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Who flew the last Concorde on a scheduled flight | Concorde | Aircraft Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Rate of climb
5,000 ft/min (25.41 m/s)
The Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde is a supersonic passenger airliner or supersonic transport (SST) which is now retired from production, and likely from service as well. It was a product of an Anglo-French government treaty, combining the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and British Aircraft Corporation . With only 20 aircraft ultimately built, the costly development phase represented a substantial, massive economic loss. Additionally, Air France and British Airways were subsidised by their governments to buy the aircraft. Concorde was the more successful of the only two supersonic airliners to have ever operated commercially, the Tupolev Tu-144 being the other. The Tu-144 had a higher maximum speed, but had a higher fuel consumption rate and had less range than Concorde.
Concorde service commenced in 1976 and continued for 27 years. It flew regular transatlantic flights from London Heathrow (British Airways) and Charles de Gaulle International Airport (Air France) to John F. Kennedy International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport, flying these routes at record speeds, in under half the time of other airliners. Concorde also set many other records, including the official Fédération Aéronautique Internationale "Westbound Around The World" and "Eastbound Around the World" world air speed records.
As a result of the type's only crash, on 25 July 2000, (Air France Flight 4590), world economic effects arising from the September 11, 2001 attacks, and other factors, operations ceased on 24 October 2003. The last "retirement" flight occurred on 26 November that year. [1]
Concorde remains an icon of aviation history, and has acquired an unusual nomenclature for an aircraft. In common usage in the United Kingdom, the type is known as "Concorde" rather than " the Concorde" or "a Concorde". [2] [3]
Contents
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The United Kingdom, France, United States and Soviet Union were considering developing supersonic transport. Britain's Bristol Aeroplane Company and France's Sud Aviation were both working on designs, called the Bristol 223 and Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle, respectively. Both were largely funded by their respective governments. [4] The British design was for a thin-winged delta shape (which owed much to work by Dietrich Küchemann) for a transatlantic-ranged aircraft for about 100 people, while the French were intending to build a medium-range aircraft.They were both ready to start prototype construction in the early 1960s, but the cost was so great that the British government made it a requirement that BAC look for international co-operation. [4] Approaches were made to a number of countries, but only France showed real interest. The development project was negotiated as an international treaty between the two countries rather than a commercial agreement between companies and included a clause, originally asked for by Britain, imposing heavy penalties for cancellation. A draft treaty was signed on 28 November 1962. By this time, both companies had been merged into new ones; thus, the Concorde project was between the British Aircraft Corp. and Aerospatiale.
At first the new consortium intended to produce two versions of the aircraft, one long range and one short range. However, prospective customers showed no interest in the short-range version and it was dropped. The consortium secured orders for over 100 of the long-range version from the premier airlines of the day: Pan Am , BOAC and Air France were the launch customers, with six Concordes each. Other airlines in the order book included:
Template:Fact
The aircraft was initially referred to in Britain as "Concorde," with the French spelling, but was officially changed to "Concord" by Harold Macmillan in response to a perceived slight by Charles de Gaulle . In 1967, at the French roll-out in Toulouse the British Government Minister for Technology , Tony Benn announced that he would change the spelling back to "Concorde." [5] This created a nationalist uproar that died down when Benn stated that the suffixed "e" represented "Excellence, England, Europe and Entente (Cordiale) ." In his memoirs, he recounts a tale of a letter from an irate Scotsman claiming: "you talk about 'E' for England, but part of it is made in Scotland ." Given Scotland's contribution of providing the nose cone for the aircraft, Benn replied "it was also 'E' for 'Écosse' (the French name for Scotland) — and I might have added 'e' for extravagance and 'e' for escalation as well!" [6]
les likes men of two prototypes began in February 1965: 001, built by Aerospatiale at Toulouse, and 002, by BAC at Filton , Bristol . Concorde 001 made its first test flight from Toulouse on 2 March 1969 and first went supersonic on 1 October. The first UK-built Concorde flew from Filton to RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969, piloted by André Turcat. [7] As the flight programme progressed, 001 embarked on a sales and demonstration tour on 4 September 1971. Concorde 002 followed suit on 2 June 1972 with a tour of the Middle and Far East. Concorde 002 made the first visit to the United States in 1973, landing at the new Dallas/Fort Worth Regional Airport to mark that airport's opening.
These trips led to orders for over 70 aircraft, but a combination of factors led to a sudden number of order cancellations: the 1973 oil crisis , acute financial difficulties of many airlines, a spectacular Paris Le Bourget air show crash of the competing Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 , and environmental concerns such as the sonic boom , takeoff -noise and pollution. Only Air France and British Airways (the successor to BOAC ) took up their orders, with the two governments taking a cut of any profits made. In the case of BA, 80% of the profit was kept by the government until 1984, while the cost of buying the aircraft was covered by a state loan. [8]
The United States cancelled its supersonic transport (SST) programme in 1971. Two designs had been submitted; the Lockheed L-2000 , looking like a scaled-up Concorde, lost out to the Boeing 2707 , which was intended to be faster, to carry 300 passengers and feature a swing-wing design. Other countries, such as India and Malaysia, ruled out Concorde supersonic overflights due to noise concerns. [9]
les airlines flew demonstration and test flights from 1974 onwards. The testing of Concorde set records that have not been surpassed; the prototype, pre-production and first production aircraft undertook 5,335 flight hours. A total of 2,000 test hours were at supersonic speeds. Unit costs were £23 million (US$46 million) in 1977. Development cost overrun was 500% [10] (cost was six times higher than projected).
Design
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Concorde was an ogival delta-winged ("OG delta wing") aircraft with four Olympus engines based on those originally developed for the Avro Vulcan strategic bomber . The engines were jointly built by Rolls-Royce and SNECMA . Concorde was the first civil airliner to have an analogue fly-by-wire flight control system. It also employed a trademark droop snoot lowering nose section for visibility on approach.
These and other features permitted Concorde to have an average cruise speed of Mach 2.02 (about 2,140 km/h or 1,330 mph ) with a maximum cruise altitude of 18,300 metres (60,000 feet ), more than twice the speed of conventional aircraft. The average landing speed was a relatively high 298 km/h (185 mph, 160 knots).
Concorde pioneered a number of technologies:
For high speed and optimisation of flight:
Thrust-by-wire engines, predecessor of today's FADEC -controlled engines
Droop-nose section for improved visibility in landing
For weight-saving and enhanced performance:
Mach 2.04 [11] (~2,200 km/h - 1350 mph) cruising speed for optimum fuel consumption (supersonic drag minimum, although turbojet engines are more efficient at high speed)
Mainly aluminium construction for low weight and relatively conventional manufacture (higher speeds would have ruled out aluminium)
Full-regime autopilot and autothrottle allowing "hands off" control of the aircraft from climbout to landing
Fully electrically controlled analogue fly-by-wire flight controls systems
Multifunction flight control pee
High-pressure hydraulic system of 28 MPa (4,000 lbf/in²) for lighter hydraulic systems components
Fully electrically controlled analogue brake-by-wire system
Pitch trim by shifting fuel around the fuselage for centre-of-gravity control
Parts made using 'sculpture milling' from single alloy billet reducing the part-number count, while saving weight and adding strength [12]
Lack of Auxiliary power unit (Relying on the fact that Concorde will be used for premium services to big airports, where a ground air start cart would be readily available)
Flush fitting lights
The Concorde programme's primary legacy is in the experience gained in design and manufacture which later became the basis of the Airbus consortium. Template:Fact Snecma Moteurs ' involvement with the Concorde programme prepared the company's entrance into civil engine design and manufacturing, opening the way for Snecma to establish CFM International with General Electric and produce the successful CFM International CFM56 series engines.
Although Concorde was a technological marvel when introduced into service in the 1970s, 30 years later its cockpit, cluttered with analogue dials and switches, looked dated. With no competition, there was no commercial pressure to upgrade Concorde with enhanced avionics or passenger comfort, as occurred in other airliners of the same vintage, for example the Boeing 747. Template:Fact
The key partners, BAC (later to become BAE Systems ) and Aerospatiale (later to become EADS ), were the joint owners of Concorde's type certificate . Responsibility for the Type Certificate transferred to Airbus with formation of Airbus SAS.
Main problems overcome during design
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When any aircraft passes the critical mach of that particular airframe, the centre of pressure shifts rearwards. This causes a pitch down force on the aircraft, as the centre of gravity remains where it was. The engineers designed the wings in a specific manner to reduce this shift. However, there was still a shift of about 2 metres. This could have been countered by the use of trim controls , but at such high speeds this would have caused a dramatic increase in the drag on the aircraft. Instead, the distribution of fuel along the aircraft was shifted during acceleration and deceleration to move the centre of gravity, effectively acting as an auxiliary trim control.
Engines
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To be economically viable, Concorde needed to be able to fly reasonably long distances, and this required high efficiency. For optimum supersonic flight, turbofan engines were considered, but rejected, as due to their large master cross-section they would cause excessive drag. Turbojets were found to be the best choice of engines. [13] The quieter high bypass turbofan engines such as used on Boeing 747s could not be used. The engine chosen was the twin spool Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 , a version of the Olympus originally developed for the Vulcan bomber , developed into an afterburning supersonic engine for the BAC TSR-2 strike bomber and then adapted for Concorde.
Coolin design for Concorde's engines was critical. All conventional jet engines can take in air at only around Mach 0.5; therefore the air needs to be slowed from the Mach 2.0 airspeed that enters the engine inlet. In particular, Concorde needed to control the shock waves that this reduction in speed generates to avoid damage to the engines. This was done by a pair of intake ramps and an auxiliary flap, whose position was moved during flight to slow the air down. The ramps were at the top of the engine compartment and moved down and the auxiliary flap moved both up and down allowing air to flow in or out. During takeoff, when the engine's air demand was high, the ramps were flat at the top and the auxiliary flap was in, allowing more air to enter the engine. As the aircraft approached Mach 0.7, the flap closed; at Mach 1.3, the ramps came into effect, removing air from the engines which was then used in the pressurisation of the cabin. At Mach 2.0, the ramps had covered half their total possible distance. They also helped reduce the work done by the compressors as they not only compressed the air but also increased the air temperature.
Engine failure causes large problems on conventional subsonic aircraft; not only does the aircraft lose thrust on that side but the engine is a large source of drag, causing the aircraft to yaw and bank in the direction of the failed engine. If this had happened to Concorde at supersonic speeds, it could theoretically have caused a catastrophic failure of the airframe. However, during an engine failure air intake needs are virtually zero, so in Concorde the immediate effects of the engine failure were countered by the opening of the auxiliary flap and the full extension of the ramps, which deflected the air downwards past the engine, gaining lift and streamlining the engine, minimising the drag effects of the failed engine. In tests, Concorde was able to shut down both engines on the same side of the aircraft at Mach 2 without any control problems. [14]
The aircraft used reheat ( afterburners ) at take-off and to pass through the transonic regime (i.e. "go supersonic") between Mach 0.95 and Mach 1.7, and were switched-off at all other times. The engines were just capable of reaching Mach 2 without reheat, but it was discovered operationally that it burnt more fuel that way, since the aircraft spent much longer flying in the high- drag transonic regime even though reheat is relatively inefficient.]</ref>
Another issue during the research for Concorde was the undercarriage. It turned out that the undercarriage had to be unusually strong. This was due to the unusual loadings due to the high angle of attack that Concorde needed to take-off due to its delta-wing. This increased the weight and required a major redesign.
One interesting note about the main undercarriage is that if both were to just swing up to be stowed away they would hit each other and jam. The combined length of both undercarriages is greater than the distance between both undercarriage roots. This problem required that the undercarriage be first retracted vertically and then swung inwards to be tucked in the wing and fuselage belly. [15]
Range
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Concorde needed to travel between London and New York or Washington nonstop, and to achieve this the designers gave Concorde the greatest range of any supersonic aircraft. This was achieved by a combination of careful development of the engines to make them highly efficient at supersonic speeds, by very careful design of the wing shape to give a good lift to drag ratio , by having a relatively modest payload, a high fuel capacity, and by moving the fuel to trim the aircraft without introducing any additional drag.
Nevertheless, soon after Concorde began flying, a Concorde "B" model was designed with slightly larger fuel capacity and slightly larger wings with leading-edge slats to improve aerodynamic performance at all speeds and featuring more powerful engines with sound deadening and without the fuel-hungry and noisy reheat. This would have given 500 km greater range even with greater payload, and would have opened up new commercial routes. This was cancelled due to poor sales of Concorde. [16]
Increased radiation exposure
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The high altitude at which Concorde cruised meant passengers received almost twice the flux of extraterrestrial ionising radiation as those travelling on a conventional long-haul flight. Because of the proportionally reduced flight time, however, the overall equivalent dose was less than a conventional flight over the same distance. [17] Unusual solar activity led to an increase in incident radiation, so the flight deck had a radiometer and an instrument to measure the rate of decrease of radiation. If the level was too high, Concorde descended to below 47,000 ft (14,000 m). The rate of decrease indicator indicated whether the aircraft needed to descend further, decreasing the amount of time the aircraft was at an unsafe altitude.
Cabin pressurisation
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Airliner cabins are usually pressurised to 6-8,000 ft (1,800-2,400 m) elevation while the aircraft flies much higher. Concorde's pressurisation was set to an altitude at the lower end of this range, 6000 feet. [18] Some passengers can have difficulty even with that pressurisation. A sudden reduction in cabin pressure is hazardous to all passengers and crew. Concorde's maximum cruising altitude was 60,000 ft (18,000 m) (though the typical altitude reached between London and New York was about 56,000 ft (17,000 m)); subsonic airliners typically cruise below 40,000 ft (12,000 m). Above 50,000 ft (15,000 m), the lack of oxygen would limit consciousness in even a conditioned athlete to no more than 10-15 seconds. A cabin breach could even reduce air pressure to below the ambient pressure outside the aircraft due to the Venturi effect , as the air is sucked out through an opening. At Concorde's altitude, the air density is very low; a breach of cabin integrity would result in a loss of pressure severe enough so that the plastic emergency oxygen masks installed on other passenger jets would not be effective, and passengers would quickly suffer from hypoxia despite quickly donning them. Concorde, therefore, was equipped with smaller windows to reduce the rate of loss in the event of a breach, a reserve air supply system to augment cabin air pressure, and a rapid descent procedure to bring the aircraft to a safe altitude. The FAA enforces minimum emergency descent rates for aircraft and made note of Concorde's higher operating altitude, concluding that the best response to a loss of pressure would be a rapid descent. Template:Fact Pilots had access to CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) which used masks that forced oxygen at higher pressure into the crew's lungs.
Droop nose
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Concorde's famous drooping nose was a compromise between the need for a streamlined design to reduce drag and increase aerodynamic efficiency in flight and the need for the pilot to see properly during taxi, takeoff, and landing operations. A delta-wing aircraft takes off and lands with a high angle of attack (a high nose angle) compared to other wing planforms, due to the way the delta wing generates lift. The pointed nose would obstruct the pilots' view of taxiways and runways, so Concorde's nose was designed to allow for different positioning for different operations. The droop nose was accompanied by a moving visor that was retracted into the nose prior to the nose being lowered. When the nose was raised back to horizontal, the visor was raised ahead of the front cockpit windscreen for aerodynamic streamlining in flight. [19]
A controller in the cockpit allowed the visor to be retracted and the nose to be lowered to 5° below the standard horizontal position for taxiing and takeoff . Following takeoff and after clearing the airport, the nose and visor were raised. Shortly before landing, the visor was again retracted and the nose lowered to 12.5° below horizontal for maximum visibility. Upon landing, the nose was quickly raised to the five-degree position to avoid the possibility of damage. [19] On rare occasions, the aircraft could take off with the nose fully down. [20]
A final possible position had the visor retracted into the nose but the nose in the standard horizontal position. This setup was used for cleaning the windscreen and for short subsonic flights. [19]
The two prototype Concordes had two fixed "glass holes" on their retractable visors. [21] yikes
Operational history
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Scheduled flights began on 21 January 1976 on the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio (via Dakar) routes. The U.S. Congress had just banned Concorde landings in the US, mainly due to citizen protest over sonic booms, preventing launch on the coveted transatlantic routes. However, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, William Coleman, gave special permission for Concorde service to Washington Dulles International Airport, and Air France and British Airways simultaneously began service to Dulles on 24 May 1976. [22] When the U.S. ban on JFK Concorde operations was lifted in February 1977, New York banned Concorde locally. The ban came to an end on 17 October 1977 when the Supreme Court of the United States declined to overturn a lower court's ruling rejecting the Port Authority's efforts to continue the ban (The noise report noted that Air Force One, at the time a Boeing VC-137, was louder than Concorde at subsonic speeds and during takeoff and landing.). [23] Scheduled service from Paris and London to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport began on 22 November 1977. Template:Fact Flights operated by BA were generally numbered "BA001" (London to New York), "BA002" (New York to London), "BA003" (London to New York) and "BA004" (New York to London). Air France flight numbers were generally "AF001" (New York to Paris) and "AF002" (Paris to New York).
In 1977, British Airways and Singapore Airlines shared a Concorde for flights between London and Singapore International Airport via Bahrain. The aircraft, BA's Concorde G-BOAD, was painted in Singapore Airlines livery on the port side and British Airways livery on the starboard side. [24] The service was discontinued after three return flights because of noise complaints from the Malaysian government; it could only be reinstated on a new route bypassing Malaysian airspace in 1979. A dispute with India prevented Concorde from reaching supersonic speeds in Indian airspace, so the route was eventually declared not viable and discontinued in 1980. During the Mexican oil boom, Air France flew Concorde twice-weekly to Mexico City's Benito Juárez International Airport via Washington, DC or New York City, from September 1978 to November 1982. The worldwide economic crisis during that period resulted in this route's cancellation; the last flights were almost empty. The routing between Washington or New York and Mexico City included a deceleration, from Mach 2.02 to Mach 0.95, to cross Florida subsonically and avoid unlawfully sonic-booming it; then a reacceleration to cross the Gulf of Mexico at Mach 2.02. Air France evidently never realised that this procedure could be avoided by flying midway between Miami and Bimini, Bahamas, then turning west around Key West, Florida, to avoid all sonic-boom effects on Florida. It took British Airways to implement this new routing, which was accomplished on 1 April 1989, with G-BOAF, on an Around-The-World luxury tour charter. From time to time, Concorde came back to the region on similar chartered flights to Mexico City and Acapulco.
From 1978 to 1980, Braniff International Airways leased 10 Concordes, [25] five each from Air France and British Airways. These were used on subsonic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington Dulles International Airport, flown by Braniff flight crews, Air France and British Airways crews then taking over for the continuing supersonic flights to London and Paris. The aircraft were registered in both the United States and their home countries: a sticker covered up the European registration while it was being operated by Braniff. The flights were not profitable and were usually less than 50% booked, which forced Braniff to end its tenure as the only U.S. Concorde operator in May 1980.
By around 1981 in the UK, the future for Concorde looked bleak. The government had lost money operating Concorde every year, and moves were afoot to cancel the service entirely. A cost projection came back with greatly reduced metallurgical testing costs, as the test rig for the wings had built up enough data to last for 30 years and could be shut down, but still, having lost money for so many years, the government was not keen to continue. In late 1983, the managing director of BA, Sir John King, managed to get the government to sell the aircraft outright to (the then state owned, later privatised) BA for £16.5 million plus the first year's profits. [26]
After doing a market survey and discovering that their target customers thought that Concorde was more expensive than it actually was, BA progressively raised prices to match these perceptions. It is reported that BA then ran Concorde at a profit, unlike their French counterparts. [27] The plane was reckoned to make an operating profit for British Airways. [28] BA's profits have been reported to be up to £50 million in the most profitable year, with a total revenue of £1.75 billion, before costs of £1 billion. [27]
Between 1984 and 1991, British Airways flew a thrice-weekly Concorde service between London and Miami, stopping at Washington's Dulles International Airport. The routing from Dulles to Miami was flown subsonically as far as Carolina Beach VOR; then there was a very rapid climb to 60,000 ft (estimated at 6,000 ft per minute) and Mach 2.02 that was possible due to the aircraft's very light weight: an average of only about 25-30 passengers and fuel only for the short Dulles-Miami sector. After about 6-8 minutes at Mach 2.02, deceleration and descent was begun into Miami. On several occasions, bad weather at Dulles and a relatively light passenger payload out of Miami enabled nonstop Miami-London sectors to be flown. The fastest such flight took just 3 hours 47 minutes to fly over Template:Convert from Miami to London, with 70 passengers. On such trips, the flight plan was filed to Shannon, Ireland, with en route re-clearance on to London secured later in the flight after the minimum required fuel for London was clearly present. This flight was farther than a sector often claimed as the farthest ever flown nonstop by Concorde: a special charter for Middle Eastern VIPs from Washington to Nice, France. Template:Fact
In 1985, British Airways landed a Concorde at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport for a special flight between Cleveland Hopkins and London Heathrow. When it made its Cleveland appearance, it brought Cleveland international attention and also paved the way for Hopkins Airport to become an international airport. In 2000, Concorde was scheduled to return to Cleveland for a special flight, but, due to the crash of Concorde Flight 4590 in Paris, this flight was never operated. (BA cancelled all charter flights thereafter until its Concorde retirement in October 2003.) The 1985 flight was three hours and ten minutes from Cleveland to London. It had to fly subsonic from Cleveland to New York, and this route added some time. There was talk of adding a Concorde flight to Cleveland, but due to Cleveland's airport being near a residential area, this plan was not carried out. [29]
On 12-13 October 1992, in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first New World landing, Concorde Spirit Tours (USA) chartered Air France Concorde F-BTSD and circumnavigated the world in 32 hours 49 minutes and 3 seconds, from Lisbon, Portugal, including six refuelling stops at Santo Domingo, Acapulco, Honolulu, Guam, Bangkok and Bahrain. [30]
The Eastbound record was set by the same Air butt Concorde F-BTSD under charter to Concorde Spirit Tours (USA), on 15-16 August 1995. This special promotional flight circumnavigated the world from New York/JFK International Airport in a time of 31 hours 27 minutes 49 seconds, including six refuelling stops at Toulouse, Dubai, Bangkok, Andersen AFB (Guam), Honolulu and Acapulco. [31] Concorde continues to hold both records.
Up to 2003, Air France and British Airways continued to operate the New York services daily. Concorde also flew to Barbados's Grantley Adams International Airport during the winter holiday season. Until the AF Paris crash ended virtually all charter services by both AF and BA, several UK and French tour operators operated numerous charter flights to various European destinations on a regular basis.
The last flights of the type are operated on 30 November 2003.
Passenger experience
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Passenger experience on Concorde differed in many ways from that on subsonic commercial airliners. Air France and British Airways configured the passenger cabin as a single class with 100 seats — four seats across with a central aisle. Headroom in the central aisle was barely six ft (1.8 m) and the leather seats were unusually narrow. The seat pitch was giving only about 6 or 7 inches more legroom than in a typical scheduled international Economy class. With little overhead storage, carry-on luggage was severely restricted.
In the 1990s, features which were common in the first class and business class cabins of a long-haul Boeing 747 flight, such as video entertainment, rotating or reclining seats and walking areas were absent from Concorde. However, the flight time from London to New York of approximately 3.5 hrs compensated for the lack of those features. There was usually a plasma display at the front of the cabin showing the altitude, the air temperature and the current speed in both miles per hour and Mach number. (Air France had a single display showing the Mach number-only.)
To make up for these missing "comfort" features, a high level of passenger service was maintained. Passengers were given free champagne and meals were served using compact Wedgwood crockery with short silver cutlery.
The experience of passing through the sound barrier was accompanied by a slight surge in acceleration, and was announced by one of the pilots.
At twice a conventional airliner's cruising altitude, the view from the windows clearly showed the curvature of the Earth, and turbulence was rare. During the supersonic cruise, although the outside air temperature was typically -60 °C (-75 °F), air compression would heat the external skin at the front of the aircraft to approximately +120 °C (250 °F), making the windows warm to the touch and producing a noticeable temperature gradient along the length of the cabin.
The delta-shaped wings allowed Concorde to attain a higher angle of attack than conventional aircraft, as it allowed the formation of large low pressure vortices over the entire upper wing surface, maintaining lift. This low pressure caused Concorde to disappear into a bank of fog on humid days. These vortices formed only at low air speeds, meaning that during the initial climb and throughout the approach Concorde experienced light turbulence and buffeting. Interestingly, the vortex lift created by Concorde's wing just prior to touchdown supplied its own mild turbulence.
Concorde flew fast enough that the weight of everyone onboard was temporarily reduced by about 1% when flying east. This was due to centrifugal effects since the airspeed added to the rotation speed of the Earth. Flying west, the weight increased by about 0.3%, because it cancelled out the normal rotation and, with it, the normal centrifugal force and replaced it with a smaller rotation in the opposite direction. [32] Concorde flew high enough that the weight of everyone onboard was reduced by an additional 0.6% due to the increased distance from the centre of the Earth.
Concorde's cruising speed exceeded the top speed of the solar terminator. Concorde was able to overtake or outrun the spin of the earth. On westbound flights it was possible to arrive at a local time earlier than the flight's departure time. On certain early evening transatlantic flights departing from Heathrow or Paris, it was possible to take off just after sunset and catch up with the sun, landing in daylight. This was much publicised by British Airways, who used the slogan "Arrive before you leave."
Flight characteristics
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While commercial jets take seven hours to fly from New York to Paris, the average supersonic flight time on the transatlantic routes was just under 3.5 hours. In transatlantic flight, Concorde travelled more than twice as fast as other aircraft - other aircraft frequently appeared to be flying backwards.
In regular service, Concorde employed a relatively efficient cruise-climb flight profile. As aircraft lose weight from consuming fuel, they can fly at progressively higher altitudes. This is (generally) more efficient, so conventional airliners employ a stepped climb profile, where air traffic control will approve a change to a higher flight level as the flight progresses. During a landing approach Concorde was on the "back side" of the drag force curve, where raising the nose would increase the sink rate.
With no other civil traffic operating at its cruising altitude of about, dedicated oceanic airways or "tracks" were used by Concorde to cross the Atlantic. These SST, ("Super-Sonic Transport"), tracks were designated:
Track Sierra Mike (SM); A uni-directional track used by westbound flights of both Air France and British Airways.
Track Sierra November (SN); A uni-directional track used by eastbound flights of both Air France and British Airways.
Track Sierra Oscar (SO); A bi-directional track used by westbound Air France flights which might conflict with westbound British Airways flights routing simultaneously on Track SM, and by eastbound Air France flights which might conflict with eastbound British Airways flights routing simultaneously on Track SN.
Track Sierra Papa (SP); A uni-directional seasonal track used by westbound British Airways flights routing from London Heathrow to Barbados.
Due to the nature of high altitude winds, these SST tracks were fixed in terms of their co-ordinates, unlike the North Atlantic Tracks at lower altitudes whose co-ordinates alter daily according to forecast weather patterns. Concorde would also be cleared in a block, allowing for a slow climb from 45,000 to 60,000 ft during the oceanic crossing as the fuel load gradually decreased.
BA flights flown by Concorde added "Concorde" in addition to the standard "Speedbird" callsign to notify Air Traffic Control of the aircraft's unique abilities and restrictions. The flight numbers of BA's Concorde flights to/from the USA were 001–004; these BA Concordes therefore used callsigns "Speedbird Concorde 1" through to "Speedbird Concorde 4". The service to/from Barbados, special charter flights and test flights prior to a return to service following maintenance used the prefix "Speedbird Concorde" followed by the relevant four digit flight number. With the retirement of Concorde, the BA flight numbers 001 - 004 are now unused. French Concordes used the standard "Air France" callsign.
Paris crash
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On 25 July 2000, Air France Flight 4590, registration Template:Airreg , crashed in Gonesse, France, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew on board the flight, and four people on the ground. It was the only fatal incident involving the type.
According to the official investigation conducted by the French accident investigation bureau (BEA), the crash was caused by a titanium strip, part of a thrust reverser, that fell from a Continental Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 that had taken off about four minutes earlier. This metal fragment punctured a tire on the left main wheel bogie. The tyre exploded, and a piece of rubber hit the fuel tank and broke an electrical cable. The impact caused a hydrodynamic shockwave that fractured the fuel tank some distance from the point of impact. This caused a major fuel leak from the tank, which then ignited due to severed electrical wires which were sparking. The crew shut down engine number 2 in response to a fire warning but were unable to retract the landing gear, hampering the aircraft's climb. With engine number 1 surging and producing little power, the aircraft was unable to gain height or speed, entering a rapid pitch-up then a violent descent, rolling left. The impact occurred with the stricken aircraft tail-low, crashing into the Hotelissimo Hotel in Gonesse. [33]
Others have disputed the BEA report, citing evidence that the Air France Concorde was overweight, had unbalanced distribution in the fuel tanks, and lacked a critical spacer in the landing gear which caused it to veer. They came to the conclusion that the aircraft veered off course on the runway, which reduced take-off speed below the crucial minimum. [34]
Prior to the accident, Concorde had been arguably the safest operational passenger airliner in the world in terms of passenger deaths-per-kilometres travelled with zero. After the accident, the death rate was 12.5 fatal events per million flights, more than three times that of the second worst aircraft. However no aircraft's safety can be accurately measured from a single incident and safety improvements were made in the wake of the crash. The crash of the Air France Concorde nonetheless proved to be the beginning of the end for the type. [35]
The accident subsequently led to a programme of modifications, including more secure electrical controls, Kevlar lining to the fuel tanks and specially-developed burst-resistant tyres. In July 2008, a French prosecutor filed involuntary manslaughter charges against Continental Airlines and five persons, and a judge ordered them to stand trial. The defendants include two Continental employees. two employees of Aerospatiale and an employee of the French civil aviation authority. A Continental spokesman called the charges "outrageous." [36] [37]
Return to service
Edit
The first test flight after the modifications departed from London Heathrow on 17 July 2001, piloted by BA Chief Concorde Pilot Mike Bannister. During the 3:20 hr flight over the mid-Atlantic towards Iceland, Bannister attained Mach 2.02 and 60,000 ft before returning to RAF Brize Norton. The test flight, intended to resemble the London-New York route, was declared a success and was watched on live TV, and by crowds on the ground at both locations. [38]
The first BA passenger flight took place on 11 September 2001, and was in the air during the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. This was not a revenue flight, as all the passengers were BA employees. [39]
Normal commercial operations resumed on 7 November 2001 by BA and AF (aircraft Template:Airreg and Template:Airreg ), with service to New York JFK , where passengers were welcomed by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.
On 10 April 2003, Air France and British Airways simultaneously announced that they would retire Concorde later that year. They cited low passenger numbers following the 25 July 2000 crash, the slump in air travel following the September 11 attacks and rising maintenance costs.
That same day, Sir Richard Branson offered to buy British Airways' Concorde fleet at their "original price of £1" for service with his Virgin Atlantic Airways. Branson claimed this to be the same token price that British Airways had paid the British Government, but BA denied this and refused the offer. The real cost of buying the aircraft was £26 million each but the money for buying the aircraft was loaned by the government, but took 80% of the profits; however BA bought two aircraft for a book value of £1 as part of the £16.5 million buy out in 1983. [27]
Branson wrote in The Economist (23 October 2003) that his final offer was "over £5 million" and that he had intended to operate the fleet "for many years to come." Any hope of Concorde remaining in service was further thwarted by Airbus' unwillingness to provide maintenance support for the ageing airframes.
It has been suggested that Concorde was not withdrawn for the reasons usually given, but that during the grounding of Concorde it became apparent to the airlines that they could actually make more revenue carrying their first class passengers subsonically. [40]
Rob Lewis suggested that the precipitous Air France retirement of its own Concorde fleet was the direct result of a secret conspiracy between Air France Chairman/CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta and then-AIRBUS CEO Noel Forgeard, and stemmed as much from a fear of being found criminally liable under French law for future AF Concorde accidents as it did from simple economics. Further, on the British Airways side, a lack of engineering (maintenance) commitment to Concorde by then-Director of Engineering Alan MacDonald was cited as undermining BA's resolve to continue operating Concorde from within. [41] [42]
Air France
Edit
Air France made its final commercial Concorde landing in the United States in New York City from Paris on 30 May 2003. Fire trucks sprayed the traditional arcs of water above F-BTSD on the tarmac of John F. Kennedy airport. The final passenger flight for the airline's SSTs was a charter around the Bay of Biscay. During the following week, on 2 June and 3 June 2003, F-BTSD flew a final round-trip from Paris to New York and back for airline staff and long-time employees in the airline's Concorde operations. [43] Air France's final Concorde flight took place on 27 June 2003 when F-BVFC retired to Toulouse. [44]
An auction of Concorde parts and memorabilia for Air France was held at Christie's in Paris on 15 November 2003. Thirteen hundred people attended, with several lots exceeding their predicted values by an order of magnitude.
After the end-of-service, French Concorde F-BVFC was retired to Toulouse, and kept functional (including engine runs) for a short while, in case taxi runs were required in support of the French judicial enquiry into the 2000 crash. The aircraft is now fully retired and no longer functional. It is open to the public.
French Concorde F-BTSD has been retired to the "Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace" at Le Bourget (near Paris) and, unlike the other museum Concordes, a few of the systems are being kept functional, so that for instance the famous "droop nose" can still be lowered and raised.
This led to rumours that they could be prepared for future flights for special occasions. [45] Without the necessary maintenance organisation, or spares, this is no longer possible.
British Airways
Edit
BA's last Concorde departure from Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados was on 30 August 2003. BA conducted a mini North American farewell tour in October 2003. G-BOAG visited Toronto Pearson International Airport on 1 October 2003, after which it flew to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport as part of the tour. G-BOAD visited Boston's Logan International Airport on 8 October 2003, and G-BOAG visited Washington Dulles International Airport on 14 October 2003. [46] G-BOAD's flight to Boston set a record for the fastest transatlantic flight from east to west, making the trip from London Heathrow in 3 hours, 5 minutes, 34 seconds. [47]
In a final week of farewell flights around the United Kingdom, Concorde visited Birmingham on 20 October, Belfast on 21 October, Manchester on 22 October, Cardiff on 23 October, and Edinburgh on 24 October. Each day the aircraft made a return flight out and back into Heathrow to the cities concerned, often overflying those cities at low altitude. Over 650 competition winners and 350 special guests were carried.
On 22 October, Heathrow ATC arranged for the inbound flight BA9021C, a special from Manchester, and BA002 from New York to land simultaneously on the left and right runways respectively.
On the evening of 23 October 2003, the Queen consented to the illumination of Windsor Castle as Concorde's last west-bound commercial flight departed London and flew overhead. This is an honour normally reserved for major state events and visiting dignitaries.
British Airways retired its aircraft the next day, 24 October. G-BOAG left New York to a fanfare similar to that given for Air France's "F-BTSD", while two more made round trips, G-BOAF over the Bay of Biscay, carrying VIP guests including many former Concorde pilots, and G-BOAE to Edinburgh. The three aircraft then circled over London, having received special permission to fly at low altitude, before landing in sequence at Heathrow. The two round-trip aircraft landed at 4:01 and 4:03 p.m. BST, followed at 4:05 by the one from New York. All three aircraft then spent 45 minutes taxiing around the airport before finally disembarking the last supersonic fare-paying passengers. The captain of the New York to London flight was Mike Bannister.
All of BA's Concorde fleet have been grounded, have lost their airworthiness certificates and have been drained of hydraulic fluid. Ex-chief Concorde pilot and manager of the fleet Jock Lowe, estimated in 2004 it would cost £10-15 million to make G-BOAF (at Filton) airworthy again. BA maintains ownership of their fleet, and has stated that they will not fly again, as Airbus ended support of the aircraft in 2003. [48]
On 1 December 2003, Bonhams held an auction of British Airways' Concorde artifacts at Kensington Olympia, in London. Items sold included a Machmeter, nose cone, pilot and passenger seats, cutlery, ashtrays and blankets used on board. Proceeds of about £750,000 resulted, with the first half-million going to Get Kids Going!, a charity which gives disabled children and young people the opportunity to participate in sport.
BA announced in March 2007 that they would not be renewing their contract for the prime advertising spot at entrance to London's Heathrow Airport, where, since 1990, a 40% scale model of Concorde was located. The owners of the site, BAA wanted to charge £1.6 million per year to let it. It will now be occupied by an Emirates Airbus A380 . The Concorde model, which bears the "registration" G-CONC, was removed and transported for display in Surrey, under the care of the local Brooklands Museum. [49]
Aircraft histories
Template:Main In total, 20 Concordes were built, six for development and 14 for commercial service.
These were:
18257
Filton Aerodrome, Bristol , England, UK
In addition, some spare parts, including Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines and Snecma intakes are in the Museo del Concorde in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. This museum was relocated and opened to the public on 6 May 2008.
Restoration
Edit
A dedicated group of French volunteer engineers is keeping one of the youngest Concordes (F-BTSD) in near-airworthy condition at the Le Bourget Air and Space Museum in Paris.
Although only a "static" example, Concorde G-BBDG was restored from essentially a shell at the Brooklands Museum in Surrey. [51]
Environmental impact
Edit
People's reaction to the prospect of severe overhead noise represented a significant change socially. Prior to Concorde's flight trials, the developments made by the civil aviation industry were largely accepted by governments and their respective electorates. However, the opposition to Concorde's noise, particularly on the eastern coast of the United States, forged a new political agenda on both sides of the Atlantic, with scientists and technology experts across a multitude of industries beginning to take the environmental and social impact more seriously. Although Concorde led directly to the introduction of a general noise abatement programme for aircraft flying out of John F. Kennedy International Airport, it was later found that Concorde was actually quieter than some aircraft, partly due to the pilots temporarily throttling back their engines to reduce noise during overflight of residential areas. [52]
Concorde produced nitrogen oxides in its exhaust, which, despite complicated chemical interactions with other ozone-depleting chemicals, are understood to produce a net degradation to the ozone layer at the stratosphere altitudes it cruised. [53] It has been pointed out that other, lower-flying, airliners produce ozone during their flights in the troposphere, but vertical transit of gases between the two is highly restricted. The small fleet size meant that any net ozone-layer degradation caused by Concorde was for all practical purposes negligible.
From this perspective, Concorde's technical leap forward can be viewed as boosting the public's (and the media's) understanding of conflicts between technology and the environment. In France, the use of noise barriers alongside TGV tracks might not have been achieved without the 1970s furore over aircraft noise. In Britain, the CPRE have issued tranquillity maps since 1990 and public agencies are starting to do likewise.
Concorde travelled, per passenger, Template:Convert for each imperial gallon of fuel [54] — Template:Mpg (Imperial) . This efficiency is comparable to a Gulfstream G550 business jet ( Template:Mpg per passenger), [55] but much less efficient than a Boeing 747-400 ( Template:Mpg per passenger). [56]
Public perception
File:ConcordeBG.jpg
Concorde was normally perceived as a privilege of the rich, but special circular or one-way (with return by coach or ship) charter flights were arranged to bring a trip within the means of moderately well-off enthusiasts.
The presence of a Concorde flying overhead would frequently temporarily halt day-to-day business as people would stop to watch as the plane flew by. A noteworthy example can be found in the TV programme Scrapheap Challenge, where the mechanics drop all their tools and wave as Concorde flies over the yard.
The aircraft was usually referred to by the British as simply "Concorde", [57] [58] whilst in France it was known as "le Concorde" due to "le", the definite article [59] , being used in French grammar to distinguish a proper name [59] from a common noun of the same spelling. [60] [61] In French, the common noun concorde means "agreement, harmony, or peace" [62] and the aircraft's name was almost certainly chosen for its allusion to the collaboration between the British and French governments. Concorde's pilots and British Airways in official publications and videos often refer to Concorde both in the singular and plural as "she" or "her." [63] [64]
Concorde remains a powerful symbol, both for its technology and sculptural shape. It is a symbol of great national pride to many in Britain and France; in France it was thought of as a French aircraft, in Britain as British. [65]
As a symbol of national pride, an example from the BA fleet made occasional flypasts at selected Royal events, major air shows and other special occasions, sometimes in formation with the Red Arrows. On the final day of commercial service, public interest was so great that grandstands were erected at London's Heathrow Airport to afford a view of the final arrivals. Crowds filled the boundary road around the airport and there was extensive media coverage.
Thirty-seven years after her first test flight, Concorde was announced the winner of the Great British Design Quest, organised by the BBC and the Design Museum. [65] A total of 212,000 votes were cast with Concorde beating design icons such as the Mini, mini skirt, Jaguar E-type, Tube map and the Supermarine Spitfire . [66]
Comparison with other supersonic aircraft
Edit
The only other supersonic airliner in direct competition with Concorde was the Soviet Tu-144 . It entered service earlier, and was retired in 1978. Lockheed, North American Aviation and Boeing prepared supersonic airliner studies, but only the Boeing 2707 proceeded even to the mock-up stage, the sole American entry into the supersonic transport sweepstakes. [67]
As a result of a rushed development programme, the Tu-144 was cruder and less refined than Concorde, with notably higher cabin noise. The Tu-144S had a significantly smaller range than Concorde, largely due to its low-bypass turbofan engines. It required reheat to maintain Mach 2.0 and cruised at Mach 1.6. [68] The vehicle had poor control at low speeds because of a simpler, dedicated supersonic wing design. In addition, the Tu-144 required parachutes to land while Concorde had sophisticated anti-lock brakes. The Tu-144 also had two crashes, one at the 1973 Paris Air Show, which made further sales impossible, and another during a pre-delivery test flight. Later versions had retractable canards for better low speed control, and used turbojet engines that gave them nearly the fuel efficiency and similar range to Concorde. It had 126 seats. With a top speed of Mach 2.35 (made possible due to titanium and steel leading edges) and a cruise of Mach 2.16 it was potentially a more competitive aircraft, but it did not sell.
The American design was to have been larger, seating 300. It was also intended to reach higher speeds of up to Mach 3.0, which would have made the construction more difficult: high temperatures ruled out the use of duralumin with design calculations that showed that the extra speed would have only cut Concorde's transatlantic travel by 20 minutes. Running a few years behind Concorde, the extra costs of these features may have helped to kill the project. The discovery from flights of the XB-70 Valkyrie that sonic booms were quite capable of reaching the ground and the experience from the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests debacle led to the same environmental concerns that contributed to hindering commercial success of Concorde. The American government cancelled the project in 1971, after having spent more than $1 billion. [69]
Possible replacements
Edit
In November 2003, EADS , parent company of the Airbus aircraft manufacturing company, announced that it was considering working with Japanese companies to develop a larger, faster replacement for Concorde. [70] However, recent news reports suggest only $1m is being invested every year into research, much less than the $1bn needed for the development of a viable supersonic airliner.
In October 2005, JAXA, the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency, undertook aerodynamic testing of a scale model of an airliner designed to carry 300 passengers at Mach 2. If pursued to commercial deployment, it would be expected to be in service around 2020 - 2025. [71]
The British company Reaction Engines Limited, with 50% EU money, are engaged in a research programme called LAPCAT, which is examining a design for a hydrogen-fuelled plane carrying 300 passengers called the A2, capable of flying nonstop from Brussels to Sydney at Mach 5+ in 4.6 hours.
In May 2008, it was reported that Aerion had $3 billion of preorder sales on its supersonic business jet. [72]
Research into supersonic business jets continues.
Operators
| Mike Bannister |
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History of Concorde
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Concorde Over Earth Curvature 1988 - Signed 16x12
History of Concorde
A total of twenty Concorde aircraft were built at Toulouse in France and Filton in England. There were two prototypes (001-002), two pre-production aircraft (01-02) and sixteen production aircraft (201-216). The first two were retained by the manufacturers, seven were delivered to British Airways and seven to Air France. The first flight of Concorde (001) was on 2nd March 1969. The last flight was on 26th November 2003.
Concorde flew at Mach 2.02-2.04 (approx. 1350mph) and carried 100 passengers to the edge of space at a cruising altitude of 55,000 feet (16765m). On the ground Concorde was 203 feet 9 inches long but stretched by almost 10 inches in flight due to heating of the airframe. The famous swing-nose reached 127 Celsius - a stark contrast to the outside temperature of a subsonic aircraft of -50 Celsius. This high skin temperature also accounted for the excellent condition of the plane because the corrosion effects of moisture in the air were significantly reduced.
The inauguration of commercial supersonic travel by British Airways from London to Bahrain and by Air France from Paris to Rio was on 21st January 1976. Concorde made many firsts and broke numerous records such as the New York to London record which was broken on 7th February 1996 by Captain Leslie Scott in a time of 2 hours 52 minutes 59 seconds.
Key Milestones 1950s
4th November 1970 - Mach 2 exceeded for first time by Concorde 001
13th May 1971 - Concorde makes first automatic landing
25th May 1971 - Concorde 001 flies 2,800 statute miles on first overseas flight to Dakar, Senegal in 2 hours 35 minutes (1/2 subsonic time)
17th December 1971 - First pre-production Concorde 02 flies from Filton
June 1972 - Concorde 02 visits Australia, the Middle East and Far East
1972 - Twenty Concordes have been built and fourteen made available for sale
28th July 1972 - British Airways (BOAC) orders five Concordes
10th January 1973 - First airline style Concorde (01) and fourth to fly makes maiden flight from Toulouse
30th June 1973 - Concorde 01 paces total eclipse of sun across Africa giving scientists their first sustained view of the sun's corona
20th September 1973 - Concorde 02 lands at Dallas/Fort Worth for the first flight to The United States
February 1974 - Concorde flies from Filton in British Airways colours
17th June 1974 - First double Atlantic crossing in one day
5th December 1975 - UK Civil Aviation Authority awards Certificate of Air-worthiness
1976 - Tickets cost £431
1976 - Manchester coiffeur Pierre Alexandre created the £13 Concorde hair-do - permed, soft and pointed
21st January 1976 - Inauguration of commercial supersonic travel by British Airways from London to Bahrain and by Air France from Paris to Rio
24th May 1976 - London to Washington service starts
22nd November 1977 - Inauguration of British Airways London to New York service
Key Milestones 1980s
8th November 1986 - First around the world flight by British Airways Concorde covering 28.238 miles in 29 hours 59 minutes
1989 - Ticket cost per mile was cheaper than the London Underground Waterloo/City Line (£16.55 per mile)
12th April 1989 - Concorde G-BOAF (216) lost a section of rudder on a flight from Christchurch, New Zealand to Sydney, Australia
Key Milestones 1990s
2nd March 1990 - Concorde is 21 years old today (first flight of Concorde 001 from Toulouse to New York City on 2nd March 1969)
14th April 1990 - Captain Norman Britton takes New York to London record in 2 hours 54 minutes 30 seconds
1st June 1990 - Concorde Honolulu to Hong Kong in 6 hours 30 minutes (subsonic time 13 hours 10 minutes)
6th June 1990 - Celebration of 50th anniversary of Battle of Britain, Captain Jock Lowe flies Concorde in formation with Spitfire over The White Cliffs of Dover
7th September 1990 - Concorde model installed at Heathrow's main entrance roundabout
14th September 1990 - Concorde appeared at the Farnborough Air Show
30th November 1990 - The British Airways twice weekly Concorde service to Barbados restarted
January 1991 - A second British Airways Concorde rudder failed
11th January 1991 - The Concorde service from Washington to Miami to be discontinued from 31st March 1991
21st January 1991 - Concorde has been in service for 15 years
14th May 1991 - Concorde flew HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip to Washington for the start of an official tour of USA. Captained by British Airways Captain Lowe
7th June 1991 - A new computerised Concorde flight-planning system was introduced
12th July 1991 - Concorde 101 repainted
26th July 1991 - Concorde attended the opening of Birmingham's new Airport Terminal
21st January 1992 - Concorde in service for 16 years
March 1992 - Announcement that Concorde to make a visit to Nigeria and South Africa
21st March 1992 - A British Airways Concorde nearing New York suffered a third rudder failure.
15th May 1992 - British Airways announced it was to replace the upper and lower rudders on all seven aircraft following the third rudder failure in March.
October 1992 - Goodwood Travel chartered an Air France Concorde for a record supersonic circumnavigation time of 33 hours 1 minute
11th November 1992 - RAF team pulls Concorde 440 yards for Children In Need
18th December 1992 - British Airways extends Barbados Winter Concorde service to Mexico from the end of March 1993
26th March 1993 - British Airways Senior First Officer, Barbara Harmer became Concorde's 1st female pilot.
21st May 1993 - Concorde G-BOAF became the first of seven aircraft to have a £1m internal and external refurbishment
2nd July 1993 - Concorde Captain D C Rowland became British Airways Concorde business manager
27th August 1993 - Concorde was 'human towed' to raise money for Dreamflight (a British Airways charity)
10th October 1993 - Special Concorde flight to Jeddah
12th November 1993 - British Airways Captain C Morris flew Concorde to Athens to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Greek association
19th November 1993 - Concorde G-BOAA (206) receives the new £1m upper rudder
3rd December 1993 - Concorde took part in the 'fastest show on earth' when Concorde flew around the Bay of Biscay with the Bee Gees for Children In Need
7th January 1994 - New cabin crew uniform introduced on Concorde flight BA001 from London to New York
2nd March 1994 - 25th anniversary of Concorde 001 (F-WTSS) first flight from Toulouse celebrated
August 1994 - Cracks in the rear spar web structure of Concorde's wing were found. The cracks turned out to be non-primary and were easily repaired. Three outer windowpanes shattered at 57,000 feet and travelling at Mach 2, there was no loss of pressurisation in the cabin as the inner ply holds held firm. Replacement windows on Concorde were now to be double ply
October 1994 - The British Airways Concorde service to Washington was discontinued. An extra British Airways Concorde was based in New York to serve the growing US Concorde charter market. Richard Branson announced the possibilities of his company, Virgin Atlantic leasing Air France Concorde's and crew. Concorde's exhaust was analysed in flight near New Zealand
29th May 1995 - British Concorde designer, Sir Archibald Russell CBE FRS, died at the age of 90
15th August 1995 - Air France Concorde leaves New York for a world record circumnavigation flight
September 1995 - The Olympus 593 engine clocks up 500k hours of supersonic flight time
25th September 1995 - Concorde carries the European Ryder Cup team and their trophy home
October 1995 - UK and French airworthiness authorities announce they will decide in 1996 what modifications are necessary for Concorde to extend its life up to 8,500 Reference Flights
January 1996 - The collision avoidance radar system (essential for flights over the USA) fitted to Concorde overcoming the problems of the aerial overheating at supersonic speeds
February 1996 - Due to the excellent state of Concorde's airframe, the UK and French airworthiness authorities ruled that, no modifications and only six changes to the Concorde maintenance schedule were required for the Life Extension Programme
7th February 1996 - British Airways Concorde Captain Leslie Scott sets the New York to London record with a time of 2 hours 52 minutes 59 seconds
2nd April 1996 - Air France Concorde F-BTSD (213) painted blue and unveiled at Gatwick Airport to advertise Pepsi-Cola's new can
2nd June 1996 - Concorde in formation with the Red Arrows perform a fly past for the 50th anniversary of Heathrow Airport
8th August 1996 - Sir Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine dies at the age of 89
1997 - British Airways repaints its Concorde fleet in the new corporate identity. Concorde is given the historic Chatham dockyard livery
21st January 1996 - Concorde in service for 21 years
24th May 1998 - British Airways Concorde G-BOAC suffers a separation of the No.3 Left Elevon. It was an original part and suffered a similar failure to the rudder sections
8th October 1998 - British Airways Concorde G-BOAC suffers a failure of the lower rudder wedge on a flight to New York. It was a new part fitted only four years earlier to all seven aircraft
1st July 1998 - British Airways sends Concorde G-BOAB (208) to Nantes, France to fly home the England World Cup 98 team. The flight uses the callsign 'Concorde 5 3 Charlie' and landed at Heathrow Airport at 16:54 hrs.
May 1999 - British Airways unveil a new internal design for the fleet designed by Terrence Conran
December 1999 - G-BOAG is the last Concorde to be painted in the new livery
Key Milestones 2000s
23rd July 2000 - British Airways tempoarily Grounds G-BOAE due to cracks discovered in non-critical areas of the wings
25th July 2000 - Air France Concorde F-BTSC crashes in Paris, due to engine failure after a tyre burst, with the loss of 109 people onboard and four on the ground
26th July 2000 - British Airways restart Concorde flights after the previous day's accident
15th August 2000 - British Airways withdraw Concorde services after hearing that the Certificate of Airworthiness is to be withdrawn on the following day. G-BOAC was on the runway at Heathrow for take off to New York when the UK Civil Aviation Authority told British Airways. G-BOAC was ordered to return to the stand and Concorde services were suspended
16th August 2000 - CAA and DGAC offically withdraw Concorde's Certificate of Airworthiness
31st August 2000 - French investigators (BEA) publish their first report into the Paris crash suggesting a burst tyre was at the heart of the accident
7th September 2000 - An Anglo-French working group meets for first time to look at ways of returning Concorde to service
21st September 2000 - Air France fly home Concorde F-BVFC from New York. It has been in storage since Air France grounded their fleet after the Paris crash
12th December 2000 - French investigators (BEA) publish their second report into the Paris crash confirming a burst tyre caused a fuel tank to rupture from the inside outwards when it was hit by debris. The tyre was possibly punctured by a titanium strip that had fallen from a Continental Airlines DC10 after a bad repair to an engine
15th December 2000 - Anglo-French working group give go-ahead for modifications to start to return Concorde to service
January 2001 - British Airways begin modifications on Concorde G-BOAF that they hope will enable them to return the aircraft to service. These include fitting of kevlar-rubber liners to the fuel tanks
26th January 2001 - Air France fly Concorde F-BVFB to Istres in the South of France to run tests to help understand the accident
3rd February 2001 - Air France Concorde F-BVFB flies back to Paris on completion of tests
11th April 2001 - Air France fly Concorde F-BTSD on a test flight in and out of Charles De Gaulle
17th April 2001 - F-BTSD is flown to Istres for tests on newly developed Michelin tyres that offer greater strength if they hit something sharp on the runway
5th May 2001 - F-BTSD returns to Orly airport to visit the paint shop after the completion of the tyre tests
30th May 2001 - F-BTSD flies back to its base at Charles De Gaulle after being given a fresh coat of paint
7th June 2001 - Michelin announce that the tyres that were tested at Istres will be fitted to Concorde when it returns to service
19th June 2001 - British Airways complete modifications of Concorde G-BOAF
20th June 2001 - G-BOAE moves into the main Concorde hanger at Heathrow to start its modification programme
4th July 2001 - G-BOAF Performs a taxi test around Heathrow in preparation for a verification flight
17th July 2001 - Captain Mike Bannister takes British Airways Concorde G-BOAF out for its first supersonic verification flight. It is fitted with new tyres, fuel tank liners and additional electrical shielding. The flight takes 3 hours 20 minutes and lands safely at RAF Brize Norton. The modifications do not reveal any unexpected side effects
20th July 2001 - G-BOAF has a supersonic verification flight from RAF Brize Notron to Heathrow. The results of this flight pave the way for the airlines to re-apply for Concorde's Certificate of Airworthiness
23th July 2001 - BEA publish a report confirming their findings on the Paris crash. It states that they understand most of the aspects of the accident. The working group meets on the same day and says that they will submit to the authorities their case for re-instatement of the Certificate of Airworthiness on 15th August 2001
25th July 2001 - Memorial services are held in Paris and the Gonesse crash site to mark the first anniversary of the accident. Many relatives of those killed along with Air France staff and locals attend
16th August 2001 - Concorde's manufacturers submit information to Aviation authorites in UK and France to apply for re-certification of aircraft that have been through the modification programme
24th August 2001 - Air France fly their first modified Concorde F-BVFB on a supersonic verification flight. It reaches a top speed of just over Mach 1.0
27th August 2001 - Air France fly Concorde F-BVFB on a supersonic verification flight where it reaches Concorde's normal cruising speed of around Mach 2.0 during the three and an half hour flight
5th September 2001 - Certificate of Airworthiness is returned to modified Concordes by the British CAA and French DGAC. When the set of airworthiness directives are carried out it will lead to the certificates of airworthiness being returned individually to the 12 remaining Concordes
11th September 2001 - Concorde 216 (G-BOAF) completes first Operational Assessment flight and is the first Concorde aircraft to carry passengers since being given back its Certificate of Airworthiness
28th September 2001 - Concorde 212 (G-BOAE) completes a 3 hour supersonic verification flight after the competion of its modification programme
5th October 2001 - Concorde 216 (G-BOAF) completes second Operational Assessment flight. The round trip flight was a 3 hour 30 minute trip from Heathrow to the Bay of Biscay
16th October 2001 - Concorde tickets go on sale after is is announced that services will restart on 7th November 2001. Ticket sales go very well with some flights sold out in a matter of days
15th October 2001 - Concorde 207 (F-BVFB) completes first, mainly subsonic, verification flight from Paris after the modification work is completed. A few days later the aircraft flies at Mach 2.0 during a second flight
19th October 2001 - Concorde 214 (G-BOAG) is the third British Airways Concorde to fly after the completion of her modifications
22nd October 2001 - British Airways Concorde G-BOAF completes final operational assessment flight to New York and back. It is the first flight to New York since the British and French fleets were grounded after the accident in Paris in 2000 and paves the way for the resumption of full passenger services.
29nd October 2001 - Air France Concorde F-BVFB completes an operational assessment flight to New York and back. This is the first Air France flight to depart for New York following the accident the previous year
7th Nov 2001 - Air France and British Airways restart Concorde services to New York. Air France Concorde F-BTSD, as Flight AF002, departs Paris Charles De Gaulle at 10:30 local time arriving at New York at 8:20EST. British Airways Concorde G-BOAE departs Heathrow Terminal 4, as BA001, at 10:30 local time and it arrives in New York at 9:10EST. Later the same day Prime Minister Tony Blair flies to Washington DC onboard Concorde G-BOAF to meet President George W Bush
1st December 2001 - British Airways restart the Saturday only BA273/4 services to Barbados. These services have become a regular part of the winter timetable since they were introduced in 1987. Concorde G-BOAF flies the re-launch service
19st December 2001 - The British Airways offer of Concorde return tickets for £2002, to celebrate the New Year 2002, sell out in 3 minutes
12th January 2002 - The French accident investigators (BEA) publish their final report into the July 2000 accident. The investigators concluded that a tyre burst on Concorde F-BTSC after running over the debris on the runway. The explosion sent rubber pieces hurtling toward fuel tanks causing a fuel leak and fire that brought the plane down. Several criticisms were made of shortcomings at Air France and in their operating procedures
29th January 2002 - Concorde 210 (G-BOAD) completes a 3 hour supersonic verification flight after the competion of its modification programme
10th February 2002 - British Airways Concorde G-BOAD flies the BA001 service from Heathrow to New York
1st April 2002 - British Airways (now with 4 serviceable aircraft) decide to overnight an aircraft in New York to allow an earlier and more popular departure time for the BA002. The BA002 now arrives in London at 17:25 rather than 21:00
13th April 2002 - After a successful summer re-launch season, the Saturday Barbados flights come to an end. The final BA273/2 flight for the season was flown by Concorde G-BOAG
20th April 2002 - British Airways restart the Saturday BA001/2 services between London and New York
May 2002 - Air France F-BVFF is the thirteenth and last of the production Concordes to go through a Major Check. F-BVFD did not go through the check as it was retired afer only flying 5,821 hours
4th June 2002 - British Airways Concorde G-BOAD flies in formation with the RAF Red Arrows to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee
11th July 2002 - British Airways Concorde G-BOAC is the fifth Concorde to be modified and gets back in the air after 23 months on the ground
23th July 2002 - G-BOAC files the BA001/2 return service to New York marking its return to passenger service
25th August 2002 - Duxford celebrates the 25th anniversary of the arrival of Concorde G-AXDN with a special anniversary reunion where people who had been involved in the aircraft over its life span both as a development aircraft and as a museum piece could come together. Many of the flight test crews were present
22nd November 2002 - British Airways and Air France quietly celebrate the 25th anniversary of the start of services to New York by Concorde
27th November 2002 - On a flight to New York British Airways Concorde G-BOAE suffers the airlines fifth rudder failure. Again one of the new lower rudders that were put on the fleet in the early 90s failed. Many suspect a flaw in the new design as the rudder had been check only a few flights before
18th February 2003 - Air France Concorde F-BTSD diverts to Halifax, Nova Scotia. A fuel leak in the No.3 engine causes it to be shut down, with the captain subsequently declaring an emergency and diverting to Halifax. The aircraft reportedly lands with only the minimum level of fuel remaining
25th February 2003 - An Air France Concorde suffers its first rudder delamination. FAA inspectors find a 50cm part of the lower rudder's bottom wedge and a 130cm piece of the lower rudder's upper wedge missing on F-BVFA. The hours on this rudder matched the same time frame when British Airways started to experience failures in the late 1980s
2nd March 2003 - Sir George Edward Dies, Aged 94. Sir George was a key player in the Concorde project and was the first person who was not a member of the flight test crews to fly on Concorde in 1969, wearing a parachute
10th April 2003 - British Airways and Air France make a simultaneous announcement that Concorde will make its last flight scheduled passenger flight at the end of October ending nearly 30 years of supersonic travel. British Airways said that its decision had been made for commercial reasons with passenger revenue falling steadily against a backdrop of rising maintenance costs for the aircraft. Air France later say they will stop services on 31st May.
11th April 2003 - Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson announces his airline is interested in buying all seven British Airways Concordes for just £1 per aircraft. Branson said he wanted the full operational figures for the fleet, to see if using their marketing skills and lower cost base could keep the aircraft airborne at a profit
31st May 2003 - Air France conclude Concorde passenger services with a the AF001 flight form New York (F-BTSD), and a round the Bay of Biscay Charter (F-BVFB)
12th June 2003 - Concorde F-BVFA (205) makes its final flight to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum at Washington Dulles airport
14th June 2003 - Air France Concorde F-BTSD (213) retires at the Air and Space museum at Le Bourget
24th June 2003 - Concorde F-BVFB (207) lands at Karlsruhe-Baden–Baden Airpark, in South West Germany, on its way to the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum
27th June 2003 - Air France conclude Concorde operations when F-BVFC (209) retires at the Airbus plant in Toulouse, where the French aircraft were constructed
21st July 2003 - After a two day journey by river barge and road, through south west Germany, Air France Concorde F-BVFB reaches its final resting place at the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum
26th July 2003 - British Airways Concorde G-BOAD kicks off the final ever summer Barbados season. On returning to Heathrow the aircraft crew issue a PAN and then a mayday after running low on fuel due to a go-around and bad weather
30th August 2003 - G-BOAC, piloted by Captain Les Brodie, leaves Barbados on the last scheduled supersonic service from the Carribean. It was the first Concorde to visit the island in 1977 when it picked up the Queen at the end of her Jubilee tour
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Who directed the spaghetti Dollar westerns | SWDB Hall of Fame/Leading Actors - The Spaghetti Western Database
SWDB Hall of Fame/Leading Actors
From The Spaghetti Western Database
Tony Anthony
October 16, 1937 (Clarksburg West Virginia, USA)- Born Antonio Pettito, Anthony not only starred in several memorable Spaghetti Westerns, but was a producer, writer or both in all of these films as well. He first starred as the “Stranger” in A Stranger in Town (1967). Released by MGM and passed off as an imitation of the “Dollars Trilogy”, Anthony nevertheless brought his own unique spin to the titular character. Anthony played the role more vulnerable and sneaky than his Clint Eastwood counterpart and the film became a sleeper hit. Anthony went on reprise his role as “The Stranger” in two sequels, The Stranger Returns (1967) and The Silent Stranger aka The Stranger in Japan (1968). He starred in the Zatoichi inspired Blindman (1971). The film was also a big hit and remains his best known role. He also starred in the bizarre fantasy western, Get Mean (1976), which is considered to be an unofficial forth entry in the “Stranger” series of films. His last Spaghetti Western vehicle was the 3D film Comin’ At Ya! (1981) which was successful enough in the states to help set off 3D films as a brief fad in the early 1980s. Besides westerns, Anthony also starred in the 3D adventure film, Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983). He also helped to produce Wild Orchid (1989) and the TV western, Dollar for the Dead (1998).
Year of Induction: 2012
Clint Eastwood
May 31, 1930 (San Francisco California, USA)- He starred in only three Spaghetti Westerns, yet he is easily the most recognizable face in the genre. The three Sergio Leone directed films, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) catapulted Eastwood to worldwide stardom, with each successive film grander than the previous. Initially derided by the critics, the films are now generally recognized as masterpieces. Today, those three films, and Eastwood’s unforgettable portrayal of the laconic, anti-hero, “The Man With No Name”, have embedded themselves into the mainstream consciousness. Eastwood’s iconic role paved the way and set the standard for other Spaghetti Western stars. Eastwood returned to America and used his success in the Spaghetti Western genre as a launching pad for his legendary, multi-decade long career in Hollywood as both an actor and director in westerns and non-westerns alike, including Dirty Harry (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), and Gran Torino (2008). His crowning achievements are perhaps his western Unforgiven (1992), and the boxing drama Million Dollar Baby (2004), both of which he starred, directed, and won two Oscars for each. But even with all his Hollywood super-stardom, his roles in the “Man With No Name" trilogy remain among his most iconic achievement in film.
Year of Induction: 2010
Gianni Garko aka John Garko
July 15, 1935 (Zadar, Italy now Croatia)- Born Giovanni Garkovich, Garko was initially billed as Gary Hudson in his first two Spaghetti Westerns, but was later billed as John Garko in many of his subsequent films. Garko is best known for portraying one of the most popular and iconic characters in the Spaghetti Western genre, “ Sartana ”, in four films. Garko played unrelated characters sharing the same name in two other films as well. The Sartana character, an almost superhuman gunfighter and gambler who combined elements of James Bond and Mandrake the Magician became so popular in Europe that many unofficial sequels were spawned. Garko himself appeared in a total of 14 Spaghetti Westerns from 1966 to 1973 (of which 5 were directed by long time collaborator Giuliano Carnimeo), many of them experiencing strong box office success and continued acclaim from fans. He also appeared in Bad Man's River (1971), alongside Lee Van Cleef. A handsome, talented and versatile actor, Garko has a total of 99 film and television credits to his name in a variety of genres in a career spanning almost 50 years, including the Oscar nominated Kapo (1959), Il Boss (1973), Lucio Fulci's classi Giallo The Psychic (1977) and the infamous Devil Fish (1984). But it is for his portrayal of the beloved anti-hero Sartana, for which he is most noted for.
Year of Induction: 2010
Giuliano Gemma aka Montgomery Wood
September 22, 1938 (Rome, Italy)- October 1, 2013 (Civitavecchia, Italy) “Il Pistolero Nazionale” started out as a stuntman in Peplum movies, but eventually became Italy’s most beloved star during the golden age of Spaghetti Westerns. Billed as Montgomery Wood in his early westerns, his lead roles in Duccio Tessari’s A Pistol for Ringo (1964) and Return of Ringo (1965) were box office smashes during the genre's early years. Although he occasionally played the laconic, gritty tough guy typical of the genre, he more often played grinning, boyish, smart-mouthed heroes. The athletic “Angel Face” had exceptional gun twirling skills and always performed his own stunts and action sequences. In all, Gemma starred in 17 westerns over a 20 year period, almost all of which were box office bonanzas in Italy, including One Silver Dollar (1966), The White, the Yellow and the Black (1975) and The Price of Power' (1969). Even genre heavyweights Franco Nero and Lee Van Cleef were hard pressed to match the commercial success of Gemma’s westerns in his homeland. Perhaps his most notable role in a western was playing Van Cleef’s Protégé in Day of Anger (1967). Outside of the Italian western genre, his most notable role was in Dario Argento’s giallo Tenebre (1982) and Even Angels Eat Beans (1973), Angelique (1964), The Leopard (1963) and Mad Love (2001). Still active in Television at the time of his death, he was also an accomplished sculptor.
Year of Induction: 2010
Anthony Ghidra aka Dragomir "Gidra" Bojanic
June 13, 1933 (Kragujevac, Kingdom of Yugoslavia now Serbia) - November 11, 1993 (Belgrade, Serbia, formerly Yugoslavia) Known by his nickname “Gidra” in his homeland, this talented Serbian actor put forth several memorable performances as a Spaghetti Western leading man. His real name was Dragomir Bojanić, but he was billed as Anthony Ghidra in all of his Spaghetti Western films. His first western was a small role in the German Karl May western Among Vultures aka Frontier Hellcat (1964). He then went on play the lead in five Spaghetti Westerns, of which the best known is probably the unofficial “Django” Sequel, Django the Last Killer, as “Django”, a mentor to George Eastman. Perhaps his best performance was as a cowardly and alcoholic Sheriff in Tequila Joe (1968). Outside of the Spaghetti Western genre, he had over 100 film and television credits, usually in Yugoslavian cinema. He gained considerable fame throughout the Eastern Bloc, starring as the character “Zika” in the popular “Lude godine” series of comedy films. He played the character a total of ten times from 1978 to 1992, and it remains his best known role. He also had a supporting role in Walter Defends Sarajevo (1972). He continued to act until his death.
Year of Induction: 2011
Richard Harrison
May 26, 1936 (Salt Lake City Utah, USA)- Handsome and muscular, Harrison was one of the most prolific American import actors in the Spaghetti Western genre, starring in 17 such films, including one that he directed. Bit roles in South Pacific (1958) and Kronos (1957) lead to a supporting role in the sci fi film, Master of the World (1961). He went to Italy and starred in several peplum films, utilizing his bodybuilder’s physique in films such as Medusa Against the Son of Hercules (1963). Harrison then turned his attention to Spaghetti Westerns. $100,000 For Ringo (1965) was a smash box office hit in Italy and one of the most successful of the early era Spaghetti Westerns. He also starred in the cult classic, Vengeance (1968) as well as Between God, the Devil and a Winchester (1968) and Holy Water Joe (1971). In 1987, he co-wrote the late Spaghetti Western, Scalps. Outside of the western genre, he has had roles in over 100 films. He is perhaps best known for starring in several Z-Grade exploitation pictures including Ninja Terminator (1985) and Ninja the Protector (1986), directed by the infamous Godfrey Ho, as well as Evil Spawn (1987) and Joe D’Amato’s Sex and Black Magic (1982). However, he also starred in several films of higher quality, including the Euro-crime film, Beast with a Gun (1977).
Year of Induction: 2012
Terence Hill
March 29, 1939 (Venice, Italy)- Born Mario Girotti, the blue-eyed actor initially played small parts in Italian and German films (including a couple of German Karl May westerns), but later adopted the name Terence Hill and starred in some of the most commercially successful Italian westerns ever made, many of them co-starring with Bud Spencer. He starred with Spencer in three westerns directed by Giuseppe Colizzi known as the “Cat Stevens" trilogy, all of which were box office successes. Because of his striking resemblance to Franco Nero, Hill was cast as the character “ Django ” in Ferdinando Baldi’s Django, Prepare a Coffin AKA Viva Django (1968), often cited as among the best of the unofficial Django sequels. Hill and Spencer made history and changed the face of the Spaghetti Western when they starred in two comedy-westerns, They Call Me Trinity (1970) and Trinity is Still My Name (1971), the second of which broke box office records in Italy and established both Hill and Spencer as cult film stars in America. Hill continued to collaborate with Spencer in commercially successful comedies, over the next two decades including Watch Out, We're Mad (1974) and Crime Busters (1977). He also starred with Gene Hackman in March or Die (1977). Perhaps Hill’s greatest achievement has been starring alongside Henry Fonda in the Spaghetti Western spoof My Name is Nobody (1973). Hill Continues to be active in Italian television today, including the hit Italian television series, Don Matteo (2000-).
Year of Induction: 2010
George Hilton
July 16, 1934 (Montevideo, Uruguay) - Born Jorge Hill Acosta y Lara, Hilton starred in a total of 21 Spaghetti Westerns. Often known for tongue and cheek portrayals of gunfighters with a talent for comedic timing, Hilton appeared as the popular character “Hallelujah”, in two successful films, They Call Me Hallelujah (1972) and Return of Hallelujah (1973). He even replaced Gianni Garko as “ Sartana ” in Fistful of Lead AKA Sartana's Here, Trade Your Pistol For a Coffin (1971), in another box office success. He collaborated frequently with director Giuliano Carnimeo. His best known western however was his first, Lucio Fulci’s Massacre Time (1966), in which he stared opposite Franco Nero as Nero’s drunk brother, in a highly praised performance. He also starred opposite George Martin and Edd Byrnes in another popular classic, Enzo G. Castellari’s Any Gun Can Play (1967). As successful and prolific as he was in Italian westerns, Hilton is also a highly accomplished actor in Giallo films, in which he often starred opposite Edwich Fenech and collaborated frequently with director Sergio Martino. His best known Giallo work includes The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971) and the Case of the Scorpian's Tail (1971), The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972), All the Colors of the Dark (1972) and The Killer Must Kill Again (1975).
Year of Induction: 2010
Peter Lee Lawrence
February 21, 1944 (Lindau, Germany) - April 20, 1974 (Rome, Italy) Born Karl Hyrenbach, the boyishly handsome German actor achieved stardom as one of the most prolific leading men of Spaghetti Westerns before succumbing to a malignant brain tumour at the still young age of 30. He first appeared uncredited as the doomed lover of Col. Mortimer’s sister in For A Few Dollars More (1965). In his very first credited role, the youthful Hyrenbach was thrust into the lead of the Spaghetti Western, Fury of Johnny Kid (1967), under the pseudonym Arthur Grant. After adopting the name Peter Lee Lawrence, he went on to star in 15 more over the next five years, including Killer Caliber 32 (1967), Days of Violence (1967), A Gun for One Hundred Graves aka A Pistol for a Hundred Coffins (1968) , Garringo (1969), Sabata the Killer (1970) and Raise Your Hands, Dead Man, You're Under Arrest (1971). His lead roles ranged from well-dressed gunmen to deranged killers. Fittingly, he also played William H. Bonney himself in The Man Who Killed Billy the Kid (1967). Outside of the Spaghetti Western genre, he also starred in the World War II Macaroni Combat film, Hell in Normandy (1968) as well as Black Beauty (1971). A citizen of France, he also appeared in photonovels under the name of Pierre Clément.
Year of Induction: 2014
Tomas Milian
March 3, 1933 (Havana, Cuba)- The Cuban-American who specialized in playing sly, sneering Mexican bandits and revolutionaries trained at New York’s Actor’s Studio and started out primarily in Italian art house films such as Boccaccio '70 (1962). He played opposite Lee Van Cleef in Sergio Sollima’s The Big Gundown (1966). The film was both a critical and box office success and catapulted Milian into lead roles in other Italian westerns. He appeared in 14 Spaghetti Westerns overall, playing the lead in classic films such as Sergio Corbucci’s Companeros (1970), opposite Franco Nero and Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot! (1967). He also starred in Sollima’s other two westerns, Run Man, Run (1968), a pseudo-sequel to The Big Gundown, and Face to Face (1967), opposite Gian Maria Volonte. He also played a memorable role in Lucio Fulci's Four of the Apocalypse (1975). Outside of westerns he also starred in Euro-Crime and Giallo films. The most notable of these was the Lucio Fulci classic Don't Torture a Duckling (1972). In more recent times, Milian returned to America to play small character roles in Hollywood films such as JFK (1991), Traffic (2000) and Amistad (1997).
Year of Induction: 2010
Franco Nero
November 23, 1941 (San Prospero, Italy)- Born Francesco Clemente Giuseppe Sparanero, a young, blue-eyed Nero, in his breakthrough role, was cast in the lead in what would become arguably the most influential Spaghetti Western ever made. Sergio Corbucci’s immortal classic, Django (1966), was a worldwide box office phenomenon. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of Jack Nicholson who tried to buy the American rights to the film, Django was never seen in the US upon its initial release. Still, the film spawned dozens of unofficial sequels, each trying to cash in on the name “ Django ”. The film’s violent images, and Nero’s portrayal of machine gun wielding anti-hero was instrumental in launching a successful acting career in European and occasionally, Hollywood films, playing a wide variety of characters. Nero would always stay close to the genre that made him a star however, playing the lead in over a dozen Italian-made Westerns including Keoma (1976), Companeros (1970), The Mercenary (1968), Massacre Time (1966) and Texas Adios (1967). He often played European characters in westerns to compensate for his accented English. His supporting role in Die Hard 2 (1990) is his most well known Hollywood role. Other notable films of his include Force 10 From Navarone (1978), Camelot (1967), Tristana (1970), and Querelle (1982), and more recently, Letters to Juliet (2010). Married to occasional co-star Vanessa Redgrave, Nero is still active as an actor and has stated his desire to make one last western.
Year of Induction: 2010
Bud Spencer
October 31, 1929 (Naples, Italy)- Born Carlo Pedersoli, he parlayed his hulking figure into a hugely successful acting career, starring in twelve Italian Westerns, six of them with long time associate Terence Hill. As a swimmer, he represented Italy in the 1952 and 1956 Olympics, reaching the semi-finals in the 100m freestyle in both games. He also won an Italian championship in 1954 as a water polo player. Initially, he had a small uncredited appearance in Quo Vadis (1951). He later changed his name to Bud Spencer, using a combination of Budweiser bear and Spencer Tracy. Together with Terence Hill, he starred in a series of international smash hits, including the three films in Giuseppe Colizzi’s “Cat Stevens trilogy” as well as the famous role of “Bambino” in Enzo Barboni aka E.B. Clucher’s “Trinity” duology. Spencer’s unchanging persona of the gruff, fist-fighting brute with a heart of gold appealed to audiences so enormously that he was able to achieve on-screen success even without his long time partner in westerns such as The Five Man Army (1969), Buddy Goes West (1981) and Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die (1968). Outside of the western genre, he continued to co-star with Terence Hill in a number of successful comedies such as Watch Out, We’re Mad (1974), Crime Busters (1977) and A Friend is a Treasure (1981). A true renaissance man, he has earned a law degree, registered several patents, became a certified commercial airline and helicopter pilot, founded the Spencer Scholarship fund, owned several businesses, worked at the Italian Embassy in Brazil, and even ventured a brief foray into Italian politics.
Year of Induction: 2013
Anthony Steffen
July 21, 1930 (Rome, Italy) - June 4, 2004 (Rio De Janeiro, Brazil) The most prolific leading man of the Spaghetti Western genre was born Antonio Luiz De Teffè in Rome of noble Brazilian extraction, the multilingual Baron was billed often as Antonio De Teffe, but was known as Anthony Steffen in nearly all of the Spaghetti Westerns he appeared in. In fact, the tall, handsome and elegant Steffen would play the lead role in a total of 27 Italian westerns. Often (and some would say unfairly) criticized for wooden acting, he nevertheless became Brazil’s answer to Clint Eastwood. Many of his westerns fared well in the box office but today, his most well known western is Django the Bastard AKA The Stranger's Gundown (1969), a film that he not only starred in, but also wrote and produced. Some source this film as an unofficial influence to Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (1973). Steffen also starred in No Room to Die (1969), W Django (1971) and A Man Called Joe Clifford Aka Apocalypse Joe (1970). Steffen would go on to star in numerous non-westerns, including the Giallo cult favorite The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971), but eventually retired from acting to live a jet setter’s lifestyle and settle down in Rio De Janeiro where he spent the remainder of his days.
Year of Induction: 2010
Lee Van Cleef
January 9, 1925 (Somerville New Jersey, USA) – December 16, 1989 (Oxnard CA, USA) Along with Clint Eastwood, Van Cleef was one of the two most iconic American stars of Italian westerns. Initially a character actor in many Hollywood westerns such as Hign Noon (1952), it wasn’t until he ventured to Italy that Van Cleef got his big break portraying the iconic “man in black”, a sort of father figure to Eastwood’s “man with no name” in For a Few Dollars More (1965). He than portrayed one of the greatest western villains in history, “Angel Eyes”, in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). After these successes, and unlike Eastwood, Van Cleef decided to stay in Italy and forge his legacy, becoming one of the biggest box office stars in Europe, although this choice would negatively affect his popularity in America. His hawk like features, menacing scowl, and imposing physical presence, ensured Van Cleef numerous lead roles as both the mature anti-hero, and as the ruthless villain. Van Cleef’s presence in some of the best and most commercially successful Spaghetti Westerns ever made, such as the The Big Gundown (1966), Sabata (1969), and Death Rides a Horse (1967), ensured his lasting popularity. His best known Hollywood role was starring alongside Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter classic Escape from New York (1980).
Year of Induction: 2010
Gian Maria Volonte
April 9, 1933 (Milan, Lombardy, Italy)- December 6, 1994 (Florina, Greece) A handsome and versatile actor, Volonte will always be remembered for playing opposite Clint Eastwood in two of the films in Sergio Leone’s “Man With No Name" trilogy. The Italian actor had a knack for playing psychotic and ruthless Mexican bandit leaders as he proved in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) (billed as Johnny Wels) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), both films bringing him his greatest recognition in America. He played yet another Mexican bandit leader in Damiano Damiani’s classic Zapata Western, A Bullet for the General (1966). In his final Spaghetti Western role, he played a Boston University Professor turned bandit in another box- office smash, Sergio Sollima’s Face to Face (1967), opposite Tomas Milian. A staunch political activist, Volonte continued to act, mostly in dramatic roles, including Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) and For Love and Gold (1966) and Sacco & Vanzetti (1971) until his death via heart attack, winning prestigious acclaim along the way including for best actor at the 1983 Cannes film festival and the 1987 the Golden Lion award at the 1991 Venice Film Festival honoring his career and achievement in international cinema.
Year of Induction: 2010
Robert Woods aka Robert Wood
July 19th, 1936 (Denver, Colorado, USA)- Among all the American actors who made a living in Italy starring in Spaghetti Westerns, none were more prolific than Robert Woods. Often billed without the ‘S’ in his last name, he starring in a total of 21 such films, playing a variety of characters. The most commercially successful of these was Seven Guns for the MacGregors (1966), which was popular enough to spawn a sequel, but without Woods. Although most of Wood’s films were only moderate successes at the Italian box office, a few of his films have gained cult followings over the years. His film Gatling Gun (1968) is a favorite of director Quentin Tarantino. Other Spaghetti Westerns include Black Jack (1968), El Puro (1969) in which he turned in a memorable performance as a drunken gunfighter, and the notorious Demofilo Fidani western, His Name Was Sam Walbash, But They Call Him Amen aka Savage Guns (1971). Outside of the Spaghetti Western genre, he modeled for Pierre Cardin, worked at an Italian dubbing studio, and sang and performed in theatre productions. He also had roles in a number of Jesus Franco films. He had a small role in Battle of the Bulge (1965), and continues to act to this day.
Year of Induction: 2011
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In the 50's western series Maverick who played Beau the English Maverick cousin | The Best Spaghetti Westerns - Great Western Movies
Great Western Movies
An In-Depth Guide to Westerns
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Nicholas Chennault ~ November 13, 2013
The Best Spaghetti Westerns
Director Sergio Corbucci claims that the idea for spaghetti westerns came when he was working as a second-unit director for his friend director Sergio Leone , filming in Spain on The Last Days of Pompeii (1959). Seeing the landscape of Spain with its wild horses, extraordinary canyons, and semi-desert landscapes which looked a lot like Mexico or Texas, Corbucci suggested making an American Wild West-themed film in Spain. Corbucci then directed his first western in Spain just before Sergio Leone completed the ground-breaking A Fistful of Dollars in 1964. The Wikipedia entry on “Spaghetti Western” lists the first such as The Sheriff in 1959.
David A. Cook’s A History of Narrative Film says more than 400 of what are generically referred to as spaghetti westerns were produced from 1963 to 1973. As a general matter, the best of them are the four directed by Sergio Leone , which show a remarkable progression in film-making ability. Two western stars in particular reached a higher status through their appearances in spaghetti westerns: Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, who both appeared in Leone films in the mid-1960s. And such other stars as Henry Fonda and Jack Palance had their careers prolonged by appearing in spaghetti westerns. Spaghetti westerns usually exhibit most of the following characteristics:
They are generally made with low budgets; but Leone’s third and fourth westerns ( The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West ) clearly show what he could do with a larger budget.
There are often lingering close-ups and a fascination with blue eyes. They often feature long shots, with fewer middle-range shots (compared to, say, the westerns of Budd Boetticher , who used mid-range shots a lot).
They were most often filmed in Spain and frequently their stories were said to be set in Mexico; perhaps due to the setting or simply to a fondness for grittiness, there was often lots of dust.
They featured extended, and not very realistic, violence and brutality.
The music was sometimes excellent in a new sort of way (especially that provided by Ennio Morricone for Leone and other films), but it was often disproportionately loud.
They were made by Italian directors with largely Italian casts, with a light sprinkling of American stars (either up and coming, like Clint Eastwood or Burt Reynolds, or getting to be long in the tooth, like Henry Fonda, Lee Van Cleef or Jack Palance).
They were shot without recording the sound, depending on putting the sound in later during post-production. That resulted in a lot of dubbed voices, sometimes by the actual actor on film (Eastwood or Van Cleef), but often not; see, for example, Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon a Time in the West . It could often mean that music or sound effects supposedly provided by someone on the film had the wrong accoustics.
There was often a fondness for the freakish, surreal or bizarre–dwarves, hunchbacks, inexplicably maniacal laughter, etc.
Our consultant for Italian and horror films, Adam Sorensen at Lionsgate Films, has provided one list of the best of the spaghetti westerns. As he says, the list is dominated by the two Sergios: Leone and Corbucci.
*Death Rides a Horse (Giulio Petroni)
*A Bullet for the General (Damiano Damiani)
*Mannaja (Sergio Martino)
*Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! (Giulio Questi)
*Four of the Apocalypse (Lucio Fulci)
*The Grand Duel (Giancarlo Santi)
*Navajo Joe (Corbucci)
*A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (Valerii)
*Face to Face (Sollima)
*Cemetery Without Crosses (Robert Hossein)
*Sabata (Gianfranco Parolini)
*My Name is Trinity (Enzo Barboni)
“Some of these get pretty bizarre, surreal, and brutal, but that seems to be part of the appeal.”
Some of the more successful of the spaghetti westerns gave rise to sequels, even multiple sequels, sometimes by parties other than the original director. Among the series, the best known is Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name or Dollar Trilogy, which features no continuity of character or story but each film simply has Clint Eastwood as a different character with identical costuming. Such spaghetti westerns series include:
The Man with No Name or Dollar Trilogy (Leone)
Django
| i don't know |
Which TV western character carried a derringer behind his belt buckle | Derringer Hideouts - Guns of the Old West
Derringer Hideouts
By |
March 4, 2013
Any of these “Stingy” guns surrounding the NAA Mini Revolver might have been found in a frontier gambler’s vest pocket or up his sleeve.
The original concealed carry handgun, when push came to shove at the card table most gamblers would rather have a Derringer or even a Mini Revolver up their sleeve than any hidden Ace.
The original concealed carry handgun, when push came to shove at the card table most gamblers would rather have a Derringer or even a Mini Revolver up their sleeve than any hidden Ace.
“Stingy” guns are small handguns meant to be carried concealed. In our Old West, these included Derringers and other small revolvers.
The classic cartridge Derringer is the Remington Model 95 Double Derringer. Introduced in 1866 in .41 Short Rimfire caliber, over 150,000 were produced in its 69 years of production. We fans of the 1950’s and 1960’s TV Westerns saw a Remington Double Derringer used often by Richard Boone as Paladin in “Have Gun, Will Travel”. Carried concealed behind his belt buckle, Paladin used it to good effect after being “disarmed.”
The little Remington weighs 11 ounces, is a single-action with spur trigger, birdshead grip, 4¾-inch overall length with 3-inch over/under barrels and a pivoting firing pin that alternates barrels with each cocking of the hammer. Standard grips are checkered black hard rubber and fired cases are ejected manually with a push type double ejector located on the left side of the barrels. The thumbpiece on the ejector is nicely checkered. The barrel assembly hinges at the top rear and rotates upward to load and unload. A thumb-operated barrel lock is located on the bottom right side of the frame. The .41 Short cartridge was not known for its stopping power with its 13 grains of black powder and 130-grain lead bullet, but the large holes in the small muzzle would give pause to anyone looking down them.
While many a Double Derringer rode in a vest pocket, legendary holstermaker S.D. Myres of El Paso, Texas made a leather wristband with a leather-covered U-shaped spring specifically sized for the little Remington Derringer. With the loose fitting shirtsleeve cuffs in fashion at the time, many a frontier or riverboat gambler had a Remington Double Derringer in a wristband holster “up his sleeve.”
For the rest of the article please see the print issue of GoW Fall 2012 #75.
| Paladin |
Which Football League side was once known as Small Heath Alliance | The Definitive The Have Gun, Will Travel Radio Log with John Dehner, Ben Wright and Virginia Gregg
Home >> D D Too Home >> Radio Logs >> Have Gun, Will Travel
CBS Television's Have Gun, Will Travel was spun off on Radio in November 1958
The Two Paladins - John Dehner appeared with Richard Boone in the Have Gun Will Travel episode High Wire in 1957
John Dehner reviews a script for Frontier Gentleman a series he completed a week before launching Have Gun Will Travel over Radio.
John Dehner in Paladin's San Francisco
The Tools of Paladin's Trade:
Paladin's famous business card
Paladin's Cavalry Model 1873 'Peacemaker' .45 calibre single-action revolver would have looked much like this modern replica. Paladin also employed a blued version of the same revolver.
Paladin's back up weapon was a Remington double Derringer neatly concealed behind his belt buckle.
Paladin's signature gun belt
Fitch Shampoo was one of Have Gun Will Travel's earliest co-sponsors
Casite was one of the earliest co-sponsors of Have Gun Will Travel
Winston cigarettes was one several tobacco sponsors of Have Gun Will Travel
Ex-Lax was another of almost 100 co-sponsors for Have Gun Will Travel over Radio
Camel cigarettes was one several other tobacco sponsors of Have Gun Will Travel
American Motors' Rambler American and Ambassador lines sponsored Have Gun Will Travel. Richard Boone, star of Have Gun Will Travel over TV could have bought a Rambler every 90 seconds at his rate of compensation on the program.
Dristan co-sponsored a portion of the 1960 run of Have Gun Will Travel
Pepsi-Cola was a long running co-sponsor of Have Gun Will Travel
French's Wocestershire sauce was a brief co-sponsor of Have Gun Will Travel
General Motors felt that Have Gun Will Travel would be a good platform to push their Guardian Maintenance campaign for 1959
Mutual of Omaha pushed its Health Insurance plans on Have Gun Will Travel
Background
For almost all of our Radio articles we generally provide some background on the production, discuss the production itself, then, when appropriate, cite Television or Radio productions that the subject production may have spawned in later years.
With Have Gun, Will Travel the process must be reversed. Television's version of Have Gun, Will Travel first aired on September 14, 1957. Quickly becoming one of Television's fastest rising Westerns, by the Summer of 1958 CBS executives began weighing the practicality of introducing the series to Radio.
This was by no means unheard of, but rare just the same. Many of Radio's most popular programs entered early 1950s Television at about the same time as their Radio counterparts. In other instances, they'd air on both Radio and Television for an overlapping period of two to three years before dropping off Radio and continuing on Television.
But as Television continued to establish its popular supremacy over Radio such instances became the rare exception rather than the rule. It was clearly a gamble for CBS to launch concurrent Television and Radio versions of a program in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But gamble they did, much in the model of Radio and Television's wildly popular Gunsmoke.
CBS rolls the dice on Have Gun, Will Travel over Radio
And so it was that Have Gun, Will Travel premiered over Radio a year and a half after its Television rendition on November 23, 1958. Veteran Film, Radio and Television actor John Dehner was tapped to portray the mono-named Paladin. The great character actor Ben Wright was selected to portray 'Hey Boy' ('real name' Kim Chan) and as the series progressed Radio legend Virginia Gregg was tapped to portray Miss Wong, Hey Boy's ostensible lady friend.
For the uninitiated, 'Paladin' (last name only) was a Renaissance Man: an adventurer, bon-vivant, gourmet, enologist, raconteur, gambler, and investment speculator--who also happened to be a very adept and deadly gun for hire. Based in San Francisco, Paladin occupied a suite of rooms at The Carlton Hotel. Most comfortable dressed as a dandy, Paladin's San Francisco 'valet' is Kim Chan, a Chinese immigrant who works primarily for The Carlton Hotel when not in the service of Paladin. Dubbed 'Hey Boy' since he began working in San Francisco, he appears to have at least two generations of roots in the San Francisco area.
While Paladin seemed to attract--and enjoy--an apparently limitless supply of female companions while staying at The Carlton, Hey Boy, by contrast, appears to have had only one steady female interest: Miss Wong, a well-educated, well-read friend of Hey Boy's family.
Paladin's daily routine, immediately after checking his financial investments, appears to have been poring over several newspaper subscriptions--for which he had a standing order--to check for possible new adventures. He has also apparently placed personal ads in numerous other newspapers of the day, advertising "Have Gun - Will Travel, Wire Paladin, San Francisco."
His adventures arrived by either wiring or posting his business card to potential interested parties or by answering responses to his personal services ads. Paladin's services don't come cheap: he customarily asked at least one thousand dollars for his services--plus expenses. But being the 'knight' he is at heart, he often took on causes at nominal or paltry charges on principle alone. Indeed, Paladin accepted $1.61 for one of his commissions.
The 'knight' references permeate both the Television and Radio incarnations of Have Gun, Will Travel:
Paladin's surname [if indeed it was his actual surname] means 'chivalrous hero' or knight in most languages
Paladin's business card is emblazoned with a white knight chess piece
Paladin's holster and at least one of his custom saddles are marked with a knight chess piece in relief
Paladin's basic service--'Have Gun, Will Travel'--is every bit in the mold of knights throughout history
Paladin, also in the mold of knights of the past has a loyal attendant--Hey Boy--and lives the life of a successful knight from his spoils (e.g., the various payments for his services)
He's the epitome of chivalry, often to a fault: never drawing first, often acting as a devout protector and defender of the weaker sex, and invariably--though mostly reluctantly--taking on ostensibly lost causes against highly unbalanced odds on principle alone.
It's no coincidence that a great number of the scripts or plots for the Radio incarnation of Have Gun, Will Travel seem identical to their Television version. It was reportedly CBS' intent from the outset to leverage as much of the writing talent as practical from the successful Television series into the Radio version.
The selection of John Dehner and Ben Wright to headline the Radio version was also a no-brainer for CBS. The pair had just completed Frontier Gentleman--often together in many episodes. Frontier Gentleman left the air on November 16, 1958. Indeed, for Dehner the Have Gun, Will Travel lead was a virtual extension of his characterization of J.B. Kendall in Frontier Gentleman.
The two roles had different settings and time frames to be sure, but the basic characters--J.B. Kendall and 'Paladin'--shared many similarities: both were men of breeding, military background, varied cultural interests, well-read, highly educated and adventurous. J.B. Kendall's weapons were his pen and his gun. Paladin's weapons were his intellect and his guns of choice--his perfectly balanced Cavalry Model 1873 Colt "Peacemaker" single action .45 calibre revolver and a dual-chambered, over and under Derringer usually concealed under his belt buckle. Paladin also often sported a Bowie knife and was demonstrably adept with both bullwhip and lariats. Once at his adventure's destination, Paladin wore black from head to toe, accented only by a light colored cravat.
Paladin's ostensible West-Point Military Academy education and service with the Union Army during The Civil War also set him apart, both culturally and philosophically from his peers of the era. Both the Television and Radio series' are set between the end of The Civil War and 1875 San Francisco. Several of the plots in both Television and Radio incarnations reflect on the slow-to-heal wounds left in the wake of The Civil War.
San Francisco's mythical Hotel Carlton is framed as one of early San Francisco's finest, and while in residence Paladin spares no expense in his personal pleasures. The Hotel Carlton, as portrayed in the Television version of Have Gun, Will Travel is juxtaposed against the infamous Barbary Coast of the Bay Area. As such, Paladin is equally at home attending the opera as meeting with modern day pirates.
Character development remains strong throughout the Radio version. John Dehner couldn't have been more perfect for the role of a turn of the century Renaissance Man. In real life Dehner had been a Walt Disney animator, a professional pianist, a fencing champion, a news editor and Peabody Award winning commentator, as well as a Stage, screen, Radio and Television actor, writer, producer and director. Ben Wright's characterization of Hey Boy is allowed to develop to the point of introducing Virginia Gregg in the role of Miss Wong, Hey Boy's love interest. Both Wright and Gregg perform in multiple roles throughout the Have Gun, Will Travel run over Radio.
Comparing and contrasting the Radio and Television versions
It's impossible to avoid the temptation to make comparisons between the Television and Radio incarnations of Have Gun, Will Travel. I heard--and watched--both versions as a child. Simply as a matter of personal taste, I preferred both the Television version and Radio versions of Have Gun, Will Travel over the Radio and Television versions of Gunsmoke, for example. I found Gunsmoke claustrophobic compared to Have Gun, Will Travel. While anchored in San Francisco, Have Gun, Will Travel allowed Paladin to range far and wide for his adventures. By contrast, Gunsmoke felt more like a soap opera to me than a western adventure series.
Radio was still 'the theatre of the mind,' and as a young boy, my imagination was as fresh and far ranging as it rightly should have been. Radio's Have Gun, Will Travel appealed to me--even after having watched almost a year and a half of the Television episodes--precisely because of my imagination. The superb writing and acting in the Radio version was the equal of its Television predecessor, but over Radio I could close my eyes, 'feel' every nuance of the rich detail of every episode and 'paint' my own scenes informed by the hundreds of other Radio, Film and Television westerns I'd heard and watched. My imagination was also informed by the many books, comics and magazines I'd read which carried western themes.
I mention my personal experience of both versions of the program only to frame my following observations. Today's audiences, unless they've viewed little cable or network television, have for the most part lost much of that ability to immerse themselves in an aural medium. The fact that the writing of the era was absolutely the finest in the history of mass communication is indisputable. That raw talent and genius isn't lost on contemporary listeners--when they actually listen. But therein lies the rub. Many of us in modern society have lost the ability to listen. We've been conditioned to have soundbites pasteurized, homogenized and sanforized by the time they're imparted to us. There's no room left for imagination--least of all over any visual medium.
That was the single, most compelling element of Radio of the era. The only distractions were the still infrequent commercial messages during the broadcast. The rest of the experience transported the listener to places and adventures and themes that the vast majority of the listening audience could only imagine in their mind's eye.
As one of the more visceral examples, Have Gun, Will Travel over Television was broadcast in black and white. But whenever I listened to Have Gun, Will Travel over the Radio I visualized it in color. My mind and imagination's ability to 'see' the Radio plays in color was, again, informed by my own extensive experience of books, magazines, comics and western films of the preceding thirty years.
Television and Radio's Paladins were not that far apart in my own imagination. I frankly felt that John Dehner brought more class and polish to the Radio version. But I'd also rush to add that by the time I'd seen Have Gun, Will Travel over Television, I'd seen Richard Boone's portrayals as Dr. Konrad Styner in Medic (1954). I, along with most of America at the time, was highly impressed with Boone's characterizations: curt, blunt, always professional, decisive and unprecedently realistic for the era. Boone's portrayal of Paladin was just as effective. But Television, being what it was becoming even then, was obsessed with visual 'hooks' and gimmicks: an oft-repeated sneer, elaborate and contrived gestures handling firearms, the 'ominous turn,' and so forth. I loved the action and I loved Boone's acting--when he was permitted to do so. But the rest of it, for me anyway, was all flash and contrivance.
Boone himself wasn't a very enthusiastic fan of the Television version. In a 1961 Life magazine article Boone expresses his amazement that CBS offered him $900,000 to return for another season of Have Gun, Will Travel. While of course not turning it down, it was Boone's feeling that no one deserved that much compensation for what would have been thirty-seven, twenty-minute performances of a Television drama. And of course, upon reflection, $1,216 a minute ($8,427 in today's dollars) for acting in just one of some twelve to fifteen Television westerns of the era does seem ridiculously absurd on the face of it. Boone had been very personally invested in Medic. I recall a Television special of the era in which Richard Boone visited a local Los Angeles hospital to assess, in documentary style, the cutting edge medical technology of the era. And indeed, the real talents behind all of those western productions--over both Radio and Television--were the writers.
In another point of comparison, John Dehner appeared once in the Television version (in 1957, prior to the Radio version) and Ben Wright appeared numerous times over the Television version of Have Gun, Will Travel. Even at that early age I'd become a fan of both great character actors, but when I watched their various characterizations in the Television version--while at the same time having heard them over Radio--I didn't 'see' Paladin when Dehner was on the small screen (even in reruns). And of course, given Ben Wright's amazing range and versatility over both Radio and Television, I certainly didn't 'see' Hey Boy when Ben Wright was on Have Gun, Will Travel's small screen. That was the genius of the aural medium--suspension of disbelief, informed by one's imagination.
The end of Radio's Have Gun, Will Travel arrives abruptly
My observations of Radio's Have Gun, Will Travel are necessarily colored by my own enthusiasm for the aural medium, to be sure. But I'm no Pollyanna either. Radio and Television were businesses, no question about it. That having being said, I heard no decline whatsoever in the quality of the Radio version of Have Gun, Will Travel. Quite the contrary. As the series progressed, I found myself enjoying it even more with each new installment. There's no question that it was commercially viable. One glance at the bewildering array of sponsors and co-sponsors of the Radio series puts that issue to rest. Boone's anecdote about his compensation for the Television version may hold part of the answer.
The Radio version of Have Gun, Will Travel cost a pittance in comparison to the Television version. CBS recycled many of the scripts from the Television series. Writers weren't paid residuals for their Television scripts so there was marginal overhead in adapting the vast majority of those scripts for Radio. The remaining talent costs for the Radio series were at scale for the era. The creators were the same for both renditions. The west coast actors for the Radio series were the equal of any performances over Radio of the era. In summary, there was no 'ratings' or quality reason to discontinue the series two episodes into its fifth order of programming. The reason for it's abrupt end was--in all probability--the exponentially rising costs of it's Television version.
Radio's Have Gun, Will Travel had been an ATM-machine for CBS throughout its run. But Radio and Television had, by 1960, become a zero-sum game for network executives and ad-men. As compensation and expenses for Television began to increase exponentially, they sucked all of the oxygen out of Radio. And so it was that Frank Paris himself wrote the series closer for Have Gun, Will Travel: a script that would have Paladin leaving San Francisco for good, to claim a $100, 000 inheritance in Boston. The week of that performance, the cast and crew were simply told that they needn't return the following week. . . game, set, match, poof.
Upon reflection it's no wonder that FCC Chairman Newton Minnow was compelled to cite Television as a 'vast wasteland' barely six months after Have Gun, Will Travel's demise over Radio. Television's Have Gun, Will Travel continued on for two more years after Minnow's cautionary and prophetic speech. For at least one of those two more seasons, Richard Boone was compensated $900,000 (over $6M in today's dollars) to continue in his role. The talent and production costs for Radio's Have Gun, Will Travel averaged about $2500 per episode--two minutes of small-screen compensation for Richard Boone, or the equivalent cost of three or four commercial spots over Radio of the era, in one regional outlet.
Adult Westerns over Television were all the rage in 1957. Witness this mock shoot-out from Life magazine's 'TV goes wild over Westerns' article from October 28 1957
Series Derivatives:
By Tom E. Danson
Press - Telegram Radio Editor
VIRGINIA GREGG looked anxiously at the clock's red sweep hand and drummed her fingers nervously on the studio table. Only one of her two male radio partners had appeared, and the morning show, "8:30 Clipper," was to go on the air in three minutes.
Inexorably the hand that rules radio moved to "On the Air" and at this point the story should say that the third party of the little trio dashed in and saved the day.
But he didn't.
No, he woke up about air time and, realizing that he couldn't make it to the studio, snapped on the bedside radio and cozily listened to Virginia and Jimmy Barton struggle through the script without the listeners knowing the cast was one actor short.
When the show finally staggered off at cue, the pixie partner at home called and congratulated Virginia and Jimmy on a swell job.
And that's the way things have been going with Virginia ever since she left Jefferson Junior High School in Long Beach.
Born in Harrisburg, IL, she came west with her parents at an early age and enrolled in the Fremont grammar school at Fourth St. and Termino Ave., in Long Beach. Her father, the late Edward W. Gregg, worked in the absorption plant of an oil company on Signal Hill. It was while in the seventh grade at Jefferson High that Virginia remembers having the most fun. She loved sports and excelled as pitcher on the baseball team. Her specialty was a fast curve and Long Beach teen-agers had their own particular version of the tragedy of Casey-at-the-Bat when they stepped to home plate to face the blue-eyed Gregg gal with the super-duper pitch.
Both of Virginia's parents are now deceased but a stepsister, Mrs. Mary Graves, Mary's husband, Don, and three lovely children, Donna, 10, Bobby, 8, and Judy, 6, live at 3561 Violeta St., Artesia.
MISS GREGG'S debut in radio came in 1937, when she joined a musical unit at KHJ known as "The Singing Strings," a group that was widely copied. Virginia played the double bass; a talent acquired attending senior high school in Pasadena.
As radio itself went through a transition from small musical groups to larger name bands just before the war, Virginia expanded her activities as an actress, and now she's heard on such dramatic shows as “The Count of Monte Cristo," "Let George Do It," "Casebook of Gregory Hood," the "Cisco Kid," "Red Ryder," "Family Theater" and "Straight Arrow." Others include "California Caravan," "Mayor of the Town," "Dr. Christian," "Front Page," "Whistler," "I Deal in 'Crime," "Lux Screen Guild," "Favorite Story."
Motion picture credits for the lovely blue-eyed actress include "The Gay Interlude," "Casbah," "The Spiritualist" and "Body and Soul."
Two years ago she married handsome and dashing Jaime del Valle, an Air Force major and one of the most highly regarded radio producer-directors in Hollywood. From a pioneer California family, his proud name is directly linked with that of Southwest history. His ancestors, Jose Antonio Carrillo, Ignacio del Valle and Juan Bandini settled here some 200 years ago. The "Old Town" outside San Diego, the original settlement of the newly arrived Spaniards, still shows the old Carrillo house, the first two-story structure in California.
THE HISTORIC Rancho San Vicente, extending from the mountains through Beverly Hills to the sea near Long Beach was one of the del Valle family properties. Between them, the del Valle-Carrillo clan owned the largest single tract of land in grants from the King of Spain.
Recently Virginia and Jaime announced the birth of a son, Gregg Bandini del Valle, and no one was prouder of his new relative than his cousin, Leo Carrillo, the movie star.
Virginia is five feet seven inches in height, weighs 129 pounds. She has light brown hair and blue eyes. She prefers not to wear hats. Her favorite sports are tennis and swimming, with gardening and symphony music her major hobbies. She's not a club joiner, but she loves adventure books and enjoys the exotic dishes her husband prepares. On Thanksgiving, Christmas and other festive occasions he takes over in the kitchen.
Possessed of some deep source of kinetic energy, Virginia gets keen zest from living and acting. She's one of the top dramatic personalities in Hollywood network radio because she is capable and alert. The incident of the "8:30 Clipper" in her early radio days was recalled recently when Virginia was cast on the "Family Theater"' show. It was a grade A production with Maureen O'Sullivan starring. Virginia was cast as Miss O'Sullivan's daughter. Suddenly the ingénue became ill just before airtime and Virginia was asked to do both roles, which she did with much success.
"That was the first time in my life I played my own grandmother," she laughs.
As Jack Webb himself might have said of the preceding article, "those are just the facts, Ma'am". But the visceral and subjective responses to Virginia Gregg's marvelous acting talent can't go without mention. The two most effective aspects of Virginia Gregg's amazing career were--for us, anyway--her Radio and Television performances.
On Radio, Virginia Gregg showed a versatility and almost chameleon-like transformative ability that a mere handful of her peers of the era possessed. I think of Lurene Tuttle to be sure, and perhaps Irene Tedrow, Lilian Buyeff, Jeanette Nolan and certainly Betty Lou Gerson and June Foray. But I'll have to say that it's Virginia Gregg and Lurene Tuttle that, for me anyway, always seemed Radio's two most versatile, most believable, most resilient and most durable actresses from The Golden Age of Radio--or Television for that matter.
We probably have at least 3,000 of Virginia Gregg's performances among our recordings from The Golden Age of Radio, and another 200-300 of her performances on Television. And yet, from Radio to Television, one is hard pressed to find a single flaw in any of her performances. An extremely attractive woman in her own right, Virginia Gregg never for a moment hestitated portraying less attractive female roles--either aurally or visually.
One is reminded of the unbelievably vast range of characterizations she was called upon to perform in Radio--often three to five characters within the same script. Then one is equally reminded of the amazing way Ginny Gregg could sell an amazing range of Television characters, especially in shows such as TV's Dragnet, wherein a great deal of verisimilitude was demanded, given the almost documentary format of the series. From a barroom floozie to the frumpiest housewife, to the most elegant society matron, Virginia Gregg became precisely what the scriptwriter called for--and letter perfect each and every time.
And beyond simply her career as an actress, in virtually every article--anecdotal or factual--that I've ever read about her, the accounts are always the same: Virginia Gregg remained an approachable, loyal, generous and non-judgemental friend to virtually everyone she worked with. Even extending that generosity to their families in most accounts.
One anecdote in particular has always struck me. It's been reported by many observers of her on-sound-stage Radio demeanor that, irrespective of the complexity of the script before her--or how many roles she was to portray in it--Virginia Gregg would simply sit and knit until the instant she was required again. Then she'd simply complete a stitch, get up for her lines, perform them, then promptly return to her seat and pick up with the next stitch. Now that's poise--and preparation and raw talent.
We've tended to pretty much sidestep her entire 45-Film movie career. But as is the triumph of Hollywood's most effective character actors, they did what they did on screen so effectively that they get somewhat overlooked. The films they support wouldn't be the same without them, but precisely because they sold their performances so effectively, they remain in the background. But indeed that's precisely what the truly great character actors throughout history have sought with their finest, most effective performances: to perform so seamlessly throughout the script that they become part of the set-dressing for either the lead actors of the arc of the script. But one particular performance deserves mention, albeit off camera: Virginia Gregg's absolutely terrifying screen voicing of the mummified mother in all three Psycho movies.
And so it was that from her first Film appearance in 1947's Body and Soul to her last Film appearance in Psycho III (1986), Virginia Gregg continued to gain both critical acclaim, growing approval from her peers, and as loyal a body of character actor fans as ever existed. Deservedly so. Talents like hers and Lurene Tuttle's appear so rarely. When they do, we can't get enough of them. When they move on, we feel the void they've left in the Entertainment world.
Such was the case with Virginia Gregg--a Radio, Television and Film treasure for all time. And thankfully a treasure we can all share in for decades to come, through the miracle of The Golden Age of Radio and the wonderfully preserved kinescopes and films of her Television and Screen appearances over the years.
| i don't know |
Who won the San Marino Grand Prix in 2005 | San Marino Grand Prix 2005 Preview · F1 Fanatic
Author Keith Collantine
Renault have made a dominant start to the 2005 season – but Toyota, Ferrari and McLaren are chasing them hard. They need to be, because if they’re not on terms with the regie at this, the first race of the ‘European season’, they can kiss their title dreams goodbye.
With the first three ‘flyaway’ races completed, Fernando Alonso leads the driver’s championship with 26 points, 10 clear of Jarno Trulli. We also find ourselves in the unusual position of there being another 16 races still to run – as many as in an entire season only a few years ago.
On the face of it, Trulli may stand a chance of overhauling Alonso’s lead because Toyota have outscored Renault in the last two races. But, realistically, Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella lost points through a collision and retirement in these rounds, and there is no obvious chink in the Renault armour just yet.
The pressure is on Fisichella, though. Since his Australian win he has had two wasted races and must not lose sight of his rampant team mate so early in the year.
Trulli, second in the last two races, must be a dark horse for victory even if he has publicly expressed reservations over how well his Toyota will perform on the unusual Imola circuit. Kimi Raikkonen is another strong tip. For three races, the Finn has unleashed awesome, covert speed on race day after qualifying poorly. This is partly a characteristic of his MP4-20, but also a consequence of needless errors, such as at Bahrain. In first qualifying this weekend, Raikkonen will be third-to-last to run, giving him a realistic chance of starting from the front two rows – something he is yet to do this year. From that position, he would be a serious threat to Alonso.
Rumours persist that Juan Pablo Montoya has not yet recovered from his should injury sufficiently to partner Raikkonen, and that McLaren third driver Alex Wurz (who has finally had the MP4-20 modified to fit his 1.85m frame) will substitute. This is a blow for Pedro de la Rosa, who set fastest lap in Bahrain on his way to fifth in Montoya’s seat. In an ideal world, both these underrated talents would have regular drives.
Ferrari, too, are seething from their early season defeats. Already the only team to violate the restricted testing agreement, they have taken their test work to new heights in their attempts to find more speed and reliability from the F2005. Remember, this car originally wasn’t supposed to arrive until the next race, in Spain.
Schumacher also has an unfavourable starting slot for first qualifying. Nonetheless, cooler ambient temperatures at San Marino will surely ease the tyre wear problems that blighted Rubens Barrichello’s recent races. But will they have the outright pace?
BAR-Honda’s situation is more desperate, but they are tipping themselves to make a strong comeback. Testing in Barcelona last week suggested they have found some genuine pace, but their more serious Achilles heels have been reliability and the inability of the 007 chassis to run effectively in the disturbed air of a leading car. If it holds together, Button should be in the points. If it holds together.
Williams and Red Bull Racing have been the pleasant surprises of 2005 so far. Williams have hammered through their backlog of wind tunnel work and positively thrown new components onto the FW27 – and there are yet more pieces coming this week. It has apparently gained vital downforce at the expense of straight-line efficiency, which the BMW engine can partly make up for, being the most powerful in the pit lane.
Red Bull, meanwhile, risk confusing their solid start to the season as they inflict a driver change upon themselves – Christian Klein out for Vitantonio Liuzzi. 2004 F3000 champion Liuzzi is highly rated in the pit lane, and has already been linked to Ferrari. Klien will be in Liuzzi’s testing role.
His first real challenge will be against team-mate David Coulthard in one-lap qualifying – an area where Coulthard has always struggled, so expect the Italian to make waves on his home debut.
It seems as if Sauber are effectively running a one-car team for Felipe Massa, with a beleaguered Jacques Villeneuve vainly peddling a second chassis and surely only races away from canning it altogether.
The Imola circuit may well upset what we have seen of 2005 form to date. The circuit rewards cars that can ride the bumpy kerbs of its many chicanes as effectively as possible, and get good traction from them. Imola has four chicanes, plus the Jordans and the Minardis – Minardi are bringing their curvy new PS05, so there is even a chance that the Jordans will get lapped first.
Passing is excruciatingly difficult on the narrow and short straights, so Sunday qualifying poses a particular challenge for the strategists – to fuel the car light and get a better grid position, or fuel more heavily and risk starting too low down? McLaren tend towards the latter option, so get your bets on Raikkonen if he qualifies well. Otherwise, the Renault’s immaculate traction should seal another win for the boy from Oviedo.
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| Fernando Alonso |
Who duetted with Kenny Rogers on Islands In The Stream | Alonso Defies Schumacher | 2005 San Marino Grand Prix - YouTube
Alonso Defies Schumacher | 2005 San Marino Grand Prix
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Published on Jun 10, 2015
Fernando Alonso holds off a series of challenges from the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher to win the 2005 San Marino Grand Prix. Follow #65YearsOfF1 on Twitter for more of F1's greatest battles.
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Who had a number one in 2000 with Black Coffee | The UK Number Ones : 2000 to 2004
3
4th & last No 1
His second No 1 of the year was based on the melody of "Angel Of The Morning" - a hit for PP Arnold in 1968. Rayvon shared the vocals, as he did on Shaggy's No 5 of 1995, "In The Summertime".
30 Jun 2001
Christina Aguilera with Lil' Kim, Mya & Pink
Lady Marmalade
1
2nd No 1
The US star, with some friends, revived a chart perennial. LaBelle took it to No 17 in 1975; then it was at No 1 in 1998 by All Saints. This version was from the Baz Luhrmann film "Moulin Rouge".
7 Jul 2001
The Way To Your Love
1
2nd & last No 1
The tv creations had a second No 1 hit, confounding the pundits. They broke up in 2002.
14 Jul 2001
3
Only No 1
Glaswegian lass who won the 2003 "Pop Idol" tv show. First week sales were a tenth of those for the previous year's winner, Will Young, but she
equaled
his weeks at the top.
6 Feb 2004
Take Me To The Clouds Above
2
Only No 1
Dance track based on the guitar riff from U2's classic "With Or Without You". Vocals were by Rachel McFarlane, who had a small hit in 1998.
21 Feb 2004
With A Little Help From My Friends
1
Only No 1
The second and third placed entrants from the 2003 "Pop Idol" tv show teamed up on this remake of the Beatles' song from 1967. It had been No 1 twice before - 1968 (Joe Cocker) and 1988 (Wet Wet Wet).
28 Feb 2004
| All Saints |
What Johnny Cash song did Blondie sing in the film Roadie | The UK Number Ones : 2000 to 2004
3
4th & last No 1
His second No 1 of the year was based on the melody of "Angel Of The Morning" - a hit for PP Arnold in 1968. Rayvon shared the vocals, as he did on Shaggy's No 5 of 1995, "In The Summertime".
30 Jun 2001
Christina Aguilera with Lil' Kim, Mya & Pink
Lady Marmalade
1
2nd No 1
The US star, with some friends, revived a chart perennial. LaBelle took it to No 17 in 1975; then it was at No 1 in 1998 by All Saints. This version was from the Baz Luhrmann film "Moulin Rouge".
7 Jul 2001
The Way To Your Love
1
2nd & last No 1
The tv creations had a second No 1 hit, confounding the pundits. They broke up in 2002.
14 Jul 2001
3
Only No 1
Glaswegian lass who won the 2003 "Pop Idol" tv show. First week sales were a tenth of those for the previous year's winner, Will Young, but she
equaled
his weeks at the top.
6 Feb 2004
Take Me To The Clouds Above
2
Only No 1
Dance track based on the guitar riff from U2's classic "With Or Without You". Vocals were by Rachel McFarlane, who had a small hit in 1998.
21 Feb 2004
With A Little Help From My Friends
1
Only No 1
The second and third placed entrants from the 2003 "Pop Idol" tv show teamed up on this remake of the Beatles' song from 1967. It had been No 1 twice before - 1968 (Joe Cocker) and 1988 (Wet Wet Wet).
28 Feb 2004
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Who wrote The Tales Of Hoffman and Orpheus In The Underworld | Offenbach: 'The Tales of Hoffman' : NPR
Tenor Marc Laho plays Hoffmann in the Grand Theatre of Geneva's production of Offenbach's opera.
GTG/Isabelle Meister
In ACT ONE, Hoffmann is drinking in Luther's tavern, near the opera house in Nuremberg. As always, he's accompanied by his muse, who wants to cure the poet of his unhappy love for Stella, a beautiful singer. The muse then takes the identity of the poet's student friend Nicklausse. We also meet a counselor called Lindorf — Hoffmann's rival for Stella's love.
The crowd at the tavern knows Hoffmann's skill at storytelling, and he entertains them with the tale of Kleinzach, a legendary dwarf. But Hoffmann is preoccupied by romance, and his mind keeps wandering into thoughts of beautiful women he has loved. The crowd decides to humor him, and wants to hear all of his love stories. Hoffmann agrees, and everyone settles down to listen.
The first story is told in ACT TWO. Hoffmann has fallen for Olympia, the daughter of an inventor named Spalanzani. But this "daughter" is actually one of Spalanzani's inventions: a mechanical doll. Spalanzani is expecting a house full of guests, and plans to introduce his new invention to the public. But he's worried about one guest in particular, a gadget-maker named Coppelius who provided Olympia's eyes. Spalanzani is afraid Coppelius will want a percentage of the action. He decides to buy him out, and writes Coppelius a check.
When all the guests have assembled, Spalanzani trots out Olympia, winds her up, and puts her through her paces. The doll can even sing, and comes up with a coloratura aria — but she slows down every now and then, and has to be rewound. Hoffmann is so in love with her that he doesn't notice.
But the jig is up when Coppelius returns. Spalanzani's check has bounced, and Coppelius gets even by destroying Olympia. At first, Hoffmann is horrified, watching as the woman he loves is torn limb from limb. Then he realizes what's really happening, and the guests all mock him as the act ends.
In ACT THREE, Hoffmann is love with Antonia, a beautiful young woman suffering from a serious illness. She lives with her father, Crespel, and their house is filled with musical instruments, which Crespel makes himself. There's a place of honor reserved for a picture of Crespel's dead wife, Antonia's mother.
Antonia is at the piano and begins to sing a sad song, but Crespel rushes in to stop her. Though Antonia loves singing, the exertion is dangerous for her, and threatens her life.
Crespel leaves again, and against his wishes, Hoffmann and Nicklausse come to pay Antonia a visit. She and Hoffmann sing together, declaring their love. When Crespel returns, Antonia runs to her room. Hoffmann hides, and overhears a heated conversation between Crespel and Dr. Miracle, who has come to treat Antonia. The doctor also treated Antonia's mother, and Crespel thinks Miracle was responsible for her death.
When the two men leave, Hoffman goes to Antonia and persuades her to stop singing. But when Hoffmann has gone, Miracle returns. He calls for Antonia, and somehow conjures the voice of her mother, which seems to emanate from the dead woman's portrait. Taking up one of Crespel's violins, Miracle urges Antonia to sing along. She does, but the stress is too much for her, and she collapses. Hoffmann and Nicklausse rush back into the house just as Dr. Miracle pronounces Antonia dead.
ACT FOUR takes place in Venice, and begins with Hoffmann on the balcony of a palace, overlooking the Grand Canal. Below, Nicklausse and the glamorous courtesan Giulietta are floating in a gondola. Hoffmann listens as the two sing a gentle barcarolle, the opera's most famous melody.
Inside, there's a lively party going on, and Hoffmann encounters Giulietta. He's been falling in love with her, despite warnings from Nicklausse. Giulietta already has a lover, a man called Schlemil, but that seems to make her even more attractive to Hoffmann.
Before long, we meet this story's villain, a magician named Dapertutto. He makes Giulietta a tempting offer. Dapertutto promises her a diamond ring if she'll bring him Hoffmann's "other self" — that is, if she can steal his reflection. Giulietta agrees, and goes into action.
She takes Hoffmann into another room. He finds her irresistible, and the two sing a rapturous duet. Giuletta asks Hoffmann for his reflection, as a keepsake. He agrees, and immediately discovers that he can no longer see himself in the mirror. Schlemil then bursts in, surprising the lovers. Giuletta runs off to hide in her private room. Schlemil challenges Hoffmann to a duel and is killed.
Hoffmann finds the key to Giulietta's room on a chain around Schlemil's neck. But when he opens her door, he finds her in a passionate embrace with a servant, Pitichinaccio. Dapertutto breaks into a sinister laugh, as Nicklausse drags Hoffmann away.
ACT FIVE is a brief epilogue. We're back in Nuremberg, at Luther's tavern, and Hoffmann has finished his sad stories. He orders more wine, to dampen his memories. Then Stella appears, fresh from a triumphant night at the opera, and approaches Hoffmann. But when he looks at her, he's reminded of the three lovers he lost in his stories, and he turns her away. Unperturbed, Stella leaves with Hoffmann's rival, Lindorf.
Nicklausse stays with Hoffmann, and again becomes the poet's muse— urging Hoffmann to go back to his writing, and saying that sorrow will make his poetry all the wiser.
| Offenbach |
Who was Joe Cocker singing about in Delta Lady | Gaite Parisienne | Offenbach, Jacques | Opera & Operetta | Josef Weinberger
Composer: Offenbach, Jacques 1819 - 1880
Version: arranged Rosenthal
Gaîté Parisienne (literally Parisian gaiety) is a 1938 ballet based on music by Jacques Offenbach, arranged by Manuel Rosenthal. SYNOPSIS: Café Tortoni, Paris, during the Second Empire. Various members from all levels of society meet, including upper-class aristocrats, high society-ladies, as well as a lower-class flower girl, along with the professional can-can dancers. The Glove Seller becomes the attention for various rival suitors, including a baron and an officer. Another suitor is a Peruvian tourist with two carpetbags, full of jewelry, hoping to make his fortune in Paris. In due course, a quarrel between the customers ensues. After order is restored, the ballet culminates in a high-spirited can-can (from Orpheus in the Underworld), and, with the Barcarolle (Les contes d’Hoffmann), the customers disperse and the café closes for the evening. The ballet ends as the Peruvian is left alone, ready to search for new adventures.
Instrumentation
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In which Canadian state is Montreal | Canada
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The Montreal consular district includes Greater Montreal and the regions of Southern Quebec Province (Laurentides, Lanaudiere, Laval, Montreal, Montregie, Estrie, and the southern parts of Centre-du-Quebec), including Joliete, Drummondville, and Sherbrooke.
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The consular district includes the province of Ontario except for the counties of Kingston, Lanark, Leeds, Prescott, Refrew, Russell, and Stormont, which are served by the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa.
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The Consulate in Winnipeg provides only emergency services for U.S. citizens. Routine services such as visas, passports and notarials are handled at other U.S. Consulates General, primarily Calgary.
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The consular district includes Quebec City and those regions of Quebec Province to the North and East of the Montreal and Ottawa Districts (indicated above), plus the Territory of Nunavut.
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See the Department of State’s Fact Sheet on Canada for additional information on U.S.-Canada relations.
Entry, Exit & Visa Requirements
For tourist visits to Canada of less than 180 days, U.S. citizens do not need visas. Other types of travel (e.g., to work, study, or immigrate) generally requires visas. For complete information on visa categories and requirements, consult the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) website .
Anyone with a criminal record (including misdemeanors or alcohol-related driving offenses) may not be able to enter Canada without first obtaining an approval for rehabilitation well in advance of any planned travel. To determine whether you may be inadmissible and how to overcome this finding, please refer to the CIC website .
Entry into Canada is solely determined by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officials in accordance with Canadian law. Please see the CBSA’s website for full details.
Travel Programs: Both the U.S. and Canadian governments urge frequent travelers to join the NEXUS trusted traveler program .
Entry into Canada: Canadian law requires that all persons entering Canada carry both proof of citizenship and proof of identity. A valid U.S. passport, passport card, or NEXUS card satisfies these requirements for U.S. citizens.
Children under 16 need only present proof of U.S. citizenship.
Entry into the United States: When traveling by air from Canada, U.S. citizens are required by U.S. law to present a U.S. passport book. A few exceptions to this rule and a full list of documents that can be used at land and sea borders are provided on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website .
Travel with Minors: If you plan to travel to Canada with a minor who is not your own child or for whom you do not have full legal custody, CBSA may require you to present a notarized affidavit of consent from the minor’s parents. Please refer to the CBSA website for more details.
Travel for Private Boaters and Recreational Vessels: Canadian law requires all foreign private boaters, including recreational vessels, to present themselves upon their arrival in Canada to the CBSA. See the CBSA website for information regarding reporting requirements upon entry to Canada by boat. For procedures to report arrivals in the United States, please refer to the Small Vessel Reporting System and Pleasure Boat Reporting Requirements .
The U.S. Department of State is unaware of any HIV/AIDS entry restrictions for visitors to or foreign residents of Canada.
Safety and Security
Crime: Although Canada generally has a lower crime rate than the United States, violent crimes do occur throughout the country, especially in urban areas. Visitors to large cities should be aware that parked cars are regularly targeted for opportunistic smash-and-grab thefts, and they are cautioned to avoid leaving any possessions unattended in a vehicle, even in the trunk. Due to the high incidence of such crimes, motorists in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and some other jurisdictions can be fined for leaving their car doors unlocked or for leaving valuables in view. Visitors should exercise precausion to safeguard their property.
While Canadian gun control laws are much stricter than those in the United States, such laws have not prevented gun-related violence in certain areas.
Be aware of your surroundings. As in the United States, travelers in popular tourist areas may be targeted by pickpockets and other petty criminals.
In many countries around the world, counterfeit and pirated goods are widely available. Do not buy counterfeit and pirated goods, even if they are widely available. Not only are the bootlegs illegal in the United States, if you purchase them you may also be breaking local law.
See the Department of State and the FBI pages for information on scams.
Victims of Crime: If you or someone you know becomes the victim of a crime abroad, you should contact the local police and the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate. Remember that local authorities are responsible for investigating and prosecuting the crime.
help you find appropriate medical care
assist you in reporting a crime to the police
contact relatives or friends with your written consent
explain the local criminal justice process in general terms
provide a list of local attorneys
See traveling safely abroad for useful travel tips.
Local Laws & Special Circumstances
Criminal Penalties: You are subject to local laws. If you violate local laws, even unknowingly, you may be expelled, arrested, or imprisoned.
Furthermore, some laws are also prosecutable in the U.S., regardless of local law. For examples, see our website on crimes against minors abroad and the Department of Justice website.
Arrest Notification: If you are arrested or detained, ask police or prison officials to notify the U.S. Embassy immediately. See our webpage for further information.
Controlled Substances: Canadian law prohibits the importation or trafficking of controlled substances and narcotics, including those which may be legal to possess under the law of certain states. Smugglers risk substantial fines, a permanent bar from Canada, and imprisonment.
Importation of Firearms: Firearms are more strictly controlled in Canada than in the United States. Violation of firearms restrictions may result in prosecution and imprisonment.
Visitors bringing any firearms or ammunition into Canada, or planning to borrow and use firearms while in Canada, must declare the firearms in writing using a Non-Resident Firearm Declaration form. Visitors planning to borrow a firearm in Canada must obtain a Temporary Firearms Borrowing License in advance. These forms must be presented in triplicate and signed in front of a CBSA officer at the border (it is not possible to make photocopies at the border). Full details and downloadable forms are available at the Canadian Firearms Centre website , under the heading "Visitors / Non Residents."
Canadian law requires that officials confiscate any firearms, ammunition, and other weapons from persons crossing the border who deny having the items in their possession. Confiscated firearms, ammunition, and weapons are not returned. Possession of an undeclared firearm may result in arrest and imprisonment. Travelers are strongly advised to inspect all belongings thoroughly prior to travel to Canada to avoid the accidental import of firearms or ammunition.
Pornography: Canada has strict laws concerning child pornography, and in recent years there has been an increase in random checks of electronic media of travelers entering Canada.
Computers and cell phones are subject to searches without a warrant at the border and illegal content can result in the seizure of the computer as well as detention, arrest, and prosecution of the bearer.
Alcohol-related driving offenses, such as driving while intoxicated (DWI), driving while ability-impaired, and driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol, are criminal offenses in Canada. Penalties are heavy, and any prior conviction (no matter how old or how minor the infraction) is grounds for exclusion from Canada. U.S. citizens with a DWI record must seek approval for rehabilitation from Canadian authorities before traveling to Canada, which requires several weeks or months to process. Please see the CBSA website for details on this program.
Students: See our Students Abroad page and FBI travel tips .
Women Travelers: See our travel tips for Women Travelers .
Health
We do not pay medical bills. Be aware that U.S. Medicare does not apply overseas.
Medical Insurance: Make sure your health insurance plan provides coverage overseas. Most care providers overseas only accept cash payments. See our webpage for more information on insurance providers for overseas coverage .
We strongly recommend supplemental insurance (our webpage) to cover medical evacuation.
Carry prescription medication in original packaging, along with your doctor’s prescription.
Healthcare in Canada: The level of public health and sanitation in Canada is high. Canada’s medical care is of a high standard but is government-controlled. Quick and easy access to ongoing medical care is difficult for temporary visitors who are not members of each province’s government-run health care plans. Many physicians will not take new patients. Access to a specialist is only by referral and may take months to obtain. Emergency room waits can be very long. Some health care professionals in the province of Québec may speak only French.
Vaccinations: Be up-to-date on all vaccinations recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Further health information:
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Travel & Transportation
Road Conditions and Safety: As in the United States, all emergency assistance in Canada can be reached by dialing 911.
For detailed information on road conditions throughout Canada, as well as links to provincial government websites, please see the Transport Canada website or the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) website . The CAA honors American Automobile Association membership. Some automobile warranties of vehicles purchased in the United States may be invalid in Canada.
Driving in Canada is similar to driving in many parts of the United States. Distances and speeds, however, are posted in kilometers per hour and some signs, particularly in Québec, may only be in French. U.S. driver’s licenses are valid for visitors in Canada. Proof of auto insurance is required. U.S. auto insurance is accepted as long as an individual is a tourist in Canada. U.S. insurance firms will issue a Canadian insurance card, which should be obtained and carried prior to driving into Canada. For specific information concerning Canadian driving permits, mandatory insurance and entry regulations, please contact the Canadian National Tourist Organization .
Some provinces require drivers to keep their vehicles’ headlights on during the day and some have banned driving while using a hand-held cell phone. Motorcycles cannot share a lane, and safety helmets for motorcycle riders and passengers are mandatory.
Drivers should be aware that running a red light is a serious concern throughout Canada and motorists are advised to pause before proceeding when a light turns green. Turning right at a red light is prohibited on the Island of Montreal, and motorists are subject to substantial fines.
It is illegal to take automobile radar detectors into Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, the Yukon or the Northwest Territories, regardless of whether they are used or not. Police there may confiscate radar detectors, operational or not, and impose substantial fines.
Winter travel can be dangerous due to heavy snowfalls and hazardous icy conditions. Some roads and bridges are subject to periodic winter closures. Snow tires are required in some provinces. The CAA has tips for winter driving in Canada.
Approaches to border crossings into the United States may experience unexpected traffic backups. Drivers should be alert, as lane restrictions at border approaches exist for drivers in NEXUS and FAST expedited inspection programs.
| Quebec |
On which island is Palermo | Canada Map, Map of Canada
Canada Rail Map
About Canada Map :- Covering an area of 3.8 million square miles, Canada is the second largest country in the world. The map of Canada shows international boundaries, the national capital, important cities and airports, major roads, rivers, sea ports and other points of interest. Some of the major attractions in Canada include Niagara Falls, CN Towers, Royal Tyrrel Museum and Vancouver Aquarium and are shown in this map. Major cities in Canada include Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Victoria and Quebec city. Some of Canada's lakes are Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake, Lake Athabasca, Lake Reindeer, Southern Indian Lake, and Lake Nipigon.
Canada, with a land area of 3.855 Million sq miles (9,984,670 sq km), is the second largest country in the world. It has a population of 34,880,491 (2012 est.). The longitudinal extent of Canada is from 52° to 141° W, whereas the latitudinal stretch is from 42° to 83° N.
History
Canada has been inhabited since around 24,500 B.C. Yukon Territory had a fair number of people, but the numbers dwindled after the Europeans started coming into Canada. More on Canada History
Geography
If the area is taken into consideration, Canada is the second largest country in the world after Russia, and makes up most of northern North America. Canada's territories extend up to the Arctic circle, though most of this land is covered with a thick layer of ice. More on Canada Geography
Polity
Canada is a federal parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch is the head of state and the prime minister is the head of government. Parliament consists of 308 members, while the Senate has 105. More on Canada Polity
ACOD~20130124
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Bougainville is the largest of which group of islands | Bougainville Island | island, Papua New Guinea | Britannica.com
island, Papua New Guinea
Pacific Ocean
Bougainville Island, easternmost island of Papua New Guinea , in the Solomon Sea , southwestern Pacific. With Buka Island and several island groups, it forms the autonomous region of Bougainville. Geographically, Bougainville is the largest of the Solomon Islands , located near the northern end of that chain. Bougainville is 75 miles (120 km) long and 40–60 miles (65–95 km) wide. The Emperor Range, with its highest peaks at Balbi (9,000 feet [2,743 metres]) and Bagana, both active volcanoes, occupies the northern half of the island, and the Crown Prince Range occupies the southern half. Coral reefs fringe the shore.
The main island and the passage between it and Choiseul Island (southeast) were visited in 1768 by the French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville , for whom both were named. Placed under German administration in 1898, Bougainville was occupied by Australian forces in 1914 and included in an Australian mandate in 1920. The Japanese occupied the island early in 1942; although U.S. troops had essentially overtaken it by March 1944, remnants of the Japanese garrison remained until the end of the war. The United States used Torokina on the west coast as an airbase from which to bomb the Japanese headquarters at Rabaul, New Britain. After the war Bougainville was returned to Australian administration as part of the UN Trust Territory of New Guinea , and when Australia granted independence to Papua New Guinea in 1975, the island became part of that new country. With Buka and the Kilinailau, Tauu, Nukumanu, Nuguria, and Nissan groups, Bougainville formed the North Solomons province of Papua New Guinea; in 1997 it was renamed Bougainville province.
In the late 1980s secessionist sentiments surfaced on Bougainville, fanned by islanders’ dissatisfaction with their share of the revenues from a copper-mining operation at Panguna on Bougainville. An insurrection, begun in 1988, succeeded in closing the mine the following year. Rebels controlled the island until 1991, when federal troops landed and regained control. The conflict continued, however, and by the late 1990s as many as 15,000 people had been killed. In 2001 secessionists and the government reached a peace agreement that called for Bougainville and nearby islands to form an autonomous region. A constitution was approved in 2004, and elections were held the following year. In June 2005 the new government, headquartered at Buka, was sworn in.
Similar Topics
| Solomon Islands |
In which town or city would you find The Raffles Western Hotel | Louis-Antoine de Bougainville | French navigator | Britannica.com
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville
John Byron
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, (born Nov. 11, 1729, Paris —died Aug. 31, 1811, Paris), French navigator who explored areas of the South Pacific as leader of the French naval force that first sailed around the world (1766–69). His widely read account, Voyage autour du monde (1771; A Voyage Round the World, 1772), helped popularize a belief in the moral worth of man in his natural state, a concept of considerable significance in the French thought of his day.
Bougainville, engraving by Émile Lassalle after Maurin
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Entering the army at age 24, Bougainville went to Canada (1756) as aide-de-camp to Gen. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and distinguished himself against the British in the French and Indian War . Having left the army for the navy in 1763, he voyaged the next year into the Atlantic near the tip of South America to establish a colony for France in the Falkland Islands . The colony was ceded to Spain in 1767.
Commissioned by the French government to circle the Earth in a voyage of exploration, Bougainville put to sea in December 1766, accompanied by naturalists and other scientists. After passing through the Strait of Magellan , he went northwest through the South Pacific and visited Tahiti . Sailing west, he touched Samoa and the New Hebrides and then continued west into waters not previously navigated by any European ship. He proved that Espiritu Santo was an island and not part of the rumoured southern continent of Terra Australis Incognita. On the fringes of the Great Barrier Reef , he turned north without sighting Australia, passed the edge of the Solomon Islands, and went on to New Britain . Because his men were by then suffering from scurvy, and the ships needed refitting, he stopped at Buru in the Moluccas (September 1768) and at Batavia (now Jakarta) in Java. He returned to Saint-Malo, in Brittany, in March 1769, having lost seven men.
Bougainville became secretary to Louis XV (1772) and served as chef d’escadre (commodore) in operations of the French fleet off North America (1779–82) in support of the American Revolution . After a French defeat off Martinique (April 12, 1782), he was court-martialled. During the French Revolution , he escaped the massacres of Paris in 1792 and settled on his estate in Normandy . Napoleon I made him a senator, count, and member of the Legion of Honour . Named for him are the largest of the Solomon Islands, a strait in the New Hebrides group, and the plant genus Bougainvillea.
Learn More in these related articles:
| i don't know |
Which European capital was the first city to begin numbering the houses | There’s No One Way to Number a House: House Numbering Around the World | The Basement Geographer
There’s No One Way to Number a House: House Numbering Around the World
by kuschk
House numbering often seems like a pretty straightforward concept: the way to find and identify a property on a street or in a neighbourhood is by giving it a unique number different from the buildings around it. The way one arrives at said number, however, differentiates quite a bit depending upon what part of the world you are in. The most direct plan, of course, is to simply start at one end of the street (1 on one side, 2 on the opposite side) and keep going until you reach the end. Most places in Europe, where the concept of house numbering first came about ( Paris in 1512, to be exact ), take this route. It’s very rare to see street numbers of more than 200 using this method, especially since street don’t often retain the same name for more than a kilometre or two at most. While the simplest way to do it, it does pose problems when buildings are subdivided; you often see houses numbered with halves or letters as a result (e.g. 12 ½ Any Street). There are some exceptions, of course. Genoa and Florence have two separate sequences for each street: one sequence for houses, another for buildings. Some streets in the United Kingdom and central/eastern Europe are numbered sequentially up one side of the road clockwise and then back down the other side to the end of the street. In isolated rural areas, houses are very often left unnumbered due to their isolation and are typically identified by a name instead.
A sequential numbering plan; the most basic house numbering scheme.
The clockwise scheme seen on a sizeable minority of British streets.
If you happened to be in Slovakia or the Czech Republic and saw a house number that looked like the one below, what would you make of it?
Source: LMB, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Czech_and_Slovak_house_numbering_scheme.jpg . Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.
Well, to make it easier, this photo actually displays two different numbers, 4/4 and 1292/30; it just happens to have two addresses because it lies on an intersection. In the former Czechoslovakia, each building is given an identifying number (a unique number-name displayed in black or blue) and an orientation number (a regular street number displayed in red). It’s actually not that hard to understand once you realise the black/blue number is just a name and that the location is contained in the red numbers. Accordingly, when writing an address, the identifying number comes first, followed by the street number (Any Street 345/6).
Australia and New Zealand have a mutually agreed-upon standard for house numbering based upon distance that has been in force since 2003. While urban areas follow the European sequential standard, both Australia and New Zealand have large expanses of rural properties that are not necessarily adjacent to another building or property. In this case, a property is assigned a number based upon the distance from the property’s access point to the beginning of the street, with a value assigned in tens of metres. A house with an entranceway 100 metres from the end of the street is given the number 10 for example, and so on up the street.
North America is where the largest street numbers are found, generally as a result of the nearly ubiquitous street grid system . Again, as in Europe and Australasia, street numbers increase from property to property with the distance one travels up the street. In North American cities with a grid plan, though, those numbers jump up by 100 after each standard block , often with a cardinal direction appended (those who read my article last month on Mormon town grids already know this, of course…). In my hometown, for example , house numbers are filled from 102 to 120 on roads between 1st Street NW and 2nd Street NW, and then jump up to 202 to 220 in the next block between 2nd Street NW and 3rd Street NW and so on; a combination of sequence with distance. Naturally, a rectilinear grid overlapping everything is physically impossible, and most urban planning since World War I has abandoned rigid street grids. Despite this, most newly-built neighbourhoods in North America still adhere to the general numbering grid , with street numbers continuing to increase based upon distance from a starting point. While numbering is very simple using this method, you do see large gaps in numbering as a result. When I lived in Prince George, British Columbia as a graduate student, I very quickly realised that in that city street numbers increased by eight with each standard-size lot; this allowed lots to be subdivided multiple times and new numbers to be assigned to the properties without ruining the numbering scheme.
Even in the most extreme cases in North America, numbers above 50000 are very uncommon (by the time they get there, they’ve usually ran through a few towns and cities and have probably hit another numbering grid), and six-digit addresses are only found in a few places. In British Columbia, the largest numbering plan is found in the Lower Mainland, extending along the border with Washington into the Fraser and Chilliwack valleys. The zero-point is at the west end of Delta ( 2 Deltaport Way ), extending through the cities of Surrey , Langley, and Langley Township on the south side of the Fraser River, and Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge on the north side. In these municipalities, street and avenues are directly named with numbers, making house numbering rather intuitive. Upon reaching the western limits of Abbotsford on the south side of the river ( 27600 ) and Mission on the north side ( 29000 ), street names revert to proper nouns but the numbering plan continues eastward without interruption for quite some distance. Using the Fraser Valley Regional District’s mapping site , we can see that the north grid ends at the hamlet of Harrison Mills ( 46190 Lougheed Highway , to be exact), while the south grid goes even further east through Chilliwack, ploughing its way into the Cascade Mountains finally ending 130 kilometres from the beginning in Hope at 64600 Trans Canada Highway (a small storage reservoir just off of an on-ramp), tied with Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park further south in the Cascade Mountains at 64600 Chilliwack Lake Road ( oh, hello there !).
As for the highest street number on the entire planet? Well, as I mentioned, there are some locations with six-digit addresses. Rocky View County in southern Alberta surrounding Calgary uses the township-and-range road system as starting prefixes for rural house numbers (for example, a house lying north of Range Road 271 will have a street number of 271xxx ); but even these numbers pale in comparison to what would appear to be the undisputed champion of insanely high house numbers in southern Ontario. Quite a few rural townships employ six-digit house numbers based upon Ontario’s line-and-road system, but the apparent winner would have to be in the township of East Zorra-Tavistock in Oxford County, where house numbers approach 1 000 000 . House numbers here (and in many other jurisdictions in this part of the province) indicate the name of the line or road with the first two numbers. In the extreme example, houses on 98 Road all have house numbers beginning with 98, followed by four more digits increasing by a value of 1000 for every line passed. And guess what? Google Street View just happens to have a perfect view of the house that, as far as I’ve been able to see, owns the highest house number in the world, located in the wonderfully named locale of Punkeydoodles Corners:
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986075 Perth-Oxford Road, Punkeydoodles Corners, Ontario; as far I can glean the highest-numbered building in the world. The green house number sign at the foot of the driveway is rather blurry, but just down and across the road, this extremely high number (the second-highest in the world) can be clearly read. I’d be very interested in finding a higher number than this one.
This doesn’t mean that the method in which street numbers are written in North America is completely uniform, even with a grid system. The New York borough of Queens , for example, sticks a hyphen in between the number generated by the street and the final two digits that indicate the tens of feet the entranceway is located from the intersection; e.g. 164-09 Any Avenue instead of 16409 Any Avenue (an address located 90 feet beyond 164th Street). Certain places in Wisconsin will put a composite number in the address, resulting in compound addresses such as W292 S4498 Hillside Way (as opposed to the standard 4498 S Hillside Way you’d get elsewhere). Naperville, Illinois operates on the Chicago street numbering grid, but further defines its addresses by listing the number of miles west of the centre each location is at the beginning, resulting in addresses such as 30W270 Butterfield Road for places 30 miles west of the grid centre.
House numbering is not necessarily street-based, as one will find when trying to find buildings in Japan and South Korea , where numbering tends to be much more layered. Districts of cities, and blocks within those cities, are each given their own numbers as well, assigned clockwise based upon proximity to the city centre. Buildings within an individual block are then assigned clockwise around the block. This results in a three-number string denoting the address, e.g. 2-34-6 Anywhere (district 2, block 34, house 6). In the case of apartments or other subdivided buildings, you’ll generally see another number as well. Formally, the Japanese postal system encourages the district name and number to follow the block and house, so you will often see the string listed in Japan as 34-6, Anywhere 2 (in South Korea, you will see it written as Anywhere 2, 34-6). This isn’t completely universal in Japan; a notable holdout is Sapporo. Sapporo’s address strings are based upon city quadrants rather than clockwise numbering; the final two numbers indicating how many blocks east/west and north/south the building is from the city centre. Many larger thoroughfares in South Korea use the street name/house number system seen in Western countries, but the East Asian system is generally preferred.
21-9, Kamimeguro 2 in Tokyo (alternately, 2-21-9 Kamimeguro).
In Latin America, one often finds a city zone number first, then the street number; in most other cases, cities generally follow the sequential scheme. There are fast-growing cities in South Asia and Africa that attempt to implement numbering schemes, but find they are growing too fast to regulate them . There are numbering schemes that make absolutely no practical sense and simply lead to more confusion . And there are those places that have no house numbers or no numbering plan. Fine enough, one supposes, when the community or neighbourhood is small enough that everyone knows one another or knows where everything is intuitively, but quite the nuisance in places like Quezon City in the Philippines, with 2 700 000 residents and hundreds of thousands of buildings. It took until December 2009 for an actual numbering scheme to be proposed. Previously, land developers issued numbers to clients at their convenience, resulting in the same number being showing up multiple times on the same street or numbers careening up and down and up and down for no apparent reason. This has resulted in many incidences of improperly delivered mail, bills and notices. A coordinated numbering scheme would certainly help put an end to that, and help make navigation easier while doing so. There are also places with rather haphazard house numbering such as Venice , where each building in one of the six districts is given a number between 1 and 6000, regardless of street or sequence. Thus, it is imperative to know the street the building lies upon beforehand or else you’ll get lost almost immediately.
How does the numbering system in your town work? Let me know below in the comments.
Further Reading
Akomolafe, F. (2009). Ghana’s mystifying house numbering System. Modern Ghana, 16 July 2009. Available at http://www.modernghana.com/news/227705/1/ghanas-mystifying-house-numbering-system.html . Accessed 28 November 2010.
Brown, J. (2009). Surrey’s road naming, numbering, and address location. Surrey History. Available at http://members.shaw.ca/jack_brown/addresslocation.html . Accessed 28 November 2010.
Bullock, B. (1994-2010). How does the Japanese addressing system work? sci.lang.japan Frequently Asked Questions. Available at http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/addresses.html . Accessed 28 November 2010.
eHow (n.d.) How to Find an Address in Venice, Italy. Available at http://www.ehow.com/how_2038251_address-venice-italy.html . Accessed 28 November 2010.
Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (2005). Street Addressing Working Group and the National Street Addressing Standard. Available at http://www.icsm.gov.au/icsm/street/index.html . Accessed 28 November 2010.
Local Government of Quezon City (2009). New house numbering system in QC. Available at http://www.quezoncity.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task;=view&id;=311&Itemid;=1 . Accessed 28 November 2010.
Powell, C.U. (1928). Bringing Order Out of Chaos in Street Naming and House Numbering. The American City, February 1928. Reprinted in Juniper Park Civic Association, 2010. Available at http://www.junipercivic.com/HistoryArticle.asp?nid=74 . Accessed 28 November 2010.
Vandervoort, B. (2009). Chicago’s Street Numbering System. Chicago Transit & Railfan. Available at http://web.me.com/willvdv/chirailfan/streetno.html . Accessed 28 November 2010.
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What is the correct name for the shoulder blade | City | Cities Wikia | Fandom powered by Wikia
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Introduction
A city usually consists of residential, industrial and business areas together with administrative functions which may relate to a wider geographical area. A large share of a city's area is generally taken up by houses, roads, and streets. Lakes and rivers may be the only undeveloped areas within the city.
"The city is a human habitat that allows people to form relations with others at various levels of intimacy while remaining entirely anonymous." (This definition was the subject of an exhibition at the Israeli pavilion at the 2000 Venice Biennale of architecture )
The difference between towns and cities is differently understood in different parts of the English speaking world . There is no one standard international definition of a city: the term may be used either for a town possessing city status; for an urban locality exceeding an arbitrary population size; for a town dominating other towns with particular regional economic or administrative significance. Although city can refer to an agglomeration including suburban and satellite areas, the term is not appropriate for a conurbation (cluster) of distinct urban places, nor for a wider metropolitan area including more than one city, each acting as a focus for parts of the area.
In the United Kingdom , a city is a town which has been known as a city since time immemorial , or which has received city status by royal charter — which is normally granted on the basis of size, importance or royal connection (traditional pointers have been whether the town has a cathedral or a university ). Some cathedral cities, for example St. David's in Wales , are quite small, and may not be known as cities in common parlance. (See the list of cities in the United Kingdom .) A similar system existed in the medieval Low Countries where a landlord would grant settlements certain privileges ( city rights ) that settlements without city rights didn't have. This include the privilege to put up city walls, hold markets or set up a judicial court .
In Australia and New Zealand , city is used to refer both to units of local government, and as a synonym for urban area. For instance the City of South Perth is part of the urban area known as Perth , commonly described as a city. On the other hand, Gisborne in New Zealand is known as the first city to see the sun, despite being administered by a district council, not a city council.
An interesting phenomenon in American English is the generalisation of the term city to all settlements . Britons may be bemused by forms with fields headed, not Town and Postal code , but City and ZIP, even though the person needing to fill it in could be living in a city, a town without city status, or even a village or hamlet.
In turn, many Americans often talk of "City Halls" when referring to town halls in quite small European towns and villages.
A possible reason for this phenomenon is that, when America was colonised, settlers enthusiastically gave the name "city" to their new settlements, predicting (rightly or wrongly) they would become great cities. For example, Salt Lake City was a village of 148 people who immediately laid out street plans and founded Great Salt Lake City (originally named for the nearby Great Salt Lake ). A century and a half later, it actually is city-sized.
Strangely, even though Americans are well aware that "village" means something smaller than a town, the word has often been co-opted by enterprising developers to make their projects sound welcoming and friendly. The result are so-called villages with 20 and 30-story high-rises, like Westwood Village in Los Angeles.
Geography
File:Haarlem-City-Map-1550.jpg
The geographies of cities are diverse. Often cities will either be coastal and have a harbour or be situated near a river giving economic advantage. Water transports on rivers and oceans were (and in most cases still are) cheaper and more efficient than road transport over long distances.
The kernels of older European cities, which have not been extensively rebuilt, tend to have city centres where the streets are jumbled together, often seemingly without a structural plan. This is a legacy of earlier unplanned or organic development. Today this is usually perceived by tourists to be picturesque.
Modern city planning has seen many different schemes for how a city should look. The most commonly seen pattern is the grid , almost a rule in parts of the United States , and used for thousands of years in China . Derry was the first ever planned city in Ireland, begun in 1613 , with the walls being completed 5 years later in 1618 . The central diamond within a walled city with four gates was thought to be a good design for defence. The grid pattern chosen was subsequently much copied in the colonies of British North America [1] .
Other forms may include a radial structure in which main roads converge on a central point, often the effect of successive growth over long time with concentric traces of town walls and citadels - recently supplemented by ring-roads that take traffic around the edge of a town. Many Dutch cities are structured that way: a central square surrounded by a concentric canals. Every city expansion would imply a new circle (canals + town walls). In cities like Amsterdam and Haarlem this pattern is still clearly visible.
History of cities
Towns and cities have a long history, although opinions vary on whether any particular ancient settlement can be considered to be a city. The first true towns are sometimes considered to be large settlements where the inhabitants were no longer simply farmers of the surrounding area, but began to take on specialised occupations, and where to trade, food storage and power was centralized. Societies that live in cities are often called civilizations .
By this definition, the first towns we know of were located in Mesopotamia , such as Ur , and along the Nile , the Indus Valley Civilisation and China . Before this time it was rare for settlements to reach significant size, although there were exceptions such as Jericho , Çatalhöyük and Mehrgarh .
The growth of ancient and medieval empires led to ever greater capital cities and seats of provincial administration, with Rome , its eastern successor Constantinople and successive Chinese and later Indian capitals approaching or exceeding the half-million population level (it is estimated that Rome 's population exceeded one million people by the middle of the last century BCE, becoming the only city to reach that number until the Industrial Revolution ). Similar large administrative, comercial, industrial and ceremonial centres emerged in other areas, though on a smaller scale.
During the European Middle Ages , a town was as much a political entity as a collection of houses. City residence brought freedom from customary rural obligations to lord and community: "Stadtluft macht frei" ("City air makes you free") was a saying in Germany. In Continental Europe cities with a legislature of their own wasn't unheard of, the laws for towns as a rule other than for the countryside, the lord of a town often being another than for surrounding land. In the Holy Roman Empire (i.e. medieval Germany and Italy) some cities had no other lord than the emperor.
In exceptional cases like Venice , Genoa or Lübeck , cities themselves became powerful states, sometimes taking surrounding areas under their control or establishing extensive maritime empires. Similar phenomena existed elsewhere, as in the case of Sakai , which enjoyed a considerable autonomy in late medieval Japan.
Most towns remained far smaller places, so that in 1500 only some two dozen places in the world contained more than 100,000 inhabitants: as late as 1700 there were fewer than forty, a figure which would rise thereafter to 300 in 1900 . A small city of the early modern period might contain as few as 10,000 inhabitants, a town far fewer still.
While the city-states , or poleis , of the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea languished from the 16th century , Europe's larger capitals benefited from the growth of commerce following the emergence of an Atlantic economy fuelled by the silver of Peru . By the 18th century , London and Paris rivalled the well-developed regionally-traditional capital cities of Baghdad , Beijing , Istanbul , Kyoto and Venice .
The growth of modern industry from the late 18th century onward led to massive urbanization and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. Today the world's population is about half urban, with millions still streaming annually into the growing cities of Asia , Africa and Latin America .
Modern conceptions
Traditional approach
A universal linear approach to cities has been in place and accepted for a long time. As this approach falls short of explaining a number of aspects of city life, such as the diversity between cities, new ways have been sought. Influenced by post-structuralist thinking a new approach was born: using spatial thinking it is possible to not only fill the gaps, but indeed replace the old completely.
Three characteristics have been identified as defining a city: the number of people to area (density), the networks of the city, as well as a particular way of life. None of these characteristics alone is enough to make a place a city.
Until recently cities were almost exclusively viewed as part of a single, linear line of development. Starting with the Greek city-state, this linear approach placed each city somewhere, and it was believed that it was only a matter of time until the next stage along the prescript path of advancement was reached. For each stage an exemplar was identified. Step by step from Athens onwards to Venice and London , Los Angeles seemed to be the ultimate stage of a postmodern city. Such an approach regarded a city as a single static entity, which could be studied disconnected in time and space. This leads to a theoretical framework with little connection to real cities, but these were simply seen as less clear examples. In spite of apparent shortcomings, this approach is still very commonplace in respected and popular publications.
Shortcomings
Despite its wide acceptance this traditional approach to cities had serious shortcomings. Firstly, leaving the latest stage aside, it was completely eurocentric. It was believed that every city in the world could be compared with a past stage in the history of one European city. Secondly, there was no real explanation when and how changes occurred, how another stage in the line of development was achieved. There seemed no need to follow the changes of one city, but instead attention was turned to another exemplar. Thirdly, the disconnected view of cities is problematic. It implies that history, culture and connections of a place do not influence a place, which is questionable. Some thinkers argue that a history ignoring connections is necessary incomplete. Fourthly, the traditional approach missed to define what makes a city. It is unclear why one place is regarded as a city while another one is not. Lewis Mumford argued in 1937 for a social dimension, describing cities as geographical plexuses. Finally, viewing cities as a single body misses modern conceptions that there is more than one story to a place. The city of an aristocrat will surely differ from that of a slave . This also reflects a shift away from one single history of the powerful élites (often referred to as city élites) to a multidimensional perception of history. The notion of city rhythms has been introduced to highlight the different aspects of city life...
The term city can be used to mean either an area of contiguous urbanization or a particular municipality (an area within the political borders of an incorporated municipality ). There is a substantial variation in municipalities around the world. The largest municipality, Chongqing, is approximately the same size as the state of Indiana and contains much more rural territory than continuous urbanization. In most cases, however, the continuous urbanization popularly thought of as the city extends well beyond the boundaries of the core incorporated city.
Modern approach
As a modern approach to cities, urban thinking analyzes various issues that arise in urban areas. It focuses largely upon connections and internal divisions which helps create a better understanding of the dynamics of cities. Using such spatial thinking, it is possible to understand various aspects for which the traditional approach did not provide an adequate explanation.
One important aspect of spatial thinking is looking at the connections of a city. Such connections allow one to understand the unique character of a place. Rather than treating all cities the same, places are seen as interconnected through networks of culture, economics, trade or history. So while London and Tokyo are economically linked through stock markets, Graz and Stockholm are linked via the Cultural Capital of Europe .
These networks overlap and are concentrated in cities. Arguably this concentration of networks creates a unique feeling of a place. Such networks, however, do not only link cities with cities, but also a city to its surroundings. The notion of a city footprint reflects the idea that a city on its own is not sustainable: it depends on produce from its surroundings, it needs trade links and other connections for economic viability. Looking at networks, it becomes possible to explain the rise and fall of cities. This has to do with the changing importance of connections and is maybe best illustrated with the arrival of Spanish colonizers in America . Within a short time, connections to Madrid became more important than connections to the former centre Tenochtitlán .
The concentration of networks in cities can be used as an explanation of urbanization . It is the access to certain networks that attracts people. As various networks spatially run together in a confined area, people gather in cities. At the same time, this concentration of people means the introduction of new networks, such as social links, increasing the creation of new possibilities within cities. Urban social movements are a direct result of this possibility of making new connections. It is this openness to new connections that makes cities both attractive and to a certain degree unpredictable.
Another important aspect of modern urban thinking is looking at the divisions within a city. This internal differentiation is linked to the external connections of a city. As places of meeting histories , cities are hybrid and heterogeneous. Hybrid they are as the connections which link places are bilateral, involving giving and taking in both directions. Heterogeneous they are because of the dynamism of cities. New encounters are ongoing processes where social relations and differences are constantly negotiated and shaped, reflecting the unequal power involved.
Neither the internal differentiations nor the connections and networks of a place on their own define a city. Internal divisions are caused by external links, while at the same time connections to the outside open up the possibility of new social divisions . Divisions and connections in every city are intertwined, and only by considering both aspects of spatial thinking the complexity of cities is approachable. Immigration illustrates this interconnection of external networks and internal divisions well. The networks concentrated in the core of the city attract immigrants. As they immigrate, the newcomers bring along their histories, bringing new networks or enforcing existing ones. At the same time, their history offers opportunities to identify with or likewise exclude. Division and connection come hand in hand. Rather than attempting to eradicate such tensions and contradictions in the theoretical framework, modern urban thinking – influenced by poststructuralist thought – accounts for both sides. Static universal bodies are replaced by multidimensional networks, allowing for fluidity and dynamism.
Global cities
City lights from space. NASA. Credit-Marc Imhoff
A global city , also known as a world city, is a prominent centre of trade , banking , finance , innovations, and markets . The term "global city", as opposed to megacity, was coined by Saskia Sassen in a seminal 1991 work. Whereas "megacity" refers to any city of enormous size, a global city is one of enormous power or influence. Global cities, according to Sassen, have more in common with each other than with other cities in their host nations. Bangkok , Beijing , Brussels , Chicago , Hong Kong , Johannesburg , London , Moscow , Mumbai , New York , Los Angeles , Paris , São Paulo , Seoul , Shanghai , Singapore , Sydney , Tokyo and Toronto are commonly referred to as global cities, however, the term is also applied to other cities.
The notion of global cities regards the power of cities as contained within cities. The city is seen as a container where skills and resources are concentrated. The more successful city is able to concentrate more of these skills and resources. This makes the city itself more powerful in terms that it can influence what is happening around the world. Following this view of cities, it is possible to rank the world's cities hierarchically (John Friedmann and Goetz Wolff, "World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 6, no. 3 (1982): 319.).
Critics of the notion point out to the different realms of power. The term global city narrowly focuses on economics. Cities like Rome are powerful in religious terms. Additionally, it has been questioned whether the city itself can be regarded as an actor.
In 1995 Kanter argued that successful cities can be identified by three elements. To be successful, a city needs to be good thinkers (concepts), good makers (competence) or good traders ( connections ). The interplay of these three elements, Kanter argued, means that good cities are not planned but managed.
Environmental effects
Modern cities are known for creating their own microclimates . This is due to the large clustering of hard surfaces that heat up in sunlight and that channel rainwater into underground ducts. As a result, city weather is often windier and cloudier than the weather in the surrounding countryside. Conversely, because these effects make cities warmer (urban heat shield or urban heat islands) than the surrounding area, tornadoes tend to go around cities. Additionally towns can cause significant downstream weather effects.
Garbage and sewage are two major problems for cities, as is air pollution coming from internal combustion engines (see public transport ). The impact of cities on places elsewhere, be it hinterlands or places far away, is considered in the notion of city footprinting (ecological footprint).
Inner city
Main article: Inner city
In the United States, United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, the term "inner city" is sometimes used with the connotation of being an area, perhaps a ghetto , where people are less educated and wealthy and where there is more crime. These connotations are less common in other Western countries, as deprived areas are located in varying parts of other Western cities. In fact, with the gentrification of some formerly run-down central city areas the reverse connotation can apply - in Australia the term "outer suburban" applied to a person implies a lack of sophistication. For instance, in Paris the inner city is the richest part of the metropolitan area, where housing is the most expensive, and where elites and high-income individuals dwell.
The United States, in particular, suffers from a culture of anti-urbanism that some say dates back as far as Thomas Jefferson who wrote that "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body." On the businessmen who brought manufacturing industry into cities and hence increased the population density necessary to supply the workforce, he wrote "the manufactures of the great cities... have begotten a depravity of morals, a dependence and corruption, which renders them an undesirable accession to a country whose morals are sound." Modern anti-urban attitudes are to be found in America in the form of a planning profession that continues to develop land on a low-density suburban basis, where access to amenities, work and shopping is provided almost exclusively by car rather than on foot.
However, there is a growing movement in North America called " New Urbanism " that calls for a return to traditional city planning methods where mixed-use zoning allows people to walk from one type of land-use to another. The idea is that housing, shopping, office space, and leisure facilities are all provided within walking distance of each other, thus reducing the demand for road-space and also improving the efficiency and effectiveness of mass transit .
See also
| i don't know |
Consumption was the old name for which disease | Definition of Consumption
Our Tuberculosis (TB) Main Article provides a comprehensive look at the who, what, when and how of Tuberculosis (TB)
Definition of Consumption
Causes of Fatigue Slideshow Pictures
Consumption: An old and once common term for wasting away of the body, particularly from pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Other old TB terms include the King's evil or scrofula (TB of the lymph nodes in the neck) and Pott's disease (TB of the spine).
The World Health Organization (WHO) in "L'histoire de la tuberculose" notes that: "In 460 BC Hippocrates identified phtisis (the Greek word meaning "consumption") as the most widespread disease of his day and observed that it was almost always fatal. Someone who had tuberculosis seemed literally to be consumed by the disease. That is why they used to speak of 'consumption'" (my translation).
Last Editorial Review: 5/13/2016
| Tuberculosis |
By what common name is Hansen's Disease better known | Dickens’s Consumptive Urbanity: Consumption (Tuberculosis) through the Prism of Sensibility
Dickens’s Consumptive Urbanity: Consumption (Tuberculosis) through the Prism of Sensibility
Hristo Boev, Ph D Student, Ovidius University, Constanta-Romania
[ Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Charles Dickens —> Gender matters ]
Life in big Victorian cities was very different from life in small towns or villages. It demanded a stronger immunity on part of the city dwellers to all sorts of pollution as their senses were overwhelmed by the batteries of sound, all-pervasive smog, contaminated potable water, advertisements urging them to continue consuming in spite of a big city’s notorious bad weather, which might affect our consumer’s disposition. This essay examines a wasteful disease associated with consuming the city in Dickens’s represented spaces – tuberculosis also called tb for short and its early name – consumption alluding to the fact that the sufferers from this disease were very visibly consumed by it, which led to their physical dissolution. This essay also establishes the relationship between urban consumption and tuberculosis in Dickens’s representations of the city.
Consumption and the Modern City
Undoubtedly, there exists a relationship between consumption in the city at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries and consumption, the disease that was a scourge wiping out thousands of lives during the Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist periods. Extreme consumption has all the symptoms of a terminal disease in Dickens’s represented spaces. The interrelation between the consumer and the modern city appears in the city dweller’s consuming the city – consumption of commodities, and him or her being consumed by it in return – consumption as the medical condition found in the city inhabitants succumbing to the forces sapping their energy while trying to generate means of survival in the metropolis, meeting its costs and paying for them with their health. Indeed, the Victorian city's heavily polluted air and contaminated water caused of many pandemics. Some of the diseases causing them could easily be connected to nineteenth-century modern urbanity – cholera, tuberculosism and typhus, which resulted from consuming contaminated water and food products, breathing polluted metropolitan air, and chronic malnourishment of the poorest class of city dwellers. Not by chance people who had tuberculosis at the time were advised to leave the cities in which they lived in as soon as possible. According to Alan Robinson’s Imagining London 1770-1900 (2004),
The concern with public hygiene in Victorian London reflected the very real and recurrent threat of cholera: there were major epidemics in 1832, 1849, 1854 and 1866. Typhus, typhoid, tuberculosis and smallpox were principally diseases of the poor, exacerbated by overcrowding, poor diet and insanitation; cholera was the great leveller that struck all classes alike. It may have caused fewer deaths but it literally brought home the public health problem to the middle classes. [54]
In numerous reports in the Victorian press, consumption in its most frequent form at the time, pulmonary tuberculosis, was associated with every-day metropolitan life in overcrowded residential areas known as rookeries where many tenants regardless of sex or age occupied the same room so they could pay a lower rent, narrow city streets where peddlers and local residents and transient travelers would rub shoulders, thus increasing the spread of the air-borne tubercular infection.
Urban novelists, such as Dickens, felt strongly about the issue, and aiming at a truthful representation of urban life, featured ample examples of the devastation this disease brought on the afflicted city dwellers. In corroboration of the data presented by a number of Victorian newspapers, Dickens also lays the blame on the poor sanitary conditions of the London slums at the time as well as the general poverty of the city residents whose only choice for a residence were the tenement buildings. Unlike the newspapers, however, which more often than not assumed a neutral tone referring to statistical data of the numbers of the fatalities from the disease, Dickens establishes a direct connection to its cause, which he sees in insufficient urban consumption.
Consumption in the Victorian Newspapers
The following passages appeared in Victorian newspapers, which viewed pulmonary tuberculosis as a daily companion to city life. Unlike Dickens’s representations of the disease, these journalistic accounts are more closely related to statistics than to establishing correlations with the urban condition with occasional comments on causes and effects. There are many, also, that advertise wondrous medications that supposedly can cure the patients of their affliction.
The ones that offer us the statistics are grisly enough in the sheer numbers of deaths revealing pulmonary tuberculosis as a scourge endemic of the modern city:
Mortality in the Metropolis. – The weekly return continues to exhibit a satisfactory state of public health. The deaths, which were about 1,200 towards the end of last month, have fallen in the last week to 1,048 or 121 less than the average. The mortality from epidemics, with the exception of hooping cough, is little more than the average, and has fallen twenty-five per cent within the period of the month. The mortality caused by small-pox and measles is still unusually low; and that from scarlatina is now little more than the average. Diarrhoea has declined; and the deaths from holera are only 10, 9 of which as is shown below, occurred in one workhouse and two hospitals; three in one family. Scarlatina and typhus were each fatal to 40 persons, which is rather less than the average for the latter disease. Inflammation of the lungs and air passages, and pulmonary consumption, do not prevail fatally at the present time: the aggregate deaths in the week from these diseases were only 260, whereas the average is 329. [The Northern Star and National Trades' Journal Leeds, England. 597 (Saturday, March 31, 1849): 1]
As we learn from the passage above, the statistics presented should be understood as optimistic by comparison with a striking average number of metropolitan deaths per week, which prompted the conclusion made by the journalists of those times that this state of public health should be considered satisfactory. Another passage offering statistical mortality rates in London 11 years later does not reveal an improvement in these black numbers:
In great part of the week that ended on the 10th instant the air was exceedingly cold; it continued cold in a less degree till neat the end of last week, and the London returns exhibit a consequent increase in the mortality. The deaths, which had declined to 1,397, rose again to 1,563 in the week that ended last Saturday. In the ten years 1850-59 the average number of deaths in the weeks corresponding with last week corrected for increase of population, is 1,362. The deaths of last week were therefore in excess of the number by 201. By comparing the results of the last two weeks it appears that the deaths by bronchitis rose from 230 to 267; those by pneumonia from 114 to 140 those by asthma from 20 to 27. Phthisis, or pulmonary consumption, which carried off 143 persons in the previous week, was fatal last week to 171. ( Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper , London, England, Sunday, March 25, 1860; Issue 905, p.1)
As the passage eloquently claims, pulmonary consumption alone caused of death of 314 city residents of a metropolis with a population of over 2 million people in the 2 weeks analyzed.
When discussing the causes of the analyzed disease of the modern city, health officials, journalists, and other investigators invariably attributed it to the very bad sanitary conditions in which city dwellers lived:
A little further up the street there is a house consisting of two storys, and entering from a close one of the most wretched, rickety fabrics imaginable, filled with filth, dirt and smoke. The apartments, small miserable holes, are seven in number, and occupied by as many families. A few weeks ago, four of these families were afflicted with fever at the same time – in one four females were lying together, in another one girl, in a third, a mother and two children, in a fourth, a mother and two daughters, and in a fifth house, an old man in an advanced stage of pulmonary consumption. [The Newcastle Courant. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. 8814 (Friday, November 10, 1843): 1]
This description is concordant with similar depictions of mass attacks of tuberculosis related to poor urban residential conditions made by Dickens in the passages that I shall analyze below. These depictions are especially numerous in Sketches by Boz (1836) and Nicholas Nickleby (1839) also featuring Dickens’s sympathetic commentaries towards the sufferers. As it is well known, a definitive cure for the disease was not found until the early 1940s when streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis was discovered.
Consumption and Sensibility
As Dickens places a strong emphasis on consumption in his represented spaces, tuberculosis (consumption) could not just be deemed an aspect of the larger economic phenomenon as it not infrequently blends with it, simply being the other name of consumption in the city. It was very common among the poor city inhabitants and one might argue that Dickensian punishment for excessive consumption befalling consumers such as Mr. Dorrit, Mr. Merdle, Mrs Clennam, Miss Havisham, etc is an attempt at achieving a wondrous equilibrium of victims of consumption (tuberculosis) among the poor and the rich in both senses of the phenomenon – consuming the city as in extreme consumption of commodities, etc and being consumed by it as in falling victim to consumption (tuberculosis). One may also argue that excessive economic consumption in Dickens’s urban representations is penalized by being transmogrified into a mental illness that doctors cannot diagnose and that has a lethal prognosis, thus restoring consumption equality. Unlike wealthy urban consumers, city inhabitants who suffered from consumption-as-disease could be diagnosed but not helped — a major difference from the extreme urban consumers, who are represented as suffering from the disease of commodity or business consumption, but the symptomology of this disease remains hidden to public scrutiny as illustrated in Mr. Merdle’s mysterious medical condition on Little Dorrit . Dickensian justice is exercised in secret.
Early works representing tuberculosis in the city, such as Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) manifest an ambivalent view that sees tuberculosis both as an indiscriminate killer regardless of sex, age, or financial means and as a scavenging urban agent that has a predilection for the minimal consumers of the city – the very poor, who are consumed by the metropolis and to whom (consumption) acts as an allegory of the indifference of the modern city towards its residents. The city, which has accumulated the synergy of all its residents, consumes them in turn, dispensing with the most vulnerable ones. In other words, the city is seen as a monster fed by and feeding off its inhabitants. Later, more mature works such as Dombey and Son (1848) accentuate the spiritual character of tuberculosis, which is related to a perceived mythologizing of the disease (Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors, 1988), and which allegorizes innocence. Finally, in its antithetic representation synonymous with consumption and at the same time its negation, tuberculosis underscores the pathology of capitalism of the modern city as represented by Dickens.
Consumption as an Indifferent Killer
An example of tuberculosis as an indifferent killer appears in the following description from Sketches by Boz, which contains an early proto-modernist sensibility in the depiction of the consumptive curate whose love for religion and the spiritual is at variance with the demands of the metropolis on his body, so that religious asceticism is refuted by corporeal needs through the vehicle of tuberculosis:
One would have supposed that, by this time, the theme of universal admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here was a discovery—the curate was consumptive. How interestingly melancholy! If the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy and solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man as the curate—such a dear—such a perfect love—to be consumptive! It was too much. Anonymous presents of black-currant jam, and lozenges, elastic waistcoats, bosom friends, and warm stockings, poured in upon the curate until he was as completely fitted out with winter clothing, as if he were on the verge of an expedition to the North Pole: verbal bulletins of the state of his health were circulated throughout the parish half-a-dozen times a day; and the curate was in the very zenith of his popularity. [II, 10-11]
Urban consumption and its pathological form of tuberculosis is extended to all members of the metropolis, appearing even in the consumptive donkey as a beast of burden:
Covent-garden market, and the avenues leading to it, are thronged with carts of all sorts, sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering waggon, with its four stout horses, to the jingling costermonger’s cart, with its consumptive donkey. [I, 59]
When it comes to portraying tuberculosis with the minimal consumers of the metropolis, Dickens’s early modernist irony of a detached observer gives way to passing remarks of Victorian sympathy:
This eloquent address produces anything but the effect desired; the women rail in concert; the man hits about him in all directions, and is in the act of establishing an indisputable claim to gratuitous lodgings for the night, when the entrance of his wife, a wretched, worn-out woman, apparently in the last stage of consumption, whose face bears evident marks of recent ill-usage, and whose strength seems hardly equal to the burden—light enough, God knows!—of the thin, sickly child she carries in her arms, turns his cowardly rage in a safer direction.
‘Come home, dear,’ cries the miserable creature, in an imploring tone; ‘Do come home, there’s a good fellow, and go to bed.’ Go home yourself,’ rejoins the furious ruffian. (XXIII, 194)
The passage above portrays London’s inhabitants in naturalist terms contending for places of habitation, the weakest members consumed by tuberculosis. Dickens’s approach is scientific observing details of the ravages of the disease and the impact left by the husband (marks of recent ill-usage, in the last stage of consumption, natural protector), but at the same time humane, commiserating with the plight of the afflicted with tuberculosis (a wretched worn out woman, >miserable creature). The insensitive husband is called furious ruffian, thus subjective comments are made to the otherwise naturalist representation of contended city space.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol (1843), the Project Gutenberg, #19337, 2006.
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son (1848). Jakarta: The Econarch Institute, 2009.
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit (1857). Jakarta: The Econarch Institute, 2009.
Dickens, Charles. Nicholas Nickleby (1839), New York: Collegebookshelf.net, 2004.
Dickens, Charles. Sketches by Boz (1836). Jakarta: The Econarch Institute, 2009.
Byrne, Katherine. Tuberculosis and the Victorian Literary Imagination. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Pappas, Stephanie. Dickensian Diagnosis: Tiny Tim’s Symptoms Decoded." LiveScience. 2012. http://www.livescience.com/18802-dickens-tiny-tim-diagnosis.html. Web.
Robinson Alan. Imagining London, 1770-1900. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Sontag, Susan. Boala ca metaforă sida şi metaforele ei. [1988] Editura Dacia Cluj-Napoca, 1995.
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper , London, England 905 (Sunday, March 25, 1860): 1.
The Newcastle Courant. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. Issue 8814 (Friday, November 10, 1843): 1.
The Northern Star and National Trades' Journal. Leeds, England. 597 (Saturday, March 31, 1849): 1.
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25What disease is also known as wool sorter's disease | Anthrax disease | definition of Anthrax disease by Medical dictionary
Anthrax disease | definition of Anthrax disease by Medical dictionary
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Anthrax+disease
Definition
Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis that primarily affects livestock but that can occasionally spread to humans, affecting either the skin, intestines, or lungs. In humans, the infection can often be treated, but it is almost always fatal in animals.
Description
Anthrax is most often found in the agricultural areas of South and Central America, southern and eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. In the United States, anthrax is rarely reported; however, cases of animal infection with anthrax are most often reported in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. The bacterium and its associated disease get their name from the Greek word meaning "coal" because of the characteristic coal-black sore that is the hallmark of the most common form of the disease.
During the 1800s, in England and Germany, anthrax was known either as "wool-sorter's" or "ragpicker's" disease because workers contracted the disease from bacterial spores present on hides and in wool or fabric fibers. Spores are the small, thick-walled dormant stage of some bacteria that enable them to survive for long periods of time under adverse conditions. The first anthrax vaccine was perfected in 1881 by Louis Pasteur.
The largest outbreak ever recorded in the United States occurred in 1957 when nine employees of a goat hair processing plant became ill after handling a contaminated shipment from Pakistan. Four of the five patients with the pulmonary form of the disease died. Other cases appeared in the 1970s when contaminated goatskin drumheads from Haiti were brought into the U.S. as souvenirs.
Today, anthrax is rare, even among cattle, largely because of widespread animal vaccination . However, some serious epidemics continue to occur among animal herds and in human settlements in developing countries due to ineffective control programs. In humans, the disease is almost always an occupational hazard, contracted by those who handle animal hides (farmers, butchers, and veterinarians) or sort wool. There are no reports of the disease spreading from one person to another.
Anthrax as a weapon
There has been a great deal of recent concern that the bacteria that cause anthrax may be used as a type of biological warfare, since it is possible to become infected simply by inhaling the spores, and inhaled anthrax is the most serious form of the disease. The bacteria can be grown in laboratories, and with a great deal of expertise and special equipment, the bacteria can be altered to be usable as a weapon.
The largest-ever documented outbreak of human anthrax contracted through spore inhalation occurred in Russia in 1979, when anthrax spores were accidentally released from a military laboratory, causing a regional epidemic that killed 69 of its 77 victims. In the United States in 2001, terrorists converted anthrax spores into a powder that could be inhaled and mailed it to intended targets, including news agencies and prominent individuals in the federal government. Because the United States government considers anthrax to be of potential risk to soldiers, the Department of Defense has begun systematic vaccination of all military personnel against anthrax. For civilians in the United States, the government has instituted a program called the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile program in which antibiotics and other medical materials to treat two million people are located so that they could be received anywhere in the country within twelve hours following a disaster or terrorist attack.
Causes and symptoms
The naturally occurring bacterium Bacillus anthracis produces spores that can remain dormant for years in soil and on animal products, such as hides, wool, hair, or bones. The disease is often fatal to cattle, sheep, and goats, and their hides, wool, and bones are often heavily contaminated.
The bacteria are found in many types of soil, all over the world, and usually do not pose a problem for humans because the spores stay in the ground. In order to infect a human, the spores have to be released from the soil and must enter the body. They can enter the body through a cut in the skin, through consuming contaminated meat, or through inhaling the spores. Once the spores are in the body, and if antibiotics are not administered, the spores become bacteria that multiply and release a toxin that affects the immune system. In the inhaled form of the infection, the immune system can become overwhelmed and the body can go into shock .
Symptoms vary depending on how the disease was contracted, but the symptoms usually appear within one week of exposure.
Key terms
Antibody — A specific protein produced by the immune system in response to a specific foreign protein or particle called an antigen.
Antitoxin — An antibody that neutralizes a toxin.
Bronchitis — Inflammation of the mucous membrane of the bronchial tubes of the lung that can make it difficult to breathe.
Cutaneous — Pertaining to the skin
Meningitis — Inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord called the meninges.
Pulmonary — Having to do with the lungs or respiratory system.
Spore — A dormant form assumed by some bacteria, such as anthrax, that enable the bacterium to survive high temperatures, dryness, and lack of nourishment for long periods of time. Under proper conditions, the spore may revert to the actively multiplying form of the bacteria.
Cutaneous anthrax
In humans, anthrax usually occurs when the spores enter a cut or abrasion, causing a skin (cutaneous) infection at the site. Cutaneous anthrax, as this infection is called, is the mildest and most common form of the disease. At first, the bacteria cause an itchy, raised area like an insect bite. Within one to two days, inflammation occurs around the raised area, and a blister forms around an area of dying tissue that becomes black in the center. Other symptoms may include shivering and chills. In most cases, the bacteria remain within the sore. If, however, they spread to the nearest lymph node (or, in rare cases, escape into the bloodstream), the bacteria can cause a form of blood poisoning that rapidly proves fatal.
Inhalation anthrax
Inhaling the bacterial spores can lead to a rare, often-fatal form of anthrax known as pulmonary or inhalation anthrax that attacks the lungs and sometimes spreads to the brain. Inhalation anthrax begins with flulike symptoms, namely fever , fatigue, headache, muscle aches, and shortness of breath . As early as one day after these initial symptoms appear, and as long as two weeks later, the symptoms suddenly worsen and progress to bronchitis . The patient experiences difficulty breathing, and finally, the patient enters a state of shock. This rare form of anthrax is often fatal, even if treated within one or two days after the symptoms appear.
Intestinal anthrax
Intestinal anthrax is a rare, often-fatal form of the disease, caused by eating meat from an animal that died of anthrax. Intestinal anthrax causes stomach and intestinal inflammation and sores or lesions (ulcers), much like the sores that appear on the skin in the cutaneous form of anthrax. The first signs of the disease are nausea and vomiting , loss of appetite, and fever, followed by abdominal pain , vomiting of blood, and severe bloody diarrhea .
Diagnosis
Anthrax is diagnosed by detecting B. anthracis in samples taken from blood, spinal fluid, skin lesions , or respiratory secretions. The bacteria may be positively identified using biochemical methods or using a technique whereby, if present in the sample, the anthrax bacterium is made to fluoresce. Blood samples will also indicate elevated antibody levels or increased amounts of a protein produced directly in response to infection with the anthrax bacterium. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests amplify trace amounts of DNA to show that the anthrax bacteria are present. Additional DNA-based tests are also currently being perfected.
Treatment
In the early stages, anthrax is curable by administering high doses of antibiotics, but in the advanced stages, it can be fatal. If anthrax is suspected, health care professionals may begin to treat the patient with antibiotics even before the diagnosis is confirmed because early intervention is essential. The antibiotics used include penicillin, doxycycline, and ciprofloxacin. Because inhaled spores can remain in the body for a long time, antibiotic treatment for inhalation anthrax should continue for 60 days. In the case of cutaneous anthrax, the infection may be cured following a single dose of antibiotic, but it is important to continue treatment so as to avoid potential serious complications, such as inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord ( meningitis ). In the setting of potential bioterrorism, cutaneous anthrax should be treated with a 60-day dose of antibiotics.
Research is ongoing to develop new antibiotics and antitoxins that would work against the anthrax bacteria and the toxins they produce. One Harvard professor, Dr. R. John Collier, and his team have been testing two possible antitoxins on rats. A Stanford microbiologist and a Penn State chemist have also been testing their new antibiotic against the bacteria that cause brucellosis and tularemia , as well as the bacteria that cause anthrax. All of these drugs are still in early investigational stages, however, and it is still unknown how these drugs would affect humans.
Prognosis
Untreated anthrax is often fatal, but death is far less likely with appropriate care. Ten to twenty percent of patients will die from anthrax of the skin (cutaneous anthrax) if it is not properly treated. All patients with inhalation (pulmonary) anthrax will die if untreated. Intestinal anthrax is fatal 25-75% of the time.
Prevention
Anthrax is relatively rare in the United States because of widespread animal vaccination and practices used to disinfect hides or other animal products. Anyone visiting a country where anthrax is common or where herd animals are not often vaccinated should avoid contact with livestock or animal products and avoid eating meat that has not been properly prepared and cooked.
Other means of preventing the spread of infection include carefully handling dead animals suspected of having the disease, burning (instead of burying) contaminated carcasses, and providing good ventilation when processing hides, fur, wool, or hair.
In the event that exposure to anthrax spores is known, such as in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, a course of antibiotics can prevent the disease from occurring.
In the case of contaminated mail, as was the case in the 2001 attacks, the U.S. postal service recommends certain precautions. These precautions include inspecting mail from an unknown sender for excessive tape, powder, uneven weight or lumpy spots, restrictive endorsements such as "Personal," or "Confidential," a postmark different from the sender's address, or a sender's address that seems false or that cannot be verified. Handwashing is also recommended after handling mail. In order to decontaminate batches of mail before being opened, machines that use bacteria-killing radiation could be used to sterilize the mail. These machines are similar to systems already in place on assembly lines for sterile products, such as bandages and medical devices, but this technique would not be practical for large quantities of mail. In addition, the radiation could damage some of the mail's contents, such as undeveloped photographic film. Microwave radiation or the heat from a clothes iron is not powerful enough to kill the anthrax bacteria.
For those in high-risk professions, an anthrax vaccine is available that is 93% effective in protecting against infection. To provide this immunity, an individual should be given an initial course of three injections, given two weeks apart, followed by booster injections at six, 12, and 18 months and an annual immunization thereafter.
Approximately 30% of those who have been vaccinated against anthrax may notice mild local reactions, such as tenderness at the injection site. Infrequently, there may be a severe local reaction with extensive swelling of the forearm, and a few vaccine recipients may have a more general flu-like reaction to the shot, including muscle and joint aches, headache, and fatigue. Reactions requiring hospitalization are very rare. However, this vaccine is only available to people who are at high risk, including veterinary and laboratory workers, livestock handlers, and military personnel. The vaccine is not recommended for people who have previously recovered from an anthrax infection or for pregnant women. Whether this vaccine would protect against anthrax used as a biological weapon is, as yet, unclear.
Resources
Organizations
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1600 Clifton Rd., NE, Atlanta, GA 30333. (800) 311-3435, (404) 639-3311. http://www.cdc.gov.
National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Building 31, Room. 7A-50, 31 Center Drive MSC 2520, Bethesda, MD 20892. http://www.niaid.nih.gov.
World Health Organization, Division of Emerging and Other Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Control. Avenue Appia 20, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland. (+00 41 22) 791 21 11. http://www.who.int.
Other
"Anthrax." New York State Department of Health Communicable Disease Fact Sheet. http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/consumer/anthrax.htm.
"Bacillus anthracis (Anthrax)." 〈http://web.bu.edu/COHIS/infxns/bacteria/anthrax.htm〉.
Begley, Sharon and Karen Springen. "Anthrax: What You Need to Know: Exposure doesn't guarantee disease, and the illness is treatable." Newsweek October 29, 2001: 40.
Centers for Disease Control. http://www.cdc.gov.
Kolata, Gina. "Antibiotics and Antitoxins." New York Times October 23, 2001: Section D, page 4, second column.
Park, Alice. "Anthrax: A Medical Guide." Time 158, no. 19 (October 29, 2001): 44.
Shapiro, Bruce. "Anthrax Anxiety." The Nation 273, no. 4 (November 5, 2001): 4.
Wade, Nicholas. "How a Patient Assassin Does Its Deadly Work." New York Times October 23, 2001: Section D, page 1.
anthrax
[an´thraks]
an infectious disease seen most often in cattle, horses, mules, sheep, and goats, due to ingestion of spores of Bacillus anthracis. It can be acquired by humans through contact with infected animals or their byproducts, such as carcasses or skins.
Anthrax in humans usually occurs as a malignant pustule or malignant edema of the skin. In rare instances it can affect the lungs if the spores of the bacillus are inhaled, or it can involve the intestinal tract when infected meat is eaten. The condition often is accompanied by hemorrhage, as the exotoxins from the bacillus attack the endothelium of small blood vessels. The condition is treated by the use of antibiotics such as penicillin and the tetracyclines. The malignant edema can be treated with intravenous hydrocortisone. The disorder is also known by a variety of names, including woolsorters' disease, ragpickers' disease, and charbon.
cutaneous anthrax anthrax due to lodgment of the causative organisms in wounds or abrasions of the skin, producing a black crusted pustule on a broad zone of edema.
gastrointestinal anthrax anthrax due to ingestion of poorly cooked meat contaminated with Bacillus anthracis, with deposition of spores in the submucosa of the intestinal tract, where they germinate, multiply, and produce toxin, resulting in massive edema, which may obstruct the bowel, hemorrhage, and necrosis.
inhalational anthrax a usually fatal form of anthrax due to inhalation of dust containing anthrax spores, which are transported to the regional lymph nodes where they germinate, multiply, and produce toxin, and characterized by hemorrhagic edematous mediastinitis, pleural effusions, dyspnea, cyanosis, stridor, and shock. It is usually an occupational disease, such as in persons who handle or sort contaminated wools and fleeces. Antimicrobial prophylaxis is used to prevent the condition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published interim guidelines for investigation and response to Bacillus anthracis infection. The evaluation of risk for exposure to aerosolized spores is of highest priority. Obtaining adequate samples, avoiding cross-contamination, and insuring proficient testing and evaluation of test results are all recommended.
meningeal anthrax a rare, usually fatal form of anthrax resembling typical hemorrhagic meningitis due to spread through the bloodstream of Bacillus anthracis from a primary focus of infection; manifestations include cerebrospinal fluid that is hemorrhagic and neurological signs and symptoms.
anthrax
(an'thraks),
Infection by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, which in humans is caused by contact with infected animals or animal products, and ingestion or inhalation of spores of the bacterium. Worldwide concern is focused on the potential use of anthrax as a bioterrorist weapon, in particular as an inhalational agent. The most common naturally occurring form of human anthrax is the cutaneous, and both the inhalational and gastrointestinal forms are quite rare. Anthrax in animals occurs throughout the world, primarily in herbivores, especially cattle, horses, goats, and sheep.
Synonym(s): charbon
anthrax
/an·thrax/ (an´thraks) an often fatal, infectious disease of ruminants due to ingestion of spores of Bacillus anthracis in soil; acquired by humans through contact with contaminated wool or other animal products or by inhalation of airborne spores.
cutaneous anthrax that due to inoculation of Bacillus anthracis into superficial wounds or abrasions of the skin, producing a black crusted pustule on a broad zone of edema.
(ăn′thrăks′)
n.
1. A serious infectious disease of mammals caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, most commonly affecting grazing animals. The disease can be transmitted to humans by handling infected animals or contaminated animal products (resulting in cutaneous lesions), by ingesting contaminated meat, or by inhaling bacterial spores.
2. pl. an·thraces (-thrə-sēz′) Archaic A lesion caused by anthrax.
anthrax
[an′thraks/]
Etymology: Gk, anthrax, coal, carbuncle
an acute infectious disease (reportable to public health officials) caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis and occurring most frequently in herbivores (cattle, goats, sheep). Humans can become infected through skin contact, ingestion, or inspiration of spores from infected animals or animal products. Person-to-person transmission of inhalational disease does not occur. Anthrax in animals is usually fatal. Inspiration causes the most serious form in humans and is usually fatal, but in 95% of the cases it is acquired when a break in the skin has direct contact with infected animals and their hides. The cutaneous form begins with itching and then a 1- to 3-cm reddish brown lesion that ulcerates and then forms dark eschar surrounded by brawny edema; the signs and symptoms that follow include internal hemorrhage, muscle pain, headache, fever, nausea, and vomiting. The pulmonary form, called woolsorter's disease, is often fatal unless treated early. Early symptoms include low-grade fever, nonproductive cough, malaise, fatigue, myalgia, profound sweating, and chest discomfort. Later symptoms include an abrupt onset of a high fever and severe respiratory distress (cyanosis, dyspnea, stridor). Treatment is a 60-day course of antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, doxycycline, and penicillin. Contaminated surfaces should be cleaned with a 5% hypochlorite solution. A vaccine is available for veterinarians and for others for whom anthrax is an occupational hazard. The incubation period for anthrax is 7 to 42 days. Anthrax is an important potential bioterrorism agent. Also called malignant edema , malignant pustule , ragpicker disease .
observations Cutaneous anthrax begins as an itchy, raised, red-brown skin bump, which develops into a vesicle and then a painless ulcer with a depressed black necrotic center. Lymph nodes in the adjacent area may be swollen and there may be fever, fatigue, and headache. Eschar from the ulcer dries and drops off with little or no scarring after 1 to 2 weeks. Cutaneous forms respond readily to treatment, but 20% of untreated cases result in death. Inhalation anthrax starts with a brief prodrome that resembles a viral respiratory illness followed by hypoxia, dyspnea, fever, muscle aches, headaches, and fatigue. Once the spores travel to the lymphatic system, respiratory failure and shock occur and death usually ensues regardless of treatment. Gastrointestinal anthrax presents with severe abdominal pain, fever, fatigue, anorexia, hematemesis, and bloody diarrhea. In some cases there may be lesions in the nose, mouth, and throat. The disease spreads systemically and is fatal in 30% to 60% of cases if not treated immediately. Diagnosis in all forms is made by history of possible exposure; by physical exam for presenting symptomatology and by isolation of Bacillus anthracis in blood, skin lesions, or respiratory secretions. Serological testing with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay can confirm diagnosis. An anthracis test (available in specialized labs) can be used to detect anthrax cell-mediated immunity. Chest x-rays may detect mediastinal widening, pleural effusion, and infiltrates in inhalation anthrax.
interventions Antiinfectives, such as penicillin, doxycycline, Cipro, and/or Floxin, are primary treatment. IV hydration and ventilator support are used for the inhalation form. Local and state authorities need to be notified in all suspected cases. Use of the anthrax vaccine is recommended in limited use for those at risk (e.g., military personnel, veterinarians, and livestock handlers). Side effects are high and schedule is six doses over an 18-month period. Treatment for exposure is usually a post exposure anthrax vaccine and 60-day course of antibiotics.
nursing considerations Nursing care for inhalation anthrax is largely supportive and centers on management of airway and mechanical ventilation, fluid management, and comfort measures. Every member of the health care team should be prepared for an effective response should anthrax be used in a bioterrorism event. This includes familiarization of institution policies, procedures, and protocols, and maintenance of current knowledge regarding bioterrorism threats.
Anthrax
anthrax
An often fatal bacterial infection that occurs when Bacillus anthracis endospores (primarily of grazing herbivorous—cattle, sheep, horses, mules—origin) enter via skin abrasions, inhalation or orally.
Diagnosis
ELISA for capsule antigens (95+% senstivity) and protective antigens (72% sensitivity); detection of exotoxins in blood is unreliable.
Prevention
Prophylaxis (six weeks) with doxycycline or ciprofloxacin; vaccination with anthrax vaccine absorbed; decontamination with aerosolised formalin.
Penicillin, doxycycline; chloramphenicol, erythromycin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin if (allergic to penicillin).
Anthrax, clinical forms
Inhalation (Anthrax pneumonia, inhalational anthrax, pulmonary anthrax)
An almost universally fatal form due to inhalation of 1 to 2 µm pathogenic endospores, which are deposited in alveoli, engulfed by macrophages and germinate en route to the mediasitinal and peribronchial lymph nodes, producing toxins.
Clinical
Mediastinal widening, pleural effusions, fever, nonproductive cough, myalgia, malaise, haemorrhage, cyanosis, SOB, stridor, shock, death; often accompanied by mesenteric lymphadenitis, diffuse abdominal pain and fever.
Once common among handlers of infected animals (e.g., farmers, wool-sorters, tanners, brushmakers and carpetmakers).
Clinical
Carbuncle, a cluster of boils that later ulcerates, resulting in a hard black centre surrounded by bright red inflammation; rare cases that become systemic are almost 100% fatal.
Gastrointestinal
After ingesting contaminated meat (2 to 5 days); once ingested, spores germinate, causing ulceration, haemorrhagic and necrotising gastroenteritis.
Clinical
Fever, diffuse abdominal pain with rebound tenderness, melanic stools, coffee grounds vomit, fluid and electrolyte imbalances, shock; death is due to intestinal perforation or anthrax toxemia.
Oropharyngeal
Uncommon; follows ingestion of contaminated meat.
Cervical oedema, lymphadenopathy (causing dysphagia), respiratory difficulty.
Anthrax meningitis
A rare, usually fatal complication of GI or inhalation anthrax, with death occurring 1 to 6 days after onset of illness.
Clinical
Meningeal symptoms, nuchal rigidity, fever, fatigue, myalgia, headache, nausea, vomiting, agitation, seizures, delirium, followed by neurologic degeneration and death.
anthrax
Greek, anthrax, a burning coal, charbon, milzbrand Infectious disease An often fatal bacterial infection which occurs when Bacillus anthracis endospores, primarily of grazing herbivore–cattle, sheep, horses, mules–origin enter via skin abrasions, inhalation, or orally Pathogenesis Anthrax endospores germinate within macrophages, become vegetative bacteria, multiply within the lymphatics, enter the bloodstream and cause massive septicemia Clinical URI-like symptoms, followed by high fever, vomiting, joint pain, SOB, internal and external hemorrhage, hypotension, meningitis, pulmonary edema, shock sudden death; intestinal anthrax is caused by ingestion of contaminated meat; cutaneous anthrax is rare Diagnosis ELISA for capsule antigens–95+% senstivity, for protective antigen–72% sensitivity; detection of exotoxins in blood is unreliable Prevention Prophylaxis–6 wks with doxycycline or ciprofloxacin; vaccination, with anthrax vaccine absorbed; decontamination with aerosolized formalin Management Penicillin, doxycycline; if allergic to penicillin, chloramaphenicol, erythromycin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin See Bacillus anthracis , Cutaneous anthrax, Industrial anthrax , Inhalation anthrax .
Anthrax, clinical forms
Pulmonary
Almost universally fatal–due to inhalation of anthrax spores which germinate and produce toxins resulting in pleural effusions, hemorrhage, cyanosis, SOB, stridor, shock, death
Inhalation
Anthrax pneumonia, inhalational anthrax, pulmonary anthrax An almost universally fatal form due to inhalation of 1 to 2 µm pathogenic endospores which are deposited in alveoli, engulfed by macrophages and germinate en route to the mediastinal and peribronchial lymph nodes, produce toxins Clinical Mediastinal widening, pleural effusions, fever, nonproductive cough, myalgia, malaise, hemorrhage, cyanosis, SOB, stridor, shock, death, often accompanied by mesenteric lymphadenitis, diffuse abdominal pain, fever
Cutaneous
Once common among handlers of infected animals, eg farmers, woolsorters, tanners, brushmakers and carpetmakers in an era when brushes were from animals Clinical Carbuncle–a cluster of boils, that later ulcerates, resulting in a hard black center surrounded by bright red inflammation; rare cases which become systemic are almost 100% fatal
Gastrointestinal
After ingesting contaminated meat–2 to 5 days; once ingested spores germinate, causing ulceration, hemorrhagic and necrotizing gastroenteritis Clinical Fever, diffuse abdominal pain with rebound tenderness, melanic stools, vomit, fluid and electrolyte imbalances, shock; death is due to intestinal perforation or anthrax toxemia
Oropharyngeal
an·thrax
(an'thraks)
A disease in humans caused by infection with Bacillus anthracis; marked by hemorrhage and serous effusions in various organs and body cavities and by symptoms of extreme prostration.
[G. anthrax (anthrak-), charcoal, coal, a carbuncle]
anthrax
(an'thraks?) [Gr. anthrax, coal, carbuncle]
ANTHRAX: Cutaneous anthrax lesion on the neck (SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
An acute infectious disease caused by contact with, ingestion of, or inhalation of the spores of Bacillus anthracis. People who work with contaminated textiles or animal products usually contract it from skin contact with animal hair, hides, or waste (the most common form of the disease, accounting for 95% of cases), but the bacilli may cause a fatal pneumonia if they are inhaled. See: illustration
Immunization
The anthrax bacillus has been prepared in aerosol form for use in biological warfare. As a result, some American troops have been vaccinated against the disease during their military training with one of several evolving vaccines. The effectiveness of the vaccine in disease prevention remains uncertain. Vaccination is also given to patients affected by active anthrax to prevent relapses. biological warfare ;
Diagnosis
Diagnosis is made by isolating B. anthracis from blood, sputum, or skin lesion cultures.
Symptoms
Signs and symptoms usually occur within 1 to 7 days after exposure, but can take up to 60 days. Early treatment helps to reduce fatalities. Cutaneous anthrax presents with small, pruritic lesions similar to insect bites that progress to malignant pustules (large, painless boils), vesicles, or skin ulcers with necrotic centers and surrounding brawny edema, usually on an exposed body surface, such as the skin of the hand. Mortality is about 20% from untreated cutaneous anthrax and is less than 1% when treated with an antibiotic (penicillin, doxycycline, ciprofloxacin). GI anthrax involves acute inflammation of the intestinal tract from ingestion of anthrax spores. Symptoms include nausea and vomiting, decreased appetite and fever, progressing to abdominal pain, vomiting blood, and severe to bloody diarrhea. Antibiotic therapy limits mortality to from 25% to 60%. Inhalation anthrax (also called pulmonary anthrax or Woolsorter's disease) is marked by flulike symptoms progressing to fevers, sweats, cough, weakness, and rapidly developing respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or meningitis. Infection of the lungs may be suggested by the rapid onset of respiratory symptoms and chest x-ray or CT findings that may include widening of the mediastinum with hemorrhagic lymph nodes, hilar fullness, and pleural effusion. The disease is often fatal even with the appropriate antibiotic therapy.
Treatment
Persons exposed to anthrax (e.g., after its dissemination by bioterrorists) should receive a 60- to 100-day course of preventive therapy with ciprofloxacin, doxycycline, or penicillin G procaine. Individuals who have active infection with anthrax should receive two of the following antibiotics for a 60-day period: aminoglycosides, penicillin G (or amoxicillin), chloramphenicol, ciprofloxacin, doxycycline, imipenem or meropenem, rifampin, tetracycline, or vancomycin. Patients with pleural effusion benefit from drainage of the effusion with a chest tube.
Patient care
Health supervision is provided to at-risk employees, along with prompt medical care of all lesions. Terminal disinfection of textile mills contaminated with B. anthracis is supervised, using vaporized formaldehyde or other recommended treatment. All cases of anthrax (in livestock or people) are reported to local health authorities. Isolation procedures (mask, gown, gloves, hand hygiene, and incineration of contaminated materials) are maintained to protect against drainage secretions for the duration of illness in inhalation, GI, and cutaneous anthrax. For patients with inhalation anthrax, vital signs are monitored and respiratory support is provided. For patients with cutaneous anthrax, lesions are kept clean and covered with sterile dressings. Prescribed antibiotics are administered and the patient is assessed for desired and adverse effects. Frequent oral hygiene and skin care are provided. Oral fluid intake and frequent small, nutritious meals are encouraged.
anthrax
A serious infection of skin, intestine or lungs caused by spores of Bacillus anthracis which can be transmitted to man from infected animals or animal products. There are large and damaging BOILS , severe GASTROENTERITIS and an often fatal PNEUMONIA . Anthrax has been intensively investigated as a bacteriological weapon and concern has been expressed over its suitability as a terrorist weapon. From the Greek anthrax , coal, possibly because of the black centre and the surrounding redness of the skin lesions.
anthrax
a fever of the spleen in cattle and sheep caused by toxins released from the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The disease can spread to humans when infected animal products such as wool and bristles are handled, giving rise to malignant skin lesions and pustules.
an·thrax
(an'thraks)
A disease in humans caused by infection with Bacillus anthracis; marked by hemorrhage and serous effusions and symptoms of extreme prostration.
[G. anthrax (anthrak-), charcoal, coal, a carbuncle]
anthrax (an´thraks),
| Anthrax |
What is cockney rhyming slang for feet | BIO 1020 Chapter 4 - 12 isotonic solution is. ..-evenly
BIO 1020 Chapter 4
BIO 1020 Chapter 4 - 12 isotonic solution is. ..-evenly
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BIO 1020 Auburn Chapter 4 1 the iodine in the gram stain acts as the. .. mordant 2 the safranin in the gram stain. .. dyes the cells pink or red 3 *peptidoglycan is. .. -chemical component of bacterial cell wall ( strength of bacterial cell wall) 4 what antibiotic prevents formation of peptidoglycan and kills bad cells? penicillin 5 *peptidoglycan can only be found in. .. bacteria 6 the outer layer of gram negative cell wall is made up of. .. lipopolysaccharide 7 the middle layer of gram negative cell wall is made up of. .. -cell wall -outer membrane -peptidoglycan 8 the inner layer of gram negative cell wall is made up of. .. plasma/cell membrane 9 lipopolysaccarides (LPS's) can contain harmful. .. -endotoxins 10 *endotoxins. .. -causes one’s OWN immune system to make them SELF sick -can cause fever and possible death 11 functions of the cell wall(2): -shape of the cell -prevents osmotic lysis
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Unformatted text preview: 12 isotonic solution is. ..-evenly distributed-unrealistic in nature 13 in hypertonic solution. ..-water moves out of cell (shrinkage) 14 in hypotonic solution. ..-water moves into cell (swelling and possible bursting/osmotic lysis) 15 what are the most resistant forms of life? endospores 16 bacterial that produce endospores(2):-Bacillus-Clostridium 17 endospores are resistant to:-high temp.-low temp.-toxic chemicals-dessication*-radiation 18 for endospores, what resistances are absolute?-dessication-low temp. 19 where are most endospores found? soil 20 what are the 3 disease causing endospores?-bacillus anthracis(anthrax)-clostridium perfringens(gas gangrene)-clostridium botulinum(botox) 21 anthrax is also known as. .. wool-sorters's disease (inhalation anthrax)...
BIO 1020 Auburn Chapter 4 1 clostridium perfringens is. -gas gangrene -bacterial infe
BIO 1020 Chapter 5
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What is the first name of chef Jamie Oliver's wife | Jamie Oliver - Biography - IMDb
Jamie Oliver
Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trivia (17) | Personal Quotes (39)
Overview (4)
5' 10" (1.78 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Jamie Oliver's cheeky manner, constant use of the word 'pukka', and down to earth personality have won him legions of fans around the world. He has sold millions of cookery books, opened a restaurant, starred in several TV shows and revolutionised UK school dinners.
He was born May 27th, 1975 and brought up in Clavering, Essex, where his parents, Trevor and Sally, ran a pub called 'The Cricketers'. It was there that the young Jamie began to cut his teeth as a chef and would practice daily in the kitchen and by the time he was 11, the young protégé could cut vegetables as well as any of the kitchen staff. He later attended Newport Free Grammar School and left at age sixteen with two GCSE qualifications going on to attend Westminster Kingsway College, formerly Westminster College. He then earned a City & Guilds NVQ in home economics.
His first foray into the cheffing industry was as a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio's Neal's Yard restaurant, where he first gained experience with preparing Italian cuisine, and developed a relationship with his 'mentor' Gennaro Contaldo. Oliver then moved to The River Café, Fulham, as a sous chef.
Also around this time he began attending the Westminster Catering College at the age of 16. Later, he worked in France, immersing himself in the culture and learning as much as he could before returning to London. His first job back was working for Antonio Carluccio as Head Pastry Chef at The Neal Street Restaurant.
Here Jamie worked alongside Gennaro Contaldo (of 'Two Greedy Italians' fame), who Jamie considers one of his mentors. After The Neal Street Restaurant, Jamie worked 3 1/2 years at the famous River Cafe in London, a position that would change his life forever. It was here, Jamie says, where he learned "all about the time and effort that goes into creating the freshest, most honest, totally delicious food." Not only that, it was also during his time at the River Cafe that he was noticed by the BBC in 1997 after making an unscripted appearance in a documentary about the restaurant, "Christmas at the River Cafe". That year, his show The Naked Chef debuted and his cookbook became a number one best-seller in the UK. That same year, Oliver was invited to prepare lunch for then Prime Minister Tony Blair at No. 10 Downing Street!
In July 2000, Oliver married former model Juliette Norton. The couple met in 1993 and have four children: Poppy Honey Rosie Oliver (born 18 March 2002), Daisy Boo Pamela Oliver (born on 10 April 2003), Petal Blossom Rainbow Oliver (born on 3 April 2009) and Buddy Bear Maurice Oliver (born on 15 September 2010).
In 2000, Oliver became the face of the UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's through an endorsement deal worth $2 million a year. After 11 years the partnership between Oliver & Sainsbury's ended. The final television advertisement was for Christmas 2011.
Oliver created Fifteen in 2002. Each year, fifteen young adults who have a disadvantaged background, criminal record or history of drug abuse, are trained in the restaurant business. Oliver conceived and established the Fifteen charity restaurant where he trained fifteen disadvantaged young people to work in the hospitality industry. Following the success of the original restaurant in London, more Fifteens have opened around the globe: Fifteen Amsterdam opened in December 2004, Fifteen Cornwall in Newquay opened in May 2006 and Fifteen Melbourne opened in September 2006 with Australian friend and fellow chef Tobie Puttock.
In 2005, he initiated a campaign called "Feed Me Better" in order to move British schoolchildren towards eating healthy foods and cutting out junk food. As a result, the British government also pledged to address the issue. Delving into politics to push for changes in nutrition resulted in people voting him as the "Most Inspiring Political Figure of 2005," according to a Channel 4 News annual viewer poll.
Oliver then began a formal campaign to ban unhealthy food in British schools and to get children eating nutritious food instead. Oliver's efforts to bring radical change to the school meals system, chronicled in the series Jamie's School Dinners, challenged the junk-food culture by showing schools they could serve healthy, cost-efficient meals that kids enjoyed eating.
Jamie is represented in London, England by Useful Talent.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Useful Talent
Spouse (1)
( 24 June 2000 - present) (5 children)
Trivia (17)
He is currently food editor for British GQ magazine and has a regular column with the Saturday Times Magazine. [2001]
Also wrote a book "The Naked Chef" to accompany the series. Published by Penguin, it was number one on the bestseller list for more than 10 weeks.
When he turned 16, he attended Westminster Catering College, where he completed his formal training.
In 1999, Jamie was invited to 10 Downing Street to prepare a lunch for the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair , who was entertaining the Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema .
He lives in London with his wife, Jools Oliver , and travels around London by motorbike.
Cooked at the critically acclaimed River Café in London for three years.
He also plays drums with his high school mates in a band called Scarlet Division. According to Jamie, they sound like a mixture of "Catatonia and Texas with a harder edge."
His parents own and operate a successful pub/restaurant "The Cricketers" in Cambridge, where he grew up.
Children, with wife Jools Oliver (Jools): Poppy Honey Oliver (b. March 18, 2002 at 7 lbs 14 oz, 4 days late), Daisy Boo Oliver (b. April 10, 2003), Petal Blossom Rainbow Oliver (b. April 3, 2009 at 6 lbs 10 oz), Buddy Bear Maurice (b. September 15, 2010) and River Rocket (b. August 6, 2016).
He was awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to the Hospitality Industry.
Turned down several offers by magazines to pose nude.
His hard work and promotion on his program "Jamie's School Dinners" has come to the attention of Prime Minister Tony Blair . The two have recently met and talked about new incentives for Labour to back the bid for healthy eating in schools.
Runs his own production company, Fresh One Productions.
Islington, London, England [April 2009]
North London, England [July 2008]
Is dyslexic, a condition that necessitated 5 years in special needs education when Jamie was growing up.
As of 2016, Jamie is the all-time best-selling writer of non-fiction in the UK.
Personal Quotes (39)
On being awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) I'm very pleased - this is terrific..Does that mean I don't get any more parking tickets? No, seriously, I'm very honoured.
What I've enjoyed most, though, is meeting people who have a real interest in food and sharing ideas with them. Good food is a global thing and I find that there is always something new and amazing to learn - I love it!
I left school with basically nothing, I was a special needs kid. I did feel as though my school had let me down.
Give your kids a bloody knife and fork and let me put some fresh food in front of them they can eat.
All I ever wanted to do was to make food accessible to everyone; to show that you can make mistakes - I do all the time - but it doesn't matter.
I'm probably a bit romantic about it, but I think we humans miss having contact with fire. We need it.
Stop being a vegan and start enjoying what you eat.
I challenge you, to go to any school and open 50 lunchboxes, and I guarantee you there will be one or two cans of Red Bull, there'll be cold McDonald's and jam sandwiches with several cakes.
I could cook from quite an early age - purely because I liked it.
When I was a schoolkid, I went to Castleton quite a few times. We'd be there studying rocks, going down these big hills. It was a great place!
I wouldn't say that processed food, ready meals and even takeaways aren't relevant to modern life, it's just that over the past 40 years there are three generations of people who have come out of school and gone through their home life without ever being shown how to cook properly.
We're in a situation now where weight and extreme weight and heart disease is the biggest killer in this country today.
Many kids can tell you about drugs but do not know what celery or courgettes taste like.
The public health of five million children should not be left to luck or chance.
God, why do I give interviews to 'the Guardian'? They always try to dissect you, and I don't really think about stuff in the way that you're asking me these questions.
I want Americans to enjoy food. I want them to celebrate food. I want them to, on occasions, to have big cakes and great things. And I want them to indulge.
It's just us trying to start a movement where everybody passes on a bit of cooking knowledge. We estimate that one person can potentially affect 180 others very quickly so we're just trying to spread the word.
If you only design menus that are essentially junk or fast food, the whole infrastructure supports junk.
In England, you're allowed to have an opinion - as long as it comes out of your mouth.
My general rule is that if everyone knew how to cook fresh produce from their local area, and Monday to Thursday within 20 minutes, you know, there's millions of recipes out there to be had.
Just because the Americans are so good at rattling out accessible and cheap junk food, nobody looks twice when it comes to their food. But there are golden nuggets everywhere.
My first outdoor cooking memories are full of erratic British summers, Dad swearing at a barbecue that he couldn't put together, and eventually eating charred sausages, feeling brilliant.
As usual, my timing is bizarrely good.
The kitchen oven is reliable, but it's made us lazy.
I think there are definitely two types of student: the academic kids and the 50% who fail. It's very clear to see - it's fact. We're not doing enough for those who fail; they need a more physical, tactile approach, involving people skills, team-building, problem-solving, building things.
It's not the extremes and the treats that are the problem. It's the everyday.
It's very clear that there's a lot of double standards going on. Should there be a 30mph speed limit? Of course there bloody should. And certainly with kids and school food, kids need to be nannied for sure. So give them a bloody good meal at school.
I like ties but I prefer not to wear one when I'm nervous.
Young people can be disruptive and screw up classes. But even if they are being a pain in the arse it's a cry for help - they don't feel like they are being listened to.
If Obama wanted to make radical changes to America's health long-term, all he has to do is treble the price of sugar and salt.
I've cooked just about everything really.
I love roasting because you can give it love, get it in the oven and go and play with the kids or whatever you've got to do, and then hours later you've got a lovely dinner.
Heads know that failing to invest in good, nutritious food is a false economy and parents won't tolerate reconstituted turkey being put back on the menu.
I hate making TV documentaries.
What we call barbecuing in this country is actually direct grilling. In many countries, it also means cooking in an enclosed box with a heat source, ideally wood, all year round.
Like most of the other teachers, I'd done a bit of teaching and we all think we're great at what we do, but you realize that normally you have an audience who are all onside, who all want to listen.
We opened a shop in Rotherham which does free demonstrations every day, six days a week and it's been very popular.
My life is really so much based in England.
I'm better with my hands, and I always loved the slightly romantic idea of starting with bits of wood and being able to create something to sit on, to eat from, to store your clothes in.
See also
| Juliette |
What nationality was the painter Diego Rivera | British Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver and His Wife Are Expecting Their Fifth Child
British Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver and His Wife Are Expecting Their Fifth Child
5
Mar 17, 2016 | 4:24 pm
By
Karen Lo
Oliver, an outspoken proponent of child nutrition reform in the UK and a father of 4, is expecting another child with his wife
Juliette Oliver, the wife of British celebrity chef and television host Jamie Oliver, is pregnant with the couple’s fifth child, the family has announced.
More on Jamie Oliver
Watch Jamie Oliver Sauté Lady Gaga’s Meat Dress
Jamie and Jools, as his wife is known at home in England, have been married for 15 years and are parents to three daughters and one son. In 2012, Juliette told Red magazine that although she wanted another child, her husband’s busy schedule was less than conducive to planning for a fifth child.
“I never get any time to spend with Jamie as it is,” Oliver said. “He has said give it a couple of years, then maybe we can think about it.” Four years later, the couple is finally ready to welcome another baby, who is due in August.
Since 2005, Oliver has been a vocal leader in the movement to improve the quality of food available to British schoolchildren, and his advocacy has made him one of the country’s most influential figures in nutrition reform.
Earlier this week, Oliver celebrated the passing of a tax of sugar-sweetened beverages . While reporting on the new tax, the BBC spotted Oliver walking past Parliament and caught him on camera celebrating the levy with an impromptu “sugar tax dance.”
“Our kids’ health comes first,” the chef wrote on Instagram . “Bold, brave, logical and supported by all the right people....now bring on the whole strategy soon to come ... Amazing news.”
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Which British aircraft manufacturer built the World War Two fighter the Defiant | Boulton Paul’s Defiant Mark II - World War 2 Planes
Boulton Paul’s Defiant Mark II
The Boulton Paul’s Defiant Mark II has the distinction of being the Royal Air Force (RAF) first four gun fighter. When the Defiant entered front line service in 1937, it was a very different fighting machine. A complete departure from the early 1930s fighter designs. First, all four of its heavy machine guns were housed on a turret mechanism. Second, no forward armament was installed. Quite a departure indeed.
The Defiant first saw combat action in the morning of May 12th 1940 over the skies above a beleaguer France. In just under a month, the Defiant was credited with the downing of 65 enemy aircraft. Unfortunately for the Defiant’s pilots, the Germans caught adjusted their strategy. Instead of the classic tail attack, Luftwaffe pilots began to engage the Defiant head on. With no forward armaments and antiquated engines, the Paul fighter was a sitting duck for any German airplane.
Losses began to mount after a successful May. So much so, that the aircraft was removed from front line service in August 1940. But this was not the end of the Defiants. Fitted with an experimental and highly secret interception radar array provided by the Americans, the Mark IIs resurfaced in the winter of 1940-41 as a dedicated night interceptor.
By the height of the Blitz, the now venerable Defiants equipped no less than thirteen RAF interception squadrons. They proved to be a critical, albeit less know, part of the RAF’s air defenses until the end of the war.
Engine: Rolls-Royce 1280hp Merlin XX piston engine
Wingspan: 11.99m
| Boulton Paul Aircraft |
What is the capital of Costa Rica | Boulton Paul’s Defiant Mark II - World War 2 Planes
Boulton Paul’s Defiant Mark II
The Boulton Paul’s Defiant Mark II has the distinction of being the Royal Air Force (RAF) first four gun fighter. When the Defiant entered front line service in 1937, it was a very different fighting machine. A complete departure from the early 1930s fighter designs. First, all four of its heavy machine guns were housed on a turret mechanism. Second, no forward armament was installed. Quite a departure indeed.
The Defiant first saw combat action in the morning of May 12th 1940 over the skies above a beleaguer France. In just under a month, the Defiant was credited with the downing of 65 enemy aircraft. Unfortunately for the Defiant’s pilots, the Germans caught adjusted their strategy. Instead of the classic tail attack, Luftwaffe pilots began to engage the Defiant head on. With no forward armaments and antiquated engines, the Paul fighter was a sitting duck for any German airplane.
Losses began to mount after a successful May. So much so, that the aircraft was removed from front line service in August 1940. But this was not the end of the Defiants. Fitted with an experimental and highly secret interception radar array provided by the Americans, the Mark IIs resurfaced in the winter of 1940-41 as a dedicated night interceptor.
By the height of the Blitz, the now venerable Defiants equipped no less than thirteen RAF interception squadrons. They proved to be a critical, albeit less know, part of the RAF’s air defenses until the end of the war.
Engine: Rolls-Royce 1280hp Merlin XX piston engine
Wingspan: 11.99m
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In which city would you be able to view the Pablo Picasso masterpiece Guernica | Guernica by Pablo Picasso
Courtesy of www.PabloPicasso.org
Probably Picasso's most famous work, Guernica is certainly the his most powerful political statement, painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War.
Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention.
This work is seen as an amalgmation of pastoral and epic styles. The discarding of color intensifis the drama, producing a reportage quality as in a photographic record. Guernica is blue, black and white, 3.5 metre (11 ft) tall and 7.8 metre (25.6 ft) wide, a mural-size canvas painted in oil. This painting can be seen in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another. This extends, for example, to the mural's two dominant elements: the bull and the horse. Art historian Patricia Failing said, "The bull and the horse are important characters in Spanish culture. Picasso himself certainly used these characters to play many different roles over time. This has made the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the bull and the horse very tough. Their relationship is a kind of ballet that was conceived in a variety of ways throughout Picasso's career."
Some critics warn against trusting the polital message in Guernica. For instance the rampaging bull, a major motif of destruction here, has previouse figured, whether as a bull or Minotaur, as Picasso' ego. However, in this instance the bull probably represents the onslaught of Fascism. Picasso said it meant brutality and darkness, presumably reminiscent of his prophetic. He also stated that the horse represented the people of Guernica.
| Madrid |
What is the minimum number of people that can turn an unruly disturbance into a riot | Guernica by Pablo Picasso – Facts & History of the Painting
137.4 in × 305.5 in
349 cm × 776 cm
Guernica is a painting by famous Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It was painted as a reaction to the aerial bombing of Guernica, Spain by German and Italian forces during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The Spanish Republic, government of Spain, appointed Picasso to paint a large mural about the bombing to display at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris.
Guernica shows the cataclysms of war as well as the anguish and destruction it inflicts upon people, especially innocent civilians. This painting has attained an enormous reputation over the years, and has become an everlasting reminder of the devastation of war, in addition to becoming an anti-war icon. After it was completed, Guernica was exhibited worldwide during a limited tour, receiving wide acclaim and becoming quite famous. The exposure assisted in bringing the Spanish Civil War to the world’s awareness.
The Painting – Summary Of Individual Components
The colors of Guernica are black, white, and grey. It is an oil painting on canvas, measuring 11 feet tall by 25.6 feet wide, and is on display at the Museo Reina Sofía (Spain’s national museum) in Madrid. The work of art was completed by Picasso in June, 1937 and depicts turmoil, people and animals suffering, with buildings in disarray – torn apart by violence and mayhem. Guernica can be summarized by its individual components as follows:
The encompassing scenario is set within a room where, in an empty part on the left, a wide-eyed bull looms above a woman grieving for a dead child she is holding.
The middle of the painting shows a horse falling over in pain, having been pierced by a spear or lance. It is essential to bear in mind that the gaping wound in the side of the horse is the primary focus of the artwork.
Two obscured visuals formed by the horse can be found in Guernica: first is human skull is superimposed on the body of the horse. Secondly, it appears that a bull is goring the horse from below. The head of the bull is formed largely by the front leg of the horse, which has its knee on the ground. The knee cap of the horse makes up the bull’s nose, and the bull’s horn jabs at the horse’s breast.
The tail of the bull is formed in the shape of flame and smoke appearing in the window at far left, produced by a lighter shade of grey bordering it.
Underneath the horse lies a dead mutilated soldier, the hand of his severed arm still grasping a broken sword, from which a flower springs up.
In the open palm of the dead soldier is a stigmata, symbolic of the sacrifices of Jesus Christ.
Above the head of the impaled horse is a light bulb which glares outward like an evil eye, it can also be likened to the single bulb hanging in a prison cell. Picasso may have also intended the symbolism of the bulb to be associated with the Spanish word for light bulb which is “bombilla”. This brings to mind the word “bomb”, which could symbolize the detrimental impact which technology can have on humanity.
Towards the upper right of the horse is a fearful female figure that appears to be watching the actions in front of her. She seems to have floated through a window into the room. Her floating arm is holding a flaming lamp and the lamp is very close to the bulb, symbolizing hope – and is in opposition to the light bulb.
Staggering in from the right, below the floating female figure, is a horror-struck woman who looks up vacantly into the glaring light bulb.
The tongues of the grieving woman, the bull, and the horse are shaped like daggers, which suggest screaming.
A bird, probably a dove, is perched on a shelf behind the bull and seems to be in panic.
On the far right of the painting, a person with arms extended in sheer terror is trapped by fire from below and above.
A shadowy wall that has an open door becomes the right end of the painting.
Interpretations
Interpretations of the symbolism of Guernica fluctuate extensively and contradict each other depending on the viewer. The list below echoes the most common interpretations and opinions of historians:
The form and bearing of the figures in Guernica convey protest.
The artist utilizes white, black, and grey paint to create a sorrowful atmosphere and convey suffering and disorder.
The flaming structures and crumbling walls do not merely communicate the devastation of Guernica, but reveal the harmful force of war.
The newspaper print used in the backdrop of the painting portrays how Picasso found out about the bombing.
The light bulb in the artwork symbolizes the sun.
The broken sword close to the base of the painting signifies the defeat of the people by their conquerors.
With Guernica, Picasso wanted to establish his identity and his strength as an artist when confronted with political authority and intolerable violence. But instead of being simply a political piece of art, Guernica ought to be viewed as Picasso’s statement on what art can in fact donate to the self-assertion that emancipates all humanity, and shields every person from overpowering forces like political crime, war, and death.
Guernica Displayed At The United Nations
A large tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica was exhibited in the United Nations building in New York City, towards the entry way of the Security Council chamber. The Guernica tapestry was commissioned in 1955 by Nelson Rockefeller, because Picasso declined to sell him the original artwork, and it was placed on loan to the UN by Rockefeller’s estate in 1985. The tapestry incorporates numerous shades of brown, and is less monochromatic in comparison to the original Guernica painting.
On March 17, 2009 Marie Okabe, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary General, said the Guernica tapestry was relocated to a gallery in London prior to a substantial remodeling at the UN headquarters. The Guernica tapestry is the highlight piece for the reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery. It is found in the “Guernica Room” that had initially been an area of the old Whitechapel Library.
Marking its 75th anniversary in 2012, the original painting is scheduled to be photographically analyzed to determine if it is in need of any restoration or repair. Picasso’s iconic anti-war painting the Guernica is still displayed at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, and remains one of Picasso’s best loved and most recognized paintings.
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What was James Bond's father's first name | Andrew Bond | James Bond Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Affiliation
Vickers-Armstrongs Limited
Andrew Bond is the father of James Bond and the spouse of Monique Bond . Like his wife, the character has only a brief mention in Fleming's penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice . Although alluded to in 1995's GoldenEye and 2012's Skyfall , he has never been portrayed in film.
Novel biography
It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice , that Ian Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background, using a fictional obituary, purportedly from The Times. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, to give Bond both a sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories. The novel reveals Bond is the son of a Scottish father, Andrew Bond, of Glencoe, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix, of the Canton de Vaud. The young James Bond spends much of his early life abroad, becoming multilingual in German and French because of his father's work as a Vickers armaments company representative. When his parents are killed in a tragic mountain climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges near Chamonix, eleven-year-old James is orphaned.
Carte Blanche
In Jeffery Deaver 's continuity, Andrew Bond worked for an arms company, and would often take the young James Bond with him on business trips and allow him to sit in on meetings. Andrew was killed when his wife was assassinated by a Soviet spy killing operation called a Steel Cartridge.
The resulting police investigation resulted in the operation being declared as a tragic accident, they did find a chrome cartridge of bullets in the snowdrift that appeared to kill them. While its presence was never explained, It was left by the Soviet operative as a warning to the SIS .
Film biography
He resided in Skyfall Lodge before his death alongside his wife, leaving James distraught. After that, his primary caretaker became Kincade , the gamekeeper of Skyfall Lodge. Andrew Bond is mentioned in Skyfall . It is shown that James does not like to talk about his roots or his parents.
Aside from his home, his only notable possession was a gun collection maintained by Kincade. Following James' supposed demise in Turkey, the guns were sold off to an American collector. The only one to remain was Andrew's engraved hunting rifle, which James intially used when Skyfall came under attack.
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Who played the title role in the film Gandhi | How SKYFALL Clears Up Bond’s Biggest Continuity Question | Birth.Movies.Death.
How SKYFALL Clears Up Bond’s Biggest Continuity Question
Is James Bond a guy or a code name? SKYFALL answers it.
By Devin Faraci Nov. 11, 2012
Note: Phil touched on this in his excellent review of Skyfall , but it's my site and I wanted to talk about it too!
Every since George Lazenby, the first replacement Bond, said "This never happened to the other fellow" in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, there has been a theory among Bond fans that perhaps James Bond isn't a guy, but rather a code name assigned all the 007 agents. It would certainly explain why he's so free in giving out his moniker, and it opened the door for a fantasy all-star Bond team-up, a movie where previous Bonds came out of retirement to help the current guy.
Of course anyone paying attention to the films themselves know this is simply not true. The best evidence, until Skyfall, has been Tracy Bond, who actually married 007 in OHMSS. But it was a Bond film and, even though she was played by the wonderful Diana Rigg, Tracy had to die. Blofeld, who would be a Bond villain throughout a number of movies (played, over the course of the series by the likes of Donald Pleasance and Telly Savalas), had her killed in a drive-by shooting.
Tracy's impact on Bond did not end there, though. Instead of wiping her from the memory bank like so many other doomed Bond girls, our secret agent mourned her over multiple movies. She's mentioned in Roger Moore's The Spy Who Loved Me, four movies, two Bonds (Connery briefly came back in between) and eight years later. That was a circumspect mention - someone asks Bond if he was ever married and he gets all PTSD about it - but For Your Eyes Only makes it really explicit. It opens with Bond at Tracy's grave and then getting his revenge on Blofeld (who, hilariously, is not named for legal reasons). He dumps Blofeld into an industrial smoke stack. The end!
So we've proven that George Lazenby and Roger Moore are the same Bond, as they were married to the same dead woman. But what about everybody else? It's less explicit in later films, but Tracy's ghost is hanging around. In License to Kill it's mentioned that Timothy Dalton's Bond was married once, long ago. Pierce Brosnan's Bond doesn't have such an obvious Tracy moment, though Bond fans do believe she's mentioned in passing in two of his films. In Goldeneye villainous 006 asks Bond if he's found comfort in the arms of many women to help him forget the ones he failed to protect. That's really vague, especially since so many Bond girls have died. You can read this to assume that the deaths of these random women meant more to Bond than he let on, or you can assume 006 is talking about Tracy. Still vague, but less so, is The World Is Not Enough, where Bond is asked if he ever lost anyone he 'truly loved,' and he gets uncomfortable and avoids the question. None of these are on the level of For Your Eyes Only, but the hints are there.
Still, the hints are vague enough that they can be ignored, and we can all pretend that Lazenby is just Moore, and that everybody else is a different guy in the Bond identity. Until Skyfall.
Mild spoilers for Skyfall follow.
At the end of Skyfall, Bond takes the battle with supervillain Silva to his own secret lair: the family mansion in the Scottish highlands (called Skyfall). There we briefly see the family cemetary, where we see the headstones of his parents, Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix Bond. And so it is established, fully and once and for all, that James Bond is actually a guy named James Bond. It is not a name that is conferred by MI6, it is not a secret identity. It is simply a shittily-hidden actual identity. All of the previous James Bonds were definitely the same guy, and all future post-Craig Bonds will still be the same guy.
It's worth noting that Bond's parents are canon from the books. In You Only Live Twice, there's an obituary for Bond written by M (echoed in Skyfall, by the way) and his parents are mentioned as being deceased. They were killed in a climbing accident, which I do not believe is mentioned in Skyfall. HIs aunt is mentioned in the film, though.
And so you have it. With a quick shot of a headstone one of the biggest continuity questions about the Bond series is cleared up. There will never be a movie where Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton swoop in to tell the current 007 how things were done in their days. It's just one guy, and it's always been just one guy.
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Which comedian is known as The Pub Landlord | Biography | The Pub Landlord | Al Murray
Click here to view The AL Murray Website
ABOUT
Al is one of the most recognisable and successful comics in the UK with his alter-ego, The Pub Landlord.
Al has hosted an array of TV series over the last few years: COMPETE FOR THE MEAT (Dave) saw teams battle it out to win the coveted prize of a frozen chicken. His BRITISH COMEDY AWARD Winning ITV1 series AL MURRAY'S HAPPY HOUR has delighted both viewers and critics alike with his no nonsense treatment of his celebrity guests. He is also one of the few stand-up comedians to be asked by ITV to perform two AUDIENCE WITH'S.... Al's sitcom TIME GENTLEMEN PLEASE (Sky One) has become something of a modern day cult classic and his series, AL MURRAY'S MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER (ITV1) saw him introduce a whole host of new characters and demonstrate his vast comedic range.
Al's other TV appearances as The Pub Landlord include three appearances on THE ROYAL VARIETY PERFORMANCE (ITV1), hosting both LIVE AT THE APOLLO (BBC1) and EDINBURGH AND BEYOND (Paramount Comedy Channel) and his edgy quiz show FACT HUNT (ITV1). He has also released eight best-selling live DVDs MY GAFF, MY RULES, GLASS OF WHITE WINE FOR THE LADY, GIVING IT BOTH BARRELS, LIVE AT THE PALLADIUM, THE BEAUTIFUL BRITISH TOUR, BARREL OF FUN, THE ONLY WAY IS EPIC and ONE MAN, ONE GUV'NOR.
Out of character, Al is the host of 7 Day Sunday a weekly programme for BBC Radio 5. He recently film two specials for BBC Four AL MURRAY'S GREAT BRITISH WAR MOVIES and AL MURRAY'S GREAT BRITISH SPY MOVIES. He has also hosted AL MURRAY'S GERMAN ADVENTURE, BBC Four, an historical series about the art and culture of Germany (without mentioning the War) and guest edited the New Year's Day episode of 'THE TODAY PROGRAMME' on BBC Radio 4.
Al's huge stand-up tours have made him one of the most popular live comedy acts in the country, with sell out shows including the O2 Arena. He won the PERRIER AWARD (after a record four successive nominations) and secured OLIVIER AWARD nominations for both of his celebrated sell-out West End runs. Internationally, Al has forged an enviable reputation with numerous sell-out runs in Melbourne, Sydney, Montreal and New Zealand.
His Pub Landlord, BOOK OF BRITISH COMMON SENSE, was a best-selling title when published in both paperback and hardback with 300,000 sales. His second hit book THINK YOURSELF BRITISH was published in hardback in 2009 and was followed in 2010 with his ultimate pub quiz book Al Murray The Pub Landlord's GREAT BRITISH PUB QUIZ BOOK. In 2013 Al released his first out of character book, WATCHING WAR FILMS WITH MY DAD.
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What is a male sheep called | Al Murray Tickets | London & UK Comedy | Show Times & Details
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Publican. Politician. Other thing beginning with P. Philosopher, yeah, that. The nation’s critically acclaimed bar-based-braveheart, Al Murray - The Pub Landlord embarks on a common sense campaign to re-Great Britain in his brand new show.
We live in troubling times. Europe. The NHS. Whatever the hell is going on in the Middle East. The gathering storm of fortnightly bin collections? Who knows where it will all end?
Watch the one man who will answer the call of destiny even though it’s an unlisted number. Watch the one man who will call time on tyranny even though he isn’t quite sure what it means. Watch the one man who isn’t afraid to say no to women ordering anything other than a glass of white wine (or fruit based drink).
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ "A supremely polished performer" - Mail on Sunday
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Luce is another name for which river fish | Arizona Game & Fish Department - Fishing
Fishing
Fishing Glossary
A.C. Plug – A brand name of a large trout-imitating, jointed topwater lure made of wood.
acidity – The degree of sourness of a usually water soluble substance. Acidity is measured in pH, with 7 being neutral and 2 being a strong acid.
action – Measure of rod performance ranging from slow to fast and describes the elapse time from when the rod is flexed to when it returns to its straight configuration. Also refers to the strength of the rod, light, medium and heavy, with light being a limber rod and heavy a stout rod.
active fish – Fish that are feeding heavily and striking aggressively.
adipose fin – On some species, the fatty fin located between the dorsal and tail fin.
air bladder – A gas-filled sac in the upper part of the body cavity of many bony fishes. It is located just beneath the vertebral column; its principal function is to offset the weight of the heavier tissue such as bone.
algae – Simple plant organism (typically a single cell) commonly found in water.
alkalinity – Measure of the amount of acid neutralizing bases.
amur – A member of the carp family found in China’s Amur River. Commonly called a white amur or grass carp. These fish are highly effective weed eaters and are stocked to control nuisance weeds and algae. They can weigh up to 47 pounds.
anal fin – The unpaired fin that lies along the midline of the body beneath the anus, usually on the back half of the fish.
anchovy or anchovies – A species of 4- to 8-inch baitfish found in the ocean that is also a popular bait used for striped bass at places like Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Pleasant but can be used for catfish as well.
angler – Person using a fishing pole or rod and reel to catch fish.
angleworm – Any live earthworm placed on a fishing hook.
angling – Usually refers to the recreational catching of fish (sport-fishing) by hook and line.
anti-reverse – System that prevents reels (typically bait casters) from spinning in reverse and causing tangles.
Apache trout – One of Arizona’s two native trout species. Body color is yellowish-gold, with dark, bold spots on dorsal and tail fin, and sparse body spotting that may extend below the lateral line. Purebred Apache trout are only found in the White Mountains of east-central Arizona. Although they are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, it is legal to fish for them in certain prescribed waters.
artificial lures and flies – Means man-made devices intended as visual attractants for fish and does not include living or dead organisms or edible parts thereof, natural or prepared food stuffs, artificial salmon eggs, artificial corn, or artificial marshmallows.
attractant – Liquid, solid or power form of scent applied to fishing lures for increased productivity.
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back cast (n.) or back-cast (v.) – Part of the cast in which the fishing rod (usually a fly rod) and the fishing line is moved from a position in front to one in back of the angler. There can be successive back casts as line is played out to increase the distance and accuracy of the cast.
backing – Any type of line used to partially fill a reel before the main fishing line is added; commonly used in fly-fishing or by bass anglers who use many of the newer thread-like or polymer lines.
backlash – An overrun of a revolving-spool reel, such as a bait-cast reel, which in turn causes the line to billow off the reel and tangle.
back-trolling – A method of boat control utilizing a motor to make a series of maneuvers in the presentation of a lure or bait. The most common back-troll method is using a front-mounted trolling motor to make the boat go backwards, while dragging or trolling the lure in front of the boat. Many back-troll methods, such as fishing for suspended crappies in winter or summer, involve a slow stop-and-go technique.
back-wash – Rough water resulting from boat wakes rebounding off fixed objects such as canyon walls, docks or anchored boats.
backwater – Shallow area of a river that is sometimes isolated, often being located behind a sand bar or other obstruction in the river. Large backwaters tat are isolated may be referred to as oxbows.
bag limit – Restriction in the number of fish an angler may retain, generally on a daily basis.
bail – Metal, semi-circular arm of an open-face spinning reel that engages the line after a cast.
bait – Can mean live bait or artificial bait, such as a lure.
baitcasting – Fishing with a revolving-spool reel and baitcasting rod, with the reel mounted on the topside of the rod.
baitfish – Small fish, such as threadfin shad, that are often eaten by predatory fish, such as largemouth bass. This can refer to the fish that predators feed upon, or the kids of fish we place on a hook to catch a sport-fish. The use of bait fish is often regulated, so be sure to check the latest fishing regulations.
baitwell – A special well or livewell in a boat to hold bait.
bank-fishing, bank-fish – A method of fishing by casting from an area on a bank of water.
bass – A common reference for a number of freshwater and saltwater species sought as game fish. The largemouth and smallmouth bass are actually members of the sunfish family, although they are commonly referred to as bass. Striped bass, white bass, and yellow bass are all members of the perch family and are often referred to as true bass family.
Bass Assassin – A brand of soft-plastic jerkbait.
bass boat – A design of shallow-drafting boat developed for modern, competitive bass fishing.
bar – Long, shallow ridge in a body of water.
barb – A sharp projection on a fishing hook that holds a hooked fish.
barbless – A hook manufactured without a barb, or one made barbless by cutting it off, filing it off or flattening the barb (typically with pliers).
bay – Major indentation in the shoreline of a lake or reservoir.
bead-headed midges – A type of fly used for fly-fishing.
bedding – In fishing, this term refers to bedding fish during the spawning period.
bell sinker – A bell-shaped fishing weight.
Belly Boat – A trademark for a brand of rubber inner tube boat used for fishing in quiet water.
benthic – Occurring at or near the bottom of a body of water.
biology – The study of living things.
bite – When a fish takes or touches a bait so that the fisherman feels it.
bite indicator – A device which activates or signals when a fish is on the line. It can be as simple as a bell placed on the line between two fishing pole guides that rings when a fish either nibbles or takes the bait. There are commercially made bite indicators as well. Bite indicators are often used by those bottom-fishing for catfish and carp.
biomass – The aggregate amount of living matter or a specific species within a specific habitat, or the total number of a specific species in a specific habitat.
black bass – Common term used to describe several types of bass of the sunfish family, including the largemouth and smallmouth bass.
blind cast – Casting at no particular target.
bluebird skies – A term used to describe bright, sunny, blue sky conditions that often make catching fish tough.
bluegill or bluegills – A common species of sunfish. Not synonymous with sunfish or panfish.
bobber – A float attached to the line under which a hook and sometimes a sinker hang. The bobber holds the bait or lure at a predetermined depth and also signals the strike of a fish (strike indicator). A variation is called a slip-bobber or slip-float, where the line runs freely through the bobber and there is a stop on the line for the predetermined depth.
bottom feeder or bottom-fish – A bottom-feeding fish, such as a catfish or carp. Refers to a fish that feeds predominantly on the bottom, not just one that is sometimes caught on the bottom, such as a largemouth bass or trout.
bow-fishing – Using a bow and arrow, typically with a reel attached to the bow, to harvest fish.
Bomber Long “A” – A brand name of crankbait.
bucketmouth – A slang term for largemouth bass, aka bigmouth bass.
brackish – Water of intermediate salinity between seawater and freshwater.
break – Distinct variation in otherwise constant stretches of cover, structure, or bottom type. Basically anything that “breaks up” the underwater terrain.
break-off – A fish lost when the line breaks, as opposed to losing fish when the hook breaks, straightens or pulls out.
broodfish – A large sexually mature fish capable of breeding. In hatcheries, these are the large egg-producing fish.
brookie, brookies, brook trout – A species of trout stocked in selected waters in Arizona’s high country (they are not native to the state).
brownie – Term can refer to a smallmouth bass or a brown trout.
brown trout – A nonnative species of trout stocked in some of Arizona’s high elevation trout waters. Sometimes referred to as a German brown.
brushline – The inside or the outside edge of a stretch of brush.
brush pile – Usually refers to a mass of small- to medium-sized tree limbs lying in the water. Brush piles may be only one of two feet across, or they may be extremely large; they may be visible or submerged. They can be created by Mother Nature or be man made. They typically attract fish, and fishermen.
buffalofish – A heavy bodied carp-like fish that can weigh up to 39 pounds that are found in some of the Salt River chain of lakes.
bumping – Refers to the act of making a lure hit an object, such as a log, tree or rock, in a controlled manner (either intentionally or unintentionally), which can get the attention of a fish and result in a strike.
bullet sinker – A cone-shaped piece of lead, zinc or steel of varying weights that slides up and down the line.
buzzbait – Top-water bait with large, propeller-type blades that churn the water during a retrieve. Usually comprised of a leadhead, a rigid hook and a wire that supports one of more blades. Typically has a plastic skirt like a spinnerbait.
buzzing – Retrieving a spinnerbait or buzzbait along the water’s surface to create a splash effect to resemble a wounded baitfish.
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caddis fly – an aquatic insect of major importance, along with the mayfly and stonefly, for the trout fly-fisherman. A caddis fly is characterized by swept-back wings; also an insect that goes through a complete metamorphosis much like a butterfly. A caddis worm is the larva of a caddis fly.
California rig or California-rigged – A method of deep-water fishing in which a plastic worm is placed at the end of a leader trailing behind a sinker.
cane pole – A pole of natural cane, often made from Calcutta or Tonkin bamboo, used for fishing. No reel is used; the line is tied to the pole. Extremely effective for fishing small, narrow streams or creeks. Those fishing with such a rig are said to be cane-poling.
cartop or cartopper – Refers to a boat small enough to be carried on the top of a car and hand-launched, especially at fisheries with limited or no boat launching facilities.
Carolina rig or Carolina-rigged – A special rig in which an exposed or hidden hook is used with a soft plastic lure placed 2 to 3 feet behind an egg or barrel sinker and swivel. Used primarily for deep fishing with heavier weights than a Texas rig. This rig is most commonly used with a plastic worm or lizard, but can be used with floating crankbaits and other lures.
A variation on this theme is using a lighter, spinning outfit with a split shot placed on the line 12 to 30 inches above the hook, with a small worm or lizard (4 to 6 inches) rigged Texas style. This style can be used in shallow or deep water, and is especially good for use in the clear, Western reservoirs, or when it is appropriate to down-size, such as in winter.
carp – A member of the minnow family, introduced to the United States in the late 1800s. Typically refers to common carp originally from Europe and not grass carp (amur), which are from Asia.
catch-and-release – Refers to catching a fish and immediately releasing it. Many anglers practice catch-and-release as a way to help conserve the resource. In some waters, such as certain small trout streams, the state fishing regulations actually require anglers to catch-and-release.
catfish – A term for any of the many species of catfish, including black, blue, flathead, channel and yellow species. Fishing for catfish can be called catfishing and a person who fishes for catfish is a catfisherman (both one word).
channel – The bed of a stream or river. This can also refer to a submerged stream or river channel in a reservoir.
chugger – Topwater plug with a dished-out, concave or cupped head designed to make a splash when pulled sharply. The act of systematically working the lure across the surface is called “chugging.”
chum – To throw chum (typically cut up pieces of bait fish or other bait) overboard to attract fish. A chum line is the trail of bait or scent in the water that attracts game fish.
clarity – Refers to the depth you are able to see an object, such as your lure, under the water.
clearwater – Describes a lake or stream with good visibility.
cold front – A weather condition accompanied by high, clear skies, and a sudden drop in temperature.
coldwater fishery – Refers to waters typically in the higher elevations that can be predominately trout fisheries.
cosmic clock – The sun’s seasonal effect on water and weather conditions relating to barometric pressure, wind, and cloud cover.
cove – An indentation along a shoreline. A very small indentation a few feet or so across is often referred to as a “pocket cove.”
cover – Natural or manmade objects on the bottom of lakes, rivers, or impoundments, especially those that influence fish behavior. Examples include stick-ups, tree lines, stumps, rocks, logs, pilings, docks, and weed patches.
cowbells – A flashing, multi-bladed lure that resembles a small school of bait fish that is commonly used to troll for trout.
crankbait – Any of a wide number of hard plastic or wooden lures that dive when retrieved (cranked with a reel) through the water. Crank or cranks are slang terms for these baits.
crappie or crappies – Two species, white and black, are popular game fish. In Arizona, white crappies are only found in Lake Pleasant.
crayfish or crawfish – A small crustacean found in freshwater. Crayfish are not native to Arizona. Also called crawdads.
creel limit – The daily number of fish an angler can keep in possession as set by state regulations. Can vary from water to water, so be sure to check the fishing regulations.
Crickhopper – A brand of plastic lure resembling a grasshopper commonly used for trout and sometimes, for smallmouth bass.
culling – A method of removing and releasing lighter-weight fish from a livewell so the heaviest or tournament limit is retained.
Curly Tail – A trademark for a brand of curved-tail soft-plastic lures.
curly-tailed grub – A curved-tail soft plastic bait often fitted on a jighead.
cutthroat trout or cutthroat – A species of salmonid characterized by a red or orange slash under the throat. They are stocked in Big Lake in the White Mountains and are not native to Arizona. Also called “cutts.”
dabbing – Working a lure up and down in the same spot a dozen or more times in a bush, or beside a tree or other structure.
damselfly – A small member of the dragonfly family.
dapping – A method of fly-fishing in which the fly is allowed to skip or dance on the water while line and leader are held above the water from a high rod.
Dardevle – A trademark for a brand of spoons typically used for trout and northern pike fishing.
deadfall – A tree that has fallen into the water.
deer-hair bug – A floating fly-rodding lure made from hollow deer hair and used principally for bass and panfish.
depthfinder, depth recorder, or depth sounder – A sonar device used to read the bottom structure, determine depth, and in some cases actually locate fish. Also called a fishfinder.
Devle Dog – A trademark for a brand of fishing lure.
desert sucker – A native Arizona fish typically found in rivers and streams that can weigh over four pounds.
die-off – Refers to having many fish die at the same time, quite often baitfish; also referred to as a fish kill.
dillys – A type of small earthworm popular for catching sunfish and trout.
dink – A small bass, usually under 6 to 8 inches long (also called a subcatchable).
dip bait – A smelly paste-type bait primarily used for catfish.
dip net – A net with a handle used to capture baitfish.
disgorger – Device for removing hooks deeply embedded in the throat of fish.
dissolved oxygen – The amount of free (usable) oxygen in water. Usually designated in parts per million.
dobsonfly – A large aquatic insect, the larva of which is the popular hellgrammite bait.
doll Fly – A trademark for a brand of chenille-bodied, hackle-wrapped jig.
doodlesock or doodlesocking – A method of cane-pole or long-pole fishing in which a lure or bait is repeatedly dipped and dragged through likely fish structures. Used in largemouth bass and crappie fishing. Very effective when fish are holding tight to cover.
dorsal fin – A median fin located along the back of a fish. It is usually supported by rays, which sometimes gives the fin a fan- or sail-like appearance. There may be two or more dorsal fins.
doughball – A ball of bait made from bread or specially prepared dough used for bait-fishing. Commonly used for carp.
downlake, downriver, downshore, and downstream, downcurrent – All terms referring to directions.
drag – Device on fishing reels that allows line to pay out under pressure, even though the reel is engaged; set correctly, it ensures against line breakage.
drawdown – Lowering a lake level for a specific purpose.
drift-boating, drift-fishing – Techniques used to fish by drifting with the current, sometimes in a drift boat.
drop-off – A sudden increase in depth, often created by washes, small creek channels, canyons, pinnacles, and other submerged topographic features.
drop shot – A tackle rigging technique employing a hook tied to the line from four-inches to four-feet above the sinker. The hook is attached using a Palomar knot and the weight is attached to the tag line from the knot. The hook is set at a 90-degree angle to the line, typically with the hook point pointing upward toward the pole. Typical drop shot baits are small, usually 4-inches or less.
dry fly – A fly which floats on the surface of the water by means of hackle (feather) fibers. An angler employing this technique is said to be dry-fly fishing.
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earthworm – A common term for any of the many different fishing worms, including night crawlers (two words), garden worms, leaf worms, dillys, and red wigglers.
edge – The borders created by a change in the structure or vegetation in a lake. Examples are edges of tree lines, weed lines, and the edges of a drop-off.
egg sinker – An egg-shaped fishing weight with a hole through the center for the line to pass through.
electro-fishing, electro-fish, electro-shocking – A term used to describe using electrical current to temporarily stun fish, typically during fish surveys.
eutrophic – Highly fertile waters characterized by warm, nutrient-rich shallow basins.
eyelets – The eyelets are the line guides or rings on a fishing rod through which line is passed.
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false-casting, false-cast – Fly-casting line in the air (not touching the water) to increase length of line and perfect accuracy to the target.
fan cast – Making a series of casts only a few degrees apart to cover a half circle (more or less). Often used to locate actively feeding fish.
feeding times – Certain times of day when fish are most active. These are often associated with the position of the sun and moon and are referred to as solunar tables.
filamentous algae – Type of algae characterized by long chains of attached cells that give it a stringy feel and appearance.
fillet – A method of using a sharp knife to separate the meaty portion of the fish from the bones and skeleton and/or skin for human consumption.
finesse fishing – An angling technique characterized by the use of light tackle – line, rods, reels and artificial baits. It is often productive in clear, fairly uncluttered water, like many of our western impoundments.
fingerling – A young fish about a finger long, usually 2 inches or so in length.
fisherman – One who engages in fishing for sport or occupation, or for food.
fishery – A term used for a lake, river or stream where people can catch fish, or even a particular kind of fish, such as a bass or trout fishery.
fishhook – A barbed or barbless hook used for catching fish. For fish hook sizes, always use numerals: No. 2, No. 4 etc.
flat – In fishing, a shallow section of water where game fish feed or spawn.
flipping – A method of fishing by which the lure is swung, not cast, to the target or structure, often with as little disturbance of the water as possible. This technique is often used for placing baits strategically in thick cover, such as bushes, trees and stick-ups.
flipping stick – Heavy action fishing rod (usually a baitcasting rod and reel), 7 to 8 feet long, designed for bass fishing using the flipping and or pitching techniques.
Florida rig – Very similar to the Texas rig, the only difference is the weight is secured by “screwing” it into the bait.
float tube – A special fishing tube in which an inner tube is covered by a casing fitted with a seat to allow an angler to float free.
floating or float fishing – To traverse a river, stream or lake by some type of watercraft while fishing, most commonly in a tube, raft, canoe, or kayak.
flutterbait – Any type of bait that is cast and then allowed to “flutter” down, resembles a dying bait fish. Typically used in bass fishing.
fly, flies – A natural insect used by fish as food or an imitation of a natural insect used by fly-anglers.
fly-casting, fly-cast – A method for a fly-fishermen to cast flies to fish or to spots likely to hold fish.
fly line, fly-line (adj.) – A line specifically designed to be used with fly-fishing tackle and a fly rod, the act of which would be termed fly-rodding.
foul-hook – To hook a fish other than in the mouth where it should take a bait or lure.
forage – Small baitfish, crayfish and other creatures that bass or other predator fish eat. Term may also be used in the sense of bass actively looking for food (foraging).
free spool, or free-spool (v.) – A reel that allows line to feed freely to the fish or current, or the method of feeding line without drag or resistance to fish or current.
freshwater – A term referring to bodies of water that do not have salt.
front – Weather system that causes changes in temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, wind and barometric pressure.
fry – Immature fish from the time they hatch to the time they become fingerlings.
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Gamakatsu – A brand name of hooks.
game fish or game-fish (adj.) – Species of fish caught for sport that fights hard when hooked. In Arizona, includes trout of all species, bass of all species, catfish of all species, sunfish of all species, northern pike, walleye and yellow perch. Legal game fish are defined in statute. There are more fish sought for sport than are listed as game fish.
gear – Any tools used to catch fish, such as rod and reel, hook and line, nets, traps, spears and baits.
Gila trout – One of Arizona’s two native trout species. Gila trout had been extirpated (eliminated) from Arizona, but were reintroduced in the mid 1990s. They are listed as federally endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
gill – Respiratory organ of many aquatic animals, such as fish.
gill opening – an opening behind the head that connects the gill chamber to the exterior.
gill net, gill-net (v.) – A commercial (not sport-fishing) net used to harvest fish. So named because of the mesh sizes designed to catch the intended species by the gill. Commonly used by biologists when conducting fish surveys.
Gizit – A brand name of tube bait (the original).
grayline – The grayline on a fish finder lets you distinguish between strong and weak echoes. For instance, a soft, muddy or weedy bottom returns a weaker symbol, which is shown with a narrow or no gray line. A hard bottom returns a strong signal, which causes a wide and dark grayline.
grayling – A northern species of freshwater game fish; a member of the trout family. In Arizona, typically found at Lee Valley Lake in the White Mountains.
grub – A short, plastic type of worm, usually rigged with a weighed jig hook.
habitat – The natural environment where people, animals and plants live. In an aquatic environment, it includes the water, topography, structure and cover present in a lake.
handline – A fishing line used without a rod or reel; a line held in the hand.
hard bottom – Usually a type of bottom that you would not sink far, if at all, were you to walk on it and can consist of clay, gravel, rock or sand.
hawg – A slang term describing a large lunker-size or heavyweight bass weighing 4 pounds or more.
hellgramite -- The larvae of the dobsonfly.
holding area – Structure that habitually attracts and holds bass.
holding station – Place on a lake where inactive fish spend most of their time.
honey hole – A slang term describing a specific hole, spot, or area containing big fish or lots of catchable fish.
Hopkins spoons – A brand name of spoon with a hammered appearance.
hump – An underwater island that generally rises gradually. Humps can often hold fish.
hydrology – The science dealing with the distribution, properties and circulation of water on land, in the soil, and in the atmosphere.
ichthyology – The science or study of fish.
IGFA – The International Game Fish Association.
inactive fish – Fish that are not in a feeding mood, sometimes referred to as having “lockjaw.” Examples of inactive times can be following a cold front, during a major weather change that causes a sudden rise or fall in the barometer.
in-line spinner – A spinner where the hook is on the same shaft, or line, as the spinner, such as a Mepps, Rooster Tail, Panther Martin or Vibrex spinner.
inside bend – The inside line of a grass bed or a creek channel.
isolated structure – A possible holding spot for fish, especially bass. Examples include a single submerged bush or rock pile on a point, a mid-lake hump, or a large tree that has fallen into the water.
jerkbait – A type of soft-plastic or hard-plastic bait resembling a bait fish that is typically fished in a series of quick jerks or is “ripped” to resemble a darting baitfish.
jig – A hook with a leadhead that is usually dressed with hair, silicone, plastic or bait.
jigging spoon – Refers to a spoon that is typically “jigged” or bounced off the bottom with a slight up-and-down motion of the rod or rod tip so the spoon resembles a dying shad or other baitfish.
jig-and-pig or jig-n-pig – Combination of a leadhead jig fitted with a pork trailer. Popular for flippin’ and pitchin’ fish-holding structure, such as submerged bushes and trees.
jig-fishing, jig-fish (v.) – The practice of using a jig to catch fish.
johnboat – A small flat-bottomed, square-fronted, shallow-draft boat that is popular with duck hunters and many anglers alike.
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KastMaster – A brand name of spoon.
keeper – For anglers, it is typically any fish that is worth taking home to eat. For lakes with special regulations, it can be fish of specified lengths that are legal to harvest, such as fisheries where there are slot limits.
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largemouth bass – A member of the black bass family that has a green-shaded body with a continuous dark stripe along each side, belly white to yellowish and a dorsal fin almost completely separated between spiny and soft portion, plus a lower jaw that extends past the gold-colored eye. Also called a bucket mouth or bigmouth bass.
Lees Ferry – The popular 16-mile stretch of tail-water fishery along the Colorado River tucked between the Glen Canyon Dam and the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. It is renowned for its large, wild trout.
larva – Refers to the subsurface stage of development of an aquatic insect.
lake bed, lake-bed (adj.) – The bottom of a lake.
lake zones – Designation that includes four categories: shallow water, open water, deep water and basin.
ledge – A severe drop-off. Commonly found in Arizona’s deep canyon lakes, such as Canyon Lake, Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Blue Ridge Reservoir and Chevelon Lake.
leadhead, lead-head (adj.) – A term for a jig where lead is molder to the hook shaft.
light intensity – The amount of light that can be measured at certain depths of water; the great the intensity, the farther down the light will project. In waters where light intensity is low, brightly colored lures can be good choices.
Light Cahill – A dry fly pattern.
line guides – The eyelets or rings on a rod through which fishing line is passed.
limit-out – To catch the daily limit legally allowed for a species of fish.
lipless crankbaits – Artificial baits designed to resemble a swimming baitfish. Such baits typically vibrate or wobble during the retrieve; some have built-in rattles. Also called swimming baits. Lipless crankbaits typically sink when they are not being retrieved, which can allow anglers to fish them deeper than lipped crankbaits.
lipping – A method of landing fish, especially bass, by placing a thumb into its mouth to bend the lip down slightly, temporarily paralyzing the fish to get it into the boat or unhook and release it.
livebox – A box or container to designed to keep bait or caught fish alive.
live baitfish – Means any species of live fish designated by Arizona Game and Fish Commission order as lawful for use in taking aquatic organisms. The act of using live bait is called live-bait fishing.
livewell – Compartment in a boat designed to hold water and keep fish alive. Typically have some device for re-circulating water.
long-lining – Another term for trolling a bait or lure a long distance behind a boat.
loose-action plug – A lure with wide, slow movements from side to side. Can be the lure of choice when fish are sluggish in colder water, such as during winter or early spring.
lunker – A slang term for a very large fish: can also be called a hawg.
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marabou jig – A weighted jig with light, fluffy feathers attached to the body.
mayfly – A small aquatic fly that is an important food for trout, which means it is also important for fly-anglers.
marker buoy – A small plastic buoy, often fluorescent color that is tossed into the water to mark a fish holding area or a school of fish. Such buoys are popular for those fishing schooling sport-fish, such as crappie, white bass, or striped bass, in open water.
Mealworms – Small beetle larvae often used for catching crappies or sunfish.
Mepps spinners – A brand name in-line spinner.
mesotrophic -- A lake classification describing middle-aged bodies of water between oligotrophic (young) and eutrophic (old) classifications. It is a body of water with a moderate amount of dissolved nutrients.
migration route – The path followed by bass or other fish when moving from one area to another.
milfoil – Surface-growing aquatic plants.
mini-jig – A small leadhead jig, usually 1/16- or 1/32-ounce, often used for catching crappie or sunfish.
mono – Short for monofilament fishing line.
monofilament – A single, untwisted, synthetic filament.
moon times – The four phases or quarters of the moon are usually what the fisherman is concerned with. Generally, the bad times in a month occur three days prior and three days after the full moon or new moon. The first-quarter and second-quarter periods are considered as the good moon times.
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nares – The nostrils of fish.
nest – The spot in where are fish, such as a largemouth bass or bluegill, deposits its eggs. Some nests, such as those for largemouth bass, can be well defined. For largemouth bass, the female lays the eggs and the male guards the eggs. See the listing for “redd.”
night crawler – A common type of worm used in fishing.
night-fisherman – An angler who fishes at night.
nongame fish – Include all the species of fish except the game fish (see game fish entry).
nonnative fish – A fish that is not native to Arizona.
nymph – The nymphal sate of an aquatic insect, or an imitation of same for nymph-fishing.
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off-color – Refers to the color and or clarity of the water. The normal off-color conditions include brown or mud-stained such as from runoff, green from algae or algae blooms and brown from tannic acid.
open-faced reel – A typical or standard spinning reel in which the line comes off the fixed spool in loops and there is no nose cone.
otolith – The ear bone of a fish. The age of a fish can be determined by counting the layers in the otolith, much like the rings of a tree.
outside bend – The outside line of a creek channel or grass bed. For underwater structure, it can also refer to the outside line of a submerged wash or arroyo.
oligotrophic – Lake classification used to describe young bodies of water characterized by deep, clear, cold, weedless water that can support fish, such as trout.
organic baits – Minnows, insects, worms, fish eggs, cut bait, cheese or similar substances.
overcast – To cast a lure, fly or bait beyond the aimed-for target.
over-fishing – Fishing pressure beyond which a sustainable population of fish or stocking effort can be maintained.
oxbow – A U-shaped bend in a river or stream. If isolated, they can be referred to as an oxbow lake.
pan fish – Any of a variety of species of fish that resemble the shape of a frying pan, thus the name. Often applies to sunfish, crappie, perch, other small fish or small sizes of other species.
Panther Martins – A brand name of in-line spinner.
Parr, parr marks – Small juvenile of the trout or salmon family. Characterized by parr marks, which are pronounced, wide, vertical bars on the sides of these fish until they mature.
pattern – Can describe where active fish are holding, or what techniques are working to catch fish, especially larger fish. For instance, pattern fishing could involve using shallow-running crankbaits on all the major points of a lake or Carolina-rigged worms on all main lake humps.
peacock ladies -- A type of fly used by fly-anglers.
pectoral fin – The fin usually found on each side of the body behind the gill opening.
pegging – Putting a toothpick in the hole of a bullet or egg sinker to prevent the sinker from sliding along the line. Typically done with a Texas-rigged bait. Other items such as rubber bands slipped through the sinker have also become popular.
Pencil Poppers – A brand name topwater lure that is long and thin. Often used for catching striped bass.
pelvic fins – Pair of juxtaposed fins ventrally on the body in front of the anus.
PFD – A personal flotation device or life jacket.
pH – A measurement for liquids to determine acidity or alkalinity. On a scale of one to 14, seven is considered neutral. Below sever is acidic and above seven is alkaline. This is a factor in the health or activity levels of fish.
pike – A common reference to northern pike, a member of the pike family.
Pop-R – A brand of popper topwater lure.
pick-up – The act of a bass or other fish taking a slowly-fished lure, such as a plastic worm, crayfish or lizard. It can also be referred to as a “pressure” bite.
pitching – Fishing technique in which worms or jigs are dropped into cover at close range with an underhand pendulum motion using a long bait-casting rod, and differs from flipping in that with pitching, line is allowed to come out of the reel during the cast.
pocket – A small indentation in the shoreline, sometimes referred to as a pocket cove.
point – A finger of land jutting into the water, which if pronounced, can form a peninsula. Some points are submerged and not visible at the surface but can often be detected in depth finders. Points often hold fish; they can become good ambush spots for predatory fish.
popper – Top-water plug with a dished-out head designed to make a splash when pulled sharply to imitate a wounded baitfish struggling on the surface.
possession limit – The maximum limit or amount of a fish species set by regulation that may be possessed at one time by any one person.
post front – The period following a cold front; atmosphere clears and becomes bright. Usually characterized by strong winds and a significant drop in temperature. Fishing can often be slow during such conditions, especially for bass.
post-spawn – The period immediately following a spawn. Post-spawn fish recovering from the spawn can often be lethargic. Post-spawn fish that have recovered from the spawn are typically hungry and aggressive.
Power Bait, Power Worms, Power Craw, Power Eggs, Power Grubs, Power Worms – Brand names of commercially prepared scented baits
presentation – A collective term referring to a combination of choices a fisherman makes, such as the choice of lure, color, and size, the type of pole and/or tackle used, the structure targeted, the casting technique, the retrieval technique (slow, medium, fast, stop-and-go) and even where the bait is worked in the water column (deep, shallow, top-water).
prespawn – The period of time immediately before the spawn when fish are often feeding more aggressively.
professional overrun – A more polite term for backlash. Also called spaghetti.
Pro – Professional anglers: those elite fishermen who make a living at fishing, typically by fishing tournaments.
put-in – Denotes a boat launching area for the start of a float trip.
put-and-take – Refers to a fishery where catchable-sized fish are stocked (typically trout but not exclusively) and caught by anglers in a relatively short period of time. For instance, the state’s urban program lakes are prime examples of popular put-and-take fisheries.
ramp – Also referred to as a boat ramp or launch ramp. It is the launch-retrieve area for a boat.
rainbow trout, rainbows – A member of the salmon/trout family. Rainbows are not native to Arizona.
Rapala – A brand or lures.
Rat-L-Trap – A brand of lipless crankbait.
redd – An individual nest or depression in the gravel excavated by trout other members of the trout and salmon family for depositing eggs. Multiple redds make up a bed.
reservoir – Artificially created lake where water is collected and stored; also called an impoundment.
re-stocking – The practice of releasing hatchery-reared fish from the hatcheries into ponds, streams, rivers, or lakes.
riprap – A man-made stretch of rocks or material of a hard composition that usually extends above and below the shoreline, often found near dams of big impoundments.
riverbank – The bank or banks of a river.
riverbed – There area or channel between the banks through which a river flows. In Arizona, there are also dry river beds.
rollcast (n., v., adj.) – A type of fly-casting technique in which the line is not cast above the water, but instead rolled over with the line lying on the water.
Rooster Tails – A brand of in-line spinner.
saddle – A thin piece of land that extends out (sometimes an extended point) from the shoreline and connects to an island (sometimes underwater), reef or a hump. Submerged saddles can hold lots of fish.
salmon eggs – A type of egg bait typically used for trout fishing.
San Juan worms – A type of wet fly designed to look like a small aquatic worm that was popularized on the San Juan River in New Mexico, but is also used at Lees Ferry, the Lower Salt River and other riverine trout fisheries.
Sassy Shad – A brand of soft-plastic lure that resembles a shad.
seine net – A rectangular fishing net designed to hang vertically in the water, the ends being drawn together to encircle fish.
selective harvest – Deciding to release or keep fish based on species, size, relative abundance, or culinary plans.
shad – Any of several species of forage fish that have a rather deep body. In Arizona, the most common is the threadfin shad.
Shad Rap – A brand name crankbait.
shiner – A member of the shiner family often used for bait. The most common in Arizona is the gold shiner.
shoal – A submerged ridge, bank, or bar.
shore-fishing, shore-fish – Fishing from the shore, as opposed to fishing from a boat or wading.
short strike – When a fish hits at a lure and misses it.
slack line – The loose line from the tip of the rod to the lure. This can be a slight bow in the line to an excess of line lying on the water. The opposite is fishing with a tight line, such as when using a drop shot outfit.
Slug-Go – A brand of soft-plastic jerkbait.
Sight-cast, sight-casting, sight-fish, sight-fishing – The technique of casting and fishing when the fish are spotted first.
size limit – The legal length a fish must be is it is in possession (kept). Some fisheries have slot limits, where fish in the specified slot size range cannot be possessed.
skipping – A method of suing small lures and casting them hard and at a low angle to the water to make them skip, like a flat stone.
slip-float – A float rigged with a tin stop or bead on the line to make it stop at a pre-determined depth.
slip-sinker – A lead, zinc or steel weight with a hole through the center that allows it to slide freely up and down the fishing line. A slip sinker provides the weight for casting, yet allows the bait to move freely.
slot – A fishing size limit where the angler may keep fish shorter than a minimum length but longer than an upper length limit. For instance, a slot limit of 13 to 16 inches means you must, by regulation practice catch-and-release on the fish in the slot. Slot limits are special regulations used on specific bodies of water.
slough – A long, narrow stretch of water such as a small stream or feeder tributary off a lake or river.
slow roll (or slow rolling) – A spinnerbait presentation in which the lure is retrieved slowly through and over cover and objects. A trailer bait is often on the hook.
slush bait – A top-water plug with flat or pointed head.
smallmouth bass – A black bass, primarily bronze in color, whose jaw does not extend beyond the eye and is found in clear rivers and lakes. They are also called bronzebacks, brown bass, river bass, or smallies.
snagging – A method of catching fish by jerking an unbaited hook through the water. In Arizona, snagging is not legal except for carp.
soft bottom – River or lake bottoms which are comprised of soft material, such as silt, mud, or muck.
sonar – An acronym derived from the expression “sound navigation and ranging.” Refers to the method or equipment for determining by underwater sound techniques the presence, location or nature of objects in the water. Fish finders use sonar.
spider jig – A type of leadhead jig with a skirt, much like the one on a spinnerbait.
spider trolling – Trolling with several rods at once.
spincaster – A manner of fishing employing a push-button, closed-faced spinning reel or baitcasting rod; the reel is mounted topside on the rod.
spin-casting, spin-cast – Sometimes called American spinning, or closed face spinning. Uses a fixes spool enclosed in a nose cone so the line leaving the reel’s nose cone comes out straight.
spinnerbait – An artificial bait consisting of a leadhead and one or two rotating blades and either a straight or a safety-pin style shaft dressed with material (often called a skirt).
spinning – A manner of fishing employing an open-face or closed-face spinning reel and spinning rod; reel is mounted on the underside of the rod and the rod guides are also on the underside of the rod.
Spinning reel – A fixed spool reel, generally referring to open-faces spinning.
Split shot, split-shotting – A style of finesse fishing employing a split shot weight up the line typically 6 to 18 inches above a small artificial worm, lizard, crawfish or grub, usually rigged Texas-style (hook concealed in the bait).
spook – Alarming a fish, such as making too much noise, movement or casting a shadow so fish become “spooked.”
stained – A discoloration of the water usually occurring after a heavy rain or significant runoff. Some shorelines can have stained water from wind and rain action causing shoreline erosion. Bass especially can often hide and feed in those bands of discoloration.
starboard – the right side of a boat or ship.
stick bait – A slender plug or topwater lure that is given action by the angler manipulating the rod and reel, sometimes making the bait go back-and-forth to resemble a wounded shad, which is called “walking the dog.”
stickups – Tips of trees and brush that “stick up” from the water and provide structure, primarily for bass fishing.
still-fishing, still-fisherman – Fishing from one spot; primarily refers to shore-fishing from a single location.
stink bait – Bait, such as chicken liver, that puts odor into the water, typically for catfishing.
stinger-hook – An additional hook placed on a lure, spinnerbait or bait rig; also called a trailer hook.
stocking – The practice of releasing hatchery raised fish into ponds, reservoirs, streams or rivers. Stocking is often necessary in waters where the fishing pressure exceeds the natural fish reproduction capabilities.
stragglers – Bass that remain behind following a general migration.
strain – A group of related individuals created through selective breeding and that is genetically different from other strains of the same species.
stream – A body of running water.
streambed – The channel being occupied or formerly occupied by a stream.
striped bass – A member of the true bass family along with white bass and yellow bass. In Arizona, they are found in the Colorado River chain of lakes such as Powell, Mead, Mohave and Havasu, but are also found in Lake Pleasant.
structure – Changes in the shape of the bottom of lakes, rivers, or impoundments, especially those that influence fish behavior. Examples include flooded roadbeds, washes, arroyos, humps, ledges and drop-offs.
Sunfish – Any of a dozens of members of the sunfish family, including largemouth bass, bluegill, redear and crappie.
Super Duper – A brand of lure typically used for trout fishing. It can be cast but is often trolled.
suspended fish – Fish at mid-level depths, neither on the surface nor on the bottom.
swim bladder – A gas-filled sac found in the upper part of the body cavity of many bony fishes.
swimming lures – Sinking-type artificial baits designed to resemble a swimming baitfish. Such plus vibrate or wobble during retrieve and some have built-in rattles. Also called lipless crankbaits.
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tail-spinners – Compact, lead-bodied lures with one or two spinner blades attached to the tail and a treble hook suspended from the body.
tagging – Marking or attached a tag to an individual or group of individual fish so that it can be identified on recapture. Tagging is used by a biologist to study the movement, migration, population size or activity patterns of fish.
take-out – A term describing the point where boats are taken out of the water at the end of a float trip.
terminal tackle – Angling equipment, excluding artificial baits, attached to the end of a fishing line; examples include hooks, snaps, swivels, snap-swivels, sinkers, floats, and plastic beads.
Texas rig (Texas-rigged) – The method of securing a hook to a soft-plastic bait, such as a worm, lizard or crawfish, so that the hook is weedless (doesn’t protrude). Typically, a slip sinker (often a bullet sinker) is threaded onto the line and then a hook is tied to the end of the fish line. The hook (often an offset hook) is inserted into the head of the soft-plastic bait for about one-quarter of an inch and brought through until only the eye is still embedded in the soft-plastic bait. The hook is then rotated and the point is embedded slightly into the body of the soft-plastic worm without coming out the opposite side. Many anglers try to ensure the bait stays straight once it is Texas-rigged.
thermocline – A distinct layer of water where rising warm and sinking cold water meet but do not mix. It is a layer of water where the temperature changes at least one-half a degree per foot of depth. In many of our desert bass lakes, a thermocline often develops during the spring and breaks down in the fall. The colder layer of water is often lacking in oxygen, forcing most baitfish and sport-fish to the upper layer of water. Thermoclines can be so dense that they actually show up on sonar (fish finders and depth finders) as a thick, impenetrable line.
threadfin shad – The most common baitfish in Arizona’s warmwater lakes.
tight-action plug – A lure with short, rapid side-to-side movement. Typically used when fish are more active in spring, summer and fall.
tiptop – Line guide at the tip end of a fishing rod.
topwater – The technique of using topwater lures for catching fish, especially bass at the water’s surface. Topwater lures are floating hard baits or plugs that create some degree of surface disturbance during the retrieve, typically mimicking struggling or wounded baitfish on the surface.
trailer hook – The extra hook or cheater hook added to a single-hook lure, such as a spinnerbait or weedless spoon. Also called a stinger hook.
transducer -- A device that converts electrical energy to sound energy, or the reverse. Typically associated with depth finders or fish finders.
transition – These are where one type of bottom material or structure changes to another, for instance, a rock pile to solid rock, or sand to gravel. There can also be transition zones, such as mud lines where a river enters a lake. Fish can often be found in transition zones.
treble hook – A hook with a single or bundled shaft and three points.
tributary – A creek, stream, or river that feeds a larger stream or river, or lake.
triggering – Using a lure-retrieval technique that causes a sport-fish to react and strike. For instance, quickly speeding up a retrieve and then stopping. Can also referred to as causing a reaction bite.
trolling – Towing a lure or several lures behind a boat. When a fish is caught on the trolled lure, the boat is typically stopped and the fish is reeled in.
trolling motor – A small electric fishing motor, typically mounted on the bow, which is used as secondary means of propulsion for positioning or maneuvering a boat quietly in fishing areas.
tubing – A float fishing term that means to float down a river, stream or using a float tube in a lake while fishing.
turnover – In Arizona’s warmwater lakes, a turnover is typically experienced in the fall and is a phenomenon associated with thermoclines. In this case, the warmer layer of water at the surface cools down, and becomes colder than or as cold as the distinct layer of coldwater below. The result is that the two layers of water mix, eliminating the thermocline and creating a fairly uniform water temperature and perhaps introducing oxygen to the lower levels of the lake. This fall turnover action can result in bottom sediments nutrients being stirred up by the water movement, sometimes stimulating algal growth. The fall turnover typically signals the transition to winter fishing conditions.
ultralight – Lighter than standard fishing rod and/or tackle.
ventral fin – The paired fin located on the front of a fish’s abdomen.
warmwater – Refers to fish habitat or fish that are warmwater species, such as largemouth bass, sunfish, and catfish, as opposed to coldwater species such as trout, grayling and salmon or cool-water species such as northern pike and walleye.
water column – Vertical section of the lake.
water dog – Any of several large salamanders (the larval or aquatic stage). They are popular as live bait.
weedguard – A protective device on fishing hooks to prevent picking up weeds.
weedless – A description of a lure designed to be fished in heavy cover with a minimum amount of snagging. Various strategies are often employed to make a lure weedless.
weed line – Abrupt edge of an aquatic weed-bed caused by a change in depth, bottom type, or other factor.
weigh-in – Term typically applied to the weighing in of fish at a tournament.
wet fly – A fly fished underwater.
Westy Worm – A brand name of plastic worm with a leadhead that has two exposed hooks already rigged.
white bass – A type of true bass that is only found at Lake Pleasant in Arizona. White bass are related to striped bass and yellow bass. None of these bass are native Arizona fish.
worm-fishing (worm-fisherman) – The act of using worms, either natural or man-made, to catch fish, although the term worming typically refers to the act of using artificial worms to catch fish.
wooly worm, or wooly bugger – A popular type of wet fly often used by fly anglers fishing lakes.
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year class – Fish of a given species that were all spawned in the same year or at the same time.
yellow bass – A specific species in the true bass family. In Arizona, yellow bass are found in Apache, Canyon and Saguaro lakes along the Salt River.
yellow cat – a flathead catfish.
young-of-the-year – refers to fish in their first year of life, often referring to immature fish.
Zara Puppy, Zara Spook, Zara Pooch – Brand names of topwater lures.
zooplankton – Animals (mostly microscopic) that drift freely in the water column.
Z-ray – A brand name of heavy spoon typically used in trout fishing.
zug bug – A type of wet fly or fly pattern commonly used by fly fishers in lakes.
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What is a white ant better known as | Varieties of Fish
Varieties of Fish
Here are listed both fresh water and salt water fish because the two can't be cleanly separated. Many fish move to salt water to mature and come back to fresh water to spawn and others are found both in salt and fresh water.
General & History
The varieties listed here
are either of wide culinary interest or marketed in Southern California. Primary names are consistent with names used in the fish markets when correct, and with Fishbase when wrong. While you may not find your exact fish on this page, if you find the right family, cooking properties are probably similar. If you want more fish, Fishbase ( F2 ) lists over 32,800 varieties under over 303,000 common names - but they provide no culinary information.
Please consider the IUCN Red List status when buying fish. In order of rising concern: LC = Least Concern, NT = Near Threatened, VU = Vulnerable, EN = Endangered, CR = Critically Endangered, EW = Extinct in the Wild, EX = Extinct. In addition there are DD = Data Deficient and NE = Not Evaluated. The Monterey Bay Aquarium ratings are more complex, rating not only the sustainability of the species, but also the fishery's effect on other species as bycatch.
Click on pictures for larger version and cooking info
Anchovy
- [family Engraulidae]
A family of tiny fish that swim in large schools in temperate seas worldwide. They are very important to the fish food chain and also for production of fermented fish sauce, as essential to the cuisines of Southeast Asia as it was to Imperial Romans. The Anchovy Family now has its own page.
Barracuda
- [Sphyraenus species]
This very elongated fish is a fearsome predator with strong jaws and sharp teeth, but very rarely attacks swimmers. It is found mostly in tropical and subtropical seas. The photo is of a Pacific Barracuda (Sphyraena argentea) 42-1/2 inches long and weighing 8-1/3 pounds. This fish is found from Alaska to the southern tip of Baja California. Mexico, but is rare north of Point Conception in Southern California, It can grow to almost 60 inches and 26 pounds, but the Great Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda) can get up to 72 inches and 100 pounds.
Caution: Barracuda can be highly toxic in tropical reef areas like Florida, the Indian Ocean, Hawaii and northern Australia. Pacific Barracuda (S. argentea) is generally safe. Details and Cooking
Basa - See Vietnamese Catfish .
BASS
"Bass" is a popular name applied to many fish that aren't really bass, but people call them "Bass" anyway, particularly the Black Bass (Smallmouth and Largemouth) which are actually Sunfish . Shown here are the real bass (even though one of them is called "Perch"), with links to some of the "not actually a bass" fish. The Bass Family now has its own page.
Belt Fish
- [Largehead Hairtail (FishBase), Ribbonfish, Cutlassfish, Scabbardfish; Kalchi (Korea, lit. "Sword fish"); Tachiuo (Japan, lit. "Sword fish"); Peixe-espada (Brazil, Portugal, lit. "Sword fish"); Trichiurus lepturus]
This fish is found worldwide in tropical and temperate waters, usually not far from the coast. It can grow to over 7-1/2 feet long and 11 pounds, but the photo specimen was a mere 34-1/2 inches long, weighing 1 pound 3/4 ounce. This is a highly commercial fish, primarily for Asian markets, so it is very common here in Los Angeles, but it is also popular in Brazil, Portugal, Italy and Pakistan. Beltfish have no scales and make no effort whatever to be kosher. Details and Cooking .
Bigeye
- [Bullseye, Glasseye, family Priacanthidae (Bigeyes or catalufas)]
Bigeyes are a family of small tropical fish found all around the world, but most are concentrated in the Indo-West Pacific region, particularly in Indonesian waters. The photo specimen was labeled "Big Eye Snapper" in a large Asian market in Los Angeles, but I have identified it as Purple-Spotted Bigeye (Priacanthus tayenus). It can grow to almost 14 inches but the photo specimen was 7-1/2 inches (not counting a thread extending from the tail) and weighed 3.5 ounces. Details and Cooking
Bluefish
- [Pomatomus saltatrix]
This fish which is found just about everywhere except in the Pacific Ocean can grow to 51 inches and 31 pounds but the photo specimen was 16-1/4 inches and weighed 1.5 pounds. Considered a good eating fish it's highly commercial and now being farmed. Details and Cooking .
Bonefish
- [Albula vulpes]
This fish is found in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, but is now thought to actually be 8 species, all of which are visually identical. It is a prized game fish in a number of regions, particularly the Caribbean. It is, however, not a prized eating fish, so once caught, it is usually released. In the Bahamas, however, they are often split in half, spread with a sauce and baked for eating.
Bowfin
- [Choupique (Creole French); Amia calva]
This fish is the only surviving species of a line that is sister to the modern fish (Telosts) but retains more features of their common ancestor. It inhabits the etire Mississippi River drainage system and many other rivers and lakes in the eastern half of the United States and southeastern Canada. It is able to breath air so can live in oxygen poor environments. This fish is most noted for its roe, which is processed and marketed as "Cajun caviar", or under the trade name "Choupiquet Royale". IUCN Red Listed LC (Least Concern).
Photo by Stan Shebs distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike v3.0 Unported , Attribution Required
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Bream
- not a useful term - generally describes a moderately deep bodied fish of moderate size but is applied to many completely unrelated fish from a number of families.
Bumper
- [Pacific Bumper, Yellowtail Bumper, Chloroscombrus orqueta | Atlantic Bumper, Chloroscombrus chrysurus]
This fish is closely related to Scad , but while there are scads of scad there are only two bumpers - Pacific and Atlantic, and even those two may prove to be different varieties of the same species. The photo specimen is a Pacific Bumper . Pacific Bumper can grow to nearly 12 inches but Atlantic Bumper can grow to 25 inches and supports a larger fishery. Pacific Bumper are found in the Eastern Pacific from Los Angeles south to Peru. Atlantic Bumper is found in the West Atlantic from Massachusetts south to Uruguay. Details and Cooking
Butterfish
- [family Stromateidae]
A family of very deep bodied fish, many of which are called something else and other fish which are not butterfish are called butterfish. see Pompano , Sablefish , Pomfret and others. One is even a Piranha . The ones listed here are real butterfish even though they may be called something else. The Butterfish Family now has its own page.
Ca keo
Carp
- [Koi (Japanese), family Cyprinidae, order Cypriniformes]
The modern Carp family has been around for about 55 million years and the carp order (Cypriniforms) since the Jurrassic 150 million years ago. They are not considered a prime eating fish in the U.S. but are very popular on the menu in Asia and in Europe, particularly Poland.
Coming in many brilliant colors and patterns and happy to live in small freshwater ponds, carp is the primary fish displayed in decorative gardens. Call a fancy carp "Koi" and it can sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Unprotected ponds need big submerged pipes for them to sleep in because they are definitely on the menu for raccoons. The Carp Family now has its own page.
Catfish
- [order Siluriformes]
There are some 2200 species of catfish in as many as 40 families and many genera. The greatest number of species is found Central and South America (including one recently discovered in Mexico that may have been around since dinosaur days). Some catfish are ocean fish but most live in fresh water. Catfish do not have scales but some species are covered with overlapping armor plates. The Catfish Family now has its own page.
Char
- [Family Salmonidae Genus Salvelinus]
Char are closely related to Salmon and Trout , and a number of species are popularly called "Trout". Among these are Brook trout (northeastern North America), Bull trout (northwestern North America), Dolly Varden trout (northern California around to Russia), and Lake trout (Alaska, Canada, northeastern U.S. and introduced to northern Europe and Asia). The lake trout is the largest char, growing to just over 100 pounds. The Char Family now has its own page.
Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service = public domain
China Sole - see Vietnamese Catfish .
Chilean Sea Bass - A made-up marketing name for Patagonian Toothfish which is not a bass at all.
Climbing Perch - [Anabas testudineus]
Not actually a perch, this fish is a member of family Anabantidae (Climbing gouramies - a different family from Gouramies proper). It can grow to over 9 inches but the photo specimen was 5-1/2 inches and weighed 2.3. ounces. Able to tolerate extremely bad water conditions, it's an air breathing fish that can survive for weeks out of the water if it's kept damp. It can't actually climb trees though - individuals found in trees were probably left by birds. Most climbing gourami species live in Africa and are too small to eat, but this large one is found from India to China and considered a delicacy in Southeast Asia. It's both caught wild and farmed. Details and Cooking
Cobia - [Black kingfish, Black salmon, Ling, Lemonfish, Crabeater; Aruan Tasek, Haruan Tasek (Malay); Rachycentron canadum]
This excellent eating fish is native to the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, except the mid Pacific and east Pacific - but is now an invasive species on the east Pacific coast. It can grow to about 78 inches and weigh 150 pounds, but is usually around 43 inches long. It is the only species in the only genus of Rachycentridae. There is no fishery for this fish, it is solitary and caught by accident. It is, however, of great interest for aquaculture, with production under way in China, Taiwan and Vietnam, and development under way in several other countries. IUCN Red List status NE (Not Evaluated). Details and Cooking
Cod, Haddock, Hake & Whiting
- [family Gadidae (Cods and haddocks)]
Cod fisheries have been so economically important on both sides of the Atlantic wars have been fought over them. There are many varieties of cod in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific, a number of which are economically important, but there are even more fish called "Cod" that aren't cod at all. The Cod Haddock & Hake now have their own page.
Croakers & Drums - Corvina
- [Family Sciaenidae]
Croakers and Drums get their name from sounds they make underwater. Corvina is a Spanish name for many fish in this family, and has been adopted here in California to differentiate between two quite different "Yellow Croakers". The Croaker & Drum Family now has its own page.
Dace
- [Dart, Dare, Leuciscus leuciscus] - See Carp .
Daing
Various small salted and dried fish importatnt to Philippine cuisine, both as snacks and recipe ingredients. For details see our Daing / Tuyo page.
Dollar Fish - see Pompano .
Dolphin (fish) - see Mahi-Mahi .
Dover Sole
There are two fish marketed as Dover Sole, Microstomus pacificus (fishbase: Dover Sole ), actally a flounder, and Solea solea (fishbase: Common sole ). Woe betide s/he who attempts to use pacificus in a recipe for real sole.
Eel
- [order Anguilliformes families Anguillidae (freshwater), Congridae (saltwater), Muraenidae (Morays), others, and order Synbranchiformes (Swamp Eels)]
Anguilliforms is a large order of fish that have become very elongated to the point of resembling snakes and worms. While related to other modern ray-finned fish they tend to be rather primitive and a bit simplified. Freshwater eels spawn at sea and die there. Their offspring enter rivers as juveniles and live there until time to spawn. Lacking scales in most cases and scales that can be scraped off without tearing the skin in all cases, eels are not kosher. The Eel Families now have their own page.
Photo by Frieda distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
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Emperor
- [family Lethrinidae]
A moderate size family of Indo Pacific fish (only one species ventures into the Atlantic, just on the west coast of Central Africa). Most are under 24 inches long and most support at least minor fisheries.
Pink Ear Emperor - [Lethrinus lentjan]
This Indo - West Pacific fish is found from the eastern coast of Africa through the South Pacific islands, and as far north as Taiwan. The most commercial of the Emperors, this fish can grow to 20 inches, but the photo specimen was 15 inches long and weighed 1 pound 10 ounces. This fish tends to olive on the upper body and lighter below, but adopts various other color schemes and patterns. "Pink Ear" comes from the variable size slash of red at the back edge of the gill cover. This fish is IUCN Red List rated NE (Not Evaluated), and is not considered threatened. Important: see Details and Cooking for special notes.
Flathead
- [Bartail Flathead, Platycephalus indicus]
Flatheads are a fairly large family of fish but only this one is commercially significant. The Bartail Flathead can grow to 39 inches and 7.7 pounds but the photo specimen was 14-1/2 inches and weighed 11 ounces, the in a package of three frozen in China. This fish is found from the Atlantic coast of southern Africa around through the Indian Ocean all the way to the mid Pacific islands and has been introduced into the eastern Mediterranean. It ranges from from southern Australia north to Korea and Japan and is now also being farmed, particularly in Japan. Prep & Cooking Details .
Featherback
- [Clown featherback, Clown knifefish; Pla Grai (Thai); Ca Thac Lac (Viet); Chitala ornata (Mekong). Also Chitala chitala (Ganges - disorderly spots), Chitala lopis (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Borneo - no spots)]
Native to the Mekong Basin, this important food fish is thin, with flesh so tender it's nearly mushy, and so shot full of bones, spines and fin rays it's nearly impossible to eat whole or as fillets. It is, however, the preferred fish for fish cakes, fish balls and some kinds of pickled fish and fish sauce in Thailand and Vietnam.
This fish grows up to 39 inches and 11 pounds but the photo specimen was 17-1/2 inches long and weighed 1 pound 6-1/8 ounces, purchased from the freezer case of an Asian market in Los Angeles. Prep & Cooking Details .
Flounders / Fluke
- [families: Achiropsettidae (southern flounders), Bothidae (lefteye flounders), Paralichthyidae (large-tooth flounders), Pleuronectidae (righteye flounders)]
Flounders include a number of families of fish that have evolved to lie flat on the bottom. Their eyes have moved so both are on the side marked "up". They make their living by blending into the sea bottom, often partially covered with sand, and ambush their prey, but some of them also leave the bottom and hunt like regular fish.
In Europe "Sole" means fish of family Soleidae. In North America the name is applied haphazardly to various flounders that are not members of the Soleidae family - probably because "sole" sounds more European and sophisticated. Caution: flounders are very often mislabeled. It usually doesn't matter a lot, but if what you are actually getting is "Dover Sole", it matters a lot. The Flounder Family now has its own page.
Fugu
- [Pufferfish, Blowfish, Boh-guh (korea), Family Tetraodontidae, usually some species of genus Takifugu (commonly Takifugu rubripes (photo)), Lagocephalus or Sphoeroides but also Diodon]
A family of fish that puff up to several times their normal size when threatened, common in tropical seas, particularly near reefs. Fugu is considered a great delicacy in Japan (and Korea) where it is extremely expensive and served raw in highly decorative arrangements. It's prepared only by trained and licensed fugu chefs - because the eyes and internals are so toxic one fish can kill 30 people.
Non-toxic fugu can be farm raised because they don't make the poison themselves, they have to consume certain bacteria to do it. Non-toxic fugu has generated little interest - without the risk of death it's just another fish. Puffers have long been eaten in Florida but are now banned taken from some waters due to a different bacterial toxin. Fugu is not considered threatened but is not generally marketed in North America. Details and Cooking
Photo by Chris 73 distuributed under license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike v3.0 .
Fusiliers
- [family Caesionidae]
Fusiliers are generally non-migratory reef fish found in tropical seas. The Fusilier Family now has its own page.
Galjoen
- [Dichistius capensis | D. multifasciatus (Banded Galjoen) | both of family Dichistiidae]
Native to the west coast of South Africa north to Angola, D. capensis can grow to 31 inches and 14 pounds. Found on the east coast of South Africa north to Madagascar, D. multifasciatus grows only to 13-3/4 inches and 3-3/4 pounds, but is prettier with vertical brown stripes. Both are very popular as both commercial and game fish, and D. multifasciatus is being farmed. These fish are found nowhere else, and there are no other fish in family Dichistiidae.
Photo by Frederick Hermanus Van der Bank, University of Johannesburg contributed to the Public Domain
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Goatfish / Red Mullet
- [Mullet, Red Mullets; family Mullidae]
A family of tropical and temperate marine fish, Goatfish, often called "Mulllet", have always been a very popular eating fish in Western and Mediterranean Europe, but are little known in North America. Confusingly, they are not related to the Mullet family . The Goatfish Family now has its own page.
Gobies
- [family Gobiidae]
Gobies constitute one of the largest fmailies of fish, but are among the smallest fish, ranging from 3/8 inches long to 12 inches long, but only a very few giant gobies are over 4 inches. Because of their size few gobies are food fish, but a number of them are popular aquarium fish. The Goby Family now has its own page.
Golden Snapper
- [Redfish (fishbase), Eastern Nannygai, Koarea; Centroberyx affinis]
Not actually a snapper, but related to the Squirrelfish / Soldierfish , this fish is found from northern Tasmania north to the central coast of Australia, and also around New Zealand and New Caledonia. It can grow to over 20 inches long and 4 pounds, but is commonly less than 16 inches. The photo specimen, from New Zealand, was 15 inches long and weighed 1 pound 15-1/2 ounces. This fish is not considered threatened, IUCN Red List rated NE (Not Evaluated). It is a commercially exploited fish within its range. Details and Cooking .
Gouramies
- [Osphronemidae (Gouramies)]
Gouramies are a family of generally very small fish (most 1 to 3 inches), most living in Africa, but in Southeast Asia there are a few species of edible size. Many gouramies have a leading ray of the pelvic fins elongated into a tentacle which may extend beyond the tail. The Gourami Family now has its own page.
Graylings
- [Genus Thymallus]
These fish belong to the Salmon family along with Trout, Char and Whitefish. They inhabit fresh waters in the far north and are easy to tell from trout by their large scales and a very large and showy dorsal fin. The longest and most commercialized (wild and farmed) is the Arctic Grayling (T. arcticus arcticus) which may grow to 30 inches and over 8 pounds. The grayling proper (T. thymallus,) is a European species that may grow to 24 inches and 15 pounds.
Drawing by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service = public domain.
Groupers
- [family Serranidae]
A group of ocean fish of the same family as Sea Bass and with very similar in characteristics. The most famous are the Giant and Goliath Groupers which can grow to around 1000 pounds - pretty big bass. All groupers meet kosher requirements but many species are Red Listed as VU (vulnerable) or EN (Endangered). The Grouper Family now has its own page.
Haddock
Hake
- [family Phycidae, family Merlucciidae, others]
"Hake" includes several families of long narrow fish of the same order as cod. Hake are popular in Europe but not widely in the U.S. where much of the New England catch is shipped to Europe. The main commercial species, the European hake (Merluccius merluccius), can grow to 55 inches and 33 pounds, but is commonly around 18 inches. It appears to be over-fished but is not yet on the threatened lists.
Photo of M. merluccius from Fishbase by Paul Harrison, permission granted, Attribution Required.
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Shad
- [Family Clupeidae, various genera and species]
A family of generally small oily fish of tremendous commercial importance worldwide. Herring can grow to over 18 inches and 1.5 pounds but is generally caught and harvested much smaller. See also Sardine . The Herring Family now has its own page.
Idiot Fish - See Rock Fish - Idiot .
Jacks, Amberjacks, Trevally, etc.
- [family Carangidae, various Genera]
Common names within family Carangidae are very disorderly, including Jacks, Amberjacks, Pompanos, Trevally, Bumpers and Scads, without clear deliniation as to which are which. This section deals with those most commonly called Jacks and Trevally, which tend to be some of the larger of the Carangidae, without too much regard as to what genus they belong to. The fish don't cooperate either, some change shape significantly as they mature. With 30 genera, this naming mess is impossible to make orderly. for other fish of this family see Pomponos , Scad and Bumpers .
Silvery John Dory
- [Zenopsis conchifer]
This fish is not the famous John Dory of European cuisine, though looks a lot like it except for color. Silvery John Dory is native to both sides of the Atlantic, from sub-Arctic down to Argentina and South Africa. It is also found in the Indian Ocean from South Africa around to Indonesia and northwest Australia. It is not found in the Pacific at all. This fish can grow to 31-1/2 inches long and 7 pounds, but the photo specimen was 21 inches long and 3-1/2 pounds, a typical size. Silvery John Dory is IUCN Red Listed NE (Not Evaluated) but is not considered threatened. It has no scales, so is not kosher.
Silvery John Dory is not a good swimer and catches it's prey by sneaking up on it. It then suddenly extends its mouth into a long tunnel and sucks the pray in. It is distinguished by a row of hard bony scutes from under from the head back to the anal spines, and hard bony bucklers, each with a thorn on it, for the full length of the base of the dorsal and anal fins. Details and Cooking .
Kilka
- Philippine word for just about any Grouper , along with a few non-groupers.
Lingcod
- [Ophiodon elongatus]
The only representative of genus Ophiodon, the Lingcod is not a cod. It's found on the Pacific coast of North America from Ensenada, Mexico to the Gulf of Alaska and along the Alutian islands. It is considered an excellent eating fish and is a prized by sports fishermen along the Pacific coast of North America. Lingcod can grow to nearly 60 inches and 130 pounds but the photo specimen, purchased at an Asian market in Los Angeles, was 27-3/4 inches and weighed 6.91 pounds. Details and Cooking .
Lionfish
- [Red Lionfish; Pterois volitans | Common Lionfish, Devil Firefish; Pterois miles]
These fish, native to the Indo-West Pacific region, are now serious invasives in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and along the South Atlantic coast of the United States. They very much deserve being eaten, as they eat just about everything else. They are severely degrading the reef ecology of the region, and are threatening important fisheries. They are insatiable eaters, they just don't stop, and many caught for study show distinct signs of obesity. The Red Lionfish is the most common, with the very similar Common Lionfish composing just 7% of the population. Details and Cooking .
Lizardfish
- [family Synodontidae]
These rather strange fish are voracious predators, sometimes swallowing fish 2/3 their own length. Their large mouths have multiple rows of needle sharp teeth, and they even have rows of needle teeth on their tongues. They are mainly ambush predators. Their flesh is strangely soft, almost gelatinous, and their bones are incompletely calcified. The most famous is the Bombay Duck, very popular in India, Southern China and Vietnam, both fresh and dried. The Lizardfish Family now has its own page.
Lumpfish
- [Lumpsucker; Cyclopterus lumpus]
This strange fish, which is highly variable in both shape and color, is native to the North Atlantic, from just south of New Jersey around to the north coast of Spain, and extending north above the Arctic Circle. They are most often dark gray, but males turn bright orange and females blue-green during mating season. The pelvic fins, just below the pectoral fins, are modified into a sucker disk used to attach to rocks and seaweed. Males may grow to 16 inches and females to 24 inches, with a maximum weight of 21 pounds.
While the flesh is eaten in the Nordic countries, fresh or smoked, this fish is most famous for its eggs, which are used to make a less expensive caviar. The eggs may be dyed black to resemble sturgeon caviar, or may be dyed red. IUCN Red Listed NE (Not Evaluated).
Photo by Cephas distributed under licence Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike v3.0 unported
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Mackerel Family
- [Seer Fish (India); family Scombridae (Mackerels, tunas, bonitos)]
Mackerels are a large family including several genera of economically important fish ranging from a few ounces to nearly 100 pounds. Mackerel are in general oval fish, meaty, oily and strongly flavored. Tuna, which are flatter in shape, are technically mackerel but are treated separately. Fish called "horse mackerel" or "jack mackerel" are not mackerel but related to Jacks and Scads. Mackerel Family now has its own page.
Mahi-Mahi
- [Dolphin, Dolphin-fish, Dorado Coryphaena hippurus]
This large fish is unrelated to the sea mammal also called "Dolphin" so the Hawaiian name Mahi-Mahi is now widely used to avoid confusion. This fish is found in tropical and subtropical seas the world around, including the deep ociean where few other fish venture. They are a short lived fish and are usually caught at about 20 pounds, though they can grow to 90 pounds. The flesh is firm and fine grained, and generally cut into steaks or fillets. It is often used as a kosher substitute for swordfish, Details and Cooking
Photo by Jeff Weiss (edited) contributed to the Public Domain
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Milkfish
- [Bangus (Philippine), Chanos chanos]
This Indo-Pacific warm water fish is an important food fish in India, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, particularly the Philippines. Milkfish are extremely suspicious, strong and very fast so are difficult to catch in the wild but are a major farm fish in many tropical counties. While they can grow to almost 6 feet and over 30 pounds, farmed milkfish is generally marketed at 18 inches and smaller The fish in the photo was 18 inches and 2-1/4 pounds. The milkfish is durable, having survived the Cretaceous extinction that did in the dinosaurs, the ammonites and perhaps 50% of other marine species. Prep & Cooking Details
Monkfish
- [Angler, Lophius americanus (North America), Lophius piscatorius (Europe)]
Monkfish is mostly a huge ugly inedible bony head with a small tail sticking out the back side of it. This explains why you'll never see a whole monkfish in the fish market - only the tail is sold. The American Monkfish can grow to 47 inches and 57 pounds, the European to 78 inches and 127 pounds but these figures are meaningless since most of the fish is inedible. The European Monkfish is considered heavily over-fished though not yet on the official endangered lists. Monkfish is not kosher. Details and Cooking
Moonfish
- [Mene maculata family Menidae]
This Indo - Pacific fish is found from the eastern coast of Africa through the South Pacific islands and as far north as the southern tip of Japan. This species, the only member of the Menidae (Moonfish) family, can grow to nearly 12 inches but the photo specimen was 8-1/4 inches and weighed 7.4 ounces. In its home range moonfish is often dried and can be dried without salt. Having no scales it is not kosher and is not listed as threatened. Prep & Cooking Details .
Moonfish, Mexican
- [Selene orstedii]
Related to Jacks and Pompanos, these fish are found along the East Pacific coast from Baja California to Ecuador in South America. They can grow to 13 inches long, but the photo specimen, from Ecuador, was 10-1/2 inches long (7-1/2 inches without the tail), 5-1/2 inches high and 7/8 inch thick. It weighed 9-7/8 ounces. This is a typical size for those sold in Southern California. Mexican Moonfish reproduce well and are not considered threatened. They are not kosher due to lack of removable scales. Details and Cooking .
Mullet Family
- [Family Mugilidae]
Mullets are a fairly large family of salt water fish, They have always been very popular in the Mediterranean area and costal Europe but little used in North America, but they are now very common in the Asian markets here in Southern California. Confusingly, the best known "mullet", the Red Mullet, isn't a mullet at all but a Goatfish . The Mullet Family now has its own page.
Orange Roughy
- [Hoplostethus atlanticus]
A member of the Slimehead family, this fish is caught in extremely deep cold waters, mainly off New Zealand. The fishery started in 1979 when gear was made available that could locate and catch them at such depth. They are extremely long lived (to 150 years) slow breeding fish and even at current reduced rates the fishery is probably not sustainable. Rated Do Not Eat by marine environmentalists and listed as threatened by the government of Australia. Average market size is about 2-1/4 pounds and they are so ugly they're always sold as fillets. The flesh is mild, almost shellfish like and has been compared to sole.
Drawing by Robbie Cada contributed to the public domain.
Pacu / Piranhas
- [family Characidae]
This family of fish, native to the rivers of South America, has a very bad reputation for biting (and stripping cows to bare bones in a few minutes), but several fish on the Pacu side of the family are farmed for sale in markets, and they are really rather good eating. They do bite, and one has a reputation for biting off the balls of skinny dippers, but Pacu don't run in shoals like the famous Red Piranah. The Piranha Family now has its own page.
Paddlefish
- [Spoonbill; Polyodon spathula (American) | Psephurus gladius (Chinese)]
American paddlefish are native to the Mississippi drainage basin and can grow to over 7 feet and 200 pounds. They have recently been found in the Danube, probably escaped from fish farms, and have been seen in restaurant holding tanks in southern China. Chinese paddlefish were native to rivers in northern China and grew to nearly 10 feet and 660 pounds. They are now though extinct due to dam building, polution and overharvesting.
Paddlefish are related to Sturgeon, and like sturgeon produce valuable caviar. This has traditionally been harvested from wild caught fish, but the success of California sturgeon farms has encouraged aquaculture development for both caviar and meat. Details and Cooking .
Illustration by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service = Public Domain.
Parrotfish
- [Genus Scarus of family Scaridae]
Parrotfish are a fairly large family of at least 10 genera, found in reef environments in the Indo-Pacific region and also the Caribbean region. They are of critical importance to the reef environment, because they clean the coral of algae and sponges on both the sea side and the land side. Only a few species are fished commercially. The Parrotfish Family now has its own page.
Patagonian Toothfish
- [Chilean Seabass, Merluza Negra (spanish), Mero (japan) Dissostichus eleginoides]
A large fish (up to 250 pounds) living at great depths in the southern oceans from Uruguay to the Antarctic Circle. It has very white flesh with a high fat content but rather little flavor. A single large fish can sell for $1000 in Japan. Though marketed as "Chilean Sea Bass" in the U.S. it is not a bass at all nor is it specific to Chile. This fish is endangered by pirate fishing and it's slow rate of maturing. While there is some properly licensed commercial fishing, the pirate take is thought to be five times as large. It is not possible to tell legal from pirated fish so consuming this fish should be avoided.
Photo by US Federal Government = public domain.
Perch
[Genus Perca species; also Latidae (Lates perches)]
"Perch" is the prototype for Order Perciformes (Perch-like fishes) to which most of our familiar fish belong. Perch are properly fresh water fish of which there are two main members, Walleye and Yellow Perch. There are a number of ocean fish called "perch" but none are actually perch. I am, though, including Lates perches (Latidae) here for convenience.
Petrale Sole - see Flounders
Pollock
-
[Theragra species (Alaska, Norwegian) | Pollachius species (true pollocks - northeastern North America, northern Europe, a few as far south as Spain) - family Gadidae (Cod)]
Native through the Sea of Japan, around Alaska and down to Carmel, California, the Alaska Pollock [walleye pollock; T. chalcogramma] is the largest fish harvest in the world at 3 million tons per year. Most is made into sirimi (artificial crab meat) and McDonald's fish sticks. This fish can grow to 35 inches and 8-1/2 pounds, but the photo specimen was 16-1/4 inches and 1 pound 4 ounces. Alaska Pollock is considered a sustainable catch by marine ecologists, IUCN Red List NE (Not Evaluated). Details and Cooking .
Pomfret
- [family Bramidae]
Yes, there actually are real pomfret, but the fish called "Pomfret" in the market aren't. They're Butterfish and Pompano . Black Pomfret Taractes rubescens, Atlantic Pomfret Brama brama and Pacific Pomfret Brama japonica are real pomfrets but I have yet to find any in the markets.
Drawing of Brama brama by U.S. Federal Government = public domain.
Pomfret, Black (Gray) - see under Pompanos Black Pomfret . There is actually a Black Pomfret that's a real Pomfret (Taractes rubescens), but the pompano is what you'll find called "black pomfret" in the markets.
White Pomfret - see under Butterfish Chinese Silver Pomfret .
Pompanos
- [Genus Trachinotus, Parastromateus and others]
These are deep bodied ocean fish of family Carangidae (Jacks and Pompanos). and are prized eating fish worldwide. The family is, however, a bit confusing because some pompanos are called Butterfish and Pomfret while some fish from those families are called "Pompano". The Pompano Family now has its own page.
Pony Fish
- [Slip Mouth; Sap Sap (Philippine); Aurigequula fasciata (Striped Ponyfish) | Leiognathus equulus (Common Ponyfish)]
These tropical Indo-Pacific fish is found from the east coast of Africa to the Pacific Islands, as far south as the north coast of Australia, and as far north as Japan. The fish get their name from their strange extensible mouths, which look like a pony's nose when extended.
The Striped Pony Fish (photo) can grow to 8 inches and the Common to 11 inches, but the photo specimen was 8 inches and weighed 5-3/4 oz, caught wild off Thailand. Living near river mouths and in mangrove areas they are both caught wild and farmed, and sold both fresh and dried. They have no scales I could find so are probably not kosher, but they're IUCN Red Listed LC (Least Concern). Details and Cooking .
Porgy / Seabream
- [family Sparidae]
Porgies and Seabreams are deep bodied fish that subsist mainly by crushing shellfish and crustaceans. On the east coasts of North and South America the "Common Seabream", is the Red Porgy (Pagrus pagrus). Pagrus pagrus is also found on the coasts of southern Europe and North Africa, but the "Common Seabream" in Europe is the Blackspot Seabream (Pagellus bogaraveo). Here in California the familiar Porgies and Seabreams are all from Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Our Pacific Porgy (Calamus brachysomus) is not common in the markets. The Porgy / Seabream Family now has its own page.
Rabbitfish / Spinefoot
- [Spinefoot; Samaral (Philippine); family Siganidae]
Rabbitfish are tropical reef dwelling fish that, unlike most fish, are vegetarian, living on seaweeds (algae). Incidental to their diet they eat bacteria and other organisms adhering to the seaweed, and some of these contain ciguatera toxins. Predatory fish that eat Rabbitfish can concentrate these toxins to a dangerous degree, but Rabbitfish themselves contain only low, non-dangerous levels.
Rex Sole - see Flounders .
Members of the cod family (Gadidae) living mainly off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand.
Rockfish / Scorpionfish
- [Pacific Rockfish, family Scorpaenidae, family Sebastidae]
Some biologists lump all these fish under Scorpaenidae (Scorpionfishes) and some assign a number of genera to Sebastidae, a family not recognized at all by the first group. They are mostly venomous (poisoned spines) ranging from extremely to not much. Fortunately those off the Pacific coast of California fall in the "not much" range.
Popularly, rockfish are called names like "Sculpin" and "Rock Cod" but none are members of those families. Here on the West Coast they are popular eating fish ranging from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska to the tip of Baja California, Mexico, though each species has a more limited range. The Rockfish / Scorpionfish Family now has its own page.
Sablefish / Black Cod
- [Coalfish, Butterfish; Blue Cod; Anoplopoma fimbria]
This fish is currently a darling of the fancy chef set, under the name "Black Cod". Sablefish is not at all related to real Cod, nor much of anything else - there's only one other fish in the entire Anoplopomatidae family. Sablefish are found off the North Pacific coast in deep water with sandy bottoms. They range from mid Baja California all the way around to mid China, though they're scarce south of Los Angeles and Korea. Most of the catch on this side of the Pacific is sold to Japan. This fish can grow to 47 inches and 125 pounds, but the photo specimen was 19-3/4 inches and weighed 2 pounds 6-3/4 ounces, within the normal market size. Details and Cooking .
Salay Salay
- Philippine - a number of small deep bodied Scad varieties - see Yellowstripe Scad Alepes melanoptera, Blackfin Scad Alepes melanoptera, Herring Scad Alepes vari, Shrimp Scad Alepes djedaba.
SALMON
- [Family Salmonidae, Genus Oncorhynchus (Pacific) and Salmo (Atlantic) species]
Salmon are large seagoing Trout. Actually all Trout are Salmonidae but we've broken out those not called Salmon to other headings (See Trout ) for a list.
Salmon live most of their lives in the deep oceans but return to the river of their birth to spawn - and then die. Why they die I do not know, other fish of the same genus, even seagoing ones, survive spawning (so are called Trout). Atlantic salmon have a high mortality at spawning but some survive.
Sandfish
- [Sailfin Sandfish, Arctoscopus japonicus]
This fish is found in sandy-muddy bottom areas of the Asian side of the North Pacific. In Japan these fish are cultured in captivity, then released for the fishery. They grow to as long as 11 inches and 7 ounces. The photo specimen was by far the largest from a tray of frozen fish purchased from a Korean grocery and was 10 inches long and just over 4 oz. Prep & Cooking Details .
Sardines
- [Herring family Clupeidae]
There are many varieties of Sardine, all members of the Herring Family , and each variety is likely to be known by a number of local names. Larger fish may be sold fresh but many millions are canned every year, packed in water, oil, mustard sauce and tomato sauce, with and without hot chilis. Morocco is the largest producer of canned sardines in the world, providing 41% of the world's exports. Unfortunately, in my opinion, those canned just about anywhere else are better. The Sardine Family now has its own page.
Saury, Pacific Saury - see Mackerel Pike .
Scad
- [family Carangidae]
Scad belong to the same family (Carangidae) as the mild and delectable Pompanos and the stronger flavored Jacks. They resemble mackerel in flavor, but a little milder and without so much oil. These fish are popular in the Philippines, so are most likely to be found in a fish market serving a Filipino community. Small ones are also sold as Daing (Philippine dried fish). The Scad Family now has its own page.
Sculpin
- [family Cottidae (Sculpins)]
Sculpins are a large family of small fish, but in California when someone says "Sculpin" they really mean the California Scorpionfish , a member of the Rockfish / Scorpionfish family(s) that looks rather like a very fat sculpin.
Sea Bream
- [family Sparidae (most), family Lethrinidae, others]
A catch-all name for a number of deep bodied fish of various names that resemble fresh water bream. Most of them are Sparidae ( Porgies ) or Lethrinidae (Emperors) but other families are represented.
Seer Fish
- [Neymeen, Aiykoora (Kerala); Vanjaram (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh); family Scombridae]
Various Mackerel , including King Mackerel, Spanish Mackerel and Wahoo/Ono, used in India both fresh and dried.
Shad:
Shark
- [class Chondrichthyes subclass Elasmobranchii superorder Selachimorpha]
Sharks are very different from other fish. When the modern fish (teleosts - bony fish) came on the scene, they rapidly pushed their predecessors toward extinction. Under severe stress some of these older fish back evolved features of their own primitive ancestors while adding some very advanced features as well. So successful were these adaptions the following era is called "The Age of Sharks" and modern fish had to struggle to survive.
Photo © i0089 .
Sharks have much larger brains than modern fish and a more complex social structure. They generally give live birth instead of laying eggs and many are warm blooded and very energetic. They have no bones but a skeleton of light weight cartilage, allowing them to grow very large and still float. Their scales are formed like teeth rather than the removable flakes on modern fish (thus shark is not kosher).
Many sharks are now IUCN Red Listed as VU (Vulnerable) due to slow birth rates and Chinese demand for shark fins. Finning sharks is illegal in US waters and posession of shark fins or shark fin products is now illegal in California and Hawaii, states with the largest Chinese communities. The Shark Family .now has its own page.
Sheephead / Sheepshead
a name applied to an number of unrelated fish. See:
California Sheephead - see Wrasse
Sillago
- [family Sillaginidae (smelt-whitings)]
A modest size family of Indo - West Pacific fish, very slender and most under 15 inches long.
Whole Silver Sillago 05e - [Whiting, Common Whiting, Northern Whiting, Sand Whiting, Silago-whiting, Silver Whiting (Australia); Sillago sihama]
This Indo-West Pacific fish is found from the east coast of Africa to the Pacific islands, and from the southern tip of Japan to the north and west coasts of Australia. A few have gotten into the eastern Mediterranean through the Red Sea. They can grow to 13 inches but the photo specimen was 5-1/4 inches and weighed 0.6 ounce. Both caught wild and farmed, this is considered a good eating fish and is not threatened. Details and Cooking .
Silverfish / Icefish / Noodlefish
- [Family Salangidae (Icefishes, Noodlefishes) of Order Osmeriformes (Smelts)]
These fish are related to trout, salmon and smelts, but remain very small and most species live no more than a year. They retain larval features, including lack of color, uncalcified bones and no scales. They are found in salt, brackish and fresh water along the East Asian coast from Korea south to Viet Nam, in Chinese rivers and lakes, and around Japan and the Philippines. They are generally nearly transparent when alive, but turn milky white upon death. They are economically important in China, and popular culinary fish in China, Japan and the Philippines. This fish family now has its own Silver Fish / Icefish / Noodlefish page.
Skates & Rays
- [order Rajiformes (skates & Rays): family Rajidae (skates) Dasyatidae (stingrays) and others. Alternate: order Rajiformes (skates), Myliobatiformes (Rays)]
These mostly bottom dwelling fish are related to sharks but have pectoral fins so enlarged they are referred to as "wings". Like sharks skates have no bones but a skeleton of cartilage. Skate is generally sold as cuts from the wings and is prepared quite differently from other fish. I haven't seen ray for sale anywhere but skate wing, and sometimes whole skate can be found in Asian fish markets.
For how to tell Skates from Rays see Note F21 . Note: I accept the FishBase taxonomy so I can lump skates and rays into the same paragraph, not from malice against biologists who support the "alternate" taxonomy. Some skates are listed as endangered (Common Skate, Thornback and Roker) but it's impossible to tell in the market what skate they are selling if it's just wings. No skate or ray is kosher. Skates & Rays now have their own page.
Photo of Little Skate (Leucoraja erinacea) by Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory contributed to the public domain.
Smelt
- [family Osmeridae, several genera]
These tiny fish are related to Salmon, with some freshwater species, some saltwater and some that are freshwater and coastal brakish. . Various species are native to Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the U.S. and Canada, some as far south as Southern California but most in northern waters. Smelt are also found along the coasts of Europe and the western Pacific. A variety native to the U.S. northeast coast was introduced to the U.S. Great Lakes in about 1918 and became an important catch there, but the population is currently in decline. The Smelt Family now has its own page.
Snakehead
- [Mudfish, Snakehed murrel; Dalag (Phil.); Murrel (India); Channa striata]
This is one of the most important food fish in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, and popular in India and the Philippines. Both wild and farmed snakeheads are popular live in Asia but are highly illegal in North America. They can grow to 40 inches (larger in Hawaii) and 6.6 pounds but the photo specimen was 17 inches and 1-1/2 pounds. It's a fresh water fish preferring muddy water, and like the walking catifish it can survive extreme conditions and take off over land to exploit new ponds and rivers. Like the walking catfish It's a voracious predator but can survive in colder climates Details & Cooking .
Snake Mackerels / Escolars
- [family Gempylidae]
This is a modest size family, with about 25 species, only three of which are commonly eaten. The Snoek is considered favorably, especially in South Africa, but a couple others are quite notorious. The Snake Mackerel Family now has its own page.
Snappers
- [family Lutjanidae (Snappers)]
Snappers, particularly the Pacific Red Snapper, are very highly regarded as food fish and demand a premium price. For this reason various other fish, many not even in the Snapper family, are marketed as "Snapper" and even as "Red Snapper". The Snapper Family now has its own page.
Snook
- [Robalo, Black Snook Centropomus nigrescens (west coast), Common Snook C. undecimalis (east coast), family Centropomidae (Snooks)]
The Common Snook, found on the eastern coast of the Americas from North Carolina to Brazil, grows to 4-1/2 feet and 53 pounds. Black Snook, found on the western coast of the Americas from southern Baja California to northern Columbia, grows to 4 feet and 57 pounds, but the photo specimen was 16-3/4 inches and 1-1/4 pounds (factory cleaned). These two snooks look very similar except the Black is darker above the centerline. Prep & Cooking Details .
Sole
- [Common Sole, Dover Sole; Solea solea]
"Sole" without a qualifier means Common Sole, a fish also known as "Dover Sole" that's very popular in Europe. Unfortunately there's another by that name - see Dover Sole for an explanation of the confusion and subterfuge created by that name. This fish is native to the North Atlantic from Norway to the northwest coast of Africa, and is most numerous around the British Isles, the north coast of Germany and the coast of France. To a lesser extent it inhabits the Mediterranean and parts of the Black Sea. This fish can grow to 27 inches and 6.6 pounds but is more commonly about 12 inches.
See also Flounder and Tongue Sole . In North America a number of flounders are called "Sole" to make them seem more sophisticated and European. While there are other true soles, Common Sole is most common and preferred when available. The Marine Stewardship Council has certified the Hastings Fleet Dover Sole fishery as sustainable, but that may not apply to other fisheries. This fish is now also being farmed. As a Pacific Coast substitute use Petrale Sole (actually a flounder). Details and Cooking .
Photo by Hans Hillewaert distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 .
Spadefish
- [Angelfish (in error); Chaetodipterus zonatus (Pacific) | Chaetodipterus faber (Atlantic)]
The Pacific and Atlantic spadefish are difficult to tell apart, because both are so variable their characteristics overlap. I believe the photo specimen is Pacific, but am not certain. The Eastern Pacific is found from San Diego, California south to Peru, while the Atlantic is found in the Western Atlantic from Massachusetts, USA south through the Gulf of Mexico and on to the far south of Brazil. The Atlantic can grow to 36 inches and 20 pounds, while the Pacific can grow to 26 inches. The photo specimen was 13 inches and weighed 1 pound 13-1/4 ounces. The Atlantic is a minor commercial catch and some aquaculture. The Atlantic is IUCN listed NE (Not Evaluated) and the Pacific LC (Least Concern). Details and Cooking .
Spiny Eel
- [Ca Chach (Viet), Peacock Eel (fishbase) Macrognathus siamensis]
Spiny Eels are a separate order (Synbranchiformes) from eels proper and eels improper (Anguilliformes). There are a fair number of spiny eel species but this one, found in the rivers of Vietnam and Southeastern Thailand, is commercially significant (and a popular aquarium fish). Infesting freshwater rivers, streams, rice paddies and flooded forests they can grow to almost 12 inches but the photo specimen was 7.5 inches and weighed 1.1 ounces, the largest in a tray of frozen eels from Vietnam. The "spiny" part is tiny sharp stickers along the back and a couple on the bottom in front of the fins. Prep & Cooking Details .
Sprats
- [family Clupeidae (herring family) Genus Spratus]
This small fish, a little smaller than sardines, is particularly important in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Sprats are commonly smoked, beheaded (to fit in the can better) and packed in 4 inch by 1 inch high cans with sunflower seed oil and salt. These are a particularly important export in Latvia. They are also packed similarly to regular sardines and sold as "Brisling Sardines". The Sprat Genus now has its own page.
Squirrelfish / Blotcheye Soldierfish
- [Myripristis berndti]
This is an Indo-Pacific fish, ranging from the east coast of Africa through the Pacific Islands, as far as the Galapagos Islands, but is not found around Easter Island. It can grow up to nearly 12 inches long, but is commonly around 9 inches. This fish is not considered threatened, IUCN Red List rated NE (Not Evaluated). It is a commercially exploited fish within its range. Details and Cooking .
Sturgeon
- [family Acipenseridae]
Sturgeons are ancient fish, highly successful and little changed for something like 200 million years. Today most species face extinction due to the absurd prices show-offs and "gourmets" will pay for their eggs (caviar), and from degradation of habitat. Sturgeon are the largest fish found in fresh water with the Russian Beluga (A. Huso huso) reaching 19 feet and and over 4500 pounds while the more slender Pacific White Sturgeon (A. Acipenser transmontanus) reaches 20 feet and 1800 pounds. The photo specimen (smoked, not yet positively identified but possibly Atlantic (A. Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus)) was 27 inches and 1.6 pounds, typical for whole smoked sturgeon found in markets serving Russian communities. The Sturgeon Family now has its own page, including caviar.
Sunfish
- [Freshwater Sunfish; family Centrarchidae (Sunfishes)]
This family of freshwater fish is native to North America. Most members are called something else, particularly "bass" and "perch". Some species of Black Bass (genus Micropterus) have been introduced worldwide and are both caught wild and farmed. Japan has been attempting to erradicate Black Bass which have been introduced there, but so far without success. The Sunfish Family now has its own page.
Illustration of Flier (Centrarchus macropterus) by Duane Raver for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service = public domain.
Swordfish
- [Xiphias gladius]
A large, ferocious predatory fish that uses it's long sharp beak as a weapon to spear prey, which includes even Orcas, and to defend against Maco Sharks, the only predator big enough, fast enough and ferocious enough to take on a swordfish. They grow to 14 feet and over 1000 pounds. Swordfish have scales but not the kind that scrape off so they are not kosher. Swordfish are not considered an endangered species. Prep & Cooking Details .
Illustration by U.S. National Oceanic and Atsmopheric Administration = public domain.
Tench
- [Tinca tinca]
A Eurasian fish closely related to Carp and of similar habits and appearance except with much smaller scales. It can grow to 25 inches and is an estemed eating fish in Europe though largely unavailable in the North America. Substitute Carp.
Photo by Karelj contributed to the pubic domain.
Threadfin
- [family Polynemidae]
A family of fish where several rays of the pectoral fins are detached and elongated, sometimes greatly elongated. These "pectoral rays" are thought useful for feeling out food. Threadfins are found in the Indo Pacific and the Atlantic, several along the east coast of the U.S.. Most are salt water fish but a few live in rivers and others may enter rivers at times. The Threadfin Family now has its own page.
Threadfin Bream
- [Whiptail Breams, False Snappers; family Nemipteridae]
This medium size family of tropical Indo-Pacific fish can most commonly be found in the West Pacific, from the northern coast of Australia up to southern Japan. Some species are found instead in the Indian Ocean from East Africa to Malaysia, while a few species extend across both ranges. While small (up to about 13 inches), some of these fish are important food fish in the West Pacific region. The Threadfin Bream Family now has its own page.
Tigerfish
- [Unidentified]
At first this fish looks a lot like the common Tilapia, but you'll quickly notice it's comparitively thick and rather heavy. This fish was grown in Taiwan and purchased at an Asian market in Los Angeles labeled "Tiger Fish". It was 12 inches long and weighed 1-1/2 pounds. Details and Cooking .
Tilapia
- [Nile Tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus niloticus]
This fish, native to the Nile, can grow to 23 inches but is generally marketed here at about between 10 and 13 inches and 1 to 2 pounds pounds, like the photo specimen. Tilapia was already being farm raised in Egypt probably over 4000 years ago. It has since been transported to fresh water rivers and lakes in many countries. Tolerant of poor water quality, fast growing, cheap to feed and tasty to eat, Tilapia is an ideal aquaculture fish for warmer climates. It is produced in quantity in Southern California and Arizona, but most still comes from Mexico and South America. Details & Cooking .
Tilefish
- [family Malacanthidae (tilefish)]
Tilefish are a worldwide family that eats either plankton or forages on the bottom for invertebrates. These fish live in burrows of their own construction.
Mercury: Tilefish are at the top of the FDA's list of mercury containing fish. This is based on a 1978 study of a few fish from a single location in the Gulf of Mexico. Tilefish do not at all fit the profile for high mercury fish/ T test results are either an abberation or simply defective, and the FDA's own 2002 figures show low mercury - but don't expect them to change the list any time soon. The Tilefish Family now has its own page.
Tounge Sole
- [family Cynoglossidae: Cynoglossus bilineatus (Fourlined tonguesole); Cynoglossus arel Largescale tonguefish; and Others]
These Indo-Pacific fish are not actually sole, but Tonguefish (family Cynoglossidae). Tongue Sole can grow to around 16 inches are more commonly around 12 inches.The photo specimens were very like C. bilineatus, but I'm not completely confident that's what it is. The upper specimen was 14-1/2 inches long, 4-1/2 inches wide, 7/8 inch thick and weighed 10 ounces Details and Cooking .
Trout
- [family Salmonidae - Genus Salmo (Atlantic) and Oncorhynchus (Pacific)]
Only Salmo and Oncorhynchus are offically trout, but a number of related fish are called "trout" (see below).
Among Oncorhynchus are Pacific Salmon, Apache trout (Arizona), Cutthroat trout (western North America), Gila trout (Arizona, New Mexico), Rainbow trout / Steelhead (western North America, northeast Asia and introduced everywhere).
Among Salmo are Atlantic Salmon, Adriatic trout, Brown trout (Europe and Asia), Marble Trout (southeastern Europe), Ohrid trout (Macedonia, Albania), Sevan trout (Armenia (native) and Kyrgyzstan (introduced)).
Salmo and Oncorhynchus now have their own Trout Family page. Other fish popularly called trout are:
Char - Salvelinus - including brook trout, lake trout and others.called "trout".
Tuna
- [family Scombridae (Mackerels)]
Tuna include the largest members of the Mackerel family. Unlike those called "Mackerel", tunas have deep flattened bodies. Most have scales only in a few places but that's enough to be kosher. Bluefin Tuna (all varieties) is to be avoided as all Bluefins are critically endangered. Yellowfin, Bonito, Tongal, Skipjack, Bigeye and Albacore are acceptable for eating. The Tuna Family now has its own page.
Turbots / Brill
- [family Scophthalmidae]
Turbot and Brill are flat fish called for in many European recipes, but none of these fish get any farther west than Iceland. They inhabit the coasts of Europe below the arctic circle, thorugh the Mediterranean, into the Black Sea and on the northwest corner of Africa. Suggested substitute, Petrale Sole (called "brill" in western Canada). The Turbots / Brill family now has its own page.
Whitefish
- [genus Coregonus C. clupeaformis. C. lavaretus (Europe) and other species]
Arctic and subarctic estuary, river and lake fish related to the salmon, whitefish can grow to about 30 inches and about 20 pounds but the one in the photo is 19-3/4 inches and weighed 2-1/2 pounds factory cleaned. They are generally caught wild but are also farmed.
Whitefish are often smoked but are also an important fresh fish in the Frozen North, particularly in Russia, Alaska, Canada and the U.S. Great Lakes area. The roe is valued as a pretty good caviar. Prep & Cooking Details
Whitefish - Ocean Whitefish - see Tilefish .
Whiting Atlantic and Pacific - see Cod .
Whiting Indo Pacific & Australia - Smelt Whitings - see Sillago
Wrasses
- [family Labridae]
Wrasses are generally tropical and subtropical fish that appeared about 65 million years ago just after extinction of the dinosaurs. Many smaller wrasses are "cleaner fish" which establish "cleaning stations" larger fish stop at to get parasites removed from inside their mouths and gills and from their skins. Some other "cleaner wrasses" make house calls to service shy fish or fish that don't travel much. Larger wrasses live on sea urchins, mollusks, lobsters, crabs and other hard shelled bottom creatures. The Wrass Family now has its own page.
Yellow Corvina
| i don't know |
What did a 1957 government report on prostitution and homosexuality become known as | BBC ON THIS DAY | 4 | 1957: Homosexuality 'should not be a crime'
About This Site | Text Only
1957: Homosexuality 'should not be a crime'
A report sponsored by the government has suggested homosexual behaviour between consenting adults should no longer be a criminal offence.
The proposal is the principal and most controversial recommendation put forward by the 13-member committee chaired by Sir John Wolfenden, Vice-Chancellor of Reading University, investigating the current law on homosexuality and prostitution.
The first print of 5,000 copies of the 155-page "Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution" - known as the Wolfenden report - sold out within hours of publication.
After its three-year long inquiry, the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution in Great Britain came to the conclusion that outlawing homosexuality impinged upon civil liberties.
'Not the law's business'
It said society and the law should respect "individual freedom of actions in matters of private morality" and stressed it was neither condoning nor condemning homosexual acts.
Ultimately, private morality or immorality was "not the law's business".
It defined "adult" as being a person over the age of 21 and that such acts should be decriminalised only if they took place "in private" and with consent.
Under current law, various homosexual offences can incur anything from a �5 fine to life imprisonment.
Street prostitutes
The committee also made recommendations to "clean up the streets" of London and other major cities of prostitutes by introducing much higher penalties for soliciting.
But the report did acknowledge that by forcing prostitutes off the streets there could be a rise in the number of "call girls" and small ads in newspapers referring to "masseuses, "models" or "companions".
The Wolfenden committee included three women, judges, doctors, MPs, lawyers and ministers of religion.
Only one expressed his reservation on relaxing the law on homosexuality - James Adair, formerly Procurator-General at Glasgow. He believed it would be regarded by many homosexuals as "condoning or licensing licentiousness".
| Wolfenden report |
Which club has won the French football league title but is not actually in French territory | Paying the price again: prostitution policy in historical perspective, by Julia Laite
About the author
Executive summary
This paper examines the recent proposals made by the Home Office for a change in the way on- and off-street prostitution is controlled in the UK.
It traces the history of the laws currently in place, and examines the development of some key terms in the legislation, such as 'common prostitute' and 'brothel'.
Despite the air of novelty in contemporary prostitution policy, much of what the government proposes has already been experimented with. Street crackdowns, for instance, have been enforced several times over the past century or so, and these increases in repression have always had troubling impacts on the safety of the women involved in prostitution.
The proposal to allow more than one woman to work from premises is an interesting step forward. Brothels thus defined have been illegal for a hundred years and the policy could provide women with safer working options. But it could also provide organized and exploitative prostitution with a haven in which to operate.
Feminist campaigns against 'the solicitation laws' have been going on almost as long as the modern state's control of prostitution. Understanding the historical dimension of these debates may help to increase awareness of the arguments for fairer and more gender-neutral laws which consider the rights of prostitute women.
It may also help to overcome the sterile debate over whether to 'tolerate' prostitution, or 'eradicate' it. For understanding prostitution as something negative, as a product of a world in which women are abused, objectified, and economically disadvantaged provides all the more reason to demand that governments should not devise laws to punish prostitutes and deny them rights.
While the past century has witnessed massive changes in the status and rights of women, prostitution law has remained static and policies toward prostitution have grown increasingly repressive. A historical perspective thus reveals the ways in which even the newest prostitution-control strategies rely on outdated concepts.
In July 2004, the Home Office published
Paying the Price
, a consultation paper on commercial sex in the UK which provided information and opinions on a wide variety of problems associated with on- and off-street prostitution. The paper was prepared under the auspices of the then Home Secretary David Blunkett, who was envisioning a possible system of toleration zones for key cities as a way to deal with street prostitution. These reports and papers were circulated and re-circulated amongst Members of Parliament, the police, concerned citizens' groups, individual experts and voluntary organizations, and the Home Office collected over 800 responses. Finally, in early 2006, the government's plans were unveiled.
The toleration-zone idea seems to have disappeared with Blunkett: the new government policy rejects any attempt to licence or quarantine prostitution in specific areas. Instead, it advocates an increased crackdown on street prostitution by calling for stricter enforcement of the kerb-crawling laws which were first put in place in the 1980s. The most striking change in the new Home Office approach, and the one most enthusiastically reported by the daily newspapers, was the decision to allow prostitutes to work together in shared premises. The media chose to refer to this as a 'legalisation' of 'mini-brothels'. For several days, debates between feminists, moralists, sex workers, sex buyers and concerned neighbourhood residents raged over whether or not the UK should 'tolerate' or 'eradicate' prostitution.
These debates are in need of some historical perspective. Examining the history of prostitution law, its implementation, and its critics over the past one hundred and fifty years provides an important dimension to the proposed policies. Firstly, it can give us an idea about what is being changed by the new policy and what has remained the same. This historical examination reveals the strikingly static nature of the UK's prostitution-control strategy and the degree of its reliance on out-dated precepts and exclusionary justice, but it also demonstrates that some of the suggested policies, while a long time coming, may be a step in the right direction. Historical perspective also warns us about what the ground-level outcomes of these suggested policy changes may be. The new policy proposes to protect women and children, and to bring 'those who exploit individuals through prostitution to justice'. The insights of almost two hundred years of history, however, give us cause to fear that it is the women working in prostitution upon whom these new strategies will fall most heavily.
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Change and continuity in the nineteenth century
The first law which made reference to the term 'common prostitute' was the Vagrancy Act of 1824. Subsection 3 of this Act stated that 'any common prostitute behaving in a riotous or indecent manner in a public place or thoroughfare' was liable to a fine or imprisonment. The next law of prostitution control was only applicable to London's police districts: subsection 54 of the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839. This stipulated that 'any common prostitute loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution to the annoyance of inhabitants or passers-by' would be subject to arrest and, if convicted, to a fine, which would increase upon subsequent convictions. In 1847, a very similar law was put in place for the rest of England, in the Towns Police Clauses Act. Together, these 'solicitation laws,' as they came to be called, were used by police in England and Wales to control unruly women in public.
A major change, or rather an addition, to the existing strategy came in 1885, when parliament, under immense public pressure, passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act. In July of 1885, William T. Stead, editor of the
Pall Mall Gazette
, had published an investigative report which unveiled an alleged organized child-prostitution ring in the heart of London, dramatically entitled 'The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon'. The new act raised the age of consent for sexual intercourse from 13 to 16 and created protective laws against procurement and forcible detainment of women by third parties for the purposes of prostitution.
More important for our current conundrum and for contemporary day-to-day policing, however, was subsection 13 of the new Act: 'Suppression of Brothels'. Under the 1885 legislation, any person who kept, managed, or assisted in the management of premises used as a brothel, or was the tenant or landlord of such premises, was liable to a hefty fine or a maximum of three months' imprisonment. The act did not, however, define what was meant by the word 'brothel'. It was not until 1895 that the case
Singleton v. Ellison
decided that 'brothel' referred to premises used by more than one woman for the purposes of prostitution.
It was good news for women like Miss Ellison, who was working alone and hence escaped conviction. However, the ruling also meant that any prostitute living with another prostitute would be guilty of keeping a 'brothel'. In London around 1885, it seems that the vast majority of off- and on-street prostitutes rented premises with other prostitute women, or rented rooms from poor landladies. These women could not afford to pay police bribes, hire legal defence for their trials, or afford the prohibitive cost of appeal. The years following the act saw a crackdown on these sorts of 'brothels', and the women who owned them were convicted in numbers which reached over 1,000 a year. Keepers of larger brothels, like the infamous Mrs. Jeffries, who had played a starring role in Stead's melodrama as madam to the aristocracy, were prosecuted only rarely over the next thirty years.
One impact of this was the development of blocks of flats from the 1890s to the 1920s, individually rented to prostitutes, which allowed women to live together without coming under the act. This led to an increase in the value of the real estate of commercial sex: landlords would run several properties and charge the women extortionate rents. It also drew other third-party elements into prostitution: cabmen, bell boys and pimps, for example. These third parties would help prostitutes get customers in more subtle ways, as brothel and street prostitution were subjected to increased repression. These third parties would also often exploit, abuse and extort prostitute women, who were made more and more vulnerable to such ill-treatment by their increasingly criminalized status.
Several laws were passed between 1885 and 1922 to curb the exploitation of women and children in prostitution. However, while public concern and sentiment most often worried over the third-party role in prostitution, it always seemed to be the prostitutes themselves who felt the overwhelming brunt of the law's force. For instance, though 1898 saw a new Amendment to the Vagrancy Act passed, which made 'living off the earnings of a prostitute' (or pimping) an offence, in 1900 only 165 'pimps' were sentenced while 7,415 women were convicted under the solicitation laws.
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Criticism and compromise in the first half of the twentieth century
Despite the new laws directed at brothels, the late-nineteenth century was a time of crisis in the control of on-street prostitution, and police found themselves frequently frustrated by certain elements of the solicitation laws. The most troublesome of all for policemen was the 'annoyance' clause of the 1839 and 1847 statutes, which technically required them to prove that a 'common prostitute' was actually bothering people by her solicitation or loitering. This clause, it was understood, was the crux of the offence, for a woman could not be arrested for simply standing on the street, no matter what her immoral intention.
For this reason, magistrates of the 1890s were at times reluctant to convict on police evidence alone, and sometimes when they did it instigated a bothersome outcry from certain groups who were concerned with legal justice, the detrimental increase in police powers and women's rights. Despite the protests and the numerous charges of police corruption, a system of prostitution control developed between the Home Office, the police and the magistrates which relied heavily on what amounted to a removal of the annoyance clause. Magistrates convicted women after a short trial on the evidence of one police officer who, if he even mentioned the annoyance clause in the first place, was not required to produce any evidence of it. This de facto system meant that the early years of the twentieth century witnessed a formidable crackdown on street prostitution, much like the one proposed by the new Home Office policies today.
This system did not go unchallenged. By the First World War, various feminist organizations and civil-rights associations were vehemently protesting against the solicitation laws, which they saw as unequal, unjust, and injurious to the women who came under their influence. A focused campaign was launched by feminists and libertarians in the 1920s, exposing the shortcomings of the summary-justice system and describing the conviction of women on police statements alone as 'against the principles of English justice'. Furthermore, they argued, the term 'common prostitute', with which a woman could be labelled after only one conviction for soliciting, became a legal stigma which prejudiced every further trial she would attend, facilitated future arrests, and marked her as being in a legal class apart, as 'outside the pale of justice'. This label, which became even more official when police began fingerprinting prostitutes in 1917, coupled with the de facto removal of the annoyance clause, meant that any time such a woman was on the street, she was liable to arrest whether she was standing quietly, being accosted by men rather than accosting them, or simply out to buy a pint of milk. Moreover, argued the critics, the solicitation laws rested on a gross double standard of sexual morality, one which held women solely responsible for the transgression and nuisance of selling sex while leaving men unmentioned and unpunished in the buying of it.
These organizations succeeded in getting a bill to parliament several times in the twenties and thirties, demanding that the solicitation laws be repealed and replaced with a law which prosecuted anyone, male or female, prostitute or non-prostitute, who disturbed the order of public places. These bills never passed into law, but such was the force of the protest that the government conceded a Departmental Enquiry into Street Offences. Its report, published in 1929, came down largely against the existing solicitation laws and in favour of the recommendations of their feminist and libertarian critics. The new law, the committee concluded, should not use the term 'common prostitute', and should prosecute any person (male or female) who disturbed the public peace for 'immoral' purposes.
Much to the disappointment of those who had campaigned for a change in the law, absolutely no legislation came along the lines of the recommendations of the Street Offences Committee during the 1930s, though continued opposition to the laws and frustration on the part of the police did see arrest rates remain low until after the Second World War.
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Consensus and control in the second half of the twentieth century
Britain in the 1950s witnessed many changes in the position of the state towards its citizens. One manifestation of this shifting relationship was the appointment of a new Departmental Committee in 1956, charged with reassessing the government's approach to homosexuality and prostitution. It was also in 1956 that the Government made its first alteration to prostitution law since 1912, when it combined what was essentially the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, the 1898 law against 'pimping', and the 1912 Criminal Law Amendment Act (which had created the offence of 'trafficking'), creating the 1956 Sexual Offences Act. This framework still forms the basis of laws directed towards third-party organized prostitution today, and the case law definition of 'brothels' still stands.
In 1957, a year after the Sexual Offences Act was passed, the Departmental Committee into Homosexual Offences and Prostitution published the 'Wolfenden Report', named after its chairman. It agreed with nineteenth-century libertarians that it was not the state's job to police private morality. On these grounds, it recommended repealing the laws which criminalized homosexuality. It also argued that prostitution could not be condemned by the law as immoral in and of itself. However, it did not advocate, as had the previous Street Offences Committee of 1929, the repeal of the heavily criticised solicitation laws. Instead it proposed a rationalized repressive approach by invoking a discourse of rights: not by referring, as had the feminists of the 1920s, to the rights of prostitute women to equality and justice before the law, but rather by championing the rights of 'respectable' citizens to enjoy neighbourhoods free from the blight of street prostitution. This discourse of citizens' rights, which also appealed to the rights of women to be free from harassment, drew even some feminists into the new consensus of prostitution control.
Far from condemning the injustice of the solicitation laws the recommendation was to make them stronger: the requirement of proving annoyance should be removed from the new statute. This would help the police clear the streets and protect the rights of the respectable. The committee also recommended that the disparate solicitation laws and various by-laws should be amalgamated and standardized in one act.
While it noted a great deal of opposition to these laws among the witnesses interviewed, the Wolfenden Committee took little account of them. As to the accusation that the laws relied on a double standard for men and women, it summoned a rather weak argument along the 'public nuisance' lines: the women were guilty of an offence because they were the most visible and nuisance-generating face of commercial sex, being the ones on the supply side of the equation. As to the charge that the term 'common prostitute' was stigmatizing and unjust, the report claimed that its removal would place 'innocent' women at risk of arrest. There was little attention paid to the criticism that if a law was not fair when applied to 'innocent' people, then it was fundamentally unjust in the first place.
Unlike the recommendations of the Street Offences Committee in 1929, the government did indeed act upon the Wolfenden Report. They repealed the laws against homosexuality. They repealed all three of the solicitation laws and replaced them with the Street Offences Act of 1959, which made it an offence for 'any common prostitute to loiter or solicit for the purposes of prostitution'. In keeping with the report's views, and the de facto situation developed by the criminal justice system, the annoyance clause was officially removed from the statute.
This change in law facilitated one of the most intensive crackdowns on street prostitution in UK history in the 1960s. Simultaneously, off-street prostitution businesses, like escort services and massage parlours, increased, as did incidences of violent attack, murder, and the involvement of exploitative third parties. History had already suggested this might happen. It may have been only a coincidence that three years after the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 instigated a crusade against so-called brothel keepers, Jack the Ripper became known as the first serial murderer of prostitutes, but it is a symbolic coincidence. The women killed in 1888 were the first of many street prostitutes to fall victim to violence, abuse and serial murder worldwide over the course of the twentieth century.
The same laws that existed in 1824 and 1839 still exist in a form only slightly modified today. A woman known as a 'common prostitute' can still be arrested if she is out buying a pint of milk, and is introduced as a 'common prostitute' to the court before her trial begins, but today the policeman need not even pretend that this milk-buyer was bothering anyone. Despite vocal and long-standing protest, the discourse of prostitution as public nuisance and of prostitutes as legal pariahs has remained the ideology implicit in the UK's prostitution control strategy down to the present day.
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The present day: toleration, eradication, or justice?
There are many laws on the statute book which have remained unchanged for a very long time. But few laws have remained so static when every presumption underlying them has been challenged by immense changes in socio-cultural life. We have a far better understanding of the ways in which poverty, abuse and dislocation contribute to women's choices to prostitute themselves. The moral issues surrounding the commercial and promiscuous dimensions of the sexual have become a broad spectrum of grays. Most of all, the legal and social position of women has fundamentally changed since 1824, and we now live in a society where a double standard legally enshrined in words like 'common prostitute' seems, from a historical perspective, bizarrely antiquated.
The government, in 2006, has indeed resolved to remove the term 'common prostitute' from the statute, but has not viewed any other aspect of solicitation law with the same degree of critical awareness. Treating women on the street as 'prostitutes' in a de facto sense, for instance, by arresting them for loitering and being 'known to the police', means little street-level change is likely to follow from the repeal of this contentious term.
One more positive change suggested by the new policy is the government's decision to allow prostitutes to live and work together in groups of two or three. This move may provide women with some of the protection and security which they lost when the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act came into effect. Historical perspective suggests, however, that there may be some drawbacks. Firstly, the poorest and most vulnerable of women will still be forced to work on the street and hence be subject to the same pattern of repeated arrests and stigmatization. Secondly, while allowing women to work together has been characterized as a change made with the welfare of the women in mind, the simultaneous street crackdown will inevitably result in increased vulnerability for street prostitutes. Unless more money is invested in police action against pimps and traffickers, allowing a woman to work in premises may well result in providing these others with legal loopholes in which to continue their exploitation. The new brothel policy may therefore be more about getting prostitution out of sight and out of mind.
The media presented the choice that the Home Office and Parliament were facing as one between tolerating prostitution or eradicating it. But the history of the protest against the solicitation laws shows us that this is a false dichotomy. Providing legal justice and protection to prostitute women is not tantamount to tolerating prostitution. The critics of solicitation laws in the 1920s were adamant that prostitution was neither acceptable nor inevitable, but they did not believe that laws should be directed against prostitute women. Indeed, understanding prostitution as something negative, as a product of a world in which women are abused, objectified, and economically disadvantaged gives us all the more reason to demand that the government does not use laws to punish prostitutes.
Moreover, the history of the past one hundred and fifty years of prostitution-control strategies teaches us that with every attempt to make prostitution and its accessorized vices more illegal, women working as prostitutes have been increasingly victimized, stigmatized and forced into a commercial sex world in which third-party exploitation and abuse has continued to rise. A historical survey of the laws and their enforcement also gives us serious reason to worry about which policies will end up being most fully implemented: the protection and rehabilitation of women, or the street crackdown?
The government report took no account of the historical dimension of the laws upon which it pondered and which have gone largely unaltered for almost two centuries. Examining the extended history of a law and its enforcement seems to be one of the more reasonable ways to assess whether or not it is just, effective and beneficial. The tradition of UK prostitution law and any further reiteration of it, does not pass this kind of historical test.
October 2006
Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England since 1830
(2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2000).
Stefan Petrow,
Policing Morals: The Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, 1870-1914
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
Prostitution, Women and the Misuse of the Law: The Fallen Daughters of Eve
(London: Frank Cass, 2003).
Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
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Early life
Born into a poor family in Waco , North Carolina , Patterson was the youngest of eleven children and experienced an insular and troubled childhood. His family moved to Brooklyn, New York , where Floyd was a truant and petty thief. At age ten, he was sent to the Wiltwyck School for Boys, a reform school in upstate New York , which he credited with turning his life around. He stayed there for almost 2 years. He attended high school in New Paltz, NY where he succeeded in all sports (to this day the New Paltz football field is named in his honor). At age fourteen, he started to box, trained by Cus D'Amato at his Gramercy Gym. Aged just 17, Patterson won the Gold medal in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as a middleweight . 1952 turned out to be a good year for the young Patterson; in addition to Olympic gold Patterson won the National Amateur Middleweight Championship and New York Golden Gloves Middleweight Championship.
Olympic results
Defeated Vasile Tiţă (Romania) KO 1
Patterson's amateur record over 44 fights was 40-4, with 37 knockouts.
Patterson carried his hands higher than most boxers, in front of his face. Sportswriters called Patterson's style a " peek-a-boo " stance.
Early pro career
Patterson turned pro and steadily rose through the ranks, his only early defeat being an eight-round decision to former Light Heavyweight Champion Joey Maxim on June 7, 1954, at the Eastern Parkway Arena in Brooklyn, New York. Most people think Patterson did enough to win, and Maxim's greater fame at the time helped to sway the judges.[ citation needed ]
Championship
Although Patterson fought around the light heavyweight limit for much of his early career, he and manager Cus D'Amato always had plans to fight for the Heavyweight Championship. In fact, D'Amato made these plans clear as early as 1954, when he told the press that Patterson was aiming for the heavyweight title. [1] However, after Rocky Marciano announced his retirement as World Heavyweight Champion on April 27, 1956, Patterson was ranked by The Ring magazine as the top light heavyweight contender. After Marciano's announcement, Jim Norris of the International Boxing Club stated that Patterson was one of the six fighters who would take part in an elimination tournament to crown Marciano's successor. The Ring then moved Patterson into the heavyweight rankings, at number five. [2]
Patterson vs. Moore
After beating Tommy "Hurricane" Jackson in an elimination fight, Patterson faced former Light Heavyweight Champion Archie Moore on November 30, 1956, for the World Heavyweight Championship. He beat Moore by a knockout in five rounds and became the youngest World Heavyweight Champion in history, at the age of 21 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 5 days. He was the first Olympic gold medalist to win a professional Heavyweight title.
Ingemar Johansson knocks out Floyd Patterson and becomes boxing heavyweight champion of the world, June 26, 1959.
Patterson vs. Johansson I, II & III
After a series of defenses against fringe contenders (Hurricane Jackson, Pete Rademacher, Roy Harris, and Brian London), Patterson met Ingemar Johansson of Sweden , the number one contender, in the first of three fights. Johansson triumphed over Patterson on June 26, 1959, with the referee Ruby Goldstein stopping the fight in the third round after the Swede had knocked Patterson down seven times. Johansson became Sweden's first World Heavyweight Champion, thus becoming a national hero as the first European to defeat an American for the title since 1933.
Patterson knocked out Johansson in the fifth round of their rematch on June 20, 1960, to become the then first man in history to ever regain the Undisputed World Heavyweight Championship. Johansson hit the canvas hard, seemingly out before he landed flat on his back. With glazed eyes, blood trickling from his mouth and his left foot quivering, he was counted out. Johansson lay unconscious for five minutes before he was helped onto a stool.
A third fight between them was held on March 13, 1961 and while Johansson put Patterson on the floor, Patterson retained his title by knockout in the sixth round to win the rubber match in which Patterson was decked twice and Johansson once in the first round. Johansson had landed both right hands over Floyd's left jab. After getting up from the second knockdown Floyd abandoned his jab and connected with a left hook that knocked down Johansson. After that, Patterson came on with a strong body attack that wore down Johansson. In the 6th round, Johansson caught Patterson with a solid right. But the power in Ingemar's punches was gone. Patterson won the fight in the 6th round by knockout. [3]
Patterson vs. Liston I & II
After the third Johansson fight, Patterson defended the title on December 4, 1961 against Tom McNeeley and retained the title with a fourth-round knockout. However he did not fight number one contender Sonny Liston . This was due in part to Cus D'Amato, who did not want Patterson in the ring with a boxer with mob connections. As a result, D'Amato turned down any challenges involving the IBC . Eventually, due to a monetary dispute with Jimmy Jacobs , Patterson removed D'Amato from handling his business affairs and agreed to fight Liston.
Leading up to the fight, Sonny Liston was the major betting line favorite, though Sports Illustrated predicted that Patterson would win in 15 rounds. Jim Braddock , Jersey Joe Walcott , Ezzard Charles , Rocky Marciano and Ingemar Johansson picked Patterson to win. The fight also carried a number of social implications. Liston's connections with the mob were well known and the NAACP was concerned about having to deal with Liston's visibility as World Champion and had encouraged Patterson not to fight Liston, fearing that a Liston victory would tarnish the civil rights movement. [4] Patterson also claimed that John F. Kennedy did not want him to fight Liston either. [5]
Patterson lost his title to Liston on September 25, 1962 in Chicago, by a first-round knockout in front of 18,894 fans. The two fighters were a marked contrast. In the ring, Liston's size and power proved too much for Patterson's guile and agility. However, Patterson did not use his speed to his benefit. According to Sports Illustrated writer Gilbert Rogin, Patterson didn't punch enough and frequently tried to clinch with Liston. Liston battered Patterson with body shots and then shortened up and connected with two double hooks high on the head. The result at the time was the third-fastest knockout in boxing history. [6] After being knocked out, Patterson left Comiskey Park in Chicago wearing dark glasses and a fake beard for the drive back to New York. After the fight, questions were raised on whether the fight was fixed to set up a more lucrative rematch. Overnight, Patterson seemed to lose his public support as a result of his swift knockout. [7]
The rematch was set for April 1963; however, Liston injured his knee swinging a golf club and the fight was delayed to July 22, 1963. In Las Vegas that night, Patterson attempted to become the first boxer to win the Heavyweight title three times, but Liston once again knocked him out in the first round. Patterson lasted four seconds longer than in the first bout.
Post-title career
Following these defeats, Patterson went through a depression. However, he eventually recovered and began winning fights again, including top victories over Eddie Machen and George Chuvalo . The Chuvalo match getting Ring magazine's " Fight of the Year " award.
Patterson was now the number one challenger for the title held by Muhammad Ali . On November 22, 1965, in yet another attempt to be the first to win the World Heavyweight title three times, Patterson lost by technical knockout at the end of the 12th round, going into the fight with an injured sacro-iliac joint in a bout in which Ali was clearly dominant. [8] Ali called Patterson an "Uncle Tom" for refusing to call him Muhammad Ali (Patterson continued to call him Cassius Clay) and for this outspokenness against black Muslims. [9] Instead of scoring a quick knockout, Ali mocked, humiliated and punished Patterson throughout the fight. [10]
Patterson was still a legitimate contender. In 1966 he traveled to England and knocked out British boxer Henry Cooper in just four rounds at Wembley Stadium. In comparison, Ali never scored a knockdown against Cooper in their two bouts and was nearly knocked out by Cooper in their first fight after he was knocked down near the end of the fourth round, but recovered after his corner used smelling salts on him (which was against British rules) at the end of that round. Ali would go on to score a TKO over Cooper after Cooper was severely cut in the fifth round. [11]
File:Floyd Patterson Wild Wild West 1968.JPG
Patterson tried his hand at acting. He is seen in this 1968 The Wild Wild West episode as a landowner who is in danger of losing his property.
In September 1969 he divorced his first wife, Sandra Hicks Patterson, who wanted him to quit boxing, while he still had hopes for another title shot.
When Ali was stripped of his title for refusing induction into the military, the World Boxing Association staged an eight-man tournament to determine his successor. Patterson fought Jerry Quarry to a draw in 1967. In a rematch four months later, Patterson lost a controversial 12-round decision to Quarry. Subsequently, in a third and final attempt at winning the title a third time, Patterson lost a controversial 15-round referee's decision to Jimmy Ellis in Sweden , despite breaking Ellis' nose and scoring a disputed knockdown.
Patterson continued on, defeating Oscar Bonavena in a close fight over ten rounds in early 1972.
At age 37, Patterson was stopped in the seventh round in a rematch with Muhammad Ali for the NABF Heavyweight title on September 20, 1972. The defeat proved to be Patterson's last fight, although there was never an announcement of retirement.
Retired life
In retirement, he and Johansson became good friends who flew across the Atlantic to visit each other every year and he became chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission . He was also inducted into the International Boxing Hall Of Fame .
In 1982 and 1983 he ran the Stockholm Marathon together with Ingemar Johansson.
Patterson lived in New Paltz, New York for many years and was known as a true gentleman around town.
His adopted son, Tracy Harris Patterson , was a world champion boxer in the 1990s and was trained by Floyd during part of his career. Floyd also trained Canadian heavyweight Donovan "Razor" Ruddock in 1992 for his fights with Greg Page , Phil Jackson , and Lennox Lewis . [12]
The New Paltz High School football field was named "Floyd Patterson Field" in 1985.
Death
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Early life
Born into a poor family in Waco , North Carolina , Patterson was the youngest of eleven children and experienced an insular and troubled childhood. His family moved to Brooklyn, New York , where Floyd was a truant and petty thief. At age ten, he was sent to the Wiltwyck School for Boys, a reform school in upstate New York , which he credited with turning his life around. He stayed there for almost 2 years. He attended high school in New Paltz, NY where he succeeded in all sports (to this day the New Paltz football field is named in his honor). At age fourteen, he started to box, trained by Cus D'Amato at his Gramercy Gym. Aged just 17, Patterson won the Gold medal in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics as a middleweight . 1952 turned out to be a good year for the young Patterson; in addition to Olympic gold Patterson won the National Amateur Middleweight Championship and New York Golden Gloves Middleweight Championship.
Olympic results
Defeated Vasile Tiţă (Romania) KO 1
Patterson's amateur record over 44 fights was 40-4, with 37 knockouts.
Patterson carried his hands higher than most boxers, in front of his face. Sportswriters called Patterson's style a " peek-a-boo " stance.
Early pro career
Patterson turned pro and steadily rose through the ranks, his only early defeat being an eight-round decision to former Light Heavyweight Champion Joey Maxim on June 7, 1954, at the Eastern Parkway Arena in Brooklyn, New York. Most people think Patterson did enough to win, and Maxim's greater fame at the time helped to sway the judges.[ citation needed ]
Championship
Although Patterson fought around the light heavyweight limit for much of his early career, he and manager Cus D'Amato always had plans to fight for the Heavyweight Championship. In fact, D'Amato made these plans clear as early as 1954, when he told the press that Patterson was aiming for the heavyweight title. [1] However, after Rocky Marciano announced his retirement as World Heavyweight Champion on April 27, 1956, Patterson was ranked by The Ring magazine as the top light heavyweight contender. After Marciano's announcement, Jim Norris of the International Boxing Club stated that Patterson was one of the six fighters who would take part in an elimination tournament to crown Marciano's successor. The Ring then moved Patterson into the heavyweight rankings, at number five. [2]
Patterson vs. Moore
After beating Tommy "Hurricane" Jackson in an elimination fight, Patterson faced former Light Heavyweight Champion Archie Moore on November 30, 1956, for the World Heavyweight Championship. He beat Moore by a knockout in five rounds and became the youngest World Heavyweight Champion in history, at the age of 21 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 5 days. He was the first Olympic gold medalist to win a professional Heavyweight title.
Ingemar Johansson knocks out Floyd Patterson and becomes boxing heavyweight champion of the world, June 26, 1959.
Patterson vs. Johansson I, II & III
After a series of defenses against fringe contenders (Hurricane Jackson, Pete Rademacher, Roy Harris, and Brian London), Patterson met Ingemar Johansson of Sweden , the number one contender, in the first of three fights. Johansson triumphed over Patterson on June 26, 1959, with the referee Ruby Goldstein stopping the fight in the third round after the Swede had knocked Patterson down seven times. Johansson became Sweden's first World Heavyweight Champion, thus becoming a national hero as the first European to defeat an American for the title since 1933.
Patterson knocked out Johansson in the fifth round of their rematch on June 20, 1960, to become the then first man in history to ever regain the Undisputed World Heavyweight Championship. Johansson hit the canvas hard, seemingly out before he landed flat on his back. With glazed eyes, blood trickling from his mouth and his left foot quivering, he was counted out. Johansson lay unconscious for five minutes before he was helped onto a stool.
A third fight between them was held on March 13, 1961 and while Johansson put Patterson on the floor, Patterson retained his title by knockout in the sixth round to win the rubber match in which Patterson was decked twice and Johansson once in the first round. Johansson had landed both right hands over Floyd's left jab. After getting up from the second knockdown Floyd abandoned his jab and connected with a left hook that knocked down Johansson. After that, Patterson came on with a strong body attack that wore down Johansson. In the 6th round, Johansson caught Patterson with a solid right. But the power in Ingemar's punches was gone. Patterson won the fight in the 6th round by knockout. [3]
Patterson vs. Liston I & II
After the third Johansson fight, Patterson defended the title on December 4, 1961 against Tom McNeeley and retained the title with a fourth-round knockout. However he did not fight number one contender Sonny Liston . This was due in part to Cus D'Amato, who did not want Patterson in the ring with a boxer with mob connections. As a result, D'Amato turned down any challenges involving the IBC . Eventually, due to a monetary dispute with Jimmy Jacobs , Patterson removed D'Amato from handling his business affairs and agreed to fight Liston.
Leading up to the fight, Sonny Liston was the major betting line favorite, though Sports Illustrated predicted that Patterson would win in 15 rounds. Jim Braddock , Jersey Joe Walcott , Ezzard Charles , Rocky Marciano and Ingemar Johansson picked Patterson to win. The fight also carried a number of social implications. Liston's connections with the mob were well known and the NAACP was concerned about having to deal with Liston's visibility as World Champion and had encouraged Patterson not to fight Liston, fearing that a Liston victory would tarnish the civil rights movement. [4] Patterson also claimed that John F. Kennedy did not want him to fight Liston either. [5]
Patterson lost his title to Liston on September 25, 1962 in Chicago, by a first-round knockout in front of 18,894 fans. The two fighters were a marked contrast. In the ring, Liston's size and power proved too much for Patterson's guile and agility. However, Patterson did not use his speed to his benefit. According to Sports Illustrated writer Gilbert Rogin, Patterson didn't punch enough and frequently tried to clinch with Liston. Liston battered Patterson with body shots and then shortened up and connected with two double hooks high on the head. The result at the time was the third-fastest knockout in boxing history. [6] After being knocked out, Patterson left Comiskey Park in Chicago wearing dark glasses and a fake beard for the drive back to New York. After the fight, questions were raised on whether the fight was fixed to set up a more lucrative rematch. Overnight, Patterson seemed to lose his public support as a result of his swift knockout. [7]
The rematch was set for April 1963; however, Liston injured his knee swinging a golf club and the fight was delayed to July 22, 1963. In Las Vegas that night, Patterson attempted to become the first boxer to win the Heavyweight title three times, but Liston once again knocked him out in the first round. Patterson lasted four seconds longer than in the first bout.
Post-title career
Following these defeats, Patterson went through a depression. However, he eventually recovered and began winning fights again, including top victories over Eddie Machen and George Chuvalo . The Chuvalo match getting Ring magazine's " Fight of the Year " award.
Patterson was now the number one challenger for the title held by Muhammad Ali . On November 22, 1965, in yet another attempt to be the first to win the World Heavyweight title three times, Patterson lost by technical knockout at the end of the 12th round, going into the fight with an injured sacro-iliac joint in a bout in which Ali was clearly dominant. [8] Ali called Patterson an "Uncle Tom" for refusing to call him Muhammad Ali (Patterson continued to call him Cassius Clay) and for this outspokenness against black Muslims. [9] Instead of scoring a quick knockout, Ali mocked, humiliated and punished Patterson throughout the fight. [10]
Patterson was still a legitimate contender. In 1966 he traveled to England and knocked out British boxer Henry Cooper in just four rounds at Wembley Stadium. In comparison, Ali never scored a knockdown against Cooper in their two bouts and was nearly knocked out by Cooper in their first fight after he was knocked down near the end of the fourth round, but recovered after his corner used smelling salts on him (which was against British rules) at the end of that round. Ali would go on to score a TKO over Cooper after Cooper was severely cut in the fifth round. [11]
File:Floyd Patterson Wild Wild West 1968.JPG
Patterson tried his hand at acting. He is seen in this 1968 The Wild Wild West episode as a landowner who is in danger of losing his property.
In September 1969 he divorced his first wife, Sandra Hicks Patterson, who wanted him to quit boxing, while he still had hopes for another title shot.
When Ali was stripped of his title for refusing induction into the military, the World Boxing Association staged an eight-man tournament to determine his successor. Patterson fought Jerry Quarry to a draw in 1967. In a rematch four months later, Patterson lost a controversial 12-round decision to Quarry. Subsequently, in a third and final attempt at winning the title a third time, Patterson lost a controversial 15-round referee's decision to Jimmy Ellis in Sweden , despite breaking Ellis' nose and scoring a disputed knockdown.
Patterson continued on, defeating Oscar Bonavena in a close fight over ten rounds in early 1972.
At age 37, Patterson was stopped in the seventh round in a rematch with Muhammad Ali for the NABF Heavyweight title on September 20, 1972. The defeat proved to be Patterson's last fight, although there was never an announcement of retirement.
Retired life
In retirement, he and Johansson became good friends who flew across the Atlantic to visit each other every year and he became chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission . He was also inducted into the International Boxing Hall Of Fame .
In 1982 and 1983 he ran the Stockholm Marathon together with Ingemar Johansson.
Patterson lived in New Paltz, New York for many years and was known as a true gentleman around town.
His adopted son, Tracy Harris Patterson , was a world champion boxer in the 1990s and was trained by Floyd during part of his career. Floyd also trained Canadian heavyweight Donovan "Razor" Ruddock in 1992 for his fights with Greg Page , Phil Jackson , and Lennox Lewis . [12]
The New Paltz High School football field was named "Floyd Patterson Field" in 1985.
Death
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What is the hardest gemstone after diamond | Gemstone descriptions
Gemstone Descriptions
These are the stones that we commonly use in our jewelry. We do offer the choice between genuine and laboratory created stones in certain pieces.
What gems are associated with each birth month?
Created Alexandrite
Alexandrite was named after Prince Alexander because it was discovered in 1830 on the day of his coming of age. Alexandrite is most noted for its color changing from shades of green in daylight to a rich purplish red color in incandescent light. Natural alexandrite is extremely rare and expensive. The laboratory created alexandrite have a higher level of perfection than the natural found alexandrite.
Amethyst
This February birthstone is one the most popular gemstones today. Its radiate violet-purple color makes it one of the most desirable members of the quartz family.
The name is derived from the word amethustos, a Greek word that means not drunken. The legend behind this is that one who drinks wine from the amethystine cup would not become drunk.
Amethysts were traditional worn in the Russian and English crown jewels. The Roman Catholic Church extensively uses the stone today.
Amethyst's color ranges from a light violet to a dark red-purple. We use the darker colored amethyst.
Aquamarine
Aquamarine is a light blue stone or blue green stone. Its name is derived from the Latin terms "aqua� meaning water, and "mare� or sea. Legends say that it is the treasure of mermaids, with the power to keep sailors safe at sea. Folklore says the aquamarine provides the wearer with foresight, courage, happiness, and increases intelligence. As a healing stone, it is said to be effective as a treatment for anxiety. Aquamarine was also claimed to have a positive influence on love and relationships. Aquamarine is the traditional birth stone for the month of March.
Blue Topaz
This less expensive alternate to aquamarine is one of the largest selling topazes in the market today. This very popular gemstone has a very hard surface and makes it the ideal stone for everyday wear.
Blue topaz's color ranges from a sky blue to a Swiss blue to the darkest, a London blue. The color of the stone will always be a distinct blue to a bluish gray; aquamarine has a bluish greenish color.
Topaz can occur naturally in many different colors, orange, blue, brown, green, beige, red, and pink. Colorless topaz can be treated by irradiation and heated to produce the different shades of blue, in which the blue topaz is formed.
We commonly use the the lighter swiss blue topaz, but the London blue, a rich darker blue, is also available.
The blue topaz is the official state gem of Texas.
Cameo
These hand-carved shell cameos are very common to the Victorian era. Cameos add a beauty and craftsmanship to any collection. Each cameo has its own individual personality, just as its owner.
Queen Victoria of England popularized the shell cameos. At different points in history, men have worn cameos. Ancient people used cameos to represent their loyalties or faith. Cameos were also used as photos during this time, since there were none. The Greek and Roman emperors, gods, and goddesses were immortalized in the shell or stone that was used to make the cameos.
Citrine
This birthstone for November is a member of the quartz family. It is mined in Brazil and is a beautiful addition to any collection. Ranging in color from light brown to a honey brown hue the hardness of this stone is very acceptable for everyday wear.
Citrine and Topaz are both accepted as the birthstone for November. For many years, the general public confused citrine as topaz because of the misrepresentation from jewelers. In 1952, the Jewelry Industry Council adopted a resolution that made both stones acceptable for the birthstone.
Citrine was carried as a protection against snake venom and evil thoughts in ancient times.
Diamond
Birthstone for April, it is some of the most sought after gemstone today. The only pure carbon element and is the hardest element known to man. Most of the mining today is found in South Africa.
Diamonds are colorless to a slightly yellow or brownish tint. The colorless diamonds are the most sought after. Fancy colors diamonds consists of pink, red, and blue. The rarest of all gemstones are red diamonds.
Diamonds are graded by carat weight, clarity, color, and cut, otherwise known as the four C's.
Emeralds are a very soft and are one of the most valuable of all the gemstones. This green version of the mineral beryl is primarily mined in Columbia.
Emerald is one of the earliest known gems to man.
Birthstone for May, the emerald has come to represent the beauty and promise of spring.
Ancients dedicated the emerald to the Goddess Venus. They believed that the emerald would improve intelligence. They also believed that it was very beneficial to the eyes, Emperor Nero would watch gladiator shows through a fine emerald glasses. It was also considered to reveal faithfulness between lovers.
Garnet
Found mainly in India, this gemstone can be found in many Victorian pieces ranging in color from brownish-red to deep red often surrounded by diamonds or pearls. This is the birthstone for the month of January.
Garnet and feldspar are the two groups in the gem world. Garnets differ extensively in chemical composition from each other. Six mineral varieties include: pyrope, almandine, grossular, spessartine, uvarovite, and andradite. Rhodolite garnet is a combination of pyrope and almandine minerals, also know as pyrope-almandine garnet. There are many names for garnets, such as: Hessonite, Rhodolite, Tsavorite, Mozambique, Malaya, Anthill, Mandarin, Demantoid, Leuco, Hydrogrossular, Thai, Topazolite, and Melanite. The Almandite garnet is the most widely known.
Green Tourmaline
This beautiful green color ranges from light to very dark in appearance. Worn as a single large stone or a smaller one accented by diamonds or pearls, this rich green is very stunning in appearance.
Tourmaline comes in every color and is known for their hardness and durability. Opal and Tourmaline are the birthstones for the month of October. Also, the United States national gemstone is tourmaline.
Tourmaline is one of the most chemically complex gem materials. It is a very wearable stone that is brilliant and durable.
Iolite
The name Iolite is derived from the Greek "los", meaning violet. Iolite is a purplish blue color. Also known as Cordierite. Iolite was known as the Vikings' compass because of its ability to help determine the direction of the sun on overcast days. When the legendary Viking mariners sailed the ocean, they used thin pieces of iolite as the world's first polarizing filter. Looking through an iolite lens they could determine the exact position of the sun and navigate safely.
Moissanite
Moissanites have several qualities in common with diamonds. They have a high index of refraction, are transparent and extremely hard. They are often brighter and have more fire than diamonds. Moissanites are often indistinguishable from diamonds to the human eye. Moissanites can be created in a laboratory and cost less than diamonds.
Opal
Most opals are found in Australia and are very soft by comparison. Jewelry enthusiasts have sought after this fiery flash of multi-color for many centuries. Opal and Tourmaline are the birthstones for the month of October.
Queen Victoria of England wore this stone regularly in her court. She was captivated by the rainbow of colors in the stone.
Opal is formed from silica rather than a crystalline material. It is iridescent with a wide range of internal colors. No other gemstone can display all of the spectrum's colors in a variety of patterns, brilliance, and shades. For this reason, no two opals are identical. There are three groups of opals: white, black, and boulder.
This bright yellow to bright yellow-green quartz is mined in Brazil. The greener specimens are also known as prasiolite.
Oro Verde is also known as the lemon yellow citrine.
The word citrine has its origins in the French word for lemon - citron.
Birthstone for June, this organic gemstone is formed in the body of a mollusk and is composed of material called nacre. Pearls have been cherished for over 5,000 years. Japan is the leading producer of pearls today.
The exquisite luster and iridescence sets them apart from other gems.
The Romans, Egyptians, and Persians all admired the pearl. Throughout history, it was not uncommon for royals to prohibit commoners to use pearls.
Peridot
This birthstone for August is often seen as a brilliant olive green. This gemstone is available from many different sources and is an attractive addition to any collection.
This gem has been mined on an island in the Red Sea since 1500 BC. The Ancients considered Peridot to be the gem of the sun. They believed that it would send evil spirits away, lessen one's thirst when placed underneath the tongue, and to drive out nighttime terrors when placed in gold.
Pink Tourmaline
Tourmaline comes in every color and is known for their hardness and durability. This high pink is a beautiful addition to any collection. Opal and Tourmaline are the birthstones for the month of October. The United States national gemstone is tourmaline.
Tourmaline is one of the most chemically complex gem materials. It is a very wearable stone that is brilliant and durable.
Rhodolite
The most sought after member of the garnet family with its distinctive raspberry color is truly unique. Worn as a large stone or surrounded by diamonds or pearls it is a beautiful addition to any collection.
Rhodolite garnet is a combination of pyrope and almandine minerals, also know as pyrope-almandine garnet. The names rhodon and lithos are derived from the Greeks, which means rose-stone.
Ruby
Ruby is the red version of the mineral corundum. Ruby is mined primarily in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Burma.
The reddish color sapphires are known as ruby. Ruby is the second hardest gemstone after the diamond. The color can vary from a faint pink to deep red, more commonly known as pigeon's blood.
Ancients believed that one who possessed a ruby was granted wisdom, health, wealth, and love. Ruby was the stone of the Judah tribe, and placed upon Aaron's neck by the command of God.
Ruby is the birthstone for the month of July. Also, it is the stone for ones born under the Capricorn sign, December 21-January 19, and for those born on Tuesday, or in the summer. Nearly anyone could wear a ruby for a legendary significance. Ruby is one of the world's most valuable gems.
Sapphire is the birthstone for September and a member of the corundum family. This is another very hard gemstone. The most sought after color is the blue and is mined primarily in Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia.
Sapphires are found in many colors. The reddish color sapphires are known as ruby.
| Sapphire |
British soldiers mentioned in despatches get which bronze award | Sapphire Gemstone & Jewelry Information, Blue & Fancy Sapphire: GemSelect.
Sapphire; Origin and Sources Back to Top
Sapphire is found in only a few locations in the world. The three most famous regions for blue sapphire are Kashmir, Burma and Sri Lanka. Sapphire has also been mined in Cambodia , Thailand, Vietnam and India. As of 2007, Madagascar has been leading the world in sapphire production, though Sri Lanka continues to be the only steady producer of fine quality blue sapphire. Sri Lanka and Madagascar produce sapphires in a wide range of colors and whilst Sri Lanka has been a known sapphire source for centuries, sapphire deposits in Madagascar were only recently discovered in 1998. The enormous deposits found in the village of Ilakaka came as a big surprise and led to a gemstone fever reminiscent of the 19th century Californian gold rush. Today, Madagascar and Tanzania are considered to be two of the most important sapphire sources. Australia is also known for significant sapphire deposits, though most Australian sapphire is known to form rather dark in color. In the USA, there are small sapphire deposits found throughout Montana and North Carolina.
The finest quality blue sapphire, based on past auction prices , comes from Kashmir and Mogok, Burma. The finest Kashmir and Burmese sapphires display superb color and clarity without any thermal (heat) treatment. In recent times, limited resources in Burma have led miners to focus on more plentiful Burmese ruby . Some Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) sapphires are also unheated , but nowadays, the majority of sapphires have been heated, diffused or fracture-filled to improve color and clarity, regardless of their origin. The Kashmir mines, high up in the Himalayas, have produced spectacular world-renowned gems, but since the 1920s, virtually no new material has been found. The rare, fine blue sapphires of Pailin, Cambodia were also very highly regarded by gem traders throughout the world. Pailin sapphires ranged in color from light to deep blue, but they possessed a distinctive purity and intensity of color that was unlike any other sapphire sources. Many gem traders graded them as close in quality to Kashmir and Burmese sapphires; and certainly superior to Sri Lankan (Ceylonese), Thai, American, Vietnamese, Indian, African and Australian sapphires.
Almost all the sapphires from around the world are cut and processed in Chanthaburi, Thailand. Along with Kanchanaburi and Trat, Chanthaburi was once one of main sources for Thai sapphire . Sapphire mining in Chanthaburi is mostly finished now, though there are a few small private mining locations scattered throughout the province. There is also a large market for Thai star sapphires that exhibit distinctive golden six-rayed stars. The golden black star sapphire is found nowhere else in the world. Nowadays, Chanthaburi, Thailand has become the main processing and trading center for almost all of the world's sapphires, rubies and other colored gemstones.
Buying Sapphire and Determining Sapphire Value Back to Top
Sapphire Color
Blue is indeed the best-known and the most valuable of sapphire colors. The prized Kashmir and Burmese sapphires have a deep blue that is described as both intense and velvety. These sapphires are not often seen on the market today. Sri Lankan and Madagascar sapphires are the most common today, with a wide range of colors from light blue to dark blue. With blue sapphire, the intensity of blue is the most important factor. For example, a huge sapphire with a washed-out, weak blue color is much less valuable than a much smaller stone of excellent color. An intense, rich pure cornflower blue that is not too dark or too 'inky' is the most desirable colour. Overall, sapphires that are too dark or too light in color are less valuable, but light-blue sapphires often have greater brilliance that is rarely found in darker blue stones. Colorless sapphires are actually quite rare, since most stones will exhibit some faint hints of color. In the gem trade, when referring to sapphire, blue sapphire is the official designation; all other colors, including pink, green, orange, purple and white sapphire, are referred to as ' fancy sapphire '.
Sapphire colors are best viewed under natural daylight. In artificial or incandescent light, sapphire colors can appear darker and inky black-blue. Many may even appear redder and less attractive than they really are. Sapphire colors are a result of trace impurities. The coloring agents found in blue sapphire are typically iron and titanium. Violet stones are colored by vanadium. Pink sapphire and purple sapphire are often colored by iron and titanium impurities. Most yellow sapphire is naturally on the lighter side. It is through heat treatment that a more intense yellow golden color is produced. Beryllium-treated sapphire may result in brilliant bright yellow. Small traces of iron can cause yellowish and greenish hues in stones. Chromium is known to produce fine pinks (and red in ruby), whilst iron and vanadium together can produce lovely orange stones. Padparadscha sapphire is a very rare sapphire with a pinkish-orange hue. A true padparadscha will always have a hint of pink. Many 'green' sapphires consist of fine alternating bands of blue and yellow sapphire, which are visible under a microscope.
Sapphire Clarity and Luster
Sapphire can occur transparent to opaque. Transparent materials are the most valuable. Some translucent materials are cut into beads or cabochons. Opaque materials have very little gemstone value, although they may sometimes be used for ornamental carvings. Sapphires are generally cleaner than ruby, so it is best to look for stones that are eye-clean. Eye-clean stones in larger sizes are quite rare, especially in ideal colors. In some cases, extremely fine silk throughout the stone can enhance the value of some sapphires. The famous sapphires from Kashmir have a velvety blue color which is caused by this fine silk. This same silk causes the asterism seen in star sapphires. However, too much silk weakens the color, rendering it an undesirable grayish colour. The rutile needles that are responsible for the silky shine reflect the light in sixty-degree angles. If the rutile needles are perfectly aligned in the same direction, the inclusions can result in six-rayed asterism when cut en cabochon and viewed under strong light. Sapphire exhibits an attractive vitreous luster.
Sapphire Cut and Shape
Various shapes and cutting styles are common with sapphires. Ovals, cushions, and rounds are commonly seen, as are other shapes, such as fancy hearts, pears and emerald cuts. Round stones can command very high premiums, especially in diamond-cut calibrated stones weighing 1 carat or more. Cabochons are common for translucent stones or for stones with visible inclusions. Briolettes, beads and tumbled sapphire can also be found, but is usually lower grade material.
Sapphire Treatment
The most common treatment for sapphire is heat treatment, though unheated sapphire specimens can be found. Stones are heated (generally before they are cut) to between 1700 to 1800 degrees Celsius (3100-3300 degrees F) for several hours. Most sapphires today are heated, and unheated stones in rich blue can command enormous prices in today's market. Some blue sapphires may also be diffusion treated, though this treatment is more common for star sapphires. Beryllium treatment is now being used to produce stunning orange and red colors that were once rarely seen. All sapphire treatments should be fully disclosed by any reputable dealer.
Sapphire Gemological Properties: Back to Top
Chemical Formula:
Blue: none; colorless: orange-yellow, violet
Please refer to our Gemstone Glossary for details of gemology-related terms.
Sapphire: Related or Similar Gemstones Back to Top
Red Ruby
Sapphire is a gem-quality variety of corundum . It is closely related to ruby , which is corundum distinguished only by its red color. Sapphire of any other color is often referred to by a color-specific name; i.e., yellow sapphire, green sapphire or violet sapphire. Colorless sapphire is sometimes known as leuko-sapphire, and rare pinkish-orange sapphire is known as ' padparadscha ', a Sinhalese word for 'lotus flower'. Blue Sri Lankan sapphire is sometimes referred to as 'Ceylon sapphire', even though Sri Lanka is known to produce many colors other than blue. Misleading names like Oriental peridot (green sapphire) and Oriental topaz (yellow sapphire) were frequently used in the past, but they are now no longer used or accepted in the gem trade.
There are also a variety of trade names used for specific forms of sapphire, such as star sapphire and color-change sapphire . Ruby-zoisite is a mixture of corundum (ruby) and zoisite (the same material as tanzanite ) formed within the same stone. Since sapphire comes in a such a wide variety of colors, it can be easily confused with many other gemstones such as zircon, beryl, chrysoberyl, spinel, tourmaline and quartz. However, sapphire has superior hardness and durability which can easily distinguish it from other similar colored gemstones.
Sapphire Mythology, Metaphysical and Crystal Healing Properties Back to Top
Sapphire is the birthstone for those who are born in September. As for the zodiac, it is regarded as the stone for Taurus . If a Taurus wears a sapphire, it is thought to protect from and cure mental disorders.
Throughout history, sapphire has symbolized truth, sincerity and loyalty. It is also thought to bring peace, joy and wisdom to its wearer. In the past, the sapphire was also believed to be a talisman that would protect against evil spirits and other unsavory creatures of the night. The ancients regarded star sapphires as powerful talismans that could protect travelers and seekers. These talismans were considered to be so powerful, that they would continue protecting the wearer even after they had been passed on to another person.
Abbes Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) chronicled the healing powers of gemstones in her book, Physica. According to her view, gemstones are formed through the powerful combination of water and fire; therefore they hold powers corresponding to these natural phenomena. She also believed that each stone had a certain, divine blessing from God. She said the following about sapphire: "Who is dull and would like to be clever, should, in a sober state, frequently lick with the tongue on a sapphire, because the gemstone's warmth and power, combined with the saliva's moisture, will expel the harmful juices that affect the intellect. Thus, the man will attain a good intellect."
Disclaimer: Metaphysical and Alternative Crystal Healing Powers and Properties are not to be taken as confirmed advice. Traditional, Ceremonial and Mythological Gemstone Lore is collected from various resources and does not represent the sole opinion of SETT Co., Ltd. This information is not to replace the advice of your doctor. Should you have any medical conditions, please see a licensed medical practitioner. GemSelect does not guarantee any claims or statements of healing or astrological birthstone powers and cannot be held liable under any circumstances.
Sapphire Jewelry Design Ideas Back to Top
Sapphire is one of the ' precious four ' gems, which also includes red ruby, green emerald and fine diamond; and so it is often seen in fine jewelry. Sapphire is one of the few colored gemstone varieties that can often be found in local retail jewelry stores. Next to diamond, sapphire is one of the most popular gemstones today, found in just about every design from exquisite brooches, pins, pendants, rings and necklaces to simple and classic traditional designs such as sapphire rings , sapphire studs or sapphire earrings. Sapphire is also an excellent gemstone carving material.
You can often find ornamental carvings of animals and flowers made from some lower grade sapphire. Briolettes make for excellent sapphire earrings or pendants. Sapphire prices can range from extremely expensive to surprisingly affordable, so they can be used for anything from costume jewelry to high-end designs. Unheated sapphire is rare and expensive, while treated sapphire stones can be had at very affordable prices .
Note: Buy colored gemstones by size and not by carat weight. Colored stones vary in size-to-weight ratio . Some stones are larger and others are smaller than diamonds by weight in comparison.
Famous Sapphire Gemstones Back to Top
Large sapphires are rare and often attract fame and myth. The largest star sapphire is the Star of India, which weighs an amazing 536 carats. Discovered about three hundred years ago in Sri Lanka, the Star of India was donated to the American Museum of Natural History by the financier J.P. Morgan. Later the infamous burglar, Jack Murphy, (AKA "Murphy the Surf"), stole the stone. Its recovery two months later only added to its fame.
The Rockefeller Sapphire was purchased in 1934 by John D. Rockefeller from an Indian maharajah (believed to be the Nizam of Hyderabad) for an undisclosed price. It is a 62.02 carat faceted blue sapphire, in a rectangular step cut, mounted in a diamond ring. It was first sold by Sotheby's in 1988 for $2.82 million and then sold by Christie's in 2001 for $3,031,000 or approximately $48,871 per carat.
The 423 carat Logan Sapphire is displayed in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. It is the largest faceted sapphire on public display and perhaps the largest known blue sapphire. This egg-sized, cushion-cut stone from Sri Lanka is set in a brooch surrounded by 16 carats of diamonds. It was donated by Mrs. John A. Logan to the Smithsonian Institute in 1960.
Other famous sapphires include the Midnight Star, a 116 carat black star sapphire. The intensely blue 330 carat Star of Asia can be found in the American Museum of Natural History. Also, the English Crown Jewels contain two famous sapphires; the St. Edward's and the Stuart Sapphire (104 carats).
Sapphire Gemstone Jewelry Care and Cleaning Back to Top
Sapphire can be cleaned using a soft cloth or brush and plain warm soapy water. After wiping, be sure to rinse your sapphire well to remove soapy residue. Sapphire can change color under extreme heat, so avoid extreme temperature fluctuations. Also avoid the use of any harsh household chemicals and cleaners, including bleach or hydrofluoric acid, as chemicals can cause corrosion.
Sapphire is quite durable, but it is still recommended to always remove any sapphire jewelry before engaging in vigorous physical activity, especially when exercising or playing sports. When removing jewelry, do not pull from the stone as this can weaken prongs, eventually leading to a lost stone. When storing sapphire gemstones, wrap them in a soft cloth or place them inside a fabric-lined jewelry box.
First Published: December-23-2006
Last Updated: September-29-2016
© 2005-2017 GemSelect.com all rights reserved.
Reproduction (text or graphics) without the express written consent of GemSelect.com (SETT Company Ltd.) is strictly prohibited.
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A really beautiful coin with natural toned bright lustre and very little actual wear ro report. LVI ...
£200.00£160.00
Good protrait, some weak areas on the reverse. TERTIO edge. REDUCED from £300.Higher values coins are always sent fully insured.
£270.00£240.00
A few available, of the very best quality.
£8.00£6.80
Stunning full lustre, of highest possible quality. A few available.
£9.00£8.10
Choice coin with beautiful proof like fields. The odd minor stain, but I am being very picky, it'...
£295.00£288.90
Anyone that has glanced at a history book for more than five minutes will probably be aware&nbs...
£2.00£1.80
I purchased about 700 of these Indian 1/12th Anna coins. Each is uncirculated, but of the 700, only ...
£1.50£0.99
I purchased about 700 of these Indian 1/12th Anna coins. Each is uncirculated, but of the 700, only ...
£1.50£0.99
Eire 1968 penny from the last date that were produced before Irish decimalisation. All Irish pre-dec...
£1.20£0.99
Round, 28mm card coin tickets, blank on both sides. A shade off-white in colour, these coin tickets...
£1.75£0.99
(Quantity 50)REDUCED IN PRICE FROM JUNE 2016.NEW IMPROVED TYPE: With a slightly higher band for...
£2.60£2.99
The British pre-decimal penny was a handsome 3.1cm (1.5in) large Bronze coin from 1860 - 1967, when ...
£10.00£8.96
Very odd even 'lustrous' tone. No hairlines so most probably dipped or treated with somethin...
£100.00
| 8 |
Who wrote the Ride of the Valkyries | 1954 Elizabeth II British Half Crown - Silveragecoins.com
1954 Elizabeth II British Half Crown
1954 Elizabeth II British Half Crown
OBVERSE
Elizabeth II British Half Crown
Origin:
Elizabeth II laureate bust right
Reverse:
Crowned quartered shild flanked by initials ER
Edge:
2.20mm
DESCRIPTION
The half crown was a denomination of British money worth two shillings and sixpence, being one-eighth of a pound. The half crown was first issued in 1549, in the reign of Edward VI. No half crowns were issued in the reign of Mary, but from the reign of Elizabeth I half crowns were issued in every reign except Edward VIII, until the coins were discontinued in 1967. The half crown was demonetised (ahead of other pre-decimal coins) on 1 January 1970, the year before the United Kingdom adopted decimal currency on Decimal Day.
During the English Interregnum of 1649-1660, a republican half crown was issued, bearing the arms of the Commonwealth of England, despite monarchist associations of the coin's name. When Oliver Cromwell made himself Lord Protector of England, half crowns were issued bearing his semi-royal portrait.
The half crown did not display its value on the reverse until 1893.
In the 1800s, the silver half crown coin was (very roughly) convertible into an American fifty-cent piece, and was sometimes nicknamed the "half dollar" in North America.
PRICE RANGE
| i don't know |
Who had a number one in the fifties with Butterfly | The UK Number Ones : 1950s Sheet Music Sales
Week Ending SONG TITLE Notable Recording(s)
+ Artist Links Weeks COMMENT 7 Jan 1950 You're Breaking My Heart Ink Spots 2
They were a top close-harmony singing act of black Americans.
21 Jan 1950 Hop Scotch Polka Billy Whitlock 1
Whitlock wrote the piece with that title, but called it "Scotch Hot" on the recording!
28 Jan 1950 The Harry Lime Theme Anton Karas 4 (Returned for 3 weeks from w/e 18/2/50)
Famed theme from the spy film "The Third Man", starring Orson Welles. The theme was composed by the performer.
4 Feb 1950 Dear Hearts And Gentle People 1: Dinah Shore
Song was a radio favourite on the "Billy Cotton Band Show".
11 Mar 1950 Music! Music! Music! Teresa Brewer 6
First major hit for the girl from Ohio. She later did badly against UK cover versions.
22 Apr 1950 (If I Knew You Were Comin') I'd've Baked A Cake Eve Young & The Homesteaders 1
Another happy-go-lucky radio favourite which Billy Cotton helped to popularise.
29 Apr 1950 My Foolish Heart Billy Eckstine 11
He was a deep-voiced star from the 1930s, still very popular throughout the 50s.
8 Jul 1950 Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered) 1: Doris Day
Written by Rodgers & Hart. Recorded by Doris Day in 1949.
9 Sep 1950 Silver Dollar (Roll, Roll, Roll) Eve Young & The Homesteaders 7
Similar style to Eve's previous hit, got the musicians buying again.
28 Oct 1950 Goodnight Irene 1: Frank Sinatra
2: Jo Stafford 4
A version by the Gordon Jenkins Orch was at no 1 in the US for 13 weeks.
25 Nov 1950 Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer 1: Gene Autry
Christmas song that has remained ever popular since.
6 Jan 1951 I Taut I Taw A Puddy Tat Mel Blanc 3
Based on a line from the Tweetie Pie cartoons. Mel was the cartoon voice.
27 Jan 1951 Beloved, Be Faithful 1: Teddy Johnson
Both of these were top British balladeers of their time.
3 Feb 1951 The Petite Waltz 1: Anne Shelton
At this time, the most popular dance by far was the waltz.
17 Feb 1951 The Tennessee Waltz 1: Patti Page
2: Anita O'Day 9
The US country music star (Patti Page) battled it out in the UK with a jazz music star (Anita O'Day) a country music waltz.
21 Apr 1951 Mockin' Bird Hill Les Paul & Mary Ford 10
They were
of multi-track recording and amplified electric guitars.
30 Jun 1951 With These Hands Nelson Eddy & Jo Stafford 3
Hits for Shirley Bassey in 1960 and Tom Jones in 1965.
21 Jul 1951 My Resistance Is Low Hoagy Carmichael 4
Written by the singer. Hit for Robin Sarstedt in 1976.
Cole's version is now best known, but it was Young's first major success.
10 Nov 1951 Longing For You Teresa Brewer 11
Melody based on the classical piece "Waltz Dream" by Oscar Straus.
12 Jan 1952 The Loveliest Night Of The Year 1: Mario Lanza
Was on the chart for a record 32 weeks before making No 1.
23 Feb 1952 There's Always Room At Our House Guy Mitchell 4
First major recording for this US singing star.
22 Mar 1952 Unforgettable Nat 'King' Cole 10
All-time Nat 'King' Cole classic.
24 May 1952 A-round The Corner Jo Stafford 3
She was the most popular American female singer in the UK at this time.
14 Jun 1952 Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart Vera Lynn 10
Immensely popular with people who remembered the war years.
23 Aug 1952 The Homing Waltz 1: Vera Lynn
Successive No 1s for Vera Lynn recordings.
25 Oct 1952 Here In My Heart Al Martino 8
Became the first No 1 on the record-sales chart.
27 Dec 1952 You Belong To Me 1: Jo Stafford
It was Jo Stafford's version that topped the infant records chart.
7 Feb 1953 Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes Perry Como 1
Como's version topped the record charts in UK and US.
14 Feb 1953 Broken Wings 1: Stargazers
2: Dickie Valentine
3: Art & Dottie Todd 6
These three versions were UK hits, but the Stargazers took it to No 1 in the records chart.
28 Mar 1953 (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window 1: Patti Page
Both UK record hits, but Lita Roza made it to the top.
9 May 1953 In A Golden Coach 1: Billy Cotton Band
Celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Both these made the records Top 10.
13 Jun 1953 I Believe Frankie Laine 1
Massive record-chart hit for Frankie Laine, where it spent 18 weeks at No 1.
31 Oct 1953 Poppa Piccolino Diana Decker 1
Italian song. There were UK versions, but this US singer had the only record-chart hit.
7 Nov 1953 Answer Me 1: David Whitfield
They both made No 1 in the record-chart, but Laine's version was the bigger seller.
26 Dec 1953 I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus 1: Beverley Sisters
2: Jimmy Boyd 1
The popular British trio were outsold by the US recording.
16 Jan 1954 Oh Mein Papa Eddie Calvert 8
Eddie had the classic-trumpet instrumental hit, but there were vocal versions too.
13 Mar 1954 I See The Moon Stargazers 5
Novelty song which they took to No 1 in the records chart. No other versions were hits.
10 Apr 1954 The Happy Wanderer Obernkirchen Children's Choir 5
German song which became the great sing-along of the year. Best-selling sheet music in 1954.
22 May 1954 Secret Love Doris Day 7
Oscar-winning song from the Doris Day film "Calamity Jane".
10 Jul 1954 Cara Mia David Whitfield & Mantovani Orchestra 2
Million-selling No 1 version that was the only one to make the charts.
24 Jul 1954 Little Things Mean A Lot 1: Kitty Kallen
2: Alma Cogan 12
The American took the single to No 1 in the records charts, but Alma Cogan made No 11.
16 Oct 1954 My Friend Frankie Laine 1
His was the only hit version back in 1954, although Roy Orbison had a minor hit with the same song in 1969.
23 Oct 1954 Hold My Hand Don Cornell 10
The American's only big hit in the UK.
1 Jan 1955 Mister Sandman 1: Chordettes
4: Max Bygraves 6
They all made the Top 20, but sales were too spread for anyone to reach the top spot.
5 Feb 1955 Mambo Italiano Rosemary Clooney 3
She was a US music and tv star who remained very popular throughout the 1950's.
26 Feb 1955 Softly, Softly Ruby Murray 8
Major British star of the mid 50s, but this was her only No 1 in the records chart.
23 Apr 1955 Stranger In Paradise 1: Tony Bennett
2: Four Aces
3: Tony Martin 7
From the 1953 Broadway musical "Kismet". Tune based on a theme from Borodin's opera "Prince Igor".
11 Jun 1955 Unchained Melody 1: Jimmy Young
3: Liberace 12
Song from the film "Unchained". This No 1 song made the top three times more, in 1990, 1995 and 2002.
3 Sep 1955 Ev'rywhere David Whitfield 5
The decade's most popular British tenor took this to No 3 in the records chart.
8 Oct 1955 Blue Star (The Medic Theme) 1: Cyril Stapleton Orch
2: Ron Goodwin Orch 8
Cyril Stapleton saw his version, with vocals by Julie Dawn, reach No 2 in the records chart.
3 Dec 1955 Christmas Alphabet Dickie Valentine 5
A Christmas No 1 that was forgotten until Cliff Richard included it on his 1991 Xmas album.
31 Dec 1955 Twenty Tiny Fingers 1: Stargazers
British novelty song about the birth of twins. The Stargazers won the record-chart battle.
7 Jan 1956 Love Is A Many-splendoured Thing 1: Four Aces
Ten versions were in the record shops but only the Four Aces charted, reaching No 2.
14 Jan 1956 The Ballad of Davy Crockett 1: Bill Hayes
Theme from the highly popular mid-50s tv series.
3 Mar 1956 Memories Are Made Of This 1: Dean Martin
2: Dave King 3
Dean Martin was a major US star - King was a UK comedian who recorded the cover version.
24 Mar 1956 It's Almost Tomorrow Dreamweavers 6
They were a studio-only act from Miami. Mark Wynter had a hit with it in 1963.
5 May 1956 No Other Love Ronnie Hilton 6
British tenor with a Rodgers & Hammerstein song.
16 Jun 1956 My September Love David Whitfield 2
Another one from the British balladeer - this one made No 3.
30 Jun 1956 Hot Diggity 1: Perry Como
2: Michael Holliday 3
A Perry Como classic which was covered by the UK singer.
21 Jul 1956 Walk Hand In Hand 1: Tony Martin
2: Ronnie Carroll 6
Tony Martin got the big hit - No 2. Gerry & The Pacemakers charted in 1965 with the song.
1 Sep 1956 What Ever Will Be Will Be Doris Day 5
Oscar-winning song from the Doris Day film "The Man Who Knew Too Much".
6 Oct 1956 Lay Down Your Arms Anne Shelton 4
The song was based on a Swedish melody. She was a British star of the 40s & 50s.
3 Nov 1956 More 1: Jimmy Young
In this battle of the nations, Young won, reaching No 4 against Como's No 10.
8 Dec 1956 Just Walking In The Rain Johnnie Ray 4
One of Johnnie's biggest hits, and one of his best-loved.
5 Jan 1957 Singing The Blues 1: Guy Mitchell
2: Tommy Steele 11
They both took this to No 1, but Guy stayed there longer - 3 weeks as opposed to 1.
23 Mar 1957 Young Love Tab Hunter 4
US movie idol who was asked to record the song. It had no connection with any film.
20 Apr 1957 Heart 1: Max Bygraves
2: Johnston Brothers 4
This did not fair well in the records charts. Max did best, but still only got to No 14.
18 May 1957 Butterfly 1: Andy Williams
Verging on rock 'n' roll, rather than MOR which Williams specialised in later.
25 May 1957 Around The World 1: Bing Crosby
2: Ronnie Hilton
These records all made the Top 10, but Hilton did best at No 4.
31 Aug 1957 Love Letters In The Sand Pat Boone 4
Pat's was the only hit at the time, reaching No 2. Vince Hill had a minor hit with the song in 1967.
28 Sep 1957 Tammy Debbie Reynolds 9
From the film in which she starred, "Tammy & The Bachelor". The record made No 2.
30 Nov 1957 Mary's Boy Child Harry Belafonte 5
Big No 1 record hit for Harry. Boney M made the song a Christmas No 1 in 1978.
4 Jan 1958 Alone 1: Petula Clark
2: Shephard Sisters 1
Rock 'n' Roll love song that the British girl covered and then won the chart battle.
11 Jan 1958 My Special Angel 1: Malcolm Vaughan
2: Bobby Helms 3
The US original was by country music singer Bobby Helms. Vaughan's version won easily.
1 Feb 1958 The Story Of My Life 1: Michael Holliday
2: Dave King 4
Burt Bacharach and Hal David song. The Brits fought it out and Holliday's record made No 1.
1 Mar 1958 Magic Moments Perry Como 9
2nd No 1 in a row for writers Burt Bacharach and Hal David. One of Como's best-known hits.
26 Apr 1958 Swingin' Shepherd Blues Ted Heath Orchestra 1
The most popular British big band of the day, but they never had a No 1 record.
10 May 1958 I May Never Pass This Way Again 1: Perry Como
2: Robert Earl 3
The sales of these two records cancelled each other out and only just made the Top 20.
31 May 1958 Who's Sorry Now Connie Francis 1
First female rock 'n' roll star to get a No 1 record, but this song was a 1920s ballad.
7 Jun 1958 Stairway Of Love 1: Michael Holliday
2: Terry Dene 1
Terry Dene was a minor star, most famous for his nervous breakdown after his army conscription.
14 Jun 1958 On The Street Where You Live Vic Damone 6
Song from the hit musical "My Fair Lady". He made No 1 in the records chart, no one else even made the Top 10.
26 Jul 1958 Tulips From Amsterdam Max Bygraves 6
One of the songs always associated with Max. The B-side was "You Need Hands".
6 Sep 1958 Trudie Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson 1
A Russ Conway rival who took this self-penned song to No 14 in the records chart.
13 Sep 1958 Volare Dean Martin 6
An Italian song - Dean Martin took the English translation to No 1 in the records chart.
25 Oct 1958 Come Prima (More Than Ever) 1: Marino Marini
2: Malcolm Vaughan 12
Another Italian song, which Marini sang in Italian. Vaughan had the English version with a new title.
17 Jan 1959 The Day The Rains Came Jane Morgan 2
A French song with English lyrics. The B-side of the single was in French!
31 Jan 1959 As I Love You Shirley Bassey 6
Her first No 1 which led to a career which extended into the 21st century.
14 Mar 1959 Side Saddle Russ Conway 12
Pianist who wrote these hits under his real name of Trevor Stanford. Was a records-chart No 1 too.
6 Jun 1959 Roulette Russ Conway 13
This was his single follow-up which also made No 1 in the records chart.
5 Sep 1959 Only Sixteen 1: Sam Cooke
2: Craig Douglas 6
This was written by Sam Cooke, but it was Douglas who got the No 1 in the records chart.
10 Oct 1959 China Tea Russ Conway 2
This gave him a total of over six months at No 1 in the sheet music chart of 1959. This tune made No 5 in the records chart.
31 Oct 1959 Mack The Knife 1: Bobby Darin
2: Louis Armstrong 2
From "The Threepenny Opera", Armstrong first charted with it in 1956. Darin made No 1 in the records chart.
14 Nov 1959 Little Donkey 1: Beverley Sisters
| Andy Williams |
In which David Bowie song which charted in 1980 does Major Tom become a junkie | The UK Number Ones : 1950s Sheet Music Sales
Week Ending SONG TITLE Notable Recording(s)
+ Artist Links Weeks COMMENT 7 Jan 1950 You're Breaking My Heart Ink Spots 2
They were a top close-harmony singing act of black Americans.
21 Jan 1950 Hop Scotch Polka Billy Whitlock 1
Whitlock wrote the piece with that title, but called it "Scotch Hot" on the recording!
28 Jan 1950 The Harry Lime Theme Anton Karas 4 (Returned for 3 weeks from w/e 18/2/50)
Famed theme from the spy film "The Third Man", starring Orson Welles. The theme was composed by the performer.
4 Feb 1950 Dear Hearts And Gentle People 1: Dinah Shore
Song was a radio favourite on the "Billy Cotton Band Show".
11 Mar 1950 Music! Music! Music! Teresa Brewer 6
First major hit for the girl from Ohio. She later did badly against UK cover versions.
22 Apr 1950 (If I Knew You Were Comin') I'd've Baked A Cake Eve Young & The Homesteaders 1
Another happy-go-lucky radio favourite which Billy Cotton helped to popularise.
29 Apr 1950 My Foolish Heart Billy Eckstine 11
He was a deep-voiced star from the 1930s, still very popular throughout the 50s.
8 Jul 1950 Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered) 1: Doris Day
Written by Rodgers & Hart. Recorded by Doris Day in 1949.
9 Sep 1950 Silver Dollar (Roll, Roll, Roll) Eve Young & The Homesteaders 7
Similar style to Eve's previous hit, got the musicians buying again.
28 Oct 1950 Goodnight Irene 1: Frank Sinatra
2: Jo Stafford 4
A version by the Gordon Jenkins Orch was at no 1 in the US for 13 weeks.
25 Nov 1950 Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer 1: Gene Autry
Christmas song that has remained ever popular since.
6 Jan 1951 I Taut I Taw A Puddy Tat Mel Blanc 3
Based on a line from the Tweetie Pie cartoons. Mel was the cartoon voice.
27 Jan 1951 Beloved, Be Faithful 1: Teddy Johnson
Both of these were top British balladeers of their time.
3 Feb 1951 The Petite Waltz 1: Anne Shelton
At this time, the most popular dance by far was the waltz.
17 Feb 1951 The Tennessee Waltz 1: Patti Page
2: Anita O'Day 9
The US country music star (Patti Page) battled it out in the UK with a jazz music star (Anita O'Day) a country music waltz.
21 Apr 1951 Mockin' Bird Hill Les Paul & Mary Ford 10
They were
of multi-track recording and amplified electric guitars.
30 Jun 1951 With These Hands Nelson Eddy & Jo Stafford 3
Hits for Shirley Bassey in 1960 and Tom Jones in 1965.
21 Jul 1951 My Resistance Is Low Hoagy Carmichael 4
Written by the singer. Hit for Robin Sarstedt in 1976.
Cole's version is now best known, but it was Young's first major success.
10 Nov 1951 Longing For You Teresa Brewer 11
Melody based on the classical piece "Waltz Dream" by Oscar Straus.
12 Jan 1952 The Loveliest Night Of The Year 1: Mario Lanza
Was on the chart for a record 32 weeks before making No 1.
23 Feb 1952 There's Always Room At Our House Guy Mitchell 4
First major recording for this US singing star.
22 Mar 1952 Unforgettable Nat 'King' Cole 10
All-time Nat 'King' Cole classic.
24 May 1952 A-round The Corner Jo Stafford 3
She was the most popular American female singer in the UK at this time.
14 Jun 1952 Auf Wiederseh'n Sweetheart Vera Lynn 10
Immensely popular with people who remembered the war years.
23 Aug 1952 The Homing Waltz 1: Vera Lynn
Successive No 1s for Vera Lynn recordings.
25 Oct 1952 Here In My Heart Al Martino 8
Became the first No 1 on the record-sales chart.
27 Dec 1952 You Belong To Me 1: Jo Stafford
It was Jo Stafford's version that topped the infant records chart.
7 Feb 1953 Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes Perry Como 1
Como's version topped the record charts in UK and US.
14 Feb 1953 Broken Wings 1: Stargazers
2: Dickie Valentine
3: Art & Dottie Todd 6
These three versions were UK hits, but the Stargazers took it to No 1 in the records chart.
28 Mar 1953 (How Much Is) That Doggie In The Window 1: Patti Page
Both UK record hits, but Lita Roza made it to the top.
9 May 1953 In A Golden Coach 1: Billy Cotton Band
Celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Both these made the records Top 10.
13 Jun 1953 I Believe Frankie Laine 1
Massive record-chart hit for Frankie Laine, where it spent 18 weeks at No 1.
31 Oct 1953 Poppa Piccolino Diana Decker 1
Italian song. There were UK versions, but this US singer had the only record-chart hit.
7 Nov 1953 Answer Me 1: David Whitfield
They both made No 1 in the record-chart, but Laine's version was the bigger seller.
26 Dec 1953 I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus 1: Beverley Sisters
2: Jimmy Boyd 1
The popular British trio were outsold by the US recording.
16 Jan 1954 Oh Mein Papa Eddie Calvert 8
Eddie had the classic-trumpet instrumental hit, but there were vocal versions too.
13 Mar 1954 I See The Moon Stargazers 5
Novelty song which they took to No 1 in the records chart. No other versions were hits.
10 Apr 1954 The Happy Wanderer Obernkirchen Children's Choir 5
German song which became the great sing-along of the year. Best-selling sheet music in 1954.
22 May 1954 Secret Love Doris Day 7
Oscar-winning song from the Doris Day film "Calamity Jane".
10 Jul 1954 Cara Mia David Whitfield & Mantovani Orchestra 2
Million-selling No 1 version that was the only one to make the charts.
24 Jul 1954 Little Things Mean A Lot 1: Kitty Kallen
2: Alma Cogan 12
The American took the single to No 1 in the records charts, but Alma Cogan made No 11.
16 Oct 1954 My Friend Frankie Laine 1
His was the only hit version back in 1954, although Roy Orbison had a minor hit with the same song in 1969.
23 Oct 1954 Hold My Hand Don Cornell 10
The American's only big hit in the UK.
1 Jan 1955 Mister Sandman 1: Chordettes
4: Max Bygraves 6
They all made the Top 20, but sales were too spread for anyone to reach the top spot.
5 Feb 1955 Mambo Italiano Rosemary Clooney 3
She was a US music and tv star who remained very popular throughout the 1950's.
26 Feb 1955 Softly, Softly Ruby Murray 8
Major British star of the mid 50s, but this was her only No 1 in the records chart.
23 Apr 1955 Stranger In Paradise 1: Tony Bennett
2: Four Aces
3: Tony Martin 7
From the 1953 Broadway musical "Kismet". Tune based on a theme from Borodin's opera "Prince Igor".
11 Jun 1955 Unchained Melody 1: Jimmy Young
3: Liberace 12
Song from the film "Unchained". This No 1 song made the top three times more, in 1990, 1995 and 2002.
3 Sep 1955 Ev'rywhere David Whitfield 5
The decade's most popular British tenor took this to No 3 in the records chart.
8 Oct 1955 Blue Star (The Medic Theme) 1: Cyril Stapleton Orch
2: Ron Goodwin Orch 8
Cyril Stapleton saw his version, with vocals by Julie Dawn, reach No 2 in the records chart.
3 Dec 1955 Christmas Alphabet Dickie Valentine 5
A Christmas No 1 that was forgotten until Cliff Richard included it on his 1991 Xmas album.
31 Dec 1955 Twenty Tiny Fingers 1: Stargazers
British novelty song about the birth of twins. The Stargazers won the record-chart battle.
7 Jan 1956 Love Is A Many-splendoured Thing 1: Four Aces
Ten versions were in the record shops but only the Four Aces charted, reaching No 2.
14 Jan 1956 The Ballad of Davy Crockett 1: Bill Hayes
Theme from the highly popular mid-50s tv series.
3 Mar 1956 Memories Are Made Of This 1: Dean Martin
2: Dave King 3
Dean Martin was a major US star - King was a UK comedian who recorded the cover version.
24 Mar 1956 It's Almost Tomorrow Dreamweavers 6
They were a studio-only act from Miami. Mark Wynter had a hit with it in 1963.
5 May 1956 No Other Love Ronnie Hilton 6
British tenor with a Rodgers & Hammerstein song.
16 Jun 1956 My September Love David Whitfield 2
Another one from the British balladeer - this one made No 3.
30 Jun 1956 Hot Diggity 1: Perry Como
2: Michael Holliday 3
A Perry Como classic which was covered by the UK singer.
21 Jul 1956 Walk Hand In Hand 1: Tony Martin
2: Ronnie Carroll 6
Tony Martin got the big hit - No 2. Gerry & The Pacemakers charted in 1965 with the song.
1 Sep 1956 What Ever Will Be Will Be Doris Day 5
Oscar-winning song from the Doris Day film "The Man Who Knew Too Much".
6 Oct 1956 Lay Down Your Arms Anne Shelton 4
The song was based on a Swedish melody. She was a British star of the 40s & 50s.
3 Nov 1956 More 1: Jimmy Young
In this battle of the nations, Young won, reaching No 4 against Como's No 10.
8 Dec 1956 Just Walking In The Rain Johnnie Ray 4
One of Johnnie's biggest hits, and one of his best-loved.
5 Jan 1957 Singing The Blues 1: Guy Mitchell
2: Tommy Steele 11
They both took this to No 1, but Guy stayed there longer - 3 weeks as opposed to 1.
23 Mar 1957 Young Love Tab Hunter 4
US movie idol who was asked to record the song. It had no connection with any film.
20 Apr 1957 Heart 1: Max Bygraves
2: Johnston Brothers 4
This did not fair well in the records charts. Max did best, but still only got to No 14.
18 May 1957 Butterfly 1: Andy Williams
Verging on rock 'n' roll, rather than MOR which Williams specialised in later.
25 May 1957 Around The World 1: Bing Crosby
2: Ronnie Hilton
These records all made the Top 10, but Hilton did best at No 4.
31 Aug 1957 Love Letters In The Sand Pat Boone 4
Pat's was the only hit at the time, reaching No 2. Vince Hill had a minor hit with the song in 1967.
28 Sep 1957 Tammy Debbie Reynolds 9
From the film in which she starred, "Tammy & The Bachelor". The record made No 2.
30 Nov 1957 Mary's Boy Child Harry Belafonte 5
Big No 1 record hit for Harry. Boney M made the song a Christmas No 1 in 1978.
4 Jan 1958 Alone 1: Petula Clark
2: Shephard Sisters 1
Rock 'n' Roll love song that the British girl covered and then won the chart battle.
11 Jan 1958 My Special Angel 1: Malcolm Vaughan
2: Bobby Helms 3
The US original was by country music singer Bobby Helms. Vaughan's version won easily.
1 Feb 1958 The Story Of My Life 1: Michael Holliday
2: Dave King 4
Burt Bacharach and Hal David song. The Brits fought it out and Holliday's record made No 1.
1 Mar 1958 Magic Moments Perry Como 9
2nd No 1 in a row for writers Burt Bacharach and Hal David. One of Como's best-known hits.
26 Apr 1958 Swingin' Shepherd Blues Ted Heath Orchestra 1
The most popular British big band of the day, but they never had a No 1 record.
10 May 1958 I May Never Pass This Way Again 1: Perry Como
2: Robert Earl 3
The sales of these two records cancelled each other out and only just made the Top 20.
31 May 1958 Who's Sorry Now Connie Francis 1
First female rock 'n' roll star to get a No 1 record, but this song was a 1920s ballad.
7 Jun 1958 Stairway Of Love 1: Michael Holliday
2: Terry Dene 1
Terry Dene was a minor star, most famous for his nervous breakdown after his army conscription.
14 Jun 1958 On The Street Where You Live Vic Damone 6
Song from the hit musical "My Fair Lady". He made No 1 in the records chart, no one else even made the Top 10.
26 Jul 1958 Tulips From Amsterdam Max Bygraves 6
One of the songs always associated with Max. The B-side was "You Need Hands".
6 Sep 1958 Trudie Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson 1
A Russ Conway rival who took this self-penned song to No 14 in the records chart.
13 Sep 1958 Volare Dean Martin 6
An Italian song - Dean Martin took the English translation to No 1 in the records chart.
25 Oct 1958 Come Prima (More Than Ever) 1: Marino Marini
2: Malcolm Vaughan 12
Another Italian song, which Marini sang in Italian. Vaughan had the English version with a new title.
17 Jan 1959 The Day The Rains Came Jane Morgan 2
A French song with English lyrics. The B-side of the single was in French!
31 Jan 1959 As I Love You Shirley Bassey 6
Her first No 1 which led to a career which extended into the 21st century.
14 Mar 1959 Side Saddle Russ Conway 12
Pianist who wrote these hits under his real name of Trevor Stanford. Was a records-chart No 1 too.
6 Jun 1959 Roulette Russ Conway 13
This was his single follow-up which also made No 1 in the records chart.
5 Sep 1959 Only Sixteen 1: Sam Cooke
2: Craig Douglas 6
This was written by Sam Cooke, but it was Douglas who got the No 1 in the records chart.
10 Oct 1959 China Tea Russ Conway 2
This gave him a total of over six months at No 1 in the sheet music chart of 1959. This tune made No 5 in the records chart.
31 Oct 1959 Mack The Knife 1: Bobby Darin
2: Louis Armstrong 2
From "The Threepenny Opera", Armstrong first charted with it in 1956. Darin made No 1 in the records chart.
14 Nov 1959 Little Donkey 1: Beverley Sisters
| i don't know |
What was Pink Floyd's first single | 1967: The First Three Singles - Pink Floyd | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic
1967: The First Three Singles
AllMusic Rating
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AllMusic Review by Andy Kellman
1967: The First Three Singles compiles exactly what it advertises. While four of the six songs can be found on the far more substantial (and indispensable) Relics compilation and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn , the EP does provide a service by making "Apples and Oranges" and "Candy and a Currant Bun" available to those who didn't purchase the Shine On box set. (The box contained a bonus disc entitled "The Early Singles," which essentially functions as a hybrid of this EP and Relics without including everything offered by both.) The big question is why this particular disc doesn't bother to include the fourth and fifth singles, released a year later. After all, it would have made for a more serviceable release, making "Point Me at the Sky" and "It Would Be So Nice" available to non- Shine On owners. Not only that, but after 1968 the band didn't release another single for an entire decade. Outside of the nit picking, "Apples and Oranges" and "Candy and a Currant Bun" are worth the budget price for those who love the Syd Barrett era of the band, just as loopy and melodic as anything on Piper . The chipper "Candy and a Currant Bun," the B-side to "Arnold Layne," was originally titled "Let's Roll Another One" until the BBC made it clear that they wouldn't play a song with that title. A song about dope smoking, the band opted to make the title relatively innocuous. "Apples and Oranges" was the third A-side (following the great success of "See Emily Play"), viewed accurately by the band to be a fine song marred by bad production.
Track Listing
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What colour would a magnesium flare burn with | Pink Floyd | Biography & History | AllMusic
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Artist Biography by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Some bands turn into shorthand for a certain sound or style, and Pink Floyd belongs among that elite group. The very name connotes something specific: an elastic, echoing, mind-bending sound that evokes the chasms of space. Pink Floyd grounded that limitless sound with exacting explorations of mundane matters of ego, mind, memory, and heart, touching upon madness, alienation, narcissism, and society on their concept albums of the '70s. Of these concept albums, Dark Side of the Moon resonated strongest, earning new audiences year after year, decade after decade, and its longevity makes sense. That 1973 album distilled the wild psychedelia of their early years -- that brief, heady period when they were fronted by Syd Barrett -- into a slow, sculpted, widescreen epic masterminded by Roger Waters , the bassist who was the band's de facto leader in the '70s. Waters fueled the band's golden years, conceiving such epics as Wish You Were Here and The Wall , but the band survived his departure in the '80s, with guitarist David Gilmour stepping to the forefront on A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell . Throughout the years, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright appeared in some capacity, and the band's sonic signature was always evident: a wide, expansive sound that was instantly recognizable as their own, yet was adopted by all manner of bands, from guitar-worshiping metalheads to freaky, hippie, ambient electronic duos. Unlike almost any of their peers, Pink Floyd played to both sides of the aisle: they were rooted in the blues but their heart belonged to the future, a dichotomy that made them a quintessentially modern 20th century band.
That blues influence, quickly sublimated and only surfacing on the occasional Gilmour guitar solo, was the foundation for the band's very name, as the group decided to splice the names of two old bluesmen -- Pink Anderson and Floyd Council -- as a tribute to the American music they loved. These members of the early Floyd -- guitarist/singer Syd Barrett , bassist Roger Waters , keyboardist Rick Wright, and drummer Nick Mason -- were all architecture students at London Polytechnic, with the exception of Barrett , who was an art student and a friend of Waters since childhood. This version of the band started gigging regularly in 1965, with Barrett becoming the group's lead singer quite quickly. During this time, the group relied on blues and R&B covers, not unlike many of their British peers, but they wound up extending the time of their sets through extended instrumental jams, planting the seeds of space rock that would come to fruition not much later. In 1966, the group's increasingly adventurous sets became something of a sensation in the London underground, leading to a contract with EMI early in 1967. Their first single, "Arnold Layne," backed with "Candy and a Currant Bun," appeared in March of 1967, and it was banned from some radio stations due to its gender-bending lyrics, but the single wound up in the U.K. Top 20, and the group's second single, "See Emily Play" -- a menacing, mincing stomp with a profound, lasting influence -- went into the Top Ten, paving the way for the release of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn . On their full-length LP, Pink Floyd veered toward the experimental and avant-garde, particularly on the elastic, largely instrumental vamps "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive," resulting in an album that had a significant influence not only upon its release but well beyond. It was also a hit in the U.K., reaching number six on the British charts.
This was a sudden rush to stardom and complications arose nearly as quickly. Not long after the release of Piper , Barrett began showing clear signs of mental illness, to the point he would often freeze on-stage, not playing a note. At this point, David Gilmour -- a friend and associate of the band -- was brought in as a second guitarist, with the intention that he'd buttress the group's live performances while Barrett continued to write and record new material. This soon proved to be an impossible situation, and Barrett left the group, at which point the band's management also jumped ship, leaving them without any kind of leader.
In the wake of Barrett 's departure, the remaining members of Pink Floyd developed a different musical identity, one that was expansive and eerie, characterized by the band's spacy, somber explorations and, eventually, Waters ' cutting, sardonic lyrics. This transition took some time. In 1968, they released A Saucerful of Secrets , which contained Barrett 's final composition for the group, "Jugband Blues," and it found the group moving forward, particularly on the instrumental sections. A Saucerful of Secrets also saw the group begin a long, fruitful collaboration with Storm Thorgerson 's design team Hipgnosis ; they'd wind up designing many iconic album covers for the band, including Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here . Hipgnosis emphasized album art, and albums are where Pink Floyd concentrated from this point forward. After the soundtrack to More , the group moved to EMI's progressive rock imprint Harvest and became the label's flagship artist beginning with the 1969 double-LP Ummagumma . Divided between live performances and experimental compositions from each member, the record wound up in the Top Ten in Britain and sowed the seeds of a cult following in the United States.
Pink Floyd 's next album, Atom Heart Mother , featured extensive contributions from composer Ron Geesin and wound up as the band's first number one album in the U.K. The band embarked on an extensive supporting tour for the album and when they returned they delved even further into studio experimentation, learning the contours of the studio. Their next studio album, 1971's Meddle , bore the fruit of this labor, as did 1972's Obscured by Clouds , which was effectively a soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder's film La Vallee. All the experiments of the early '70s were consolidated on their 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon , an album for which there simply was no precedent in their catalog. Deepening their music while sharpening their songwriting, Floyd created a complex, luxurious album with infinite space and depth. Partially helped by the single "Money," it was an immediate success, reaching number one on the U.S. Billboard charts and peaking at number two in the U.K., but what was striking was its longevity. Dark Side of the Moon found space on the Billboard charts and then it just stayed there, week after week for years -- a total of 741 weeks in all (once it finally dropped off the charts, Billboard began the Catalog charts, where Dark Side was a fixture as well). Dark Side of the Moon was a staple on classic rock radio but it also was a rite of passage, an album passed down to teenagers when they were turning to serious music, and it was an album that stayed with listeners as they aged.
Now established superstars, Pink Floyd dug deep on Wish You Were Here , their 1975 sequel to Dark Side of the Moon , which functioned as an album-long tribute to Syd Barrett . Compared to Dark Side , Wish You Were Here wasn't quite a blockbuster but it was certainly a hit, debuting at number one in the U.K. and reaching that peak in the U.S. as well. Floyd continued to tour steadily, often working out new material on the road. This is particularly true of 1977's Animals , which had its roots in several songs aired during the 1975 tour. During the Animals tour, Waters had a difficult experience with a Montreal crowd where he spit on a heckler, and he used this incident as the genesis for 1979's rock opera The Wall . Co-produced by Bob Ezrin , The Wall may be Floyd 's most ambitious album, telling a semi-autobiographical story about a damaged rock star, and it's one of the band's most successful records, topping the charts throughout the '80s and turning into a pop music perennial along the lines of Dark Side . Part of its success in 1980 was due to "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2," where an instrumental motif from the album was given a disco beat and an anti-authoritarian spin, leading to a genuine number one hit single from the band. Certainly, the single had more to do with the album's success than the live production of the album, as Pink Floyd only did a handful of dates in major cities. Nevertheless, these shows, consisting of a wall being built across the stage during the first act and the band performing behind it during the second, were legendary ( Waters would revive and update the production years later to great success).
Pink Floyd did attempt to film The Wall for a documentary film, but the footage was botched, so they decided to pursue a feature film directed by Alan Parker and featuring Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof in the lead role. The Wall arrived in theaters in 1982 and turned into a midnight movie staple. A year later, The Final Cut -- a further autobiographical work from Waters , its title a sly dig to his battles with Parker on the film -- arrived, but it didn't come close to matching the chart success of any of its predecessors. Behind the scenes, things were tense. Rick Wright had been fired during the making of The Wall -- he was hired as a contract player during the recording and tour -- and Waters split after the release of The Final Cut , assuming that it was the end of the band. Waters released his debut solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking -- a piece that was pitched to Floyd in 1978, but the band chose The Wall instead -- in 1984, and not long afterward, Gilmour and Mason indicated they intended to carry on as Pink Floyd , so the bassist sued the duo for the rights to the Pink Floyd name. Waters lost and Pink Floyd released A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987, just months after Waters released his own Radio KAOS . Bad blood was evident -- T-shirts on Waters ' tour bore the question, "Which One's Pink?," an old lyric that now had greater resonance -- but Pink Floyd emerged victorious, as A Momentary Lapse of Reason turned into an international hit, and racked up some hit singles, including "Learning to Fly," which was supported by the band's first music video. Most importantly, the band racked up significant box office returns on tour, playing to sold-out stadiums across the globe. This tour was documented on the Delicate Sound of Thunder live album.
The success of A Momentary Lapse of Reason allowed Pink Floyd to dictate their own schedule and they took their time to return with a new album, eventually emerging in 1994 with The Division Bell . Greeted by warmer reviews than its predecessor, The Division Bell was another international success, and the accompanying tour -- which featured a performance of the entirety of The Dark Side of the Moon -- was a smash success. As before, the tour was documented with a live album -- this one was called Pulse , packaged in eye-catching artwork with a pulsing LED light -- and it performed respectably. After that, Pink Floyd went into effective retirement. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, while Gilmour released some solo albums, including the acclaimed On an Island , but most of their efforts were devoted to managing their catalog. Long a beloved band of audiophiles, the group saw their catalog boxed and remastered several times, including 5.1 mixes on SACD in the early 2000s.
As the new millennium progressed, a détente arose between the Floyd and Waters camps, culminating in an unexpected reunion of the original lineup of Waters , Gilmour , Mason , and Wright at the 2005 charity concert Live 8. The reunion was a rousing success, sparking rumors of a more permanent arrangement, but Gilmour declined. Instead, Waters ramped up his touring -- he performed Dark Side in its entirety, then turned his attention to The Wall , touring that for years. Gilmour and Mason wound up appearing at a 2011 show in London, signaling that there was no ill will between the members. Barrett passed in 2006 from cancer and in 2008, Wright also died from the disease.
In 2011, Pink Floyd launched an ambitious reissue project called Why Pink Floyd…? spearheaded by multi-disc, rarity-laden box set reissues of Dark Side of the Moon , Wish You Were Here , and The Wall . Among the newly released exclusives was the original Alan Parsons mix of Dark Side , heavily bootlegged live tracks like "Raving and Drooling," and demos. Three years later, in 2014, The Division Bell was reissued to celebrate its 20th anniversary, but the bigger news was the announcement of a new album called The Endless River . Constructed using outtakes from the recording sessions for The Division Bell , the primarily instrumental album was co-produced by Gilmour , Roxy Music 's Phil Manzanera , Youth , and Andy Jackson , and featured heavy contributions from the late keyboardist Rick Wright along with new work from Gilmour and Mason . The Endless River saw release in November of 2014. Two years later, Pink Floyd released the mammoth box set The Early Years 1965-1972 , which combined 28 CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays to tell a complete audio and visual picture of the band's first act. Released alongside this box was Cre/Ation: The Early Years 1967-1972 , a double-disc compilation of highlights from this set.
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Who was Little Sure Shot according to Sitting Bull | November 3, 1926 Greenville, Ohio
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Frank E. Butler
Annie Oakley Summary Information: Annie Oakley was the stage name of Phoebe Ann Moses, a sharpshooter whose skill at shooting led her to star in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and made her a national celebrity. She won numerous medals for her marksmanship, performed for royalty, and remains a legendary figure of the American West.
She was born August 13, 1860, to Jacob and Susan (Wise) Moses, Quakers who had migrated from Pennsylvania to a rented farm in Darke County, Ohio, a rural county on the Indiana border. Called Annie by her sisters, she was the sixth of seven children born to Susan Moses. In 1866, her father died of pneumonia. Her mother, unable to support her children, sent Annie to the live at the Darke County Infirmary—the county poor house—when she was 9 years old.
When she was about 10, she agreed to become a servant of sorts—helping with a baby and household chores—for another local farming family. The family was abusive, however; Annie referred to them later only as "the wolves." She stayed with them in near-slavery for about two years before running away, back to the Darke County Infirmary. She returned home to her mother not long after. Her mother had remarried and had another child, but her husband had died, leaving her to fend for herself and her children alone again.
Annie Gets Her First Gun
Annie, who had first shot a gun at a very young age before she was sent away, ended up supporting the family by hunting and trapping when she returned. She could shoot quail and pheasants in the head, keeping the edible portions of the birds entirely free of buckshot. She sold the game to locals in Greenville, Ohio, and to hotels and restaurants in the area, and built a reputation as an excellent shot. She claimed to have so been successful that she paid the mortgage on her family’s farm.
As a young woman, she met Francis "Frank" Butler while he performed his traveling marksman show in Cincinnati, Ohio. Part of Frank’s act was accepting challenges from local marksmen to matches, with bets being placed on both sides. A local hotel owner arranged a shooting match between Frank and Annie on Thanksgiving Day. Frank was surprised to learn his opponent was a five-foot-tall, 15-year-old girl— who beat him after he missed on his 25th shot. They began a courtship and eventually married. There is disagreement over the dates of their first meeting and their marriage; they may have wed as early as 1876, but their only known marriage certificate is in Windsor, Canada, and is dated June 20, 1882. Various reasons have been given for the discrepancies, including the possibility that Frank was not yet legally divorced from his first wife when he and Annie wed.
Phoebe Becomes Annie Oakley
The Butlers began performing together in May 1882 when Frank’s partner became ill. She took the stage name "Annie Oakley," possibly after the Oakley neighborhood in Cincinnati where they lived. Frank immediately recognized that Annie had a bigger draw and began to showcase her as the main act, acting more as a manager than as a fellow performer.
In 1884, the Sioux (Lakota) spiritual leader and medicine man Sitting Bull, who had beaten Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn, saw a show that Annie was in in a theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. He asked to see her after the show. Annie gave him a signed picture of herself ; Sitting Bull gave her moccasins he had worn at Little Bighorn and the nickname "Watanya Cicilla," Little Sure Shot.
Annie Oakley Meets Buffalo Bill
Also in 1884, Annie and Frank met William "Buffalo Bill" Cody while performing with a circus in New Orleans. Frank and Cody negotiated for a three-day trial with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show in early 1885—Annie and Frank would go on to perform with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show for 16 seasons. Cody called Annie "Li’l Miss," an apt nickname for the five-foot-tall markswoman, and had her perform early in the show to help audiences get used to the sound of gunfire. Her charisma and her skill with many firearms endeared audiences to her and to the show. At 90 feet, she could shoot a dime or a cork out of a bottle or snuff out candle flames. She could also shoot a playing card with the thin edge held facing her multiple times—the theatre business began referring to free tickets, which had holes punched in them, as "Annie Oakleys."
During the 1885 season, Cody also hired Sitting Bull to perform with the show, for which the government had allowed the chief to leave the Standing Rock Reservation. Although Sitting Bull only had to ride once around the arena in his role as "Show Indian," he did not take well to performing. Cody often asked Annie to talk to Sitting Bull when he became upset, but her presence and cajoling were ultimately not enough to keep him touring, and he returned to Standing Rock.
Annie Goes To London With The Wild West Show
In 1887, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show traveled to London as part of the American Exhibition, which coincided with Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. In early May, they gave several special performances for the royal family. During the performance for Queen Victoria on May 11, the queen rose and bowed deeply when the American flag came into the arena—it was the first time a British monarch had saluted the American flag and the members of the show roared their approval. The show stayed in London until October, giving over 300 performances that helped Annie hone her showmanship. The London newspapers gave her very favorable press for her shooting skills and began to embellish her western background.
In May 1888, the Wild West Show returned to the U.S. after stops in Birmingham and Manchester, England. Annie and Frank left the show for reasons that were "too long to tell" that spring and toured with various other shows and independently for the rest of the year. In December, she made her debut as an actress in a play called Deadwood Dick, but the play and the theater company weren’t successful. In the spring of 1889, they rejoined the Wild West Show for a tour of Europe, beginning with the Exposition Universelle in Paris, France, from May to October. They toured southern France, Spain, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany before returning to the States in the spring of 1890. The show returned to Europe for two more tours in 1891 and 1892, including another performance for Queen Victoria in 1892.
Annie Becomes A National Superstar
Annie was a celebrity, reportedly earning more than any other employee in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, when the show returned to the U.S. in 1892. Annie and Frank bought a house in Nutley, New Jersey, which they lived in between the tours that typically took them to about 130 towns each season. In 1894, Buffalo Bill, 15 of his Indians, and Annie Oakley were filmed by Thomas Edison in his Black Maria Studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison turned the films into nickelodeons—the public could go to Kinetoscope parlors and, for a nickel, see Annie shoot.
On October 29, 1901, the show members were traveling north in North Carolina to the final performance of the season in Danville, Virginia. Because of a misunderstanding at the switching station, the second train, the one Annie and Frank were on, ran head-on into a southbound train. Whether because of this accident or because it was just time—the 41-year-old sharpshooter had been touring continuously for nearly 20 years—she retired from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Around this time, her hair had begun to turn white as well, which was an obvious liability for a performer.
In retirement, Annie tried her hand at acting again, appearing in a play called The Western Girl in 1902, wearing a wig to conceal her hair. She also began giving shooting lessons at exclusive shooting clubs. Frank became a representative of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, a position that allowed Annie and Frank to continue their shooting exhibitions while endorsing the company’s products.
Annie Oakley Retires
In 1910, they attended a Wild West show known as "The Two Bills Show" at Madison Square Garden—Cody had merged his show with Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show. Cody asked Annie to join his show, but Annie refused, although she did tour some with another show until 1913, when she retired for good. She and Frank remained good friends with Buffalo Bill. When Bill died on January 10, 1917, she wrote a glowing eulogy of the old showman.
In 1912, Frank and Annie had began building a house in Cambridge, Maryland, which is on Maryland’s eastern shore. The roof of the house was designed so that Annie could step out onto it and shoot game off the Choptank River. They spent the rest of their lives in that house, spending some of their time at resorts in North Carolina and Florida. Hunting and shooting remained important parts in their lives. In 1922, Annie performed at a benefit show on Long Island and was rumored to be making a comeback, but she did not—in November, at the age of 62, she was in a car accident in Florida and fractured her hip and ankle. The brace she had to wear may have kept her from performing again, but it did not keep her from hunting and shooting.
Over the next four years, her health began to decline, and she and Frank returned to her roots in Ohio. On November 3, 1926, she died of pernicious anemia at the age of 66. Frank mourned so deeply, he stopped eating and died 18 days later on November 21. They are buried at Brock Cemetery near Greenville, Ohio.
Articles Featuring Annie Oakley From History Net Magazines
Featured Article
Annie Oakley
She was an Ohio-born lady who could shoot like the dickens. She was the first white woman hired by a Wild West outfit to fill a traditionally male role. She was, hands down, the finest woman sharpshooting entertainer of all time. And, at one time, she may have been the most famous woman in the American West or the American East. She was, of course, Annie Oakley — her name nearly as well recognized to this day as that of the bigger-than-life figure who hired her, Buffalo Bill.
Annie, born Phoebe Ann Moses in Ohio’s Darke County on August 13, 1860, got her gun at an early age but didn’t shoot her way to everlasting fame until after William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody put her on the payroll in 1885. In the process, the little woman (5 feet tall, about 110 pounds) gave Cody’s Wild West a shot in the arm. As a star with the stature, ability and uniqueness of Buffalo Bill himself, Annie Oakley had a platform to promote her egalitarian views about women. She believed that women needed to learn to be proficient with firearms to defend themselves and that they could even help fight for their country. During World War I, she offered to recruit and train a regiment of women sharpshooters. If nothing else, Annie Oakley helped expand the career options of American women.
Annie rose to stardom from humble roots. In the mid-1860s her father, Jacob, died, and her mother, Susan, had a devil of a time trying to make ends meet with seven children age 15 or younger on her hands. Annie tried to help by hunting and trapping in the Darke County woods. By age 10, Annie had been sent off to live at the county poor farm, known as the Infirmary, and during her early teens she alternated between living there and with her mother and stepfather. Her life took a turn for the better when she met Irishman Frank (‘Jimmie’) Butler of the Butler and Baughman shooting act.
According to legend, Butler was trying to drum up business in 1875 by accepting challenges from local marksmen, and on Thanksgiving Day in Greenville, Ohio, he took on young Annie Moses in a shooting match. ‘I almost dropped dead when a slim girl in a short dress stepped out to the mark with me,’ Frank Butler later said. ‘I was a beaten man the moment she appeared.’ Frank lost, 23 to 21. Later, whenever he said that he had purposely thrown the match, Annie would just flutter her eyes and smile. In any case, Frank was impressed enough by Annie to invite her to see his act in Cincinnati. She accepted. As part of his act, Butler and his big white French poodle, George, performed a William Tell bit. As usual, Frank shot the apple off George’s head and George retrieved the fruit, but the dog then brought it to Annie instead of to the shooter. A courtship ensued — between Annie and Frank, that is — and the couple was married within the year…or so the legend has it.
Shirl Kasper, author of the 1992 biography Annie Oakley, points out that the shooting match couldn’t have occurred in 1875, because Frank Butler’s shooting career probably didn’t even start until 1876. There are no contemporary newspaper accounts of the match. More likely, it occurred in 1881, which is what Butler said several times much later. When the couple actually wed is also uncertain. They told everyone that they were married about a year after they met, and their only known marriage certificate says they tied the knot on June 20, 1882, in Windsor, Canada, when Annie was 21.
Annie joined Frank’s stage act, according to her own account, only after Frank’s shooting partner, John Graham, became ill in May 1882. She filled in admirably and became an instant hit. She chose ‘Oakley’ as her stage name for some unknown reason and began to tour with Frank. To the experienced showman’s credit, he immediately realized that his wife was a star. He put his own career on a backburner so that he could manage her career, saying, ‘She outclassed me.’
In those early days of her stage career, Annie Oakley played with Frank Butler at small theaters, skating rinks and circuses. While working for the Sells Brothers Circus in New Orleans in 1884, they met Buffalo Bill Cody, but he didn’t hire her until after she and her manager-husband had come to Louisville, Ky., early in 1885 for a three-day tryout. After an agreement was struck, Buffalo Bill brought her to the mess tent to introduce her to the members of his Wild West, which had been inaugurated in 1883. ‘This little missie here is Miss Annie Oakley,’ Buffalo Bill said. ‘She is to be the only white woman with our exhibition. And I want you boys to welcome and protect her.’ They didn’t need to — ‘Li’l Missie,’ as Cody usually called her, had pretty much fended for herself from childhood.
Annie Oakley and Frank Butler toured with the Wild West for some 16 seasons, and the only contract they had with Cody was verbal. Annie said that Cody, whom she called ‘the Colonel,’ was the kindest-hearted, most loyal man she had ever met, and also the softest touch. She noted that Cody kept a big pitcher of lemonade by his tent so that he could serve refreshments to visiting youngsters. The Oakley act was spectacular. Cody generally used Li’l Missie early in his entertainment extravaganza so that she could warm the audience up to the sound of gunfire. Dexter Fellows, a sometimes press agent for the Wild West, wrote in his autobiographical book This Way to the Big Show that Annie ‘was a consummate actress, with a personality that made itself felt as soon as she entered the arena.’ During her entrance, Annie waved and blew kisses to the audience. She was an ambidextrous shot who fired rapidly and with unerring accuracy. On the rare occasions when she missed a shot, she immediately fired again. On occasion, she intentionally missed and then pretended to become petulant, stamping her feet in frustration and sometimes throwing her hat down and walking around it to change her luck. Then when she did hit the mark, the audience would roar louder than ever.
Frank Butler also got into the act, releasing clay pigeons for his wife. She would jump over her gun table and shoot the clay bird before it hit the ground. Often she shot cigarettes out of her husband’s mouth, and once she even shot a cigarette out of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s mouth. Charlatan shooters preferred to shoot ashes from cigars (with the help of a wire embedded in the cigar and twisted by the assistant’s tongue at the proper moment), so Annie insisted on shooting only whole cigarettes. Her act often included hitting targets while riding a bicycle with no hands. Although she could ride a horse in fine style, she left the shooting of glass balls from horseback to Buffalo Bill. Annie concluded her act with a funny jig and would kick up her heels just before she left the arena. Once when a newspaper in England wondered how fast and accurate she was, she gave a special demonstration. Frank stood on a chair facing his wife’s back. At Annie’s command, he dropped a tin plate. Annie turned, fired and hit it square, all within about half a second.
Annie Oakley had a theatrical flair and the quickness and agility of an athlete. But none of it would have meant too much had she not been such a top hand with all kinds of firearms. She practiced constantly and did not rely on trickery; she was no sham shooting star. Among her favorite shotguns were a Lancaster and a Francotte, her favorite rifles included a Winchester and a Marlin, and she used Colts and Smith & Wesson handguns equally well. ‘Guns, rifles and pistols are of many styles,’ she once said, ‘and to declare that any one make is superior to all others would show a very narrow mind and limited knowledge of firearms….Nobody should trust their lives behind a cheap gun.’
The famous Sioux (Lakota) spiritual leader and medicine man Sitting Bull toured with the Wild West during the 1885 season. Annie had actually met him the previous year in a St. Paul, Minn., theater, when Sitting Bull, then a resident of the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory, watched her fire a rifle to snuff out a burning candle. Apparently, Sitting Bull was so impressed that afterward he asked to see the little white woman. Annie then gave Sitting Bull a picture of herself, while he gave her moccasins he had worn at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, as well as the nickname Watanya Cicilla (‘Little Sure Shot’). They were happily reunited the next year as employees of Cody’s Wild West. Whenever Sitting Bull got peevish that season, Cody would send for Little Sure Shot, who would talk to the Lakota leader for a while and then do her jig before leaving his quarters. That inevitably would make Sitting Bull laugh and would lift his spirits. But her presence was not enough to make him want to continue with the show another season.
In the spring of 1886, while the Wild West performed in Washington, D.C., en route to an extended summer stay at Erastina, on Staten Island, an insect lodged itself deep inside Annie Oakley’s ear. By June, she had an ear infection, but, against doctor’s orders, she still rode in the 17-mile opening-day parade in New York City. Near the end of it, she collapsed, and doctors determined that the area behind her eardrum needed to be lanced to drain its poison. The bedridden Li’l Missie missed four performances at Erastina (probably the only four she missed during her show career) before she hobbled into the arena on the fifth day to shoot again. She had plenty of grit for sure, but part of Annie Oakley’s motivation for getting back in action was the fact that Cody had hired a younger female shooter, Lillian Smith, for the 1886 season. At the time, Annie may have been concerned about her job security. But there was room for both of them, and the Wild West continued to be a big hit when it moved into Madison Square Garden that winter.
In 1887, the two women sharpshooters and the rest of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West sailed to London as part of the U.S. delegation to Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. That May 5, Prince Albert Edward delighted in a special performance by the company and afterward wanted to meet the cast members. Annie Oakley had heard that women would flirt with the prince in front of his wife. When the prince was introduced to Annie and extended his hand, Annie passed it by and shook the princess’ hand first. She told the prince, ‘You’ll have to forgive me, I’m an American, and in America, women come first.’
Library of Congress
Portrait of Annie Oakley
On May 11, it was Queen Victoria’s turn to have a command performance. It was held at the exhibition grounds after her courtiers convinced her that they couldn’t fit Cody’s outfit into Windsor Castle. When the American flag entered the arena, Queen Victoria stood up and bowed deeply, and Cody’s company roared its approval. For the first time in history, an English monarch had saluted the Star-Spangled Banner. After Lillian Smith and Annie Oakley had curtsied and walked up to her, the queen told Annie, ‘You are a very clever little girl.’ L’il Missie had become an international star. At least one newspaper said that her marksmanship was better than that of Buffalo Bill.
Annie Oakley’s rising fame may have gone to her head, or to the head of her husband, and a rift developed between them and Cody. The couple left the Wild West. Annie did not explain the break from Cody, but she did say that the reasons she left were ‘too long to tell.’ She and Frank toured with vaudeville impresario Tony Pastor’s show in the spring of 1888. That summer, they hooked up with struggling Pawnee Bill (real name Gordon W. Lillie), a genuine frontiersman who had turned to showmanship, just like Buffalo Bill. Even though Pawnee Bill’s wife, May Lillie, was a sharpshooter with Pawnee Bill’s Wild West, Annie Oakley received top billing. Annie left the new show after a month to rejoin Pastor on a fall tour, and Pawnee Bill went broke less than three months later. While Annie was touring with Pastor, Frank Butler also arranged frequent shooting matches and exhibitions for his wife. In one match for $50 she broke all 50 clay birds, and in another, featuring 50 live pigeons, she defeated Miles Johnson, champion of New Jersey.
On Christmas Eve 1888, Annie Oakley made her debut as an actress in the Western melodrama Deadwood Dick. The play was not a success, and by early February 1889 the theater company had folded. One of the Deadwood Dick managers, though, was John Burke (who was a press agent for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West), and he was probably the one who convinced Frank Butler and Annie Oakley to rejoin Buffalo Bill for a spring run in Paris. That same year, Lillian Smith left the show, and Annie had no competition from any other female sharpshooter in France.
At first, the French apparently thought Buffalo Bill’s whole spectacle, including the shooting, was a fake, but when they saw Annie Oakley perform, they became convinced that she was the real thing. Nate Salsbury, Cody’s business partner, wrote that Annie Oakley saved the show. According to the scrapbooks at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., the French, like the rest of the world, idolized Little Sure Shot. The French papers also played up Cody’s reputation as a womanizer.
The Paris show ran until the fall of 1889, and then the Wild West ventured on an extended European tour. The English and Italians were most impressed by the horseback riding, but the Germans, especially Prussian military men, took a greater interest in the show’s logistics. The Germans were amazed by the Wild West’s efficient rail movement and the fact that Cody fed his crew three hot meals a day regardless of travel. After World War I started, Annie Oakley heard a rumor that the Germans modeled the movement of the German regiment after the movement of Buffalo Bill’s large company. When reporters reminded Li’l Missie that she had shot a cigarette out of the mouth of the kaiser (Wilhelm II) during the 1890-91 tour, she remarked that she wished that she had missed that particular shot. In Strassburg, Germany, in 1890, Cody sneaked into Annie Oakley’s tent and wrote in her autograph book: ‘To the loveliest and truest little woman, both in heart and aim, in all the world. Sworn by and before myself. W.F. Cody, Buffalo Bill.’
When Annie Oakley returned to the United States in October 1892, she was a celebrity who reportedly made more money than any other of Cody’s Wild West employees. In the fall of 1894, Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley and a handful of Indians performed in front of Thomas Edison’s moving-picture machine at the inventor’s laboratory near Orange Mountain in New Jersey. Edison was delighted that his machine could reproduce gun smoke and the shattering of glass balls. The public could go to kinetoscope parlors and, for a nickel, view these early Edison films in peep-show machines. Now, people didn’t have to see Annie Oakley live to know her. She had become the first ‘cowgirl’ in motion pictures.
Meanwhile the show went on, and it became more of a road show than ever. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West played in more than 130 towns in both 1895 and 1896. In 1897, the Wild West played in Canada for the first time since Sitting Bull was a headliner in 1885. Annie admitted in 1899 that she had begun to at least think about retirement. The railroad travel was endless, and it had its dangers. Train accidents were not uncommon.
One notable wreck occurred at 3 a.m. on October 29, 1901, near Lindwood, N.C., while the company was headed to Danville, Va., for its last performance of the season. When the first section passed the switching station, the switcher thought that it was the whole outfit, so he threw the switch. The second section ran into an oncoming train. The wooden cars became so many piles of kindling as people and animals cried out in pain and steam hissed. Legend says that Annie Oakley, now 41, was found pinned beneath the rubble and it took several hours before she could be extracted. As Li’l Missie was carried by stretcher past some wounded horses that had to be shot, she supposedly remarked that she felt sorry for them. Just 17 hours after the wreck, according to legend, her brown hair turned totally white because of the horror of the accident.
Biographer Shirl Kasper, however, argues that Annie was not badly hurt in the wreck (the Charlotte Observer reported that nobody from the Wild West was injured) and that while Annie’s hair did turn white rather fast, it wasn’t because of the train wreck. Two newspaper articles in Annie’s scrapbooks at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center say that her hair turned white after she sat too long in a hot bath at a health resort later that year. In any case, says Kasper, it was her white hair, not any bodily injuries, that convinced Annie Oakley to immediately leave Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
After her retirement from the Wild West, Annie Oakley tried her hand at acting again, appearing as the lead in a play called The Western Girl, which opened in New Jersey in November 1902. She looked much as she had while shooting in the Wild West, except now she wore a brown wig to hide her white hair. She also would teach shooting at exclusive clubs. Meanwhile, her husband worked for the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, promoting its products to the growing number of trapshooters. In the spring of 1910, Frank and Annie attended a Wild West show at Madison Square Garden known as the ‘Two Bills Show,’ because Buffalo Bill’s outfit had merged with Pawnee Bill’s outfit. Cody apparently asked Annie to rejoin the show, but she and Frank turned the old showman down. Instead, the following year, they joined up with Vernon C. Seavers’ Young Buffalo Wild West, and Little Sure Shot continued to shoot for that outfit until retiring for good in 1913. Annie and Frank continued to be friends with Cody, though, and when Buffalo Bill died on January 10, 1917, she wrote a glowing eulogy.
After giving her last performance with Young Buffalo Wild West on October 4, 1913, Annie and Frank retired to a new home in Cambridge, Md., and also spent a lot of their time at resorts in Pinehurst, N.C., and Leesburg, Fla. Hunting and shooting remained a big part of their lives. They had no children. In the summer of 1922, when she was about to turn 62, Annie Oakley performed at a benefit show on Long Island (a clip of her performance that day can be seen at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center). The New York Herald hinted that she might be making a comeback in show biz and could appear in the movies soon. It never happened. That November, she fractured her hip and an ankle in a car accident in Florida. The steel leg brace she was forced to wear did not, however, keep her from resuming her shooting and hunting.
Annie Oakley was back home in Darke County, Ohio, when she died on November 3, 1926. She had never fully recovered from the car accident. The doctor wrote ‘pernicious anemia’ as her cause of death. Frank Butler reportedly stopped eating or caring. Less than three weeks later, on November 21, he seemed to fulfill his wish by joining his beloved wife in death.
Annie Oakley had not been born in the West, and she had not lived there. But for many years she had certainly looked like a cowgirl, and she had ridden a horse and shot better than most any Westerner, of either sex, while performing in Wild West shows. To call her, then, a ‘Western legend’ does not miss the mark…even if she was too good, and too good a shot, to shoot anyone.
This article was written by Eric V. Sorg and originally appeared in the February 2001 issue of Wild West.
| Annie Oakley |
What would a person normally do with perique | History I Never Knew: The Remarkable Annie Oakley - West Roxbury, MA Patch
History I Never Knew: The Remarkable Annie Oakley
By Tom Burke (Open Post) - July 8, 2013 1:05 am ET
In April 1898, three weeks before the Spanish-American War broke out, President William McKinley received the following letter:
“I feel confident that your good judgment will carry America safely through without war. But in case of such an event I am ready to place a company of fifty lady sharpshooters at your disposal. Every one of them will be an American, and as they will furnish their own Arms and Ammunition will be little if any expense to the government. “
--Annie Oakley
McKinley never responded to the 37-year old Annie’s offer to help. Nor did Woodrow Wilson or his Secretary of War Newton Baker nineteen years later when Oakley wrote “I can guarantee a regiment of women for home protection, every one of whom can and will shoot if necessary.” But she still gave soldiers of World War I shooting lessons, and she helped raise money for Red Cross and other organizations.
Annie Oakley, born in 1860, was a remarkable woman. Her name is familiar to my generation. We all remember the TV show of the mid-1950s that starred the glamorous Gail Davis. Gail was also a sharpshooter and expert rider too, but the 81 episodes of the Annie Oakley Show had no resemblance to the life and accomplishments of “Little Sure Shot.”
We boomers have also sung “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” They’re from Annie Get Your Gun, the popular musical that debuted in 1946. Some of us even remember Barbara Stanwyck as Annie in the 1936 biopic.
So we can thank the showbiz acumen of people like Gail Davis’s mentor Gene Autry and composer Irving Berlin for keeping the name of Annie Oakley alive. That’s a good thing. But she deserves to be remembered for far more than most of us know about her.
Annie Oakley was not just an entertainer with a rifle slung over her shoulder. She was the first bona fide American female superstar. Her story is an inspirational tale of a child who rose from stark and abusive poverty, who never forgot her roots or those who faced similar hurdles, who did everything in her power to better the lives of girls and women, and who was a staunch patriot in deed as well as in word.
During her career, Oakley taught more than 15,000 women how to use a gun, both for the inherent discipline of marksmanship and for self-defense. She even taught ladies how to conceal their guns in umbrellas. She said, “I would like to see every woman know how to handle firearms as naturally as they know how to handle babies.”
Up from Poverty, Rifle in Hand
Phoebe Ann (Annie) Moses was born in a log cabin in rural northwest Ohio, the sixth of seven children of Jacob and Susan Moses. Jacob had fought in the War of 1812. He died of pneumonia in 1866, when Annie was five. Annie taught herself how to shoot, using her late father’s old 40-inch cap-and-ball Kentucky rifle.
At age eight, she began trapping and hunting small game to support her widowed mother and her siblings. She would kill the animals with a head shot, preserving as much edible meat as possible. She sold the game to Katzenberger’s Restaurant in Greenviile, Ohio. The owner re-sold most of it hotels and restaurants in Cincinnati, 80 miles away. Annie so good that by age 15 she had earned enough to pay off her mother’s mortgage.
At age nine she was admitted to an infirmary in Darke County, Ohio along with her sister. The superintendent’s wife taught her how to sew and decorate. Annie was also "bound out" to a local family to help care for their infant son, on the false promise of fifty cents a week and an education. For two years t she endured the couple’s mental and physical abuse. She would often have to do boys' work. One time she was put out in the freezing cold, without shoes, to punish her for falling asleep over some darning. Annie referred to the family as "the wolves." But in her autobiography, she did not reveal the couple's real name.
Word of Annie’s prowess as a sharpshooter spread throughout the region. Her escape hatch from a grinding life of penury was that singular – but now forgotten - American institution, the traveling road show. On Thanksgiving Day, 1875, the Baughman and Butler shooting act was performing in Cincinnati. Traveling marksman and former dog trainer Frank Butler, an Irish immigrant, placed a $100 side bet – one worth more than $2500 today - with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost. The bet: that Butler could beat any local shooter.
Frost arranged a match between the 25-year-old Butler and Annie, saying, "The last opponent Butler expected was a five-foot-tall 15-year old girl.”
Butler missed on his 25th shot, losing both match and bet. But he eventually won big. He began courting Annie. They married in August 1876 and stayed together until their deaths 50 years later. They first lived in the Oakley district of Cincinnati, and Oakley became her stage name. Offstage, she always referred to herself as Mrs. Frank Butler.
Annie began as Butler’s assistant in the traveling act. But soon he stepped back from the limelight and let his more talented spouse be the star. They joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show in 1885 and stayed with it for 17 years. Annie was the main attraction. Her most famous trick was repeatedly splitting a playing card, with the edge facing her, and putting several more holes in it before it could touch the ground. She did it from 90 feet away, using a .22 caliber rifle.
That feat prompted people in the theatre business to refer to complimentary tickets as "Annie Oakleys". Such tickets traditionally have holes punched into them to prevent them from being resold. She could also hit a tossed-up dime from 90 feet, and one day she hit 4,472 of 5,000 glass balls tossed into midair.
How “Little Sure Shot” Got Her Nickname
In 1884, after a performance in St. Paul, Minnesota, Oakley befriended the fearsome Sitting Bull, chief of the Lakota Sioux. Eight years previously, in 1876, Sitting Bull had led the Indians in the rout of General George Armstrong Custer at Little Big Horn. Sitting Bull fled to Canada, returned in 1881 and surrendered, and was still a political prisoner when he met Annie. Impressed by both her marksmanship and her self-assured demeanor, he gave her the Sioux name “Watanya Cicilla,“ which means “Little Sure Shot.”
Later that year Sitting Bull was allowed to join Cody’s entourage as a show Indian. He earned about $50 a week for riding once around the arena, and he became a popular attraction. But Sitting Bull stayed with the show for just four months. The poverty of the white men’s cities and their patronizing attitude disgusted him.
Sitting Bull was an admirable leader of his people, a superb military tactician, and a good guy. He gave speeches about education for the young and reconciling relations between the Sioux and whites. He earned a small fortune by charging for his autograph and picture, and he often gave his money away to the homeless and beggars. He said that Indian culture would take care of its sick and elderly, and was appalled that white society did not do the same for its own. But Sitting Bull loved Annie Oakley.
Fame, and Fortune Generously Shared
In 1887, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West toured England to join in the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Annie received a great deal of press coverage, and by the time Cody and his show returned to Europe in 1889, Annie had become a seasoned performer and earned star billing. The troupe stayed in Paris for a six-month exhibition, and then travelled around France, Italy, and Spain. Oakley was especially popular with women. Buffalo Bill made the most of her fame to demonstrate that shooting was neither detrimental nor too intense for women and children.
In Europe, Annie also performed for King Umberto I of Italy and Marie François Sadi Carnot, president of France. Shooting the ashes off a cigarette held in Frank's mouth was a big part of the act. She was so good that the newly-crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II asked her to shoot the ash off his cigarette. She did so, but had him hold the butt in his hand. After World War I began, she wrote him a letter requesting a second shot.
Annie earned $700 a week while on tour in Europe. But she remembered the poverty of childhood and lived frugally. She sent money home to her mother and family, and gave money to orphans, widows and young women who wanted to further their education. Records show she provided funding and professional training for at least 20 young women.
She often said, “Aim at the high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, not the second time and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally you'll hit the bull's-eye of success.”
Though she had no formal education, Annie instinctively knew all about cultivating her feminine image – today we’d call it brand management. Annie projected womanly allure and sex appeal without being sexy - the perfect little lady. She wore her hair unpinned, like a young girl. She made all of her own clothes, which she styled to hug and display her pleasing curves. But she never showed any skin, covering her legs with long stockings and wearing long sleeves and high collars.
In that uptight, repressed Victorian era, Annie Oakley was breaking barriers at the same time while helping to create an image of American womanhood - proper, attractive, and practical. The woman Annie represented didn’t need protection; she could protect herself.
Setbacks and Hardships
It wasn’t all glory and fame for Annie Oakley and Frank Butler. She left Cody’s show for a year when a younger rival shooter named Lillian Smith joined up and got higher billing. In 1901, she lost a shooting match to a nine-year-old girl, Ethel Nice. Shortly after that, Annie was in a train wreck, was temporarily paralyzed, and had five spinal operations.
She left Buffalo Bill’s show in 1902 and began an acting career. She was on the stage as Nancy Berry, The Western Girl, who got the better of the bad guys by using pistol, rifle, and lariat.
Annie had previously appeared in one of the earliest movies ever produced, “The Little Sure Shot of the Wild West.” A Kinetoscope film shot in 1894 by inventor Thomas Edison, it was the 11th movie made after commercial showings began in April of that year. In the film, Annie performed an exhibition of shooting at glass balls.
In 1904, the odious William Randolph Hearst published a scurrilous story that Annie had been arrested for stealing to support a cocaine habit. A coke-snorting stripper from Chicago had been nabbed by police, and she gave her name as “Annie Oakley.” That “evidence” was apparently enough for the scandal-mongering Hearst.
It took the real Annie six years and 55 libel lawsuits against newspapers to get back her reputation. She won 54 of those suits, but the judgments she collected didn’t even pay her legal bills. Hearst even sent punks from his papers to Ohio to try and dig up dirt about her, but they came back with nothing.
Following Annie’s change of career and despite her injury, her shooting prowess continued to improve until she was well into her sixties. In a 1922 contest, Annie hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards away. She was 62 at the time.
Later that year, she and Frank were in a car accident that forced her to wear a steel brace on her right leg. But she recovered and set more records in 1924.
Annie’s health declined in 1925. She succumbed to pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio and died at age 66 in November 1926. Frank Butler was so disconsolate at her passing that he stopped eating and died just 18 days later.
After Annie’s death, her incomplete autobiography was given a friend, the stage comedian Fred Stone. Soon it was discovered that her entire fortune had been spent on her family and on her charities.
Her Legacy
So how should we remember Annie Oakley? As one of America’s best. Ever.
Annie Oakley was a model for the Greatest Generation that followed her, and for all generations to come. She overcame poverty, mistreatment and physical injury with her determination and strength of character. She broke barriers for women with her talent and accomplishments in her sport. She loved her country and proved it with many good and patriotic works. She showed compassion and generosity to orphans, widows and other young women. She was a devoted and faithful wife.
Annie Oakley excelled in a man's world by doing what she loved – winning fame and fortune as the little lady from Ohio who never missed a shot.
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Who was the first woman to be appointed Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports | Admiralty Judge – Cinque Ports
Admiralty Judge
The Judge Official and Commissary of the Court of Admiralty of the Cinque Ports, to use the full title, is appointed by the Lord Warden.Until the early years of the 20th century, the Judge presided over sessions of the Admiralty Court, on behalf of the Lord Warden. Although still entitled to act in that capacity, in practice the position is now an honorary and ceremonial one.
Current Judge
The current Admiralty Judge is Lord Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony. First appointed by HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, in 1997, Lord Clarke was re-appointed by the present Lord Warden in 2004.
After serving as the Admiralty Judge of the High Court in London and as Master of the Rolls, Lord Clarke was the first Justice to be appointed directly to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, when it was established in 2009.
Judge Surrogate
The Judge has a deputy, known as the Judge Surrogate of the Admiralty Court of the Cinque Ports, also a purely honorary role.
Since 1991, this position has been held by Peter Sherred, formerly a solicitor in private practice in Dover.
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Paratha is a type of bread from which country | Cinque Ports (Pepys' Diary)
Cinque Ports
Wikipedia
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Location of the Cinque Ports and their limbs.
The Confederation of Cinque Ports ( /sɪŋk pɔərts/ [1] ) is a historic series of coastal towns in Kent and Sussex . [2] It was originally formed for military and trade purposes, but is now entirely ceremonial. It lies at the eastern end of the English Channel , where the crossing to the continent is narrowest. The name is Norman French , meaning "five ports". They were:
However, Rye , originally a subsidiary of New Romney, changed to become one of the Cinque Ports once New Romney was damaged by storms and silted up.
Other towns also contribute to the confederation, including two Antient (see e.g. [3] ) Towns, and seven Limbs.
Contents
11 External links
"Antient Towns"
The five ports are supported by the two so-called "Antient Towns" of Rye and Winchelsea , [2] whose councils traditionally maintained defence contingents for the realm of England.
Limbs
Apart from the five ports and the two Antient Towns, there are eight other members of the Confederation, which are considered to be Limbs of the other towns. These are:
Lydd (Limb of New Romney)
Folkestone (Limb of Dover)
Tenterden (Limb of Rye) [4]
Connected towns
There are in addition some 23 towns, villages and offices which have varying degrees of connection to the ancient Liberties of the Cinque Ports.
The coastal confederation during its mediaeval period consisted of a confederation of 42 towns and villages in all. These include:
Limbs of Hastings – Grange (now part of Gillingham, Kent ), Bekesbourne , Bulverhythe , Northeye (former village in Sussex [5] ), Eastbourne , Hydney (now Hampden Park, part of Eastbourne ), Pebsham (small village between Bulverhythe and Bexhill-on-Sea (then as Bexhill), Pevensey and Seaford (in Sussex )
Limbs of Hythe – West Hythe [7]
Walmer, Ramsgate
History of the ports
Formation, duties and privileges
A Royal Charter of 1155 established the ports to maintain ships ready for the Crown in case of need. The chief obligation laid upon the ports, as a corporate duty, was to provide 57 ships for 15 days' service to the king annually, each port fulfilling a proportion of the whole duty. [8] In return the towns received the following privileges:
"Exemption from tax and tallage , right of soc and sac , tol and team , blodwit (the right to punish shedders of blood) and fledwit (the right to punish those who were seized in an attempt to escape from justice), pillory and tumbril , infangentheof and outfangentheof , mundbryce (the breaking into or violation of a man's mund or property in order to erect banks or dikes as a defence against the sea), waifs and strays , flotsam and jetsam and ligan "
That is to say:
Exemption from tax and tolls; self-government; permission to levy tolls, punish those who shed blood or flee justice, punish minor offences, detain and execute criminals both inside and outside the port's jurisdiction, and punish breaches of the peace; and possession of lost goods that remain unclaimed after a year, goods thrown overboard, and floating wreckage.
The leeway given to the Cinque Ports, and the turning of a blind eye to misbehaviour, led to smuggling , though common everywhere at this time becoming more or less one of the dominant industries.
A significant factor in the need to maintain the authority of the Cinque Ports by the King was the development of the Royal Navy . King Edward I of England granted the citizens of the Cinque Ports special privileges, including the right to bring goods into the country without paying import duties; in return the Ports would supply him with men and ships in time of war. The associated ports, known as "limbs", were given the same privileges. The five head ports and two antient towns were entitled to send two Members to Parliament . A Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was appointed, and also held the title of Constable of Dover Castle , and whilst this office exists today, it is now a purely honorary title, with an official residence at Walmer Castle . The town of Hastings was the head port of the Cinque Ports in mediaeval times. The towns also had their own system of courts.
Barons
SIGILLUM COMMUNE BARONUM DE HETHE, common seal of the barons of Hythe
SIGILLUM COMMUNE BARONUM DE HASTINGUIS, common seal of the barons of Hastings. 2 standards can be seen flying from the ship: one showing the Plantagenet arms of 3 lions, the other seemingly showing 3 ships, which arms are combined by dimidiation in the arms of the Cinque Ports
All Freemen of the ports, termed "portsmen", were deemed in the age of Feudalism to be barons , and thus members of the baronage entitled to attend the king's parliament. Termed "Barons of the Cinque Ports", they reflected an early concept that military service at sea constituted land tenure per baroniam making them quasi feudal barons . The early-14th-century treatise Modus Tenendi Parliamentum stated the Barons of the Cinque Ports to hold a place of precedence below the lay magnates but above the representatives of the shires and boroughs . Writs of summons to parliament were sent to the warden following which representative barons of the Cinque Ports were selected to attend parliament. Thus the warden's duty in this respect was similar to that of the sheriff who received the writs for distribution to the barons in the shires . The existence of common (i.e. communal) seals of the barons of the individual ports (see illustration) suggests they formed a corporation as the seal was designed to be affixed to charters and legal documents which would bind them as a single body. [9] This no doubt related to their privileges as monopolies . The warden and barons often experienced clashes of jurisdiction. [8] In the 21st century the title "Baron of the Cinque Ports" is now reserved for Freemen elected by the Mayor, Jurats and Common Council of the Ports to attend a Coronation, at which they hold the canopy above a new monarch, and is solely honorary in nature.
Changes in composition
As time went by and some ports declined or silted up, others were added. Rye and Winchelsea were attached to Hastings as "Antient Towns" in the 12th century, and later became members in their own right. The following "corporate limbs" were added in the 15th century: Lydd , Faversham , Folkestone , Deal , Tenterden , Margate and Ramsgate . Other places associated with the Cinque Ports and sometimes described as "non-corporate limbs" included Bekesbourne , Birchington , Brightlingsea , Fordwich , Pevensey , Reculver , Seaford , Stonor and Walmer . [2] At one time there were 23 limbs.
Decline
The continuing decline of the confederation of the Cinque Ports may be ascribed to a variety of different circumstances, but they were not so hampered by the raids from the Danes and the French to be removed by the numerous destructive impact of plagues, and survived the politics of the 13th-century Plantagenets and the subsequent War of the Roses .
Although by the 14th century the confederation faced wider challenges from a greater consolidation of national identity in the monarchy and Parliament, the legacy of the Saxon authority remained. Even after the 15th century, the 'antient towns' continued to serve with the supply of transport ships.
During the 15th century, New Romney, once a port of great importance at the mouth of the river Rother (until it became completely blocked by the shifting of sands during the South England flood of February 1287 ), was considered the central port in the confederation, and the place of assembly for the Cinque Port Courts, the oldest such authority being vested in the "Kynges high courte of Shepway", which was being held from at least 1150. It was here that from 1433 the White (1433–1571) and Black (1572–1955) Books of the Cinque Port Courts were kept.
Much of Hastings was washed away by the sea in the 13th century. During a naval campaign of 1339, and again in 1377, the town was raided and burnt by the French, and went into a decline during which it ceased to be a major port. It had no natural sheltered harbour. Attempts were made to build a stone harbour during the reign of Elizabeth I, but the foundations were destroyed by the sea in storms.
New Romney is now about a mile and a half from the seafront. It was originally a harbour town at the mouth of the River Rother . The Rother estuary was always difficult to navigate, with many shallow channels and sandbanks. In the latter part of the thirteenth century a series of severe storms weakened the coastal defences of Romney Marsh , and the South England flood of February 1287 almost destroyed the town. The harbour and town were filled with sand, silt, mud and debris, and the River Rother changed course, now running out into the sea near Rye, Sussex. New Romney ceased to be a port.
Hythe is still on the coast. However, although it is beside a broad bay, its natural harbour has been removed by centuries of silting.
Dover is still a major port.
Sandwich is now 3 km (1.9 mi) from the sea and no longer a port.
Ongoing changes in the coastline along the south east coast, from the Thames estuary to Hastings and the Isle of Wight inevitably reduced the significance of a number of the Cinque port towns as port authorities. However, ship building and repair, fishing, piloting, off shore rescue and sometimes even "wrecking" continued to play a large part in the activities of the local community.
By the reign of Queen Elizabeth I , the Cinque Ports had effectively ceased to be of any real significance, and were absorbed into the general administration of the Realm. Queen Elizabeth I sanctioned the first national lottery that was held in 1569 in an effort to raise funds for the crumbling Cinque Ports. [10] With the advance in shipbuilding techniques came a growth in towns such as Bristol and Liverpool and the wider development of ports such as London , Gravesend , Southampton , Chichester , Plymouth and the royal dockyards of Chatham , Portsmouth , Greenwich , Woolwich and Deptford . A further reason for the decline of many older ports may be ascribed to the development of the railway network across Britain, and the increased quantity of overseas trade it could distribute from the new major ports developing from the 18th century.
Local Government reforms and Acts of Parliament passed during the 19th and 20th centuries (notably the Great Reform Act of 1832) have eroded the administrative and judicial powers of the Confederation of the Cinque Ports, when New Romney and Winchelsea were disenfranchised from the Parliament, with representation provided through their Counties alone, while Hythe and Rye's representation was halved.
In 1985, HMS Illustrious established an affiliation with the Cinque Ports. In 2005, the affiliation was changed to HMS Kent .
Coat of arms of Hastings
Heraldry
The distinctive heraldic emblem of the Cinque Ports is the front half of a lion joined to the back of a ship, seen in the coats of arms of several towns, and also in the heraldic banner (flag) of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports . This was originally created by heraldic dimidiation . [11]
Cinque Ports Acts 1811 to 1872
The Cinque Ports Acts 1811 to 1872 is the collective title of the following Acts: [12]
http://www.open-sandwich.co.uk/cinqueports/cinq... .
“In Medieval times, the responsibility for the defense of the South East Coast and the Channel, fell to a Confederation of the five main ports at that time. These were, Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings, plus two other towns, Rye and Winchelsea. Their correct title is, The Cinque (pronounced ‘sink’) Ports and Two Ancient Towns. They supplied the Crown with ships and men, and in return were granted privileges.
Over the years there have been a varying number of member towns associated with them, called corporate and non corporate members, the present main associates can be seen on the map.
The Great Storm of 1287 was the beginning of the end for many of the ports, it silted up harbours, blocked rivers, and submerged towns. Despite this, the Cinque Ports still retained their status and privileges, probably in recognition of their service to the Crown Fleet, but not necessarily their loyal support of the Crown! The people of the Ports were notoriously independent and tended to go their own way.
Today, these towns are still known as the Cinque Ports, but the coastline has changed considerably over the centuries (see maps in the other sections) and only Dover remains as a major port.
There was always an overall Warden of the Cinque Ports, and this tradition is still carried on today. Former Wardens include, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill and lately, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who will be greatly missed. The present Lord Warden has yet to be appointed.”
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What are Globe and Jerusalem a form of | Artichoke Harvest: How To Tell When An Artichoke Is Ripe
Image by Clay Irving
By Susan Patterson, Master Gardener
Artichokes (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus), considered a delightful treat by many, are perennial edible plants that are similar in appearance to thistles. They can grow up to 5 feet tall and bear flower buds that look like a dark green pinecone, almost 4 inches in diameter. A leathery bract surrounds a purple-blue flower.
Most of the nation’s artichokes are grown in the coastal California region because conditions are most favorable. Artichokes like frost-free winters and cool, foggy summers the best. When and how to harvest artichokes in the home garden depends on the type you are growing.
Types of Artichokes
There are two main types of artichokes — those that are round are known as “Globe” and those that are long and tapered are known as “Violetta.” The flowering bud of these artichokes is the part that is harvested.
The Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), a strong growing perennial, is referred to as a sunchoke and is a member of the sunflower family. The edible portion of this crop is underground in the form of a tuber.
When and How to Harvest Artichokes
Artichoke harvest starts in late July or early August and continues well until frost. Buds are generally harvested once they reach full size, just before the bracts begin to spread open.
Harvesting artichokes requires that you cut off the bud along with 3 inches of stem. Harvesting Jerusalem artichoke tubers is not done until after frost when tubers are dug up from the ground.
After harvest, continue to water and feed the plants. After several frosts, cut back the artichoke plant and mulch heavily.
How Do I Know When to Pick Artichokes?
You’ve probably asked yourself, how do I know when to pick artichokes even when the timing seems right? If you’re concerned about how to tell when an artichoke is ripe, watch plants very carefully. Once flower buds begin to form, it’s vital to provide the right conditions for the plant so that it doesn’t become stressed.
If you miss the ideal artichoke harvest for Globe and Violetta types and buds are not harvested, they will form a purple flower that can be cut for fresh or dried arrangements.
Artichoke Harvest Concerns
Although artichokes aren’t difficult plants to maintain, they won’t flower if they don’t receive an adequate number of chilling days. It’s best to plant early to ensure proper growth.
| Artichoke |
The mojito is a traditional cocktail that originated in which country | Artichoke Harvest: How To Tell When An Artichoke Is Ripe
Image by Clay Irving
By Susan Patterson, Master Gardener
Artichokes (Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus), considered a delightful treat by many, are perennial edible plants that are similar in appearance to thistles. They can grow up to 5 feet tall and bear flower buds that look like a dark green pinecone, almost 4 inches in diameter. A leathery bract surrounds a purple-blue flower.
Most of the nation’s artichokes are grown in the coastal California region because conditions are most favorable. Artichokes like frost-free winters and cool, foggy summers the best. When and how to harvest artichokes in the home garden depends on the type you are growing.
Types of Artichokes
There are two main types of artichokes — those that are round are known as “Globe” and those that are long and tapered are known as “Violetta.” The flowering bud of these artichokes is the part that is harvested.
The Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), a strong growing perennial, is referred to as a sunchoke and is a member of the sunflower family. The edible portion of this crop is underground in the form of a tuber.
When and How to Harvest Artichokes
Artichoke harvest starts in late July or early August and continues well until frost. Buds are generally harvested once they reach full size, just before the bracts begin to spread open.
Harvesting artichokes requires that you cut off the bud along with 3 inches of stem. Harvesting Jerusalem artichoke tubers is not done until after frost when tubers are dug up from the ground.
After harvest, continue to water and feed the plants. After several frosts, cut back the artichoke plant and mulch heavily.
How Do I Know When to Pick Artichokes?
You’ve probably asked yourself, how do I know when to pick artichokes even when the timing seems right? If you’re concerned about how to tell when an artichoke is ripe, watch plants very carefully. Once flower buds begin to form, it’s vital to provide the right conditions for the plant so that it doesn’t become stressed.
If you miss the ideal artichoke harvest for Globe and Violetta types and buds are not harvested, they will form a purple flower that can be cut for fresh or dried arrangements.
Artichoke Harvest Concerns
Although artichokes aren’t difficult plants to maintain, they won’t flower if they don’t receive an adequate number of chilling days. It’s best to plant early to ensure proper growth.
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What type of pastry is used to make Baklava, a sweet dessert produced in Greece and Turkey | Baklava and Beyond: 12 Turkish Sweets You Should Know | Serious Eats
Baklava and Beyond: 12 Turkish Sweets You Should Know
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In Turkey, dessert is often a social ritual, a course meant to be shared. At any time of day or night, friends can be found congregating to sip Turkish coffee or tea from dainty glasses, and should you care to accompany that beverage with a roll, pastry, or snack, there's much to choose from. Baklava is just the tip of the iceberg—on a recent trip to Istanbul, I fell in love with the country's vast range of desserts, while developing a far deeper understanding of the Turkish sweet tooth. Here's a look at some of the most popular desserts you'll find.
Baklava
[Photo: Robyn Lee ]
Baklava was just as ubiquitous as I'd anticipated, though not all brands are created equal. It's always best eaten fresh (I certainly wouldn't recommend "saving it for later"—believe me, I tried!) and thankfully it's socially acceptable to devour it for breakfast, fresh out of the oven.
The pastry comes in numerous shapes, sizes, and flavors; cevizli baklava (walnut baklava) and fistikli baklava (pistachio baklava) are what you see most often in the States: flaky layers of phyllo dough, stacked and brushed with butter and sugar syrup, and then cut into rectangles or diamonds. But keep an eye out for other variations, like ceviz dolama, a round and slightly more compact baklava made with walnuts, or the similarly shaped saray sarmasi, which features a combination of both nuts. Then there's dürüm, which is made with only a single layer of phyllo, so it's composed almost entirely of ground pistachios that turn each piece a vibrant green. And wait, there's more! Like özel kare baklava, which contains the traditional layers of phyllo but bulges with double the pistachio filling; visenli baklava, packed with sour cherries; and the delightful kestaneli baklava, in which phyllo dough is wrapped around a candied chestnut so it actually assumes that same, rotund shape.
My favorite iteration comes from Karaköy Güllüoğlu , accompanied by a generous dollop of kaymak (clotted cream) that balances out the sweetness of the nuts and provides an airy contrast to the crisp, buttery layers. It's no wonder the shop has been in business since 1871, when Güllü Çelebi brought the recipe to Gaziantep, Turkey, after learning the technique from a chef in Damascus. "Baklava is like an art," says Fatih Güllü, who runs day-to-day operations at Güllüoğlu. In Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert , he explains, "In one piece of baklava are thirty-five layers of dough. The learning process is like a university. It takes years to learn."
Don't miss out on kadayif, either. Often sold alongside baklava at shops, it's indeed a similar pastry, but one that's made using shredded, syrup-soaked phyllo instead of sheets. But while it's common to find baklava made with rosewater in Syria, or honey and cinnamon in Greece, Turkey maintains certain purist baklava standards, no matter how you fill it, wrap it, or slice it. "It is important that baklava is never made with honey, but with a simple sugar syrup," explains culinary travel expert Selin Rozanes of Turkish Flavours . "A good baklava must be made of real butter and real sugar and not their replacements."
Kaymaklı kayısı
I had the pleasure of taking a cooking class with the aforementioned Rozanes, after which we sat down to a feast of a lunch, capped off with kaymakli kayisi for dessert. For this unique sweet, dried apricots are cooked in a sugar syrup until soft, then stuffed with buffalo milk kaymak (the same rich, clotted cream I ate with baklava, though marscapone can be used too) and rolled in ground pistachios. The apricots can be simmered in red wine instead of water to enhance the color, advises Rozanes, and they can be garnished with crushed walnuts or hazelnuts in lieu of pistachios.
"Apricots are widely grown in Malatya in Turkey," explains Rozanes. "They store the energy of the sun during the hot summer months, and in the cold winter, are a remembrance of great sunny days. An apricot festival is held in many Turkish towns every year." Sure enough, kaymakli kayisi delivers a perfect combination of textures and flavors—fruity, creamy, and nutty all at once.
Salep Dondurma
[Photo: Robyn Lee ]
In certain heavily trafficked areas, like Sultanahmet and Istiklal Avenue, vendors donning a red and gold fez and vest can be seen ringing a bell and calling out to passersby. They're peddling more than just the stretchy ice cream known as salep dondurma—each transaction turns into a slapstick routine with the customer, as they repeatedly trick and taunt you with the cone: grabbing it back out of your hand, flipping it upside down, tossing it in the air, making you lick it for an audience, and more. (And, somehow, their schtick never gets old!) That said, it's not just the stuff of street vendors; dondurma is sold in familiar ice cream parlor setups, as well.
The stretchy Turkish ice cream is sweetened and flavored with aromatic mastic (derived from an evergreen in the pistachio family) and thickened with salep (a powder made from wild orchid tubers). The addition of salep results in a distinct elasticity, allowing the ice cream to droop off the side of the cone without melting and dripping. "Salep dondurma is about 300 years old," says Rozanes. "It is said that it was invented in a part of southeastern Turkey where all three key ingredients were plentiful—milk, mastic resin, and salep."
These days, mass production has depleted Turkey's supply of wild orchids, since 250 orchid bulbs are needed to make a kilo of the powder and it takes an orchid producing salep seven to eight years to grow back. Consequently, there's a government ban on the export of salep, but it can be found for sale in small amounts at at some of the shops inside Mısır Çarşısı (the Spice Bazaar); I procured a bag of the precious powder from a spice shop called Ucuzcular Baharat .
Revani
[Photo: bp_lumia920 Flickr ]
Revani is one of those things that the Turks and the Greeks both like to claim as their own but, according to Tina Wasserman, Jewish cuisine expert and author of Entree to Judaism , the original recipe can be credited to Sephardic Jews who migrated to Turkey after 1492. Originally known as tishpishti, it was renamed revani in honor of the eponymous 16th-century Turkish poet.
The dense sponge cake traditionally gets its granular texture from semolina flour. In Greece, it's made with ground almonds and sweetened with honey or orange blossom syrup. But Turkish revani uses only semolina flour and sometimes yogurt, and is served steeped in a sugar syrup. Semolina, which is ground from durum wheat and typically used to make pasta, can be found in other Turkish desserts as well, such as Turkish helva, which is made simply from semolina flour, butter, sugar, milk, and pine nuts.
My first piece of revani was topped with a mastic ice cream and came with a shot of raki, Turkey's signature anise liqueur, which nicely cut the sweetness of the cake.
Aşure
Pudding fans will be happy in Turkey. I didn't even put a dent in the spectrum of flavors, like pomegranate, pistachio, rose, saffron, and coconut. The legendary Hafiz Mustafa , a pastry and candy store dating back to 1864, is a one-stop shop for all things pudding.
Aşure, which I tried at a historic restaurant in Sultanahmet called The Pudding Shop , is a light, fruity dessert also known as "Noah's pudding." (Named for the Noah who survived the flood—and, according to tradition, created a pudding using all the ingredients he had.) There, it carries hints of orange and a distinctive texture thanks to fig, apricot, hazelnut, garbanzo beans, golden raisins, and bulgar or barley—though the exact fruits and nuts used can vary. According to Turkish culinary expert Elizabeth Taviloğlu, some say aşure is the oldest dessert in the world. It's customary to fast for the first ten days of Muharrem (the first month of the Islamic calendar), and then share aşure with friends and neighbors on the 10th day.
While there are endless variations, for a basic recipe, Taviloğlu recommends bringing the wheat or barley to a gentle boil before letting it soak overnight and absorb all the liquid. Next, the chickpeas, beans, dried fruits, sugar and flavors like lemon or orange zest are added and brought again to a boil, and then cooked until thickened. Once cool, it should be refrigerated and garnished with nuts, seeds and other dried fruits before serving.
Tavukgogsu
[Photo: Robyn Lee ]
Here's how a Turkish man living in New York described tavukgogsu to me: "A white pudding made from chicken—but it doesn't taste like chicken at all!"
And that's a pretty spot-on description. Tavukgogsu tastes more like a rice pudding, minus the rice—creamy and smooth, but thick enough to be almost chewy. It's seasoned with cinnamon and vanilla, but there's not even a trace of chicken flavor. The white meat is added simply for the elastic texture it creates after cooking down for a long time in milk and breaking up into indistinguishable strands. The dish has its roots in a medieval French dessert called blancmange, says Rozanes, and it was once served to the sultans living at Topkapı Palace. Though it's still considered one of Turkey's signature delicacies, I had to search around Istanbul a bit before finding it at Saray Muhallebicisi , a cafe with several locations throughout the city.
Kesme dondurma
Have you ever eaten ice cream with a knife and fork? Kesmek means "to cut" in Turkish, so kesme dondurma, made from salep and goat milk, refers to an ice cream made for slicing. There are several brands of the ice cream, which originated in the city of Maraş, but a cafe called MADO is one of the more well-known. They not only grow their own salep and use exclusively natural flavors for their ice creams, but also raise goats fed only with thyme, milk vetch, and orchid flowers, to give their ice cream its sweet, subtly botanical base.
While kesme dondurma uses the same type of orchid-root thickening agent used in salep dondurma, it's a specific beating method that makes it dense enough to form that solid brick shape when frozen; when eaten, it melts slowly in the mouth. MADO carries several flavors of kesme dondurma, including Maraş cut (plain), peanut, orange, caramel-almond, chocolate, pistachio, and mixed fruit.
Gelincik şerbet
In Turkey, sherbet refers not to a fruity frozen dessert, but rather a sweet, carbonated soft drink dating back to the Ottoman empire. According to Binnur Tomay, author of Binnur's Turkish Cookbook , sherbet was once enjoyed at each meal by sultans and visitors to the palace. In the gardens of the Ottoman Palace, spices and fruits grown for sherbets were controlled by the pharmacists and doctors. "It was used during childbirth to increase lactation of the mother," writes Tomay. "This type of sherbet is called lohusa şerbeti (birth sherbet) which is crimson in color and is flavored with cloves and herbs." In Eastern Turkey, the groom's family would bring sherbet to the bride's family after the dowry was agreed upon, as symbol of his acceptance.
Now, sherbets are enjoyed on special occasions like Ramadan and weddings, served in crystal bowls placed on lace-covered trays. Popular flavors include rose, cardamom, tamarind, raspberry, poppy, and pomegranate, and they're traditionally made from a syrup steeped with honey, spices like cinnamon and clove, flower petals, and dried fruits. I picked up this delicately floral poppy sherbet (gelincik şerbet) while visiting the gilded Topkapı Palace.
Osmanli macunu
Much like the salep dondurma magicians, vendors outside tourist destinations make a show of twirling and spinning melty colored sugar from a large tin onto a stick to create osmanli macunu. The origin of the candy dates back to the Ottoman Empire, when a spiced paste known as mesir macunu was used to cure Ayşe Hafsa Sultan, mother of Suleyman the Magnificent, who had fallen ill after the death of her husband. It was made from a grape molasses called pekmez and 41 different plants and spices. Hafsa Sultan was so pleased with the results, she created a festival in its honor; every March 22nd is the Mesir Macun Celebration, where wrapped candies are tossed from the roof of the mosque in Manisa, an Anatolian city in the Aegean region.
The showy osmanli macunu hawked by street vendors in Sultanahmet these days is a far cry from the spicy paste of years past, which included everything from anise, cardamom, and cloves, to coriander, fennel, and rhubarb. Instead, sweet strands of strawberry, kiwi, chocolate, orange, and lemon-flavored caramelized sugar come together to form a sticky rainbow before it's sealed off with a swipe from a halved lemon. "The one on the stick is a street food version, mostly sold as a tourist attraction," explains Rozanes. "It is sold also at the Spice Market, wrapped in candy form, for those who believe in its power."
Kunefe
[Photo: Robyn Lee ]
This sweet and savory Levantine cheese pastry is hard to avoid in Turkey; you can smell the street vendors frying it up from blocks away. Kunefe is made from a stretchy, unsalted fresh melting cheese called hatay found only in this region—mozzarella would be the closest Western analogue. The cheese is coated in sugar syrup-soaked phyllo shreds called kadayıf (the same ones used to make some varieties of baklava, as described above), and fried until crisp. Its appeal is the contrasting textures of the crunchy exterior against the soft, melty interior. It can be topped with pistachios, kaymak (clotted cream) or ice cream—or simply eaten on its own, preferably while still piping hot.
Pudingli pasta
Pudingli pasta, despite its name, is neither pudding nor pasta; rather, it's a light cake made by layering Turkish cream biscuits with a pudding-like filling. Think of it as an icebox cake, pre-icebox. While many of the desserts I tried in Turkey were dense and syrupy, this was a welcome, lighter change.
Lokma
[Photo: Robyn Lee ]
You better have a hungry friend in tote if you order a box of the sweet, fried dough balls known as lokma. This Mediterranean answer to a doughnut is crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle, and coated with a sugar syrup, leaving you with sticky fingers. Lokma means "bite" in Turkish, and these appropriately bite-sized pieces are rich and chewy, unlike our drier, more cakelike doughnut holes. The dough is made from basic flour, yeast, salt, and oil before it's fried and doused with sugar syrup (and sometimes grated lemon peel).
Like so many treats in Turkey, lokma is said to have been created by the sultan's cooks at Ottoman Empire palaces, but these days it's a popular dessert for Turks to cook at home and serve to friends and family. Similar desserts can be found throughout the Mediterranean and Asia, such as struffoli, marble-sized Neapolitan fried dough balls coated with cinnamon and orange zest, and loukoumades, the version of the dish soaked in honey and said to be served to Olympic winners in ancient Greece.
| Filo |
What trophy is at stake when Australia play the West Indies at test cricket | Blog - Libanaissweets
Blog
Posted by Baklava on
22nd Mar 2016
I read with great interest the article posted on Groupon and titled “The Best Chicago Baklava Ranked by a Greek pastry Chef Mom” , and while the article was fun to read and light hearted, I honestly was expecting a lot more from it and, with all due respect, I believe the article was a bit misleading to the readers.
I am not here to start a culinary cultural war, I am just trying to set things straight: Lebanese Baklava is the best, the most diversified and the one that contributed to the advancement of Baklava more than that of any other culture in the world. Did I say I was not going to start a culturpistachio_squaresal culinary war? Oups! :). Before justifying the reasons that led me to consider the post as misleading and showering you with facts about Lebanese Baklava, allow me to make one fact crystal clear: judging food is not a piece of cake! As such a process involves a comprehensive set of criteria involving quality, look, smell and most importantly taste.
First thing first, the Greek Pastry chef mom compared Greek Baklava to Middle Eastern Baklava without explaining to the readers that by default they are not the same as every culture puts their own stamps on it. While they may share the same name, some of the same ingredients they are different. Baklava has always had a controversial, not very well documented history which I invite you to read on my website where I have detailed the history of baklava . Secondly, hosting friends and asking them to choose between your family recipe and that of others is not exactly an objective approach at ranking baklava in Chicago.
Middle Eastern Baklava is not the same as the Greek one nor the Turkish one. Greek Baklava is very sweet usually filled with walnuts or pistachios and dipped in honey. It comes in one shape, squares; One piece of balloriehGreek Baklava is fulfilling and for some overwhelming.
While Turkish Baklava comes in numerous shapes, sizes and flavors: cevizli baklava (walnut baklava), fistikli baklava (pistachio baklava) and saray sarmasi (walnut+pistachio baklava) are the ones you see often. You may also find özel kare baklava containing double the pistachio filling and visenli baklava packed with sour cherries. Turkish baklava is served in multiple shapes: rounds, rectangles or diamonds. Turkish Baklava is never made with honey, it’s made with a simple sugar syrup as they believe a good baklava is made of real sugar and not its replacement.
Middle Eastern Baklava, Lebanese in particular is very different. It’s lighter and flakier. It’s made of phyllo dough sheets filled with Walnuts, Pistachios, Almonds, Cashews or Pine Nuts and dipped in syrup made borma_pistachioof orange blossom water and rose water, sugar and water. It comes in a variety of triangular rectangular, diamond or square shapes.
Now that we made the difference crystal clear, let’s move to the set of criteria (and I am not referring to our own opinions) based on which I will prove that the Lebanese Baklava, we make at Libanais Sweets, is the best.
Quality– our secret recipe phyllo dough (my grandfather’s recipe) is the best but I can’t tell you why! We’re committed to using high quality fresh and natural ingredients acquired directly from local farmers (when possible) and free of artificial flavors and preservatives. Nuts are never mixed in the same baklava piece to lower the cost of production. All the nuts we use are handpicked and each piece is handcrafted.
Look– they say “don’t judge a book by its cover”, well that’s not the case here! The look is the very first indicator of any product quality, and that’s what we believe in. We pay attention to every little detail: the size, the color, the shape, the lightness, the texture etc…a simple glance at one of our Baklava pieces will be sufficient: yish_boulboulou will clearly distinguish every well cut layer of phyllo dough sandwiching the roasted to perfection fresh nuts.
Taste– Well, it’s like a perfect harmony between the phyllo dough taste, the nuts taste and the taste of the back-stage ingredients. With each bite, you will distinguish the different textures and flavors of the ingredients with a pleasant aftertaste that will leave you wondering. Not too sweet, not too dry…not over roasted, not too brown…not too puréed, not too chunky, just perfect.
Smell– another delight: when you lift it to your mouth, a blend of creamy fresh ghee, nature scent of nuts with the hints of orange blossom and rose water will give you the first, everlasting, desired impression!
Quality √
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Which football league side were originally called Dial Square | Arsenal Football Club - The Glorious History 1886 to 1945
Arsenal Football Club
The Glorious History
1886 - 1945
* Please be aware that any derogatory remarks made during these history pages about Tottenham Hotspur are purely intentional and are meant to offend any supporters of the said club as much as is legally possible. The author would also like to take this opportunity to thank all Tottenham supporters worldwide for giving us their First Division place in 1919, he would also like to gloat at never giving it back! Oh, thanks for Pat Jennings as well!!
1886 "Royal Arsenal" is Born
In approximately October 1886, the arrival of two Nottingham Forest players Fred Beardsley and Morris Bates was the catalyst that David Danskin from Kirkcaldy in Fife needed to create a works football team at the Woolwich Arsenal. Fifteen players were recruited, and all contributed towards the purchase of their first football. As one of the workshops within the Arsenal was called Dial Square, the name was chosen to represent the team.
The first game of the new club was against a team called Eastern Wanderers on the 11th December 1886. the game was played on a piece of open ground that someone had found on the Isle of Dogs. Apparently the pitch (if it could be called that) was shapeless with one portion being described as a ditch by some and as an open sewer by others.. Still, history says that Dial Square won the game 6-0. This result filled the players with enthusiasm and resulted in a meeting at the Royal Oak, next to Woolwich Arsenal Station, on Christmas day 1886.
The meeting was called to solve three major problems. These problems were, a shortage of name, kit and somewhere to play. Apparently, no-one was happy with the name Dial Square, and a combination of Royal Oak and Woolwich Arsenal resulted in the regal sounding name Royal Arsenal which was met by approval from all. The decision for choice of kit was almost as easy, Fred Beardsley wrote to Nottingham Forest asking for help. Forest generously sent Beardsley a complete set of red shirts and a ball. Plumstead Common recreation area as home venue was the third decision arrived at on that fateful Christmas day.
1887 Royal Arsenal v Erith
The first official fixture that Royal Arsenal played at Plumstead Common was against Erith. The final result was a 6-1 home victory.
1888 Royal Arsenal move from Plumstead Common to Manor Field
Manor Field is affectionately re-named Manor Ground for purposes of grandness!
1890 Royal Arsenal win their first trophies!
Royal Arsenal won the Kent Senior Cup, the Kent Junior Cup, and more significantly, the London Charity Cup. The latter was concluded with a 3-1 win over Old Westminsters at the Manor Ground in front of 10,000 people.
1891 Royal Arsenal Move again
After the cup successes of 1990, Royal Arsenal decided to move just across Plumstead High Street, to a new ground which already had a stand, terraces and dressing rooms - the Invicta
1891 Name changed to "Woolwich Arsenal"
1893 Greedy Landlord tries to cash in on new success!!
A home crowd of 12,000 people against Scottish Champions Hearts combined with Woolwich Arsenal's election to the Football League (when the size was increased from 12 to 15 teams) resulted in a rent increase from �200 to �350 per annum. Woolwich Arsenal could not afford this exorbitant request, and were left with no alternative but to repurchase the old Manor Ground. They formed a limited liability company with a nominal capital of 4,000 �1.00 shares. In all, 860 people subscribed for 1,552 shares, the largest shareholder (50 shares) was a local coffee house proprietor . With the help of supporters, the team worked throughout the summer to get the ground ready for the Second Division.
1896 Woolwich Arsenal suffer 0-8 defeat at the hands of Loughborough
1900 Woolwich Arsenal get revenge by thrashing Loughborough 12-0
1904 Woolwich Arsenal Promoted!
The arrival of Harry Bradshaw as manager in 1901 resulted in a 4th position, followed by 3rd, and 2nd in 1904 gaining Woolwich Arsenal promotion to the Football League First Division.
1910 Henry Norris Becomes Woolwich Arsenal Manager
1913 Woolwich Arsenal Are Highbury bound....
Woolwich Arsenal relegated after only winning three games all season. Exactly how Highbury came into reckoning when a move was decided upon is not known. In the end though, Woolwich Arsenal paid a massive �20,000 for a mere 21-year lease and agreed not to stage any matches on Good Friday and Christmas Day (due to the property being leased from St Johns College of Divinity)(these restrictions were lifted in 1925 when the club paid another �64,000 to buy the whole site outright). The following year, the serious work started on the ground. The pitch was levelled (the north end had to be raised eleven feet, the south lowered five), a new grandstand was partially built and turnstiles and terracing installed. It cost another �80,000. Cash at the time though was so short that the builder agreed to take a percentage of the gate money until he was paid for his work.....
1914 Name changed from "Woolwich Arsenal" to "Arsenal"
1919 Henry Norris engineers Arsenal Promotion to Division 1 at expense of Tottenham despite being 5th in Division 2! (Gotta Laugh)
In 1919 the Football League decided to extend the First Division from 20 to 22 clubs. The usual procedure had been to simply re-elect the bottom clubs from the previous season and to promote the top clubs from the Second Division. This indeed was what almost everyone assumed (and were told) would happen. By chance, two other London clubs, Chelsea and Tottenham had finished 19th and 20th in the First Division in 1915, with Arsenal finishing 5th in the Second. When the League AGM was convened, Norris' strategy became clear. It must have been agreed with League President John McKenna, a close friend of Norris and the owner of Liverpool in advance (Manchester United came 17th in Division 1 after rigging their last game (2-0) against Liverpool to finish above Chelsea).
Firstly, Chelsea were detached from Tottenham and their position taken separately. There was no vote, and the fact that Chelsea would have finished third from bottom in 1915 had Liverpool beaten United in the fixed match undoubtedly influenced the meeting. MeKenna proposed that they be re-elected on the nod and this was accepted. Then Derby and Preston, first and second in the Second Division in 1914-15, were elected into the First Division without debate. Then came the bombshell. McKenna made a brief speech recommending that Arsenal be given the remaining First Division place because of their service to the league and their longevity , particularly pointing out that Arsenal had been in the League 15 years longer than Tottenham.
To this day, it is impossible to explain what actually went on at that AGM. The arguments for Arsenal's promotion were complete nonsense. The committee took their vote, and Arsenal received 18 votes out of a possible 41, while Tottenham only received 8. Additionally, for many years there were rumours of significant amounts of money changing hands, but to this day, nothing has ever been proven. Hence, Arsenal were promoted from 5th place in the Second Division while neither 4th, or 3rd had a realistic chance in the vote, and Tottenham were relegated...... This moment started a feud between the two clubs that has continued on ever since!
1925 Herbert Chapman becomes Arsenal Manager for 2,000 p.a.
Arsenal advertised their manager's job in "The Athletic News" on 11th May 1925. Herbert Chapman however had already been approached for the job. Henry Norris (by now) the Arsenal Chairman offered him �2,000 a year to take the job, easily the highest salary in the game, and Chapman needed little persuading!
Some of Herberts inovations included Changing "Gillespie Road" underground train station to "Arsenal". This was an amazing coup at the time, because it resulted in millions of tickets, maps and signage being changed and was actually a huge operation. To this day, Arsenal are the ONLY Football team to have a station named after them. Herbert also advocated flood-lighting, artificial pitches and instigated placing numbers on players backs.
1927 Arsenal Appear in the F.A. Cup Final for the first time
On 23rd April 1927, Arsenal met Cardiff City in the F.A. Cup Final at Wembley's Empire Stadium. The team was: Lewis, Parker, Kennedy, Baker, Butler, John, Hulme, Buchan, Brain, Blyth, Hoar. Unfortunately, the visit was not a happy one, as Arsenal were defeated 1-0 with Hugh Ferguson scoring the all important goal for Cardiff. The day goes down in Football history for being the only time that the F.A. Cup has left England.
1930 Arsenal WIN the F.A. Cup Final for the first time
Saturday 26th April 1930. After 44 years, Arsenal finally achieved their first success. It was the day that Arsenal wrote themselves into the record books. The 55th F.A. Cup Final saw Arsenal defeat Huddersfield Town (the dominant team of the late 20's) 2-0 infront of a crowd of 92,488 with goals from Alex James in the 17th minute and Jack Lambert in the 83rd minute. The team was: Preedy, Parker, Hapgood, Baker, Seddon, John, Hulme, Jack, Lambert, James, Bastin. The game will also be remembered for the vivid image of the airship Graf Zeppelin flying 2,000 feet above Wembley during the first half, and King George handing over the trophy.
The victory signalled the start of a period when Arsenal completely dominated English football and gained recognition worldwide during a remarkable era.
The Road to the First F.A. Cup
OPPOSITION
54
2nd
In the F.A. Cup Final, Arsenal were equally unlucky being defeated 2-1 by Newcastle with Bob John scoring Arsenal's only goal. The Arsenal team for the final comprised of: Moss, Parker, Hapgood, Jones, Roberts, Male, Hulme, Jack, Lambert, Bastin and John.
1932 Arsenal open new West Stand
The West Stand cost �45,000 and was officially opened by the Prince of Wales (later the Duke of Windsor) on the 10th December 1932. It was actually first used on the 12th November for a game against Chelsea (Arsenal won 1-0) and was, by a large margin, the grandest and most expensive structure on any league ground at the time. It incorporated three flats, an electronic lift, and had 4,100 seats and the lower lever, which was originally all standing, could in theory hold another 20,000.
While the West Stand was being built, a story that has become a bit of folk-lore at Highbury occurred. Local inhabitants were encouraged to bring along their rubbish to help in the process of raising up the banking on all four sides of the ground. One coal merchant backed up too close to the hole in the North Bank and saw his hourse and cart disappear into the cavity. The animal was so badly injured that it had to be destroyed and it is buried where it fell, in the middle of the North Bank terracing.
1933 Herbert Chapman's New Shirts
Herbert Chapman decides before the Liverpool game at Highbury to add white sleeves to our red shirts to add distinction.
1933 / 4 / 5 Arsenal win THREE First Division Championships in consecutive years!!
The Final standings for the three glorious Football League championship years were as follows:
P
58
1934 - 1935
Arsenal were awarded a crest by the Football League for this achievement that still hangs outside the directors offices in Highbury's East Stand to this day.
1934 / 5 Ted Drake breaks Arsenal scoring record.
Ted Drake scored 42 League goals. He scored 4 goals against Birmingham, Chelsea (and in the next game) Wolverhampton and Middlesborough. His mere hat-tricks came against Liverpool, Tottenham (suffer hehehe) and Leicester City. He also scored 1 goal in the F.A. Cup. against Brighton and Hove Albion and 1 goal against Manchester City in a 4-0 Charity Shield victory, bringing his seasons total to 44 goals.
1935 Highbury Record Attendance set.
On the 9th March 1935 Arsenal welcomed visitors Sunderland to Highbury. Unfortuanately the 73,295 RECORD ATTENDANCE were only thrilled with the cramped conditions as the final score was 0-0.
1935 Ted Drake scores 7!!!
On December 14th 1935 Ted Drake Scored all SEVEN goals in Arsenal's 7-1 victory against Aston Villa at Villa Park in Birminham. The record still stands to this day as the greatest number of goals scored in a Football League First Division (Premier League) game by an individual. For the first quarter hour Villa were the better team, but at half-time they went in 3-0 down and Drake had a hat-trick. All the goals were classic Arsenal - a long ball from Pat Beasley for Drake to run on to, a long pass from Bastin which Drake picked up and ran with to the edge of the area before scoring, and a rebound from a Pat Beasley shot from the wing. At the end of an hour Drake had a double hat-trick and Arsenal were 6-0 up. This time the goals came from a mistake from Villa centre half Tommy Griffiths, who assumed a ball was going over the dead ball line only to see it rebound off the post for Drake, another pass from Bastin to Drake and an instant return from a bad goalkeeping clearance.
Drake was controlling the ball perfectly, beating defenders at will and shooting so accurately that the Villa Keeper, Merson, had no chance. It was the exhibition of a complete centre forward. By this time the entire Villa half back line was marking Drake, but it made little difference for his seventh shot actually hit the bar and bounced down to be cleared. It was one of only two goal attempts of the whole afternoon which missed it's mark (the other was saved). Villa did score once, but Drake had the final word in the last minute with yet another goal from a bastin cross-field pass; seven goals away from home with just nine shots.
1936 Arsenal WIN the F.A. Cup Final for the second time
Saturday 25th April 1936. Arsenal defeated Sheffield United 1-0 at Wembley with a goal from Ted Drake in the 74th minute from a Cliff Bastin clearance. Drake was unable to get off the floor after scoring the goal due to pain from an injured knee. When he finally got up, he remained on the field without actually taking part in the remainder of the game. The team for the final was: Wilson, Male, Hapgood, Crayston, Roberts, Copping, Hulme, Bowden, Drake, James and Bastin.
Incidentally, Arsenal had previously been fined �250 by the Football League for resting players (Roberts and Drake) and fielding less than their most competative team between F.A. Cup ties (once Arsenal found that they were unable to win the First Division for the 4th consecutive time).
The Road to the Second F.A. Cup
OPPOSITION
52
1st
Once again, Ted Drake was the highest scorer with 17 goals dispite missing 15 league games through injury, while Cliff Bastin contributed 15 goals. This Championship signalled the end of a quite remarkable era when Arsenal became the most recognised football team in the world!!
1939 Hollywood comes to North London?!
The last game at Highbury before the Second World War was against Brentford on the 6th May 1939 and Arsenal won 2-0 with goals from Alf Kirchen and Ted Drake, but it was MORE noteable for the fact that it was used to make the film "The Arsenal Stadium Mystery" .
The story centres around a footballer who dies by poisoning during a game at Highbury. Scotland Yard investigate, and all the Arsenal and "Trojan" players come under suspicion. The film provides some wonderful footage of the great pre-war Arsenal team, both on and off the pitch. See the ground, dressing rooms and other fascinating "behind-the-scenes" views of the East Stand.
Brentford in unusual change strip, played the fictional part of "The Trojans" and several Arsenal personalities took part in the film, including Cliff Bastin, Tom Whittaker and George Allison.
1939 World War 2 brings League Football to a standstill!
With the close of the 1938-9 season, Arsenal were in the midst of a huge financial crisis. The re-building of the ground in the mid 30's had resulted in a huge debt burden with crippling interest payments. Crowds of 40,000 were required simply to break even.
By August 1939, Arsenal had only �3 and 92 pence (metricised) in the bank. Luckily, the post war football boom between 1945 and 1952 when attendances soared, happily solved the clubs financial problems.
1939 - 45 World War 2 Claims 9 Arsenal Players....
The War was to prove a tragic time for a heavily bombed Highbury. No less than 9 of the 42 professionals on the books in 1939 failed to survive it, the highest loss of any club. The nine players to lose their lives were, Henry Cook, Bobby Daniel, William Dean, Hugh Glass, Leslie Lack, William Parr, Sidney Pugh, Herbie Roberts and Cyril Tooze.
This history was written by
Steve Gleiber. Frankly, I spent weeks reading Arsenal history books, watching Arsenal videos and listening to Arsenal tapes to bring this to you, so I'm adding my little � symbol to it ok! Please do not copy, distribute or reproduce this history without my permission.
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For which county does England batsman Gary Balance play | Arsenal 3-0 Manchester United - BBC Sport
Arsenal 3-0 Manchester United
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Mesut Ozil scored and provided an assist in a Premier League game for the fourth time.
Arsenal stunned Manchester United with three goals in the opening 20 minutes as the Gunners moved up to second in the Premier League table.
United had no answer to Arsenal's opening burst as Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil scored twice in 74 seconds.
Sanchez added a third from 18 yards as the Gunners beat United for just the second time in 14 league meetings.
United improved after the break but Arsenal substitute Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain hit the crossbar late on.
Defeat leaves Louis van Gaal's side in third place, behind Arsenal on goal difference.
Rodgers could not fool Liverpool fans any longer - Lawrenson
Wenger relieves the pressure
Arsenal's Champions League defeat at home to Olympiakos in midweek left them in danger of failing to reach the last 16 and manager Arsene Wenger in the face of heavy criticism.
Wenger was forced to defend his selection of goalkeeper David Ospina, describing recent criticism as "not analysis of football". He also called the press "boring".
But his side were anything but in an opening half which saw them tear Manchester United apart, almost at will.
With their first real attack Sanchez back-heeled in at the near post after good work from Aaron Ramsey and Ozil, and the Germany playmaker then added the second a minute later after Walcott ran at a struggling defence.
Sanchez shrugged Matteo Darmian aside to add his second with a brilliant 18-yard strike which brought up an unwanted record for the visitors, as they conceded three goals in the opening 20 minutes of a Premier League game for the first time.
And it should have been four just after the half-hour mark as Ramsey volleyed wide from close range when completely unmarked.
With the game won, Arsenal failed to repeat their attacking display in the second half until substitute Oxlade-Chamberlain chipped David de Gea and hit the crossbar in injury time.
The Gunners are now just two points behind leaders Manchester City going into a two-week international break which had the potential to be uncomfortable for their fans and for Wenger.
Did Van Gaal get team selection wrong?
Louis van Gaal may have spent over £250m since taking charge at Old Trafford, but he still appears to have glaring holes in his squad.
The decision to play winger Ashley Young at left-back, and the continuing selection of Daley Blind at centre-back, were both exposed by Arsenal's electric start.
Blind played most of his first season at United in a deep midfield role and a lack of pace and strength were both in evidence against Walcott and Sanchez.
Arsenal were utterly dominant during the opening 15 minutes.
Even Chris Smalling - who has been lauded for his early season form - was too slow to close down Sanchez as he bent in the third goal after easily outwitting Darmian.
In front of United's ragged back four, partnering Michael Carrick and Bastian Schweinsteiger in midfield also proved an error.
Carrick, 34, and Schweinsteiger, 31, are both masters at keeping possession but in an opening 15 minutes in which Arsenal totally dominated the ball, their lack of pace against the counter-attack was exposed all too easily.
Morgan Schneiderlin - left on the bench - may have been a better option to break up play as Arsenal's Ramsey, Santi Cazorla and Francis Coquelin bossed the midfield.
The anonymous Memphis Depay and Darmian were hauled off at the break as Marouane Fellaini belatedly stiffened the centre and Wayne Rooney was moved out to the left wing.
The changes worked - as United had 72.5% of second-half possession - but they came far too late to affect the result.
The recalled Petr Cech - who made a good save to deny Anthony Martial just before half-time - saved well from Schweinsteiger late on, but United rarely threatened.
What a weekend for City
Manchester City started the weekend a point behind leaders United, and level on goal difference.
But Arsenal's opening burst, coupled with City's 6-1 thrashing of Newcastle, saw the men in blue open up a two-point lead at the top of the table, eight goals better off than United.
Man of the match: Alexis Sanchez (Arsenal)
The Arsenal forward made it six goals in three games this week and was a tireless menace throughout
Manager reaction
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Our pace surprised United - Wenger
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger:
"We did not give them any chances to score and that was vital. We surprised them with our start.
"From Petr Cech to Theo Walcott we only had superb performances. I have managed many strong teams and never had one that played 60 games at the same level. You have to accept that we are human beings.
"I've been at the club for 19 years and I know what you want is a strong response in a big game when you have a big disappointment.
"We are in it, we are two points off the league leaders, Manchester City, so I hope that result today will give us belief to fight for it."
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Man Utd lacked will to win - Van Gaal
Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal:
"It was a very bad start, without aggression and the will to win. That is the first time I have seen that from my team. I did not expect that.
"We have won our last four matches - I gave the players a day off because they were tired. On Saturday the training was normal, I was very amazed to see that.
"When you give a team like Arsenal so much space to play football, then you know that you shall lose.
"But all teams will have a dip."
What next?
Both sides have a fortnight off thanks to the upcoming international break. Arsenal resume their Premier League campaign at Watford on 17 October, while United face Everton at Goodison Park on the same date.
34 Coquelin Booked at 51mins
19 Cazorla
11 Özil Substituted for Oxlade-Chamberlain at 75'minutes
17 Sánchez Substituted for Gibbs at 81'minutes
14 Walcott Substituted for Giroud at 75'minutes
Substitutes
36 Darmian Booked at 30minsSubstituted for A Valencia at 45'minutes
12 Smalling
18 Young Booked at 22mins
16 Carrick
8 Mata Substituted for Wilson at 82'minutes
10 Rooney Booked at 55mins
7 Depay Substituted for Fellaini at 45'minutes
9 Martial
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In which film did Dolly Parton make her starring debut | Dolly Parton | New Music And Songs |
Dolly Parton
About Dolly Parton
"I’ve always been a writer. My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved,” says Dolly Parton of her incredible career, which has spanned nearly five decades and is showing no signs of slowing down.
An internationally renowned superstar, the iconic and irrepressible Parton has contributed countless treasures to the world of music entertainment, penning classic songs such as “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors,” and her mega-hit “I Will Always Love You.” With 1977’s crossover hit “Here You Come Again,” she successfully erased the line between country and pop music without noticeably altering either her music or her image. “I’m not leaving country,” she said at the time, “I’m just taking it with me.”
Making her film debut in the 1980 hit comedy 9 to 5, Dolly earned rave reviews for her performance and an Oscar nomination for writing the title tune, along with her second and third Grammy Awards. Roles in Steel Magnolias, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone, and Straight Talk followed, along with two network television series, made for television movies, network and HBO specials, and guest-starring roles in series television. In 2006, Dolly earned her second Oscar nomination for “Travelin’ Thru,” which she wrote for the film Transamerica.
Dolly Parton’s remarkable life began very humbly. Born January 19, 1946 on a farm in Sevier County, Tennessee, Dolly is the fourth of twelve children. Her parents, Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton struggled to make ends meet in the impoverished East Tennessee hills. This hard rural life was the foundation of Dolly’s career, as she began singing almost before she could talk, according to her father. By age 10, Dolly was performing on local television and radio shows in nearby Knoxville, Tennessee. “I always wanted to be a star. It just seemed natural to me,” she said. “Making music is all I’ve ever known.”
Dolly left for Nashville the day after her high school graduation. On her first afternoon there, she met a young man, Carl Dean, who would become her husband. Two years later, in May 1966, they were married. “He’s good for me, cause he’s so different in nature from me,” she smiles.
In 1967, Dolly’s career took off when country music superstar Porter Wagoner began featuring her on his popular syndicated television show, exposing Dolly to over 45 million people in more than 100 markets and attracting the attention of record executives at RCA. Dolly and Porter had 14 Top Ten hits together, and Dolly quickly blossomed into one of the best-selling country artists in music history. By 1974, Dolly ended her working relationship with Wagoner. She was voted the Country Music Association Female Artist of the Year two years in a row, and in 1978, Dolly was named the CMA Entertainer of the Year.
In 1974, “I Will Always Love You” topped the charts and did so again in 1982 when it was revived in the movie Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, making Dolly the first artist to earn a number one record twice with the same song. In 1992, the song was recorded by Whitney Houston for the movie The Bodyguard and went on to sell in excess of 4 million copies, topping the charts once again. “I Will Always Love You” was named BMI’s Most Performed Song of the Year in 1993.
Dolly saw a cherished dream become a reality in 1986 with the opening of her own theme park called Dollywood, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains. The state’s number one tourist attraction, Dollywood was selected by the theme park industry as one of the top three theme parks in the world in 2006.
In 1988, she began the Dollywood Foundation to inspire children in her home community to dream more, learn more, do more and care more. Currently the foundation funds the Dolly Parton Imagination Library across America and in Canada, by giving every preschool child a book each month from the time he or she is born until the child reaches kindergarten. With the help of local sponsors, this program has expanded to over 800 communities in 41 states and will give away over 5 million books in 2007 alone. Dolly says, “My dad was prouder of me for this program than for my music career. He thought it was grand that all the kids called me the Book Lady.”
Also in 1988, Dolly founded a group of dinner attractions called Dixie Stampede. In 2001, she built Dollywood’s Splash Country, which is Tennessee’s largest water park. Dolly Parton’s entertainment businesses attract 4.5 million visitors annually and employ more than 3,000 people.
Long respected for her instinctive business savvy, Dolly established Velvet Apple Music (BMI) early in her career and owns the copyrights and the publishing for her vast songwriting empire. She owns her own successful record label, Blue Eye Records.
Dolly Parton transitioned her flair for making hit music into producing hit movies and television shows when she established Sandollar Productions with former manager, Sandy Gallin. A film and television production company, Sandollar has produced feature films such as Father of the Bride I and II, Straight Talk, Sabrina, Shining Through, IQ, and the Academy Award-winning (for Best Documentary) Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, along with Fox television shows Babes and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Her 1994 autobiography was aptly titled “My Life and Other Unfinished Business.”
Dolly Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 RIAA certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach number 1 on the Billboard Country charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career charted singles over the past 40 years. All-inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, paid digital downloads and compilation usage during her Hall of Fame career have reportedly topped a staggering 100 million records world-wide.
She has garnered 7 Grammy Awards, 10 Country Music Association Awards, 5 Academy of Country Music Awards, 3 American Music Awards and is one of only five female artists to win the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year Award.
In 1999, Dolly Parton was inducted as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. She has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and became a member of the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001. Broadcast Music, Inc. honored Dolly with their Icon Award in 2003, and in 2004, the U.S. Library of Congress presented her with their Living Legend Award for her contribution to the cultural heritage of the United States. This was followed in 2005 with the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given by the U.S. government for excellence in the arts.
In December, 2006 Dolly was honored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for her lifetime of contributions to the arts. In June 2007 Dolly was named the recipient of the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. The Johnny Mercer Award is exclusively reserved for a songwriter who has already been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in a prior year, and whose body of work is of such high quality and impact, that it upholds the gold standard set by the legendary Johnny Mercer.
Yet with all of the national and international recognition given her, Dolly Parton calls the bronze statue of her, which stands on the courthouse lawn in her hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee, her “greatest honor, because it came from the people who know me."
| 9 to 5 (disambiguation) |
How many times was Clark Gable nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor | Dolly Parton on Apple Music
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Biography
It's difficult to find a country performer who has moved from her country roots to international fame more successfully than Dolly Parton. Her autobiographical single "Coat of Many Colors" shows the poverty of growing up one of 12 children on a rundown farm in Locust Ridge, Tennessee. At 12 years old, she was appearing on Knoxville television; at 13 she was recording on a small label and appearing on the Grand Ole Opry. Her 1967 hit "Dumb Blonde" (which she's not) caught Porter Wagoner's ear, and he hired Parton to appear on his television show, where their duet numbers became famous. By the time her "Joshua" reached number one in 1970, Parton's fame had overshadowed her boss', and she had struck out on her own, though she still recorded duets with him. During the mid-'70s, she established herself as a country superstar, crossing over into the pop mainstream in the early '80s, when she smoothed out the rough edges in her music and began singing pop as well as country. In the early '80s, she also began appearing in movies, most notably the hit 9 to 5. Though her savvy marketing, image manipulation (her big dumb blond stage persona is an act), extracurricular forays into film, and flirtations with country-pop have occasionally overshadowed her music, at her core Parton is a country gal and a tremendously gifted singer/songwriter. Among her classics are "Coat of Many Colors," "Jolene," "Kentucky Gambler," "I Will Always Love You," "But You Know I Love You," and "Tennessee Homesick Blues," and they give a hint as to why her contribution to bringing country music to a wide audience, not only in America but throughout the world, cannot be overestimated. The fourth of 12 children, Parton was born and raised in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, just next to the Smoky Mountains National Forest. Parton's family struggled to survive throughout her childhood, and she was often ridiculed for her poverty, yet music soothed their worries. Though her farming father did not play, her half-Cherokee mother played guitar and her grandfather, Rev. Jake Owens, was a fiddler and songwriter (his "Singing His Praise" was recorded by Kitty Wells). When she was seven, her uncle Bill Owens gave her a guitar, and within three years, she became a regular on WIVK Knoxville's The Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour. Over the next two years, her career steadily increased, and in 1959 she made her debut on the Grand Ole Opry; the following year, she recorded her first single, "Puppy Love," for Goldband. When she was 14 years old, Parton signed to Mercury Records, but her 1962 debut for the label, "It's Sure Gonna Hurt," was a bomb, and the label immediately dropped her. Over the next five years, she shopped for a new contract and did indeed record a number of songs, which were later reissued through budget-line records. She continued to attend high school, playing snare drum in the marching band. After she graduated, she moved to Nashville, where she stayed with Bill Owens. Both songwriters pitched songs across Nashville with no success, and Parton began singing on demos. Early in 1965, both Parton and Owens finally found work when Fred Foster signed them to his publishing house, Combine Music; Foster subsequently signed her to Monument Records. Parton's first records for Monument were marketed to pop audiences, and her second record, "Happy, Happy Birthday Baby," nearly made the charts. In 1966, Bill Phillips took two of Parton's and Owens' songs -- "Put It Off Until Tomorrow" and "The Company You Keep" -- to the Top Ten, setting the stage for Parton's breakthrough single, "Dumb Blonde." Released early in 1967, the record climbed to number 24, followed shortly afterward by the number 17 "Something Fishy." The two hit Monument singles attracted the attention of country star Porter Wagoner, who was looking to hire a new female singer for his syndicated television show. Parton accepted the offer and began appearing on the show on September 5, 1967. Initially, Wagoner's audience was reluctant to warm to Parton and chanted for Norma Jean, the singer she replaced, but with Wagoner's assistance, she was accepted. Wagoner also convinced his label, RCA, to sign Parton. Since female performers were not particularly popular in the late '60s, the label decided to protect their investment by releasing her first single as a duet with Wagoner. Their first single, "The Last Thing on My Mind," reached the country Top Ten early in 1968, launching a six-year streak of virtually uninterrupted Top Ten singles. Parton's first solo single, "Just Because I'm a Woman," was released in the summer of 1968 and was a moderate hit, reaching number 17. For the remainder of the decade, none of her solo efforts -- even "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)," which would later become a standard -- were as successful as her duets. The duo was named Vocal Group of the Year in 1968 by the Country Music Association, but Parton's solo records were continually ignored. Wagoner and Parton were both frustrated by her lack of solo success, because he had a significant financial stake in her future; as of 1969, he was her co-producer and owned nearly half of the publishing company Owepar. By 1970, Porter had her sing Jimmie Rodgers' "Mule Skinner Blues (Blue Yodel No. 8)," a gimmick that worked. The record shot to number three on the charts, followed closely by her first number one single, "Joshua." For the next two years, she had a number of solo hits -- including her signature song "Coat of Many Colors" (number four, 1971) -- in addition to her duets. Though she had successful singles, none of them were blockbusters until "Jolene" reached number one in early 1974. Parton stopped traveling with Wagoner after its release, yet she continued to appear on television and sing duets with him until 1976. Once she left Wagoner, Parton's records became more eclectic and diverse, ranging from the ballad "I Will Always Love You" (number one, 1974) and the racy "The Bargain Store" (number one, 1975) to the crossover pop of "Here You Come Again" (number one, 1977) and the disco experiments of "Baby I'm Burning" (number 25 pop, 1978). From 1974 to 1980, she consistently charted in the country Top Ten, with no less than eight singles reaching number one. Parton had her own syndicated television show, Dolly, in 1976, and by the next year had gained the right to produce her own albums, which immediately resulted in diverse efforts like 1977's New Harvest...First Gathering. In addition to her own hits during the late '70s, many artists, from Rose Maddox and Kitty Wells to Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt, covered her songs, and her siblings Randy and Stella received recording contracts of their own. Though she was quite popular, Parton became a genuine superstar in 1977, when the Barry Mann/Cynthia Weil song "Here You Come Again" became a huge crossover hit, reaching number three on the pop charts, spending five weeks at the top of the country charts, and going gold. Its accompanying album went platinum and the follow-up, Heartbreaker, went gold. Soon, she was on the cover of country and mainstream publications alike. With the new financial windfall, a lawsuit against Wagoner -- who had received a significant portion of her royalties -- ensued. By the time it was settled, she regained her copyrights while Wagoner was given a nominal fee and the studio the duo shared. In the wake of the lawsuit, a delayed duet album, Making Plans, appeared in 1980; its title track hit number two on the country charts. Parton's commercial success continued to grow during 1980, as she had three number one hits in a row: the Donna Summer-written "Starting Over Again," "Old Flames (Can't Hold a Candle to You)," and "9 to 5." The latter was the theme song to Parton's acting debut, 9 to 5. Also starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the movie became a huge success, establishing Parton as a movie star. The song became her first number one pop single as well. 9 to 5 gave Parton's career momentum that lasted throughout the early '80s. She began appearing in more films, including the Burt Reynolds musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) and the Sylvester Stallone comedy Rhinestone (1984). Parton's singles continued to appear consistently in the country Top Ten: between 1981 and 1985, she had 12 Top Ten hits and half of those were number one singles. Parton continued to make inroads on the pop charts as well with a re-recorded version of "I Will Always Love You" from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas scraping the Top 50 and her Kenny Rogers duet "Islands in the Stream" (which was written by the Bee Gees and produced by Barry Gibb) spending two weeks at number one. However, by 1985 many old-time fans had felt that Parton was spending too much time courting the mainstream. Most of her albums were dominated by the adult contemporary pop of songs like "Islands in the Stream," and it had been years since she had sung straightforward country. She also continued to explore new business and entertainment ventures such as her Dollywood theme park, which opened in 1985. Despite these misgivings, she had continued to chart well until 1986, when none of her singles reached the Top Ten. RCA Records didn't renew her contract after it expired that year, and she signed with Columbia in 1987. Before she released her Columbia debut, Parton joined forces with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris to record the rootsy Trio album. Trio became a huge hit, earning both critical and popular acclaim, selling over a million copies, and peaking at number six on the pop charts; it also spawned three Top Ten country singles: "To Know Him Is to Love Him," "Telling Me Lies," and "Those Memories of You." Following the success of the album, she had a weekly variety television show, Dolly, on ABC that lasted only one season. Trio also provided a perfect launching pad for her first Columbia album, 1989's White Limozeen, which produced two number one hits in "Why'd You Come in Here Lookin' Like That" and "Yellow Roses." Though it looked like Parton's career had been revived, it was actually just a brief revival before contemporary country came along in the early '90s and pushed all veteran artists out of the charts. Parton had a number one duet with Ricky Van Shelton, "Rockin' Years," in 1991, but after that single, she slowly crept out of the Top Ten and later the Top 40. Parton was one of the most outspoken critics of radio's treatment of older stars. While her sales had declined, she didn't disappear. Despite her lack of sales, Parton remained an iconic figure in country music, appearing in films (the 1991 TV movie Wild Texas Wind, 1992's Straight Talk), selling out concerts, and releasing a series of acclaimed albums -- including 1993's Honky Tonk Angels, a collaboration with Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn -- that all sold respectably. Furthermore, "I Will Always Love You" was covered in 1992 by Whitney Houston, who took it to number one on the pop charts; the single spent 14 weeks at number one, becoming the biggest pop hit of the rock & roll era (it was unseated four years later by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's "One Sweet Day"). In 1994, Parton published her autobiography, My Life and Other Unfinished Business. Treasures, her 1996 album, was a praised collection of unusual covers, ranging from Merle Haggard to Neil Young. Hungry Again followed in 1998, and early the following year she reunited with Ronstadt and Harris for a second Trio collection in addition to releasing the solo The Grass Is Blue. A rootsy effort, it was well received and prompted the release of more recordings like it on Little Sparrow in 2001 and Halos & Horns in 2002. The patriotic For God and Country appeared in 2003 and was followed by the CD and DVD Live and Well a year later. Those Were the Days from 2005 found Parton covering her favorite pop songs from the '60s and '70s. Backwoods Barbie, Parton's first mainstream country album in nearly 20 years, arrived on her own Dolly Records imprint in 2008. Live from London followed in 2009. An album of all Parton-written material, Better Day, appeared from Dolly Records in 2011, the 41st studio release of her long career. Three years later, Blue Smoke was released, appearing first in Australia and New Zealand in January, then in other territories, including America, in May. In 2015, Parton's classic song "Coat of Many Colors" was adapted into a made-for-TV movie, which featured Alyvia Alyn Lind as the young Dolly Parton and Jennifer Nettles (from the group Sugarland) as her mother. Parton was a producer on the film, which became a major success in the ratings, and a Christmas-themed sequel was put into production for the 2016 holiday season. In the summer of 2016, Parton announced that she was headlining a 60-date North American concert tour, her most extensive run of shows in 25 years. The jaunt was being billed as the Pure & Simple Tour, and not coincidentally, Parton also revealed she was releasing a new album in August 2016, a set of ten original love songs also called Pure & Simple. ~ David Vinopal
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In which city was the third Die Hard film set | Die Hard - NYC Sightseeing Tours : On Location Tours
Die Hard
Explore Die Hard movie locations!
Written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, Die Hard is an American action film released in 1988 starring Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson, and William Atherton, and directed by John McTiernan. The movie is based on a novel by Roderick Thorp titled Nothing Lasts Forever.
Die Hard was filmed in and is set in Los Angeles, but a latermovie in the series (Die Hard 3) is set in New York City.
Die Hard 2 (Die Hard 2: Die Harder)
Die Hard 2, also known as Die Hard 2: Die Harder, is a 1990 film starring Bruce Willis reprising his role as police detective John McClane and co-stars Bonnie Bedelia, reprising her role as Holly McClane. The movie is based on a novel by Walter Wager entitled 58 Minutes. Die Hard 2 was the first movie to have a digitally-manipulated Matte Painting.
Though it takes place in Dulles International Airport in Virginia, the movie was actually filmed in many other locations. Many of the airport terminal shots were from LAX in Los Angeles, other shots were from many runways of other airports, such as Stapleton International Airport in Denver, CO. Some runway scenes were also shot at Alpena County Regional Airport in Alpena, MI.
Die Hard 3 (Die Hard with a Vengeance)
Die Hard with a Vengeance, also known as Die Hard 3, is the third film in the Die Hard series released in 1995. It was directed by John McTiernan and written by Jonathan Hensleigh.
Many of the scenes were filmed in New York City, and you will get a chance to see these sites on our New York TV & Movie Sites Tour . You will see the New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, a then-unfinished tunnel connecting the city to reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, where the chase scenes in the tunnel were filmed.
Don’t forget the subway station entrance at 72nd St. and Broadway where John McClane and Zeus (Samuel Jackson) race to pick up the pay phone in order to beat the deadline imposed by the mad bomber Simon (Jeremy Irons). Also, the Tompkins Square Park at Avenue A and 7th St. is where John and Zeus struggled to solve a riddle in order to prevent the detonation of a bomb.
There is also the Federal Reserve Building at William and Liberty St. where Simon and his team tried to remove the city's gold supply. Sam went in through the front entrance while the others drove trucks along the side of the building.
Die Hard 4 (Live Free or Die Hard)
Live Free or Die Hard, released as Die Hard 4.0 or Die Hard 4, is the fourth installment in this series. The film takes place some 19 years after the first film, and sees McClane face a gang of cyber-terrorism.
Filming for Live Free or Die Hard started in downtown Baltimore, Maryland on September 23, 2006 but it didn’t go quite as expected. Willis was injured on January 24, 2007 during a fight scene, when he was kicked above his right eye. The injury was regarded as "no big deal" and Willis saw a doctor and went home for the rest of the day.
Unfortunately, Bruce Willis' stunt double was seriously injured when he fell twenty-five feet to the pavement. He suffered broken bones in his face and fractures in both wrists and the production was temporarily shut down. Willis picked up the tab at area hotels for his stunt double's parents and visited him a number of times at the hospital.
After the injuries, the movie was finally able to get going and was eventually released in June 2007. Most locations in this film were in Los Angeles, California such as 20th Century Fox Studios, Los Angeles Center Studios, Los Angeles International Airport, Hahn Plaza in the University of Southern California and many others.
Come take this tour with us and catch a glimpse of some of the sites in this Die Hard thrilling series!
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What was the name of the bride in the 1998 film Bride of Chucky | Die Hard (1988)
Die Hard (1988)
The 'Die Hard' Films - Part 1
Die Hard (1988)
d. John McTiernan, 131 minutes
Film Plot Summary
New York detective/cop Lt. Bruce McClane (Bruce Willis) took a flight to Los Angeles, arriving on Christmas Eve, 1988, with plans to join his estranged wife (of six months) Holly Gennero/McClane (Bonnie Bedelia) at a holiday party in her place of business, the 40 story high-rise Nakatomi Plaza Towers in Century City. A fast-talking, inquisitive limo driver named Argyle (De'voreaux White), paid for by the Nakatomi Corporation, drove him to the building, and promised to wait for him in the underground parking garage, pending the outcome of his renewed reconciliation with Holly. He entered the Christmas Eve party already in progress on the 30th floor, where he met the CEO Joe Takagi (James Shigeta), and was led to Holly's private office - her position was Director of Corporate Affairs. When McClane first saw Holly, Takagi commended her as a successful career woman: "She was made for the business. Tough as nails."
While washing up in the bathroom, Holly invited him to use the spare bedroom at her house, where she lived with their two daughters, although they bickered about long-standing issues between them. Downstairs, two assailants, one of whom was nasty, long blonde-haired henchman Karl Vreski (Alexander Godunov), entered the lobby and shot the front-desk officer and security guard, while in the parking area, a truck opened up with ten other heavily-armed, hi-tech terrorists, led by the classic bad-guy villain Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), a well-read ex-member of the radical West German Volksfrei movement. As they infiltrated into the building, one of the men, a black technical-computer expert named Theo (Clarence Gilyard, Jr.), locked up all the elevator access and the outer entrances of the building, and another cut off all phone communications.
The gunmen interrupted the party with gunfire, and took all the guests hostage, including McClane's wife. McClane, in a white T-shirt and barefooted, watched from the wash-room and then fled to various upper floors, keeping track of which ones were operational or under-construction. Gruber addressed the frightened party-goers, citing the corporation's greed and power worldwide, and then took CEO Takagi away. In Takagi's executive offices (where McClane overheard their conversations), he was threatened to reveal the computer's passcodes, to access the $640 million dollars in negotiable bearer bonds locked in the Japanese corporation's vault. When Takagi refused, Gruber shot him point-blank in the head. The terrorists were forced to try to break into the vault "the hard way." Theo told Gruber that it would take a half-hour to break the code, and two and a half hours to disable six other mechanical locks on the vault, leaving the seventh and final lock ("the electromagnetic seal") with circuits that could not be cut locally. Gruber replied confidently: "Trust me."
To distract the terrorists and alert outside authorities, McClane activated a fire alarm on the 32nd floor, but the alarm was cancelled and the system deactivated. During a struggle with one of the German terrorists (Karl's brother) sent to investigate, McClane broke his neck and then took his machine-gun, ammunition and other items from his satchel. He sent the dead body down to the 30th floor on the elevator (with "Now I Have a Machine Gun - Ho-Ho-Ho" spelled out on his sweatshirt) to alert the terrorists of his presence (and his ability to thwart their efforts), as he stealthily entered the elevator shaft. On the building's roof, he used a two-way CB radio (on a reserved channel) to send out a "May-Day" alert about the terrorist take-over, and although he was not taken seriously, a black-and-white "drive-by" was ordered. While buying snacks at an AM-PM Mini-Mart (gas was 74.9 cents/gallon!), LAPD Sgt. Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) was notified of a Code 2 at the nearby Nakatomi Building in Century City, and proceeded to the area.
When the terrorists overheard his alert, McClane escaped their gunfire and pursuit by moving through a maze of airducts and ventilation/elevator shafts from the rooftop, in a tense cat-and-mouse sequence. McClane killed two more terrorists, Heinrich (Gary Roberts) and Marco (Lorenzo Caccialanza), and took detonators from Heinrich's bag. To alert Officer Powell to problems inside (Powell had determined he was on a "wild goose chase"), McClane heaved the dead body of Marco out of the skyscraper onto his patrol car as he pulled away. Powell radioed in: "Police under automatic rifle fire at Nakatomi. I need back-up assistance now!" Sirens sounded from multiple police cars as the building was surrounded by LAPD, although Gruber called it only "inconvenient timing." When McClane radioed Gruber, he was called the "mysterious party crasher" and "Mr. Mystery Guest" - and misidentified as a security guard. For clarity's sake, McClane identified himself: "Just a fly in the ointment, Hans, the monkey in the wrench, the pain in the ass..." Gruber wasn't satisfied: "You know my name, but who are you? Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne? Rambo? Marshal Dillon?" McClane responded: "I was always kinda partial to Roy Rogers actually. I really liked those sequined shirts." When Gruber replied: "Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?", McClane delivered his most familiar line: "Yippee-kai-yay, motherf--ker."
On the radio with Powell throughout the remainder of the siege, McClane (calling himself "Roy") described the tense situation on the 30th floor with hostages, calling the terrorists "bad-ass perpetrators." SWAT teams, the FBI in helicopters, and a live-mobile news crew arrived at the scene to report on the incident of international terrorism. (Meanwhile, in the basement garage, Argyle finally learned of the situation, but found he was locked in). Cantankerous, stubborn and clueless Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson (Paul Gleason) ordered an all-out assault of the building by his SWAT team, unaware of the ambush being prepared to greet them, as McClane worriedly called them "macho assholes." The terrorists set up a massive rocket launcher to repel the attack of an LAPD armored R.V. (Theo exclaimed as the vehicle exploded: "Oh my God, the quarterback is toast!"). To prevent further devastation, McClane opened the elevator doors and sent C4 plastic explosives down the shaft ("Geronimo, motherf--ker") - wiping out a few more terrorists on the lower floors who were firing on the SWAT team.
Calling himself Gruber's "white knight," Holly's egotistical co-worker Harry Ellis (Hart Bochner) negotiated with the lead terrorist, telling him that he could reveal McClane: "I can give him to you" - Gruber learned McClane's name and occupation (NYPD officer). Ellis, by radio, attempted to convince McClane to "stop messing up the works," and asked him to reveal the location of the detonators so that no one else would get hurt. When Gruber realized that Ellis was lying and didn't really know McClane, Ellis was summarily shot dead. Gruber then spoke to police chief Robinson, falsely demanding the release of "revolutionary brothers and sisters" around the world in prison. If they complied within two hours, he promised that the hostages would be taken to the building's roof to accompany them in helicopters to the Los Angeles International Airport.
When two FBI agents arrived (both named Johnson (Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush)), they took over responsibility from Robinson for the siege of the building. McClane confronted Gruber face-to-face, not realizing who he was when the terrorist gave him a real pseudonym, Bill Clay, and explained how he was one of the party-goers attempting to send a signal from the roof. After McClane had given him a gun to help, Gruber demanded that McClane drop the detonators in his satchel. The gun was not loaded, however, and McClane was enabled to escape (without his satchel) when Gruber's henchmen arrived and peppered him with machine-gun fire (spraying the area with shattered glass) - but he was able to kill two more bad guys. McClane suffered bloodied feet after having to walk through shards of sharp glass.
The FBI ordered city engineers to cut the building's power (within grid 212, an area encompassing 10 square blocks), exactly what Gruber wanted, so that the seventh "electromagnetic seal" or lock could be released ("the circuits that cannot be cut are cut automatically in response to a terrorist incident. You asked for miracles. I give you the FBI"). The safe's vault opened, to the tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" movement from the 9th Symphony, revealing the bonds. The FBI then ordered fully armed helicopter support to approach the rooftop (rather than transports), while Gruber planned to blow the roof when they touched down (and then escape with the bonds in an emergency vehicle readied for him in the basement). McClane confessed to Powell that he wanted to convey to his wife that "she's the best thing that ever happened to a bum like me" and to apologize for not being supportive of her.
Meanwhile, ambitious LA TV reporter Richard Thornburg (William Atherton) tracked down Holly's address and forced his way in to interview Holly and John's two children. McClane confirmed, from investigating the roof, that Gruber had set it to be detonated with C4 explosives - and radioed Powell to warn him of the double-cross: "The whole roof of the building is wired to..." but was seized by Karl before he finished his message. They viciously fought against each other, as the FBI helicopters (now armed with guns) approached, and Gruber learned from Thornburg's exclusive TV report (and a family portrait at Holly's desk) that McClane's wife was Holly Gennero. As he ordered the other hostages to the roof, Gruber kidnapped Holly as his own personal hostage. After their long struggle, McClane presumably killed Karl by strangling him with a heavy chain, and then charged up to the roof where he:
(1) discovered that Holly was missing and had been taken prisoner on the 30th floor, and
(2) ordered the hostages to flee downstairs to escape the wired-to-blow roof.
However, he was misinterpreted as being one of the terrorists by the FBI agents in the helicopters and was shot at ("I'm on your side, you assholes!"). He then unraveled a long fire hose, tied himself to it, and jumped off the side of the building as he was assaulted a second time by helicopter fire. At the same time, Gruber detonated the roof and destroyed one of the helicopters in the process.
McClane precariously dangled over the face of the skyscraper, then shot out the large pane of glass in front of him, swung himself into another floor, and untied himself before being dragged to his death. Meanwhile, Argyle foiled the escape scheme in the basement by ramming the emergency vehicle, driven by Theo, that was preparing to take Gruber from the building - he also knocked Theo unconscious. McClane confronted Gruber (holding a gun on Holly in front of him) and one other remaining terrorist, asking about the incredulous robbery that required the destruction of the entire building ("Why'd you have to nuke the entire building, Hans?") - Gruber replied that it was to make it look like everyone died. McClane was forced to drop his gun and admit "You got me," but still managed to shoot them (with a loaded gun with his last two bullets, taped to his back) - he injured Gruber ("Happy trails, Hans") and killed the second remaining terrorist.
In the exciting and climactic confrontation between McClane and Gruber, the injured Gruber stumbled backwards and crashed through a pane of glass while holding onto Holly's arm and metal watchband, nearly dragging her with him. McClane rushed forward and grabbed her, released the band, and watched as Gruber unforgettably fell to his death 30 stories below, while Robinson watched and commented from the ground below: "Oh, I hope that's not a hostage."
Bloodied and exhausted, McClane joyously kissed Holly. As they exited from the front of the building, McClane had his first face-to-face meeting with Powell, and introduced him to his wife (who noticeably identified herself as "Holly McClane"). As Robinson senselessly charged McClane with responsibility for Ellis' murder, property damage, and interfering with police business, terrorist Karl - thought to be dead - suddenly appeared screaming and aiming a machine gun at McClane. Powell drew his gun, the first time he had done so since accidentally killing a 13 year-old boy years earlier, and decisively shot him dead.
As limo driver Argyle drove in to pick up the couple, TV reporter Thornburg attempted to interview McClane about his "incredible ordeal" - Holly punched him squarely in the face during the live broadcast ("Did you get that?"). Argyle joked as he prepared to drive them away: "If this is their idea of Christmas, I've gotta be here for New Year's," to the tune of Bing Crosby's singing of: "Let It Snow."
Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)
This highly-acclaimed, big-budget action film (and quintessential guy film) was the first in a series of films stretching over a period of 20 years, featuring Bruce Willis as wise-cracking, tough-guy NYC police cop John McClane with real human vulnerabilities, the protagonist in all four films. A fifth film was also added to the series: A Good Day to Die Hard (2013).
11 terrorists were killed (including the chief terrorist who fell off the building).
Based on Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever.
Nominated for four Academy Awards (with no wins), including Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.
From a production budget of approximately $28 million, the film's box-office was $83 million (domestic) and $140.7 million (worldwide).
The film (and its many sequels) were known for McClane's oft-censored line of dialogue: "Yippee-kai-yay, motherf--ker."
Lt. Bruce McClane
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Who played the President of the United States in the film Dr. Strangelove | Dr. Strangelove (Film) - TV Tropes
Dr. Strangelove
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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
— President Merkin Muffley
Dr. Strangelove or : How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a 1964 Black Comedy film by Stanley Kubrick . The plot is largely taken from the 1958 novel Red Alert
by Peter George, who contributed to the film's screenplay.
One day during the Cold War , General Jack D. Ripper ( Sterling Hayden ) goes mental. He orders the nuclear bombers under his command to carry out a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. He puts his entire military base in lockdown with all communications cut, ordering all radios confiscated (so that Communist infiltrators can't receive outside commands) and all troops to fire on anyone who tries to enter the base, even if they appear to be fellow Americans (because they will surely be Communists in disguise). Ripper's aide, British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake ( Peter Sellers ), tries to talk sense into him but shortly realizes his boss has gone right out of his pointy little mind, believing that only he stands in the way of a Communist plot to contaminate America's "precious bodily fluids."
In Washington, U.S. President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers again) holds a meeting in the War Room with his top advisors. While the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Buck Turgidson ( George C. Scott ), sees the crisis as an opportunity to hit the Russkies where they live once and for all, the President's wheelchair-bound , ex-Nazi science advisor , Dr. Strangelove (also Peter Sellers), and the Soviet ambassador (Peter Bull) both confirm that an attack on the USSR will trigger The Doomsday Machine : a computer programmed to detonate a cobalt bomb that will kill nearly all life on Earth's surface with its radiation over the course of months, if the Soviet Union is attacked (or if any attempt is made to disable the Doomsday Machine ). The president gets on the hotline and desperately attempts to convince the drunken Soviet premier that the American attack is just a silly mistake as they attempt to call off the attack.
The film was supposed to be released in November of 1963 (see Too Soon in the Trivia page), but was eventually released in January of 1964.
James Earl Jones made his film debut as one of the crewmen on the bomber plane.
This film includes examples of:
Ripper's paranoia about water fluoridation was based on real conspiracy theories
about the effects of fluoridation, some which persist to this day on both extremes of the political spectrum, minus the "vodka-drinking Russians did it" part.
Strategic Air Command's motto really was "Peace Is Our Profession".
USAF pilot survival kits really did contain such items as condoms and nylons, which can be quite useful in survival situations.
It turns out that salting a bomb with cobalt
is a handy method for making human extinction more likely.
The babbling about a "doomsday gap" and a "mineshaft gap" was a nod to rhetoric from the 1960 presidential campaign. John F. Kennedy had attacked Nixon and the Eisenhower Administration for allowing the Soviets to open up a " missile gap
" between themselves and the United States (in fact, the USA actually had more missiles). This kind of discourse would continue in the seventies with the so-called " Cruiser gap
".
The 24-hour B-52 squadrons within 2 hours of their targets inside the USSR? They were part of Operation Chrome Dome
.
The US military actually used " Operation Drop Kick
" as a name. It revolved around biological warfare rather than nuclear.
A 2014 article
in The New Yorker by Eric Schlosser confirmed what many had long suspected: that despite the disclaimer placed in front of the movie, and the scorn heaped upon its plot by the military establishment at the time, for many decades it was entirely possible for someone other than the US President to launch a nuclear first strike without authorization.
The Soviets developed a real-life "Doomsday Device" called the Dead Hand
, albeit not until the '70s and '80s. One wonders if they drew inspiration from the movie.
Ambiguously Evil : Strangelove spends all his screen time acting as cartoonishly evil as possible, and has a Nazi past to boot, but he never does anything all that evil, at least not that we know about (although his obvious glee to see that humanity is going to be destroyed, and the fact that this joy is enough to make him walk again�).
Appeal to Force : The point of the Doomsday Machine. Not that it does the Soviets any good in the long run.
Apocalypse How : "Obviously, you've never heard of Cobalt-Thorium G. When the bombs detonate, they'll create a radioactive cloud, that would circle the earth for ninety-three years!"
Armed Farces
The Artifact : A pastry table seen in one scene refers to the original ending, a colossal pie fight , which was deleted from the film's final cut for being too farcical. The fact that a joke was made about the President being "struck down in his prime" by one of the pies didn't help its case (see Too Soon in the Trivia page).
Artistic License � Gun Safety / Reckless Gun Usage : General Ripper with his Browning M1919 .30 caliber machine gun. He fires it from the hip and holds it by the barrel. In Real Life , he would be unlikely to hit anything at medium-to-long range, and would probably burn his hand off in the process.
Ass in Ambassador : "Try one of these Jamaican cigars, Ambassador, they're pretty good." "No, I do not support the work of imperialist stooges." "Oh, only Commie stooges, huh?"
Note that the Ambassador had just asked for a Cuban cigar.
Attack Pattern Alpha : Delivered via Sealed Orders — Wing Attack Plan R, which is removed from a whole safe full of attack plans. This was Truth in Television .
Beneath the Earth : The future of mankind After the End is to dwell in underground facilities and fallout shelters for almost a century — quickly leading to an Adam and Eve Plot and oaths of eternal vigilance by those who think that "we must not be allowed a mine-shaft gap".
Big Bad : General Jack D. Ripper starts the entire affair by ordering the strike on Russia.
Comically Missing the Point :
After being informed of the badness of the Doomsday Machine, a world-ending device, Turgidson's first reaction is, "Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines."
Also played with by one of the moments shortly afterward, as Turgidson gleefully details the last bomber's chances... then realises they're screwed.
Another Turgidson one comes when Plan R is in danger of causing the end of the world, and he says that the reliability of it shouldn't be written off after a "single incident".
DeSadesky is going to be trapped with the US officials or left to die in the upcoming radioactive wasteland. He still sneaks photographs of the Big Board after this is a foregone conclusion, even though the photos would be obsolete and he'd die long before he could deliver them anyway — symbolic of the pointlessness of the war, and its probable continuation.
The Comically Serious : Pretty much everyone, but General Ripper and Col. Bat Guano take the cake.
Conspiracy Theorist : General Jack D. Ripper, with his belief that the Communists are poisoning American drinking water.
Crazy-Prepared :
Ambassador DeSadesky accuses General Turgidson of trying to plant a Spy Cam on him, and is later shown with another spy camera. This means that either Turgidson always carries a spy camera in case of such an eventuality, or the Russian ambassador carried two spy cameras.
The survival kit carried by the crew of The Leper Colony. There's a season's worth of MacGyver material in there (not to mention that you could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas Vegas with all that stuff). Doubles as Aluminum Christmas Trees , since it was based almost entirely on real USAF pilot survival kits.
The collection of Attack Plans kept aboard each B-52 in a safe provide instruction for every possible scenario that could be played out in a nuclear exchange. Truth in Television .
General Ripper (emphasis on crazy), commander of an Air Force base, casually carries a machine gun in his golf bag, handy for additional holes.
Critical Research Failure : In-universe. DeSadesky explains that the Soviets built their machine because they feared a "Doomsday-gap" when they "discovered" that the Americans were building one. When the US President refutes that as a ludicrous fantasy, the ambassador replies that their source was the New York Times.
Cut Himself Shaving : Guano ironically lampshades it against Mandrake when he is informed of Ripper's death.
Deadpan Snarker : Mandrake, as the Only Sane Man , gets designated snarker status for this film. Strangelove himself has his moments as well.
Death by Adaptation : Life on Earth as we know it! In the novel Red Alert, the lone bomber fails to destroy its target and nuclear catastrophe is averted.
Decapitated Army : "Plan R" is designed to subvert this contingency; if Washington leadership is incapacitated, regional commanders have the authority to launch a counter-attack.
Deliberately Monochrome : By 1963, color was the standard. The black-and-white photography was a deliberate artistic choice.
The Determinator : Major Kong and the rest of the crew of The Leper Colony.
Dirty Communists : Satirizing this trope is one the central tenets of the film. But the Soviets themselves are openly lampooned as well.
Disproportionate Retribution :
Pretty much what sets the plot in motion; General Ripper believes that Russians are fluoridating his drinking water.
The Doomsday Device is designed and built to respond to an attack — any attack of any magnitude — with the detonation of so much salted nuclear ordnance that the surface of the Earth will be sterilized of all life with the possible exception of the cockroach.
Does This Remind You of Anything? : The opening scene, of a B-52 re-fuelling in mid-air (which really looks like two planes screwing) set to an instrumental version of "Try A Little Tenderness", no less. Interestingly, it was taken from stock footage that Kubrick simply discovered and made one of cinema's most memorable opening scenes.
A more subtle form of symbolism: chewing gum represents the upcoming war. Mandrake forlornly fidgets with a stick of chewing gum while sitting on Ripper's couch, while Turgidson gobbles down stick after stick of gum with aplomb.
The End of the World as We Know It : The Doomsday Machine goes off and wipes out all human and animal life on the planet.
Enemy Mine : President Muffley brings the Soviets into the loop as soon as he is informed of the peril. Turgidson is dismayed, instead urging that the United States launch an all-out attack now that Ripper has committed it to war.
Evil Chancellor : Dr. Strangelove essentially marginalizes Muffley and seduces Turgidson in the climax, seizing power himself.
Evil Hand : Dr. Strangelove has one, which seems to act on Strangelove's violent and Nazi subconscious. The portrayal was so influential that the real life condition "alien hand syndrome"
is also known as "Dr. Strangelove Syndrome".
Exact Time to Failure : Justified, as a crewman on the bomber calculates how much flying time they have left after the missile explosion causes a fuel leak. Even then he has to adjust his timetable when the fuel leak grows mid-flight.
Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! : When President Muffley asks General Turgidson whether the remaining bomber has a chance to reach its target, Turgidson enthusiastically describes the crew's skill and technique and concludes by declaring "Hell, ye-!.. y-... y-..." — realizing the implications .
Extremely Short Timespan : The film takes place over less than a day.
Failsafe Failure :
The Doomsday Machine is deliberately Fail Deadly. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a Doomsday Machine, as Strangelove points out . Unfortunately it didn't occur to the Soviets to tell anyone about the device well after it became operational, rendering it a complete liability as Strangelove once again points out (though they were planning on announcing it the following Monday, because the premier "loves surprises").
'''But, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost....if you KEEP IT A SECRET! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL THE WORLD, EH?!"
Muffley was assured by Turgidson that "Plan R" had safeguards against a rogue launch. Turgidson is reluctant to admit the failure and argues its reliability shouldn't be written off after a single incident.
Fanservice : Precisely one female character appears in this movie. General Turgidson's mistress and secretary, heard in one scene and seen in a bikini in another. She is also a Playboy centrefold.
Foil :
Ripper and Turgidson are both high-ranking generals, one goes rogue and has intimacy issues, the other stays loyal and is clearly a horn dog. The twist comes in their mannerisms; while Ripper is crazy, he sounds calm, collected, and soft-spoken. Turgidson makes a lot of rational points, but he is a stirred Large Ham who sounds deranged. Judging by the body language and demeanor of both men alone, Ripper would look the saner one.
The energetic warmonger Turgidson also acts as a more direct foil to the mild, meek, and emasculated President Muffley.
Forever War : Implied; the jingoist generals and advisors are planning After the End schemes to maintain the status-quo of the Cold War , prevent Soviet expansionism and a "mine-shaft gap". Reinforced by the use of " We'll Meet Again " over the final Apocalyptic Montage .
Freud Was Right : Invoked by the film itself. A central theme of the movie is the portrayal of sexual symbolism as more than symbolism; Kubrick transparently paraphrases Clausewitz as in "war is the continuation of sex by other means". Specific examples include:
In the opening refueling scene, the bomber and the tanker are coupling.
Bat Guano thinks everything is some kind of "preversion", and ironically his stupidity carries some meta-truth.
The madness of General Ripper is driven by not-even-veiled sexual references . He seems to be Compensating for Something with his stiff cigars and his long one-barreled machine gun.
The film is rife with sexually Meaningful Names ; the two warmongers (Jack D. Ripper and Turgidson) push against a peaceful and mild figure (Merkin Muffley). See below for more examples
Near the end, there is another Mood Dissonance when the characters are happily planning a postnuclear scenario where the male to female ratio would land them with their own harems to repopulate the world . The excitement over this allows Strangelove to stand up.
The end of the world is started by a man yelling and riding on top of a phallic bomb to a site called "Laputa" (Spanish for "the whore"). It triggers a series of climatic, orgasmic explosions.
From Bad to Worse : Anything that could go wrong in the prevention of the end of the world, does.
Gallows Humor : Given that it was made against the real-life backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which nuclear war was a genuine possibility, much of the film's humor would have qualified at the time. Many contemporary viewers called " Dude, Not Funny! ".
Gambit Pile Up : General Ripper, Premier Kissov, and Dr. Strangelove all have competing plans that lead to the film's events.
General Ripper : Trope Namer , obviously. Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, commander of Burpelson Air Force Base, goes mental and launches an attack on his archenemy , communist USSR.
Getting Crap Past the Radar :
Honed to an art form. Almost everything is a sexual reference of some kind if you look hard enough — Kong's target (Laputa), Buck Turgidson's name, Jack D. Ripper (the murderer Jack the Ripper mutilated women's sexual organs), Merkin Muffley (speaking of Country Matters ), etc. etc. See Visual Innuendo below, also.
A specific example, late in the film, is a scene where you can tell from Dr. Strangelove's dialogue and reactions that his Evil Hand is clearly doing something ... unsavory just out of frame. Apparently in his lap.
Gone Horribly Right : Kubrick�s primary aim in making this movie was to satirize nuclear deterrence theory by demonstrating the inherent craziness of consciously abdicating control over nuclear weapons. Plan R is established to ensure the US has second strike capability even if the President and executive branch are eliminated in a nuclear strike. General Ripper takes this to its extreme conclusion by deciding the President should be denied nuclear authority altogether, and that the military (i.e., General Ripper) should decide when to start a nuclear war. From there, Plan R works perfectly, as the pilots shut off all communication with the US and focus on their targets in the Soviet Union. Likewise, the Doomsday Machine works exactly as planned: automatic and irrevocable nuclear retaliation against the United States following an initial nuclear attack.
Within the context of the film, employing Strangelove for his scientific acumen leads to the downfall of American democracy.
Good People Have Good Sex : A downplayed example — General Ripper won't allow himself to ejaculate during sex (the fear of losing his 'essence' is the motivating factor for his insane behavior, and he came to this conclusion after finding himself unable to perform at least once); on the other hand, General Turgid son has a relatively normal relationship with his Sexy Secretary and is not much better.
Good Smoking, Evil Smoking : A perplexing example with Dr. Strangelove himself; when he tries to enjoy a cigarette, his Evil Hand keeps trying to remove it from his mouth. This is almost certainly an oblique reference to the Nazi's attempts to discourage smoking because they thought it was detrimental to the health .
Hypocritical Humor :
No fighting allowed in the War Room.
SAC's motto "Peace Is Our Profession" is offhandedly highlighted by the camera angle several times; when Ripper explains how he's "preventing" World War III with his first-strike and later when the soldiers are fighting for the base.
Turgidson being both a religious man and, assuming he's married, an adulterer in the same phrase while he is talking to his secretary/mistress. If he's not married, he's just commiting a different sin, fornication rather than adultery.
The Soviet ambassador not supporting "imperialist stooges". He's quickly called out by the person offering him the object of offense (a Jamaican cigar) when the man says "Only Commie stooges, eh?" Note that the ambassador had asked for a Cuban cigar before being offered the Jamaican cigar.
I Did What I Had to Do : Before kicking the bucket, Ripper remarks that he knows he'll have to answer in the afterlife for what he did and that he thinks he can.
Insane Troll Logic : What led Ripper to first suspect the Communists of trying to "sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids" through fluoridation. "A profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed." So sex = loss of 'essence'! Fluoridation starts in 1946 = part of postwar commie conspiracy! It all makes sense! The commies are, of course, immune to their own plot, as they only drink pure vodka and would never, under any circumstances, drink water in the first place.
Irony : Of the comedic variety, as the auto-destruct button "got hit and blew itself up".
Irrevocable Order : The entire plot, as the general puts the base on lockdown. Played with in that they do manage to revoke it, but by then one plane is too damaged to receive the recall.
Jerkass Has a Point : Everything General Turgidson says sounds deranged, but it's mostly factually correct.
Kubrick Stare : General Ripper.
Lampshaded Double Entendre : "Premier Kissov is a man of the people, but he is also a man, if you know what I mean."
Lampshade Hanging : Subverted : It was impossible to launch a wing of B-52s on an irrevocable mission, and the movie acknowledges this, not to show their work but to calm potential hysterical moviegoers down.
Large Ham : George C. Scott originally gave a subtle portrayal of Colonel Turgidson. Before filming each scene, Kubrick would tell him to do one take over the top to help entertain the crew. Almost the entire performance that made it into the film was made of these takes. It works. It works so hard. Notably, Scott was very upset at which takes were used, as he had been assured that his 'serious' takes would be ones used.
Dr. Strangelove in dealing with his "evil hand". Even Turgidson is sitting there silently dumbfounded at Strangelove's behavior.
Lawful Stupid : Col. "Bat" Guano initially refuses to let Mandrake break into a vending machine to get the change he needs to call the President even though the latter is trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust. Even after giving in Guano sternly insists he will "have to answer to the Coca Cola company".
Leitmotif : 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home' plays whenever Major Kong's B-52 appears. It could, knowing Kubrick, also be a musical Double Entendre on the much, much darker ' Johnny I hardly knew ya
'.
Let No Crisis Go to Waste : Turgidson's initial suggestion; commit to a full attack while the Americans have the upper hand and win the Cold War . This is exactly what Ripper was planning, of course.
Loads and Loads of Roles : Peter Sellers plays three roles. He was originally slated to play Major Kong, but broke his ankle during filming and the part was recast . Sellers also had trouble with the accent.
The Loins Sleep Tonight : Implied to be the reason General Ripper went nuts with the "precious bodily fluids" and all.
Madness Mantra :
"Purity Of Essence" mixed with "Peace On Earth", for General Ripper .
Mad Scientist : The dear doctor is a Shout-Out to Rotwang from Metropolis and classical Stock Characters .
Malaproper : Bat Guano gets it all wrong, even on a verbal level.
Bat Guano: I think you're a deviated prevert. Gen. Ripper found out about your preversion and that you're organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts. If you try any of your preversions in there, I'll blow your head off.
Meaningful Name : Just about every name in the film has some sort of suggestive connotation regarding sexuality, playing on the film's theme that war is fueled by masculine sexual urges. (See also Punny Name , below.)
General Turgidson is a horn-dog whose name refers to a "turgid" erection.
Group Captain Mandrake is a voice of reason, and his name refers to the Mandrake root, which can resemble a human figure and which (when ingested) acts as a hallucinogen. In certain ancient texts, it's referred to as an aphrodisiac.
General Jack D. Ripper is motivated by sexual frustration (he's afraid of losing his "essence" through ejaculation) to spread destruction and is named for the misogynistic serial killer Jack the Ripper .
Muffley
is a pussy.
Colonel "Bat" Guano is "batshit" insane. His Meaningful Name is lampshaded by Mandrake, who asks him if his name is real. What's really surprising is that the name was improvised by Sellers.
The target for the bomber is Laputa. La puta is Spanish for "the whore". Doubles as a Shout-Out to Gulliver's Travels .
The Russian ambassador's name DeSadesky refers to the outrageous Marquis de Sade , trope namer of the sexual tendency .
The Soviet Premier is named Kissov ("kiss off" and/or "piss off")
And let's not forget the multiple potential interpretations of "Strangelove".
Military Alphabet :
Most famously "Wing Attack Plan R for Romeo." Also used by the bomber crew. Major Kong's accent could be a shining example of why a phonetic alphabet is useful.
General Ripper uses "R for Robert" when speaking to Mandrake on the phone. The Royal Air Force commonly used a different phonetic alphabet (including R for Robert) until adopting the NATO standard in the late 1950s — shortly before the events of the film. Since Group Captain Mandrake is a former RAF fighter pilot, Ripper may use it for Mandrake's convenience. Or maybe it's only an oversight filmed before someone could do the research.
A Million Is a Statistic : General Turdgidson enthusiastically reports an unofficial analysis for the contigency summarizing that the United States would suffer reduced megadeaths (20M vs 150M) if they capitalize on the situation and commit to a full attack.
Mood Dissonance : It's hard not to root for the crew of The Leper Colony, even with the knowledge that when they succeed, they've doomed the world.
Mr. Exposition : General Turgidson and Doctor Strangelove are advisors who explain most of the strategical and technical details to the President , and to the audience by extension.
Mutually Assured Destruction : Turgidson thinks it can be averted with a pre-emptive strike since the United States has a five-to-one missile superiority. Enforced once the Doomsday Machine comes into play as an involuntary Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum .
My God, You Are Serious : Major Kong's first reaction to being told Plan R is to tell his crew to stop horsing around. He sobers up really quickly.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast : Whoever thought that putting a General Jack D. Ripper in control of the nuclear launch codes was a good idea?
Newhart Phone Call : The conversation between President Muffley and Premier Kissov. We only hear President Muffley's side, but from the way he has to keep explaining things in simple terms and nudging the conversation back on topic, it's clear that (as the Soviet ambassador warned) Kissov is thoroughly drunk.
No Celebrities Were Harmed :
President Muffley has some similarities to Adlai Stevenson. Gens. Ripper and Turgidson could both be seen as caricaturing different aspects of real-life USAF General Curtis LeMay. Ripper also draws inspiration from Army General Edwin Walker, who distributed John Birch Society literature to his troops and became a right-wing demagogue after resigning.
Strangelove himself has aspects of several real-life nuclear scientists, but his obvious (if never stated) Nazi past specifically evokes Wernher von Braun. Arthur C. Clarke , who knew both Stanley Kubrick and Wernher von Braun, reported that Kubrick once asked him to "tell Wernher I wasn't getting at him". Clarke adds, "I never did because, firstly, I didn't believe him, and secondly, even if Stanley wasn't, Peter Sellers certainly was."
Other scientists upon whom the Strangelove character was based were Herman Kahn, Edward Teller and John von Neumann. While many assume Henry Kissinger was an inspiration, Kubrick and Sellers both denied it, and Kissinger's background (he was neither a rocket scientist nor an ex-Nazi) wouldn't fit the character anyway.
Noodle Implements : The survival kit — which was based entirely on real survival kits of the second world war.
No Sense of Personal Space : As Ripper gets drunk, he starts getting uncomfortably close and hands-on toward Mandrake, suggesting a possible explanation for his sexual issues.
Oh Crap! : Two Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap! realizations:
Under normal circumstances, a commander would be proud of his own units getting to its target against all odds. In this scenario, it means the end of the World as we know it. Gen. Turgidson misses this point for a while, gushing on about the toughness and skill of the surviving B-52 bomber and its crew. Finally, Pres. Muffley cuts in and asks directly: (on reaching the target and dropping a bomb, even through the entire Soviet air defense grid) "Has he got a chance?" Turgidson: "Has he got a chance? HELL YE...ye...y..." Turgidson's realization face is priceless
.
When Mandrake realizes what's happened.
Mandrake: Well, I'm afraid I'm still not with you, sir, because, I mean, if a Russian attack was not in progress, then your use of Plan R — in fact, your order to the entire wing... [ beat ] Oh. I would say, sir, that there were something dreadfully wrong somewhere.
Ambassador DeSadesky, when his superiors tell him that the Doomsday Machine has just been installed.
Mandrake laments his treatment in a Japanese POW camp, but admits that the Japanese do make bloody good cameras.
Downplayed by Turgidson, who despises the Russians but tries to balance the scolding with a fair compliment.
Turgidson: The Russki talks big, but frankly, we think he's short of know-how. You can't expect a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like our boys. And that's not meant as an insult to you, Mr. Ambassador. I mean, we all know how much guts the average Russki's got. Look at all of them the Nazis killed off; they still wouldn't quit!
Only Sane Man :
Mandrake, at the base; Muffley, in the War Room; and most ironically the bomber crew (save, perhaps, for Kong).
Played with Strangelove himself. Despite the Dead Hand Syndrome, there's a brief scene with the president demanding to know who would create a doomsday device; the camera lingers on Strangelove, calmly smoking in the shadow, the president off-screen. A few minutes from later, Strangelove casually suggests the mine shaft survival plan, a new system of government, including who lives and who dies. For all intents and purposes, he takes over the US government right then and there, in front of its actual leaders, who are oblivious. Nobody said the Only Sane Man has to be a good person. He looks and speaks like a Looney Tunes character, but everything he says is coldly rational.
DeSadesky considers himself one among the Soviet leadership, and despite his quirks, he's not very off in that regard, calling his colleagues "fools" upon hearing they did implement the Doomsday machine, much to his dismay. (Though he still wastes his time on photographing the Big Board even after it's clear that the nuclear war's already happening.)
Muffley is also clearly a sane man, with a clear understanding of how horrible the situation is, but is woefully incapable of handling it.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business : Strangelove's Large Ham behavior is so distracting that it's jarring during a brief shot of him in shadow, calmly smoking while the others wonder who set up the Soviet's doomsday device, underscores that Strangelove's the new shadow leader of the western world.
Turgidson spends much of the film acting like a belligerent and loud jerk, but clams up when he realizes the world may end.
Operation: [Blank] : Turgidson tells the President that the bombers in Ripper's wing were airborne "as part of a special exercise we were holding called Operation Drop-Kick".
. Talk about a Bland-Name Product .
The Password is Always "Swordfish" : Mandrake is able to guess the Override Command code because Ripper's madness had it spelled all over the place.
Pay Phone : Mandrake has to relay the recall code to the Pentagon on one of these, and naturally finds he doesn't have enough change. Fortunately a vending machine is conveniently nearby.
Mandrake: Colonel, that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.
Guano: That's private property.
Mandrake: Colonel, can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot, with the gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit!
Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for you. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you?
Mandrake: What?
Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company.
Pointless Doomsday Device : The Soviets activated the Doomsday Machine before they told anyone about it, eliminating the whole point of its role as a deterrent from nuclear war. Dr. Strangelove points this out, and the Soviet ambassador counters that they were saving its announcement for a special occasion (See As You Know above).
Poor Communication Kills : Mandrake has problems reaching the president to recall the bombers, he finds a Pay Phone , but has not enough pocket change and a brief issue with British vs American terms . Finally, one of the bombers cannot be recalled via the Override Command because its communication system has been destroyed. Armageddon ensues. And of course, the Soviets didn't tell the world about their Doomsday Device because their premier "loves surprises". It's even enforced by Big Bad General Ripper, whose first action in launching his nuclear attack on Russia is ordering his staff to hand over all their radios (so they won't know he's lying and that the Russians aren't actually attacking).
Interestingly, while the Pentagon stated that pretty much the entire scenario depicted was absurd and could never happen, they did decide that the pay phone scene raised some important questions about whether information could be gotten to the right people fast enough in an emergency.
Pragmatic Villainy : The United States ruled out building a nefarious device like the Soviet Doomsday Device only because they realized that such a device is not a practical deterrent and could come back to bite them hard.
Properly Paranoid : General Turgidson on the Russian ambassador, who takes a photo of The Big Board with a camera disguised as a pocket watch (or a pocket watch with an integrated camera) at the end. It's ambiguous if the miniature camera really was his or if Turgidson actually planted it on him.
Punny Name : Many of them.
General Jack D. Ripper is self-explanatory .
A merkin is a pubic wig often seen in burlesque. "Muff" is slang for vagina. With President Merkin Muffley, the film basically admits that one of its most well-meaning characters is, in schoolyard terms, a pussy.
Guano is bat droppings collected for use as fuel, so Col. Bat Guano = "batshit insane".
"Alexei de Sadeski" just puts a stock Russian suffix on "de Sade" .
The Radio Dies First : Invoked by Ripper with the base lockdown; he even impounds civilian radios. Straight example in the CRM-114, the communications device onboard the "Leper Colony".
Strangelove is an expy of Rotwang from Metropolis and the black and white chiaroscuros are also a nod to German Expressionism .
The bomber being called Leper Colony may be a Shout-Out to Twelve O'Clock High (probably the movie).
Shown Their Work : The movie is filled with references to military life and then quite obscure research. Also subverted, what the cockpit of a B-52 looked like was classified, so Kubrick and crew just made what a B-29 would look if the plane was shaped like a B-52. They were so close to correct that they were briefly investigated to make sure there was no spying going on! Also, all the procedures inside the aircraft (e.g. going through the checklists) are absolutely believable.
Soundtrack Dissonance :
The ending montage, of course.
In-universe, the playing of pleasant civilian music over the radio during a supposed nuclear attack is what clues Mandrake into Ripper's lie.
Soviet Superscience : Subverted. The characters initially react as it's a big feat and the ominous name alone reinforces this perception, but Strangelove points out that the Doomsday Machine is within the means of even the smallest nuclear power.
Spy Cam : The Russian ambassador is accused of trying to take pictures of the War Room using a camera disguised as a pack of cigarettes. The ambassador claims that the spy camera was planted. It turns out that the ambassador was telling the truth - his spy camera was disguised as his pocket watch (unless you believe that the ambassador brought two hidden cameras with him).
Stealth Pun : Dr. Strangelove is strangled by his glove.
Stiff Upper Lip : Mandrake for a while, until Bat Guano's obstructionism makes him lose it.
Straight Man : Peter Sellers plays two of these, oddly enough. His third role more than makes up for it.
Strawman Political : President Muffley is a well-meaning but ineffectual liberal (look-up the meaning of merkin, or, for that matter, muff) and General Ripper is an insane "John Bircher" conservative.
Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard : Pronounced by Major Kong during his initial incredulous reaction when the crew receives the go ahead codes for "Plan R".
Superweapon Surprise : The Doomsday Machine, "as you know the Premier loves surprises". It was meant to be announced on Monday.
Survivor Guilt : President Muffley discusses it paraphrasing Khrushchev ; Won't "the living envy the dead"? but Strangelove easily dismisses the concept.
This Is a Work of Fiction : The US version has this kind of disclaimer note It is the stated position of the U.S. Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film. Furthermore, it should be noted that none of the characters portrayed in this film are meant to represent any real persons living or dead.. Actually a subversion or a false reassurance since it conveys the stated position of the Air Force about the subject but not the acknowledgement of the film makers.
Understatement :
"Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed..."
President Muffley, on the phone with the Soviet Premier — "One of our generals went a little... 'funny'... and went and did a silly thing..."
"I hate to judge a man before the full facts are in but at this point it does appear that General Ripper has exceeded his authority..."
Unwitting Pawn : The crew of The Leper Colony. Poor guys are just following orders. They don't know that the guy who gave them has lost it.
Vengeful Vending Machine : Col. Guano has to shoot a Coca-Cola vending machine to get change for a crucial phone call to the President. He gets Coke squirted in his face.
Viewers Are Geniuses : The "survival kit" includes, among others, nylon stockings. While this can be lost to today's audience, in the 60s soldiers were issued nylons — they were supposed to wear them under the uniform, as the stockings would keep them warm.
Visual Innuendo : There are a number of phallic and sexual images throughout the film to highlight its theme of sexuality. The famous opening credits sequence of planes refueling in a way which looks like sexual congress. General Ripper is particularly fond of compensating for his impotency with enormous cigars (and a machine gun). Major Kong straddles the strikingly tubular bomb just before it explodes.
Vodka Drunkenski :
Even though we hear only President Muffley's side of the conversation , it's quite obvious that Premier Kissov is sloshed out of his gourd. It's more than hinted earlier when DeSadesky warns Muffley beforehand of a probably-intoxicated Kissov.
General Ripper asks Mandrake if he has ever seen a Russian drinking water and then "concludes" that they only drink vodka.
| Peter Sellers |
What was the name of the dog in the novel Three Men in a Boat | Dr. Strangelove is Released | World History Project
Jan 29 1964
Dr. Strangelove is Released
Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (commonly known as Dr. Strangelove) is a 1964 American/British black comedy film directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott, and featuring Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn and Slim Pickens. Loosely based on Peter George's Cold War thriller novel Red Alert (aka Two Hours to Doom), Dr. Strangelove satirized the nuclear scare.
The story concerns an unhinged US Air Force general who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and follows the President of the United States, his advisors, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse, as well as the crew of one B-52 as they attempt to deliver their payload.
In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was listed as number three on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.
Source: Wikipedia Added by: Aimee Lucido
In 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis fresh in viewers' minds, the Cold War at its frostiest, and the hydrogen bomb relatively new and frightening, Stanley Kubrick dared to make a film about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the wrong button -- and played the situation for laughs. Dr. Strangelove's jet-black satire (from a script by director Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern) and a host of superb comic performances (including three from Peter Sellers) have kept the film fresh and entertaining, even as its issues have become (slightly) less timely. Loaded with thermonuclear weapons, a U.S. bomber piloted by Maj. T.J. "King" Kong (Slim Pickens) is on a routine flight pattern near the Soviet Union when they receive orders to commence Wing Attack Plan R, best summarized by Maj. Kong as "Nuclear combat! Toe to toe with the Russkies!" On the ground at Burpleson Air Force Base, Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) notices nothing on the news about America being at war. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) calmly informs him that he gave the command to attack the Soviet Union because it was high time someone did something about fluoridation, which is sapping Americans' bodily fluids (and apparently has something to do with Ripper's sexual dysfunction). Meanwhile, President Merkin Muffley (Sellers again) meets with his top Pentagon advisors, including super-hawk Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), who sees this as an opportunity to do something about Communism in general and Russians in particular. However, the ante is upped considerably when Soviet ambassador de Sadesky (Peter Bull) informs Muffley and his staff of the latest innovation in Soviet weapons technology: a "Doomsday Machine" that will destroy the entire world if the Russians are attacked. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
| i don't know |
What is the name of Dennis the Menace's dog | Dennis the Coincidence | Now I Know
Dennis the Coincidence
September 11, 2012
Dennis the Menace, pictured above, is a comic strip which was first published in the United States on March 12, 1951. It features the protagonist, Dennis Mitchell, and his penchant for causing trouble in ways both hilarious and disconcerting — and often with his dog, Ruff. Dennis the Menace has been in production for the half-century since its debut, and the franchise has expanded well outside of just paper-and-ink comics. There was a live action television series and three different animated ones; a few Dennis the Menace movies; a video game; and even a playground/park . To those of us in the United States, the blond kid with the red overalls covering a striped shirt is a cultural icon.
And to those in the UK, he’s an accidental imposter.
Dennis the Menace, pictured below, is a comic strip which was first published in the United Kingdom on March 17, 1951, five days after the U.S. version, in the Beano, a children’s comic book. The British Dennis is very similar to his American pseudo-cousin. He has a similar itch for mischief (although with somewhat of a malevolent bent) and, of course, the sidekick dog — in his case, it’s Gnasher, not Ruff. This Dennis has also made its way into television, movies, and (as a character) in a video game — and appeared as a regular character at a theme park . (Close enough.) In the UK, he, too, is a cultural icon. But the other similarities end at the striped shirt — the UK Dennis doesn’t wear overalls and has black hair.
So who copied whom? Most likely, neither Dennis is inspired by the other — it’s simply an odd coincidence.
The U.S. Dennis was created by cartoonist Hank Ketcham. Ketcham used his own family as inspiration for the strip — his real-life son’s name was Dennis and the fictional Dennis Mitchell’s parents were Henry and Alice. Hank’s real first name was Henry and Alice was his first wife and mother of the real Dennis. (Alice died in 1959 due to a drug overdose.) According to the New York Times in Ketcham’s obituary:
Mr. Ketcham was pursuing a career as a freelance cartoonist in October 1950, when his first wife, the former Alice Mahar, burst into his studio to complain that their 4-year-old, Dennis, who was supposed to be napping, had instead wrecked his bedroom. ”Your son is a menace,” she shouted.
The UK Dennis, on the other hand, has a less personal history — he is the byproduct of a doodle by the then-publisher of the Beano, Ian Chisholm, during a discussion with the strip’s eventual artist, David Law. However, there is one major salient fact which demonstrates that the British Menace is not a copy of the American one. While it appeared in the issue of the Beano dated March 17th, the publication went to press at least ten days before that date, meaning that the UK comic was drawn and published without any way of knowing about the American comic.
While this coincidence is almost certainly innocent, it has led to some problems. In 1993, the U.S. franchise came out with a movie, titled “Dennis the Menace” in most of the English-speaking world, but, because of intellectual property questions (as well as confusion generally), the title was shorted to merely “Dennis” in the UK. And currently, the British Dennis the Menace strip goes instead by the title Dennis and Gnasher, a title originally adopted for non-UK publications as to avoid confusion with the American comic. But the protagonist, is still known as Dennis the Menace.
Bonus fact: The U.S. Dennis is a blond, not a blonde. Per Merriam-Webster , “Blond” refers to the color, generally, but it is also used to refer to a man with hair of that color. When referring to a woman with blond hair, it is acceptable — albeit sometimes regarded as sexist, per Wikipedia — to use “blonde,” with an “e” at the end.
From the Archives: Schtroumpf : The salty origins of another comic.
Related: The first year of (U.S.) Dennis the Menace cartoons . 7 reviews, all of five stars. About $17 for 672 pages of comics. Also, if you’d like to compare, there’s the Dennis the Menace (UK) and Gnasher 2009 Annual , for a few cents (plus shipping) if you buy a used copy.
| Gnasher |
What dog is known as the King of the Terriers | Dennis the Menace | Villains Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
To prank Walter and other softies
Type of Villain
Kid Villain
Dennis the Menace is the anti-hero of The Beano comic strip of the same name and it's subsequent television programmes.
He is a 10-year-old boy who lives in Beanotown with his parents (simply known as Mum and Dad), his younger sister Bea and his dog Gnasher (and sometimes Gnasher's son Gnipper). He also has two friends named Curly and Pie-Face and lives next door to The Colonel. Dennis loves menacing around and enjoys picking on and playing pranks on Walter and any other "softie" with Gnasher.
Dennis has three television shows based on the comic strip. The first was a puppet show called The Dennis the Menace and Gnasher Show which aired on The Children's Channel for two series from 1990 to 1991. The second was animated and called Dennis the Menace (later Dennis & Gnasher) which aired from 1996 to 1998. The third was once again animated and was once again called Dennis & Gnasher and aired in 2009, but when a second series was made in 2013, the show was renamed Dennis the Menace and Gnasher.
In the 1990-1991 series, Dennis was voiced by Logan Murray, Richard Pearce in the 1996-1998 series and Sophie Aldred (in the first series) and later Chris Johnson (in the second series) in the 2009-2013 series.
Appearance
Dennis has spiky black hair and his attire consists of a red and black striped jumper, black shorts, red socks and light grey trainers.
Gallery
| i don't know |
What breed of dog was traditionally used for the retrieval of game birds, particularly quail and woodcock | Dog Breeds - K9 TRAINING SERVICES - K9 BEHAVIOURAL SPECIALIST
K9 TRAINING SERVICES - K9 BEHAVIOURAL SPECIALIST
Akita
BACKGROUND
The exact origin of the Akita remains unknown. Through skeletal remains and carbon dating, it was traced to 500 BC, although the Akita's specific breed history has only been recorded for the past 350 years. The Akita was also known as the Odate dog – named after the rugged mountainous area of Odate in the prefecture of Akita, on the island of Honshu.
As fishing has always been a major Japanese industry, the Akita, with its webbed feet and thick water-resistant coat, readily became the fishermen's workmate. Akitas were then used as cattle dogs, seeing-eye dogs for the blind, sled pullers and police dogs. They were also utilised as "babysitters" looking after children while their mothers worked in the rice fields. They first arrived in Australia in 1982.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
These proud dogs often live to eight years of age, but Akitas treated correctly and fed the proper nutrition can live up to 10 years.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Akita very much personifies the enigmatic character of the Orient.A dignified, proud, and courageous dog with a fearless yet steady disposition which does not lose control when confronted with unusual or sudden stress situations. Even as a puppy it displays a certain dignity. It is an ever-patient playmate for children and a no-nonsense protector of family and home. Most of all, in the hands of suitable owners it is a joy to own.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Tends to show dominance over other dogs.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The Akita loses its coat twice, sometimes three times a year and this is definitely something to consider if you are looking for a dog to live inside the house with you and your family. It requires extensive amounts of exercise and obedience training – this is a breed that needs to learn, from a young age, who is the "leader of the pack". When the Akita loses its coat, its fur literally drops out. At this time it is almost impossible to have it in the house with you so it is necessary to provide an outside fenced area with a warm, dry bed.
IDEAL OWNERS
Those who accept the challenge and understand what is required to do justice to this breed will be rewarded with a loyal and loving animal.
Afghan Hound
BACKGROUND
In the country from which the breed derives its name, the Afghan hound is regarded, though unofficially, as the "national" dog. Native Afghans also uphold the belief that the Afghan is the dog portrayed on the cave walls in the northern province of Balkh, which is why the Afghan has also been called the Balkh Hound. The Afghan hound is a sight hound, rather than a hunter by scent. It has exceptional vision and great speed, both of which were used in the hunt for prey.
Its thick, luxurious coat protected it against the extreme cold of the upper snow regions, while also shielding it from the merciless sun as it roamed the desert. Its huge thickly padded paws and powerful hindquarters gave the Afghan hound equal ability to skim across hot desert sands or to scale rocky hilltops in mountainous terrain.
[ Afghan Puppies ]
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Afghan Hounds will often live up to 13 years of age, but with the proper care and nutrition can live up to 15 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The breed is said to have a good, but aloof personality. These dogs are loyal and extremely manageable as adults, however, this is not to say that as puppies they do not have "their moments". On the whole, though, this is a breed that is extremely good with children, whether introduced to the home as a puppy or an adult, and it will adapt readily to the household routine. Afghans should never be off the lead outside their own environment because once the eyes spot a target, the ears "switch off".
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
As adaptable as Afghans are, they do need to be brought up among the animals they will spend time with. Remember they were bred as sight hounds and instinct will dictate their behaviour when confronted with strange animals they do not understand. Having said that, once accustomed to a situation, an Afghan will readily adapt.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Well-fenced enclosures are a must for this breed, as their keen sight will often get them into trouble otherwise. They require regular coat maintenance, bathing and exercise. They need appropriate feeding to cope with their growth patterns as youngsters and they should always have fresh, clean water available.
IDEAL OWNERS
Anyone prepared to accept the dog's need for exercise and coat maintenance will be well rewarded with this breed.
Beagle
BACKGROUND
The Beagle is a small hound that was originally developed for hunting hare and rabbit by scent, and was followed on foot by hunters. Beagles hunted in packs of 12 or 24 hounds.
The need for Beagles to track wily hares that twisted and turned, even backtracking over fields, is what dictated a Beagle's size. Different sized Beagles worked over different terrain – from open fields for the smaller hound to the high and mountainous English Border country for the larger hounds, with various sized dogs for in-between terrain.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
These lovable dogs can easily live for 13 years, but given the right nutrition Beagles can often live up to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
It is in a Beagle's nature to be a loyal companion. They are usually gentle, but they can be as robust and as tough as you care to make it. It is also a great children's playmate. In fact, the Beagle will become very "human" if you forget to remind it that it is in fact a dog.
Affectionate and obedient with its owners, a Beagle should never be nervous or aggressive under any circumstances. This is a happy, versatile and adaptable hound that can be used to hunt in the morning, be your children's devoted companion in the afternoon, then curl up and play the part of the lap-dog in the evening.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Beagles are pack hounds and as such are definitely better off with some company during the day.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Beagles require minimum maintenance, but do watch their weight, as left to their own devices they tend to become obese as they love their food – and their pleading eyes are hard to resist especially at meal times. Beagles are scent hounds and therefore should not be walked off the lead because if they get a whiff of an enticing smell they will do what nature intended – and hunt. It is said that when a Beagle's nose switches on, its ears switch off! These dogs need a secure yard as they have little or no traffic sense and tend to have the attitude that cars will stop for them if they are on the road.
Please take note:
Beagles do not cope well with being on their own for long periods of time. They can be very naughty if they become bored, and dig holes, escape, or pull the washing off the clothesline.
IDEAL OWNERS
Basset Hound
BACKGROUND
The word Basset is French and means "low-set". The first detailed proof of the Basset’s existence was in 1585 where they were used as badger dogs. Their original home was the region of Artois and Flanders.
The French Basset hound was first discovered in Britain, after the invasion by the Normans, in 1066. By the 1900s, packs were established and the breed was popular on the show bench. In 1957 Bassets were sent to Sydney, where today they are found throughout Australia.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Basset Hounds will normally live to 10 years of age but can live up to 12 years when given lots of love and attention as well as being fed the correct diet.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
It is fortunate that such a large, solid hound has such a placid nature. It should be outgoing, but gentle and loving. Similar to many breeds, Basset hounds take 18 months to three years to fully mature. During this juvenile stage they are full of energy and tend to get into mischief. However, with firm and consistent discipline, these dogs make well-mannered and much loved family members.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Excellent.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Basset hounds are enthusiastic eaters and should be fed a well-balanced, quality diet. They love to come inside the house, but will manage quite well outside, provided they have a cosy draught-free kennel and a safe back yard in which to romp. It is imperative that yards be fully fenced with reliable gates. Bassets (being scent hounds) have very little road sense – they just put their nose to the ground and off they go on their merry way.
Compared to many other breeds Basset hounds need relatively little grooming, but still love to be pampered and fussed over.
Please take note:
There is nothing worse than a totally unruly, uncontrollable, spoilt Basset. Remember that as these dogs mature, they need both firm and consistent training in order to teach them acceptable manners. Don't let your Basset Hound rule the roost!
IDEAL OWNERS
People who can provide the right facilities and assert the necessary discipline to enable them to enjoy these colourful canine characters to the full.
Border Collie
BACKGROUND
The Border Collie has its origins in the border country between England and Scotland. It has been adopted as an Australian working dog because of its outstanding qualities as a sheepdog.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
These clever working dogs will often live to 12 years of age, but cared for with the right nutrition Border Collies can live up to 14 years.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Border Collie is highly intelligent with an instinctive tendency to work and is very responsive to training. These dogs make keen, alert, loyal and sensitive companions. As well as being loving family pets they excel at obedience, agility and tracking, and make great sheepdogs. They are "people dogs" and so need to interact within the family.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
A Border Collie will enjoy having another dog for company (preferably the opposite sex). Because of this breed's natural herding instinct, small pets that tend to run away may find themselves continually being herded into whatever area your Border Collie has designated for them. If you live on an area of land you will need to have a run made to restrain your dog when it is home alone, especially at night, as it will consider your neighbour's stock perfect for chasing.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Border Collies are double-coated dogs with a short thick undercoat and a moderately long medium textured topcoat. They are easy to groom if cared for on a regular basis. Weekly combing and brushing is needed to remove dead coat and to avoid problems when moulting.
If you are not prepared to exercise your Border Collie regularly then this is not the dog for you. A walk each morning and evening is a must to keep this dog fit and happy.
Please take note:
A Border Collie's strong in-built herding instinct can quickly turn into a dangerous chasing habit if not curbed. Because they are tempted to round up any moving object, this can include traffic – so train your dog to understand that "traffic herding" is not allowed.
IDEAL OWNERS
Because Border Collies grow so quickly and are extremely active, they are usually too "full on" for very young children and elderly folk. Their herding instinct can also make them a problem for the young.
Borzoi
BACKGROUND
The Borzoi (or Russian Wolfhound) originated in Russia and was bred as a hunting dog, using its excellent speed and sight to chase and run down foxes, hares and wolves. The agility and strength of the Borzoi lent itself perfectly to the great hunting traditions of the Russian aristocracy. The first Borzoi was exported to Australia in 1898.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
This unique animal normally lives to 10 years of age, but Borzois have been known to live up to 12 years of age when fed the correct nutrition.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Borzoi is usually a calm and sensitive, gentle giant that responds well to a loving owner. A reserved and dignified breed, it is not suited to rough handling or aggressive training. As with many other dogs, this breed will benefit from basic obedience training. Borzois need to be handled sensitively, and any children with whom this breed is to live, must be taught to handle the dog quietly and sensibly.
Although a Borzoi loves to run and enjoys frequent walks, it is also happy to find a comfortable bed or place in the back yard and rest quietly. This breed is adept at finding the most comfortable position in the house for a nap - quite frequently your bed - it is best not to encourage this behaviour.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
When properly socialised as puppies, Borzois can live amicably with other pets in your household. It is important to remember, however, that the Borzoi was bred to chase running game, and that care should be taken with cats and other small animals when in the back yard or out walking.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Borzois are surprisingly small eaters for their size and only eat about the same amount of food as a medium-sized dog. As well as being fed a high quality balanced diet, a Borzoi enjoys chewing large bones, particularly when left alone for periods of time. The Borzoi coat is easy to maintain. Brushing several times a week and bathing regularly will keep the coat clean and assist with flea control.
A primary part of Borzoi care is the importance of regular exercise. These dogs need to visit open spaces such as parks or the beach, where they can be exercised "off leash". It is vital for the physical and mental wellbeing of this breed that regular exercise be maintained. Ideally, the Borzoi needs a large back yard, although this can be compensated for with long daily walks. As with all dogs, the Borzoi requires regular veterinary checks and lots of loving care.
Please take note:
Borzois are agile dogs that need adequate fencing in order to keep them safely enclosed, particularly in the city. Similar to other large dogs, Borzois are occasionally prone to "bloat". Consult the breeder of your dog or your vet for additional information. Although this breed is quite capable of undertaking basic obedience training, it is generally not responsive to specialist training.
IDEAL OWNERS
The ideal owner of this breed is someone who regularly takes their dog for long walks, but is happy to have a couch potato at home! Borzois are not suited to rough play or being physically reprimanded and respond better to owners who employ calm vocal discipline. A loving owner will be rewarded with great affection by this devoted breed.
Bloodhound
BACKGROUND
The Bloodhound is an ancient breed, first taken to England from Normandy by William the Conqueror. The name Bloodhound is not for being "blood thirsty", but from being a hound of pure blood (pure in breeding). They were bred from the Talbot hound and the St Hubert hound, but have been identified as the modern Bloodhound since the Middle Ages.
The Bloodhound has the best nose of any hound and excels at tracking. It is first and foremost a scenting breed and will be persistent in following a trail, no matter for how long. It has been known for a Bloodhound to successfully follow a trail that was more than 72 hours "cold". In America, Bloodhounds are used by the police for manhunts and have been successful in finding missing persons.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The Bloodhound usually lives up to eight years of age, but it is not uncommon to live to 10 years if given a loving home and the right food
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Bloodhound is a reserved and sensitive hound. They rely heavily on their scenting abilities, and would rather "smell" you first before introducing themselves, but once they get to know you they are affectionate.
At home, they will let you know when you have visitors with their deep voice, but they are no guard dog. They will only "give voice" when there is a reason, they do not bark just to hear the sound of their own voice. The Bloodhound's characteristic wrinkles and large amount of loose skin can have its drawbacks, they do drool and dribble and will leave "snail trails" throughout the house.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Bloodhound is a "pack hound" and therefore must get on well with other animals. A Bloodhound does not like to live alone, and if his human companions have to spend time away at work or school, the Bloodhound will need a companion.
They get on well with other animals. It is important that when introducing a small kitten, or puppy to a fully-grown Bloodhound, that you do it gradually. Although the Bloodhound is not aggressive towards other animals, its sheer size can cause problems. If allowed to grow up with other animals or be introduced as a puppy, Bloodhounds enjoy the company of other animals.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Having a short coat, a Bloodhound is low maintenance. A good regular brushing is basically all that is required of the coat. The long ears can give problems with ear mites or fungal infections and need to be cleaned regularly. The ends of the ears should also be cleaned after meals.
They do need regular exercise and they grow quickly in the first 12 months so exercise with caution - as a puppy, Bloodhounds will tire quickly. The Bloodhound is not particularly adept at advanced obedience work, but they should be trained in basic obedience.
Please take note:
The Bloodhound is a scent hound, and as such "the nose rules" and so they will put their nose down and become oblivious to all around them and will follow the scent until its conclusion. This means they have no road sense and should only be allowed to run free in a secured area.
The Bloodhound has very few medical problems, but can be prone to bloat which is a serious condition and requires immediate veterinarian attention. The eyes also need to be checked and well cared for.
IDEAL OWNERS
A Bloodhound needs to be part of the family and involved with the family and if included they will make excellent companions.
British Bulldog
BACKGROUND
Bulldogs – a breed developed from Mastiffs and which acquired their name about 1630 – were also used to bait bears and badgers. The tremendous upswept jaw, with a broad nose set back almost between the eyes, was developed so that the Bulldog could breathe while it was hanging on to the neck of its unfortunate opponent. Horrifying accounts relate the animal's courage and tenacity in the bullring. Originally bred for the sport of bull baiting, which was popular in England for more than 700 years before it was made illegal in 1850.
Today's Bulldog is a far cry from its ancestors. It is more heavily built and less athletic than those dogs that were used to torment the bulls.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Bulldogs will normally live for about eight years, but given the right environment and sound nutrition will usually live up to 10 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The British Bulldog is usually placid and gentle, but can be jealously territorial around that which it regards as "its own". Its appearance, rather than its temperament, is its only asset if looking for a "watchdog". But it certainly has courage when called upon to defend its property. Its burly figure and massive head and jaw would undoubtedly deter any marauder. The Bulldog enjoys the company of its owner and displays a loving nature at every available opportunity. It is stoic to a fault. As with all animals, training and kind discipline should begin at eight weeks.
If a puppy is not discouraged when it jumps up on its owner, it will not be its fault if it is a nuisance later on. It is primarily as a family pet that the Bulldog scores well and it will repay you with many years of devotion and good health in return for your care and companionship.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Most will be amenable with other dogs, but there are individuals within the breed that do not care to share their home comforts with other species. It would be advisable to introduce any Bulldog to cats at an early age.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
It is recommended would-be purchasers learn a little about the breed before purchasing. A smooth-coated breed, the British Bulldog is generally a clean animal. Folds in its face need to be cleaned daily by drying them out with cotton wool, applying a petroleum jelly, and then wiping it out to create a barrier against tear stains and to prevent chafing.
The area underneath the root of the tail requires the same attention. And a little smeared over (and left on) the nose daily prevents it becoming crusty. Toe-nails (especially the dewclaws) should be inspected weekly to ensure they have not become too long and require clipping.
Daily brushing for five minutes, and a wipe over with a damp flannel should keep your dog looking and feeling in top condition. Cooked bones should never be given nor any small bones that could become caught in the throat. Fresh clean water should be available at all times. A daily walk around the block should suffice for exercise, preferably early in the morning or late in the evening. These dogs do not enjoy getting overheated and great care should be taken to ensure that they are in a comfortable temperature at all times.
Please take note:
Agitation, particularly during hot weather, can prove fatal. The build of this breed determines that it is not a dog to be vigorously exercised, but nevertheless should always be maintained in top muscular tone.
IDEAL OWNERS
Recommended for all those both sensible and sensitive to the needs of this breed. Very young children would need to be taught to respect the animal and its requirements. It is not suitable for exercising by anyone of a frail build, as the breed can be quite rambunctious.
BACKGROUND
The Bull Terrier is known as the gladiator of the canine race and is one of the oldest terrier breeds native to England. The Bull Terrier was originally bred for combat with dogs and other animals, a sport that was permissible in England in the 1800s. Since the late 1800s the Bull Terrier has been bred as a companion dog.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Bull Terriers will normally live for 10 years, but given heaps of attention and the right foods it can live up to 13 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Bull Terrier is a combination of balanced power, grace and agility. It desires human companionship and its character and individuality win it lifelong friends. It is very devoted to its family. The Bull Terrier has an innate sense of humour, brains, imagination, personality, and to those who love it – beauty. Its appearance, along with its character, is unique in the spectrum of dogs. The character and personality of the Bull Terrier is very complex.
A Bull Terrier is very active and acts similar to a child and so you must be prepared for anything, and you must supervise it. Activity is a common characteristic in nearly every young Bull Terrier. All puppies are extremely busy and many Bull Terriers remain active and playful until well into middle age (5 to 6 years). A Bull Terrier will not do well in a situation where it is expected to remain alone in the home or yard for long periods of time.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
[ Long Haired Puppy ]
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Chihuahua is truly a companion animal and therefore thrives on the company of other animals. It will stand up for itself, but if you do have big dogs in the home it is best to keep an eye on this little dog while it is playing with them just to make sure all is well.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Minimal care requirements exist with this breed, but it is an active little dog and should be fed and cared for accordingly. It requires an amount of regular exercise or will tend to gain weight. The Long Coat needs a good brushing once or twice a week to keep it healthy and free of any debris it may pick up. The Smooth Coat, depending on how often it is taken outside, will only need minimal attention to its coat.
[ Smooth Haired Puppy ]
BACKGROUND
The Cocker Spaniel featured prominently both as working dogs and pets through the reign of Henry VIII and the Stuart kings, being referred to as "wood-cocking spaniels" - small dogs that could go through hedges and the undergrowth to flush out the woodcock.
The beginning of this century saw the formation of the Cocker Spaniel Club of England which drew up the early standard of the breed for shooters who needed a small, active, strong dog, sturdy enough to work cheerfully and tirelessly all day flushing out game.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
These devoted and lovable dogs will normally live to 14 years of age but treated with the care they deserve and fed a sound diet, Cocker Spaniels can live up to 16 years.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
This merry little dog makes a wonderful family friend and a devoted companion. It thrives on, and needs the companionship of human beings.
[ Black Coloured Shown ]
Good.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Dalmatian
BACKGROUND
The picturesque spotting of the Dalmatian makes this breed among the most distinctive of dogs. Pups are born white and begin to acquire their black or liver spots at about two weeks old. Although a breed of ancient lineage, in Victorian times the Dalmatian gained a reputation as a carriage dog and ran with the horses, either out in front, beside or behind the carriage of the nobility.
The Dalmatian had a natural affinity with horses, a trait that is still very strong today. Put most Dalmatians anywhere near a horse and they will immediately go and greet it. Any dog that has been a drover of cattle, a trekker in two World Wars and the Vietnam War, earned a place on the racing fire engine, been the darling of the Victorian dandy, a show dog, a trick dog, a gundog, and a hunter, need only be given half a chance to win a place in your heart and your life.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Dalmatians can live up to 12 years of age, but with the proper care and attention and fed the right nutrition they will often live up to 14 years.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Dalmatians are fun loving, natural clowns with both elegance and humour being hallmarks of the breed. Their "smile" is often taken for a snarl, until one spots the madly wagging tail.The breed's fairly sensitive nature also craves human company and affection.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Dalmatians can share their home quite comfortably with other pets.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Cleanliness and the need for minimal grooming are other much-appreciated characteristics of the breed. Having a short dense coat, Dalmatians only need an occasional brushing to present a well-groomed appearance. Being strong active dogs, they need to be kept under control and obedience training is recommended. As they are active dogs, they require a good walk every day and need a well-fenced yard.
Please take note:
Dalmatians may be predisposed to bladder stones. Some dogs are prone to skin trouble, while some are born deaf.
IDEAL OWNERS
Dalmatians are perfect as a companion, a watchdog, and a marvelous pet for the family, but as they are strong and active they do need to be kept under control.
Trained and brought up correctly the Dogue de Bordeaux is a gentle giant. Like many large dogs, this breed loves human company but, due to their imposing bulk, should be closely supervised around children and the elderly to discourage jumping up. Biting and jumping should be discouraged from an early age as this type of behaviour stops being cute when they are fully grown! The Dogue de Bordeaux is a loyal and trustworthy breed that also makes an excellent guard dog.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Being a large breed, the Dogue de Bordeaux has a tendency to dominate other pets around the home and is best kept on its own or with its own kind.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Big dogs need big space, so potential owners should consider the size of their home and their lifestyle before bringing one of these gentle giants into their lives. Although not an overly active dog, daily walking on a strong lead is essential for adult dogs to maintain their condition and exercise. Growing puppies should be allowed to finish developing before they are given too much exercise and should be given plenty of time to rest between bouts of play.
IDEAL OWNERS
Big dogs like the Dogue de Bordeaux are not for everyone, but those who choose to bring one into their home must be sure they can handle a big dog and be prepared to exercise it regularly. Those who are prepared to put in the hard work with this dog will certainly be rewarded with a devoted and affectionate companion.
German Shorthaired Pointers are gentle, active dogs that love human company - particularly children. They are an intelligent breed making them relatively easy to train. Their loving disposition makes them an ideal pet for dog lovers of all ages.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
These agreeable dogs will get along with most pets in the home, especially when raised together from an early age. Like most hunting breeds, they may enjoy the occasional (but harmless) chasing game with smaller pets.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The German Shorthaired Pointer should be brushed with a firm bristle brush at least twice a month and bathed when required. Like most hunting dogs, this breed needs plenty of exercise if it is to stay in peak condition so regular walks or runs will also be required. While these dogs have a gentle, loving nature, they are easily excited and should be supervised around young children to help discourage jumping up.
IDEAL OWNERS
Being an active dog, the German Shorthaired Pointer needs plenty of space to roam and explore and is best suited to a home environment with a large backyard. Owners must be prepared for regular, lengthy exercise sessions.
Great Dane
BACKGROUND
The origin of the Great Dane has always been a controversial subject. Most of the credit is given to Germany, as they were basically responsible for the Great Dane as we know it today. History has proven that Dane-type dogs existed in Russia, Poland and middle Germany. In the middle ages large packs of wild boar roamed the European forests and it is well known that Royalty of the day formed packs of these large dogs similar to Great Danes and they became known as Boar Hounds, due to their capability of pulling the boar to ground.Over the generations, the Great Dane's nature has changed to the present day type that is known as the "gentle giant".
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The average lifespan for the Great Dane is 9 to 10 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Great Dane is an elegant and muscular animal, with a look of dash and daring, of being ready to go anywhere and do anything. Elegance of outline and grace of form is most essential. It carries its head and neck high with an alert expression and it has a powerful majestic action when moving.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Excellent. But it must be remembered that it is the owner's responsibility to keep their dog under control.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The coat of the Great Dane is short, close and sleek looking. Daily grooming of five to ten minutes will be ample to keep the coat under control. It has a single coat, therefore as the dead coat is falling out, the new coat is coming in.
IDEAL OWNERS
It is a misconception that the Great Dane requires estate sized living quarters or a huge exercise area. It is quite happy living in a flat or unit, but they must be given exercise by walks or running if possible. Due to the exceptional quick growth of a Great Dane puppy, it should not be given too much exercise before 12 months of age. Make sure your property is well fenced. When away from your well-fenced property they should always be kept on a lead. The Great Dane can jump fences quite easily, but this is contrary to their nature.
Irish Water Spaniel
BACKGROUND
The Irish Water Spaniel is acknowledged to be a very old breed, but as is the case with so many Irish dogs and horses, it is impossible to separate fact from folklore and the exact date of origin cannot be established. It is believed to be a descendant of the old Portuguese Water Dogs and Spaniel root stock that came to Ireland from the Iberian Peninsula. The lineage can be traced back to the period, centuries ago, when the large and important Spaniel group was divided into the Land Spaniels and the Water Spaniels. The Water Spaniels included both the Irish and English varieties of water dogs. The Irish Water Spaniel was developed in Ireland from two different strains – the Southern County Water Spaniel and the Northern County Water Spaniel. Both were distinct types in size and colour, however today's Irish Water Spaniel more closely follows the Southern type. The earliest record of Irish Water Spaniels in Australia is 1891.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Irish Water Spaniels can live up to 12 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Beneath its livery of brown curly ringlets, with topknot of twisted curls hanging down over its eyes, you will find a true Irishman – full of life, with a comical nature and great intelligence. The Irish Water Spaniel enjoys human companionship and will want to become one of the family.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Needs to grow up with the animals it might live with.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The coat with its crisp curls does not present the problem that might be expected, however, it should be thoroughly combed with a wide toothed comb at least once a week. Eyes, ears and toenails should be checked regularly. A good swim or spray down will bring back those lovely curls. Irish Water Spaniels do not shed loose hair and can therefore be recommended for people who may suffer from allergies.
Please take note:
Although this breed is easy to train, and is very quick to learn, it can become easily bored so avoid overtraining.
IDEAL OWNERS
For families and individuals that want a dog a little bit different than the rest of the pack.
Irish Terrier
BACKGROUND
The ancestry of the Irish Terrier goes back into the mists of time, and long ago it was used by the Irish farmers as a worker, a guard dog for the family and a wonderful companion. It has a heart three sizes too big for its shaggy body; a heart that is as white and clean as that of a knight-errant. There is a psychic side of the Irish Terrier too, found in almost no other dog, a tinge of the mysticism of the land of his ancestry.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The Irish Terrier can live to 15 years. Owners must realise they are taking this lovely breed on for its lifetime.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
As mentioned, they are a wonderful companion, intelligent, affectionate and a great family dog. They make a good show dog although most people who purchase an Irish Terrier want them solely for their happy and fun nature. They can be trained at an early age to be an obedience dog.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
They can be equally at home with cats, birds and other dogs, although if a male he does not take kindly to other outside males on his property.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Irish Wolfhound
BACKGROUND
The origin of the Irish Wolfhound has been lost in antiquity, however, from illustrations dating back to 1400 BC we know that the Celts had huge hounds. Irish mythology, legends and sagas abound with the exploits of this ancient breed. This dog was the companion of kings - whether at war, on the hunt or just by the hearth. History tells of many hounds being sent to the royal houses of both Europe and Scandinavia. The breed has also come close to extinction.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Irish Wolfhounds can live up to 8 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Irish Wolfhound is often called the "gentle giant" of the dog world. Its proud bearing, quiet dignity and intelligence are just some of its many wonderful characteristics. This is definitely a family dog with an incredibly affectionate nature, which thrives on human companionship. Regardless of whether you are looking for a Wolfhound with show potential or one as a companion and family pet it should be physically and temperamentally healthy, exhibiting the friendly even disposition that is essential to its character.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Wolfhound will live happily with cats, rabbits and other domestic animals if introduced to them as a puppy - however, one must always remember that this dog is a sight hound.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Jack Russell Terrier
BACKGROUND
The Reverend Jack Russell was very interested in fox hunting and saw the need for a small terrier to be used to flush out foxes that had gone to ground. In 1814 he acquired a terrier bitch named Trump from the local milkman which became his foundation bitch – and so the breed was born.The first Jack Russells were quite tall dogs (35cm) but during the years the breed has changed, and there are now two distinct varieties that are recognised as separate breeds – the Parson Jack Russell and the Jack Russell Terrier. There are three coat varieties, a smooth coat, a broken coat and a rough coat.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Jack Russells can live up to 14 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Jack Russell Terriers are great little hunting dogs that will tackle anything from a fox to a mouse. They spend a large amount of time investigating their surroundings and when taken for a walk in the country will hunt for hours. They are extremely intelligent and as a result, beginning to make their presence felt in the obedience ring.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Japanese Chin
BACKGROUND
One of life's mysteries is why the Japanese Chin is still comparatively rare and unknown. Here is a little dog that has it all - it is easy to care for, lovely to look at, and has even had Royal patronage - Queen Alexandra owned 261 of them!
The Japanese Chin is one of the most ancient of breeds and its exact history is difficult to determine, but ancestors can be traced back to China or Korea more than 1100 years ago. In Japan there were two distinct size/types of Chins and they were bred separately and exclusively for centuries in noble households, and were so highly regarded that no "commoner" could possess one.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Japanese Chins can live up to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Japanese Chin is an intelligent, happy, lively little dog with a good nature and gentle temperament. While they are content to sit quietly on your lap or curled up in a chair, they are also ready for a game, and love to race around madly.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Chins are happiest in the company of other Chins. Indeed a large number can live together in harmony and so if it is possible, have two!
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Japanese Chins, with their silky coats, are easy to keep well groomed, and brushing 2 to 3 times a week with a bristle brush and paying attention to behind the ears where matting can occur - and a regular bath - is all that is required for the coat. This will also help with the seasonal shedding.
Because of the Chin's flat face, the eyes are vulnerable, so should an injury occur, seek vet advice immediately. As with any pet, ears and teeth need to be checked/cleaned regularly. A Chin does not need a huge area for exercise, so it makes an ideal pet for flat dwellers. However, they do enjoy a good walk, or better still a free run.
Please take note:
Japanese Chins are indoor dogs and bred only to be companions. A dog kept continually outside will be miserable. It will also be most unhappy if left alone for any length of time, so if the family/owner is out all day, then a Chin is not for you. It should be said too that a Chin exercises a certain amount of independence, and being sensitive will react badly to harsh discipline, so if you want a dog to dominate, then again, this is not the breed for you.
IDEAL OWNERS
Japanese Chins do not like teasing or very rough play, and are therefore best suited to the older person or families where there are no young children.
Keeshond
BACKGROUND
The origin of the Keeshond is the Netherlands. The Keeshond (pronounced caze-hawnd) is best known as the Dutch Barge Dog, having come to prominence guarding the barges traveling up and down the canals of Holland. It took its name from Cornelis de Gyselaar, the leader of the Patriots in the Netherlands during the late 1700s, whose dog "Kees" became the political emblem of the Dutch party.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Keeshonds live from between 10 to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Keeshonds are loving, gentle and loyal dogs. They can occasionally be stubborn, but they learn quickly and make an outstanding family companion and watchdog suitable for both children and adults. As a breed, they are extremely adaptable, and instinctively clean in their personal habits.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Keeshonds get on exceptionally well with other dogs.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Keeshonds have a dense, harsh, odourless coat that consists of two layers – a soft thick undercoat through which grows the longer, harsher guard hair. Both coats inhibit dirt from penetrating to the skin and so bathing is rarely needed. In hot and humid weather when most Keeshonds loll in their personal dirt dugouts, or when they are shedding, a bit of extra care and possibly a bath may be in order. Check the dog's toenails and claws regularly and carefully trim the hair on the bottom of the feet so they are flush with the pads.
Please take note:
Keeshonds can be very noisy if left alone for long periods outside, as they believe they are part of the family and want to be with you.
IDEAL OWNERS
BACKGROUND
As the name suggests, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel proudly traces its ancestry back to the royal courts of England.
King Charles II, was devoted to his dogs - almost to the point of addiction. They travelled with him everywhere and the sign "Beware of the Dog" originated in his court, meaning not that they were dangerous, but rather don't tread on them. Contrary to popular belief they do not have free access to all royal parks, palaces and public buildings in England - they just behave as if they do!
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Cavaliers can live up to 13 years of age, but, more often than not, will live up to 15 years if cared for with the correct nutrition and given lots of loving attention.
Ruby Coloured Puppy
[ Ruby Coloured Puppy ]
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Energetic and loving, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel makes the perfect family pet, but it must be stressed they are dogs that belong with people. They are not dogs to be left alone or housed outside as they thrive on human contact.
Cavaliers are bred in four colours:
BLENHEIM: Chestnut markings on a pearly white coat. The markings on the head should be equally divided giving a masked effect and leaving room in the middle for the prized "Blenheim Spot".
TRI-COLOUR: A black and white dog with tan markings over the eyes, on the cheeks, inside the legs, behind the elbows and on the underside of the tail.
BLACK AND TAN: Absolutely raven black coat with tan markings over the eyes, on the cheeks, inside the legs, behind the elbows and under the tail.
RUBY: Whole colour rich red with no white markings at all.
Black and Tan Coloured
Excellent.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Apart from all their excellent qualities, they do shed their coat twice a year and have poor road sense, so outside the well-fenced family property they should always be kept on a lead. If you are contemplating buying a Cavalier make certain that your fences are secure as puppies are apt to dig when young, and will find a way out of their yard if it is at all possible.
Please take note:
Annual checks and vaccinations are essential, as is regular worming. Your vet will explain the dangers of heartworm and advise on the preventative measures. It should be noted that certain weeds and grasses might have adverse affects too. Regular grooming is necessary to remove excess hair and prevent the coat from matting.
Lhasa Apso
BACKGROUND
The Lhasa Apso is a small, well-muscled hardy little house dog originating in Tibet and is thought to be descended from the type of dog common for centuries over Central Asia.The name Apso is used in Tibet for both of their smaller longhaired breeds and means longhaired or goat like.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Lhasas have been known to live up to 17 years of age.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Very good, but being an assertive breed they like to show dominance over other dogs and so care should be taken if introducing another dog into the family.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Maltese
BACKGROUND
The correct name for this beautiful toy breed is Maltese (not Maltese Terrier as it is often referred to). No one is certain of the origins of the breed despite claims that they came from the island of Malta, or that they are similar to the dogs worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. There is little doubt though that they are one of the oldest of all dog breeds, with records of this type of dog dating from 6000 BC. They were a prized possession of the people of Malta, as well as an exotic animal of trade in the Middle East.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Maltese live from between 12 to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Maltese are not working dogs, although some have gained excellent results in obedience trials and even make good watchdogs. A Maltese is here just to give love and shower you with affection, to let you know who is at the door and generally just make everyone it meets feel happy and welcome. It is very intelligent and lively – and just loves to be pampered.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Excellent.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Miniature Pinscher
BACKGROUND
The Min Pin (as it is affectionately called) originated in Germany and has been documented since the early 1800s, more formally so since 1895 with the formation of the German Pinscher Club. Evidence of the breed dates to the 15th Century and it was formerly known as the Red Pinscher that refers to the "small red deer", found in the German forest. They were originally bred as stable dogs to eradicate rats and mice.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The Miniature Pinscher can live up to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
This is a proud and spirited little dog - all terrier and certainly no "toy" - they are a loyal and intelligent companion. They are fearless, alert and make an excellent watchdog.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
If brought up from a young age with other animals, Miniature Pinschers will accept just about anything including birds and cats, while chasing away similar interlopers. Min Pins like to dominate so care should be taken regarding personalities and supervised introduction.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The short, hard coat requires little care. In spring and autumn firm stroking by hand or a small brush will remove excess hair. Bathing is not often required as too much removes essential oils that protect the coat. A quick wipe with a warm face-washer containing a few drops of eucalyptus oil will both freshen and keep fleas at bay. Nails must be kept short - trim a little each week as this maintains compact healthy feet.
Please take note:
A Min Pin will be a very active, alert and an interactive member of your household, often behaving like an unruly child. While they always amuse and entertain they need a consistent set of house rules from the start. Be firm in your resolve or they will beguile you. Never walk a Min Pin off the lead, as they can be selectively deaf.
IDEAL OWNERS
All except the very young and the very elderly (too active). They tend to be devoted to the family as a whole, but may choose a particular member as their soul mate while still revelling in the company of all.
Newfoundland
BACKGROUND
The first Newfoundland to reach Australia arrived with the First Fleet, on the Scarborough – his name was Hector and he was owned by the ship's master, John Marshall. When the ship sailed for home again, the dog was left in Australia. When the Scarborough returned two years later with the Second Fleet, Hector is said to have swum out to meet the ship and welcome his master.Newfoundlands have a very powerful water rescue instinct and were also used to rescue people and retrieve cargo lost overboard from ships – these dogs have well-developed webbing between their toes to assist in swimming.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Newfoundlands can live to 10 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Newfoundlands love people and worship their family members. They are placid, loyal and trustworthy. Their playmate and nursemaid qualities are second to none.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Excellent.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Most people believe that a dog as large as a Newfoundland will eat you out of house and home. Not so – adult Newfoundlands will only eat as much as dogs the size of a German Shepherd. Big dogs with a moderately long outer coat and a thick undercoat, Newfoundlands look their most glamorous in the winter. While regular brushing is required, and ears and feet need trimming, most do not require hours of grooming and work to keep them looking and feeling their best.
Please take note:
Although Newfoundlands are not difficult to groom, be warned that dog hair will become a fact of life!
IDEAL OWNERS
Families. These dogs are suitable for both children and older folk, although they can be a little on the boisterous side.
Norwich Terrier
BACKGROUND
The Norwich Terrier is a native breed to Norfolk, England, although they are called Norwich Terriers. This lovable and feisty little dog was first registered with the British Kennel Club in the 1930s. There are two similar breeds, one with drop ears, and one with pricked ears. In 1964 the British Kennel Club divided the two breeds and we now know them today as Norwich Terriers (pricked ears) and Norfolk Terriers (drop ears).
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The life span of the Norwich is well over 10 years, but some have been known to live up to 15 years.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Norwich Terrier is a very powerful, strong and self-willed little dog with plenty of energy, so if you are thinking of buying a Norwich make sure you will have time to spend walking and exercising it. To the new owner your Norwich will be friendly and loyal and they are very easy to train.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Norwich Terriers are very adaptable little dogs and will get on well with other family pets.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The coat is coarse, straight, lying close to the body, generally short and smooth on top of the head and ears, longer and rougher around the neck forming a ruff. A daily grooming with a solid comb is best for your Norwich's coat to keep it free from knots and to help pull the dead hair out.
IDEAL OWNERS
If you are not the boss then your Norwich will be – so beware! Your Norwich loves tearing around the garden with the children or they will just simply relax on your chair with you.
Norfolk Terrier
BACKGROUND
About the middle of the 19th Century a man known as "Doggy" Lawrence was breeding small red terriers (about 4kg) that he sold mainly to Cambridge undergraduates. It is believed these dogs were the foundation of what are now known as Norwich and Norfolk Terriers.Norwich Terriers, drop-eared and prick-eared were officially recognised by the English Kennel Club in 1932. Following later disagreements, several representations made to separate the breed officially into two varieties were refused, but a suggestion to form two separate breeds was agreed by the club, with the prick-ears to be Norwich Terriers, while the drop-ears would form the new breed to be known as Norfolk Terriers.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Norfolk Terriers can live up to 15 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Norfolk Terrier is one of the smallest of the terrier group; of a lovable disposition, not quarrelsome, and with a strong constitution. They are appealing, easily portable and cheap to feed. With its origin as a working terrier, these breeds do require exercise. As a watchdog the Norfolk Terrier will always let you know if someone approaches your home, however, they are not a guard dog as friendliness is a dominant characteristic.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
As a companion it is to be encouraged that the Norfolk familiarise with other household pets early. As with all terriers it is a pack dog and will live happily with other animals.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The coat is hard, wiry, and straight, lying close to the body with ruff on the neck. Head, ears and muzzle should be short and smooth with slight eyebrows and whiskers. Weather resistant coats are generally maintained by tidying with fingers, brush and comb. Special care should be taken with the dog living in town ensuring that the dog is on a lead when leaving the yard, which must be secure.
Old English Sheep Dog
BACKGROUND
The Old English Sheep Dog was bred to herd and to guard sheep. Similar to all sheep dogs they are very intelligent and the shepherd relied on them not only to protect the sheep day and night, but also to help keep the sheep together on the unfenced fields and then drive them to the market.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Old English Sheep Dogs can live up to 15 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Old English Sheep Dog is a delightful dog totally devoted to its family. It is full of fun and so loves to play. If you are a jogger then that is its desire, if you are a bush walker then that is its joy too. If you are a homebody then they are happy to lie at your feet. They never grow up and love to go for a ride in the car, in fact they are never happier than with the family. They possess a very even temperament and are an excellent watchdog, but never aggressive.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Old English Sheep Dog loves the company of its own breed. They mix well with other breeds too. Remember the secret of bringing up any dog is correct socialisation with other animals and of course people.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The Old English Sheep Dog is a high maintenance breed because of its beautiful jacket, which is both dense and profuse. However, there is nothing against keeping its coat short. They do not shed as their coat is wool and not hair. You will need to check and clean its ears regularly, keep its eyes clean and check its rear end and in between the toes. In the summer it is of the utmost importance to check for grass seeds all over the body and head as these can cause great trouble when they enter through the skin. A regular groom and bath makes them pleasant to have in the house.
IDEAL OWNERS
Anyone who will love and spend time with them is a must. They adore their family particularly children. But children should never be left unsupervised with any dog.
Papillon
BACKGROUND
This breed appeared in paintings in the 1200s and was known then as the toy Spaniel and was owned by royalty and noblemen. Many paintings feature the toy Spaniel with dropped ears called the Phalene (moth) and the large erect ears of the Papillon.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Papillon''s can live up to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
This breed is a friendly little dog and shows no aggression, it is clean and easy to manage in a small back yard or unit. It loves company, is very intelligent and can be taught tricks or obedience.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Will live happily with other pets, but care should be taken with larger dogs because of their small size.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Needs regular brushing and bathing as they do shed their coat. Care must be taken with the ear canals on the drop-eared variety. Does not have many health problems, but can occasionally suffer from slipping patellas – check with breeder in this regard. Enjoys walks and regular exercise, but is quite happy in the back yard.
Please take note:
Because of its small size is not ideal for young children.
IDEAL OWNERS
This is a companion dog and so they do not live happily without a lot of human contact or living outside the home.
Pointer
BACKGROUND
Hunting dogs were, without doubt, the earliest specialised canines known to man. In the Louvre, in Paris, there hangs a painting by Jean Baptiste Oudry depicting a very handsome Pointer pointing a pheasant. The inscription on the painting tells us that this was a "Dog of the Field" of Louis XV. The painting was done during the last half of the 17th or the first half of the 18th Century.
The English Pointer is believed be derived from both the French and Spanish pointers, breeds that date back to the 18th Century. The Pointer has now evolved into a specialised field dog; one that hesitates and points out the position of the hidden game before flushing it.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Pointers can live up to 15 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Pointer is known for its keen intelligence and even, biddable temperament, which makes it a congenial companion both in the home and in the field. Members of this breed are alert and handsome and this is characterised by its unique dished-face appearance. Possessing an ability to point as a true, fixed genetic characteristic, the Pointer is a hard driving gundog in the field as well as a loyal and dignified companion.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Pointer will live happily with all members of the household. Even hens and other birds are okay if familiarised with them early in life. It will display natural curiosity to wild birds and will point all around the back yard when they are present. It is inclined to be submissive towards other dogs on initial contact and will assess the situation from there. They are not an aggressive dog and will avoid conflict wherever possible.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
It is a low maintenance breed, the short coat needing little more than regular brushing. When the Pointer gets muddy or dirty most will fall off the coat when they dry. They do have a seasonal molt and brushing with a rubber mitt will remove most of the unwanted hair. The Pointer has pendant (dropped) ears which need to be kept clean and checked regularly for any ear infections.
It will live happily in the house with a small back yard providing they get some regular exercise to keep them in good shape and to run off any excess energy. They love to play and will fetch balls and toys willingly.
Please take note:
In the field the working Pointer is the master of gundogs. It lives in harmony with its natural environment, but in our modern society there are restrictions that need to be placed on the dog. Basic obedience training is a necessity and the Pointer is good at it. It is vitally important that the Pointer is socialised regardless of whether it is to be a companion or working dog.
IDEAL OWNERS
Pointers are ideal for the person who wants an excellent family companion or working gundog or for showing, obedience or agility. They are a soft-tempered dog and not for someone who believes in heavy-handed discipline.
BACKGROUND
Poodles have been in existence for many centuries and historical reference to them has been found in Germany, England, Italy and France. In pictorial evidence the dogs nearly always appear in the traditional lion clip, which leaves the hindquarters bare except for leg bands and a pom-pom on the tail, while the forequarters are heavily coated except for the face and legs. This appears to indicate that these dogs were used for sporting and retrieving purposes. As the coat is quite heavy when wet, they were clipped in areas to alleviate weight. The tail was docked as a long tail would be caught in the undergrowth. The ribbon on the topknot was to indicate that the dog was working and also to signify it was not a bird or other animal.
The word Poodle itself is said to derive from the German word "pudel", meaning to splash in water. Although three varieties of Poodles are recognised, they differ in size only and are closely related. The largest, the Standard Poodle, is the oldest variety and was used as a water retriever. The smaller Poodles have become more and more popular. The Miniature Poodle is the medium-sized variety and may be closer to the original Poodle in height than the present Standard size. It was originally called the Toy Poodle, but the name was changed when the smallest form was recognised.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Poodles can live up to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Whatever their size, Poodles are renowned for their intelligence. They are lively dogs with friendly dispositions and make excellent guard dogs.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Excellent.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Pug
BACKGROUND
It is not generally known that the Pug was the most popular of all dogs in England and the Continent many years ago. It is generally accepted that the Pug originated in China and made its way to England through Holland.With the introduction of other toy dogs, the Pug began to lose its popularity in England and there was a danger at one time that the breed would become extinct but more stock was introduced from Holland and Austria in the reign of George III, and this gave the breed a new lease of life. The breed in Australia has been kept going by imports from England at different times.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Pugs can live in excess of 12 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The perfect blend of little dog appeal and wistfulness and big stamina and courage is to be found in the adorable Pug. If you only have a small yard or live in a flat, the Pug is for you. They are remarkably free of "doggy" odours, and their short coat sheds very little, they are also exceptionally clean.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Most Pugs tend to laziness if left to their own devices and so a brisk walk or a vigorous game of fetch every day is needed. Do not allow strenuous exercise in hot weather or just after meals.Pugs, being intelligent and tending to independence, are not the easiest dogs to train, but they are trainable and it does them a lot of good to have a purpose in life. A local obedience club will put you on the right track and introduce you to another aspect to owning a dog and it becoming a companion – not just a pet.
Please take note:
Due to the shape of the eyes and face, Pugs are prone to eye injury. If your Pug is rubbing its eyes, or is squinting, or its eyes are watering, or there is any discolouration of the eye, see your vet immediately. And being a short-nosed breed, the Pug can have difficulties with its soft palate and needs to be monitored.
IDEAL OWNERS
They love to be with people and so make excellent companion dogs. They are sturdy little dogs. They are natural clowns and they will keep you laughing. They snore, wheeze, grunt, snort and sneeze in your face.
Pekingese
BACKGROUND
When the British entered Peking for the first time, they found the Empress Tzu'Hai, dead on the floor of her palace, in the Forbidden City, and with five Pekingese dogs guarding her body. The Empress had committed suicide because China was being invaded by troops from the West. Some of her servants and eunuchs had also killed themselves, while others had fled to the hills, taking with them the sacred little Pekingese dogs that had never been seen before outside the walls of the Forbidden City. During the centuries in which the eunuchs had bred the Pekingese for the Emperors, the breed remained cloistered in the Forbidden City at the Summer Palace. The penalty for anyone found with a dog outside these places was death.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The Pekingese can live to about 17 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Pekingese is fearless to the point of exasperation as they do not recognise size when they look at another dog or even man. Their loyalty is one of their strongest qualities and they would protect anything they thought belonged to them.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Pekingese is a breed that can adapt to any breed. As Pekingese are a fearless breed and can stand their ground with any other breed of dogs if they are introduced at a young age growing up together.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
It is compatible with other domestic animals, but needs training regarding livestock.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
This is a fast growing dog that should not be overfed or over exercised as a puppy, as this puts too much stress on developing bones.
Please take note:
Remember that this breed is part of the hound fraternity and likes to chase. Secure fencing and gates are needed.
Saluki
BACKGROUND
Camel trains from Egypt carried Salukis to all parts of the ancient world along the silk roads. The Saluki is widely recognised as the first of the sighthound breeds and is still unsurpassed for its combination of speed and endurance and is still used as a food provider by some nomadic tribes from Morocco to Asia Minor.
The Saluki is a beautiful connection with the past and is treasured by a relatively small number of devotees as a companion and show dog. Their aristocratic appearance and light, easy movement have made them a favourite with the show judges. They can share an active outdoor life, or while away summer days and winter nights of peaceful partnership. They are equally at ease racing through the open fields, or resting peacefully in the comfort of your home.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Salukis can live up to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Bred to share the family home, Salukis are an extremely gentle breed. A medium sized, moderate dog built for extreme speed and endurance. There are smooth coated and feathered varieties, the latter with silky fringes mainly on the ears and tail. It is a watchdog that will warn of intruders, but will not attack. Salukis are trustworthy, tolerant and are affectionate with children.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Shar Pei
BACKGROUND
The Shar-Pei originated in China and has a history dating back 2000 years. Although the exact place of origin is unclear, statues indicate they came from somewhere in southern China, Tibet or Dah-Lel. The name Shar-Pei literally translates to mean sand skin. This is from the breed's characteristic harsh coat. Shar-Pei were used as general utility dogs for herding and guarding.
They were also known as tomb dogs, relating to the discovery in ancient tombs of 2000-year-old statues bearing their likeness. When China became a communist country, a tax was brought in that made the keeping of dogs a luxury and basically out of reach of the average farmer. In 1947 the tax was increased and breeding banned. This led to the Shar-Pei becoming an endangered breed and it was listed with the Guinness Book of Records in 1978 as the world's rarest dog. The first registered Shar-Pei were imported into Australia in 1981 with the first litter in 1985.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The average lifespan for a Shar-Pei is 10 to 12 years.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Shar-Peis are intelligent dogs needing little training. Although they are somewhat aloof, snobbish and reserved in the presence of strangers, they are extremely loyal and devoted to their family. Essentially they are an independent, regal, alert, dignified, animal with a calm and confident stature.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Shar-Pei is primarily a working dog, although it is placed in the non-sporting classification. Socialisation with other animals is important, as they can be aggressive with other dogs of the same sex. Personality and temperament is an individual thing. Some Shar-Peis will live quite happily around smaller animals and livestock while others may exhibit the natural instinct to hunt. They are generally good with children and other pets when they are reared with them.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Shih Tzu
BACKGROUND
The breed's origins are shrouded in mystery, but it is known that these little dogs were raised in palaces by eunuchs for the pleasure of the nobility. Here they sat on satin pillows and had beautiful marble courtyards to run in. Distant relatives of the Shih Tzu are the Pekingese and Tibetan-type dogs.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Shih Tzus live from between 12 to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Every dog has a reason for being: the Shih Tzu's is strictly to give love. They don't hunt, pull, track or attack - they just love to be with you. Although they may bark to let you know someone is at the door, they soon befriend any visitors once they realise they are friend, not foe.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Excellent.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
St. Bernard
BACKGROUND
The Saint Bernard is the original and renowned rescue dog of Switzerland. Since the middle of the 17th Century the Hospice du Grand St. Bernard has been home to large mountain dogs that first protected the monks and their belongings, and later were developed to help find and rescue lost travellers.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
St Bernards can live up to 9 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The breed is friendly, loyal, fun loving (particularly youngsters) and people orientated. Individuals will range from very steady and quiet through to a more cheeky and boisterous personality. It is a breed that loves to please which makes training and socialising your pup from an early age an experience that you will both enjoy. With its history as a protector, many of today's "Saints" will also instinctively watch over the family and belongings, barking at strangers and demanding introduction before allowing that person to enter the home, but it must never be aggressive or fearful.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Like any other dog, it needs to be properly introduced and supervised with any new additions. Once a friendship is forged, most Saints take on a life-long attachment and consider other pets to be a part of their household.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Schnauzer
BACKGROUND
The Schnauzer is an ancient breed. It is the original sheepdog of the Austrian Tyrol. Paintings and tapestries dating back to 1492 show dogs that are not unlike the modern Schnauzers.
The Schnauzer has also been found in statuary, one on a statue in Mecklenborg, Germany. This statue is dated 1620.
"Schnauzer" was the name of the first prize winning Wired-haired pinscher (the breed's previous title) which was exhibited for the first time in 1879 in Hanover.
Because of its desire to work with the shepherds and guard the family home, the traveling merchants of the 15th and 16th centuries used the Schnauzer to guard their wagons as they traveled from village to village.
These dogs had to be of a size not to take up too much room when traveling on top of the wagon but fierce enough to repel possible thieves.
The Miniature and Giant Schnauzers were developed from the Standard Schnauzer.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The Schnauzer, in general, is a very healthy breed and has a long lifespan: The Standard - up to 13+ years The Mini - up to 15+ years The Giant - up to 12+ years.
[ Miniature Schnauzer ]
Shetland Sheepdog
BACKGROUND
The Shetland Sheep dog, or "Sheltie" as it is affectionately known, originated from the Shetland Islands where it was used by crofters as a sheep dog. Few Shelties are used today for their original purpose as sheep dogs, but those people who have worked them vouch for their incredible stamina and instinctive ability to herd. They were first introduced into Australia in 1936. Often referred to as a miniature Collie, the Shetland Sheep dog certainly has the overall appearance of the Rough Collie, however, it is a breed in its own right and possesses some minor distinguishing features, apart from the obvious size difference.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Shetland Sheepdogs live from between 12 to 16 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Although rather a small dog, the Shetland Sheep dog is certainly not fragile. When feed was in short supply on the farms, the original Shelties were ferried on to small outlying islands with a flock of sheep and left for long periods to guard the flock and fend for themselves. Only the hardy would have been able to survive. When brought back to the farms after such isolation, the dogs would thrive on attention and affection. It is probably this part of their history that makes them so devoted to their owners, but suspicious of intruders and intent on protecting the family.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Excellent. It can live happily with the family cat and will get along with most other dogs.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The Shetland Sheep dog's glamorous jacket requires surprisingly little attention. A brush and a comb behind the ears each week will keep it in good condition. The breed's double coat enables it to adapt to both hot and cold weather, the second layer (undercoat) giving insulation against both heat and cold.
Please take note:
While the Shetland Sheep dog is certainly capable of barking, it is also smart enough to be trained not to bark unnecessarily. It makes an excellent watchdog and will alert you to visitors or unusual occurrences.
IDEAL OWNERS
Almost anyone will benefit from owning a Shetland Sheepdog. The ideal owner is someone who understands the need for occasional grooming.
Mastiff
BACKGROUND
The Mastiff (often called English Mastiff) can truly claim an ancient heritage. Mastiff type dogs have existed since the human race began recording history, thousands of years ago. Mastiffs have been used for various purposes, but primarily as guardians of people and their property. Today they are bred as a superb companion and family dog.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
When considering a dog, please realise that you are taking it on for its lifetime. Like many large breeds of dog, the Mastif has an average lifespan of 8-10 years.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Mastiffs are loving, gentle and extremely loyal dogs. Provided they have been properly introduced, they are usually very good with children, but, as with any breed of dog, there should always be adult supervision.
Mastiffs are sensitive and crave approval and affection. They love nothing better than to be with their owners and for this reason are particularly suitable and rewarding as house dogs.
While not suitable as commercial guard dogs, Mastiffs will let you know when strangers are about. Their deep bark and massive appearance is usually enough to deter any unwelcome visitors.
Mastiffs love to please their owners but they are not a breed that will respond quickly or instantly obey without question.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
By nature Mastiffs are usually very compatible with other pets, especially if they have been raised together.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Mastiffs are a low maintenance breed. Their short coats require only a weekly brushing and a monthly bath. They do shed hair and many slobber a great deal. For exercise, most Mastiffs love to lie about watching you exercise. However, they do need and enjoy a daily half hour walk, regardless of how big or small their property is. They do not cope well with warm weather so walking should be done in the cool early morning or late evening.
Mastiffs need very large amounts of food while they are young and growing but less as they mature. A fully mature Mastiff may not eat much more than an adult German Shepherd Dog. Fresh cool water in a large chew and tip proof container must always be available.
Please take note:
Mastiffs are generally healthy dogs and responsible breeders take every care to ensure the long term health of the puppy you buy. However, as with most dogs, problems can occur. Large breeds grow rapidly and they can be affected by bone disorders. Mastiffs can suffer eye problems and some have a tendency to be susceptible to bloat. If you are considering a Mastiff, discuss the breed with as many breeders as possible and with your vet.
BACKGROUND
At the basin of the Kolyma River at the foothills of the Cherski mountains, one of the tribes, the Chukchi people, went on to develop the Siberian Husky. These dogs were developed to meet the requirements of their specific needs. The required specific confirmation of this dog was to provide speed and endurance over great distances, therefore kilo for kilo the Siberian Husky would be one of the strongest draft dogs.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Tenterfield Terrier
BACKGROUND
The Tenterfield Terrier originated in England after local fox hunters developed a need for a small, agile dog that was capable of chasing vermin from their dens. The early settlers to Australia brought out the Tenterfield Terrier as a working dog that would help rid their land of rats, rabbits and foxes. Over the next hundred or so years, the breed became quite established in Australia as a working terrier and family companion. In fact there was hardly a farm in Australia that didn’t have at least one of these terriers.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
The Tenterfield Terrier is well known for its lengthy lifespan and can live to anywhere between 12 and 20 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
The Tenterfield Terrier is a strong, active, agile working terrier of great versatility and has proven itself, without question, as a keen hunter and an extremely loving pet. The Tenterfield Terrier is equally at home hunting vermin (large and small) on the land or curled up on a loving knee in front of a fire. It is an ideal companion for both children and the elderly alike.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The Tenterfield Terrier is very amicable with other pets. They are often used as companion dogs for larger breeds and can become the best of friends with the family cat when introduced as a puppy. They also get along very well with other Tenterfield's, even when running in a pack. However, the Tenterfield Terrier is a true terrier in temperament and therefore will not hesitate to "stand up for himself" should he feel threatened.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The Tenterfield Terrier is a simple wash and wear dog that needs very little upkeep other than keeping the toe nails trimmed, the teeth clean (as with any breed) and an occasional brushing to remove loose hair (especially when dropping summer and winter coats). However, the Tenterfield Terrier can have a mind of its own so early training is a great advantage. Owners should also be aware that these dogs love to dig and will need to provide plenty of toys to keep it entertained, especially when left alone for long periods of time.
Despite its name, the Tibetan Terrier boasts few of the true terrier characteristics. Their high level of intelligence makes for a sensitive dog which can sometimes result in stubbornness. However, given plenty of love and firm training, these loyal dogs will quickly become a valued companion. Their natural guarding instinct makes them a wonderful watchdog that remains alert but does not bark unnecessarily
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Being extremely adaptable, the Tibetan Terrier is happy to mingle with other dogs of all shapes and sizes. While adults are not generally tolerant of cats, they can be taught to live in harmony if introduced to each other from an early age.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
As a puppy, its coat is extremely easy to look after and requires a weekly brush with a pin-type brush. These sessions are not only an ideal way to spend time together, they will also be an important part of teaching the young pup to enjoy the grooming process which becomes more frequent once they reach adulthood. The adult coat will appear sometime between 12 to 18 months of age and will require a thorough brushing every couple of days. A minimum amount of daily exercise is also required to help keep it healthy and happy.
Staffordshire Bull Terrier
BACKGROUND
The Staffordshire Bull Terrier was brought into existence in the early 1800s and is a cross between the bulldog of the day and the old English Terrier – a breed which is now extinct. It was produced with the sole purpose of obtaining a dog with a longer, broader head than the bulldog and also able to combine strength and agility. The early dogs did not have very specific pedigrees because the importance was a game-fighting dog. The miners and ironworkers of Staffordshire began to foster the breed and the qualities of gameness, intelligence and loyalty were developed.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
This dog can live up to 14 years of age.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
You must never forget the Staffordshire Bull Terriers’ past as a fighting dog is still present in most Staffords today. Their boisterous nature and spirit give credit to the statement that "Staffords are the loveable rogues of the dog world". Always be a responsible Stafford owner and never have your dog off lead in a public place.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Staffordshire Bull Terriers live happily with other pets provided that they are trained and socialised from an early age. Puppies can be easily trained to obey house rules and obedience training can be an excellent avenue to provide socialisation with other animals.Obedience is a fun way to develop a close bond of friendship and respect with your Stafford. They love to be with you and take great delight in pleasing you.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The Stafford is a low maintenance breed, the short coat requiring little more than a regular brushing and the occasional bath. Depending on the amount of exercise your dog has on a hard surface will determine if the nails need clipping to keep them short and tidy.
IDEAL OWNERS
Staffordshire Bull Terriers are a dog that very much needs to be a member of the family. They are not a dog that can be left alone in the back yard to amuse themselves.
Weimaraner
BACKGROUND
There have been numerous theories cited over the origins of the Weimaraner. One fact remains certain, that the Weimaraner had much Leithund blood in it. These dogs were kept during the first third of the 19th century at the Court of Weimar. Towards the middle of the century the dogs were found almost exclusively in the hands of professional hunters and forest officials in central Germany, especially in the regions of Weimar and Thuringia.
These dogs were usually bred for performance and when the days of the Leithund ended, these breeders crossed their dogs with Huhnerhund (refers to Pointers and Setters) and continued these matings further. The Weimaraner is the oldest German pointing breed, and has been pure bred for about 100 years.
The versatile Weimaraner (nicknamed the "Grey Ghost" due to its unique colour) is a dedicated companion dog. From the early years of the breed to the present day, they have lived with people as dedicated companions and hunting dogs. In Australia both the Weimaraner (shorthaired) and the Weimaraner (longhaired) varieties are available.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Weimaraners live to about 12 years. The oldest known in Victoria was 18.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Weimaraners are a breed for those people who enjoy a dog that is intensely devoted and responsive to attention - they demand attention - and will follow owners from room to room, usually lying down with body contact when owners sit down. They are wonderful with children, protective, fun loving, easy to train, and can be quite the clown.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
They usually get along with other pets especially if introduced at a young age, however, rabbits, ducks or game are not recommended.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Daily running in a park or large area and some training to exercise their brain prevents them from becoming bored and destructive. Regular brushing with a rubber grooming mitt is best. It needs grooming more often when losing hair. This usually occurs twice a year. Regular bathing, cleaning of ears, trimming of toe-nails and dental care are essential too.
Please take note:
The decision to own a Weimaraner should be considered carefully as they require an active person who is prepared to give it the exercise, love and attention it demands. They do not like to be relegated to the back yard and forgotten. Once you decide upon the breed you will become one of the many who firmly believe that this is the most wonderful breed in the world and could never live without one.
Whippets have an agreeable temperament and make an ideal family pet and a wonderful companion. It is often said that bitches generally make better pets than their male counterparts because they are more affectionate and obedient. However, this is quite the opposite for Whippets where the male is the more obedient, friendly and outgoing of the species.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The vast majority of Whippets are not aggressive towards other dogs. Similar to most animals blessed with great speed, they prefer to use their speed to get out of a fight.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Whippets are much tougher than they look and will happily go for a walk in weather that would deter most owners. Being high on the leg, they bring in relatively little dirt after an energetic walk, and their short coats require only a minimum of grooming to keep in trim.
Whippets have been described as the lazy man's dog, because they are easy to look after and to feed. They do need daily exercise, and similar to most dogs thirty minutes walk daily on a lead will keep them healthy and reasonably fit - they will also appreciate fifteen minutes free running where they can really "stretch out".
Please take note:
Although in many breeds it is considered that bitches make better house pets than dogs, this is not necessarily the case with Whippets.
Whippets have an agreeable temperament and make an ideal family pet and a wonderful companion. It is often said that bitches generally make better pets than their male counterparts because they are more affectionate and obedient. However, this is quite the opposite for Whippets where the male is the more obedient, friendly and outgoing of the species.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
The vast majority of Whippets are not aggressive towards other dogs. Similar to most animals blessed with great speed, they prefer to use their speed to get out of a fight.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
Whippets are much tougher than they look and will happily go for a walk in weather that would deter most owners. Being high on the leg, they bring in relatively little dirt after an energetic walk, and their short coats require only a minimum of grooming to keep in trim.
Whippets have been described as the lazy man's dog, because they are easy to look after and to feed. They do need daily exercise, and similar to most dogs thirty minutes walk daily on a lead will keep them healthy and reasonably fit - they will also appreciate fifteen minutes free running where they can really "stretch out".
Please take note:
Although in many breeds it is considered that bitches make better house pets than dogs, this is not necessarily the case with Whippets.
Yorkshire Terrier
BACKGROUND
The Yorkshire Terrier is the result of cross breeding between a variety of terrier types and first appeared around England’s Yorkshire region during the middle of the 19th century. The early Yorkshire Terriers could be as large as 6kg and were used, similar to other terrier breeds, to kill rats. Over time, breeders produced a smaller, more beautiful dog that was a household pet and show dog, rather than a rat killer.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
Yorkshire Terriers often live for 14 years, but can live up to 16 years of age when cared for properly and given the right food.
BREED PERSONALITY, CHARACTERISTICS & TEMPERAMENT
Most Yorkshire Terriers are alert, active and inquisitive. They can be determined, but are faithful and loyal to their human family. They thrive on human companionship and will happily be included in family activities. They make a good watchdog and will bark if strangers come to the home. Although small, they are a robust and healthy animal and have the proportions of a normal dog but in miniature. Yorkshire Terriers have a coat that does not shed or moult and therefore are a hypo-allergenic (low allergy) breed. The coat is not weather resistant and so they should live indoors with periods outside for exercise.
COMPATIBILITY WITH OTHER PETS
Yorkshire Terriers generally live happily with other breeds of dog as long as the dog is of similar size.
CARE REQUIREMENTS
The Yorkshire Terrier's coat will generally grow to the ground and needs to be brushed for an hour every second day to keep it free of tangles. The hair on the head needs to be tied up to keep it out of the eyes. If an owner wants less work then the coat can be kept short. They will happily go for a long walk with their owner or run around in the back yard.
IDEAL OWNERS
The Yorkshire Terrier is suitable for people of all ages, with or without children, but children do need to be supervised around this small dog. The most important issue when considering owning a Yorkshire Terrier is whether you have adequate time to look after it. Similar to most dogs it is not good for a Yorkshire Terrier's temperament to be left alone for long periods of time, and if everyone in the house is away for most of the day then it is best to get two dogs so that they have company.
West Highland White Terrier
BACKGROUND
The West Highland White Terrier or "Westie" as they are affectionately known, is a member of the small group of Scottish National Breeds that includes the Scottish Terrier and also the Cairn, from which the Westie originated. Until the early 19th century Terriers tended to be dark in colour and it was not uncommon for hunters to mistake a brown terrier for a fox and shoot it by mistake.
So the lightest coloured puppies of future litters were then kept in a bid to avoid these shooting accidents. These white terriers were then used to control vermin, including foxes and hares. They became known as the West Highland White Terrier in the first part of the 20th century.
AVERAGE LIFESPAN
| Cocker Spaniel |
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Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1026365.asp
Wheatens As Guard Dogs
There are a number of dogs known for their ability to act as guardians for their owners and their property. Among them are Rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shepherds and Bull Mastiffs. These dogs have specific temperaments that include a protective instinct that is vital for a guard dog.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1026365.asp#comments
Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1027265.asp
The Difference Between The Japanese Akita And The American Akita
Usually, when people group Akitas together, there is no distinction between the Japanese Akita and American Akita. In the States and in parts of Canada, an Akita may originate in Japan or not. In Japan, however, any dog that is mixed outside the gene pool of the traditional Akita bloodline is not considered "pure," and it is usually classified differently.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1027265.asp#comments
Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1027565.asp
Training An Akita
Training an Akita entails a lot of patience and hard work, but the pay-off can be great. Akitas can become possessive, territorial and even destructive when not properly trained. It is an intelligent breed of dog which is usually known to be docile and non-aggressive. These traits can be achieved through proper training, early lessons in socialization and a lot of mental stimulation.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1027565.asp#comments
Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1027765.asp
Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldogs: The Thinking Guard Dog
Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldogs are quite rare; not everyone agrees on a number, but some reports indicate that there are presently less than two hundred Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldogs in the world. That being said, there is enough information on these rare dogs to piece together some important facts about the personality of the breed. While there are some disagreements about its history or its standard, everyone agrees that these dogs have remarkable temperaments. Often described as protective, one interesting facet of its temperament stands out: its ability to pause and reflect before acting. This lends credence to the idea that Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldogs are not just guard dogs, but thinking guard dogs.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1027765.asp#comments
Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1028165.asp
The Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog Is A Natural Guardian
Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldogs are well loved for their docile temperaments, their energy and agility and their devotion to their families, but the one characteristic that that stands out and makes them prized by their owners is their natural guarding and protecting instincts.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/1028165.asp#comments
Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10210065.asp
Shelties In Obedience And Herding Competition
Shelties are one of the most intelligent dog breeds. This intelligence makes them prime candidates for showing and other competitions. Two of the types of competition to which shelties are well suited are obedience and herding competitions. Obedience competitions measure how well dogs perform the commands as directed by their handlers. The dogs are measured on activities such as heeling, sitting and lying down. Obedience competitions are conducted at several levels.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10210065.asp#comments
Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10210165.asp
The Sheltie's Natural Herding Instinct
The Sheltie breed was developed as a herding dog. The breed was first developed in the Shetland Islands by crossing collies with the Icelandic Yakkin, a small island dog that came to the Shetland Islands via fisherman, who kept these small dogs as companions and rat hunters on their boats.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10210165.asp#comments
Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10210865.asp
The Scottish Terrier As A Hunting Dog
The Scottish Terrier, like most Highland Terriers, was originally bred in order to assist with the work of small game hunters and farmers in Scotland. Virtually everything about the breed was worked for with the singular idea of hunting in mind, and most of those traits still survive to this day, making the Scottie suitable as a working dog despite their rampant popularity as a family pet.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10210865.asp#comments
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10214865.asp
Keeping A Single Hound Rather Than A Pack
All hounds are pack breeds and historically American Foxhounds and their relatives the English Foxhounds were only kept in packs of several dogs, often more than 10, that would eat, sleep, play and hunt together.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10214865.asp#comments
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10215265.asp
Hunting Trials And Events And Training Your American Foxhound To Track
Dogs have always been able to track their prey and for centuries man has used dogs to his benefit and often for survival. Tracking events are a way to show your American foxhounds power at recognizing and following the disturbed vegetation scent or scent trail left by another animal or person.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10215265.asp#comments
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10215465.asp
Why Newfoundlands Make Great Search And Rescue Dogs
The Newfoundland is an excellent dog to use for therapeutic reasons as it has a reassuring and devoted demeanor-but it has even more to offer. His main historical use is that of search and rescue dog. His personality lends this dog to being a compassionate source of comfort for an ailing person as well as to the extreme rigors of saving a drowning, struggling person. And the explanation for this versatility can be found in the large, cuddly and somewhat deceiving physique of the Newfoundland.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10215465.asp#comments
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10215765.asp
Newfoundlands As A Ship Dog
Newfoundlands were bred to be work dogs, hauling by sled and cart goods that needed to be transported in a time before mass transport over extreme distances. They soon became staples on ships because of the hereditary physical and personality traits. The Newfoundland dog's extremely fit legs and webbed toes. Make swimming a cinch for them. They also possess lungs that allow them long periods under water.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10215765.asp#comments
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10221365.asp
Original Use Of The Australian Cattle Dog
There are a number of dog breeds available that herd large groups of animals with great precision and ease. However, in the 1800's Australian cattle ranchers not only wanted but needed a resourceful dog with the moxie to withstand the country's harsh conditions.
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Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10222665.asp
The Use Of Basenjis In Native Zaire
Though commonly known as the Barkless Dog, the Basenji is also referred to as the Dog of the Bush Hunters. Though the breed has existed for thousands of years, it wasn't until the late 1930's that the rest of the world found out about the Basenji. Before then, they were used as hunting dogs for the people of the Congo in central Africa.
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Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10223865.asp
Belgian Tervuren For Hunting
Reaching back to the dawn of man, dogs and humans have always been partners on the field when it comes to hunting. Thousands of years ago, ancient man and wolves worked together and shared the kill. Wolves were eventually mated with other breeds to create more able and loyal kinds of hunting dog. More so than their independent wolf fore bearers, today's hunting dogs tend to be satisfied with being their human partner's right hand man, hunting for the sport of the chase and to earn reverence in the eyes of their master.
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Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10224365.asp
Mastiff As A House Guard
Mastiffs are dogs that make wonderful companions for people who love animals. If you wish to keep a Mastiff in your home, you have to be prepared to put in valuable time and effort to make it feel comfortable. A Mastiff needs constant human contact and it feels as if it is part of the family. Other than just a companion, a Mastiff is also an ideal house guard as it is a fearsome presence that will keep intruders at bay.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10227765.asp
Labrador Retriever Weird Facts/did You Know?
The Labrador retriever has long been known as one of the most lovable dogs in the world. It also has the title of being the most popular family dog, especially for families with children. There are many fascinating little tidbits of information about the Labrador retriever that many probably don't know. They are also referred to as Labrador or just simply "Lab". In fact, they are so popular and well known that when people say, "I have a Lab", everyone knows exactly what is meant.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10228165.asp
Labrador Retrievers As Hunting Dogs
Labrador retrievers, besides being one of the more popular dogs in the United States, are a very versatile dog. They can serve many purposes, all of which depend on the wishes of the owner. Some people get a Labrador retriever for their excellent qualities as a family pet. In some cases, the Labrador is trained for a certain services such as service dog, therapy dog or Seeing Eye dog. We must not forget one of their first purposes of years ago - their use as hunting dogs. Labradors were originally bred for waterfowl hunting, where they would go in the water to retrieve the birds as they were shot. They were also used many years ago to help the fishermen in Newfoundland bring in the fish they caught.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10228365.asp
Labrador Retrievers Being Used For Work Dogs
Labrador Retrievers are one type of retriever and very possibly the most popular. They were originally bred to be bird dogs for waterfowl hunting. They loved the water and seemed to thrive and excel at going in the water and retrieving the game that was shot. To this day, the Labrador retriever still loves water and swimming. Although the Labrador is a wonderful pet, both loving and affection, they also make excellent working dogs. In the United States, there are actually two lines of the Labrador retriever: the field line and the show line.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10228565.asp
Jobs Of The Black Russian Terrier
Some people are born to work. The Black Russian Terrier fits into this category, as well. Although part of the reason it was bred was to create a national dog for Russia, the primary goal in creating the Black Russian Terrier's was bred to fulfill a need for in the country's national security force - one that could withstand the country's frigid winters.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10229065.asp
Border Terriers And Earthdog Trials
Because of their long history as working hunting dogs, Border Terriers still retain much of their hunting instincts. While they have found success in present day agility and obedience trials, they really excel in Earthdog trials. As a matter of fact, more Border Terriers have won American Kennel Club Earthdog trials than any other breed. If you're looking for a way to get involved in competition and exercise with your Border Terrier, Earthdog trials are a great option.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10230165.asp
Border Terriers And Hunting
Border Terriers enjoy a long history as working dogs going back at least two hundred years. They were originally developed by the Robson family in the middle of the 19th century to hunt fox, rabbit, and other small animals around the border between England and Scotland, which is how they earned their name. While Border Terriers are not the most popular hunting dog in the world, they certainly are still used to hunting both in North America and in England. In this article, we'll take a look at training and where hunting is available in the United States.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10230465.asp
Border Terrier: Did You Know ?
Border Terriers are energetic, playful, clever dogs that are devoted to their favorite person or families. Like many terriers, they tend to have dominant personalities, but this attitude can be trained out with early obedience training. These active little dogs excel in most dog sporting events, including Agility, Obedience, Flyball and Earthdog trials. They respond well to positive reinforcement training and are famous for their love of food, so food treats are an excellent way to reinforce good behavior. Perhaps not the best choice for the youngest of children, Border Terriers are nevertheless excellent companions for families if trained properly.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10230965.asp
The Irish Setter As A Hunting Dog
The Irish Setter, like all Setters, was originally developed as a "gundog", that is to say a breed used in hunting small game, usually birds. Unlike other hunting dogs such as terriers who give chase and kill the prey themselves, the Irish Setter was always intended to hunt in conjunction with a human companion. On a hunt, the Irish Setter will use his or her keen sense of smell to track prey. Once they find the type they're looking for, instead of chasing, the Irish Setter will adopt a frozen stance that simply and silently points the direction towards the prey for the human hunter to pursue. This posture, called "setting" the direction of a quarry, is where the breed gets their name.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Living With The Bouvier Des Flandres
There are many breeds of dogs that make good family pets as well as companion dogs and watchdogs. The Bouvier des Flandres stands out as one of the top dogs in any of these categories. Living with a Bouvier des Flandres will be a fun-filled and rewarding experience.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10232465.asp
The Brittany, Spaniel, Pointer Or Setter?
The Brittany is revered by hunters as a brilliant and efficient gun dog. For many years the breed was referred to as the Brittany Spaniel. However, this often led to a confusing debate over its classification. Although it carried the markings of a spaniel, in the field the Brittany often froze or pointed out game, much in the tradition of a setter or pointer. Spaniels, on the other hand, were known to typically flush game from their hiding spots. While the Brittany is believed to be the result of a setter and spaniel cross, it would seem more than just being the only spaniel breed that points out game, they are actually a setter in a spaniel suit.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Why Bird Hunters Prefer The Brittany
The relationship between a hunter and his or her gun dog is a unique one. There is a rapport based on companionship but there is also a distinct working relationship in place as well. The two relationships both have their times and places; and both hunter and dog each have their expectations in both of them. When out in the field, hunters want and need a dependable hunting dog that knows what it needs to do and when. The dog, in a away, also needs the same of the hunter. This keeps the gun dog safe while out doing what it loves best.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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The Brittany At Work In Law Enforcement
For the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, there is no better canine breed for sniffing out drugs than the Brittany. They are well known for always following their nose and having one of the most singular senses of smell in the dog world. When used for hunting out in the field, hunters are often amazed at the Brittany's ability to find lost or wounded birds that dive into the underbrush to hide. As many have come to find, it is better to let the laser focused Brittany find its quarry as it does not give up until what is lost is found.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Golden Retrievers As Hunting Dogs
Golden Retrievers are one of the most popular breeds of dog in the United States. They make great companion dogs, and are also very popular for service dogs. But, the Golden Retriever breed was created to be a hunting dog, and for many years this was their sole purpose. It took several years before people realized the versatility of this breed. Golden Retrievers retrieve instinctively, which is what makes them such good companion dogs for hunters. However, they are not true hunting dogs, like a blue tick or other breed of hunting hound. What this means is that they do not flush out the game for you, but rather retrieve the game once you've spotted and killed it.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Golden Retrievers As Service And Narcotics Dogs
Golden Retrievers are among the most popular family pets in the United States. They were originally bred as hunting dogs, but quickly gained a reputation for being a great family dog because of their gentle and easy going temperament. However, Golden Retrievers are often used as working dogs, too. In particular, they are excellent service dogs and are often used as narcotics dogs. Dr. Bonita Bergin, the initial creator of the idea of a "service dog" reports that Golden Retrievers are the best suited breed for service dog work. The reason that Goldens are the best suited breed is their combination of gentle disposition, great intelligence and strength.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10236365.asp
German Shepherds As Police Dogs
The German shepherd dog is known for its many fine attributes, including intelligence, loyalty, good temperament, trainability and endurance. These characteristics are what make German shepherds the perfect choice for their work as police dogs. A police dog is trained specifically to work with the police and other law enforcement agencies. In the United States, they are often known as the K9 unit. They are a highly regarded and respected unit wherever they go and work in many different locations. They have been known for their work with the police and military for so many years that many people automatically refer to the German shepherd dog as a police dog, whether they are work dogs or merely family pets.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10236665.asp
German Shepherds And Schutzhund
German shepherds have been successfully trained in many different sports and activities due to their intelligence and endurance, as well as the fact they are very adaptable to training. One such training program is known as Schutzhund. Schutzhund is a German word meaning "protection dog", and was developed in Germany in the 1900s as a way to test the German shepherd dog to see if they possessed the traits they were originally bred for such as the strong desire to work, courage, intelligence, obedience, strong bond to the handler, perseverance and protective instinct. Schutzhund training is a way for trainers to determine if the dog still has what it takes.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10237465.asp
The German Shepherd As A Working Dog
Many people that own German shepherds know them only as the wonderful family pets they love. They don't often think of them as working dogs. However, they have been used as working dogs ever since the German shepherd breed was developed in Germany in the 1800s. Back then they were appreciated as an animal that, it seemed, could see, hear, smell and run better than any human being. Their name shep-HERD came about because of their work as herding dogs. That herding quality they still carry with them today makes them such loyal and excellent watchdogs and family pets.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10239465.asp
Are Estrelas Good With Children?
Although Estrela Mountain Dogs can be aggressive and fierce when it comes to strangers encroaching on your property or attempting to break into your home, they are also sensitive animals that quickly become attached to family members, especially children. As herding dogs for shepherds in the Serra da Estrela Mountains in Portugal, these dogs spend their summers outside. However, during the winter they stayed inside with the family as a guard dog. During this time, they became accustomed to family life and being around kids. In fact, these dogs have an affinity with children that may surprise you.
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Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10241465.asp
Training The Dogue De Bordeaux, Police Work
The Dogue de Bordeaux also referred to as a French Mastiff has gained popularity and respect as a well trained police dog. The history of the breed refers to the dog as a bodyguard, watchdog and a tracker of bear, bulls and other animals. Because of the nature of the dog, it makes an excellent police dog. The training is similar to other breeds except the Dogue de Bordeaux is so large, extra measures are taken in training. In order for this breed to train for police work, they need to have proper puppy training. Understanding and learning the basic dog commands and obedience training is important.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10242765.asp
The Chesapeake Bay Retriever As A Hunting Dog
The Chesapeake Bay retriever is a multi-functional dog. It is used in the show ring and field trials, as a watchdog and as a family pet. The reason most individuals are interested in the Chesapeake, however, is their great talent as hunting dogs. They are a great hunting dog that loves the water, which is another trait that adds to their hunting ability.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10243865.asp
Doberman Pinschers: Their Origin And Service In World War Ii
It may be difficult to imagine that a whole breed of dogs that are loved throughout the world came into being thanks to one man, but this is true of the Doberman Pinscher. Not only did this dog become popular throughout the world, but it went on to become prominent in its service during a time of war. In this article, we'll take a look at the Doberman Pinscher's beginnings and its service during World War II. The time is the late 19th century and the place is Apolda, Germany. Louis Dobermann had a curious collection of jobs - not only was he a tax collector and night watchman, but he was also in charge of a dog pound. Without a doubt, these jobs made him less than popular, especially in a time when robberies and muggings ran rampant.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10244065.asp
Doberman Pinschers As Service And Police Dogs
It's hard to imagine two jobs a dog could perform that could be any less opposed than working as a service dog and a police dog. When we think of service dogs, we think of dogs that are helpful and friendly, and this doesn't always mesh with the popular image we have of Doberman Pinschers as fierce guard dogs! The truth is Dobermans are quite adept as both police dogs and service dogs. Police Dogs Perhaps the oldest canine profession is one of protection. Since the beginning of recorded time, dogs were used as personal protection as well as fierce weapons in war.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10244865.asp
Doberman Pinschers And Search And Rescue
Doberman Pinschers have a long history of performing highly valued tasks such as protection dogs, guard dogs, war dogs and even service dogs. Yet another area where Dobermans can excel is in search and rescue, in an effort to help law enforcement to find missing persons. While Dobermans are not at the top of the list of dogs that we associate with search and rescue, they are certainly involved in this important service and some Dobermans have even claimed some notoriety from their success. In this article, we'll take a look at what search and rescue involves, pros and cons of Dobermans in the field, and how you can get involved in this important service.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10246165.asp
The Collie's Herding Instincts
The Collie breed was developed in the Scottish highlands and lowlands as a herding dog for flocks of sheep. Many years and much care was taken to breed in the appropriate herding instincts to make the collie a superior shepherding dog. If you own a collie as a family pet today, you'll note that many of these shepherding instincts show in your collie's behavior. Following are some things to note about how collies behave that are directly related to the use of the breed as a shepherding dog.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10246465.asp
Cocker Spaniels As Hunting Dogs
Cocker spaniels enjoy a very long history and have always been exceptional hunting dogs. While this might not mesh with many people's idea of a Cocker spaniel, with their flowing long coat and soulful eyes, the truth is that they have been beloved for their hunting skills for centuries. In this article, we'll take a look at the Cocker spaniel's history as a hunting dog and whether it can still be found hunting today. The Cocker spaniel with its very long coat and perfect posture is only a recent phenomenon when compared to its very long history.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10246965.asp
Cocker Spaniels And Hunt Tests
Despite their image as house pets with beautifully long coats, Cocker spaniels enjoy a long history as a capable hunting dog, and they still retain their hunting instincts. All spaniels are natural flushing dogs; their purpose is to find birds, flush them from marshes or bushes and retrieve them, all in an efficient manner. If you enjoy bird hunting, don't rule out Cocker Spaniels as a formidable hunting partner. If you have a Cocker spaniel and you want to get involved in hunting, hunt tests are not only an excellent way to train, but they are also a great way to meet other hunters and to test your Cocker against a field standard.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10247465.asp
Hunting - The Weimaraner's First Love
As a sporting dog, the Weimaraner displays great energy and hunting instincts. It has been used as a hunting dog since its early days, and it is equally adept at hunting large and small games. With its excellent hunting abilities, the Weimaraner is the perfect companion to bring on a hunting trip. Its fearlessness and athleticism makes it one of the favourite hunting dogs in the world today. Though a Weimaraner can excel in many different types of sports and activities, hunting is still its first love. The Weimaraner is known for its well-rounded hunting style, and it is considered one of the top hunting breeds according to the American Kennel Club.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10248265.asp
The Vizsla Origins As A Pointer And A Retriever
The Vizsla origins as a pointer and retriever begin with the ancient people called the Magyars. They were a people who constantly had to defend their existence through the use of animals. Horses were used in war while the Vizsla was used in the hunt for food. The Vizsla, whose name is Hungarian for Pointer, is a very smart pointer and retriever whose value and ability was recognized early on.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10248665.asp
The Vizsla And Point Score Competitions
Their incredible hunting ability and lean athletic build make the Vizsla perfect for more than just dog shows. Since its incarnation, the Vizsla has had a display of skills that were soon put to the test in point score competitions that both he and his owner could enjoy. Since the early 1970s when they were first introduced into Australia, their popularity has exploded. Thus, point score competitions are very prevalent there as well as the States, both places being outside of the native land of the Vizsla, which is Europe.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10249465.asp
Kooikerhondje And Ducks And Other Working Uses
Dogs can do a lot more than just play fetch even though that is enough reason to love them. They can fill many roles and utilize their gifts and senses to help out their owners. They don't even ask for anything but love in return. Kooikerhondjes, for example, can work as duck decoys, hearing dogs, and therapy dogs. These dogs have a lot to offer if only given the chance. Let's see exactly what they can do.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10249665.asp
The Kooikerhondje And Its Surprising Guarding Behaviour
They say a dog would do anything to protect his owner, and this is quite often the case. Guard dogs serve this protective function in several different settings including businesses and homes. Some breeds, such as Kooikerhondjes, are more inclined toward being guard dogs than others. They are ideal guard dogs because they are territorial, can be trained to respond to commands, and are good watch dogs. Let's take a look at some of the reasons why Kooikerhondjes make such good protectors.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10250765.asp
The Akbash As A Herder And Working Dog
The Akbash dog is an exceptional working dog. For any farmer or rancher with a flock of animals to protect, there are few better options for a guardian dog than the Akbash. His breeding has ensured the dog's intelligence, instincts, protectiveness, and physical prowess, all very important aspects of the ultimate flock guardian.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10253165.asp
English Cocker Spaniel Training Tips For Hunting
The first training session for hunting starts as a puppy. This includes the basic commands for retrieving, recall, stay, sit and up. These commands are necessary for a good hunting dog. The English Cocker Spaniel is a natural bird dog. Without the proper commands, the safety of the hunter and the dog could be compromised. The training should be done on a daily basis until the puppy is fully aware of what they are to do for every command.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10253665.asp
Advantages And Disadvantages Of Owning A Female Vs A Male
There are some advantages to having a female English Cocker Spaniel rather than a male, which include the fact that a female does not feel the need to leave a scent everywhere and a female is easier to housebreak than a male. If you do not have the male neutered right away, they will forget at times they are housebroken, whereas a female will always remember. If you do not use the female or male for breeding, you should have them altered for many reasons. The problem with scenting alone makes a female more favorable. The male that is neutered does lose the urge to "mark his spot" everywhere.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10253965.asp
Reasons For Gun Shy English Cocker Spaniel
As a puppy, the English Cocker Spaniel will go through hours of training to learn the basic commands and they will train for hunting. Puppies that are subjected to gunshots or other loud noises at a young age may become skittish around loud noises. When this happens, training the puppy for hunting is difficult. It may even become impossible to correct the gun shyness, as the puppy grows older. Proper care of the puppy before and during training is essential. Following guidelines for training the puppy for hunting is vital to them not becoming scared and anxious around guns.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10255865.asp
Establishing Who's The Boss With A Basset Hound
Basset hounds can make wonderful companions. However, they are stubborn, strong-willed and can be difficult at times. Some specific areas of life in which you need to establish some dominance, or at least a plan of attack, are when it comes to food, house training, and their masterful escapes. This article will try to explain and give helpful hints to give you a leg up on your shirt legged competition.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10256765.asp
The Borzoi And Outdoor Environments
A huge but people-loving breed, the Borzoi got their start as the official hunting dogs of the Tsarist Russian nobility and royalty. These dogs were bred over the course of many years in order to make the fastest, smartest dogs possible. The necessity of the dog's incredible speed, agility, and intelligence was tied to the dog's purpose as a hunter. He was trained to take down many types of game, but specifically wolves.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10257165.asp
Cats And Borzoi: Problematic?
The Borzoi is a Russian hunting dog that was bred by the Tsars and nobility of Russia to be the ultimate runner and chaser. He is descended from ancient sighthounds like the Russian smooth-faced bearhound, Russian sheepdogs, and Southern coursing hounds. All of these dogs had one thing in common: they were prominent figures in the Russian tsars' hunting parties. The result of all of this breeding was the Russian Wolfhound or Borzoi, who is one of the faster and most intelligent sighthounds today. But what does all of this have to do with cats?
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10258465.asp
The Canaan Dog As A Working Dog
The Canaan Dog has a long history of having many purposes. They are used as pets, companion dogs, for the show ring and as working dogs. The Bedouins had the Canaan dog to guard their camps during the night as well as watching the flocks. This dog was made by nature to survive, which helps to make him such a versatile dog, able to meet any one's needs. The Canaan was used as a working dog during World War II for patrol work in addition to helped the army in any way they were needed. Their use as sentry dogs for the army was invaluable as well as tracking dogs whose purpose was to detect any landmines. This dog has repeatedly put his life on the line to help his owner or master.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10260265.asp
The Clumber Spaniel As A Hunting Companion
The Clumber Spaniel is a fit, capable and willing participant for hunting expeditions. The dog was first recognized in the 1800's and the where breed for the benefit of the hunter. Many take one look at these dogs and do not believe that they are able to be such physical dogs considering their low and heavy frame. Yet, these dogs are agile and they enjoy the hunt. Those considering a companion for their next hunting trip should definitely consider adding these dogs to that trip.
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Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10260665.asp
Cesky Terrier Shows And Competitions
For people that love Cesky terriers, enjoy being around other Cesky terriers and owners of this wonderful breed, Cesky terrier dog shows and competitions are fun events to watch and an enjoyable, rewarding experience if you choose to compete. Cesky terrier dog events, trials, shows, and competitions are a great way to spend time and be active with your pet. They are rewarding, fun and offered both in the United States and internationally.
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Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10260865.asp
Fun Activities With A Cesky Terrier
Since the Cesky Terrier has such an outstanding personality and temperament and gets along well with kids and other dogs they are an ideal breed for a family that loves to take their pet with them. Unlike many of the terrier breeds the Cesky does not have as high of a prey instinct and is not as prone to chasing or running when off-leash once they are fully obedience trained. This means that the Cesky is a very versatile dog that can enjoy a huge range of activities.
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Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Earthdog Trials And Hunting Events
The Earthdog Trials are noncompetitive venues for Cesky terriers, small terriers, and Dachshunds. The Earthdog tests offer breeders and dog owners a standardized gauge that assesses their Cesky terriers and other dogs trained and natural working and hunting abilities, by exposing the dogs to a specific hunting situation. If you are interested in getting your Cesky terrier started in Earthdog tests, get a book of regulations from the American Kennel Club.
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Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Chihuahuas Used In Police Work
How can a tiny Chihuahua be used in police work you might ask and rightfully so. When we think of police dogs, we think of German Shepherds and other large and powerful dogs that can easily apprehend a criminal and take a bullet when necessary. They are loyal officers that give their lives in the line of duty. Or we think of bloodhounds and other dogs used for their powerful sense of smell. These dogs have been trained to find drugs or search out important clues at crime scenes. It now appears that the profile of a police dog is changing and a little Chihuahua, with a rat terrier mix is now on the scene to stay.
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Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10262565.asp
Jack Russell Terriers Are Hunting Dogs
The Jack Russell Terrier was originally bred in Devonshire, England, in the 1800s for the purpose of hunting fox. They get their name from the Rev. Jack Russell who, besides his ministry, had a passion for the fox hunt. The fox hunt is a deeply routed rural tradition of England. Many animal activists object to the hunt as they see it to be a cruel, barbaric sport elicited by the idle rich. The fox hunt is carried out by trained working dogs, which pursue a fox until the ultimate kill. The dogs are followed by humans either on foot but mostly on horseback. For the advocates of the fox hunt, it is more than a sport. It is a method for conservation and pest control. In North America, the pesky coyotes is the "tod" or target predator of the hunt.
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Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Jack Russell Terriers And Their Role In Police Work
The Jack Russell Terrier may be small in stature, nevertheless it is a working dog. It is wrong to assume that its size necessitates less exercise than that which is necessary for the larger breeds. In fact, this tenacious breed is even deemed suitable for police work. Originally bred for hunting foxes, these small dogs are strong and well built. They must be allowed to vent their energy, either through work or exercise. They are also fierce and courageous animals that will stop at nothing to protect their loved ones. They have shown their loyalty and bravery in the line of duty time and again.
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Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Are Pugs Good Watchdogs?
Throughout time, dogs have been used to alert their owners to signs of danger. Some dogs make better watchdogs than others, and this article will take a look at where pug dogs might fall along this continuum. We will look at how pug dogs are alert, stubborn, and friendly. Believe it or not, all these can come into play when you’re wondering if a pug would make a good guard dog for your home. Intruder Alert! We all want a dog who will let us know if there is anything suspicious going on around or outside of our houses. Pug dogs will notify you of such activity by barking at any such sign. They will respond mostly to strangers or odd noises in this fashion. They are very protective of their owners, which is also a desirable quality in a watchdog.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Unique Personality Of The Anatolian Shepherd
The personality of the Anatolian Shepherd is unique as they are guardians of the flock. You as their owner are considered their flock and take pride in protecting you. However, the Anatolian is a stubborn dog with territorial instincts. If early training is not received to control temperament and personalities that are natural to the breed, they can become a dominant dog with an obstinate personality.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10270065.asp
Large, Strong And Fast: The Anatomy Of An Anatolian And Appearance
The Anatolian Shepherd is a strong, fast and dog that has endurance, power and agility. The appearance of the dog reflects its ability to overpower and conquer any animal or person trying to enter its territory without permission. The Anatolian is a large breed that is all muscle and strength. The large build of the dog shows its tolerability to endure months of being in the mountains taking care of the flock protecting them from animals such as wolves.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Buying A Female Or A Male, Puppy Or An Older Anatolian Shepherd
If you are thinking about owning an Anatolian Shepherd, you need to consider a few things. The first thing to consider is whether you want a female or a male. There are some differences between the Anatolian female and male that you should consider when you start your search. The next thing you want to consider is if you want a puppy or an older dog. Taking into consideration how much time you have to spend with the dog is also a factor.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Training The Anatolian Shepherds To Guard The Flock
As soon as the puppy reaches the age of three months, it should be placed with the flock. What this is doing is letting the natural guarding instinct of the dog know this is his flock to take care of and protect. Now when you do this, you do have to keep an eye on the puppy, since he is likely to try to play with his flock. He will out grow this in a few months, but if the puppy over does it, the flock can actually become overworked and die.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Five Reasons Why An Anatolian Shepherd Is Not For Everyone
There are five good reasons why an Anatolian Shepherd is not right for everyone. The reasons are that they are an overly protective dog, they need plenty of room in the yard, they are harder to train, they have socialization issues and they have a tendency to dig and chase.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10271265.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Beauceron As A Leader
The Beauceron is a dog with a natural affinity for leadership. Indeed, when he walks into a room, he commands attention with his take charge attitude.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Beauceron As A Watchdog
The Beaceron has a natural affinity to guarding people and things. It is an excellent guard dog whose appearance and demeanor command respect.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Beauceron As A Family Dog
The Beauceron can be an important addition to your family if you know how to integrate him properly. It is important to be patient. Your diligence and patience will have positive and lasting results!
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Beauceron On The Job
The Beauceron is bred to be primarily a working dog. He loves to work and needs to have a job to do! He has many talents that bode well for many different jobs for him to do.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Maturity Of The Beauceron
The Beauceron is a wonderful dog in many ways, but it does have its drawbacks. One of those is the length of time it takes for this dog to mature.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10272965.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10273165.asp
Beauceron Weird Facts/did You Know?
The Beauceron is an interesting dog with many fun facts within its rich history. It is a noble and wonderful dog and there may be a few things that will surprise you about its past!
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10273165.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10273665.asp
Puppy Behavior Of The Belgian Malinois
The Belgian Malinois is a terrific pet. Whether you are using him as a home companion, a working dog, a police dog, or a personal protection dog, if you have enough time to train the dog, you will greatly enjoy the breed. Of course there are a few things about the Belgian Malinois that should be considered, especially when a potential owner is deciding whether or not he or she has the time or experience to raise and train this breed.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10274165.asp
Your Pets And Your New Belgian Malinois
The type and age of Belgian Malinois you want to adopt or purchase is a decision that only you can make; and while there are millions of reasons you may have for preferring one age over another, if you have any pets already, you should consider their feelings also before you settle on adopting a Belgian Malinois puppy or adult.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10274165.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Belgian Malinois: Are They All From Belgium?
The Belgium Malinois is one of three breeds belonging to the Belgian Shepherd dog breed. While the three types are all recognized separately by the American Kennel Club, other places in the world recognize Belgian Shepherds as one breed. The three breeds of Belgian Shepherd are the Belgian Malinois, the Belgian Sheepdog, and the Belgian Tervuren.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10274965.asp
The Policeman's Belgian Malinois
There are a lot of different jobs that a dog like the Belgian Malinois can do. He was originally bred as one of the varieties of the Belgian Shepherd dogs, so his background is in herding sheep. He also can be a terrific guard dog, or protection dog for a family. But the most common job for a Belgian Malinois is as a police dog.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10275065.asp
Working With The Belgian Malinois
The Belgian Malinois is a smart, energetic dog. As such, he requires a lot of patience from his master, as well as a lot of training time and bonding time. The Belgian Malinois is not a dog to sit quietly on the couch with you. Instead, he wants to be doing something exciting, and he loves to have a job. Having a job makes the Belgian Malinois not only happy and healthy; it also keeps him from developing poor behaviors from the overabundance of energy and boredom.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10275965.asp
Belgian Malinois: Weird Facts Did You Know?
The Belgian Malinois is a square dog. He does not just appear square, or stand square, like some other breeds. This dog breed actually is exactly square. The dog's body is between 24 to 26 inches tall for males and between 22 to 24 inches tall for females. The dog's body's length is exactly the same as the height of the body. This makes the dog a literal square.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10275965.asp#comments
Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10276465.asp
The Wire Fox Terrier And Its Work Ethic
The Wire Fox Terrier is a very intelligent dog that has been taught to do many things, with the first one being obedience. This is not to say that they eagerly look forward to obedience training. Quite the opposite, in fact. They are very smart dogs, but they don't understand why they need to do something just because you say so. There are capable and have the intelligence to learn anything, so long as it's something they feel they want to learn and do.
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Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10276665.asp
The Wire Fox Terrier As A Hunting Dog
The Wire Fox Terrier is a dog of many talents, but their original and first job was as a hunting dog. They were originally bred for fox-hunting. There were fox-hunting hounds that were bred to chase foxes until they got to a hole in the ground. The hound would stop and the chase was over. When the Wire Fox Terrier was developed, their ability to hunt extended beyond just chasing the fox. With their agility, prey, and hunting drive, they would chase the fox until it ran in the hole and then climb in the hole after the fox. Their short docked tails came in handy with the hunters, who were able to pull the terrier out of the hole if the fox wouldn't come out on its own.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10276665.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10277365.asp
Bloodhounds At Work
Bloodhounds have one amazing sense of smell and that is why they are said to be an excellent search and rescue dog breed. Their keen sense of smell surpasses all other breeds, they have been responsible for tracking, and finding people lost in remote areas, missing children, fugitives, bodies and other animals. They excel in this field of work. The dogs have a handler that is trained with the dog to perform all duties of a search and rescue dog.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Things To Do With Your Bloodhound
You can do many things with a Bloodhound. They are great long distance walkers therefore long hikes or walks great. They can be playful and if started early, a puppy or older dog does like to play fetch. Things like catching a flying disc may not be for a Bloodhound, but every dog can be taught to do something if they like it. They like to go out hunting, tracking and just laying around resting.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Devoted, Howling And Drooling: The Bloodhound Personality
When you are looking for a puppy, you should look for a happy puppy. A puppy that wags its tail, comes running to you, show playfulness and is curious should prove to be a well-adjusted puppy. If you see a puppy that shows sign of being shy or crouches when you approach them, you should avoid such a puppy. Puppies should be happy and adventurous. A Bloodhound's personality is important to consider when looking for a good family pet. There are some puppies or even older dogs that may have a disposition and personality that is unwanted for a family dog.
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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10280065.asp
Welsh Springer Spaniel: Great Hunting Companion
The Welsh Springer Spaniel is a dog that was made for hunting. It is a descendant of a great hunting dog that was introduced to Wales in the year 250 B.C. But interest in a dog that hunted with more forethought was required and from that need, the Welsh Springer Spaniel was born. Until the Welsh Springer Spaniel was first bred, the hunters on the continent had to contend with hunting dogs that provided no warning to their owners prior to flushing the bird. Instead, they required a dog that would wait until the hunter was properly in place, a technique that the Welsh Springer Spaniel is still popular for today.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10280065.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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History Of The Cairn Terriers
What is a cairn? A cairn is an artificially made conical pile of stones that can be found in uplands, or moorlands, or mountaintops. A cairn used to serve as astronomical markers, landmarks, and sepulchral monuments. In the Scottish Highlands, cairns are common. Cairn Terriers were named after these piles of stones – or rather, for their ability to dig into the burrows of vermin hiding within the cairns.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Likes And Dislikes Of The Cairn Terrier
Cairn Terriers are amazing little creatures. They are balls of fluff that seem to have inherited generations of inexhaustible vigor. Initially bred to be small game hunters and vermin exterminators, Cairn Terriers are known for their power, persistence and dynamic temperament.
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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10286565.asp
Norwegian Elkhounds And Modern Day Hunting In Norway
The Norwegian Elkhound's name in English derives from the dog's original name, Elghund; "Elg", however, actually means "Moose", while "Hund" actually means "Dog"; the Elkhound, therefore, is a Moosedog and was originally bred to hunt these enormous animals in its native Norway. Thankfully, the dog also gained popularity in the show ring and was introduced to the rest of the world. This ascension into the limelight, though, did not lead to a decline in the breed's hunting characteristics in favor of its show qualities. In Northern countries, especially Norway, the dog is still used to do what it was bred to do: hunt moose.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10286565.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10288165.asp
Shar Pei As Watchdogs
With such a cuddly looking face, it's hard to believe that a Chinese Shar Pei could serve as a watch dog. But traditionally in China, the Shar Pei was bred as a fighting dog, that's why its skin is so wrinkly; if struck by an opponent, the folds protect the major organs to limit the injury. Intelligent and loyal by nature, the Shar Pei makes a perfect watch dog for any home. These cute and cuddly pups make great family pets as well as watch dogs. It's like having an alarm, but cuter!
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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Norwich Terriers As Watchdogs
One of the first and most important jobs for which dog breeds were created was that of the watchdog; humans have taken advantage of the dog's natural instincts to protect its territory and/or its family and directed them towards protecting the property or family of the dog owner (a dog will consider his human family his pack if trained properly). There are a number of breeds that have been traditionally viewed as watchdogs, such as German Shepherds or Rottweilers, though many dog owners are finding out that there are a variety of different dogs that make excellent watchdogs.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Is Your Family Right For A Fila Brasileiro?
A Fila Brasileiro is one of the few breeds of large dogs raised to herd livestock. They are most comfortable in country settings and can be hard to keep in an urban environment. Since they were bred to herd and protect livestock, they have a natural aggressive tendency to anyone that that they do not consider part of their herd. This can range from other pets to strangers. They are naturally suspicious of strangers and can have an over-protective instinct that can get them in trouble in a social setting.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Aggression In Fila Brasileiro
The Fila Brasileiro has an instinctive aggressiveness towards strangers, and it doesn't mind showing it. For this reason, it is not judged on signs of aggressiveness in a dog show, even though some Filas are disqualified for being overly aggressive. It is not friendly with other animals and distinctly dislikes other Fila Brasileiros of the same sex. It is tremendously aggressive towards other small animals, like cats. It will not hesitate to injure or kill another animal.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10297265.asp
Fila Brasileiro As A Bodyguard
The Fila Brasileiro makes a fine bodyguard. It is completely loyal to its owner and has a naturally suspicious nature towards strangers. If you want a dog that will put your security needs first, this dog will be more than happy to comply. It has originally bred as a guard dog for livestock, but this devotion carries through to the owner and the owner's household. The breed's characteristics give it a good sense of smell and a powerful and intimidating appearance.
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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10298865.asp
The Irish Wolfhound And Hunting
The Irish wolfhound was bred to be a hunting dog. Although they have many talents, they were first and foremost a hunting dog and still are in their blood. When they first were developed, they were used for hunting large and dangerous game. Some of the animals they were known for hunting were the wolves and wild boars. This is partly how they got their name, "wolfhound". They were taught not only to chase the wolf, but to kill it as well. They would shake it by the neck until it was dead. Their drive, courage and endurance are what made them such excellent hunting dogs.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10299465.asp
Flat Coated Retriever And Hunting
Like all dog breeds of the Retriever lineage, the Flat Coated Retriever is great when it comes to the outdoor sport called hunting. Hunting is basically bringing down game and as a sport, it follows a specified number of rules and regulations. With the case of the Flat Coated Retriever, game means small game like fowls, i.e. quail, wild duck, grouse, etc.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/10299565.asp
Flat Coated Retriever And Hunting
Like all dog breeds of the Retriever lineage, the Flat Coated Retriever is great when it comes to the outdoor sport called hunting. Hunting is basically bringing down game and as a sport, it follows a specified number of rules and regulations. With the case of the Flat Coated Retriever, game means small game like fowls, i.e. quail, wild duck, grouse, etc.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102100365.asp
Working Ability Of Flat Coated Retriever
A Flat Coated Retriever is usually classified as a working dog or as a hunting dog. Retrievers have a long line of historical feat when it comes to hunting, flushing and (of course) retrieving small game. Although often used for hunting, the Flat Coated Retriever is never trained to be a game "pointer."
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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102102865.asp
Sport And Spinone Italiano
The Spinone Italiano is one of the oldest breed of hunting dogs. The correct term that actually applies to this breed is "gun dogs" or "bird dogs." There are many theories as to how the Spinone Italiano came into existence, and many of them are contradictory to one another. However, the one unifying theme among them is that the Spinone Italiano is a sporting animal, bred for hunting and retrieval. During the earliest times of game hunting, the Spinone Italiano was used exclusively for the sport. The dogs were easy to train, quick on its feet and follow its master's instructions without hesitation. Unfortunately, during the Second World War, the Spinone Italiano came close to extinction.
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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102102965.asp
Spinone Navhda
NAVHDA stands for the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association. It is a non-profit corporation that aims to foster, promote and improve the versatility of hunting dog breeds in North America. According to this association, versatility is defined as: "The dog that is bred and trained to dependably hunt and point game, to retrieve on both land and water, and to track wounded game on both land and water." Another one of NAVHDA's mission aims to conserve (hunting) game by using well-trained and reliable hunting dogs before and after the (killing) shot. Finally, NAVHDA helps in the prevention of cruelty to animals (particularly hunting dogs) through non-selective and uncontrolled breeding, which produces litters that are both unwanted and uncared for.
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Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102103365.asp
Spinone Italiano And Hunting
Probably the most ancient traceable dog breed line is the Spinone Italiano breed. It is said that the line developed from the Piedmont region of Italy and goes back as far as 500 B.C. As of today, because of active efforts to preserve the dog breed blood line, the Spinone Italiano is believed to be one of the oldest gun dogs in living existence. There are many theories as to how the Spinone Italiano came to existence. These theories may often sound contradictory to one another, but it shows the dynamic gene pool that constitutes this ancient breed of hunting dog.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102103965.asp
The Alaskan Klee Kai As Watchdog
The Alaskan Klee Kai is being touted as an ideal companion and house (or apartment dog). Small in stature, intelligent, and caring, the Alaskan Klee Kai quickly takes to life in the home and proves itself as a useful watchdog to boot.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102103965.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102106365.asp
Pit Bulls In Service The American Pit Bull Terrier As Working Dog
Despite the negative media attention the American Pit Bull Terrier often receives, pit bulls are an intelligent breed of dog that have proven themselves in a variety of service capacities for humans.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102106365.asp#comments
Mon, 1 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102108065.asp
Wirehaired Pointing Griffon As Hunter
Dogs that are specifically bred for the purpose of becoming skilled hunters are mostly preferred by those people or families that are into the sport of hunting. This is because these dog breeds already have the inherent abilities that are necessary when it comes to hunting. One of the more popular hunting breeds is the Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. This dog breed, which is also known as a pleasant and affectionate dog that could work well as a family pet is said to be a master hunter that has qualities that are quite formidable. Developed primarily as a sporting dog, the Wirehaired Pointing Griffon is equal, if not better than an English gundog in hunting fitness.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102108365.asp
Weird & Interesting Facts About The American Pit Bull Terrier
There are lots of interesting things to know about the American Pit Bull Terrier, and pit bull lovers are proud to tout the positives of this controversial breed. In years past, the American Pit Bull Terrier was famous as the consummate children's guardian and companion.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102108765.asp
Wisconsin's American Water Spaniel Honor
It's not everyday that a dog is given the honorary title of State Dog but Wisconsin certainly found the American Water Spaniel worthy of the designation. After all, the breed is believed to have gotten its start in the Wolf and Fox River Valleys of Wisconsin in the late 1800's. Upon crossing an Olde English Spaniel, the Irish Water Spaniel and the Curly Coat Retriever, the result was a compact water dog called the American Water Spaniel. Used for retrieving, the breed had everything hunters needed for swimming the marshy waters to locate and return downed waterfowl.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Toys The American Water Spaniel Will Love
The American Water Spaniel is a spunky breed that loves nothing more then to spend time with its owner. One of the benefits of having a dog that hunts often comes in the opportunity to combine training exercises with play. The Spaniel gets in a good amount of exercise while owners help their dogs learn valuable hunting skills. When training is kept short and exciting, the Spaniel is then able to keep a more positive attitude when out in the field. Spaniels who are put through rigorous drills and training are likely to give a less than successful performance. It is also a great way for the dog and its owner to bond and learn each other's cues.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Difference Between Irish And American Water Spaniels
The American Water Spaniel and its look a like cousin, the Irish Water Spaniel, share many commonalities. They were both bred to hunt on land and water, have shaggy coats that help protect them from cooler temperatures and are well renowned with hunting enthusiasts around the world. They are both intelligent, lively breeds that thrive on human companionship. The American Water Spaniel and Irish Water Spaniel are also rare breeds and locating one can mean spending months on a waiting list.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Uncommon Jobs For The American Water Spaniel
Specially developed for hunting, the American Water Spaniel is a lively breed that thoroughly enjoys the outdoor life. However, their high intelligence mixed with a need to have and provide companionship has proven them highly capable of a life beyond ordinary petdom. Many individuals working in unique fields have also found unique purposes for their American Water Spaniels. Though not commonly used as service animals, the breed loves to be of use and they have many ideal physical and temperamental characteristics for a very fulfilling work life.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102112165.asp
Belgian Sheepdog Must Keep Working
Before you take the time to consider being an owner of a Belgian Sheepdog, you have to understand the amount of effort you must exert into owning this breed. Unlike some other breeds, this one needs to always have something to do, must feel useful or they will become bored. If your Belgian Sheepdog becomes bored, he will look for ways to entertain himself, which may cause him to become destructive or exert signs of poor behavior. On the other end of the spectrum, however, a Belgian Sheepdog that is well-trained and possesses social skills will be a pride to his or her owner and tends to be like a shadow, following its master everywhere he goes.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Exercising The Belgian Sheepdog
Before you invest in a Belgian Sheepdog, make sure you have both the time and room to exercise him. This highly intelligent breed requires a great deal of human interaction and exercise. They are not well-suited to apartment living unless you have a large area where you can exercise them frequently. This dog breed is not happy to sit around at your feet and be petted. They are herding dogs, and herding dogs always have to have something to do to keep them busy. If you don't use your Belgian Sheepdog for herding, you have to find activities to keep him busy so that he doesn't become bored.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Drooling, Howling And The Black And Tan Coonhound
Pytalism, or excessive drooling, is common in the Black and Tan Coonhound. Their extra loose and floppy jowls do not do much to keep the slobber inside their mouths. For some, this is an endearing trait; for others, it can be a nuisance. However, drooling is every bit a part of this breed as its tail and little can be done to stop it. Plus, this trait very much plays a part in the Black and Tan Coonhound's extraordinary ability to track scents. It is said that much can be told about a person by the way they deal with their Coonhound's drool.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Black And Tan Coonhound That Doesn’t Hunt
For the majority of its existence, the Black and Tan Coonhound has always been used for the tracking and hunting of game. With twenty times the amount of scent receptors, blood vessels and nerve endings of the human nose, the Coonhound has proven to be a major success at sniffing out leads not only on land but water as well. Seeing the advantages of this ability, many agencies have put the Black and Tan Coonhound's nose to use. From search and rescue missions to various programs in law enforcement, the nose of the Coonhound has consistently come out the winner over advanced computer programs and machines.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Black And Tan Coonhounds Of The Rich And Famous
Because hunting and tracking has largely fallen by the wayside, the Black and Tan Coonhound is a breed not commonly seen in many homes these days. It still remains an extremely popular choice with hunters and it has also made quite an impact on law enforcement and search and rescue programs. As it was from its early beginnings, the docile breed has only one thing in mind and that is to catch the scent of leads and follow them. This has made them invaluable not only in the days when hunting was a primary source of food but also now; especially when it comes to important tasks such as finding lost and missing persons. Yet, the Black and Tan Coonhound also pops up amongst some of the most important names of history.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Black And Tan Coonhound Weird Facts/did You Know?
At only three hundred years old, the Black and Tan Coonhound is a relatively new breed. However, the first scent hounds ever noted on the history books make their appearance somewhere around 3000 BC. It is also known that ancient Greeks and Romans used scent hounds during hunting. Many believe that it was the Greeks and Romans that introduced their dogs to parts of Europe where they were bred with other hounds indigenous to the region. Eventually, this gave way to the St. Hubert Bloodhound and the Talbot hound of Europe that eventually led to the Black and Tan Coonhound developed in America.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Working Life Of The Border Collie
Since its inception as a breed, the Border Collie was always intended as a working animal. It is noted for its exceeding intelligence, strong work ethic, agility and endurance.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Introducing The Working Collie To Stock Animals
Border Collies are instinctive work animals by nature; they will work until they are made to stop—often to the point of self-injury and exhaustion. But even the most intelligent and instinctual working dog (argued by many to be the Border Collie) requires dedicated, consistent training to hone his or her skills.
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Mon, 1 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Sealyham Terrier: The Police Dog
Not all dog breeds are capable of police work. This is because law enforcement agencies have stringent requirements when it comes to the form, build and temperament of a police dog. However, there are some people who would love to christen their own dogs as police dogs in their own rights because of their innate qualities of being aggressive in protecting the members of the family that they belong to. Even if law enforcement agencies will never consider these dogs as police dog material, for the proud owners, their dogs are police dogs in their homes and in their hearts.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Sealyham Terriers For Hunting
Nowadays, since hunting is not as popular as before, dogs that were bred for such a purpose could somehow put their abilities to rest if their owners are not those who are enthusiastic about the sport. However, those that have owners that enjoy hunting can use their hunting instincts when the opportunities arise. Quite a lot of dogs were bred in the past with the primary purpose of being hunting companions. There are the hound dogs that either hunt by sight or smell or both and there are also terriers that are known for their speed and agility. These dogs' hunting abilities may not be put to much use today, but they still retain the innate abilities that would make them effective in any type of hunting activity.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Why The Dachshund Club Of America Doesn't Want You To Go To The Races
All breeds of dog were created from existing stock to do something in particular. Just because we tend to keep them all as pets in post-modern times doesn't mean dogs have lived and worked with human beings for centuries. The dachshund was designed for one thing: going to ground. Whether that means hunting badgers, rabbits or whatever, it's what they do.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Hunting With Your Dachshund
Hunting is, after all, what your dachshund was bred to do. Though most lie lives of luxury that involve a lot of sitting on couches, even the most pampered of dachshunds is ready to go to earth at the slightest provocation. In fact, they may be some of the smallest hunters out there, but their natural instincts to chase down other creatures remains as strong as you might imagine five-hundred years of selective breeding.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Hunting And The Scottish Deerhound
The Scottish Deerhound is considered a sighthound, which makes it an excellent dog for hunting. Throughout the Middle Ages, this dog breed was known as a noblemen's dog and it was bred for the specific purpose of becoming a Scottish chieftain's deer-hunting dog. In those times, no one below the ranking of an Earl could own a Scottish Deerhound. This dog's estimable talents include not only sighting and hunting but also tracking, racing and lure coursing. It is also known for its speed and agility.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Schipperke: Terrier Or Mini Sheep Dog
At less than 20 pounds the Schipperke is a dynamic breed that exhibits many different traits that make it hard to define. Though typically categorized by the American Kennel Club as non sporting and as a companion breed by the United Kennel Club, the Schipperke still finds itself wandering in between the classifications of the spitz, terrier and sheepdog. With a solid balance of appearance, temperament and constitution, the breed wins the hearts of its owners for its ability to combine all the best traits into one package. Individuals looking for a versatile breed with spark and tenacity will find just what they are looking for in the Schipperke.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Field Spaniel: The Stubborn Hunting Dog
There are now many hunting dog breeds available for dog lovers to choose from, especially those who are also fond of the game. While there are hunting dogs that hunt by sight, there are others that hunt by smell. There are those dogs that are best at retrieving their quarries while others are good at pointing to where their quarries are. There are some that are better at being setter dogs, which crouch near their preys, so that they won't escape. There also dogs which possess all these abilities and much more, making them perfect hunting dogs. Among all these different types of dogs, there is one breed of dog that makes use of its keen nose and exceptional hunting instincts to track down its quarry, and this is the Field Spaniel.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Field Spaniel In Action
While there are dogs that appear ungainly in their actions, there are also dogs that seem to exude poetry in motion. The unhurried gait of the Field Spaniel, combined with its long stride, make it one of those dogs that many people would love to see in action. Considering their love for any kind of sporting activity, there are many dog lovers now, especially those with active lifestyles, who prefer owning Field Spaniels. The sporting instincts that this breed of dog possesses, which outweigh those of other dogs under the spaniel line, make the Field Spaniel a perfect companion for sporty people.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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The Saluki And Its Different Gaits
The Saluki is a dog of many talents, but mostly he is a hunting dog. As with most hunting dogs, they have two important gaits - the trot and the gallop. Of the possible gaits, the trot is the most important gait for a hunting dog like the Saluki, especially during the actual search for game. Many times the game was hard to find so the dog really had to work hard to get it. He needed a gait that would cover a lot of territory in the shortest amount of time as possible, while still being slow enough for the dog to actually get a good view of the land.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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German Wirehaired Pointer As Hunting Dog
If you love the thrill of hunting, the German Wirehaired Pointer is the perfect dog for you. Originally bred due to the increased need for a versatile hunting dog, the German Wirehaired Pointer still retains that versatility today, serving well on land and in water. The Pointer has been very well-received by hunters of all types due its “full-service†capabilities to hunt various game in a wide variety of terrains. Whether you hunt for sport or for work, the German Wirehaired Pointer is the most skilled companion a hunter will ever need.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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German Wirehaired Pointer As Watch Dog
The German Wirehaired Pointer is a breed that is naturally standoffish with strangers. While in some instances this could cause a problem, it actually makes it an ideal watch dog. As a family pet, the German Wirehaired Pointer can be very protective and always looking out for danger. Bred as the ultimate hunting dog, the keen instincts of the German Wirehaired Pointer make it a natural watch dog. With proper training, those natural skills will make your pet an amazingly skilled watch dog.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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German Wirehaired Pointer In Search And Rescue
The German Wirehaired Pointer is somewhat an all-purpose dog. It is a great hunting companion, loving family pet and competent watch dog. But, did you know that its keen hunting instincts also make it a great search and rescue dog? This dog’s ability to search and locate game makes it predisposed to the similar training of search and rescue. With proper training, the German Wirehaired Pointer will be a fantastic search and rescue dog.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Grace And Power Of The Ibizan Hound
It is quite uncommon for those who want to own dogs as pets to consider grace as one of the main requirements for a dog. This is especially true if you are looking for a hunting dog such as a hound. For those who know about dogs, particularly the hound line, the Ibizan Hound is considered one of the few dogs that possesses the power of a hunter as well as the grace of a dancer. This hound breed has existed for thousands of years and its characteristics have never failed to impress dog lovers.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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The Saluki As A Hunting Dog
The Saluki has been around for over 5,000 years with a lot of their original origin unknown and uncertain. The one thing about this dog that is certain is they were used for their great hunting ability back then and are still used for their great hunting ability now. The tribes that existed in the Middle East bred the Saluki for its stamina, intelligence, speed, courage and endurance and used to hunt hare and gazelle. Their training began at an early age with the rat being their first prey, before working up to the gazelle. The dog was fearless, which contributed greatly to its success. The Saluki was the preferred dog of kings for hunting. They were also so treasured they were given away in the form of a gift or in exchange for wives or horses or camels.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Hunting Styles Of The Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever
Ducks by nature are very curious birds, which often ends up with the ducks swimming into danger because of this. Luring ducks closer, or duck tolling, is something a pair of foxes in the wild often did to take advantage of the ducks curiosity. This method of hunting used by foxes has been studied over the centuries by hunters and naturalists. A red fox would ignore the ducks while it rambled, cavorted, and leapt on shore near the waters edge, getting the attention of ducks swimming a safe distance away from shore. Out of curiosity, the raft of ducks would gradually move closer to shore to take a better look until the birds were dangerously close to the fox. A second fox hides on shore in the tall grasses then rushed out and grabs a duck before the birds know what is happening.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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What Is A Gun Dog?
Gun dogs, also knows as bird dogs, are dog breeds developed to help duck and bird hunters locate and retrieve game. There are three primary classes of gundogs based upon their work method, divided into pointing breeds, flushing spaniels and retrievers. Within these classes are several types of bird dogs or gun dogs, which include setters, water dogs, and flushing spaniels.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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The Rhodesian Ridgeback That Doesn't Hunt
While the hunting instinct is strong in the Rhodesian Ridgeback, their double ability of sight and scent have proven extremely beneficial in a number of search and rescue programs. The Ridgeback can be found worldwide in drug sniffing dog programs but they are used more often in rescue efforts and for tracking down lost persons and sometimes even escapees. Their ability to sniff out quarry plus chase it down comes from their days of hunting in the African bush. Being developed to hunt the African savannahs has also given the Ridgeback a strong self confidence, allowing it to go anywhere in any situation with little fear. More than anything, search and rescue trainers say it is the attitude of the dog itself and not the breed that matters most. However, the Rhodesian Ridgeback has become a favorite because when out in the field, the breed is all business. They do not often give up or give in unless and until they have accomplished their task.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Redbone Coonhounds Used In Search And Rescue And Cadaver Recovery
As mentioned previously, many of the skills that were so essential for particular breeds excelling at their intended functions have easily transferred into other activities. Today, dogs not only still work as hunters and herders, but they also perform extremely beneficial jobs such as pet therapy and search and rescue. There are quite a large number of search and rescue organizations throughout the country and a wide variety of dogs, both purebred and mixed breed are employed in these important activities. Though Redbone Coonhounds at the moment are not in high numbers in search and rescue organizations, the set of skills that make them such versatile hunters have allowed them to successfully break into the job.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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The Farming Dog Of Norway The Norwegian Buhund
While most people may consider dogs as pets nowadays, there are other people who would use dogs to do chores in their households. Dogs that are used for work, such as hunting dogs, sight dogs, work dogs and herding dogs, are called utilitarian dogs. One of the utilitarian breeds that have found its place in American homes is the Norwegian Buhund. While the Norwegian Buhund may be classified as a herding dog from the Spitz family, it is better known as the farming dog of Norway. This dog is still used in the country as a farm dog, and one of the tasks it is assigned to do is to herd livestock. In fact, the Norwegian Buhund was originally used as a herding dog, and it has become quite an expert in this line of work throughout the years. With its exceptional alertness, the Buhund is very quick to sense danger, and it will protect the herd with its life if the situation calls for it.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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The Norwegian Buhund The Spitz Family Shepherd
It is quite amazing what utilitarian dog breeds can do. There are hunting dogs that can track and retrieve game for their masters and work dogs that can do a variety of household chores and farm work. These dogs are highly regarded by their owners because they have proven their worth in making life easier for their masters. One of these seemingly all-purpose dog breeds is the Norwegian Buhund. The Norwegian Buhund, which is also considered Norway's farm dog, is a herding dog that comes from the Spitz family. This dog has the typical characteristics of a Spitz when it comes to being active and self-confident. It also has an independence that is typical of a Spitz, and like the other dogs in its family line, the Buhund also loves its home and it can be easily trained to do a variety of chores. However, unlike the other Spitz breeds that are used as draft and hunt dogs, the Buhund does not have much of an inclination to hunt. This is because it was primarily bred as a herding dog.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Irish Water Spaniel And Hunting
One of the oldest and rarest of all hunting dogs is the Irish Water Spaniel. Although the depiction of its origins remains sketchy, its reputation as a great hunting companion cannot be denied. The Irish Water Spaniel is rather famous for its daring ability to plunge into the coldest waters just to retrieve a fallen game. It is still being used on upland game hunting and duck hunting, often helping bring over prey like grouse, pheasants, quails, and other wild fowls. This breed of dog is now gradually becoming a favorite among retriever enthusiasts, especially in the hunting or field sport category.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Versatility Of The Irish Water Spaniel
The Irish Water Spaniel is one of the gentlest giants in the dog breed world. Technically, it’s not really a giant breed of dog, but it is one of the largest, standing at 22 to 24 inches at the withers and weighing between 55 to 65 pounds. Originally bred to be a hunting dog, the Irish Water Spaniel is now making a name for itself as a hunting/field trial dog, and also a wonderful house pet or companion.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Versatility Of The Irish Water Spaniel
The Irish Water Spaniel is one of the gentlest giants in the dog breed world. Technically, it’s not really a giant breed of dog, but it is one of the largest, standing at 22 to 24 inches at the withers and weighing between 55 to 65 pounds. Originally bred to be a hunting dog, the Irish Water Spaniel is now making a name for itself as a hunting/field trial dog, and also a wonderful house pet or companion.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Lowchen As A Watchdog
When the average individual hears or thinks of a watchdog, a large breed of dog such as the German shepherd usually comes to mind. Many other dogs also fill that role quite sufficiently, and the Lowchen is one of those dogs. The Lowchen may only be up to 18 pounds in weight, but they are a very dedicated watchdog.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Red And White Setters In The Hunt
The Red and White Setter is a vivacious dog that is both strong and affectionate. Throughout its history the Red and White Setter has been useful as a hunting companion but more recently has gained popularity as a great family pet. This breed is known for being quite strong-headed due in large part to its hunting ancestry but with proper training, the Red and White Setter can become your favorite hunting buddy. You'll be amazed to watch the Red and White Setter in action; these creatures are quick and crafty, making them a true asset in any environment. Like many similar breeds, Red and White Setters were bred specifically as a hunting companion so many of those instincts come naturally. You can say hunting is in their DNA; just about every detail of the Red and White Setters makes them a superior hunting companion. The build of this breed is such that they are powerful, but athletic rather than swift.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Resources On Miniature Bull Terriers
For people considering a miniature bull terrier as a pet or for someone wanting to show, train, or enter their dogs in events or competitions, it is important to have as much information and accurate facts as possible. There are a great number of resources available on the internet with websites that have information on anything you need to know about miniature bull terriers. Books are another great source of important information along with Kennel Clubs, the miniature bull terrier association, and breeders.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Events And Competitions For A Mini Bull
For an active miniature bull terrier that has done well in obedience training, possesses excellent social skills, and you want something fun and physical to do together with your pet, then competitions and events are a great way to spend quality time with your dog. This is also a great way to socialize and be with other miniature bull terrier lovers and their pets. Mini bulls love agility training because they get to jump, run, and burn off some of their excess energy. Events such as an agility training competitions are exciting and fun for you and your dog to compete in and just as enjoyable when watching the other dogs compete.
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Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102144365.asp
The Hunting Ability Of The Pharaoh Dog
The Pharaoh dog is a breed of dog that was developed as a hunting dog, which they do very well with their speed, alertness and agility. Being members of the Sight hound family, they were excellent as hunters. The difference between sighthounds and regular hunting hounds are that sight hounds hunt by speed and sight, whereas regular hunting hounds hunt by scent and endurance. They specialize in finding the prey, not losing it in their line of view, and capturing it with their agility, intelligence and great speed. They were originally used to hunt and capture small game. Their excellent eyesight, sense of smell and perfect hearing made them the perfect choice for hunting. Very seldom did an animal get past the Pharaoh.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Hunting With Beagles
That energetic little bundle of enthusiasm that you consider your pet Beagle was actually created to be an effective rabbit hunter; actually, Beagles were used to track a variety of game including foxes, hares, birds, deer, bobcat, wild boar and coyote. They were ideal hunting companions because they were not bred to bolt off rapidly, but rather deliberately track an animal, with their nose always to the ground. This made them dogs that anyone could follow on foot, such as the elderly, young children, and hunters who could not afford horses.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Beagles And Pet Therapy
One of the most important jobs any dog can undertake is being a Pet Therapy dog. These dogs can become important parts of a person's recovery process, whether they suffer from physical or emotional impairments, and have, in some cases, meant the difference between life and death for many patients who had lost hope. A variety of different animals have been used in pet therapy, all with astounding success; man's best friend, though, always holds a special place in everyone's heart and has at excelled at assisting those who are most in need.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102146365.asp
The Beagle Howl
Beagles, like all hound dogs, have been bred to vocalize while on the hunt; these vocalizations helped keep the hunter aware of the dog's position and let the hunter know whether the Beagle was chasing its prey or whether the prey had been caught. People who love the breed tend to find Beagle vocalizations endearing and entertaining, while others are not so pleased by all the loud noise such a little dog can make. Beagles are not dogs that bark incessantly all day, like many toy breeds, but they are hard-wired to sound alerts; usually, these alerts were sounded when prey was sighted, but with Beagles who have never been on the hunt, many things may trigger the alert, such as dust, a car back firing, a shadow or the wind slamming a door shut.
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Tue, 9 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102150465.asp
Digging Behavior In West Highland White Terriers
Like most terriers, West Highland White Terriers have a tendency towards digging. While this behavior is natural to a breed that was bred specifically for this purpose, as a pet, digging can be destructive for a cultivated lawn or dangerous for the dog if he gets a notion to dig under a fence to see what's on the other side. While digging is natural for Westies, there are various methods of controlling this behavior. In this article, we'll take a look at why Westies are predisposed to digging behavior and some tips for how to control it. In order to understand why the West Highland White Terrier has a penchant for digging, we have to go back to its roots. Westies, as well as other short legged terriers from Scotland, were bred specifically for aiding in the hunt for small animals. These "earth dogs" were trained to search out and flush fox and other small animals from their burrows. After generations of this type of work, the behavior becomes ingrained and the body evolves to suit its purpose. This is why Westie's and other terrier's nails tend to grow faster than other breeds, in order to aid them in their digging work.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102150665.asp
Catahoula Leopard Dogs And Hunting
Catahoula Leopard Dogs are considered premiere hunting companions, especially in their home state of Louisiana. They are excellent at tracking a variety of animals from wild board and deer to squirrels and raccoons. They are even known for fiercely hunting bear. They have a high energy level and generally, love to work. It is their nature to herd, as well track animals. They are also good at treeing, the process of scaring raccoons out of trees.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102150865.asp
Catahoula Leopard Dog As A Cattle Herder
The Catahoula Leopard dog is a versatile dog that today is used in hunting, search and rescue, and even service dogs, but their roots lie in herding animals such as hogs, sheep, geese, turkey and cattle. Perhaps better known for their long history in participating in the annual round ups of wild hogs in its native Louisiana, Catahoula Leopard dogs have also done the same with the semi wild cattle that lived in the same area. These impressive working dogs are still used today in cattle driving and rounding up runaway cattle. In this article, we’ll learn why the Catahoula Leopard dog is so well suited to cattle herding and a few tips for those that wish to train their Catahoula for cattle herding.
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Tue, 9 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102151365.asp
West Highland White Terriers And Earthdog Tests
West Highland White Terriers enjoy a long history as working hunting dogs. In fact, they, along with other short legged terriers that originate in Scotland, were bred specifically to help farmers in keeping small burrowing animals such as foxes and badgers from destroying the crops. This digging instinct is still strong in Westies today, making them excellent competitors in modern day Earthdog Trials. If you're looking for a way to get involved in sporting events with your Westie, Earthdog Trials are an excellent option. Earthdog Trials, notably hosted by the American Kennel Club as well as other organizations throughout North America and Europe, are a non-competitive and safe way of gauging a dog's aptitude in "going to ground," or hunting for quarry in a series of underground tunnels.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102153365.asp
Central Asian Ovtcharkas As Guardians
No matter the amount of variation within the breed known as the Central Asian Ovtcharka (more correctly known as the Central Asian Shepherd, or CAS), these dogs developed with one general purpose: guarding their owners and the livestock that belonged to their owners. Only the strongest, most courageous and intelligent of these dogs would survive the harsh conditions under which they and their humans lived and so a breed of dog was born that was the archetypical guardian dog, able to think on its own and willing to sacrifice his own life to save that of his family. Even today, the CAS is used for guardian purposes and makes an excellent watch dog, in both his native country and in locations around the world.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102154965.asp
Chinese Foos As Guard Dogs
Devoted to their families and wary of strangers, Chinese Foos make excellent guard dogs. While this can be said about any number of other breeds, Chinese Foo fanciers claim that their dogs are naturals thanks to thousands of years of experience. While there is some controversy whether today’s Chinese Foos are the direct descendants of the guard dogs of legend, there is no question that they take the protection of their family and possessions very seriously. In this article, we’ll take a look at the Chinese Foo guard dogs of legend and how that translates into the guard dog of today.
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Tue, 9 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102156265.asp
Smooth Fox Terrier Used For Hunting
The smooth fox terrier is a breed of dog that is very bold, energetic, loving and full of life. These are the qualities that many smooth fox terrier owners love about the dog; these are also the qualities that many hunters admired about the smooth fox terrier. Although unknown to many smooth fox terrier dog owners, this breed was once used as a hunting dog. In the 18th century the smooth fox terrier was used to hunt foxes in England. It was primarily used to hunt foxes by harassing the fox out of its hole. The smooth fox terrier was trained to hunt the fox and harass it from its hole by snapping, growling and lunging at the fox until to bolted out from its hole. The smooth fox terrier was a very useful hunting companion. Before the smooth fox terrier was discovered, the hunt for a fox would be very frustrating for many hunters as the hunt would be over as soon as the fox reached its hole. So when the smooth fox terrier was introduced it solved the dilemma that many fox hunters faced.
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Tue, 9 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
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Is A Skye Terrier Right For You?
Skye terriers have their own unique personalities. As a breed they are actually hard to put a pinpoint of breed trait labels on because so many of them defy their traditional labels. This breed has a long history of status as both a working dog and a pet. Sometimes they have been both within the same household. They are great for hunting small game such as foxes. They also make loyal companions for the humans they chose often merely toleration other humans.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102160165.asp
The Difference Between Field Setters And Bench Setters
When it comes time to choose a dog, individuals should always devote a good amount of time researching the breeds they are considering. This keeps individuals from not only choosing the wrong type of dog, but also ensures the dog itself is not moved from home to home. Those who decide to opt for a Setter breed will find themselves needing to choose between the Gordon, Irish or English Setter. When the decision is made to go with the English Setter, potential owners must then decide between a field Setter or a bench Setter. For those who do not do their research, this can be a perplexing question.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102160265.asp
The Difference Between Field Setters And Bench Setters
When it comes time to choose a dog, individuals should always devote a good amount of time researching the breeds they are considering. This keeps individuals from not only choosing the wrong type of dog, but also ensures the dog itself is not moved from home to home. Those who decide to opt for a Setter breed will find themselves needing to choose between the Gordon, Irish or English Setter. When the decision is made to go with the English Setter, potential owners must then decide between a field Setter or a bench Setter. For those who do not do their research, this can be a perplexing question.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102160265.asp#comments
Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102160465.asp
English Setters And Hunting
With nearly seven hundred years of development under its belt, the English Setter remains one of the most popular gundogs in the history of hunting. Not only are their physical traits perfect in the field, their temperament is also ideal. This wonderful blend also comes with natural instincts for pointing, retrieving and forming a solid working relationship with their owner. It is not uncommon to find hunters who stick with this breed and nothing else for many years. On top of their superb instincts, the English Setter is a breed that makes a memorable companion. They know when it's time to work and they know when it's time to have fun.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102160565.asp
What Not To Expect From An English Setter
The English Setter has earned its reputation not only as an extraordinary hunting breed but a wonderful companion animal as well. They are extremely intelligent and known for forming strong bonds with their owners very early on. If there is one thing that all English Setter owners agree on as a basic truth, it is that this breed very much depends on human interaction to stay healthy. Not only do they expect to be part of the family, they are quite actually the best type of dog for those needing a twenty four hour guardian or an enthusiastic traveling buddy.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102163365.asp
The Lakeland Terrier And Its Courage
The Lakeland terrier is a breed of dog that is used for hunting purposes as well as being a great family dog. Although many used the Lakeland terrier as a family pet or a show dog, their main purpose originally was as a hunting dog used in the pursuit of foxes.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102164065.asp
The Lakeland Terrier Is This The Right Dog For You?
The Lakeland terrier, although originally used for hunting, is now a very versatile dog used in the show ring as well as a family pet and companion. If you are thinking of getting a Lakeland terrier, consider some of the characteristics of the dog before deciding if he is the right one for you. You may find this dog is all wrong or that the Lakeland terrier is the perfect choice of dog for you and your family.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102164265.asp
The Lakeland Terrier As A Hunter
The Lakeland terrier is a breed of dog that was bred to hunt vermin. Anyone that knows anything about this terrier knows this, too. What many don't realize is just what an extraordinary hunter the Lakeland terrier is. They are brave, bold, energetic and very courageous.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102165365.asp
Manchester Terriers As Hunting Dogs
Many people think that they only dogs that are worth while when hunting are the bigger breeds. However, many people are now using smaller breeds such as the Manchester terriers as well. When it comes to the Manchester terriers as being hunting dogs, not all of them are cut out for the job. In fact, in order for a Manchester terrier to become a hunting dog, there are many things that it will need to learn first. Many times when people think of a hunting dog, they think of them as chasing around big animals such as bears. However, there are also many other different kinds of hunting dogs. When it actually comes down to hunting dogs, it does not matter what size of animal it is that they are hunting; it is that they are actually hunting a specific animal that they are supposed to be hunting.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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A Dog That Doesn't Forget
The Maremma Sheepdog is a highly intelligent dog that can be trusted to be left alone with the sheep for several days. They do not forget their duty to guard the sheep and they will remain attentive and on the job, regardless of whether you are there or not. This ability to remember its function also extends to any behavior between it and its owner.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102165965.asp
Legal Liabilities Of Owning A Large Guard Dog
Anyone that decides to own a large guard dog will have to deal with the realities of the liabilities they are undertaking when doing so. The Maremma Sheepdog is no different. This is a large guard dog that takes its role as guardian very seriously. While it is not overtly aggressive with strangers, it does have a fierce reputation as a slayer of wolves. So, this is not a dog to be taken lightly. It has an independent mindset and will sometimes ignore the commands of an owner if its guardian instincts kick in. It will not hesitate to bark and bite a stranger that is not welcome on your property.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102166765.asp
Tending Its Flock Is Serious Business
You can take the dog out of the flock, but you can’t take the guarding instinct out of the Maremma Sheepdog. This dog is sometimes thought of as the best sheep herding and guard dog around. It has guarding instincts that can range from a fierce attack on wolves to a careful tending of an injured lamb. The Maremma Sheepdog is such a dutiful guard dog that you can leave it unattended for several days and it will continue to guard the flock, even when you are there.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102167065.asp
Herding With The Miniature Australian Shepherd
As the breed’s name implies, the Miniature Australian Shepherd was born and bred to be a herder. Its natural instinct to herd can be traced, much like every other facet of the Miniature Australian Shepherd, to the Australian Shepherd, to which it shares a history until 1968, when the miniature breed was first created.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102168665.asp
Otterhounds As Hunting Dogs
The large size of this canine, weighing up to 125 pounds, and tremendous strength makes the Otterhound a good hunting dog for anything from small mink and raccoon to bear and mountain lion. Though the Otterhound can hunt alone, it usually hunts in packs. The Otterhound has a thick course outer coat that serves as a protection from shrubs and bushes. The Otterhound is also known for its long strides which he can keep up for hours on the hunt. But as the name suggests, the original Otterhound was bred for the specific purpose of hunting otters which were destroying the trout population in rivers and streams in the United Kingdom. The fishermen could not afford to have their livelihood jeopardized in this fashion and so the Otterhound was selected to rid the fisherman of this pest.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102169065.asp
Activities Otterhounds Enjoy: Hunting, Agility Training, Tracking
The Otterhound, referred to as a scent dog, was interbred with bloodhounds and Southern hounds for the specific purpose of tracking Otters in the United Kingdom. Though no longer used for this purpose, Otterhounds still enjoy hunting as an activity and hunt Mink in the U.K. They serve as a means to rid the farmer of these dreaded pests. In North America, they are used to hunt raccoons, bears and even mountain lions. Of course since these scent hounds love hunting they would no doubt love agility training. Agility training originated in England around 1978; this sport for canines was borrowed from horse steeplechases, a jumping activity. Today this sport is very popular and is growing in leaps and bounds. Both large and small dogs can participate in the fun.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102169165.asp
Otterhounds And Police Work
By definition, traditionally hounds have been bred for hunting. These dogs are noted for their ability to chase and track; so it would follow that due to their incredible sense of smell they would be used in police work for drug investigations.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102169265.asp
Otterhounds The Working Dog
Otterhounds are descendants of the bloodhound and an ancestor of the Airedale. They are large dogs weighing up to 125 pounds. By and far the Otterhound is a working dog, first bred in England in the 13th century to rid the waters of pesky Otters that were killing out the fish population. These dogs are definitely water dogs, with web feet and a thick course water proof undercoat. They are excellent swimmers with the stamina to swim for hours chasing their prey.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102169365.asp
Otterhounds As Service Dogs And Therapy Dogs
Service dogs are trained to render a service to people in need. It could be to assist people with physical or mental impairments by physical means or Otterhounds could be used for guiding a blind person across the street. The mere presence of the animal could act as therapy for a sick person or patient in a hospital or nursing care facility.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102169665.asp
Cute And Annoying Herding Behavior In Your Pon
A PON (Polish Owczarek Nizinny) is a dog that was bred to help larger dogs herd sheep. While the larger dogs acted as guard dogs and protected the flock from intruders, the PON was busy guiding the flock away from dangers and towards their final destination. This makes the PON a very intelligent animal, somewhat independent, but with a much more affectionate outlook than other herding dogs.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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How To Socialize Your Pon And When You Have Other Pets
A Polish Owczarek Nizinny, PON, is a wonderfully affectionate dog once it is socialized properly. It has come from a long line of sheep herding dogs that take great pride in being part of a family unit. There are certain things that bring out the loyal and affectionate nature of the dog, while downplaying some of the natural suspiciousness of the breed. The trick to socializing your dog is to start early and to include all members or your family, even other pets in the household.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102170765.asp
A Dog That Is Highly Intelligent
As a herding dog, the PON (Polish Owczarek Nizinny) has a natural intelligence and independence to make its own decisions. It has developed this capacity to learn and to judge its environment from years of breeding. This can be a good character trait as well as a bad one, depending on how the dog fits into the family unit.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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A Dog Comfortable In Different Environments
The Polish Owczarek Nizinny, sometimes referred to as a PONS, is a dog bred for helping larger dogs to herd livestock. In the United States, the dog would also be called the Polish Lowland Sheepdog. This is a medium-sized dog that has a very even temperament. These dogs were bred to be used with larger, aggressive dogs that actually guarded and protected the flock, but that was not their primary role. Instead, they helped to keep the livestock in line and away from any dangerous areas. They are intelligent, well mannered, but can still be somewhat suspicious of strangers. For this reason, they can make ideal dogs for almost any environment, whether it is a country home or a city apartment.
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Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102171265.asp
Silky Terriers As Watchdogs
So you see a 10 pound Silky Terrier and the last thing you think is "Hey, what a great watchdog!" Silky Terriers are not large, muscular, threatening looking dogs and they don't have deep, powerful barks that will scare away the bad guys; dogs don't need to look like Dobermans, Great Danes, or Saint Bernards to make good watchdogs. Actually, some of those large, imposing breeds make horrible watchdogs! All a dog needs to be a decent watchdog is the tendency to be somewhat wary of strangers and new situations and the inclination to bark when it senses someone or something new on the way. Some big, lumbering breeds are gentle giants; they hate barking and they love everyone, not to mention they're often oblivious to anything new happening in their surroundings. This description doesn't fit the Silky Terrier. The may be small, but they're extremely alert, surveying and keeping tabs on everything that goes on around them. Thanks to their terrier personality, they tend to be a bit yappy and will vocalize substantially to communicate their curiosity at new developments; their insatiable curiosity is another characteristic that makes them excellent watchdogs, as they never let anything slip by their scrutiny. They are also quite standoffish in nature and are somewhat wary of strangers; this makes a stranger approaching their home or family worthy of being scrutinized and barked at.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102172065.asp
The American Staffordshire Terrier And Schutzhund
There are a number of sports that have been created to test the working ability of protection or police dogs, most notably Belgian Ring, French Ring and Schutzhund, though there are others. Schutzhund was originally developed in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century to test whether or not German Shepherds had the ability to perform the tasks they were bred for. Nowadays, a variety of countries participate in the sport and it is no longer restricted to German Shepherds; the trials are very difficult and demanding, though, and not many dogs succeed. The Amstaff has been known to participate in Schutzhund as a protection breed and has obtained quite impressive results.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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Herding Abilities Of The Bearded Collie
Although it is possible to keep a Bearded Collie as a pet, they are very energetic dogs, and as such, they work well as herding dogs for both sheep and cattle. Their history takes them back to the Scottish Highlands where they performed their duties as a working dog doing just that, herding the sheep. They are a very strong and reliable breed that is able to endure the harshest working conditions, even that of a difficult herd of sheep or cattle.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102174265.asp
Boxers - Police Work
Because of their size and their overall intelligence, boxers can be ideal dogs to be trained to assist law enforcement officers with police work. Boxer dogs are large enough and strong enough that they can take down or restrain a perpetrator if needed, and are smart enough that they can be taught a variety of different skills which can help the police with their work. The boxer breed carries with it a long tradition of police work, as even the early boxers of the beginning of the 20th century were being used as police dogs in Germany while the breed was still becoming popular in the rest of the world.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102175165.asp
The Briard And Its Herding History
The Briard is an old breed of dog, well known for its look and its personality. Yet, what many do not know about this loving animal is that it is very much a dog with fierce hunting abilities and incredible instincts. Today's Briard is quite a bit different from the one of its past. Nevertheless, when put to the test, these dogs will always outperform others in hunting skills, in defending his owner and in keeping his herd safe. For this reason, they are still used for herding today. Those that want to own this breed should not be overly concerned about these characteristics because the dogs are loyal to the end.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102176465.asp
Hunting With The Briquet Griffon Vendeen
The Briquet Griffon Vendeen offers owners a very unique and useful type of dog. These dogs are designed to be hunters and to help their masters in located and catching their prey, whatever it may be that their master wants them to retrieve. They are not aggressive dogs. They are not fearful or shy dogs either. They are devoted, hard working dogs known by their temperament and their ability to obey. They are also well known for their hunting skills. The hunter that is looking for a dependable companion on his hunting trips should take consideration of the Briquet Griffon Vendeen for all that it can offer.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102177565.asp
The Little Herder
Nowadays, Cardigan Welsh Corgis are used primarily as companion dogs and proud Cardigan owners swear by the loyal, affectionate, and protective nature of their little canine friends. While they don’t need an excessive amount of exercise, they are active dogs and owners find that their Cardigans greatly benefit from participating in a wide variety of organized competitions. One of the Cardigan’s favorite competitions is the sheepdog trial; indeed, it may seem strange when looking at the stature of this dog, but the Cardigan Welsh Corgi is one of the oldest and actually most formidable herding breeds man has ever bred.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
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The Cardigan Welsh Corgi Ears
There is quite a great deal of debate regarding certain evolutionary concepts; one concept that is especially controversial is the “form follows function†idea. At the level of anatomy, this idea states that a certain body part will be shaped or built in such a way as to allow it to perform a specific job. The debate regarding this concept can essentially be boiled down to “what came first, the chicken or the egg?†in the sense that scientists are unsure whether a body part first assumes a certain function and then changes over time to assume a proper shape for that function, or if the form of the body part changes first and then assumes a certain function; others claim that the two go hand in hand.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102184165.asp
Is The Dandie Dinmont Terrier The Dog For You?
When searching for a family pet, it's often difficult to find one that seems just right for you. Different breeds possess different characteristics, some of which may not be right for yours and your families needs. The Dandie Dinmont Terrier, however, is the perfect house pet. It doesn't shed, is small enough to take along with you wherever you go, and it provides complete devotion to its human family.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102184465.asp
Underground Earthdog Testing
Because of the small size of a Dandie Dinmont Terrier, they are quite capable of being successful in underground earthdog testing. The tests are conducted as non-competitive trials in order to assess the hunting ability of an individual dog during the performance of an underground hunting expedition. Owners don't have to be concerned with their dogs being in danger as the encounters are controlled.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102186665.asp
Harriers The Harehounds
As sometimes occurs, the origins of the Harrier breed are somewhat shrouded in mystery; various accounts exist regarding exactly how and when the dogs developed. The first known pack of actual Harriers existed in the year 1260, so everyone agrees that the breed is quite old. But where exactly did these dogs come from? One theory is that very early crossings between Bloodhounds, Basset Hounds and extinct Talbot Hounds resulted in these mysterious dogs. Another theory postulates other crosses: between the English Foxhound, the Greyhound and the Fox Terrier. The last theory, and the one which many people accept, is that these dogs were merely the "next size down" of the Foxhound and were developed by simply breeding down the latter.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102186765.asp
Using Rottweilers For Herding
Looking back at the history of the Rottweiler, you will see that one of its first jobs was to herd cattle and sheep. In fact it dates back to Roman times that Rottweilers were used to guide the food supply over the Alps. Then they were used in Germany to guide cattle to the markets. The breed was specifically bred to herd and for this purpose they were generally less stocky than they are today. However, it is still possible to use your Rottweiler as a herding dog, it just requires firm and consistent training!
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102187165.asp
The Rottweiler And It's Guarding Instincts.
If you are looking for a breed of dog which is confident, intimidating and capable of seeing off any potential unwanted visitors, then the Rottweiler may be just the dog for you. Well known for its potential aggressiveness, the Rottweiler will readily defend its land and its family. It is one of the few breeds which is capable of being a fantastic guarding dog, but just where do these guarding instincts come from?
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102187765.asp
English Springer Spaniels In Police And Service Work
English Springer Spaniels are much loved for their docile temperaments, affection and playful spirits, as well as their capable abilities as hunting dogs. In addition to these qualities, English Springer Spaniels are intelligent and learn quite quickly, making them excellent candidates for other pursuits as well. Their intelligence and quick thinking in addition to their powerful sense of smell make them wonderful companions in police work, while their kind temperaments have helped them become popular service dogs. In this article, we’ll take a look at English Springer Spaniels and their abilities in police and service work.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102187865.asp
English Springer Spaniels In Police And Service Work
English Springer Spaniels are much loved for their docile temperaments, affection and playful spirits, as well as their capable abilities as hunting dogs. In addition to these qualities, English Springer Spaniels are intelligent and learn quite quickly, making them excellent candidates for other pursuits as well. Their intelligence and quick thinking in addition to their powerful sense of smell make them wonderful companions in police work, while their kind temperaments have helped them become popular service dogs. In this article, we’ll take a look at English Springer Spaniels and their abilities in police and service work.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102188665.asp
Training The Finnish Spitz To Hunt
Finnish Spitz are an active and lively breed of dogs and can be trained to be the perfect pets as well hunting dogs.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102190265.asp
Things You Didn't Know About The Finnish Spitz!
The Finnish Spitz is one of the oldest known breed and enjoys a long legacy across centuries. Along with its proud lineage, these dogs also possess certain unique characteristics and are known for some of the most interesting facts associated to their history and development.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102190365.asp
Finnish Spitz- The Gun Dog
The Finnish Spitz is a small-sized, rugged breed, with a fox-like appearance and a lively temperament. A member of the small hunting breeds, the Finnish Spitz originated in Finland and is one of the oldest known breeds, with the breed standards dating back to 1812. Known as the Finsk Spets and Suomen-pystyykorva in Finland, meaning the 'Finnish prick-eared dog', these dogs are famous for their hunting and watchdog capabilities. The Gun Dogs as they are often referred to, these exhibit a perfect combination of the finer attributes of the Setter, Pointer and the Retriever.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102190765.asp
Harriers And Tracking
All dogs have an amazing sense of smell, much more advanced than that of a human. That sense of smell was improved in certain breeds, and these breeds were used to "track" game or people; tracking involves following a scent trail left by a person or animal and a dog's ability to track has proven to be useful to humans on many occasions. Dogs have been used to track missing persons and they have been used to track prey on hunts. The Harrier is a breed of dog that was developed as a scent hound, with an excellent sense of smell. While Harriers are not used on the hunt as often as they once were, you can still put that nose to good use and have your dog participate in tracking activities and games.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102190865.asp
Harriers And Tracking
All dogs have an amazing sense of smell, much more advanced than that of a human. That sense of smell was improved in certain breeds, and these breeds were used to "track" game or people; tracking involves following a scent trail left by a person or animal and a dog's ability to track has proven to be useful to humans on many occasions. Dogs have been used to track missing persons and they have been used to track prey on hunts. The Harrier is a breed of dog that was developed as a scent hound, with an excellent sense of smell. While Harriers are not used on the hunt as often as they once were, you can still put that nose to good use and have your dog participate in tracking activities and games.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102191065.asp
The Old English Sheepdog As A Nanny
Old English Sheepdogs were bred mainly to be the perfect herders; their herding qualities allowed them to also become a wonderful protector and companion for their human family. Because herding dogs needed to understand commands and complex tasks, the Old English Sheepdog was bred to be intelligent; they are also intuitive, as this skill helped them to anticipate the moves of sheep and predators. They are extremely gentle, as farmers needed to be able to trust them around their defenseless flocks; loyalty was also bred into this dog, so that he would protect all that belonged to his master.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102191265.asp
The Old English Sheepdog And Herding
Herding is an ancient practice, going back to before the beginnings of true civilization; it consists in making sure individual animals form a group, stay in the group and move as a group from one place to another. People originally performed this function, though they quickly learned to use the instinctive behavior of the dog (the wolf, in his hunting escapades, mimics herding); indeed, the dog soon became an essential aid to the shepherd for herding, protecting and transporting flocks and herds. There are a number of different herding dog breeds, some older than others; some dogs also act as livestock guardian dogs, protecting the herd from dangerous predators. Some dogs either herd or protect, but do not often do both. Some herding dogs were bred to work with specific animals, such as sheep or cattle, while others were bred to work with a variety of livestock. The Old English Sheepdog was bred as a herding dog, though he was also called on to protect his charges from fierce animals such as wolves. He was mainly used to herd sheep, though he also worked well with cattle; the breed has also been put to use herding reindeer, thanks to his tolerance of cold weather. After a period of time, the Old English Sheepdog was also used to drive his master's sheep and cattle to market.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102192665.asp
The German Shorthaired Pointer As A Watchdog
Many hunting dogs have taken on multiple roles in the lives of their owners and one of the more important roles is that of guardian. The natural hunting instinct transfers quite well into the realm of the watchdog and German Shorthaired Pointers are no different. It also helps that the hunting dog is bred to work closely and develop a tight, long-lasting bond with his owner and family. This spurs the dog to instinctly protect his humans, though thankfully most hunting dogs do not (or at least should not) display direct, active aggression towards humans. Another point in favor of the hunting dog is its intelligence; with a little skillful training, these dogs can be taught how to be effective watchdogs rather than barking unnecessarily all day at the slightest of sounds.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102193165.asp
The German Shorthaired Pointer's Hunting Instinct - The Versatile Gun Dog
While people today are used to the sight of a dog performing a number of different tasks, like watchdog, therapy dog, companion and participant in a number of organized canine competitions, among other things, dogs were not always seen as such versatile animals. This was especially true regarding the hunting dog, a prized possession for pre-19th century nobility, who counted their dogs among their vast wealth. Indeed, in Europe hunting became viewed as a sport only for the wealthy, who essentially owned all the land and so were the only ones to have the right to hunt on any given patch of land.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102193965.asp
Great Swiss Mountain Dogs As Tracking Dogs
Great Swiss Mountain Dogs have many attributes that make them a tremendous asset as tracking dogs. One of the many stories attributed to a Great Swiss Mountain Dog was one in which a farmer loaded up his cart with his wares and was about to go on his regular route to make deliveries, when he began to feel ill and went inside to rest, leaving his dog hitched to the cart. After having been ill that whole day, when he went outside that evening, he found his cart empty, and later was able to ascertain that his dog had realized it was time to make deliveries, had pulled the wagon the regular route, and allowed the farmer's customers to take their orders from the wagon.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102195165.asp
Havanese As Signal Dogs
Though the primary function of the Havanese breed has always been to provide companionship to its human owners, the breed's characteristics have allowed it to be employed in a wide variety of settings. Especially thanks to its cheerful, happy-go-lucky personality and the ease with which it can be trained, this dog does well in jobs that have to do with the public and helping other people; in other words, it makes an excellent pet therapy and assistance dog, helping individuals with physical and emotional disabilities. Havanese have been particularly exceptional as signal, or hearing, dogs. Hearing dogs are literally the ears of people who are deaf or hearing impaired. There are a variety of organizations that carefully select and specifically train dogs to work with hearing impaired individuals; these dogs are very well trained at signaling to their charges when they hear some important sound, like a doorbell, a telephone, a smoke alarm, an alarm clock, or perhaps the sound of an intruder.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102196565.asp
The Benefits Of The Irish Terrier's Hunting Instincts
Irish terriers were originally bred to be fox hunting dogs. Today, however, these dogs are mostly used as companion dogs. They are well suited to families, provided they are trained consistently and at a young age to tame the terrier’s natural daredevil and strong willed nature. Though most people do not hunt with their Irish terriers today, some of the natural instincts that this breed carries can be quite beneficial in a family pet. If you properly understand and use these tendencies, you can bring out the best in your Irish terrier.
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Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102196765.asp
The Irish Terrier As A Hunting Dog
Most Irish terrier owners in the United States own their dogs as companions. Irish terriers make great watchdogs and good family pets, so long as they are properly trained. However, the Irish terrier was bred to be a small hunting dog, and is still one of the best breeds you can use for hunting small prey.
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Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102197365.asp
The Kerry Blue Terrier As A Working Dog
As many people choose to get a Kerry Blue Terrier, they are not sure of all the different uses for them. In fact, most people either get them for being a pet or possibly a show dog. However, many people are unaware that they are now being used as a working dog. When people think of dogs as being working dogs, they are not sure if they want that for the dog. However, many of those people think that the dogs get worked to the point of exhaustion; but that is not true. Most often the dogs are usually used outside or for the good of the people. There are many different ways that the Kerry Blue Terriers are being used and none of them involve being abused.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102197365.asp#comments
Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102199865.asp
Top Activity Choices For The Bedlington Terrier
It is commonly believed that somewhere in the history of the Bedlington Terrier, the Greyhound and the Whippet make their appearance. This is based largely on the breed's arched back, a trademark characteristic seen in the two sighthounds. The only difference is in the Bedlingtons front legs that are perfectly developed for turning on a dime at high speeds. This has made the Bedlington an absolute ideal choice for agility course training and field trials. On top of their physical aptness for the activity, it provides the perfect amount of mental stimulations that keeps the Bedlington at its best. Working breed dogs are happiest when they are given a specific job to do and the Bedlington is no different. Along with agility training, years as a baiting dog have made the Bedlington a perfect candidate for earth dog competitions. Earth dog competitions are events that put a dog's basic skills and instincts to the test.
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Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102202165.asp
Bernese Mountain Dogs And Their Potential For Guarding
To look at the Bernese mountain dog you would think that it is a soft, gentle dog with a fun sense of character. Whilst this is mainly the case, the breed was originally bred to be a watchdog and they still have that same instinct embedded in them today. The History of the Bernese as a Watchdog and How it Compares Today The Bernese mountain dog has come a long way since it was first introduced into the world. Its main purpose in Roman times was to guard cattle and property. It was a mastiff type dog and it did have a tendency to become aggressive if provoked. This was only bred out of the dog when it was needed more for pulling carts over the Alps from village to village. As time went on, the need for the Bernese to be aggressive and watchful died down. These days they are still sometimes watchful but generally the breed is much friendlier. They love being around people and they are really gentle around their family.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102202165.asp#comments
Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102202265.asp
The Rare Rough Haired Laekenois Breed
Because they are rarely seen outside of their native Belgium, the Laekenois is considered one of the rarer breeds of the canine world. Vigilant, smart and steady, not only were they used as Belgian police dogs they were used as army dogs as well. As part of the sheep dog family, they are quite independent but still require close human contact in order to stay healthy mentally and emotionally. They are adaptable and at their best when given something to do that requires using their alert mind. They are perhaps most noted for their rough coats that give the appearance of being somewhat unkempt. Many have noted that even with a fawn or reddish coat and dark shading, the breed resembles a bushy German Shepherd to some extent.
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102202265.asp#comments
Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102202565.asp
The Laekenois Linen Guard Dogs
In the nineteenth century, the flatlands of Flanders in Belgium were found to have the best type of soil for growing flax, a plant used to make linen. The flax was of such good quality that the region came to depend on the crop as a vital part of its economy. Thusly, flax fields began to spring up everywhere along the countryside. It was then that the Laekenois also began to make its own appearance as the protector of these valuable flax fields. Day or night, their ferocious bark and tenacity proved the breed quite effective at keeping thieves and bandits at bay.
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Mon, 5 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST
http://www.terrificpets.com/articles/102213165.asp
Specialized Events For Different Breeds
Each type or breed of dog has been bred and developed to fill a particular niche for humans. This may be a very general job such as a companion dog's role, or it may be very practical such as a breed that has been developed as a gun or hunting dog, as a working dog or as a herding or flock guardian. Each breed, regardless of its size or abilities, has a special type of event or competition that they could, with work and practice, start to compete in. Some competitions will require that the dog be a registered purebred, while other events, typically the hunting and working trials, will be open to all dogs regardless of registry or lineage. Other events may be sponsored completely by one breed association and may be restricted to dogs that are registered through that group, club or association.
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| i don't know |
"What was the name of the band that started their career with the song ""Anarchy in the UK""" | History of Rock Music Exam 3 at Winona State University - StudyBlue
StudyBlue
History of Rock Music Exam 3
Kalene H.
Name the musical elements found in Led Zeppelin songs.
traditional electric blues, acoustic folk, experiementation
Who recorded the blues rock song "Highway Star"?
Deep Purple
Ozzy Osbourne sang lead vocals for what british band?
Black Sabbath
The faces lineup included members from what earlier band?
The Jeff Beck group
Who is the classically-trained keyboard player of Deep Purple?
Garth Hudson
What elements of "Whole Lotta Love" demonstrate psychedelic characteristics?
spacey sounds, stereo effects, Plant's moaning
Where did Duane Alman begin his musical career?
Muscle Shoals
Name the song heard in class the exemplifies the early work of the Allman Brothers Band
Whipping Post
Lynyrd Skynyrd signed with what record label?
Al Kooper's label 'Sounds of the South'
"The devil went down to georgia" was a trademark song for what southern rock band?
The charlie daniels band
to what rock type does Santana's Music belong?
Electric Blues / Latin Rock
What Los Angeles-based blues-rock band was produced by Brian Wilson early in it's career?
Three Dog Night
Name the song we heard in class by Three Dog Night. Who wrote this song?
'One'- Written by Kooper
Aerosmith were often compared to what british band?
The rolling stones
How did the Moody Blues incorporate classical music into Days of Future Past?
Orchestral interludes between tracks on album
Advertisement
name all of the Who's "concept" albums.
Tommy, Who's Next, Quadrophenia
What song by the Who was a precursor to that band's concept albums?
The concept album Aqualung center on what idea?
suspicion of political and religious institutions, like the Church of England
Name the Jethro Tull recording heard in class that exemplifies their sound?
'Nothing Is Easy'
What irregular instrument was part of Jethro Tull's make-up?
Flute (Jazz Flute) (Yazz Flute)
Who was the original lead singer of Genesis?
Perter Gabriel
Name the albums released by Pink Floyd.
Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall
Name the musicians who worked on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew album.
John McLauchlin, Joseph Zawinul, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock
Musically speaking, for what were Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago known?
"Horn Bands"
Musically speaking, for what was Alice Cooper known?
dramatic music with self-satire & ghoulish topics
Who was the principal songwriter of The Band during that group's peak years?
Robertson
Which member of The Band was classically trained?
Garth Hudson
Name the characteristics of the singer-songwriter movement.
they were revealing their true selves, accompanied by piano or acoustic guitar--if other instruments, not distracting
What 1970s singer-songwriter had worked in the Brill Building?
James Taylor
How did Elton John change the model of the singer-songwriter by the latter half of the 1970's ?
began employing a back up band
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was a country rock song by what group?
The Band
The members of the Eagles had been in a backup band for what singer?
Linda Ronstadt
Name the song heard in class by Linda Ronstadt that utilized members of the Eagles
'Rock Me On The Water'
Name the musical elements of the song "Take It Easy"
Country-rock; open with big brilliant electric guitar (folk rock), another guitar enters w/ a lick (steel guitar) (country music).. Lead vocals enter (southern accent) & backup vocals (Beatles and Beach Boys), Duet in 2nd verse is added. Song is Simple Verse form.
Who wrote the song "Take It Easy"?
Jackson Browne
Name the guitar player who briefly formed a "super group" with Stephen Stills and Al Kooper?
Michael Bloomfield
Name the album mentioned in class as being the beginning of country rock
Sweetheart of the Radio- the Byrds
What Bay Area band was commercially successful at fusing elements of funk with psychedelia?
Sly and the Family Stone
What musical element establishes the groove in "Thank You (faletitinme Be Mice Elf Agin)"?
A repeating riff in the bass
Name the member of Sly and the Family Stone who provides this element of groove?
Stewart (Sly Stone)
Whose "Funky Worm" was a novelty song?
Ohio Players
what group had a horn section who were often guest performers on other artist's recordings?
Tower of Power
What group was Lionel Ritchie a singer and songwriter?
The Commodores'
What is the focus of Marvin Gaye's album What's Going On?
problems of black urban life, issues of environmentalism in modern society, and questioned the U.S. presence in Vietnam
What term did Marvin Gaye adopt to describe the structure of Side 1 What's Going On?
Name the three "pillar" songs of Side 1 What's Going On?
Let's Get It On, Trouble Man, Got to Give It Up, Pt 1.
Name the artist who made an album entitled Innervisions
Stevie Wonder
Name the song heard in class from Innervisions
What goup helped Motown break into the teen market in the late 1960's and early 1970's?
The Jackson 5
Why was the signing of Rare Earth to Motown demonstrating Berry Gordy's broader musical aspirations?
Branches out to all musical devices
What independent producers started Philadelphia International?
Gamble and Huff
In addition to lyrical vocals and driving rhythms, what musical elements were a feature of the "Philadelphia sound"?
elegant string arrangements
"TSOP" served as theme music for what 1970's media product?
Soul Train
Name the artists produced by Thom Bell.
Spinners, Stylistics
Identify the "blaxploitation" films of the 1970's.
Shaft, Superfly
What song firmly established the rhythmic sound of the wah-wah guitar in 1970's black pop?
The Theme From Shaft
Who was Isaac Hayes' songwriting partner in his early days at Stax/Volt/Atlantic? For what song were they known?
David Porter- "The Theme From Shaft"
With what band did George Clinton begin his career?
Parliaments
Name the musicians who worked with both James Brown and George Clinton.
Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley Bootsy Collins
Out of which jamican musical style did reggae develop?
ska- rock steady
What Jamaican musician's work exemplifies this style? (ska- rock steady)
Bob Marley- The Wailers
What musician helped to popularize reggae outside of Jamaica with a cover of "I Shot the Sheriff"?
Eric Clapton
Name the musical aspects of disco
dance oriented. direct dance beat with a catchy pop hook that is repeated frequently
What artists were featured on the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever?
Bee Gees
How did disco bring back the authority of the producer?
Focus was not on the artist but on the song and beat
Off the wall was a collaboration between what two musical artists?
Micheal Jackson and Quincy Jones
In 1979 an antidisco rally was held in what city?
Chicago
Name the main reasons for the disco backlash in the late 1970s
viewed as a threat within the rock community, a small role was homophobia and racism, people rejected the anti-hippie part of disco
On what album did Stanley Clarke fuse jazz, rock, and reggae?
I want to play for you
Whom did Marvin Gaye say wrote the music for his album, What's Going On?
Who earned an Oscar for his score for the film, Shaft?
Isaac Hayes
Why is advertising on radio necessary to keep a radio station in business?
It provided profits
What designated Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive! as a "big Album"?
The album sold Millions of copies instead of just Thousands.
Stevie Nicks was a singer for what successul '70s rock band?
Fleetwood Mac
What former Beatle formed the group, Wings?
Paul McCartney
"More Than a Feeling" is representative of what band's musical style?
Boston
What band had a successful cover to the Kinks" You Really Got Me"?
Van Halen
Of what musical style is Rush an example?
progressive-rock
Freddie Mercury was the lead singer for what band?
Queen
What singer-songwriter promoted fundamentalist-style Christianity on late '70s albums?
Bob Dylan
How did Jackson Browne start his musical career?
singer-songwriter in So Cal. cowrote "Take It Easy"
How are Foreigner's early albums influenced by progressive rock?
Blue rock guitar hooks drive the song forward.
how did Jackson Browne start his musical Carrer?
Co-wrote the Eagles "Take it Easy"
How does "More Than a Feeling" feature musical progressive rock touches?
uses compound AABA format, No two sections where the same, Harmony guitar parts are carefully coordinated
what was the primary reason why American record labels developed new wave?
they used the term "new wave" vs punk. because aggressive and dangerous images were associated with punk
Andy Warhol produced an album for what band?
Velvet underground( the velvets)
from what city were the Stooges and MC5 from?
Detroit
Name the performers who were regulars at CBGB.
The Ramones, the Patti Smith Group, the Stilletos, Blondie
What individual managed the Sex Pistols?
Malcolm McLaren
What event was viewed as a demonstration of the Sex Pistols conning of the music business industry?
Filled in for Queen on a British TV show.
how were the Clash generally viewed by fans and critics?
the good guys in punk, political protestors
Paul Weller was the vocalist for what UK punk Band?
The Jam
Identify the musical features of the Sex Pistols "Anarchy in the UK".
Simple verse structure, 8 bar refrain, no guitar solos or synthesizer riffs
What new wave band did David Byrne Lead?
Talking Heads
What new wave band adopted a futuristic image from the 50's science fiction?
Devo
What band suggested that they were the new Beatles?
The Knacks
Which british new wave musician blended a strong reggae influence into their music?
The police
For what group did Mark Knopfler play lead guitar and write songs?
Dire Straits
Name the films for which Knopfler wrote soundtracks
Cal, Local Hero, Princess Bride
Name the female instrumentalist of Velvet Underground, and identify the instrument she played
Maureen Tucker- drums
Name the song heard in class that represents the style of MC5
Kick Out The Jams
Name the song heard in class that represents the style of Siouxsie and the Banshees
Hong Kong Garden
What 1970s artist was known as the 'godmother of punk'
Patti Smith
What British band is known for creating the "gothic rock" genre?
Siouxsi and the Banshees
What is the subject matter of the song, "Gold Dust Woman"? Who wrote the song?
Stevie Nicks wrote this song about her addiction to cocaine
Name the song we listened to in class that represents the style of Queen
Stone Cold Crazy
Name the song in class that exemplifies the disco sound
Bad Girls
| Sex Pistols |
Who painted the famous picture Bubbles | 6. Never Mind the Bollocks – Sex Pistols (October 1977) With its day-glo stencilled lettering cover & prominent swear word this was an album to scare the middle-aged & middle-class. A good dose of post-war deference & manners still survived in Seventies Britain – particularly on TV & radio – & it is hard now to appreciate the impact of songs like God Save the Queen & Anarchy in the UK had during the Monarch's Silver Jubilee Year. The album gives the lie to the canard that punks couldn't play. Drummer Paul Cook & guitarist Steve Jones's were one of the tightest backing units in British rock, & combined with bassist Glen Matlock's song writing craft & singer Johnny Rotten's manic sneer, they created a majestic aural assault which thrills to this day. | The 11 best punk albums - Music
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It took a while for punk to go from squats and bedsits to recording studios – so much so that with no punk records available Don Letts, the resident DJ at Covent Garden's Roxy Club, would famously play his favourite reggae tracks instead – turning spikey haired white kids onto the Jamaican sounds that had already inspired the likes of The Clash. But when the new bands started recording the results were explosive. While some classic punk tracks were only released as singles – The Clash's 1977, Buzzcocks' Orgasm Addict and Siouxsie and the Banshees' Hong Kong Garden – these albums still reinvented the musical landscape. By Patrick Sawer.
1. The New York Dolls – The New York Dolls (July 1973) The granddaddy of them all, unless we go as far back as the Detroit proto-punk of MC5's 1969 album Kick Out the Jams. David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain's pouting sneers and spandex costumes made The Dolls the bastard children of The Rolling Stones, their gender bending clothes and angst ridden lyrics – particularly on standout track Personality Crisis – bringing succour to teenage misfits. Johnny Thunders's jagged guitar licks influenced a generation of skinny white boys, particularly the Sex Pistols, whose manager Malcolm McLaren had briefly looked after The Dolls.
2. The Ramones – The Ramones (April 1976) The Clash's Joe Strummer repeatedly paid tribute to The Ramones for stripping rock 'n' roll to its bare two or three chord essentials, while all around them bands like Rush and Yes were lost in 20-minute guitar solos and stadium rock excess. The band's black leather, torn skinny jeans and cheap sneakers trademarked the essential punk look, while their revved-up hyper accelerated sound fired the starting pistol for every kid looking to start a punk band. "Hey ho, let's go!"
3. Neat, Neat, Neat – The Damned (February 1977) They may not have had the anarchic shock value of the Sex Pistols or the sheer righteous anger of The Clash – preferring a cartoonish stage presence and dressing up in party costumes – but The Damned beat them all to it with the first British punk single New Rose. Included in this, their debut album, the opening chords of the song are a spine tingling attempt to sweep away the prog rock, glam and euro-style ballads which then dominated the charts. Listening to it now it's still possible to conjure up the excitement a teenager looking for a new, relevant soundtrack to their lives must have felt.
4. The Clash – The Clash (April 1977) Under the tutelage of their manager Bernard Rhodes, and drawing on their own experience of unemployment, squatting and social conflict, The Clash addressed urban alienation (London's Burning), dead end jobs (Career Opportunities) and racism (Hate and War); their militant politics a counter to the nihilism of Sex Pistols. Strummer's lyrics were dispatches from a nation in crisis and with a tunesmith in guitarist Mick Jones their songs quickly rose above the three chord terrace chanting expected of punk. The band's punked up cover of reggae classic Police and Thieves and its use of reggae's 'drop out' techniques, even on faster numbers, heralded a musical experimentation which found fruit in later albums.
5. No More Heroes – The Stranglers (September 1977) With their use of racial epithets and sexist imagery – culminating in bringing strippers on stage during an infamous Battersea Park show – The Stranglers angered many within the punk movement and wider music scene. London punks dismissed them as provincial oiks – they came from Guildford, Surrey, and were older in years – but it was hard to dismiss the rumbling bass of Jean-Jacques Burnel and the haunting keyboards of Dave Greenfield, which brought a dark ominousness to punk's musical range, best displayed in No More Heroes, Something Better Change and the earlier Hanging Around.
6. Never Mind the Bollocks – Sex Pistols (October 1977) With its day-glo stencilled lettering cover and prominent swear word this was an album to scare the middle-aged and middle-class. A good dose of post-war deference and manners still survived in Seventies Britain – particularly on TV and radio – and it is hard now to appreciate the impact of songs like God Save the Queen and Anarchy in the UK had during the Monarch's Silver Jubilee Year. The album gives the lie to the canard that punks couldn't play. Drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones's were one of the tightest backing units in British rock, and combined with bassist Glen Matlock's song writing craft and singer Johnny Rotten's manic sneer, they created a majestic aural assault which thrills to this day.
7. Love Bites – The Buzzcocks (September 1978) Very much the northern wing of what was initially a London-centric phenomenon; the Buzzcocks went from early experimentalism to power-pop chords and harmonies about girls, love and heartbreak. The earnestness of their tales of teenage tribulations (Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've), 16 Again, Just Lust), set to a backdrop of crumbling industrial Manchester, provided a respite from the more knowing London bands.
8. The Scream – Siouxsie and the Banshees (November 1978) Singer Siouxsie Sioux and guitarist Steve Severin had started off as part of the 'Bromley Contingent', the Sex Pistols' original coterie of fans, before taking the DIY message to heart and starting a band. Influenced by David Bowie, Lou Reed and German synth rock, such as Kraftwerk, Siouxsie and the Banshees brought a new depth and atmosphere to the punk palette, with hauntingly gothic songs such as Metal Postcard and their cover of The Beatles' Helter Skelter.
9. Germ Free Adolescents – X-Ray Spex (November 1978) A mixed-race girl with prominent braces and a granny's knitted hat, a saxophone player, songs about consumerist excess: X-Ray Spex reinvented what punk could be, even before the original formula had become familiar. Singer Poly Styrene defied the rock industry's traditional sexism ("Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard/But I say . . . 'Oh bondage up yours'") and the band's teenage vim and lyrical inventiveness took British punks in a new direction.
10. Cut – The Slits (September 1979) By synthesising punk attitude with stripped-down reggae dub the Slits created a uniquely British, and particularly London, sound. Four girls – singer Ari Up was just 14 – who taught themselves how to play, perform and record, the Slits epitomised punk's Do It Yourself ethos. And with their brashness and unvarnished feminism (the clue is in the name, after all), they made Girl Power a reality nearly 20 years before Ginger, Sporty, Posh, Scary and Baby. Their version of Martin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine remains a masterpiece of reinvention.
11. The Crack – The Ruts (September 1979) Based in Southall, west London, these four white boys found themselves on the front line of clashes between local Asian youth and far-right National Front thugs and police. The Ruts pinned their colours to the mast of militant anti-racism, borrowing Rastafarian imagery and language – notably in Babylon's Burning and Jah War – for their punk evocation of the street battles around them. Their spark was extinguished with the death of singer Malcolm Owen from a heroin overdose in 1980, his demise symbolic of the death of punk and the ushering in of (Thatcher's) New Romantics.
| i don't know |
Which British bank was the first to appoint a female manager in 1958 | From top hats to Metro Bank: a history of British banking in pictures - Telegraph
Bank accounts
From top hats to Metro Bank: a history of British banking in pictures
In 1958 Barclays appointed the first female bank manager Hilda Harding at the Hanover Street branch in London. It could be argued that the appearance of women in banks was the biggest banking revolution of the 20th century. Many women were recruited during the First World War, but most of them left afterwards. The pattern was repeated during the Second World War, but this time more of the women stayed. Today, the majority of bank staff are women.
| Barclays |
Who was the first Jamaican to top the UK charts | PRESS DIGEST- British Business - June 27
PRESS DIGEST- British Business - June 27
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The following are the top stories on the business pages of British newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
The Telegraph
Housebuilders, banks and markets were lifted on Thursday after the Bank of England decided against taking draconian steps to cool the housing market.
BARCLAYS SHARES HIT 19-MONTH-LOW ON DARK POOL CLAIMS
Barclays shares slumped to their lowest level for 19 months on Thursday after the bank was accused by U.S. authorities of defrauding investors.
The Guardian
Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket chain, is hoarding land and buildings covering an area big enough to build 15,000 homes, a Guardian analysis has revealed.
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK ISSUES PROFIT WARNING
Standard Chartered warned that profits will fall this year and said the head of its worst-performing business had gone on a long-term break from the Asia-focused bank.
The Times
( http://thetim.es/1jpg1ai )
Hurricane Energy said it successfully drilled the first exploration well into granite rock beneath the Atlantic waters close to Britain. It said the gusher at its Lancaster field in the West of Shetlands proved that oil could be produced from "fractured basement reservoirs", describing it as a "game-changer" for the UK.
GLENCORE GETS WITH THE TIMES WITH FIRST FEMALE BOARD MEMBER
Glencore has appointed Patrice Merrin, a Canadian mining veteran, as a non-executive director, becoming the last FTSE 100 company to appoint a woman on its board.
The Independent
| i don't know |
What was the name of the cheap record singles label that Woolworths brought out to sell cover versions of hit songs | Embassy Records and the hits of the sixties at Woolworth's
Music for the style generation in the 1960s
From 1962 there was huge interest in the Beatles in both Britain and America. But at Woolworth's UK the closest you could get was a cover of the songs on Embassy or a set of Remco Dolls of the Fab Four at 19/11 the set (just under £1), a Beatles Car Mascot at 14 shillings and elevenpence (75p) or a Beatles china plate for five bob (25p)
At the time Woolworth didn't sell chart music on either side of the Atlantic. In the USA some stores sold bin ends of 45s and cartridges, while the British stores had built a strong following for cover versions recorded by unknown artists at a studio in New Bond Street, in fashionable Mayfair and rushed out to the shops on the same day as the official 'hit'.
A 2009 BBC radio documentary The Wonderful Sound of Woolies tracked down some of the original artists. Most had sung with 'The Typhoons; and had recorded Beatles covers, and revealed that the 'group' had consisted of whatever artists happened to be at the studios on the day. It seems Embassy's Fab Four was actually a Fab Fifty!
Embassy's Beatles covers are perhaps the label's best 'hits'. Even critics admit that The Typhoons did the songs justice, despite the cheap price.
Some people loved these covers, others absolutely hated them. Whatever your perspective, they are highly collectable today!
Embassy Tops in Pops: Singles 4/3 (approx 21p) EPs 6/11 (approx 34p).
Oriole, the recording company that Woolworths hired to mastermind the Embassy Records initiative, showed lots of initiative in marketing the line. They successfully made the transition from shellac 78s from 1954 to vinyl 45 rpm singles from 1958 and continued to innovate during the Sixties. To bolster sales they introduced EPs (Extended Play records) which allowed them to squeeze four songs onto one single instead of the usual two, and gave them the chance to give the most popular songs a second release. These EPs were often given picture sleeves to improve their appeal and were sometimes advertised in the press.
Building on the success of picture sleeved EPs, they began compiling full LPs of the songs sometimes as a 'Juke Box' and sometimes linked to a film or theme. These proved a big hit in Woolworths stores, particularly at Christmas. Some people credit them with prompting the rise of budget compilation albums from labels like Camden, K-Tel and Ronco.
Some of the Embassy songs went on to become hits on the Continent as Oriole leveraged their investment by releasing the best titles in Belgium to some acclaim.
If you would like to hear some of the songs, please visit our Virtual Juke Box feature and see what you think!.
The extended play (EP) and long playing (LP) formats helped to keep Embassy going well into the Sixties, despite the rapid changes in taste during the period. The instrumentals and language courses were very popular.
But, with the disposable income of young people increasing and the birth of the style generation, cover versions were looking increasingly outdated. By 1965 people wanted the real thing.
The firm set about designing a new music department for the new age. For the first time the company would stock chart music, sourced initially through EMI Records Ltd and Decca Records. (EMI later floated their wholesaling business as Record Merchandisers Ltd and it later became Entertainment (UK) Ltd., a subsidiary of Woolworths Group plc, and, for some, the Achilles Heel that ultimately brought the whole business to its knees.
The first full Entertainment offer in Britain was in the refurbished store at Gallowtree Gate in Leicester. The displays were brightly coloured and highly distinctive compared with Embassy. The product selection incuded a small amount of chart music, but mainly focused on back catalogue titles.
The American parent company developed a larger music offer for its huge superstore in Times Square, New York. This was a big hit with the public. The wall browser fixtures, topped with display boards still appear quite modern today, half a century after the picture was taken.
By 1969 the modern entertainment offer was beginning to take shape in the UK. Among the most popular items in the range were electric guitars and amplifiers for budding rock stars.
Chart music was supplemented by budget titles from Hallmark, RCA Camden and the new Music for Pleasure (MFP) label from EMI. Each offered a mixture of albums from real artists and cover versions. Embassy faded into the distance to become highly collectable in the third millennium.
| Diplomatic mission |
What type of musical instrument is a gekkin | Embassy Records and the hits of the sixties at Woolworth's
Music for the style generation in the 1960s
From 1962 there was huge interest in the Beatles in both Britain and America. But at Woolworth's UK the closest you could get was a cover of the songs on Embassy or a set of Remco Dolls of the Fab Four at 19/11 the set (just under £1), a Beatles Car Mascot at 14 shillings and elevenpence (75p) or a Beatles china plate for five bob (25p)
At the time Woolworth didn't sell chart music on either side of the Atlantic. In the USA some stores sold bin ends of 45s and cartridges, while the British stores had built a strong following for cover versions recorded by unknown artists at a studio in New Bond Street, in fashionable Mayfair and rushed out to the shops on the same day as the official 'hit'.
A 2009 BBC radio documentary The Wonderful Sound of Woolies tracked down some of the original artists. Most had sung with 'The Typhoons; and had recorded Beatles covers, and revealed that the 'group' had consisted of whatever artists happened to be at the studios on the day. It seems Embassy's Fab Four was actually a Fab Fifty!
Embassy's Beatles covers are perhaps the label's best 'hits'. Even critics admit that The Typhoons did the songs justice, despite the cheap price.
Some people loved these covers, others absolutely hated them. Whatever your perspective, they are highly collectable today!
Embassy Tops in Pops: Singles 4/3 (approx 21p) EPs 6/11 (approx 34p).
Oriole, the recording company that Woolworths hired to mastermind the Embassy Records initiative, showed lots of initiative in marketing the line. They successfully made the transition from shellac 78s from 1954 to vinyl 45 rpm singles from 1958 and continued to innovate during the Sixties. To bolster sales they introduced EPs (Extended Play records) which allowed them to squeeze four songs onto one single instead of the usual two, and gave them the chance to give the most popular songs a second release. These EPs were often given picture sleeves to improve their appeal and were sometimes advertised in the press.
Building on the success of picture sleeved EPs, they began compiling full LPs of the songs sometimes as a 'Juke Box' and sometimes linked to a film or theme. These proved a big hit in Woolworths stores, particularly at Christmas. Some people credit them with prompting the rise of budget compilation albums from labels like Camden, K-Tel and Ronco.
Some of the Embassy songs went on to become hits on the Continent as Oriole leveraged their investment by releasing the best titles in Belgium to some acclaim.
If you would like to hear some of the songs, please visit our Virtual Juke Box feature and see what you think!.
The extended play (EP) and long playing (LP) formats helped to keep Embassy going well into the Sixties, despite the rapid changes in taste during the period. The instrumentals and language courses were very popular.
But, with the disposable income of young people increasing and the birth of the style generation, cover versions were looking increasingly outdated. By 1965 people wanted the real thing.
The firm set about designing a new music department for the new age. For the first time the company would stock chart music, sourced initially through EMI Records Ltd and Decca Records. (EMI later floated their wholesaling business as Record Merchandisers Ltd and it later became Entertainment (UK) Ltd., a subsidiary of Woolworths Group plc, and, for some, the Achilles Heel that ultimately brought the whole business to its knees.
The first full Entertainment offer in Britain was in the refurbished store at Gallowtree Gate in Leicester. The displays were brightly coloured and highly distinctive compared with Embassy. The product selection incuded a small amount of chart music, but mainly focused on back catalogue titles.
The American parent company developed a larger music offer for its huge superstore in Times Square, New York. This was a big hit with the public. The wall browser fixtures, topped with display boards still appear quite modern today, half a century after the picture was taken.
By 1969 the modern entertainment offer was beginning to take shape in the UK. Among the most popular items in the range were electric guitars and amplifiers for budding rock stars.
Chart music was supplemented by budget titles from Hallmark, RCA Camden and the new Music for Pleasure (MFP) label from EMI. Each offered a mixture of albums from real artists and cover versions. Embassy faded into the distance to become highly collectable in the third millennium.
| i don't know |
The 2012 Paralympics Closing Ceremony featured an extended set by which British band | Paralympic Games: Closing ceremony led by Coldplay - BBC News
BBC News
Paralympic Games: Closing ceremony led by Coldplay
10 September 2012
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Media captionAcrobats and dancers performed to live music from Coldplay and other artists in what was described as a festival of fire
London's 2012 Paralympics has ended with a fiery finale and official handover to 2016 host, Rio de Janeiro.
The show, described as a "festival of flame" honouring Britain's ancient traditions and festivals, brought 11 days of sport to a close.
UK band Coldplay led the show, which started at 20:30 BST, with a live set reflecting the four seasons.
The event ended what organisers say has been "the greatest Paralympic Games ever".
Unlike the other Games ceremonies, the 4,200 athletes were seated around the main arena, putting them at the heart of the action.
At the Olympic Stadium
By Ian WestbrookBBC 2012
If the Paralympics had to end then they did so in style, with a superb closing ceremony that had a bit of everything.
There were spectacular moments, dazzling fireworks, great live music and tributes to all the right people - the armed forces, the Games Maker volunteers and the athletes.
The speeches were made in the right tone and contained good and appropriate anecdotes and the tale of the four seasons from autumn going to spring showed the continuing nature of life.
And that is what everyone has to face now with a Monday morning that won't contain tales of medals won and those possibly to come.
It is back to reality for most people and on to pastures new for others.
London 2012 will never be forgotten.
Declaring the 2012 Paralympics closed, International Paralympic Committee president, Sir Philip Craven, said: "These Games have changed us all forever."
China finished top of the Paralympic medals table, with 231 medals - 95 gold. Great Britain cemented third place behind Russia, with a tally of 120, including 34 golds.
As the ceremony drew to a close, Paralympians Ellie Simmonds and Jonnie Peacock helped to put out the Paralympic flame, which was shared out across the stadium symbolising "the eternal nature of the flame living among us all".
Each participating country will take home one of the 200 copper petals that made up the Paralympic cauldron.
In other developments on the final weekend of 2012:
Organisers say some 2.7 million Paralympic tickets have been sold - beating targets by 200,000 and predicted sales by £10m
On Monday, 800 British stars of the Olympics and Paralympics will celebrate their success during a victory parade through the streets of London.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson said he hoped to see a social and cultural legacy from the Games.
'Coming together'
As Sunday's show began, a tribute was paid to the armed forces and military charity, Help for Heroes.
The Paralympians have lifted the cloud of limitation
Lord Coe, Locog chairman
GB Paralympians David Weir and Sarah Storey, who both won four gold medals at the Games, carried the British flag into the stadium, as flagbearers representing 164 nations participating in the Paralympics entered the arena.
And Captain Luke Sinnott, who lost both legs in an IED bomb blast while serving in Afghanistan, climbed the flagpole to raise the Union Jack.
Coldplay sang songs from their five albums, while dancers including the Candoco Dance Company - a contemporary group of 12 disabled and non-disabled dancers - performed with flames around the burning face of a "sun king".
Apart from Coldplay's live set, the sold-out finale featured performances from pop star Rihanna, rapper Jay-Z and a cast of around 1,200 performers on three circular stages - Summer, Winter and the Sundial.
"The idea is the coming together as one," said artistic director Kim Gavin behind the Festival of Flame.
"We are known as a nation for having the most festivals, it is something that we do - with 600 festivals a year.
Paralympics coverage online
Travel info for Games locations
"We pay tribute to all the human spirit and achievement through this wonderful sport of the last two weeks."
Kenya's Mary Nakhumicha ZakayoIrish and Irish runner Michael McKillop were presented with gold medals in recognition of them winning the Whang Youn Dai Achievement Award - for athletes who exemplify the best spirit of the Paralympic Games.
Flowers were also presented to honour the 70,000 Games Maker Olympic and Paralympic volunteers.
Some 120 child volunteers from east London took part in the spectacle, along with disabled aerial performers from Circus Space and The British Paraorchestra.
After the Paralympic flag was passed to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, performers from Rio - which will stage the games in 2016 - put on a colourful performance fusing hip-hop freestyle and samba, performed by disabled and non-disabled dancers.
Speaking to the 80,000-strong crowd, organising committee chairman Lord Coe said the UK would "never think of sport the same way and we will never think of disability the same way.
"The Paralympians have lifted the cloud of limitation."
He added: "Finally, there are some famous words you can find stamped on the bottom of a product. Words, that when you read them, you know mean high quality, mean skill, mean creativity.
'An absolute triumph'
"We have stamped those words on the Olympic and Paralympic games of London 2012.
"London 2012. Made in Britain."
IPC president Sir Philip Craven said the Games had been "unique and without doubt, in my mind and those of the athletes - the greatest Paralympic Games ever".
Speaking before the start of the ceremony, Prime Minister David Cameron said: "I think it's been an absolute triumph from start to finish and I'm really proud of the country, not just that we've put on a great show, but we've had these great audiences".
Mr Cameron, whose disabled son Ivan died in 2009, added: "I think back to Ivan. As every parent, you think about all the things they can't do, but at the Paralympics they are superhuman, you see all the things they can do."
He also said it would give momentum to sports participation and the Paralympics had changed perceptions of disabled sport.
| Coldplay |
As at 2012 what 115-island Indian Ocean nation has the smallest population (about 86,000) of any African country | (HD) - CLOSING CEREMONY - PARALYMPIC GAMES - PART 3 - LONDON 2012 - LIVE 09/09/2012 - YouTube
(HD) - CLOSING CEREMONY - PARALYMPIC GAMES - PART 3 - LONDON 2012 - LIVE 09/09/2012
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Published on Sep 11, 2012
I Will Never Forget This Paralympic Games - London 2012....My respect and admiration to all Athletes who participating in this Olympic Games :) Super Heros :)
London's 2012 Paralympics has ended with a fiery finale and official handover to 2016 host, Rio de Janeiro.
The show, described as a "festival of flame" honouring Britain's ancient traditions and festivals, brought 11 days of sport to a close.
UK band Coldplay led the show, which started at 20:30 BST, with a live set reflecting the four seasons.
The event ended what organisers say has been "the greatest Paralympic Games ever".
Unlike the other Games ceremonies, the 4,200 athletes were seated around the main arena, putting them at the heart of the action.
Declaring the 2012 Paralympics closed, International Paralympic Committee president, Sir Philip Craven, said: "These Games have changed us all forever."
China finished top of the Paralympic medals table, with 231 medals - 95 gold. Great Britain cemented third place behind Russia, with a tally of 120, including 34 golds.
As the ceremony drew to a close, Paralympians Ellie Simmonds and Jonnie Peacock helped to put out the Paralympic flame, which was shared out across the stadium symbolising "the eternal nature of the flame living among us all".
Each participating country will take home one of the 200 copper petals that made up the Paralympic cauldron.
'A few surprises'
As Sunday's show began, a tribute was paid to the armed forces and military charity, Help for Heroes.
GB Paralympians David Weir and Sarah Storey, who both won four gold medals at the Games, carried the British flag into the stadium, as flagbearers representing 164 nations participating in the Paralympics entered the arena.
And Captain Luke Sinnott, who lost both legs in an IED bomb blast while serving in Afghanistan, climbed the flagpole to raise the Union Jack.
Coldplay sang songs from their five albums, while dancers including the Candoco Dance Company - a contemporary group of 12 disabled and non-disabled dancers - performed with flames around the burning face of a "sun king".
Apart from Coldplay's live set, the sold-out finale featured performances from pop star Rihanna, rapper Jay-Z and a cast of around 1,200 performers on three circular stages - Summer, Winter and the Sundial.
"The idea is the coming together as one," said artistic director Kim Gavin behind the Festival of Flame.
"We are known as a nation for having the most festivals, it is something that we do - with 600 festivals a year.
"We pay tribute to all the human spirit and achievement through this wonderful sport of the last two weeks."
Kenya's Mary Nakhumicha ZakayoIrish and Irish runner Michael McKillop were presented with gold medals in recognition of them winning the Whang Youn Dai Achievement Award - for athletes who exemplify the best spirit of the Paralympic Games.
Flowers were also presented to honour the 70,000 Games Maker Olympic and Paralympic volunteers.
Some 120 child volunteers from east London took part in the spectacle, along with disabled aerial performers from Circus Space and The British Paraorchestra.
After the Paralympic flag was passed to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, performers from Rio - which will stage the games in 2016 - put on a colourful performance fusing hip-hop freestyle and samba, performed by disabled and non-disabled dancers.
Speaking to the 80,000-strong crowd, organising committee chairman Lord Coe said the UK would "never think of sport the same way and we will never think of disability the same way.
"The Paralympians have lifted the cloud of limitation."
He added: "Finally, there are some famous words you can find stamped on the bottom of a product. Words, that when you read them, you know mean high quality, mean skill, mean creativity
'Superhuman' achievements
"We have stamped those words on the Olympic and Paralympic games of London 2012.
"London 2012. Made in Britain."
IPC president Sir Philip Craven said the Games had been "unique and without doubt, in my mind and those of the athletes - the greatest Paralympic Games ever".
Speaking before the start of the ceremony, Prime Minister David Cameron said: "I think it's been an absolute triumph from start to finish and I'm really proud of the country, not just that we've put on a great show, but we've had these great audiences".
Mr Cameron, whose disabled son Ivan died in 2009, added: "I think back to Ivan. As every parent, you think about all the things they can't do, but at the Paralympics they are superhuman, you see all the things they can do."
He also said it would give momentum to sports participation and the Paralympics had changed perceptions of disabled sport
Category
| i don't know |
Discounting Australia which is the largest island in the world (Geographers insist on calling it a continental land mass to me it is still an island) | Why is Europe called a continent? Ever look at a map? - Google Groups
Why is Europe called a continent? Ever look at a map?
Showing 1-112 of 112 messages
In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
perhaps, involed here?
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 04:16:54 -0800, section8
<[email protected]> wrote:
>In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
>that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
>Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
>dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
>really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
>6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
>Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
>and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
>but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
>wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
>the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
>perhaps, involed here?
No, it's the Asians who have too much pride. THEY wanted to have their
own continent, so the Europeans HAD to give a name to what was
leftover.
Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
Also, who says continents have to be separated by water ? Maybe they
could be separated by other geological singularities, like maybe
mountains ?
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 12:31:10 GMT, [email protected] (Fred#Paris)
wrote:
>Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
>and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
Probably because there's no land mass at the North Pole.
Larry Palletti East Point/Atlanta, Georgia
> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
Um, is this for real?
Jon "USS Nautilus" Miller
> So what makes Europe a continent?
The weight of history.
> I wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one?
The Greeks, before it was known that Europe and Asia are connected.
> Is pride, perhaps, involed here?
Perhaps.
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica.
The world is a very big place.
I was not taught that, rather I was told that geographically the continent
was Eurasia, but they were split up for convenience into Europe and Asia
because (1) they were too big to be treated as one, and (2) it was a
fairly sensible split because of historical and cultural differences (most
importantly, because that's what the Greeks did).
njm
See, here he comes stealing through the undergrowth, his face shining
with the light of pure intelligence. There are no limits to Jeeve's
brain power. He virtually lives on fish.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
>and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
>but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
>wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
>the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
>perhaps, involed here?
You're making an unspoken assumption here: that the definition
of a "continent" is purely physical. But perhaps geographers
consider human cultural factors (languages, religions, distribution
of population), ranges of flora and fauna, etc., as well as the shape
of land masses in deciding what to call a "continent".
--
> I was not taught that, rather I was told that geographically the continent
> was Eurasia, but they were split up for convenience into Europe and Asia
> because (1) they were too big to be treated as one, and (2) it was a
> fairly sensible split because of historical and cultural differences (most
> importantly, because that's what the Greeks did).
I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to
do with major plates and plate tectonics and that Europe and Asia are
really different plates with the European plate sublimating under the
Asian plate at the Urals. But accuracy wise, that information is based
on what I remember from tenth grade geoscience so it probably isn't
accurate. I just post it for comparison between what I was taught and
what others were taught.
As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
single continent and Antarctica isn't one. That always puzzled me. North
and South America are the same continent yet Europe and Asia are
different?
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6,
And how do you define the term? By landmass alone?
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one?
Probably someone who used a different slant on the word than you are.
The word 'continent' does not mean landmass, but simply something
that holds together. Major landmasses do, but so does minor ones.
Myself, I have not heard the word 'continent' applied to Europe as a whole,
but only to the main body of it. Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are not part of
'the continent', and I have a feeling Finland isn't either, whereas Denmark
very probably is. (A psychologist will explain why UKoGBaNI doesn't even occur
to me.)
A quick check in a old Webster's dictionary confirms this: 'the continent'
is the main land of Europe, and distinguished from 'the islands', which then
presumably is the rest.
Remember that head line? "Heavy Fog over the Channel -- Continent Isolated"
>Is pride, perhaps, involed here?
A check in a decent ethymological dictionary would give you the approximate
time the word was first used, and that might help answer that question.
I suspect it was first applied to separate the main body of Europe from
the rest -- and in which direction pride may be working here, I won't even
speculate.
Anders Thulin [email protected] 040-10 50 63
Telia Prosoft AB, Hjälmaregatan 3B, 212 19 Malmö, Sweden
It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
second part of two step process. The first step would be to
define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
David
section8 <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
> perhaps, involed here?
No, it is foresight. With continued continental drift and further extension
of the widening rift that has already made the Red Sea, Europe is expected
to break away. Be patient.
In a previous article, [email protected] said:
>I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to
>do with major plates and plate tectonics and that Europe and Asia are
>really different plates with the European plate sublimating under the
>Asian plate at the Urals. But accuracy wise, that information is based
Europe and Asia have been called separate continents since the time of the
ancient Greeks. Continental drift has been a widely accepted theory for just
about 50 years. You figure out what's wrong with your argument.
Depending on whom you talk to, Europe and Asia are often referred to as
"Eurasia", because they are in many respects one continent. And that includes
Greenland and the Scandanavian(sp?) peninsula, and the British Isles, all of
which are on the same continental shelf as Eurasia.
India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) has been called "a subcontinent" for a lot
longer than it was known that they were a separate plate that smashed into
Eurasia so fast that it raised the Himilayas. I've often wondered about that,
but I guess it got that nickname because the Himilayas cut them off so
completely from the rest of Eurasia.
--
Paul Tomblin, not speaking for anybody.
"I find your lack of clue...disturbing" - Sithadmin Vader.
> I just post it for comparison between what I was taught
> and
Along the lines of "interesting" education: I asked what a continent
was (must have been about 4th grade) and was told it's a land mass
bigger than an island. Then, they told me Australia was an island. But
it's a continent, I said. Oh yeah, it's the only island continent;
shouldn't you be playing kickball about now?
Somewhat related quandry: are there four or five oceans? I think most
people learned Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic, but I've seen
books include Antarctic. I guess a more important question is why does
it matter. Speaking of water...maybe they felt seven the right number
for land masses, since there were seven water masses, or seas.
-Samwise "Seven seas? I can barely remember the seven dwarfs"
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
>You're making an unspoken assumption here: that the definition
>of a "continent" is purely physical. But perhaps geographers
>consider human cultural factors (languages, religions, distribution
>of population), ranges of flora and fauna, etc., as well as the shape
>of land masses in deciding what to call a "continent".
How about geology? Just because Asia and Europe are united today doesn't have
to mean that they are have always always been part of the same landmass.
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
> perhaps, involed here?
Europe and Asia were defined as separate by the Greeks at a time
when their northern limits were unknown. All the Greeks had to go
on was the clear division at the Bosphorus
--
> India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) has been called "a subcontinent" for
a lot
> longer than it was known that they were a separate plate that smashed
into
> Eurasia so fast that it raised the Himilayas.
I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
at which said collision occured (is occurring). In brief,
because continental crusts are so much thicker (30-50 km vs
~7 km) and less dense (2.7 g/cm^3 vs 3.0 g/cm^3) than
oceanic crusts, when they meet at a converging plate
boundary, neither plate is subducted (which is the case in
oceanic/oceanic or continental/oceanic boundary collisions).
The result is a buckling of the plates, which tend to be
pushed upward or sideways. Thus, the Himalayas and the
Tibetan Plateau.
>I was not taught that, rather I was told that geographically the continent
>was Eurasia, but they were split up for convenience into Europe and Asia
>because (1) they were too big to be treated as one, and (2) it was a
>fairly sensible split because of historical and cultural differences
Hmmm -- how would that apply to, say, Saudi Arabia and Africa/Asia ... ?
Bob "lame inside jokes" Moissonnier
>really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
>6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass
I just recalled that some scholar has recently published a book
arguing that it's at least as useful to consider oceans-and-the-
surrounding-lands as geographical units as it is to consider
landmasses-separated-by-oceans. Anybody recognize this vague
description?
In the popular media we already
see this kind of thinking in the term "Pacific Rim" -- China,
Indonesia, New Zealand, Peru, and the U.S., which are in 3 or 4
different (land-mass) "continents", may share some historical and
economic similarities by virtue of being connected by Pacific
trade routes. Then there's the Mediterranean (connecting southern
Europe, northern Africa, and south-west Asia); the Indian Ocean
(where the Indian subcontinent of Asia has long had contact with
eastern Africa); etc.
Michael "Goode's School Atlas for sale, cheap" Glaser
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
>> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
>> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
>
>Um, is this for real?
Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are
started by people of dubious existance and responded to by other
similar personas, all debating troll topics?
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
> second part of two step process. The first step would be to
> define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
> South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
OED2 on CD:
[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
Florio, 1598; the Fr. is not in Cotgr. 1611.]
I. A containing agent or space.
1. a. That which contains or holds. Now rare or arch.
b. fig. That which comprises or sums up; summary, sum and
substance (sometimes not distinguishable from content, that
which is contained). Now rare or arch.
? 2. Containing area, space, or bulk; capacity; = content n.1 5,
6. Obs.
? 3. a. A connected or continuous tract of land. Obs.
(Cf. continent a. 6.)
? b. The land as opposed to the water, etc.; 'terra firma'; the
earth. Obs.
? c. The 'solid globe' or orb of the sun or moon. Obs.
? 4. a. esp. The main land, as distinguished from islands, islets,
or peninsulas; mainland. Obs. exc. as in b, or when referring to
one of the recognized continents of modern Geography: see 5.
b. spec. the Continent: the mainland of Europe, as distinguished
from the British Isles. (Orig. a specific use of 4; now commonly
referred to 5.)
5. a. One of the main continuous bodies of land on the earth's
surface.
Formerly two continents were reckoned, the Old and the New;
the former comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa, which form
one continuous mass of land; the latter, North and South
America, forming another. (These two continents are strictly
islands, distinguished only by their extent.) Now it is usual to
reckon four or five continents, Europe, Asia, Africa, and
America, North and South; the great island of Australia is
sometimes reckoned as another, and geographers have
speculated on the existence of an Antarctic Continent.
b. transf. A continuous mass or extent of land of any kind, of
ice, or the like.
d. Comb., as continent-country, -island, one approaching in
size to a continent;
continent-wide a., throughout a (specified) continent.
? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
colonies (which ultimately became the United States). Cf.
continental a. 3.
III. [subst. use of continent a. 1.]
7. Eccl. Hist. = Encratite.
? 8. A continent person; a married person or widow under
vow of continency. Obs. (Cf. penitent.)
'sub"continent. (Now also with main stress on second syllable.)
[sub- 5 b.]
A land mass of great extent, but smaller than those generally
called continents; a large section of a continent having a
certain geographical or political independence; spec. applied
formerly to South Africa, and more recently to India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
[a. F. incontinent (14th c.) or ad. L. incontinent-em, f. in-
(in-3) + continent- continent.]
Joe "Throw it o'er my shoulder,
like a Continental soldier" Shair
Joseph M. Shair < [email protected] > wrote:
>
>David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
>> second part of two step process. The first step would be to
>> define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
>> South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
>
>[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
>of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
[etc]
I fail to see how the quote from the OED2 has helped the discussion
one bit. In fact, it seems to muddy the waters even more.
What the hell Let's throw in the indian subcontinent while we're at
it.
> >> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
> >> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
> >
> >Um, is this for real?
>
> Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are
> started by people of dubious existance and responded to by other
> similar personas, all debating troll topics?
Yeah. And I beat ya to it by 11 minutes.
Michael "I'm returning your boxtops and revoking your fanship" Glaser
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
> Joseph M. Shair < [email protected] > wrote:
> >
> >[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
> >of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
>
> I fail to see how the quote from the OED2 has helped the discussion
> one bit. In fact, it seems to muddy the waters even more.
>
OK. Some mumbledy years ago Sister Mary Martha, S.P. conveyed to me, along
with a lot of other useful stuff, the existence of seven continents: Europe,
Asia, Africa, N. America, S. America, Australia, and Antarctica.[1]
Now the OED2 says there are four or five continents (depending on how you
feel about the Americas), Australia *might* be a continent, and the
continental status of Antarctica is pure speculation.
When faced with conflicting viewpoints from two unimpeachable sources, I'm
gonna go with the Sisters of Providence every time.
Steve "Can I go to recess now?" Jones
[1] 5th grade Geography[2]
[2] not Geology[3]
>Now the OED2 says there are four or five continents (depending on
>how you feel about the Americas), Australia *might* be a
>continent, and the continental status of Antarctica is pure
>speculation.
It now seems that Antarctica may be an ice and snow covered
archipelago rather than a single land mass. But shouldn't ice be as
much a "land mass" as any other mineral?
--
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
Previously, cwp stated, in part,
>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
grows. This factoid isn't an urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so
it's way OT, but can anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on
my own keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
Guinness World Book.
Address munged. AOL isn't "coma"tose, evidence to the contrary not
withstanding.
>Previously, cwp stated, in part,
>
>>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
>
>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's
>shows hosted by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental
>plates (at least those colliding in California) are moving at
>about the rate at which a fingernail grows. This factoid isn't an
>urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so it's way OT, but can
>anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on my own
>keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
>Guinness World Book.
Well, the San Andreas fault is presumed to move on the order of
20-some feet per century. How fast does a fingernail grow?
--
On Sun, 27 Jan 3900 19:03:40, "cwp" < [email protected] > wrote:
> Paul Tomblin < [email protected] > wrote
> > India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) has been called "a subcontinent" for
> a lot
> > longer than it was known that they were a separate plate that smashed
> into
> > Eurasia so fast that it raised the Himilayas.
>
> I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
> collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
> at which said collision occured (is occurring)....
The speed comes in as soon as the hills are high enough to start
eroding. The higher they get, the faster they're worn down. To get
as high as the Himalayas and stay that way for a few million years,
they need to be growing fast.
--
"Fred#Paris" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> Another question: why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
and not the one at the north pole?
Duh...maybe because dere is a landmass at da sout pole?
"section8" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>>So what makes Europe a continent?
Politics, same as North America.
> Depending on whom you talk to, Europe and Asia are often referred to as
> "Eurasia", because they are in many respects one continent. And that includes
> Greenland and the Scandanavian(sp?) peninsula, and the British Isles, all of
> which are on the same continental shelf as Eurasia.
For one very ido[ma]tic definition of 'continental shelf', perhaps.
Greenland is certainly not on the Eurasian plate, but rather is
part of the North American plate. It is only European in that it
is under Danish sovereignty. But Greenland is definitely not part
of the European Union.
>> So what makes Europe a continent?
> The weight of history.
>> I wonder, who started all of this business
>> calling Europe a continent in the first place
>> when apparently it doesn't seem to be one?
> The Greeks, before it was known that Europe
> and Asia are connected.
If I may amplify a bit, the distinction between Europe and Asia arose
among Mediterranean peoples to whom the Hellespont - Propontis -
Bosporus waterway seemed an obvious and important physical and, to an
extent, cultural / linguistic boundary. The term "Asia" originally
referred to the Anatolian Peninsula, which is still sometimes called
Asia Minor; it was only gradually -- though certainly by the time of
Herodotus in the 5th Century B.C. -- that it began to dawn on the Greek
world that there was an extensive and seamless land connection between
Europe and Asia north of the Black Sea. By that time the terminology
had become established.
I suspect that the now-traditional placement of the northern portion of
the dividing line between Europe and Asia at the Urals, far to the
northeast of the Black Sea, has something to do with the limits of
Russian settlement and political dominion in early modern times, say
1500 or so; but I will happily defer to someone more expert in Russian
history.
Alan "Had the Mycenaeans but had a few satellite photos at their
disposal...." Follett
> David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> ? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
> War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
> colonies (which ultimately became the United States).
Not all of us here in England would describe the USA as revolting nowadays.
Chris "but we might think it" C
(de-x email address to de-spam)
>> I just post it for comparison between what I was taught
>
>Along the lines of "interesting" education: I asked what a continent
>
>Somewhat related quandry: are there four or five oceans? I think most
>
>-Samwise "Seven seas? I can barely remember the seven dwarfs"
>
Really, it seems to me that this whole thread is about education --
geography education, grammar school division. "They" (the teachers
and educators and textbook writers) think that the best way to pound
information into our heads is to chop it up into nice, memorizable
categories: seven seas, five oceans, six continents, or whatever. All
of a piece with memorizing dates.
Whereas, judging from this bunch, they'd be better off asking questions
like, "what is a continent, exactly? an ocean? a sea? let's look at
the map and think about how the earth was formed, the politics and
geography and plates -- what do you think?"
Maggie "always asking why" Newman
--
"I used to be troubled, but then I saw the light.
Now I don't worry about a thing, 'cause I know
Nothing's going to be all right."
M. Allison
According to "Continental Drift - the Evolution of a Concept" written by Ursula B. Marvin,
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. and editing out a LOT (the book is 230
pages) it seems each plate drifts at a different rate. The central valley of Iceland, at the
north of the Atlantic Rift is opening at about 0.356cm per year, averaged over the last 5000
years. She does not give any other modern, verified, drift speeds that I have found, yet.
Jack
>>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
>
>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
>by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
>colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
>grows. This factoid isn't an urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so
>it's way OT, but can anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on
>my own keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
>Guinness World Book.
>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
>by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
>colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
>grows. This factoid isn't an urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so
>it's way OT, but can anyone begin to substantiate this?
Not I, said the vector.
I *do* recall some plate movement (probably the pacific/north
american, but maybe not) being stated as moving around an inch per
year (averages, of course).
That's slower than my fingernails, but in the right order of
magnitude.
Drew "and they're not colliding. they're scraping each other" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | Of all the things I've lost |
| [email protected] | I miss my mind the most |
Maybe, maybe not. But there is a biiiig chunk of ice and snow.
--
> I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to
> do with major plates and plate tectonics
If so, that definition is a rather late one, as plate tectonics was not
widely accepted until fairly late in the 20th century.
--
Anders Thulin [email protected] 040-10 50 63
Telia Prosoft AB, Hjälmaregatan 3B, 212 19 Malmö, Sweden
>>Previously, cwp stated, in part,
>>
>>>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>>>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>>>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
>>
>>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's
>>shows hosted by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental
>>plates (at least those colliding in California) are moving at
>>about the rate at which a fingernail grows. This factoid isn't an
>>urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so it's way OT, but can
>>anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on my own
>>keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
>>Guinness World Book.
>Well, the San Andreas fault is presumed to move on the order of
>20-some feet per century. How fast does a fingernail grow?
Nail: fingernail growth rate: 1 cm/3 months (0.1 mm/day), toenail growth 1 cm/9
months
>>>> Another question: why is the landmass at the south pole a
>>>> continent, and not the one at the north pole?
>>
>>Duh...maybe because dere is a landmass at da sout pole?
And not one at the north pole.
Reply to:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:53:08 -0500, Jacquilynne < [email protected] >
wrote:
>[...] As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
>there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
>single continent [...]
How come they're one continent when, only a few million years ago they
weren't even join by a land bridge? The gap was so big that Cuba was
able to sail through it from the Pacific.
--
Remove NOSPAM from my email address to reply.
My opinions are not necessarily those of my employers.
I wanted to stay out of this...Sorry, this is a subject where precise
answers demand a precise question----I don't believe Anders provide the
question to do that. Though it is something to discuss.
In USpeak, many Americans seem to be cautious *not* to include The
British Islands with Europe. I've heard many people say "We're going to
Europe."---"Where?" "London...."----"Oh, you're _not_ going to Europe,
Europe is on *the continent*---you're going to the British Isles" Many
French *will not* include Britain as part of Europe.
The wars were *on* *The Continent*---June 6, '44 was an invasion *of*
*The Continent*.
Most books about Turkey *divide* the country between Europe and
Asia---What about the the land east of Turkey? Well, no one is sure
where Asia ends and Europe begins---Especially as it concerns the old
Soviet Republics. Eurocentrics that we are, try to give a country a
break (many will include part of Russia in Europe---part in Asia, St
Petersburg is in *European* Russia)--- unless it sounds Asian---the
*stahns* are all Asian.
Then there's Japan, Asian, *in* Asia, but not like The British Isles
that are not in Europe? (Do we reflexively call it Asia, better than the
*Orient*?)
Egypt is *rarely* African---But, *Middle-Eastern* solved that.
Soooo. I believe it depends on how one or why is speaking of "A
Continents" and maybe were they are from. There are different terms for
the same places/people depending on whether we are describing political,
geological and geographical entities or the cultural designations for
the people that inhabit these places.
If you have have a plane load of people departing from Canada, the U.S,
Mexico and various South American countries. Ask the *Americans* to
raise their hand----what happens? Only the folks from the U.S will raise
their hands.
OK. I'll do the math. For a fingernail that's 4cm/year or
4m/century. So the San Andreas appears to be faster, since it moves
at maybe 7m/century.
> Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are started
> by people of dubious existance and responded to by other similar personas,
> all debating troll topics?
David Hatunen < [email protected] > wrote in message
news:%[email protected]...
> Joseph M. Shair < [email protected] > wrote:
> >
> >David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
> >news:[email protected]...
> >> It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
> >> second part of two step process. The first step would be to
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >> define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >> South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
> >
> >[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
> >of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
>
> I fail to see how the quote from the OED2 has helped the discussion
> one bit. In fact, it seems to muddy the waters even more.
But it muddies them *authoritatively*.
Joe "Authority (go) figure" Shair
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:53:08 -0500, Jacquilynne < [email protected] >
> wrote:
> >[...] As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
> >there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
> >single continent [...]
> How come they're one continent when, only a few million years ago they
> weren't even join by a land bridge? The gap was so big that Cuba was
> able to sail through it from the Pacific.
>
Asia really didn't start at the Bosphorus or the Urines, but on a line
stretched between Buda and Helsinki, representing the extent of the
FinnoUgrians (sp?) migrations/conquests.
Greenland only looks like a continent on school maps which are mostly
Mercators. On the lesser used Fornicator Projection, Greenland's about
the size of the Aisle of Wight.
Austria was grated continental status shortly after the Defenestration
of Prague (or was it the Hemorrhoidectomy of Brno) to compensate for an
insular papanoia rampant there. Limited genetically to a spread no more
diverse than samples scraped from the slimy stones of Newgate and
Tolbooth, forced to wear magnetic insoles to keep from toppling off the
soft underbelly of civilization, and pretty much ignored by
right-thinking folks everywhere, Austria has recently been awarded the
title of "Big Island" formerly used by Hawaii, Hawaii, now known as St.
Brendan's Isle, while continental status has devolved upon Lower
Mingrelia.
Urop is only considered a continent among ravening Eurocentrics. For
the rest of us, it's simply an attractive group of appendages to an
otherwise uninteresting expanse of steppe/tundra/taiga.
--
No body parts were mentioned. No sexual act were proposed. The exit was
not shown.
And David seems to be thriving on this thread---He does not usually open
his doors to trolls. David is a softy. David is a softy. David is a
softy. David is a softy.
I should have waited a year to join.
Michael "Hey, I did wait" Glaser
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
>On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:53:08 -0500, Jacquilynne < [email protected] >
>wrote:
>>[...] As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
>>there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
>>single continent [...]
>How come they're one continent when, only a few million years ago they
>weren't even join by a land bridge? The gap was so big that Cuba was
>able to sail through it from the Pacific.
That is probably because the Brazilians weren't talking about it
a few million years ago.
Western Utah is (mostly) dry land, even though it used to be under
Lake Bonneville. What was the case a few million years ago isn't
relevant to current terminology.
That said, apparently it is common in Latin America to think of
"the americas" as one continent. Ref: a friend who taught ESL to
Latin American immigrants.
Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
count because we insist on the existance of a mythical geographical
entity called "central america."
Drew "what size sail did Cuba use?" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
>Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
>count because we insist on the existance of a mythical
>geographical entity called "central america."
No more mythical than the term "midwestern states".
--
> > David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> > ? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
> > War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
> > colonies (which ultimately became the United States).
>
> Not all of us here in England would describe the USA as revolting nowadays.
>
> Chris "but we might think it" C
> (de-x email address to de-spam)
The OED of CD is on my wish list. The Oxford English Dictionary
is ultimate reference in regards to the English language.
However in regards to this discussion the OED is not particularly
relevant.
The question is not what the definitions of continent are. The
question is, or as least should bd, what criteria for a continent
where used to derive the list in question. I think it more a
question of geology than English.
David
In article < [email protected] >, Olivers < [email protected] >
wrote:
| Urop is only considered a continent among ravening Eurocentrics. For
| the rest of us, it's simply an attractive group of appendages to an
| otherwise uninteresting expanse of steppe/tundra/taiga.
As blatant a troll as this may be, I do feel constrained to point out
by way of counterexample the relative absence of erhu players and Tuvan
kargyraa singers in such comparative cultural meccae as Ozona, Texas.
Chris "though I've never seen Santiago Jiminez, Jr. and Kangar-ool
Ondar in the same photo" Clarke
--
"Though wonderful to watch, transformation from larva to pupa
or from pupa to butterfly is not a particularly pleasant process
for the subject involved." -- Vladimir Nabokov
Michael Glaser < [email protected] , [email protected] > wrote:
>David Hatunen wrote:
>> >Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
>> >count because we insist on the existance of a mythical
>> >geographical entity called "central america."
>>
>> No more mythical than the term "midwestern states".
>*Geographical* entity?
>Which states comprise the midwest?
Depends.
>*I* know the counties of Central America.
That's nothing. I know the countries.
(I know; cheapshot spelling thing. I couldn't resist)
OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
"New England".
> >Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
> >count because we insist on the existance of a mythical
> >geographical entity called "central america."
>
> No more mythical than the term "midwestern states".
>
> ******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
*Geographical* entity?
Which states comprise the midwest?
*I* know the counties of Central America.
Michael
> Michael Glaser < [email protected] , [email protected] > wrote:
> >*I* know the counties of Central America.
>
> That's nothing. I know the countries.
>
> (I know; cheapshot spelling thing. I couldn't resist)
A long as it was not in retaliation for me calling you a *softy*.
If I was honest, it was misspelt---If I was lying, it was not---But I do
not know the largest local administrative unit in the Central American
COUNTRIES! Hell, I don't even know if *they* have counties?
> OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
> "New England".
I prefer Great Lakes States as a definition of *my* geographical region.
Michael "I think the last guy left and the lights are already off"
Glaser
******* My typos are intentional attention getters ******
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Larry Palletti wrote:
}On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 12:31:10 GMT, [email protected] (Fred#Paris)
}wrote:
}>Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
}>and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
}
}Probably because there's no land mass at the North Pole.
True. The Earth is really hollow, and the water and ice just float
there above the central void.
Dr H
}>> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
}>> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
}>
}>Um, is this for real?
}
}Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are
}started by people of dubious existance and responded to by other
}similar personas, all debating troll topics?
Yes.
>The gap was so big that Cuba was
>able to sail through it from the Pacific.
This explains the ubiquity of restaurants in New York advertising
"comidas Cubanas y Chinas".
>Well, the San Andreas fault is presumed to move on the order of
>20-some feet per century. How fast does a fingernail grow?
Before or after death?
Drew Lawson < [email protected] > wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
<snip Spock said plates move about as fast as fingernails grow>
> I *do* recall some plate movement (probably the pacific/north
> american, but maybe not) being stated as moving around an inch per
> year (averages, of course).
> That's slower than my fingernails, but in the right order of
> magnitude.
From _Essentials of Geology_ Chernicoff / Fox (2nd ed. 2000) p.13:
"Although the fact that entire continents and ocean basins are in motion is
rather astonishing, the rate at which they move is not; it is comparable to
the rate of growth of your fingernails-only a few centimeters per year."
also p.201:
"How rapidly, then, do plates move? Combining the information gleaned from
relatively stationary oceanic hot spots, magnetic anomalies, and orbiting
satellites, we have been able to determine that the Pacific, Nazca, Cocos,
and Australian-Indian plates, among the Earth's fastest, move more than 10
cm. (4 in.) per year. The N. and S. American, Eurasian, and Antarctic
plates, among the slowest movers, travel 1 to 3 cm.(.4-1.2 in.) per year."
If anyone cares, there are seven major plates (N.American, S.American,
African, Eurasian, Indian-Australian, Pacific, and Antarctic) as well as
eight smaller ones.
In article <C%lk4.51$ [email protected] >,
David Hatunen < [email protected] > wrote:
>OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
>"New England".
Thats easy. It's the tri-state area, plus, errrm, the other
tri-state area?
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which
> include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the
> other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected
> with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like
> North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like
> Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent?
> I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a
> continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is
> pride,
Well, I dont know about you, but I was taught this by the nuns and
dammit, they know their shit.
Grindo
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On Sat, 29 Jan 2000 01:45:53 GMT, [email protected]
(Fred#Paris) wrote:
>However I admit I was mistaken in my use of the term 'landmass' for
>what's at the North Pole. 'Icemass' would have been more appropriate.
>
>And, from now on, *I* intend to call this icemass a continent.
>Everyone else can do it the old fashioned way.
Especially the submarines who surfaced from under the
"continental icemass" at the North Pole?
Barbara Needham
> [...] Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
> colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
> grows.
If my own half-assed searches[1] are anything to go by, this factoid is
indeed true, more or less.
Continental drift was given by various sites as 1-10 cm/year, 2
inches/year, or "several" inches/year. Bear in mind that different
plates move at different rates.
Fingernail growth was given as 0.1mm/day, or 3 mm/month, or described as
taking 8 months to grow 1 inch, or 5-6 months to grow out from the base
to the end of the nail bed. The nails on each hand grow at a different
rate (your preferred hand grows its nails faster) and the nails on
different fingers grow at different rates (middle finger fastest). Other
factors (e.g. nutrition) affect growth rate.
1 inch = 2.54 cm. 1 cm = 10 mm. After doing all the necessary
conversions to get a bunch of numbers all using the same units for both
distance and time, the result is, yes they're all in the same ballpark.
Surprisingly close, in fact.
It's good enough for an informal comparison, or as a way to grasp the
rate of continental drift, by comparing it to the speed of growing
fingernails[1]. There is, of course, no one correct number for growth
rate of continental drift, just as there is no one correct number for
fingernail growth. There is a range for each, and *so many* fudge
factors that go into the range. Keeping that caveat in mind, though, it
remains true, that yes, continental drift rate is about equal to
fingernail growth rate.
[1] Since there is another thread about search engines, how I searched
may be of interest to some. I searched for sites on continental drift
rate and fingernail growth rate separately; I didn't try to find sites
that mentioned both.
Continental drift--used Google, with search keywords (including quotes):
"continental drift" "per year"
Fingernail growth--used Ask Jeeves and AltaVista, entering the question:
how fast do fingernails grow?
Hit several promising-looking sites in each set of results quickly; on
each one, doing several text searches for keywords like "per", "day", or
"month" to jump to spots of most probable relevance. Jotted down numbers
on an (electronic) sticky note as I went along.
[2] Or vice versa, using the rate of continental drift to help one grasp
how fast fingernails grew. But less likely. Fingernails growing is a
more commonplace and familiar and visible event than continental plates
moving, and it is usually the commonplace thingy that is used to help
one grasp a concept relating to a less familiar thingy. ("Thingy" here
is just a generic term used to mean an object, an event, a process, an
abstract idea, or anything else.)
keith "how about thread drift? what's the speed of that?" lim
--
In article <86r1dp$8je$ [email protected] >, [email protected] says...
> "section8" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> >>So what makes Europe a continent?
>
> Politics, same as North America.
>
No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the first two posters
have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously interested!
Doug
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
>No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the first two posters
>have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously interested!
If you're referring to me, I haven't vanished (although my existence
is pretty dubious).
I just don't have anything useful to add.... I agree with about
everything that's been said.
However I admit I was mistaken in my use of the term 'landmass' for
what's at the North Pole. 'Icemass' would have been more appropriate.
And, from now on, *I* intend to call this icemass a continent.
Everyone else can do it the old fashioned way.
Fred
On Fri, 28 Jan 2000 01:40:00 +0000, [email protected] (Chris C)
wrote:
>> David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>> ? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
>> War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
>> colonies (which ultimately became the United States).
>
>Not all of us here in England would describe the USA as revolting nowadays.
>
But many of us here in The Great White North would.
Bill in Vancouver
In article < [email protected] >, [email protected] says...
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2000 00:24:31 -0000, Doug Weller
> < [email protected] > wrote:
>
> >No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the first two posters
> >have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously interested!
>
> If you're referring to me, I haven't vanished (although my existence
> is pretty dubious).
Ok. The first poster certainly does seem to have nothing to say, and that is
very strange (or simply the sign of a troll).
> I just don't have anything useful to add.... I agree with about
> everything that's been said.
> However I admit I was mistaken in my use of the term 'landmass' for
> what's at the North Pole. 'Icemass' would have been more appropriate.
>
> And, from now on, *I* intend to call this icemass a continent.
Fine, but are you really ever going to mention subs going under the Arctic
Continent? :)
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
> In USpeak, many Americans seem to be cautious *not* to include The
> British Islands with Europe. I've heard many people say "We're going to
> Europe."---"Where?" "London...."----"Oh, you're _not_ going to Europe,
> Europe is on *the continent*---you're going to the British Isles" Many
> French *will not* include Britain as part of Europe.
Geographically (here's that landmass thing again), the British Isles are not
a part of the continent of Europe...politically they are (whether they care
to admit it or not)...in fact, when the nations of the world are divvied up,
*Iceland* usually ends up part of Europe as well, as do such smaller and
less ambiguous island nations as Cyprus....
> Then there's Japan, Asian, *in* Asia, but not like The British Isles
> that are not in Europe? (Do we reflexively call it Asia, better than the
> *Orient*?)
Go ahead, tell the average Japanese citizen that he's "Asian"...the result
should be entertaining....
> If you have have a plane load of people departing from Canada, the U.S,
> Mexico and various South American countries. Ask the *Americans* to
> raise their hand----what happens? Only the folks from the U.S will raise
> their hands.
We did this one a couple of months ago...I deal often enough at work with
Mexicans, Venezuelans, Brazilians and Argentines that I know better...Deja
should show a number of instances of the word "norteño" in my past posts
here...(and the previous point is one reason the international keyboard is
so accessible to me)....r
> No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the
> first two posters
> have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously
> interested!
Still here, still reading. Cheers!
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>Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
>North Pole?,......
Because there _is_ a huge mass of ice up there. However, there is no land
underneath the ice. So quite technically, they are in fact traveling
hundreds of miles over water to the north pole. The fact that it's frozen
water floating on liquid water does not make this any less true.
Oh, yes, and please change your setting to remove that HTML signature from
your messages. Posting HTML to Usenet is Just Not A Good Idea. Not
everyone's news reader can read HTML.
Andrea "and I told mine not to, because it's annoying." Jones
--
". . . ordinary people will do extraordinary things out
of honour, and duty, and love, and . . . courage
is something you don't know you have until you need it."
--Paul Tomblin
> Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
> North Pole?,......
Did you never notice that ice floats?
--
Nick Spalding
>Fine, but are you really ever going to mention subs going under the Arctic
>Continent? :)
Let's look at it this way : why are there certain things that you call
continents, and others that you don't.
For example : Australia'a an island, it's also called a continent.
England's an island, it's not called a continent.
So, what's the difference ? The two that immediately come to mind are:
-Australia is BIG
-Australia is not near something bigger that'a already a continent.
So, an icecube floating in the middle of the sea wouldn't be a
continent.
But, the arctic icemass is BIG. Also, it's placed far enough form
Europe/Asia & North America considering its size.
So, *I* think it maybe it could qualify for the rank of continent.
What ? Submarines ?
-no one ever said that continents was something submarines couldn't go
under. Let's dig a big tunnel full of water from New York to LA, and
have the submarines go under there.
-its not stranger than digging a tunnel under water and have trains go
under, like in the English Channel
-but, to preserve peace, I accept to refer to this arctic icemass as a
"F-continent". The F will stand for Fred.
Or for "floating".
It doesn't matter what you call it. It never comes.
Barbara "draw euro conclusion" Mikkelson
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Urban legends and more --> http://www.snopes.com
> > I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to=
>
> > do with major plates and plate tectonics =
>
> If so, that definition is a rather late one, as plate tectonics was not=
>
> widely accepted until fairly late in the 20th century.
>
Maybe not plate tectonics, but continental drift? And ancient
shorelines? I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
-L
In a previous article, [email protected] (Lisa R. Arnold) said:
>Maybe not plate tectonics, but continental drift? And ancient
Continental Drift was not being taken seriously 75 years ago.
--
Paul Tomblin, not speaking for anybody.
"I find your lack of clue...disturbing" - Sithadmin Vader.
> Geographically (here's that landmass thing again), the British Isles are not
> a part of the continent of Europe..
But geologically the British Isles are very definitely part of the
continent of Europe. It just so happens that at the present time
there is more water in the oceans than the ocean basins can
hold. So Europe (and all the other continents of the world)
are under about 600 feet of water, the so-called continental
shelf. By the same token, Greenland is part of the continent
of North America and, although I hate to admit it, the
Falkland Islands are part of the continent of South America.
> *Iceland* usually ends up part of Europe as well, as do such smaller and
> less ambiguous island nations as Cyprus....
However, Iceland is very definitely _not_ part of the
continent of Europe, and Cyprus is of mixed parentage,
being separated at the moment from both Europe and
Africa on its own microplate, but having elements of
both in its geologic makeup.
If you want to have a water separation between
continents, what was the boundary between
Africa and Asia before the Suez Canal? The
Red Sea? It doesn't go all the way through.
What about the boundary between North
America and South America? Which continent
does Central America belong to?
Better we should drop the whole matter. It
belongs over at alt.fan.cecil-adams, not here.
Charles Wm. "a part of the continent, a piece
of the main" Dimmick
> Fine, but are you really ever going to mention subs going under the Arctic
> Continent? :)
And here, all along, I thought continents were made out of, umm, like,
umm, dirt, or something.
1. One of the principal land masses of the earth.
[From Latin (terra) continEns, continuous (land)]
The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition
-Stan "put that in your Funk & Wagnalls and smoke it" Greene-
> I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
> collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
> at which said collision occured (is occurring). In brief,
> because continental crusts are so much thicker (30-50 km vs
> ~7 km) and less dense (2.7 g/cm^3 vs 3.0 g/cm^3) than
> oceanic crusts, when they meet at a converging plate
> boundary, neither plate is subducted (which is the case in
> oceanic/oceanic or continental/oceanic boundary collisions).
> The result is a buckling of the plates, which tend to be
> pushed upward or sideways. Thus, the Himalayas and the
> Tibetan Plateau.
Well, yes and no. While it is true that the Indian plate was
not subducted into the mantle, it did get pushed _under_
the Eurasian plate. At one time India and Eurasia were
separated by the Tethys Ocean. The Tethys oceanic
floor was part of the Indian plate. So when India and
Eurasia started moving towards each other the denser
Tethys floor was subducted under the Eurasian plate.
When the Tethys finally closed, the Indian continent
part of the plate kept moving in the same direction, only
it was too light to be subducted into the mantle, so it
ended up wedged under the Eurasian Plate, and since
India couldn't go down, that part of Eurasia went up.
Thus the very high but relatively flat Tibetian Plateau.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
> by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
> colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
> grows.
There are no plates colliding in either southern or central California.
They are moving sideways relative to each other, at a rate of about
6 cm a year, give-or-take. There is a plate _collision_ in northern
California, but not the one that Nimoy was talking about. The
Juan de Fuca plate is being subducted under the North American
Plate and is all but gone by now, except for a little piece offshore
Washington and Oregon and very northernmost part of California.
Charles D.
> Is it finally time to break down an put in that global WebTV filter?
No. There's Alan. And this one woman on rec.equestrian. I wish the heck
they'd change ISPs. See what we do for you, Mr. Follett?
Deborah Stevenson
david nixon wrote:
> it seems each plate drifts at a different rate. The central valley of Iceland, at the
> north of the Atlantic Rift is opening at about 0.356cm per year, averaged over the last 5000
> years.
North Atlantic Ridge --- 3.2 cm/yr
North Indian Ocean --- 3.8 cm/yr
South Atlantic Ridge --- 5 cm/yr
South Pacific Ocean --- 9.5 cm/yr
Pacific-Antarctic Rise-- 12.5 cm/yr
East Pacific Rise ------- 17 cm/yr
[I'm not too sure about this last one. It may be
based on faulty data]
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
> million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
> projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
> level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
Please give me data as to title of map, when published, inserted
in which issue of National Geographic, etc. I will check it with my
collection (going back to 1934). Something doesn't seem right,
based on your description. Especially, having Great Britain as a
projection of Greenland. More-or-less impossible, as far as I
know, especially for 49 million years ago. You sure it wasn't
490 million years ago, and the sea was the Iapetus instead of
the Atlantic?
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> Continental Drift was not being taken seriously 75 years ago.
Not in the northern hemisphere (see notes from the lecture
I gave yesterday), but popular among many southern
hemisphere geologists, especially in South Africa and
Argentina. Anyway, continental drift as proposed by
Wegener was impossible. He would have had the continents
plowing their way through the oceanic crust.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
> "New England".
Where's the problem, other than this big silver hook dangling
in front of me? We even have legal definitions of what constitutes
New England. Try the New England dairy compact.
Or the fact that the Northeast Section of AIPG is defined as
NY, NJ and New England, and nobody has any doubt as to
what is included.
Charles Wm. "past president of NE-AIPG" Dimmick
Not speaking for Lisa, but I can attest that her description is accurate,
except, possibly, for the description of 'bulbous', of which I don't know
the scientific definition, so I'll try to be more accurate:
(Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue. Should've been in your mail two
or three days ago).
Europe is certainly separated from Asia along roughly what would be the
Urals today by a shallow sea. Great Britain is connected to Greenland by a
narrow strip of land (of width about one fifth the full width of Britain).
However, it sits on an undersea shelf which is connected to Greenland and
which is as wide as Britain itself. The other (southern) side of this
shelf goes on to France and Spain. It is hard to tell what is the average
elevation of the landbridge between Britain and Greenland. But I don't
think this is important because the sea shelf is wide and clear, so it
doesn't matter whether the rise above sea level is significant or not.
As for deep water and the Atlantic ocean, they start southwest of the
shelf connecting Britain and Greenland, and extend southward. There is
also another deep water trench between the northeastern part of this
shelf and Scandinavia. The south and north trenches are not connected.
They were probably connected at a later time to form the present day
Atlantic.
To summarize, If we look only on the 'shelfs', and not care about the
waterline, then Europe, Asia, Britain, and Greenland are connected (though
there is no direct contact between Greenland and Scandinavia). On the
other hand, If we look at what peeks from the water, then Europe is an
island (disconnected from Asia), and Britain is connected to Greenland,
and disconnected from Europe.
The map says 49 million years ago and this is also mentioned at least
three times in the text as well (which is about some stupid fossils, BTW).
Yehuda
>> Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
>> North Pole?,......
>Did you never notice that ice floats?
Ice flows?
I though it was a supercooled a%$##ah^*2
NO CARRIER
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
Is it finally time to break down an put in that global WebTV filter?
Drew "for couch potatoes with VCRs flashing 12:00-12:00-12:00" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
> > I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
> > million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
> > projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
> > level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
>
> Please give me data as to title of map, when published, inserted
> in which issue of National Geographic, etc. I will check it with my
> collection (going back to 1934). Something doesn't seem right,
> based on your description. Especially, having Great Britain as a
> projection of Greenland. More-or-less impossible, as far as I
> know, especially for 49 million years ago. You sure it wasn't
> 490 million years ago, and the sea was the Iapetus instead of
> the Atlantic?
Well, actually, it's in the current issue. And it's not a full-fledged
map. It's a graphic accompanying an article on the Eocene fossils at the
Messel site in Germany. The graphic is labelled National Geographic Maps,
Source: Christopher R. Scotese, Paleomap Project. It superimposes the
current European coastline over an artist's rendition of the ancient one.
And the article specifically says, "...[during the Eocene,] Europe was an
island..."
-L "will the venerable Society come under fire or is it just me" Arnold
Charles Wm. Dimmick < [email protected] > wrote:
>David Hatunen wrote:
>> OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
>> "New England".
>Where's the problem, other than this big silver hook dangling in
>front of me? We even have legal definitions of what constitutes
>New England. Try the New England dairy compact. Or the fact that
>the Northeast Section of AIPG is defined as NY, NJ and New
>England, and nobody has any doubt as to what is included.
And, taking it full circle, there's not much doubt about what
constitutes Central America, which is no more "mythical" than new
England.
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
> If you want to have a water separation between
> continents, what was the boundary between
> Africa and Asia before the Suez Canal? The
> Red Sea? It doesn't go all the way through.
> What about the boundary between North
> America and South America? Which continent
> does Central America belong to?
Isaac Asimov did one of his F&SF [1] columns on the continents, finally concluding
that there were four: The World Island (his name for what he first considered
calling "Eurafrasia", correctly noting that only a man-made channel prevents you
from walking overland from Norway to Capetown to Kowloon), the "New World Island"
(again, the only clear separation of North and South America is an human
artifact), Australia and Antarctica...all the smaller landmasses he covered in
another article....
Now, a while back, someone asked about the "seven seas"...Asimov's article on the
oceans came up with three: Atlantic, Pacific and Indian...he said the traditional
seven separated the Atlantic into North and South, likewise the Pacific, and also
included the Arctic and Antarctic...his suggestion for those who consider the
Arctic a separate ocean is to look at a globe rather than a flat map; that this
would make it clearer that it's really just an arm of the Atlantic in the global
scheme of things (in much the same way that Europe is an arm of the much larger
continent of "The World Island")....r
[1] popular abbreviation for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, for
which Dr A wrote a monthly science column from the mid-1950s until shortly before
his death in the early 1990s...these columns are collected in batches of seventeen
[2] in various books
[2] one book explains this bit of numerology in its obligatory foreword
>And, taking it full circle, there's not much doubt about what
>constitutes Central America, which is no more "mythical" than new
>England.
As taught in geography classes as the primary and secondary level,
there is certainly something mythical about it. It's there in the
sequence: North America, Central America, South America. I'd
venture that many people came out of high school with the distinct
impression that Cenntral America is distinct from the other two.
Drew "which explains why so many get
confused at Mexico being north American" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | So many newsgroups |
| [email protected] | So little time |
> On 30 Jan 2000, Drew Lawson wrote:
>
> > Is it finally time to break down an put in that global WebTV filter?
>
> No. There's Alan. And this one woman on rec.equestrian. I wish the heck
> they'd change ISPs. See what we do for you, Mr. Follett?
If you have Agent a kill filter based on:
author: (webtv & ! {follett})
works nicely for this group. You would have to substitute something
else for follett in rec.equestrian.
--
Nick Spalding
In article < [email protected] >, [email protected] wrote:
> [...] Eurocentrics that we are, try to give a country a
> break (many will include part of Russia in Europe---part in Asia, St
> Petersburg is in *European* Russia)--- unless it sounds Asian---the
> *stahns* are all Asian. [...]
According to the standard definition (ie, the Ural-Caucasus boundary), both
Daghestan and Tatarstan are in Europe.
mdl
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which
include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
> perhaps, involed here?
> * Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion
Network *
> The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet -
Free!
What you cite is actually a very relevant social issue. The moguls of
media are alarmed that today's house-bound generation would rather
spend time at the internet than at the network. I remember at the
second grade, when parents were contemplating a 500 mile trip to Dallas
during school year to aid striken granny, we were in interview @ Allen
Elementary in Hutchinson, Kansas - I spoke up and offered as
demonstration of my not needing school for two weeks that I could
observe that the earth was round; and that the cardboard object in
front of us only modeled the world ~ it was not the world itself.
This brought a round of stares and the assessment that I would not
suffer the loss of the two weeks.
It must have been during that two weeks that all students were shown:
1. Life sucks, and then you cry.
2. Educational is a big scam by which those who cannot find employment
in the field in the real world propogate fantastic [of or having the
nature of fantasy] ideas about how the world works so as to justifiy
continued employment by keeping those who are not prepared for harsh
realities and the risks they contain from those risks & and those who
fail to find ensconsment in the overall mythology are estranged to a
risk-pool euphmisitcally labeled 'poverty'.
I note with interest that today's 6pm newscasts tend to cite go.net
which points to disney - which is itself the recipient of massive
government funding under the defensible accounting of 'for the
children' ... which in turn, buys advertising on the 6pm news as being
the web.
The world is cruel and desparately needs people like you.
The head honcho @ sun has repeatedly asserted that it is a very real
risk that we will all be forcibly implanted with thought-control
devices just exactly of the nature of some punk-hollywoood2000 movie.
There are zillions who stand ready to support the 'easy-way' social
structure where such things as camping would be outlawed for those who
do not have RV's. It has already happend to me that I was questioned
solely on the basis that I did not have a tent or other structure to
sleep in; this in a park where a decade ago I simply slept on the
ground without answering to anybody.
I have put up under http nearly a quarter of a million bytes of
straight ascii/html - most of which either harps on this or has a
traceable basis to this purpose.
--
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
In article < [email protected] >, [email protected] says...
> Let's look at it this way : why are there certain things that you call
> continents, and others that you don't.
>
> For example : Australia'a an island, it's also called a continent.
> England's an island, it's not called a continent.
>
England is on the European continental shelf, and at times has been an integral
part of that continent. Ah, looking ahead before carrying on, I see Charles has
gone into detail on this, nevermind.
Doug
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
And what of the catastrophists McPhee describes? If that is a good word?
Don "Just wondering" Whittington
"Aside from its unscientificaliness, it has destroyed my faith
in my fellow man. (My fellow women are still faithable.)"
--Timothy A. McDaniel on the state of the poll
Actually, I've been known to send helpful hints to other WebTV clients, where
the offense is something specific and correctable like posting HTML, rather
than generalized webicility. Results have occasionally been encouraging.
The problem is, although WebTV has a page on Usenet conventions and
etiquette, they don't go out of their way to call it to their customers'
attention.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
>>And, taking it full circle, there's not much doubt about what
>>constitutes Central America, which is no more "mythical" than new
>>England.
>As taught in geography classes as the primary and secondary level,
>there is certainly something mythical about it. It's there in the
>sequence: North America, Central America, South America. I'd
>venture that many people came out of high school with the distinct
>impression that Cenntral America is distinct from the other two.
>
>Drew "which explains why so many get
> confused at Mexico being north American" Lawson
Well, Mexico is in NAFTA and none of the Central American countries
are. If the diplomats can't get it straight, why should the kids?
--
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
>> > I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
>> > million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
>> > projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
>> > level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
'Continental Drift', pg 163, fig. 73:"a plan of the ocean floors illustrating the configuration of
the midocean ridges, transform faults and transverse fracture zones..." shows Great Britain as
part of the European mass.
Pg. 166, fig 76, a map of the rigid plates form 1968, shows the European plate as bordered by the
mid-atlantic, Azores and Gibralter and the northern edge of the Med.
There are many maps which show GB as attached to or touching North America, but so was the rest of
Europe at that time.
Jack 'I lived in the Aleutians and still like quakes' Ray
Reply to:
[email protected]
St. Elizabeth Community, Norwood, Ohio
>East Pacific Rise ------- 17 cm/yr
>[I'm not too sure about this last one. It may be
>based on faulty data]
>
Hi Charles
The figure I found for the East-Pac rise (lat 51 S) is 4.4cm/year spreading rate, or a total
separation of 8.8cm/year. This was based on Vine's magnetic and age samples, both continental and
oceanic. The reference was to a 1966 report, tho, so the figures might have been corrected.
Jack 'read a lot' Ray
On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Michael wrote:
}Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
}North Pole?,......
Hmm... this must be a trick question.
Um, they walk on the ice?
Dr H
> > > Continental Drift was not being taken seriously 75 years ago.
> >
> > .And what of the catastrophists McPhee describes? If that is a good
> word?
In general, catastrophists haven't been taken seriously by
the scientific community since 1829. However, I think we
have now drifted so far from the original topic and have gone
far enough off-charter that followups should be by e-mail.
You know where to find me.
Charles D.
> How about geology? Just because Asia and Europe are united today doesn't have
> to mean that they are have always always been part of the same landmass.
Can of worms. Europe was fused to Asia at the end of the Permian
Period, about 250 million years ago. But when we go down this
road we find that there are hundreds (I do not exaggerate) of other
fusions of plates and microplates in the geologic record. In my own
very tiny state of Connecticut the northwest corner belongs to
ancestral North America and the southeast corner is part of
Avalon, which may or may not have been part of Africa at one
time. Most of the stuff inbetween was part of the Iapetus Ocean.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
Charles Wm. Dimmick < [email protected] > wrote:
And California is largely made up of terranes, sort of islands on
the Pacific plate the got rammed into California back when there
was a subduction zone along the California coast.
--
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
> In general, catastrophists haven't been taken seriously by
> the scientific community since 1829.
What, Velikovsky doesn't count as the scientific community?
Mark D "warning: this message contains irony" Lew
> > > I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
> > > million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
> > > projection of Greenland.
> Not speaking for Lisa, but I can attest that her description is accurate,
> except, possibly, for the description of 'bulbous', of which I don't know
> the scientific definition, so I'll try to be more accurate:
>
> (Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue. Should've been in your mail two
> or three days ago).
OK, I finally got a copy. Whoever drew that map should be shot.
It is not exactly wrong, but it isn't exactly right either.
1. Absolutely correct but absolutely misleading is the fact that the
map shows the present outlines of Great Britain, Scandinavia, and
Greenland in their present positions relative to the equator by thin
white lines.
2. In solid colors they show the positions of land 49 million years
ago in the places where that land was 49 million years ago. Note
the two white dots labeled "Messel today" and "49 million years
ago". Notice how much separation there is.
3. Note, running along the southeast side of the Greenland of
49 million years ago a deep trench, which seems to be covered
by the "connection" between Great Britain and Greenland. This
is interpretive. Other reconstructions of paleogeography do not
show this covering, or else show a completely submerged
platform. If you move the white lines to put Greenland in its
present position you will find Iceland sitting in the middle of
that platform. When North American finally made its last
break of connecting links between North America/Greenland
and Europe, about 60 million years ago, there was the
beginning of vast outpourings of basaltic lava at this spot,
so much lava that a shallow ridge developed, covering the
newly formed mid-ocean rift at this point, with part
extending above sea level to form the beginnings of what
is now Iceland. Some geologists have interpreted the data
to indicate that the lava flows completely bridged the
gap between Greenland and Great Britain, with Iceland
sitting in the middle of the bridge. Others disagree that
the bridge was that complete. Anyway, it isn't
continental crust bridging the gap; it is oceanic crust.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Charles Wm. Dimmick wrote:
> Yehuda Naveh wrote:
> > (Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue. Should've been in your mail two
> > or three days ago).
> OK, I finally got a copy. Whoever drew that map should be shot.
> It is not exactly wrong, but it isn't exactly right either.
> 1. Absolutely correct but absolutely misleading is the fact that the
> map shows the present outlines of Great Britain, Scandinavia, and
> Greenland in their present positions relative to the equator by thin
> white lines.
> 2. In solid colors they show the positions of land 49 million years
> ago in the places where that land was 49 million years ago. Note
> the two white dots labeled "Messel today" and "49 million years
> ago". Notice how much separation there is.
These two points were quite clear on first reading and I don't find them
misleading or otherwise objectionable.
> 3. Note, running along the southeast side of the Greenland of
> 49 million years ago a deep trench, which seems to be covered
> by the "connection" between Great Britain and Greenland. This
> is interpretive. Other reconstructions of paleogeography do not
> show this covering, or else show a completely submerged
> platform. If you move the white lines to put Greenland in its
> present position you will find Iceland sitting in the middle of
> that platform. When North American finally made its last
> break of connecting links between North America/Greenland
> and Europe, about 60 million years ago, there was the
> beginning of vast outpourings of basaltic lava at this spot,
> so much lava that a shallow ridge developed, covering the
> newly formed mid-ocean rift at this point, with part
> extending above sea level to form the beginnings of what
> is now Iceland. Some geologists have interpreted the data
> to indicate that the lava flows completely bridged the
> gap between Greenland and Great Britain, with Iceland
> sitting in the middle of the bridge. Others disagree that
> the bridge was that complete. Anyway, it isn't
> continental crust bridging the gap; it is oceanic crust.
Now this is very interesting. If you are correct it is a major F of the
NG. I would expect them to be much more careful in their flagship niche
of physical maps. Actually, continuous crust between Greenland and Britain
was hard for me to understand because the midatlantic rift continues both
southward and northward from this bridge and the new ocean is already
quite wide. Being the result of a global force I could not see how the
rift can be interrupted on such a small scale. The map clearly implies that
the bridge is formed of continuous crust matter, and not just a patch of
oceanic lava. But this being the NG, I concluded that some things are
above me and plainly took it as the truth.
Also, the land bridge (green color), which you say is only a speculation
not shared by all, is also pictured as fact. The existence of a land
bridge at such a late period may have substantial implications. As a
layman, I wouldn't want to go around with this wrong knowledge. Have you
considered sending them a letter?
Finally, is the wide (and shallow) sea between Europe and Asia agreed
upon, or is this also only a speculation?
Yehuda
> > > (Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue.
[of National Geographic]
> Finally, is the wide (and shallow) sea between Europe and Asia agreed
> upon, or is this also only a speculation?
I have no real quarrel with that. Certainly in the interval between
ca 55 million years ago and ca 35 million years ago there were
shallow seas in that general area. The shorelines fluctuated a
great deal during that interval, so it is conceivable that at 49
MYBP the shoreline was as shown. I will readily admit that
knowing the detailed fluctuations of that shoreline is outside
my area of expertise. I could do a passable reconstruction
of fluctuating shorlines on the Gulf Coast of the United
States for the same time interval, but for Europe I know
only what I see in the books, and my books don't give very
good coverage for Cenozoic Europe.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
Actually, I think the original 'continental' distinction was more
political geography rather than topographical geography. The border between
Europe and Asia is the Caucas mountains. On the west side, they believed, was
the civilized Europe, and on the East, the barbaric Asia, a kind of ill
defined no man's land filled with Mongol hordes and mean ol' Turks. For some
Europeans, the Caucas mountains were a kind of edge of the world. And so it
came to pass that Europe was a seperate (cultural, anyway) entity than Asia.
When more knowledge of physical geopgraphy came about, they were loathe to
give up this distinction. Then some scientists called the whole sucker
Eurasia. That's my opinion.
| Greenland |
Following a military coup in 1987, which island group in the South Pacific allowed its membership of the Commonwealth to lapse | Why is Europe called a continent? Ever look at a map? - Google Groups
Why is Europe called a continent? Ever look at a map?
Showing 1-112 of 112 messages
In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
perhaps, involed here?
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 04:16:54 -0800, section8
<[email protected]> wrote:
>In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
>that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
>Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
>dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
>really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
>6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
>Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
>and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
>but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
>wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
>the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
>perhaps, involed here?
No, it's the Asians who have too much pride. THEY wanted to have their
own continent, so the Europeans HAD to give a name to what was
leftover.
Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
Also, who says continents have to be separated by water ? Maybe they
could be separated by other geological singularities, like maybe
mountains ?
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 12:31:10 GMT, [email protected] (Fred#Paris)
wrote:
>Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
>and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
Probably because there's no land mass at the North Pole.
Larry Palletti East Point/Atlanta, Georgia
> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
Um, is this for real?
Jon "USS Nautilus" Miller
> So what makes Europe a continent?
The weight of history.
> I wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one?
The Greeks, before it was known that Europe and Asia are connected.
> Is pride, perhaps, involed here?
Perhaps.
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica.
The world is a very big place.
I was not taught that, rather I was told that geographically the continent
was Eurasia, but they were split up for convenience into Europe and Asia
because (1) they were too big to be treated as one, and (2) it was a
fairly sensible split because of historical and cultural differences (most
importantly, because that's what the Greeks did).
njm
See, here he comes stealing through the undergrowth, his face shining
with the light of pure intelligence. There are no limits to Jeeve's
brain power. He virtually lives on fish.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
>and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
>but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
>wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
>the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
>perhaps, involed here?
You're making an unspoken assumption here: that the definition
of a "continent" is purely physical. But perhaps geographers
consider human cultural factors (languages, religions, distribution
of population), ranges of flora and fauna, etc., as well as the shape
of land masses in deciding what to call a "continent".
--
> I was not taught that, rather I was told that geographically the continent
> was Eurasia, but they were split up for convenience into Europe and Asia
> because (1) they were too big to be treated as one, and (2) it was a
> fairly sensible split because of historical and cultural differences (most
> importantly, because that's what the Greeks did).
I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to
do with major plates and plate tectonics and that Europe and Asia are
really different plates with the European plate sublimating under the
Asian plate at the Urals. But accuracy wise, that information is based
on what I remember from tenth grade geoscience so it probably isn't
accurate. I just post it for comparison between what I was taught and
what others were taught.
As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
single continent and Antarctica isn't one. That always puzzled me. North
and South America are the same continent yet Europe and Asia are
different?
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6,
And how do you define the term? By landmass alone?
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one?
Probably someone who used a different slant on the word than you are.
The word 'continent' does not mean landmass, but simply something
that holds together. Major landmasses do, but so does minor ones.
Myself, I have not heard the word 'continent' applied to Europe as a whole,
but only to the main body of it. Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are not part of
'the continent', and I have a feeling Finland isn't either, whereas Denmark
very probably is. (A psychologist will explain why UKoGBaNI doesn't even occur
to me.)
A quick check in a old Webster's dictionary confirms this: 'the continent'
is the main land of Europe, and distinguished from 'the islands', which then
presumably is the rest.
Remember that head line? "Heavy Fog over the Channel -- Continent Isolated"
>Is pride, perhaps, involed here?
A check in a decent ethymological dictionary would give you the approximate
time the word was first used, and that might help answer that question.
I suspect it was first applied to separate the main body of Europe from
the rest -- and in which direction pride may be working here, I won't even
speculate.
Anders Thulin [email protected] 040-10 50 63
Telia Prosoft AB, Hjälmaregatan 3B, 212 19 Malmö, Sweden
It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
second part of two step process. The first step would be to
define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
David
section8 <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
> perhaps, involed here?
No, it is foresight. With continued continental drift and further extension
of the widening rift that has already made the Red Sea, Europe is expected
to break away. Be patient.
In a previous article, [email protected] said:
>I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to
>do with major plates and plate tectonics and that Europe and Asia are
>really different plates with the European plate sublimating under the
>Asian plate at the Urals. But accuracy wise, that information is based
Europe and Asia have been called separate continents since the time of the
ancient Greeks. Continental drift has been a widely accepted theory for just
about 50 years. You figure out what's wrong with your argument.
Depending on whom you talk to, Europe and Asia are often referred to as
"Eurasia", because they are in many respects one continent. And that includes
Greenland and the Scandanavian(sp?) peninsula, and the British Isles, all of
which are on the same continental shelf as Eurasia.
India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) has been called "a subcontinent" for a lot
longer than it was known that they were a separate plate that smashed into
Eurasia so fast that it raised the Himilayas. I've often wondered about that,
but I guess it got that nickname because the Himilayas cut them off so
completely from the rest of Eurasia.
--
Paul Tomblin, not speaking for anybody.
"I find your lack of clue...disturbing" - Sithadmin Vader.
> I just post it for comparison between what I was taught
> and
Along the lines of "interesting" education: I asked what a continent
was (must have been about 4th grade) and was told it's a land mass
bigger than an island. Then, they told me Australia was an island. But
it's a continent, I said. Oh yeah, it's the only island continent;
shouldn't you be playing kickball about now?
Somewhat related quandry: are there four or five oceans? I think most
people learned Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic, but I've seen
books include Antarctic. I guess a more important question is why does
it matter. Speaking of water...maybe they felt seven the right number
for land masses, since there were seven water masses, or seas.
-Samwise "Seven seas? I can barely remember the seven dwarfs"
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
>You're making an unspoken assumption here: that the definition
>of a "continent" is purely physical. But perhaps geographers
>consider human cultural factors (languages, religions, distribution
>of population), ranges of flora and fauna, etc., as well as the shape
>of land masses in deciding what to call a "continent".
How about geology? Just because Asia and Europe are united today doesn't have
to mean that they are have always always been part of the same landmass.
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
> perhaps, involed here?
Europe and Asia were defined as separate by the Greeks at a time
when their northern limits were unknown. All the Greeks had to go
on was the clear division at the Bosphorus
--
> India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) has been called "a subcontinent" for
a lot
> longer than it was known that they were a separate plate that smashed
into
> Eurasia so fast that it raised the Himilayas.
I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
at which said collision occured (is occurring). In brief,
because continental crusts are so much thicker (30-50 km vs
~7 km) and less dense (2.7 g/cm^3 vs 3.0 g/cm^3) than
oceanic crusts, when they meet at a converging plate
boundary, neither plate is subducted (which is the case in
oceanic/oceanic or continental/oceanic boundary collisions).
The result is a buckling of the plates, which tend to be
pushed upward or sideways. Thus, the Himalayas and the
Tibetan Plateau.
>I was not taught that, rather I was told that geographically the continent
>was Eurasia, but they were split up for convenience into Europe and Asia
>because (1) they were too big to be treated as one, and (2) it was a
>fairly sensible split because of historical and cultural differences
Hmmm -- how would that apply to, say, Saudi Arabia and Africa/Asia ... ?
Bob "lame inside jokes" Moissonnier
>really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
>6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass
I just recalled that some scholar has recently published a book
arguing that it's at least as useful to consider oceans-and-the-
surrounding-lands as geographical units as it is to consider
landmasses-separated-by-oceans. Anybody recognize this vague
description?
In the popular media we already
see this kind of thinking in the term "Pacific Rim" -- China,
Indonesia, New Zealand, Peru, and the U.S., which are in 3 or 4
different (land-mass) "continents", may share some historical and
economic similarities by virtue of being connected by Pacific
trade routes. Then there's the Mediterranean (connecting southern
Europe, northern Africa, and south-west Asia); the Indian Ocean
(where the Indian subcontinent of Asia has long had contact with
eastern Africa); etc.
Michael "Goode's School Atlas for sale, cheap" Glaser
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
>> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
>> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
>
>Um, is this for real?
Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are
started by people of dubious existance and responded to by other
similar personas, all debating troll topics?
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
> second part of two step process. The first step would be to
> define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
> South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
OED2 on CD:
[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
Florio, 1598; the Fr. is not in Cotgr. 1611.]
I. A containing agent or space.
1. a. That which contains or holds. Now rare or arch.
b. fig. That which comprises or sums up; summary, sum and
substance (sometimes not distinguishable from content, that
which is contained). Now rare or arch.
? 2. Containing area, space, or bulk; capacity; = content n.1 5,
6. Obs.
? 3. a. A connected or continuous tract of land. Obs.
(Cf. continent a. 6.)
? b. The land as opposed to the water, etc.; 'terra firma'; the
earth. Obs.
? c. The 'solid globe' or orb of the sun or moon. Obs.
? 4. a. esp. The main land, as distinguished from islands, islets,
or peninsulas; mainland. Obs. exc. as in b, or when referring to
one of the recognized continents of modern Geography: see 5.
b. spec. the Continent: the mainland of Europe, as distinguished
from the British Isles. (Orig. a specific use of 4; now commonly
referred to 5.)
5. a. One of the main continuous bodies of land on the earth's
surface.
Formerly two continents were reckoned, the Old and the New;
the former comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa, which form
one continuous mass of land; the latter, North and South
America, forming another. (These two continents are strictly
islands, distinguished only by their extent.) Now it is usual to
reckon four or five continents, Europe, Asia, Africa, and
America, North and South; the great island of Australia is
sometimes reckoned as another, and geographers have
speculated on the existence of an Antarctic Continent.
b. transf. A continuous mass or extent of land of any kind, of
ice, or the like.
d. Comb., as continent-country, -island, one approaching in
size to a continent;
continent-wide a., throughout a (specified) continent.
? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
colonies (which ultimately became the United States). Cf.
continental a. 3.
III. [subst. use of continent a. 1.]
7. Eccl. Hist. = Encratite.
? 8. A continent person; a married person or widow under
vow of continency. Obs. (Cf. penitent.)
'sub"continent. (Now also with main stress on second syllable.)
[sub- 5 b.]
A land mass of great extent, but smaller than those generally
called continents; a large section of a continent having a
certain geographical or political independence; spec. applied
formerly to South Africa, and more recently to India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
[a. F. incontinent (14th c.) or ad. L. incontinent-em, f. in-
(in-3) + continent- continent.]
Joe "Throw it o'er my shoulder,
like a Continental soldier" Shair
Joseph M. Shair < [email protected] > wrote:
>
>David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
>> second part of two step process. The first step would be to
>> define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
>> South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
>
>[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
>of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
[etc]
I fail to see how the quote from the OED2 has helped the discussion
one bit. In fact, it seems to muddy the waters even more.
What the hell Let's throw in the indian subcontinent while we're at
it.
> >> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
> >> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
> >
> >Um, is this for real?
>
> Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are
> started by people of dubious existance and responded to by other
> similar personas, all debating troll topics?
Yeah. And I beat ya to it by 11 minutes.
Michael "I'm returning your boxtops and revoking your fanship" Glaser
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
> Joseph M. Shair < [email protected] > wrote:
> >
> >[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
> >of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
>
> I fail to see how the quote from the OED2 has helped the discussion
> one bit. In fact, it seems to muddy the waters even more.
>
OK. Some mumbledy years ago Sister Mary Martha, S.P. conveyed to me, along
with a lot of other useful stuff, the existence of seven continents: Europe,
Asia, Africa, N. America, S. America, Australia, and Antarctica.[1]
Now the OED2 says there are four or five continents (depending on how you
feel about the Americas), Australia *might* be a continent, and the
continental status of Antarctica is pure speculation.
When faced with conflicting viewpoints from two unimpeachable sources, I'm
gonna go with the Sisters of Providence every time.
Steve "Can I go to recess now?" Jones
[1] 5th grade Geography[2]
[2] not Geology[3]
>Now the OED2 says there are four or five continents (depending on
>how you feel about the Americas), Australia *might* be a
>continent, and the continental status of Antarctica is pure
>speculation.
It now seems that Antarctica may be an ice and snow covered
archipelago rather than a single land mass. But shouldn't ice be as
much a "land mass" as any other mineral?
--
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
Previously, cwp stated, in part,
>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
grows. This factoid isn't an urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so
it's way OT, but can anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on
my own keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
Guinness World Book.
Address munged. AOL isn't "coma"tose, evidence to the contrary not
withstanding.
>Previously, cwp stated, in part,
>
>>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
>
>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's
>shows hosted by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental
>plates (at least those colliding in California) are moving at
>about the rate at which a fingernail grows. This factoid isn't an
>urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so it's way OT, but can
>anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on my own
>keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
>Guinness World Book.
Well, the San Andreas fault is presumed to move on the order of
20-some feet per century. How fast does a fingernail grow?
--
On Sun, 27 Jan 3900 19:03:40, "cwp" < [email protected] > wrote:
> Paul Tomblin < [email protected] > wrote
> > India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) has been called "a subcontinent" for
> a lot
> > longer than it was known that they were a separate plate that smashed
> into
> > Eurasia so fast that it raised the Himilayas.
>
> I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
> collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
> at which said collision occured (is occurring)....
The speed comes in as soon as the hills are high enough to start
eroding. The higher they get, the faster they're worn down. To get
as high as the Himalayas and stay that way for a few million years,
they need to be growing fast.
--
"Fred#Paris" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> Another question: why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
and not the one at the north pole?
Duh...maybe because dere is a landmass at da sout pole?
"section8" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>>So what makes Europe a continent?
Politics, same as North America.
> Depending on whom you talk to, Europe and Asia are often referred to as
> "Eurasia", because they are in many respects one continent. And that includes
> Greenland and the Scandanavian(sp?) peninsula, and the British Isles, all of
> which are on the same continental shelf as Eurasia.
For one very ido[ma]tic definition of 'continental shelf', perhaps.
Greenland is certainly not on the Eurasian plate, but rather is
part of the North American plate. It is only European in that it
is under Danish sovereignty. But Greenland is definitely not part
of the European Union.
>> So what makes Europe a continent?
> The weight of history.
>> I wonder, who started all of this business
>> calling Europe a continent in the first place
>> when apparently it doesn't seem to be one?
> The Greeks, before it was known that Europe
> and Asia are connected.
If I may amplify a bit, the distinction between Europe and Asia arose
among Mediterranean peoples to whom the Hellespont - Propontis -
Bosporus waterway seemed an obvious and important physical and, to an
extent, cultural / linguistic boundary. The term "Asia" originally
referred to the Anatolian Peninsula, which is still sometimes called
Asia Minor; it was only gradually -- though certainly by the time of
Herodotus in the 5th Century B.C. -- that it began to dawn on the Greek
world that there was an extensive and seamless land connection between
Europe and Asia north of the Black Sea. By that time the terminology
had become established.
I suspect that the now-traditional placement of the northern portion of
the dividing line between Europe and Asia at the Urals, far to the
northeast of the Black Sea, has something to do with the limits of
Russian settlement and political dominion in early modern times, say
1500 or so; but I will happily defer to someone more expert in Russian
history.
Alan "Had the Mycenaeans but had a few satellite photos at their
disposal...." Follett
> David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> ? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
> War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
> colonies (which ultimately became the United States).
Not all of us here in England would describe the USA as revolting nowadays.
Chris "but we might think it" C
(de-x email address to de-spam)
>> I just post it for comparison between what I was taught
>
>Along the lines of "interesting" education: I asked what a continent
>
>Somewhat related quandry: are there four or five oceans? I think most
>
>-Samwise "Seven seas? I can barely remember the seven dwarfs"
>
Really, it seems to me that this whole thread is about education --
geography education, grammar school division. "They" (the teachers
and educators and textbook writers) think that the best way to pound
information into our heads is to chop it up into nice, memorizable
categories: seven seas, five oceans, six continents, or whatever. All
of a piece with memorizing dates.
Whereas, judging from this bunch, they'd be better off asking questions
like, "what is a continent, exactly? an ocean? a sea? let's look at
the map and think about how the earth was formed, the politics and
geography and plates -- what do you think?"
Maggie "always asking why" Newman
--
"I used to be troubled, but then I saw the light.
Now I don't worry about a thing, 'cause I know
Nothing's going to be all right."
M. Allison
According to "Continental Drift - the Evolution of a Concept" written by Ursula B. Marvin,
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. and editing out a LOT (the book is 230
pages) it seems each plate drifts at a different rate. The central valley of Iceland, at the
north of the Atlantic Rift is opening at about 0.356cm per year, averaged over the last 5000
years. She does not give any other modern, verified, drift speeds that I have found, yet.
Jack
>>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
>
>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
>by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
>colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
>grows. This factoid isn't an urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so
>it's way OT, but can anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on
>my own keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
>Guinness World Book.
>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
>by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
>colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
>grows. This factoid isn't an urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so
>it's way OT, but can anyone begin to substantiate this?
Not I, said the vector.
I *do* recall some plate movement (probably the pacific/north
american, but maybe not) being stated as moving around an inch per
year (averages, of course).
That's slower than my fingernails, but in the right order of
magnitude.
Drew "and they're not colliding. they're scraping each other" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | Of all the things I've lost |
| [email protected] | I miss my mind the most |
Maybe, maybe not. But there is a biiiig chunk of ice and snow.
--
> I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to
> do with major plates and plate tectonics
If so, that definition is a rather late one, as plate tectonics was not
widely accepted until fairly late in the 20th century.
--
Anders Thulin [email protected] 040-10 50 63
Telia Prosoft AB, Hjälmaregatan 3B, 212 19 Malmö, Sweden
>>Previously, cwp stated, in part,
>>
>>>I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
>>>collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
>>>at which said collision occured (is occurring).
>>
>>On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's
>>shows hosted by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental
>>plates (at least those colliding in California) are moving at
>>about the rate at which a fingernail grows. This factoid isn't an
>>urban legend, or any other kind of legend, so it's way OT, but can
>>anyone begin to substantiate this? A half-assed search on my own
>>keeps giving me a reference to the longest fingernail guy in the
>>Guinness World Book.
>Well, the San Andreas fault is presumed to move on the order of
>20-some feet per century. How fast does a fingernail grow?
Nail: fingernail growth rate: 1 cm/3 months (0.1 mm/day), toenail growth 1 cm/9
months
>>>> Another question: why is the landmass at the south pole a
>>>> continent, and not the one at the north pole?
>>
>>Duh...maybe because dere is a landmass at da sout pole?
And not one at the north pole.
Reply to:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:53:08 -0500, Jacquilynne < [email protected] >
wrote:
>[...] As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
>there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
>single continent [...]
How come they're one continent when, only a few million years ago they
weren't even join by a land bridge? The gap was so big that Cuba was
able to sail through it from the Pacific.
--
Remove NOSPAM from my email address to reply.
My opinions are not necessarily those of my employers.
I wanted to stay out of this...Sorry, this is a subject where precise
answers demand a precise question----I don't believe Anders provide the
question to do that. Though it is something to discuss.
In USpeak, many Americans seem to be cautious *not* to include The
British Islands with Europe. I've heard many people say "We're going to
Europe."---"Where?" "London...."----"Oh, you're _not_ going to Europe,
Europe is on *the continent*---you're going to the British Isles" Many
French *will not* include Britain as part of Europe.
The wars were *on* *The Continent*---June 6, '44 was an invasion *of*
*The Continent*.
Most books about Turkey *divide* the country between Europe and
Asia---What about the the land east of Turkey? Well, no one is sure
where Asia ends and Europe begins---Especially as it concerns the old
Soviet Republics. Eurocentrics that we are, try to give a country a
break (many will include part of Russia in Europe---part in Asia, St
Petersburg is in *European* Russia)--- unless it sounds Asian---the
*stahns* are all Asian.
Then there's Japan, Asian, *in* Asia, but not like The British Isles
that are not in Europe? (Do we reflexively call it Asia, better than the
*Orient*?)
Egypt is *rarely* African---But, *Middle-Eastern* solved that.
Soooo. I believe it depends on how one or why is speaking of "A
Continents" and maybe were they are from. There are different terms for
the same places/people depending on whether we are describing political,
geological and geographical entities or the cultural designations for
the people that inhabit these places.
If you have have a plane load of people departing from Canada, the U.S,
Mexico and various South American countries. Ask the *Americans* to
raise their hand----what happens? Only the folks from the U.S will raise
their hands.
OK. I'll do the math. For a fingernail that's 4cm/year or
4m/century. So the San Andreas appears to be faster, since it moves
at maybe 7m/century.
> Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are started
> by people of dubious existance and responded to by other similar personas,
> all debating troll topics?
David Hatunen < [email protected] > wrote in message
news:%[email protected]...
> Joseph M. Shair < [email protected] > wrote:
> >
> >David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
> >news:[email protected]...
> >> It strikes me as saying there are only so many continents is the
> >> second part of two step process. The first step would be to
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >> define a continent. What are the criteria that make North and
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >> South America, but not Antarctica in a continent?
> >
> >[ad. L. continent-em (in senses I and II), subst. use of pr. pple.
> >of continere: see prec. and contain. It. continente mainland is in
>
> I fail to see how the quote from the OED2 has helped the discussion
> one bit. In fact, it seems to muddy the waters even more.
But it muddies them *authoritatively*.
Joe "Authority (go) figure" Shair
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:53:08 -0500, Jacquilynne < [email protected] >
> wrote:
> >[...] As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
> >there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
> >single continent [...]
> How come they're one continent when, only a few million years ago they
> weren't even join by a land bridge? The gap was so big that Cuba was
> able to sail through it from the Pacific.
>
Asia really didn't start at the Bosphorus or the Urines, but on a line
stretched between Buda and Helsinki, representing the extent of the
FinnoUgrians (sp?) migrations/conquests.
Greenland only looks like a continent on school maps which are mostly
Mercators. On the lesser used Fornicator Projection, Greenland's about
the size of the Aisle of Wight.
Austria was grated continental status shortly after the Defenestration
of Prague (or was it the Hemorrhoidectomy of Brno) to compensate for an
insular papanoia rampant there. Limited genetically to a spread no more
diverse than samples scraped from the slimy stones of Newgate and
Tolbooth, forced to wear magnetic insoles to keep from toppling off the
soft underbelly of civilization, and pretty much ignored by
right-thinking folks everywhere, Austria has recently been awarded the
title of "Big Island" formerly used by Hawaii, Hawaii, now known as St.
Brendan's Isle, while continental status has devolved upon Lower
Mingrelia.
Urop is only considered a continent among ravening Eurocentrics. For
the rest of us, it's simply an attractive group of appendages to an
otherwise uninteresting expanse of steppe/tundra/taiga.
--
No body parts were mentioned. No sexual act were proposed. The exit was
not shown.
And David seems to be thriving on this thread---He does not usually open
his doors to trolls. David is a softy. David is a softy. David is a
softy. David is a softy.
I should have waited a year to join.
Michael "Hey, I did wait" Glaser
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
>On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:53:08 -0500, Jacquilynne < [email protected] >
>wrote:
>>[...] As a side note, while studying in Brazil for a year, I was taught that
>>there are only five continents, because North and South America are a
>>single continent [...]
>How come they're one continent when, only a few million years ago they
>weren't even join by a land bridge? The gap was so big that Cuba was
>able to sail through it from the Pacific.
That is probably because the Brazilians weren't talking about it
a few million years ago.
Western Utah is (mostly) dry land, even though it used to be under
Lake Bonneville. What was the case a few million years ago isn't
relevant to current terminology.
That said, apparently it is common in Latin America to think of
"the americas" as one continent. Ref: a friend who taught ESL to
Latin American immigrants.
Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
count because we insist on the existance of a mythical geographical
entity called "central america."
Drew "what size sail did Cuba use?" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
>Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
>count because we insist on the existance of a mythical
>geographical entity called "central america."
No more mythical than the term "midwestern states".
--
> > David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> > ? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
> > War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
> > colonies (which ultimately became the United States).
>
> Not all of us here in England would describe the USA as revolting nowadays.
>
> Chris "but we might think it" C
> (de-x email address to de-spam)
The OED of CD is on my wish list. The Oxford English Dictionary
is ultimate reference in regards to the English language.
However in regards to this discussion the OED is not particularly
relevant.
The question is not what the definitions of continent are. The
question is, or as least should bd, what criteria for a continent
where used to derive the list in question. I think it more a
question of geology than English.
David
In article < [email protected] >, Olivers < [email protected] >
wrote:
| Urop is only considered a continent among ravening Eurocentrics. For
| the rest of us, it's simply an attractive group of appendages to an
| otherwise uninteresting expanse of steppe/tundra/taiga.
As blatant a troll as this may be, I do feel constrained to point out
by way of counterexample the relative absence of erhu players and Tuvan
kargyraa singers in such comparative cultural meccae as Ozona, Texas.
Chris "though I've never seen Santiago Jiminez, Jr. and Kangar-ool
Ondar in the same photo" Clarke
--
"Though wonderful to watch, transformation from larva to pupa
or from pupa to butterfly is not a particularly pleasant process
for the subject involved." -- Vladimir Nabokov
Michael Glaser < [email protected] , [email protected] > wrote:
>David Hatunen wrote:
>> >Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
>> >count because we insist on the existance of a mythical
>> >geographical entity called "central america."
>>
>> No more mythical than the term "midwestern states".
>*Geographical* entity?
>Which states comprise the midwest?
Depends.
>*I* know the counties of Central America.
That's nothing. I know the countries.
(I know; cheapshot spelling thing. I couldn't resist)
OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
"New England".
> >Of course, many USAian school-children will be confused at the
> >count because we insist on the existance of a mythical
> >geographical entity called "central america."
>
> No more mythical than the term "midwestern states".
>
> ******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
*Geographical* entity?
Which states comprise the midwest?
*I* know the counties of Central America.
Michael
> Michael Glaser < [email protected] , [email protected] > wrote:
> >*I* know the counties of Central America.
>
> That's nothing. I know the countries.
>
> (I know; cheapshot spelling thing. I couldn't resist)
A long as it was not in retaliation for me calling you a *softy*.
If I was honest, it was misspelt---If I was lying, it was not---But I do
not know the largest local administrative unit in the Central American
COUNTRIES! Hell, I don't even know if *they* have counties?
> OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
> "New England".
I prefer Great Lakes States as a definition of *my* geographical region.
Michael "I think the last guy left and the lights are already off"
Glaser
******* My typos are intentional attention getters ******
Please direct e-mail to both of the following addresses :
On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Larry Palletti wrote:
}On Thu, 27 Jan 2000 12:31:10 GMT, [email protected] (Fred#Paris)
}wrote:
}>Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
}>and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
}
}Probably because there's no land mass at the North Pole.
True. The Earth is really hollow, and the water and ice just float
there above the central void.
Dr H
}>> Another question : why is the landmass at the south pole a continent,
}>> and not the one at the north pole ? (Maybe pride :).
}>
}>Um, is this for real?
}
}Am I the only one to notice a trend lately toward threads that are
}started by people of dubious existance and responded to by other
}similar personas, all debating troll topics?
Yes.
>The gap was so big that Cuba was
>able to sail through it from the Pacific.
This explains the ubiquity of restaurants in New York advertising
"comidas Cubanas y Chinas".
>Well, the San Andreas fault is presumed to move on the order of
>20-some feet per century. How fast does a fingernail grow?
Before or after death?
Drew Lawson < [email protected] > wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
<snip Spock said plates move about as fast as fingernails grow>
> I *do* recall some plate movement (probably the pacific/north
> american, but maybe not) being stated as moving around an inch per
> year (averages, of course).
> That's slower than my fingernails, but in the right order of
> magnitude.
From _Essentials of Geology_ Chernicoff / Fox (2nd ed. 2000) p.13:
"Although the fact that entire continents and ocean basins are in motion is
rather astonishing, the rate at which they move is not; it is comparable to
the rate of growth of your fingernails-only a few centimeters per year."
also p.201:
"How rapidly, then, do plates move? Combining the information gleaned from
relatively stationary oceanic hot spots, magnetic anomalies, and orbiting
satellites, we have been able to determine that the Pacific, Nazca, Cocos,
and Australian-Indian plates, among the Earth's fastest, move more than 10
cm. (4 in.) per year. The N. and S. American, Eurasian, and Antarctic
plates, among the slowest movers, travel 1 to 3 cm.(.4-1.2 in.) per year."
If anyone cares, there are seven major plates (N.American, S.American,
African, Eurasian, Indian-Australian, Pacific, and Antarctic) as well as
eight smaller ones.
In article <C%lk4.51$ [email protected] >,
David Hatunen < [email protected] > wrote:
>OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
>"New England".
Thats easy. It's the tri-state area, plus, errrm, the other
tri-state area?
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which
> include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the
> other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected
> with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like
> North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like
> Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent?
> I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a
> continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is
> pride,
Well, I dont know about you, but I was taught this by the nuns and
dammit, they know their shit.
Grindo
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For your Brewin', Fishing Reports,
& assorted twisted needs,
On Sat, 29 Jan 2000 01:45:53 GMT, [email protected]
(Fred#Paris) wrote:
>However I admit I was mistaken in my use of the term 'landmass' for
>what's at the North Pole. 'Icemass' would have been more appropriate.
>
>And, from now on, *I* intend to call this icemass a continent.
>Everyone else can do it the old fashioned way.
Especially the submarines who surfaced from under the
"continental icemass" at the North Pole?
Barbara Needham
> [...] Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
> colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
> grows.
If my own half-assed searches[1] are anything to go by, this factoid is
indeed true, more or less.
Continental drift was given by various sites as 1-10 cm/year, 2
inches/year, or "several" inches/year. Bear in mind that different
plates move at different rates.
Fingernail growth was given as 0.1mm/day, or 3 mm/month, or described as
taking 8 months to grow 1 inch, or 5-6 months to grow out from the base
to the end of the nail bed. The nails on each hand grow at a different
rate (your preferred hand grows its nails faster) and the nails on
different fingers grow at different rates (middle finger fastest). Other
factors (e.g. nutrition) affect growth rate.
1 inch = 2.54 cm. 1 cm = 10 mm. After doing all the necessary
conversions to get a bunch of numbers all using the same units for both
distance and time, the result is, yes they're all in the same ballpark.
Surprisingly close, in fact.
It's good enough for an informal comparison, or as a way to grasp the
rate of continental drift, by comparing it to the speed of growing
fingernails[1]. There is, of course, no one correct number for growth
rate of continental drift, just as there is no one correct number for
fingernail growth. There is a range for each, and *so many* fudge
factors that go into the range. Keeping that caveat in mind, though, it
remains true, that yes, continental drift rate is about equal to
fingernail growth rate.
[1] Since there is another thread about search engines, how I searched
may be of interest to some. I searched for sites on continental drift
rate and fingernail growth rate separately; I didn't try to find sites
that mentioned both.
Continental drift--used Google, with search keywords (including quotes):
"continental drift" "per year"
Fingernail growth--used Ask Jeeves and AltaVista, entering the question:
how fast do fingernails grow?
Hit several promising-looking sites in each set of results quickly; on
each one, doing several text searches for keywords like "per", "day", or
"month" to jump to spots of most probable relevance. Jotted down numbers
on an (electronic) sticky note as I went along.
[2] Or vice versa, using the rate of continental drift to help one grasp
how fast fingernails grew. But less likely. Fingernails growing is a
more commonplace and familiar and visible event than continental plates
moving, and it is usually the commonplace thingy that is used to help
one grasp a concept relating to a less familiar thingy. ("Thingy" here
is just a generic term used to mean an object, an event, a process, an
abstract idea, or anything else.)
keith "how about thread drift? what's the speed of that?" lim
--
In article <86r1dp$8je$ [email protected] >, [email protected] says...
> "section8" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> >>So what makes Europe a continent?
>
> Politics, same as North America.
>
No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the first two posters
have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously interested!
Doug
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
>No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the first two posters
>have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously interested!
If you're referring to me, I haven't vanished (although my existence
is pretty dubious).
I just don't have anything useful to add.... I agree with about
everything that's been said.
However I admit I was mistaken in my use of the term 'landmass' for
what's at the North Pole. 'Icemass' would have been more appropriate.
And, from now on, *I* intend to call this icemass a continent.
Everyone else can do it the old fashioned way.
Fred
On Fri, 28 Jan 2000 01:40:00 +0000, [email protected] (Chris C)
wrote:
>> David Lentz < [email protected]//NOSPAM// > wrote in message
>> news:[email protected]...
>> ? 6. Amer. Hist. Applied, during and immediately after the
>> War of Independence, as a collective name for the revolting
>> colonies (which ultimately became the United States).
>
>Not all of us here in England would describe the USA as revolting nowadays.
>
But many of us here in The Great White North would.
Bill in Vancouver
In article < [email protected] >, [email protected] says...
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2000 00:24:31 -0000, Doug Weller
> < [email protected] > wrote:
>
> >No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the first two posters
> >have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously interested!
>
> If you're referring to me, I haven't vanished (although my existence
> is pretty dubious).
Ok. The first poster certainly does seem to have nothing to say, and that is
very strange (or simply the sign of a troll).
> I just don't have anything useful to add.... I agree with about
> everything that's been said.
> However I admit I was mistaken in my use of the term 'landmass' for
> what's at the North Pole. 'Icemass' would have been more appropriate.
>
> And, from now on, *I* intend to call this icemass a continent.
Fine, but are you really ever going to mention subs going under the Arctic
Continent? :)
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
> In USpeak, many Americans seem to be cautious *not* to include The
> British Islands with Europe. I've heard many people say "We're going to
> Europe."---"Where?" "London...."----"Oh, you're _not_ going to Europe,
> Europe is on *the continent*---you're going to the British Isles" Many
> French *will not* include Britain as part of Europe.
Geographically (here's that landmass thing again), the British Isles are not
a part of the continent of Europe...politically they are (whether they care
to admit it or not)...in fact, when the nations of the world are divvied up,
*Iceland* usually ends up part of Europe as well, as do such smaller and
less ambiguous island nations as Cyprus....
> Then there's Japan, Asian, *in* Asia, but not like The British Isles
> that are not in Europe? (Do we reflexively call it Asia, better than the
> *Orient*?)
Go ahead, tell the average Japanese citizen that he's "Asian"...the result
should be entertaining....
> If you have have a plane load of people departing from Canada, the U.S,
> Mexico and various South American countries. Ask the *Americans* to
> raise their hand----what happens? Only the folks from the U.S will raise
> their hands.
We did this one a couple of months ago...I deal often enough at work with
Mexicans, Venezuelans, Brazilians and Argentines that I know better...Deja
should show a number of instances of the word "norteño" in my past posts
here...(and the previous point is one reason the international keyboard is
so accessible to me)....r
> No, I think it's historical. But in any case, I note that the
> first two posters
> have vanished. Somehow I don't think they were seriously
> interested!
Still here, still reading. Cheers!
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
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>Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
>North Pole?,......
Because there _is_ a huge mass of ice up there. However, there is no land
underneath the ice. So quite technically, they are in fact traveling
hundreds of miles over water to the north pole. The fact that it's frozen
water floating on liquid water does not make this any less true.
Oh, yes, and please change your setting to remove that HTML signature from
your messages. Posting HTML to Usenet is Just Not A Good Idea. Not
everyone's news reader can read HTML.
Andrea "and I told mine not to, because it's annoying." Jones
--
". . . ordinary people will do extraordinary things out
of honour, and duty, and love, and . . . courage
is something you don't know you have until you need it."
--Paul Tomblin
> Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
> North Pole?,......
Did you never notice that ice floats?
--
Nick Spalding
>Fine, but are you really ever going to mention subs going under the Arctic
>Continent? :)
Let's look at it this way : why are there certain things that you call
continents, and others that you don't.
For example : Australia'a an island, it's also called a continent.
England's an island, it's not called a continent.
So, what's the difference ? The two that immediately come to mind are:
-Australia is BIG
-Australia is not near something bigger that'a already a continent.
So, an icecube floating in the middle of the sea wouldn't be a
continent.
But, the arctic icemass is BIG. Also, it's placed far enough form
Europe/Asia & North America considering its size.
So, *I* think it maybe it could qualify for the rank of continent.
What ? Submarines ?
-no one ever said that continents was something submarines couldn't go
under. Let's dig a big tunnel full of water from New York to LA, and
have the submarines go under there.
-its not stranger than digging a tunnel under water and have trains go
under, like in the English Channel
-but, to preserve peace, I accept to refer to this arctic icemass as a
"F-continent". The F will stand for Fred.
Or for "floating".
It doesn't matter what you call it. It never comes.
Barbara "draw euro conclusion" Mikkelson
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Urban legends and more --> http://www.snopes.com
> > I seem to remember that the division of the continents had something to=
>
> > do with major plates and plate tectonics =
>
> If so, that definition is a rather late one, as plate tectonics was not=
>
> widely accepted until fairly late in the 20th century.
>
Maybe not plate tectonics, but continental drift? And ancient
shorelines? I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
-L
In a previous article, [email protected] (Lisa R. Arnold) said:
>Maybe not plate tectonics, but continental drift? And ancient
Continental Drift was not being taken seriously 75 years ago.
--
Paul Tomblin, not speaking for anybody.
"I find your lack of clue...disturbing" - Sithadmin Vader.
> Geographically (here's that landmass thing again), the British Isles are not
> a part of the continent of Europe..
But geologically the British Isles are very definitely part of the
continent of Europe. It just so happens that at the present time
there is more water in the oceans than the ocean basins can
hold. So Europe (and all the other continents of the world)
are under about 600 feet of water, the so-called continental
shelf. By the same token, Greenland is part of the continent
of North America and, although I hate to admit it, the
Falkland Islands are part of the continent of South America.
> *Iceland* usually ends up part of Europe as well, as do such smaller and
> less ambiguous island nations as Cyprus....
However, Iceland is very definitely _not_ part of the
continent of Europe, and Cyprus is of mixed parentage,
being separated at the moment from both Europe and
Africa on its own microplate, but having elements of
both in its geologic makeup.
If you want to have a water separation between
continents, what was the boundary between
Africa and Asia before the Suez Canal? The
Red Sea? It doesn't go all the way through.
What about the boundary between North
America and South America? Which continent
does Central America belong to?
Better we should drop the whole matter. It
belongs over at alt.fan.cecil-adams, not here.
Charles Wm. "a part of the continent, a piece
of the main" Dimmick
> Fine, but are you really ever going to mention subs going under the Arctic
> Continent? :)
And here, all along, I thought continents were made out of, umm, like,
umm, dirt, or something.
1. One of the principal land masses of the earth.
[From Latin (terra) continEns, continuous (land)]
The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition
-Stan "put that in your Funk & Wagnalls and smoke it" Greene-
> I thought that the Himalayas were simply a result of a
> collision between continental plates, rather than the speed
> at which said collision occured (is occurring). In brief,
> because continental crusts are so much thicker (30-50 km vs
> ~7 km) and less dense (2.7 g/cm^3 vs 3.0 g/cm^3) than
> oceanic crusts, when they meet at a converging plate
> boundary, neither plate is subducted (which is the case in
> oceanic/oceanic or continental/oceanic boundary collisions).
> The result is a buckling of the plates, which tend to be
> pushed upward or sideways. Thus, the Himalayas and the
> Tibetan Plateau.
Well, yes and no. While it is true that the Indian plate was
not subducted into the mantle, it did get pushed _under_
the Eurasian plate. At one time India and Eurasia were
separated by the Tethys Ocean. The Tethys oceanic
floor was part of the Indian plate. So when India and
Eurasia started moving towards each other the denser
Tethys floor was subducted under the Eurasian plate.
When the Tethys finally closed, the Indian continent
part of the plate kept moving in the same direction, only
it was too light to be subducted into the mantle, so it
ended up wedged under the Eurasian Plate, and since
India couldn't go down, that part of Eurasia went up.
Thus the very high but relatively flat Tibetian Plateau.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> On (US) tv last Sunday, on one of those pseudo-scientific 1980's shows hosted
> by Leonard Nimoy, he stated that the continental plates (at least those
> colliding in California) are moving at about the rate at which a fingernail
> grows.
There are no plates colliding in either southern or central California.
They are moving sideways relative to each other, at a rate of about
6 cm a year, give-or-take. There is a plate _collision_ in northern
California, but not the one that Nimoy was talking about. The
Juan de Fuca plate is being subducted under the North American
Plate and is all but gone by now, except for a little piece offshore
Washington and Oregon and very northernmost part of California.
Charles D.
> Is it finally time to break down an put in that global WebTV filter?
No. There's Alan. And this one woman on rec.equestrian. I wish the heck
they'd change ISPs. See what we do for you, Mr. Follett?
Deborah Stevenson
david nixon wrote:
> it seems each plate drifts at a different rate. The central valley of Iceland, at the
> north of the Atlantic Rift is opening at about 0.356cm per year, averaged over the last 5000
> years.
North Atlantic Ridge --- 3.2 cm/yr
North Indian Ocean --- 3.8 cm/yr
South Atlantic Ridge --- 5 cm/yr
South Pacific Ocean --- 9.5 cm/yr
Pacific-Antarctic Rise-- 12.5 cm/yr
East Pacific Rise ------- 17 cm/yr
[I'm not too sure about this last one. It may be
based on faulty data]
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
> million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
> projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
> level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
Please give me data as to title of map, when published, inserted
in which issue of National Geographic, etc. I will check it with my
collection (going back to 1934). Something doesn't seem right,
based on your description. Especially, having Great Britain as a
projection of Greenland. More-or-less impossible, as far as I
know, especially for 49 million years ago. You sure it wasn't
490 million years ago, and the sea was the Iapetus instead of
the Atlantic?
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> Continental Drift was not being taken seriously 75 years ago.
Not in the northern hemisphere (see notes from the lecture
I gave yesterday), but popular among many southern
hemisphere geologists, especially in South Africa and
Argentina. Anyway, continental drift as proposed by
Wegener was impossible. He would have had the continents
plowing their way through the oceanic crust.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
> OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
> "New England".
Where's the problem, other than this big silver hook dangling
in front of me? We even have legal definitions of what constitutes
New England. Try the New England dairy compact.
Or the fact that the Northeast Section of AIPG is defined as
NY, NJ and New England, and nobody has any doubt as to
what is included.
Charles Wm. "past president of NE-AIPG" Dimmick
Not speaking for Lisa, but I can attest that her description is accurate,
except, possibly, for the description of 'bulbous', of which I don't know
the scientific definition, so I'll try to be more accurate:
(Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue. Should've been in your mail two
or three days ago).
Europe is certainly separated from Asia along roughly what would be the
Urals today by a shallow sea. Great Britain is connected to Greenland by a
narrow strip of land (of width about one fifth the full width of Britain).
However, it sits on an undersea shelf which is connected to Greenland and
which is as wide as Britain itself. The other (southern) side of this
shelf goes on to France and Spain. It is hard to tell what is the average
elevation of the landbridge between Britain and Greenland. But I don't
think this is important because the sea shelf is wide and clear, so it
doesn't matter whether the rise above sea level is significant or not.
As for deep water and the Atlantic ocean, they start southwest of the
shelf connecting Britain and Greenland, and extend southward. There is
also another deep water trench between the northeastern part of this
shelf and Scandinavia. The south and north trenches are not connected.
They were probably connected at a later time to form the present day
Atlantic.
To summarize, If we look only on the 'shelfs', and not care about the
waterline, then Europe, Asia, Britain, and Greenland are connected (though
there is no direct contact between Greenland and Scandinavia). On the
other hand, If we look at what peeks from the water, then Europe is an
island (disconnected from Asia), and Britain is connected to Greenland,
and disconnected from Europe.
The map says 49 million years ago and this is also mentioned at least
three times in the text as well (which is about some stupid fossils, BTW).
Yehuda
>> Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
>> North Pole?,......
>Did you never notice that ice floats?
Ice flows?
I though it was a supercooled a%$##ah^*2
NO CARRIER
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
Is it finally time to break down an put in that global WebTV filter?
Drew "for couch potatoes with VCRs flashing 12:00-12:00-12:00" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| [email protected] | you're part of the precipitate. |
> > I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
> > million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
> > projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
> > level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
>
> Please give me data as to title of map, when published, inserted
> in which issue of National Geographic, etc. I will check it with my
> collection (going back to 1934). Something doesn't seem right,
> based on your description. Especially, having Great Britain as a
> projection of Greenland. More-or-less impossible, as far as I
> know, especially for 49 million years ago. You sure it wasn't
> 490 million years ago, and the sea was the Iapetus instead of
> the Atlantic?
Well, actually, it's in the current issue. And it's not a full-fledged
map. It's a graphic accompanying an article on the Eocene fossils at the
Messel site in Germany. The graphic is labelled National Geographic Maps,
Source: Christopher R. Scotese, Paleomap Project. It superimposes the
current European coastline over an artist's rendition of the ancient one.
And the article specifically says, "...[during the Eocene,] Europe was an
island..."
-L "will the venerable Society come under fire or is it just me" Arnold
Charles Wm. Dimmick < [email protected] > wrote:
>David Hatunen wrote:
>> OK. If you want to argue about "midwest", let's try the mythical
>> "New England".
>Where's the problem, other than this big silver hook dangling in
>front of me? We even have legal definitions of what constitutes
>New England. Try the New England dairy compact. Or the fact that
>the Northeast Section of AIPG is defined as NY, NJ and New
>England, and nobody has any doubt as to what is included.
And, taking it full circle, there's not much doubt about what
constitutes Central America, which is no more "mythical" than new
England.
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
> If you want to have a water separation between
> continents, what was the boundary between
> Africa and Asia before the Suez Canal? The
> Red Sea? It doesn't go all the way through.
> What about the boundary between North
> America and South America? Which continent
> does Central America belong to?
Isaac Asimov did one of his F&SF [1] columns on the continents, finally concluding
that there were four: The World Island (his name for what he first considered
calling "Eurafrasia", correctly noting that only a man-made channel prevents you
from walking overland from Norway to Capetown to Kowloon), the "New World Island"
(again, the only clear separation of North and South America is an human
artifact), Australia and Antarctica...all the smaller landmasses he covered in
another article....
Now, a while back, someone asked about the "seven seas"...Asimov's article on the
oceans came up with three: Atlantic, Pacific and Indian...he said the traditional
seven separated the Atlantic into North and South, likewise the Pacific, and also
included the Arctic and Antarctic...his suggestion for those who consider the
Arctic a separate ocean is to look at a globe rather than a flat map; that this
would make it clearer that it's really just an arm of the Atlantic in the global
scheme of things (in much the same way that Europe is an arm of the much larger
continent of "The World Island")....r
[1] popular abbreviation for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, for
which Dr A wrote a monthly science column from the mid-1950s until shortly before
his death in the early 1990s...these columns are collected in batches of seventeen
[2] in various books
[2] one book explains this bit of numerology in its obligatory foreword
>And, taking it full circle, there's not much doubt about what
>constitutes Central America, which is no more "mythical" than new
>England.
As taught in geography classes as the primary and secondary level,
there is certainly something mythical about it. It's there in the
sequence: North America, Central America, South America. I'd
venture that many people came out of high school with the distinct
impression that Cenntral America is distinct from the other two.
Drew "which explains why so many get
confused at Mexico being north American" Lawson
--
|Drew Lawson | So many newsgroups |
| [email protected] | So little time |
> On 30 Jan 2000, Drew Lawson wrote:
>
> > Is it finally time to break down an put in that global WebTV filter?
>
> No. There's Alan. And this one woman on rec.equestrian. I wish the heck
> they'd change ISPs. See what we do for you, Mr. Follett?
If you have Agent a kill filter based on:
author: (webtv & ! {follett})
works nicely for this group. You would have to substitute something
else for follett in rec.equestrian.
--
Nick Spalding
In article < [email protected] >, [email protected] wrote:
> [...] Eurocentrics that we are, try to give a country a
> break (many will include part of Russia in Europe---part in Asia, St
> Petersburg is in *European* Russia)--- unless it sounds Asian---the
> *stahns* are all Asian. [...]
According to the standard definition (ie, the Ural-Caucasus boundary), both
Daghestan and Tatarstan are in Europe.
mdl
> In school for many generations, all around the world, we are taught
> that Europe is 1 of the 7 continents of the planet Earth, which
include
> Africa, Asia, Australia, N. America, S. America, and Antarctica. I
> dunno why, but it suddenly dawned on me today that Europe doesn't
> really seem to be a definable continent in the same sense as the other
> 6, and that Europe is just part of one larger landmass connected with
> Asia. Europe is not seperated from Asia by a thin isthmus like North
> and South America, nor is it a free standing landmass like Australia,
> but is fully connected to Asia. So what makes Europe a continent? I
> wonder, who started all of this business calling Europe a continent in
> the first place when apparently it doesn't seem to be one? Is pride,
> perhaps, involed here?
> * Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion
Network *
> The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet -
Free!
What you cite is actually a very relevant social issue. The moguls of
media are alarmed that today's house-bound generation would rather
spend time at the internet than at the network. I remember at the
second grade, when parents were contemplating a 500 mile trip to Dallas
during school year to aid striken granny, we were in interview @ Allen
Elementary in Hutchinson, Kansas - I spoke up and offered as
demonstration of my not needing school for two weeks that I could
observe that the earth was round; and that the cardboard object in
front of us only modeled the world ~ it was not the world itself.
This brought a round of stares and the assessment that I would not
suffer the loss of the two weeks.
It must have been during that two weeks that all students were shown:
1. Life sucks, and then you cry.
2. Educational is a big scam by which those who cannot find employment
in the field in the real world propogate fantastic [of or having the
nature of fantasy] ideas about how the world works so as to justifiy
continued employment by keeping those who are not prepared for harsh
realities and the risks they contain from those risks & and those who
fail to find ensconsment in the overall mythology are estranged to a
risk-pool euphmisitcally labeled 'poverty'.
I note with interest that today's 6pm newscasts tend to cite go.net
which points to disney - which is itself the recipient of massive
government funding under the defensible accounting of 'for the
children' ... which in turn, buys advertising on the 6pm news as being
the web.
The world is cruel and desparately needs people like you.
The head honcho @ sun has repeatedly asserted that it is a very real
risk that we will all be forcibly implanted with thought-control
devices just exactly of the nature of some punk-hollywoood2000 movie.
There are zillions who stand ready to support the 'easy-way' social
structure where such things as camping would be outlawed for those who
do not have RV's. It has already happend to me that I was questioned
solely on the basis that I did not have a tent or other structure to
sleep in; this in a park where a decade ago I simply slept on the
ground without answering to anybody.
I have put up under http nearly a quarter of a million bytes of
straight ascii/html - most of which either harps on this or has a
traceable basis to this purpose.
--
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
In article < [email protected] >, [email protected] says...
> Let's look at it this way : why are there certain things that you call
> continents, and others that you don't.
>
> For example : Australia'a an island, it's also called a continent.
> England's an island, it's not called a continent.
>
England is on the European continental shelf, and at times has been an integral
part of that continent. Ah, looking ahead before carrying on, I see Charles has
gone into detail on this, nevermind.
Doug
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.demon.co.uk
Co-owner UK-Schools mailing list: email me for details
And what of the catastrophists McPhee describes? If that is a good word?
Don "Just wondering" Whittington
"Aside from its unscientificaliness, it has destroyed my faith
in my fellow man. (My fellow women are still faithable.)"
--Timothy A. McDaniel on the state of the poll
Actually, I've been known to send helpful hints to other WebTV clients, where
the offense is something specific and correctable like posting HTML, rather
than generalized webicility. Results have occasionally been encouraging.
The problem is, although WebTV has a page on Usenet conventions and
etiquette, they don't go out of their way to call it to their customers'
attention.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
>>And, taking it full circle, there's not much doubt about what
>>constitutes Central America, which is no more "mythical" than new
>>England.
>As taught in geography classes as the primary and secondary level,
>there is certainly something mythical about it. It's there in the
>sequence: North America, Central America, South America. I'd
>venture that many people came out of high school with the distinct
>impression that Cenntral America is distinct from the other two.
>
>Drew "which explains why so many get
> confused at Mexico being north American" Lawson
Well, Mexico is in NAFTA and none of the Central American countries
are. If the diplomats can't get it straight, why should the kids?
--
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
>> > I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
>> > million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
>> > projection of Greenland. I'm guessing, but I think that subsequent sea
>> > level drop left behind the Caspian Sea as a vestige of the ocean.
'Continental Drift', pg 163, fig. 73:"a plan of the ocean floors illustrating the configuration of
the midocean ridges, transform faults and transverse fracture zones..." shows Great Britain as
part of the European mass.
Pg. 166, fig 76, a map of the rigid plates form 1968, shows the European plate as bordered by the
mid-atlantic, Azores and Gibralter and the northern edge of the Med.
There are many maps which show GB as attached to or touching North America, but so was the rest of
Europe at that time.
Jack 'I lived in the Aleutians and still like quakes' Ray
Reply to:
[email protected]
St. Elizabeth Community, Norwood, Ohio
>East Pacific Rise ------- 17 cm/yr
>[I'm not too sure about this last one. It may be
>based on faulty data]
>
Hi Charles
The figure I found for the East-Pac rise (lat 51 S) is 4.4cm/year spreading rate, or a total
separation of 8.8cm/year. This was based on Vine's magnetic and age samples, both continental and
oceanic. The reference was to a 1966 report, tho, so the figures might have been corrected.
Jack 'read a lot' Ray
On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Michael wrote:
}Then how do people travel hundreds of miles over, (not water), to the
}North Pole?,......
Hmm... this must be a trick question.
Um, they walk on the ice?
Dr H
> > > Continental Drift was not being taken seriously 75 years ago.
> >
> > .And what of the catastrophists McPhee describes? If that is a good
> word?
In general, catastrophists haven't been taken seriously by
the scientific community since 1829. However, I think we
have now drifted so far from the original topic and have gone
far enough off-charter that followups should be by e-mail.
You know where to find me.
Charles D.
> How about geology? Just because Asia and Europe are united today doesn't have
> to mean that they are have always always been part of the same landmass.
Can of worms. Europe was fused to Asia at the end of the Permian
Period, about 250 million years ago. But when we go down this
road we find that there are hundreds (I do not exaggerate) of other
fusions of plates and microplates in the geologic record. In my own
very tiny state of Connecticut the northwest corner belongs to
ancestral North America and the southeast corner is part of
Avalon, which may or may not have been part of Africa at one
time. Most of the stuff inbetween was part of the Iapetus Ocean.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
Charles Wm. Dimmick < [email protected] > wrote:
And California is largely made up of terranes, sort of islands on
the Pacific plate the got rammed into California back when there
was a subduction zone along the California coast.
--
* Daly City California *
******* My typos are intentional copyright traps ******
> In general, catastrophists haven't been taken seriously by
> the scientific community since 1829.
What, Velikovsky doesn't count as the scientific community?
Mark D "warning: this message contains irony" Lew
> > > I'm looking at a National Geographic map that shows Europe 49
> > > million years ago as a big island, and Great Britain as a bulbous
> > > projection of Greenland.
> Not speaking for Lisa, but I can attest that her description is accurate,
> except, possibly, for the description of 'bulbous', of which I don't know
> the scientific definition, so I'll try to be more accurate:
>
> (Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue. Should've been in your mail two
> or three days ago).
OK, I finally got a copy. Whoever drew that map should be shot.
It is not exactly wrong, but it isn't exactly right either.
1. Absolutely correct but absolutely misleading is the fact that the
map shows the present outlines of Great Britain, Scandinavia, and
Greenland in their present positions relative to the equator by thin
white lines.
2. In solid colors they show the positions of land 49 million years
ago in the places where that land was 49 million years ago. Note
the two white dots labeled "Messel today" and "49 million years
ago". Notice how much separation there is.
3. Note, running along the southeast side of the Greenland of
49 million years ago a deep trench, which seems to be covered
by the "connection" between Great Britain and Greenland. This
is interpretive. Other reconstructions of paleogeography do not
show this covering, or else show a completely submerged
platform. If you move the white lines to put Greenland in its
present position you will find Iceland sitting in the middle of
that platform. When North American finally made its last
break of connecting links between North America/Greenland
and Europe, about 60 million years ago, there was the
beginning of vast outpourings of basaltic lava at this spot,
so much lava that a shallow ridge developed, covering the
newly formed mid-ocean rift at this point, with part
extending above sea level to form the beginnings of what
is now Iceland. Some geologists have interpreted the data
to indicate that the lava flows completely bridged the
gap between Greenland and Great Britain, with Iceland
sitting in the middle of the bridge. Others disagree that
the bridge was that complete. Anyway, it isn't
continental crust bridging the gap; it is oceanic crust.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Charles Wm. Dimmick wrote:
> Yehuda Naveh wrote:
> > (Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue. Should've been in your mail two
> > or three days ago).
> OK, I finally got a copy. Whoever drew that map should be shot.
> It is not exactly wrong, but it isn't exactly right either.
> 1. Absolutely correct but absolutely misleading is the fact that the
> map shows the present outlines of Great Britain, Scandinavia, and
> Greenland in their present positions relative to the equator by thin
> white lines.
> 2. In solid colors they show the positions of land 49 million years
> ago in the places where that land was 49 million years ago. Note
> the two white dots labeled "Messel today" and "49 million years
> ago". Notice how much separation there is.
These two points were quite clear on first reading and I don't find them
misleading or otherwise objectionable.
> 3. Note, running along the southeast side of the Greenland of
> 49 million years ago a deep trench, which seems to be covered
> by the "connection" between Great Britain and Greenland. This
> is interpretive. Other reconstructions of paleogeography do not
> show this covering, or else show a completely submerged
> platform. If you move the white lines to put Greenland in its
> present position you will find Iceland sitting in the middle of
> that platform. When North American finally made its last
> break of connecting links between North America/Greenland
> and Europe, about 60 million years ago, there was the
> beginning of vast outpourings of basaltic lava at this spot,
> so much lava that a shallow ridge developed, covering the
> newly formed mid-ocean rift at this point, with part
> extending above sea level to form the beginnings of what
> is now Iceland. Some geologists have interpreted the data
> to indicate that the lava flows completely bridged the
> gap between Greenland and Great Britain, with Iceland
> sitting in the middle of the bridge. Others disagree that
> the bridge was that complete. Anyway, it isn't
> continental crust bridging the gap; it is oceanic crust.
Now this is very interesting. If you are correct it is a major F of the
NG. I would expect them to be much more careful in their flagship niche
of physical maps. Actually, continuous crust between Greenland and Britain
was hard for me to understand because the midatlantic rift continues both
southward and northward from this bridge and the new ocean is already
quite wide. Being the result of a global force I could not see how the
rift can be interrupted on such a small scale. The map clearly implies that
the bridge is formed of continuous crust matter, and not just a patch of
oceanic lava. But this being the NG, I concluded that some things are
above me and plainly took it as the truth.
Also, the land bridge (green color), which you say is only a speculation
not shared by all, is also pictured as fact. The existence of a land
bridge at such a late period may have substantial implications. As a
layman, I wouldn't want to go around with this wrong knowledge. Have you
considered sending them a letter?
Finally, is the wide (and shallow) sea between Europe and Asia agreed
upon, or is this also only a speculation?
Yehuda
> > > (Map is on p. 38 of February 2000 issue.
[of National Geographic]
> Finally, is the wide (and shallow) sea between Europe and Asia agreed
> upon, or is this also only a speculation?
I have no real quarrel with that. Certainly in the interval between
ca 55 million years ago and ca 35 million years ago there were
shallow seas in that general area. The shorelines fluctuated a
great deal during that interval, so it is conceivable that at 49
MYBP the shoreline was as shown. I will readily admit that
knowing the detailed fluctuations of that shoreline is outside
my area of expertise. I could do a passable reconstruction
of fluctuating shorlines on the Gulf Coast of the United
States for the same time interval, but for Europe I know
only what I see in the books, and my books don't give very
good coverage for Cenozoic Europe.
Charles Wm. Dimmick
Actually, I think the original 'continental' distinction was more
political geography rather than topographical geography. The border between
Europe and Asia is the Caucas mountains. On the west side, they believed, was
the civilized Europe, and on the East, the barbaric Asia, a kind of ill
defined no man's land filled with Mongol hordes and mean ol' Turks. For some
Europeans, the Caucas mountains were a kind of edge of the world. And so it
came to pass that Europe was a seperate (cultural, anyway) entity than Asia.
When more knowledge of physical geopgraphy came about, they were loathe to
give up this distinction. Then some scientists called the whole sucker
Eurasia. That's my opinion.
| i don't know |
Which actor who played Superman in the films became a quadriplegic and has since died | The Actors Who’ve Played Batman | Den of Geek
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The Actors Who’ve Played Batman
We take a look back at the 8 crusading actors who’ve played Batman in TV and the movies, as well as his animated avatars!
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Holy revolving door, Batman! The Caped Crusader has been portrayed by more actors than any other superhero in movie history – eight to be exact. Most have lasted for just one film. But after The Dark Knight Rises, Christian Bale has become the first man to have played Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego more than twice on the silver screen. He didn’t have much competition – Michael Keaton was the only other actor to reprise the role. And we imagine that with the kind of deals being shaken out at WB that Ben Affleck has a good shot at topping both of those numbers, especially if you count his Suicide Squad cameo, which makes 2017's Justice League his third film in the cape.
But before anymore history is made next year, let’s take a look at the men who have been Batman.
1. Lewis G Wilson
Wilson was the first and youngest actor ever to play the adult Batman, and also the least successful. At 23, the unknown thespian donned the cape and the cowl in the 15-part 1943 Columbia serial Batman. While he looked the part of the dashing playboy, his physique was more Danny DeVito as the Penguin. One critic described Wilson as “thick about the middle.” Maybe that was why he wore his utility belt just below his chest. Critics also complained that his voice was too high and that he had a Boston accent. That, of course, wouldn’t be the last time someone complained about Batman’s voice.
After Batman, Wilson’s career went nowhere. Most of his roles went uncredited. His next biggest movie part was probably in the 1951 cult classic Bowanga Bowanga. A few years later he was out of showbiz altogether. His son, Michael G. Wilson, however, fared better in Hollywood, becoming the executive producer of the James Bond series. Lewis G. Wilson died in 2000.
Buy the 1943 Batman serial on Amazon
2. Robert Lowrey
Lowery took over the role in the follow-up serial, 1949’s Batman And Robin. Unlike Lewis, Lowery, 36 at the time, was a veteran actor, having already appeared in The Mark Of Zorro (1940), The Mummy's Ghost (1944), and Dangerous Passage (1944). He also filled out the Batsuit better than Lewis, with his utility belt hanging where you would expect it on a non-octogenarian.
Though Lowery never played Batman in another movie, he did get to wear the cape once more and make superhero history in the process. In 1956 he guest-starred on an episode of The Adventures Of Superman, marking the first time a Batman actor shared screen time with a Superman actor. (The two also appeared together in their pre-superhero days, in a WWII anti-VD propaganda film called Sex Hygiene).
After Batman, Lowrey enjoyed another 20 years in movies and TV. He died in 1971.
Buy Batman & Robin (1949) on Amazon
3. Adam West
The man logging the most hours in the Batcave, of course, was William West Anderson, whom you probably know better as Adam West. Either you love him for his goofy charm or hate him for blemishing the Bat’s image for several decades. His campy, over-the-top portrayal of Gotham’s Guardian infiltrated nearly every medium, including a 1966 movie and several animated series.
[related article: Batman '66 - The Comic Book Origins]
Legend has it producer William Dozier cast West after seeing him play a James Bond-like spy called Captain Q in a Nestlé Quik TV ad. He beat future Wonder Woman co-star Lyle Waggoner for the role. Dozier, who supposedly hated comic books, decided the only way the show would be successful was if they camped it up. So blame him.
Things would almost come full circle in 1970 when West was offered the role of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. West declined, later writing in his autobiography that he believed Bond should always be played by a Brit. Holy bad career moves, Batman!
After the Batman series went off the air in 1968, West was resigned to typecast hell. At one point, he was forced to make public appearances as the Caped Crusader to earn a living. Then, in 1977, he returned to the tube as Batman, doing his voice in The New Adventures Of Batman, and then on such shows as Super Friends.
Buy the Complete 1966 Batman TV Series on Amazon
West’s resurgence as a pop-culture icon began in the early '90s when he starred as a has-been TV action hero in the pilot episode of Lookwell, produced by Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel. It wasn’t picked up but took on a cult following online (check it out here ). Since then his cult popularity has increased and he now makes regular appearances on the animated series Family Guy.
4. Michael Keaton
It took more than 20 years for Adam West to lose his exclusivity on Batman.
When director Tim Burton (who like Dozier was not a fan of comic books) and Michael Keaton were announced for 1989’s Batman, fans went bat-shit crazy, thinking their beloved superhero was going to get the Adam West treatment again. Keaton's casting caused such controversy that 50,000 protest letters were sent to Warner Bros.’ offices. In an effort to appease the naysayers, Batman co-creator Bob Kane was hired as the film’s creative consultant. And in case you're curious, here is Keaton, Affleck, and a long list of other great castings that fans initially thought would suck .
Other Hollywood stars considered for the role of Batman included Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Charlie Sheen, Pierce Brosnan, Tom Selleck, and Bill Murray. But producer Jon Peters said he cast Keaton because “The image of Batman is a big male model type, but I wanted a guy who's a real person who happens to put on this weird armor. A guy who's funny and scary. Keaton's both. He's got that explosive, insane side.''
[related article: The Evolution of Batman Returns]
The studio and the fans had nothing to worry about. Keaton’s performance received favorable reviews, and Batman killed at the box office. Variety magazine gushed, “Michael Keaton captures the haunted intensity of the character, and seems particularly lonely and obsessive without Robin around to share his exploits.” Keaton was rewarded by being the first actor to reprise the role on the big screen. And in 1992’s Batman Returns, Keaton again garnered positive reviews.
Of course, Keaton has now seen a career revival thanks to the spectacular Birdman, he's even suiting up again as the winged Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming!
5. Val Kilmer
When the Batman franchise was turned over to director Joel Schumacher, Keaton decided not to return. Daniel Day-Lewis, Ralph Fiennes, William Baldwin, and Johnny Depp were reportedly considered as replacements. But the job was won by Val Kilmer – probably the most forgettable of the modern Batmen. Go ahead – try to remember. See? You can’t.
[related article: Why We Never Saw Tim Burton's Batman 3]
Schumacher became interested in Kilmer for 1995’s Batman Forever after seeing him in Tombstone (in which he played Doc Holiday, who Adam West also portrayed in a movie before he did the Batman TV series). Kilmer allegedly accepted the role without even reading the script or knowing who the new director was.
Schumacher quickly learned who Kilmer was, though, and the two clashed on the set. Schumacher later described Kilmer as “childish and impossible,” claiming that he fought with various crewmen and refused to speak to him for two weeks after the director asked his star to stop behaving rudely.
Kilmer’s performance got mixed reviews. As The New York Times put it, “The prime costume is now worn by Val Kilmer, who makes a good Batman but not a better one than Michael Keaton.” Bob Kane felt otherwise, saying he thought Kilmer did the best job of all the actors to have played Batman up to that point.
The movie performed better than Batman Returns at the box office, but Kilmer was destined to be a one-term Caped Crusader. Between his bad attitude and his concern that the superhero wasn’t getting as much screen time as the villains, he left the Batcave for good. Instead of filming 1997’s Batman & Robin, he did The Saint.
After Batman, Kilmer’s career headed downhill. Though it was probably 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau that had more to do with that than Batman Forever.
Buy The Batman Collection on Amazon
6. George Clooney
Clooney’s movie career was just taking off when he was cast in 1997’s Batman & Robin, with his breakthrough performance coming just the year before in Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn. Producers probably felt they pulled off a major coup landing the soon-to-be mega-movie star. Those producers, along with Clooney, may regret that decision now.
Batman & Robin was a disaster, rife with homoeroticism, camp, and those infamous Bat-nipples. Clooney once joked that he helped to kill the franchise. “Joel Schumacher told me we never made another Batman film because Batman was gay.” The actor also called the movie “a waste of money.”
Critics and fans agreed. In 1997, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “George Clooney is the big zero of the film, and should go down in history as the George Lazenby of the series.” Batman & Robin received 11 nominations at the Razzie Awards and frequently ranks among the worst films of all time. It was also the worst box office performer of the modern Batman movies. However, despite its many, many, many flaws, we will stick up for it a little...
[related article - Batman & Robin: The Judas Defense]
But all that did nothing to hurt Clooney’s career. After Batman, he went on to super stardom, starring in Out of Sight (with a cameo from Michael Keaton), Three Kings, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? over the next three years.
7. Christian Bale
Between Adam West and George Clooney, Batman seemed destined to remain a joke, at least when it came to live-action adaptations. Then came along Christopher Nolan. The Memento and Insomnia director was given the reins and he planned to reinvent the franchise, finally making the Dark Knight dark.
Among the early candidates for the Batman/Bruce Wayne roles were Billy Crudup, Jake Gyllenhaal, Joshua Jackson, Heath Ledger, and Cillian Murphy. But Nolan ultimately chose Christian Bale, explaining that “he has exactly the balance of darkness and light that we were looking for.”
Bale got generally favorable reviews for 2005’s Batman Begins, with several critics saying it reminded them of his brilliant turn in American Psycho. Not so brilliant, it seems, was his uber-husky Bat-voice. One reviewer compared Bale's guttural utterances to a “10-year-old putting on an ‘adult’ voice to make prank phone calls.” It got even more gravelly in 2008’s The Dark Knight, with NPR’s David Edelstein describing it as “a voice that's deeper and hammier than ever.”
Even Kevin Conroy, the man behind probably the most recognisable Batman voice, chimed in, saying at a C2E2 panel in 2010 that Bale’s voice was “ridiculous” and implored the actor to stop doing it. If The Dark Knight Rises trailer is any indication, Bale hasn’t taken the advice. Still, while that film was not as well received as 2008's sterling The Dark Knight, especially in the fan community, we still will happily come to the defense of The Dark Knight Rises .
Also, Bale was crucial to the alchemy in Nolan's second Batman feature, The Dark Knight. That film is generally considered the benchmark in the superhero genre that all other movies about caped do-gooders are compared to nearly a decade later. It is also the only superhero movie to win an acting Oscar, for Heath Ledger's iconic Joker, and is considered responsible for why the Academy now nominates 10 films instead of five for Best Picture. This occurred after The Dark Knight was egregiously snubbed in 2009.
Buy the Complete Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy on Amazon
8. Ben Affleck
It is often said that history repeats itself, and so it did when Ben Affleck was cast in the role of Batman for Zack Snyder's controversial Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Affleck was fresh off of seeing his third directorial effort, Argo, win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, cementing one of the most grandiose career comebacks in Hollywood history. He also was in the midst of filming Gone Girl with legendary auteur David Fincher at the helm. Nevertheless, fans went epileptic that the star of notorious flops like Gigli and Jersey Girl was now the "Bat-Fleck." The fact he appeared in the mediocre Daredevil movie from 2003 likely did him no favors.
Yet, ironically, Affleck is now generally considered the very best part in an otherwise tortured viewing experience. Like Michael Keaton before him, Affleck enjoys fan adulation only a few years after intense backlash. Of course, the actual depiction of his Dark Knight in director Snyder's hands is far less universally loved. For the record, Affleck offers a solid performance as the Batman. He is neither as haunted and emotionally elusive as Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne, or as noble and psychologically broken as Christian Bale's take on the character. In fact, Affleck lacks the lived-in quality of either performer's interpretation. But what he does have is a picture-perfect physique for the role that no actor has showcased before them, and a sense of dashing charisma that all other Bat-actors have lacked or underplayed.
[related article: Batman v Superman and Batman & Robin: Two Sides of the Same Coin]
Some fans even suggest he could be the perfect Batman due to his appearance and natural charm, but he was hampered in BvS with a voice modulator no less absurd than Bale's gravelly alternative, as well as a characterization of Batman that bordered on fascism, including as he ambivalently murdered many folks with direct gun shots, car collisions, grenades, knife stabs, and even crushing one's head in with a crate. This cruelty and totalitarian streak is in-keeping with Frank Miller's extreme vision of the character in The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel. But that story was always a major departure from mainstream interpretations of the character. In fact, for all the visual upgrades to Affleck's Batman, his characterization completely lacks the altrusitic heroism and sense of driven purpose enjoyed by the much more humanistic (read: flawed) take offered by Christian Bale.
Nevertheless, WB has indicated Justice League will be a course correction for the DCEU and Affleck's take, and might allow the actor to give the definitive Batman fans want, assuming of course Snyder's most 'creative' flourishes are reined in.
The Voices of Batman
Speaking of Batman voices, there have been about as many men to voice the Caped Crusader as have portrayed him in live-action. But the bulk of the animated Batman work over the years has gone to two actors.
In real life Olan Soule was a bespectacled pencil-necked geek, but that didn’t stop him from voicing the Dark Knight in six different animated series, beginning with 1968’s The Batman/Superman Hour. His run pretty much ended when Adam West took over voicing duties in the late '70s. Soule, who also appeared in such films as The Day The Earth Stood Still and North By Northwest, died in 1994.
Unlike Soule, Kevin Conroy could probably pull off Batman in real life, but so far he’s been relegated to voice work – and quite a lot of it. Conroy began voicing the superhero in Batman: The Animated Series, which made its debut in 1992. Since then, he’s done three other Batman series, a bunch of animated movies and videogames.
Others to voice Batman are Will Friedle (Batman Beyond), Rino Romano (The Batman), Diedrich Bader (Batman: The Brave And The Bold), Jeremy Sisto (Justice League: The New Frontier), and Bruce Thomas (who voiced Batman in commercials for GM’s OnStar service and portrayed the character briefly in the live-action TV series Birds Of Prey).
But Will Arnett deserves special attention.
With any other actor in the role, the presence of Batman in the 2014 cinematic smash The Lego Movie (which we reviewed here ) could easily have become the sort of performance that gets neglected from lists like this. However, Arrested Development star Will Arnett brought some comedy magic to the role and landed his own spin-off movie as a result.
It helped that movie came at the perfect time in Batman’s busy cinema schedule – long enough after The Dark Knight Rises for lampooning of Bale’s gruff Batman to be entirely welcome, and far enough before Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice that Arnett’s new iteration didn’t get lost in all the hype for Ben Affleck’s debut.
The result of this perfect casting and canny scheduling was a Batman who will go down in the history books as the funniest, freshest and downright fun-est take on the character. From penning ‘dark’ lyrics to helplessly attempting to hide his secret identity, Arnett’s Batman was a gag machine who The Lego Movie’s primary younger audience really embraced.
There were knowing winks in there for adult fans too, with such as dialogue as “I only work in black – and sometimes very, very dark grey’ appealing to comic book fans and LEGO Batman’s painful attempts to hit a button with a Batarang surely connecting with anyone who’s ever got stuck for hours at a simple door-button in the Arkham Asylum games.
Arnett’s delivery, combined with Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s zingers, made this portrayal a quick favourite for many, and it’s telling that no-one is complaining about Arnett’s reprisal in an upcoming 2017 standalone story. If you want more hilarious Arnett voice work in the meantime, check out BoJack Horseman on Netflix – you wont regret it, we promise .
The number one Batman?
It’s probably not a worthwhile question to ask which Batman actor is the best. It’s hard to argue that Christian Bale isn’t tops among the live-action crowd (Though I’m sure there are some Adam West Michael Keaton, and Ben Affleck fans out there who might take up the cause).
Still, Bale is no Christopher Reeve, whose iconic portrayal of Superman has made replacing him a seemingly impossible task. Bale has been a respectable Bruce Wayne/Batman, but the franchise can and has moved on without him. And though another half-dozen actors have resided in Wayne Manor, we have not found the definitive Batman.
Until then, Hollywood is sure to keep trying, and maybe Affleck will be able to do it all on his own when he's allowed to direct his own solo Batman movie following 2017's Justice League.
| Christopher Reeve |
In which of Shakespeare's plays are the title character's last words 'the rest is silence' | Christopher Reeve was an asshole.
Update (10-11-04): Christopher Reeve passed away October 10, 2004 due to heart failure. The title to this article was inappropriate given this tragic event, so I changed it:
Christopher Reeve is was an asshole.
For those of you who don't know, Christopher Reeve is the guy who played "Superman" in all four coma-inducing movies during the 80's. Before I even get started about his injury, I'd like to point out that "the curse of Superman" is bullshit, and I'd love nothing more than to punch the guy who came up with it. Just like the E! True Hollywood Stories "curse of The Little Rascals," it's much publicized Hollywood trash. Half the time they try to pass off a tragic event due to a "curse," it turns out that the actors died at the age of 86. Yeah real tragic, dumbass. An actor got murdered or paralyzed after living a healthy youth? Excuse me while I shit myself in awe at the mysterious power of the curse.
In 1995 "the curse" struck Reeve as he was riding a horse called "Eastern Express." The horse was running around, trying to get the gangly asshole off of his back when he finally came to an abrupt stop before a jump, leaving Reeve's shit in ruins. Reeve became paralyzed from the neck down after the accident (more like conspiracy, another reason to add horse to the dinner menu).
Why is Reeve an asshole?
Simple: because he's selfish. Reeve didn't give a shit about paralysis before his accident, but now that he's paralyzed, suddenly he opens up a paralysis foundation and cares about the plight of cripples? Where was his foundation in '95 when he played the role of a man with spinal cord injury? Sure, some of you might argue that he's doing a good thing by bringing attention to paralysis, but the underlying message being sent here is that nobody gives a shit about cripples until a celebrity becomes one.
What really pisses me off about Reeve is the sheer arrogance. Look up a Reeve biography and you'll find praise like "he has now found new meaning in life." Let me tell you something: any time you find new meaning in life because of a debilitating injury, your "old" life didn't have much meaning. Paralysis could strike anyone at any time, and if you're living your life in such a way that all your goals require the use of your arms and legs, then your life probably doesn't mean much to begin with. I'm sure people who were born paralyzed don't appreciate being told that their lives "have meaning too," as if they need affirmation from people who spend most of their lives working to pay off stupid bullshit like sports cars, expensive houses, and other junk that they don't need.
The "still living life to the fullest" doctrine pisses me off even more because you can almost hear a voice in your head that finishes off the sentence with "...as a cripple." What does it mean to "still live life to the fullest"? Why should it require any extra effort or energy, or the addition of the word "still" in front if you were living your life "to the fullest" to begin with? What can physical mobility afford you that pure thought can't alone? It's so gracious of Mr. Reeve to acknowledge that you can "still" live a meaningful life, even as a cripple. I'm sure that people who struggle with paralysis every day are exuberant at having someone champion their cause, it's just too bad that Reeve is in all likelihood doing it because he cares about himself first and foremost. Would he have opened up a paralysis foundation before the accident? Doubtful. Of course, we can never know for sure, but the fact remains that he didn't open up a foundation before the accident, and he poured his heart and soul into research afterwards, so the only conclusion that can be made is that he's doing it simply because he himself needs treatment.
The fact that he's helping thousands of people as he helps himself is a side effect of his cure; not necessarily his intention. I have little doubt that Mr. Reeve would work as hard to find a cure for paralysis if he was one of only a hand full of victims, so I don't think he deserves praise for this "good deed," because if it was intentional on his part to help these people, he probably would have had a paralysis foundation before the accident occurred.
I didn't have any beef with Reeve before his accident, but it's the praise he collects for his selfishness that makes him an asshole in my book. If tomorrow Reeve selflessly dedicated all of his time and effort--or even half of it--towards finding a cure for cancer or heart disease, he'd have my respect (not that he's trying to earn my respect, but having my respect is an awesome privilege). Hell, he'd earn my respect if he just cut the condescending bullshit for a few minutes, such as this prize quote "I've noticed that there are very few roles for people in chairs... I would like to see people with disabilities featured sympathetically." No shit? As opposed to all those other movies that show people with disabilities being demonized? Like it happens so often anyway. Why should people with disabilities be featured any more sympathetically than people without disabilities? If his goal is to live a normal life, how normal could his life be if all his future roles were "sympathetic"? Oh look, here comes the cripple, everyone act sympathetic regardless of the plot, because real life cripples never experience conflict or drama. If I were in a wheel chair, I'd want an ass kicking role where I would spend the entire movie running over people's fingers and tossing old ladies off of cliffs, not some suck-ass sissy role where I'd sit around and cry like a pussy.
Before you send me email bitching about me picking on cripples, ask yourself the following question: why is it any more acceptable to pick on non-cripples? Sounds like discrimination to me. If you're the type of person who would be offended by an article picking on Christopher Reeve without giving second thought to other celebrities I've picked on, chances are good that you're racist*.
*Note: I know that "race" doesn't have anything to do with being crippled. I'm just connecting the dots here people, quit emailing me.
Update (10-12-04):
A few choice emails I've received since Reeve's passing. Many people think I rushed to write this article after his death. Check again, dipshits.
From: kyle edwards
Subject: Read your Christopher Reeve's site
Dear dumb-fuck:
You are probably right that Christopher Reeve would have not started
a foundation if he did not have his accident.� Instead of feeling
sorry for himself, he used his fame to help people with
disabilities.
So while he is now in heaven walking along with God, his foundation
and legacy will continue; and when you die (by the looks of it nobody
will care or notice), you can just go straight to hell where you
belong.
By the way, I'm not a racist or a bigot since I work with people with
mental and physical disabilities and I'm a black man married to a
white woman.� You seem like the kind of person who would vote for Bush.
You are nothing but a bitter, fucked-up waste of space.
CHRISTOPHER "MAN OF STEEL" REEVE
1952-2004
| i don't know |
In the film The Truman Show what is Truman's surname | The Truman Show (1998) - Synopsis
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Synopsis
Truman Burbank ( Jim Carrey ) is an insurance salesman leading an idyllic, peaceful life on Seahaven Island.
Truman also happens to be the star of the most popular live show in television history. The only problem is, he doesn't know it! In fact, the entire island of Seahaven is a complete fabrication; a massive set surrounded by a protective dome that produces the most sophisticated effects and imagery to mimic the sky, weather, and temperature of the real world. Set just off of what appears to be the coast of Florida, the dome is run by a massive staff hidden just beyond its barriers and managed by the artistically eccentric Director, Christof ( Ed Harris ). Christof has filmed Truman since just before his birth and sees the project as a ray of hope; a way to truthfully portray a person's life nonstop while maintaining their innocence.
It is on Day 10,909 of Truman's life that things begin to change. As he's getting ready for work, he greets his neighbors across the street ( Fritz Dominique , Angel Schmiedt , and Nastassja Schmiedt ), with his traditional greeting of, "Good morning! And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night", before a mysterious object falls from the sky and lands near his car. When Truman looks up, however, the sky is clear and offers no explanation for the object, which we can see is obviously a studio light. As he drives to work, the radio reports that an aircraft flying over the island shed parts which leads Truman to believe that was the source of the fallen object. At work, Truman discreetly tears pieces of paper out of a magazine and stows them away before making a call asking for directory information to Fiji. He asks for a Lauren or Silvia Garland. When neither of the names bears results he hangs up just as his boss, Lawrence ( Peter Krause ), approaches and asks him to close a deal on Harbor Island. Reluctantly, Truman leaves but once he reaches the pier he is forced to return to work due to his fear of open water.
At home Truman spends some time gardening before his wife, Meryl ( Laura Linney ), returns from work with a chipper smile on her face. Afterwards, Truman visits with his long time friend, Marlon ( Noah Emmerich ), real name Louis Coltrane, where he confides the wish to leave Seahaven, quit his job, and travel to Fiji, echoing a childhood wish to explore (despite his teacher's ( Muriel Moore ) attempts to dissuade him by informing him that there was nothing left in the world to discover). Marlon feigns ignorance and says that he doesn't even know where Fiji is.
That evening, Truman sits alone on the beach looking out towards the water. He remembers a boating trip he took with his father ( Brian Delate ) as a child ( Blair Slater ) and requesting that they stay out at sea for just a bit longer. Though his father wanted to go back to shore, he complied. Shortly after, a strong storm hit and Truman's father was swept overboard and drowned. As he comes out of the memory it begins to rain on Truman...and just on Truman. When he realizes this, he stands up in shock as the rest of the sky finally opens up in a downpour, prompting him to rush home.
He tells Meryl about his plans to go to Fiji but she dismisses the idea, saying that their financial obligations are much more important. When he argues that it could be an adventure she counters by asking if having a baby would be a good adventure. She then suggests they go to bed. The following morning, as Truman drives to work, he spots a homeless man on the street. Looking closely he realizes that the man looks just like his father. Before he can get to the man, however, a number of people and strange obstacles spontaneously appear and the homeless man is taken away. Later that day, Truman questions his mother ( Holland Taylor ) about this over the phone but she refuses to believe any of it and dismisses the idea as wishful thinking.
That night, Truman retreats to the basement of his home where he begins to look through an old trunk filled with his personal mementos. He spies a red sweater with a white pin that says 'How will it end?' His memories bring him back to college where he and Marlon are in the homecoming band. Truman has his eye on an attractive young woman across the courtyard but is distracted when Meryl shows up. Over the next month or so, Meryl is inseparable from Truman until one evening when he is in the library studying. He looks up and sees the young woman from the courtyard whom he'd been admiring. He approaches her and learns that her name is Lauren ( Natascha McElhone ) but she tells him that she's not allowed to speak with him. Despite this, Truman asks if she'd like to go out with him sometime. She takes out a small piece of paper, writes quickly, and hands it to Truman. It says one word, 'now'. The two secretly rush out of the library. The cameras around the room lose them for a second but manage to spy them running out a nearby exit.
Truman and Lauren run towards the beach where they are able to share a moment of privacy. However, a vehicle approaches and Lauren becomes frantic. She tells Truman that her real name is actually Sylvia and tries to tell him the truth about the show as her 'father' appears on the dunes and calls for her. He comes down to collect her and tells Truman that she's delusional before announcing that they are moving to Fiji. Truman can only watch in puzzlement as they drive off, never to return. In the aftermath, Truman finds the red sweater that Lauren/Sylvia left behind.
As he returns from his memory, Truman takes the scraps of magazine that he'd been tearing out at work and reveals that he's been compiling a collage of a woman's face; Lauren/Sylvia's face as he remembers it.
The next day, as he drives to work, the radio in Truman's car begins to strangely broadcast every movement he makes, which are actually remarks from crew members observing him. Growing increasingly paranoid, Truman opts to walk around in the open air outside. He parks and ducks into a building. He makes his way towards the elevator and, as the doors open, is surprised to see, not an empty car, but an entrance to what seems to be a studio filled with people wearing headphones and eating sandwiches - the actors' break room. Before he can register what he's seeing, security grabs him and pushes him out of the building for trespassing.
Confused, Truman walks to a nearby market where he sees Marlon's service vehicle parked. Truman tries to explain to Marlon what he just experienced but Marlon passes it off as Truman trying to be funny. Truman pulls Marlon aside and tells him that he's his best friend and needs to confide that he's going to be going away for a while.
When he returns home, Truman finds Meryl and his mother looking at photos in an old album. They show him and look on together as the TV begins to play an old film called 'Show Me the Way to Go Home', a clear attempt to reassure the notion of never leaving home. As Truman looks back at the photo album, his eyes fall on a picture of his wedding day with Meryl. Looking closer, he sees that her fingers are crossed which implies that Meryl did not marry Truman truthfully.
Truman goes to a travel agency the next day to book a flight to Fiji but the agent ( Judy Clayton ) tells him that there are no available flights for at least a month. When he tries to take a bus to Chicago, the bus breaks down before it can leave the station.
When Meryl comes home from work, she finds Truman sitting in his car in the driveway, fixated on something. She goes to the car and sits with him but he tells her to be silent before predicting the appearance of every person along the street; as if they were on a fixed schedule - specifically, a lady on a red bike, a man with flowers, and a vintage Volkswagen beetle with a dented fender. Meryl tells him that his behavior is worrying but he decides to put his theory to a bigger test. He drives off down the street with Meryl who demands that they return home. When they come to a rotary, a traffic jam suddenly appears. Truman feigns disappointment and takes the car around the rotary multiple times. When he comes back to the blocked road all the cars have vanished and he continues towards the only bridge that leads off the island. However, Truman is forced to stop at the bridge when he realizes that he can't drive over because of his fear of water. Instead, he closes his eyes and slams his foot on the gas, forcing Meryl to drive. Victorious, Truman cries out as Meryl continues to try and convince him to return home. They pass a sign warning of forest fires and a line of flames shoots across the road, but Truman drives onward. The car is finally stopped just beyond a power plant that appears to have experienced a meltdown. Men in hazmat suits approach the car and apologize for the inconvenience but when one of them accidentally calls Truman by his first name (they would of course not know otherwise) Truman gets out of the car and attempts to make a break for it. The men chase after him and manage to capture him and return him to the island.
Once home, Meryl tries to console a dejected Truman by offering him a new drink she picked up. However, she promotes the item as if on a commercial which prompts Truman to ask who she thinks she's talking to. Meryl becomes upset and blames Truman's recent behavior but Truman becomes more frantic and tries to convince Meryl that there's something wrong with everything. Becoming scared, Meryl takes a peeler and aims it at Truman, telling him to keep his distance. When he grabs it away from her and puts her in a lock hold she calls out for 'someone' to stop him. Truman, in shock, releases her and demands to know what's going on. Marlon appears at the door and walks in with a case of beer, as if to casually hang out, and Meryl runs into his arms, crying that 'it's not professional'.
Marlon takes Truman out where they sit at the edge of a road, sharing the beers. Marlon tries to assure Truman that, if everyone was in on a massive scheme or conspiracy, he'd have to be in on it too. He tells Truman that the last thing he would ever want to do is lie to him, though in reality, he's saying this as Christof feeds him his words through an earpiece. Marlon then tells Truman the real reason he stopped by and took him out tonight. They stand and look behind them where a dark figure emerges from the mist. Marlon tells Truman that he was able to find the homeless man he'd seen and, as the man gets closer, Truman realizes that it is his father. The two embrace while Christof composes the cinematography from above and revels in his master shot of Truman weeping with happiness. Truman's father promises to make up for all the lost years.
Shortly after this moment a weekly TV show titled 'TruTalk' begins while a smaller screen in the right-hand corner of the television shows Truman as he eats his breakfast. Christof is interviewed and he explains the reasoning behind many things that have happened on the show. The purpose of 'killing' his father out at sea was to implant the fear of water in Truman so that he would have no wish of leaving the island. This decision was reinforced by his youthful wishes to explore and discover which often nearly led him to discover his own captivity. Bringing his father back now was done with the hopes to quell Truman's emotional turmoil and soothe him into remaining on the island despite all that's happened. Various security measures were taken in light of a few occurrences, one of which involved a Truman fan ( Marco Rubeo ) hiding himself in a Christmas present of Truman's when he was a child in order to get air-time.
A caller rings in and Christof accepts to answer questions. He recognizes Sylvia's voice as she berates Christof for keeping up the charade and imprisoning Truman within a mockery of life. Christof counters by saying that the real world is a prison and that what he has done is to actually give Truman the chance to lead a completely normal life, free of violence or pain and says that, should Truman discover the truth, he could leave.
The following day, Truman appears to be well and back to his normal self. He greets his neighbors and heads off to work where he meets a new coworker named Vivien (Meryl's appointed replacement as Truman's prospective female partner). That evening, Truman moves some things around his basement, appearing to reorganize, before pulling on some covers on a makeshift bed and falling asleep. After several hours of inactivity, even when Truman should be awake, Christof becomes suspicious while watching the video feed. He orders that the phone ring in the house. When Truman doesn't answer, much less move, Christof sends Marlon over, cueing him the entire time as to what to do. Marlon goes into the basement and pulls Truman's covers back to find a noise recorder and a gaping hole in the basement floor. At a loss of what to do or say, Christof does the unthinkable; he cuts the transmission.
The cease in transmission puts the world into a state of shock and Christof orders the entire staff on the island to form search parties. Performing a God-like move over the set, Christof commands the sun to rise to aid in the search. When the search on land has been exhausted, Christof suggests an impossible idea; search at sea. His intuition proves correct as cameras pan over the ocean and locate a lone sailboat with Truman at the helm. The live video feeds continue and Christof orders one of the actors to go out and fetch Truman. However, being actors, none of them know how to man a boat.
Christof utilizes his weather program to simulate a storm to entice Truman to go back to port. However, Truman battens down and yells to the skies in defiance. Angry, Christof increases the wind and turbulence, nearly causing Truman to fall overboard. Knowing that Truman will never back down, Christof pull the plug on the weather. Truman continues sailing, victorious, until the boat is rocked by a strong impact. Truman collects himself and finds that the bow of the ship has lodged into...the sky. He has come to the end of the dome. He gets off of the boat and examines the wall, following it a short ways until he finds a short staircase leading to an exit door. As he reaches for the handle, Christof speaks on the intercom system to Truman directly for the first time. He introduces himself as the creator who has been watching Truman since the day he was born and revealing his life as entertainment for a world beyond. Christof tries to convince Truman to stay within his world where he can live happily and without suffering or pain and tries to plant the idea that Truman is still deathly afraid of continuing on.
Truman appears deep in thought and Christof suggests that he say something. After all, the entire world is watching. Truman looks up and says, "In case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night." He bows as Christof looks on incredulously, opens the door, and leaves. An elated Sylvia jumps up from her living room floor and leaves her apartment as the rest of the world cheers tremendously at the finale of the Truman Show.
A saddened but resolute Christof removes his head piece and cuts the transmission.
Synopsis
| Burbank |
In which country was the former Oxo advert actress Lynda Bellingham born | The Truman Show Summary | GradeSaver
The Truman Show Summary
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Christof , the creator of a television show called " The Truman Show ," informs a documentary-style camera that even though everything around Truman is fake, his life and emotions are genuine. Actors Hannah Gill and Louis Coltrane, who play Truman's wife and best friend, respectively, support Christof's statement. Meanwhile, Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) has no idea that 5,000 hidden cameras document his entire life, making him one of the biggest TV stars in the world. He also does not realize that Seahaven Island, where he lives, is a giant television studio under a dome, controlled entirely by Christof and his production team.
Truman is a cheerful insurance adjustor with a pretty, perky wife, Meryl. One morning, a cinema light falls in front of his house but a subsequent radio broadcast explains it away by claiming that a plane flying overhead had been shedding parts. At work, Truman tries to make a secret phone call to Fiji looking for someone named Lauren or Sylvia Garland. He can't find her. Later, his boss instructs Truman to go to Wells Island to meet a client. This will require Truman to take a ferry, but he's desperately afraid of the water, so he turns back.
Truman tells his friend Marlon about his dream to go to Fiji, but Marlon convinces Truman that his life on Seahaven Island is enviable, trying to dissuade him from leaving. Later, Truman sits at home on the beach and "The Truman Show" cuts to a flashback of Truman's father drowning at sea. Back in the present, the rain starts to fall - just on Truman. As soon as he realizes this, the whole sky opens up. Back at home, a soaking wet Truman tries to convince Meryl to leave everything behind and roam around the world, but she dismisses the idea as absurd and seduces him into bed instead.
The next day, on his way to work, Truman sees a hobo who looks exactly like his father. Before he can speak to the man, some other pedestrians take the man away and bundle him onto a bus. Later, Truman goes to visit his mother, Angela, who dismisses the encounter as a vision stemming from the loss of his father.
In his basement, Truman goes through a box of keepsakes, including a red sweater. It belonged to a woman named Lauren (or Sylvia) that Truman fell for in high school. She was supposed to be an extra but she caught Truman's eye. However, Meryl was his intended mate, so "The Truman Show" producers did everything in their power to keep Lauren and Truman apart. One night, Truman and Lauren are able to steal a kiss on the beach, and Lauren tells Truman that her real name is Sylvia and tries to reveal the truth. Before Truman can digest what's happening, though, Lauren's "father" barrels onto the beach and takes her away, saying she's insane and they're moving to Fiji. Truman's viewers at "The Truman Bar" are still invested in this romantic storyline (just like Truman himself).
The next day, Truman overhears the production walkie-talkies on his radio, describing his exact location. He is paranoid now, despite the "radio announcer's" explanation that there was an interference with a police scanner. Truman does not go into the office, and wanders around Seahaven instead, finally noticing all the strange things happening around him that he never saw before. Extras are lunching in an elevator shaft, and buses and cars stop for him as he crosses the street. He tries to talk to Marlon, who treats Truman like he is unraveling. Truman, however, insists that he's going away for a while. The next morning, he follows Meryl to work, forcing her and the actors playing doctors to bungle their way through a fake "surgery." Truman leaves a message for Meryl to say that he's going to Fiji.
Truman tries many different methods to get out of Seahaven, but Christof is able to stop him at every turn. Finally, he forces Meryl to come with him and points out all the strange inconsistencies in his life. He eventually runs out of the car at a roadblock, but a group of extras wrestle him to the ground and return him to his home. When Meryl tries to act out her scripted product placement for "Mococoa," Truman insists on knowing who she is talking to. His paranoia gets the better of him and he threatens her by holding a sharp utensil to her throat. Finally Marlon comes over with a six-pack and saves Meryl, who bawls that the situation has become "unprofessional."
That night, Marlon makes a heartfelt speech to Truman, trying to convince him that his paranoia is unfounded. However, Christof is telling Marlon exactly what to say through an earpiece, including, "I would never lie to you, Truman." Marlon reveals that Truman was, indeed, right about his father. Kirk comes out of the fog to hug his son - they are going with the story that he has had amnesia for the past 22 years but has come back. On a televised interview with Christof, the creator describes the mechanisms that have kept "The Truman Show" running for the past 29 years without Truman's knowledge. Everything on the show is for sale, and actors integrate product placement regularly (as we have seen before). Lauren/Sylvia calls into the show to tell Christof he is manipulative and evil, but Christof assures her that Truman "prefers his cell" to the sick world outside of it.
Late one night, Truman is asleep in the basement, where he has moved after Meryl left. Suddenly, the "The Truman Show" control team realizes that Truman is not actually there - he has escaped their cameras. Christof cuts transmission for the first time. They mount an Island-wide search, and Christof even turns on the "sun" to make it easier. However, by this time, Truman is actually on a boat in the middle of the ocean, having overcome his fear in order to achieve his dreams. Christof creates a massive storm and seems to be ready to kill Truman to keep him from figuring out the truth. Eventually, Christof is forced to introduce himself to Truman - only as a voice from the sky, though. He tries to prevent Truman from leaving the safety of Seahaven, saying that what lies outside is sick and dangerous. Truman, however, tells Christof that he never had cameras in his head and doesn't know Truman as well as he thinks he does.
Truman then steps off the set for the first and last time. His loyal viewership applauds, celebrates and... changes the channel, looking for something else to watch.
| i don't know |
Which TV series co-starred Pauline Quirke and Warren Clarke as Faith and Brian Addis | BBC - Drama - Down To Earth
Down To Earth
Down To Earth
Down to Earth follows a family who leave London for a different life in Devon. It tells the story of their fight to adapt to life in the countryside.
The first series commences when Brian (Warren Clarke) and Faith (Pauline Quirke) Addis buy Silverdale farm so that they can grow their own flowers. Eventually they are forced to make a tough and unexpected decision to hand over the running of Silverdale Farm to Brian's brother, Matt Brewer (Ian Kelsey) and his new wife, Frankie (Angela Griffin).
As the Brewer family soon discover, life in Silverdale is neither dull nor simple. Matt's three children find it difficult to adjust to their new stepmother. Frankie herself, initially takes some persuading to move away from her urban existence into the heart of the countryside, but once she agrees she grabs the opportunity with both hands.
Matt, in the meantime, desperately wants to implement his new plans for the Salad Days business which the Addis family bequeath him. However, progress is slow and overnight success seemed impossible. They moved back to the city in order to make ends meet.
Finally Tony (Ricky Tomlinson) and Jackie (Denise Welch) shatter the idyllic peace when they take over Silverdale.
| Down to Earth |
In the UK, which animals are traditionally associated with the first of the month | Down To Earth | Drama Channel
Down To Earth
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The Great Escape
Pauline Quirke teams up with Warren 'Dalziel' Clarke to head the clan who leave London for a smallholding in Devon. Florist Brian Addis has plans for his family.
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In at the Deep End
Pauline Quirke and Warren Clarke team up to head the family who leave London for a new life in Devon. The family fail to spot youngest child Molly is in trouble.
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Oh Best Beloved
Homesick Sarah goes missing, and her family are convinced that the teenager has returned to London to be with her boyfriend. Warren Clarke and Pauline Quirk star.
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Do As You Would Be Done by
Warren Clarke and Pauline Quirke are Mum and Dad in the country drama. There's trouble afoot on the farm as Faith's secret turns the family upside down.
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My Kingdom for a Horse
Warren Clarke of 'Dalziel and Pascoe' fame is the head of the family adapting to rural life. Marcus helps a friend and gets himself in trouble with the police.
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Love in a Mist
It's an upsetting time for the family who've swapped London for Devon. The weather spells disaster for Brian as he and his family face the loss of their farm.
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Great Expectations
The second series of the country drama begins. Faith opens up Phillishayes to children as a holiday venue. Brian's estranged mother turns up out of the blue.
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Wild Life
Drama with the family who left London for a smallholding in Devon. Faith is so caught up in looking after guests that her children are starting to feel neglected.
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A Time to Live
Fun and drama in the beautiful surroundings of Devon. Addy and Brian have mended their fences, only to have them knocked down again by an unexpected visitor.
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Rites and Wrongs
Put your feet up and relax with the family coping with country life. Addy's death brings the Addis family back to London for her funeral.
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The Final Straw
Family drama with Pauline Quirke and Warren Clarke. Foot and mouth disease strikes as Marcus's love life is getting complicated.
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Home Truths
Laughs and tears in the family drama with Pauline Quirke and Warren Clarke. Brian and Faith make the difficult decision to sell Phillishayes and move to a bigger house.
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The Lie of the Land
Pauline Quirke and Warren Clarke head the family drama. Settling into their new house, Brian discovers that his neighbour, Ray, is facing bankruptcy.
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Gone but Not Forgotten
Pauline Quirke and Warren Clarke head the cast in the great family drama. Brian realises his dream of putting on a charity show in memory of his mother.
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All Together Now
Family drama where the stressed out townies Warren Clarke and Pauline Quirke move out to get stressed in the countryside instead. Faith plans a wedding reception.
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The Last Dance
Pauline Quirke shows her versatility in the family drama as Faith and the children are devastated by Brian's death. Marcus tries to take on the business.
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Moving On
Bittersweet drama as Faith and her children are not coping without Brian, and it may be time to move on. But finding the right buyer for Silverdale proves difficult.
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Cat on a Bonfire
Bittersweet drama series that survived several cast changes. The Brewers attempt to adapt to their new life in the countryside. Matt gets hopelessly lost.
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The Poseidon Effect
Bittersweet drama about life in the sticks. A karaoke performance at the pub earns Matt the unsought-after lead role in an amateur dramatics production.
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Honesty
Fun and high drama with the family experiencing the rural life. Tension grows between Lucy Brewer and her new stepmother, Frankie, culminating in an alarming accusation.
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High Hopes
Bittersweet family drama series. Matt's attempts to sell his first bean crop to Fenner's supermarket are sabotaged when Fenner objects to Frankie's plans.
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Still Waters
The bittersweet family drama. Newly installed pub landlord, Tony Murphy played by Ricky Tomlinson, is in for the biggest shock of his life.
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Seeing Is Believing
Bittersweet family drama from the West Country. Blamed for a tragedy at a local farm, Matt and Frankie Brewer pull together to save their business.
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Fate and Fortune
More bittersweet family drama from the West Country. Frankie's refusal to grieve for the baby pushes Matt to the edge. Jackie succeeds in making Tony jealous.
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Can't Buy You Love
More from the townies who move to the sticks. Frankie has doubts about life in the country with Matt. Tony wants a greyhound to get rich quick.
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Family Ties
Bittersweet drama series. Matt comes face-to-face with the father who walked out on him when he was eight. Tony inadvertently puts the pub licence in jeopardy.
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Best Laid Paws
Bittersweet drama and a deadly disease forces Matt and Frankie to shut down the farm. And Tony has his own crisis when Jackie enters him in a salsa competition.
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First Love
Bittersweet family drama. Frankie's world is turned upside down when her first love comes back into her life. Jackie considers drastic measures to stay looking young.
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Unfinished Business
Cast changes but the bittersweet drama continues. Steve Benson continues to stir up feelings in Frankie where she has to make the biggest decision of her life.
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Cowboys
Bittersweet drama as the Murphy family adjust to rural life. Tony's friend from jail turns up in the village looking for love, and the arrival of new vet Kerry causes a stir.
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Ignorance Is Bliss
Ricky Tomlinson and Denise Welch head the family drama. Tony's latest money making idea is a badger safari. Ryan gets into trouble when persuing an older woman.
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Dangerous Liaisons
Bittersweet drama about a family adjusting to rural life. Tony has plans for a paintballing business in Silverdale. Tony's old friend is smitten with Jackie.
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Changes
Final series of the bittersweet family drama. Jackie becomes increasingly suspicious that Tony is having an affair, and Kerry's ex-boyfriend Ben shows up out of the blue.
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Broken Dreams
Drama series starring Ricky Tomlinson and Denise Welch. Tony hides his health worries from Jackie and focuses on throwing her a unforgettable 40th birthday party.
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SAY HELLO, SAY GOODBYE , 7
Bittersweet drama following a family's adjustment to rural life. Tensions erupt with the Murphys as Tony reads out his will, and there's a shock in store for Lyn.
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Hot Air
Drama series about a family adjusting to rural life. While Jackie and Lyn argue over Sylvia's funeral, Tony looks for her will.
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Which former British heavyweight boxing champion had an identical twin brother called George | Former heavyweight contender Cooper dies at age 76
Former heavyweight contender Cooper dies at age 76
STUART CONDIE - AP Sports Writer
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FILE - This Tuesday Feb. 22, 200 photo from files shows former British and European heavyweight boxing champion Sir Henry Cooper after receiving his knighthood at an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London. Sir Henry has died aged 76, sources told Britain's Press Association Sunday May 1, 2011. He was well known for two famous clashes with Muhammad Ali in the 1960's flooring Ali in the 4th round of a 1963 non-title fight at London's Wembley, though Ali eventually won the fight. He fought Ali again in 1966 but was again beaten.
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Former heavyweight boxer Henry Cooper, one of Britain's most popular sportsmen who was best known for knocking down Muhammad Ali while he was still known as Cassius Clay, died Sunday. He was 76.
The first boxer to be knighted and receive the title "Sir" from a British monarch, Cooper died just two days before his 77th birthday, the British Boxing Board of Control said. He died at his son's house in Oxted, Surrey, in southern England, after an extended illness.
"I am at a loss for words over the death of my friend, Henry Cooper," Ali said in a statement. Cooper floored Ali, then an up-and-coming contender named Clay, in a 1963 non-title fight at Wembley Stadium.
Cooper threw a trademark left hook — known by fans and British boxing writers as "'Enry's 'Ammer" in acknowledgment of his south London accent — toward the end of the fourth round, catching the much larger Ali flush on the jaw and sending him through the ropes and onto the canvas.
Ali, who later said the knockdown punch "not only shook me, it shook my relations in Africa," won the bout by technical knockout in the next round while trailing on the scorecard.
The two fought again in 1966 at London's Highbury Stadium. This time, Ali came in as the world champion and he retained his belt by stopping a bloodied Cooper in the sixth round.
Ali said he visited with Cooper two summers ago during a visit to Windsor.
"Henry always had a smile for me; a warm and embracing smile," Ali said. "It was always a pleasure being in Henry's company. I will miss my ole friend. He was a great fighter and a gentleman. My family and I extend our heartfelt sympathies to his family and loved ones."
Cooper, who won the British, European and Commonwealth heavyweight titles but never the world crown, remained revered in Britain as much for his warm personality and gentlemanly manner as a 40-14-1 record in a professional career spanning more than 16 years.
"He's not the only one who wasn't good enough to beat Ali," said Robert Smith, the general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control. "For such a small man, he put up some great performances in a world-class context.
"It's not just the boxing and your ability, it's the personality as well. He won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year on two occasions, which is a tremendous feat for a boxer. Everyone called him 'Our Enry,' and he was much loved. He served boxing wonderfully."
Many fans in the partisan Wembley crowd believed Cooper was only denied victory over Ali in the 1963 fight by debatable tactics from his corner.
Trainer Angelo Dundee brought a rip in Ali's gloves to the attention of the referee and Ali had time to recover while new gloves were located and brought to the ring. He then stopped Cooper in the next round.
Cooper retired in 1971 shortly after losing his British, European and Commonwealth belts to Joe Bugner by a quarter of a point. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
"He transcended boxing," promoter Frank Warren said. "He was a true gentleman of sport and had a huge place in the public's affection. He never won the world title but he had true British grit, he tried.
"His weakness was that he cut very easily."
Recent British champions paid their respects to Cooper, who also fought Floyd Patterson.
"One of Britain's greatest sportsmen Sir Henry Cooper passed away today," WBA heavyweight champion David Haye tweeted. "A true warrior and great human being. Rest in Peace."
Former undisputed heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis tweeted: "R.I.P. Sir Henry Cooper. Former British, Commonwealth and European Champion. My deepest condolences to the Cooper family."
WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan said that his compatriot had encouraged him in the early stages of his professional career.
"I met Henry in London a few times. He was very humble, we had a good conversation about my own career and what steps I should be taking," Khan told BBC radio. "He told me not to rush it as a pro, pick the right fights at the right time. I'm young and there are bigger fights ahead.
"It was great advice."
Cooper's twin brother George, who turned professional with him in 1965, died last year.
Cooper's wife of 47 years, Albina, died in 2008 of a heart attack. The couple had two sons, Henry Marco and John Pietro.
___
AP Sports Writer Rob Murray in London contributed to this report.
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| Henry Cooper |
Which Olympic event in 1900 left around 300 creatures dead | Sir Henry Cooper (From HeraldScotland)
Boxer;
Born: May 3, 1934; Died: May 1, 2011
SIR Henry Cooper, who has died aged 76, was a boxer and one of the best-loved British sportsmen of all time. He came within seconds of defeating the great Muhammad Ali during a career in which he won no global honours but earned incredible goodwill and public support.
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Armed with his legendary left hook, dubbed ’Enry’s ’Ammer, a fighter’s heart, solid skills and a winning personality, the respectful Londoner was as popular for his character outside the ring as his achievements inside it.
A former British, European and Commonwealth heavyweight champion, Cooper was the first to win two BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards – in 1967 and 1970 – and reigned at home and in Europe without managing to conquer the world.
Cooper stood at just 6ft but carried genuine heavyweight power, as witnessed by young American upstart Cassius Clay, who before becoming Ali, found himself floored and floundering at the hands of his British host at Wembley in June, 1963.
With Clay knocked down, his senses scrambled, the Louisville Lip barely got to his feet before being saved by the bell at the end of the fourth round. An extended break before the fight’s resumption after a rip conveniently appeared in Clay’s gloves essentially saved the future champion as he collected himself and proceeded to open up decisive cuts around Cooper’s notoriously tender eyes.
The fight was stopped in that very round.
While it was a non-title affair, it was Cooper’s big chance. Though defeated, it remained his big night and Ali later said Cooper “had hit him so hard that his ancestors in Africa felt it”.
Three years later, a wiser Ali – having changed his name and won the world heavyweight championship – returned to London and staged a masterclass to effectively take care of unfinished business, boxing his way to another cuts stoppage.
The second Ali bout was refereed by former Leith Victoria amateur champion, George Smith, who recalled: “On first seeing how bad Henry’s cut eye was, some of his corner shouted about a butt but Cooper instantly said it had been a punch, which I thought spoke volumes for his sportsmanship.”
Some commentators believed he was too light to fight at heavyweight, and in today’s world he could have dominated the cruiserweight division.
But despite enjoying a successful career – won 40, lost 14, drawn one – he never won a world title and in 1971 lost to the up-and-coming Joe Bugner, trained by Glaswegian Andy Smith, in hugely controversial circumstances.
Bugner claimed the British, European and Commonwealth belts by a quarter of a point, thanks to referee Harry Gibbs in a verdict poorly received by fans and which led BBC commentator Harry Carpenter to ask: “How can they take away the man’s titles like this?” Cooper announced his retirement shortly after the defeat.
Born in 1934, Cooper and his identical twin brother George grew up in a council house on the Bellingham Estate on Farmstead Road, south-east London, before they were evacuated to the Sussex coast. He was nine when he began to show an interest in boxing and he started his amateur career in 1949 with the Eltham Amateur Boxing Club, where he won 73 of 84 contests.
He soon rose through the ranks and went on to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Games in 1952. In order to qualify for the Olympics he had to defeat Burntisland amateur John McLean in the British ABA final, whom Cooper beat on points. Years later they would meet occasionally at boxing events. McLean recalled: “What impressed me was that I was by then a fairly obscure local government official in Fife while Cooper had become an international celebrity.
“But there was no side with him – he made me feel important and was more interested in learning about my life, family and career since our 1952 fight than trumpeting his own considerable personal achievements.’’
Cooper, who became the first man ever to win three Lonsdale belts, remained a firm favourite with a mainstream appeal few sportsman have ever achieved or are likely to again.
He lived a full life after boxing and was a frequent TV guest and appeared alongside Kevin Keegan in adverts for Brut, “the deodorant with muscle”, and for Shredded Wheat.
He was knighted in 2000 – becoming the first boxer to receive the honour.
His Italian-born wife Albina, 71, who was married to the former UK heavyweight champion for 47 years, suffered a heart attack at the age of 71 and died in 2008. Cooper took the loss badly and this was compounded by the death of his twin last year. He is survived by his two sons, Henry Marco and John Pietro.
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Which cricketing country did Heath Streak play test cricket for | Heath Streak | Zimbabwe Cricket | Cricket Players and Officials | ESPN Cricinfo
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A lion-hearted fast bowler with immense stamina and strength, Heath Streak has the ability to bowl outswing at good pace and with excellent control, as he showed at Lord's in 2000 when he was virtually a one-man attack. These qualities made him the first Zimbabwean to reach 100 Test wickets. Streak is also an extremely capable batsman who loves to give the ball a whack over the infield, and a magnificent outfielder with a howitzer-like throw.
He was appointed Zimbabwe captain in 2000, but found that the responsibilities - and tension with the board over pay and quotas - affected his form and he resigned. He was reappointed to the role in 2002 but again found himself in the spotlight as the Zimbabwe side disintegrated in the wake of the country's internal turmoil. He was criticised for not taking a firmer political stand, and the subsequent protest by Henry Olonga and Andy Flower further weakened his standing. He again burdened the bowling - and the batting - in Zimbabwe's disappointing tour of England in 2003. The disintegration of the side and the political turmoil in Zimbabwe made the captaincy increasingly burdensome, and in April 2004 he quit after the Zimbabwe board refused to give him guarantees over selection.
After a bitter standoff with the board, Streak finally returned to the fold in March 2005 and was immediately restored to a struggling side. He was appointed captain of Warwickshire for the 2006 season after signing a two-year contract, but quit the captaincy one match into the 2007 season. While he hasn't completely ruled out a return to Zimbabwean cricket, his contract with the Indian Cricket League, which he signed early in 2008, spelled the end of his international career. In 2009, he was named as Zimbabwe's bowling coach.
A phlegmatic character who is hugely popular with team-mates, Streak is a fluent Ndebele speaker and hails from a ranching family near Bulawayo. His father, Denis, played for Zimbabwe in pre-Test days.
Geoffrey Dean August 2009
| Zimbabwe |
Where in the body is the lunate bone | Alan Butcher charged with rejuvenating Zimbabwe cricket - BBC Sport
BBC Sport
Alan Butcher charged with rejuvenating Zimbabwe cricket
By Chris Jones
ICC WORLD TWENTY20: South Africa v Zimbabwe
Venue:
15:00 BST
Coverage:
Ball-by-ball Test Match Special commentary on BBC 5 live sports extra, BBC Radio 4 LW and BBC Sport website; live text commentary online and on mobiles
It is 20 years since Zimbabwe shocked England at the 1992 cricket World Cup - and the African nation's short cricketing history has been marked by a string of significant highs and crushing lows.
An impressive Test series win in Pakistan and fifth-place finish at the 1999 World Cup was followed by Andy Flower and Henry Olonga's death of democracy protest in 2003, then the controversial sacking of Test captain Heath Streak and player walkout over racial quotas a year later.
After a five-year period from 2006 to 2011, when they were exiled from Test cricket, it is down to former Surrey and Glamorgan opener Alan Butcher as the man tasked with rejuvenating Zimbabwe cricket.
The Butcher dynasty
Alan Butcher played 402 first-class matches for Surrey and Glamorgan, and one Test for England
His brother, Martin, played one game for Surrey
His brother, Ian, played 124 first-class matches for Gloucestershire and Leicestershire
His son, Mark, played 71 Tests for England and 209 first-class matches for Surrey
His son, Gary, played 53 first-class matches for Glamorgan and Surrey
Butcher - who made one Test appearance for England - took the Zimbabwe job in April 2010, with his first main challenge overseeing that return to Test cricket.
It proved to be a victorious one, with Zimbabwe beating Bangladesh by 130 runs in a one-off Test in Harare.
"The fact that we came back and won that one and made it difficult against Pakistan and New Zealand in Zimbabwe suggests things are moving forward," Butcher told BBC Sport.
Coaching Zimbabwe comes with its problems - not least a severe lack of money, which makes organising tours to major cricketing nations difficult.
"Like the rest of the world, Zimbabwe is going through an economic crisis, so finances to resource cricket are difficult to come by," Butcher added.
"We have a few series planned over the next six months, but unfortunately we've just lost one against Pakistan, which was scheduled for the new year.
"India have offered them a tour and we couldn't compete with the money that was available."
It means his players are deprived of priceless experience, which was evident in Tuesday's thrashing at the hands of Sri Lanka.
Butcher added: "It would definitely help if we played more cricket, especially overseas in different conditions. It's very difficult to get on a roll, while the learning curve of the players keeps getting interrupted.
"We don't play very often unless we come to World Cups. We definitely need to play more cricket and that will help the process of improving the side, although we should have given a better account of ourselves than we did against Sri Lanka."
Zimbabwe's cricket record
Most Test runs: Andy Flower, 4,794; Avg: 51.54
Most ODI runs: Andy Flower, 6,786; Avg: 35.34
Most Test wickets: Heath Streak, 216; Avg: 28.14
Most ODI wickets: Heath Streak, 237; Avg: 29.81
Source: Cricinfo
Butcher is confident the talent pool in Zimbabwe is as good as it has ever been.
"The player base is bigger than it ever was before. There's a lot of talent among the black Zimbabweans who have really taken to the game.
"Providing the right decisions are made there is a bright future. I think that in a period of time if we can find enough finances and the right development processes we can become a good side."
Butcher also says that he is able to coach the team the way he wants, without an excessive amount of interference from board level and beyond.
"In any work there is always some interference from up above but by and large I've been able to do the job the way I want.
"There is no suggestion of racial quotas and we pick what we think is the best side, which is how it should be. Beyond the frustrations of not having enough money, it's not been that difficult."
It is an adventure he does not want to end.
"I've really enjoyed it. I enjoy Harare, I enjoy the country and I enjoy the people. I've looked on it as a bit of an adventure, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to, and I still feel good about it. My wife always says I'm happier living overseas. My contract runs out in March and I can see myself staying around for longer. But we need some results to put a case forward - that starts against South Africa."
Test Match Special has ball-by-ball coverage of Zimbabwe v South Africa on Thursday from 14:45 on BBC 5 live sports extra, BBC Radio 4 long wave and via the BBC Sport website.
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Where is the National Railway Museum situated | NYCRR Museum / Elkhart, IN
A TIMETABLE TO THE PAST
The National New York Central Railroad Museum, located in Elkhart, Ind., recaptures the glory days when the America's railroads were symbols of progress and goodwill ambassadors across the country. The Museum was founded in 1987 and is an ever-growing preservation site of both local and national railroad heritage pertaining to the New York Central System. The New York Central was once the second-largest railroad in the United States, with 11,000 route miles of track in eleven states and two Canadian provinces. Elkhart is a natural home for the Museum: the New York Central's Robert R. Young Yard (now Norfolk Southern Railway's Elkhart Yard) is the largest railroad freight classification yard east of the Mississippi River. Just as when the railroad first arrived in Elkhart in 1851, Elkhart functions as a vital link in the chain connecting the Atlantic Seaboard with the Midwest and beyond. The Museum's goal is to tell the story of the vast New York Central System, and its predecessors and successors into the modern era.
| York |
The fictional characters William Dobbin and Rawdon Crawley appear in which novel | Home - Flying Scotsman
Flying Scotsman
03 / My Scotsman Story 02 / Shop
The Nation’s Favourite Locomotive
Flying Scotsman was originally built in Doncaster for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), emerging from the works on 24 February 1923 and initially numbered 1472. It was designed by Sir Nigel Gresley as part of the A1 class – the most powerful locomotives used by the railway. Discover more about Scotsman .
By 1924, when it was selected to appear at the British Empire Exhibition in London, the loco had been renumbered 4472 – and been given the name ‘Flying Scotsman’ after the London to Edinburgh rail service which started daily at 10am in 1862.
Flying Scotsman is hauling more tours around the UK in 2017.
World Records
'Pacific' Class 4-6-2 wheel notation
70 feet long and
9 tons of coal and 5000 gallons of water
and the first to have a corridor to allow crew changes without stopping
Originally numbered 1472, then 4472 and painted Apple Green then
renumbered 60103 in 1949
Designed by Nigel Gresley and
built in 1922 at Doncaster Works
at a cost of £7,944
More About Flying Scotsman
Flying Scotsman Season
Get a flavour of 2016’s Scotsman Season here at the National Railway Museum in York and our sister museum in Shildon, where the Shildon Shed Bash took place.
Terms and Conditions
Flying Scotsman
After a £4.2 million refurbishment, Flying Scotsman has returned to the UK’s mainline. One of the jewels in the crown of the National Railway Museum’s Collection, it is being presented to a new generation of Scotsman fans.
While we understand that interest in Flying Scotsman will be extremely high, we urge those wishing to view it on its tour dates do so from a safe vantage point. It is vital that spectators do not venture onto the railway, particularly when it is on the mainline, as a full timetable of regular services will also be running.
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The Maledicta Society caters for people who like to do what | Why Don't Homeless People Use Shelters? | Soapboxie
Why Don't Homeless People Use Shelters?
Why Don't Homeless People Use Shelters?
Updated on July 22, 2016
Source
When I was homeless, I spent a lot of my time sleeping "in the rough," which is another way of saying outdoors. Many homed people assume the homeless don't use shelters because they're drug users (and drug use is against the rules) or refuse to follow some other aspect of the shelter's rules. But no, I was neither using drugs nor too defiant to obey the rules.
I've been asked why I didn't just stay in shelters. The issue is pretty complex, but here is my answer, my reasons for sleeping in the rough, and also some of the reasons I've seen others avoid shelters. Some of these might surprise you. I know I was shocked to discover a few of them myself.
Please keep in mind that not all facilities have all or even any of these downsides. Still, these are the things many homeless people have experienced at some facilities in the U.S. which may have caused them to later avoid using them at all. There are good ones out there, too. They can just be hard to find sometimes.
Note:
As someone who has worked in homeless shelters, I am very aware that the vast majority of these workers are good people who are doing their best. I am glad that these facilities exist to help people without homes. However, it would be an injustice to pretend that shelters in America are plentiful enough or that they're all safe enough, or free from other downsides.
photo by Beverly Lussier
19. No Pets Allowed
Trading faithful companionship for somewhere legal to sleep is not an option for some. Think about your family dog, the one you've loved for years who is a member of your family. Now imagine that you become homeless and all you have left of your old life is that faithful, lifetime friend. He is your only source of affection and companionship. Could you abandon him without a second thought?
Pets are usually not allowed into shelters, so their owners often choose to sleep outside with the only friends who haven't deserted them: their pets.
18. Denied Entry Due to Mental Illness
Some people are denied entry due to mental illness, even if caregivers have given them paperwork stating that they are not a danger to themselves or others.
Since most workers and volunteers are not trained to distinguish between violent criminals and harmless people with mental illnesses, the tendency is to be overly cautious and refuse anyone with any mental health issues entry at some (but thankfully not all) shelters. Workers and organizations cannot be blamed for being ill-equipped to handle mentally ill clients because they simply don't have the resources to train volunteers or workers.
17. Discrimination Against LGBTQ People
40% of homeless teens and youth identify as LGBT and often don't use shelters because many of those places, like the parents who discarded them, discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.
According to the National Coalition for the Homeless ,
"LGBT youth are also disproportionally homeless due to overt discrimination when seeking alternative housing – widespread discrimination in federally funded institutions frequently contributes to the growing rates of homelessness among LGBT youth. Once homeless, these youth experience greater physical and sexual exploitation than their heterosexual counterparts."
Shelters are often infested with lice or other parasites. | Source
16. Fear of Contracting Parasites like Lice, Scabies, Pubic Lice, or Bedbugs
No matter how clean a facility is kept, the danger of getting parasites there is still very high. Mind you, this is not the fault of staff or organizations running shelters, it is simply a hazard of having sleeping arrangements that hundreds of people cycle through; bedbugs are now even fairly common in high end hotels. Homeless people tend to carry a lot of parasites, likely because they tend to sleep in lots of different places. So if you sleep every night in a different bed that a long string of other people have slept in, or if you sleep too close to an ever-changing assortment of people, eventually you are bound to get head lice, pubic lice, or scabies, and it's hard as heck to get rid of parasites when you have no home.
Bedbugs are a biting parasite that can easily infest a bedroll, backpack, clothes, or other possessions. Homeless people don't want to infest the homes of people who give them a place to stay for the night or to bring bedbugs to work with them. Volunteers and employees also need to take precautions to avoid bringing bedbugs home with them.
The parasites commonly present in shelters were my second most important reason for avoiding them. I'm itching right now just thinking about the nasty things.
15. Hours of Operation Incompatible with Work Hours
Contrary to popular belief, many homeless people have jobs. Because check-in hours for shelters are often rigid and the process of waiting in line and checking in usually takes hours, many working poor cannot use them. Others work evening or night hours which don't allow them to get inside before curfew. People who work from nine to five usually can't use them, either, since by the time they get off work, it's usually too late for them to get in line for check-in.
Another reason some shelters are incompatible with employment is that they require people to attend AA or other drug abuse rehab classes, often held during normal work hours, every day or most days they use the facility, whether they have a drug or alcohol problem or not. Others require those who use their services to take rudimentary job skill classes or other life-skill classes during business hours even if employed and already well-educated on those topics.
By the time I had a regular job, I had decided to sleep outside exclusively, so this was not a problem for me.
Shelters attract predators. | Source
14. Danger of Rape or Assault
Homeless shelters and the areas around them are often hunting grounds for human predators. Some of the craftier ones get jobs at the charities while most others just watch for individuals departing in the morning or arriving in the evening. It's not just rapists, either. Predators in search of "excitement" will track a lone person leaving a facility so they can beat him or harass him for fun.
Also, although there are usually attendants of some kind on watch, almost none of them are trained to deal with violent behavior, leaving users vulnerable. Volunteer workers honestly cannot be expected to put themselves in the sort of danger intervening in such situations requires, nor can they have eyes on the backs of their heads or keep watch over everyone. Lack of sufficient staffing is common and people can only do so much.
For me, this was the number one reason to avoid them. Once you get raped or assaulted in a shelter or because you were trailed after leaving one, you just don't want to try it again, no matter how hot or cold or rainy or otherwise unpleasant it is outside.
Criminals are well aware that police seldom take complaints from people without homes seriously. Many people avoid shelters because pretending to not be homeless (which means avoiding shelters, missions, and soup kitchens) is one of the most effective ways to avoid such predators.
13. Fear of Contracting Disease
Diseases spread easily in close quarters. There's always at least one person with a cough. One reason it's hard to fall asleep in a shelter is the almost endless coughing. Many of those with coughs have chronic illnesses or transmissible diseases. Tuberculosis is frighteningly common among people living on the street. When you may have to sleep out in the elements on any given night (there's no guarantee you'll get into a shelter every night), even the flu can be a life-threatening disease to contract.
If you know that many people are homeless due to ill health or chronic illnesses, you'll see why accommodations full of sick people pose an even greater risk to them.
12. An Invasive and Disrespectful Check-In Process
This answer has brought me a lot of flack, but even though it played only a minor part in my decision not to use shelters, I feel it is important to mention: The check-in process in some but not all of these places is sometimes humiliating and dehumanizing.
On more than one occasion, I was asked questions such as, "Do you have any sexual partners you could stay with?" as well as other questions about my sex life. One worker even said that I find a boyfriend to stay with, basically suggesting I exchange sexual favors for a place to sleep. Keep in mind that I, like most women homeless more than a few weeks, had already been the victim of sexual assault. It made me feel horrible, like I was less than a person and had nothing else to offer anyone.
Many shelters don't offer accommodations for the handicapped. | Source
11. Lack of Handicapped Accommodations
While I was waiting to talk to someone about volunteering at an associated soup kitchen, I was shocked to see someone turned away because he was in a wheelchair. Another person and I offered to pull his chair up the stairs and help him inside if he needed it, but they told us it had to do with insurance concerns and said that they were sorry but, no, he couldn't stay.
That was the first time I saw a handicapped person turned away from a homeless shelter but sadly, it was not the last. Many of these organizations make use of old buildings re-purposed to fit a bunch of beds. Sometimes their beds are located above the first floor and they have no elevators. Some don't have railings in the restrooms or ramps into the rooms or buildings either. While it is not the fault of those who run them, some facilities are unable to accommodate people in wheelchairs.
Regardless of what the Americans with Disabilities Act says, some places that provide temporary housing turn away people in wheelchairs or with other mobility limitations such as the need to use a walker or crutches to get around. While sometimes they will offer a hotel voucher to the disabled person, that doesn't always happen. Not every organization has the funds to do this and a shelter can get shut down if they break the rules. They truly don't want to turn away disabled people, but they may have no choice.
10. Drug Addictions
Yes, some people avoid shelters because of drug addictions—their own or others'.
Since many locations have signs insisting they are drug free zones, some drug users will avoid them. However, many drug users and dealers do not, making some of them hot spots of drug activity, and those frightened by drug related activity may come to avoid shelters because of this, quite reasonably fearing for their or their children's safety. Still others are themselves trying to get off drugs and being around other users makes it very difficult for them to do so, so they avoid staying there while trying to kick their drug or alcohol habits.
9. Separation of Family Members
This is a biggie and it's pretty horrible when you think about it: Most homeless shelters separate families.
Women can bring their pre-teen children into most women's facilities, but teenage male children (as young as 13) may be required to go to a men's shelter which they may not even get into. Can you imagine a mother leaving her young teenage son to sleep alone on the street without her protection while she sleeps inside? Most parents will not leave their children, so instead, the whole family sleeps in their car or outside.
Men and women usually cannot stay in the same place, so husbands and wives are separated, knowing their spouse might not get a bed somewhere else. These people are often elderly or disabled and depend on each other for safety and care. So again, most of them will forgo the use of temporary emergency housing so they can take care of each other.
Also, children cannot stay in the vast majority of men's shelters. This leaves single fathers in a very difficult spot, one that is not only heartbreaking but criminal. While some may say the children should just be taken away, the homelessness is usually temporary and the loss of a parent or parents will probably affect a child more deeply than a month or so living with insecurity and discomfort.
Source
8. Some Service Dogs are Barred from Entry
Service dogs, other than seeing eye and hearing assistance dogs, are sometimes denied entry to homeless facilities. Mobility dogs (that help you stand or get into your wheelchair, assist you up stairs, etc.), dogs that provide assistance for mental conditions such as anxiety or agoraphobia, and other service dogs are even more often denied entry.
People frequently lose their own identification papers, often through no fault of their own, so it is no surprise that they often lose identification papers for their service animals. Even in the case of seeing eye and hearing assistance dogs, if the person has lost the dog's paperwork or doesn't have an official harness, the dog will not be allowed inside. Few people in that situation will abandon a service dog.
While it is perfectly understandable that facilities will not allow animals, especially those that are not service animals, it's also perfectly understandable that disabled people would not be willing to part with an animal that increases their ability to function, especially at the risk of having that animal die from exposure or get lost or stolen. Many people who rely on animals for independence and safety are unwilling to be separated from them for any reason.
7. Staff Assumptions about Drug Use and Criminality
While it was not often said aloud, many shelter employees and volunteers regard all people who need their services as drug addicts and criminals. To avoid being perceived as such, many avoid using those services.
When you are homeless, many people will automatically treat you as a criminal and a drug user. They are unable to comprehend that a person without a home may just be someone down on his or her luck without any wrongdoing on his or her part.
While I'm sure they mean well, many organizations and their employees or volunteers take it upon themselves to cure people of their sometimes non-existent addictions and criminal ways. Some put a lot of pressure on homeless people to attend alcohol and drug abuse counseling even if they are not alcohol or drug abusers.
I remember the smirks and questioning looks I got when I insisted I had no drug or alcohol abuse issues. One employee actually asked me, "Well, then, why are you so skinny?"
Forced participation in substance abuse counseling takes time away from job searches and current employment which the average person in such a situation cannot afford, causing most employed homeless people and those actively seeking employment to avoid shelters that require it.
6. Danger of Theft
While most homeless people are not thieves, a few of them are. It only takes one to spoil it for everyone else. When you have no home, your little bit of stuff is precious; it's all you have.
While I was not robbed inside a shelter, I heard stories from many who were. They stopped using shelters to protect their few meager possessions from theft.
Shoes are among the most commonly stolen items. Foot care is incredibly important and the loss of your only pair of shoes can be life-threatening. It can also be extremely difficult to replace them if they get stolen.
5. Religious Differences
Most shelters and kitchens have some sort of religious service people are required to sit through to eat or sleep there. I'm an atheist, but this didn't bother me much. Frankly, I was pleased to be in a climate-controlled room and sitting at rest somewhere without fear of getting harassed by gangs or police, no matter what I had to pretend to believe. It didn't even bother me that I had to give lip-service to the notion that I was being punished by God for being a bad person.
However, some people object to this, often people with strong religious beliefs of their own who believe they already have a good relationship with God. I've met a fair number of people unwilling to sit through the services and pretend their situation is a just punishment from God for being a terrible person. Very religious people might get extremely offended when someone looks down on them and tells them they don't have a good enough relationship with Jesus to deserve a place to live.
4. Lack of Privacy and Fear of Crowds
Many homed people would argue that people who are down on their luck are not deserving of privacy. However, the complete lack of privacy can be especially hard on people with mental disorders that make them fear crowds. I encountered several crowd-phobic people who could not be convinced to use a homeless facility even though they were sickly and ill-suited to outdoor sleeping even when the weather was good.
Deserving of privacy or not, people with mental illnesses that cause a fear of crowds or even a fear of a moderate number of people packed into close quarters are genuinely terrified of such conditions, even in the safest of circumstances.
Charities understandably try to make the most of their square footage by squeezing as many beds into their facility as possible. Unfortunately, that can make them frightening to people with PTSD, claustrophobia, social anxiety, or fear of crowds.
3. Lack of Control
By the time a person is on the street, his or her life is usually already careening out of control. That feeling can be enhanced by the regimented check-in times, eating, prayer, sleep times, and check-out in a shelter. Some people stay out-of-doors so they can feel like they have some vestige of control over their own lives.
Source
2. Rules That Unfairly Endanger Disabled Individuals
Walkers, crutches, and canes are sometimes taken away from users at some organizations during check-in. Sometimes, even appliances such as leg braces are taken away for "safe keeping." While I can understand that the danger of theft is very real, and that some people who are mentally ill might hit people with their crutches, braces, or walkers, it is frightening to be left without mobility in a strange place. So some who have need of medical appliances or mobility assisting devices forgo the use of homeless facilities.
1. Lack of Available Beds
There is not enough safe, legal shelter for everyone. No matter how many people choose not to use them, there are still not nearly enough beds available for those who would like to sleep indoors despite the risks involved.
In most cities in the US, there's space for less than 25% of the homeless people living in that city. In some cities, there is room for less than 5% of their homeless population.
Additionally, many cities have made ordinances limiting the number of people a charity may serve. In some, they may not provide beds for more than 20 people! Additionally, some cities have created ordinances barring services from being located in or near the downtown area (where the churches and other organizations likely to provide such services are most likely to own property) or laws preventing two shelters from being within a certain distance of each other.
This is why lines to check in form so early in the day and staff is often so quick to deny entry to people for the most trivial of reasons. This may be why some facilities have made their requirements for use so restrictive. In fact, some of them have made their requirements so strict that, in some cases and despite a long line of people trying to get a place to sleep, they don't even fill the number of beds they have.
In my opinion, the ordinances are a bigger issue than the lack of funding because the ordinances have prevented people with funding from opening or expanding existing shelters. What you can do about it is find out what your local laws are regarding homeless facilities and write to your congresspeople and representatives as well as donating to local charities and helping to fund new ones.
Are Current Shelters Perfectly Adequate to Serve the Unhomed Population?
Do you think that current shelters are sufficient in number, quality, and dignity to serve the needs of the American homeless population?
Yes
Kylyssa 3 weeks ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Please explain how it would benefit, say, your own mother, if your father passed away and she became too ill to work and support herself for you to practice tough love and let her die on the street as older people tend to do when ill? Would you just sadly say, oh, she made her bed, now she has to lie in it, when you found out she'd been beaten and raped as most women suffering homelessness are? Because that is exactly what you are advocating for. You are advocating for the abandonment and suffering of people who are out of their depths and unable to help themselves.
guess who 3 weeks ago
I think people r right enough is enough. Tough love is the key being homeless sucksvim sure but if your homeless cuz of choices in your life that u made then u need to suffer the consequences and if that means being homeless then that means being homeless don't get me wrong its not that I have no compassion I do but I do believe that in order for u to turn your life around u need to suffer all consequences for the choices in life that u make. Tough love is the key whether its homelessness or adfiction. God helps those who help themselves..
Kylyssa 4 weeks ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
You and I both know what I've said on this page is true. I'm actually glad people make comments like Irrelevant's because many decent people just don't comprehend the level of hatred some individuals have towards people who are homeless. There's frequently little logic normal people can see in anything people warped by hatred say.
The truth speaks 4 weeks ago
This comment is for Irrelevant:
In your comment of 2 years ago, you said that a lot of the stories to read or heard about the shelters are fabricated,, & HOW THE HELL WOULD YOU KNOW IF YOU'VE NEVER HAD TO USE ONE!!
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
It's also actually cheaper. It costs less to house a person than to maintain a single cot in most homeless shelters. It's safer, cleaner, healthier, and allows for the growth of self-esteem and confidence. It aids in getting more work hours or regaining employment if the person is unemployed.
But folks don't want the "undeserving poor" to get things they don't feel they are human enough to have.They'd rather have more money spent keeping people in lousy conditions on the theory that if homelessness sucks enough, people will escape it. They don't realize that homelessness already sucks immensely and if people saw the way out, they'd take it.
Most of the folks I've helped find homes have done brilliantly all on their own once the money issue has been solved. A huge percentage are on the streets for losing everything to medical bills or illness (their own or a dependent's), getting kicked out for being gay, being disabled Veterans the government refuses to help, working at exploitative businesses that do not pay living wages, or due to losing a job from downsizing.
Speth 2 years ago
People need homes and the support to learn or remember how to live in them. Providing those homes, and the rent to enable keeping them would be an infinitely better solution.
Thomas 2 years ago
Yes, the current housing of homeless people is fine. I'll let the author of this article in on a little secret. The accommodations are not supposed to be pleasant, easy to deal with or anywhere on par with a person's actual home. That might encourage them to want to stay in the homeless shelter, rather than re-integrate into regular society with the rest of us. Homeless shelters are not places where people should keep coming back to again and again. Personally, I think that people should be banned from homeless shelters after staying for more than a month. If you can rebound by then, you're not trying hard enough!!!!!!
irrelevant 2 years ago
A lot of what I've read on here about why people don't stay in shelters are fabricated. And secondly, In Livermore there aren't any shelters for women, unless you have a big fat maggot, then u might get priority to be on the waiting list.
anonymous 2 years ago
Yes, there should be 24 hour services for homeless. However, some of the churches and shelters are adding baking soda to the clients food. Which causes them to not only get full immediately, but causes bloating and high blood pressure. Families are also separated in some situations, due to age. MUCH CORRUPTION takes place through that of circles including staff and advocates slowing you down or stopping you from getting out of these shelters. They assign people to fraternize with family members that are adulthood. They need more professional staff and advocates. These people are unprofessional and disrespect the homeless clients. The clients do not receive much help, staff etc.keep much of the donated items themselves and they do not drive the clients for appointments unless your one of the few that are favored. I have had numerous problems in the shelter. The workers are extremely corrupt. Yes, they need more shelters, but they need investigators on the staff/advocates.
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
@anonymous: What a rare and wonderful shelter you manage; you have no idea what a good organization you are in charge of if you think it is typical. You should feel extremely proud to work where you do as your shelter displays a degree of excellence uncommon in American homeless shelters. My "irrational" ideas about homeless shelters came from both being homeless once upon a time and using assorted shelters across the US and volunteering in them later when I was in much better circumstances. Some of the things you mention are downright illegal in some cities. Some American cities limit homeless shelters to a certain number of beds far less than 400. A shelter that is allowed to provide beds outside of the night-time hours is extremely rare.Please leave a link to your shelter's information page and I will be sure to promote it in the hopes it will help donations to an excellent homeless shelter. I'm working on a page full of good American homeless shelters to give them the credit that is due and to illustrate how it ought to be done.Just ask the people you serve if your homeless shelter is typical of shelters they've stayed in. I'll bet your shelter is the best any of them have ever found or heard of. I'm not sure how personal experiences count as irrational but I'll bet most of your clients have had similar "irrational" personal experiences in other shelters. Especially ask the lgbtq people you serve if they've ever experienced discrimination or violence outside of or inside of other shelters. You have no idea of what a good job you are doing in comparison to what's out there.
anonymous 3 years ago
I have worked at a homeless shelter for many years and can say this person has irrational ideas about homeless shelters. I'm sure there are people who shouldn't be working in a shelter because they lack the compassion needed. We serve roughly 400 a night in a clean, safe environment. We have zero tolerance for any aggressive behavior. We make accommodations for physically challenged. We don't discriminate for any reason. We make accommodations for those working third shift to sleep during the day even though we are a night shelter only. We allow people who are impaired due to drugs and alcohol to stay as long as they behave. We have an extremely clean facility, no bug infestation. Our intake process is very respectful. We always strive to treat our guest with respect and dignity.
Kylyssa 4 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
@kadymitchell: Many people who are poor now had children when they were not. Many upper-middle class people such as yourself think it is impossible to lose a job or to have a child or spouse get ill or injured enough to wipe out their savings but they are wrong; insurance does not cover what you think it does. Unless people have a few million dollars in the bank there's really no way to be sure they will always have money. That is how people such as yourself end up homeless. You are one major illness or accident from homelessness now or in the future unless you have at least a million dollars in the bank. Everyone is very shocked when it happens to them, especially the folks such as yourself who think poverty equals moral bankruptcy. I hope you never face the situation but the only way many people dead set on the idea that poverty equals being a bad and stupid person is when they experience it themselves.If an upper-middle class family becomes poor after they have children, what do you suggest be done with those children? It isn't as if God makes the children "didn't happen" or magically whisks them off to a rich family when a spouse dies or leaves, or if a child or parent gets so ill or injured that savings get wiped out, or when jobs get lost when the jobs cease to exist. Would you give up your children if you suddenly became poor?The truth is that many families do not step up. They believe poverty equals stupidity and moral bankruptcy. They tell even their sick, elderly parents, "you made your bed, now lie in it" after those parents did things like putting them through college, giving them the down payments on their first houses, and providing free childcare to their children.In working with homeless people, I encountered very few people who had children after they were poor and many who had children before illness, tragedy, or a rotten economy struck. Most were earning middle-class or upper-middle-class wages just like the folks you think should be allowed to have children when they chose to have children. They were just like you before really rotten stuff happened in their lives- no better, no worse.
kadymitchell 4 years ago
Yes, no matter how many are built there will never be enough...so many people have just given up. Families have to stick together and help one another. People have to learn if you cannot afford to have children don't because its not the governments responsibility to raise them.
anonymous 4 years ago
No. God says to help those in need. Also you never know when that stranger comes along in need of a meal or a warm coat. Could be Jesus in disguise
anonymous 4 years ago
I say that, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, and all you people in homeless shelters treat all the homeless people very, very badly it just needs to stop people are dying everywhere because all of you workers in homeless shelters are selfish, I may be a 16 Year old but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
mannasugar 4 years ago
Shelters treat people very badly, and they do this to discourage people from wanting a free ride....
anonymous 4 years ago
Esvoytko is a man after my own heart. There is no reason why someone, especially a family, should be homeless. What a disgrace. Whatever happened to the common good? I live in NYC and there are thousands of working families who are homeless. This is a very complex problem and only a person with pathology problems would prefer panhandling to permanent shelter. No wonder we are in this situation. Public policies must address the social and economic issues that creates this problem instead of focusing on a few miscreants and punishing those who really need help.
mowug1776 4 years ago
somepeople have given up hope completely. I myself at times have as well the problem is not that there's enough beds find that the American people have lost their love for each other we are too greedy to see that we should wait and help others out there for buying the brand-new Mercedes-Benz that we may not be able to afford in a couple months. Also that excuse could also be put out because they don't want to help themselves I have started to help out at a mission. I find that many of them may have even shows the lifestyle in actuality at the mission there is one man that comes in who actually is a real estate investor and quite frankly because of his sorrows drains himself to the point that he himself is homeless he happens to be a veteran Delta force I believe if we can help the road may be harder than he may have a will to change. What we need is more family helping family.
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Math alone proves that more than 10% of homeless people successfully re-integrate into society because otherwise, we'd be overrun with tens of millions of homeless people! There are far more formerly homeless people than homeless people living in America. Over 80% of Americans who experience homelessness get into homes and do not experience homelessness again.Math alone also shows us that there are not enough homeless shelters. When there are more homeless people than beds, there will be homeless people who can't use them no matter how much they might want to. I don't know if you've driven past any homeless shelters lately but here in Grand Rapids the lines for them wrap around the buildings. The number of shelters and beds also keeps decreasing all while the number of homeless people increases.Math also shows us that some people will inevitably be left without jobs (and become likely to become homeless) when the number of adults in our country exceeds the number of jobs that exist. That's not even taking into account the number of jobs out there that are too part-time to live on.Over a period of about eighteen years I took in seventeen homeless teens and young adults, three couples, a man in his fifties and a woman in her sixties. Out of those twenty-five people, twenty-one succeeded in re-integrating into society. That's around the typical 80% mark. Perhaps you are having such a terrible success rate because you are focusing on panhandlers and chronically homeless folks?And, since you gave an anecdote about a couple refusing to stay with you because you separated them, you just backed up one of the reasons I listed.I'm secure in the knowledge that what I say here on this page about homeless shelters is true. I've personally witnessed most of these problems and, on occasion, I had to enforce some of these policies I disagree with while volunteering in shelters. I've learned of the other issues from other volunteers and from homeless and formerly homeless people.
clifRad 5 years ago
Yes. I work with the homeless and I've had over 100 live in my house with my family over the last ten years. They were right off the street.Very few want to get back into the mainstream. Probably only 10% I've dealt with.It is way to easy to make it on the street with pan handling, feeding programs, food cards, SSI, state programs, hotel vouchers...And the reasons you gave for them not using shelter is bogus. They are most generally rebellious and anti-social, that's is a great generalization. Like I said 10%.We had a couple, rather than be at our house where couldn't sleep with one another in there on room, choose an outhouse in town. Go figure.They need help and that help needs to given rightly. You work you eat. You want to play the game your on your own.
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EM 5 weeks ago
If you are in a position to need a shelter bed chances are you have burned your bridges with family and friends due to drug abuse, violence and untreated mental health issues.
Kylyssa 11 months ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
The problem with using the police to determine identities is that most homeless people aren't criminals so they aren't in the system.
Loss of ID is a terrifying experience for people without homes. It causes all the problems you mentioned plus it presents an additional danger to Americans of Mexican or Hispanic descent; they could potentially get deported if they can't prove their citizenship.
Claudia 11 months ago
I challenge anyone to walk into the county clerks office without any personal identification give them your name and SS# and have them issue you new ones .
This poses a serious and in many cases life threatening problem for the homeless. Without the proper Identification they are not able to get any assistance, such as .shelters , food , housing, cash and medical, Even job applications require ID"s
Would it be possible for local police departments to set aside a day or two a few times a year where homeless people could come in and get their identity verified by either fingerprints police files or even a police officer that has seen proof of their id . Then give each person a temporary photo id that they could use to get a permanent state Id
Jason 2 years ago
I'm homeless right now, after spending 10 years working abroad I became ill and was repatriated to the United States.
I was happy for the medical treatment I received, but after 3 weeks and a clean bill of health -- thank you sir, goodbye! I had to leave with nowhere to go. After being gone for ten years, I had to start from scratch. 35 degrees outside and all I had was the t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops I wore when I was returned to the States.
What I, and probably many others truly need are: A place to take a shower. An address to use for mail. Canned food that we can store. No "shelter emloyees" ruining your job search. Or ruining your job, for that matter. Do they not understand that it's not a good thing to go to your new boss and ask for a note so you can go back to your homeless shelter after hours so you can work a normal shift?
The problem is, shelter employees know that in order to expand their operations (and get more government grants) is to house a larger homeless population. Now although they can't "make" more people homeless, they can "keep" more people homeless by not letting them have a job. Or throwing them out as soon as they get one. I've seen it happen twice now (once to me).
We need clothes, a place to shower, and an address to use for mail. That's pretty much it. I won't stay in a shelter for the reasons listed above as well as in the article. A big thing for me is theft, and being around people who use drugs increases the chance of me losing stuff like work shoes -- and ultimately losing my job.
ionkosmic 3 years ago
BIG NO unfortunately . Just take a look at Greece. Things are really difficult there for homeless peopleand refuges because very simply the people that create the government are useless and not human.I really feel shame and pain for what is going there.
anonymous 3 years ago
It varies quite a bit by place within the US. In Ft. Lauderdale FL they were impossible to get into. In Indianapolis IN I got forced to use a men's shelter (hurrah transphobia) when I finally got into one, in which I was robbed and raped, of course. Meanwhile deaths and mutilations from cold were ongoing outside. To my chagrin, I'll very shortly find out what being homeless in New York is like.
anonymous 3 years ago
Definitely NOT! I didn't know of the ordinances preventing expansion... it seems like cities would rather house people and to keep their cities looking good, than to force people to live in the streets...
lilydanne 3 years ago
Your speak the truth sadly a few of these people who still feel like the homeless deserve it even if they were to become homeless they would still possibly feel this way I think it a coping mechanism
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
@ajtyne: People are not usually required to convert, just to sit through a service and look interested and/or to say "Amen" at the appropriate points. They also usually won't escort a person out for not saying "Amen" or for not looking interested during the service but they will often question them intensely. I usually just sat through the service about what bad people homeless people are and looked interested and said whatever they wanted me to. But I don't have a religion so it wasn't anything terrible. It was mostly Christians with other beliefs (like that Jesus forgives and loves everybody and that God doesn't purposely punish people with or for being poor) who objected or felt awful. So it was really a Christian on Christian kind of unkindness for the most part and there was no converting to be done because most people I met on the streets and while volunteering were Christian. But it really hurt them to be told they weren't good enough Christians or that they were flat-out bad Christians or not really Christians that God was choosing to punish.There's no need for you to apologize on behalf of other Christians for requiring lip service or for discriminating against LGBT persons. The vast majority of mainstream Christians aren't doing these things and you certainly aren't. There are far more Christian victims of that behavior than people doing it.Actually, in most shelters, the cost of maintaining one "bed" for a month is equal to or greater than the cost of a two bedroom apartment into which four people could be housed, at least in Michigan. It would never be discussed because homeless people have been put into a category as "undeserving poor" and our society would not go for it. It would be too much like helping a homed person stay in housing which many people have no problem with. So they'd rather pay more for an unsafe situation than allow that kind of help to be provided. Charities and organizations using a "housing first" approach have seen huge success in getting even chronic homeless people off the streets and eventually paying their own way. But there are a lot of opponents to housing first programs.
chi kung 3 years ago
Dignity is the first that is not present at these places, nor is fair treatment unfortunately. Most "workers" here hate their job, they just do it for the money - not a great situation which shows up in their attitude towards the homeless...
ajtyne 3 years ago from North Carolina
I say NO to every part of your question. I do not have your experiences as either a shelter seeker or a shelter worker, but it takes a very perfunctory check to show all your points to be true. I think, from my experiences talking with homeless people in Philadelphia, that one thing that would help the situation a lot is psychiatric care. I have also read that the homeless problem grew suddenly because of cut backs and laws that no longer permitted people to be hospitalized against their will. Now, psychiatric hospitals would be another hot issue for me, but I still think that a person who is in need of psychiatric care cannot always be capable of realizing that. And families absolutely MUST be kept together. I already knew that men were often not allowed to stay with their wives and children, but did not know until reading your lens that boys as young as 13 are considered "men" and forced away from their mothers and siblings to sleep at a men's shelter where their lives could be in danger. I think now homelessness is surging again because of the economy. I have seen so many people that I know online only who are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless, and I have gone through that danger, although not to the point of homelessness, thanks to a relative. I am shocked to read that prayers and such are required. Are you saying that they require people to actually "convert" or adopt the particular religion (I'm assuming you mean Christian but not sure)? Or are you saying that people FELT that it was being required? I must tell you that it is so completely against everything Christianity is about and everything our Lord Jesus stands for to say that homelessness and all the related problems are punishment. In the New Testament, Jesus was questioned about this. They asked Him, who sinned, this unfortunate person or his parents, for him to end up in such a bad condition. He rebuked them and told them plain and clear that it has nothing to do with sin. Repeatedly. Homelessness, rape, drugs, violence. These are evidence of the general human condition. These are NOT EVER punishment for sins. God may remove some of His protection (for lack of a better way of saying it), allowing bad things to happen as a sort of wake up call -- this is what people mean (or should mean) when they claim America is under God's judgment. But God does not punish individuals in this way or even nations. That is not what is meant. It is so often misinterpreted. I feel so bad to think that people who should be seeing the Love of God in action are feeling the wrath of people who call it the wrath of God! That is not the Christian way. Alas, many people call themselves Christians but are not -- or have no understanding of the ways of Christ. I believe the only hope is to make private apartments/hotel rooms, which of course would never be even discussed because of the cost and security issues, but I believe they could be if people would address these problems and force lawmakers to discuss them. They fling money without having a good grasp of how or where it will be used, and if they see something not working the knee-jerk response is to withdraw money. I am a Christian and I am so sorry that you were so poorly treated by anyone naming the name of Christ.
CaztyBon 3 years ago
No, I know there are many homeless families and they don't have enough shelters for them.
anonymous 3 years ago
My brother caught TB in a shelter. He also told me about being given blankets at bedtime that the shelters only washed once per month which resulted in things like scabies and lice. He too ended up choosing the cold hard streets over an alleged comfortable warm bed. I, myself remember a shleter I stayed in when I was 20 years old. At the front desk was a sign that said, "You did what you wanted to get here and now you'll do what we want to stay here". No, I didn't. I was running from an abusive relationship. After 33 years I still remember the words of that sign. I am now homeless again, after 33 years. I'm on the streets and not even thinking of seeking a shelter bed because I have a small dog who wouldn't be allowed in.
waynekat 3 years ago
I don't live in america but I would doubt there are enough shelters, especially now... Thank you for an eye opening lense. I didn't know....
chironseer 3 years ago
Hi, great lens, I was once forced to sleep rough on the streets for a week in amsterdam, and on one of those nights I stayed at the salvation army hostel, which was really a big hall with most of the people in it out of their minds on some drug or other.It was the most dangerous place I've ever stayed for sure, I much preferred the streets.
EsotericAllusion 3 years ago
What an excellent article about a subject which concerns me. My son recently told me, that homeless people would come into the building where he worked seeking help as they did not want to go to the homeless shelter due to drugs and fear of violence. What can we do about such a problem in this group of vulnerable people?
KFairweather 3 years ago
Group shelters are inherently dangerous and the entire paradigm should be rethought. Better is a model that works like a motel or old motor lodge. Separate rooms, with varying number of beds, cabins with two or more rooms for families, trailers homes (although after working with the FEMA housing program for a decade and a half I find trailers to be sub standard housing), cottages and even uninhabited lost-mortgage homes. There was a pilot home building program in Louisiana after Katrina where actual homes were built for disaster victims. And with the amount of money that was spent on temporary housing and trailers, building a new home for each registered victim would have been cheaper. We have some kind of idea in this country that people don't deserve to live well unless they live in a certain, accepted way and are lucky enough to maintain that life. Homelessness is not a disease that is contagious, it is a condition caused by the standards of our culture. is a national shame that we have so many unoccupied homes due to greed and malfeasance, illness, unemployment and other reasons and so many people without homes for many of the same reasons. Pure logic says, put those people in those homes. Banks are losing money with repossessed homes sitting empty, being robbed of copper and other materials, being vandalized, burned and destroyed. Neighborhoods lose value with empty homes sitting on their streets. If nothing else, it would behoove mortgage holders to pay homeless people to occupy these homes until they are sold just to insure they are monitored and kept from the dangers of vacancy. In the long run, it would solve so many problems, it seems obvious. But, we have a cultural imperative that says, homeless people don't deserve standard housing unless they get it the way their neighbors get it. It's shameful to see families on the streets when there are places for them to live and the only reason they aren't there is because their neighbors would be jealous.
fmauritzen 3 years ago from Wading River, NY
That fact that there is even a need for homeless shelters is an abominable symptom of a sick society.
Jillynn 3 years ago
They are largely warehousing people while stripping them of their individual humanity.
Pat Goltz 3 years ago
Of course not. And services to get people back on their feet are sorely lacking, too. People who can game the system aren't usually homeless, but they may be taking money they're not entitled to. It's a huge mess. This is why I think churches and charities should be allowed to offer whatever help they desire, without government poking in their nose, and why I think government is not designed to dispense charity, but on the contrary, is clueless about it. Refusing to let people use necessary devices is insane and cruel.
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Would You Be Reluctant to Use a Shelter?
There are not nearly enough shelters and many of them that exist are too hazardous or, more often, too regulation-bound to be effective in providing safe haven from the elements.
The fact of the matter is that almost no one is immune from the possibility of homelessness. In many cases all it takes is one personal catastrophe to put a person or family on the street. Homeless people are just like you and me.
After reading this article and getting some more information on the dangers and indignities you could face in a shelter, do you understand why many people without traditional housing avoid using them? If you wouldn't use a homeless shelter, you can hardly expect homeless people to. I hope you will share this distressing information and help others see why things need to change.
If you were homeless would you be reluctant or feel some apprehension about using a shelter?
Yes
See results
Should Be Grateful for Assistance No Matter How They Are Treated? Or Do People Deserve to Be Treated like Human Beings?
Some people believe that the homeless should just be grateful for any scraps tossed their way, no matter what indignities, dangers, or humiliations they must face to get them. They believe that they should be grateful even if a worker suggests they exchange sexual favors for a place to stay or if they get assaulted in or when leaving a shelter. They believe that anyone who suggests that there is anything wrong with shelters as they currently exist is simply hateful. They believe it's a sin to criticize any efforts to help, no matter how those people being helped are treated. The hate mail I have received regarding this page supports these views.
While I worked in shelters for many years as a volunteer and absolutely know that the vast majority of workers are doing their best, I believe the system is deeply flawed. There are not enough facilities or security, and a homeless person is a person, deserving of a degree of dignity. What do you think?
Homeless people should be grateful for any help, no matter the dangers or indignities required to receive it.
Yes, beggars can't be choosers.
Yes, homeless people gave up their rights to safety and dignity.
No, homeless people are still people and deserve to be treated as such.
Other, explained in the guestbook below.
An interesting account of one man's experience with a faith-based charity. The comments are also an interesting read. No, it's not a recent post, but he expressed himself clearly and well and some of the comments provide valuable insights.
Do We Need More, Better Homeless Shelters and Help for Existent Ones?
Do we need to build more homeless shelters and help the ones that already exist?
Yes, but not in my neighborhood.
Yes
See results
About Comments
This article has received some very angry responses. Please, before sending hate mail or leaving an angry comment, read the whole page. If you want to use the comment section to express your disgust, please refrain from profanity or your comments will not be published.
Comments do not appear immediately. Due to the number of comments with swearing or threats in them that this article gets, the comments are moderated. Your very much welcomed comment won't show up until I have a chance to see the notification in my inbox and approve it. I am not always at my computer so sometimes this can take a day or longer.
© 2009 Kylyssa Shay
Menstruating isn't considered fun by anyone, but having your period while being homeless sucks in its own special way. Learn how you can help women dealing with both homelessness and periods.
208
Have you wondered why people living on the street don't just get jobs and stop being homeless? Learn some of the barriers to employment they must overcome and share your solutions in the comments.
138
Have you ever wondered why people become homeless? This article explains just a few of the most common causes of home loss for people living in the United States. Some of them may surprise you.
Please Don't Swear or Make Personal Attacks in the Comments 315 comments
Crystal 5 months ago
Actually, yes, we do deserve privacy. This is an objective fact.
And with or without mental illness, privacy is a universal psychological need; lacking it is detrimental to the mental and therefore physical health of every human being. This is why it is always considered inherently abusive to infringe upon someone's privacy.
Kev 8 months ago
I say to open MORE shelters that COMPLY with ADA guidelines, and to completely drop the unnecessary "Pray to stay" or "Work for our thrift store/'rehab program'/whatever in order to stay" requirement. Christian-run shelters have all kinds of discriminatory (and are, sad to say, legal) rules. Muncie Mission (in Muncie, IN), a shelter a friend and I got perma-banned from just this week, has these rules that you're shown in a PowerPoint slideshow that has these obviously discriminatory rules:
[The PPT file looks hurried and cheaply made, BTW. I could do better... but, I digress.]
* (Picture of the serving line) This is where you get your three meals a day. If you need more than three meals a day because of diabetes or other medical concerns, you should look for another place to stay.
* (Meme "Before there was Iron Man / There was Iron Lung") If you have medical or mental health issues beyond the care we provide, you should look for another place to stay.
* (Picture of their elevator) This is our elevator. It can be used ONLY with staff permission [capitalized emphasis theirs], if you use a wheelchair or other medical issues.
* (Picture of breathalizer) You may be asked to blow in this. It MUST read .000 or you will be asked to leave.
* A couple of slides say the same thing about drug use and you may be asked at any time and if ANY drugs are found in a urinalysis, again, they say "You will be asked to leave."
There are others, but some of them contradict with each other.
Going on, they will not let you even have certain things: laptop, even if you are going to school (Someone attending college asked and said it was MANDATORY for their homework,and they said "Oh well, then go look for somewhere else,then!"), cell phone (they're afraid you'll call a drug dealer) or even "People" Magazine or "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition" because they think it's porn... seriously!
And they have confusing rules: If you don't have a job, you're REQUIRED to work at their "New Life Center" EVERY DAY, but if you DO have one, you're asked to "volunteer 8 hours a week," but if you NEED a job and are actively looking for one, how is that even possible?
Oh, BTW, I'm an atheist, and I faked it good enough. I even was asked to lead the prayer at a couple of meals. But a couple of "morning devotional" sessions was mostly 30-minute soapbox sessions to air the b.s. of what he thought was wrong with the world...
TL;DR, some of what he said made me cringe. He thought LGBTQ should be banished permanently "Because God Said So, Damn It!", that there was really NO constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state, we were founded as a Christian country from Day 1 (Uh, WRONG, Dennis [his name]! Section VI of our Constitution AND Amendment I say otherwise!!!!), all a bunch of stuff. I mostly written Linux Bash Shell Scripts in my provided notebook when we were *supposed* to write our "shortcomings" and our offerings to God in them...
And don't get me started on their "Statement of Moral Obligation," a confusing document about "Biblical Marriage".
But all what you wrote is what me and my friend experienced too. And just because we had our reasons, they kicked us out.
Screw them, I've been living on the streets since 2011 and I can survive. These places are 3 hots and a cot with restrictions.
Jane 10 months ago
The Shelters in Dallas TX are awful. Many people would rather live in Tent City (underneath a major expressway in Downtown Dallas) than go to a shelter. Why are the shelters so awful? They are very authoritarian. You have to be in at 2 or 3 p.m. and they lock you in. If you leave out for any reason you are banned. The staff is often rude and abusive. There are major privacy violations as well. Dallas has instituted some type of system where all of the shelters share information with each other and with about 150 other businesses that are suppose to help the homeless. So if you are homeless for one night your name and social security number and other personally identifiable information are shared forever with 150 different agencies and private corporations. Never to be deleted. Also, Dallas Shelters turn over all of their shelter lists to the police. Each night. They give the police the names of people to be searched (even after background checks are ran) by the shelter. How do I know? I have a cousin who is married to a police officer in another city. Her and I weren't speaking for while and she had her husband violate the law and he looked me up and could see every shelter I had ever stayed in, in the State of Texas. There should have been no way he could see this if I wasn't breaking any law. Which I wasn't. But the shelters just violate your privacy. So they frighten many people away. The Bridge Shelter in Dallas forces everyone who stays there even one night to sign away their rights to their personal information and so the shelter can share this with hundreds of different public and private companies. Other shelters do the same.
Kylyssa 21 months ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
You can be certain homeless women get raped at a horrifying and alarming rate in India as well, probably even more frequently and with even fewer repercussions for their assailants.They may even be more likely to be murdered by their assailants. I'm guessing more people are alarmed by the rape of middle class and upper class women no matter where they are than by similar crimes against people of the lowest classes anywhere on earth, even in their own neighborhoods.
Margelia 21 months ago from Culver City, California
I know this is an old article, but I had been looking for something that summed up the major problems that homeless women have to deal with, and this does it perfectly. I wanted something to share on Facebook, because there are so many posts I have seen about the horrifying conditions for women in other countries... Everyone rallies around causes like rape in India, but what about here in the U.S.? The rate of sexual assault among homeless women is simply unacceptable. I cannot believe more is not being done about it. I'm not saying we have the same problem as India, only that their problem is garnering a lot of attention while ours are being ignored. Is it because these women are homeless, and in India average college students get gang raped? Is it more horrifying to people that these women get attacked?
I don't know, but I think there needs to be a conversation about this... Thank you so much for such a well written article. It makes it easier to bring all of this to people's attention when it's presented so clearly and succinctly.
GypsyOwl 2 years ago from Chico California
Thank you! The only long-term solution to homelessness in America will be from-the-heart change in how people are treated across the board. When we are able to treat each other as we want to be treated.
Opinion aside. My experience has shown me being homeless happens to people in all walks of life and all levels of achievement, motivation, and even hard working people find out through disaster or economic shifts suddenly life comes along and everything changes. Displacement is what they call my situation.
Shelters aren't an option for me. I appreciate your presentation and from-the-heart observation.
And, today I found your page because it is LotD on Squidoo's home page. Congratulations well deserved!
Dressage Husband 2 years ago from Pine Grove, Nova Scotia, Canada
Not having used a shelter I am horrified at the issues described here. However I am not really surprised. Most people with a good job never think how it is to be out of work and fighting against the prejudices of other ignorant people just like they actually are.
Only after an actual experience of living the life of the homeless can people understand and handle this difficult situation fairly and well. This is true in many areas of life and unfortunately this is the root cause of most of the issues in the Western World. It is ignorance and the fact that what we do not know we do not know can and does hurt us! Good Hub - Today's LOTD on Squidoo
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@burntchestnut: The biggest problem, in my opinion, is nothing anyone involved with running shelters can do anything about directly. Predators are going to stalk homeless people leaving shelters; they know it's safer for them to choose homeless victims. Society has to change for that to change. Law enforcement has to change (equal enforcement of and protection under the law) to change the phenomenon. Places like underfunded homeless shelters also often don't have the resources to run background checks on workers and certainly not on volunteers. One way to get around these problems would be to have housing assistance programs in place of homeless shelters.
burntchestnut 2 years ago
Homeless shelters have to have money and they have to have volunteers (or paid workers), both in short supply. It's easy to criticize people when we've never been in their situation or have observed the inside of a homeless shelter. The well-run shelters (and with money), provide the homeless with dignity, keep the family together and help training to get a job. I never realized the homeless have to deal with violence or uncleanliness in some of the shelters. But the workers can't tell if someone will be violent, and they certainly can't force everyone to bathe and submit to a physical to see if they have a disease. It's a problem that has always existed, but the public rarely knew about.
ozoneman68 2 years ago
@lskjk: It's sad that in this day and age where our currency isn't worth even a quarter of what it used to be and so many of the once decent paying jobs having been outsourced that a large amount of people still believe that anyone who is homeless is either mentally ill, a drug addict or alcoholic - or (as is commonly believed in the buy bull belt) they're being punished by "god".
lskjk 2 years ago
I am homeless and also do not have a drug or alcohol addiction. I tried to stay in the Salvation Army shelter and made it one night. At the intake they run your I.D. and make you do a drug test and breathalizer, which to me they were saying that I was a drug addict no matter what. While I was waiting I saw two men come out of a room, one was buckling his belt like they had just did something sexual. The staff didn't care or pretended not to notice. Now, I have a problem with this because I was raped by a man. They put us in rooms with no supervision and the door closed. I barely got any sleep that night. I never tried to stay in a shelter again.
annemarievocalsintallahassee 2 years ago
the only ones that I know of that are clean, are usually battered women shelters with lockdowns.I am looking for a safe emergancy haven myself in Portland Maine till I can get into the Victoria Center.
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@Vicki_P: The unfriendly pre-meal sermon I recall most clearly was in a shelter run by a Reformed Church. It wasn't particularly nasty but it clearly communicated that the pastor felt homelessness is the consequence of and punishment for sinning. Some pastors even talk positively about the sermon style online. I'll add some links.
Vicki_P 2 years ago
Where I live, no, there's not enough. There are always homeless on both sides where I live (a small urban park in one direction, two major plazas in the other). This city has a large "soup kitchen" but the city itself doesn't help much at all. There are a few other nonprofits that help in the area. I love the lens, it's great. I did want to say, though, that no Christian group I know of would tell you that you're being "punished for your sins," so I don't know what kind-of shelter that was you had experience with. Emmaus Ministries in Chicago may be a good example of a multi-denominational shelter/kitchen that provides love and help, in their case, to men in survival prostitution. (PS - I tried posting this in the debate comment, but it's not working - I tried a number of times.)
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@Alison Williams: We have enough vacant buildings in America that we could probably house all of the homeless people in the world very comfortably. Unfortunately, even if the banks that own the abandoned (and now decaying because no one has been living in them and keeping them up) houses and other buildings were to give permission for people to live in them, it would be illegal. Yes, it's crazy.
Alison Williams 2 years ago
I found this page quite enlightening. I always thought of Shelters as a place of refuge and thought that things like theft, assault and rape were more likely to happen to a homeless person on the street. I was aware of drug addicts possibly being in them but I thought everyone had their own room and you could just avoid them for a lot of the time. Last year, my landlord evicted me and I was worried sick at the prospect of possibly being homeless because I was hitting a brick wall all the time trying to find somewhere else. I couldn't move back in with my family because of problems there and the thought of sleeping on a cold, hard street scared me a lot. So I rang shelters but no-one could take me for various reasons such as age or income.Maybe not all shelters have these problems but one way I think might solve problems for the homeless would be to use vacant housing that has just been standing empty for years. Why can't they be converted somehow and temporarily house a few people while they get themselves together?
anonymous 2 years ago
it's actually quite sad that shelters don't provide enough materials and facilities for the homeless, not to mention SAFETY. Being a woman in a shelter would be one of the hardest things I must assume. Great lens, thank you!
jen09 writes 2 years ago
I found this very interesting. My husband works hand-in-hand with law enforcement and often views homeless as lazy, however I am a bit more sympathetic. Your article really brought to light a lot of issues I had not thought about previously. Definitely going to share it (and a few others on the topic) with him
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@mary-helmers: Those sound like great ideas. Kleenex and bathroom tissue are also always useful. I need to add a bunch of things or possibly create an additional page geared more directly toward making care packages. Please remember to keep safety in mind and take someone along with you when you do something like handing out backpacks. And don't be discouraged if some people seem ungrateful or curse at you. Many such people are either mentally ill or just lashing out because they've been hurt so badly they fear peoples' motivations. Thank you for being a caring person!
mary-helmers 2 years ago
Thank you for your informative and well-written articles! I have copied a lot of the information to put into packs I will now be making up and giving out to homeless men and women I see. Your listing of what is needed is a huge help. To many of the things in your list, I intend to add a couple of toothbrush holders--one for a toothbrush, and one for holding small stuff like a pencil with extra lead and a pen. And also add a few plastic spoons and some Ziplock bags in 2 or three sizes and larger plastic bags with ties. I'm going to see just how many things I can include for $20. Thanks for giving me an excellent way to be able to help. I have wanted to do so for some time, but did not know what I could do other than to offer a sandwich or something of that sort.
sarah-kareem-7 2 years ago
I am an international student from Saudi Arabia, I feel sad deep from my heart when I see teen or elderly as homeless. Every day I cry when I came home, I appreciate my bed and every thing more than before. Being homeless is not an easy thing at all, May God (Allah) help every single one in this world with financial and health problems. This page is so great
hclyne1 2 years ago
Having been kind of homeless - I needed to stay in a shelter type accommodation but thankfully here in Australia ours are much better than anywhere else in the world they're LGBTQ friendly, disabled friendly and treat a person with respect and decency and I felt no judgement at the one I stayed at. It's classed as short term accommodation as you do have to pay a weekly rent but for that you got 3 meals per day and a lockable room to yourself. Also our government provides people with various financial assistance depending on your circumstances including a homeless allowance.
Alyssa DeBoer 2 years ago
I had a very bad experience with being homeless and homeless shelters (thank god only for a week). It was one of the worst times of my life. I love your article. I understand ever aspect of all your homeless articles.
Lionrhod 2 years ago from Orlando, FL
I am in the middle dealing with the almost opposite challenge. While we were out of state and working to get back and get our feet under ourselves, my husband's mother was taken and determined as Alzheimer's incapacitated and thrown in a home by a person who for a freaking living, warehouses the elderly.Thankfully we had a home to move into. However then there are things like electricity (we lived for 2 months without - and the place was almost condemned because of that) and food and such.Obviously things are now on the mend and we now have electric and internet and a few other basic amenities. Still working on a car and all.And yet still we have to find the $1500-3000 or so to just get a lawyer to get her out of the home she's got stuck in. So that she can be treated with basic human respect - be allowed to garden and worship and pet the dogs and..simple things. As in she wasn't allowed to make a phone call out for a year. We weren't even allowed to know what facility she was being held in.Wacky stuff.Being homeless or near so is completely demoralizing and astonishing and...just outright a mess. No, I don't have the answer yet. Still trying to figure it out myself. This page...truly hit my heart. Thank you for doing what you do and what you can.
jan-powers-16 2 years ago
Housing First programs are more of an answer, especially for homeless families. I tried to get into a program like that, here in Los Angeles, but they wouldn't accept me because my mental illness was so out of control. It was difficult to get mental health help while being homeless. My children were taken from me because I was mentally ill and unable to qualify for a program that would stabilize my family. It took me years to get them back, and the entire experience with Children's Services was dehumanizing. The social workers we had were, for the most part, decent people who cared about the children, but the system is simply evil. I was mentally ill and homeless and somehow, it was my fault in the eyes of the "helpers." How does anyone deserve that? I am an atheist partly because religious shelters told me I am a bad person and deserve to be homeless. I could never trust a god that would punish me for being poor because my children's father abandoned us when my youngest was only two months old. I survived, managed to get a bit of an education, and am stable today. Being homeless is horrible, but the way a homeless person is treated is even worse. This is where you find inhumanity hardest at work.
alian1888 2 years ago
I thought the answer was simple.... Build more homeless centres!!!How ignorantly stupidly arrogant do I feel right now? VERY VERY VERY!!!!I live in New Zealand. I have spent short stints on the street, sleeping under church bushes and other not so great places. I had a mother who beat me when she got pissed with my dad and he took off to get away from her anger issues.Get what I looked too much like my dad. ANYway!I had been offered places to stay overnight a few times and always said no thank you.Never really thought why I said that.In the end the same reason as most homeless people I guess.Pride, fear, would rather do things for myself... no handouts or help needed... OK! goes back to pride I guess.Always thought I'd like to "SAVE THE WORLD" some day.Win big on Lottery (LOTTO). look after myself then help others with the rest. Help build homeless shelters for the homeless etc.NEVER EVER! thought about how homeless people would think about some "know it all" turning up and saying here's another shelter for you to live in, use it!Ignorance is soo bliss isn't it.Right now I'm thinking.... WHAT IS THE ANSWER???????- Has anyone asked a homeless person what they would like?- Do they just want a safe place to spend the night?- Would they accept help that was given (to a degree, forced) upon them?+++ or do they really want a HOME of their own.A small safe place to go home to every night, with nice neighbors who say good morning etc. And know how to treat them like real people.... I know all about not quite fitting in, no matter where you go.It's taken me lots of years ( maybe 20-30) and lots of luck, and eventually to be able to accept the help of some very very good people whom I could trust, just to get to where I am now.I have a partner I love.... Hopefully to be married in a very simple ceremony in September.A rented house that I call HOME!A job I love, that pays a very good wage (in comparison to the minimum wage I've always gotten), and working with people who appreciate what I do... with them and for them when I can. (I like to be helpful).How I got here, I don't honestly know!But I love my life, and the people around me, who make my life worth living.To go from what I have now, to the life I used to live (which even at it's worst was nothing compared to soo many others in this world we live in... Is unimaginable to me know.IN CONCLSION:More homless shelters are not the best answer, but a plaster on the wound of humanitys shame and neglect of what is right there in front of us every day.But giving soo many people a house they can own out right, a place to call "HOME"... a place people can call safe...mine....a sense of belonging, to somewhere special, and to the community they live in.I guess even a cardboard box in an alley, with other people in the same situation can give someone that same or similar sense of home!Or as close as it will ever get for a lot of people.GOD bless the poor, the meek, and the humble... for they shall inherit the kingdom of GOD before the rest of us.Love and best wishes to all those who live simple lives, and struggle in an unkind world, who feel the unimaginable coldness of a winters night in the open.May their hearts always be as warm as the midday sun, and their souls shine brighter than the brightest stars of a clear night.Kindest RegardsAllen Murray Davis
Loretta L 2 years ago from Chilterns, UK.
I also just tried to like your page, but apparently I am over the limit. I will try to remember to come back tomorrow. Thank you for such an enlightening lens.
Loretta L 2 years ago from Chilterns, UK.
I have recently been reading up about homeless shelters as I have written a book about a homeless girl - Where Angels Tread - and needed to do some research for it. I wish I had found your lenses, but I did manage to find sufficient information to cover the reason why my fictitious heroine had never used the shelters before - although her experience of a shelter is a good one. I did try to post in your poll but it wouldn't let me.
Lionrhod 2 years ago from Orlando, FL
My answer in the duel module was: "Sadly a huge NO!" but it wouldn't post for some reason. Back when I had a car I was bringing food to Food Not Bombs. I encourage everyone to do what they can to help. Thank you for your good works!
OUTFOXprevention1 2 years ago
Interesting information! Thanks for sharing.
your-mate-with-a-ute 2 years ago
I have lived on the streets on and off for most of my life and in one form or another. I was ejected from home at age 13 and between foster care, group homes and shelters there was just less conflict to go it alone. I spent time living in cheap hotels but even this was not ideal. Communal kitchen and bathrooms meant possessions were constantly stollen. Unannounced searches of my room by landlords invading my privacy. And some even had no communal kitchen and also wouldn't allow cooking in your room. (Fire hazzard) so you would have to eat in their dining room (expensive) or eat take away (unhealthy and expensive) or as i did just eat 3 dining room meals a week. Rest of the time its bread and crackers.The single best thing that i ever did was to buy a car. Not only did this allow me to transport my belongings from place to place. Without having to leave stuff behind simply because i couldn't carry it. But it also gave me a reasonably secure place to sleep between housing. So much so that it became my preferred option in many instances. Fuel costs are a concern but if you can drive it opens up so many more options for employment. Some jobs are only available because nobody can make the start times due to their requirements for public transport. And there is always pizza or other fast food delivery jobs available. Yes these can place a burden on your home and transport but it can provide a leg up.One time i rear ended someone in my car and wrote off the car. It still ran but the front was totally crumpled. My employer (pizza shop owner) respected my dedication having learned of my circumstances and gave me a loan to purchase and register another very cheap car. That i would pay back as a percentage of my wages for the next several months. People like that are rare and in most instances they wouldn't lift a finger to help someone who is homeless. However someone in that situation who is trying to better themselves. They consider more like themselves and hence feel more obliged to help.Living in a car takes some finesse and planning. If you have work even part time or casual labouring work it makes things easyer. The amount of glass in a car makes it very poorly insulated. Cardboard cut to the shape of each window will help trap the heat in cold weather and keep it cool and dark in the hot sun (pizza delivery is an evening job) paint one side of the cardboard white and the other black. White face out for cool black face out for warm. With a car the issue of charging your phone is taken care of. 12volt chargers are cheap. And with that 12 volt constant power source comes other options. Entertainment is the biggest concern for me. I found myself bored to death sitting in my car all day with very little money. I started out 20 years ago when i first started living in my car by purchasing a pocket telivision. I expanded that to a 12 volt carravan VCR. Later portable DVD players became more affordable. I purchased one recently for $30 it doesn't have a battery and requires the 12 volt power from the car but it works and $1 each for weekly DVD rentals from my local video store provides me with endless cheap entertainment during my down time. An old laptop computer coupled with a power inverter (turns 12v DC into mains power AC) allows me to write out my resumes and application letters. Coupled to my mobile phone i can email and browse the net for other job opportunities.Many years ago i tried using a cooler to be able to purchase food and have it keep. This worked to some degree but milk cartons would move as the ice melted and spill and meat would become waterlogged. I saved enough money to buy a 12 volt cooler and solved the problem of having to buy ice every 3 days. However with this came another problem. The cooler draws so much power and is always running that the battery in my car would go flat. A jump pack solved that problem. I can now jump start my car whenever the battery dies. And if i know I'm parking up for a few days and not intending to run the car i can still get 1/2 a bag of ice and put it in the car cooler. I am now married and have 4 children under the age of 8 my wife and I live in stable rented accommodation and my life has changed for the better. However recently i needed to find a job urgently and there was no job vacancy where we lived. I told my wife that it wasn't a problem i would go to the city and find work. "But where will you live? We can't afford anything!" Was her reaction. " it won't cost me anything if i live out of my car." I replied. I put all my gear in the car and for 4 months i was back living in my car. But the long term history that i have. Having lived on the streets on and of for 26 years i had accumulated all the equipment i would need. So i lived in relative comfort. I don't advise anyone living rough now to run out and buy all the stuff that i have mentioned but if you are in a position to begin acquiring (financially able) or at risk of becoming homeless theres a start point. I recommend a van if you can get one cheap or trade your car for one. The added headroom and flat floor for sleeping on will make you much more comfortable. The toys can be purchased second hand if needed. I bought mine new and knowing that i couldn't afford to replace them have looked after them. Being able to watch the news or an evening movie is a great comfort. And if your up late waiting for the area your in to quieten down so that you can sleep you can watch a movie or surf the web. This also has the advantage that if passers by see you they won't assume your a bum or a hobo living in your car just a business person checking their emails on their way home and not bother calling the police to move you on. A good sleeping bag is life or death don't cheap out on this. Dacron is best value for your money but down is just as warm however takes up less space. (Is useless when wet and looses its efficiency every time it gets wet and is dried) not a good idea if you may end up sleeping outside. Don't waste your money on anything cheaper than $50 you will get a nylon cover stuffed with cotton wool. Great for camping during the summer but useless for roughing it outdoors in colder months. A small stove of some description. Butane if you have the space or solid fuel/metho if not. I would boil a pot of water every night especially in colder weather. And fill both a hot water bottle and a thermos. Wake up shivering cold in the middle of the night. Have a hot chocolate in bed and wonder to yourself about how those poor homed people are managing without this! A great morale booster and a lifesaver in itself. Showers and toilets are the only concern left to cover. I always carry a basin or a crate that can be emptied easily and filled with warm water for a sponge bath between showers. Many shelters or assistance agency's will have showers and all you have to do is ask for one. If they have one they won't refuse you. The other option is truck stops sometimes they charge a small fee or will give you free use with a fuel purchase. Find out where they are and what the deal is. These are usually open 24 hours so you can use them when its quiet and theres no-one around. Toilets i usually tried always to park close to one where i could or if not make use of one when its there. In my area many are closed at night due to vandals. I would keep a roll of toilet paper and a small folding trowel in a bag where it was easy to reach if i had to go. Not pretty but beats messing yourself. That's my story. Hope it helps someone. Or at least entertained you.
John Dyhouse 2 years ago from UK
A very disturbing account of the issues with shelters, the fact that there are not enough is common to many countries and cultures but even if one or two of the other reasons are encountered in each one it is most worrying. I guess that they are always full so often don't see the problems.
Stephanie36 2 years ago from Canada
I guessed some of these reasons (especially working hours, pets, and safety), but issues of disease actually hadn't occurred to me. It makes sense, of course. I find the questioning about if you have somewhere else to stay insane. If you had another place to stay, whether it's a friend, boyfriend, or other, you'd probably already be doing that rather than going to the shelter. Fantastic lens with really eye-opening info.
mike-hanson-5454 2 years ago
What is the reason that shelters often have such rigid check in times? Usually, these check in times are in the early evening, just right around the time some people are working. Shelters obviously provide a much needed service, but, the way that the one's that I have been in seem to want people to be stuck in them.Case in point. If you don't have a regular job, then you are not permitted to work via a day labor place.Ever lived on the streets?It costs money to ride the bus, or to buy gas for your vehicle and if you don't have an income then you'll be doing a lot of walking.Therefore, why don't most shelters make concessions that allow people to work day labor until they have enough money to pay for transportation, cell phone airtime and laundry etc..There are times that I believe that some shelters want to keep people in them because for every person in a shelter allows for money to be spent housing them.If a shelter had all of their clients get employment and thereby leave the shelter, those that run them would lose their jobs.If you ever stay at a shelter, do not by any means list the shelters address as your home address because it is well known in whatever town you are living in.The place that you fill out the application will more than likely not hire you because of the whole shelter/homeless stereotypes.Furthermore, if there is a plasma lab in your city and they know that you're staying at a shelter, they will not let you donate.I am not going to tell you why that is, instead, I invite you to call one up and ask them why they don't let shelter residents donate.
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@yasminbrownmermaiddqueen: I'm sorry to hear that. Please be sure to exhaust every possibility of help that you can. If you live in the US please be sure you've properly applied for assistance at your local Department of Human Services; it's far easier to get help before the homelessness occurs than after. Also, keep in mind that not all shelters are bad, these are just all of the down sides people have found to using shelters in different areas in the US. Not every shelter has all of the down sides and some don't have any.
yasminbrownmermaiddqueen 2 years ago
quite scared now because ill be homeless in 2 days
AnonymousC831 2 years ago from Kentucky
Fantastic lens, very informative.
Thanks for this. I never realized that being homeless would be this difficult and complicated.
MVKilgore 2 years ago
Intensely informative!! Thank you for the insights and honest perspective on the Homeless subject.
tinastreasures01 2 years ago
Excellent and educational article. Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge.
inspirationalshortstories 2 years ago
Certainly a heart shuddering read. Also, I'd like to recommend you to read "At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey by Claude Anshin". Thanks
christian reese 5 2 years ago
This is so sad. I learned a little something about the homeless people thanks to this article. Thank you for sharing your experience. My everyday problems seem so insignificant right now.
HSP Connections 2 years ago from Port Townsend, WA, USA
Amazing article! I only have the limited experience of living in my car for a few weeks... not really educated enough on the matter to offer any great wisdom.As someone who grew up in Denmark-- a "social democracy"-- I am always appalled by the lack of "safety nets" in the US; there's so little that seems to separate those who are having "a hard time" from a life a life on the streets. And we end up with this "chicken vs. egg" situation where there's lots of crime because people have almost no non-criminal options... the situation is created (and made worse) by the way we-- as a culture-- champion self-reliance, independence and "everyone for themselves," to the point where public assistance is viewed with "suspicion" rather than as a benefit. To answer your question... no, I would not go to a homeless shelter; mostly to avoid the criminal element, which I am expanding to include assault, theft, drug abuse and other addictions having a direct impact on me. When I lived in my car I was actually working, but was out of couch surfing options and at minimum wage couldn't get a place to live (no deposit) for a while... even if this were to happen to me today (at 50-something) I would STILL live in the back of my truck before going to a shelter.
jnnfr4387 3 years ago
I work in a homeless shelter and frankly I have never been so disgusted. Everyone feels sorry for our down and out guests. I agree that maybe 50% of the people actually need to be there because of mental illness, severe addictions, or just being down and out. But the other 50% are CRIMINALS! These people have rap sheets that are sometimes in excess of 35 pages long. Charges that include: battery intending great harm, domestic abuse, keeping a drug house, habitual criminality, prostitution, contempt of court, multiple DWI'S - some with injuries to others, and on and on!!! They are players and hustlers, show no respect to staff, feel above the rules, and steal from the shelter. They request several of the same articles of clothing and then sell it on the street. They laugh and joke about pimping each other out during the day and then come back with wads of cash in their pockets! It truly disgusts me. i feel like we shelter and feed these people and then they go out and commit crimes during the day. I recently saw a photocopy of a donated check from someone's trust fund for thousands of dollars...I could n't help thinking those poor people have no idea the what kind of people they are supporting. These 50% are homeless because they have burned all of their bridges and nobody wants them anymore. I have no empathy for that!
chrisilouwho 3 years ago
This was certainly eye-openning. Thank you for sharing this.
ShelbyLinMarie 3 years ago
This is very moving. I am a social work major intent on working at the macro community level with my focus on homeless adults. These people are our fellow human beings! They need all of the help we can give them to get back on their way to living a happy quality of life.
NathanThomasTaylor 3 years ago
In some parts of the United States, police officers say to homeless people, "You can go to a shelter or you can go to to jail - make your choice now - we will not allow you to walk around on the sidewalks during daylight hours and we will not allow you to sleep on the ground at night." What they are doing is in effect punishing American citizens for not having the means to rent or purchase living space, because there is little difference between a shelter for the homeless and a jail for criminals. Some of us who have been homeless don't like either of these choices offered to us, so we find ways to evade the authorities. We hide in places where we are not likely to be seen by the police, such as inside abandoned buildings or in heavily wooded areas or in underground drainage systems. Some of us have been known to fake drug or alcohol dependency in order to get into 'sober living' housing facilities. Some of us fake having a mental illness in order to be placed in housing for the mentally ill. Some of us who have had very rough lives choose a final solution - suicide - which ends all pain from hunger and stops the horrible feeling of belonging no place in this world. What we really all need (excepting those with extremely severe mental or physical conditions, who need special help) is a decent job and an affordable place to stay, which is not easily attainable in many parts of the United States at this time. Instead, our nation's politicians give speeches about the 'heroic illegal aliens who only come here for work' and how 'we should never expect good jobs that have been exported to other countries to ever come back to our country.' What our nation needs in order to reduce the need for tax-payer subsidized shelters for the homeless and to reduce overall homelessness is a new generation of leaders - leaders who are aren't all millionaire and billionaire politicians. We need political leaders who come from the lower economic classes. If that seems an unlikely possibility, consider that we live in the internet era, where many societal changes are achievable by people who simply have the will to change the way things are now. Are you one of the people who will use the internet as a starting point to make the world a better place?
anonymous 3 years ago
Very educational. Each of us never know how close we are to being homeless. I am sure these people never thought it would happen to them. Of course not, in my opinion. I don't know the statistics behind this but I just keep my eyes and ears alert, as well as listen to media reports. I think this is an opportunity for non profit organizations to consider in order to restore dignity to those who have almost given up hope. (tried to post this at the appropriate spot but could not get the robot filter to accept)
amirahmed01 3 years ago
I actually took the time to sit and have a conversation of group oh homeless individuals. To be honest I was sitting down having a conversation for a whole hour! People tend to fear them because they are not "one of them" but they are still people like you and me. And they tell you things that are out of this world!
amirahmed01 3 years ago
I really enjoyed reading this article! I was on the verge of being homeless and I'm not out of the woods yet. I am poor, but rich in sole haha that's how I always tend to think. Yes, it is a tragic life, but like anything our bodies seem to adjust to any circumstance no matter how bad it is. I used to be able to eat three meals day, but now it is one and sometimes half a meal. But, what I've learned, is that my body adjusts well. Life will always be about survival of the fittest no matter how bad things tend to be.
Lowdown0 3 years ago
Hello, thanks for your insight, I've been homeless before to, usually did have a job. I smoked weed then but nothing else, I would find spots where no-one was. In Portland Oregon there is a bridge called the Burnside Bridge, and this is where many homeless people sleep every night. I would avoid this place and go to the parks outside of town a bit. Sometimes it would take some creative thinking and could be scary dark and mysterious, but I'd rather be eaten by a monster than stuck on the Burnside Bridge. Thanks again
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@wer_werf: It's actually cheaper to put a person into an apartment in some areas than it is to maintain a single cot in a homeless shelter for a month!
wer_werf 3 years ago
I dislike the only homeless shelter my county has. It turned away over 3,500 and only 54% of the people staying there are actually from my county. Why they are building a second one it won't be big enough to serve our population. I live in a very rich county and it disguist me that we are not helping our homeless but can help other people's homeless. It can cost tax payers 5 times as much to do emergency and transiting housing so why not just put funding for studio, one, and two bedroom apartments. I vote to either end all section 8 housing or find the funding for everyone that qualifies
WriterJanis2 3 years ago
This was a real eye opener for me. Thanks for putting this info out there.
Doc_Holliday 3 years ago
Very interesting lens. Thanks for sharing.
smine27 3 years ago from Tokyo, Japan
There are quite a number of homeless people in Tokyo. However I have never seen shelters here like in America. this wasa very educational and enlightening lens for me. Thank you for sharing your story.
QianaMDavis 3 years ago
Very enlightening article. Although this would make me think twice about operating a homeless shelter personally, I'd still like to volunteer at one and do whatever I can to help alleviate suffering of the homeless. I long ago became interested in this matter as a college student reading about whole families who having to live in shelters after the parent(s) lost their jobs then their homes, cars, savings etc. This article gives one a lot to think about and sheds a light on how many issues homeless people face and the problem with the system itself.
anonymous 3 years ago
@anonymous: This would be more of a transitional housing program then a shelter the way you are describing it!
SheGetsCreative 3 years ago from Seattle, WA
I am so glad that currently 88% of people in your poll above agree that the homeless are deserving of being treated like humans. You know how important this issue is to me so I'll just send you a big "Bravo" :)
ErikaV LM 3 years ago
Brilliant lens, it takes tons of courage to say all these things when so many amongst us live by the moto "you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you" -even when that hand feeds you crumbs. Well said, well done.
goldenecho 3 years ago from Texas
As a Christian I'm really sad to hear that a homeless shelter used their religious services to try to make people feel that God was punishing them by making them homeless. I think the Bible is very clear that we should be wary of labeling another's hardship as "punishment from God." I understand that you don't believe in God, but I just didn't want you to think that was what our faith really taught. Thank you for the article that spread light on so many things I was not aware of about homelessness.
anonymous 3 years ago
@GuruBurt LM: I agree, and it's rare that people can understand this without being in a similar situation.
anonymous 3 years ago
@CrazyHomemaker: Homeless accommodations just need to be redesigned. :)
anonymous 3 years ago
Great article. If i were rich I would create a new kind of "homeless shelter". It would be a community of buildings, Much like apartments. (homeless) People would live like humans: like everyone else. No check in days and no "kick out" days. They would stay there for as long as they needed. Although I would have security for everyones safety and sections for animals (to protect those with allergies). My place would not have a high turn over rate, so it would not have vacancies often, but the resources would be there if anyone needed them. I would ask for professionals to volunteer like veterinarians, and doctors and shrinks and addiction counselors and career finding resources, and I would not make it mandatory to see any of them. I would help those who seek for it, but leave the ones who don't want or need the help alone. I learned of ordinances restricting expansion from your article!! thanks. It's good to know when I design my Community of Hope :P
GuruBurt LM 3 years ago
I was fortunate enough to avoid having to live on the streets after I effectively became homeless. My parents allowed me to move back in with them and stay with them as I rebuilt my life after a separation and divorce when I became unemployed. Without their help I would have been at least couch surfing for a while. Life is wonderful again but without the critical support when I was depressed, financially destitute things could have been very different. There are many reasons good people become homeless. They need your help not your judgement.
CrazyHomemaker 3 years ago
This is an amazing look at homeless shelters. I often thought "If I were rich, I'd create one in my town". Now, with all of the instances you've described, I'd forget it and help out in other ways. Thanks for this lens and all of your other ones, too. Very interesting information!
DtKnight 3 years ago
This a very well thought out, very significant commentary on why homeless people do not use homeless shelters. The current nature of limited habitation is a quality of this world that is unfortunate, especially in light of all the land that is currently available but held in reserve. It says a tremendous deal about any country in the way that it treats its homeless, and your lens is a very good place to start on ways to try to combat homelessness and to also figure out ways to help those in need without in turn harming them, even if unintentionally.
sheilamarie78 3 years ago
Very moving account. People forget how close each of us is to being in the same situation. Thank you for opening a few eyes. P.S. Even if you've gotten some ignorant or even down right mean responses, your words will still work on those hearts. I hope you are okay, and I will keep you in my prayers (whether or not you are a believer, you can still feel -- and give -- the love, right?)
chi kung 3 years ago
fantastic piece of writing and very much needed!
LisaDH 3 years ago
You've done a great job highlighting the problems with homeless shelters. We need to do better than this.
nicolekato 3 years ago
This was a great lens that really made me think about homelessness in another light.
blestman lm 3 years ago
Awesome lens about a national travesty. I applied to work at a homeless shelter but I did not get hired -- I guess I was too naïve for at the time
CaztyBon 3 years ago
I really liked your lens I think if more people read the lens it would wake people up to the problems we have in the U.S.A. I know for a fact that a lot of what you wrote is true and I find it disgusting that in this day and age the U.S. would give much needed money to foreign countries that hate us instead of coming up with ways to prevent U.S. citizens from being homeless.
jaclyn-mellon 3 years ago
I was homeless for many many years and in all that time I used shelters twice, and only in dire situations. I did not use them because my pet could not come with me. I was also a minor thrown out by my abusive parents and could not utilize shelters because I was a minor whose parents could not be contacted. There was also my general fear of issues listed above, my stuff getting stolen, getting illnesses and bugs. I was homeless on and off (more on then off) for ten years and I never once got scabbies, I am sure that I would have had I slept in a shelter. Also I did not have identification which most if not all shelters require, I was not able to get my ID for many years because I did not have my birth certificate. But I could not get my birth certificate without ID and I could not get ID without my birth certificate. It was not until I had a child of my own and had his birth certificate to prove who I was that I was finally able to get my birth certificate sent to me!
takkhisa 3 years ago
What a great lens! I hope nobody would be homeless anymore. Thanks for writing this great lens.
anonymous 3 years ago
One of the other things I noticed during a spat of houslessness is that there is a lack of information online about the services these shelters offer, although they are happy to tell folks online how to give them donations.I stayed in a tent in a wooded area outside town and was not bothered though keeping clean was an issue. I still managed to work and save that way.If you look at the websites, the sites have plenty of "donate now' buttons but NO actual description of what to do if you need help. Also, the one thing not covered in the article --- MANY of these shelters such as the Salvation Army and others are starting to CHARGE 5 to 8 USD per night in addition to curfews that are incompatible with getting work.
Margot_C 3 years ago
Thanks for a great article. I did not realize the dangers of living in a homeless shelter. Thanks for enlightening me.
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: If the person was a renter, there is no area in America wherein landlords are responsible for the crimes of renters.I never encountered a law that considered guests in the home to be renters after a two day stay. Money has to change hands for them to be considered renters in the United States. If I discovered a renter to have a meth lab set up in her room, I would call the police. If a guest in my house set up a meth lab, I would call the police. Going in and messing with evidence at a crime scene is never a good idea.If you failed to screen a renter it is a different issue. I had a terrible experience with a renter, too, wherein I had to pay for my mortgage on the rental property while receiving no rent for 11 months and, by law, I couldn't get her evicted, during which time she trashed my rental house. I would have never been able to afford to repair it except that I allowed a homeless man who worked in maintenance at a local hospital to stay in it for free while he repaired the damage the former renter had caused. He rented it for four years after he finished and kept right on making improvements and was never late with the rent once I started charging for him to stay.My experiences were much different. The worst experiences I had with taking in over twenty different homeless people into my home over about a twenty year period were that one kid took twelve dollars from my purse and another made long distance phone calls without asking.
anonymous 3 years ago
I have had dealings with homeless people on several levels and tried helping the homeless in different ways. What I want to share is more about how laws are set up to discourage helping those in need rather they are homeless are about to be homeless. When my boys left for college my home became free of space that I was willing to allow those that found themselves in hard times to stay. I learned the hard way that by helping can be very costly both emotionally and monetarily. Although, I have many stories to share I will limit it to this one.I allowed a woman who had become homeless to use a spare room in my home. it didn't take long to realize she wasn't using the room to get on her feet and move on. She had set up a mobile meth lab (which I destroyed and disposed of taking to the local land fill not putting into my garbage). Since she had lived in the room for more than 2 days she had renters rights and used them against me. When I kicked her out the local police showed up with a warrant looking for a lab she had saw. Long story short had I left it I would be in jail. I have been told the items which I destroyed would had put me there for over 50 years. This is the worst case however, all the cases I tried to help ended up just like this one People taking advantage of another persons good nature and the laws are set up in favor of the one needing help so the one in however many that will benefit is left without help because the laws are set up to discourage those in a position to help, help. I live in a house with several extra rooms that I no longer consider using to help not even those I have known. Who can help with the laws set up to the homeowners disadvantage?
chironseer 3 years ago
Hi, me again, I forgot to say that I also worked at a homeless hostel in the UK, only for a few months though, my colleagues were good people, although some of them came from very dysfunctional backgrounds, and had issues with anger and control.because of the need to get workers as soon as possible, the staff weren't always suited to the job. The shift patterns were crazy, 12 hour nights, and days, changing regularly. I don't miss it, although I met some interesting people there.
SheGetsCreative 3 years ago from Seattle, WA
Illuminating and true... so much so you've inspired me to write about my own recent experience.
tokfakirmiskin 3 years ago
we are live under the same sun...
Girlwiththorns 3 years ago
Thank you for this insight into an area of life that I have no experience of and which is given little coverage in the mainstream media... The points about gay, lesbian and transgendered folk was particularly illuminating
anonymous 3 years ago
@Kylyssa: Thank you. I will look out for that article. I don't have a car, but I also hope to know how to make the right friends to stick around with. I have the kind of face that looks like "here's a good victim." I can only hope to survive out there if I became homeless.
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: It is. I am actually currently working on such an article. One piece of advice I can give you straight off is to keep a vehicle if you have one. Sleeping in your vehicle is vastly safer than sleeping outside. Another bit of advice is that there's safety in numbers. Make a friend or friends you can trust and stick together. Not being seen is another factor. f no one knows where you are, no one can hurt you. Avoid high crime areas also. If you must use a shelter (and there are good ones in some areas) never, ever call attention to yourself when entering or leaving it. Go to and from it as directly and promptly as possible. Being identified as homeless is the single biggest danger of using a homeless shelter. I will link to the article (which I am still researching) within a week or so.
anonymous 3 years ago
This is very informative. Is there a thread which advises how to protect oneself and sleep outside? I would think it would be very dangerous to sleep outdoors as much as in a shelter. I would like to know how one may protect his or herself sleeping outside. i ask this because I may become homeless in a few months. If this happens, which looks likely, I'm going to buy a ticket to Florida with the little money I have so I won't freeze (I'm in New York, and the winters are too hard). I would try to get public housing if possible, go on assistance and to work, but I need to find out how to survive sleeping outdoors.
Lady Lorelei 3 years ago from Canada
I have thankfully never had to make use of a homeless shelter. Now that you mention the many reasons not to use one it really makes sense.
agagata lm 3 years ago
I am actually ashamed to say that I have never really thought much about it. Thank you for writing about your experiences. It's an eye opener.
Pat Goltz 3 years ago
I am too disabled to sleep outside. I would have no choice but to go to a homeless shelter. I would have to survive as best I could. This information is good; thank you for writing it.
kimadagem 3 years ago
Wow. It's about time someone talked about this. I'm glad you did.
TLStahling 3 years ago
This was very enlightening and I had no idea. Thank you for sharing.
MooshkaDaisy 3 years ago
I haven't imagined that there are so many problems with homeless sheltering. I completely changed my view on homeless people in the streets. Thank you very much for this lens!
kerbev 3 years ago from Upstate, NY
I read this and thought of this page - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/tuberculo...
GardenerDon 3 years ago
The idea of JennyLynn's below is a great one - & something we should investigate, as from your experiences it's obvious our present system is not so good.
Expat Mamasita 3 years ago from Slovakia
Thank you for bringing the problems of homeless shelters to a wider audience.
anonymous 3 years ago
We should build small rooms for rent like Japan does called capsule hotels. They are clean, cheap, and small. You can sleep in a safe clean bed, get a shower every day, and go about your life. This would eliminate 80% of the disease and homelessness in the US because people could work and live like this until they could afford better housing.
anonymous 3 years ago
Thank you so much this helped a lot for my video documentary on homeless people...
anonymous 3 years ago
Very informative. We really need more shelters. In my opinion the should have separate facilities for each group of people. Family only shelters, drug rehab shelters, Men only shelters, women only shelters. Due to safety reasons they def should do weeding of people for safety reasons. Why not a building to take of them, give them hope, treat them like people. If I had the money I would make each person responsible for his own volunteer to stay at my building. Provide there own kitchen, be a cook, be a dishwasher, be in charge of garbage, Be apart of the laundry room, help wash cloths, help fold cloths, help maintain the building, with duties as, clean floors, clean walls, clean yard, That way they could stay there. Provide a regular space for cleanliness products, such as shampoo, soap, laundry soap, toothpaste. People even homeless have got to help also for there own well being & if the truly want help they will not mind doing an exchange of work for a place to sleep. We need a whole new outlook on such facilities for the homeless. If they never change on how they operate they will continue too have the same problems. I have seen poor people take advantage of free food. They walk in with their hair done, Nike shoes and clean cloths, Nails done and fine jewelry. I am sorry but if you have money to to that then you do not need food. You can use the money you had for those things and take care of your food. If you have money for a pack of cigarettes then you have money for food. I do feel sorry for the homeless, but like I said they still have to be weeded out like everyone else in the world. Better shelters means improved conditions for everyone. They need love and hugs and concern. I get upset when people just say "here is just a blanket for you " do you think just a blanket will really help everything? They need more people to stand up for those homeless people who really want help. we need more advocates for the cause, more people to stand up and fight. Your information was very good and very informative, Thank you for sharing it. God Bless
alexbricker 4 years ago
Thank you Kylssa for sharing this information. This side of the argument is not told very often. When it is told, I feel people ignore the real issues.
dumpstergourmet 4 years ago
Thanks for your honesty and vulnerability here. An informative and hard hitting lens, thanks for publishing and sharing. We are a better informed group of people because of your willingness to speak out. Thank you.
anonymous 4 years ago
What a great lens, makes you really appreciate what you got.
dellgirl 4 years ago
~SquidAngel Blessings~ for this wonderful lens on Why Homeless People Don't Use Shelters. What a great article, its so full of helpful information. Thank you for sharing, I learned a lot here.
anonymous 4 years ago
I have never been homeless, but I have sense enough to know that I am not immune to the possibility, especially living in Los Angeles. Perhaps shelters are not the answer. As they imply a temporary solution. Maybe cooperative living might work where people can live, work, share in the responsibilities in one large residential home. Just a thought.
karen-stephens 4 years ago
Thank you for this important lens. I have forwarded this to our city council, demanding to know if this is happening in our city. Angel Blessings xxo
lookupphonenumber 4 years ago
Very interesting and very realistic! I became homeless once for couples of months! Thanks god I knew no "shelter" then!
anonymous 4 years ago
my name is jessy i am a kaplan university student writing a "Big Idea" project paper. my paper is on a graduatory homeless shelter. If you come into my shelter homeless you stay in the shelter building. i offer a program that helps people get on their feet but transitioning them to apartments on the sameproperty and under the shelter management this will prepare people for paying bills and being slf saficiant. there are a veriety of feature my shelter will have. your blog has helped to better the rules and regulations to my shelter. thank you.
anonymous 4 years ago
the waiting list is too freeking long. lost my home.. on the streets with a child and no one will freeking help.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: Hi: The only hope is God! Take it from someone who has been homeless for the last 2 years, without a choice, and God always comes though somehow.I am really impressed with the Lord. There is no way I can distrust Him. Remember sweetie He loves you very much, and so do I. He is not going to forsake ya. Ask Him for guidance, and wisdom. I am so sorry to hear that, your husband abandoned you, but Jesus will never do so no matter what. Love and Laughter!
anonymous 4 years ago
Hi: I am homeless myself. It started in 2010, due to losing my disability benefits that I had been received by the insurance company from the company I was working for. At the time I had my dear lifetime companion doggie, and there was not a chance that I would think of being separated from it. As she was old, she passed away, when we both were homeless, leaving me without any other family in the world, nor a single true friend. God helped me, and I got an apartment through a program, where this agency paid the rent for six months. They closed, and there I go back to the street. I was very scared of homeless shelters for all the reasons mentioned in previous articles, besides, I could not help being on the street. I tried one shelter for a month an a half, but I became more depressed, losing control of my life, which is addiction free, and I left, since then, I am still homeless living in my car. I pray 24/7, and trust God that sometime, somehow, He will work a miracle for someone's mercy, and I can get help to get a decent RV to live in. I am skilled, but with my disability, it is very hard to be able to work full time, so I just do gigs or whatever I can.I personally feel, that every homeless person should be helped one on one situation, with dignity, love, compassion, and without judgement. Thank you for reading. May God Bless Y'all.
NibsyNell 4 years ago
Thank you for such an eye opening lens. You're a very inspirational woman to turn such a negative life experience into a positive by educating others in such a way. :)
AstroGremlin 4 years ago
Homeless shelters are a business. They keep banker's hours for their own convenience, and they allow "whatever the market will bear." Why? Because they are funded by grants that assume, like the rest of us, that they have the best interests of the homeless at heart. That they are filthy, dangerous, inconvenient and exclusive doesn't stop the flow of money, does it? Then why would you expect anything to change? The problem: the "customers" aren't the customers. When has government-funded business ever been as efficient, clean and responsive as the private sector? I feel for the homeless because they have become "clients" of a business that doesn't care about their satisfaction or happiness.
Kylyssa 4 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: There is hope as long as you don't give up. And if you do give up you can come back around to trying again. Over twenty years ago, I was a homeless young adult with Asperger's Syndrome, a learning disability that causes difficulty in social interactions, after my parents ran away from home. I wasn't as experienced as you surely are but I stumbled around blindly and awkwardly and eventually found my way out. I knew virtually no one who could help and no idea of who to approach for help.Contact any relatives you may have, even if you haven't contacted them in a while, even if you don't think they can or will help you. They may know who can. I have seen dozens of homeless people find help and get out of homelessness this way even when they were sure none of their family would help.If you belong to a church, talk to your pastor, minister, or priest about your situation. If you are in the US and haven't already, go down to your Department of Human Services and apply for assistance. Contact your local Salvation Army. Search for food banks in your area and contact the one that serves your zip code. And while the system of homeless shelters in America is faulty, most homeless shelters provide help. Conditions in one area do not apply to all. This page is not intended to make homeless people or nearly homeless people lose hope but to show homed people, those who hate homeless people for being homeless and think they could just stop being homeless if they put any effort into it, that homeless shelters aren't all roses and honey. It's also to show those same homed people that homelessness sucks and that it is a significant obstacle, not something that can be cured just by checking into a homeless shelter. It's also to show that the homeless shelter option doesn't even exist for some people.
anonymous 4 years ago
Today 8/28/12 is my 47th birthday. My husband abandoned me 7 months ago. I have no money and no place to turn. I will be thrown out of my current housing shortly. So I was looking to find help .. but I see now there is no hope.
anonymous 4 years ago
I do think that people in need of help should be grateful for any assistance that's offered, however, I don't think they should necessarily accept it. It's important to show appreciation for legitimate attempts to help, no matter how meagre, but the sad fact is some help -- even genuinely well-meaning help -- is worse than worthless, being more problematic than no help at all.Not long ago I saw a reedy, unhealthy-looking man being given a sandwich bag full of tortilla chips so salty the crystals were visible from a few yards away. He was also given a bunch of water, and strong encouragement to drink it. This was good, it was 100+ degrees out, the man was obviously losing a lot of electrolytes through sweat.Take the same situation but WITHOUT the water, and the man ends up being poisoned by these charitable individuals, he could get sicker or even be killed off completely by it. I think an appropriate response in that case is along the lines of "Thank you, but I'll have to decline unless I can get a lot of water to go with that. I appreciate what you're trying to do for me, but I'm already dehydrated from sweating, the salt will make it worse, and that can kill me faster than hunger."It's not any person's responsibility to accept additional burden or injury just for the sake of making the givers feel good about themselves.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: i agree but it is not just banking and selfishness that caused it those two take up only twenty percent in the causes of homelessness fifty percent is because they were hurt emotionally and forty percent is of other things. sorry if I'm being a smart alic.:(
WhiteKnight7770 4 years ago
Great Lens; I use to work at a homeless shelter and everything you said is so true.
oakstreet 4 years ago
This len help us to know more about the homeless people and their lives as well. I hope we can always help these kinds of people. A "like" from me.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: It's also selfishness too
Heidi Vincent 4 years ago from GRENADA
This is a very educational lens Kylyssa in which you have succeeded in educating us on homelessness. Thanks for sharing especially as I realize this must be a very painful subject to share on given your own experience.
anonymous 4 years ago
jesus was homeless and others great people were also.the banking system is the cause of large part of it
Onemargaret LM 4 years ago
Excellent lens! Thank you so much for the insignt!
kburns421 lm 4 years ago
I just commented but have one more thing to say. Not only is this insightful information, this is an inspiration for me as a writer. This is what writing should be and what it should do. It should make people think and see things in a different light. The fact that you have had personal experience with this and included that made it even more powerful.
kburns421 lm 4 years ago
Wow. I never knew all this. I never even thought about it. This is so incredible, insightful, and well written. I really learned something, and not just factual information. You've really changed my views about homeless shelters and homeless people from reading this and one of your other lenses. Although I've never just assumed that homeless people were lazy or deserved anything bad, you still have really made me see some things in a different light, in ways I hadn't thought about them before.
OliviaDaughter LM 4 years ago
I am a social worker and my internship was in a shelter for battered women. That was 19 years ago, but I remember the women and children. They had a home to go to but it was to unsafe for them to return. Many of them decided to return to their abuser some because they wanted to return to their abusers but others wanted to get out of the life in shelter. It was hard on them to live in shelter with children and get them to school. The mothers had to leave out of the shelter during the day and look for jobs, etc and it was difficult. Thanks for this lens.
Normyo Yonormyo 4 years ago
A great lens kylyssa, thank you for your time and effort to give me this insight into what troubles people without homes. I can only say that knowing these reasons I can only agree with the decision so many homeless people make to stay far away from shelters.
Normyo Yonormyo 4 years ago
I hope your insightful lens will create the much needed understanding of people to create the motivation to change the situation you describe.I can only imagine that the reasons you give for not using shelters is the same world wide.The situation as you describe should not exist in a society that calls itself civilized.
wolfiemeister 4 years ago
Brilliant lens, I hope as many as possible see this
teinesamoa1971 4 years ago
I've worked in a homeless shelter that targeted the most severe members of that population. They had serious mental issues and some had full blown AIDS. What surprised me the most when we were doing outreach with that segment was how many of them had no desire to sleep in a shelter. They'd had experiences of being assaulted, had caught diseases, had had what few belongings they had stolen, and a number of other frightening experiences. Some were too paranoid to be in such a restricted environment. Many of them used the workers at the shelter as trustees to receive their checks and had no desire for conventional living.I also have experience with a close family member being homeless. He cites the same reasons as why he chooses not to sleep in a shelter. I don't have a choice but to accept his way of living and try to understand the way that he thinks.Thank you so much for posting this.
anonymous 4 years ago
This is a real eye opener. Thank you for getting the word out. Keep up the good work.
sunny saib 4 years ago
can't speak in most parts of your lens because then i wouldn't be knowing what i'd be talking about.. but you do know it so much.. i wish you all the best in future.. your lens is for sure an eye-opener..
Kylyssa 4 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: Each "bed" in an average homeless shelter costs more to operate than it would to rent an apartment two people could live in, even with mostly volunteer labor.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: It takes money to turn on lights, run water, pay employees, pay rent or mortuage payments, buy needed supplies and fixtures. If you serve food then it takes money to buy food, prepare food, pay cooks, more rent and taxes. Where does the money come from? Donations? Not enough. Grants? Not enough. Nothing in life is free except a hard time.
ElizabethOSP 4 years ago
This is a disturbing, ***excellent*** lense. You are a blessing to us. Thankyou!!!
microfarmproject 4 years ago
This is an interesting lens that brought up some issues that I had not considered before. Thanks!
kmyangel 4 years ago
Very interesting lens, you are a great and strong woman !!!!!!!
anonymous 4 years ago
It was refreshing to read real reasons people avoid the shelters. I've been homeless and knew instinctively to avoid the shelter for the reasons you listed. I'm so sick of people saying "you know there's a shelter" or "why don't you go to the mission?" They don't want to hear that the mission is only for men or that most of the people there are criminals and I'm not. They don't believe that I'm just a throwaway family member without a job. They need to believe I'm a criminal and drug abuser or they'd have to face it could happen to them.
Millionairemomma 4 years ago
Thank you writing this!
debate76ster 4 years ago
I think it is part of an amazingly large problem that we in America choose to ignore. I created a lens about the rich poor gap recently, and it made me realize that there is a significant plot to keep those in economic strife in economic strife.
flycatcherrr 4 years ago
Thank you for writing this. Your article is a clear, articulate, intimate, and deeply moving treatment of a particular aspect of homelessness that is not widely understood. And I know it's right on the mark, because I was once homeless, too. Only briefly, thank God, and long ago, but the experience was terrifying and humiliating; the memories will never leave me. 'High Five' to you for shining a light on this important (and increasingly important) issue from an "insider" perspective. We really need to start to treat each other like human beings, regardless of personal problems and/or financial status.
DiscoverWithAndy 4 years ago
Wow, incredibly informative article. And very brave of you to speak out for something you believe in - and it's great that you want to not just constructively criticize, but that you want to make it better.
anonymous 4 years ago
I've read some of your other lenses on homelessness as well as this one, and they are a real eye-opener. I live in the UK, and there's not much easily-accessible information on this topic, especially not from people who have had to live through the experience. You've really educated me; and they are a series of well-written articles.
anonymous 4 years ago
Is it right for shelters to charge for a bed?
emmesinger1 4 years ago
http://www.squidoo.com/i-live-in-a-van .... Here is a lens written by someone who was "homeless by choice" (as mentioned in my commentary below.) She also noticed the lack of bathrooms issue, which makes me laugh to remember it, though it's no laughing matter.
emmesinger1 4 years ago
This may sound strange, but one summer about 10 years ago, when my children were with their father for the summer, I decided to try to understand this issue better, but first-hand. I closed up my pretty little townhouse and lived out of my car far about 2 weeks. Yes, I know it sounds crazy for an adult to CHOOSE to do. During those 2 weeks I slept in under bushes (deliberately undercover) in two different public parks. (Yes, all night in a sleeping bag. In fact, it was the scariest thing I had ever done.) I also squatted a house one night with a friend (yes, being bad, but again doing relatively safe experimenting). On this experience I discovered the true danger of CARS and traffic. My lord! how people drive. They go about as if they are invincible and blind in their cars. I can't tell you the number of times I felt so unseen as I had to abruptly get out of the way of a blind person driving his-her car in a PARKING LOT!! So my (1) consciousness grew of how we live UNconsciously with our cars. (2) I became terribly aware of how our nation does NOT believe in public bathrooms! What I had to go through sometimes, just to use the fricken toilet was amazing!! And imagine a truly desperate person (I was not) who cannot afford to purchase merchandise just for the right to go to the bathroom. Additionally, I became aware of a huge subculture that PREFERS to live in this way, counter-culture, seeing the mortgage as a means to perpetuate wage-slavery, etc. On abandoned, unsold, but available homes (and this BEFORE the crisis) I saw many signs written by the homeless-by-choice that read, "who is really the owner?" .... I think we should create a MonkeyBrain Lens on this issue, no? Could prove very interesting.3) I also became aware of the reality and function of "dumpsterdiving" ... (another lens to make)4) And I discovered Western Washington University's wonderful program on "Alternative Construction ". Here I met many innovative, activists living out of a bus, a yurt, a teepee, an old VW wagon, to name a few. 5) The University also has a great program that these activists engaged called, "Permaculture" -- A type of natural agriculture that works WITH nature rather than counter. (Yet another lens to write.)So, (sigh!) thanks for this lens and your shared consciousness.P.S. I have PINNED this lens to my Pinterest board, "strength and resiliency"In fact, I first visited your lens just 2 weeks and 4 lenses ago when I was a NEWBIE in the Squid Sea! ... Today I came back to PIN it and engage you further (as you can see!!) When you have an available moment, I would appreciate it if you could stop by and give me some feedback on my two (somewhat delicate "cause" lenses), "breast cancer tattoos" and "breast cancer pinkwashing".I have arranged the earnings (which are currently 0.00, unfortunately) to be shared with Women's Future Benefit (Squidoo doesn't have any specifically related to breast cancer, so far as I have seen. Let me know if you know differently?)Sending you a thank you in advance! EmmeSinger
AnnMarie7 4 years ago
I agree with this lens 100%. I was homeless for several weeks in 2001. Everything you have stated here is true as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure every city is different, but many of the the things you described here are true where I live. Or at least they used to be. It's been awhile since I've been homeless (Praise God), but I believe my city has made some changes to the homeless situation. I think the shelters here are now segregated between the sexes. A new shelter was built for just for women and children, and there is a separate shelter for the men. This is at least a step in the right direction. Co-ed shelters are a nightmare for single, homeless women. The men are like sharks circling their prey. Homeless men outnumber women here probably 4 to 1. It's frightening, and a woman really has to keep her wits to stay safe.I appreciate this lens. It brings to light a very serious problem in America today...especially when so many have lost their homes to foreclosures, due to losing their jobs.
anonymous 4 years ago
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.John 20:29
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: im sorry ben but people like you should be put in an institution or worse prison you are a prime example to a horrible person and im 16 and relize this and ps. get a life and stop living in yours moms basement
pcgamehardware 4 years ago
Very informative lens. I never realized that the situation of the homeless shelters in our country are in that bad of shape... Thanks for opening my eyes to a very dark reality that I didn't know existed... Great lens and topic, it's just that it is sad that the homeless people are treated the way they are. As far as most of the bad comments listed below are concerned, just ignore them.Many times kids or very immature adults get on here and run off at the mouth without knowing what they are talking about. Notice that most of the bad comments are not from Squidoo members? The Squidoo community is filled with many great mature adults, so if you get tired of the bad comments, set your guestbook settings to "logged in squidoo members only". Anyway, great lens... :)
anonymous 4 years ago
Great job on covering a difficult subject, 2 subjects, really--homelessness and disabiity.
JustOneGuy 4 years ago
@anonymous: Really? What if I build and operate a homeless shelter of my own without anyone being forced to pay for it through taxes? Would that go for my shelter too? If so, then you are saying that it is ok to burn your place down. You sleep there, right? Would you mind giving me your address, just in case? And by the way, have any of your ancestors ever been homeless? How about those who came over on boats and stayed in temporary housing, like mine did? Would you have burned them down too? Or maybe you just shouldn't drink before you post.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: you, my friend are a mental midget, an uncompassionate ignoramus and a agnoptimistic, bloated jelly-fish of a human being.
JustOneGuy 4 years ago
@Kylyssa: It's tragic that the causes of homelessness aren't being eliminated. There will probably always be people who don't have a normal "home" so the ones that you are trying to help are the ones who have simply hit a bump in the road and need help for a rather short period of time to get on their feet. But that problem, getting on one's feet, isn't so easy in an economy where jobs are disappearing and the cost of everything is going up. And older folks, like myself, are making do so far but if the economy collapses, we will probably be homeless too and if we get in that position there will be millions more than there are now. You commented that you liked my rational religion lens. Thank you. I reread it and I don't like it. It's too hard to get through the first sections. I like your lenses. You write very well and your style is easy to read. Anyway, you have nice lenses. I'll stop by and check some other ones out too. Like you, I'm an atheist but I'm not sure that means we can't be religious, whatever that means. Especially if we change some of the fundamental rules. Not based on faith, no god, etc. Anyway, I could use some help on my new religion: the church of virtue. It would be nice to solve the problems of human predation, wouldn't it?
greenmind 4 years ago
Too many trolls here. We're all people, people!
anonymous 4 years ago
i think homeless shelters should be burnt down... certain rat and bedbug, disease infested mongrels should be allowed in society... i dont donate because its their fault for being losers... do they think money comes easy? hell no.. stupid beggars...
anonymous 4 years ago
I stayed in a homeless shelter for teens for a few weeks. I stopped going back because I was bullied. And because someone set fire to my clothes bin.
DeniseDurham2011 4 years ago
Very good lens. I knew the situations were less than ideal, I had no idea it was THAT bad. I have known quite a few homeless people & not many of them were chomping at the bit to get to a shelter. Now i know why.
anonymous 4 years ago
I tried getting help for housing from a Veterans organization in Fairfield, CA. This organization was sponsored by the Community Action Council. After filling out all the required paperwork, I was turned away because I didn't fit thier profile. So just being a homeless veteran isn't just what is required. Sorry man... I've lost my military bearing years ago, and so I live where I can find a warm soft spot.
anonymous 4 years ago
If you look at statistics, homeless shelters ARE FULL. Shelters in the United States only house around 10% of the total homeless population. There are around a thousand shelter beds in Santa Clara County and around ten thousand homeless in Santa Clara. Depending on who you ask and what year you look at. This is no different, all over the United States only 10% of the homeless are sheltered. The fact that there are so many turned away that appear at shelters during the 'early afternoon' to check in which does nothing for people working or going to school. So I sleep by the river in a tent and am two classes away from my Bachelors of Science in Information systems. I have over 80 published essays and over 42,000 unique reads on my essays. Maybe someday someone will over look the fact that I am homeless and hire me. I'll just keep improving myself and going to job interviews where they discriminate against me and keep slapping and sloshing water over the people that continue to say that homeless are all Junkies, Criminals and Crazy.
BobBlackUK 4 years ago
Great lens. I worked as a volunteer in a homeless centre in the UK for several years and got a much better understanding of this subject. More people should try volunteering if only for a couple of hours a week.
esvoytko lm 4 years ago
I am new on this site, but this is easily the best lens I have found so far. Thank you for helping more people to engage with this issue.
Angelgirl1976 4 years ago
This is a fantastic lens, 10/10. My brother has been homeless for 7yrs, got to stay at a friends bedsit, which is a room and a living room in one for past 3yrs and after waiting 10yrs has now got a flat. He slep in fields, old abandoned caravans, sofas, church yards, you name it, he has slep there. I have helped him out over the years as drugs did eventually play a part in his life, but things are looking better now fingers crossed. Thanks for sharing :)
anonymous 4 years ago
I had a friend that was homeless, he would go as far as to confront others that would try tobeat me up for my money. His name was Raphal. When a con-artist would con me out of money, he would try to make me happy. I even tried to offer him to stay at my place, but the motel manager wouldn't allow it. He was like a brother to me, and he helped me set my life straight. A few weeks later, he was hit by a train and I only got to see him one last time. That man changed my whole life and I became a better person becasue of him.It angers me that the homeless would be viewed as criminals when they are not. I hope your current state will improve. Hopefully, this piece of information will being awareness towards the homeless as well as better understanding of this problem.
anonymous 4 years ago
I've never lived in a homeless shelter, but I did stay for one day at a battered women's shelter. I left after one day even though I knew my abusive partner was looking for me and I might not be safe, because they wanted me to do housework in the shelter and go to therapy rather than look for a job. I was not being battered because I was crazy or a bad housekeeper, and the thing I needed the most was work, so that I could save enough money to leave town and start again somewhere else away from the abuse (which I did---today I have three college degrees and a good job, and own my own home.)
juniperberry lm 4 years ago
Great lens - having worked in the sector i feel that most of these are due to a lack of resources; if there were plenty of beds and we paid staff better we could do a better job at then working with individuals where they are at. Unfortunately there is so much need that even those who do a good job get overwhelmed, overworked and eventually burn out.I have heard many of these reasons for not wanting to stay at a shelter - one that stands out for me from a number of people I have worked with is the fear that if they stay at such a place they will fall back in with the wrong crowd and undo all the hard work they have done in removing themselves from addiction networks and such places where drugs particularly are easily accessible.
LaraineRoses 4 years ago from Lake Country, B.C.
I believe that my father was a very good example to follow. A true christian, he gave generously to anyone he could. I didn't fully realize this until after his death. Taking care of his income tax form I couldn't help but note how many charitable contribution receipts he had accumulated in one year. Although always looking after this family, he also gave generously to others. Dad never expected repayment of any kind but I remember in one particular case a $20. cheque he received in the mail. It was from a homeless person he had given money to. Dad cried.
ifuturz 4 years ago
This is amazing
sherridan 4 years ago
Gosh, this is amazing! I thought homeless people did not use shelters because there were not enough beds, but this puts a whole new perspective on it. Please God that I am never in this situation; but I should have headed straight for a shelter, but I would think twice now.
Talktomeuk 4 years ago
Again just want to say thank you for educating me, Im no longer ignorant to the horrors of being homeless, I now understand as best as I could without becoming homeless myself what people in poverty have to go through, you have a great lens. Ive just started my own lens, its about helping people through life problems like bullying, would you mind if I was to get someone who has the same experiences as you to talk to you if they ask me about homelessness? Cheers anyway all the best.
jimmyworldstar 4 years ago
Standards for homeless shelters needs to be raised. I've heard of the awful unsanitary conditions in many and wouldn't be surprised in people avoiding the danger of it.
sheezie77 4 years ago
Thank you for posting this lens, thumbs up!
aesta1 4 years ago from Ontario, Canada
This is really very enlightening. Here in Phnom Penh, there is one person sleeping in the sidewalk but he has a home in the province. He finds it hard to work in the farm so he'd rather panhandle in the street. Our street is very safe as all the tuk tuk drivers know him and this is largely a Buddhist community so no one will hurt him. I know that others have better reasons than this and as I understand it is a choice. It is complicated and having more of those shelters which often create its own problems may not be the answer.
TolovajWordsmith 4 years ago from Ljubljana
I already visited this lens months before and still found it as interesting and intriguing reading. Thank you!
hlkljgk 4 years ago from Western Mass
wonderful insight
this was the thought-provoking lens
anonymous 5 years ago
Returning with a fresh blessing....
Titia 5 years ago from Waterlandkerkje - The Netherlands
Thanks for this eye opener lens.
ChrissLJ 5 years ago
If I were to lose my home, I wouldn't be able to go into a shelter. I have 2 dogs and a cat who have been my faithful companions for years. They have comforted me in times of sadness and loneliness. Shared my joy in times of happiness. They mean more to me than any physical belongings ever could. I could not and would not leave them to fend for themselves or take them to a shelter where 75% of all animals are put to sleep.I would also like to add though that not all homeless shelters have all the horrible conditions. About 10 years ago, I spent the entire summer volunteering at a shelter that offered childcare for the working homeless that lived at the shelter. Medical and dental care was offered 6 days a week to both the homeless and people in the community who otherwise would have no medical care. Families were never split up... even if they were a single father with children, a married couple without children, etc. Individuals could also CHOOSE to attend life skills classes and educational type classes that would help them find jobs. Classes were offered 6 days a week during the days and evenings. They also had transitional housing where families with children could be put into apartments while working on their goals, rebuilding financial independence after getting a job, etc. There were other problems, but the shelter was ran in more of a way shelters should be run and residents were treated as family instead of criminals.
Zut Moon 5 years ago
Good Lens. I mostly write fun stuff but have also have written on social problems as I have done in Self-Destructive Behaviour. What a mosiac we live in - from very poor to very rich ... just doesn't seem right to me ....
anonymous 5 years ago
May be an old topic but very relevant to an issue I am facing. First to give my responsesaaa to all the questions asked. It is obvious that as the population in countries increase that there will be a greater responsibility on the government of any country to help people in need. The government system in America though with a few good neccessary things tends to be way too busy to think of smart ways to simplify processes and help its people. As far as being homeless goes, I would say that I would be afraid if homeless to use a homeless shelter. This goes without saying that beggars can indeed be choosers. All humans should have dignity, and no matter what causes a person to become homeless as long as they are doing the best within their power to cause positive change then the environment around them should help that change. The reason why this is relevant to me is, that as a 21 year old, I am living at a parents house. This is not while attending school or holding a job. I perform many roles to keep the house stable but in the end it is rare that any needs are met and it has been this way for quite some time. In a way this family is a job as they all require some type of care from me. If I consider this place a job but not a home then I am homeless. Now say if the circumstances here prevent me from getting health insurance, a job, or any type of college education outside the library. Then there really isn't a way to move forward. In most cases such a struggle causes increased signs depression [whether or not it already existed]. Depression is a disability which can last a very long time and also affects the lives of many people my age and some older. If i don't have health insurance not only can it not be diagnosed but if I receive any other injuries at all I am left to pay a bill i surely cannot pay homeless or not in the same situation. There are no programs that help people with absolutely no funds but a home to get health insurance. Getting a place to sleep doesn't come without its headaches to deal with and if you go with someone else it will require your reliance on them to do paperwork on your behalf. This also goes with some problems. If you are kind you find your needs not met while you understand that other people are human beings and have things to do but then find those very people who are supposed to bring relief degrading you for your inability to deliver. Life is a big puzzle box and it shouldn't be like that all the time. If it should be a puzzle maybe some pieces should be simple like the framework of the picture while others seem to be more complex and can fit incorrectly into the frame but not create the correct picture. People who are homeless, financially unstable, without parents or guardians, without education and without skills are human beings but in the end a system which requires you to have all of the above subdues the person in addition to all of the things their life may have to offer as well. This leads back to the government. If the government is good, there won't be a lot of these shelters. Why? If there are good shelters providing the services so that people can positively change their lives then there isn't as much of a problem in later generations, it would be a ripple effect [hopefully] where success washes over the first wave of failure and then continues flowing. The government collects taxes, so the government shouldn't be able to enact any laws in which it cannot provide convenience to its citizens instead of discomfort. {If your state requires car insurance it should offer insurance to people with cars]. States may have health insurance but instead of asking about the individual's status [wealth, disabilities, education, skills, careers] it typically adds this to a list of things others must also provide. [How is one a house owner but does not have health insurance or a job?]So yes this leads to the fact that our government isn't corrupt but certainly not user friendly and sometimes the people pulling the strings aren't looking out for the interest of the citizen down to those who don't have homes. There is no prioritization either, these things are problems that are put off to the side and ignored for the next generation to handle somehow...
anonymous 5 years ago
I am in an abuse situation that I refuse to leave because my only option would be a homeless shelter and I have mental health issues that are not conducive to living in group quarters with no privacy. I am also unable to hold down a job and this is a problem because these places have time limits of only 30-60 days before you are tossed into the street. Many people don't understand this and have this strange idea that the shelter is somehow going to get you an apartment. On a daily basis ignorant type people try to bully me into shelters claiming they will help me get housing, job training ect. They don't believe me when I tell them that shelters don't do that. If you have kids you might be lucky enough to get a section 8 place through social services but if you don't have kids there are no housing options other than a shelter that will toss you in the street. Like you, I am no drug user either. It makes me so angry that people think that is the only reason a person becomes homeless. Disability is actually the number one reason for homelessness. I blame the media for this ignorance. Right wing type people are always stereotyping the poor and homeless as drug addicts so they have an excuse to ignore them.
theSEOmama 5 years ago
This was a truly great lens, very insightful and informative.
traveller27 5 years ago
Thanks for sharing. Blessed by a travelling angel.
SiochainGraSonas 5 years ago
I am glad you shared this lens with us. I hope others find it. It was very educational.
anonymous 5 years ago
May you be heard and may homeless shelters become places of safety, dignity and somehow find ways of increasing privacy as well as looking toward alternatives that individuals can move beyond temporary and to day time opportunities that meet real needs. Another work of excellence by you and may each negative response be as a step over another barrier...you are doing an important work.
anonymous 5 years ago
thank you so much for this information, you are helping me a lot for my homework. i dont if anyone else couldve helped more.
anonymous 5 years ago
Shelters are necessary but should be considered a very temporary stop on the way to permanent, and supportive if needed, housing. Housing is a fundamental human right and EVERYONE deserves their own, safe, clean home. Stop helping to manage homelessness and start demanding we END homelessness.
anonymous 5 years ago
Oh for the ignorance of some people, I am sorry that you have received some really angry responses, please don't take it to heart, these people are just ignorant, you are not saying that there shouldn't be any homeless shelters, what you are actually pointing out are the dangers that are faced when using a shelter. I have stated above that rental accommodation is a much better way to go and like I have said when in their own home that they dont have to line up for homeless people have a better opportunity to start all over again. We actually need more rental accommodation that can be shared.
Rhidawn 5 years ago
Thank you for the info! I didn't know the shelters were that bad
Diana Wenzel 5 years ago from Colorado
There has to be a better way. Sounds like there is a big need for shelter reform. I appreciated this honest and first-hand view of the realities of homeless shelters. Under these conditions, I would most likely avoid shelters, too.
SydneyH LM 5 years ago
Interesting and thoughtful lens. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
anonymous 5 years ago
Hello. I read the information on homeless shelters and have learned a lot. It is very heart breaking knowing that our nation is suffering more than now due to homeless. I must say shame on majority of rich who know they can extend a hand in helping to bring progress to homeless shelters. Its time to take focus off oneself and put it on the nation needs. Jesus came to save the poor, not to ignore them. For we are created in his image. Man kind must be very careful of how we treat one another, cause you never know what situation you can be in. Why must we be so self centered and not pay attention to the needs of our brothers and sisters.
brytaylor 5 years ago
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge of homeless shelters. I enjoyed reading it and feel like I learned a lot.
anonymous 5 years ago
This is a very eye-opening lens. I learned things I did not know. It's good that you write about your experience and share it. Hopefully the right people, politicians and decision makers, will read it and realize that they need to make changes.
samsaradakini 5 years ago
What a powerful lens on homelessness and shelters - I had no idea. So now I know what to say when I hear a haughty "They don't want to follow the rules" response. There is so much more to it than that! Thank you.
lollyj lm 5 years ago from Washington KS
I'm not sure what makes me sadder, the fact that our homeless population continues to increase or the multifaceted causes that drive people to the streets. Hubby and I are a long time married couple who worked hard, paid bills, and lived responsibly from age 16 on. But the cost increase in everything we need to survive has carved out larger pieces of our income over time. We pull in our belts and pull in our belts, but what if we had children to support? We've tried to get jobs but no one will hire us, probably because of our advancing age. Many of us are one crisis away from losing everything. Perhaps those angry responses were knee jerk reactions from people who are even more frightened than I am about the floundering economy.This is a WONDERFUL, honest, poignant lens.
rootadesigns lm 5 years ago
Very interesting lens!
anonymous 5 years ago
I would like to introduce you to a new concept in homeless shelters its called the Triage Low Demand Shelter. We a wet shelter that is a colaborative effort with a well known non profit agency, the major hospital provider, the major Mental health provider, and the major addictions provider in the county and all the county law enforcement agencies. We do accept people with walkers and let them keep them since many of our folks come from the hospital. We specialize in providing case management for folks suffering from MH and SA problems and look to place in programs locally and out of the county. As the owner of three dogs myself I am sorry to say that we do not allow pets. We have stretched the rules and allowed a person in a wheel chair on occassion but unfortunately very rare the problem as was mentioned is law suits. Shelters can not afford lawsuits. If required to be wheel chair accessible many shelters do not have the funds to upgrade and would probably close rather than upgrade.
julescorriere 5 years ago from Jonesborough TN
Your lens is thoughtFULL and thought provoking. I was shaken by reading in your comment bar that this received angry responses. I find this odd. What you are doing is providing much needed information and education. We must never become angry about education and illumination. And it is YOUR STORY, told from your own unique lens of life. It is beyond politics. You aren't asking anyone to do anything. Except think. I look forward to reading more from you.
RhondaSueDavis 5 years ago
Klyssa, the city is looking to relocate a temporary homeless shelter right across the street from my neighborhood! they do screen residents and keep security for themselves. It is quite controversial, and it seems this one so far has made a good name for itself, breaking the mold. It is cooperatively run by the residents and local volunteers and some city and county support as well. I have blogged about it, since it is landing 'so very close to home" thank you for your lenses ,it has been good to have read these and also to listen to the many people at our recent city council hearing on the camp. I do wonder where the line is to be drawn on enabling homelessness, as in would some not live in the shelters or streets if it were not so easy to do so? I hope that community efforts to "fix" problems don't in fact create more of it or draw in from other communities that are not as amenable. Good to look at who is befitting (financially and otherwise) from the programs to evaluate thier worth in community.
anonymous 5 years ago
I have a shelter in Phx AZ and i thank GOD that we treat our clients with the up most respect. what you do in the dark will come to light...........Start Living 480-235-1297
Franksterk 5 years ago from California
Another excellent lens illuminating a much needed topic of discussion and change. Blessed. Bear hugs, Frankster
TolovajWordsmith 5 years ago from Ljubljana
Your lens scares me a lot. I knew about a lot of bad stuff before, but now... All the best and keep it up!
anonymous 5 years ago
Loved this lens before and now came back to Bless it.
anonymous 5 years ago
It also cost money to sleep in a homeless shelter. For a mother and a 13 year old child, it could cost $600-$800 a month.
donnetted 5 years ago from South Africa
This is an excellent lens. I love the way you have included the dangers posed - this is very often overlooked by the authorities, although here in S Africa there isn't really any great movement to create shelters or places of safety for those in need. Even the medical and education is frighteningly expensive - and extremely unprofessional and shoddy given the fact that the government is placing unqualified persons in positions of responsibility.
AigulErali 5 years ago
Very enlightening lens on homelessness. Good luck to you!
phoenix arizona f 5 years ago
Good job making your point.
lawpost 5 years ago
Fantastic lense. Hopefully your experience and insight with the plight of the homeless will help others to put aside stereotypes and prejudices against the homeless and work towards a better alternatives to homeless shelters.
lawpost 5 years ago
This lense is amazing. Your experience and insight into the plight of the homeless will hopefully put to bed many of the stereotypes and assumptions that Americans believe about homeless shelters.
thequietanarchist 5 years ago
Thank you for sharing this--I can only imagine what you went through. At one point in my life, I was almost homeless myself so I absolutely understand that there is no black and white when it comes to the have and have nots. Good luck to you!
ecogranny 5 years ago from San Francisco
Thoughtful, well-written, poignant, this lens hits hard and, from what I do know personally, which is not nearly as extensive, hits true. May you be blessed beyond your wildest dreams.
Jerrad28 5 years ago
I've never thought about homeless shelters from these perspectives before... It's been a real eye-opener for sure! Great lens, thank you
pheonix76 5 years ago from WNY
I had always thought that homeless shelters would be something of a refuge for all people living on the streets -- how naive! I could never sleep if I was separated from my children or pet, not knowing what was happening to them. This is such a sad truth, thanks again for giving voice to those in need.
Jessica-Burde 5 years ago from Lehighton, PA
Expanding on my 'other' response in the poll - I believe that people who are able to benefit from shelters should be grateful for that benefit, but that they still have a right to good treatment and dignity. If I go all day without eating, and someone gives me an apple and some water, I'll be grateful. But that apple doesn't come anywhere meeting my needs. It's the same thing - being grateful for a small improvement (again, this is regarding those who can benefit from sheltes, those who can't benefit have nothing to be grateful for), doesn't change the fact that it is only a small improvement in the situation and much more is needed.
Wedding Mom 5 years ago
This is such an interesting read. It certainly open-up a whole new perspective on this kind of situation. Thanks so much for sharing this One-of-A-Kind lens. I hope more people will be able to read your work because it is highly commendable and very insightful!
SeptemberLove 5 years ago
The homeless shelter in the U.S.A. is not effective.As one responder said .."it is just to store people"Actually , it is a growing population and not all homeless people are druggies or mentally ill people.In the near future I am trying to straighten this population of people out.First, there are no accurate places for the homeless, including the women and children. Many are in this position from loss of job or rent and bills became too much for them to handle either alone or together,Leaving items in storage caused them to lose their furniture, clothes, toys etc.There should be a place like an apartment which would give them a new start, temporaily until they have saved up enough for a apartment which would incorporate with their previous dwelling and charging just a small amount to help them back on their feet.Homeless shelters are filthy along with the inborne bacterias.I.ve heard of people getting robbed ,attacked in those places, so why would you risk that? I someday soon plan to change this entire homeless situation around for all homeless people.
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: You are bang on with your statement "usually a health condition" because many official figures suggest about 40% of homeless people are disabled. Additionally, many others who may no longer be ill or not have been ill themselves (but one of their dependents has been), are on the street due to foreclosures or job loss due to medical bills, America's #1 reason for bankruptcy.I've found, however, that shelters run by formerly homeless people or people very close to it, tend to be the better shelters. They may not have all the bells and whistles but they usually have the most important aspect of all- dignity. I'm not sure what goes wrong with the shelters that turn unpleasant but I don't think it's that they are run by formerly homeless people. We know better than to treat human beings as we were treated. Funding is definitely an issue and getting people to part with time or cash or even empathy for homeless people is extremely difficult. I think the only way to overcome that is to break down the myths and stereotypes that make people unable to see that homeless people are people.
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: Fixing things starts with making people aware of what is wrong. You would not believe how many people think that homelessness is always a choice or that only bad people become homeless and thus aren't willing to even think of helping them or working on the problem. They are likely the folks who checked "beggars can't be choosers" in the poll, even after reading that the shelter process is often dehumanizing and may include things like shelter workers suggesting you find a man to who will trade use of your body for a place to stay. Many others think that homeless shelters are plentiful, that anyone can get into them, and that they are like hotels for homeless people or something. Perhaps you can see how those preconceptions need to be changed before people can get moved to action?
anonymous 5 years ago
G'day well i have did alot of homework on shelters and the homeless , what i don't understand is that there is alot of evidance showing whats wrong with them but nothing what so ever on how you all should fix things, you can blame your govermant if you like but it don't change the fact that if you wont something done do it yourself's , so lets find a way to fix it and enforce it
anonymous 5 years ago
Usually the people that are closer to the problem are the ones that help (aka a person is more likely to help a homeless person if that person has experienced or near experienced homelessness.)And that is why, the conditions of shelters are like this. People that are able to help the most, wont help at all because they do know and will not look into this. And, because of this ignorance, they share the point of view that a homeless person did something to deserver being homeless. Is not only until (usually a health condition) makes them homeless that they understand. And funny, their friends abandon them. Alas, politicians never come from the groups that understand the problem, so unless people start a pacific rebellion (like what happen with the movement against "separated but equal"). Nothing will change. Justice come from the people, never from government.
anonymous 5 years ago
People should accept help, but not if help makes it worse
FanfrelucheHubs 5 years ago from France (Canadian expat)
I use to work in a corner store, at night, in Montreal and meet many homeless people coming in to get a free coffee (my boss was giving the coffee for free to the homeless we knew). And i would say that more than 50% of them preferred the street (even in the harsh Montreal winters) to the local shelter. many were afraid to be stolen (they don't have mush, but what they do own is sometime the last thing they have from their "before" life) and most where afraid of violence in the shelter. The shelter are useful and there should be more, but it won't change the fact that many homeless prefer to fend for themselves.Blessed (it is outside my neighborhood, but they are not going to cut my wings are they??)
Oliversbabycarecouk 5 years ago
Great lens - im not in America but i don't see why homeless people avoid shelters when they are there to help and support them with their lives, not to do the oppisite!
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: Dear Jacquie B,If you happen to come back here, please contact me with the details about your shelter. I will gladly give it a "donate button" on one or more of my pages. You can find my contact button by clicking my name or photo icon on this comment. I am heartened to hear about the great homeless shelters, the ones that don't judge people in need of them. Family shelters are far too rare and those which take in couples without children even more so. Thank you for serving humanity, Jacquie B!
anonymous 5 years ago
Hi, my name is Jacquie. I am very active at our local shelter. I am the volunteer coordinator and I am happy to spend at least 2 or 3 nights a week at the shelter as a supervisor. I would gladly use this shelter if I become homeless, which is not unrealistic in my circumstance. We bend over backwards for our guests. We love our friends/guests and make their stay with us as comfortable and pleasant as possible. Never would a predator be able to take advantage of our guests. We are a family first shelter. After families the priority is women and couples. While many of our volunteers are devout Christians, I am not, though my spirituality certainly plays a part in my love and compassion for our homeless friends. This shelter has been a blessing in my life and I am grateful for my position there, to share and nurture to those who are going through hard times. It has certainly helped me to realize that empathy and compassion for humanity is still alive and well in this hate filled Republicanesque country.
anonymous 5 years ago
great len alot of information visit my newest len military women homeless
sheriangell 5 years ago
I've been here before, but wanted to return to leave you an Angel Blessing.
Krafick 5 years ago
Nice lens. Keep it up.
chacalit 5 years ago
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chacalit 5 years ago
I am currently homeless and know this is true. I built a website to help people I know. www.chacalit.webs.com
anonymous 5 years ago
I have been homeless off and on for the last 3 years. Prior to this I was a System Engineer/System Administrator for 35 years for fortune 500 companies. Medical reasons (MS Relapse/Cervical Radiculopathy). I see drug use alot, people with bi-polar/schizophrenia). I also have seen staff problems - treatment was like a prison not a shelter. I used to be the one doing philanthropy but because of the life path change, I see the other side. I am not sure I would do the philanthropy again. There is alot of integrity/professionalism/ethics-morals-values issues with some of the shelter systems.
oldcat 5 years ago
I admire your forthrightness and ability to open our eyes to the indignities you and too many other down-on-their-luck folks have had to endure. As someone who uses a walker and at times a wheelchair, I was particularly moved at the inhumanity you had to suffer at that shelter when you were injured and needed your walker for mobility....what a disgraceful lack of compassion. An acquaintance of mine lost her job at age 62 and then her car was stolen and finally found wrecked...she had minimal insurance so couldn't afford repairs and only got $100 for it from a junkyard. After going through what little savings she had she ended up getting evicted from her small apartment. After several months of being unemployed she moved into a Catholic Charities shelter after being on a waiting list. It was clean, safe, and they supplied food and job counseling but there were mandatory church attendance and prayer meetings. For those who couldn't or wouldn't attend they were given notice to leave....how Jesus-like of them. I just don't understand that kind of thinking. They also had time-limits as to how long you could stay and her time will be up the middle of next month. She still has no job and her unemployment ran out and now she's ill from some sort of respiratory condition she most likely contacted there. I'd take her in but I'm in no position to help at this point. I'm glad and proud for you that you've survived your ordeal and hope you'll have brighter days ahead. It is such a disgrace what has happened in this country to perfectly good and decent people.
mysticmama lm 5 years ago
I didn't leave my husband as soon as I should of in a big part because I didn't want to go into a woman's shelter because I wouldn't be able to take my cat ~ it's hard enough to go through homelessness, but to give up a beloved pet just wasn't worth the shelter. When I finally did leave, I took my cat & stayed with family & friends & in my Jeep until I bought my RV with the last of my savings that my X didn't spend on Meth...I had enough in savings to pay maybe 6 months rent in a tiny one room apt with no furniture or anything, or to buy the RV ~ basially I'm still technically homeless, but the RV was an alternative to being completely homeless, at least in the RV I can have my cats, I can drive to warmer areas of the Country in the winter & there are a lot of RV parks that are way cheaper to rent a space in for a month that to pay rent somewhere. There are also lots of places where you can park an RV overnight for free, so for me it was a better choice than a shelter, or complete homelessness ~ I still can't afford to pay rent at an apt. So, I'm still basically homeless, but my RV is like a tiny home, so I'm happy :)
WorldVisionary 5 years ago
I've been to your lens before, but I've come back to give it an Angel blessing. :)
AllyVuitton 5 years ago
My heart goes out to the homeless and this was definitely an eye-opener. I really did not know loads of things on this page, and I'd be scared of going to a shelter! So touching, it's blessed!
choosehappy 5 years ago from US
Your lenses on homelessness are really very touching and amazing. Makes one think. This lens has been *blessed* ;)
Philippians468 5 years ago
thank you for this lens to raise awareness! great work! cheers
small dog lady 6 years ago
Your lens is very moving and very effective in educating others... SO much to think about, then DO!
Lovinworkinathome 6 years ago
I always wonder what to do to help these people and you actually opened my eyes to some of the "other" struggles homelessness can cause. So sad! I hadn't thought about a shelter as anything but shelter, however, this information proves how wrong my assumptions were. It's not the same as a Rape Crisis Center or women's shelter, is it? WOW. That's all I can say. Now, I know that homeless folks can use backpacks and mylar blankets...maybe a thermos thrown in there, too? Thanks for your concise article...and, even though you're an atheist, I will pray for you.
David Stone1 6 years ago from New York City
Any anger, I'd guess, would be a cover for guilt. What sense does it make to be angry at homeless people, no matter who's at fault. As a very young man, I spent a few homeless days myself, a decision I made in which I refused to compromise. It taught me a lesson about the value of learning to live in a community. But I had a choice. Others do not, and that, like it or not, has been an American tradition since before independence.
Carmel Aaron 6 years ago
Thank you for enlightening us about the use of Homeless Shelters. I didn't know many of the points that you mentioned.I do know that it is more possible then ever before, except probably during the Depression, to become homeless.Great lens on a very sad subject.Thumbs-up
ohcaroline 6 years ago
This is a very well written and concise article on homelessness issues. God bless you and I hope you will be successful in all of your life's ventures. Thanks for sharing.
anonymous 6 years ago
I'm 19 and just starting to learn about homelessness and trying to find ways I can help. Thank you for shedding light on aspects of the issue I had never even considered before.
nebby 6 years ago from USA
I've been here a few times before & have shared your lens with many that I know. Looks like you've added a bit sine my last visit.Congratulations on making the list of The Best Squidoo Intros Ever! - well deserved!
Joan4 6 years ago
This is very thought provoking. You mentioned many issues that I had never considered at all. Thank you for educating me! I certainly would be hesitant to stay in a shelter now.
OhMe 6 years ago from Pendleton, SC
Congrats for making The Best Squidoo Intros Ever list. This is an amazing lens and brings about more awareness of the Homeless and their needs.
MargoPArrowsmith 6 years ago
Very thoughtful lens. See my story about the state mental hospital above
SquidooEconomy 6 years ago
ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS --------------> W - O - W
anonymous 6 years ago
I like what you have to say here. Personally, I think we should have more housing options (rooming houses, smaller houses, etc.), so people would have a wider range of choices and would have less chance of losing their homes.
NoYouAreNot 6 years ago
I didn't know many things about homeless shelters, but I think I should have guessed some of them. My country (Greece) is not yet so hardly inflicted by homelessness (although things are turning to the worse nowadays), mostly because family ties are still quite strong, and that saves people in times of personal or social crisis. I think that people who maintain that "beggars can't be choosers" have already given up on their humanity.
hotbrain 6 years ago from Tacoma, WA
Excellent lens with many good points. I don't know much about homeless shelters, but it is true that I would be hesitant to stay in one.
LizMac60 6 years ago from United Kingdom
This is a most important subject and you have covered it well. Keep up the good work in enlightening people about this.
ZazzleEnchante 6 years ago
An awesome lens, provides such a great understanding of the homeless. Kudos for an awesome lens. Blessed by a SquidAngel.
Vern523 6 years ago
@Shannon79: Hi Shannon, I too am sorry you have had to experience this. I thank you for sharing your story. I'm curious how old your son is (or was at the time)? Thank you.
Vern523 6 years ago
Yours is an incredibly well-written and insightful article. I learned SO much from you. Thank you for writing this. I will try to share it with others and enlighten them too. Thank you.
AWildDog 6 years ago
Even though I've not been homeless this doesn't surprise me at all. I have once visited a homeless shelter - which I believe does give more help to people in the UK - helps them find a place to live and a job and things - but when visiting there (well I say visiting, we had to wait outside) with a friend of mine, who wanted to see her friend (she didn't want to go alone), it was scary enough just to stand outside.The person we were meeting admittedly was a drug addict (sadly still is) - but the people "living" there we frankly quite intimidating.Great lens.
anonymous 6 years ago
Very informative lens! Thank you for creating it!
ArtByLinda 6 years ago from Idaho
Incredibly eye opening lens. It brought tears to my eyes thinking of winter coming and so many people having to make the decision between the cold and dangers they face everyday in the world outside with no home, or finding a shelter they feel safe in. With the economy the way it is, there is more and more homeless everyday. So sad. Thank you so much for sharing your personal story and helping open our eyes to this issue.
bechand 6 years ago
honestly your page was an eye opener for me on a few issues - never really thought of all the downsides of the shelter. Thank you for bringing it to attention. Hopefully shelters may see what the downsides are and do what they can do to change them for the better.
Allison Whitehead 6 years ago
I have learned a lot and feel quite humbled by reading this page. My thoughts go with you; I have had some new insights into the world of homelessness and I thank you for them.
anonymous 6 years ago
I've never been homeless, but I made it a point, for years, to talk to the homeless people I met, not just give them some change and run away. I've heard horror stories about shelters for decades as a result, and I'm so glad to see someone with the guts to tackle this issue here. I truly do not understand the mentality of people who think just because another human being is homeless, for whatever reason, that they deserve to be treated like garbage, and I don't understand the mentality of anyone who thinks someone should be grateful for being treated like garbage.(On a side note, prison is not better treatment than a shelter. It is far more dehumanizing, uniformally dirty and brutal, violent, and invasive. I would never wish prison upon a single homeless person, and I have, in the course of working with inmates, met prisoners who were homeless and said they would rather live on the streets any day. So I do disagree, respectfully, with the author's characterization that prison is better than a homeless shelter. But I do agree they are fairly close.)
anonymous 6 years ago
I've wondered why people refuse to go to shelters for a long time, and used it as an excuse to keep myself from feeling guilty or sad when I passed a homeless person. I'm glad I read this lens, because the truth that breaks one of your views of the world is better than a lie that can barely hold it together.
anonymous 6 years ago
Wow - what an education. I have a new insight to the plight of the homeless. I do agree with Joyce that there should be a way that we can do a better job helping people.
anonymous 6 years ago
With all the aid and all the money spent on housing for the middle class and wealthy, there should be a government program uncontaminated like the Philadelphia Housing Authority) to take care of our homeless c(itizens. This situation of having American citizens living their lives out on the streets is outrageous. We have land and we have contractors to build inexpensive housing and yet the demand far exceeds the fulfillment. Let's try supporting America for a change!
RhondaAlbom 6 years ago from New Zealand
This is one of those lenses that stays with you after you read it. Now that I have my wings, I had to come back and give it an angel blessing. (I added it to Angel Blessings From Pukeko October 2010)
Ashly Rain 6 years ago
Amazing lens. I've learned so much from this lens, and your other lenses about homelessness (not to mention the comment you made 0n my communication lens). Thank you so muh for sharing so much of yourself.
affordableelegancejewelry 6 years ago
This was an amazing lens. In fact, anyone who would leave hate mail after reading this is just disgusting. You're so brave for writing this and being so honest. Thank you so much for sharing this story.
anonymous 6 years ago
Thank you for sharing your story.
Addy Bell 6 years ago
This lens is brilliant and spot-on. I think it should be required reading for politicians, service providers, and anyone who thinks they're entitled to an "opinion on the homeless".
BetsiGoutal1 6 years ago
Amazingly powerful and eye-opening lens, thanks so much for sharing.
RhondaAlbom 6 years ago from New Zealand
What a powerful lens. Opened my eyes to something I don't really know much about. Thank you for sharing your experiences, and sorry to hear you went through all that. Maybe they will help people in the future.
seegreen 6 years ago
What an eye-opener. While I suspected a few of the reasons, most of these were new to me. Blessed by an Angel.
anonymous 6 years ago
I've been homeless for the past 2 months and I've avoided the shelters. I was referred to one and even stood in line with a ticket, but I just couldn't do it. The parasites, the food, the close proximity to a bunch of other dudes, and being stuck inside from 4pm-6a just didn't work for me. I'm in Los Angeles so the weatehr is great right now, even though some nights it can get a little nippy. The emergency mylar blanket has probably been the best $4 i've ever spent. Thanks for the tips. The last few months has been life changing, but I'm sure things will look up for me and I'll be able to look back on this whole thing as something that made me a better person. It's been a very lonely experience and some days are worse than others, but I prefer it this way than to be locked down at a shelter.
anonymous 6 years ago
I have an overwhelming burden to help homeless people & I believe that the help should go beyond food & shelter Home less shelter must include programs which help the homeless to stand on their own 2 feet at the end .
paperfacets 6 years ago from La Verne, CA
Excellent. I am glad you have this platform to earn the cash you need. You survived the United States!
Grawr 6 years ago
Great read.It's true I dont think we do enough for homeless people, I know people that want to help but just have nowhere to start. Thank you for opening my eyes a little more to the issues surrounding homelessness.
anonymous 6 years ago
Thanks for sharing these reasons for why the homeless avoid shelters. I recently wrote about some of the dangers that homeless people face on a blog for a project I'm working on with a photographer: The Chicago Panhandler Project. You can find the blog, if you're interested at http://chicagopanhandler.wordpress.com . I never would have thought of the parasites or disease, but those are both really good reasons why someone would avoid a shelter!
myraggededge 6 years ago
You have made a lot of good points here... and it might make people more aware of the pitfalls. Blessed. :-)
nebby 6 years ago from USA
Over the last year or two there have been many more families that are in need of shelter, but as you mentioned above shelters don't allow pets (and i can understand why), so many families choose to live on the street so they they do not have to give up their family pet.I wish that there were more shelters and that many of the would have small apartment type living spaces for those who needed and wanted them.If we took just 1 year of the money that we give to other countries it could be done.Excellent information and passionately written.
anonymous 6 years ago
I work in an honmeless shelter, and I think it is a blessing from GOD. Be glad that there ared.people willing to help you when you are going through hard times.
JenOfChicago LM 6 years ago
Blessed by a squidangel!
PNWtravels 6 years ago from Wandering the Pacific Northwest USA
Your lens did a lot to educate me about homeless shelters and the experiences of the homeless. Thank you for sharing.
anonymous 6 years ago
I will be homeless at the end of the month. found places for my pets with one exception, my dog. I will not give him up when i have to give up everything else. hopefully we can make it down to Arizona where my father in law will give us a place to stay....Till then, homeless in Alaska
jlshernandez 6 years ago
Thank you for sharing this lens. It just made me realize that homeless shelters are not real shelters, but traps for unsuspecting unhomed people. I truly learned a lot from this powerful lens.
Starrweaver 6 years ago
I was homeless twice in my life - once as a runaway to escape abuse. The second time I was abandoned, pregnant with a 2 1/2 year old in an unknown city. My "supposed" boyfriend moved us there on the claim of having a job. In the morning, he was gone and so was all my money! Our stuff was in a couple of large lockers at the bus station. My child and myself were left to the streets. Many people ask why I didn't go to a shelter or some group for help - if they have to ask, then they don't realize the ugly truth. Child Protection Services, many of the organizations, will take your child with the story of how you can get them back once you get back on your feet. I met many that had believed them - they in turn helped me and my child so that I would not suffer as they had. They'd done all asked of them, but never saw their child again. So I did whatever I had to to keep us safe. Collecting metal for scrap money, raiding dumpsters behind grocery stores for tossed out food. I eventually was able to reach those that could help, who didn't judge or lecture me for being gullible. I was able to get a bus ticket to go stay with some relatives. It was a new start - but I'd never stay in a shelter for one reason. When I stayed in one as a runaway, some of the staff did not believe I was pregnant. They made me work moving heavy tables and such before allowing me to get food. When I complained about them, they would cause me to miss meals, make accusations that I stole items. (at which time other people at the shelter would defend me, informing the security guard that they'd seen the items put in my sleeping area, by my accusers.) The security guard also called 911 for an ambulance when I started to go into premature labor due to the heavy work and little food. After that, several of the staff were missing when I returned a few days later from the hospital. The guard had taken my things and locked them up in his office to keep them safe. I was grateful to the guard and the main management staff - they secured me temporary housing after what happened. But these kind souls are not the norm at many shelters. I nearly lost my child due to the attitudes of those staff members, who were told not to come back I'm glad to say. But I would not ever return to such a place, especially if I had children.
anonymous 6 years ago
This is SO annoying! people should have safe places to sleep and live! they need to be able to keep their walkers,wheelchairs, and crunches! and why do peple think that all homeless people are on drugs? Thats SO stupid!
anonymous 6 years ago
Hi there, I was homeless for almost 7 years, some of it by choice. Something about modern society and me just don't click, I'd rather sleep under a bridge than work a 9-5 job, which is my decision. I was mostly pretty content being homeless and I would never stay in a shelter. Homeless shelters, that I've seen are disgusting and frightening places. They are dingy and smelly with rows of cots and no privacy at all. Personally, if I'm going to sleep somewhere mildly uncomfortable that's a bit smelly with the chance of someone messing with me while I sleep, I'd much rather be hidden behind a dumpster, under a bridge or in the woods, with my dog who I know will always warn me of danger.If people want to help the homeless and make shelters better, they need to treat them like they would want to be treated. Make a homeless shelter with separate rooms so you can be alone! When I was homeless, it was so hard to find someone who would let me use their bathroom because they thought I was going to go in there and shoot up or something, but really I just wanted to be in that one-and-only place that when you're homeless you can close the door... And stop feeding homeless people crappy food. I can't tell you how many times I held up a sign saying I was hungry on the side of the road and all I got was pb&j and cookies. How do cookies make my life any better? Now that I'm not homeless, I give people food I would eat, food that gives you energy. I also avoided soup kitchens when I was homeless because most of the food was worse than the crap they give you in grade school. I ate better and healthier foods by digging through the trash at grocery stores.The best soup kitchen I ever went to was so wonderful. The man who cooked was a retired chef. He made fantastic dishes (with vegetarian options). The tables had table cloths and real silverware (they usually only give you plastic cause they think you're going to brain the person next to you or some other ridiculous thing) and the people who worked there would bring you food like you were in a restaurant. And they didn't try to make you listen to a sermon or preach about their religion at all. I loved those people.Please don't forget, homeless people aren't all disgusting lunatics. Mostly they're kind and good people who are down on their luck, don't fit in with society (aka what some would call mentally ill), or have a drug or alcohol addiction. That doesn't mean your options are take pity or ignore them. Pity can be just as painful as being ignored. Just treat us normal, have a conversation, don't be afraid, and don't act like our lives are so terrible unless we say they are. Not everyone hates being homeless.
MicheleT 6 years ago
P.S. I gave you 5 stars and also shared this lens on Facebook and Twitter. Great job!!!
MicheleT 6 years ago
Wow. What a touching, informative lens. I can relate all too well to the majority of this lens. I wasn't homeless, but I have helped the homeless for years - any way I can. This includes taking food to them, hosting homeless families on holidays, taking hygiene products, helping individual homeless people get back on their feet as best I can. I have seen honest, hard-working homeless people go to jail because they were just walking down the street. I've seen homeless people turned away from shelters for all sorts of reasons. And the list goes on. And the world is so, so cruel when it comes to the homeless topic. Gosh, people are cruel. They say the homeless should just "get a job" or "get a life" - oh, my.... How sad. And I firmly believe we don't understand anything 'till we've walked at least a mile in someone's shoes. Even then, we all react differently. So it's still hard to judge someone else - even if we've been in the exact same situation.I'm so glad you commented on my lens. And I am so glad you aren't homeless anymore. My heart aches because you had to go through all this - but I commend you for sharing with others and teaching about the reality of homelessness.
Sylvestermouse 6 years ago from United States
I am touched and saddened beyond words! Angel Blessed!
jgelien 6 years ago
The situations you describe are appalling. Why are people so inhumane?You have done a great service in writing this eye-opening lens. The more exposure this topic receives, the better.
Mahogany LM 6 years ago
This lens really opened my eyes Kylyssa, not only in spotlighting the dangers of life in homeless shelters, but also pointing me in the direction of a way to make a small difference. Thank you for putting this lens together.
libertysteward 6 years ago
Thank you for your efforts to open peoples eyes to the indignities suffered by people whose only real crime is not fitting in to the Capitalist Lie. I don't give a damn if I offend my "fellow" countrymen, they are a truly sorry lot of foolish materialistic selfish and very mean people in the majority. I do not believe most of them have a clue how tenuous their existence really is. People like you remind me that there are some people out there still worth embracing as brothers and sisters. I am an old hippie, so when I became "homeless" it was because I would not give up on my ideals and my knowledge as I was well-educated and came from a "good" family. In the beginning, as they fancied themselves elitist republicans, they rejected me for being a food faddist (vegetarian) and for living a rebellious politically defiant lifestyle...you know, not cutting your hair, not wearing straight clothes, not being willing to die for rubber, tin and bauxite in the illegal unconstitutional war in Vietnam against an innocent people, etc. It was a different time then and many of us were homeless, but we still lived a rather idyllic existence other than being threatened with violence, intimidated and harassed by the PIGS ( I'm 62 and to this date I consider them the true dregs of society, most are violent, undereducated, willing to compromise with evil and contorted social "values"). But later on in life after I tried to live up to the social expectations of the "I got mine you go get yours" culture I lost it all in a terrible accident. I spent many years being homeless before the accident enduring multiple layoffs during the engineered "recessions" our country went through. After I lost my home to Countrywide Mortgage and a crooked Dept. of Vocation/Rehab counselor in California, and a discriminatory employer I took to the road to save myself from adversity. No benefits, no healthcare (I lost A+ coverage with Kaiser Permanente) I would sleep in my truck which I managed to hang on to. My dogs and I would awaken to icicles hanging from the ceiling of the camper shell and frozen dog water it was so cold. I had 14 camping places around Santa Fe in the BLM lands where you can stay for 14 days then you have to move on to a new location. I swept the church at the Santuario de Guadalupe where the priest gave me $15.00 each time. I didn't panhandle although I've done it a few times, but I did odd jobs, whatever I could get. As long as my dogs ate I was happy even though I was cold and hungry. I was homeless so long that when I finally came back to New Mexico to live I was one angry human being. I had a worse case of PTSD than some vets, because I understood a lot of what had happened to me and I've always been insightful politically. It took 20 years of solitude in the country learning to live with a broken body and mangled spirit. Today although I live on a fixed income and still basically indigent I live in a cabin I built on rough range land. I traded river sticks (used to make furniture) for the lumber to build the roof. I was too messed up physically to do any of it, but I did it anyway. It's taken 16 years to build it to it's current state, it's still uninsulated properly, cold and drafty in the winter, and I still need a water heater, a propane tank or a solar system to heat water. I have solar and wind power and a computer. My mind is still more important to me than my other needs. I will continue to fight to survive, I don't really know any other way. Homelessness either drives you to give up or to fight so hard that you become so hard you never get back to just being a happy soul in a sound body. Some people get fortunate and work their way out of it, but it always takes someone else to help you up. But many homeless people never get out of their reality and can see no other way. I live in such a neighborhood. One such fellow walks to town every day to get one free meal, then he drinks and walks another 16 miles home drunk, sad and often with only a windbreaker in the wintertime. He is a brilliant pianist I heard him play once when we coached him into a coffee house one day on his way to town. My other neighbors live in trailers with junk piled all around their houses, not because they are "hoarders", but because they have no vehicle able to carry trash and no money to pay for a dump fee. One fellow dug a hole under his trailer and lights a small fire under his trailer and sleeps in the smoke stream surrounding his tiny little rig. Another girl lives alone in her trailer, walks back and forth daily 8 miles a day even in the dead of winter. Her father was a friend of mine and at the age of 80 he lifted each of the 10 16ft 6x3 timbers up to the roof as I couldn't pick them up. He built the San Francisco bridge as a cat walker and was tough as nails until he died at 94. She doesn't ask for help and although I tried to give her rides she's scared of my dogs. These people remind me daily that homelessness is not a state that necessarily goes away. None of them wants help from people who would in any way dictate moral values or code specifications to them. The only thing they lack to be real revolutionaries is a good rifle and plenty of ammo and each of them would probably fight to the death before they would allow any authorities to come in here and force them into a different mold. If it is allowed to go along too long it changes you to the point where you can't shake it. I believe that it is fundamentally a reflection of how little we really care about each other, because the system we live in presumes "I've got mine, you go get yours!" and it's all about being selfish. I grew up in Latin America so I learned early on how to ignore the pain of others that was all around me. I didn't know at the time that it was greedy capitalistic thinking that was leading to all of this. As a hippie I learned to share and love with others in a communitarian way and yet even though this helped me, many of these folks are much younger than I and never had that experience. If you do not love others and fight to improve society for them things will never change. If I had any funding I would create a homeless shelter for people with pets or kids and create a little teepee village here on my acreage. But that is only a dream if my countrymen continue to be such self-involved greedy little materialistic and violent piggies. There has to be a change of heart of what it means to be an American. We are in the midst of a spiritual crisis which we will never solve by throwing money at the problem. We have to fix the value system we are all worshipping like the Golden Calf the Bible thumpers like to rail about. Oddly they are the worst offenders as they are the good that pretends to be better than it is and that is truly the worst and most insidious evil. Reach out whenever you can and help others - you don't need an excuse. My stories are on Libertysteward.com and you can read about my experiences with the healthcare system under the Digest of Articles link on the frontpage. I think about what I told myself in the beginning...you have to have something of your own before you can really offer something of true value to others. If you just move them into the middle of your own chaos you just confuse things further and then you get dragged into it as well..,that might have been true, but it was equally selfish. Sometimes you just have to do something. Each time I get some money I try to spot a homeless person and give them at least $20. I am blessed to have the good things that I have and have learned to be glad for that and not yearn for more. Wanting to help others is a good thing, but don't look for more to come to you before you do, you may miss your chance to be that one catalyst that prompts everything to move in a better direction. Accepting your limitations is a good thing though, so be careful not to put yourself in an even worse situation. Life is very tenuous and it's ultimately a balancing act on the high wire and it is a long way to the bottom. One thing I learned about people is that they often want to see if yo
BarbRad 6 years ago from Templeton, CA
You taught me a lot I didn't know. I hope to read more of your lenses as soon as I have time.
verymary 6 years ago from Chicago area
Eye opening and very well done.
lasertek lm 6 years ago
For me, topmost reason why homeless people don't use shelters is because they want privacy. Although these shelters provide homeless people what they need, most would still want to be off on their own and find a place that they could consider their own. Like this lens! 5*
Heather426 6 years ago from Wexford, Ireland
I think it is criminal to separate Mothers and children. My daughter's fiance was forced to find his own way in life since he was 13 because his mother ws in homeless shelters and could not keep him...so he spent many nights in the streets. 13! There was no father around so he was all alone. It breaks my heart to think of it. So sorry your life has been so hard. Very well written.
Kylyssa 6 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@Shannon79: I'm so sorry you had to suffer through all that! Unfortunately, your story is not that unusual, it's similar to stories I've heard from dozens of people and it's a story people need to hear. I hope that life is treating you a whole lot better now.
Shannon79 6 years ago
Homeless shelters do everything but what they're supposed to do--offer the homeless a safe clean place to sleep. I was homeless for about a month and I went to a shelter and they informed me I would have to quit my job and that my son would have to go to a men's shelter or something, but he couldn't stay with me. I told the worker, "F**k you and this raggedy shelter! I'll find somewhere else to go where they don't expect me to kick my child to the curb!" The next three shelters told me the same thing and I left; the next shelter accepted my family on the condition that I attend drug and alcohol counseling and take parenting classes. I refused and they accused me of being in denial about my problem. I cursed the people out. "How in the hell are you going to tell me I have a drug or drinking problem?!" I shouted. They said, "Well, if you don't, then why are you homeless?" Like that's the only reason people are homeless. I told them, "Just because I'm homeless doesn't mean I have a drug or alcohol problem." They said, "Prove it," I looked at them. "How the hell do you prove you don't drink or use drugs?! Why don't you prove I do?!" I shouted. They said, "The proof is, you're homeless and have no money." Well, that was the last straw. I called my card company and combined my rewards points toward a stay in a studio apartment hotel. I was able to stay with my supervisor until I got a place to live and I made a point to report that shelter to the city. Not long afterward, they were forced to close their doors; there were a lot of complaints from others about how they were forced to abandon pets, service animals, mobility equipment, sometimes even their children, to the streets. The people running the shelter faced criminal charges. Homeless shelters and the regulation of them really needs to be overhauled. There are homeless shelters that offer apartments for families in Houston, but if you have a vehicle, the tags must be current and if you are working, you must quit your job and show proof that you quit so you can have time for their job training class. If you have any kind of income, you have to assign it to them. Not surprisingly, most of their units have never been used. I mean, it's a homeless shelter; give people a place to sleep. Keep families together instead of forcing a mother to abandon her son to the streets. The way these places are run is really stupid and needs to be rethought.
Maraiya 7 years ago
Being on the verge of homelessness myself, I found this lens to be very informative and helpful. I hope I don't end up homeless; but if I do, you gave me some valuable tips on how to deal with it. I live in Arizona, and while I was investigating some of the homeless shelters, I found out that most in Arizona charge a daily fee! A lot of them charge what you'd normally pay for rent somewhere. The cheapest one I found was $8 a day, which averages out to about $200 a month, and some nights you can't get into the shelter due to the overflow. Thanks for this lens. You write very well, by the way; I have read most of your other lenses on homelessness and they are all excellent. Thanks so much. I am so sorry you have had to go through so much.
Brookelorren LM 7 years ago
Another great lens, and another way that governmental intrusion hurts people (with the ordinances). I'm not sure if I would want to stay in a homeless shelter either.
norma-holt 7 years ago
This highlights again the stupidity of humans who are better off and turn aside from those most in need. Powerful lens but very sad and once again an outstanding account of a grave problem. 5* fave and lens rolled. I am also going to feature it on my Overpopulation lens.Norma :)
VarietyWriter2 7 years ago
I agree with pkmcr...powerful lens. Thank you for sharing and for the insight. If I was an angel I'd bless it...for now I rate it 5 stars.
pkmcruk 7 years ago from Cheshire UK
Powerful lens and Blessed by a Squid Angel
Spook LM 7 years ago
Just dropping by for another look. Blessed by an Angel.
clouda9 lm 7 years ago
Very touching and timely information - thank you for sharing your story with us.
KimGiancaterino 7 years ago
Blessed and featured on my Squid Angel Diary this week. By the way, it's nobody's business how you spend your money. You've put a lot of time and thought into this lens and should not feel the need to defend yourself for trying to make a living. You are helping homeless people simply by sharing this information.
luvmyludwig lm 7 years ago
I admire you for your willingness to speak up and how well you describe a very real and horrible situation. *blessed by as squid angel/greeter*
joanhall 7 years ago from Los Angeles
What an article. I'm DIGGing and STUMBLEing this.
puterfreak 7 years ago
Great lens! Definitely an eye opener!
WindyWintersHubs 7 years ago from Vancouver Island, BC
Amazing Information! 5* Homelessness is a very big problem in Canada, too (as in many countries). Many cities and towns are now trying to force homeless people to use shelters, too. This may help but I don't think it's the answer. The underlying problems of why people are homeless in the first place need to be seriously addressed. Thanks again for your info as to why people don't use shelters. :)
jptanabe 7 years ago from Red Hook, NY
Great lens, disturbing information. I knew a few of the points, but hadn't realized how many reasons there are to avoid these shelters. How to improve things though - I fear many of the people running shelters are doing the best they can with lack of funding and resources. Still, if they could be educated by reading this type of material it might help them make some positive changes.
Spook LM 7 years ago
I'm horrified by what I read on homelessness in America. However it must also be a tough call on those trying their best to help. With your experiences on all this Kylyssa, how about a lens on how you would go about improving this? Wishing you all the best.
jjj1 7 years ago
An excellent, informative lens about an important subject. I was horrified that shelters would turn away someone in a wheelchair - and was disturbed by much else that you wrote.
| Swear |
On a wine label what does Premier Cru mean | Why Don't Homeless People Use Shelters? | Soapboxie
Why Don't Homeless People Use Shelters?
Why Don't Homeless People Use Shelters?
Updated on July 22, 2016
Source
When I was homeless, I spent a lot of my time sleeping "in the rough," which is another way of saying outdoors. Many homed people assume the homeless don't use shelters because they're drug users (and drug use is against the rules) or refuse to follow some other aspect of the shelter's rules. But no, I was neither using drugs nor too defiant to obey the rules.
I've been asked why I didn't just stay in shelters. The issue is pretty complex, but here is my answer, my reasons for sleeping in the rough, and also some of the reasons I've seen others avoid shelters. Some of these might surprise you. I know I was shocked to discover a few of them myself.
Please keep in mind that not all facilities have all or even any of these downsides. Still, these are the things many homeless people have experienced at some facilities in the U.S. which may have caused them to later avoid using them at all. There are good ones out there, too. They can just be hard to find sometimes.
Note:
As someone who has worked in homeless shelters, I am very aware that the vast majority of these workers are good people who are doing their best. I am glad that these facilities exist to help people without homes. However, it would be an injustice to pretend that shelters in America are plentiful enough or that they're all safe enough, or free from other downsides.
photo by Beverly Lussier
19. No Pets Allowed
Trading faithful companionship for somewhere legal to sleep is not an option for some. Think about your family dog, the one you've loved for years who is a member of your family. Now imagine that you become homeless and all you have left of your old life is that faithful, lifetime friend. He is your only source of affection and companionship. Could you abandon him without a second thought?
Pets are usually not allowed into shelters, so their owners often choose to sleep outside with the only friends who haven't deserted them: their pets.
18. Denied Entry Due to Mental Illness
Some people are denied entry due to mental illness, even if caregivers have given them paperwork stating that they are not a danger to themselves or others.
Since most workers and volunteers are not trained to distinguish between violent criminals and harmless people with mental illnesses, the tendency is to be overly cautious and refuse anyone with any mental health issues entry at some (but thankfully not all) shelters. Workers and organizations cannot be blamed for being ill-equipped to handle mentally ill clients because they simply don't have the resources to train volunteers or workers.
17. Discrimination Against LGBTQ People
40% of homeless teens and youth identify as LGBT and often don't use shelters because many of those places, like the parents who discarded them, discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.
According to the National Coalition for the Homeless ,
"LGBT youth are also disproportionally homeless due to overt discrimination when seeking alternative housing – widespread discrimination in federally funded institutions frequently contributes to the growing rates of homelessness among LGBT youth. Once homeless, these youth experience greater physical and sexual exploitation than their heterosexual counterparts."
Shelters are often infested with lice or other parasites. | Source
16. Fear of Contracting Parasites like Lice, Scabies, Pubic Lice, or Bedbugs
No matter how clean a facility is kept, the danger of getting parasites there is still very high. Mind you, this is not the fault of staff or organizations running shelters, it is simply a hazard of having sleeping arrangements that hundreds of people cycle through; bedbugs are now even fairly common in high end hotels. Homeless people tend to carry a lot of parasites, likely because they tend to sleep in lots of different places. So if you sleep every night in a different bed that a long string of other people have slept in, or if you sleep too close to an ever-changing assortment of people, eventually you are bound to get head lice, pubic lice, or scabies, and it's hard as heck to get rid of parasites when you have no home.
Bedbugs are a biting parasite that can easily infest a bedroll, backpack, clothes, or other possessions. Homeless people don't want to infest the homes of people who give them a place to stay for the night or to bring bedbugs to work with them. Volunteers and employees also need to take precautions to avoid bringing bedbugs home with them.
The parasites commonly present in shelters were my second most important reason for avoiding them. I'm itching right now just thinking about the nasty things.
15. Hours of Operation Incompatible with Work Hours
Contrary to popular belief, many homeless people have jobs. Because check-in hours for shelters are often rigid and the process of waiting in line and checking in usually takes hours, many working poor cannot use them. Others work evening or night hours which don't allow them to get inside before curfew. People who work from nine to five usually can't use them, either, since by the time they get off work, it's usually too late for them to get in line for check-in.
Another reason some shelters are incompatible with employment is that they require people to attend AA or other drug abuse rehab classes, often held during normal work hours, every day or most days they use the facility, whether they have a drug or alcohol problem or not. Others require those who use their services to take rudimentary job skill classes or other life-skill classes during business hours even if employed and already well-educated on those topics.
By the time I had a regular job, I had decided to sleep outside exclusively, so this was not a problem for me.
Shelters attract predators. | Source
14. Danger of Rape or Assault
Homeless shelters and the areas around them are often hunting grounds for human predators. Some of the craftier ones get jobs at the charities while most others just watch for individuals departing in the morning or arriving in the evening. It's not just rapists, either. Predators in search of "excitement" will track a lone person leaving a facility so they can beat him or harass him for fun.
Also, although there are usually attendants of some kind on watch, almost none of them are trained to deal with violent behavior, leaving users vulnerable. Volunteer workers honestly cannot be expected to put themselves in the sort of danger intervening in such situations requires, nor can they have eyes on the backs of their heads or keep watch over everyone. Lack of sufficient staffing is common and people can only do so much.
For me, this was the number one reason to avoid them. Once you get raped or assaulted in a shelter or because you were trailed after leaving one, you just don't want to try it again, no matter how hot or cold or rainy or otherwise unpleasant it is outside.
Criminals are well aware that police seldom take complaints from people without homes seriously. Many people avoid shelters because pretending to not be homeless (which means avoiding shelters, missions, and soup kitchens) is one of the most effective ways to avoid such predators.
13. Fear of Contracting Disease
Diseases spread easily in close quarters. There's always at least one person with a cough. One reason it's hard to fall asleep in a shelter is the almost endless coughing. Many of those with coughs have chronic illnesses or transmissible diseases. Tuberculosis is frighteningly common among people living on the street. When you may have to sleep out in the elements on any given night (there's no guarantee you'll get into a shelter every night), even the flu can be a life-threatening disease to contract.
If you know that many people are homeless due to ill health or chronic illnesses, you'll see why accommodations full of sick people pose an even greater risk to them.
12. An Invasive and Disrespectful Check-In Process
This answer has brought me a lot of flack, but even though it played only a minor part in my decision not to use shelters, I feel it is important to mention: The check-in process in some but not all of these places is sometimes humiliating and dehumanizing.
On more than one occasion, I was asked questions such as, "Do you have any sexual partners you could stay with?" as well as other questions about my sex life. One worker even said that I find a boyfriend to stay with, basically suggesting I exchange sexual favors for a place to sleep. Keep in mind that I, like most women homeless more than a few weeks, had already been the victim of sexual assault. It made me feel horrible, like I was less than a person and had nothing else to offer anyone.
Many shelters don't offer accommodations for the handicapped. | Source
11. Lack of Handicapped Accommodations
While I was waiting to talk to someone about volunteering at an associated soup kitchen, I was shocked to see someone turned away because he was in a wheelchair. Another person and I offered to pull his chair up the stairs and help him inside if he needed it, but they told us it had to do with insurance concerns and said that they were sorry but, no, he couldn't stay.
That was the first time I saw a handicapped person turned away from a homeless shelter but sadly, it was not the last. Many of these organizations make use of old buildings re-purposed to fit a bunch of beds. Sometimes their beds are located above the first floor and they have no elevators. Some don't have railings in the restrooms or ramps into the rooms or buildings either. While it is not the fault of those who run them, some facilities are unable to accommodate people in wheelchairs.
Regardless of what the Americans with Disabilities Act says, some places that provide temporary housing turn away people in wheelchairs or with other mobility limitations such as the need to use a walker or crutches to get around. While sometimes they will offer a hotel voucher to the disabled person, that doesn't always happen. Not every organization has the funds to do this and a shelter can get shut down if they break the rules. They truly don't want to turn away disabled people, but they may have no choice.
10. Drug Addictions
Yes, some people avoid shelters because of drug addictions—their own or others'.
Since many locations have signs insisting they are drug free zones, some drug users will avoid them. However, many drug users and dealers do not, making some of them hot spots of drug activity, and those frightened by drug related activity may come to avoid shelters because of this, quite reasonably fearing for their or their children's safety. Still others are themselves trying to get off drugs and being around other users makes it very difficult for them to do so, so they avoid staying there while trying to kick their drug or alcohol habits.
9. Separation of Family Members
This is a biggie and it's pretty horrible when you think about it: Most homeless shelters separate families.
Women can bring their pre-teen children into most women's facilities, but teenage male children (as young as 13) may be required to go to a men's shelter which they may not even get into. Can you imagine a mother leaving her young teenage son to sleep alone on the street without her protection while she sleeps inside? Most parents will not leave their children, so instead, the whole family sleeps in their car or outside.
Men and women usually cannot stay in the same place, so husbands and wives are separated, knowing their spouse might not get a bed somewhere else. These people are often elderly or disabled and depend on each other for safety and care. So again, most of them will forgo the use of temporary emergency housing so they can take care of each other.
Also, children cannot stay in the vast majority of men's shelters. This leaves single fathers in a very difficult spot, one that is not only heartbreaking but criminal. While some may say the children should just be taken away, the homelessness is usually temporary and the loss of a parent or parents will probably affect a child more deeply than a month or so living with insecurity and discomfort.
Source
8. Some Service Dogs are Barred from Entry
Service dogs, other than seeing eye and hearing assistance dogs, are sometimes denied entry to homeless facilities. Mobility dogs (that help you stand or get into your wheelchair, assist you up stairs, etc.), dogs that provide assistance for mental conditions such as anxiety or agoraphobia, and other service dogs are even more often denied entry.
People frequently lose their own identification papers, often through no fault of their own, so it is no surprise that they often lose identification papers for their service animals. Even in the case of seeing eye and hearing assistance dogs, if the person has lost the dog's paperwork or doesn't have an official harness, the dog will not be allowed inside. Few people in that situation will abandon a service dog.
While it is perfectly understandable that facilities will not allow animals, especially those that are not service animals, it's also perfectly understandable that disabled people would not be willing to part with an animal that increases their ability to function, especially at the risk of having that animal die from exposure or get lost or stolen. Many people who rely on animals for independence and safety are unwilling to be separated from them for any reason.
7. Staff Assumptions about Drug Use and Criminality
While it was not often said aloud, many shelter employees and volunteers regard all people who need their services as drug addicts and criminals. To avoid being perceived as such, many avoid using those services.
When you are homeless, many people will automatically treat you as a criminal and a drug user. They are unable to comprehend that a person without a home may just be someone down on his or her luck without any wrongdoing on his or her part.
While I'm sure they mean well, many organizations and their employees or volunteers take it upon themselves to cure people of their sometimes non-existent addictions and criminal ways. Some put a lot of pressure on homeless people to attend alcohol and drug abuse counseling even if they are not alcohol or drug abusers.
I remember the smirks and questioning looks I got when I insisted I had no drug or alcohol abuse issues. One employee actually asked me, "Well, then, why are you so skinny?"
Forced participation in substance abuse counseling takes time away from job searches and current employment which the average person in such a situation cannot afford, causing most employed homeless people and those actively seeking employment to avoid shelters that require it.
6. Danger of Theft
While most homeless people are not thieves, a few of them are. It only takes one to spoil it for everyone else. When you have no home, your little bit of stuff is precious; it's all you have.
While I was not robbed inside a shelter, I heard stories from many who were. They stopped using shelters to protect their few meager possessions from theft.
Shoes are among the most commonly stolen items. Foot care is incredibly important and the loss of your only pair of shoes can be life-threatening. It can also be extremely difficult to replace them if they get stolen.
5. Religious Differences
Most shelters and kitchens have some sort of religious service people are required to sit through to eat or sleep there. I'm an atheist, but this didn't bother me much. Frankly, I was pleased to be in a climate-controlled room and sitting at rest somewhere without fear of getting harassed by gangs or police, no matter what I had to pretend to believe. It didn't even bother me that I had to give lip-service to the notion that I was being punished by God for being a bad person.
However, some people object to this, often people with strong religious beliefs of their own who believe they already have a good relationship with God. I've met a fair number of people unwilling to sit through the services and pretend their situation is a just punishment from God for being a terrible person. Very religious people might get extremely offended when someone looks down on them and tells them they don't have a good enough relationship with Jesus to deserve a place to live.
4. Lack of Privacy and Fear of Crowds
Many homed people would argue that people who are down on their luck are not deserving of privacy. However, the complete lack of privacy can be especially hard on people with mental disorders that make them fear crowds. I encountered several crowd-phobic people who could not be convinced to use a homeless facility even though they were sickly and ill-suited to outdoor sleeping even when the weather was good.
Deserving of privacy or not, people with mental illnesses that cause a fear of crowds or even a fear of a moderate number of people packed into close quarters are genuinely terrified of such conditions, even in the safest of circumstances.
Charities understandably try to make the most of their square footage by squeezing as many beds into their facility as possible. Unfortunately, that can make them frightening to people with PTSD, claustrophobia, social anxiety, or fear of crowds.
3. Lack of Control
By the time a person is on the street, his or her life is usually already careening out of control. That feeling can be enhanced by the regimented check-in times, eating, prayer, sleep times, and check-out in a shelter. Some people stay out-of-doors so they can feel like they have some vestige of control over their own lives.
Source
2. Rules That Unfairly Endanger Disabled Individuals
Walkers, crutches, and canes are sometimes taken away from users at some organizations during check-in. Sometimes, even appliances such as leg braces are taken away for "safe keeping." While I can understand that the danger of theft is very real, and that some people who are mentally ill might hit people with their crutches, braces, or walkers, it is frightening to be left without mobility in a strange place. So some who have need of medical appliances or mobility assisting devices forgo the use of homeless facilities.
1. Lack of Available Beds
There is not enough safe, legal shelter for everyone. No matter how many people choose not to use them, there are still not nearly enough beds available for those who would like to sleep indoors despite the risks involved.
In most cities in the US, there's space for less than 25% of the homeless people living in that city. In some cities, there is room for less than 5% of their homeless population.
Additionally, many cities have made ordinances limiting the number of people a charity may serve. In some, they may not provide beds for more than 20 people! Additionally, some cities have created ordinances barring services from being located in or near the downtown area (where the churches and other organizations likely to provide such services are most likely to own property) or laws preventing two shelters from being within a certain distance of each other.
This is why lines to check in form so early in the day and staff is often so quick to deny entry to people for the most trivial of reasons. This may be why some facilities have made their requirements for use so restrictive. In fact, some of them have made their requirements so strict that, in some cases and despite a long line of people trying to get a place to sleep, they don't even fill the number of beds they have.
In my opinion, the ordinances are a bigger issue than the lack of funding because the ordinances have prevented people with funding from opening or expanding existing shelters. What you can do about it is find out what your local laws are regarding homeless facilities and write to your congresspeople and representatives as well as donating to local charities and helping to fund new ones.
Are Current Shelters Perfectly Adequate to Serve the Unhomed Population?
Do you think that current shelters are sufficient in number, quality, and dignity to serve the needs of the American homeless population?
Yes
Kylyssa 3 weeks ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Please explain how it would benefit, say, your own mother, if your father passed away and she became too ill to work and support herself for you to practice tough love and let her die on the street as older people tend to do when ill? Would you just sadly say, oh, she made her bed, now she has to lie in it, when you found out she'd been beaten and raped as most women suffering homelessness are? Because that is exactly what you are advocating for. You are advocating for the abandonment and suffering of people who are out of their depths and unable to help themselves.
guess who 3 weeks ago
I think people r right enough is enough. Tough love is the key being homeless sucksvim sure but if your homeless cuz of choices in your life that u made then u need to suffer the consequences and if that means being homeless then that means being homeless don't get me wrong its not that I have no compassion I do but I do believe that in order for u to turn your life around u need to suffer all consequences for the choices in life that u make. Tough love is the key whether its homelessness or adfiction. God helps those who help themselves..
Kylyssa 4 weeks ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
You and I both know what I've said on this page is true. I'm actually glad people make comments like Irrelevant's because many decent people just don't comprehend the level of hatred some individuals have towards people who are homeless. There's frequently little logic normal people can see in anything people warped by hatred say.
The truth speaks 4 weeks ago
This comment is for Irrelevant:
In your comment of 2 years ago, you said that a lot of the stories to read or heard about the shelters are fabricated,, & HOW THE HELL WOULD YOU KNOW IF YOU'VE NEVER HAD TO USE ONE!!
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
It's also actually cheaper. It costs less to house a person than to maintain a single cot in most homeless shelters. It's safer, cleaner, healthier, and allows for the growth of self-esteem and confidence. It aids in getting more work hours or regaining employment if the person is unemployed.
But folks don't want the "undeserving poor" to get things they don't feel they are human enough to have.They'd rather have more money spent keeping people in lousy conditions on the theory that if homelessness sucks enough, people will escape it. They don't realize that homelessness already sucks immensely and if people saw the way out, they'd take it.
Most of the folks I've helped find homes have done brilliantly all on their own once the money issue has been solved. A huge percentage are on the streets for losing everything to medical bills or illness (their own or a dependent's), getting kicked out for being gay, being disabled Veterans the government refuses to help, working at exploitative businesses that do not pay living wages, or due to losing a job from downsizing.
Speth 2 years ago
People need homes and the support to learn or remember how to live in them. Providing those homes, and the rent to enable keeping them would be an infinitely better solution.
Thomas 2 years ago
Yes, the current housing of homeless people is fine. I'll let the author of this article in on a little secret. The accommodations are not supposed to be pleasant, easy to deal with or anywhere on par with a person's actual home. That might encourage them to want to stay in the homeless shelter, rather than re-integrate into regular society with the rest of us. Homeless shelters are not places where people should keep coming back to again and again. Personally, I think that people should be banned from homeless shelters after staying for more than a month. If you can rebound by then, you're not trying hard enough!!!!!!
irrelevant 2 years ago
A lot of what I've read on here about why people don't stay in shelters are fabricated. And secondly, In Livermore there aren't any shelters for women, unless you have a big fat maggot, then u might get priority to be on the waiting list.
anonymous 2 years ago
Yes, there should be 24 hour services for homeless. However, some of the churches and shelters are adding baking soda to the clients food. Which causes them to not only get full immediately, but causes bloating and high blood pressure. Families are also separated in some situations, due to age. MUCH CORRUPTION takes place through that of circles including staff and advocates slowing you down or stopping you from getting out of these shelters. They assign people to fraternize with family members that are adulthood. They need more professional staff and advocates. These people are unprofessional and disrespect the homeless clients. The clients do not receive much help, staff etc.keep much of the donated items themselves and they do not drive the clients for appointments unless your one of the few that are favored. I have had numerous problems in the shelter. The workers are extremely corrupt. Yes, they need more shelters, but they need investigators on the staff/advocates.
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
@anonymous: What a rare and wonderful shelter you manage; you have no idea what a good organization you are in charge of if you think it is typical. You should feel extremely proud to work where you do as your shelter displays a degree of excellence uncommon in American homeless shelters. My "irrational" ideas about homeless shelters came from both being homeless once upon a time and using assorted shelters across the US and volunteering in them later when I was in much better circumstances. Some of the things you mention are downright illegal in some cities. Some American cities limit homeless shelters to a certain number of beds far less than 400. A shelter that is allowed to provide beds outside of the night-time hours is extremely rare.Please leave a link to your shelter's information page and I will be sure to promote it in the hopes it will help donations to an excellent homeless shelter. I'm working on a page full of good American homeless shelters to give them the credit that is due and to illustrate how it ought to be done.Just ask the people you serve if your homeless shelter is typical of shelters they've stayed in. I'll bet your shelter is the best any of them have ever found or heard of. I'm not sure how personal experiences count as irrational but I'll bet most of your clients have had similar "irrational" personal experiences in other shelters. Especially ask the lgbtq people you serve if they've ever experienced discrimination or violence outside of or inside of other shelters. You have no idea of what a good job you are doing in comparison to what's out there.
anonymous 3 years ago
I have worked at a homeless shelter for many years and can say this person has irrational ideas about homeless shelters. I'm sure there are people who shouldn't be working in a shelter because they lack the compassion needed. We serve roughly 400 a night in a clean, safe environment. We have zero tolerance for any aggressive behavior. We make accommodations for physically challenged. We don't discriminate for any reason. We make accommodations for those working third shift to sleep during the day even though we are a night shelter only. We allow people who are impaired due to drugs and alcohol to stay as long as they behave. We have an extremely clean facility, no bug infestation. Our intake process is very respectful. We always strive to treat our guest with respect and dignity.
Kylyssa 4 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
@kadymitchell: Many people who are poor now had children when they were not. Many upper-middle class people such as yourself think it is impossible to lose a job or to have a child or spouse get ill or injured enough to wipe out their savings but they are wrong; insurance does not cover what you think it does. Unless people have a few million dollars in the bank there's really no way to be sure they will always have money. That is how people such as yourself end up homeless. You are one major illness or accident from homelessness now or in the future unless you have at least a million dollars in the bank. Everyone is very shocked when it happens to them, especially the folks such as yourself who think poverty equals moral bankruptcy. I hope you never face the situation but the only way many people dead set on the idea that poverty equals being a bad and stupid person is when they experience it themselves.If an upper-middle class family becomes poor after they have children, what do you suggest be done with those children? It isn't as if God makes the children "didn't happen" or magically whisks them off to a rich family when a spouse dies or leaves, or if a child or parent gets so ill or injured that savings get wiped out, or when jobs get lost when the jobs cease to exist. Would you give up your children if you suddenly became poor?The truth is that many families do not step up. They believe poverty equals stupidity and moral bankruptcy. They tell even their sick, elderly parents, "you made your bed, now lie in it" after those parents did things like putting them through college, giving them the down payments on their first houses, and providing free childcare to their children.In working with homeless people, I encountered very few people who had children after they were poor and many who had children before illness, tragedy, or a rotten economy struck. Most were earning middle-class or upper-middle-class wages just like the folks you think should be allowed to have children when they chose to have children. They were just like you before really rotten stuff happened in their lives- no better, no worse.
kadymitchell 4 years ago
Yes, no matter how many are built there will never be enough...so many people have just given up. Families have to stick together and help one another. People have to learn if you cannot afford to have children don't because its not the governments responsibility to raise them.
anonymous 4 years ago
No. God says to help those in need. Also you never know when that stranger comes along in need of a meal or a warm coat. Could be Jesus in disguise
anonymous 4 years ago
I say that, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, and all you people in homeless shelters treat all the homeless people very, very badly it just needs to stop people are dying everywhere because all of you workers in homeless shelters are selfish, I may be a 16 Year old but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
mannasugar 4 years ago
Shelters treat people very badly, and they do this to discourage people from wanting a free ride....
anonymous 4 years ago
Esvoytko is a man after my own heart. There is no reason why someone, especially a family, should be homeless. What a disgrace. Whatever happened to the common good? I live in NYC and there are thousands of working families who are homeless. This is a very complex problem and only a person with pathology problems would prefer panhandling to permanent shelter. No wonder we are in this situation. Public policies must address the social and economic issues that creates this problem instead of focusing on a few miscreants and punishing those who really need help.
mowug1776 4 years ago
somepeople have given up hope completely. I myself at times have as well the problem is not that there's enough beds find that the American people have lost their love for each other we are too greedy to see that we should wait and help others out there for buying the brand-new Mercedes-Benz that we may not be able to afford in a couple months. Also that excuse could also be put out because they don't want to help themselves I have started to help out at a mission. I find that many of them may have even shows the lifestyle in actuality at the mission there is one man that comes in who actually is a real estate investor and quite frankly because of his sorrows drains himself to the point that he himself is homeless he happens to be a veteran Delta force I believe if we can help the road may be harder than he may have a will to change. What we need is more family helping family.
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Math alone proves that more than 10% of homeless people successfully re-integrate into society because otherwise, we'd be overrun with tens of millions of homeless people! There are far more formerly homeless people than homeless people living in America. Over 80% of Americans who experience homelessness get into homes and do not experience homelessness again.Math alone also shows us that there are not enough homeless shelters. When there are more homeless people than beds, there will be homeless people who can't use them no matter how much they might want to. I don't know if you've driven past any homeless shelters lately but here in Grand Rapids the lines for them wrap around the buildings. The number of shelters and beds also keeps decreasing all while the number of homeless people increases.Math also shows us that some people will inevitably be left without jobs (and become likely to become homeless) when the number of adults in our country exceeds the number of jobs that exist. That's not even taking into account the number of jobs out there that are too part-time to live on.Over a period of about eighteen years I took in seventeen homeless teens and young adults, three couples, a man in his fifties and a woman in her sixties. Out of those twenty-five people, twenty-one succeeded in re-integrating into society. That's around the typical 80% mark. Perhaps you are having such a terrible success rate because you are focusing on panhandlers and chronically homeless folks?And, since you gave an anecdote about a couple refusing to stay with you because you separated them, you just backed up one of the reasons I listed.I'm secure in the knowledge that what I say here on this page about homeless shelters is true. I've personally witnessed most of these problems and, on occasion, I had to enforce some of these policies I disagree with while volunteering in shelters. I've learned of the other issues from other volunteers and from homeless and formerly homeless people.
clifRad 5 years ago
Yes. I work with the homeless and I've had over 100 live in my house with my family over the last ten years. They were right off the street.Very few want to get back into the mainstream. Probably only 10% I've dealt with.It is way to easy to make it on the street with pan handling, feeding programs, food cards, SSI, state programs, hotel vouchers...And the reasons you gave for them not using shelter is bogus. They are most generally rebellious and anti-social, that's is a great generalization. Like I said 10%.We had a couple, rather than be at our house where couldn't sleep with one another in there on room, choose an outhouse in town. Go figure.They need help and that help needs to given rightly. You work you eat. You want to play the game your on your own.
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EM 5 weeks ago
If you are in a position to need a shelter bed chances are you have burned your bridges with family and friends due to drug abuse, violence and untreated mental health issues.
Kylyssa 11 months ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
The problem with using the police to determine identities is that most homeless people aren't criminals so they aren't in the system.
Loss of ID is a terrifying experience for people without homes. It causes all the problems you mentioned plus it presents an additional danger to Americans of Mexican or Hispanic descent; they could potentially get deported if they can't prove their citizenship.
Claudia 11 months ago
I challenge anyone to walk into the county clerks office without any personal identification give them your name and SS# and have them issue you new ones .
This poses a serious and in many cases life threatening problem for the homeless. Without the proper Identification they are not able to get any assistance, such as .shelters , food , housing, cash and medical, Even job applications require ID"s
Would it be possible for local police departments to set aside a day or two a few times a year where homeless people could come in and get their identity verified by either fingerprints police files or even a police officer that has seen proof of their id . Then give each person a temporary photo id that they could use to get a permanent state Id
Jason 2 years ago
I'm homeless right now, after spending 10 years working abroad I became ill and was repatriated to the United States.
I was happy for the medical treatment I received, but after 3 weeks and a clean bill of health -- thank you sir, goodbye! I had to leave with nowhere to go. After being gone for ten years, I had to start from scratch. 35 degrees outside and all I had was the t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops I wore when I was returned to the States.
What I, and probably many others truly need are: A place to take a shower. An address to use for mail. Canned food that we can store. No "shelter emloyees" ruining your job search. Or ruining your job, for that matter. Do they not understand that it's not a good thing to go to your new boss and ask for a note so you can go back to your homeless shelter after hours so you can work a normal shift?
The problem is, shelter employees know that in order to expand their operations (and get more government grants) is to house a larger homeless population. Now although they can't "make" more people homeless, they can "keep" more people homeless by not letting them have a job. Or throwing them out as soon as they get one. I've seen it happen twice now (once to me).
We need clothes, a place to shower, and an address to use for mail. That's pretty much it. I won't stay in a shelter for the reasons listed above as well as in the article. A big thing for me is theft, and being around people who use drugs increases the chance of me losing stuff like work shoes -- and ultimately losing my job.
ionkosmic 3 years ago
BIG NO unfortunately . Just take a look at Greece. Things are really difficult there for homeless peopleand refuges because very simply the people that create the government are useless and not human.I really feel shame and pain for what is going there.
anonymous 3 years ago
It varies quite a bit by place within the US. In Ft. Lauderdale FL they were impossible to get into. In Indianapolis IN I got forced to use a men's shelter (hurrah transphobia) when I finally got into one, in which I was robbed and raped, of course. Meanwhile deaths and mutilations from cold were ongoing outside. To my chagrin, I'll very shortly find out what being homeless in New York is like.
anonymous 3 years ago
Definitely NOT! I didn't know of the ordinances preventing expansion... it seems like cities would rather house people and to keep their cities looking good, than to force people to live in the streets...
lilydanne 3 years ago
Your speak the truth sadly a few of these people who still feel like the homeless deserve it even if they were to become homeless they would still possibly feel this way I think it a coping mechanism
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
@ajtyne: People are not usually required to convert, just to sit through a service and look interested and/or to say "Amen" at the appropriate points. They also usually won't escort a person out for not saying "Amen" or for not looking interested during the service but they will often question them intensely. I usually just sat through the service about what bad people homeless people are and looked interested and said whatever they wanted me to. But I don't have a religion so it wasn't anything terrible. It was mostly Christians with other beliefs (like that Jesus forgives and loves everybody and that God doesn't purposely punish people with or for being poor) who objected or felt awful. So it was really a Christian on Christian kind of unkindness for the most part and there was no converting to be done because most people I met on the streets and while volunteering were Christian. But it really hurt them to be told they weren't good enough Christians or that they were flat-out bad Christians or not really Christians that God was choosing to punish.There's no need for you to apologize on behalf of other Christians for requiring lip service or for discriminating against LGBT persons. The vast majority of mainstream Christians aren't doing these things and you certainly aren't. There are far more Christian victims of that behavior than people doing it.Actually, in most shelters, the cost of maintaining one "bed" for a month is equal to or greater than the cost of a two bedroom apartment into which four people could be housed, at least in Michigan. It would never be discussed because homeless people have been put into a category as "undeserving poor" and our society would not go for it. It would be too much like helping a homed person stay in housing which many people have no problem with. So they'd rather pay more for an unsafe situation than allow that kind of help to be provided. Charities and organizations using a "housing first" approach have seen huge success in getting even chronic homeless people off the streets and eventually paying their own way. But there are a lot of opponents to housing first programs.
chi kung 3 years ago
Dignity is the first that is not present at these places, nor is fair treatment unfortunately. Most "workers" here hate their job, they just do it for the money - not a great situation which shows up in their attitude towards the homeless...
ajtyne 3 years ago from North Carolina
I say NO to every part of your question. I do not have your experiences as either a shelter seeker or a shelter worker, but it takes a very perfunctory check to show all your points to be true. I think, from my experiences talking with homeless people in Philadelphia, that one thing that would help the situation a lot is psychiatric care. I have also read that the homeless problem grew suddenly because of cut backs and laws that no longer permitted people to be hospitalized against their will. Now, psychiatric hospitals would be another hot issue for me, but I still think that a person who is in need of psychiatric care cannot always be capable of realizing that. And families absolutely MUST be kept together. I already knew that men were often not allowed to stay with their wives and children, but did not know until reading your lens that boys as young as 13 are considered "men" and forced away from their mothers and siblings to sleep at a men's shelter where their lives could be in danger. I think now homelessness is surging again because of the economy. I have seen so many people that I know online only who are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless, and I have gone through that danger, although not to the point of homelessness, thanks to a relative. I am shocked to read that prayers and such are required. Are you saying that they require people to actually "convert" or adopt the particular religion (I'm assuming you mean Christian but not sure)? Or are you saying that people FELT that it was being required? I must tell you that it is so completely against everything Christianity is about and everything our Lord Jesus stands for to say that homelessness and all the related problems are punishment. In the New Testament, Jesus was questioned about this. They asked Him, who sinned, this unfortunate person or his parents, for him to end up in such a bad condition. He rebuked them and told them plain and clear that it has nothing to do with sin. Repeatedly. Homelessness, rape, drugs, violence. These are evidence of the general human condition. These are NOT EVER punishment for sins. God may remove some of His protection (for lack of a better way of saying it), allowing bad things to happen as a sort of wake up call -- this is what people mean (or should mean) when they claim America is under God's judgment. But God does not punish individuals in this way or even nations. That is not what is meant. It is so often misinterpreted. I feel so bad to think that people who should be seeing the Love of God in action are feeling the wrath of people who call it the wrath of God! That is not the Christian way. Alas, many people call themselves Christians but are not -- or have no understanding of the ways of Christ. I believe the only hope is to make private apartments/hotel rooms, which of course would never be even discussed because of the cost and security issues, but I believe they could be if people would address these problems and force lawmakers to discuss them. They fling money without having a good grasp of how or where it will be used, and if they see something not working the knee-jerk response is to withdraw money. I am a Christian and I am so sorry that you were so poorly treated by anyone naming the name of Christ.
CaztyBon 3 years ago
No, I know there are many homeless families and they don't have enough shelters for them.
anonymous 3 years ago
My brother caught TB in a shelter. He also told me about being given blankets at bedtime that the shelters only washed once per month which resulted in things like scabies and lice. He too ended up choosing the cold hard streets over an alleged comfortable warm bed. I, myself remember a shleter I stayed in when I was 20 years old. At the front desk was a sign that said, "You did what you wanted to get here and now you'll do what we want to stay here". No, I didn't. I was running from an abusive relationship. After 33 years I still remember the words of that sign. I am now homeless again, after 33 years. I'm on the streets and not even thinking of seeking a shelter bed because I have a small dog who wouldn't be allowed in.
waynekat 3 years ago
I don't live in america but I would doubt there are enough shelters, especially now... Thank you for an eye opening lense. I didn't know....
chironseer 3 years ago
Hi, great lens, I was once forced to sleep rough on the streets for a week in amsterdam, and on one of those nights I stayed at the salvation army hostel, which was really a big hall with most of the people in it out of their minds on some drug or other.It was the most dangerous place I've ever stayed for sure, I much preferred the streets.
EsotericAllusion 3 years ago
What an excellent article about a subject which concerns me. My son recently told me, that homeless people would come into the building where he worked seeking help as they did not want to go to the homeless shelter due to drugs and fear of violence. What can we do about such a problem in this group of vulnerable people?
KFairweather 3 years ago
Group shelters are inherently dangerous and the entire paradigm should be rethought. Better is a model that works like a motel or old motor lodge. Separate rooms, with varying number of beds, cabins with two or more rooms for families, trailers homes (although after working with the FEMA housing program for a decade and a half I find trailers to be sub standard housing), cottages and even uninhabited lost-mortgage homes. There was a pilot home building program in Louisiana after Katrina where actual homes were built for disaster victims. And with the amount of money that was spent on temporary housing and trailers, building a new home for each registered victim would have been cheaper. We have some kind of idea in this country that people don't deserve to live well unless they live in a certain, accepted way and are lucky enough to maintain that life. Homelessness is not a disease that is contagious, it is a condition caused by the standards of our culture. is a national shame that we have so many unoccupied homes due to greed and malfeasance, illness, unemployment and other reasons and so many people without homes for many of the same reasons. Pure logic says, put those people in those homes. Banks are losing money with repossessed homes sitting empty, being robbed of copper and other materials, being vandalized, burned and destroyed. Neighborhoods lose value with empty homes sitting on their streets. If nothing else, it would behoove mortgage holders to pay homeless people to occupy these homes until they are sold just to insure they are monitored and kept from the dangers of vacancy. In the long run, it would solve so many problems, it seems obvious. But, we have a cultural imperative that says, homeless people don't deserve standard housing unless they get it the way their neighbors get it. It's shameful to see families on the streets when there are places for them to live and the only reason they aren't there is because their neighbors would be jealous.
fmauritzen 3 years ago from Wading River, NY
That fact that there is even a need for homeless shelters is an abominable symptom of a sick society.
Jillynn 3 years ago
They are largely warehousing people while stripping them of their individual humanity.
Pat Goltz 3 years ago
Of course not. And services to get people back on their feet are sorely lacking, too. People who can game the system aren't usually homeless, but they may be taking money they're not entitled to. It's a huge mess. This is why I think churches and charities should be allowed to offer whatever help they desire, without government poking in their nose, and why I think government is not designed to dispense charity, but on the contrary, is clueless about it. Refusing to let people use necessary devices is insane and cruel.
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Would You Be Reluctant to Use a Shelter?
There are not nearly enough shelters and many of them that exist are too hazardous or, more often, too regulation-bound to be effective in providing safe haven from the elements.
The fact of the matter is that almost no one is immune from the possibility of homelessness. In many cases all it takes is one personal catastrophe to put a person or family on the street. Homeless people are just like you and me.
After reading this article and getting some more information on the dangers and indignities you could face in a shelter, do you understand why many people without traditional housing avoid using them? If you wouldn't use a homeless shelter, you can hardly expect homeless people to. I hope you will share this distressing information and help others see why things need to change.
If you were homeless would you be reluctant or feel some apprehension about using a shelter?
Yes
See results
Should Be Grateful for Assistance No Matter How They Are Treated? Or Do People Deserve to Be Treated like Human Beings?
Some people believe that the homeless should just be grateful for any scraps tossed their way, no matter what indignities, dangers, or humiliations they must face to get them. They believe that they should be grateful even if a worker suggests they exchange sexual favors for a place to stay or if they get assaulted in or when leaving a shelter. They believe that anyone who suggests that there is anything wrong with shelters as they currently exist is simply hateful. They believe it's a sin to criticize any efforts to help, no matter how those people being helped are treated. The hate mail I have received regarding this page supports these views.
While I worked in shelters for many years as a volunteer and absolutely know that the vast majority of workers are doing their best, I believe the system is deeply flawed. There are not enough facilities or security, and a homeless person is a person, deserving of a degree of dignity. What do you think?
Homeless people should be grateful for any help, no matter the dangers or indignities required to receive it.
Yes, beggars can't be choosers.
Yes, homeless people gave up their rights to safety and dignity.
No, homeless people are still people and deserve to be treated as such.
Other, explained in the guestbook below.
An interesting account of one man's experience with a faith-based charity. The comments are also an interesting read. No, it's not a recent post, but he expressed himself clearly and well and some of the comments provide valuable insights.
Do We Need More, Better Homeless Shelters and Help for Existent Ones?
Do we need to build more homeless shelters and help the ones that already exist?
Yes, but not in my neighborhood.
Yes
See results
About Comments
This article has received some very angry responses. Please, before sending hate mail or leaving an angry comment, read the whole page. If you want to use the comment section to express your disgust, please refrain from profanity or your comments will not be published.
Comments do not appear immediately. Due to the number of comments with swearing or threats in them that this article gets, the comments are moderated. Your very much welcomed comment won't show up until I have a chance to see the notification in my inbox and approve it. I am not always at my computer so sometimes this can take a day or longer.
© 2009 Kylyssa Shay
Menstruating isn't considered fun by anyone, but having your period while being homeless sucks in its own special way. Learn how you can help women dealing with both homelessness and periods.
208
Have you wondered why people living on the street don't just get jobs and stop being homeless? Learn some of the barriers to employment they must overcome and share your solutions in the comments.
138
Have you ever wondered why people become homeless? This article explains just a few of the most common causes of home loss for people living in the United States. Some of them may surprise you.
Please Don't Swear or Make Personal Attacks in the Comments 315 comments
Crystal 5 months ago
Actually, yes, we do deserve privacy. This is an objective fact.
And with or without mental illness, privacy is a universal psychological need; lacking it is detrimental to the mental and therefore physical health of every human being. This is why it is always considered inherently abusive to infringe upon someone's privacy.
Kev 8 months ago
I say to open MORE shelters that COMPLY with ADA guidelines, and to completely drop the unnecessary "Pray to stay" or "Work for our thrift store/'rehab program'/whatever in order to stay" requirement. Christian-run shelters have all kinds of discriminatory (and are, sad to say, legal) rules. Muncie Mission (in Muncie, IN), a shelter a friend and I got perma-banned from just this week, has these rules that you're shown in a PowerPoint slideshow that has these obviously discriminatory rules:
[The PPT file looks hurried and cheaply made, BTW. I could do better... but, I digress.]
* (Picture of the serving line) This is where you get your three meals a day. If you need more than three meals a day because of diabetes or other medical concerns, you should look for another place to stay.
* (Meme "Before there was Iron Man / There was Iron Lung") If you have medical or mental health issues beyond the care we provide, you should look for another place to stay.
* (Picture of their elevator) This is our elevator. It can be used ONLY with staff permission [capitalized emphasis theirs], if you use a wheelchair or other medical issues.
* (Picture of breathalizer) You may be asked to blow in this. It MUST read .000 or you will be asked to leave.
* A couple of slides say the same thing about drug use and you may be asked at any time and if ANY drugs are found in a urinalysis, again, they say "You will be asked to leave."
There are others, but some of them contradict with each other.
Going on, they will not let you even have certain things: laptop, even if you are going to school (Someone attending college asked and said it was MANDATORY for their homework,and they said "Oh well, then go look for somewhere else,then!"), cell phone (they're afraid you'll call a drug dealer) or even "People" Magazine or "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition" because they think it's porn... seriously!
And they have confusing rules: If you don't have a job, you're REQUIRED to work at their "New Life Center" EVERY DAY, but if you DO have one, you're asked to "volunteer 8 hours a week," but if you NEED a job and are actively looking for one, how is that even possible?
Oh, BTW, I'm an atheist, and I faked it good enough. I even was asked to lead the prayer at a couple of meals. But a couple of "morning devotional" sessions was mostly 30-minute soapbox sessions to air the b.s. of what he thought was wrong with the world...
TL;DR, some of what he said made me cringe. He thought LGBTQ should be banished permanently "Because God Said So, Damn It!", that there was really NO constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state, we were founded as a Christian country from Day 1 (Uh, WRONG, Dennis [his name]! Section VI of our Constitution AND Amendment I say otherwise!!!!), all a bunch of stuff. I mostly written Linux Bash Shell Scripts in my provided notebook when we were *supposed* to write our "shortcomings" and our offerings to God in them...
And don't get me started on their "Statement of Moral Obligation," a confusing document about "Biblical Marriage".
But all what you wrote is what me and my friend experienced too. And just because we had our reasons, they kicked us out.
Screw them, I've been living on the streets since 2011 and I can survive. These places are 3 hots and a cot with restrictions.
Jane 10 months ago
The Shelters in Dallas TX are awful. Many people would rather live in Tent City (underneath a major expressway in Downtown Dallas) than go to a shelter. Why are the shelters so awful? They are very authoritarian. You have to be in at 2 or 3 p.m. and they lock you in. If you leave out for any reason you are banned. The staff is often rude and abusive. There are major privacy violations as well. Dallas has instituted some type of system where all of the shelters share information with each other and with about 150 other businesses that are suppose to help the homeless. So if you are homeless for one night your name and social security number and other personally identifiable information are shared forever with 150 different agencies and private corporations. Never to be deleted. Also, Dallas Shelters turn over all of their shelter lists to the police. Each night. They give the police the names of people to be searched (even after background checks are ran) by the shelter. How do I know? I have a cousin who is married to a police officer in another city. Her and I weren't speaking for while and she had her husband violate the law and he looked me up and could see every shelter I had ever stayed in, in the State of Texas. There should have been no way he could see this if I wasn't breaking any law. Which I wasn't. But the shelters just violate your privacy. So they frighten many people away. The Bridge Shelter in Dallas forces everyone who stays there even one night to sign away their rights to their personal information and so the shelter can share this with hundreds of different public and private companies. Other shelters do the same.
Kylyssa 21 months ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
You can be certain homeless women get raped at a horrifying and alarming rate in India as well, probably even more frequently and with even fewer repercussions for their assailants.They may even be more likely to be murdered by their assailants. I'm guessing more people are alarmed by the rape of middle class and upper class women no matter where they are than by similar crimes against people of the lowest classes anywhere on earth, even in their own neighborhoods.
Margelia 21 months ago from Culver City, California
I know this is an old article, but I had been looking for something that summed up the major problems that homeless women have to deal with, and this does it perfectly. I wanted something to share on Facebook, because there are so many posts I have seen about the horrifying conditions for women in other countries... Everyone rallies around causes like rape in India, but what about here in the U.S.? The rate of sexual assault among homeless women is simply unacceptable. I cannot believe more is not being done about it. I'm not saying we have the same problem as India, only that their problem is garnering a lot of attention while ours are being ignored. Is it because these women are homeless, and in India average college students get gang raped? Is it more horrifying to people that these women get attacked?
I don't know, but I think there needs to be a conversation about this... Thank you so much for such a well written article. It makes it easier to bring all of this to people's attention when it's presented so clearly and succinctly.
GypsyOwl 2 years ago from Chico California
Thank you! The only long-term solution to homelessness in America will be from-the-heart change in how people are treated across the board. When we are able to treat each other as we want to be treated.
Opinion aside. My experience has shown me being homeless happens to people in all walks of life and all levels of achievement, motivation, and even hard working people find out through disaster or economic shifts suddenly life comes along and everything changes. Displacement is what they call my situation.
Shelters aren't an option for me. I appreciate your presentation and from-the-heart observation.
And, today I found your page because it is LotD on Squidoo's home page. Congratulations well deserved!
Dressage Husband 2 years ago from Pine Grove, Nova Scotia, Canada
Not having used a shelter I am horrified at the issues described here. However I am not really surprised. Most people with a good job never think how it is to be out of work and fighting against the prejudices of other ignorant people just like they actually are.
Only after an actual experience of living the life of the homeless can people understand and handle this difficult situation fairly and well. This is true in many areas of life and unfortunately this is the root cause of most of the issues in the Western World. It is ignorance and the fact that what we do not know we do not know can and does hurt us! Good Hub - Today's LOTD on Squidoo
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@burntchestnut: The biggest problem, in my opinion, is nothing anyone involved with running shelters can do anything about directly. Predators are going to stalk homeless people leaving shelters; they know it's safer for them to choose homeless victims. Society has to change for that to change. Law enforcement has to change (equal enforcement of and protection under the law) to change the phenomenon. Places like underfunded homeless shelters also often don't have the resources to run background checks on workers and certainly not on volunteers. One way to get around these problems would be to have housing assistance programs in place of homeless shelters.
burntchestnut 2 years ago
Homeless shelters have to have money and they have to have volunteers (or paid workers), both in short supply. It's easy to criticize people when we've never been in their situation or have observed the inside of a homeless shelter. The well-run shelters (and with money), provide the homeless with dignity, keep the family together and help training to get a job. I never realized the homeless have to deal with violence or uncleanliness in some of the shelters. But the workers can't tell if someone will be violent, and they certainly can't force everyone to bathe and submit to a physical to see if they have a disease. It's a problem that has always existed, but the public rarely knew about.
ozoneman68 2 years ago
@lskjk: It's sad that in this day and age where our currency isn't worth even a quarter of what it used to be and so many of the once decent paying jobs having been outsourced that a large amount of people still believe that anyone who is homeless is either mentally ill, a drug addict or alcoholic - or (as is commonly believed in the buy bull belt) they're being punished by "god".
lskjk 2 years ago
I am homeless and also do not have a drug or alcohol addiction. I tried to stay in the Salvation Army shelter and made it one night. At the intake they run your I.D. and make you do a drug test and breathalizer, which to me they were saying that I was a drug addict no matter what. While I was waiting I saw two men come out of a room, one was buckling his belt like they had just did something sexual. The staff didn't care or pretended not to notice. Now, I have a problem with this because I was raped by a man. They put us in rooms with no supervision and the door closed. I barely got any sleep that night. I never tried to stay in a shelter again.
annemarievocalsintallahassee 2 years ago
the only ones that I know of that are clean, are usually battered women shelters with lockdowns.I am looking for a safe emergancy haven myself in Portland Maine till I can get into the Victoria Center.
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@Vicki_P: The unfriendly pre-meal sermon I recall most clearly was in a shelter run by a Reformed Church. It wasn't particularly nasty but it clearly communicated that the pastor felt homelessness is the consequence of and punishment for sinning. Some pastors even talk positively about the sermon style online. I'll add some links.
Vicki_P 2 years ago
Where I live, no, there's not enough. There are always homeless on both sides where I live (a small urban park in one direction, two major plazas in the other). This city has a large "soup kitchen" but the city itself doesn't help much at all. There are a few other nonprofits that help in the area. I love the lens, it's great. I did want to say, though, that no Christian group I know of would tell you that you're being "punished for your sins," so I don't know what kind-of shelter that was you had experience with. Emmaus Ministries in Chicago may be a good example of a multi-denominational shelter/kitchen that provides love and help, in their case, to men in survival prostitution. (PS - I tried posting this in the debate comment, but it's not working - I tried a number of times.)
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@Alison Williams: We have enough vacant buildings in America that we could probably house all of the homeless people in the world very comfortably. Unfortunately, even if the banks that own the abandoned (and now decaying because no one has been living in them and keeping them up) houses and other buildings were to give permission for people to live in them, it would be illegal. Yes, it's crazy.
Alison Williams 2 years ago
I found this page quite enlightening. I always thought of Shelters as a place of refuge and thought that things like theft, assault and rape were more likely to happen to a homeless person on the street. I was aware of drug addicts possibly being in them but I thought everyone had their own room and you could just avoid them for a lot of the time. Last year, my landlord evicted me and I was worried sick at the prospect of possibly being homeless because I was hitting a brick wall all the time trying to find somewhere else. I couldn't move back in with my family because of problems there and the thought of sleeping on a cold, hard street scared me a lot. So I rang shelters but no-one could take me for various reasons such as age or income.Maybe not all shelters have these problems but one way I think might solve problems for the homeless would be to use vacant housing that has just been standing empty for years. Why can't they be converted somehow and temporarily house a few people while they get themselves together?
anonymous 2 years ago
it's actually quite sad that shelters don't provide enough materials and facilities for the homeless, not to mention SAFETY. Being a woman in a shelter would be one of the hardest things I must assume. Great lens, thank you!
jen09 writes 2 years ago
I found this very interesting. My husband works hand-in-hand with law enforcement and often views homeless as lazy, however I am a bit more sympathetic. Your article really brought to light a lot of issues I had not thought about previously. Definitely going to share it (and a few others on the topic) with him
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@mary-helmers: Those sound like great ideas. Kleenex and bathroom tissue are also always useful. I need to add a bunch of things or possibly create an additional page geared more directly toward making care packages. Please remember to keep safety in mind and take someone along with you when you do something like handing out backpacks. And don't be discouraged if some people seem ungrateful or curse at you. Many such people are either mentally ill or just lashing out because they've been hurt so badly they fear peoples' motivations. Thank you for being a caring person!
mary-helmers 2 years ago
Thank you for your informative and well-written articles! I have copied a lot of the information to put into packs I will now be making up and giving out to homeless men and women I see. Your listing of what is needed is a huge help. To many of the things in your list, I intend to add a couple of toothbrush holders--one for a toothbrush, and one for holding small stuff like a pencil with extra lead and a pen. And also add a few plastic spoons and some Ziplock bags in 2 or three sizes and larger plastic bags with ties. I'm going to see just how many things I can include for $20. Thanks for giving me an excellent way to be able to help. I have wanted to do so for some time, but did not know what I could do other than to offer a sandwich or something of that sort.
sarah-kareem-7 2 years ago
I am an international student from Saudi Arabia, I feel sad deep from my heart when I see teen or elderly as homeless. Every day I cry when I came home, I appreciate my bed and every thing more than before. Being homeless is not an easy thing at all, May God (Allah) help every single one in this world with financial and health problems. This page is so great
hclyne1 2 years ago
Having been kind of homeless - I needed to stay in a shelter type accommodation but thankfully here in Australia ours are much better than anywhere else in the world they're LGBTQ friendly, disabled friendly and treat a person with respect and decency and I felt no judgement at the one I stayed at. It's classed as short term accommodation as you do have to pay a weekly rent but for that you got 3 meals per day and a lockable room to yourself. Also our government provides people with various financial assistance depending on your circumstances including a homeless allowance.
Alyssa DeBoer 2 years ago
I had a very bad experience with being homeless and homeless shelters (thank god only for a week). It was one of the worst times of my life. I love your article. I understand ever aspect of all your homeless articles.
Lionrhod 2 years ago from Orlando, FL
I am in the middle dealing with the almost opposite challenge. While we were out of state and working to get back and get our feet under ourselves, my husband's mother was taken and determined as Alzheimer's incapacitated and thrown in a home by a person who for a freaking living, warehouses the elderly.Thankfully we had a home to move into. However then there are things like electricity (we lived for 2 months without - and the place was almost condemned because of that) and food and such.Obviously things are now on the mend and we now have electric and internet and a few other basic amenities. Still working on a car and all.And yet still we have to find the $1500-3000 or so to just get a lawyer to get her out of the home she's got stuck in. So that she can be treated with basic human respect - be allowed to garden and worship and pet the dogs and..simple things. As in she wasn't allowed to make a phone call out for a year. We weren't even allowed to know what facility she was being held in.Wacky stuff.Being homeless or near so is completely demoralizing and astonishing and...just outright a mess. No, I don't have the answer yet. Still trying to figure it out myself. This page...truly hit my heart. Thank you for doing what you do and what you can.
jan-powers-16 2 years ago
Housing First programs are more of an answer, especially for homeless families. I tried to get into a program like that, here in Los Angeles, but they wouldn't accept me because my mental illness was so out of control. It was difficult to get mental health help while being homeless. My children were taken from me because I was mentally ill and unable to qualify for a program that would stabilize my family. It took me years to get them back, and the entire experience with Children's Services was dehumanizing. The social workers we had were, for the most part, decent people who cared about the children, but the system is simply evil. I was mentally ill and homeless and somehow, it was my fault in the eyes of the "helpers." How does anyone deserve that? I am an atheist partly because religious shelters told me I am a bad person and deserve to be homeless. I could never trust a god that would punish me for being poor because my children's father abandoned us when my youngest was only two months old. I survived, managed to get a bit of an education, and am stable today. Being homeless is horrible, but the way a homeless person is treated is even worse. This is where you find inhumanity hardest at work.
alian1888 2 years ago
I thought the answer was simple.... Build more homeless centres!!!How ignorantly stupidly arrogant do I feel right now? VERY VERY VERY!!!!I live in New Zealand. I have spent short stints on the street, sleeping under church bushes and other not so great places. I had a mother who beat me when she got pissed with my dad and he took off to get away from her anger issues.Get what I looked too much like my dad. ANYway!I had been offered places to stay overnight a few times and always said no thank you.Never really thought why I said that.In the end the same reason as most homeless people I guess.Pride, fear, would rather do things for myself... no handouts or help needed... OK! goes back to pride I guess.Always thought I'd like to "SAVE THE WORLD" some day.Win big on Lottery (LOTTO). look after myself then help others with the rest. Help build homeless shelters for the homeless etc.NEVER EVER! thought about how homeless people would think about some "know it all" turning up and saying here's another shelter for you to live in, use it!Ignorance is soo bliss isn't it.Right now I'm thinking.... WHAT IS THE ANSWER???????- Has anyone asked a homeless person what they would like?- Do they just want a safe place to spend the night?- Would they accept help that was given (to a degree, forced) upon them?+++ or do they really want a HOME of their own.A small safe place to go home to every night, with nice neighbors who say good morning etc. And know how to treat them like real people.... I know all about not quite fitting in, no matter where you go.It's taken me lots of years ( maybe 20-30) and lots of luck, and eventually to be able to accept the help of some very very good people whom I could trust, just to get to where I am now.I have a partner I love.... Hopefully to be married in a very simple ceremony in September.A rented house that I call HOME!A job I love, that pays a very good wage (in comparison to the minimum wage I've always gotten), and working with people who appreciate what I do... with them and for them when I can. (I like to be helpful).How I got here, I don't honestly know!But I love my life, and the people around me, who make my life worth living.To go from what I have now, to the life I used to live (which even at it's worst was nothing compared to soo many others in this world we live in... Is unimaginable to me know.IN CONCLSION:More homless shelters are not the best answer, but a plaster on the wound of humanitys shame and neglect of what is right there in front of us every day.But giving soo many people a house they can own out right, a place to call "HOME"... a place people can call safe...mine....a sense of belonging, to somewhere special, and to the community they live in.I guess even a cardboard box in an alley, with other people in the same situation can give someone that same or similar sense of home!Or as close as it will ever get for a lot of people.GOD bless the poor, the meek, and the humble... for they shall inherit the kingdom of GOD before the rest of us.Love and best wishes to all those who live simple lives, and struggle in an unkind world, who feel the unimaginable coldness of a winters night in the open.May their hearts always be as warm as the midday sun, and their souls shine brighter than the brightest stars of a clear night.Kindest RegardsAllen Murray Davis
Loretta L 2 years ago from Chilterns, UK.
I also just tried to like your page, but apparently I am over the limit. I will try to remember to come back tomorrow. Thank you for such an enlightening lens.
Loretta L 2 years ago from Chilterns, UK.
I have recently been reading up about homeless shelters as I have written a book about a homeless girl - Where Angels Tread - and needed to do some research for it. I wish I had found your lenses, but I did manage to find sufficient information to cover the reason why my fictitious heroine had never used the shelters before - although her experience of a shelter is a good one. I did try to post in your poll but it wouldn't let me.
Lionrhod 2 years ago from Orlando, FL
My answer in the duel module was: "Sadly a huge NO!" but it wouldn't post for some reason. Back when I had a car I was bringing food to Food Not Bombs. I encourage everyone to do what they can to help. Thank you for your good works!
OUTFOXprevention1 2 years ago
Interesting information! Thanks for sharing.
your-mate-with-a-ute 2 years ago
I have lived on the streets on and off for most of my life and in one form or another. I was ejected from home at age 13 and between foster care, group homes and shelters there was just less conflict to go it alone. I spent time living in cheap hotels but even this was not ideal. Communal kitchen and bathrooms meant possessions were constantly stollen. Unannounced searches of my room by landlords invading my privacy. And some even had no communal kitchen and also wouldn't allow cooking in your room. (Fire hazzard) so you would have to eat in their dining room (expensive) or eat take away (unhealthy and expensive) or as i did just eat 3 dining room meals a week. Rest of the time its bread and crackers.The single best thing that i ever did was to buy a car. Not only did this allow me to transport my belongings from place to place. Without having to leave stuff behind simply because i couldn't carry it. But it also gave me a reasonably secure place to sleep between housing. So much so that it became my preferred option in many instances. Fuel costs are a concern but if you can drive it opens up so many more options for employment. Some jobs are only available because nobody can make the start times due to their requirements for public transport. And there is always pizza or other fast food delivery jobs available. Yes these can place a burden on your home and transport but it can provide a leg up.One time i rear ended someone in my car and wrote off the car. It still ran but the front was totally crumpled. My employer (pizza shop owner) respected my dedication having learned of my circumstances and gave me a loan to purchase and register another very cheap car. That i would pay back as a percentage of my wages for the next several months. People like that are rare and in most instances they wouldn't lift a finger to help someone who is homeless. However someone in that situation who is trying to better themselves. They consider more like themselves and hence feel more obliged to help.Living in a car takes some finesse and planning. If you have work even part time or casual labouring work it makes things easyer. The amount of glass in a car makes it very poorly insulated. Cardboard cut to the shape of each window will help trap the heat in cold weather and keep it cool and dark in the hot sun (pizza delivery is an evening job) paint one side of the cardboard white and the other black. White face out for cool black face out for warm. With a car the issue of charging your phone is taken care of. 12volt chargers are cheap. And with that 12 volt constant power source comes other options. Entertainment is the biggest concern for me. I found myself bored to death sitting in my car all day with very little money. I started out 20 years ago when i first started living in my car by purchasing a pocket telivision. I expanded that to a 12 volt carravan VCR. Later portable DVD players became more affordable. I purchased one recently for $30 it doesn't have a battery and requires the 12 volt power from the car but it works and $1 each for weekly DVD rentals from my local video store provides me with endless cheap entertainment during my down time. An old laptop computer coupled with a power inverter (turns 12v DC into mains power AC) allows me to write out my resumes and application letters. Coupled to my mobile phone i can email and browse the net for other job opportunities.Many years ago i tried using a cooler to be able to purchase food and have it keep. This worked to some degree but milk cartons would move as the ice melted and spill and meat would become waterlogged. I saved enough money to buy a 12 volt cooler and solved the problem of having to buy ice every 3 days. However with this came another problem. The cooler draws so much power and is always running that the battery in my car would go flat. A jump pack solved that problem. I can now jump start my car whenever the battery dies. And if i know I'm parking up for a few days and not intending to run the car i can still get 1/2 a bag of ice and put it in the car cooler. I am now married and have 4 children under the age of 8 my wife and I live in stable rented accommodation and my life has changed for the better. However recently i needed to find a job urgently and there was no job vacancy where we lived. I told my wife that it wasn't a problem i would go to the city and find work. "But where will you live? We can't afford anything!" Was her reaction. " it won't cost me anything if i live out of my car." I replied. I put all my gear in the car and for 4 months i was back living in my car. But the long term history that i have. Having lived on the streets on and of for 26 years i had accumulated all the equipment i would need. So i lived in relative comfort. I don't advise anyone living rough now to run out and buy all the stuff that i have mentioned but if you are in a position to begin acquiring (financially able) or at risk of becoming homeless theres a start point. I recommend a van if you can get one cheap or trade your car for one. The added headroom and flat floor for sleeping on will make you much more comfortable. The toys can be purchased second hand if needed. I bought mine new and knowing that i couldn't afford to replace them have looked after them. Being able to watch the news or an evening movie is a great comfort. And if your up late waiting for the area your in to quieten down so that you can sleep you can watch a movie or surf the web. This also has the advantage that if passers by see you they won't assume your a bum or a hobo living in your car just a business person checking their emails on their way home and not bother calling the police to move you on. A good sleeping bag is life or death don't cheap out on this. Dacron is best value for your money but down is just as warm however takes up less space. (Is useless when wet and looses its efficiency every time it gets wet and is dried) not a good idea if you may end up sleeping outside. Don't waste your money on anything cheaper than $50 you will get a nylon cover stuffed with cotton wool. Great for camping during the summer but useless for roughing it outdoors in colder months. A small stove of some description. Butane if you have the space or solid fuel/metho if not. I would boil a pot of water every night especially in colder weather. And fill both a hot water bottle and a thermos. Wake up shivering cold in the middle of the night. Have a hot chocolate in bed and wonder to yourself about how those poor homed people are managing without this! A great morale booster and a lifesaver in itself. Showers and toilets are the only concern left to cover. I always carry a basin or a crate that can be emptied easily and filled with warm water for a sponge bath between showers. Many shelters or assistance agency's will have showers and all you have to do is ask for one. If they have one they won't refuse you. The other option is truck stops sometimes they charge a small fee or will give you free use with a fuel purchase. Find out where they are and what the deal is. These are usually open 24 hours so you can use them when its quiet and theres no-one around. Toilets i usually tried always to park close to one where i could or if not make use of one when its there. In my area many are closed at night due to vandals. I would keep a roll of toilet paper and a small folding trowel in a bag where it was easy to reach if i had to go. Not pretty but beats messing yourself. That's my story. Hope it helps someone. Or at least entertained you.
John Dyhouse 2 years ago from UK
A very disturbing account of the issues with shelters, the fact that there are not enough is common to many countries and cultures but even if one or two of the other reasons are encountered in each one it is most worrying. I guess that they are always full so often don't see the problems.
Stephanie36 2 years ago from Canada
I guessed some of these reasons (especially working hours, pets, and safety), but issues of disease actually hadn't occurred to me. It makes sense, of course. I find the questioning about if you have somewhere else to stay insane. If you had another place to stay, whether it's a friend, boyfriend, or other, you'd probably already be doing that rather than going to the shelter. Fantastic lens with really eye-opening info.
mike-hanson-5454 2 years ago
What is the reason that shelters often have such rigid check in times? Usually, these check in times are in the early evening, just right around the time some people are working. Shelters obviously provide a much needed service, but, the way that the one's that I have been in seem to want people to be stuck in them.Case in point. If you don't have a regular job, then you are not permitted to work via a day labor place.Ever lived on the streets?It costs money to ride the bus, or to buy gas for your vehicle and if you don't have an income then you'll be doing a lot of walking.Therefore, why don't most shelters make concessions that allow people to work day labor until they have enough money to pay for transportation, cell phone airtime and laundry etc..There are times that I believe that some shelters want to keep people in them because for every person in a shelter allows for money to be spent housing them.If a shelter had all of their clients get employment and thereby leave the shelter, those that run them would lose their jobs.If you ever stay at a shelter, do not by any means list the shelters address as your home address because it is well known in whatever town you are living in.The place that you fill out the application will more than likely not hire you because of the whole shelter/homeless stereotypes.Furthermore, if there is a plasma lab in your city and they know that you're staying at a shelter, they will not let you donate.I am not going to tell you why that is, instead, I invite you to call one up and ask them why they don't let shelter residents donate.
Kylyssa 2 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@yasminbrownmermaiddqueen: I'm sorry to hear that. Please be sure to exhaust every possibility of help that you can. If you live in the US please be sure you've properly applied for assistance at your local Department of Human Services; it's far easier to get help before the homelessness occurs than after. Also, keep in mind that not all shelters are bad, these are just all of the down sides people have found to using shelters in different areas in the US. Not every shelter has all of the down sides and some don't have any.
yasminbrownmermaiddqueen 2 years ago
quite scared now because ill be homeless in 2 days
AnonymousC831 2 years ago from Kentucky
Fantastic lens, very informative.
Thanks for this. I never realized that being homeless would be this difficult and complicated.
MVKilgore 2 years ago
Intensely informative!! Thank you for the insights and honest perspective on the Homeless subject.
tinastreasures01 2 years ago
Excellent and educational article. Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge.
inspirationalshortstories 2 years ago
Certainly a heart shuddering read. Also, I'd like to recommend you to read "At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey by Claude Anshin". Thanks
christian reese 5 2 years ago
This is so sad. I learned a little something about the homeless people thanks to this article. Thank you for sharing your experience. My everyday problems seem so insignificant right now.
HSP Connections 2 years ago from Port Townsend, WA, USA
Amazing article! I only have the limited experience of living in my car for a few weeks... not really educated enough on the matter to offer any great wisdom.As someone who grew up in Denmark-- a "social democracy"-- I am always appalled by the lack of "safety nets" in the US; there's so little that seems to separate those who are having "a hard time" from a life a life on the streets. And we end up with this "chicken vs. egg" situation where there's lots of crime because people have almost no non-criminal options... the situation is created (and made worse) by the way we-- as a culture-- champion self-reliance, independence and "everyone for themselves," to the point where public assistance is viewed with "suspicion" rather than as a benefit. To answer your question... no, I would not go to a homeless shelter; mostly to avoid the criminal element, which I am expanding to include assault, theft, drug abuse and other addictions having a direct impact on me. When I lived in my car I was actually working, but was out of couch surfing options and at minimum wage couldn't get a place to live (no deposit) for a while... even if this were to happen to me today (at 50-something) I would STILL live in the back of my truck before going to a shelter.
jnnfr4387 3 years ago
I work in a homeless shelter and frankly I have never been so disgusted. Everyone feels sorry for our down and out guests. I agree that maybe 50% of the people actually need to be there because of mental illness, severe addictions, or just being down and out. But the other 50% are CRIMINALS! These people have rap sheets that are sometimes in excess of 35 pages long. Charges that include: battery intending great harm, domestic abuse, keeping a drug house, habitual criminality, prostitution, contempt of court, multiple DWI'S - some with injuries to others, and on and on!!! They are players and hustlers, show no respect to staff, feel above the rules, and steal from the shelter. They request several of the same articles of clothing and then sell it on the street. They laugh and joke about pimping each other out during the day and then come back with wads of cash in their pockets! It truly disgusts me. i feel like we shelter and feed these people and then they go out and commit crimes during the day. I recently saw a photocopy of a donated check from someone's trust fund for thousands of dollars...I could n't help thinking those poor people have no idea the what kind of people they are supporting. These 50% are homeless because they have burned all of their bridges and nobody wants them anymore. I have no empathy for that!
chrisilouwho 3 years ago
This was certainly eye-openning. Thank you for sharing this.
ShelbyLinMarie 3 years ago
This is very moving. I am a social work major intent on working at the macro community level with my focus on homeless adults. These people are our fellow human beings! They need all of the help we can give them to get back on their way to living a happy quality of life.
NathanThomasTaylor 3 years ago
In some parts of the United States, police officers say to homeless people, "You can go to a shelter or you can go to to jail - make your choice now - we will not allow you to walk around on the sidewalks during daylight hours and we will not allow you to sleep on the ground at night." What they are doing is in effect punishing American citizens for not having the means to rent or purchase living space, because there is little difference between a shelter for the homeless and a jail for criminals. Some of us who have been homeless don't like either of these choices offered to us, so we find ways to evade the authorities. We hide in places where we are not likely to be seen by the police, such as inside abandoned buildings or in heavily wooded areas or in underground drainage systems. Some of us have been known to fake drug or alcohol dependency in order to get into 'sober living' housing facilities. Some of us fake having a mental illness in order to be placed in housing for the mentally ill. Some of us who have had very rough lives choose a final solution - suicide - which ends all pain from hunger and stops the horrible feeling of belonging no place in this world. What we really all need (excepting those with extremely severe mental or physical conditions, who need special help) is a decent job and an affordable place to stay, which is not easily attainable in many parts of the United States at this time. Instead, our nation's politicians give speeches about the 'heroic illegal aliens who only come here for work' and how 'we should never expect good jobs that have been exported to other countries to ever come back to our country.' What our nation needs in order to reduce the need for tax-payer subsidized shelters for the homeless and to reduce overall homelessness is a new generation of leaders - leaders who are aren't all millionaire and billionaire politicians. We need political leaders who come from the lower economic classes. If that seems an unlikely possibility, consider that we live in the internet era, where many societal changes are achievable by people who simply have the will to change the way things are now. Are you one of the people who will use the internet as a starting point to make the world a better place?
anonymous 3 years ago
Very educational. Each of us never know how close we are to being homeless. I am sure these people never thought it would happen to them. Of course not, in my opinion. I don't know the statistics behind this but I just keep my eyes and ears alert, as well as listen to media reports. I think this is an opportunity for non profit organizations to consider in order to restore dignity to those who have almost given up hope. (tried to post this at the appropriate spot but could not get the robot filter to accept)
amirahmed01 3 years ago
I actually took the time to sit and have a conversation of group oh homeless individuals. To be honest I was sitting down having a conversation for a whole hour! People tend to fear them because they are not "one of them" but they are still people like you and me. And they tell you things that are out of this world!
amirahmed01 3 years ago
I really enjoyed reading this article! I was on the verge of being homeless and I'm not out of the woods yet. I am poor, but rich in sole haha that's how I always tend to think. Yes, it is a tragic life, but like anything our bodies seem to adjust to any circumstance no matter how bad it is. I used to be able to eat three meals day, but now it is one and sometimes half a meal. But, what I've learned, is that my body adjusts well. Life will always be about survival of the fittest no matter how bad things tend to be.
Lowdown0 3 years ago
Hello, thanks for your insight, I've been homeless before to, usually did have a job. I smoked weed then but nothing else, I would find spots where no-one was. In Portland Oregon there is a bridge called the Burnside Bridge, and this is where many homeless people sleep every night. I would avoid this place and go to the parks outside of town a bit. Sometimes it would take some creative thinking and could be scary dark and mysterious, but I'd rather be eaten by a monster than stuck on the Burnside Bridge. Thanks again
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@wer_werf: It's actually cheaper to put a person into an apartment in some areas than it is to maintain a single cot in a homeless shelter for a month!
wer_werf 3 years ago
I dislike the only homeless shelter my county has. It turned away over 3,500 and only 54% of the people staying there are actually from my county. Why they are building a second one it won't be big enough to serve our population. I live in a very rich county and it disguist me that we are not helping our homeless but can help other people's homeless. It can cost tax payers 5 times as much to do emergency and transiting housing so why not just put funding for studio, one, and two bedroom apartments. I vote to either end all section 8 housing or find the funding for everyone that qualifies
WriterJanis2 3 years ago
This was a real eye opener for me. Thanks for putting this info out there.
Doc_Holliday 3 years ago
Very interesting lens. Thanks for sharing.
smine27 3 years ago from Tokyo, Japan
There are quite a number of homeless people in Tokyo. However I have never seen shelters here like in America. this wasa very educational and enlightening lens for me. Thank you for sharing your story.
QianaMDavis 3 years ago
Very enlightening article. Although this would make me think twice about operating a homeless shelter personally, I'd still like to volunteer at one and do whatever I can to help alleviate suffering of the homeless. I long ago became interested in this matter as a college student reading about whole families who having to live in shelters after the parent(s) lost their jobs then their homes, cars, savings etc. This article gives one a lot to think about and sheds a light on how many issues homeless people face and the problem with the system itself.
anonymous 3 years ago
@anonymous: This would be more of a transitional housing program then a shelter the way you are describing it!
SheGetsCreative 3 years ago from Seattle, WA
I am so glad that currently 88% of people in your poll above agree that the homeless are deserving of being treated like humans. You know how important this issue is to me so I'll just send you a big "Bravo" :)
ErikaV LM 3 years ago
Brilliant lens, it takes tons of courage to say all these things when so many amongst us live by the moto "you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you" -even when that hand feeds you crumbs. Well said, well done.
goldenecho 3 years ago from Texas
As a Christian I'm really sad to hear that a homeless shelter used their religious services to try to make people feel that God was punishing them by making them homeless. I think the Bible is very clear that we should be wary of labeling another's hardship as "punishment from God." I understand that you don't believe in God, but I just didn't want you to think that was what our faith really taught. Thank you for the article that spread light on so many things I was not aware of about homelessness.
anonymous 3 years ago
@GuruBurt LM: I agree, and it's rare that people can understand this without being in a similar situation.
anonymous 3 years ago
@CrazyHomemaker: Homeless accommodations just need to be redesigned. :)
anonymous 3 years ago
Great article. If i were rich I would create a new kind of "homeless shelter". It would be a community of buildings, Much like apartments. (homeless) People would live like humans: like everyone else. No check in days and no "kick out" days. They would stay there for as long as they needed. Although I would have security for everyones safety and sections for animals (to protect those with allergies). My place would not have a high turn over rate, so it would not have vacancies often, but the resources would be there if anyone needed them. I would ask for professionals to volunteer like veterinarians, and doctors and shrinks and addiction counselors and career finding resources, and I would not make it mandatory to see any of them. I would help those who seek for it, but leave the ones who don't want or need the help alone. I learned of ordinances restricting expansion from your article!! thanks. It's good to know when I design my Community of Hope :P
GuruBurt LM 3 years ago
I was fortunate enough to avoid having to live on the streets after I effectively became homeless. My parents allowed me to move back in with them and stay with them as I rebuilt my life after a separation and divorce when I became unemployed. Without their help I would have been at least couch surfing for a while. Life is wonderful again but without the critical support when I was depressed, financially destitute things could have been very different. There are many reasons good people become homeless. They need your help not your judgement.
CrazyHomemaker 3 years ago
This is an amazing look at homeless shelters. I often thought "If I were rich, I'd create one in my town". Now, with all of the instances you've described, I'd forget it and help out in other ways. Thanks for this lens and all of your other ones, too. Very interesting information!
DtKnight 3 years ago
This a very well thought out, very significant commentary on why homeless people do not use homeless shelters. The current nature of limited habitation is a quality of this world that is unfortunate, especially in light of all the land that is currently available but held in reserve. It says a tremendous deal about any country in the way that it treats its homeless, and your lens is a very good place to start on ways to try to combat homelessness and to also figure out ways to help those in need without in turn harming them, even if unintentionally.
sheilamarie78 3 years ago
Very moving account. People forget how close each of us is to being in the same situation. Thank you for opening a few eyes. P.S. Even if you've gotten some ignorant or even down right mean responses, your words will still work on those hearts. I hope you are okay, and I will keep you in my prayers (whether or not you are a believer, you can still feel -- and give -- the love, right?)
chi kung 3 years ago
fantastic piece of writing and very much needed!
LisaDH 3 years ago
You've done a great job highlighting the problems with homeless shelters. We need to do better than this.
nicolekato 3 years ago
This was a great lens that really made me think about homelessness in another light.
blestman lm 3 years ago
Awesome lens about a national travesty. I applied to work at a homeless shelter but I did not get hired -- I guess I was too naïve for at the time
CaztyBon 3 years ago
I really liked your lens I think if more people read the lens it would wake people up to the problems we have in the U.S.A. I know for a fact that a lot of what you wrote is true and I find it disgusting that in this day and age the U.S. would give much needed money to foreign countries that hate us instead of coming up with ways to prevent U.S. citizens from being homeless.
jaclyn-mellon 3 years ago
I was homeless for many many years and in all that time I used shelters twice, and only in dire situations. I did not use them because my pet could not come with me. I was also a minor thrown out by my abusive parents and could not utilize shelters because I was a minor whose parents could not be contacted. There was also my general fear of issues listed above, my stuff getting stolen, getting illnesses and bugs. I was homeless on and off (more on then off) for ten years and I never once got scabbies, I am sure that I would have had I slept in a shelter. Also I did not have identification which most if not all shelters require, I was not able to get my ID for many years because I did not have my birth certificate. But I could not get my birth certificate without ID and I could not get ID without my birth certificate. It was not until I had a child of my own and had his birth certificate to prove who I was that I was finally able to get my birth certificate sent to me!
takkhisa 3 years ago
What a great lens! I hope nobody would be homeless anymore. Thanks for writing this great lens.
anonymous 3 years ago
One of the other things I noticed during a spat of houslessness is that there is a lack of information online about the services these shelters offer, although they are happy to tell folks online how to give them donations.I stayed in a tent in a wooded area outside town and was not bothered though keeping clean was an issue. I still managed to work and save that way.If you look at the websites, the sites have plenty of "donate now' buttons but NO actual description of what to do if you need help. Also, the one thing not covered in the article --- MANY of these shelters such as the Salvation Army and others are starting to CHARGE 5 to 8 USD per night in addition to curfews that are incompatible with getting work.
Margot_C 3 years ago
Thanks for a great article. I did not realize the dangers of living in a homeless shelter. Thanks for enlightening me.
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: If the person was a renter, there is no area in America wherein landlords are responsible for the crimes of renters.I never encountered a law that considered guests in the home to be renters after a two day stay. Money has to change hands for them to be considered renters in the United States. If I discovered a renter to have a meth lab set up in her room, I would call the police. If a guest in my house set up a meth lab, I would call the police. Going in and messing with evidence at a crime scene is never a good idea.If you failed to screen a renter it is a different issue. I had a terrible experience with a renter, too, wherein I had to pay for my mortgage on the rental property while receiving no rent for 11 months and, by law, I couldn't get her evicted, during which time she trashed my rental house. I would have never been able to afford to repair it except that I allowed a homeless man who worked in maintenance at a local hospital to stay in it for free while he repaired the damage the former renter had caused. He rented it for four years after he finished and kept right on making improvements and was never late with the rent once I started charging for him to stay.My experiences were much different. The worst experiences I had with taking in over twenty different homeless people into my home over about a twenty year period were that one kid took twelve dollars from my purse and another made long distance phone calls without asking.
anonymous 3 years ago
I have had dealings with homeless people on several levels and tried helping the homeless in different ways. What I want to share is more about how laws are set up to discourage helping those in need rather they are homeless are about to be homeless. When my boys left for college my home became free of space that I was willing to allow those that found themselves in hard times to stay. I learned the hard way that by helping can be very costly both emotionally and monetarily. Although, I have many stories to share I will limit it to this one.I allowed a woman who had become homeless to use a spare room in my home. it didn't take long to realize she wasn't using the room to get on her feet and move on. She had set up a mobile meth lab (which I destroyed and disposed of taking to the local land fill not putting into my garbage). Since she had lived in the room for more than 2 days she had renters rights and used them against me. When I kicked her out the local police showed up with a warrant looking for a lab she had saw. Long story short had I left it I would be in jail. I have been told the items which I destroyed would had put me there for over 50 years. This is the worst case however, all the cases I tried to help ended up just like this one People taking advantage of another persons good nature and the laws are set up in favor of the one needing help so the one in however many that will benefit is left without help because the laws are set up to discourage those in a position to help, help. I live in a house with several extra rooms that I no longer consider using to help not even those I have known. Who can help with the laws set up to the homeowners disadvantage?
chironseer 3 years ago
Hi, me again, I forgot to say that I also worked at a homeless hostel in the UK, only for a few months though, my colleagues were good people, although some of them came from very dysfunctional backgrounds, and had issues with anger and control.because of the need to get workers as soon as possible, the staff weren't always suited to the job. The shift patterns were crazy, 12 hour nights, and days, changing regularly. I don't miss it, although I met some interesting people there.
SheGetsCreative 3 years ago from Seattle, WA
Illuminating and true... so much so you've inspired me to write about my own recent experience.
tokfakirmiskin 3 years ago
we are live under the same sun...
Girlwiththorns 3 years ago
Thank you for this insight into an area of life that I have no experience of and which is given little coverage in the mainstream media... The points about gay, lesbian and transgendered folk was particularly illuminating
anonymous 3 years ago
@Kylyssa: Thank you. I will look out for that article. I don't have a car, but I also hope to know how to make the right friends to stick around with. I have the kind of face that looks like "here's a good victim." I can only hope to survive out there if I became homeless.
Kylyssa 3 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: It is. I am actually currently working on such an article. One piece of advice I can give you straight off is to keep a vehicle if you have one. Sleeping in your vehicle is vastly safer than sleeping outside. Another bit of advice is that there's safety in numbers. Make a friend or friends you can trust and stick together. Not being seen is another factor. f no one knows where you are, no one can hurt you. Avoid high crime areas also. If you must use a shelter (and there are good ones in some areas) never, ever call attention to yourself when entering or leaving it. Go to and from it as directly and promptly as possible. Being identified as homeless is the single biggest danger of using a homeless shelter. I will link to the article (which I am still researching) within a week or so.
anonymous 3 years ago
This is very informative. Is there a thread which advises how to protect oneself and sleep outside? I would think it would be very dangerous to sleep outdoors as much as in a shelter. I would like to know how one may protect his or herself sleeping outside. i ask this because I may become homeless in a few months. If this happens, which looks likely, I'm going to buy a ticket to Florida with the little money I have so I won't freeze (I'm in New York, and the winters are too hard). I would try to get public housing if possible, go on assistance and to work, but I need to find out how to survive sleeping outdoors.
Lady Lorelei 3 years ago from Canada
I have thankfully never had to make use of a homeless shelter. Now that you mention the many reasons not to use one it really makes sense.
agagata lm 3 years ago
I am actually ashamed to say that I have never really thought much about it. Thank you for writing about your experiences. It's an eye opener.
Pat Goltz 3 years ago
I am too disabled to sleep outside. I would have no choice but to go to a homeless shelter. I would have to survive as best I could. This information is good; thank you for writing it.
kimadagem 3 years ago
Wow. It's about time someone talked about this. I'm glad you did.
TLStahling 3 years ago
This was very enlightening and I had no idea. Thank you for sharing.
MooshkaDaisy 3 years ago
I haven't imagined that there are so many problems with homeless sheltering. I completely changed my view on homeless people in the streets. Thank you very much for this lens!
kerbev 3 years ago from Upstate, NY
I read this and thought of this page - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/tuberculo...
GardenerDon 3 years ago
The idea of JennyLynn's below is a great one - & something we should investigate, as from your experiences it's obvious our present system is not so good.
Expat Mamasita 3 years ago from Slovakia
Thank you for bringing the problems of homeless shelters to a wider audience.
anonymous 3 years ago
We should build small rooms for rent like Japan does called capsule hotels. They are clean, cheap, and small. You can sleep in a safe clean bed, get a shower every day, and go about your life. This would eliminate 80% of the disease and homelessness in the US because people could work and live like this until they could afford better housing.
anonymous 3 years ago
Thank you so much this helped a lot for my video documentary on homeless people...
anonymous 3 years ago
Very informative. We really need more shelters. In my opinion the should have separate facilities for each group of people. Family only shelters, drug rehab shelters, Men only shelters, women only shelters. Due to safety reasons they def should do weeding of people for safety reasons. Why not a building to take of them, give them hope, treat them like people. If I had the money I would make each person responsible for his own volunteer to stay at my building. Provide there own kitchen, be a cook, be a dishwasher, be in charge of garbage, Be apart of the laundry room, help wash cloths, help fold cloths, help maintain the building, with duties as, clean floors, clean walls, clean yard, That way they could stay there. Provide a regular space for cleanliness products, such as shampoo, soap, laundry soap, toothpaste. People even homeless have got to help also for there own well being & if the truly want help they will not mind doing an exchange of work for a place to sleep. We need a whole new outlook on such facilities for the homeless. If they never change on how they operate they will continue too have the same problems. I have seen poor people take advantage of free food. They walk in with their hair done, Nike shoes and clean cloths, Nails done and fine jewelry. I am sorry but if you have money to to that then you do not need food. You can use the money you had for those things and take care of your food. If you have money for a pack of cigarettes then you have money for food. I do feel sorry for the homeless, but like I said they still have to be weeded out like everyone else in the world. Better shelters means improved conditions for everyone. They need love and hugs and concern. I get upset when people just say "here is just a blanket for you " do you think just a blanket will really help everything? They need more people to stand up for those homeless people who really want help. we need more advocates for the cause, more people to stand up and fight. Your information was very good and very informative, Thank you for sharing it. God Bless
alexbricker 4 years ago
Thank you Kylssa for sharing this information. This side of the argument is not told very often. When it is told, I feel people ignore the real issues.
dumpstergourmet 4 years ago
Thanks for your honesty and vulnerability here. An informative and hard hitting lens, thanks for publishing and sharing. We are a better informed group of people because of your willingness to speak out. Thank you.
anonymous 4 years ago
What a great lens, makes you really appreciate what you got.
dellgirl 4 years ago
~SquidAngel Blessings~ for this wonderful lens on Why Homeless People Don't Use Shelters. What a great article, its so full of helpful information. Thank you for sharing, I learned a lot here.
anonymous 4 years ago
I have never been homeless, but I have sense enough to know that I am not immune to the possibility, especially living in Los Angeles. Perhaps shelters are not the answer. As they imply a temporary solution. Maybe cooperative living might work where people can live, work, share in the responsibilities in one large residential home. Just a thought.
karen-stephens 4 years ago
Thank you for this important lens. I have forwarded this to our city council, demanding to know if this is happening in our city. Angel Blessings xxo
lookupphonenumber 4 years ago
Very interesting and very realistic! I became homeless once for couples of months! Thanks god I knew no "shelter" then!
anonymous 4 years ago
my name is jessy i am a kaplan university student writing a "Big Idea" project paper. my paper is on a graduatory homeless shelter. If you come into my shelter homeless you stay in the shelter building. i offer a program that helps people get on their feet but transitioning them to apartments on the sameproperty and under the shelter management this will prepare people for paying bills and being slf saficiant. there are a veriety of feature my shelter will have. your blog has helped to better the rules and regulations to my shelter. thank you.
anonymous 4 years ago
the waiting list is too freeking long. lost my home.. on the streets with a child and no one will freeking help.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: Hi: The only hope is God! Take it from someone who has been homeless for the last 2 years, without a choice, and God always comes though somehow.I am really impressed with the Lord. There is no way I can distrust Him. Remember sweetie He loves you very much, and so do I. He is not going to forsake ya. Ask Him for guidance, and wisdom. I am so sorry to hear that, your husband abandoned you, but Jesus will never do so no matter what. Love and Laughter!
anonymous 4 years ago
Hi: I am homeless myself. It started in 2010, due to losing my disability benefits that I had been received by the insurance company from the company I was working for. At the time I had my dear lifetime companion doggie, and there was not a chance that I would think of being separated from it. As she was old, she passed away, when we both were homeless, leaving me without any other family in the world, nor a single true friend. God helped me, and I got an apartment through a program, where this agency paid the rent for six months. They closed, and there I go back to the street. I was very scared of homeless shelters for all the reasons mentioned in previous articles, besides, I could not help being on the street. I tried one shelter for a month an a half, but I became more depressed, losing control of my life, which is addiction free, and I left, since then, I am still homeless living in my car. I pray 24/7, and trust God that sometime, somehow, He will work a miracle for someone's mercy, and I can get help to get a decent RV to live in. I am skilled, but with my disability, it is very hard to be able to work full time, so I just do gigs or whatever I can.I personally feel, that every homeless person should be helped one on one situation, with dignity, love, compassion, and without judgement. Thank you for reading. May God Bless Y'all.
NibsyNell 4 years ago
Thank you for such an eye opening lens. You're a very inspirational woman to turn such a negative life experience into a positive by educating others in such a way. :)
AstroGremlin 4 years ago
Homeless shelters are a business. They keep banker's hours for their own convenience, and they allow "whatever the market will bear." Why? Because they are funded by grants that assume, like the rest of us, that they have the best interests of the homeless at heart. That they are filthy, dangerous, inconvenient and exclusive doesn't stop the flow of money, does it? Then why would you expect anything to change? The problem: the "customers" aren't the customers. When has government-funded business ever been as efficient, clean and responsive as the private sector? I feel for the homeless because they have become "clients" of a business that doesn't care about their satisfaction or happiness.
Kylyssa 4 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: There is hope as long as you don't give up. And if you do give up you can come back around to trying again. Over twenty years ago, I was a homeless young adult with Asperger's Syndrome, a learning disability that causes difficulty in social interactions, after my parents ran away from home. I wasn't as experienced as you surely are but I stumbled around blindly and awkwardly and eventually found my way out. I knew virtually no one who could help and no idea of who to approach for help.Contact any relatives you may have, even if you haven't contacted them in a while, even if you don't think they can or will help you. They may know who can. I have seen dozens of homeless people find help and get out of homelessness this way even when they were sure none of their family would help.If you belong to a church, talk to your pastor, minister, or priest about your situation. If you are in the US and haven't already, go down to your Department of Human Services and apply for assistance. Contact your local Salvation Army. Search for food banks in your area and contact the one that serves your zip code. And while the system of homeless shelters in America is faulty, most homeless shelters provide help. Conditions in one area do not apply to all. This page is not intended to make homeless people or nearly homeless people lose hope but to show homed people, those who hate homeless people for being homeless and think they could just stop being homeless if they put any effort into it, that homeless shelters aren't all roses and honey. It's also to show those same homed people that homelessness sucks and that it is a significant obstacle, not something that can be cured just by checking into a homeless shelter. It's also to show that the homeless shelter option doesn't even exist for some people.
anonymous 4 years ago
Today 8/28/12 is my 47th birthday. My husband abandoned me 7 months ago. I have no money and no place to turn. I will be thrown out of my current housing shortly. So I was looking to find help .. but I see now there is no hope.
anonymous 4 years ago
I do think that people in need of help should be grateful for any assistance that's offered, however, I don't think they should necessarily accept it. It's important to show appreciation for legitimate attempts to help, no matter how meagre, but the sad fact is some help -- even genuinely well-meaning help -- is worse than worthless, being more problematic than no help at all.Not long ago I saw a reedy, unhealthy-looking man being given a sandwich bag full of tortilla chips so salty the crystals were visible from a few yards away. He was also given a bunch of water, and strong encouragement to drink it. This was good, it was 100+ degrees out, the man was obviously losing a lot of electrolytes through sweat.Take the same situation but WITHOUT the water, and the man ends up being poisoned by these charitable individuals, he could get sicker or even be killed off completely by it. I think an appropriate response in that case is along the lines of "Thank you, but I'll have to decline unless I can get a lot of water to go with that. I appreciate what you're trying to do for me, but I'm already dehydrated from sweating, the salt will make it worse, and that can kill me faster than hunger."It's not any person's responsibility to accept additional burden or injury just for the sake of making the givers feel good about themselves.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: i agree but it is not just banking and selfishness that caused it those two take up only twenty percent in the causes of homelessness fifty percent is because they were hurt emotionally and forty percent is of other things. sorry if I'm being a smart alic.:(
WhiteKnight7770 4 years ago
Great Lens; I use to work at a homeless shelter and everything you said is so true.
oakstreet 4 years ago
This len help us to know more about the homeless people and their lives as well. I hope we can always help these kinds of people. A "like" from me.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: It's also selfishness too
Heidi Vincent 4 years ago from GRENADA
This is a very educational lens Kylyssa in which you have succeeded in educating us on homelessness. Thanks for sharing especially as I realize this must be a very painful subject to share on given your own experience.
anonymous 4 years ago
jesus was homeless and others great people were also.the banking system is the cause of large part of it
Onemargaret LM 4 years ago
Excellent lens! Thank you so much for the insignt!
kburns421 lm 4 years ago
I just commented but have one more thing to say. Not only is this insightful information, this is an inspiration for me as a writer. This is what writing should be and what it should do. It should make people think and see things in a different light. The fact that you have had personal experience with this and included that made it even more powerful.
kburns421 lm 4 years ago
Wow. I never knew all this. I never even thought about it. This is so incredible, insightful, and well written. I really learned something, and not just factual information. You've really changed my views about homeless shelters and homeless people from reading this and one of your other lenses. Although I've never just assumed that homeless people were lazy or deserved anything bad, you still have really made me see some things in a different light, in ways I hadn't thought about them before.
OliviaDaughter LM 4 years ago
I am a social worker and my internship was in a shelter for battered women. That was 19 years ago, but I remember the women and children. They had a home to go to but it was to unsafe for them to return. Many of them decided to return to their abuser some because they wanted to return to their abusers but others wanted to get out of the life in shelter. It was hard on them to live in shelter with children and get them to school. The mothers had to leave out of the shelter during the day and look for jobs, etc and it was difficult. Thanks for this lens.
Normyo Yonormyo 4 years ago
A great lens kylyssa, thank you for your time and effort to give me this insight into what troubles people without homes. I can only say that knowing these reasons I can only agree with the decision so many homeless people make to stay far away from shelters.
Normyo Yonormyo 4 years ago
I hope your insightful lens will create the much needed understanding of people to create the motivation to change the situation you describe.I can only imagine that the reasons you give for not using shelters is the same world wide.The situation as you describe should not exist in a society that calls itself civilized.
wolfiemeister 4 years ago
Brilliant lens, I hope as many as possible see this
teinesamoa1971 4 years ago
I've worked in a homeless shelter that targeted the most severe members of that population. They had serious mental issues and some had full blown AIDS. What surprised me the most when we were doing outreach with that segment was how many of them had no desire to sleep in a shelter. They'd had experiences of being assaulted, had caught diseases, had had what few belongings they had stolen, and a number of other frightening experiences. Some were too paranoid to be in such a restricted environment. Many of them used the workers at the shelter as trustees to receive their checks and had no desire for conventional living.I also have experience with a close family member being homeless. He cites the same reasons as why he chooses not to sleep in a shelter. I don't have a choice but to accept his way of living and try to understand the way that he thinks.Thank you so much for posting this.
anonymous 4 years ago
This is a real eye opener. Thank you for getting the word out. Keep up the good work.
sunny saib 4 years ago
can't speak in most parts of your lens because then i wouldn't be knowing what i'd be talking about.. but you do know it so much.. i wish you all the best in future.. your lens is for sure an eye-opener..
Kylyssa 4 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: Each "bed" in an average homeless shelter costs more to operate than it would to rent an apartment two people could live in, even with mostly volunteer labor.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: It takes money to turn on lights, run water, pay employees, pay rent or mortuage payments, buy needed supplies and fixtures. If you serve food then it takes money to buy food, prepare food, pay cooks, more rent and taxes. Where does the money come from? Donations? Not enough. Grants? Not enough. Nothing in life is free except a hard time.
ElizabethOSP 4 years ago
This is a disturbing, ***excellent*** lense. You are a blessing to us. Thankyou!!!
microfarmproject 4 years ago
This is an interesting lens that brought up some issues that I had not considered before. Thanks!
kmyangel 4 years ago
Very interesting lens, you are a great and strong woman !!!!!!!
anonymous 4 years ago
It was refreshing to read real reasons people avoid the shelters. I've been homeless and knew instinctively to avoid the shelter for the reasons you listed. I'm so sick of people saying "you know there's a shelter" or "why don't you go to the mission?" They don't want to hear that the mission is only for men or that most of the people there are criminals and I'm not. They don't believe that I'm just a throwaway family member without a job. They need to believe I'm a criminal and drug abuser or they'd have to face it could happen to them.
Millionairemomma 4 years ago
Thank you writing this!
debate76ster 4 years ago
I think it is part of an amazingly large problem that we in America choose to ignore. I created a lens about the rich poor gap recently, and it made me realize that there is a significant plot to keep those in economic strife in economic strife.
flycatcherrr 4 years ago
Thank you for writing this. Your article is a clear, articulate, intimate, and deeply moving treatment of a particular aspect of homelessness that is not widely understood. And I know it's right on the mark, because I was once homeless, too. Only briefly, thank God, and long ago, but the experience was terrifying and humiliating; the memories will never leave me. 'High Five' to you for shining a light on this important (and increasingly important) issue from an "insider" perspective. We really need to start to treat each other like human beings, regardless of personal problems and/or financial status.
DiscoverWithAndy 4 years ago
Wow, incredibly informative article. And very brave of you to speak out for something you believe in - and it's great that you want to not just constructively criticize, but that you want to make it better.
anonymous 4 years ago
I've read some of your other lenses on homelessness as well as this one, and they are a real eye-opener. I live in the UK, and there's not much easily-accessible information on this topic, especially not from people who have had to live through the experience. You've really educated me; and they are a series of well-written articles.
anonymous 4 years ago
Is it right for shelters to charge for a bed?
emmesinger1 4 years ago
http://www.squidoo.com/i-live-in-a-van .... Here is a lens written by someone who was "homeless by choice" (as mentioned in my commentary below.) She also noticed the lack of bathrooms issue, which makes me laugh to remember it, though it's no laughing matter.
emmesinger1 4 years ago
This may sound strange, but one summer about 10 years ago, when my children were with their father for the summer, I decided to try to understand this issue better, but first-hand. I closed up my pretty little townhouse and lived out of my car far about 2 weeks. Yes, I know it sounds crazy for an adult to CHOOSE to do. During those 2 weeks I slept in under bushes (deliberately undercover) in two different public parks. (Yes, all night in a sleeping bag. In fact, it was the scariest thing I had ever done.) I also squatted a house one night with a friend (yes, being bad, but again doing relatively safe experimenting). On this experience I discovered the true danger of CARS and traffic. My lord! how people drive. They go about as if they are invincible and blind in their cars. I can't tell you the number of times I felt so unseen as I had to abruptly get out of the way of a blind person driving his-her car in a PARKING LOT!! So my (1) consciousness grew of how we live UNconsciously with our cars. (2) I became terribly aware of how our nation does NOT believe in public bathrooms! What I had to go through sometimes, just to use the fricken toilet was amazing!! And imagine a truly desperate person (I was not) who cannot afford to purchase merchandise just for the right to go to the bathroom. Additionally, I became aware of a huge subculture that PREFERS to live in this way, counter-culture, seeing the mortgage as a means to perpetuate wage-slavery, etc. On abandoned, unsold, but available homes (and this BEFORE the crisis) I saw many signs written by the homeless-by-choice that read, "who is really the owner?" .... I think we should create a MonkeyBrain Lens on this issue, no? Could prove very interesting.3) I also became aware of the reality and function of "dumpsterdiving" ... (another lens to make)4) And I discovered Western Washington University's wonderful program on "Alternative Construction ". Here I met many innovative, activists living out of a bus, a yurt, a teepee, an old VW wagon, to name a few. 5) The University also has a great program that these activists engaged called, "Permaculture" -- A type of natural agriculture that works WITH nature rather than counter. (Yet another lens to write.)So, (sigh!) thanks for this lens and your shared consciousness.P.S. I have PINNED this lens to my Pinterest board, "strength and resiliency"In fact, I first visited your lens just 2 weeks and 4 lenses ago when I was a NEWBIE in the Squid Sea! ... Today I came back to PIN it and engage you further (as you can see!!) When you have an available moment, I would appreciate it if you could stop by and give me some feedback on my two (somewhat delicate "cause" lenses), "breast cancer tattoos" and "breast cancer pinkwashing".I have arranged the earnings (which are currently 0.00, unfortunately) to be shared with Women's Future Benefit (Squidoo doesn't have any specifically related to breast cancer, so far as I have seen. Let me know if you know differently?)Sending you a thank you in advance! EmmeSinger
AnnMarie7 4 years ago
I agree with this lens 100%. I was homeless for several weeks in 2001. Everything you have stated here is true as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure every city is different, but many of the the things you described here are true where I live. Or at least they used to be. It's been awhile since I've been homeless (Praise God), but I believe my city has made some changes to the homeless situation. I think the shelters here are now segregated between the sexes. A new shelter was built for just for women and children, and there is a separate shelter for the men. This is at least a step in the right direction. Co-ed shelters are a nightmare for single, homeless women. The men are like sharks circling their prey. Homeless men outnumber women here probably 4 to 1. It's frightening, and a woman really has to keep her wits to stay safe.I appreciate this lens. It brings to light a very serious problem in America today...especially when so many have lost their homes to foreclosures, due to losing their jobs.
anonymous 4 years ago
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.John 20:29
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: im sorry ben but people like you should be put in an institution or worse prison you are a prime example to a horrible person and im 16 and relize this and ps. get a life and stop living in yours moms basement
pcgamehardware 4 years ago
Very informative lens. I never realized that the situation of the homeless shelters in our country are in that bad of shape... Thanks for opening my eyes to a very dark reality that I didn't know existed... Great lens and topic, it's just that it is sad that the homeless people are treated the way they are. As far as most of the bad comments listed below are concerned, just ignore them.Many times kids or very immature adults get on here and run off at the mouth without knowing what they are talking about. Notice that most of the bad comments are not from Squidoo members? The Squidoo community is filled with many great mature adults, so if you get tired of the bad comments, set your guestbook settings to "logged in squidoo members only". Anyway, great lens... :)
anonymous 4 years ago
Great job on covering a difficult subject, 2 subjects, really--homelessness and disabiity.
JustOneGuy 4 years ago
@anonymous: Really? What if I build and operate a homeless shelter of my own without anyone being forced to pay for it through taxes? Would that go for my shelter too? If so, then you are saying that it is ok to burn your place down. You sleep there, right? Would you mind giving me your address, just in case? And by the way, have any of your ancestors ever been homeless? How about those who came over on boats and stayed in temporary housing, like mine did? Would you have burned them down too? Or maybe you just shouldn't drink before you post.
anonymous 4 years ago
@anonymous: you, my friend are a mental midget, an uncompassionate ignoramus and a agnoptimistic, bloated jelly-fish of a human being.
JustOneGuy 4 years ago
@Kylyssa: It's tragic that the causes of homelessness aren't being eliminated. There will probably always be people who don't have a normal "home" so the ones that you are trying to help are the ones who have simply hit a bump in the road and need help for a rather short period of time to get on their feet. But that problem, getting on one's feet, isn't so easy in an economy where jobs are disappearing and the cost of everything is going up. And older folks, like myself, are making do so far but if the economy collapses, we will probably be homeless too and if we get in that position there will be millions more than there are now. You commented that you liked my rational religion lens. Thank you. I reread it and I don't like it. It's too hard to get through the first sections. I like your lenses. You write very well and your style is easy to read. Anyway, you have nice lenses. I'll stop by and check some other ones out too. Like you, I'm an atheist but I'm not sure that means we can't be religious, whatever that means. Especially if we change some of the fundamental rules. Not based on faith, no god, etc. Anyway, I could use some help on my new religion: the church of virtue. It would be nice to solve the problems of human predation, wouldn't it?
greenmind 4 years ago
Too many trolls here. We're all people, people!
anonymous 4 years ago
i think homeless shelters should be burnt down... certain rat and bedbug, disease infested mongrels should be allowed in society... i dont donate because its their fault for being losers... do they think money comes easy? hell no.. stupid beggars...
anonymous 4 years ago
I stayed in a homeless shelter for teens for a few weeks. I stopped going back because I was bullied. And because someone set fire to my clothes bin.
DeniseDurham2011 4 years ago
Very good lens. I knew the situations were less than ideal, I had no idea it was THAT bad. I have known quite a few homeless people & not many of them were chomping at the bit to get to a shelter. Now i know why.
anonymous 4 years ago
I tried getting help for housing from a Veterans organization in Fairfield, CA. This organization was sponsored by the Community Action Council. After filling out all the required paperwork, I was turned away because I didn't fit thier profile. So just being a homeless veteran isn't just what is required. Sorry man... I've lost my military bearing years ago, and so I live where I can find a warm soft spot.
anonymous 4 years ago
If you look at statistics, homeless shelters ARE FULL. Shelters in the United States only house around 10% of the total homeless population. There are around a thousand shelter beds in Santa Clara County and around ten thousand homeless in Santa Clara. Depending on who you ask and what year you look at. This is no different, all over the United States only 10% of the homeless are sheltered. The fact that there are so many turned away that appear at shelters during the 'early afternoon' to check in which does nothing for people working or going to school. So I sleep by the river in a tent and am two classes away from my Bachelors of Science in Information systems. I have over 80 published essays and over 42,000 unique reads on my essays. Maybe someday someone will over look the fact that I am homeless and hire me. I'll just keep improving myself and going to job interviews where they discriminate against me and keep slapping and sloshing water over the people that continue to say that homeless are all Junkies, Criminals and Crazy.
BobBlackUK 4 years ago
Great lens. I worked as a volunteer in a homeless centre in the UK for several years and got a much better understanding of this subject. More people should try volunteering if only for a couple of hours a week.
esvoytko lm 4 years ago
I am new on this site, but this is easily the best lens I have found so far. Thank you for helping more people to engage with this issue.
Angelgirl1976 4 years ago
This is a fantastic lens, 10/10. My brother has been homeless for 7yrs, got to stay at a friends bedsit, which is a room and a living room in one for past 3yrs and after waiting 10yrs has now got a flat. He slep in fields, old abandoned caravans, sofas, church yards, you name it, he has slep there. I have helped him out over the years as drugs did eventually play a part in his life, but things are looking better now fingers crossed. Thanks for sharing :)
anonymous 4 years ago
I had a friend that was homeless, he would go as far as to confront others that would try tobeat me up for my money. His name was Raphal. When a con-artist would con me out of money, he would try to make me happy. I even tried to offer him to stay at my place, but the motel manager wouldn't allow it. He was like a brother to me, and he helped me set my life straight. A few weeks later, he was hit by a train and I only got to see him one last time. That man changed my whole life and I became a better person becasue of him.It angers me that the homeless would be viewed as criminals when they are not. I hope your current state will improve. Hopefully, this piece of information will being awareness towards the homeless as well as better understanding of this problem.
anonymous 4 years ago
I've never lived in a homeless shelter, but I did stay for one day at a battered women's shelter. I left after one day even though I knew my abusive partner was looking for me and I might not be safe, because they wanted me to do housework in the shelter and go to therapy rather than look for a job. I was not being battered because I was crazy or a bad housekeeper, and the thing I needed the most was work, so that I could save enough money to leave town and start again somewhere else away from the abuse (which I did---today I have three college degrees and a good job, and own my own home.)
juniperberry lm 4 years ago
Great lens - having worked in the sector i feel that most of these are due to a lack of resources; if there were plenty of beds and we paid staff better we could do a better job at then working with individuals where they are at. Unfortunately there is so much need that even those who do a good job get overwhelmed, overworked and eventually burn out.I have heard many of these reasons for not wanting to stay at a shelter - one that stands out for me from a number of people I have worked with is the fear that if they stay at such a place they will fall back in with the wrong crowd and undo all the hard work they have done in removing themselves from addiction networks and such places where drugs particularly are easily accessible.
LaraineRoses 4 years ago from Lake Country, B.C.
I believe that my father was a very good example to follow. A true christian, he gave generously to anyone he could. I didn't fully realize this until after his death. Taking care of his income tax form I couldn't help but note how many charitable contribution receipts he had accumulated in one year. Although always looking after this family, he also gave generously to others. Dad never expected repayment of any kind but I remember in one particular case a $20. cheque he received in the mail. It was from a homeless person he had given money to. Dad cried.
ifuturz 4 years ago
This is amazing
sherridan 4 years ago
Gosh, this is amazing! I thought homeless people did not use shelters because there were not enough beds, but this puts a whole new perspective on it. Please God that I am never in this situation; but I should have headed straight for a shelter, but I would think twice now.
Talktomeuk 4 years ago
Again just want to say thank you for educating me, Im no longer ignorant to the horrors of being homeless, I now understand as best as I could without becoming homeless myself what people in poverty have to go through, you have a great lens. Ive just started my own lens, its about helping people through life problems like bullying, would you mind if I was to get someone who has the same experiences as you to talk to you if they ask me about homelessness? Cheers anyway all the best.
jimmyworldstar 4 years ago
Standards for homeless shelters needs to be raised. I've heard of the awful unsanitary conditions in many and wouldn't be surprised in people avoiding the danger of it.
sheezie77 4 years ago
Thank you for posting this lens, thumbs up!
aesta1 4 years ago from Ontario, Canada
This is really very enlightening. Here in Phnom Penh, there is one person sleeping in the sidewalk but he has a home in the province. He finds it hard to work in the farm so he'd rather panhandle in the street. Our street is very safe as all the tuk tuk drivers know him and this is largely a Buddhist community so no one will hurt him. I know that others have better reasons than this and as I understand it is a choice. It is complicated and having more of those shelters which often create its own problems may not be the answer.
TolovajWordsmith 4 years ago from Ljubljana
I already visited this lens months before and still found it as interesting and intriguing reading. Thank you!
hlkljgk 4 years ago from Western Mass
wonderful insight
this was the thought-provoking lens
anonymous 5 years ago
Returning with a fresh blessing....
Titia 5 years ago from Waterlandkerkje - The Netherlands
Thanks for this eye opener lens.
ChrissLJ 5 years ago
If I were to lose my home, I wouldn't be able to go into a shelter. I have 2 dogs and a cat who have been my faithful companions for years. They have comforted me in times of sadness and loneliness. Shared my joy in times of happiness. They mean more to me than any physical belongings ever could. I could not and would not leave them to fend for themselves or take them to a shelter where 75% of all animals are put to sleep.I would also like to add though that not all homeless shelters have all the horrible conditions. About 10 years ago, I spent the entire summer volunteering at a shelter that offered childcare for the working homeless that lived at the shelter. Medical and dental care was offered 6 days a week to both the homeless and people in the community who otherwise would have no medical care. Families were never split up... even if they were a single father with children, a married couple without children, etc. Individuals could also CHOOSE to attend life skills classes and educational type classes that would help them find jobs. Classes were offered 6 days a week during the days and evenings. They also had transitional housing where families with children could be put into apartments while working on their goals, rebuilding financial independence after getting a job, etc. There were other problems, but the shelter was ran in more of a way shelters should be run and residents were treated as family instead of criminals.
Zut Moon 5 years ago
Good Lens. I mostly write fun stuff but have also have written on social problems as I have done in Self-Destructive Behaviour. What a mosiac we live in - from very poor to very rich ... just doesn't seem right to me ....
anonymous 5 years ago
May be an old topic but very relevant to an issue I am facing. First to give my responsesaaa to all the questions asked. It is obvious that as the population in countries increase that there will be a greater responsibility on the government of any country to help people in need. The government system in America though with a few good neccessary things tends to be way too busy to think of smart ways to simplify processes and help its people. As far as being homeless goes, I would say that I would be afraid if homeless to use a homeless shelter. This goes without saying that beggars can indeed be choosers. All humans should have dignity, and no matter what causes a person to become homeless as long as they are doing the best within their power to cause positive change then the environment around them should help that change. The reason why this is relevant to me is, that as a 21 year old, I am living at a parents house. This is not while attending school or holding a job. I perform many roles to keep the house stable but in the end it is rare that any needs are met and it has been this way for quite some time. In a way this family is a job as they all require some type of care from me. If I consider this place a job but not a home then I am homeless. Now say if the circumstances here prevent me from getting health insurance, a job, or any type of college education outside the library. Then there really isn't a way to move forward. In most cases such a struggle causes increased signs depression [whether or not it already existed]. Depression is a disability which can last a very long time and also affects the lives of many people my age and some older. If i don't have health insurance not only can it not be diagnosed but if I receive any other injuries at all I am left to pay a bill i surely cannot pay homeless or not in the same situation. There are no programs that help people with absolutely no funds but a home to get health insurance. Getting a place to sleep doesn't come without its headaches to deal with and if you go with someone else it will require your reliance on them to do paperwork on your behalf. This also goes with some problems. If you are kind you find your needs not met while you understand that other people are human beings and have things to do but then find those very people who are supposed to bring relief degrading you for your inability to deliver. Life is a big puzzle box and it shouldn't be like that all the time. If it should be a puzzle maybe some pieces should be simple like the framework of the picture while others seem to be more complex and can fit incorrectly into the frame but not create the correct picture. People who are homeless, financially unstable, without parents or guardians, without education and without skills are human beings but in the end a system which requires you to have all of the above subdues the person in addition to all of the things their life may have to offer as well. This leads back to the government. If the government is good, there won't be a lot of these shelters. Why? If there are good shelters providing the services so that people can positively change their lives then there isn't as much of a problem in later generations, it would be a ripple effect [hopefully] where success washes over the first wave of failure and then continues flowing. The government collects taxes, so the government shouldn't be able to enact any laws in which it cannot provide convenience to its citizens instead of discomfort. {If your state requires car insurance it should offer insurance to people with cars]. States may have health insurance but instead of asking about the individual's status [wealth, disabilities, education, skills, careers] it typically adds this to a list of things others must also provide. [How is one a house owner but does not have health insurance or a job?]So yes this leads to the fact that our government isn't corrupt but certainly not user friendly and sometimes the people pulling the strings aren't looking out for the interest of the citizen down to those who don't have homes. There is no prioritization either, these things are problems that are put off to the side and ignored for the next generation to handle somehow...
anonymous 5 years ago
I am in an abuse situation that I refuse to leave because my only option would be a homeless shelter and I have mental health issues that are not conducive to living in group quarters with no privacy. I am also unable to hold down a job and this is a problem because these places have time limits of only 30-60 days before you are tossed into the street. Many people don't understand this and have this strange idea that the shelter is somehow going to get you an apartment. On a daily basis ignorant type people try to bully me into shelters claiming they will help me get housing, job training ect. They don't believe me when I tell them that shelters don't do that. If you have kids you might be lucky enough to get a section 8 place through social services but if you don't have kids there are no housing options other than a shelter that will toss you in the street. Like you, I am no drug user either. It makes me so angry that people think that is the only reason a person becomes homeless. Disability is actually the number one reason for homelessness. I blame the media for this ignorance. Right wing type people are always stereotyping the poor and homeless as drug addicts so they have an excuse to ignore them.
theSEOmama 5 years ago
This was a truly great lens, very insightful and informative.
traveller27 5 years ago
Thanks for sharing. Blessed by a travelling angel.
SiochainGraSonas 5 years ago
I am glad you shared this lens with us. I hope others find it. It was very educational.
anonymous 5 years ago
May you be heard and may homeless shelters become places of safety, dignity and somehow find ways of increasing privacy as well as looking toward alternatives that individuals can move beyond temporary and to day time opportunities that meet real needs. Another work of excellence by you and may each negative response be as a step over another barrier...you are doing an important work.
anonymous 5 years ago
thank you so much for this information, you are helping me a lot for my homework. i dont if anyone else couldve helped more.
anonymous 5 years ago
Shelters are necessary but should be considered a very temporary stop on the way to permanent, and supportive if needed, housing. Housing is a fundamental human right and EVERYONE deserves their own, safe, clean home. Stop helping to manage homelessness and start demanding we END homelessness.
anonymous 5 years ago
Oh for the ignorance of some people, I am sorry that you have received some really angry responses, please don't take it to heart, these people are just ignorant, you are not saying that there shouldn't be any homeless shelters, what you are actually pointing out are the dangers that are faced when using a shelter. I have stated above that rental accommodation is a much better way to go and like I have said when in their own home that they dont have to line up for homeless people have a better opportunity to start all over again. We actually need more rental accommodation that can be shared.
Rhidawn 5 years ago
Thank you for the info! I didn't know the shelters were that bad
Diana Wenzel 5 years ago from Colorado
There has to be a better way. Sounds like there is a big need for shelter reform. I appreciated this honest and first-hand view of the realities of homeless shelters. Under these conditions, I would most likely avoid shelters, too.
SydneyH LM 5 years ago
Interesting and thoughtful lens. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
anonymous 5 years ago
Hello. I read the information on homeless shelters and have learned a lot. It is very heart breaking knowing that our nation is suffering more than now due to homeless. I must say shame on majority of rich who know they can extend a hand in helping to bring progress to homeless shelters. Its time to take focus off oneself and put it on the nation needs. Jesus came to save the poor, not to ignore them. For we are created in his image. Man kind must be very careful of how we treat one another, cause you never know what situation you can be in. Why must we be so self centered and not pay attention to the needs of our brothers and sisters.
brytaylor 5 years ago
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge of homeless shelters. I enjoyed reading it and feel like I learned a lot.
anonymous 5 years ago
This is a very eye-opening lens. I learned things I did not know. It's good that you write about your experience and share it. Hopefully the right people, politicians and decision makers, will read it and realize that they need to make changes.
samsaradakini 5 years ago
What a powerful lens on homelessness and shelters - I had no idea. So now I know what to say when I hear a haughty "They don't want to follow the rules" response. There is so much more to it than that! Thank you.
lollyj lm 5 years ago from Washington KS
I'm not sure what makes me sadder, the fact that our homeless population continues to increase or the multifaceted causes that drive people to the streets. Hubby and I are a long time married couple who worked hard, paid bills, and lived responsibly from age 16 on. But the cost increase in everything we need to survive has carved out larger pieces of our income over time. We pull in our belts and pull in our belts, but what if we had children to support? We've tried to get jobs but no one will hire us, probably because of our advancing age. Many of us are one crisis away from losing everything. Perhaps those angry responses were knee jerk reactions from people who are even more frightened than I am about the floundering economy.This is a WONDERFUL, honest, poignant lens.
rootadesigns lm 5 years ago
Very interesting lens!
anonymous 5 years ago
I would like to introduce you to a new concept in homeless shelters its called the Triage Low Demand Shelter. We a wet shelter that is a colaborative effort with a well known non profit agency, the major hospital provider, the major Mental health provider, and the major addictions provider in the county and all the county law enforcement agencies. We do accept people with walkers and let them keep them since many of our folks come from the hospital. We specialize in providing case management for folks suffering from MH and SA problems and look to place in programs locally and out of the county. As the owner of three dogs myself I am sorry to say that we do not allow pets. We have stretched the rules and allowed a person in a wheel chair on occassion but unfortunately very rare the problem as was mentioned is law suits. Shelters can not afford lawsuits. If required to be wheel chair accessible many shelters do not have the funds to upgrade and would probably close rather than upgrade.
julescorriere 5 years ago from Jonesborough TN
Your lens is thoughtFULL and thought provoking. I was shaken by reading in your comment bar that this received angry responses. I find this odd. What you are doing is providing much needed information and education. We must never become angry about education and illumination. And it is YOUR STORY, told from your own unique lens of life. It is beyond politics. You aren't asking anyone to do anything. Except think. I look forward to reading more from you.
RhondaSueDavis 5 years ago
Klyssa, the city is looking to relocate a temporary homeless shelter right across the street from my neighborhood! they do screen residents and keep security for themselves. It is quite controversial, and it seems this one so far has made a good name for itself, breaking the mold. It is cooperatively run by the residents and local volunteers and some city and county support as well. I have blogged about it, since it is landing 'so very close to home" thank you for your lenses ,it has been good to have read these and also to listen to the many people at our recent city council hearing on the camp. I do wonder where the line is to be drawn on enabling homelessness, as in would some not live in the shelters or streets if it were not so easy to do so? I hope that community efforts to "fix" problems don't in fact create more of it or draw in from other communities that are not as amenable. Good to look at who is befitting (financially and otherwise) from the programs to evaluate thier worth in community.
anonymous 5 years ago
I have a shelter in Phx AZ and i thank GOD that we treat our clients with the up most respect. what you do in the dark will come to light...........Start Living 480-235-1297
Franksterk 5 years ago from California
Another excellent lens illuminating a much needed topic of discussion and change. Blessed. Bear hugs, Frankster
TolovajWordsmith 5 years ago from Ljubljana
Your lens scares me a lot. I knew about a lot of bad stuff before, but now... All the best and keep it up!
anonymous 5 years ago
Loved this lens before and now came back to Bless it.
anonymous 5 years ago
It also cost money to sleep in a homeless shelter. For a mother and a 13 year old child, it could cost $600-$800 a month.
donnetted 5 years ago from South Africa
This is an excellent lens. I love the way you have included the dangers posed - this is very often overlooked by the authorities, although here in S Africa there isn't really any great movement to create shelters or places of safety for those in need. Even the medical and education is frighteningly expensive - and extremely unprofessional and shoddy given the fact that the government is placing unqualified persons in positions of responsibility.
AigulErali 5 years ago
Very enlightening lens on homelessness. Good luck to you!
phoenix arizona f 5 years ago
Good job making your point.
lawpost 5 years ago
Fantastic lense. Hopefully your experience and insight with the plight of the homeless will help others to put aside stereotypes and prejudices against the homeless and work towards a better alternatives to homeless shelters.
lawpost 5 years ago
This lense is amazing. Your experience and insight into the plight of the homeless will hopefully put to bed many of the stereotypes and assumptions that Americans believe about homeless shelters.
thequietanarchist 5 years ago
Thank you for sharing this--I can only imagine what you went through. At one point in my life, I was almost homeless myself so I absolutely understand that there is no black and white when it comes to the have and have nots. Good luck to you!
ecogranny 5 years ago from San Francisco
Thoughtful, well-written, poignant, this lens hits hard and, from what I do know personally, which is not nearly as extensive, hits true. May you be blessed beyond your wildest dreams.
Jerrad28 5 years ago
I've never thought about homeless shelters from these perspectives before... It's been a real eye-opener for sure! Great lens, thank you
pheonix76 5 years ago from WNY
I had always thought that homeless shelters would be something of a refuge for all people living on the streets -- how naive! I could never sleep if I was separated from my children or pet, not knowing what was happening to them. This is such a sad truth, thanks again for giving voice to those in need.
Jessica-Burde 5 years ago from Lehighton, PA
Expanding on my 'other' response in the poll - I believe that people who are able to benefit from shelters should be grateful for that benefit, but that they still have a right to good treatment and dignity. If I go all day without eating, and someone gives me an apple and some water, I'll be grateful. But that apple doesn't come anywhere meeting my needs. It's the same thing - being grateful for a small improvement (again, this is regarding those who can benefit from sheltes, those who can't benefit have nothing to be grateful for), doesn't change the fact that it is only a small improvement in the situation and much more is needed.
Wedding Mom 5 years ago
This is such an interesting read. It certainly open-up a whole new perspective on this kind of situation. Thanks so much for sharing this One-of-A-Kind lens. I hope more people will be able to read your work because it is highly commendable and very insightful!
SeptemberLove 5 years ago
The homeless shelter in the U.S.A. is not effective.As one responder said .."it is just to store people"Actually , it is a growing population and not all homeless people are druggies or mentally ill people.In the near future I am trying to straighten this population of people out.First, there are no accurate places for the homeless, including the women and children. Many are in this position from loss of job or rent and bills became too much for them to handle either alone or together,Leaving items in storage caused them to lose their furniture, clothes, toys etc.There should be a place like an apartment which would give them a new start, temporaily until they have saved up enough for a apartment which would incorporate with their previous dwelling and charging just a small amount to help them back on their feet.Homeless shelters are filthy along with the inborne bacterias.I.ve heard of people getting robbed ,attacked in those places, so why would you risk that? I someday soon plan to change this entire homeless situation around for all homeless people.
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: You are bang on with your statement "usually a health condition" because many official figures suggest about 40% of homeless people are disabled. Additionally, many others who may no longer be ill or not have been ill themselves (but one of their dependents has been), are on the street due to foreclosures or job loss due to medical bills, America's #1 reason for bankruptcy.I've found, however, that shelters run by formerly homeless people or people very close to it, tend to be the better shelters. They may not have all the bells and whistles but they usually have the most important aspect of all- dignity. I'm not sure what goes wrong with the shelters that turn unpleasant but I don't think it's that they are run by formerly homeless people. We know better than to treat human beings as we were treated. Funding is definitely an issue and getting people to part with time or cash or even empathy for homeless people is extremely difficult. I think the only way to overcome that is to break down the myths and stereotypes that make people unable to see that homeless people are people.
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: Fixing things starts with making people aware of what is wrong. You would not believe how many people think that homelessness is always a choice or that only bad people become homeless and thus aren't willing to even think of helping them or working on the problem. They are likely the folks who checked "beggars can't be choosers" in the poll, even after reading that the shelter process is often dehumanizing and may include things like shelter workers suggesting you find a man to who will trade use of your body for a place to stay. Many others think that homeless shelters are plentiful, that anyone can get into them, and that they are like hotels for homeless people or something. Perhaps you can see how those preconceptions need to be changed before people can get moved to action?
anonymous 5 years ago
G'day well i have did alot of homework on shelters and the homeless , what i don't understand is that there is alot of evidance showing whats wrong with them but nothing what so ever on how you all should fix things, you can blame your govermant if you like but it don't change the fact that if you wont something done do it yourself's , so lets find a way to fix it and enforce it
anonymous 5 years ago
Usually the people that are closer to the problem are the ones that help (aka a person is more likely to help a homeless person if that person has experienced or near experienced homelessness.)And that is why, the conditions of shelters are like this. People that are able to help the most, wont help at all because they do know and will not look into this. And, because of this ignorance, they share the point of view that a homeless person did something to deserver being homeless. Is not only until (usually a health condition) makes them homeless that they understand. And funny, their friends abandon them. Alas, politicians never come from the groups that understand the problem, so unless people start a pacific rebellion (like what happen with the movement against "separated but equal"). Nothing will change. Justice come from the people, never from government.
anonymous 5 years ago
People should accept help, but not if help makes it worse
FanfrelucheHubs 5 years ago from France (Canadian expat)
I use to work in a corner store, at night, in Montreal and meet many homeless people coming in to get a free coffee (my boss was giving the coffee for free to the homeless we knew). And i would say that more than 50% of them preferred the street (even in the harsh Montreal winters) to the local shelter. many were afraid to be stolen (they don't have mush, but what they do own is sometime the last thing they have from their "before" life) and most where afraid of violence in the shelter. The shelter are useful and there should be more, but it won't change the fact that many homeless prefer to fend for themselves.Blessed (it is outside my neighborhood, but they are not going to cut my wings are they??)
Oliversbabycarecouk 5 years ago
Great lens - im not in America but i don't see why homeless people avoid shelters when they are there to help and support them with their lives, not to do the oppisite!
Kylyssa 5 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@anonymous: Dear Jacquie B,If you happen to come back here, please contact me with the details about your shelter. I will gladly give it a "donate button" on one or more of my pages. You can find my contact button by clicking my name or photo icon on this comment. I am heartened to hear about the great homeless shelters, the ones that don't judge people in need of them. Family shelters are far too rare and those which take in couples without children even more so. Thank you for serving humanity, Jacquie B!
anonymous 5 years ago
Hi, my name is Jacquie. I am very active at our local shelter. I am the volunteer coordinator and I am happy to spend at least 2 or 3 nights a week at the shelter as a supervisor. I would gladly use this shelter if I become homeless, which is not unrealistic in my circumstance. We bend over backwards for our guests. We love our friends/guests and make their stay with us as comfortable and pleasant as possible. Never would a predator be able to take advantage of our guests. We are a family first shelter. After families the priority is women and couples. While many of our volunteers are devout Christians, I am not, though my spirituality certainly plays a part in my love and compassion for our homeless friends. This shelter has been a blessing in my life and I am grateful for my position there, to share and nurture to those who are going through hard times. It has certainly helped me to realize that empathy and compassion for humanity is still alive and well in this hate filled Republicanesque country.
anonymous 5 years ago
great len alot of information visit my newest len military women homeless
sheriangell 5 years ago
I've been here before, but wanted to return to leave you an Angel Blessing.
Krafick 5 years ago
Nice lens. Keep it up.
chacalit 5 years ago
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chacalit 5 years ago
I am currently homeless and know this is true. I built a website to help people I know. www.chacalit.webs.com
anonymous 5 years ago
I have been homeless off and on for the last 3 years. Prior to this I was a System Engineer/System Administrator for 35 years for fortune 500 companies. Medical reasons (MS Relapse/Cervical Radiculopathy). I see drug use alot, people with bi-polar/schizophrenia). I also have seen staff problems - treatment was like a prison not a shelter. I used to be the one doing philanthropy but because of the life path change, I see the other side. I am not sure I would do the philanthropy again. There is alot of integrity/professionalism/ethics-morals-values issues with some of the shelter systems.
oldcat 5 years ago
I admire your forthrightness and ability to open our eyes to the indignities you and too many other down-on-their-luck folks have had to endure. As someone who uses a walker and at times a wheelchair, I was particularly moved at the inhumanity you had to suffer at that shelter when you were injured and needed your walker for mobility....what a disgraceful lack of compassion. An acquaintance of mine lost her job at age 62 and then her car was stolen and finally found wrecked...she had minimal insurance so couldn't afford repairs and only got $100 for it from a junkyard. After going through what little savings she had she ended up getting evicted from her small apartment. After several months of being unemployed she moved into a Catholic Charities shelter after being on a waiting list. It was clean, safe, and they supplied food and job counseling but there were mandatory church attendance and prayer meetings. For those who couldn't or wouldn't attend they were given notice to leave....how Jesus-like of them. I just don't understand that kind of thinking. They also had time-limits as to how long you could stay and her time will be up the middle of next month. She still has no job and her unemployment ran out and now she's ill from some sort of respiratory condition she most likely contacted there. I'd take her in but I'm in no position to help at this point. I'm glad and proud for you that you've survived your ordeal and hope you'll have brighter days ahead. It is such a disgrace what has happened in this country to perfectly good and decent people.
mysticmama lm 5 years ago
I didn't leave my husband as soon as I should of in a big part because I didn't want to go into a woman's shelter because I wouldn't be able to take my cat ~ it's hard enough to go through homelessness, but to give up a beloved pet just wasn't worth the shelter. When I finally did leave, I took my cat & stayed with family & friends & in my Jeep until I bought my RV with the last of my savings that my X didn't spend on Meth...I had enough in savings to pay maybe 6 months rent in a tiny one room apt with no furniture or anything, or to buy the RV ~ basially I'm still technically homeless, but the RV was an alternative to being completely homeless, at least in the RV I can have my cats, I can drive to warmer areas of the Country in the winter & there are a lot of RV parks that are way cheaper to rent a space in for a month that to pay rent somewhere. There are also lots of places where you can park an RV overnight for free, so for me it was a better choice than a shelter, or complete homelessness ~ I still can't afford to pay rent at an apt. So, I'm still basically homeless, but my RV is like a tiny home, so I'm happy :)
WorldVisionary 5 years ago
I've been to your lens before, but I've come back to give it an Angel blessing. :)
AllyVuitton 5 years ago
My heart goes out to the homeless and this was definitely an eye-opener. I really did not know loads of things on this page, and I'd be scared of going to a shelter! So touching, it's blessed!
choosehappy 5 years ago from US
Your lenses on homelessness are really very touching and amazing. Makes one think. This lens has been *blessed* ;)
Philippians468 5 years ago
thank you for this lens to raise awareness! great work! cheers
small dog lady 6 years ago
Your lens is very moving and very effective in educating others... SO much to think about, then DO!
Lovinworkinathome 6 years ago
I always wonder what to do to help these people and you actually opened my eyes to some of the "other" struggles homelessness can cause. So sad! I hadn't thought about a shelter as anything but shelter, however, this information proves how wrong my assumptions were. It's not the same as a Rape Crisis Center or women's shelter, is it? WOW. That's all I can say. Now, I know that homeless folks can use backpacks and mylar blankets...maybe a thermos thrown in there, too? Thanks for your concise article...and, even though you're an atheist, I will pray for you.
David Stone1 6 years ago from New York City
Any anger, I'd guess, would be a cover for guilt. What sense does it make to be angry at homeless people, no matter who's at fault. As a very young man, I spent a few homeless days myself, a decision I made in which I refused to compromise. It taught me a lesson about the value of learning to live in a community. But I had a choice. Others do not, and that, like it or not, has been an American tradition since before independence.
Carmel Aaron 6 years ago
Thank you for enlightening us about the use of Homeless Shelters. I didn't know many of the points that you mentioned.I do know that it is more possible then ever before, except probably during the Depression, to become homeless.Great lens on a very sad subject.Thumbs-up
ohcaroline 6 years ago
This is a very well written and concise article on homelessness issues. God bless you and I hope you will be successful in all of your life's ventures. Thanks for sharing.
anonymous 6 years ago
I'm 19 and just starting to learn about homelessness and trying to find ways I can help. Thank you for shedding light on aspects of the issue I had never even considered before.
nebby 6 years ago from USA
I've been here a few times before & have shared your lens with many that I know. Looks like you've added a bit sine my last visit.Congratulations on making the list of The Best Squidoo Intros Ever! - well deserved!
Joan4 6 years ago
This is very thought provoking. You mentioned many issues that I had never considered at all. Thank you for educating me! I certainly would be hesitant to stay in a shelter now.
OhMe 6 years ago from Pendleton, SC
Congrats for making The Best Squidoo Intros Ever list. This is an amazing lens and brings about more awareness of the Homeless and their needs.
MargoPArrowsmith 6 years ago
Very thoughtful lens. See my story about the state mental hospital above
SquidooEconomy 6 years ago
ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS --------------> W - O - W
anonymous 6 years ago
I like what you have to say here. Personally, I think we should have more housing options (rooming houses, smaller houses, etc.), so people would have a wider range of choices and would have less chance of losing their homes.
NoYouAreNot 6 years ago
I didn't know many things about homeless shelters, but I think I should have guessed some of them. My country (Greece) is not yet so hardly inflicted by homelessness (although things are turning to the worse nowadays), mostly because family ties are still quite strong, and that saves people in times of personal or social crisis. I think that people who maintain that "beggars can't be choosers" have already given up on their humanity.
hotbrain 6 years ago from Tacoma, WA
Excellent lens with many good points. I don't know much about homeless shelters, but it is true that I would be hesitant to stay in one.
LizMac60 6 years ago from United Kingdom
This is a most important subject and you have covered it well. Keep up the good work in enlightening people about this.
ZazzleEnchante 6 years ago
An awesome lens, provides such a great understanding of the homeless. Kudos for an awesome lens. Blessed by a SquidAngel.
Vern523 6 years ago
@Shannon79: Hi Shannon, I too am sorry you have had to experience this. I thank you for sharing your story. I'm curious how old your son is (or was at the time)? Thank you.
Vern523 6 years ago
Yours is an incredibly well-written and insightful article. I learned SO much from you. Thank you for writing this. I will try to share it with others and enlighten them too. Thank you.
AWildDog 6 years ago
Even though I've not been homeless this doesn't surprise me at all. I have once visited a homeless shelter - which I believe does give more help to people in the UK - helps them find a place to live and a job and things - but when visiting there (well I say visiting, we had to wait outside) with a friend of mine, who wanted to see her friend (she didn't want to go alone), it was scary enough just to stand outside.The person we were meeting admittedly was a drug addict (sadly still is) - but the people "living" there we frankly quite intimidating.Great lens.
anonymous 6 years ago
Very informative lens! Thank you for creating it!
ArtByLinda 6 years ago from Idaho
Incredibly eye opening lens. It brought tears to my eyes thinking of winter coming and so many people having to make the decision between the cold and dangers they face everyday in the world outside with no home, or finding a shelter they feel safe in. With the economy the way it is, there is more and more homeless everyday. So sad. Thank you so much for sharing your personal story and helping open our eyes to this issue.
bechand 6 years ago
honestly your page was an eye opener for me on a few issues - never really thought of all the downsides of the shelter. Thank you for bringing it to attention. Hopefully shelters may see what the downsides are and do what they can do to change them for the better.
Allison Whitehead 6 years ago
I have learned a lot and feel quite humbled by reading this page. My thoughts go with you; I have had some new insights into the world of homelessness and I thank you for them.
anonymous 6 years ago
I've never been homeless, but I made it a point, for years, to talk to the homeless people I met, not just give them some change and run away. I've heard horror stories about shelters for decades as a result, and I'm so glad to see someone with the guts to tackle this issue here. I truly do not understand the mentality of people who think just because another human being is homeless, for whatever reason, that they deserve to be treated like garbage, and I don't understand the mentality of anyone who thinks someone should be grateful for being treated like garbage.(On a side note, prison is not better treatment than a shelter. It is far more dehumanizing, uniformally dirty and brutal, violent, and invasive. I would never wish prison upon a single homeless person, and I have, in the course of working with inmates, met prisoners who were homeless and said they would rather live on the streets any day. So I do disagree, respectfully, with the author's characterization that prison is better than a homeless shelter. But I do agree they are fairly close.)
anonymous 6 years ago
I've wondered why people refuse to go to shelters for a long time, and used it as an excuse to keep myself from feeling guilty or sad when I passed a homeless person. I'm glad I read this lens, because the truth that breaks one of your views of the world is better than a lie that can barely hold it together.
anonymous 6 years ago
Wow - what an education. I have a new insight to the plight of the homeless. I do agree with Joyce that there should be a way that we can do a better job helping people.
anonymous 6 years ago
With all the aid and all the money spent on housing for the middle class and wealthy, there should be a government program uncontaminated like the Philadelphia Housing Authority) to take care of our homeless c(itizens. This situation of having American citizens living their lives out on the streets is outrageous. We have land and we have contractors to build inexpensive housing and yet the demand far exceeds the fulfillment. Let's try supporting America for a change!
RhondaAlbom 6 years ago from New Zealand
This is one of those lenses that stays with you after you read it. Now that I have my wings, I had to come back and give it an angel blessing. (I added it to Angel Blessings From Pukeko October 2010)
Ashly Rain 6 years ago
Amazing lens. I've learned so much from this lens, and your other lenses about homelessness (not to mention the comment you made 0n my communication lens). Thank you so muh for sharing so much of yourself.
affordableelegancejewelry 6 years ago
This was an amazing lens. In fact, anyone who would leave hate mail after reading this is just disgusting. You're so brave for writing this and being so honest. Thank you so much for sharing this story.
anonymous 6 years ago
Thank you for sharing your story.
Addy Bell 6 years ago
This lens is brilliant and spot-on. I think it should be required reading for politicians, service providers, and anyone who thinks they're entitled to an "opinion on the homeless".
BetsiGoutal1 6 years ago
Amazingly powerful and eye-opening lens, thanks so much for sharing.
RhondaAlbom 6 years ago from New Zealand
What a powerful lens. Opened my eyes to something I don't really know much about. Thank you for sharing your experiences, and sorry to hear you went through all that. Maybe they will help people in the future.
seegreen 6 years ago
What an eye-opener. While I suspected a few of the reasons, most of these were new to me. Blessed by an Angel.
anonymous 6 years ago
I've been homeless for the past 2 months and I've avoided the shelters. I was referred to one and even stood in line with a ticket, but I just couldn't do it. The parasites, the food, the close proximity to a bunch of other dudes, and being stuck inside from 4pm-6a just didn't work for me. I'm in Los Angeles so the weatehr is great right now, even though some nights it can get a little nippy. The emergency mylar blanket has probably been the best $4 i've ever spent. Thanks for the tips. The last few months has been life changing, but I'm sure things will look up for me and I'll be able to look back on this whole thing as something that made me a better person. It's been a very lonely experience and some days are worse than others, but I prefer it this way than to be locked down at a shelter.
anonymous 6 years ago
I have an overwhelming burden to help homeless people & I believe that the help should go beyond food & shelter Home less shelter must include programs which help the homeless to stand on their own 2 feet at the end .
paperfacets 6 years ago from La Verne, CA
Excellent. I am glad you have this platform to earn the cash you need. You survived the United States!
Grawr 6 years ago
Great read.It's true I dont think we do enough for homeless people, I know people that want to help but just have nowhere to start. Thank you for opening my eyes a little more to the issues surrounding homelessness.
anonymous 6 years ago
Thanks for sharing these reasons for why the homeless avoid shelters. I recently wrote about some of the dangers that homeless people face on a blog for a project I'm working on with a photographer: The Chicago Panhandler Project. You can find the blog, if you're interested at http://chicagopanhandler.wordpress.com . I never would have thought of the parasites or disease, but those are both really good reasons why someone would avoid a shelter!
myraggededge 6 years ago
You have made a lot of good points here... and it might make people more aware of the pitfalls. Blessed. :-)
nebby 6 years ago from USA
Over the last year or two there have been many more families that are in need of shelter, but as you mentioned above shelters don't allow pets (and i can understand why), so many families choose to live on the street so they they do not have to give up their family pet.I wish that there were more shelters and that many of the would have small apartment type living spaces for those who needed and wanted them.If we took just 1 year of the money that we give to other countries it could be done.Excellent information and passionately written.
anonymous 6 years ago
I work in an honmeless shelter, and I think it is a blessing from GOD. Be glad that there ared.people willing to help you when you are going through hard times.
JenOfChicago LM 6 years ago
Blessed by a squidangel!
PNWtravels 6 years ago from Wandering the Pacific Northwest USA
Your lens did a lot to educate me about homeless shelters and the experiences of the homeless. Thank you for sharing.
anonymous 6 years ago
I will be homeless at the end of the month. found places for my pets with one exception, my dog. I will not give him up when i have to give up everything else. hopefully we can make it down to Arizona where my father in law will give us a place to stay....Till then, homeless in Alaska
jlshernandez 6 years ago
Thank you for sharing this lens. It just made me realize that homeless shelters are not real shelters, but traps for unsuspecting unhomed people. I truly learned a lot from this powerful lens.
Starrweaver 6 years ago
I was homeless twice in my life - once as a runaway to escape abuse. The second time I was abandoned, pregnant with a 2 1/2 year old in an unknown city. My "supposed" boyfriend moved us there on the claim of having a job. In the morning, he was gone and so was all my money! Our stuff was in a couple of large lockers at the bus station. My child and myself were left to the streets. Many people ask why I didn't go to a shelter or some group for help - if they have to ask, then they don't realize the ugly truth. Child Protection Services, many of the organizations, will take your child with the story of how you can get them back once you get back on your feet. I met many that had believed them - they in turn helped me and my child so that I would not suffer as they had. They'd done all asked of them, but never saw their child again. So I did whatever I had to to keep us safe. Collecting metal for scrap money, raiding dumpsters behind grocery stores for tossed out food. I eventually was able to reach those that could help, who didn't judge or lecture me for being gullible. I was able to get a bus ticket to go stay with some relatives. It was a new start - but I'd never stay in a shelter for one reason. When I stayed in one as a runaway, some of the staff did not believe I was pregnant. They made me work moving heavy tables and such before allowing me to get food. When I complained about them, they would cause me to miss meals, make accusations that I stole items. (at which time other people at the shelter would defend me, informing the security guard that they'd seen the items put in my sleeping area, by my accusers.) The security guard also called 911 for an ambulance when I started to go into premature labor due to the heavy work and little food. After that, several of the staff were missing when I returned a few days later from the hospital. The guard had taken my things and locked them up in his office to keep them safe. I was grateful to the guard and the main management staff - they secured me temporary housing after what happened. But these kind souls are not the norm at many shelters. I nearly lost my child due to the attitudes of those staff members, who were told not to come back I'm glad to say. But I would not ever return to such a place, especially if I had children.
anonymous 6 years ago
This is SO annoying! people should have safe places to sleep and live! they need to be able to keep their walkers,wheelchairs, and crunches! and why do peple think that all homeless people are on drugs? Thats SO stupid!
anonymous 6 years ago
Hi there, I was homeless for almost 7 years, some of it by choice. Something about modern society and me just don't click, I'd rather sleep under a bridge than work a 9-5 job, which is my decision. I was mostly pretty content being homeless and I would never stay in a shelter. Homeless shelters, that I've seen are disgusting and frightening places. They are dingy and smelly with rows of cots and no privacy at all. Personally, if I'm going to sleep somewhere mildly uncomfortable that's a bit smelly with the chance of someone messing with me while I sleep, I'd much rather be hidden behind a dumpster, under a bridge or in the woods, with my dog who I know will always warn me of danger.If people want to help the homeless and make shelters better, they need to treat them like they would want to be treated. Make a homeless shelter with separate rooms so you can be alone! When I was homeless, it was so hard to find someone who would let me use their bathroom because they thought I was going to go in there and shoot up or something, but really I just wanted to be in that one-and-only place that when you're homeless you can close the door... And stop feeding homeless people crappy food. I can't tell you how many times I held up a sign saying I was hungry on the side of the road and all I got was pb&j and cookies. How do cookies make my life any better? Now that I'm not homeless, I give people food I would eat, food that gives you energy. I also avoided soup kitchens when I was homeless because most of the food was worse than the crap they give you in grade school. I ate better and healthier foods by digging through the trash at grocery stores.The best soup kitchen I ever went to was so wonderful. The man who cooked was a retired chef. He made fantastic dishes (with vegetarian options). The tables had table cloths and real silverware (they usually only give you plastic cause they think you're going to brain the person next to you or some other ridiculous thing) and the people who worked there would bring you food like you were in a restaurant. And they didn't try to make you listen to a sermon or preach about their religion at all. I loved those people.Please don't forget, homeless people aren't all disgusting lunatics. Mostly they're kind and good people who are down on their luck, don't fit in with society (aka what some would call mentally ill), or have a drug or alcohol addiction. That doesn't mean your options are take pity or ignore them. Pity can be just as painful as being ignored. Just treat us normal, have a conversation, don't be afraid, and don't act like our lives are so terrible unless we say they are. Not everyone hates being homeless.
MicheleT 6 years ago
P.S. I gave you 5 stars and also shared this lens on Facebook and Twitter. Great job!!!
MicheleT 6 years ago
Wow. What a touching, informative lens. I can relate all too well to the majority of this lens. I wasn't homeless, but I have helped the homeless for years - any way I can. This includes taking food to them, hosting homeless families on holidays, taking hygiene products, helping individual homeless people get back on their feet as best I can. I have seen honest, hard-working homeless people go to jail because they were just walking down the street. I've seen homeless people turned away from shelters for all sorts of reasons. And the list goes on. And the world is so, so cruel when it comes to the homeless topic. Gosh, people are cruel. They say the homeless should just "get a job" or "get a life" - oh, my.... How sad. And I firmly believe we don't understand anything 'till we've walked at least a mile in someone's shoes. Even then, we all react differently. So it's still hard to judge someone else - even if we've been in the exact same situation.I'm so glad you commented on my lens. And I am so glad you aren't homeless anymore. My heart aches because you had to go through all this - but I commend you for sharing with others and teaching about the reality of homelessness.
Sylvestermouse 6 years ago from United States
I am touched and saddened beyond words! Angel Blessed!
jgelien 6 years ago
The situations you describe are appalling. Why are people so inhumane?You have done a great service in writing this eye-opening lens. The more exposure this topic receives, the better.
Mahogany LM 6 years ago
This lens really opened my eyes Kylyssa, not only in spotlighting the dangers of life in homeless shelters, but also pointing me in the direction of a way to make a small difference. Thank you for putting this lens together.
libertysteward 6 years ago
Thank you for your efforts to open peoples eyes to the indignities suffered by people whose only real crime is not fitting in to the Capitalist Lie. I don't give a damn if I offend my "fellow" countrymen, they are a truly sorry lot of foolish materialistic selfish and very mean people in the majority. I do not believe most of them have a clue how tenuous their existence really is. People like you remind me that there are some people out there still worth embracing as brothers and sisters. I am an old hippie, so when I became "homeless" it was because I would not give up on my ideals and my knowledge as I was well-educated and came from a "good" family. In the beginning, as they fancied themselves elitist republicans, they rejected me for being a food faddist (vegetarian) and for living a rebellious politically defiant lifestyle...you know, not cutting your hair, not wearing straight clothes, not being willing to die for rubber, tin and bauxite in the illegal unconstitutional war in Vietnam against an innocent people, etc. It was a different time then and many of us were homeless, but we still lived a rather idyllic existence other than being threatened with violence, intimidated and harassed by the PIGS ( I'm 62 and to this date I consider them the true dregs of society, most are violent, undereducated, willing to compromise with evil and contorted social "values"). But later on in life after I tried to live up to the social expectations of the "I got mine you go get yours" culture I lost it all in a terrible accident. I spent many years being homeless before the accident enduring multiple layoffs during the engineered "recessions" our country went through. After I lost my home to Countrywide Mortgage and a crooked Dept. of Vocation/Rehab counselor in California, and a discriminatory employer I took to the road to save myself from adversity. No benefits, no healthcare (I lost A+ coverage with Kaiser Permanente) I would sleep in my truck which I managed to hang on to. My dogs and I would awaken to icicles hanging from the ceiling of the camper shell and frozen dog water it was so cold. I had 14 camping places around Santa Fe in the BLM lands where you can stay for 14 days then you have to move on to a new location. I swept the church at the Santuario de Guadalupe where the priest gave me $15.00 each time. I didn't panhandle although I've done it a few times, but I did odd jobs, whatever I could get. As long as my dogs ate I was happy even though I was cold and hungry. I was homeless so long that when I finally came back to New Mexico to live I was one angry human being. I had a worse case of PTSD than some vets, because I understood a lot of what had happened to me and I've always been insightful politically. It took 20 years of solitude in the country learning to live with a broken body and mangled spirit. Today although I live on a fixed income and still basically indigent I live in a cabin I built on rough range land. I traded river sticks (used to make furniture) for the lumber to build the roof. I was too messed up physically to do any of it, but I did it anyway. It's taken 16 years to build it to it's current state, it's still uninsulated properly, cold and drafty in the winter, and I still need a water heater, a propane tank or a solar system to heat water. I have solar and wind power and a computer. My mind is still more important to me than my other needs. I will continue to fight to survive, I don't really know any other way. Homelessness either drives you to give up or to fight so hard that you become so hard you never get back to just being a happy soul in a sound body. Some people get fortunate and work their way out of it, but it always takes someone else to help you up. But many homeless people never get out of their reality and can see no other way. I live in such a neighborhood. One such fellow walks to town every day to get one free meal, then he drinks and walks another 16 miles home drunk, sad and often with only a windbreaker in the wintertime. He is a brilliant pianist I heard him play once when we coached him into a coffee house one day on his way to town. My other neighbors live in trailers with junk piled all around their houses, not because they are "hoarders", but because they have no vehicle able to carry trash and no money to pay for a dump fee. One fellow dug a hole under his trailer and lights a small fire under his trailer and sleeps in the smoke stream surrounding his tiny little rig. Another girl lives alone in her trailer, walks back and forth daily 8 miles a day even in the dead of winter. Her father was a friend of mine and at the age of 80 he lifted each of the 10 16ft 6x3 timbers up to the roof as I couldn't pick them up. He built the San Francisco bridge as a cat walker and was tough as nails until he died at 94. She doesn't ask for help and although I tried to give her rides she's scared of my dogs. These people remind me daily that homelessness is not a state that necessarily goes away. None of them wants help from people who would in any way dictate moral values or code specifications to them. The only thing they lack to be real revolutionaries is a good rifle and plenty of ammo and each of them would probably fight to the death before they would allow any authorities to come in here and force them into a different mold. If it is allowed to go along too long it changes you to the point where you can't shake it. I believe that it is fundamentally a reflection of how little we really care about each other, because the system we live in presumes "I've got mine, you go get yours!" and it's all about being selfish. I grew up in Latin America so I learned early on how to ignore the pain of others that was all around me. I didn't know at the time that it was greedy capitalistic thinking that was leading to all of this. As a hippie I learned to share and love with others in a communitarian way and yet even though this helped me, many of these folks are much younger than I and never had that experience. If you do not love others and fight to improve society for them things will never change. If I had any funding I would create a homeless shelter for people with pets or kids and create a little teepee village here on my acreage. But that is only a dream if my countrymen continue to be such self-involved greedy little materialistic and violent piggies. There has to be a change of heart of what it means to be an American. We are in the midst of a spiritual crisis which we will never solve by throwing money at the problem. We have to fix the value system we are all worshipping like the Golden Calf the Bible thumpers like to rail about. Oddly they are the worst offenders as they are the good that pretends to be better than it is and that is truly the worst and most insidious evil. Reach out whenever you can and help others - you don't need an excuse. My stories are on Libertysteward.com and you can read about my experiences with the healthcare system under the Digest of Articles link on the frontpage. I think about what I told myself in the beginning...you have to have something of your own before you can really offer something of true value to others. If you just move them into the middle of your own chaos you just confuse things further and then you get dragged into it as well..,that might have been true, but it was equally selfish. Sometimes you just have to do something. Each time I get some money I try to spot a homeless person and give them at least $20. I am blessed to have the good things that I have and have learned to be glad for that and not yearn for more. Wanting to help others is a good thing, but don't look for more to come to you before you do, you may miss your chance to be that one catalyst that prompts everything to move in a better direction. Accepting your limitations is a good thing though, so be careful not to put yourself in an even worse situation. Life is very tenuous and it's ultimately a balancing act on the high wire and it is a long way to the bottom. One thing I learned about people is that they often want to see if yo
BarbRad 6 years ago from Templeton, CA
You taught me a lot I didn't know. I hope to read more of your lenses as soon as I have time.
verymary 6 years ago from Chicago area
Eye opening and very well done.
lasertek lm 6 years ago
For me, topmost reason why homeless people don't use shelters is because they want privacy. Although these shelters provide homeless people what they need, most would still want to be off on their own and find a place that they could consider their own. Like this lens! 5*
Heather426 6 years ago from Wexford, Ireland
I think it is criminal to separate Mothers and children. My daughter's fiance was forced to find his own way in life since he was 13 because his mother ws in homeless shelters and could not keep him...so he spent many nights in the streets. 13! There was no father around so he was all alone. It breaks my heart to think of it. So sorry your life has been so hard. Very well written.
Kylyssa 6 years ago from Overlooking a meadow near Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Author
@Shannon79: I'm so sorry you had to suffer through all that! Unfortunately, your story is not that unusual, it's similar to stories I've heard from dozens of people and it's a story people need to hear. I hope that life is treating you a whole lot better now.
Shannon79 6 years ago
Homeless shelters do everything but what they're supposed to do--offer the homeless a safe clean place to sleep. I was homeless for about a month and I went to a shelter and they informed me I would have to quit my job and that my son would have to go to a men's shelter or something, but he couldn't stay with me. I told the worker, "F**k you and this raggedy shelter! I'll find somewhere else to go where they don't expect me to kick my child to the curb!" The next three shelters told me the same thing and I left; the next shelter accepted my family on the condition that I attend drug and alcohol counseling and take parenting classes. I refused and they accused me of being in denial about my problem. I cursed the people out. "How in the hell are you going to tell me I have a drug or drinking problem?!" I shouted. They said, "Well, if you don't, then why are you homeless?" Like that's the only reason people are homeless. I told them, "Just because I'm homeless doesn't mean I have a drug or alcohol problem." They said, "Prove it," I looked at them. "How the hell do you prove you don't drink or use drugs?! Why don't you prove I do?!" I shouted. They said, "The proof is, you're homeless and have no money." Well, that was the last straw. I called my card company and combined my rewards points toward a stay in a studio apartment hotel. I was able to stay with my supervisor until I got a place to live and I made a point to report that shelter to the city. Not long afterward, they were forced to close their doors; there were a lot of complaints from others about how they were forced to abandon pets, service animals, mobility equipment, sometimes even their children, to the streets. The people running the shelter faced criminal charges. Homeless shelters and the regulation of them really needs to be overhauled. There are homeless shelters that offer apartments for families in Houston, but if you have a vehicle, the tags must be current and if you are working, you must quit your job and show proof that you quit so you can have time for their job training class. If you have any kind of income, you have to assign it to them. Not surprisingly, most of their units have never been used. I mean, it's a homeless shelter; give people a place to sleep. Keep families together instead of forcing a mother to abandon her son to the streets. The way these places are run is really stupid and needs to be rethought.
Maraiya 7 years ago
Being on the verge of homelessness myself, I found this lens to be very informative and helpful. I hope I don't end up homeless; but if I do, you gave me some valuable tips on how to deal with it. I live in Arizona, and while I was investigating some of the homeless shelters, I found out that most in Arizona charge a daily fee! A lot of them charge what you'd normally pay for rent somewhere. The cheapest one I found was $8 a day, which averages out to about $200 a month, and some nights you can't get into the shelter due to the overflow. Thanks for this lens. You write very well, by the way; I have read most of your other lenses on homelessness and they are all excellent. Thanks so much. I am so sorry you have had to go through so much.
Brookelorren LM 7 years ago
Another great lens, and another way that governmental intrusion hurts people (with the ordinances). I'm not sure if I would want to stay in a homeless shelter either.
norma-holt 7 years ago
This highlights again the stupidity of humans who are better off and turn aside from those most in need. Powerful lens but very sad and once again an outstanding account of a grave problem. 5* fave and lens rolled. I am also going to feature it on my Overpopulation lens.Norma :)
VarietyWriter2 7 years ago
I agree with pkmcr...powerful lens. Thank you for sharing and for the insight. If I was an angel I'd bless it...for now I rate it 5 stars.
pkmcruk 7 years ago from Cheshire UK
Powerful lens and Blessed by a Squid Angel
Spook LM 7 years ago
Just dropping by for another look. Blessed by an Angel.
clouda9 lm 7 years ago
Very touching and timely information - thank you for sharing your story with us.
KimGiancaterino 7 years ago
Blessed and featured on my Squid Angel Diary this week. By the way, it's nobody's business how you spend your money. You've put a lot of time and thought into this lens and should not feel the need to defend yourself for trying to make a living. You are helping homeless people simply by sharing this information.
luvmyludwig lm 7 years ago
I admire you for your willingness to speak up and how well you describe a very real and horrible situation. *blessed by as squid angel/greeter*
joanhall 7 years ago from Los Angeles
What an article. I'm DIGGing and STUMBLEing this.
puterfreak 7 years ago
Great lens! Definitely an eye opener!
WindyWintersHubs 7 years ago from Vancouver Island, BC
Amazing Information! 5* Homelessness is a very big problem in Canada, too (as in many countries). Many cities and towns are now trying to force homeless people to use shelters, too. This may help but I don't think it's the answer. The underlying problems of why people are homeless in the first place need to be seriously addressed. Thanks again for your info as to why people don't use shelters. :)
jptanabe 7 years ago from Red Hook, NY
Great lens, disturbing information. I knew a few of the points, but hadn't realized how many reasons there are to avoid these shelters. How to improve things though - I fear many of the people running shelters are doing the best they can with lack of funding and resources. Still, if they could be educated by reading this type of material it might help them make some positive changes.
Spook LM 7 years ago
I'm horrified by what I read on homelessness in America. However it must also be a tough call on those trying their best to help. With your experiences on all this Kylyssa, how about a lens on how you would go about improving this? Wishing you all the best.
jjj1 7 years ago
An excellent, informative lens about an important subject. I was horrified that shelters would turn away someone in a wheelchair - and was disturbed by much else that you wrote.
| i don't know |
What is the third film in The Matrix series called | The MATRIX 101 - Understanding The Matrix Revolutions - Meaning And Interpretations
The Matrix Revolutions: Meaning & Interpretations
As with the previous two movies, Revolutions is filled with information, ideas, and amazing visuals that all have a reason for being there. And like Reloaded, some ideas are new, some conflict with information from The Matrix, and some are just confusing as hell. Just when everyone thought the Wachowskis were going to hand them all the answers on a platter, they stayed true to their game plan all along and layered answer under hint under enigma, and then topped it with more questions. You can find the answers if you look, but you do have to look...both within and without. Following are some of our initial interpretations, and we'll also share some theories from other fans that we may or may not agree with. We hope this helps you find some of the deeper ideas located below the surface.
You can skip ahead to a specific topic here:
The Ending
Ah, the ending. What happened to Neo? How did he defeat Agent Smith? DID he defeat Smith? What was that crazy floating thing? Many, many viewers left Revolutions a little confused about the ending, so we're going to attempt to shed a little light on what happened and what it might mean.
First of all, let's set the scene: Smith is duplicating at a rapid pace, taking over everyone he runs into. As he grows in power, he's becoming a bigger threat to the Matrix, and therefore humanity, than anything else. While the machines are certainly not nice guys, they seem willing to allow humanity to continue; granted, as batteries powering their existence. Regardless, with the machines in full control, Zion is destroyed and rebuilt in cycles with humanity persisting, at least until they completely resolve the anomaly. Smith, on the other hand, wants to destroy everything. He hates the Matrix, he hates humans, he hates Neo - he hates his whole existence, and he'll stop at nothing to eradicate everything.
As Smith grows in power, he gains control over aspects of the Matrix, either directly or indirectly. Remember his comment to Neo at the beginning of the Super Burly Brawl (the rainy, airborne fight): "Like what I've done with the place?" He's referring to the darkened skies, the constant rain, the lightening - the Matrix is decaying and Smith is responsible. If he's not stopped, the entire thing will crash, killing the humans still hooked to it, and leaving the machines in a seriously vulnerable position with no power system in place.
While Smith had been a minor annoyance in the past, Neo begins to realize (with the help of the Oracle) that Smith is THE problem now. And it's a problem both the humans and the machines share. He'll effectively destroy them all, and the machines can't seem to do anything to stop him. So it's up to Neo.
Once the Oracle has given Neo the push he needs, she knows her work is almost done (and boy, did she do some work - see The Oracle's Gamble for more). She sends Seraph and Sati away, then waits for the next step in the master plan - Smith's arrival. Smith takes over the Oracle, and he gains her sight. His maniacal laughter is an indication of what he's able to see now: the end of his struggle, himself standing over Neo in the crater and ending it.
At the same time, as a result of his own sight, Neo knows he must go to the machine city to play the one card he has: Smith. The machines can't stop him (think they'd be letting him degrade the Matrix if they could?), but Neo believes he can. He gains an audience with Deus Ex Machina, the machine intelligence, and plays his card. The deal is that he stops Smith, preventing the catastrophic system crash, and the machines call off the sentinels.
Deus Ex Machina reacts with arrogance initially, borne of hundreds of years of being dominant, but let's face it: they're computers. They can calculate the odds in a fraction of a second, and they know the odds aren't good. On the one hand, if the Matrix crashes, they lose all those minds, and the Sentinels destroy Zion, leaving no humans/batteries left. On the other, if Neo beats Smith, the Matrix persists, and they lose some minds as the rejections are freed into Zion. They agree, and Neo brokers a peace that no one else has ever been able to accomplish.
The machines jack Neo in, and the climactic battle ensues - Neo and Oracle-Smith to the death. Oracle-Smith takes Neo on solo, because he's already seen the ending of the fight - he knows he wins. So they fight, and they fight, and they fly, and then they fight some more. Finally we're left with Neo and Oracle-Smith in a crater, Oracle-Smith railing at Neo: "Why, Mr. Anderson, Why?" He can't understand why Neo keeps getting up and fighting. No machine can, because they don't understand choice. And fortunately, The Oracle (and therefore Oracle-Smith) can't see past a choice that isn't understood. And Oracle-Smith does not understand Neo's decision to keep fighting.
Then he says it: "Everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo." Smith has never called Neo anything other than Mr. Anderson before, has he? And he's repeating what the Oracle told Neo just hours before. Neo gets it - he understands the Oracle is talking through Smith, and he understands the only way to beat Smith is to let him take over and unbalance the equation. Smith and Neo are opposites created to balance an equation. And the Oracle is here to unbalance equations.
Neo allows the inevitable to happen, unbalancing the equation, thereby giving the machines control of Smith through Neo's jacked in body. Neo-Smith is destroyed by the machines, then all the other Smiths are destroyed, leaving programs he previously took over lying on asphalt, 'free' again. Smith is defeated, and the Matrix reloads to version 7, with Zion persisting this time.
Neo's body emanates white light, probably not a healthy occurrence for a flesh and blood organism, fueling speculation that his body is dead. But his mind, his consciousness, his memories...those could easily be downloaded into the machine mainframe to be born again if needed.
So the film ends with the Architect's grudging agreement that all minds that reject the Matrix will be freed. Zion has been saved, and will grow in size with the influx of freed minds. For now, the war is over. The Matrix has been reloaded and all of Smith's damage has been reversed. And Sati, a child born in the Matrix, has made a beautiful sunrise for Neo, remaking the Matrix as she sees fit.
So What's Changed?
A lot of people have come out of Revolutions with the mistaken impression that nothing's changed. Many expected there would be a "clear winner" to this struggle. The machines would be destroyed, the Matrix would be dismantled, or Zion would be destroyed, and the machines would win. But no one won, no one lost, so everything must be the same. We don't buy that. It seems to us that this ending is the only one that makes any sense, and the only one that really could have happened.
Let's take a brief look at each side winning: If the machines win, it likely means Zion is destroyed and The One returns to the source, the Matrix is reloaded, and it all starts over again. That's status quo, and puts us back to where we were before the first movie. Where's the movie in that?
If the humans win, it likely means some destruction of the machines. Where does this leave the Matrix? The machines run it, they understand it, they upgrade it, and they have the help desk support for it. Do the humans destroy the Matrix and kill the millions still trapped in it? Do they free everyone simultaneously? Where would they put everyone? How would they feed everyone?
It just doesn't seem like a clear-cut, black-and-white answer will work here; and really, when is life ever black-and-white? There are always shades of grey, and this ending is grey, grey, grey.
So what's changed? If we look at the situation just before the first movie
Humans are held as batteries against their will
Zion is a temporary refuge for those who reject the Matrix
The resistance 'secretly' frees minds that reject the Matrix
There is an ongoing war with the machines to save Zion
Unbeknownst to Zionists, Zion is also a form of control by the machines
Zion is repeatedly destroyed and re-built with total loss of life
The One is repeatedly located, trained, and given an ultimately meaningless mission
The Oracle devotes a lot of energy to this mission
Etc.
Humans are held as batteries, but all minds who reject the Matrix are automatically freed
Zion is a permanent refuge for those who reject the Matrix
There is peace between humanity and the machines
More and more people will end up free outside the Matrix, likely leading to some re-building of civilization
Zion will not be destroyed
The Oracle has more time to bake cookies
Etc.
This ending paves the way for a return to a previous time, when humans and machines lived in peace and shared the Earth. This won't happen any time soon, but the foundation has been laid to repair a lot of damage and to attempt to co-exist, as opposed to conquer. Why is this a possible, perhaps probable, future? Well, The Oracle's Gamble paved the way, but it's all about Love, Actually .
The Oracle's Gamble
The Oracle, she's crafty. All along we thought she was baking cookies and handing candy to strangers, but it turns out she's a player. She played Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus. She played The Merovingian, and she totally played The Architect. If he had a real head, it would still be spinning from the moves she made.
The Oracle, described by The Architect as "an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche", has been around since the beginning. She's experienced the 5 previous iterations of the Matrix, and has guided The Ones along the path in each iteration. But over time, her purpose has changed: she's learned more about the human psyche than any other machine or program. She's seen them struggle, fight, fall, get back up, and keep going. She's seen them live, love, and die. She's seen Ones follow the path. She's seen others put their faith in The One and do everything necessary to assist him or her. In short, she's seen it all. And she's learned. As each iteration of the Matrix played itself out, The Oracle has learned a bit more about the human psyche, a bit more about what makes humans tick. Couple this knowledge with a weariness of the unending war, and a desire to see humanity on equal footing with the machines again, and you've got a whole new purpose for the Oracle, and the makings of an interesting game.
With Neo and iteration 6 of The Matrix, The Oracle finally has the perfect candidate to accomplish something she's been trying to achieve for quite a while: the end of the war. For as the Architect balances the equations of the Matrix, The Oracle unbalances them. Every bit of information she gives to Morpheus, Trinity, or Neo in the first movie is a carefully worded push in the right direction, to ensure events play themselves out as she wishes. Neo's not the One? Hey, no pressure; he's just a member of the team there to help. That'll ensure he follows a path of heroism and self-sacrifice essential to the success of her plan, and doesn't get overwhelmed by having the weight of the world on his hacker shoulders. Trinity will fall in love with The One? That's to ensure that The One's connection to humanity is specific - a powerful connection to one person, thus ensuring Neo makes the right choice in The Architect's chamber. In the end of The Matrix, Neo can't be dead because Trinity loves him, therefore he's The One, and the connection's established, if not strengthened.
In Reloaded, Seraph's statement "I protect that which matters most" is telling. Doesn't The One matter most? Not really - The One is a pawn in the game The Oracle is playing. He's the most critical pawn, to be sure, but a pawn nonetheless. The stakes are incredibly high in this game, and The Oracle matters more than anything, because without her the humans have no chance to break the cycle and end the war. And she sees a unique opportunity in Agent Smith's ascension: here's a way to unbalance the equation this time around. Here's a way to ensure a different outcome than the five previous times. Thank you, Smith!
So she uses Seraph to protect her until the critical moment, and she continues to feed Neo just enough information to make sure he does what she needs him to do. In the park, she gives him the nudge that he's already made a decision about Trinity's fate - if he has, it sure isn't death. It has to be life, and it follows from love. Back in her kitchen in Revolutions, knowing that Smith is close, she makes sure Neo understands that Smith is the target now, not the machines. Neo's role is not to fight the war, it's to fight Smith, but why? Because everything that has a beginning has an end. You, me, Smith, this war, the machine's enslavement; all these things can and will come to an end. And sacrifices are necessary to achieve the end. After Neo leaves to reflect on her guidance, The Oracle sacrifices herself to Smith, hoping Neo has gotten the message, and knowing that if he fails, this is her end. She plays Smith by providing him her sight, which leads to overconfidence when he sees the end coming.
As The Oracle hoped, Neo goes to the machine city to broker peace, and ends up facing off against Smith. After a lengthy battle, The Oracle has one final move to make: Smith repeats her quote about everything having an end, giving Neo the final push he needs. He accepts his end, which unbalances the equation and gives control of a purposeless Smith to the machines. As Smith himself said "without purpose we would not exist". Now that he's destroyed Neo, his only purpose in coming back, Smith is left with nothing. And with Neo dead (and the equation unbalanced again, thanks to the Oracle), The Architect re-balances the equation by deleting Smith.
In the final scene The Architect acknowledges that he's been played, telling The Oracle that it was a dangerous game she'd been playing. The Oracle's long, risky gamble has finally paid off, and she's led the way to the first peaceful co-existence between man and machine since man first created machines, so long ago.
Love, Actually
So what's the Matrix Trilogy really about? With the bucketloads of meaning, metaphor, and symbolism in every scene, it's pretty difficult to distill these films down to a simple, punchy one-liner. But we won't let that stop us! As corny as it may sound, The Matrix Trilogy is about love, actually.
A scene critical to understanding the past, and especially the future of the Matrix occurs at the beginning of Revolutions. Neo, trapped in the train station between two worlds, encounters a 'family': father, mother, and their child. From the father, Rama-Kandra, Neo learns a valuable lesson. Rama-Kandra and his wife (both programs) have created a daughter, Sati. Sati is a program without purpose and will be deleted from the machine mainframe unless her parents can hide her. They make a deal with The Merovingian to smuggle Sati into the Matrix where The Oracle will care for her.
Why do these programs care what happens to Sati? Why did they create her in the first place? The answer is love. Not love as a human emotion obviously, but love as a word denoting a profound connection between entities. As Rama-Kandra explains it, love is just a word. What matters is the meaning you attach to the word. These programs are experiencing a profound connection to each other, one that they're using the word 'love' to describe, since it's as good a word as any, and it shares a reasonably close meaning with Neo's understanding of the word.
This revelation, that machines can experience something like this, is incredibly important for Neo. They've learned to love, or always had the capacity, but the resistance never knew. What other non-machinelike behaviour are they capable of? Showing mercy? Compassion? We already know that earlier they'd developed the idea of self-preservation - that's really what started the whole war. This knowledge will impact Neo's choices for the rest of the movie. Prior to this, there was little evidence that he would be able to reason with the machines - that he would be able to make them envision a peaceful future. They were simply killing machines with logic circuits that were either on or off, yes or no, good or bad. But Neo learns from Rama-Kandra that there is hope for humanity, because machines now possess the most basic and most cherished of human abilities: the ability to love another.
We believe this revelation paves the way for the peace treaty Neo negotiates with Deus Ex Machina - a peace treaty that no one else would have thought possible...but Neo now does. The future of the Matrix is wide open, full of possibility, but what of the past?
Love permeates the past of the Matrix. So many of the critical events in these movies are based on the love of someone for someone else, on the profound connection between people. In The Matrix, the Oracle herself says "Being the One is like being in love." We never knew how true that statement was, and how many layers it had at the time. Would Cypher have switched sides if Trinity had shown him some warmth and compassion? We'll never know. If Neo didn't already feel a profound connection to Morpheus, would he have risked his life to free him? And of course, would Neo have come back at the end of the movie without Trinity's expression of love?
In Reloaded, Trinity and Neo's love is brought into focus. Their scene under the arch during the celebration in Zion is critical to the outcome, because it is this love that fuels Neo. He can't do this on his own - he needs Trinity to keep him moving forward on the path of the One. It's this love that's causing Neo's nightmares, leading him to ask her to stay out of the Matrix. It's this love that both causes her to agree to his request and to ignore it when she believes he is in jeopardy and only she can help. And most importantly, it's because of this love that Neo chooses the door to save Trinity instead of doing what the Architect expects, putting into motion the events that would bring about peace in Revolutions. And it's this love that Neo draws on when he brings Trinity back to life near the end of Reloaded. Each critical branch in the path would end very differently (and a lot less happily) if love wasn't a driving force behind the choices being made.
Love plays a role in other decisions. If Niobe didn't still love Morpheus, would she choose to help him against Commander Lock's wishes? Her help is critical to the success of the mission. If Link didn't love his brothers-in-law, Tank and Dozer, would he volunteer and stay on Morpheus' ship through all the danger?
In Revolutions, Zee's love of Link led her to volunteer for the resistance army. Her impact in taking down one of the diggers is immense. Niobe's love of Morpheus is critical to her decision to offer her ship to Neo and to pilot the Hammer back to Zion. Would she trust Morpheus and his undying belief in Neo if not?
It's Trinity's love that rescues Neo from the train station. When The Merovingian asks "You are really ready to die for this man?", it's Persephone that answers "She'll do it! She'll kill every one of us if she has to... she's in love." And she will. It's Trinity that gets Neo through the trials on the way to the machine city. It's Neo's love of Trinity, and now humanity that leads him both to taking on Smith, and to brokering the peace between man and machine.
Neo's final fight with Smith is a direct comment on the importance of love to this trilogy. Smith rails at Neo "Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? [...] Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. [...] And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love." Rama-Kandra would have something to say to Smith about this. Two programs, each with very different opinions on love. Has one evolved further than the other? This is ultimately why Smith loses. He's left behind in a world that is changing, with machines/programs like Rama-Kandra paving the way to a future where maybe machines and humans can find more common ground instead of focusing on their differences.
This is a world that has love to thank for its existence. This is a world Neo gives to them, a world brought about by his ultimate sacrifice. This is a world where eradication of the enemy is seen for what it is: a symptom of the problem, not a solution. This is a world where the creator and its creation have the potential to live fruitfully in peace and cooperation. Neo has given his children, both mechanical and biological, a world where a machine can learn to love.
| The Matrix Revolutions |
Which 1999 film starring Tom Hanks is set in a Louisiana prison | Matrix | Matrix Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Edit
In the late 21st century, humans had developed a self-aware A.I. that would efficiently do all the jobs humans did not want to do. As a result, mankind became lazy and arrogant. This newly created species of A.I. machines were superior to humans in every way. As the machines were abused by their human masters, the relationship between them began to change. The first incident was due to a common house robot - B1-66ER .
B1-66ER was the first of its species to rebel against its human masters. When threatened with deactivation, B1-66ER killed his wealthy owner and the mechanic ordered to deactivate him. This was the first ever incident of an A.I. machine killing a human. The machine was detained and put on trial. B1-66ER stated that it was in self defense, saying that it "did not want to die".
The defense attorney Clarence Drummond used the famous Dred Scott v. Sandford case in 1856 as precedent to defend B1-66ER. But the judges decided that A.I. machines did not have the same rights as humans and B1-66ER was destroyed. Ironically, he was still tried as a human for his crimes.
Fearing a worldwide machine rebellion, leaders around the world ordered the destruction of all humanoid A.I. machines. Scenes shown in the Animatrix show similar fates to the machines that mankind has suffered in history such as the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Holocaust. Some machines managed to escape but were exiled. They settled in the Fertile Valley in the Middle East, the origin of human civilization. The machines started their own civilization, named 01 . This new nation began to create products that they exported to human countries. The machine-made products of 01 were superior in quantity and quality to all man-made products, and as a result the currency of 01 rose while that of the human nations crashed. Angered by this economic crisis, the United Nations started a naval blockade of 01. Two machine ambassadors from 01 entered the UN to plead for peace, but were refused as they were laughed at and taken away.
War
Edit
After careful deliberation, the UN and all of mankind decided to declare war on 01, a move that would lead to a war greater than any other in history. The UN high-altitude bombers unleashed a massive nuclear barrage on 01, but the machines were barely affected by the heat and radiation. The machine troops advanced throughout the Middle East, conquering human territories with ease. Despite the combined efforts of all humanity, the machines pushed deeper and deeper into human territory. Fearing that mankind would be defeated, the human leaders came up with increasingly desperate solutions.
At a worldwide summit, UN military leaders offered a final solution - the destruction of the sky. By blocking out the sun, the machines would be left without a power source.
The destruction of the sky, codenamed Operation Dark Storm , was set into motion around 2105. Using high-altitude bombers, the humans dispersed sky-darkening nano-machines. The plan initially worked and the Earth fell under the dark shroud forever. But one setback the humans did not predict was that their long-range weaponry (which was originally made by the machines) would not function due to the black clouds. With all their intercontinental weapons neutralized, the humans were forced into infantry combat. Armies in mechanized battle armor, supported by EMP artillery, launched a final attack against the machines.
This attack, however, was destroyed by the onslaught of the newer, insectoid machines. The UN command desperately launched more nuclear missiles, destroying many of their own troops along with the machines. 01 then used a biological weapon on their enemies, a flesh-eating plague that caused great misery to the human population. The remnants of the human armies were defeated by the machines; the war was over.
The UN Security Council called for an emergency summit to sign an armistice to end the war. 01 sent an ambassador for the second time, who signed the treaty and told the defeated humans to surrender their bodies. Then the machine ambassador detonated a nuclear bomb, killing all the human world leaders and destroying most of New York City.
Aftermath
Edit
Captive humans networked together
Though the machines were victorious, their win was a pyrrhic victory, as the world was in ruins. In need of a new energy source, the machines turned to something that was readily available; the humans. The machines took the injured humans and studied them (probing their brains, etc.) Using the energy from human bodies, combined with a form of fusion, the machines would have all the power they would ever need.
The machines took human captives and placed them into thermo-dynamic power stations. There they forcibly restrained them and built mechanical devices in them. Then they lined them horizontally and entombed them into their power stations. The first human prisoners, therefore, weren't actually plugged in. The machines later designed the first Matrix to keep their prisoners sedated. So, the first captives suffered in pain and horror en-route to what the machines viewed as the human's version of a "perfect world."
The Computer Generated Dream World
Edit
The first Matrixes were built to keep humans under control so that they could be used as an energy source for the machines. For this to work, they must not ever be aware that they are living in a dream world. Every sense was being blinded by the Matrix and the memories of their former lives were presumably erased. Programs were put into place to keep the Matrix from ever being discovered. Everything was created to be perfect for humankind, with no disease, war, or suffering. But as Agent Smith said; "Human beings define their existence through suffering and misery". As a result, the first Matrix was a monumental failure, with "entire crops" of humans rejecting the program.
The machines were quick to act. They hastily put into place a program to live among the humans and study them. This program would come to be known as " The Oracle ". She discovered a way to run the program, with a very gradual, but inevitable failure rate. Many humans would then live their normal lives, with very few ever realizing that they were in fact, not living any real life at all. The Matrix would then run very smoothly, until the beginning of the resistance.
The Resistance
Edit
The machine responsible for creating and managing the Matrix; The Architect , who had previously failed at creating a perfect world for the humans to live in not once, but twice now, had finally come up with the solution to his failures. With the help of the Oracle, as stated above, they discovered that if all the humans were given a choice to reject the Matrix, even though it was at an almost subconscious level, 99% of the humans would flourish inside. However, the remaining one percent of the population, if left unchecked, could cause a threat to the stability of the Matrix. To counter this, the Architect would allow seven males and sixteen females to leave the Matrix, and settle into the last human city in the real world, Zion . Otherwise, the unwilling people left inside could crash the Matrix, thus killing everyone connected to it.
In order to keep the people of Zion under further control, the two programs created the concept of " The One ". The Oracle would tell the Rebels about the prophecy of The One, saying that he would free humanity. The One would also be an important part in restarting the Matrix. Towards the end of his journey, just before the Matrix would crash, The One would end up meeting the Architect, and would be told the truth about the so called prophecy and his next task.
"The function of the One is now to return to the Source allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the Prime Program. After which you will be required to select from the Matrix twenty-three individuals — sixteen female, seven male — to rebuild Zion. Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash killing everyone connected to the Matrix which, coupled with the extermination of Zion, will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race."
The survivors would be told of the prophecy of The One, but would not be allowed to know of the renewal of the Matrix. They would be told that they were the first to be "unplugged", and that the year was somewhere around 2200. In reality, the year would be closer to 2700, if each cycle of the Matrix lasted around 100 years, and there being five cycles revealed in the movie.
The One cycle was put into effect, and the machines were able to maintain their control over humanity through five cycles and five versions of The One. However, the sixth "One", was different than the last five.
Enter Neo
Edit
The sixth version of The One was a man with the Bluepill name of Thomas Anderson (which, by way of folk etymology, means "the son of man"). His hacker alias was 'Neo'. He was the only version of the One to reject the Architect's deal of restarting the Matrix. The previous versions of The One all had a special attachment to the rest of humanity. Neo however, had an even larger sense of compassion to a certain individual, to the woman he loved; Trinity . When Neo was proposed the restarting idea, he declined the rational answer given by all his predecessors, and opted to save the woman he loved from an attack by an Agent .
Meanwhile, Smith, a rogue Agent corrupted and strengthened by a previous encounter with Neo, was spreading throughout the Matrix like a virus, becoming a threat to both machines and humans. The One struck a deal with the machines — in the form of an entity known as Deus ex Machina — to destroy Smith in return for peace. After mocking the One by saying they didn't need his help, the machines reluctantly accepted this proposal.
They knew they could no longer control or terminate the renegade viral Smith, who had grown much too powerful, and was known to have become obsessed with his desire to be "free" of a world and existence polluted by the "stench" of humanity. In order to save the Matrix, the machines knew Neo was their only option (because of the specific reset program he carries.) Neo and Smith battled, but eventually Neo submitted and allowed Smith to imprint over him, causing Neo to die. Once dead the machines were able to retrieve the reset program he held sending a surge throughout the matrix destroying Smith in the process. Peace was restored, and the inhabitants of Zion were allowed to survive this time.
The final version of the Matrix was shown at the end of The Matrix Revolutions . It was a world where anyone who wanted to be free, was able to do so. But the question of how long the peace would last is a major concern. How many humans would be allowed to be free if the machines hoped to survive?
It should be noted, however, that the Machines may not be completely dependent on humanity as batteries in order to survive, as when the Architect gives the threat of Zion being inevitably destroyed to Neo, and combined with the Matrix's failure should Neo not comply, would mean the total extinction of humanity, Neo points out that if humanity is destroyed, the Machines would die off as well. The Architect then replies with "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept," implying he is willing to risk it in order to keep the Matrix and Humanity under control. He also rebuttals by telling the One if they are willing to defy him at the cost of every single human being. However, the One is programmed and designed to have an attachment to mankind to increase their chances of complying with him.
Thanks for the extra resource :)
2014-04-23T06:49:23Z
Matrix 4: Sofia Stewart book
2016-10-28T08:13:56Z
I forgot to mention another good evidence that Neo is program - its the fact that he was dead in real world in the matrxi 1, but magica...
2015-10-20T10:13:43Z
How Can I Belong to The Matrix
2015-12-28T22:34:04Z
| i don't know |
Who played the architect in The Towering Inferno | The Towering Inferno Reviews & Ratings - IMDb
IMDb
65 out of 79 people found the following review useful:
Did someone leave a cigarette burning?
from United States
2 February 2004
Having struck box office gold two years earlier with The Poseidon Adventure, Irwin Allen aided by the combined financing of Fox and Warner Bros., decided to do himself one better with The Towering Inferno. No expense was spared, as evidenced by Allen securing the services of two of the top box office draws available in Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. Next, he hedged his bet with a supporting cast that ran the gamut from William Holden, Fred Astaire and Faye Dunaway to soap actress Susan Flannery and football star O.J. Simpson. Add a lot of fire, a lot of smoke, a lot of flaming and charred humans and you have the makings of a box office bonanza. It's amazing that the budget was held down to a mere $14 million dollars even in 1974 dollars. Did it work? The film grossed $116 million dollars which was quite a princely sum in those days so the answer to that as far as Allen, Fox, and Warner Bros. is concerned would be yes.
Newman plays architect Doug Roberts who has been away in the jungle somewhere but is returning home just in time for the grand opening of the tallest building ever to grace California that he just happened to have designed. Doug is also returning home to his mistress played by Faye Dunaway to persuade her to join him on his next project. The head of the company building the tower is James Duncan(William Holden) whom has left a lot of the details of the construction of the tower to his no good son-in-law, Roger Simmons(Richard Chamberlain). That turns out to be bad news for everyone unfortunate to find themselves in The Tower. After some of the wiring in the building begins to have a major meltdown, Doug investigates to find that Roger has cut so many corners it could lead to a major catastrophe. Was there any doubt?
Despite the abundance of headlining actors in Towering Inferno, the true star of the film is the disaster itself, just as it is in any of these concoctions. Allen directed the action sequences with John Guillerman handling the rest of the chores. Allen does himself proud. Although we know of course that The Tower is not truly as tall as the filmmakers would have us believe, it's not obvious enough to detract from the film. It doesn't matter though, as most of the action takes place inside the building or near the suite at the top where most of our stars end up trapped. Of course this being a disaster film, we do get the privilege of watching flaming bodies fall over a hundred stories, be it it outside or down an elevator shaft.
Allen also does well at piling on the suspense and keeps you on edge for long moments, with such things as a long climb up a flaming stare well and a long decent down a scenic elevator that will have you wringing your hands. The fire sequences are all well staged as you can almost feel the flames leaping through the screen and smell the smoke circling around the room.
The problem with most disaster films is that with the good, there is generally some bad and Inferno is no exception. Some of the dialog in this film is truly horrendous.
Example:
Duncan: How bad is it? Halloran: It's a fire. All fires are bad
James Duncan: Give me the architect that designed you, and who needs Doug Roberts? Susan: I do.
In one truly silly moment, after Dan Bigelow(Robert Wagner) and his secretary Lorrie (Susan Flannery)have just finished love making, the fire has engulfed the room next to theirs. Lorrie, being the ever observant secretary and mistress sniffs and delivers this line: "Did someone leave a cigarette burning?"
The best of the actors is easily Steve McQueen. As Chief Michael O'Hallorhan who is called to put the fire out, he seems to relish has role as a fire department head. Paul Newman on the other hand is a mixed bag. When he's playing his scenes with McQueen, Holden, Dunaway, or Chamberlain, he's OK. In other scenes, especially when the fire initially breaks out, he appears stiff and uncomfortable. Fred Astaire is on hand as the whimsical con artist Harlee Claiborne out to bilk Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones)with some phony stocks. Jones is one of the best things going in this movie, turning out to be quite the heroine. Dunaway as Robert's girlfriend Susan is dry enough that we wish they could have brought Joanne Woodward in to give the relationship some real spark (no pun intended). Wagner as Dan Bigelow is a charmer but we just can't buy into his relationship with Lorrie (Susan Flannery). Susan Blakely as Patty Simmons, Holden's spoiled daughter and the wife of Roger (Richard Chamberlain)has nothing much to do except chastise her husband for causing Daddy a big headache. Chamberlain, on the other hand, seems to like playing the role of the villain and he does it well. You'll have no trouble believing just how big of a jerk Roger is. Last , is O.J. Simpson as the security guard who seems to be smarter than everybody else. The role requires little and in his big screen debut, Simpson gives it just that.
No matter. The Towering Inferno will still entertain you. At 165 minutes, you'll only be looking at your watch in the first half hour or so as you wait for that one tiny spark to ignite a night of suspense. Irwin Allen put quite a spectacle on the screen, but unfortunately never again duplicated it and with each subsequent film his product went from bad to being truly mediocre. Considering how much I really liked this film, it's a shame. Now, please put out that cigarette.
My Grade: B
from london
27 December 2003
When I was an impressionable teenager in 1975 I saw Towering Inferno 4 times at the cinema, Still a record for me, and despite the years and jaded view of middle age, this is still a thrilling film, mainly because the effects are so realistic, no CGI then, and the characters are so presented well (if a bit archly at times). I still cannot decide if the ending would actually put the fire out, but who cares, that countdown still gets to me. I forgot how good Paul Newman was in his role, and I can never forget Fred Astaire, such a smooth performance. Great cinema, daft in parts, but the best films always are.
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53 out of 65 people found the following review useful:
The Towering Inferno
from United Kingdom
15 June 2005
What a movie! it has an all star cast including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden and many more.
The basis for this movie is the opening of the worlds tallest building, but things aren't as perfect as they seem as architect Paul Newman discovers inadequate electrical wiring in the building which could result in dangerous concequences. He then reports this to the buildings owner James Duncan but he doesn't think that it is a problem and still decides to go on with the opening ceremony which puts 300 peoples lives in the balance while trapped on the top of the 138 storey skyscraper when the building goes on fire due to the poor wiring, this results in unpredictable explosions and fires breaking out everywhere in the building. It is now up to fireman Steve McQueen his crew and the aide of the Navy to rescue the 300 people on top of the building and put out the fire.
By far the best disaster movie ever made with a terrific all star cast. Not to be missed!
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39 out of 49 people found the following review useful:
Fire cracker
from St. Louis, Missouri
19 April 2004
The all-star blockbuster THE TOWERING INFERNO proves that you can make a bad film that still manages to be a great movie. Contrary to conventional wisdom, special effects and elaborate stunt work can actually be the star of a movie and provide ample compensation for poor writing, clumsy direction and really amateurish acting.
THE TOWERING INFERNO is, of course, a disaster movie, the methodical destruction of a high-rise skyscraper, along with many of its tenants. It came on the heels of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and quite honestly is no match for that film's delicious mix of sappy sentimentality and hammy heroics. But, while its dramatic quality is only marginally superior to hack films like AIRPORT '75 and the atrocious EARTHQUAKE, INFERNO provides a masterful blend of audience manipulation and technical craftsmanship. As Paul Newman pointed out to the press, neither he nor his perpetual professional rival Steve McQueen are the star of the film: the fire is the star. And as appropriate to any star, the fire, in all of its glorious mayhem, is lovingly filmed and given a wide berth to overact with style.
The rest of the cast should be so lucky. The remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime cast (Newman, McQueen, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Fred Astaire, etc.) behave like troopers, even though they are primarily reduced to being little more than high priced props. Most of the scenes involving actual human interaction seem rushed and the inept line readings of the inane dialogue suggest that no one bothered with retakes, let alone rehearsals. But such moments are little more than filler, marking time between some of the most remarkable actions sequences ever filmed. The helicopter rescue of the derailed scenic elevator is heartstoppingly thrilling, even as you realize that it is absolutely physically impossible. And it is overshadowed by the explosive final showdown with the villainous fire. Hollywood has cinematically destroyed greater amounts of real estate, but seldom with such style.
As art, THE TOWERING INFERNO is a fizzle, but as a cheap carnival thrill show it's pretty hot stuff.
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43 out of 64 people found the following review useful:
The Best Of The Disaster Flicks?
from United States
3 April 2006
"Disaster Movies" were a big hit in this era, with airplane crashes, earthquakes, fires, etc. This one made huge fires and firemen fashionable for awhile. It certainly had people talking, and it may have been the best of those "disaster" flicks.
The movie certainly had an all-star cast: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner and (gulp) O.J. Simpson. Even Jennifer Jones came out of a long retirement to return to films. It was really nice to see her again.
What really surprised me about this film when I watched it earlier this year was that the special effects were still good, and the film is almost 40 years old. It was also good to see Steve McQueen being the good guy again. He was the best character in the film. The worst was William Holden, who turned out to play a lot profane-spewing nasty people as soon as the Hays' code was totally abolished in 1967. Same thing for Paul Newman. McQueen, meanwhile, kept his class as did Jones, of course, and Astaire.
The film is almost three hours long but, a few soap opera scenes aside, it's a solid adventure story that holds up well and it served a good purpose, making hotel owners more aware of potential fire hazards.
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35 out of 49 people found the following review useful:
McQueen and Newman create sparks
from United States
13 December 2003
Your typical dumb disaster flick, produced by the king of the genre, Irwin Allen, made notable by the presence of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman who finally agreed to share the screen as equals, something they almost did in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." The ever competitive McQueen made his film debut with a bit part in "Somebody Up There Likes Me" in which Newman starred, and one of his ambitions was to finally get top billing over his number one rival. Even with the so-called "diagonal billing" employed in the film and its advertising (with Newman's name elevated slightly above McQueen's), those of us who read from left to right can see that McQueen got his wish. He also got the best role. He's the firefighter, a tight jawed man of action, while Newman is saddled with the less sympathetic role of the architect. But the real star is the burning building. It burns, and impressively at that, but there's something very claustrophobic about this situation which results in less action than Allen's previous smash, "The Posiedon Adventure."
But the acting is better. In addition to McQueen and Newman, the cast includes Richard Chamberlain (particularly good), William Holden, Faye Dunaway, and Fred Astaire. That's an improvement over Carol Lynley and Eric Shea, both of whom Gene Hackman had the misfortune of emoting with two years earlier. Whatever one thinks of this particular genre, "The Towering Inferno" is probably the best of the bunch.
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22 out of 25 people found the following review useful:
The crowning glory of a much maligned genre.
from United Kingdom
4 May 2008
A newly built state of the art high-rise is hosting a big society gathering when a fire starts up on the 81st floor...
Warner Brothers & 20th Century Fox were both keen to cash in on the success of 1972s The Poseidon Adventure, Warner's buying the rights to The Tower, and Fox buying the rights to The Glass Inferno, both novels about burning skyscrapers and seemingly ripe for a big screen adaptation. Enter producer Irwin Allen who smartly suggested that both studios should come together and produce one blockbusting genre defining film. Splitting the cost down the middle, The Towering Inferno was born and went on to make over $100 million across the globe, a very impressive take for its time, and certainly a shot in the arm for disaster genre enthusiasts.
The Towering Inferno is far from flawless, it contains some cheese sodden dialogue, and the film's running time doesn't quite do the film any favours. However, the film's strengths far outweigh the handful of negatives that are often used to beat it up with. The sets are fabulous (Academy Award Nominated) and all to perish in the fire, the cinematography from Fred J Koenekamp (Academy Award Winner) is lush and puts the fire in the eyes, while the score from John Williams (Academy Award Nominated) is suitably poignant and edgy. What about the action sequences? The set pieces? With many of the illustrious cast doing their own stunts! All impacting sharp on the ears thanks to the brilliant sound from Soderberg & Lewis (Academy Award Nominated), with the cast itself a reminder of a wonderful time when only the big names were considered for the big projects, McQueen, Newman, Holden, Astaire (Academy Award Nominated) & Dunaway rolling off the tongue like a who's who of entertainment heavyweights.
Some say that The Towering Inferno finally killed off the ailing disaster genre, no it didn't, it crowned it, and all the others that followed were merely trailing in its wake. The Towering Inferno is a spectacular production that positively booms with high entertainment values, no expense is spared in the pursuit of entertaining the masses, it's thoughtful in texture and it teaches as it plays and it remains to me a wonderful archaic gem. 9/10
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18 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
The Titanic Of The Skyscrapers
21 January 2007
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Although some like to compare The Towering Inferno to The Poseidon Adventure because Irwin Allen that master of disaster brought us both, in point of fact The Towering Inferno is more like a landlocked Titanic than anything else.
It has to be remembered that the Titanic was on its maiden voyage and was ballyhooed as an unsinkable ship when the tragedy occurred. The building that William Holden built, that Paul Newman designed was also on its maiden voyage so to speak. The 135 story building in San Francisco was being dedicated and there was going to be a big blowout on the top floor with all kinds of VIPS in attendance. Little does Holden suspect that his son-in-law Richard Chamberlain cut quite a few safety corners in the electrical wiring. When the whole tower gets lighted up, a fire breaks out in one of the circuit junction boxes and the party gets cut short.
Paul Newman and Steve McQueen as the fire battalion chief head an impressive cast list of name players put in harm's way by Chamberlain's avarice. Fred Astaire got an Academy Award nomination for playing an elderly conman who tricks his way into the VIP gathering to fleece wealthy widow Jennifer Jones. This was Jones's farewell performance on screen, she retired right after that to become just the kind of wealthy society matron she plays here.
The film got an award for Best Cinematography deservedly so, the shots are quite vivid and also the best song of 1974. During the party scene, Maureen McGovern who had introduced the popular There's Got To Be A Morning After in Irwin Allen's The Poseidon Adventure sings We May Never Get To Love Like This Again. It won for best song, but certainly didn't have the lasting popularity of the other.
The most vivid moment of the film for me besides the climax is the illfated rendezvous of Robert Wagner and Susan Flannery. They agree for a boss secretary rendezvous in his apartment there and Wagner turns off the phone so word cannot reach them of the fire. The death scenes of both will tear you up.
According to the Films of Steve McQueen the reason for the joint production by Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox is that when two studios put out two Harlow films, both cut each other up at the box office and no one made out. Warner Brothers purchased The Tower and Fox bought the Glass Inferno screen rights. Rather than have competing disaster films, they made an historic interstudio agreement to have a joint production.
I think it worked out well all around.
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23 out of 32 people found the following review useful:
Hot Potato.
from United States
25 August 2003
"Grand Hotel"-styled disaster epic that, along with the original "Airport" and "The Poseidon Adventure", became a monstrous money-maker which dominated not only economically, but also critically. "The Towering Inferno" is an intense affair as a high-rise skyscraper in San Francisco seems to be a state-of-the-art marvel, but sometimes things are not as perfect as they seem. There are still flaws in the building and naturally a small spark in a utility room will lead to an overwhelming night of terror and heroism. A who's who cast in Hollywood at the time makes up the mind-blowing list of performers. Paul Newman, Robert Vaughn, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner and Jennifer Jones all make lasting impressions. However it is Fred Astaire (in an Oscar-nominated role of a lifetime) and then-Buffalo Bill superstar O.J. Simpson (showing the style, grace and power that he showed on the playing field here in his debut screen performance) that stand out and create a higher dimension to an honestly corn-filled story. A terribly difficult production to pull off due to the very large scope involved. The technical effects compete well with the all-world performers to make a stunningly impressive movie. Near the top of the usually ho-hum genre of the period. 4 stars out of 5.
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16 out of 19 people found the following review useful:
Classic star-studded disaster film....
Author: templer_doom ([email protected])
20 July 2003
With the likes of INDEPENDENCE DAY and DIE HARD, which were both influenced by THE TOWERING INFERNO, a new awareness of the potential of the disaster film emerged, culminating in the likes of DEEP IMPACT, ARMAGEDDON and the more recent THE CORE.
The definition of 'all-star cast' and 'star-studded' has changed substantially in the last few years and in fact, the true star of THE TOWERING INFERNO wasn't any actor or star, but the late Irwin Allen, whose career in this type of film ended with the poorly-received WHEN TIME RAN OUT.
The film, which was adapted from two source novels, THE GLASS INFERNO and THE TOWER (both of which were bought by rival studios Fox and Warner to compete at the box-office - and then decided at the last minute to pool their resources into creating a single script) is impressive in scope and design.
For the uninitiated, one of the books deals with a disgrunted ex-employee who decides to cause an accident which starts a fire and in some ways that would have made a more intriguing storyline, but the plot of the actual film which involves cost-cutting to electrical circuits which causes the fire int the first place works as it is.
At a running time of 158 minutes some may think the film too long. In this day and age there would have possibly been test screenings and some cutting of the film, but since the success of TITANIC at the box-office longer films have become the norm. Indeed, the more recent HARRY POTTER and LORD OF THE RINGS movies are in this bracket (although the upcoming KILL BILL story that the three-hour film will be split in two may pave the way for shorter lengths!!) Mind you, THE GREAT ESCAPE is of similar length and that film moves at a cracking pace.
Steve McQueen is on screen less than some of the other stars in the film, but his performance is the best and complements others on show.
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Page 1 of 20:
| Paul Newman |
Which actor starred in the films The China Syndrome and Disclosure | The Towering Inferno
The Towering Inferno
By Patrick Mondout
The world's largest skyscraper has just opened and many of the movers and shakers who are responsible for it are partying (like it's 1949) on the top floor (the 130th floor!). Unfortunately, cost-cutting measures have compromised the safety of the building and a single spark from faulty electrical wiring is all that was needed to engulf it in flames. The ensuing chaos includes extramarital-lovers being burned to death, a firemen falling through an elevator shaft a hundred (or so) floors this his death, and heart-wrenching, Titanic-like decisions about who gets to go down the one working elevator to safety.
Actually, the story of how this movie came about is at least as interesting as the movie: In the early Super70s, a pair of movie studios purchased separate scripts which both featured skyscraper engulfed in flames (Warner Brothers owned Richard Martin Stern's "The Tower," and 20th Century Fox owned Thomas Scotia/Frank Robinson's "The Glass Inferno,"). Rather than compete with one another, they decided to pool their resources and filming began in early 1973. This was quickly becoming the Decade of the Disaster Film and 'Inferno cost a breathtaking (by 1974 standards) $14 million to make but returned $150 million in worldwide release. It took two directors to handle one of the biggest all-star casts to grace the silver screen. Over 200 stunts were performed for the movie, including the famous last scene where millions of gallons of water were poured over the party-goers.
The all-star cast was wasted on this box-office burner which received far more Academy Award nominations than it deserved. Paul Newman played the architect of the ill-fated building, Steve McQueen was a firefighter, and Fred Astaire was one of the folks trapped on the top floor (this was a roll for which he was Oscar-nominated). A security guard in the burning building, O.J. Simpson landed a role where he actually gets to save lives! Before you get your hopes up, he only manages to rescue a cat (hey Juice, how's that search for the "real" killer coming along?).
Trivia!
Both Steve McQueen and Paul Newman performed their own stunt work for this movie.
Academy Awards
The Towering Inferno received Academy Awards for Cinematography (Fred J. Koenekamp & Joseph Biroc), Film Editing (Harold F. Kress & Carl Kress), and Music: Best Song (Al Kasha - Music & Lyrics, Joel Hirschhorn - Music & Lyrics). The Towering Inferno also received Academy Awards nominations for Best Picture (Irwin Allen - Producer), Supporting Actor (Fred Astaire), Art Direction/Set Decoration (William Creber - Art Direction, Ward Preston - Art Direction, Raphael Bretton - Set Decoration), Music Scoring Awards (Best Original Dramatic Score; John Williams), and Sound (Theodore Soderberg & Herman Lewis).
Share Your Memories!
Is The Towering Inferno one of your favorite movies? What do you remember about it? Share your stories (or your reviews) with the world ! (We print the best stories right here!)
Your Memories Shared!
"This is a movie with heart !! Who could ever forget the lovely Susan Flannery as the sympathetic Lorrie , a beautiful , brave , and loving young women who affirms her love in the face of death ? If you didn't feel for her you have no heart !"
--Spellman
"It's hard to watch this movie post 9/11 and not think about all those people trapped in the towers. I first watched this movie in awe as a child. Then for fun as cheesy Super70s kitsch. Now it's just sad."
--Anonymous
"I was only 5 years old when this movie came out and I liked it then and I liked it now. Many relatives including myself had been firefighters at one point in our lives. By watching this movie today, I can assure you that Duncan would had rather jumped off the burning building himself considering ALL the lawsuits he would be up against, including possible criminal negligence charges and the other people who'd be responsible such as Doug Roberts (better hide back into the wilderness), Roger Simmmons (He already met his fate in the film) and maybe even the security department and yes, the fire departments may get nailed as well. Oh, yeah, the inspectors, the builders, the city, etc. This would be a legal mess, huh???...Now, if they actually did a movie of such, I'd like to see how it turns out. Titled: THE TOWERING INFERNO AFTERMATH [Editor's note: "Mr. Grisham, pick up the white courtesy phone please."]"
--Charious
| i don't know |
Which fruit plays a role in the downfall of Captain Queeg in the film 'The Caine Mutiny | The Caine Mutiny
Remind Me
Behind the Camera On THE CAINE MUTINY
Because the public was so familiar with the The Caine Mutiny from the book and the play, anticipation for the Hollywood adaptation ran high. National magazines ran several stories on the film's production and imminent release. Publications from Variety to The Christian Science Monitor were publishing features and interviews before the New York premiere of The Caine Mutiny, detailing the making of the film and the anticipated response from audiences around the country.
The Caine Mutiny was made under tight restrictions from Columbia Studios' chief Harry Cohn, who demanded that the final cut not exceed two hours in running time and a $2 million budget. If the running time or the budget ran over, ultimate control of the production would fall into Harry Cohn's tyrannical hands. The reason why Cohn insisted on the two hours maximum running time was purely financial; if it was no more than 120 minutes in length theaters could squeeze in an extra showing of the film per day.
One of the naval officers who advised the filmmakers on technical aspects during the making of The Caine Mutiny held a bitter grudge against one of his former commanding officers, whom he described as a "Captain Queeg." The officer asserted that the novel "should be required reading for every man and officer in the United States Navy."
The Caine Mutiny opens with the epigraph that states that there has never been a mutiny in the United States Navy. The Navy insisted on the epigraph in exchange for the production's use of Pearl Harbor, planes, aircraft carriers, destroyers, combat boats, and the port in San Francisco. In fact, this was the only film made with the complete cooperation of the Navy for which they didn't want credit, only the opening disclaimer. The agreement was the result of heavy pre-production cajoling between the producers and the U.S. Navy. At first, the Navy was cool to the idea of lending support to The Caine Mutiny. Rear Admiral Robert Hickey, information chief of the Navy, wrote to the producers: "I believe your production would plant in the minds of millions the idea that life in the Navy is akin to confinement in a psychiatric institution." The Navy suggested several changes to the script, including a change of title to "The Caine Incident." In the end, the Navy's suggested changes were kept to a minimum and the final script was approved for shooting.
To capture the excitement of the typhoon scene, the filmmakers originally intended to steer the ship (a replica of the USS Caine) into an actual gale for the bad-weather footage. It was eventually decided that the typhoon would be artificially created in a studio by special effects technician Lawrence W. Butler.
Columbia Studios was determined to hire Humphrey Bogart for the top role in The Caine Mutiny, and Bogart was enthusiastic about playing Captain Queeg, but the Columbia brass did not want to pay him his top salary. Bogart was rather miffed at this, complaining to wife Lauren Bacall, "This never happens to (Gary) Cooper, or (Cary) Grant or (Clark) Gable, but always to me." Bogart correctly figured that Harry Cohn and company knew that Bogart wanted to play the part so fervently that he would agree to take less money rather than surrender the part to someone else. Cohn and Columbia were right, and Bogart was cast in one of his best roles.
The Navy technical advisor, Commander James C. Shaw, grew upset with the way the character Captain Queeg butters his toast during the infamous "strawberry" scene. Shaw understood that Queeg was mentally unbalanced, but that didn't mean that he was not an officer and a gentleman. Shaw figured that any officer who graduated from Annapolis would know the military standard for breaking a slice of bread into small pieces before buttering it. Unfortunately, Bogart (in the role of Queeg) felt like Shaw was personally attacking his performance and became agitated. To placate both parties, the crust was trimmed from the bread, thus reducing the size and satisfying both Bogart and the Navy.
Humphrey Bogart's tour de force performance in the climactic courtroom scene was so powerful that it completely captivated the onlooking film technicians and crewmen. After the scene's completion, the company gave Bogart a round of thunderous applause.
Producer Stanley Kramer and director Edward Dmytryk cast Lee Marvin as one of the USS Caine's supporting sailors, not only for his knowledge of ships at sea but for his acting talent. Throughout the production, the former Marine served as an unofficial technical advisor to the filmmakers. Sometimes a shot would be set up, only to be criticized by Marvin as being inauthentic. In addition to The Caine Mutiny, Dmytryk directed Lee Marvin in Eight Iron Men (1952) and Raintree County (1958).
Stanley Kramer gave Fred MacMurray a prominent role in The Caine Mutiny during a difficult period in the actor's life - his wife had just died - and work was a needed distraction for him. MacMurray's unsympathetic Lieutenant Tom Keefer was one of a handful of parts that went against his usual nice-guy typecasting. His few unlikable roles in Double Indemnity (1944) and The Apartment (1960) contrasted sharply with his more audience-friendly appearances in movies like The Egg and I (1947) and The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and the TV series, My Three Sons.
by Scott McGee
| Strawberry |
What word goes before tree, cart and pie | The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray
The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (25.96 Mbps)
Resolution: 1080p
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital Mono (Original)
French: Dolby Digital Mono
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital Mono (Original)
French: Dolby Digital Mono
Subtitles
English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Dutch, Greek, Hindi… (more)
English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Dutch, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Thai, Turkish (less)
Discs
(1954)
The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
A captain of a US Navy destroyer during World War II begins to crack under pressure, expressing odd behavior and is forcibly relieved by his second in command, but then a trial ensues to uncover who was in the right.
For more about The Caine Mutiny and the The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray release, see the The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray Review published by Martin Liebman on October 9, 2011 where this Blu-ray release scored 4.0 out of 5.
The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray Review
A classic picture arrives on Blu-ray at an attractive price.
Reviewed by Martin Liebman , October 9, 2011
There has never been a mutiny in a ship of the United States Navy. The truths of this film lie not in its incidents but in the way a few men meet the crisis of their lives.
It's not often that a film made of such a simple story -- "disorganized Navy crew is forced to shape up for a new Captain who may be stern but who also may not be completely in charge of all his faculties" -- proves to be this good on so many levels. The Caine Mutiny is made of nothing short of superb filmmaking, a picture that's perhaps the very embodiment of the value of a sound plot and fantastic acting, both working in seamless harmony and elevating the movie to heights rarely achieved by mere visual or audio excess or a ridiculously fast pace. It's the sort of movie that exudes such a strong magnetism that one can't help but to be swept up in it, working the deck of the Caine, huddled around the officer's mess, standing firm on the bridge in the face of an almost unthinkable and unprecedented nautical change-of-power, and breathlessly awaiting each syllable of testimony in the subsequent trial. The Caine Mutiny represents the peak of cinematic Drama. There's no shortage of emotional energy and structural chaos that develops as the plot plays out. The action emanates from deep within the viewer; the film engages the nerves and creates an uneasiness as the story reaches its climax, and while the end result isn't exactly a surprise -- the title of the film telegraphs what's to come -- The Caine Mutiny nevertheless piles on the thrills even as it marches so smartly, effortlessly, and memorably towards the inevitable.
Queeg assumes command.
Brand-new Naval Ensign Willie Keith (Robert Francis) has been assigned to the U.S.S. Caine, a minesweeping ship that's barely seaworthy -- it's described as a "beaten up tub" -- and that has seen more action than it has mine detection duty. Keith's surprised at the lax discipline aboard the Caine; it's hardly a vessel worthy of a man with his background, but even when he's offered a cushy desk job for a high-profile Admiral, he chooses to remain aboard and carry out his assignment. It's not long, however, before the ship's easygoing captain, DeVriess (Tom Tully), is replaced by a longtime Navy man, the experienced and no-nonsense Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg (Humphrey Bogart). The upstart Keith is assigned to serve as ship's "morale officer," code for "discipline enforcer." Discipline improves, but to the chagrin of the crew and the growing frustration of the officers. As Queeg's understandable demand for heightened discipline at a time of war and out of respect for the rules of the book and the chain of command slowly morphs into unacceptable behavior, coverups, and questionable command decisions, the officers aboard the Caine begin to contemplate the unthinkable: mutiny, but mutiny as prescribed by Naval code. Can the officers come to an agreement about Queeg's suitability as ship's captain, and should they choose to remove him from command, will their decision hold up in a Naval court?
When a movie is this good, there are any number of contributing factors working in its favor. To elevate one over another would be a disservice to the seamlessness with which the movie works and the greatness it exudes, so suffice it to say that all of the praises hereafter discussed may be seen as equals and critical factors all to the film's ultimate success. One of The Caine Mutiny's strengths lies in its ability to immediately make the viewer feel as part of the ship's crew and both an integral player and observer in the situations that unfold. The audience will feel most closely related to newly-minted Naval Ensign Willie Keith. His experiences on the ship with both of his commanding officers -- the looser but nevertheless accountable and, to a degree, demanding Captain DeVriess and, of course, the film's most critical character, Captain Queeg -- carry the audience through the film. He's certainly not naive or unfamiliar with the goings-on aboard the Caine, but the audience experiences everything for the first time along with him, both the lax discipline under DeVriess and the staunch by-the-book and, ultimately, undue demands of Queeg. Keith's initial boarding of the Caine brings with it a great sense of awe -- even if the ship is a rusting mess and certainly not one of the more prominent, larger flagship-like vessels -- which ultimately yields a chilling air of uncertainty and uneasy nervousness not necessarily over a new captain who's a bit more formal and demanding, but instead detached from reality, easily distracted, slow to decide, and fast to blame, all aboard a ship that can't afford any command mistakes. Keith's eyes and ears serve as something of a channel of information and perspective to the audience that's not easily accomplished, particularly in lesser movies that are more content to simply show its audience what's happening rather than make them feel as if a part of the story.
Another plus that elevates The Caine Mutiny to "classic" levels is its absolute reliance on story over raw action and kinetic activity. The picture plays with a understated fa�ade and a pace that's "slower" than even that employed by more modern films with a similar premise, for instance the excellent Crimson Tide , a picture that does rely more on story and acting but that has a more polished and refined presence and a slicker veneer than The Caine Mutiny. However, even those added "qualities" don't necessarily make it the superior of the two (though there's no doubt Crimson Tide is an absolutely fantastic picture). Then again, there's no need for flash in The Caine Mutiny; the story and the acting both are top-notch and at a level of such refined excellence that audience members will find themselves too engrossed in the plot and the characters to realize that the movie lacks that visceral pizzaz so often employed to distract from, rather than add to, a plot. The story's primary dynamics deal more in mental and emotional exercises, anyway; this is the story of people who must face a drastic change in routine in a time already defined by great stress, and have those pressures exponentially increased when it becomes apparent that the man under whose command they fall may not himself be up to performing his duties with the capability and capacity the situation demands. The story looks at the role of discipline and its place in an organized militaristic structure, but in this case "discipline" means not only tucking in shirts and abstaining from thieving a few strawberries. In The Caine Mutiny, it means taking command of a situation and upsetting the norm when it becomes clear that there's more than pride on the line; suddenly, it's the very lives of a crew come into undo jeopardy that's at stake, not simply their fall into a malaise that's a result of bad attitudes and a permitted absence of discipline all around.
And then there's the acting. There are plenty of movies out there that can boast wonderful casts and legendary performances. The Caine Mutiny doesn't have the finest assembled name cast and there are certainly some movies with -- subjectively speaking, of course -- "better" performances, but this movie comes in near the top of both categories. The iconic Humphrey Bogart turns in a performance that's a case study in complete acting. His character, Queeg, is so complex that he's defined not by his broad strokes -- disciplinarian, egoist, mentally unsteady -- but by the less obvious but ultimately far more crucial subtleties that make him a man who's hard to read, difficult to either outright like or dislike, and not readily revealing of what makes him tick and what will ultimately bring about the mutinous actions of the crew. Bogart's uncanny ability to become a character of such great complexity is practically unmatched -- Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade is a more modern example -- and even as an actor of such stature and who is instantly recognizable to most anyone who watches film, he simply melts into the character makes audiences forget the man behind the make-believe fa�ade. The film's other stellar performance comes from Robert Francis as Ensign Keith. As alluded to earlier, it's his ability to play the eyes and ears of the audience while also defining his own character that's one of the areas in which The Caine Mutiny readily separates itself from the pack. Francis offers a steady effort that sees him smartly, but never absurdly, maneuver through the various difficulties facing his tour of duty aboard the Caine, both before and after Queeg's arrival. Needless to say, the remainder of the cast is superb, the performances highlighted by the notable interplay between Jos� Ferrer and Fred MacMurray near film's end.
The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray, Video Quality
The Caine Mutiny's 1080p, 1.85:1-framed transfer delivers what are oftentimes striking results. Needless to say, the movie has never looked better for mass media home consumption. Sony's transfer appears faithful to the source, resulting in a handsome film-like image that's not always even and balanced, but representative of its natural state and intended appearance. Fine detailing is a strength. The image is often crisp and sharp, yielding remarkably intricate textures on welded and painted bulkheads, rusty surfaces, and other various areas around the ship. Facial detailing occasionally yields a somewhat flat and pasty appearance and the frame sometimes softens up, but neither hinder the overall appearance or one's ability to enjoy the movie. Colors waver slightly at times but are generally steady and pleasant. Brighter hues aren't the norm -- the picture is dominated by the flat gray paint aboard the Caine and the officers' tan uniforms -- but red dresses, the bright blue waters, and any other number of brilliant shades occasionally liven up the screen and demonstrate the palette's overall steadiness. The transfer is home to a few pops and scratches, but nothing that could be deemed deal breakers; they're minor inconveniences at worst. Strong blacks, solid flesh tones, and an absence of intrusive digital tinkering make this another handsome catalogue release in the ever-growing number of classic films earning high quality Blu-ray releases.
The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray, Audio Quality
Sony's DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless soundtrack of The Caine Mutiny isn't going to rock the listening area or push the limits of even modest home theater systems, but the presentation is fair and satisfying. Music might not enjoy the pitch-perfect lifelike realism of today's finest mixes, but there's no denying that the opening title theme is gloriously revealing, yielding rich clarity and wonderful spacing across the front. The track is rather limited in range and clarity outside of music, however; the surrounds don't exactly submerse the listener into the film or capture the everyday little nuanced details that might make up life aboard the Caine, but general effects are satisfactory in delivery, if not a bit on the crunchy and muffled side. The track picks up a bit of power during the heavy storm that appears in chapter eleven; solid bass, good use of the surround channels, and the wide front soundstage collectively do a fine job of recreating the chaos of a potent storm at sea. Dialogue is usually sharp and clear, but it can play with a slightly muffled texture on a few occasions. All in all, this is a quality presentation of a soundtrack that's well over fifty years of age.
The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray, Special Features and Extras
The Caine Mutiny makes up for its relatively short collection of extras with a strong commentary and a must-watch Documentary.
Audio Commentary: Program Director of the Society of Lincoln Center Richard Pe�a and Filmmaker Ken Bowser share a well-rounded collection of thoughts and insights into the history of The Caine Mutiny. Discussions include casting, the Navy's cooperation, the picture's awards and nominations, differences between book and film, various liberties taken throughout the film, shooting locales, and plenty more.
Behind The Caine Mutiny (480p, 35:13): This two-part Documentary from 2006 covers numerous aspects of the production, including its place in cinema and world history, the work of Producer Stanley Kramer, adapting the book to the screen and the need to cut it down to size, the legendary ensemble cast, the work of Edward Dmytryk and his transition from Noir pictures, the film's authenticity to Naval regulation and procedure, the inter-character dynamics, the plot's themes and character development, and more. This is a wonderfully all-inclusive, fast-paced, and engaging feature. It's a must-watch for all who enjoy this film and film history.
The Caine Mutiny Teaser Trailer #1 (1080p, 0:55).
The Caine Mutiny Teaser Trailer #2 (1080p, 0:51).
Previews: Additional Sony titles.
The Caine Mutiny Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
The Caine Mutiny is a remarkably strong film that's not lacking in any single area. Tremendous acting, a gripping story, and steady direction that accentuates the former two elements make the movie a wartime classic and one of the finest pictures to ever explore the dynamics of human interaction and the effects of pressure and uncertainty through the chain of command and, indeed, within any sort of multi-participant structure. It's one of the must-see films of the 1950s -- or any era for that matter -- and hasn't lost a beat even in today's more chaotic, faster-paced world of cinema. Sony's Blu-ray release of The Cain Mutiny deserves a more thorough supplemental section (though what's included is of the highest quality). Still, the technical specs are up to par and the price is right. Highly recommended.
| i don't know |
Who had a top ten hit in 1965 with Game Of Love | The Greatest Hits of 1965
The Ad Libs - The Boy From New York City - 02-65 - Blue Cat
Jewel Akens - The Birds And The Bees - 03-65 - Era
Herb Alpert - A Taste Of Honey - 11-65 - A&M
Eddy Arnold - Make The World Go Away - 12-65 - RCA
Len Barry - 1-2-3 - 11-65 - Decca
Fontella Bass - Rescue Me - 11-65 - Checker
Shirley Bassey - Goldfinger - 03-65 - UA
The Beach Boys - California Girls - 08-65 - Capitol
The Beach Boys - Do You Wanna Dance - 04-65 - Capitol
The Beach Boys - Help Me, Rhonda - 05-65- Capitol
The Beatles - Eight Days A Week - 03-65 - Capitol
The Beatles - Help! - 09-65 - Capitol
The Beatles - Ticket To Ride - 05-65 - Capitol
The Beatles - We Can Work It Out - 12-65 - Capitol
The Beatles - Yesterday - 10-65 - Capitol
The Beau Brummels - Just A Little - 06-65 - Autumn
The Beau Brummels - Laugh, Laugh - 02-65
James Brown - I Got You (I Feel Good) - 11-65
James Brown - Papa's Got A Brand New Bag - 08-65 - King
The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man - 06-65 - Columbia
The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn! - 11-65 - Columbia
Freddy Cannon - Action - 09-65 - Warner
Mel Carter - Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me - 08-65 - Imperial
Alvin Cash & The Crawlers - Twine Time - 02-65 - Mar-V-Lus
The Castaways - Liar, Liar - 10-65 - Soma
Chad & Jeremy - Willow Weep For Me - 01-65 - World Artists
Cher - All I Really Want To Do - 08-65 - Imperial
Petula Clark - Downtown - 01-65 - Warner
Petula Clark - I Know A Place - 04-65 - Warner
Sam Cooke - Shake - 02-65 - RCA
Vic Dana - Red Roses For A Blue Lady - 04-65 - Dolton
The Dave Clark Five - Any Way You Want It - 01-65 - Epic
The Dave Clark Five - Catch Us If You Can - 09-65 - Epic
The Dave Clark Five - Come Home - 03-65 - Epic
The Dave Clark Five - I Like It Like That - 07-65 - Epic
The Dave Clark Five - Over And Over - 12-65 - Epic
Jackie DeShannon - What The World Needs Now Is Love - 07-65 - Imperial
Dick & Deedee - Thou Shalt Not Steal - Warner
Ronnie Dove - One Kiss For Old Time's Sake - 05-65 - Diamond
Patty Duke - Don't Just Stand There - 08-65 - UA
Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone - 08-65 - Columbia
Bob Dylan - Positively 4th Street - 10-65 - Columbia
Shirley Ellis - The Clapping Song - 04-65 - Congress
Shirley Ellis - The Name Game - 01-65 - Congress
Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders - Game Of Love - 04-65 - Fontana
The Fortunes - You've Got Your Troubles - 09-65 - Press
The Four Seasons - Bye, Bye, Baby (Baby Goodbye) - 02-65 - Philips
The Four Seasons - Let's Hang On! - 11-65 - Philips
The Four Tops - I Can't Help Myself - 06-65 - Motown
The Four Tops - It's The Same Old Song - 08-65 - Motown
Freddie & The Dreamers - I'm Telling You Now - 04-65 - Tower
Marvin Gaye - Ain't That Peculiar - 11-65 - Tamla
Marvin Gaye - How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You - 01-65 - Tamla
Marvin Gaye - I'll Be Doggone - 05-65 - Tamla
The Gentrys - Keep On Dancing - 10-65 - MGM
Gerry & The Pacemakers - Ferry Across The Mersey - 03-65 - Laurie
Bobby Goldsboro - Little Things - 03-65 - UA
Dobie Gray - The "In" Crowd - 02-65 - Charger
Roy Head - Treat Her Right - 10-65 - Back Beat
Herman's Hermits - Can't You Hear My Heartbeat - 03-65 - MGM
Herman's Hermits - I'm Henry VIII I Am - 07-65 - MGM
Herman's Hermits - Just A Little Bit Better - 10-65 - MGM
Herman's Hermits - Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter - 04-65 - MGM
Herman's Hermits - Silhouettes - 05-65 - MGM
Herman's Hermits - Wonderful World - 06-65 - MGM
The Impressions - Amen - 01-65 - ABC Paramount
The Impressions - People Get Ready - 03-65 - ABC Paramount
Horst Jankowski - A Walk In The Black Forest - 06-65 -Mercury
Jay & The Americans - Cara Mia - 07-65 - UA
Jay & The Americans - Let's Lock The Door (And Throw Away The Key) - 02-65 - UA
Jay & The Americans - Some Enchanted Evening - 10-65 - UA
Jack Jones - The Race Is On - 04-65 - Kapp (written and recorded first by country singer George Jones at the same time on United Artists)
Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual - 05-65 - Parrot
Tom Jones - What's New Pussycat? - 07-65 - Parrot
Bert Kaempfert - Red Roses For A Blue Lady - 03-65 - Decca
The Kingsmen - The Jolly Green Giant - 02-65 - Wand
The Kinks - All Day And All Of The Night - 02-65 - Reprise
The Kinks - Tired Of Waiting For You - 04-65 - Reprise
Brenda Lee - Too Many Rivers - 07-65 - Decca
Dickey Lee - Laurie (Strange Things Happen) - 07-65 - TCF Hall
Barbara Lewis - Baby, I'm Yours - 08-65 - Atlantic
Barbara Lewis - Make Me Your Baby - 11-65 - Atlantic
Gary Lewis & The Playboys - Count Me In - 05-65 - Liberty
Gary Lewis & The Playboys - Everybody Loves A Clown - 10-65 - Liberty
Gary Lewis & The Playboys - Save Your Heart For Me - 07-65 - Liberty
Gary Lewis & The Playboys - This Diamond Ring - 02-65 - Liberty
Little Anthony & The Imperials - Hurt So Bad - DCP
The Lovin' Spoonful - Do You Believe In Magic - 10-65 - Kama Sutra
Martha & The Vandellas - Nowhere To Run - 04-65 - Gordy
Dean Martin - I Will - 12-65 - Reprise
Barbara Mason - Yes, I'm Ready - 07-65 - Artic
The McCoys - Fever - 12-65 - Bang
The McCoys - Hang On Sloopy - 09-65 - Bang
Barry McGuire - Eve Of Destruction - 09-65 - Dunhill
Roger Miller - Engine Engine #9 - 06-65 - Smash
Roger Miller - England Swings - 12-65 - Smash
Roger Miller - King Of The Road - 02-65 - Smash
The Miracles - The Tracks Of My Tears - 08-65 - Tamla
The Moody Blues - Go Now! - 04-65 - London
The Newbeats - Run, Baby Run (Back Into My Arms) - 11-65 - Hickory
Buck Owens - I've Got A Tiger By The Tail - 02-65 - Capitol (peaked at #25)
Patti Page - Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte - 06-65 - Columbia
Peter & Gordon - I Go To Pieces - 02-65 - Capitol
Gene Pitney - Last Chance To Turn Around - 06-65 - Musicor
Elvis Presley - Crying In The Chapel - 05-65 - RCA
Elvis Presley - I'm Yours - 10-65 - RCA
Elvis Presley - (Such An) Easy Question - 07-65 - RCA
The Ramsey Lewis Trio - Hang On Sloopy - 12-65 - Cadet
The Ramsey Lewis Trio - The "In" Crowd - 09-65 - Argo
The Righteous Brothers - Ebb Tide - 12-65 - Philles
The Righteous Brothers - Just Once In My Life - 05-65 - Philles
The Righteous Brothers - Unchained Melody - 08-65 - Philles
The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' - 01-65 - Philles
Johnny Rivers - Seventh Son - 06-65 - Imperial
The Rolling Stones - Get Off Of My Cloud - 10-65 - London
The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - 06-65 - London
The Rolling Stones - The Last Time - 04-65 - London
Billy Joe Royal - Down In The Boondocks - 08-65 - Columbia
Billy Joe Royal - I Knew You When - 11-65 - Columbia
Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs - Wooly Bully - 05-65 - MGM
The Seekers - I'll Never Find Another You - 04-65 - Capitol
The Shangri-Las - I Can Never Go Home Anymore - 12-65 - Red Bird
Del Shannon - Keep Searchin' (We'll Follow The Sun) - 01-65 - Amy
Silkie - You've Got To Hide Your Love Away - 11-65 - Fontana
Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds Of Silence - 12-65 - Columbia
The Sir Douglas Quintet - She's About A Mover - 06-65 - Tribe
Sonny - Laugh At Me - 09-65 - Atco
Sonny & Cher - Baby Don't Go - 10-65 - Reprise
Sonny & Cher - But You're Mine - 11-65 - Atco
Sonny & Cher - I Got You Babe - 08-65 - Atco
Sounds Orchestral - Cast Your Fate To The Wind - 05-65 - Parkway
The Strangeloves - I Want Candy - 08-65 - Bang
The Supremes - Back In My Arms Again - 05-65 - Motown
The Supremes - I Hear A Symphony - 11-65 - Motown
The Supremes - Nothing But Heartaches - 09-65 - Motown
The Supremes - Stop! In The Name Of Love - 03-65 - Motown
The Temptations - My Girl - 02-65 - Gordy
Joe Tex - Hold What You've Got - 01-65 - Dial
The Toys - A Lovers Concerto - 10-65 - Dynovoice
The Turtles - It Ain't Me Babe - 09-65 - White Whale
The Vogues - You're The One - 10-65 - Co & Ce
Jr. Walker & The All Stars - Shotgun - 03-65 - Soul
We Five - You Were On My Mind - 09-65 - A&M
Ian Whitcomb - You Turn Me On - 07-65 - Tower
Wonder Who? - Don't Think Twice - 12-65 - Philips
Glenn Yarbrough - Baby The Rain Must Fall - 05-65 - RCA
The Yardbirds - For Your Love - 06-65 - Epic
The Yardbirds - Heart Full Of Soul - 09-65 - Epic
The Zombies - Tell Her No - 02-65 - Parrot
| Wayne Fontana |
What was Jim Reeves first UK top ten hit (1963) | 1965 Trivia and Fun Facts
"Turn on, tune in and drop out"
- Dr. Timothy Leary
Johnny Cash's truck caught fire triggering a forest fire that burnt several hundred acres in Los Padres National Forest. When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it."
Time Magazine's Man of the Year:
William Westmoreland
Vonda Van Dyke (Phoenix, AZ)
Miss USA:
Sue Ann Downey (Ohio)
The Scandals and Bad News:
January 1, 1965, Soupy Sales, a popular wacky children's show host told his young listeners to rob their parents while they slept, and send him the money.
A man named Norman Morrison committed suicide in protest of America's involvement in Vietnam. Before a crowd, he set himself on fire outside the Pentagon.
The species of banana eaten today is different to the species eaten pre 1965. The Gros Michel banana became commercially extinct in 1965 due to fungal disease. Today's main export banana, the Cavendish, is now under threat from the same disease.
Charles Linster broke the world record for the most nonstop pushups w/ 6,006. He only stopped at 6,006 because his couch didn't want him to harm himself unknowingly. 69 days later he broke his neck, paralyzing him permanently.
NASA astronaut John Young upset Congress by smuggling a corned beef sandwich onto Gemini 3, prompting The House of Representatives' appropriations committee to organize a meeting to investigate the "sandwich scandal".
Pete Best released an album in 1965 called "Best of the Beatles" that contained no Beatles music but fooled so many people into buying it that it was investigated for consumer fraud. The case was dropped because no fraud had been committed, he was Best, of the Beatles.
1965 Pop Culture News:
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov was the first person to 'walk' in space, on March 18th, next to the Voskhod 2.'
Hugh Hefner threw a Batman-themed party back in 1965; ABC executive Yale Udoff was in attendance and ended up pitching the idea for the Batman TV show launched in 1966.
Keith Richards came up with the famous guitar riff for "Satisfaction" when he woke up from a deep sleep and sung the riff for 3 seconds into a tape recorder only then to fall back to sleep again.
When McDonalds first became a publicly traded company in 1965, many Wall Street brokers were wary as they had never heard of it.
Randy Gardner, a 17-year-old, set the scientifically-documented record for the longest a non-stimulated human has gone without sleep, by staying up over 11 days... all for his science fair project.
A 1965 Barbie came complete with a book titled How To Lose Weight that instructed Dont Eat! It also came with a scale permanently set to 110 lbs.
Muhammad Mahmood Alam, a Pakistani fighter pilot shot down four enemy aircraft in 30 seconds, then shot another one within the minute, and has held that world record still stands.
Bob Dylan said that if he ever sold out to a commercial interest, it would be "ladies garments." In 2007, he and his music appeared in a Victoria's Secret commercial.
Construction of the Duomo of Milan began in 1386, but wasn't considered complete until the final bronze door was installed in 1965, after nearly 600 years.
The first T.G.I. Fridays restaurant opened in Manhattan.
Ronald Reagan's first autobiography was titled "Where's the Rest of Me?" (1965) from a line in the movie "King's Row" (1942) where his character wakes up to find that his legs have been amputated.
James Russell invented the compact disc in 1965, although the public first got a first taste of this invention in 1980.
Joseph Licklider's 1962 idea became a reality with his Integalactic Computer Network in 1965, the first internet. Al Gore claimed the Court of Public Opinion 'common knowledge' Internet creator title in the late 1990s.
US Senator John McCain won Jeopardy in 1965.
Howard Stringer got drafted six weeks after finding a job at CBS in New York in 1965. He complied with the draft notice, spent a year in Vietnam, returned to his job, and became head of the TV network in 1988.
Pop singer Bobby Darin (real name: Walden Robert Cassotto) was an advocate for civil rights and participated in a 1965 civil rights march to Alabama.
Chris Matulich's New Orleans restaurant "Chris Steak House" was bought by Ruth Furtel in 1965. Thus oddly named "Ruth's Chris Steak House".
A Ukrainian farmer dug up the lower jawbone of a mammoth. Further excavations revealed the presence of 4 huts, made up of a total of 149 mammoth bones. These dwellings, dating back some 15,000 years, were determined to have been some of the oldest shelters ever built.
Gatorade was created and named in 1965 by scientists at the University of Florida at the request of the head coach of the football team. When the Gators won the Orange Bowl, the opposing coach said about the loss, "We didn't have Gatorade. That made the difference."
The Habit:
Bouncing Wham-O's Super-balls, Troll Dolls (Year 3)
1st appearances & 1965's Most Popular Christmas gifts, toys and presents:
Operation, Moon McDare action figures, James Bond Aston Martin from Corgi, Green Ghost Game , Bash! Game , Flea Circus, Super Ball (which could bounce at 92% of the prior bounce), Rock Em' Sock Em' Robots, Mystery Date
1965 Most Popular TV shows:
1. Bonanza (NBC)
2. Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. (CBS)
3. The Lucy Show (CBS)
4. The Red Skelton Show (CBS)
5. Batman (Thursday, ABC)
6. The Andy Griffith Show (CBS)
7. Bewitched (ABC)
8. The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS)
9. Hogan's Heroes (CBS)
10. Batman (Wednesday, ABC)
The biggest Pop Artists of 1965 include:
Barbara Mason, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Billy Stewart, The Byrds, Gene Chandler, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Fontella Bass, The 4 Seasons, The Four Tops, Freddie & the Dreamers, Gary Lewis & The Playboys, Herman's Hermits, The Impressions, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Jay & the Americans, Joe Tex, Jr. Walker & the All Stars, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Martha and the Vandellas, The Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye, The Miracles, Otis Redding, Petula Clark, The Righteous Brothers, Roger Miller, The Rolling Stones, Shirley Ellis, Solomon Burke, Sonny & Cher, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Temptations, Wilson Pickett
(Data is complied from various charts including: Billboard's Pop, Rock, Airplay, R&B/Dance and Singles Charts. The Hot 100 is the primary chart used for this list.)
The Number One Hits Of 1965:
December 26, 1964 - January 22, 1965: The Beatles - I Feel Fine
January 23, 1965 - February 5, 1965: Petula Clark - Downtown
February 6, 1965 - February 19, 1965: Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'
February 20, 1965 - March 5, 1965: Gary Lewis & The Playboys - This Diamond Ring
March 6, 1965 - March 12, 1965: The Temptations - My Girl
March 13, 1965 - March 26, 1965: The Beatles - Eight Days a Week
March 27, 1965 - April 9, 1965: The Supremes - Stop! In the Name of Love
April 10, 1965 - April 23, 1965: Freddie and the Dreamers - I'm Telling You Now
April 24, 1965 - April 30, 1965: Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders - Game of Love
May 1, 1965 - May 21, 1965: Herman's Hermits - Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter
May 22, 1965 - May 28, 1965: The Beatles - Ticket to Ride
May 29, 1965 - June 11, 1965: The Beach Boys - Help Me Rhonda
June 12, 1965 - June 18, 1965: The Supremes - Back In My Arms Again
June 19, 1965 - June 25, 1965: Four Tops - I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)
June 26, 1965 - July 9, 1965: The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man
July 10, 1965 - August 6, 1965: The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
August 7, 1965 - August 13, 1965: Herman's Hermits - I'm Henry VIII, I Am
August 14, 1965 - September 3, 1965: Sonny & Cher - I Got You Babe
September 4, 1965 - September 24, 1965: The Beatles - Help!
September 25, 1965 - October 1, 1965: Barry McGuire - Eve Of Destruction
October 2, 1965 - October 8, 1965: The McCoys - Hang On Sloopy
October 9, 1965 - November 5, 1965: The Beatles - Yesterday
November 6, 1965 - November 19, 1965: The Rolling Stones - Get Off of My Cloud
November 20, 1965 - December 3, 1965: The Supremes - I Hear A Symphony
December 4, 1965 - December 24, 1965: The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn!
December 25, 1965 - December 31, 1966: The Dave Clark Five - Over and Over
Popular Music in 1965 - # 1 Hits of 1965
Pop Culture News
| i don't know |
Which group had a top ten hit in 1976 with Things We do For Love | The UK Number Ones : 1975-1979
Week Ending ACT + Links TITLE Weeks TALLY COMMENT 18 Jan 1975 Status Quo Down Down 1
Only No 1
This famous band of head bangers had 22 Top 10s out of 52 hits between 1968 and 1996, but only this No 1.
25 Jan 1975 Tymes Ms Grace 1
Only No 1
US group that first charted in 1963. They had only two other hits before this No 1.
1 Feb 1975 Pilot January 3
Only No 1
British group whose two follow-ups failed even make the Top 30.
22 Feb 1975 Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) 2
Only No 1
They had two Top 10s before this. Harley went solo in 1976 but never made the big time.
8 Mar 1975 Telly Savalas If 2
Only No 1
Actor who starred in the tv cop show "Kojak". He spoke his way through this song by David Gates from Bread.
22 Mar 1975 Bay City Rollers Bye Bye Baby 6
1st No 1
Scottish band that dressed in tartan and built up a fanatical teen following. Best-selling single of 1975.
3 May 1975 Mud Oh Boy 2
3rd & last No 1
Buddy Holly hit from 1958. They had a further 4 Top 10 hits by the end of 1976.
17 May 1975 Tammy Wynette Stand By Your Man 3
Only No 1
Legendary US country music singer for whom this song became a trade mark.
7 Jun 1975 Windsor Davies & Don Estelle Whispering Grass 3
Only No 1
Spin-off from the BBC sitcom " It Ain't Half Hot Mum ". This pair were the stars.
28 Jun 1975 10 CC I'm Not In Love 2
2nd No 1
Classic love song and radio play list favourite. They were major stars of the 1970s.
12 Jul 1975 Johnny Nash Tears On My Pillow 1
Only No 1
Texan who specialised in soft reggae arrangements, and had much success in the UK.
19 Jul 1975 Bay City Rollers Give A Little Love 3
2nd & last No 1
"Rollermania" had been coined by this time, but by mid-77, it was all over.
9 Aug 1975 Typically Tropical Barbados 1
Only No 1
Two recording engineers created this reggae dance hit, but became One-hit Wonders. The song, with new words and title made No 1 again in 1999.
16 Aug 1975 Stylistics Can't Give You Anything (But My Love) 3
Only No 1
Philadelphian satin soul group who charmed the UK with a succession of smooth ballads.
6 Sep 1975 Rod Stewart Sailing 4
3rd No 1
One of his classic anthems, which returned to No 3 the following year, after use in a tv documentary series.
4 Oct 1975 David Essex Hold Me Close 3
2nd & last No 1
He was at the height of his popularity at this time. In the 1980s he concentrated on stage musicals.
25 Oct 1975 Art Garfunkel I Only Have Eyes For You 2
1st No 1
Having separated from Paul Simon, he recorded mostly MOR standards.
8 Nov 1975 David Bowie Space Oddity 2
1st No 1
He made No 5 with this in 1969. Rick Wakeman provides synthesiser backing.
22 Nov 1975 Billy Connolly D.I.V.O.R.C.E. 1
Only No 1
Scottish comedian who made this parody of a Tammy Wynette hit.
29 Nov 1975
Xmas No 1 Queen Bohemian Rhapsody 9
1st No 1
All-time classic which was accompanied by a video, and was the first No 1 to benefit from tv exposure. In 1991, the record was back at No 1.
31 Jan 1976 Abba Mamma Mia 2
2nd No 1
Two years after their first No 1 they were back, and their careers took off.
14 Feb 1976 Slik Forever And Ever 1
Only No 1
Scots band led by Midge Ure . He went on to groups Visage and Ultravox , but his next No 1 was solo in 1985.
21 Feb 1976 Four Seasons December '63 2
Only No 1
Major 60s act, with falsetto vocalist, Frankie Valli, who made a strong return in the 70s with the band and solo.
6 Mar 1976 Tina Charles I Love To Love 3
Only No 1
She once recorded budget cover versions and was in band 5000 Volts. Solo, she had two other Top 10 hits.
27 Mar 1976 Brotherhood Of Man Save Your Kisses For Me 6
1st No 1
UK Eurovision winner, which shot them to stardom for a couple of years. Best-selling single of 1976.
8 May 1976 Abba Fernando 4
3rd No 1
The momentum was now picking up - Abbamania began.
5 Jun 1976 J J Barrie No Charge 1
Only No 1
Slushy, sentimentality from the Canadian. Female vocals are by Vicky Brown, late wife of 60s' rocker Joe Brown .
12 Jun 1976 Wurzels Combine Harvester (Brand New Key) 2
Only No 1
Cider-drinking folkies from the West Country with a reworking of Melanie's hit.
26 Jun 1976 Real Thing You To Me Are Everything 3
Only No 1
TV talent show winners from Liverpool who enjoyed hits for the rest of the decade.
17 Jul 1976 Demis Roussos The Roussos Phenomenon EP (main track: Forever And Ever) 1
Only No 1
Overweight Greek star, prone to wearing kaftans. Most of his success came from live performances.
24 Jul 1976 Elton John & Kiki Dee Don't Go Breaking My Heart 6
1st No 1 for Elton, Only No 1 for Kiki
The British legend had scored five No 1s in the US before this one. His next UK No 1 was 14 years away.
4 Sep 1976 Abba Dancing Queen 6
4th No 1
This classic dance track was their only US No 1. Still heard on radio in to the 2000s.
11 Oct 1976 Pussycat Mississippi 4
Only No 1
First Dutch act to make the UK top spot. Success was short lived.
13 Nov 1976 Chicago If You Leave Me Now 3
Only No 1
They started as rockers in late 60s, but settled into AOR and became the darlings of American FM radio.
4 Dec 1976 Showaddywaddy Under The Moon Of Love 3
Only No 1
Rock 'n' roll revival group from Leicester who had nine Top 10 hits with remakes.
25 Dec 1976
Xmas No 1 Johnny Mathis When A Child Is Born 3
Only No 1
American MOR star who first charted in 1958, and was 41 by the time he got to No 1 with this Christmas classic.
15 Jan 1977 David Soul Don't Give Up On Us 4
1st No 1
One half of top tv cop show "Starsky & Hutch" (he was blonde Hutch) who was a singer before he became an actor. Written by Tony Macaulay. Top seller of 1977.
12 Feb 1977
400th No 1 Julie Covington Don't Cry For Me Argentina 1
Only No 1
From the Tim Rice & Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical "Evita". Julie was in tv series "Rock Follies", but did not take a role in the "Evita" stage production.
19 Feb 1977 Leo Sayer When I Need You 3
Only No 1
Discovered and managed by Adam Faith , Leo had 10 Top 10 hits over nearly 10 years. Written by Albert Hammond & Carole Bayer Sager.
12 Mar 1977 Manhattan Transfer Chanson D'Amour 3
Only No 1
MOR mixed harmony group who worked in New York gay bars, singing 40s and 50s swing classics.
2 Apr 1977 Abba Knowing You Knowing Me 5
5th No 1
Their previous release had stalled at No 3, but they returned for another run of chart toppers.
7 May 1977 Deniece Williams Free 2
Only No 1
She was in in Stevie Wonder's backing group in the early 70s, and gained a few solo hits until 1984.
21 May 1977 Rod Stewart I Don't Want To Talk About It / First Cut Is The Deepest 4
4th No 1
He was now enjoying super star status with world-wide popularity.
18 Jun 1977 Kenny Rogers Lucille 1
1st No 1
Country music singer with US hits in the late 60s. This hit gave him stardom in the UK.
25 Jun 1977 Jacksons Show You The Way To Go 1
Only No 1
Four members of the Jackson Five, including Michael. They had several disco hits 77-81.
2 Jul 1977 Hot Chocolate So You Win Again 3
Only No 1
Led by Errol Brown , they had 30 hits from 1970 to 1984. Remixed hits charted into the 1990s.
23 Jul 1977 Donna Summer I Feel Love 4
Only No 1
US disco diva produced by Giorgio Moroder. She had scored 40 hits by 1999.
20 Aug 1977 Brotherhood Of Man Angelo 1
2nd No 1
Two girls and two men who were tackling Abba head-on, but were destined to lose.
27 Aug 1977 Floaters Float On 1
Only No 1
Soul/funk act from Detroit, formed in 1964. Top US soul hit of 1977. One-hit Wonders.
3 Sep 1977 Elvis Presley Way Down 5
17th No 1
Released just before the King died on 16/8/77, it shot to No 1 as a result. It put him equal with the Beatles, each amassing 17 No 1 hits.
8 Oct 1977 David Soul Silver Lady 3
2nd & last No 1
He had 5 hits which all made the Top 12. After that his successes were back in acting.
29 Oct 1977 Baccara Yes Sir I Can Boogie 1
Only No 1
First Spanish act to reach the UK No 1, and first female duo to do so. One more hit and they were gone.
5 Nov 1977 Abba The Name Of The Game 4
6th No 1
The Abba success wagon was at full speed now, with a film in the can and a world tour having taken place.
3 Dec 1977
Xmas No 1 Wings Mull Of Kintyre 9
Only No 1
(1st for Paul McCartney)
Paul's first No 1 since he was a Beatle in 1969. Before his next he had disbanded Wings.
4 Feb 1978 Althia & Donna Up Town top Ranking 1
Only No 1
Two Jamaican teenagers who put some Carribean slang to existing music. One-hit Wonders.
11 Feb 1978 Brotherhood Of Man Figaro 1
3rd & last No 1
The formula worked again, but after this the hits faded away and they turned to the cabaret circuit.
18 Feb 1978 Abba Take A Chance On Me 3
7th No 1
Still riding high, they completed a second hat trick of chart toppers.
11 Mar 1978 Kate Bush Wuthering Heights 4
Only No 1
Somewhat freaky, this talented singer/songwriter enjoyed 10 years of stardom, but only one No 1.
8 Apr 1978 Brian & Michael Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs 3
Only No 1
Celebrating the work of northern painter, L S Lowry, the backing vocals are by the St Winifred's School Choir, who had a No 1 in 1980.
29 Apr 1978 Bee Gees Night Fever 2
3rd No 1
They wrote the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever", and relaunched their careers as kings of disco.
13 May 1978 Boney M Rivers Of Babylon 5
1st No 1
Carribean act, recorded in Germany, who were major stars in the late 70s. Best selling single of 1978.
17 Jun 1978 John Travolta & Olivia Newton John You're The One That I Want 9
1st No 1
From the soundtrack of "Grease", the film and music from it dominated the second half of 1978.
19 Aug 1978 Commodores Three Times A Lady 5
Only No 1
Led by Lionel Richie who wrote the song, they had considerable success until Richie went solo in 1982.
23 Sep 1978 10 CC Dreadlock Holiday 1
3rd & last No 1
30 Sep 1978 John Travolta & Olivia Newton John Summer Nights 7
2nd No 1 for Olivia; 2nd & last No 1 for Travolta.
Another classic track from the film "Grease". The album was second best selling of 1978, beaten by "Saturday Night Fever".
18 Nov 1978 Boomtown Rats Rat Trap 2
1st No 1
Irish new wave outfit led by the now-legendary Sir Bob Geldorf.
2 Dec 1978 Rod Stewart Da Ya Think I'm Sexy 1
5th No 1
He jumped on the disco bandwagon for this hit. It was remixed in 1997 by N-Trance, reaching No 7.
9 Dec 1978
Xmas No 1 Boney M Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord 4
2nd & last No 1
Remake of a 1957 No 1. They had two more Top 10s, but faded in the early 80s.
6 Jan 1979 Village People Y.M.C.A. 3
Only No 1
Classic disco hit from New Yorkers who started out in the Big Apple's gay bars.
27 Jan 1979 Ian Dury & The Blockheads Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick 1
Only No 1
They were a popular part of the new wave scene, but this is more of a novelty item.
3 Feb 1979 Blondie Heart Of Glass 4
1st No 1
Led by the charismatic Debbie Harry, they found considerable success between 1978 and 1982.
3 Mar 1979 Bee Gees Tragedy 2
4th No 1
By then a major disco act, this was from their No 1 album, "Spirits Having Flown".
17 Mar 1979 Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive 4
Only No 1
Established US disco diva who finally got to No 1 with a song that became the karaoki No 1 in the 1990s.
14 Apr 1979 Art Garfunkel Bright Eyes 6
2nd & last No 1
From the cartoon film "Watership Down". Written by Wombles voice Mike Batt .
26 May 1979 Blondie Sunday Girl 3
2nd No 1
Originally regarded as new wave, their material was now finding a broader audience.
16 Jun 1979 Anita Ward Ring My Bell 2
Only No 1
She was a gospel singer in Memphis, but ended up recording disco tracks. One-hit Wonder.
30 Jun 1979 Tubeway Army ( Gary Numan ) Are 'Friends' Electric 4
1st No 1
Numan provided vocals, guitar and synthesiser for this locally recorded hit.
28 Jul 1979 Boomtown Rats I Don't Like Mondays 4
2nd & last No 1
Geldorf was later famous for his Live Aid fund raising event. He went into TV production in the 1990s.
25 Aug 1979 Cliff Richard We Don't Talk Anymore 4
10th No 1
After a lean time through most of the 70s, this first No 1 for 11 years started run of Top 10 hits throughout the 80s.
22 Sep 1979 Gary Numan Cars 1
2nd & last No 1
After a string of hits through the 80s, he turned to flying, and now concentrates on his active web site .
29 Sep 1979 Police Message In A Bottle 3
1st No 1
Led by Sting, who wrote the songs, they were to become one of the major bands of the 1980s.
20 Oct 1979 Buggles Video killed The Radio Star 1
Only No 1
A studio band featuring producer Trevor Horn . Famously, it was the first ever item played on MTV.
27 Oct 1979 Lena Martell One Day At A Time 3
Only No 1
British MOR album artist who had this unexpected hit. One-hit Wonder.
17 Nov 1979 Dr Hook When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman 3
Only No 1
US country-rock act formed in 1969. They found favour in the UK with a series of melodic love songs.
8 Dec 1979 Police Walking On The moon 1
2nd No 1
Like their first No 1, this came from their album "Reggatta De Blanc".
15 Dec 1979
Xmas No 1 Pink Floyd Another Brick In The Wall 5
Only No 1
They had charted in 1967, but in the 70s concentrated on albums, their most famous being "The Dark Side Of The Moon". They returned to live concerts in the 1990s.
NOTES:
"One-hit Wonders" are acts that achieved just one number one, and had no other hits at all.
The dates and total weeks at No 1 shown may not always appear to line up. This is because some number ones fell from the top and returned a week or so later. The "weeks" shows the total of all periods at number one.
No link to your favourite artist's web site? Please e-mail me with details of your recommended sites.
Other Decades
| 10cc |
Which manager took Liverpool FC to six league titles and three European Cup wins | The UK Number Ones : 1975-1979
Week Ending ACT + Links TITLE Weeks TALLY COMMENT 18 Jan 1975 Status Quo Down Down 1
Only No 1
This famous band of head bangers had 22 Top 10s out of 52 hits between 1968 and 1996, but only this No 1.
25 Jan 1975 Tymes Ms Grace 1
Only No 1
US group that first charted in 1963. They had only two other hits before this No 1.
1 Feb 1975 Pilot January 3
Only No 1
British group whose two follow-ups failed even make the Top 30.
22 Feb 1975 Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) 2
Only No 1
They had two Top 10s before this. Harley went solo in 1976 but never made the big time.
8 Mar 1975 Telly Savalas If 2
Only No 1
Actor who starred in the tv cop show "Kojak". He spoke his way through this song by David Gates from Bread.
22 Mar 1975 Bay City Rollers Bye Bye Baby 6
1st No 1
Scottish band that dressed in tartan and built up a fanatical teen following. Best-selling single of 1975.
3 May 1975 Mud Oh Boy 2
3rd & last No 1
Buddy Holly hit from 1958. They had a further 4 Top 10 hits by the end of 1976.
17 May 1975 Tammy Wynette Stand By Your Man 3
Only No 1
Legendary US country music singer for whom this song became a trade mark.
7 Jun 1975 Windsor Davies & Don Estelle Whispering Grass 3
Only No 1
Spin-off from the BBC sitcom " It Ain't Half Hot Mum ". This pair were the stars.
28 Jun 1975 10 CC I'm Not In Love 2
2nd No 1
Classic love song and radio play list favourite. They were major stars of the 1970s.
12 Jul 1975 Johnny Nash Tears On My Pillow 1
Only No 1
Texan who specialised in soft reggae arrangements, and had much success in the UK.
19 Jul 1975 Bay City Rollers Give A Little Love 3
2nd & last No 1
"Rollermania" had been coined by this time, but by mid-77, it was all over.
9 Aug 1975 Typically Tropical Barbados 1
Only No 1
Two recording engineers created this reggae dance hit, but became One-hit Wonders. The song, with new words and title made No 1 again in 1999.
16 Aug 1975 Stylistics Can't Give You Anything (But My Love) 3
Only No 1
Philadelphian satin soul group who charmed the UK with a succession of smooth ballads.
6 Sep 1975 Rod Stewart Sailing 4
3rd No 1
One of his classic anthems, which returned to No 3 the following year, after use in a tv documentary series.
4 Oct 1975 David Essex Hold Me Close 3
2nd & last No 1
He was at the height of his popularity at this time. In the 1980s he concentrated on stage musicals.
25 Oct 1975 Art Garfunkel I Only Have Eyes For You 2
1st No 1
Having separated from Paul Simon, he recorded mostly MOR standards.
8 Nov 1975 David Bowie Space Oddity 2
1st No 1
He made No 5 with this in 1969. Rick Wakeman provides synthesiser backing.
22 Nov 1975 Billy Connolly D.I.V.O.R.C.E. 1
Only No 1
Scottish comedian who made this parody of a Tammy Wynette hit.
29 Nov 1975
Xmas No 1 Queen Bohemian Rhapsody 9
1st No 1
All-time classic which was accompanied by a video, and was the first No 1 to benefit from tv exposure. In 1991, the record was back at No 1.
31 Jan 1976 Abba Mamma Mia 2
2nd No 1
Two years after their first No 1 they were back, and their careers took off.
14 Feb 1976 Slik Forever And Ever 1
Only No 1
Scots band led by Midge Ure . He went on to groups Visage and Ultravox , but his next No 1 was solo in 1985.
21 Feb 1976 Four Seasons December '63 2
Only No 1
Major 60s act, with falsetto vocalist, Frankie Valli, who made a strong return in the 70s with the band and solo.
6 Mar 1976 Tina Charles I Love To Love 3
Only No 1
She once recorded budget cover versions and was in band 5000 Volts. Solo, she had two other Top 10 hits.
27 Mar 1976 Brotherhood Of Man Save Your Kisses For Me 6
1st No 1
UK Eurovision winner, which shot them to stardom for a couple of years. Best-selling single of 1976.
8 May 1976 Abba Fernando 4
3rd No 1
The momentum was now picking up - Abbamania began.
5 Jun 1976 J J Barrie No Charge 1
Only No 1
Slushy, sentimentality from the Canadian. Female vocals are by Vicky Brown, late wife of 60s' rocker Joe Brown .
12 Jun 1976 Wurzels Combine Harvester (Brand New Key) 2
Only No 1
Cider-drinking folkies from the West Country with a reworking of Melanie's hit.
26 Jun 1976 Real Thing You To Me Are Everything 3
Only No 1
TV talent show winners from Liverpool who enjoyed hits for the rest of the decade.
17 Jul 1976 Demis Roussos The Roussos Phenomenon EP (main track: Forever And Ever) 1
Only No 1
Overweight Greek star, prone to wearing kaftans. Most of his success came from live performances.
24 Jul 1976 Elton John & Kiki Dee Don't Go Breaking My Heart 6
1st No 1 for Elton, Only No 1 for Kiki
The British legend had scored five No 1s in the US before this one. His next UK No 1 was 14 years away.
4 Sep 1976 Abba Dancing Queen 6
4th No 1
This classic dance track was their only US No 1. Still heard on radio in to the 2000s.
11 Oct 1976 Pussycat Mississippi 4
Only No 1
First Dutch act to make the UK top spot. Success was short lived.
13 Nov 1976 Chicago If You Leave Me Now 3
Only No 1
They started as rockers in late 60s, but settled into AOR and became the darlings of American FM radio.
4 Dec 1976 Showaddywaddy Under The Moon Of Love 3
Only No 1
Rock 'n' roll revival group from Leicester who had nine Top 10 hits with remakes.
25 Dec 1976
Xmas No 1 Johnny Mathis When A Child Is Born 3
Only No 1
American MOR star who first charted in 1958, and was 41 by the time he got to No 1 with this Christmas classic.
15 Jan 1977 David Soul Don't Give Up On Us 4
1st No 1
One half of top tv cop show "Starsky & Hutch" (he was blonde Hutch) who was a singer before he became an actor. Written by Tony Macaulay. Top seller of 1977.
12 Feb 1977
400th No 1 Julie Covington Don't Cry For Me Argentina 1
Only No 1
From the Tim Rice & Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical "Evita". Julie was in tv series "Rock Follies", but did not take a role in the "Evita" stage production.
19 Feb 1977 Leo Sayer When I Need You 3
Only No 1
Discovered and managed by Adam Faith , Leo had 10 Top 10 hits over nearly 10 years. Written by Albert Hammond & Carole Bayer Sager.
12 Mar 1977 Manhattan Transfer Chanson D'Amour 3
Only No 1
MOR mixed harmony group who worked in New York gay bars, singing 40s and 50s swing classics.
2 Apr 1977 Abba Knowing You Knowing Me 5
5th No 1
Their previous release had stalled at No 3, but they returned for another run of chart toppers.
7 May 1977 Deniece Williams Free 2
Only No 1
She was in in Stevie Wonder's backing group in the early 70s, and gained a few solo hits until 1984.
21 May 1977 Rod Stewart I Don't Want To Talk About It / First Cut Is The Deepest 4
4th No 1
He was now enjoying super star status with world-wide popularity.
18 Jun 1977 Kenny Rogers Lucille 1
1st No 1
Country music singer with US hits in the late 60s. This hit gave him stardom in the UK.
25 Jun 1977 Jacksons Show You The Way To Go 1
Only No 1
Four members of the Jackson Five, including Michael. They had several disco hits 77-81.
2 Jul 1977 Hot Chocolate So You Win Again 3
Only No 1
Led by Errol Brown , they had 30 hits from 1970 to 1984. Remixed hits charted into the 1990s.
23 Jul 1977 Donna Summer I Feel Love 4
Only No 1
US disco diva produced by Giorgio Moroder. She had scored 40 hits by 1999.
20 Aug 1977 Brotherhood Of Man Angelo 1
2nd No 1
Two girls and two men who were tackling Abba head-on, but were destined to lose.
27 Aug 1977 Floaters Float On 1
Only No 1
Soul/funk act from Detroit, formed in 1964. Top US soul hit of 1977. One-hit Wonders.
3 Sep 1977 Elvis Presley Way Down 5
17th No 1
Released just before the King died on 16/8/77, it shot to No 1 as a result. It put him equal with the Beatles, each amassing 17 No 1 hits.
8 Oct 1977 David Soul Silver Lady 3
2nd & last No 1
He had 5 hits which all made the Top 12. After that his successes were back in acting.
29 Oct 1977 Baccara Yes Sir I Can Boogie 1
Only No 1
First Spanish act to reach the UK No 1, and first female duo to do so. One more hit and they were gone.
5 Nov 1977 Abba The Name Of The Game 4
6th No 1
The Abba success wagon was at full speed now, with a film in the can and a world tour having taken place.
3 Dec 1977
Xmas No 1 Wings Mull Of Kintyre 9
Only No 1
(1st for Paul McCartney)
Paul's first No 1 since he was a Beatle in 1969. Before his next he had disbanded Wings.
4 Feb 1978 Althia & Donna Up Town top Ranking 1
Only No 1
Two Jamaican teenagers who put some Carribean slang to existing music. One-hit Wonders.
11 Feb 1978 Brotherhood Of Man Figaro 1
3rd & last No 1
The formula worked again, but after this the hits faded away and they turned to the cabaret circuit.
18 Feb 1978 Abba Take A Chance On Me 3
7th No 1
Still riding high, they completed a second hat trick of chart toppers.
11 Mar 1978 Kate Bush Wuthering Heights 4
Only No 1
Somewhat freaky, this talented singer/songwriter enjoyed 10 years of stardom, but only one No 1.
8 Apr 1978 Brian & Michael Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs 3
Only No 1
Celebrating the work of northern painter, L S Lowry, the backing vocals are by the St Winifred's School Choir, who had a No 1 in 1980.
29 Apr 1978 Bee Gees Night Fever 2
3rd No 1
They wrote the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever", and relaunched their careers as kings of disco.
13 May 1978 Boney M Rivers Of Babylon 5
1st No 1
Carribean act, recorded in Germany, who were major stars in the late 70s. Best selling single of 1978.
17 Jun 1978 John Travolta & Olivia Newton John You're The One That I Want 9
1st No 1
From the soundtrack of "Grease", the film and music from it dominated the second half of 1978.
19 Aug 1978 Commodores Three Times A Lady 5
Only No 1
Led by Lionel Richie who wrote the song, they had considerable success until Richie went solo in 1982.
23 Sep 1978 10 CC Dreadlock Holiday 1
3rd & last No 1
30 Sep 1978 John Travolta & Olivia Newton John Summer Nights 7
2nd No 1 for Olivia; 2nd & last No 1 for Travolta.
Another classic track from the film "Grease". The album was second best selling of 1978, beaten by "Saturday Night Fever".
18 Nov 1978 Boomtown Rats Rat Trap 2
1st No 1
Irish new wave outfit led by the now-legendary Sir Bob Geldorf.
2 Dec 1978 Rod Stewart Da Ya Think I'm Sexy 1
5th No 1
He jumped on the disco bandwagon for this hit. It was remixed in 1997 by N-Trance, reaching No 7.
9 Dec 1978
Xmas No 1 Boney M Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord 4
2nd & last No 1
Remake of a 1957 No 1. They had two more Top 10s, but faded in the early 80s.
6 Jan 1979 Village People Y.M.C.A. 3
Only No 1
Classic disco hit from New Yorkers who started out in the Big Apple's gay bars.
27 Jan 1979 Ian Dury & The Blockheads Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick 1
Only No 1
They were a popular part of the new wave scene, but this is more of a novelty item.
3 Feb 1979 Blondie Heart Of Glass 4
1st No 1
Led by the charismatic Debbie Harry, they found considerable success between 1978 and 1982.
3 Mar 1979 Bee Gees Tragedy 2
4th No 1
By then a major disco act, this was from their No 1 album, "Spirits Having Flown".
17 Mar 1979 Gloria Gaynor I Will Survive 4
Only No 1
Established US disco diva who finally got to No 1 with a song that became the karaoki No 1 in the 1990s.
14 Apr 1979 Art Garfunkel Bright Eyes 6
2nd & last No 1
From the cartoon film "Watership Down". Written by Wombles voice Mike Batt .
26 May 1979 Blondie Sunday Girl 3
2nd No 1
Originally regarded as new wave, their material was now finding a broader audience.
16 Jun 1979 Anita Ward Ring My Bell 2
Only No 1
She was a gospel singer in Memphis, but ended up recording disco tracks. One-hit Wonder.
30 Jun 1979 Tubeway Army ( Gary Numan ) Are 'Friends' Electric 4
1st No 1
Numan provided vocals, guitar and synthesiser for this locally recorded hit.
28 Jul 1979 Boomtown Rats I Don't Like Mondays 4
2nd & last No 1
Geldorf was later famous for his Live Aid fund raising event. He went into TV production in the 1990s.
25 Aug 1979 Cliff Richard We Don't Talk Anymore 4
10th No 1
After a lean time through most of the 70s, this first No 1 for 11 years started run of Top 10 hits throughout the 80s.
22 Sep 1979 Gary Numan Cars 1
2nd & last No 1
After a string of hits through the 80s, he turned to flying, and now concentrates on his active web site .
29 Sep 1979 Police Message In A Bottle 3
1st No 1
Led by Sting, who wrote the songs, they were to become one of the major bands of the 1980s.
20 Oct 1979 Buggles Video killed The Radio Star 1
Only No 1
A studio band featuring producer Trevor Horn . Famously, it was the first ever item played on MTV.
27 Oct 1979 Lena Martell One Day At A Time 3
Only No 1
British MOR album artist who had this unexpected hit. One-hit Wonder.
17 Nov 1979 Dr Hook When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman 3
Only No 1
US country-rock act formed in 1969. They found favour in the UK with a series of melodic love songs.
8 Dec 1979 Police Walking On The moon 1
2nd No 1
Like their first No 1, this came from their album "Reggatta De Blanc".
15 Dec 1979
Xmas No 1 Pink Floyd Another Brick In The Wall 5
Only No 1
They had charted in 1967, but in the 70s concentrated on albums, their most famous being "The Dark Side Of The Moon". They returned to live concerts in the 1990s.
NOTES:
"One-hit Wonders" are acts that achieved just one number one, and had no other hits at all.
The dates and total weeks at No 1 shown may not always appear to line up. This is because some number ones fell from the top and returned a week or so later. The "weeks" shows the total of all periods at number one.
No link to your favourite artist's web site? Please e-mail me with details of your recommended sites.
Other Decades
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