honours.
In 1984, a fleet of 150 yachts started, but 104 retired in the face of 'strong to gale force' southerly winds that battered the fleet. In 1993, there were 110 starters, but only 38 finished: crews abandoned two yachts as they sank, while the skipper of another was washed overboard and spent five hours in high seas. Luckily he was spotted by a search vessel and picked up by another yacht.
Stormy weather
In 1998 the race became a major disaster, when wild storms took their toll. The 115-yacht fleet sailed into the worst weather in the Sydney to Hobart's history. Six sailors died and just 44 yachts survived the gale-force winds and mountainous seas to finish the race. Two crew members died on the Launceston yacht Business Post Naiad, one by drowning, the other from a heart attack at the height of the storm. Several yachts were sent to the bottom and the biggest maritime rescue operation in Australia's history was mounted to pluck about 50 sailors from the sea. The storm highlighted some of the more foolhardy aspects of the race and led to a major review of race procedures. The ensuing enquiry made several recommendations for raising safety standards and requirements for competitors.
Despite such risks, the Sydney to Hobart is one of the great ocean races of the globe. No other annual yachting event in the world attracts such huge media coverage and popular attention.
The weather risks are not the only source of controversy. In 1990, a spokesman for the NSW Cancer Council ruffled a few cravats by claiming that the name and logo of the British yacht Rothmans breached the NSW voluntary advertising code – which stated that any vehicles propelled by petrol, diesel, gas, solar or wind power were banned from advertising cigarettes. This was in the midst of a war between tobacco companies – who were denying any adverse effects of smoking – and doctors and public health advocates, so it saw much heated debate. Gin-and-tonics were spilt at the bar.
While many of the same yachts compete around the world, and their focus is on the longer campaign to be best in Category 1, for many locals the Sydney to Hobart race is itself the point of it all. In its early years, the race was dominated by 'amateurs', many of whom were Wednesday and Saturday sailors for their local clubs. But over the years, the race has attracted the rich and famous, and many such Australians have been competitors: Alan Bond, and Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch among them. The race has also attracted well-known sailors from overseas: Ted Turner, the founder of CNN cable network in the USA, for one, while Sir Edward Heath skippered Morning Cloud to victory in 1969, a year before he became Prime Minister of Britain.
The yachts
Nowadays, major corporations sponsor both yachts and the race itself. Many yachts now have names like Alfa Romeo, Nokia, Skandia, Porsche, Hugo Boss, and Credit Index Leopard, while the race itself was, in 2008, the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, after the race's organiser, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, negotiated a multi-year sponsorship deal with the prominent international company Rolex.
The 2007 winner of line honours, Wild Oats XI, is only the second boat to win in three consecutive years; the first was Morna, in 1948. There have been several repeat winners, like 1975 and 1977 line honours winner Kialoa III.
Names can linger on, even though the boat itself has changed. There have been various famous Gretels and Helsals: the original Helsal took line honours in 1973 and set a race record, while Helsal IV competed in 2007.
On the other hand, some boats like Ragamuffin keep starting year after year: her placings in the Sydney to Hobart include a second in 1986 and two thirds, in 1985 and 1989 respectively. Among the fleet in 1994 were two yachts that had started in the inaugural race – Archina and Winston Churchill. Among the crews that year were two yachtsmen, Peter Luke and 'Boy' Messenger, by then in their 70s, who had sailed in 1945. Probably the 'grand old man' of the race is Syd Fischer, now in his eighties, who in 2008 competed in his fortieth Sydney to Hobart race.
References
Sail-world.com website, 'Rolex Sydney Hobart Milstone Race, Overall Winners Announced', http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Rolex-Sydney-Hobart-Milestone-Race,-Overall-Winners-Announced/52428, viewed 20 February 2009
Official Site of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/default.asp, viewed 20 February 2009
Cruising Yacht Club of Australia website, http://www.cyca.com.au/, viewed 20 February 2009
Notes
[1] BC Peck, Recollections of Sydney, John Mortimer, London, 1850, pp 150–1
.
| Edward Heath |
In which sport did Southport-born Francesca Halsall win three gold and two bronze medals for Great Britain in the 2014 European Championships? | Sydney to Hobart yacht race
Sydney to Hobart yacht race
Sydney to Hobart yacht race
Garry Wotherspoon
Sydney Harbour and boat races have gone together for a long time. One writer, referring to 'what may fairly be termed the national sport of the colony, boat-racing', has left us with a lyrical description of a typical race day on the harbour:
… the glancing waters, fresh with the breeze that prevailed throughout the day, were studded by a thousand boats of every description, all freighted with life and gaiety; and round the harbour, from every point commanding a view of the course prescribed for the contesting boats, gay parties were assembled. [1]
This was 26 January, Foundation Day (also known as Anniversary Day, now called Australia Day) in 1848, and it showed the sense of adventure and exhilaration associated with yachting that has continued to be felt on Sydney Harbour.
The most famous race that has emerged is the Sydney to Hobart, as it is locally known. The race covers 628 nautical miles, starting from Sydney Harbour at 1 pm on Boxing Day (26 December), as it has done for over six decades. It has been held every year since 1945, with the inaugural fleet of nine yachts growing to a record 371 starters in the 50th race in 1994 – the largest fleet in the world for a Category 1 Ocean Race. In 2007, 82 yachts took part.
Postwar celebration
It all began in 1945, when a group of Sydney yachtsmen started planning for a post-World War II cruise to Hobart. Captain John Illingworth, who was a British Royal Navy officer stationed in Sydney at the time, had been a keen racing yachtsman in Britain before the war. He bought the 39-foot (11.8-metre) Rani, and joined them.
Because of weather conditions, the race is rarely without incident: in the first, several of the boats were briefly 'lost' during the race, among them Rani, although it did complete the course to take both 'line' (first over the line) and 'handicap' (corrected time for type of yacht) honours.
In 1984, a fleet of 150 yachts started, but 104 retired in the face of 'strong to gale force' southerly winds that battered the fleet. In 1993, there were 110 starters, but only 38 finished: crews abandoned two yachts as they sank, while the skipper of another was washed overboard and spent five hours in high seas. Luckily he was spotted by a search vessel and picked up by another yacht.
Stormy weather
In 1998 the race became a major disaster, when wild storms took their toll. The 115-yacht fleet sailed into the worst weather in the Sydney to Hobart's history. Six sailors died and just 44 yachts survived the gale-force winds and mountainous seas to finish the race. Two crew members died on the Launceston yacht Business Post Naiad, one by drowning, the other from a heart attack at the height of the storm. Several yachts were sent to the bottom and the biggest maritime rescue operation in Australia's history was mounted to pluck about 50 sailors from the sea. The storm highlighted some of the more foolhardy aspects of the race and led to a major review of race procedures. The ensuing enquiry made several recommendations for raising safety standards and requirements for competitors.
Despite such risks, the Sydney to Hobart is one of the great ocean races of the globe. No other annual yachting event in the world attracts such huge media coverage and popular attention.
The weather risks are not the only source of controversy. In 1990, a spokesman for the NSW Cancer Council ruffled a few cravats by claiming that the name and logo of the British yacht Rothmans breached the NSW voluntary advertising code – which stated that any vehicles propelled by petrol, diesel, gas, solar or wind power were banned from advertising cigarettes. This was in the midst of a war between tobacco companies – who were denying any adverse effects of smoking – and doctors and public health advocates, so it saw much heated debate. Gin-and-tonics were spilt at the bar.
While many of the same yachts compete around the world, and their focus is on the longer campaign to be best in Category 1, for many locals the Sydney to Hobart race is itself the point of it all. In its early years, the race was dominated by 'amateurs', many of whom were Wednesday and Saturday sailors for their local clubs. But over the years, the race has attracted the rich and famous, and many such Australians have been competitors: Alan Bond, and Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch among them. The race has also attracted well-known sailors from overseas: Ted Turner, the founder of CNN cable network in the USA, for one, while Sir Edward Heath skippered Morning Cloud to victory in 1969, a year before he became Prime Minister of Britain.
The yachts
Nowadays, major corporations sponsor both yachts and the race itself. Many yachts now have names like Alfa Romeo, Nokia, Skandia, Porsche, Hugo Boss, and Credit Index Leopard, while the race itself was, in 2008, the Rolex Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, after the race's organiser, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, negotiated a multi-year sponsorship deal with the prominent international company Rolex.
The 2007 winner of line honours, Wild Oats XI, is only the second boat to win in three consecutive years; the first was Morna, in 1948. There have been several repeat winners, like 1975 and 1977 line honours winner Kialoa III.
Names can linger on, even though the boat itself has changed. There have been various famous Gretels and Helsals: the original Helsal took line honours in 1973 and set a race record, while Helsal IV competed in 2007.
On the other hand, some boats like Ragamuffin keep starting year after year: her placings in the Sydney to Hobart include a second in 1986 and two thirds, in 1985 and 1989 respectively. Among the fleet in 1994 were two yachts that had started in the inaugural race – Archina and Winston Churchill. Among the crews that year were two yachtsmen, Peter Luke and 'Boy' Messenger, by then in their 70s, who had sailed in 1945. Probably the 'grand old man' of the race is Syd Fischer, now in his eighties, who in 2008 competed in his fortieth Sydney to Hobart race.
References
Sail-world.com website, 'Rolex Sydney Hobart Milstone Race, Overall Winners Announced', http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Rolex-Sydney-Hobart-Milestone-Race,-Overall-Winners-Announced/52428, viewed 20 February 2009
Official Site of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/default.asp, viewed 20 February 2009
Cruising Yacht Club of Australia website, http://www.cyca.com.au/, viewed 20 February 2009
Notes
[1] BC Peck, Recollections of Sydney, John Mortimer, London, 1850, pp 150–1
.
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Which word completes the title of MOCA in Los Angeles: Museum of???????????? Art? | Home • MOCA
The Museum of Contemporary Art
Los Angeles
| Contemporary history |
Which 1936 novel tells the story of 20-year old Mary Yellan who was brought up on a farm but has to and live with her Aunt Patience in Cornwall after her mother dies? | MCASD'S SCULPTURE AND SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS by Jennifer Snow - issuu
To carry a characteristic from one generation to the next
To work or operate
And More!
What “runs” in your family? Blue eyes? A dog? Your sister’s nose? Make your own play on words inspired by Ed Ruscha.
Ed Ruscha Brave Men of La Jolla 1995–1996 acrylic on PVC coated fabric
___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ runs in my family!
ed ruscha: brave men of la jolla
Ed Ruscha used to work in advertising [definition: a public notice about a product, like a TV commercial] so he likes to use words in his art!
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 13
The 12-foot sign points away from the U.S.–Mexico border to ten West Coast and international cities. On the back of each city sign, there is a quotation from an important artist who lived there. For example, on the back of the street sign for Paris, France is a quotation from Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968).
Where have you been? Have you ever traveled to any of the cities on the sign? Where do you want to travel? Circle the cities and countries you want to travel to.
This work uses the style of official street signs and tourism markers.
FUN FACT
Marcos Ramírez ERRE, like several artists at the Museum, is inspired by objects found in everyday life. What is the difference between your street sign at home with this piece of art? Would you consider a stop sign art?
Each of the signs shows us the distance to the city from the U.S.–Mexico border. It is even aligned according to the points of a real life compass.
Marcos Ramírez erre: crossroads (border Tijuana - San Diego)
MARCOS RAMíREZ ERRE Crossroads (Border Tijuana – San Diego) 2003 aluminum, automotive paint, wood, vinyl
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FUN FACT Iran do Espírito Santo made twenty sets of dice that can be found along the U.S.–Mexico border, including this one!
Imagine the size of the hands it would take to roll dice that are 16 inches tall by 16 inches wide, and made of concrete!
What did the artist roll in this work? Where do you find dice normally? What sorts of games involve dice? List the games here! ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ What determines if you win or lose in these games? Is it skill or luck?
IRAN DO ESPÍRITO SANTO Drops I 1997 concrete
IRan do espîrito santo: Drops I
As a minimalist [definition: when an artist likes to reduce art to a minimal number of colors, shapes, and lines] artist, Iran do Espírito Santo likes to play with everyday objects in his work. In Drops I, he uses the dice often found in board games to convey the idea of luck. He is looking at the “luck of the draw” and how fate determines which side of the U.S.–Mexico border you are born on. MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 15
Where do you usually find hammers? What kind of work do you do with hammers? What do you consider work? What do you think the Hammering Man is working on? What story would you tell about this piece? Can you imagine hammering for 24 hours a day?
Jonathan Borofsky has hammering men all over the world in Japan and Switzerland and in the U.S. There are men hammering in the cities of New York, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. He wanted all these hammering men to be hammering all together at the same time. The artist is showing us how everyone is connected no matter what time it is or how far away we are from each other.
Have you ever thought about where your sneakers come from? Jonathan Borofsky Hammering Man at 3,110,527 1988 13/4” thick COR-TEN steel with motorized aluminum arm
Jonathan borofsky: HAMMERING MAN AT 3,110,527
Most likely your sneakers were made in a foreign country like China or Chile by someone you’ve never met. That makes you connected to this person. Think about the things you have in your room–where did they come from? Who made them?
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 16
DID yOU KNOW?
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy is from Scotland and the word cairn [definition: A mound of rough stones built as a landmark or in memory of someone] comes from the Scottish Gaelic word càrn. An old Scottish Gaelic blessing is “Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn”or, “I’ll put a stone on your cairn.”
Three Cairns 2002 limestone
The pieces aren’t being held together by anything except their own weight! Next time you are at the beach or playing at home, try to build a mound like Andy Goldsworthy’s. How large can you build it? What shape would you make it? Draw it here! Try making your own cairn with blocks at home.
andy goldsworthy: three cairns
Andy Goldsworthy brought six stonemasons all the way from Scotland to help him make this. He made a total of three cairns—two more sculptures just like this are in Iowa and the other one is in New York.
Cairns are traditionally journey markers. Each of the three cairns in Iowa, New York, and LA JOLLA mark the artist’s journeys across America. Where would you build your cairns? MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 17
ERIKA ROTHENBERG Monument to a Bear 2002–2003 glass reinforced concrete over steel, bronze plaque, edition 1 of 2
Given the title of the work, do you see what you would expect? Does the word monument [definition: a type of structure created to commemorate a person or important event] in the title of this artwork make you assume the work is supposed to be larger?
Why might the artist want us to honor nature? How are the memorials by Erika Rothenberg and Maya Lin different? How are they similar?
This work is a memorial to a black bear cub that had its paws burned. A memorial can be a monument or holiday intended to celebrate or honor the memory of a person or an event. In the United States, we honor the memory of important leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. or war heroes as in Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial (at right). In Monument to a Bear Erika Rothenberg asks us to consider nature, like this black bear cub, as a victim that should to be remembered. She wants us to honor nature like we do our war heroes.
ERIKA ROTHENBERG: Monument to a Bear
Photographic view of the apex of the Vietnam War Memorial, West Potomac Park, Washington, D.C., looking from the apex towards the Washington Monument. Courtesy of the Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 18
Thank you for visiting the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego! Don’t forget that your admission is valid for seven days and includes admission to our downtown location at 1100 & 1001 Kettner Boulevard. If you’re in the La Jolla area for longer, please take a look at two of our additional works:
Incomplete Neon Square for La Jolla sits just above the Museum’s box office at an angle of the roofline. Stephen Antonakos plays with light and color. The piece changes with the location of the viewer and the time of day. The neon lights only come on at night, so be sure to stop by and see it after dark!
George Trakas Pacific Union 1986–1988 mixed media outdoor site installation
Pacific Union was designed for visitors to sit, meet, and meditate. George Trakas made sure to use steps, wooden walkways, and benches to engage the viewer. He invites you to enjoy the foliage, to perch atop the slabs of natural granite or huddle underneath them in private den-like hutches. It’s a great place to enjoy the view of the Pacific.
GEORGE TRAKAS: Pacific union and STEPHEN ANTONAKOS: Incomplete neon square for la jolla
Stephen Antonakos Incomplete Neon Square for La Jolla 1984 neon tubes and painted metal
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 19
GLOSSARY OF TERMS advertising: a public notice about a product, like a TV commercial. Bible: the sacred scripture or book of Christianity. cairn: a mound of rough stones built as a landmark or in memory of someone. Christianity: the religion founded from the life and the teachings of Jesus Christ, professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies.
monument: a type of structure created to commemorate a person or important event. negative space: the areas in an artwork that are empty. object label: a sign next to the artwork that says the title, artist, and material with which the art is made.
contrast: opposite colors that stand out more when put next to each other.
performance art: a type of art that combines visual art “things you can see” with theatrical art “things you can do.”
displaced: when something has been taken out of its original place and put into a new, unfamiliar one.
sculpture: a three dimensional piece of art made by shaping or combining materials, usually wood, rock, metal, glass, or marble.
environmental art: artworks that artists created in response to the environment, or when artists use the enviroment as a medium for their artwork.
site-specific: art that is made with a certain location in mind and whose location influences the meaning of the art. Site-specific pieces are installed permanently in a particular place.
form: the visible shape of something, also known as the positive space.
tension: stiffness as a result of something being stretched as tight as possible.
found objects (also known as common objects): something the artist found that was not designed to be art and already had another purpose. Hindu: an individual practicing Hinduism. Hinduism: major Indian religion which worships a number of gods and believes in reincarnation, or rebirth after death. landscape: an expanse of scenery that can be seen in a single view. landscape artist: an artist whose job is the decorative and functional alteration and planting of grounds, especially at or around a building site. memorial: a monument or holiday intended to celebrate or honor the memory of a person or an event. minimalist: an artist who chooses to reduce art to a minimal number of colors, shapes, and lines.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 20
CREDITS Vito Acconci, Garden Installation (Displaced Person), 1987, concrete, stones, dirt and grass. Extended loan of the artist. © 2012 Vito Acconci / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Stephen Antonakos, Incomplete Neon Square for La Jolla, 1984, neon tubes and painted metal. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase with contributions from the Museum Art Council Fund. © Stephen Antonakos 1984. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Jonathan Borofsky, Hammering Man at 3,110,527, 1988, 13/4” thick COR-TEN steel with motorized aluminum arm. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Gift of Matthew and Iris Strauss. © Jonathan Borofsky 1988. Photo by Jimmy Fluker. Niki de Saint Phalle, Big Ganesh, 1998, steel, polystyrene foam, polyurethane, automotive paint, electronic component, light bulbs, and iron base. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Gift of Ron and Mary Taylor to honor Martha Longnecker, Founder, Mingei International Museum of Folk Art. © 2012 Niki Charitable Art Foundation. All rights reserved / ARS, NY / ADAGP, Paris. Photo by Pablo Mason. Roman de Salvo, Liquid Ballistic, 2001, mahogany, diaphragm pump, water, storage tank, brass, plumbing hardware, fasteners. Courtesy of the artist and Quint Contemporary Art. © Roman de Salvo 2001. Photo by Pablo Mason. Iran do Espírito Santo, Drops I, 1997, concrete. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Anonymous gift. © Iran do Espírito Santo 1997. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Marcos Ramírez ERRE, Crossroads (Border Tijuana - San Diego), 2003, aluminum, automotive paint, wood, vinyl. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase. © Marcos Ramírez ERRE 2003. Richard Fleischner, Froebel’s Blocks, 1983, limestone. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase, Contemporary Collectors Fund in honor of Ronald J. Onorato. © Richard Fleischner 1983. Photo by Pablo Mason.
CREDITS
Andy Goldsworthy, Three Cairns, 2002, limestone. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase with funds from Sue K. and Dr. Charles C. Edwards. © Andy Goldsworthy 2002. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Gabriel Orozco, Long Yellow Hose, 1996, plastic watering hoses. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase. © Gabriel Orozco 1996. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Erika Rothenberg, Monument to a Bear, 2002-2003, glass reinforced concrete over steel, bronze plaque, edition 1 of 2. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Gift of Sheridan Brown. © Erika Rothenberg. Photo by Pablo Mason. Nancy Rubins, Pleasure Point, 2006, nautical vessels, stainless steel, steel wire. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase, International and Contemporary Collectors Funds. © Nancy Rubins. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery. Photo by Erich Koyama. Ed Ruscha, Brave Men of La Jolla, 1995-1996, acrylic on PVC coated fabric. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase with proceeds from Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Art Auction 2006, and from prior donations by Susan and Frank Kockritz and Mr. and Mrs. Norton S. Walbridge. © Ed Ruscha. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Judith Shea, Eden, 1987, bronze. Extended loan of Collette Carson and Dr. Ivor Royston. © Judith Shea 1987. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann. Mauro Staccioli, Untitled, 1987, plywood, cement, red pigment, and metal. Extended loan of the artist. © Mauro Staccioli. Photo by Pablo Mason. George Trakas, Pacific Union, 1986-1988, mixed media outdoor site installation. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase with matching funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Art in Public Places program. © George Trakas 1986-1988. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 21
Guide written by Jessica Jacobs and Jennifer Winter Snow, Education Interns, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Education Department. At the time of publication, Education Programs at MCASD are supported by The James Irvine Foundation, Qualcomm Foundation, the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Fund, the Samuel I. & John Henry Fox Foundation, and contributions to MCASD’s Museum Fund. Institutional support for MCASD is provided, in part, by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO 22
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In which German city, is the tomb of Charlemagne? | Aachen, Germany: The charm of Charlemagne - Telegraph
Germany
Aachen, Germany: The charm of Charlemagne
Max Davidson explores the delights of Aachen, one of the most beautiful and historic medieval cities in northern Europe.
Here in the middle, in the rabbit warren of streets around the famous cathedral, there is hardly an ugly vista or boring street Photo: GETTY
By Max Davidson
Comments
If atlases were arranged according to the same principles as the Yellow Pages, Aachen would head the list of Great Small European Cities to Visit. Like Aardvark & Aardvark Solicitors or Aasvogel Estate Agents, it would steal a march on the competition.
As it is, the city attracts fewer visitors than you feel it deserves. Perhaps the problem is geographical. Where is Aachen? Belgium? No, Germany, just across the border from Belgium. Or perhaps it is historical. Is Aachen the same as Aix-la-Chapelle? Got it in one.
Since 794, when Charlemagne established the city as his seat of government, its identity has become steadily more fuzzy: part of that sloppy Franco-German blancmange that so baffles Euro-sceptics.
Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle was, rightly, one of the first batch of World Heritage Sites recognised by Unesco. But it doesn't feel like a World Heritage Site – that is, you don't have to fend off thousands of other tourists as you head for the city centre. As I sip a Glühwein in a café in the main square, the only accents around me are German. I can tell I am going to enjoy myself.
"The key to Aachen is its size," says one local, who moved there from the Netherlands 20 years ago. "Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg… They are big cities, not very welcoming. This is smaller, more intimate. There is a real feeling of community." As if to illustrate the point, he waves at a woman on the other side of the square, who waves back, then wanders across with her dog, Otto, to whom I am introduced as if I were the Duke of Edinburgh.
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It is the buzz of the past – dead but not dead, if that makes sense – that first grabs the imagination in Aachen. How many English cities – even our great cathedral cities – have such an architecturally satisfying city centre?
The outskirts of Aachen have little to recommend them. You have to drive a bit out of town – to Monschau, for example, one of the prettiest old towns in Germany – to find charm and atmosphere. But here in the middle, in the rabbit warren of streets around the famous Dom (cathedral), there is hardly an ugly vista or boring street.
In Worcester or Norwich, there would probably be a McDonald's where Aachen has a second-hand bookshop, a medieval Bierkeller or a lovely old church: weather-worn; timeless; its spire pointing crookedly skywards. The cobbles underfoot ring true as a bell and, as you emerge from a narrow alley, to see the Dom looming above you like a giant, you get a real sense of the excitement that Charlemagne and his heirs must have experienced.
The Dom, where Charlemagne is buried, would not match, say, Cologne cathedral in terms of size, but in the period it was built, around AD 800, must have been one of the most astounding buildings in Europe. The centrepiece, the palace chapel, is a soaring octagonal church, designed in the Byzantine style, but on a sumptuous scale. It is one of those buildings where you gasp as soon you walk into it: there is a boldness of vision, combined with geometrical simplicity, that is the hallmark of all great religious buildings.
Later additions – the beautiful 11th-century altar, decorated with scenes from the Passion, the vast 12th-century chandelier, the gilded shrine of Charlemagne, with its portraits of other Holy Roman Emperors – only augment the impression of power wielded with supreme self-confidence.
The neighbouring Rathaus (town hall) – if you can cope with a photograph of Ted Heath on the stairs, where champions of European unity are commemorated – is another splendid building. It is an architectural mishmash, with some parts dating back to the 14th century and the basic Gothic structure complicated by Baroque embellishments. But the great hall, with its frescoes portraying scenes from the life of Charlemagne, gives a real flavour of the city in its pomp.
Pomp, but not pomposity. That is another key to the charm of Aachen. In between the great, monumental buildings, you come across little statues and fountains – some centuries old, some contemporary – that would be downright frivolous if they were anywhere else. A naked boy holding a fish. A puppet knight on a puppet horse. Three ridiculously skinny women clutching umbrellas. A poacher with a cockerel sticking out of his rucksack. A girl with pigtails holding what looks like a surfboard. They are not all great works of art, but they have an exuberant, ludic quality that seems to sum up a friendly city, comfortable in its own skin.
Great cities tend to have great restaurants and, in that respect, Aachen does not disappoint. German provincial cooking can be pretty stodgy, but there is something here for all tastes. For traditional food in a traditional setting – one of those wonderful timbered buildings where every floor seems to slope at a crazy angle – the Zum Postwagen is hard to beat. I can taste its black pudding still. But then just around the corner, you come across the delightful Ratskeller, offering modern, lighter food – sea bass, cappuccino of wild mushrooms – in a sophisticated setting.
Aachen does not have a huge number of museums, although two that can be recommended with confidence are the Couven-Museum, an 18th-century merchant house which gives a flavour of the city in its Baroque pomp, and the Internationales Zeitungsmuseum, which commemorates the news agency founded by Paul Julius von Reuter, a great son of Aachen. There is no signage in English, unfortunately, but the display of old newspapers – particularly from the Nazi period – is fascinating.
Non-German speakers will also need to tread carefully at the Carolus Thermen, a spanking new spa complex opened in 2000. Aachen used to be a celebrated spa town – one of the reasons Charlemagne established his court here was that there were hot springs, going back to Roman times – but gradually lost ground to Baden Baden. The Carolus Thermen is its attempt to raise its game.
It is certainly an impressive facility although, as I say, non-German speakers will need to tread carefully. You queue up, go through a turnstile, are given a blue token, use it to get a key, use the key to open a locker, change into your swimming costume, lock the door, making sure to keep the token AND the key… Vorsprung durch Technik! Then the fun starts.
Downstairs is just a bog-standard municipal swimming baths: a bit bigger than average and with an outdoor as well as an indoor pool. Upstairs – follow the signs marked SAUNA – is a large separate area, arranged on two floors, where the dress code… well, basically, there is no dress code. Or, rather, I suddenly realise, there is a no-dress code. I do not know the German for "naked", but I can deconstruct the large sign with a swimming costume with a red line through it.
A man has to do what a man has to do – so, five minutes later, I find myself sauntering around sauna-land in the buff, then swimming in the buff, with about 150 locals, not all of them male, not all of them over 80, and not all of them the worse for their lunchtime Bratwurst and Sauerkraut.
It is like a scene from German mythology, with Rhine maidens sitting on the rocks combing their hair.
What's not to like? The concept wouldn't work in Leamington Spa. Or Harrogate Spa. Not in 2009. Not in 2059. The British don't do nudity. We never have. We never will. But it shows such an unexpectedly frolicsome side of German life – a gift for spontaneous relaxation that is not always evident in town centres – that it is hard not to warm to the place.
If the fun-loving Charlemagne – 19 children and the greatest swimmer of his age – had visited Aachen in 2009, he would have been first in the sauna.
A three-night stay at the Mercure am Grab Hotel in Aachen costs from £280 per person with the German Travel Centre (020 8429 2900; www.german-travel-uk.com )
Price is based on two sharing and includes breakfast, flights from Heathrow to Cologne and Düsseldorf, but not transfers.
The German Travel Centre can arrange three-day car rental starting from £99. Aachen is also easily accessible by rail from Cologne and Düsseldorf.
| Aachen |
Wroxeter, the site of the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum, is in which English county? | Germany - Charlemagne | history - geography | Britannica.com
Charlemagne
Gerd von Rundstedt
Charlemagne built on the foundations laid by Boniface, Charles Martel, and Pippin. Contemporary writers were vastly impressed by Charlemagne’s political campaigns to destroy the autonomy of Bavaria and his equally determined efforts against the Saxons. Under their Agilolfing dukes, who had at times led the opposition to the rising Carolingians, the Bavarians had developed an independent, southward-looking state that had close contacts with Lombard Italy and peaceful relations with the Avar kingdom to the east. Charlemagne’s conquest of the Lombards in 774 left Bavaria isolated, and in 788 Charlemagne succeeded in deposing the last Agilolfing duke, Tassilo III, and replacing him with a trusted agent. Thereafter Charlemagne used Bavaria as the staging ground for a series of campaigns in 791, 795, and 796 that destroyed the Avar kingdom.
The subjugation of the north proved much more difficult than that of the south. In the wake of the missionaries, Frankish counts and other officials moved into northeastern Frisia, raising contingents for the royal host and doing the other business of secular government. As for the Rhineland, the richer it grew, the more necessary it became to protect its hinterland, Franconia (including present-day Hessen ) and Thuringia, from Saxon raids. Because there was no natural barrier behind which to hold the Saxons, this was a difficult task.
Unlike the Bavarians, the Saxons were not politically united. Their independent edhelingi (nobles) lived on estates among forest clearings, dominating the frilingi (freemen), lazzi (half-free), and unfree members of Saxon society and leading raids into the rich Frankish kingdom. Thus each of Charlemagne’s punitive expeditions, which began in 772 and lasted until 804, bit deeper into the heart of Saxony , leaving behind bitter memories of forced conversions, deportations, and massacres. These raids were inspired by religious as well as political zeal; with fire and sword, Charlemagne tried to break Saxon resistance both to Christianity and to Frankish dominance. Still, the decentralized nature of Saxon society made ultimate conquest extremely difficult. Whenever the Frankish army was occupied elsewhere, the Saxons could be counted on to revolt, to slaughter Frankish officials and priests , and to raid as far westward as they could. Charlemagne in turn would punish the offending tribes, as he did when he executed 4,500 Saxons at Verden, and garrison the defense points abandoned by the Saxons. In time, resistance to the Franks gave the Saxons a kind of unity under the leadership of Widukind , who succeeded longer than any other leader in holding together a majority of chieftains in armed resistance to the Franks. Ultimately, internal feuding led to the capitulation even of Widukind. He surrendered, was baptized, and, like Tassilo, was imprisoned in a monastery for the remainder of his life. Despite this victory, it would take another 20 years before Saxony would be finally subdued.
Learn about the Saxon leader Widukind.
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz
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Charlemagne’s efforts were not limited to military repression, however. He also issued two edicts concerning the pacification and conversion of Saxony, which reveal the brutality of the process as well as its gradual success. The Capitulatio de Partibus Saxoniae (c. 785; “Capitulary for the Saxon Regions”) was intended to force the submission of the Saxons to the Franks and to Christianity, imposing the death penalty for destruction of churches, refusal of baptism , and violating the Lenten fast. The Capitulare Saxonicum (797; “Saxon Capitulary”), although not necessarily abrogating the earlier decree, replaced the harsher measures of the earlier capitulary with conversion through less brutal methods. Moreover, Frankish churchmen and aristocrats loyal to Charlemagne were introduced to secure and pacify the region. Although the northern regions that enjoyed Danish support remained outside of Frankish control, most of Saxony gradually moved into the united Frankish realm and would become a great centre of political, cultural, and religious life in the 10th century.
The emergence of Germany
Germany from 911 to 1250
The 10th and 11th centuries
Conrad I
When in 911 Louis the Child, last of the East Frankish Carolingians, died without leaving a male heir, it seemed quite possible that his kingdom would break into pieces. In at least three of the duchies—Bavaria, Saxony, and Franconia—the ducal families were established in the leadership of their regions; in Swabia (Alemannia) two houses were still fighting for hegemony . Only the church, fearing for its endowments, had an obvious interest in the survival of the monarchy , its ancient protector. Against the growing authority of the dukes and the deep differences in dialect, customs, and social structure among the tribal duchies there stood only the Carolingian tradition of kingship; but, with Charles III (Charles the Simple) as ruler of the West Frankish kingdom, its future was uncertain and not very hopeful. Only the Lotharingians put their faith in the ancient line and did homage to Charles, its sole reigning representative. The other component parts of the East Frankish kingdom did not follow suit.
Germany in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
On November 10, 911, Saxon and Frankish leaders ended Carolingian rule in Germany when they met at Forchheim in Franconia to elect Conrad , duke of the Franks, as their king. The rejection of the Carolingian dynasty was motivated by the dynasty’s inability to protect the kingdom from invaders and related internal political matters. In the early 10th century, the Germanic peoples in the lands east of the Rhine and west of the Elbe and Saale rivers and the Bohemian Forest—as rudimentary and as thinly spread as their settlements were—had to face even more primitive and pagan races pressing in from farther east, especially the Magyars . The Saxons, headed by the Liudolfing duke Otto—who refused to be considered a candidate for the royal crown—were threatened by more enemies on their frontiers than any other tribe; Danes, Slavs, and Magyars simultaneously harassed their homeland. A king who commanded resources farther west, in Franconia, might therefore prove to be of help to Saxony. The Rhenish Franks, on the other hand, did not wish to abdicate from their position as the leading and kingmaking people, which gave them many material advantages.
Conrad of Franconia, elected by Franks and Saxons, was soon recognized also by Arnulf, duke of Bavaria, and by the Swabian clans. In descent, honours, and wealth, however, Conrad was no more than the equal of the dukes who had accepted him as king. To surmount them, to found a new royal house, and to acquire those wonder-working attributes that the Germans venerated in their rulers long after they had been converted to Christianity, he had yet to prove himself able, lucky, and successful.
In this period, political affairs became the monopoly of the German kings and a few score families of great magnates. The reason for this concentration of power was that, at the very foundation of the German kingdom, circumstances had long favoured those men whom birth, wealth, and military success had raised well above the ranks of the ordinary free members of their tribe. Their estates were cultivated in the main by half-free peasants —slaves who had risen or freemen who had sunk. The holdings of these dependents fell under the power of the lord to whom they owed service and obedience. Already they were tied to the lands on which they laboured and were dependent on their protectors for justice. For many reasons ordinary freemen tended generally to lose their independence and had to seek aid from their more fortunate and powerful neighbours; thus, they lost their standing in the assemblies of their tribe. Everywhere, except in Friesland and parts of Saxony, the nobles wedged themselves between king or duke and the rank and file. They alone could become prelates of the church, and they alone could compete for the possession and enjoyment of political power. At the level below the dukes, the bulk of administrative authority, jurisdiction, and command in war lay with the margraves and counts, whose hold on their charges developed gradually into a hereditary right. The commended men and the half-free disappeared from the important functions of public life. In the local assemblies they came only to pay dues and to receive orders, justice, and penalties. Their political role was passive. Those lords whose protection was most worth having also had the largest throng of dependents and thus became more formidable to their enemies and to the remaining freemen. Lordship and vassalage were hereditary, and thus the horizon of the dependent classes narrowed until eventually the lord and his officials held all secular authority and power over their lives. Military strength, the possession of arms and horses, and tactical training in their use were decisive. Most dependent men were disarmed, and this became part of their degradation .
The accession of the Saxons
Conrad I was quite unequal to the situation in Germany. According to the beliefs of contemporaries, his failure meant that his house was luckless and lacked the prosperity-bringing virtues that belonged to true kingship. He also had no heir. On his deathbed in 918, he therefore proposed that the crown, which in 911 had remained with the Franks, should now pass to the leading man in Saxony, the Liudolfing Henry (later called the Fowler). Henry I was elected by the Saxons and Franks at Fritzlar, their ancient meeting place, in 919. With a monarch of their own ethnicity , the Saxons now took over the burden and the rewards of being the kingmaking people. The centre of gravity shifted to eastern Saxony, where the Liudolfing lands lay.
Germany in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The transition of the crown from the Franks to the Saxons for a time enhanced the self-sufficiency of the southern German tribes. The Swabians had kept away from the Fritzlar election. The Bavarians believed that they had a better right to the Carolingian inheritance than the Saxons (who had been remote outsiders in the 9th century) and in 919 elected their own duke Arnulf as king. They, too, wanted to be the royal and kingmaking people. Henry I’s regime rested in the main on his own position and family demesne in Saxony and on certain ancient royal seats in Franconia. His kingship was purely military. He hoped to win authority by waging successful frontier wars and to gain recognition through concessions rather than to insist on the sacred and priestlike status of the royal office that the church had built up in the 9th century. At his election he refused to be anointed and consecrated by the archbishop of Mainz. In settling with the Bavarians, he abandoned the policy of supporting the internal opposition that the clergy offered to Duke Arnulf, a plank to which Conrad had clung. To end Arnulf’s rival kingship, Henry formally surrendered to him the most characteristic privilege and honour of the crown: the right to dispose of the region’s bishoprics and abbeys. Arnulf’s homage and friendship entailed no obligations to Henry, and the Bavarian duke pursued his own regional interests—peace with the Hungarians and expansion across the Alps—as long as he lived.
From these unpromising beginnings the Saxon dynasty not only found its way back to Carolingian traditions of government but soon got far better terms in its relations with the autonomous powers of the duchies, which had gained such a start on it. Nonetheless, the governing structures that it bequeathed to its Salian successors were self-contradictory; while seeking to overcome the princely aristocracies of the duchies by leaving them to themselves, the Saxon kings came to rely more and more, both for the inspiration and for the practice of government, on the prelates of the church, who were themselves recruited from the ranks of the same great families. They loaded bishoprics and abbeys with endowments and privileges and thus gradually turned the bishops and abbots into princes with interests not unlike those of their lay kinsmen. These weaknesses, however, lay concealed behind the personal ascendancy of an exceptionally tough and commanding set of rulers up to the middle of the 11th century. Thereafter the ambiguous system could not take the strain of the changes fermenting within German society and even less the attack on its values that came from without—from the reformed papacy.
The Liudolfing kings won military success, and with it they gained the respect for their personal authority that counted for so much at a time when the great followed only those whose star they trusted and who could reward services with the spoils of victory. In 925 Henry I brought Lotharingia (the region between the upper Meuse and Schelde rivers in the west and the Rhine River in the east that contained Charlemagne’s capital Aachen) back to the East Frankish realm. Whoever had authority in that region could treat the neighbouring kingdom of the West Franks as a dependent. The young Saxon dynasty thus won for itself and its successors a hegemony over the west and the southwest that lasted at least until the mid-11th century. The Carolingian kings of France , as well as the great feudatories who sought to dominate if not to ruin them, became, in turn, petitioners to the German court during the reign of the Ottos. The kings of Burgundy —whose suzerainty lay over the valleys of the Saône and the Rhône, the western Alps, and Provence—fell under the virtual tutelage of the masters of Lotharingia. Rich in ancient towns, this region, once the homeland of the Carolingians, was more thickly populated and wealthier than the lands east of the Rhine. Lotharingian merchants controlled the slave trade from the Saxon marches to Córdoba.
The eastern policy of the Saxons
Greater prestige still and a claim to imperial hegemony fell to the Saxon rulers when they broke the impetus of the Hungarian (Magyar) invasions, against which the military resources and methods of western European society had almost wholly failed for several decades. In 933, after long preparations, Henry routed a Hungarian attack on Saxony and Thuringia. In 955 Otto I (Otto the Great; reigned 936–973), at the head of a force to which nearly all the duchies had sent mounted contingents, annihilated a great Hungarian army on the Lech River near Augsburg. The battle again vindicated the efficiency of the heavily armed man skilled in fighting on horseback.
With a Saxon dynasty on the throne, Saxon nobles gained office and power, with opportunities for conquest along the eastern river frontiers and marches of their homeland. Otto I implemented an eastern policy that aimed at getting more than slaves, loot, and tribute. Between 955 and 972 he founded and richly endowed an archbishopric at Magdeburg , which he intended to be the metropolis of a large missionary province among the Slavic Wends beyond the Elbe, who remained faithful to their traditional polytheistic religion. This would have brought their tribes under German control and exploitation in the long run, but the ruthless methods of the Saxon lay lords led to a rebellion that forced Otto to scale back his plans.
In the 10th century there was little or no German agricultural settlement beyond the Elbe. Far too much forested land remained available for clearing and colonization in western and southern Germany. The Saxons attempted to secure their tenuous military victories in the region between the Elbe and Oder rivers by building and garrisoning forts. Beyond the Wends of Brandenburg and Lusatia, meanwhile, new Slavic powers rose; the Poles under Mieszko I and, to the south, the Czechs under the Přemyslids received missionaries from Magdeburg and Passau without falling permanently under the political and ecclesiastical domination of Saxons and Bavarians. The Wends, who had been subjugated by the Saxon margraves, resisted conversion to Christianity. They rebelled in 983 against the German military occupation, which collapsed along with the missionary bishoprics that had been founded at Oldenburg , Brandenburg, and Havelberg. Farther south the defenses of the Thuringian marches between the Saale and the middle Elbe remained in German hands, but only after a long and fierce struggle against Polish invaders early in the 11th century. The northern part of the frontier reverted to its position before Otto’s trustees, Hermann Billung and Gero, had begun their wars. Missionary enterprises directed into Wendish territory from Bremen and Magdeburg achieved little before the 12th century.
The Saxon ruling class and margraves must bear the responsibility for the fiasco of eastward expansion in the 10th century. The prelates, too, saw their missions as means to found ecclesiastical empires of subject dioceses that would exact tribute from the conquered Wends. The Slavic tribes across the Elbe remained unconverted and implacable foes, a standing menace to the nearby churches. The wars also left a legacy of savagery on both sides, so that from about 1140 onward the colonization of conquered Slavic lands by German settlers became the common policy of both the church and the princes.
Dukes, counts, and advocates
Conrad I’s and Henry I’s kingships rested on the election by the tribal duchies’ leaders and higher aristocracy. It was in the first place an arrangement between the Franks and the Saxons that the Bavarian and Swabian dukes recognized at a price by acts of personal homage, but the German kings, of whatever dynasty, had to live under Frankish law. After the death of Conrad I’s brother Eberhard in 939, Otto I kept the Franconian dukedom vacant, and the Franconian counts henceforth stood under the immediate authority of the crown. In Saxony, too, Otto kept in his hands the dukedom of his ancestors, even though the beginning of the Billung line of dukes is traditionally dated to 936. The march-duchy of the Billungs , a bulwark raised against the Danes and the northern Slav tribes, gave the Billung family military command but did not give it authority over all the other Saxon princes.
Germany in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In the south the Ottonians sought to turn the tribal duchies into royal lands and to supplant native dynasties with aliens and members of their own clan. When even that policy did not stop rebellions under the banner of tribal self-interest, the Ottonians began to break up the ancient Bavarian tribal land by carving out a new duchy in Carinthia where the Bavarian expansion southward had opened up new lands and sources of revenue. The first two members of the Rhine-Frankish Salian dynasty , Conrad II (reigned 1024–39) and Henry III (reigned alone 1039–56), also bestowed vacant duchies quite freely on their own kin and on men from outside the duchies. They competed against ducal power but could neither abolish nor replace it. In the 11th century, as before, the dukes held assemblies of their freemen and nobility, led the tribal army in war, and enforced peace.
The counts , who were the ordinary officers of justice in serious criminal cases, obeyed the ducal summons; but, for the most part, they received their “ban,” the power to do blood justice, from the king himself. The lands and the customary rights attached to their office, and indeed the office itself, not only became hereditary but also came to be treated more and more as a patrimony to which they had an inherent right against all men, king and duke included. Even so, however, a good many lines died out, and their counties fell back into the king’s hands. From Otto III ’s reign (983–1002) onward, kings often bestowed these counties on bishoprics and great abbeys rather than granting them again to lay magnates. The bishops, however, could not perform all the functions of the counts; in particular, their holy orders forbade them to pass judgments of blood. They often subinfeudated their countships, and they needed officials called advocates (Vögte; singular Vogt) to take charge of the higher jurisdiction in the territories that their churches possessed by royal grant. In the 10th and 11th centuries these advocates had to be recruited from the aristocracy, the very class whose greed for hereditary office was to be checked, because ordinary freemen could not enforce severe sentences or defend the privileges of the church against armed intrusion. Ostensibly advocates and protectors of ecclesiastical possessions, the nobles were in fact anything but reliable servants of their ecclesiastical overlords and instead posed great danger for the bishoprics and abbeys.
Thus there arose in nearly all German lands, whether the ducal office survived or not, powerful lines of margraves, counts, and hereditary advocates who enriched themselves at the expense of the church (which meant also the crown) and in competition with one another. From the abler, more fortunate, and long-lived of these dynasties sprang the territorial princes of the later 12th and 13th centuries, absorbing and finally inheriting most of the rights of government.
The king was the personal overlord of all the great. His court was the seat of government, and it went with him on his long journeys. The German kings, even more than other medieval rulers, could make their authority respected in the far-flung regions of their kingdom only by traveling ceaselessly from duchy to duchy, from frontier to frontier. Wherever they stayed, their jurisdiction superseded the standing power of dukes, counts, and advocates, and they could collect the profits of local justice and wield some control over it. As they came into each region, they summoned its leaders to attend their solemn crown wearings, deliberated with them on the affairs of the kingdom and the locality, presided over pleas, granted privileges, and made war against peacemakers at home and enemies abroad.
The promotion of the German church
The royal revenues came from the king’s demesne and from his share of the tributes that Poles, Czechs, Wends, and Danes paid whenever he could enforce his claims of overlordship. There were also profits from tolls and mints that had not yet been granted away. The king’s demesne was his working capital. He and his household lived on its produce during their wanderings through the Reich, and he used its revenue to provide for his family, to found churches, and to reward faithful services done to him, especially in war. To swell his army, the king needed to add new vassals, and he inevitably had to grant land to some of them from his own demesne. Although the Salians inherited the remains of Ottonian wealth as an imperial demesne, they brought little of their own to make up for its diminution. The last Ottonian, Henry II (1002–24), and after him Conrad II, accordingly took to enfeoffing vassals with lands taken from the monasteries. Since the beneficiaries were often already powerful and wealthy men in their own right, no class of freeborn, mounted warriors linked permanently with the crown resulted from the loyalties established and rewards granted during but one or two reigns. In any case, the lion’s share of grants went to the German church.
From the Carolingians the German kings inherited their one and only institution of central government: the royal chapel , with the chancery that does not seem to have been distinct from it. Service there became a recognized avenue of promotion to the episcopate for highborn clerics. In the 11th century bishops and abbots conducted the affairs of the Reich much more than the lay lords, even in war. They were its habitual diplomats and ambassadors. Unlike Henry I, Otto I and his successors sought to free the prelates from all forms of subjection to the dukes. The king appointed most of them, and to him alone, as to one sent by God, they owed obedience.
Thus there arose beside the loose association of tribal duchies in the German kingdom a more compact and uniform body with a far greater vested interest in the Reich: the German church . By ancient Germanic custom, moreover, the founder of a church did not lose his estate in the endowment that he had made; he remained its proprietor and protecting lord. Still, the bishoprics and certain ancient abbeys, such as Sankt Gallen , Reichenau , Fulda , and Hersfeld, did not belong to the king; they were members of the kingdom, but he served only as their guardian. The greater churches therefore had to provide the rulers with mounted men, money, and free quarters. Gifts of royal demesne to found or to enrich bishoprics and convents were not really losses of land but pious reinvestments, as long as the crown controlled the appointments of bishops and abbots. The church did not merely receive grants of land, often uncultivated, to settle, develop, and make profitable; it was also given jurisdiction over its dependents. Nor did the kings stint the prelates in other regalian rights, such as mints, markets, and tolls. These grants broke up counties and to some extent even duchies, and that was their purpose: to disrupt the secular lords’ jurisdictions that had escaped royal control.
This policy of fastening the church, a universal institution, into the Reich, with its well-defined frontiers, is usually associated with Otto I, but it gathered momentum only in the reigns of his successors. The policy reached a climax under Henry II , the founder of the see of Bamberg in the upper Main valley; nonetheless, Conrad II, though less generous with his grants, and his son Henry III continued it. Bishops and abbots became the competitors of lay princes in the formation of territories, a rivalry that more than any other was the fuel and substance of the ceaseless feuds—the smoldering internal wars in all the regions of Germany for many centuries. The welter and the confused mosaic of the political map of Germany until 1803 is the not-so-remote outcome of these 10th- and 11th-century grants and of the incompatible ambitions that they aroused.
The Ottonian conquest of Italy and the imperial crown
Otto first entered Italy in 951 and, according to some accounts, was already interested in securing the imperial crown. He campaigned in Italy at the request of Adelaide (Adelheid), the daughter of Rudolph II of Burgundy and widow of the king of Italy , who had been jailed by Berengar II , the king of Italy. Otto defeated Berengar, secured Adelaide’s release, and then married her. His first Italian campaign was also motivated by political developments in Germany, including the competing ambitions in Italy of his son Liudolf, duke of Swabia, and Otto’s brother Henry I, duke of Bavaria. Although he would be called back to Germany by a revolt in 953, Otto accomplished his primary goals during his first trip to Italy. He gained legitimate rights to govern in Italy as a result of his marriage, and securing his southern flanks guaranteed access to the pope. Moreover, after 951, expeditions into Italy were a matter for the whole Reich under the leadership of its ruler and no longer just expansion efforts by the southern German tribes. For the Saxon military class, too, the south was more tempting than the forests and swamps beyond the Elbe. With superior forces at their back, the German kings gained possession of the Lombard kingdom in Italy. There, too, their overlordship in the 10th and the 11th centuries came to rest on the bishoprics and a handful of great abbeys.
Germany in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
After Otto I’s victory over the Magyars in 955, his hegemony in the West was indisputable. Indeed, he was hailed in traditional fashion as emperor (imperator) by his troops after the victory, which was seen as divine sanction for Otto’s ascendant position by his contemporaries. Furthermore, according to one chronicler, the Saxon Widukind, he had already become emperor because he had subjected other peoples and enjoyed authority in more than one kingdom. But the right to confer the imperial crown, to raise a king to the higher rank of emperor, belonged to the papacy , which had crowned Charlemagne and most of his successors. The Carolingian order was still the model and something like a political ideal for all Western ruling families in the 10th century. Otto had measured himself against the political tasks that had faced his East Frankish predecessors and more or less mastered them. To be like Charlemagne, therefore, and to clothe his newly won position in a traditional and time-honoured dignity, he accepted the imperial crown and anointment from Pope John XII in Rome in 962. The substance of his empire was military power and success in war; but Christian and Roman ideas were woven round the Saxon’s throne by the writers of his own and the next generation. Although the German kings as emperors did not legislate matters of doctrine and ritual, they became the political masters of the Roman church for nearly a century. The imperial crown enhanced their standing even among the nobles and knights who followed them to Italy and can hardly have understood or wanted all its outlandish associations. Not only the king but also the German bishops and lay lords thus entered into a permanent connection with an empire won on the way to Rome and bestowed by the papacy.
Otto I successfully revived the empire in the West on Carolingian precedents and secured Ottonian rule in Germany, but his greatest triumph may have come near the end of his reign when he secured both recognition from the Byzantine emperor and a marriage arrangement between his son, Otto II , and the Byzantine princess Theophano. In 973 Otto II succeeded his father as emperor. His attention, perhaps under his wife’s influence, was drawn to Italy and the Mediterranean, and he campaigned in southern Italy with disastrous results, suffering a terrible defeat at the hands of Muslim armies. When Otto II died in 983, his heir, Otto III , was only three years old, and a period of regency preceded a reign of great promise unfulfilled. Inheriting the traditions of both the Western and Eastern empires, the third Otto sought to revive the Christian Roman empire of Charlemagne and Constantine and planned a great capital in Rome. Otto’s grand ambition is reflected in the appointment of Gerbert of Aurillac as pope, who took the name Sylvester II in imitation of Constantine’s pope; in Otto’s efforts to expand the empire (see Researcher’s Note: Holy Roman Empire ) and Christendom to the east; and in his discovery, with its apocalyptic overtones, of the tomb of Charlemagne in the year 1000. His premature death two years later, followed by that of Sylvester in 1003, ended this promising chapter of German history. His successor, Henry II, returned the imperial focus to Germany and contented himself with three brief Italian expeditions.
The Salians, the papacy, and the princes, 1024–1125
During the reign of Conrad II (1024–39), the first Salian emperor, the kingdom of Burgundy fell finally under the overlordship of the German crown, and this tough and formidable emperor also renewed German authority in Italy. His son and successor, Henry III (1039–56), treated the empire as a mission that imposed on him the tasks of reforming the papacy and of preaching peace to his lay vassals. Without possessing any very significant new resources of power, he nevertheless lent his authority an exalted and strained theocratic complexion. Yet, under Henry, the last German ruler to maintain his hegemony in western Europe, the popes themselves seemed to become mere imperial bishops. He deposed three of them, and four Germans held the Holy See at his command; but lay opposition to the emperor in Germany and criticism of his control over the church were on the increase during the last years of his reign.
Germany in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Germany - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
One of the great powers of Europe and of the industrial world, Germany rose from a collection of small states, principalities, and dukedoms to become a unified empire in 1871. The German empire was strategically located between France and Russia, and it clashed with both countries as it attempted to expand its borders. This conflict resulted in World War I, in which Germany was defeated. Germany, however, emerged again as a major force in Europe in the 1930s under the leadership of the dictator Adolf Hitler, and German aggression set off World War II. Area 137,879 square miles (357,104 square kilometers). Population (2016 est.) 81,762,000.
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