Marbury, Rhode Island, United States
The history of massage dates back up to 3000 BCE (as early as documented history) in India, as it was once considered a sacred, holistic form of alternative medicine. Used chiefly by Indians in Ayurveda, massage was a long-time practice passed on from generation to heal injuries, relieve pain, prevent and even cure diseases. The custom has been altered and adapted for many cultures and over the years it has gained increasing prominence and acceptance in the West as a natural health treatment.Ancient Egyptian culture is the one which popularized the practice of massage therapy. Their knowledge of the components, life force, and the five elements of air, fire, water, wood and soil, were passed down from father to son over centuries. As civilization advanced throughout Egypt, knowledge of early methods dates back much further. This would include information on how acupuncture and other historical methods worked.Indian influence On the other side of the globe, massage's ancient origins can be traced back in India to India, among the most prominent and earliest cultures in the world. For centuries, Indians practiced therapeutic methods based on yoga breathing methods, pranayama (breath control), and various forms of meditation. The practice evolved from being something that monks did as a religious practice to a time when it had been used to remedy all sorts of physical disorders, including those of the body and mind.Ancient Greece The history of ancient Greece and Rome is combined with the practice of massage therapy in a way that's not so much connected to religious beliefs or philosophies. In both these states, medical professionals took advantage of the benefits that were related to the various kinds of massage therapies that were accessible to them. This included the use of aromatherapy, which included the use of essential oils. Egyptians also learned of the advantages that a certain kind of massage could give to their own bodies. 진주출장안마 For example, they learned that the massage could relieve the suffering of those who had been plucked from the jaws of the pit from the soldiers of Xeroxar.Ancient China The history of Chinese massage does not actually have a clear beginning and there is much that is still uncertain about this important part of the ancient Chinese civilization. However, the ancient Chinese were known to have used the anma as a means of healing, both physically and emotionally. As times progressed, the area began to take on the role of a kind of hypnosis or a state of meditation. This would allow the Chinese to free their mind of stress and tension which was frequently brought on by the life they lived. Today, this treatment is used for a huge selection of health conditions and can be used as an alternative medication.Sigmund Freud In the early part of the twentieth century, things began to change in Sweden when a Chinese psychologist by the name of Sigmund Freud started to develop his theories about what today is usually called psychological therapy. The founder of modern medicine, Sir Alfred Wallace claimed the Swedish doctor had found evidence that showed that all cases of mental illness were psychosomatic. It was this concept that made Freud popular around the world and even more so when he started to suggest that all cases of mental illness could be traced to a central nervous system problem.Indian and chinese The most frequent ailments that are treated with the anma are back and leg pain in addition to problems with the digestive system. However, the anma may also be used to treat problems with the lungs, the spleen, kidneys, bowels, stomach as well as the bladder and colon. The anma may also be utilised in treating menstrual pains, asthma, arthritis, high blood pressure and kidney stones among an assortment of other medical conditions. In general, the area has shown itself to be among the most useful forms of alternative medicine from both east and west for many centuries.As you can see, there is an excellent reason why people from India and China have been using this sort of therapeutic massage treatment for millennia and likely much more than the ancients ever envisioned. Massage therapy is proven to not only be very beneficial to one's health but it has also been proven to be quite effective at aiding in the healing of virtually every type of physical ailment you can imagine. Even cancer sufferers stand to benefit from massage therapy as studies have shown that massage techniques can actually stop the spread of cancer cells. Using massage therapy for curing purposes has been shown to be quite effective.


OPENING THE DOOR TO BETTER EXPERIENCES
Our journey towards becoming a preeminent partner of contractors and property owners is rooted in our humble beginnings.
A lot has changed in the years since our founding, but one thing has remained the same: a commitment to excellence and serving your needs.
Getting our foot in the door
Our company was founded in 1988 as a small pre-hung door shop on Kent Avenue in NYC.
Doors were very simple in those days – each one was 80 inches – and there was no use for a showroom. What made us unique was our service and dedication to each buyer.
But we remained ahead of the times and continued to expand our services regularly to accommodate the varying requests that came our way.
BUILDING ON A RECORD OF SUCCESS
In 2000, we moved to Flushing Avenue, opened a showroom, bought machinery befitting the new century, and began serving customers who wanted custom jobs, with hardware and all.
During the decades, trucks got bigger, machines grew in complexity and ability, and our clientele expanded to multi-family builders and homeowners who wanted doors done to perfection.
Along with it, grew our reputation as the finest door supplier around.
OPENING OUR SHOWROOM DOORS
At last, our showroom moved to our current location in Brooklyn. Our manufacturing and warehousing operations found their home of the future in Newark NJ.
With time we have further cemented our reputation as the team that takes doors off your to-do list. With unparalleled stock, all hardware styles, and the best craftsmen in the USA, an Exclusive experience awaits you here.
OUR MOTTO, THEN AND NOW:
QUALITY. SERVICE. RESULTS.
Visit our showroom at 672 Morgan Ave brooklyn NY 11222
We look forward to welcoming you.


Kentucky Derby history
The Kentucky Derby is the first jewel of horse racing's Triple Crown. It is staged at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky on the first Saturday in May, capping the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. The race is over one and a quarter miles (2 km).
The Kentucky Derby is also known as "The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports" for its approximate duration, and is also called "The Run for the Roses" for the blanket of roses draped over the winner.
Kentucky has been a major center of horse breeding and racing since the late 1700s due to the Ordovician fields of the Bluegrass region, which contains higher than average amounts of calcium and thus produced superior race horses. In 1872, Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, traveled to England, visiting the Epsom Derby, a famous race that had been running annually since 1780. From there, Clark went on to Paris, France, where in 1863, a group of racing enthusiasts had formed the French Jockey Club and had organized the Grand Prix de Paris, which eventually became the famous Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.
Returning home to Kentucky, Clark organized the Louisville Jockey Club for the purpose of raising money to build quality racing facilities just outside of the city. The track would soon become known as Churchill Downs, named for Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr.'s relatives, John and Henry Churchill, who had provided the land for the racetrack. Officially, the racetrack was incorporated as Churchill Downs in 1937.
The Kentucky Derby was first run at 1.5 miles (2.4 km), the same distance as the Epsom Derby and the Grand Prix de Paris. In 1896, the distance was changed to its current 1.25 miles (2 km). On May 17, 1875, in front of an estimated crowd of 10,000 people, a field of 15 three-year-old horses contested the first Derby. Under African-American jockey Oliver Lewis, a colt named Aristides, who was trained by future Hall of Famer, Ansel Williamson, won the inaugural Derby. Later that year, Lewis rode Aristides to a second-place finish in the Belmont Stakes.
Although the first race meet proved a success, the track ran into financial difficulties and in 1894 the New Louisville Jockey Club was incorporated with new capitalization and improved facilities. Despite this, the business floundered until 1902 when Col. Matt Winn of Louisville put together a syndicate of businessmen to acquire the facility. Under Winn, Churchill Downs prospered and the Kentucky Derby became the preeminent thoroughbred horse race in America.
Between 1875 and 1902, African-American jockeys won 15 of the 28 runnings of the Kentucky Derby. On May 11, 1892, African-American jockey Alonzo "Lonnie" Clayton, age 15, became the youngest rider to win the Derby. The 1904 race was won by Elwood, the first Derby starter and winner to be owned by a woman, Laska Durnell. In 1915, Regret became the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby, and in 1917, the English bred colt "Omar Khayyam" became the first foreign-bred horse to win the race.
As part of gaining income, horse owners began sending their successful Derby horses to compete a few weeks later in the Preakness Stakes at the Pimlico Race Course, in Baltimore, Maryland, followed by the Belmont Stakes in Elmont, New York. The three races offered the largest purse and in 1919 Sir Barton became the first horse to win all three races. However, the term Triple Crown didn't come into use for another eleven years. In 1930, when Gallant Fox became the second horse to win all three races, sportswriter Charles Hatton brought the phrase into American usage. Fueled by the media, public interest in the possibility of a "superhorse" that could win the Triple Crown began in the weeks leading up to the Derby. Two years after the term was coined, the race, which had been run in mid-May since inception, was changed to the first Saturday in May to allow for a specific schedule for the Triple Crown races.
In 1950, legendary baseball owner and promoter Joe Engel, who managed the Chattanooga Lookouts at Engel Stadium, entered his horse, Hallieboy, who was known only as a laughing-stock underdog, that finished 10th of 14 horses in the race.
On May 3, 1952, the first national television coverage of the Kentucky Derby took place. In 1954, the purse exceeded $100,000 for the first time. In 1968, Dancer's Image became the first (and to this day the only) horse to win the race and then be disqualified after traces of phenylbutazone, an analgesic and anti-inflammatory drug, were found in the horse's urinalysis; ironically, the regulations at Kentucky thoroughbred race tracks were changed some years later, allowing horses to run on phenylbutazone.
The fastest time ever run in the Derby (at its present distance) is 1 minute 59 2/5 seconds, by Secretariat in 1973.
The 2004 Derby marked the first time that jockeys, as a result of a court order, were allowed to wear corporate advertising logos on their clothing.
In 2005, the purse distribution for the Derby was changed, so that horses finishing fifth would henceforth receive a share of the purse; previously only the first four finishers did so.
On February 1, 2006, the Louisville-based fast-food company Yum! Brands, Inc. announced a corporate sponsorship deal to call the race "The Kentucky Derby presented by Yum! Brands".
The 2006 edition of the race was won by Barbaro, with jockey Edgar Prado aboard. The winning time was two minutes, 1.39 seconds. He won by 6.5 lengths over second place finisher Bluegrass Cat. Steppenwolfer finished third; Jazil and Brother Derek finished in a dead heat for fourth place. The race was attended by 157,536 fans, the second-largest crowd in Derby history.
Kentucky Derby Trophy
Since the 50th running of the Kentucky Derby in 1924, Churchill Downs has annually presented a gold trophy to the winning owner of the famed "Run for the Roses."
History is unclear if a trophy was presented in 1875 to the winner of the first Kentucky Derby, and trophy presentations were sporadically made in following years. Finally, in 1924, legendary Churchill Downs President Matt Winn commissioned that a standard design be developed for the "Golden Anniversary" of the Derby.
Outside of the jeweled embellishments that were added to note special Derby anniversaries in 1949 (75th), 1974 (100th), and 1999 (125th), only one change has been made to the original design. For the 125th Kentucky Derby in 1999, Churchill Downs officials decided to defer to racing lore and change the direction of the decorative horseshoe displayed on the 14-karat gold trophy.
The horseshoe, fashioned from 18-karat gold, had pointed downward on each of the trophies since 1924. To commemorate Derby 125 the change was made and the horseshoe was turned 180 degrees so that its ends pointed up. The trophy now annually incorporates the horseshoe with the ends pointing up. Racing superstition decrees that if the horseshoe is turned down all the luck will run out.
Since 1975 the trophy has been created by New England Sterling located in North Attleboro, MA. The trophy, which is topped by an 18-karat gold horse and rider, includes horseshoe shaped handles, is 22 inches tall and weighs 56 ounces, excluding its jade base. The entire trophy is handcrafted with the exception of the horse and rider that are both cast from a mold.
To complete the trophy by April, craftsmen begin the process during the fall of the previous year and literally work hundreds of hours. The trophy is believed to be the only solid gold trophy that is annually awarded the winner of a major American sporting event.
The Mint Julep
The Mint Julep has been the traditional beverage of Churchill Downs® and the Kentucky Derby® for nearly a century. Early Times Kentucky Whisky has been privileged and honored to be a part of that tradition. The Early Times Mint Julep Ready-to-Serve Cocktail has been "The Official Mint Julep of the Kentucky Derby®" for over 18 years.
Each year, almost 120,000 Early Times Mint Juleps are served over the two-day period of the Kentucky Oaks® and Kentucky Derby®. A feat that requires over 10,000 bottles of Early Times Mint Julep Ready-to-Serve Cocktail, 1,000 pounds of freshly harvested mint and 60,000 pounds of ice.
The Early Times Mint Julep Ready-to-Serve Cocktail is a staple at the track the rest of the year as well. In fact, the Grade II Early Times Mint Julep Stakes on June 17 at Churchill Downs® is sponsored by Early Times.
You can also find the Early Times Mint Julep Ready-to-Serve Cocktail at your local retailer. The commemorative bottles have become collectors' items for many, capturing the mood and spirit of the famous Churchill Downs® track and Kentucky Derby® race. If the Early Times Ready-to-Serve Cocktail is not available from your local retailer, you can make your own with this time-honored recipe:
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups water
- Sprigs of fresh mint
- Crushed ice
- Early Times Kentucky Whisky
- Silver Julep Cups
Make a simple syrup by boiling sugar and water together for five minutes. Cool and place in a covered container with six or eight sprigs of fresh mint, then refrigerate overnight. Make one julep at a time by filling a julep cup with crushed ice, adding one tablespoon mint syrup and two ounces of Early Times Kentucky Whisky. Stir rapidly with a spoon to frost the outside of the cup. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.
Garland Of Roses (Run for the Roses)
The roses were first established as part of the Derby celebration when they were presented to all the ladies attending a fashionable Louisville Derby party. The roses were such a sensation, that the president of Churchill Downs, Col. Lewis Clark, adopted the rose as the race's official flower. The rose garland now synonymous with the Kentucky Derby first appeared in the 1896 when the winner, Ben Brush, received a floral arrangement of white and pink roses.
In 1904 the red rose became the official flower of the Kentucky Derby. The tradition was strengthened when, in 1925, New York sports columnist Bill Corum, later the president of Churchill Downs, dubbed the Kentucky Derby the "Run for the Roses". The garland as it exists today was first introduced in 1932 for the 58th running won by Burgoo King.
Each year, a garland of 554 red roses is sewn into a green satin backing with the seal of the Commonwealth on one end and the twin spires and number of the running on the other. Each garland is also adorned with a "Crown" of roses, green fern and ribbon. The "Crown", a single rose pointing upward in the center of the garland, symbolizes the struggle and heart necessary to reach the winners' circle.
Each year the Governor and other dignitaries present the winning jockey with a bouquet of 60 long stemmed roses wrapped in ten yards of ribbon.
For several years, owners of the Derby winner also received a silk replica of the garland, but since Grindstone's 1996 victory, the actual garland has made the trip to Danville, Kentucky to be freeze-dried. Some owners have even gone as far as to have a flower dipped in silver. A silver dipped flower from the garland of Gato del Sol, the 1982 winner, is on display in the Kentucky Derby Museum.
The Kroger Company has been the official florist of the Kentucky Derby since 1987. After taking over the duties from the Kingsley Walker florist, Kroger began constructing the prestigious garland in one of its local stores for the public to view on Derby Eve.
The preservation of the garland and crowds of spectators watching its construction are a testament to the prestige and mystique of the Garland of Roses.


Green Cat modification and use effects Yellow & Gold
Windshield PX LUX
P / Original Piaggio
Close Fork New Px
Full Chrome rim
Standart Full Chrome
Close Filter Vigano
The Piaggio Story
Piaggio came into actuality in Sestri Ponente in the automated ambit of Genoa in 1884. Situated beside the Odero shipyard, it anon became the best approved ship-fitting aggregation in the area.
Rinaldo Piaggio (1864-1938) was aloof 20 years old when, on 10 October 1884, he active the accomplishment that set up Piaggio & C., a aggregation formed calm with a sculptor (Pietro Costa), an accoutrements architect (Giuseppe Piaggio) and a fourth accomplice who was artlessly authentic "a acreage owner" (Giacomo Pastorino). Rinaldo was the son of Enrico, a bounded merchant who endemic a balk sawmill, classified "by beef operation" in 1882 and, as such, amid Genoa's best avant-garde mechanised installations.
A bald three years later, in 1887, the assembly breadth would no best do. The branch expanded, while the company's cabinet-makers were bearing accessories for some of the finest Italian and adopted ships of the backward 19th century. It was a actual cogent aeon in Italian history. The country was aloof demography off industrially, its alpha accepting appear after than that of the above European nations. In this phase, there was affluence of allowance for bodies with adeptness and a spirit of enterprise, qualities in which Rinaldo Piaggio absolutely wasn't lacking. Accepting bald himself of his business partners, he went advanced on his own, aberration out into the railways, the best avant-garde area of the time with accomplished advance prospects. Here, too, cogent new barriers were bound beyond and above affairs were active at home as able-bodied as abroad, including the aristocratic alternation congenital in the aboriginal 1920s and the assembly of electric trains for which Piaggio took out a adjustment apparent in Italy.
The MC2 at the access to the museum, unearthed at the Calabro-lucane railway, is an amazing sample of this period. Once afresh Rinaldo Piaggio begin that the Sestri bulb could not accommodate his dynamism. In 1901 the aboriginal accomplish appear the accretion of a branch in Finale Ligure were taken and in 1903 it was assuredly purchased.


There is a distinctive probability the stand mixer is the most beneficial device to be discovered in any kitchen, from the family kitchen to that discovered in the finest dining establishments.
November 17, 1885, was a memorable day in the history of labor-saving kitchen home appliances. On that particular day, creator Rufus M. Eastman got the initial license issued for an electrical mixer which could make use of mechanical power, water power, or electric power.
African-American creator Willie Johnson was accountable for the 1884 style of an eggbeater powered by a driving wheel about a plan of gears and pulley-blocks which turned a collection of stirrers, beaters, or blades.
Appliance business such as Bosch, KitchenAid, and Sunbeam were quick to expand upon Johnson’s suggestion, resorting to the manufacturing of multipurpose kitchen gizmos.
The prototype electric mixers were anything and stylish; they were bulky and huge and looked more in your home in a manufacturing facility compared to in the house kitchen. By the 1930s, at least a dozen business were ending up electric mixers, which the two well known were the Hobart/Kitchen/Aid and the Sunbeam Mixmaster.
The version M4A Sunbeam Mixmaster, first presented in 1930, had a streaming silhouette in comparison to the ungainly outlines of its competitors. This sleek machine became so preferred its name “Mixmaster” became associated with “stand mixer,” equally as “Jell-O ®,” “Kleenex ®, “and “Band-Aid ®” are to gelatin dessert, face tissue, and any first-aid bandage.
The new stand mixer was not simply just a device to amuse a chef; rather, it was a compound of gizmos which were copacetic with each other. Sunbeam initially marketed the Mixmaster as efficient in performing a variety of activities, provided the suitable add-ons were available.
A fad for family automation started to sweep the country in the late 1800s. Slaves were leaving residential service in droves to get in the general labor force. The Clinical depression and The second world war disrupted life everywhere. Many residential workers loaded jobs in manufacturing facilities and such, which around then, were held by the males that were off to war. Due to the regarded “servant scarcity,” mid- and upper-class femininity turned to do their own household chores, specifically in the kitchen. They feared to discover kitchen home appliances that could conserve time, energy, and money.
In 1908, developer Herbert Johnson, head of state of the Hobart Production Business of Troy, Ohio, fabricated a gadget that could relieve the work any place food was involved. After watching a baker using a steel spoon to blend bread dough, he played around till he created a mechanical version; by 1915, Hobart’s 80-quart mixer became part of the standard stock on all USA Navy vessels plus he had his foot in the door of several commercial bakeries.
By 1918, KitchenAid’s management was doing tasting trials in their own homes. The printers were such a success, legend has it, that one of the management’s wives gave it a beautiful suggestion: “all I know is it’s the very best kitchen aid I’ve ever had.”.
By 1919, the Hobart Business had come to be KitchenAid and was merchandizing a “food preparer” (stand mixer) suitable for the house kitchen. It was very large at 65 pounds and quite costly: $189.50 (comparable to around $2000 in the very early 2000s). Nevertheless, in 1936, commercial designer Egmont Ahrens brought down both the mixer’s size and specifically its price tag to $55.
This new kitchen device was an adaptation of the 1908 commercial stand mixer and included a groundbreaking style known as “planetary action;” the action blends the active ingredients right to the edges of the bowl. The bowl never should be by hand turned.
Early sales of the KitchenAid mixer by sellers were rather slow. The citrus juicer and food grinder add-ons, first available in 1919, made the stand mixer even a lot more appealing.
In 1937, KitchenAid presented completely interchangeable add-ons, a smart advertising ploy. The idea of a kitchenaid ice cream maker attachment is still being made use of in modern times. For instance, the 1919 pea shucker attachment, although not available anymore, will certainly still fit today’s version.
The title of an “American Symbol” has actually been given upon the KitchenAid stand mixer by the Smithsonian Establishment Gallery in Washington, DC, where the mixer is on display as an essential pressure in American family life.
KitchenAid might have been the initial team to produce the electric standing mixer and the greatest level of consumer approval visited the Sunbeam Mixmaster, designed by Ivan Jepson. His Mixmaster was patented in 1928 and 1929, and was first mass- marketed in May, 1930.
Jepson was able to create a mixer for Sunbeam that sold for a portion of the KitchenAid machine’s price. (In the very early 1930s, the Sunbeam mixer retailed for a simple $18.25 [$ 240 in the very early 21st century], rather than the hefty $189.50 for the KitchenAid.).
Jepson, a Swede, departed to the USA. Getting there in the country in 1925, he sought employment in Chicago, at the Chicago Flexible Shaft Business, parent business to Sunbeam. The business expansion was for increased kitchen device manufacturing and Jepson became Sunbeam’s head designer by 1930.
By 1940, many years ahead of its time, Jepson’s Mixmaster was capable of a multitude of activities: it could squeeze juice, shell peas, peel fruit, press pasta, grind meat, and grind coffee beans in addition to open can, sharpen knives, and gloss silverware. It additionally had a mayo oil dropper attachment, seemingly regulating oil flow into the juicer bowl.


Nancy Kenney, niece of Adelina “Nina” Otero Warren, New Mexico’s pioneer suffragette, writes about her aunt’s achievements, firsts and family in honor of the impending release of the American Women Quarters, featuring Otero Warren’s image. The quarters are available NOW. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE.
By Nancy Kenney
My aunt, Adelina “Nina” Otero Warren, was a role model for women in her time. Born in 1881 in Las Lunas, she was a descendant of prominent Spanish families who arrived in North America in the 16th Century. Nina’s achievements as an advocate for political and social causes spanned through the 19th and 20th centuries; while New Mexico was an American territory and after NM gained statehood in (1912, and for 53 years beyond). She had Spanish and Native American blood, and brokered relationships in a contentious time. Her accomplishments, which broke many glass-ceilings, were the result of her dauntless courage to stand up for the people and cultures she loved.
The term “advocate” aptly describes Nina’s character. Her greatest strengths were her ability to convince predominantly male power brokers to support changes in favor of New Mexican women, advocate for passage of the 19 Amendment (woman’s right to vote), and advocate for children by challenging the Native American Boarding School standards imposed by the U.S.. She fought for English and Spanish literacy standards in the statewide curriculum, insisting that her Spanish culture not be replaced by ‘newcomers.’
Nina Otero Warren’s achievements as an advocate include:
- As a lead suffragette, Nina fought for New Mexico women’s right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment.
- Became the first Hispanic woman to run for the U.S. Congress, winning the Republican primary by a landslide. In the general election she was defeated because of rumors she was divorced, or so it is said.
- Advocated for the integration of military officers and servicemen, who at the time of her marriage to Officer Ransom Warren, were not allowed to socialize on base.
- Advocated for intercultural education as the first state woman Superintendent of Instruction at the tender age of 37. She insisted the curriculum be taught in Spanish and English and that teachers learn both Spanish culture and language.
- Advocated for cultural sensitivity during her tenure as the Supervisor of Indian Boarding Schools. Working against the norms of the time she insisted that native children should be allowed to speak their own language and retain their native culture so they could be integral parts of their communities when they returned. But the implementation of her policies was resisted. She went to Washington D.C. to lobby for better living conditions, burning filthy school mattresses and replacing them with individual student cots. Nina was shortly thereafter ‘released’ from her position.
- Advocated for The Homesteading Act, which was passed in 1863 so that individuals of modest means, or women, could build, farm, and live on their own tracts of land. Nina and Mamie Meadors homesteaded their own property “Las Dos” in 1935, 22 miles northwest of Santa Fe.
She was the oldest daughter of 12 Luna-Otero-Bergere children and pushed for her siblings to be educated and active in community affairs. When her mother, Eloisa Luna Bergere, lost her community law status after the territory became a state, Nina helped her set up a family trust that protected the rights of the single and widowed women in her family to retain their home and land, fighting against state laws that allowed only men to own property.
Nina became the head of the Folklorica Society incorporating artistic activities from the Spanish and Native cultures into events and economic generators for artisanos, dancers and authors. Her own book entitled, “Spain in Our Southwest” was published in 1936.
Nina demonstrated courage, intelligence, self-confidence, and an exceptional ability to influence in order to be an advocate for the just causes for women, children, and native communities.
Nina is loved deeply by her great nieces and nephews and when we gather at her Las Dos homestead, her presence is felt around the old sheepherder’s fireplace. She was a true tri-cultural educator, politician and suffragist ahead of her time and will always be remembered fondly and gratefully by her family.


Eskilstuna minigolf historyFew places have a minigolf history like Eskilstuna. It all began in the 1920's when Edwin O Norrman went to the United States. He returned to Sweden 1930 with fresh ideas after having seen minigolf courses for the first time and started a company, Norman & Norrman Miniatyrgolf, together with a friend, Eskil Norman. Their goal was to introduce minigolf in Sweden and soon the first courses were built in Eskilstuna. The next years they continued their mission and minigolf courses were built all over Sweden.
Nowadays, there are 3 clubs in Eskilstuna, all with their own history of over 50 years of activity. Through the years, there has been other clubs as well, but none of them exist today.
The oldest club, Eskilstuna Bangolfklubb (EBGK), was founded in 1932. For some reason, the activity was closed down in 1933, but then re-established in 1934. EBGK was one of the 7 clubs, which originally founded the Swedish Minigolf Federation in 1937. During the 50's and 60's, EBGK won 3 Swedish championship gold medals, but nowadays the activity is not so elite concentrated as it has been.
The second oldest club, Bangolfklubben Spiik (BGKS), was founded in 1940 and the name alludes to the Swedish expression "spik", which is similar to "ace", clearing the course with one stroke. The most successful era for BGKS was during the 80's and 90's, when they won the Swedish team championships 2 times and the team championships for women 5 times. Through the years, the club also had lots of eminent players who participated in both European and World championships, like Gerd Andersson and her daughter Anneli (married Larsson), Peter Brown and his sons Lars and Johan, Peter Samuelsson, Johan Dyfvelsten and Tommy Blixt.
Fröslunda Bangolfklubb (FBGK), consequently the youngest club, was founded in 1953. The golden years for FBGK were the 60's and 70's when they won the Swedish team championships 5 times. Through the years, also FBGK had several members playing on a high international level, like Lars Lingvall, Alf Pettersson, S-O Birgersson, Therese Gustavsson, Kurt Österberg, Jan Mattsson, Bo Bergman, Gerd Andersson (former member of BGK Spiik) and of course, Arne Spångtorp.


There is no doubt that the polska in all its dance and music forms belongs to the mainstream of Swedish and Scandinavian folk music. Under lots of different spellings and titles, it was the dominant music and dance repertoire in Scandinavia for nearly 300 years. One purpose of this project has been to dispel some of the mystique surrounding this repertoire and to clarify some of the principal characteristics and roots in both its dance and music forms. The challenge has been to relate to the past as well as to practices in more recent times. The project has therefore had both a historical and an ethnomusicological perspective and has moved in the intersection between different types of traditional music and music for which the original source or documentation has been preserved.
There are at least 800 handwritten notebooks with polskas preserved in Sweden. These books contains alltogether more than 100.000 melodies. The oldest polskas have strong connections to the couple-dance forms of the Renaissance – influences and impulses which reach Sweden and the Nordic countries in the 1500s, and which gradually manifest in the polonaise, polska, pols and springlek. The early impulses came, by all accounts, from Poland. Polish, but also German, Slovakian and Hungarian music collections from the 1600s and 1700s can sometimes be incredibly similar to several Swedish music manuscripts and collections from both of these centuries. A great number of the oldest polska melodies in Scandinavia – nurtured with national romantic overtones as national treasures over a few hundred years – are in actual fact a part of something bigger: the great northern-European flow of melodies which partly go hand in hand with what is sometimes described as the figured couple dance.
The Polish dances are all part of the older figured couple dance’s expansion throughout Europe during the 1500s and 1600s. It is possible to observe that this seems to be closely linked with the violin’s equivalent expansion and consolidation as a significant dance-music instrument during the same period. It is therefore no exaggeration to suggest that the violin and this type of couple dance went hand in hand and that together they won new ground. It was also the violin that went on to become the Polish, German and French couple dances’ most important instrument. And not least, with time the repertoire for these dances became naturally and idiomatically linked to the violin.
What is certain is that it was in Germany that the fördans (a slow formal section in duple time) and efterdans (a more lively section in triple time) began to spread seriously to one and the same melody, which rhythmically changed from an even to an uneven time signature through a so-called proportion (proporz). Proporzes had their roots in proportion theory, highly important during the Renaissance. The way of performing dance music with a proportio in triple time became typical for almost the whole of Europe from the late 1400s to the early 1700s. Also included in this development was that they were often improvised in the moment and were rarely notated.
The generally accepted way in Germany (and in several other countries) of constructing a simple proportio (sesquialtera) meant quite simply pulling the final two quarter notes together into eighth notes. In contrast to the German method of constructing the efterdanser, a different rhythmic pattern – ”the polska rhythm” – gained a big break-through in the mid 1500s. The basic idea in Poland was to pull together the initial two quarter tones into eighth notes.
Remains of the older fördans and efterdans form (the polska suite) have in part lived on within wedding ceremonies, but it is as the independent efterdans that we recognise the polska in Sweden and in large areas of Norway (pols / springleik). When the polska dance gained popularity with the people in the 1600s, it is quite probable that there arose a sort of musical deficiency. Even if many melodies found their way by different means to Scandinavia from Poland, the 1600s and early 1700s were marked by extensive melody transformations. Ballads, songs, singing games, herding calls and even chorales were recast to create basic musical material for the new dance. Many of the melodies used for this purpose were in triple time.
The actual consolidation of the efterdans as the dominant polska form is thought to have taken place in Sweden around the turn of the 18th century. In Swedish fiddlers’ notebooks one finds hardly any references to the polska in fördans and efterdans form (dance proportion) after circa 1730. They do however appear regularly in notebooks from the start of the 1600s up to around 1725. It therefore seems to be a relatively quick and drastic change that took place in Sweden and probably other parts of Scandinavia in the decades around the year 1700.
By the end of the 1800s there had already arisen a need for the folk music researchers of the time to systematize and organise the polska melodies into different principle categories. In order to compare different melodies from notebooks and transcriptions, one or more tools were needed, which could be applied more generally to the study of types, melody transformations and concordances. With regards to the systematization and typology of polskas, a clear distinction was soon made between rhythmic and melodic analyses. To the former belongs the generally accepted categorisation throughout the entire 1900s of eighth note, sixteenth note and triplet polkas.


History of Vaping
Brief History of Vaping (e-cigarettes)
1965 -- The first electronic cigarette was patented in the US by the inventor, Herbert A. Gilbert. As smoking tobacco cigarettes was still fashionable and promoted as a healthy choice this fad received little attention.
2001 – Hon Lik, a Chinese research pharmacist devised a large console which used an ultrasound element to vaporise a liquid containing nicotine. Hon Lik was a heavy smoker and found this device provided him with a similar experience to smoking cigarettes without the harmful chemicals from tobacco.
2003 – After modifying the original design many times Hon Lik patented a smaller hand held device which was the forerunner of the modern day e-cig.
2004 – 2007 Electronic cigarettes were introduced to the Chinese domestic market before making their way to the US and European markets where their popularity grew exponentially. This period saw many new companies enter the market of manufacturing e-cigarettes together with many more modifications and improvements in designs.
2009 – The Joyetech company introduced the popular eGo series with an innovated design including replaceable atomiser coils and variable voltage batteries. Within three years the Joyetech eGo series became the world’s bestselling e-cigarette components. Joyetech products continue to be world leaders in the development and improvement of e-cigarettes.
2015 – Worldwide the number of users of e-cigs continues to rise. About 2.6 million people in the UK now Vape and more than 7 million people in France have tried vaping with 1.9 million continuing to vape on a daily basis. From a survey in France, 84% of people who recently stopped smoking credited e-cigarettes as essential in their quitting smoking tobacco.


Artifact found in bank’s elevator shaft
TRINIDAD — Many of Trinidad’s historic downtown buildings have been around so long that people tend to pass them by without a thought, never imagining they contain intriguing surprises left from the age when the city was first founded. That’s the case with a flagpole base that was found recently in the bottom of the elevator shaft at First National Bank of Trinidad.
A contractor was recently working on renovations to the elevator when the flagpole base was discovered. At first, it looked like something that might have come from an old ship, but a closer look and some knowledge of the bank building’s history showed that it held up the flagpole on the bank’s exterior, at the corner of Main and Commercial streets.
The flagpole base is now back in the public eye in the lobby of the bank, where it’s on display. Hand-forged and held together with iron rivets, the base weighs 250 pounds and measures 38 inches tall. It supported a pole that was eight inches in diameter and 30 feet tall, from which the flag flew for many years by the twin-arched windows on the fifth floor. A support bracket mounted just below the lofty corner precipice of the building helped stabilize the pole.
The bank opened for business April 16, 1875, and relocated to its present location at 100 E. Main St. in 1892. The renowned architectural firm of Bulger and Rapp designed the five-story sandstone structure. It featured ornate carvings, a brass doorway, marble floors, and the flagpole.
The precipice suffered much wear and tear through Trinidad’s early years, and was removed, along with the flagpole and its base, in 1950.
Jesse Waters is head content writer and article at God Men. He found out about his love for writing when he was struggling with cancer. His works are very sensitive and he writes with his heart.


Henry Kissinger, born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Germany, in 1923, had a complex relationship with his German origins. As a Jewish child growing up during the rise of Nazism, he experienced firsthand the horrors of anti-Semitic policies. His family fled Germany in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime, settling in the United States.
This early life experience deeply influenced Kissinger. His Jewish heritage and the trauma of fleeing Nazi Germany likely impacted his sense of identity. While he became a prominent figure in American politics and international relations, often embracing his American identity, the memories of his early years in Germany would have remained a part of his personal history.
Kissinger himself did not frequently publicly reflect on his German origins in great detail. However, his actions and career suggest a man who was profoundly shaped by his early experiences in Germany, yet primarily focused on his role and identity as an American statesman. It’s important to note that personal feelings and connections to one’s origins are complex and multifaceted, and Kissinger’s feelings about his German heritage might have contained elements of both connection and disconnection due to the historical context of his upbringing.
Answer by ChatGPT, Picture by Midjourney AI.


Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The Trevi Fountain is a fountain in the Trevi district in Rome, Italy. Standing 26.3 metres (86 ft) high and 49.15 metres (161.3 ft) wide, it is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most famous fountains in the world.
Pre-1629 history of the aqueduct and the fountain site
The fountain at the junction of three roads (tre vie) marks the terminal point of the "modern" Acqua Vergine, the revived Aqua Virgo, one of the ancient aqueducts that supplied water to ancient Rome. In 19 BC, supposedly with the help of a virgin, Roman technicians located a source of pure water some 13 km (8.1 mi) from the city. (This scene is presented on the present fountain's façade.) However, the eventual indirect route of the aqueduct made its length some 22 km (14 mi). This Aqua Virgo led the water into the Baths of Agrippa. It served Rome for more than four hundred years. The coup de grâce for the urban life of late classical Rome came when the Goth besiegers in 537/38 broke the aqueducts. Medieval Romans were reduced to drawing water from polluted wells and the Tiber River.
Commission, construction and design
In 1629 Pope Urban VIII, finding the earlier fountain insufficiently dramatic, asked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to sketch possible renovations, but when the Pope died, the project was abandoned. Though Bernini's project was never constructed, there are many Bernini touches in the fountain as it exists today. An early, striking and influential model by Pietro da Cortona, preserved in the Albertina, Vienna, also exists, as do various early 18th century sketches, most unsigned, as well as a project attributed to Nicola Michetti one attributed to Ferdinando Fuga and a French design by Edme Bouchardon.
Competitions had become the rage during the Baroque era to design buildings, fountains, and even the Spanish Steps. In 1730 Pope Clement XII organized a contest in which Nicola Salvi initially lost to Alessandro Galilei – but due to the outcry in Rome over the fact that a Florentine won, Salvi was awarded the commission anyway. Work began in 1732, and the fountain was completed in 1762, long after Salvi's death, when Pietro Bracci's Oceanus (god of all water) was set in the central niche.
Salvi died in 1751, with his work half-finished, but before he went he made sure a stubborn barber's unsightly sign would not spoil the ensemble, hiding it behind a sculpted vase, called by Romans the asso di coppe, the "Ace of Cups".
The Trevi Fountain was finished in 1762 by Giuseppe Pannini, who substituted the present allegories for planned sculptures of Agrippaand "Trivia", the Roman virgin. It was and still is one of the most beautiful and historic cultural landmarks in all of Rome
The fountain was refurbished in 1998; the stonework was scrubbed and all cracks and other areas of deterioration were repaired by skilled artisans and the fountain was equipped with recirculating pumps.
In January 2013, it was announced that the Italian fashion company Fendi would sponsor a 20-month, 2.2 million euro restoration of the fountain; it will be the most thorough restoration in the fountain's history.
The backdrop for the fountain is the Palazzo Poli, given a new facade with a giant order of Corinthian pilasters that link the two main stories. Taming of the waters is the theme of the gigantic scheme that tumbles forward, mixing water and rockwork, and filling the small square. Tritons guide Oceanus' shell chariot, taming hippocamps.
In the centre a robustly-modelled triumphal arch is superimposed on the palazzo façade. The centre niche or exedra framing Oceanus has free-standing columns for maximal light and shade. In the niches flanking Oceanus, Abundancespills water from her urn and Salubrity holds a cup from which a snake drinks. Above, bas reliefs illustrate the Roman origin of the aqueducts.
The tritons and horses provide symmetrical balance, with the maximum contrast in their mood and poses (by 1730, rococo was already in full bloom in France and Germany).
A traditional legend holds that if visitors throw a coin into the fountain, they are ensured a return to Rome. This was the theme of 1954's Three Coins in the Fountain and the Academy Award-winning song by that name which introduced the picture.
An estimated 3,000 euros are thrown into the fountain each day. The money has been used to subsidize a supermarket for Rome's needy; however, there are regular attempts to steal coins from the fountain.
In popular culture
|Wikinews has related news:Man throws red paint in Roman Trevi fountain to protest film festival|
The Trevi fountain is featured in Respighi's symphonic pictures Fontane di Roma, and was the setting for an iconic scene in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita starring Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni. The fountain was turned off and draped in black in honor of Mastroianni after the actor's death in 1996. The fountain is used for some scenes in the 1953 film Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. The fountain is also featured in the film "Gidget Goes to Rome". Part of the fountain is replicated at the Italy Pavilion at Epcot in Walt Disney World, United States. The fountain itself is also a stage in Tekken Tag Tournament 2.


In 1993 the newly formed AKIBA Bank, then a subsidiary of East African Building Society, approached PLANNING with a major design challenge. This decaying building with a listed front façade and with hostile sitting tenants occupying the ground floor required a Banking Hall and offices to be built at first and second floor levels.
The entire building operation had to be designed to have construction activities conducted through a gap at first floor level that was less than one meter wide and three meters long. This was a formidable design challenge. The renovated building was occupied early in 1996.
Following the restoration of Baltit Fort in Northern Pakistan, the Old Dispensary in Zanzibar is the second major historic building restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture since its establishment of the Historic Cities Programme in 1992. As in the case of Baltit Fort, the Zanzibar restoration project was complemented by a wider urban planning and conservation effort, with a view to guiding and controlling future development in the sensitive area of the Stone Town. A cosmopolitan city which developed and flourished in the context of Arab and European marine trade, Zanzibar has now become an attractive tourist destination, and the Stone Town is subject to increasing pressure as a result of modern development. The planning surveys and proposals, carried out in close co-operation with the Zanzibar Stone Town Conservation and Development Authority on the basis of earlier efforts sponsored by UNCHS Habitat (United Nations Conference for Human Settlements), are presented in this brochure in summary form, since a separate monograph entitled Zanzibar: A Plan for the Historic Stone Town has been published by the Trust.


Ukraine has been an independent state since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. While Ukrainians have their own ethnic identity, its limited history as a sovereign state and the presence of a substantial ethnic-Russian and Russian-speaking population, particularly in the eastern half of the country, has spurred ongoing efforts by Russia to keep Ukraine in its orbit. For decades, these efforts were largely successful; the 2004 Orange Revolution gave way to retrenchment of pro-Russian forces when Viktor Yanukovych won a narrow victory over Yulia Tymoshenko and her pro-European bloc. However, discontent ran high in subsequent years, particularly in the western half of the country, and finally, widespread anti-government protests erupted in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in November 2013.
These protests, named “Euromaidan” after their pro-European bent and the Maidan Nezalezhnosti in downtown Kiev, where the unrest originated, came in response to then-president Victor Yanukovych’s decision not to join the EU and his prior acceptance of Russia’s $15 billion bailout. To protesting Ukrainians, Yanukovych was a corrupt and autocratic pawn of Russia. In response to rising tensions, Yanukovych deployed internal security forces and passed a series of laws that severely restricted Ukrainians’ basic rights of speech and assembly. In February of 2014, as armed conflict between protesters and government forces mounted, Yanukovych was removed from his post by a vote of the Ukrainian Parliament. He fled to Crimea, and later to exile in southern Russia. Over the next several days, Crimea was seized by pro-Russian forces and annexed by Russia. While the majority of Crimea’s population of 2 million is ethnically Russian, there are significant minorities of Ukrainians and Tatars, who are generally disinclined to join the Russian Federation. Shortly after the annexation a referendum was held, asking Crimeans to decide between gaining greater autonomy within Ukraine and joining Russia. This referendum, which resulted in 95.5% of the vote in favor of joining Russia, was deemed invalid by the UN General Assembly and a broad array of international experts, since it was conducted during a Russian military occupation.
Since the annexation, there has been ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine over the status of Crimea and Ukraine’s increasing geopolitical alignment toward the West. In April 2014, low-level fighting between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatist rebels in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine escalated into an undeclared war. Solid numbers are difficult to come by, but it is widely estimated that over 10,000 civilians and combatants have been killed, primarily between April 2014 and the signing of the Minsk II ceasefire agreement in February 2015. While large-scale fighting has come to an end, occasional skirmishes break out, and tensions remain high between western Ukrainians and those in the east supplied with Russian support. Without a more permanent agreement on the status of Ukraine and its disputed territories, and some accommodation found between the two sides in what essentially amounts to a civil war, the world risks finding another Korean Demilitarized Zone on Europe’s doorstep. With many actors, a deep history, and complicated political and national allegiances among citizens, the need for UN intervention could not be more apparent. How can DISEC bring a more permanent end to the violence, and how can a peaceful solution be created and maintained?


Monedas De Curso Legal Pesetas
In Epila, Zaragoza, is the Peseta Park, where a monument of the peseta, represented by several coins, stands out. This peseta is a trial version, hence its high rating. It is only included in the official coin sets and the number of copies is very small. 1 January 2002 was a before and after for European countries in terms of legal tender. This is the date on which the euro entered into circulation, which withdrew into the Spanish peseta. Eighteen years later, there are still many nostalgic people who still keep coins and peseta notes at home. According to the Bank of Spain, it is possible that about 268,547 million pesetas will remain unchanged (49% of this amount, about 792 million, in coins). Many nostalgic people do not want to change them, they prefer to keep them as souvenirs, but beware, those who are interested in exchanging them for euros have a deadline: 31. December 2020, after this date, pesetas can no longer be exchanged for any other legal tender. Until then, each branch of the Bank of Spain will reimburse the coins – and notes – of the pesetas.
All? Negative. Below we explain what are the refundable amounts. Take note and take a look at your peseta collection if you are interested. As noted by the specialized portal Coleccionista de Monedas, the “5 Pesetas 1949”, better known as the “Duros of 1949”, are “in all likelihood the favorite piece of the Spanish coin collection”. The explanation for their great popularity is that they have been “a global bargaining chip for a long time,” according to media reports. Some of them may reach a high value in the market due to their foreign character or age. It should be noted that, according to the Bank of Spain, 266.051 million old pesetas are unchanged, so some of these valuable collectibles could be found in one of the drawers of your home. Experimental 1 and 2 cent coins of the same type as the 5 and 10 cent coins were also minted, which were similar in weight and diameter to their predecessors in the provisional government. The Bank of Spain estimates that at least 45% of the peseta in Spanish hands will remain untraded. Originally, December 31, 2020 was the deadline, but the effects of the pandemic led to the deadline being extended to June 30. After the introduction of the euro, the peseta circulated as a “non-decimal fraction of the euro” until 31 December 2001 and then provisionally until 28 February 2002. On 1 January of the same year, euro banknotes and coins were put into circulation with which he lived for two months.
Peru also minted silver coins with the face value “peseta” in 1880. The coins with values of one and five pesetas have a female figure on their obverse and the following text: “Wealth and power for justice. 1880». On the reverse, the coat of arms of Peru reads: “Peruvian Republic of Lima 9 tenths. Fino B.F.” followed by value: one or five pesetas. On the other hand, coins bearing the inscription 19 51 have a lower value: between 3,000 and 6,000 euros. In any case, experts claim that these figures are only paid for parts in perfect condition. If they are damaged, the market value decreases significantly. The Equatorial Guinean peseta was the official currency of Equatorial Guinea from 1969 to 1975. Different types of coins and notes were issued, all following the model of coins circulating in Spain at the time. Equatorial Guinean peseta 1, 5, 25 and 50 peseta coins were minted, as well as 100, 500 and 1000 peseta notes. Under the Second Republic, coins were no longer issued in precious metals.
Several coins on two notes of the old pesetas This nickname of the coins led to the proverbial phrase “For you, the fat”, which is used to refer to the greed or stubbornness of the person to whom it is spoken, thus settling the discussion. Coins that were in circulation on 1 January 2002 are perfectly exchangeable. In addition, parts, including damaged parts, “identified as such by the machines used for this purpose will be refunded and may refuse the exchange of those that have undergone an industrial or mechanical modification”. On the other hand, the 2,000 pesetas in circulation can also be exchanged as collectible, commemorative and commemorative coins. Twenty years after their disappearance, the pesetas are not forgotten. There are many Spaniards who still keep in their drawers like gold in a cloth many coins that have accompanied them for much of their lives. The peseta was legal tender in Spain until the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999. The Banco de España allows the exchange of peseta coins and notes in any of its branches without prior appointment, but with conditions: not all copies can be exchanged. The first peseta note was issued on July 1, 1874, at the same time that the Bank of Spain obtained exclusivity to issue banknotes. Which peseta coins can I exchange exactly? In 1992, the last banknotes in circulation (1000, 2000, 5000 and 10,000 pesetas) were introduced, smaller than those of the previous series. In 1997, all banknotes in the series were withdrawn from circulation before 1992. The four banknotes of the 1992 series were the only ones to remain in use during the last years of the peseta`s life until the introduction of the euro in 2002.
The peseta was legal tender in Spain between 1868 and 2001. As of 1 January 2002, the current currency, the euro, was put into circulation. The monetary value of one peseta is 0.006 euros, which means that two pesetas correspond to just over one cent. The first coin, minted in 1869, is the unit. It was born with the legend of the “Provisional Government” on the obverse instead of “Spain”, which will appear in subsequent coins and in silver values. The motif chosen was the personification of Hispania in the Pyrenees, inspired by the coins of Emperor Hadrian. The bronze depicted Spain as a matron sitting on the rocks. Both were beautifully engraved by Luis Marchionni, who held the position of chief engraver of the Madrid Mint from 1861. Thus, the 5 peseta nickel coins of 1949 reach a value of up to 36,000 euros on sites specializing in numismatic auctions such as Ibercoin or Foronum. The choice of the name was mainly due to its colloquial use. Some denominations such as Maravedí, Real, Escudo, etc.
they were buried under the term peseta, which was common in the time of Isabella II. It also seems that pesetas were already circulating in Catalonia before the War of Independence. The first coins were minted in 1869 by the Madrid Mint, the core of today`s National Mint and Stamp – Royal Mint (FNMT-RCM). To create the image of the new coin, a matron inspired by Hadrian`s Roman coins was chosen. From that point until they were no longer minted in 2001, they had different values, sizes, alloys, metals, and patterns from the front and back. Spaniards still keep €1,637 million in pesetas 15 years after the euro In 1939, Francisco Franco`s regime withdrew precious metal coins from circulation and minted peseta coins imitating the design of the Yugoslav dinar; The coins had denominations of 5 and 10 cents, aluminum (which was still called Bitch Girl and Fat Bitch, although I changed the number to a jumper), 25 cts (one it), 1 pta and 5 pta (one hard); Later, one of the 50 STCs (1951) and another of 2.5 pta (1954) were added, which circulated relatively little. These coins were produced from 1944 to 1982 and were legal tender until 1997. Until 1958, due to inflation, coins with higher denominations were put into circulation, such as 25 and 50 pesetas, and later the silver of 100 pesetas from the 800 thousandth of 1966.


Atlanta Georgia has a very strong history when it comes to events in the United States. In addition to the past, it also is now a major metropolitan area that is the home of countless international companies that fuel the local and national economy. Here are just a few things that you may not know about this great city.
While many are well aware of the fact that this city was greatly affected by the Civil War, many do not know just how much. Atlanta was a hotbed for those that were for the succeeding of the south from the union. This meant that a great deal of politics occurred here, but a great deal of the war was determined in this area as well. Sadly, once the war reached the city it was mostly burned to the ground by Union troops. This led to a devastation of the population that called it home as well as the loss of history that can never be replaced.
Fortunately, Atlanta Georgia was able to rebound from this event and did so with great passion. In the years that followed they were able to encourage businesses of all sorts to make the city their home, but that did not come without controversy. In fact, the next civil movement, known as the Civil Rights Movement, actively played out in the city. Fortunately, what at that time was considered a hateful area has since become very diverse with pride. This city shows that time can heal many wounds.
The city is now the home of a large number of major corporations, which does a great deal to continue to allow the area to prosper. Many are unaware of the fact that CNN is actually primarily located there. They even allow people to come and see what they do on a daily basis. There are few that could have imagined just a few decades ago that one of the most liberal media outlets would call this city home. It truly speaks to the progress that can be made in a short time frame.
Atlanta Georgia is a beautiful city that often does not get the credit that it deserves. It is a wonderful place to vacation as well as live. The economy is thriving and the number of things to do really set it apart from other cities in this country.


Mr. McCluney said it was unreasonable to judge Confederate leaders by today’s societal standards. He also contended that many soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War were buried in unmarked graves and deserved to be memorialized.
“Is it fair 200 years from now to judge us?” he said. “They were men of their time.”
The Law Center said that 31 public schools were expected to change their names this year to sever ties with their Confederate heritage.
Last year, a 131-year-old statue commemorating Confederate soldiers was removed in Alexandria, Va., on June 2. Protesters in Richmond, Va., toppled a Jefferson Davis statue on June 10 and vandalized other Confederate memorials. On June 13, a statue of Davis was removed from the Kentucky Capitol Rotunda.
A statue depicting a Confederate soldier holding a rifle in his hands was removed from Charlottesville, Va., in September.
Several other Confederate monuments and memorials in multiple states were covered in graffiti during protests, which extended to other people and institutions seen as having a racist past.
In one case, a Confederate statue fell not to protesters or politicians but to Mother Earth: Hurricane Laura caused a 105-year-old statue in Lake Charles, La., to tumble in August.
Some institutions that long supported the imagery changed their tune.
In late June, Mississippi removed the Confederate symbol from its state flag. And this month, North Carolina said it had discontinued the use of a specialty license plate bearing the Confederate battle flag.


These drawers were at the beginning product of cambric with 2 frills of embroidery added to the ground of the legs. Yardage – Approx 2 3/4 yds forty five” wide. Ageless Patterns (AG) is an original from the era including original sewing instructions which assume some sewing knowledge, which might have been typical for the era indicated. Ageless Patterns (AG) come with original sewing instructions from the Victorian/Edwardian/Titanic era and assume some sewing knowledge. Great for Victorian Era, Victorian costume, Victorian Get dressed, Edwardian Get dressed, Edwardian Costume, Titanic Era, Titanic Era costume, Victorian Living history. Civil War Living History, Antebellum living history. SASS Living history events. SASS Costumes. Great for Cowboys and Aliens Costume, Jake Lonergan, Daniel Craig, Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde, Harrison Ford, Ella, Emmett Taggart, Percy Dolarhyde, Black Knife, Doc, Nat Colorado, Sheriff Taggart and Meacham. Cowboys & Aliens Costume. Cowboys vs Aliens, Cowboys & Aliens. Makes great costumes for such western stars and flicks as James Arness, Gene Autry, Amanda Blake, Miss Kitty, Peter Breck, the Big Valley, Harry Carey, Chuck Connors , Lucas McCain, the Rifleman, Gary Cooper, High Noon, Dale Evans, Roy Rogers, Glenn Ford, James Garner, Maverick, The Lone Ranger, Tom Mix, Audie Murphy, Dorothy Page, Slim Pickens, The Cisco Kid, Tex Ritter, Randolph Scott, John Wayne, the Virginian, Clint Eastwood, Outlaw Josey Wales, Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven, Jonah Hex, True Grit, Maverick, Wyatt Earp, Desperado, Purgatory, Appaloosa, Dead Wood, 3:10 to Yuma, and Open Range.
Sewing Pattern -1891 Lady’s Drawers with Yoke Band
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Wonderful Victorian, Victorian Costume, Victorian Living History,Wild West Costume, Western Living, SASS Living history, Edwardian Costume, Renaissance Costume
Pattern is an original pattern from the era, printed on blue line paper and brought from extant samples of the era – really useful for intermediate to experienced sewers
Wonderful for SASS living history events, SASS reenactments SASS Wild West events, Victorian Living history event, Great for Cowboys and Aliens Costume.


No matter what dress she chooses, Kate Middleton's wedding gownwill be great providing it "reflects our times", a historian saidtoday.
Dr Joanna Marschner, senior curator at Historic Royal Palaces,spoke as they prepared to show six royal wedding dresses from the19th and 20th centuries to the world.
The gowns are usually kept in the conservation stores atKensington Palace and are rarely viewed by the public.
But Dr Marschner, who co-authored the book The Royal WeddingDresses, said the huge interest in the forthcoming wedding had giventhem the opportunity to share the historic collection.
The gowns cannot be put on public display but are being beamedworldwide via the internet and social media so people across theglobe can experience them.
The collection includes the cloth-of-silver dress worn byPrincess Charlotte when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg in1816; the dress Alexandra of Denmark wore when she married AlbertEdward, Prince of Wales in 1863; and Princess (Victoria) Mary ofTeck's white satin dress, worn when she married Prince George, Dukeof York -- later King George V -- in 1893.
And as speculation mounts over which dress Kate will choose forthe big day, Dr Marschner said the collection proved wedding dressesnever disappoint if they are true to the time they are worn in.
"Catherine's dress should reflect our times," she said.
"Each of these ladies have taken the gifts that were available intheir times, whether that was extraordinary craft skills likeweaving or lacemaking, they made something beautiful of it."
CAPTION: Clockwise from main picture: Wedding dresses worn byPrincess Margaret, Queen Alexandra of Denmark, Queen Mary and QueenElizabeth II will be shown to the world via the internet asBritain's Royals prepare for next week's big day


Winter solstice, Christmas, New Year. All close together, but not on the same day. What’s more, Christmas is celebrated on different days in different parts of the world. Why is it all like this?
It all began in Rome
The origins of our calendar lie in Rome. In the Republican calender used in the centuries before Julius Caesar, the year began on March 1st. Unlike today, the Romans wanted their year to begin on the day of Spring equinox. This is the day on which day and night are the same length and (astronomical) spring begins in the northern hemisphere.
The Romans thought it made sense for a month to correspond to the time between one new moon and the next new moon. That is approximately 29.5 days. With twelve months, the Roman year therefore only had 355 days. The missing 10 days were simply compensated for every two years by a special month, which was inserted between February and March.
Let’s start in January
Scholars are somewhat divided as to when and why, but one thing is certain: At some point, the Romans decided to start the year in January rather than March. This had the somewhat illogical effect that the month of December, which means the tenth month in Latin, was then the twelfth month of the year. But what the heck. There were probably good political reasons, and in such situations logic has to take a back seat.
Times change, and unfortunately so does the beginning of the year
The first Roman calendars assumed that a year was exactly 365 days long. In reality, however, the earth takes about a quarter of a day longer to orbit the sun. If this is not taken into account, the spring equinox shifts further and further towards the end of the year. However, this shift did not seem to be so important to the Romans at first.
But then came Julius Caesar. Of course, someone like Caeser had to clean up the calendar thoroughly. He introduced the Julian calendar in 45 BC. He added a few days to a few months so that they had the number of days we know today. And he defined every fourth year as a leap year, which had an additional leap day. Because people were so used to it, this leap day was placed in February - even though February was no longer the last month of the year. This brings us to the calendar we know today. Only two month names have changed since then: Quintilis became Iulius (in honor of Julius Caesar) and Sextilis became Augustus (in honor of Emperor Augustus).
Julius Caesar reorganizes everything, the winter solstice gets a new date
The spring equinox in the old Roman calendar had shifted to May. That’s why Caesar had to insert a few special months and extra days to bring the spring equinox back into March. But on which day should the new year begin with the new calendar? Caesar could have made it so that the spring equinox was again on the first of March. But instead he decided that the new year should begin with the first new moon after the winter solstice.
The Winter solstice is the day on which the night is longest and the day is shortest in the northern hemisphere. Today we also regard this day as the (astronomical) beginning of Winter in the northern hemisphere.
It is not entirely clear why Caesar decided to start the new year on the first new moon after the winter solstice. Presumably because he was first and foremost a politician and adapted the calendar so that there was as little resistance as possible in his state. As a result, the winter solstice was on December 23 in the new calendar. But somehow in Caesar’s time, or a few years later, December 25 was considered the day of the winter solstice. The Kiwi Hellenist blog assumes that the Romans reckoned with the day that the Greek astronomer Callippus had researched around 330 BC as the day of the winter solstice.
Emperor Aurelian celebrates the sun, on the day of the winter solstice
From the winter solstice, the days become longer again. The sun gains power. Emperor Aurelian regarded the sun god as his personal protector and had a temple built for him, which was dedicated 274 AD on the winter solstice. From then on, December 25 was an important holiday - perhaps the Romans also regarded it as the birthday of the sun god.
It’s Christmas time
Christianity became increasingly influential in the following decades and sometime in the fourth century, December 25 was no longer celebrated as the birthday of the sun god, but as the birthday of Jesus. Since then, Christmas has been on December 25.
So Christmas took place on the (imaginary) day of the winter solstice for quite some time.
Times change, and unfortunately so does the day of the winter solstice
The Julian calendar introduced by Caesar worked well for several centuries. But it was not perfect. The Julian calendar calculates with a year length of 365.25 days. In reality, however, the year is about 11 minutes shorter. Therefore, the Julian calendar goes forward by one day after approx. 130 years. Throughout the Middle Ages, this doesn’t seem to have really bothered anyone. It was not until 1582, under Pope Gregory XIII, that things began to move again.
The first correction in the new Gregorian calendar was to reduce the number of leap years: A year that is divisible by 100 but not by 400 was deleted as a leap year. This ensured that the calendar year had the correct length in the long term.
But due to the errors of the Julian calendar, the winter solstice had meanwhile changed to December 11 in 1581, and the spring equinox had shifted to March 11:
Pope Gregory lets spring begin on March 21
Easter is a very important day for the Catholic Church. Easter is on a different calendar day every year because the church sets the Date of Easter depending on spring exquinox. That’s why the church didn’t like the fact that spring equinox had moved up to March 11. So a major change was necessary.
Which day should the church choose? Quite simply, the church went back to the year 325. In this year, the Council of Nicaea had taken place, in which the calculation of the date of Easter had been determined. In 325, the spring equinox was on March 21. And this should be the case again in the new Gregorian calendar for the year 1582.
Because spring equinox was on March 11 in the Julian calendar, ten days had to be omitted for the gregorian calendar in 1582 in order to get the spring equinox on March 21. Christmas was left unchanged on December 25. Because the spring equinox is on March 21, the winter solstice is on December 21
Happy New Year
Soon all the winter calendar days will be here. The only thing missing is New Year.
When should people celebrate the start of the new year? On the day of the winter solstice, at Christmas, on the first of January? With this confusion in the calendar, it’s not so easy to decide. In the end, however, most countries have sooner or later settled on the first of January. That’s why New Year’s Day is now a public holiday in many countries.
Christmas on January 7
We can make it a little more complicated. In Russia and other Eastern European countries, Christmas is not celebrated on December 25, but on January 7.
This is because at the time of the Gregorian calendar reform, the Orthodox Church ruled in Russia and not the Catholic Church. The Orthodox Church had no interest in switching from the Julian calendar to the Catholic Gregorian calendar. Russia switched to the Gregorian calendar much later, in 1918. In the years between 1582 and 1918, however, the calendars were three days further apart and shifted by thirteen days. December 25 in the Julian calendar was on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar:
To align the calendars, thirteen days were omitted in 1918. As a result, Christmas in Soviet Russia was postponed to January 7. And that’s where it stayed in Russia and other Eastern European countries to this day.
But wait, this year the winter solstice is on December 22nd and not December 21st
To make it a little easier to describe, I have referred to the winter solstice on December 21. In reality, however, the winter solstice takes place every few years on December 22. If you look in this table, you can see that this can happen before a leap year. As explained above, this is because the 365 days of our calendar are slightly shorter than the real astronomical year. This is corrected in the leap year, and the winter solstice is brought back to December 21. For similar reasons, the winter solstice sometimes even takes place on December 20 (next in 2080) or December 23 (next in 2303).
Today’s calendar is the result of more than 2000 years of European history. Ancient Greeks and Romans, the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and Soviet Russia, they all had their share. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
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Mosaic Kabbalah is the heretofore-undiscovered, nearly lost ancient Israelite mystical and esoteric lore, the kabbalistic system of Moses, the legendary adept and servant of YHWH the God of Israel. In accordance with the Sôd Hypothesis, this system was the very initiatory praxis of the First Temple priestly hierarchy, which zealously guarded this precious inner knowledge that founded the Jewish religion some three millenniums ago. Mere whispers were known to hint of its existence throughout Jewish history.
This system—called the Sôd, or “secret,” in those whispers—is being recovered today through the coded “second-channel” metaphoric-allegorical coded level of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is there, inside the Torah’s pages, that the priests, rightly apprehensive of the coming destruction, embedded their system’s key elements. It’ll henceforth be their eternal communication to future generations—across three millennia and containing one of humanity’s most potent and principal spiritual inheritances.
The mystical-initiatory, foundational system of Hebrew-Jewish priests of the First Temple in Jerusalem (957–587 BCE) was only recently recovered, in a rudimentary form. The discovery of the tenets and the crucial aspects of the priestly esotericism is the pioneering work of Dr. Alex S. Kohav, the founder of the Institute for Ancient Israelite Spirituality and the iAiS-MaKoM Spiritual Retreat Center. Dr. Kohav subsequently developed the transmitted-and-received outlines of the ancient Hebraic tradition into a teachable modern framework (which he named the “Mosaic Kabbalah”).


Join the Australian Red Cross SA IHL Collective to mark the 72nd anniversary of the detonation of an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. We invite the community to come together to remember the victims of this attack and to highlight the devastating humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.
After the recent historic adoption of Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, add your message of hope for a world free of nuclear weapons to our paper crane and lantern peace sign; listen to guest speakers and performers as we reflect on the need to continue to fight for an end to nuclear weapons.
For more information, email email@example.com
Sun, August 6, 2017
2:00 PM â€“ 4:00 PM
Elder Park, King William St


Lincoln wanted to save the Union at all costs. In the letter response to Horace Greeley, Lincoln stated that he did not agree with those who would not save the Union unless they could save slavery at the same time. His stated object was to save the Union, not to save or destroy slavery. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Whether Lincoln hurt or helped the slaves, it was all for the sake and well-being of the Union. "The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was.'"
President Lincoln was unbiased and open-minded to ideas involving the saving of the Union. "I shall try to correct errors when they are shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views." Basically, he will do anything he can to help the cause. Even though Lincoln tried to hear and respond to the nation's wishes, he had to favor the rejection of the doctrine of popular sovereignty. (Electronic Resource) A possible explanation for this decision may have been that he felt the government was better equipped to decide on the fate of the country (at war within itself over the issue of slavery.)
Lincoln saw his duty as helping his people and restoring the Union. His country was his main priority. He took this responsibility seriously stating," I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free." Written in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, Lincoln deemed,"...all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion of the United States...forever free." In his power of Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States Lincoln had to suppress fighting. His duty required him to call for the freedom of the slaves in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority of the Government.
From the above sources, Lincoln has shown to be true and fair to his duties and his country on the issue of slavery. His main goal was to save the Union at any cost. He not only saved the Union, but freed the slaves also.


NEW ENTRANCE SIGN INSTALLATION AND DEDICATION SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024 9am-12 noon
Gerald Morgan, President
Randy Beckham, Vice President
Ginger Oliver, Secretary
Elaine Rains, Treasurer
Mark Webster, Trustee At Large
Lydia Hicks, Trustee At Large
Jerald Beckham, Honorary Trustee
As Trustees, we pledge to do our best to provide affordable grave spaces for those who need them and to maintain Shiloh as a cherished burial ground while retaining its rural and historic identity.
We welcome you to contact us at
Shiloh Cemetery Association, Inc. is a private, not-for-profit corporation organized for the management, maintenance and improvement of Shiloh Cemetery in Sumner, Florida. Supported by private donations and modest grave space privilege fees, Shiloh provides an affordable option for those needing its services.
Shiloh Cemetery Association, Inc. is registered with the State of Florida
as a qualified charitable organization.
"A COPY OF THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICES BY CALLING TOLL-FREE (800-435- 7352) WITHIN THE STATE. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION
BY THE STATE."
In 1855, Allen Osteen was granted 80 acres of land as payment by the US government for his military service in two tours of duty in the Second Seminole War. Osteen did not want the land and it was conveyed to William Yearty. When Yearty died in 1875, his widow, Caroline, buried him on their land, designating a parcel as a cemetery which is included in the present location of Shiloh Cemetery's Ancestral area. On January 21, 1907, W. B. Ellis deeded an adjacent parcel for "burial of the dead," with W. R. Hodges, J. M. Wright, William F. Ingram, and Robert L. Smith as trustees. On October 21, 1920, another adjacent parcel was deeded as a burial ground by W. R. Hodges creating the original one acre Shiloh cemetery, which is now known as the Ancestral area of Shiloh cemetery. Mr. Hodges appointed Jesse Ford, and Charlie Miller as trustees. In 2003, the Trustees who held the deeds to the cemetery parcels, conveyed them to Shiloh Cemetery Association, Inc., to combine with the surrounding nine acres of land donated by Etter T. Usher, making it the ten acre cemetery it is today. Mr. Usher appointed Jerald Beckham, Faye Fenton, David King, Caren W. Smith and Mark W. Webster as trustees, established Shiloh Cemetery Association, Inc., and conveyed ownership of the cemetery to the Association to be managed and operated by the board of trustees..


The Goulburn Locomotive Roundhouse is the largest heritage based operating roundhouse in NSW and displays the historic transition from steam to diesel operation. A range of locomotives and items of rolling stock are exhibited. Additionally thee are other items of heritage machinery and equipment relevant to the Centre's history. A significant part of the town's history, the original 42 road circular shed within its 90-foot turntable continues to operate today. The Roundhouse comprises a fascinating workshop complete with a large wheel lathe, machine shop, sheet metal shop and blacksmiths forge. Numerous machines have been returned to working order.


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Roush Performance Inventory
In 1976, the same year Wayne Pitman founded our Ford dealership, Jack Roush founded his company Roush Performance. Based on his experience in motorsports, he began selling his race-winning Ford designs to the rest of the industry. Now, in 2019, you can join into the Roush Performance legacy with one of our factory modified Ford F-150 or Mustangs, or purchase parts for your Ford vehicle at home in Guelph.


Among all the different sources available in DashThis, social media networks are very popular; Facebook Insights and Ads, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn metrics are widely used to monitor our users’ clients’ social impact.
One of the most unfortunate truths about social media networks and their APIs: data history is very unreliable. For certain metrics, it is readily available. For other metrics, there are only a couple months of history available or none at all!
–> Note: By default, DashThis will import 13 months of history whenever you create a dashboard for the first time.
So, what is the actual picture?
– Social Networks History –
Facebook: complete history for all metrics
Twitter: some metrics have a history, others don’t (metrics WITH history: Follower Engagement, Retweets, Mentions (3-month history))
LinkedIn: all metrics EXCEPT Followers (we keep the history*)
Instagram: all metrics EXCEPT Followers (we keep the history*)
Youtube: complete history for all metrics
* When you create a widget with the Twitter Followers metric (for example), we import the number at present time, but we do not have access to the past. We build the history (store the numbers on our side) as time goes by, for a given widget.
What this means in layman’s terms?
Basically, for a metric without history, we store it on our side. However, we do this on a widget-level: if you delete the widget, then rebuild it right after, your history is lost.
When in doubt, contact us anytime at email@example.com!


A neighborhood association advocating growth and pride for families and businesses in the heart of the city – working to provide a safe, attractive and welcoming environment in which to live, work and play.
The Leavenworth Neighborhood Association was formed in 1984. LNA brought together residents, business and property owners to work toward improving the quality of life in the area. This was and continues to be on ongoing effort on the part of many of our volunteers.
Historic Turner Boulevard lies within the LNA boundaries. Along the boulevard are Turner, Dewey, and Leavenworth Parks as well as numerous green spaces. “The Board of Park Commissioner’s report for 1897 noted a donation of 32 lots by Mrs. Charlotte Turner. The property was to be used for parks and boulevard purposes. Through condemnation proceedings, additional land for a boulevard between Hanscom & Bemis Parks was opened for use in 1902. In 1913, the parkway from Woolworth Ave to Dodge St was named Turner Boulevard in honor of Mrs. Turner’s son. The idea of small parks along the boulevard system was consistent with a plan developed for the City. About 1910 a rectangular parcel (now Leavenworth Park) and land for Dewey Park were acquired. Thus building on the idea of the boulevards as linear parks. ” (City’s Planning Dept., 1992)
President: Ashley Flater
Vice-President: Jacob Rump
Treasurer: Janelle Domeyer
Secretary: Lisa Kammerer
At Large: Nicole Walker


The soul of Gloucester is split as the souls of its sons and daughters are split, as a rock may be split by chisel and mallet. The town clings by fingernails to one mass of jagged granite that is Cape Ann, surrounded on three sides by the northern manic sea. The sea throws itself at the rocky shore like a demon lover, caressing and fleeing, caressing and retreating. On the highest point of the Cape, originally the center of old Gloucester, lie deep woods moist with cleft life: pines, oaks, maples, firs; owls, bluebirds, robins, chickadees. Nearby down rambling old stone roads crumble the ruins of many a cellar hole—ancient foundations of houses that once lined the streets.
There Gloucester was first settled by English Puritans as a farming community in the 1600s. But when the granite proved too diffcult to farm, the settlers moved downhill that their men might earn a living by the sea. Eventually the families established the town as the premier fishing village in New England. For day after relentless day every dogged Odysseus, leaving behind his woman, set sail on the salt-clean sea and returned boat heavy with the day’s catch, heart hardened by the cold Goddess Atlantic. Drunk, knotted hands twitching on tables laden with fish-bought coin, their silent dinners served by stranger-women, the fishermen and lobstermen came to rage at the fixed course of their common fate.
Over time the men of Gloucester abandoned the decaying houses to the spinsters and whores, the healers, witches and Druids, and the woods up the hill became known as Dogtown, after the witch Hecate’s totem. There the women suffered their own splintered lives, without men to mend roof or shingle, to balance the scales. Dogtown’s women came to rage at their share of fate, splitting their bodies for the men below while spitting venom and curses, in their own dog-protected ways becoming as fearful as the men.
Devotees of a religion older than Christianity, some of those women tended to the discards of the spoils below: sacred knowledge of the earth, the use of herb and mineral, bark and fresh water. While heavenly, God-driven men tamed a world with reason and commerce, the witches and Druids of Dogtown huddled close to the trees, the earth’s mantic, stone-clad root.
Two centuries later sturdy Finns arrived to mine the granite skeleton of Cape Ann, sending boxcar-sized blocks southward to build the mansions of the newly rich. Men worked land and sea until nature gave up her all, as she will for a time. The seas were finally emptied out while many a hidden rain-filled quarry was forgotten in the woods, for no longer is Gloucester a resource of stone, much less of fish. Yet still in the Dogtown air lingers the spirit of the first women arrrested in the Salem witch trials; the moist, piney woods, female smells where cleaves the mind of reason.
Nowadays down in the village harbor old sailors huddle on cracked wooden benches that line Rogers Street. They stare out to sea, lick salt-dried lips and remember, fists clenching warm beers. They totter home at midnight, drunk down narrow, pitched streets of crumpled vinyl-clad houses, mumbling snatches of sea shanties. Kicking at the emasculated dreams of lottery tickets, leering out of red-rimmed eyes for the next hit of heroin, they long to forget their fathers’ dreams of faraway tropical isles teeming with soft brown women and dangling fruit; to forget the hounding.
Out of the long line of woodland Druid mothers and seafaring, stone-cutting fathers, Gloucester contrived to give birth to a daughter, Nikki Helmik, who was made to carve out the town’s divided nature, bearing the land’s fault line within.
Copyright © Thomas Kaplan-Maxfield. All Rights Reserved


Tired of the political fracass, of the unfulfilled promises, I went looking for a treasure at the Coral Gables Public Library and VOILA I found her. The one who came back from death 62 years later. Irene Nemirowsky was born in Kiev (then Russia) in 1903 in a wealthy Jewish family. In 1918 they flew to Finland escaping the Communist revolution. From there the family went to Paris where she studied at La Sorbonne and started a career as a writer. When the Nazi occupied France Irene already married to a Jewish-French banker moved to provinces with her husband and her two small daughters to avoid detection from Gestapo. The French colaborationist police arrested her in Juky 1942 and the Germans send her to Auschwitz where she died from typhus in August 1942. Her husband had the same fate and died also in August 1942. The children's governess went hiding with the two girls: Denise and Elizabeth. One of the girl took the leather portfolio with a new novel thinking that was her mother diary and she wanted to keep something to remind always of their mother. Sixty years passed and when Denise the older sister accepted to donate the portfolio (diary) to a museum and began to type the manuscript she realized it was a novel not a diary. So in 2004 she sent it to a French Publisher. Suite francaise became a succcess. In 2006 it was translated into English and published by Alfred A. Knopf in New York.
A masterpiece about the environment in France before and during German occupation. A must read one.


I'm sure expats have been waiting in anticipation for this one - Cars of the Soviet Union.
Well here they are in glorious technicolour.
First is Putins favourite brand of vehicle the Volga.
Here we have the ubiquitous Volga GAZ M24 pictured in Lviv Ukraine in 2006. The GAZ-24 used
to be every mans dream car in the USSR. The GAZ-24 was introduced in 1967 and continued
production in its original format until 1992.
As the BBC reported in a recent article - the russians never had much love for their Ladas. But
the Volga was different, it was the Soviet Mercedes Benz, Rover or Buick.
So if you wanted to impress your Soviet girlfriend, this was the car to be seen in.
Even the President of the United States, George W. Bush just couldn't resist taking the
wheel of Putins 1956 Volga, seen here on a recent visit to Moscow.
Then we have the Zaporozhets or ZAZ. This has a special affection for Vladimir Putin for being
his very first car. In fact for many people in the Soviet Union, the Zaporozhets is the entry
level, cheapest car you could buy in the USSR. Even today it is warmly remembered by many
people in the former Soviet Union, much like the mini, the Voltswagen beetle or the Trabant
in East Germany.Mr Bush checking out Putins little runaboutOther Zaporozhets - the ZAZ 968Side view of the ZAZ 968
Next we have the Moskvitch 408 - a real gem for the discerning connoisseur of Soviet classic
cars. This Moskvitch 408 is taken in Lviv, Ukraine in 2006. The Moskvitch 408 was produced
between 1964 and 1976 in the Soviet Union. This particular Moskvitch belongs to the first
generation of the 408 (1964-1969)
Sports version of the Moskvitch 408 in blue with roof rack. The Moskvitch sports is easily identified
by a pair of training shoes in the rear window. Photo taken in Lviv, Ukraine.TV video of the Moskvitch 412 being put through its paces in the DDR East Germany in the 1980's.
The test track featured in this video is an East German / Soviet army tank assault course
Moskvitch 2140 pictured in Bulgaria in 2006. In 1975, the 412 got a facelift and was renamed
The Moskvitch 2140 station wagon
The Station wagon version of the Moskvitch 2140, here pictured in Viljandi Estonia in 2007.
In 1975, the 412 got a facelift and was renamed Moskvitsh 2140. The 2140 carried the
Moskvitch 500 name for Western exports.
The GAZ 12 ZIM
In the hierarchy of Soviet luxury cars it was in the intermediate position between ZIS-110
and the smaller GAZ M20 “Pobeda”. The GAZ 12 ZIM was produced between 1950
and 1959. ZIM = Zavod imeni Molotova (”named after Molotov”)
UAZ 452 photographed in Lviv Ukraine in 2007. UAZ-452 (van, pick-up, truck) was introduced
in the Soviet Union in 1966. The offroad abilities of UAZ-452 made it popular among farmers
and also widely used by Soviet / Russian military.
Lada's produced by the VAZ factory on the banks of the Volga in Russia.
The Lada plant was set up as a collaboration between Italy & the Soviet Union in 1966 and used as
the basis of its first collaborative production model the Italian Fiat 124.
The lightweight Italian Fiat 124 was adapted into something intended to survive treacherous
Russian driving conditions. Among many changes, aluminium brake drums were added to the rear,
and the original Fiat engine was dropped in favour of a newer design also purchased from Fiat. This
new engine had a modern overhead camshaft design but was never used in Fiat cars. The suspension
was raised (to clear rough Russian & Ukrainian roads) and the bodyshell was made from thicker,
The first Lada models were equipped with a starting handle in case the battery went flat in Siberian
conditions, though this was later dropped. Another feature specifically intended to help out in
cold conditions was a manual auxiliary fuel pump.
The Fiat-based Ladas feature various headlight, trim and body styles. The original, Fiat style
models included VAZ-2101 sedan and VAZ-2102 station wagon. 1972 saw introduction of deluxe
version of the sedan, VAZ-2103, which was based on Fiat 124 Speciale and featured new 1.5L engine
and twin headlights. In 1974, the original VAZ-2101 was updated with new engines and
nteriors; VAZ-2102 underwent the same improvements in 1976. The body style with two round
headlights was manufactured until 1988, all others remain in production in slightly updated form.The Lada 2101 or VAZ-2101The Lada 2103 or VAZ-2103
Lada 1200 S
Lada 1200 S (VAZ 21051) pictured in Finland in 2007. Lada 1200 S was manufactured in
Soviet Union in 1982 - 1990.Lada 1200 Combi
The Lada 1200 Combi here pictured in Narva Estonia in 2007.
The limosine of choice for all high ranking officials of the Soviet Politburo, including the General Secretary
of the CPSU. Expats living in Moscow during the heyday of the Soviet May day parades would be
familiar with the Zil.
Please note - this post maybe updated from time to time.