Sinners Among Saints
Sinners Among Saints
The Sinners Among Saints (SAS) is an online gaming group (guild) that was founded in 1996 by Rivan of SAS and Aries of SAS. The group is made up from people of all walks of life including climatologists, lawyers, game developers, entrepreneurs and ex-convicts. Members of the guild are all over the world including; North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The SAS is a competitive online gaming group of close friends.
The guild is highly competitive in several online games and always adopts a "power-gamer" playstyle. In the early inception of the guild we were strongly concentrated in a few games and dominated them together, over the last decade though we’ve fanned out into communities across many different games.
Get in touch… We still maintain our infamous IRC channel on irc.gamesurge.net #sas.
The following is a brief history of the formation of the SAS. Please also check out the individual history pages for more details on specific events. Are you mentioned in one of these stories or do you have something to add? Please get in touch! info at sinnersamongsaints dot com.
- 1 Active Games
- 2 History
- 3 Rep Patch
- 4 Cool Test Center
- 5 Other Information
- 6 Notable Achievements
The SAS was founded in 1996 by Rivan and Aries during the Closed Beta of the MMORPG Ultima Online on the Pacific shard. The original name of the guild was Sosarian Armed Services and was intended to be a mercenary guild with the name being created from the game story lore of the Ultima Series. The guild would transform over time to become one of the most feared guilds in the history of UO and other games. As the guild expanded into other games, it became necessary to adopt a new name that had a more global application. Circa 2000 the guild was renamed by NeXuS to Sinners Among Saints.
The Beginning - 1996
In the beginning there was Rivan and Aries. They played games like Warcraft, Red Alert and Diablo together on Kali. They were able to secure spots in the beta test for an upcoming MMORPG known as Ultima Online, based off of the ever-popular Ultima series. During the beta months Rivan and Aries formally established the Sosarian Armed Services as a mercenary guild selling their services where they were needed.
Ultima Online was one of the first MMORPGs ever created and little was known about how online gaming communities worked at the time. The original creators of Ultima had no idea how people would play the game, and hence the game world had very little rules. This was the birth of modern day “Player Killing”. The act of “griefing” your online enemies by killing their online character. Very quickly after the launch of the game, players started to break down into their own communities. The communities were the start of the guilds and conflicts that would create the overall society of the game and give Ultima it’s rich flavor. Almost immediately, players started killing each other. Some did it because of grudges, some did it because they were protecting friends, others started doing it simply to gain wealth.
Very quickly after launch, Aries and Rivan were able to discover that you could amass more wealth and reputation through killing other players instead of the normal gameplay paths. This was a defining moment in the history of SAS because it would dictate the guilds style of play for the next two decades.
Disguising themselves as Fishermen, Aries and Rivan used to hang out on the docks on the south end of Trisnic where they would prey on the frequent ship captains that came into port. On one such occasion, they hijacked a boat and took it the Ice Island where they had their infamous meeting with Lord British, aka Richard Garriot. Check out the images of the adventure in our gallery.
Ultima Online - 1997
At the time of launch SAS had grown to be around 15 people including; Rivan, Aries, Rotifer, Gertrude, Skeletor, Elf, GodOfFear and more. The first day of final we logged into the Pacific shard, creating our first characters in Trinsic.
One of the guild's first enemies was the “Lords of Evil” or LoE. The beginnings of this war occurred when Rivan used a house break in bug to steal a Chaos Shield from their leader, Charger. At the time, Chaos shields could only be gotten through a bug that involved hours of work killing the guards in Lord Blackthorn's castle. The shields were both very rare and very expensive.
On the Pacific server, the guild made it’s home on the island of Hyloth with a guildhouse on the north side of the island between two mountains. Here they trained blacksmiths and often adventured into the depths of Hyloth.
The Sonoma Shard - 1997
While SAS had already been an established guild and achieved great success for close to a year at this point, this is where the real history of the guild begins. The guild moved to Sonoma the day it went live in November 1997 and was immediately established as a Player Killer guild. A common theme among members was to put "of SAS" at the end of their names, players such as Rivan of SAS and Aries of SAS could be seen running through Sonoma in the very early days terrorizing everyone around them. Since Sonoma was a new shard, and the SAS guys had already a year of experience working together and combining resources, we very quickly became a dominant force on the shard.
At the time of Sonoma I came over from Atlantic with two RL friends (RainFall and Drizzt Do'Urden/DragonMaster Dyn) and we joined a guild known as the Chaotic Horde. This was a group of established Player Killers that was based in the Southern Trinsic jungles area. Being that SAS also used the Trinsic area we had many run ins with them at an early date. There was a great deal of respect between the two guilds, along with Company of the Damned (CoTD) that would carry forward for years to come. While this is not a history lesson of CH or CoTD, I thought it necessary to mention both since they were in their own way enormous parts of Sonoma’s history and mark large PK guilds that played the shard. It is also necessary to mention them because SAS would gain many of their members from both CH and CoTD as time progressed. This was an ongoing thing for the guild as time went on. We had a bad habit of recruiting former enemies.
The guild would continue to grow in membership and terrorize the player killer battlefield. Membership was beginning to blossom on this new found shard with additions of ChaoS, ArKaiNe, MoneyMaker, True Pimp, MasterMind, Psycho the Ripper and SHADOW. Along with Rivan and Aries, these characters were making a name for SAS as one of the most dominant PK guilds in the game. Rivan also started climbing the ranks at the Oasis Fight Nights, first as a contender and then as a terrorist, more on this later. There was also this kid named Leo of EW that just loved to hang out with Rivan and wouldn’t leave him alone.
During this time is when SHAD0W purchased and placed his tower in the South of Trinny swamp… Deep in the forest there was a single splotch of land just large enough for a tower. The tower was placed during the first 3 months of Sonoma and at first it was Shadow’s residence. In a strange coincidence of circumstances, Rivan met Shadow the day he placed that tower and helped him get the last couple thousand gold to purchase the deed. Rivan then also accompanied him and Blood Dog through the South of Trinny swamps to place the tower. Looking back now – it was very strange that Shadow trusted Rivan enough to let him follow him outside town with a tower deed on him, and even stranger that Rivan didn’t steal it! As time went on though, this tower became the home and guild house of the Sinners Among Saints on the Sonoma shard. The guild had many other structures, including a keep and tower complex to the east of Britain, for some reason that tower was always home. These were legendary structures that remained a beacon for the guilds presence on all Ultima shards for years to come.
SAS would also form bonds with other guilds on Sonoma. You can never have too many enemies, but now we go back to the part I mentioned about CH and CoTD. Out of the ashes of both these guilds and another known as MO (Mount Olympus) formed a new guild, much like SAS, called Fires of Heaven, or FoH. Many of the members from FoH would have characters on the SAS stone, and vice versa. There was a strong bond between SAS and FoH and the alliance of these two guilds was legendary.
It was during this time that I began to make friends with Rivan and Aries which would lead to me eventually joining the guild...
In the spring of 1998 Origin released a publish known to many as the Rep Patch which implemented Stat Loss for “Murderers”. The Dread Lord days had come to an end. Anyone who played UO will remember this day. A day when you saw so many names that you were used to auto attacking turn blue. For many of the SAS it was the first time that they could enter towns without the guards auto-attacking them.
Initially emotions ran high. A lot of guilds revolted to this Player Killer “nerf” and left the game. In other cases we saw guilds shattered and new ones form out of the fragments. In SAS’s case it was a combination of both. At this point SAS had lost a few of its more hard core PK members who no longer wanted to play in this Stat Loss Murderer system, but at the same time it had gained a whole new group of recruits. One of those recruits was MRGrimm of SAS, formerly Leo of EW, and would quickly become one of the guilds most skilled members. With the introduction of this patch also came guild wars, and with the wars came the need for bodies.
And with guild wars… A whole new chapter began. Our hunting was no longer limited to outside of town, we could now hunt down our enemies while they were at the bank or purchasing things in the stores. It also made us much more focused… The game became less about who had the highest body count, now we had to become organized and focused on attacking our enemies.
The SAS vs. BLD War
One war that we all remember was the BLD anti PK guild that SAS battled for years. Prior to the reputation patch, the BLD guild would organize themselves in town and then come into the dungeons where they thought we were; however now with the new Guild Wars system… Nowhere was safe. We could now freely attack each other inside town, a place that BLD previously was safe in. BLD was not the most skilled PvP guild on the server, but they had a large number of dedicated core of members that always showed up to fight no matter what. This was the story of two guilds with fundamentally different play styles who just didn’t like each other. This was Grunk Half Orc and rukNar the Orc vs. Rivan and MRGrimm of SAS. This is also where the guild gained a 14 year old punk who always shot from the hip and ran his mouth way too much known as Blood Crypt. I joined the guild at the beginning of the SAS vs. BLD war along with many former members of CH including; JodoCast, PaLoudaq, Barbe, Dakkon, NeXuS, of Mutilation, Drizzt Do’Urden, Skid, God II and Corn Pops.
http://www.pusateri....ures/fight1.jpg This wasn’t just BLD vs. SAS, this was the anti PKs of the server vs the PK’s. As the war continued, both sides started drawing in allies, and the battles became bigger and bigger. The biggest names that would ever play on the Sonoma shard were all involved in this war. It was, by definition, simply epic.
This war would last for months. I remember fighting well into the summer. As time went on the interest and intensity slowly dwindled as more and more members left each stone. Eventually, the war was brought to a halt. There was no clear winner, just a lot of bloodied and battered participants. What remained on both sides was a totally reformed guild, with a new structure and dozens of new members that would shape the shard for years to come. Out of this war came a great amount of respect from both sides. We had learned that the Blood Clan were a serious foe that were not to be taken lightly. And although we would remain enemies on the field, many of us were able to form friendships and bonds between the two guilds.
The End of the Beginning
After the war with BLD things began to settle down a bit for the guild. Some members quit the game. Others left the shard. SAS slowly began to become more of a tight knit, smaller guild like it was used to in days before. Although SAS has always prided itself on being among the elite in PvP, we have always been first and foremost about friendship.
The first few wars helped create the structure and the principals of the type of guild that the Sinners Among Saints would become. The history continues through new Ultima Online servers, Counterstrike, Asheron's Call, World of Warcraft, Lineage, and many many more. Have a chapter to add to our history? Get in touch... email@example.com
The Dranchenfels Shard
For a brief time period when the action on Sonoma had grown stale during the pre cast days, SAS made a move to the DF server. This was a European based server, so all of our pings were terrible, but despite that we were still able to field a full roster and compete with the most skilled guilds on the server.
This was also the birthplace and death of shadow, the black sheep. May he rest in peace. (and fuck you Deathclaw)
The Siege Perilous Test
After the second SAS/BLD war Origin came up with an idea for a server called Siege Perilous. This server was a throwback to the “old days”. It was a server without stat loss, without vendor buy backs and with limited amount of gains from monster bashing. This server was intended to be tough and present a challenge to even the most seasoned UO player, hence the name.
SAS was out in full force on this server and we brought with us many old friends from Sonoma. There were dozens of our former rivals on this shard and many potential ones as well. All of the ingredients were there for another legendary chapter in the history of our guild.
We started fast out of the gate, grinding the gold quickly to secure a boat to travel to Deceit, here we were able to farm a large amount of gold and ultimately secure a house and a guild stone. This shard is what we were waiting for, this is the kind of experience that fuels a guilds unity. We were going up against some legendary guilds from other servers, and we were winning.
One of the most memorable events on this server featured a guild called SSJ who had also just started on the server. With the server only being a couple of days old, most of our characters were newbies with no magery and non-master level combat skills. Never the less though, we weren't going to let that stop us. One evening, while hiding near the docks, we managed to gain access to a boat that was owned by the SSJ. We got onto the boat and murdered the one character already on board, only to discover that two more were hidden. After a battle of a few minutes, Aries and I were both killed. In an act of defiance though, as ghosts we stood on the open plank making it impossible for the owner of the boat to lock it.
For hours, the rest of the SAS sailed around the globe trying to catch up with the boat that we were on, in hopes that they would be able to jump on the open plank and slay the rest of the SSJ. Finally after a few hours, the SSJ guys docked at Moonglow for a few seconds to get supplies. BC & Kewl Hand Luke quickly arrived to the scene, jumped on the boat and murdered everyone.
Now the tables were turned though... We had control of the boat but their ghosts were now standing on the plank, making it impossible to lock. We quickly returned to Trinsic on the boat to get restocked and then immediately set sail before the SSJ could catch us. We sailed through the night, hoping that if we could stay awake until the servers rebooted for maintenance... We would be able to sail away before the ghost logged in and he would be booted to shore, allowing us to drydock the vessel. No such luck though, after server down the ghost and us logged in at the same time. This was looking hectic... we were now moving into day 2 of the battle for this boat.
In another strange turn of events... The SSJ were allies with a guild called "the F - heads" back on their home server of Atlantic. The "F - heads" had also spent some time on Sonoma battling the SAS and CoTD and we knew them very well. MRGrimm and Rivan also had a serious axe to grind with one of their members named "P*****e". The F-Heads, getting the call from their SSJ allies, logged onto the server in bulk and jumped on their boat to come after us.
The next day had already started and many of the SAS were exhausted from a night with no sleep trying to keep the boat under their control, however they knew that this battle couldn't go on much longer. So they hatched a plan - a simple one. All the SAS would get on the boat and hide, with only Rivan standing in a death robe on the boat. He was the bait to the trap.
After an hour of preparation, the team stopped the boat in the middle of the ocean with only Rivan on it and the rest of the team hidden. Within 30 minutes the boat filled with F-Heads and SSJ troops pulled up. They immediately pulled up side to side with our boat and started trying to run aboard. After everyone was on board, Rivan yelled "forward" to the ships captain and boat took off while the rest of the SAS members unhid. A gruesome brawl ensued on the highly lagged oceans. Corpses were appearing everywhere and people seemed unable to heal themselves. Finally as the tide of battle was swinging in their favor, Rivan stopped the boat and they started to clean up the last few SSJ and Fheads that were left.
The boat was covered in bodies but there was a clear victor. After resurrecting the dead SAS members, we dropped off the enemy ghosts in Moonglow where they disembarked. We then also returned to the original boat the F - Heads had showed up on. Everyone except for Rivan got off the SAS boat and onto the Fheads boat to declare victory. Rivan decided to go and dry dock his boat at this point. After pulling away from the group though, Rivan discovered that there was a hidden person at the helm of the ship! After a few seconds of using detect hidden... a familiar person appeared. "P*****e" was still on the boat, hiding like a coward while his friends were all killed. Rivan pulled out his Halberd and fought him... but it was clear Rivan's character was more advanced and killed him on the ship, laden down with loot, in a 1 on 1 situation. That would be the last time MGRimm of Rivan would ever see or hear of that player again.
Unfortunately for us the server had a name attached to it, Test. It was evident now that Origin had planned to wipe the server the entire time. They were trying to see what methods people would use to advance the fastest. They saw that many guilds were gaining at an accelerated rate, something they had wanted to prevent or at least make difficult on this new server. Eventually the server was wiped, and with it all of our hard work including boats, houses, gold, skills, guild stone etc.. Although there were many of us that still wanted to play the new “improved” server, many did not. At this point many of the SAS members who had returned for SP Test now left the game again, most went back to Sonoma and any that remained on SP were told to do so under a different guild tag.
A potentially great chapter in the history of the guild was lost with the wipe. I have often wondered in the past how differently our history would be written if they had not wiped the shard. It isn’t that we weren’t up to the challenge, it was that many just did not have the energy to start over again after so much hard work. Many people who had come back to the game had invested free time that was very limited with RL commitments at this point and simply could not do so again, at least not immediately. By the time we did make it back to the Siege Perilous shard as a guild it would be to late. Many of the top guilds remained, but SAS had missed out on a lot of epic battles. I know this because I was one of the people who stayed, under a different tag known as DTM (Disciples of the Moment) a guild formed by my friends Meursalt and the late Orin Warrick (RIP) on the Sonoma shard and later re-formed on SP after OGD became active and GC stabbed them in the back.. but that is another story for another time.
Cool Test Center
Now I pvped on a lot of shards in my days, I spent time on Great Lakes, Pacific, Atlantic, DF, SP, Sonoma, Catskills, Chesapeake.. like serious play times with finished characters. I dueled a lot and was a part of a lot of guild wars, and nowhere did I find the same skill level as Sonoma. When CTC went live we grabbed anyone from the old days and headed over. We had M's roster (which was the most numerous guild at the time) along with any SAS left playing and anyone else we knew from the old days. When we got there we were apparently going up against some guild called KoC from Chessy. I had seen these guys fight before and I knew they were good, but this wasn't the same guild. There were a lot of names I didn't recognize, but there were enough there to carry the tag. Either way, no matter who it was, they got lit up. We beat them so bad they wouldn't even leave their houses. Again, further re enforcement that Sonoma had the greatest PvPers in the game. We were never the most populated shard, but we were definitely the games best kept secret.
The City of Trinsic is sacred for SAS. This is the area where we have our roots, this is the area where we started and finished the game. Many of us PKed in the Trinny spawn area, specifically the southern peninsula known as "Trinny Pen", early in the game and it is where all of us met for the first time. SHAD0W's famous tower "The Devil's Own" was placed and kept in the southern Trinny jungles. This would serve as a base for the guild for years to come and is a major part of our history.
The town of Trinsic itself is where we fought a lot of wars and forged many bonds. There was a group of us that used the Southern Trinsic Bank, this was known as the "Trinny Crew". Not everyone who was in the Trinny Crew was a part of SAS, but they all held ties to the guild in one way or another and we considered each other a family. If you ever needed help all you had to do was recall to the top of the bank and let the call out, within minutes you had a Trinny Crew assembled to confront your enemies.
Trinny was a weapon for us in guild wars. We knew every pathway on the walls, or as I liked to call them the "tunnels", and we would use this to our advantage in fights. Many times when outnumbered you would see us teleport to a sweet spot up on the wall that only we knew about from practice, eventually one of the four or five enemies would find it and follow foolishly separating himself from his guildmates. Ask anyone who ever fought us in Trinny and they will tell you that SAS knows that town just a little too well. There was a time during guild wars when you couldn't use magic in town. The trick was to get people to follow you along the walls until the "You have left the protection of the guards." message appeared. At that point they’d be lit up up, many people called me a cheater over that.
That was one of the best parts about Ultima Online, identifying yourself with a territory. This is something missing in today's game. If we wanted to fight BLD we went to Vesper, BoL were found at their valley in Yew. OGD was in Skara Brae and BD was in Serpents Hold. If you wanted to fight Koreans you went to the Trinny North (or Big) Bank and if you wanted to fight SAS everyone knew you went to Trinny South (or Small) bank.
I didn't play Everquest. Can Phil or Nexus fill in something about what we did here?
Arkaine or Phil needs to fill this out.
World of Warcraft
This needs an lengthy update about hewhat happened with Sir Radjin.
Ultima Online Redux - In Por Ylem
Rivan needs help here. Can someone with a better memory give me an outline?
Ultima Online - In Por Ylem - 2
Rivan needs help here. Can someone with a better memory give me an outline?
Oasis Fight Night Terrorism!
So... I just recently saw a speech by Starr Long, Raph Koster, and some of the other developers of UO at the Game Developers Conference and amazingly... they briefly touch on our terrorist character Tinker Boy! You can see the speech here: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016629/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Ultima
Back circa 1999, you used to be able to "chain" together several purple potions. If you put a few on the ground, then you detonated another one nearby, they would all explode at once causing enough damage to kill anyone nearby!
I'd been using wooden boxes full of purple potions to kill people in battles for a while, but hadn't used it for anything "big". Finally we had an event on the Sonoma shard called "Fight Night" which was a weekly event held on Sunday evenings. Hundreds of players would come show up and watch players battle it out inside of some GM made cages in an organized tournament. Given the way the game worked though, hundreds of players would cram up against the sides of the cage on the same tiles. (This also created incredible lag). One Sunday evening though, I hatched my plan and brought my character to the fighting pits. I waited until about halfway through a match when the population was at its highest... dropped a wooden box full of purple potions, used my axe on it to break it, and then detonated the first one in the middle of the biggest congregation of players.
I remember it like yesterday - the countdown on the screen started and people were just annoyed, thinking no one could get killed by a single purple potion. When the thing detonated though... my entire computer locked up for about 15 seconds, and when it finally came back... I was looking at the grey screen of death with hundreds of bodies on the ground and hundreds of ghosts walking around freaking out. To make matters worse - because it was Fight Night everyone was wearing their best gear that took them months to collect.
People who were on the outside of the blast radius came running in to start looting, most of them immediately turning grey. Other opportunists started attacking them, and because there was so much on the screen, everyone was lagged to hell and auto-defending and dieing before they could recover from the lag.
It was... amazing. The next morning, (Monday) OSI immediately patched out a fix that made it so that axes didn't break boxes anymore, thus making this impossible to quickly put 10 potions on the ground at once.
After seeing this speech, I sent Starr Long a message through LinkedIn telling him I was TinkerBoy and got this response. :
Starr Long has sent you a message. Date: 1/09/2013 Subject: RE: GDC Talk - I was Tinker Boy! So nice to e-meet you Alexander. Your letter brought a huge smile to my face. -Starr


Some Ice Cream Trivia.
Ice cream was made available to the general public for the first
time in France at a cafe in 1670. (France also gave us bon-bons and crepe suzette amongst other
In 1700 the delectable treat was historically documented as being
enjoyed in America. This date was in a letter written by a guest of William
Bladen, Maryland’s governerat the time. However, Ice
cream was enjoyed in the Far East and Europe for over a thousand years, before
the U.S. even existed. A popular legend is that, in the first century, a Roman
emperor commanded his slaves to run up to the mountains to collect ice and snow.
The flavored ices supposedly preceded the ice cream we know and love today.
The average number of licks it takes to polish off one single-scoop
on an ice cream cone is about fifty.
In 1904, a New York City ice cream seller is reported to have
invented the cone. He ran out of serving cups, so he asked a nearby waffle
vendor to make some thin waffles to wrap around his scoops of ice cream. In 1903
he patented his cone idea and they were a big hit at the World’s Fair the


+ September 14, 2015
GLENFIDDICH BACK IN TIME AT GOODWOOD REVIVAL!
Goodwood Revival is a festival of racing cars and motorcycles from the circuit’s original period 1948 – 1966, the golden era of motor sport. Visitors go back in time by dressing in the period of 40s/50s/60s to really take on the authentic style and feel of the festival making the event a unique day that you wouldn’t want to miss.
This was a perfect weekend for Glenfiddich to travel back into this era especially as this was the period when design and style was influencing the way brands look. In the 1960s, Glenfiddich Whisky changed to a triangular bottle inspired by the drastic changes in design, making sure they were at the front of time, fitting in with the swinging sixties.
At Goodwood Revival amongst all the noise of motorcars and fighter jets, Glenfiddich was situated within the Highstreet area where they had their own Original Club. A bar was set up where visitors could relax and enjoy their Whisky to take a break of the hustle and bustle outside. You could enjoy anything from a single malt whisky shot or variety of cocktails from your classics Old Fashioned or Whisky Sour to a Revival unique cocktail.
It was a brilliant weekend, in which everyone made a huge effort to look and bring the style of that era to life… Except you Mike.


September 3 - Labor Of Luck
Lovely day at home with Harriet, 21st-Century Music update, pdf'ing Missa California: Gloria (13), detail-editing Triple Concerto: III (27) and The Decameron - Second Day: V (17-8), and plenteous filing / reorganization of the adjunct library -- much while taking in Ken Burns's
The Civil War (1990),
featuring George Frederick Root's
Battle Cry of Freedom (1862, "Yes, we'll rally round the flag, boys") -- known for the past 45 years or so by present company, thanks to its multiple usages in the works of Charles Ives, but never by name until googling "Civil War songs" and almost immediately hearing it at the top of the first website reached. Evening bike break to mail regrets to the jury conscriptors, turning it into an outing with H.


Woodworking shops are preferred, because they smell the best, but I’ll take just about any kind of shop at all – cabinetry, picture-framing, even a small machine shop set up in somebody’s garage.
There’s usually a heater going, sometimes even a coal stove; up on a dusty shelf there’s a radio playing, too – bluegrass and country, but turned down. And an old dog asleep in his place under the workbench with the vise.
There’s that slow, steady rhythm as the host moves from miter saw to planer to jigsaw, then back to the work table, picking up a rule or a pencil as he goes. My father was a carpenter and a fine craftsman, as was his father before him. Those rhythms are in my blood.
I’ve sat around in a lot of shops, lending a hand when needed – “Here, steady this end while I rip it on the twelve-inch” – but mostly just lending encouragement and good cheer. I’m not much of a craftsman myself. I can saw and nail and paint, and shovel and dig and tuck-point, but beyond that I’m not much of an artisan. Still, being in that world makes me feel good.
My father and grandfather had shops of various kinds, and they also had what they called “sheds,” which were makeshift buildings filled with a variety of building materials they had accumulated. My grandfather Tom Carter was born in 1872; my father Bob Carter was born in 1910. Between them, they had seen a great many things, and built a considerable number of houses and bridges and warehouses.
They had acquired every conceivable kind of raw material – marble and limestone, concrete blocks, bricks of all sizes and shapes, spools of wire, barrels of iron hooks and fasteners for assembling forms, half-filled nail kegs, seemingly endless stacks of used lumber, along with a bewildering variety of hand tools such as spades, shovels, picks, mattocks, grubbing hoes, tamps, long-handled shovels, scoop shovels, sledgehammers, axes, hatchets, screw-jacks, and pry bars.
I spent my childhood in such shops and sheds, poking around among the treasures to be found there – the mysterious block-and-tackles, the great coils of rope, the oxy-acetylene bottles, the rusted iron stoves, and the rooms full of unidentifiable parts and pieces that had been ripped out of earlier structures and brought home and stored in the shed, in case they were ever needed again. My grandfather had been a young man during the hard times following the Panic of 1893; both he and my father had lived through the bitterest years of the Great Depression. They did not throw anything away.
Of the 1890s I learned little from my grandfather, who died when I was six. From my grandmother, Effie, who survived him by a quarter of a century, I heard quite a few interesting tales. I can recall her saying that the name of the first president she could remember was Grover Cleveland.
I lost no time in determining, in my grandparents’ library, among the musty old reference books kept there, that Grover Cleveland had been elected to the presidency in 1884. My grandmother, born in 1878, was six years old in that year. That seemed to me a very long time ago, and yet she could remember something that happened then, just as I knew at the age of six that in April of 1945 President Roosevelt had died, and had been succeeded by President Truman.
I did not stop to reason that Cleveland had been elected to two non-consecutive terms, and that my grandmother might have remembered him from a time as late as 1892, when she was fourteen, which does not seem so remarkable a feat – of noticing who was president, or of remembering that fact. Still, Cleveland’s name was a bench-mark. It helped to anchor me in my grandmother’s past.
Her grown-up name was Effie, but we called her “Nannie.” She spoke quite knowingly of the Blizzard of ’88, when she was ten years old, and when she and everyone else on the Hinshaw farm, a mile south of Windfall, Indiana, had been snowed in for several days. This in turn would prompt her to take down a copy of Whittier’s long poem Snow Bound, and read us a few pages, which lent credibility to her eye-witness account of the great blizzard of her youth.
She spoke of Coxey’s Army, although it was years before I understood what that was all about. And she talked of the World’s Fair of 1893, the Great Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which, unfortunately, she had not been able to attend. She had fallen ill that summer, on the eve of the family’s departure by train to visit the fair, and had had to stay home. I can barely imagine, even now, what a disappointment that must have been – not to have seen the Fair.
Her younger brother Glenn, and her stepbrothers and stepsisters, did in fact attend, and brought back small souvenirs to present to her, as if in compensation. She had kept them for half a century, and on those wintry evenings sometimes my two cousins and I were allowed to get them out of their special drawer, and arrange them on the kitchen table, and listen to her talk about them.
One was a pincushion in the shape of a miniature laundry basket. The size of a man’s thumb, cast of lead, it held a red-and-white checked cushion into which the pins were stuck. On the bottom were the faint letters “World’s Columbian Exposition 1893.” Attached by a white ribbon to one of the handles was a tiny pearl-handled pocket knife, the smallest I have ever seen. Whether the knife came from the Fair I do not know, but it was something we marveled over.
There was a small cream pitcher made of red and white glass that bore the engraved names of her father’s sisters, Jennie and Eliza Hinshaw, who lived in Mechanicsburg, Indiana. This item bore a date of 1899, long after the Fair, but it was still part of the treasure kept in the drawer. The piéce de resistance, and the artifact that fascinated us most, was a wooden egg exactly the size of the soft-boiled egg each of us sometimes got for breakfast. (This curious egg is now in my possession. Here is a photograph.)
It is pale yellow, imprinted with eight-pointed stars, and bears a line-drawing likeness of Columbus, who looks strangely like an Italian Santa Claus, with a jaunty hat from which two curling feathers project. On the opposite side, between the flags of the U.S. and Spain, is the legend:
If you look closely, beneath the legend, you can make out a line explaining in English that this souvenir had been “Made in Germany.” A product of global cooperation, then, in celebration of a fair for the entire world.
The egg was, for my two cousins and me, the holiest of relics. Studying its inscriptions, and talking about the discovery of America, and about the Fair itself, and Chicago, and why the Fair began in 1893 rather than the four-hundredth anniversary year (the people sponsoring the fair simply couldn’t get it together in time) usually kept us occupied until bedtime. But I have not yet come to the best part. Always save the best until last, as my grandmother might have said.
The egg was particularly mysterious because it always stood on one end, and the proper end at that, so that the image of Columbus appeared rightside up. But how did it do that? Even as a child I knew that it was not easy to balance an ordinary egg on end. Curiously, my grandmother did not seem to know of the story of Columbus and the egg, and it was years before I learned it from other sources.
According to this possibly apocryphal tale, Columbus, having been told that discovering the Americas was no great accomplishment, challenged his critics to make an egg stand on end. When they failed to do so, he tapped the egg on the table, flattening its tip. Voila! Of course the shell was broken in the process. But the upright egg provided a startling example of the unconventional thinking that had propelled Columbus to the New World in the first place.
I was confronted, then, at a very early age – say two or three years – by an egg that was not really an egg but certainly looked like an egg, and was made of wood, with pictures on it, and that always stood upright, like the Steadfast Tin Soldier. When you flicked it with your finger, it bobbled for an instant and then returned to its original position. I and my cousins were determined to get to the bottom of this.
Our grandmother showed us that the egg was hollow, and consisted of two hemispheres fitted together. In the bottom of the lower half, quite visible, was a small circle, about the size of a penny, of a substance she identified for us as lead. Screw the hemispheres back together, place it on the table, tip it over, and immediately it rights itself. In due time this simple process brought forth comments from my cousin Lowell, two years older than me, concerning the law of gravitation, Newton, the Principia, and other arcane matters.
We learned from my grandmother, too, that within five years of the Fair, which celebrated the great friendship between America and Spain, those two nations had gone to war, and a number of her neighbors and high-school classmates had hurried off to join the conflict, and been uniformly disappointed if not downright repelled by the entire business.
My grandmother, motherless at the age of two, had as a small child been raised in a Quaker household presided over by the two maiden aunts, Jennie and Eliza Hinshaw. They had brooked little dissension when it came to the subject of war.
And what of my father and my grandfather, who, oblivious of what was being discussed in that warm kitchen, were probably at that very moment out in some small town or village, dismantling some old building, or preparing to move one to the opposite side of town – they were champion house-movers – and could be counted on to bring home a truck-load of spare and used lumber and cast-iron debris which they would store in their various sheds behind the main house and in other locations.
In another entry I shall tell of the strange and marvelous concrete house father and son constructed during the Depression, primarily because they had nothing else to do. Suffice it for now for me to describe one of the ways in which, according to my father, the two of them were accustomed to scraping together a little cash during the most difficult years of the 1930s.
In those days the last of the Interurban cars still shuttled between the small towns of central Indiana that made up the “gas belt” of the 1890s – Kokomo and Marion, Anderson and Alexandria, Tipton and Elwood, and points between.
The fare between one town and the next was seldom more than a dime or fifteen cents, and with the proper manipulation of transfers and a wink to the friendly motorman, you could parlay that fare and make it all the way to the Traction Terminal in downtown Indianapolis.
My father and grandfather, upon discovering they had a spare day with nothing in particular to do, and sensing that the weather would be fine, would gather up the necessary tools – a variety of trowels and a makeshift mortar board – and stow these items in a couple of metal buckets. They would board “the car,” as it was called, for the town they had selected to canvass.
On arriving in Lapel or Pendleton, say, or one of the crossroads villages, or even one of the larger towns, they would fan out and study the chimneys on the houses they passed. This was in the mid-1930s; most households were still burning coal. Chimneys were essential, but since money was scarce, many had been allowed to deteriorate. Some leaned precariously, others had lost a great deal of their mortar and would not draft properly.
Upon spying a defective chimney, or chimneys, my grandfather would speak with the person who answered the door and offer to tuck-point the chimney for a nominal amount – fifty cents or a dollar. I suppose if the chimney needed extensive restoration, and additional bricks inserted, the charge was slightly higher.
Not everyone subscribed, of course, but it was clearly an opportunity for the householder, even during the Depression. Skeptics, or the initially reluctant, were undoubtedly drawn off the porch and out into the side yard, where they could see the chimney while listening to a litany of misfortunes that would descend upon the house and the roof, and upon them personally, unless the chimney were repaired.
When my father and grandfather had lined up half a dozen such projects, they would find their way to the lumber yard or the hardware store near the center of town and purchase a sack of cement. They probably filled the second bucket with sand from an abandoned lot or building site. Back in the target neighborhood, my grandfather, acting as hod-carrier, would get water from a backyard pump and mix the mortar, while my father, still in his early twenties, would find a way to get up on the roof and chip out the dry mortar with the point of his finishing trowel.
They would proceed in this fashion from one neighborhood to the next, sometimes spending the entire day tuck-pointing chimneys, buying their lunch for a quarter apiece in a greasy spoon on the town square, catching the Interurban car back home again in the afternoon, and sometimes having made eight or ten dollars for a day’s outing.
During the harshest winter months of the Depression they could not range about or work outside, so I assume they stayed in their shop, near the coal-fired pot-bellied stove, and worked on repairing and sharpening tools and getting ready for spring. In later winters, after my grandfather died and my father came home from the war, I too spent a certain amount of time after school in those shops, playing somewhere in the loft with my cousins, or begging to be allowed to go outside – to go sledding, perhaps – but I paid little attention to what my father and the other grownups were doing.
I think mostly they were just sitting there, taking it easy. I think that during those winters in the 1930s my father and grandfather were happy to be in a warm place, out of the cold. I think they enjoyed being there amid all the odors and smells – the pine of the planks, the rosins, the glues, the sealers, the disinfectants, the paint, the sweeper’s dust. They were surrounded by their tools and their materials, and this must have given them a sense of reassurance during those hard times. They were ready for just about anything, and everything they might need was immediately at hand.
Curiously, the best woodworking shop I ever saw was in Benton Harbor, Michigan, on the grounds of the old House of David compound, and it was presided over by a woman. It consisted of a series of high-ceilinged rooms of considerable size, all filled with the necessary planers and routers and table saws. I assumed that in earlier times it had been an all-purpose carpenter’s shop, since so many of the House of David’s original structures were made of wood. But when I accidentally discovered this shop in the early 1980s, it was entirely devoted to the framing of pictures – that being one of the few remaining sources of income for the dwindling number of believers in the colony.
On my trips through that part of the world I fell into the habit of stopping at the shop with a couple of prints I wished to have framed. I would drop them off, then come back five or six months later, pick them up, and order frames for additional prints. Each visit gave me the opportunity of chatting with the proprietress, who was then in her eighties, and who explained that she had come originally from England in the 1920s, with other members of her family, in order to join the religious community of the House of David. She had arrived as a teen-ager, married another immigrant, and remained in the commune all that time, working at a variety of jobs and finally entering into the vocation of picture-framer.
Her framing studio was extremely peaceful. Winter or summer, the north light was extraordinary, entering through banks of tall overhead windows. The two of us would sit on high stools at a plank table made of oak and examine and measure the prints, and then from the surrounding walls she would take down samples of picture frames she thought might be appropriate.
Her collection of frames was vast, the largest I have ever seen, and when the soft, even light illuminated the dozens of rows of vees made of oak and maple and walnut, and all the painted varieties and widths, the effect was memorable. While she and I talked about framing and matting, we would also discuss stories from the Bible, for she was quite religious and extremely knowledgeable on such subjects, and I learned a great deal from her.
Twenty years later, I have forgotten her name. But I remember that her hands were, strangely, without thumbs. She had lost both thumbs, she said, due to an illness when she was a small child. It did not seem to matter. She easily moved about the frame samples and the different pieces of rag-content matboard, and she had no trouble picking up any item or tool, large or small.
Our talk was often of the more arcane and unusual elements of the Bible, such as Saul’s visit to the Witch of Endor, or the angel seen by Balaam’s ass, or Mark’s account of the nameless young man with the linen cloth who ran naked from the place called Gethsemane.
I last stopped to see her, to pick up my final set of framed prints, in the late 1980s. Yet I can still remember her shop with great clarity. I have never seen a room so filled with light, or a space made so splendid by the marvelous objects it contained. The tomb of Tutankhamun was, as Howard Carter called back to Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn Herbert, filled with “wonderful things,” but it was a place of darkness, and the shop in Benton Harbor was a place of illumination.
The picture-framing shop has remained for me, in the years that have followed, a perfected version of the shops of skilled workmanship I knew as a child. In my imagination it is kin to those that even now I consider myself fortunate to be able to visit and to spend time in.


DADA 36 – “på liv och död” – a new series
DADA 36 – “på liv och död”
First out in a new digital series of old music back on track again and also never released stuff. More to come during the near future…
A sampler from the Swedish (landskrona) postpunk band Dada 36 with music from 1982-1986.
Out on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Tidal and so on …
Dada 36 was formed in the early 80s. To begin with as a side project by the members that at that time all played in other bands. The idea was to try to take new paths in punk rock and the music was inspired by the Dadaist movement and bands like Siouxie and the Banshees, Killing Joke and Chatterbox. Soon Dada 36 became the main focus and it was as important as life and death until the end of the 80s.


The impressive neo-gothic building, which houses the Main School, was built for the Crofts family in about 1856 to the design of the eminent architect Philip Charles Hardwick. Then known as Sompting House, it replaced an older house also owned by the Crofts. The family lived there until circa 1920 when Mr. A.C. Rutherford relocated an established preparatory school, initially based in Brighton and subsequently in Bognor Regis, to Sompting House to become Sompting Abbotts Preparatory School.
In 1940 the school was evacuated to Wales but the death of Mr. Rutherford in 1942 resulted in its closure. Happily, thanks to the efforts of Mr. and Mrs. A.D. Sinclair, the school was re-established at Sompting Abbotts after the war and continues to this day as a family concern with its members playing a very active role in the running and welfare of the school. It is a member of the IAPS and caters for boys and girls from the age of two to thirteen.


This isn’t necessarily work-related, but I wanted to share it regardless. We use the word “hero” a lot, but I was honored to meet someone whose claim to that word is beyond debate.
This is Col. Richard Cole, who was Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot during the famous “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” raid of 1942. To get America a much-needed victory and reset Japanese strategic calculations after Pearl Harbor, the “Doolittle Raiders” launched bombers that had never before flown from an aircraft carrier on a mission where they had no real expectation of landing at an actual airfield. (Cole’s crew bailed out over China when they ran out of fuel.) They bombed military targets in Tokyo, doing minor physical damage but sending shockwaves through the entire Japanese military and delivering notice that America wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
At 102 years old, Col. Cole is the last surviving member of the Doolittle Raiders.
I met him because this past weekend, my family and I were honored to be guests at the 93d Bomb Squadron’s centennial celebration, which included a change-of-command ceremony. My grandfather Charles R. d’Olive was a member of the 93d in World War I, when it was a “pursuit squadron” (we call them “fighter squadrons” now), and scored the first victory in the 93d’s history. Today, the 93d is a USAF Reserve B-52 squadron based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
The men and women of the 93d continue to serve in the best tradition of Col. Cole, my grandfather and their brothers in arms. Their legacies are in good hands.


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When I visited in 2002, the world was a much different place. The land line-based communication systems of sub-Saharan Africa were abysmal with little to no expectation of repair. Cell phone adoption had only just begun to emerge. No one, including the army, owned a cell phone. People received most of their information through the radio and word of mouth. Cell phones were for the workers of the non-government organizations, SUVs crisscrossing the countryside, going from one relocation camp to the next. Each one filled with internally-displaced people, regular civilians moved around like chess pieces manipulated between the government and the rebel factions.
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Building on the legacy established in the Clearwater Greek Orthodox community 50 years ago, Holy Trinity is a mix of both honored traditions and a bold new vision. The master plan for the campus includes renovations for the sanctuary itself , the adjacent Matheos Hall community center, and Papadi educational center. The design for the church was inspired by Byzantine architectural forms, based on a cross-plan topped by a dramatic dome hovering 65 feet above the church center. Although the church is predominantly a new structure, care was taken to preserve the existing mosaic iconography designs from the original structure built in the 1960s, incorporating these elements into a new chapel and iconostasis. A balcony level provides additional seating in the choir loft.


As we are expecting Typhoon Usagi to make landfall later tonight, it seems appropriate to pay a visit to Pak Tai (北帝 – literally “Emperor of the North”) temple in Stanley, just in case, it might come in handy if he can prevent the wind from breaking our windows since he’s commander of the twelve heavenly legions.
Pak Tai Temple is one of the few buildings remaining of the old Stanley on the waterfront side.
古井 – Ancient Well? I did not see one…
Always fascinating, these cone shaped incense sticks.


By Trish O’Reilly
Adapted from an article written for the Pocket Newsletter in 2007. Reprinted with permission.
Here is the church, here is the steeple, open it up and — well, if you’re looking at the church located directly across from Donlands subway station, you’re in for some surprises. First, there are not one but two congregations under the roof. Second, at any point during the service, the priest might suddenly start speaking Japanese. And third, the man up at the front… well, he doesn’t look Japanese. So how does a tall, bearded white guy from Scarborough end up leading a Japanese congregation? And how did the two congregations come together? It’s a long story — or rather a series of stories:
St. David’s Anglican Church began in 1906 as a mission of St. Clement’s parish. The parishioners formed a work party to prepare the site for the church building themselves and then a simple wood-frame church was built on Englewood Avenue — a street south of the Danforth, west off Jones, which today is called Harcourt. The original St. David’s church was on the south side roughly where the houses at 61 to 65 Harcourt stand today.
The congregation grew and in 1912 the parish was split, creating St. David’s as a parish of its own, with boundaries running from Pape to Coxwell and from the railway tracks north to Sammon Ave. In 1921 the congregation moved to a bigger church at the present site on Donlands Avenue. Its original parish hall and tennis courts were torn down in 1985 to make room for St. David’s Tower, a five-storey residence run by a non-profit corporation to provide housing for seniors and single parents. (Due to changes in legislation, the residence is now open to anyone.)
The church suffered from a fire in 1988. Fortunately, the damage was moderate. Ironically, some of the worst damage was caused by firefighters, who had to smash the stained glass windows above the altar to let smoke out. But since then the building has been restored to its former beauty.
Today, if you go into St. David’s, your eyes are in for a feast. The lovely, serene interior has pale walls with stencilled designs in gold and a range of soft, chalky colours that stand in contrast to the high vaulted dark wood ceilings and warm red carpeting. Members of St. David’s represent a range of ages from young families to octogenarians, and come from a variety of backgrounds including European-descended people whose families have been in Ontario for generations side by side with more recent immigrants from places like Africa, Guyana, and the Caribbean.
St. Andrew’s was founded at the end of WWII at a time when Japanese Canadians were being forcibly dispersed through Canada following their internment. Japanese Canadians who ended up in Toronto were no longer able to form tight ethnic communities, but instead dispersed throughout the city. In the 1940s, however, about a dozen people who wanted to worship in Japanese began meeting in a St. George’s chapel inside St. James Cathedral. They began under the leadership of a bishop who had been in Japan and learned a bit of their language. The group quickly outgrew the chapel, however, and over the years they shared space with a number of different Anglican parishes.
In 1996, the congregation finally came to St. David’s. With the exception of a once-monthly service in Japanese, the two congregations share Sunday services, which are largely in English (although several prayers are usually read in both languages). Once a year St. Andrew’s has Shinbokukai, a “get to know you better” gathering, with performances of Japanese folk songs and — instead of the usual post-service tea, coffee, and sandwiches — a feast of Japanese delicacies, such as maki and inari sushi, Japanese-style chow mein, and manju (a Japanese dessert pastry with sweet soybean paste).
Bringing it all together
But what about the tall bearded white guy at the front of the congregation? His name is Warren Wilson, and he grew up in Scarborough and planned to be an accountant — until he realized his life was headed on a different path. In 1978 Wilson volunteered as a missionary in Japan and fell in love with the language and culture.
That’s not all he fell in love with. After three years, Wilson returned to Canada to study for the priesthood, but returned to Japan afterwards to be ordained in the Japanese Anglican Church and marry a woman he had met during his first stay overseas. He and his wife Yoko raised three children while living principally in Kaya, a rural town about 70 km from Kyoto.
When their children entered their teens, Wilson and his wife felt it was time they got to know the other half of their heritage, so the family moved to Canada. And in 2003 Wilson found himself coming full circle — not only back to an area close to where he had grown up, but back to a parish where he could speak Japanese again, and specifically to St. Andrew’s where, as it happens, he had spent a year as a student. (In 2006, when a position at St. David’s opened up, he quite naturally made the transition to serving both parishes.)
So this is some of the people, and some of the history, behind this tale of two churches. Who would have thought that just steps from the bustle of Donlands Avenue, inside this workaday red brick exterior most of us pass every day without noticing, so much was going on and so many different stories were being woven together?
Note: Rev. Warren Wilson left St. David’s and St. Andrew’s in the spring of 2015. He and Yoko now live and work in Japan where they can be closer to their daughter and grandson.
The new priest for both St. David’s Anglican Church and St. Andrew’s Japanese Congregation is the Rev. Adrienne Clements. St. David’s and St. Andrew’s continue to worship together at 11 am on Sunday and share many joint activities.


Long-time union stalwarts (from left)
Donavan Hatori, Gary James, Bonnie James, Bruce Morgan and
Bryce Albrecht were presented pins and certificates at a
special luncheon held in their honour.
30 November 2009
Long-time union members
saluted for commitment,
Media and Communications Workers of Alberta | CWA Canada
Five long-time members of the union that
represents workers at the Red Deer Advocate have been recognized
for their commitment to organized labour and for being an
inspiration to a new generation of activists.
"These people were members of the union long before
the Advocate became a wall-to-wall bargaining unit more than
18 years ago," said Jack Wilson, president of the Local. "They
often made sacrifices to serve in various union capacities
and help their fellow workers. These sharing and caring attitudes
were instilled in them as they, too, learned their craft
from older union members."
Two of the five, all of whom
toiled as either journeymen pressmen or compositors, continue
to work at the Advocate. Almost all of them served on the
Local's executive board or in various union capacities
during their illustrious careers in the industry.
Being proud members of the oldest
trade organization in Canada (formerly the International
Typographical Union), "we
owe these members our debt of gratitude today," Wilson
said during a luncheon held in their honour on Nov. 21.
Wilson and the Local's secretary-treasurer, Luis Rufo, presented
25- and 40-year pins and certificates. Recipients included
Bruce Morgan, journeyman ad compositor for 46 years; Bonnie
James, journeyman ad compositor for 40 years; Gary James,
journeyman pressman for 35 years; Donavan Hatori, journeyman
ad compositor for 36 years; and Bryce Albrecht, journeyman
ad compositor and pressman for 36 years.
In addition to pins and certificates, the five were also
presented with metal water bottles featuring the new CWA|SCA
Also present at the luncheon were Red Deer Advocate Lodge
Representative Harry Numrich and Lodge Vice-President Janice


"Pingyuan" offshore defense armored ship
Coast Defence Ironclad
H.I.M.S. Ping Yuen
This ship is the first steel armored warship designed and built by China itself, and the first such warship created by an East Asian country. After the Sino-French War in 1885, Minister of Shipping Pei Yinsen, in view of the lessons of the defeat in the Battle of Majiang, determined to create armored warships to increase maritime power, and was approved by the Empress Dowager Cixi. This ship is based on the French Navy’s "Huangquan"-class armored gunboat as its reference model. It has been designed and improved according to the actual conditions of the coast of China. The hull is an all-steel structure, and steel armor is laid on the waterline belt. The steel used is purchased From the Creusot Works in France.
The ship started construction on December 7, 1886 in Foochow Arsenal, construction number 29. Shipbuilding engineers Wei Han, Zheng Qinglian, and Wu Dezhang were responsible for the design and overall supervision of the hull. Chen Zhaoao, Li Shoutian, and Yang Lianchen were responsible for the design and supervision of the power system, 1888 It was launched on January 29, 1890 and transferred to the Beiyang Navy. The ship was originally named "Longwei" in the Foochow Arsenal, and the later minister of the Northern Oceans Li Hongzhang planned to rename it to "Yuyuan". The cause and the Nanyang Navy ship were renamed, and the ship administration "Pingyuan" sail training ship was renamed. "Ping Yuan".
Due to the late incorporation into the Beiyang Navy, the ship was not organized in the Beiyang Navy. The military expenses were paid from the navy's yamen, and the public expenses were evenly shared from the Beiyang Navy's other naval fleets. The captain was Li He. After the ship was incorporated into the Beiyang Navy, it was remodeled at the Lushun Dockyard, and important changes have taken place in the position of the ears and the configuration of weapons. In the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the ship participated in the Yellow Sea battle and the Weihai defense battle. In the Yellow Sea battle, the ship had won the record of damaging the Japanese "Matsushima", "Itsukushima" and "Seokyeong Maru".
After the Beiyang Navy was defeated in 1895, the ship was captured by the Japanese army on Liugong Island and incorporated into the Japanese Navy, still using the name "Pingyuan". It was designated as a security training ship in 1896, and was changed to a first-class gunship in 1898. In 1904, it participated in the Russo-Japanese War in the Third Fleet of the Japanese Navy and implemented a blockade of the Russian army along the coast of Lushun. In addition to the explosion and sinking of a Russian mine near the bay, he was expelled from the Japanese army on May 2, 1905.
The main parameters:
Displacement: 2100 tons
Main dimensions: 59.99 meters long between the verticals, 12.19 meters wide, and 4.4 meters draught at the stern
Main engine: 2 Foochow Arsenal built three-cylinder and three-expansion steam engines
Boiler: 4 round high pressure coal-fired boilers built by Foochow Arsenal
Work rate: 2400 horsepower
Speed: 10.5 knots
Armament: 260mm caliber 35-fold Krupp gun × 1
150mm caliber 35-fold Krupp gun x 2
57mm caliber Hotchkiss gun×2
37mm caliber Hotchkiss gun×4
37 mm caliber Hotchkiss 5-barrel cannon×6
Armor: Waterline belt armor thickness is 127-203 mm
The thickness of the gun mount armor is 127 mm
The thickness of the armor of the gun cover, the thickness of the armor deck is 50 mm


The I-182 Champions Wall is a recognition of the people and businesses who contributed to the historical effort to save the medical marijuana program in the state of Montana in 2016.
Working alongside the strategic guidance of the MTCIA, these contributors applied their selfless dedication and financial contributions to save the program from being dissolved into the archaic demands of SB423.
Patient access to medical marijuana was finally restored with the passage of I-182 on Election day 2016. We succeeded with gratitude, for the many levels of support given to the MTCIA by local Montanans. Thank You!
All the Volunteers that put in time and energy with the signature gathering campaign
Alternative Wellness of Northwest Montana
Everyone across the state who rallied support for 182
Garden Mother Herbs
Greener Pastures Natural Medicine
Glacier View Glass
Heaven Scent Cannabis
Lil’ Amsterdam U.S.A.
Montana State Hemp and Cannabis Festival
Montana Preferred Providers
M+R and Staff


"The true friend, the trusty sword, is worth in times of need nearly its weight in Gold" said Master Freidank, expressing a thought which was common throughout the Middle Ages.
The sword was the most important fighting weapon from ancient times on. The Germanic Heroic Sagas take us back to a time when a sword was an extremely precious heirloom; a hereditary prize given to a noble ancestor by a God, the hallmark of the hero. When we hear echoes of such revered legendary swords as Siegfried's Balmung, of the Eckesachs, and of Miming, we can reason that the reverence for the sword shown in the Sagas was also known in real life.
On reaching adulthood, the oldest son would take in advance a single object from his inheritance - his father's sword. The young man would wear this sword at the local folk assembly as a symbol of his readiness to bear arms and a sign of adulthood. Thus, with his sword, the father bestowed the symbols of rank and respect by which his son would be recognized. This was the "Swordly" ceremony and it was on this very weapon that a man's legal oaths would be sworn.
It is easy to think that this respect for the weapon is evidence of the availability of masterful training in the art of sword fighting that must have existed in the heroic ages.
There's a small problem with this assumption, the legendary sword was indeed often wielded but the heroic master was determined not by conditioning and technique, but by strength. The old Germanic sagas tell of terrible blows on helm and shield; they extoll the strength of their heros, given by the gods or implying their own godliness; but regarding technique, they report nothing.
The combat descriptions in the poem "Waltharius " are snapshots from the 10th century: the hero broke his sword over Hagen's helm and in annoyance throws it away by the grip. This motion fools his "smart" opponent, and cuts his hand off. After the heroic (dark) ages, the Waltharians continued to carry swords as a matter of right and defended their rights with their swords. (Note: the author is describing a free warrior culture which valued strength of arms over learned skill and settled disputes with the trial by arms).
Starting first in France and spreading east to lands subject to French influence, reverence for strength was counter-balanced by the ideal of courtesy which accompanied manorialism. As this transformed into a chivalric system used by the nobility to regulate all aspects of daily life, the ideal of the warrior transformed from the unskilled raw form into a more refined form where delicacy and skill became effective: the fighting arts were founded in the form of the knight.
With practise the weak man can too learn to fight far better,
otherwise the state of swordsmanship, as an art, may not have achieved this level of skill.
Here was the union of skill and strength"
- Hartmann von Aue, (Iwein 7000).
We musn't set our expectations too high and deceive ourselves again. Based on the information available to us from period sources, there is much to contradict the notion of highly developed and skillful sword fighting arts. (During much of the feudal period).
What is the reason for this? The answer lies with the single minded maintenance of the joust: Running with the lance was fraught with so much difficulty, it required great skill to lower the lance into correct position while in full gallop and then bear the strong impact of the opponent at the same time, that the information on the knightly arts are highly focused on the joust and little else.
When the folk hero Parzival (Percival) went to Thorenweise, the master Gurnemanz taught him the joust and thus completed his training in the knightly arts. (Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival 174)
Swordfighting remained, on the whole, as an afterthought.
One did not fence in tournament; Dueling with swords was practiced solely by the Slavs before they, in turn, adopted the romantic ideals of knighthood.
Thus "Biter Rolf" said the Boehmen (Slavs?) were unaquainted with the tournament fight, but their broad flat swords emptied many saddles.
For the manorial knights, fencing with swords came at the conclusion of a fight. If both opponents had been de-horsed with the impact of the lance they then proceeded to the swords; but even if both lances were splintered, the horses still served. Thus it reads in Iwein:
"no horse will they wear wrong
their own life depends on it."
The first blows went to the Shield: on the same page of Iwein it reads:
"You both think the same,
I know not what use this striving for so long a time is
If it's only to shoot to the shield."
Good fighters were capable regarding shield and sword, i.e.: they knew how to parry and preserve their harness as this was their only protection against projectiles.
If the shield is fully "overhewn," it is then thrown away and the fight continues without it. Strong knights then apparently siezed the sword in both hands and let the blows fall on their opponent. "Chivalrous" fighters would observe the rule to strike no blow below the knees.
This fight with swords could result in opponents killed or made defenseless through many small wounds or splitting of the helm:
"The helms were hewn
and enormous forceful blows were landed there;
the harness soaked as the blood began,
as it ran much from wounds, dripping richly down."
- (Iwein, 7230)
The capture of the opponent's sword could also occur, forcing the opponent to resort to grappling.
This fighting style persisted into the 14th and 15th centuries; it is clear that fencing with the two-handed longsword evolved from this style, a style which originated with the throwing away of the shield and the continuance of the fight with the sword wielded with both hands.
In the fencing schools, which transformed from knightly schools to civil ones, these traditional styles were practised and developed into the 15th and 16th centuries. This is the origin of our own fechtbuch.
In particular, the judicial duel offered a special unleashing of the polarizing element of the fencing art; it still required a shadow of the Saxon hero in that the combatants would engage in the duel without the protection of armour.
As it became desireable to learn the art of parrying with the sword at these schools, we hear that resolutions governing the judicial duel in regard to the period between the challenge and the fight became included in fechtbuch based instruction.
Fencing soon became a popular undertaking maintained by the guilds, like all occupations with civil status. With much pomp and ceremony, fencing schools were opened, normally under an acknowledged Master, in which one could take up the study of any weapon. These did not fully reduce the count of bloody heads, bad luck was still known to occur, but did create an educated guild of fencers overseen by the "Marx Brotherhood" in Frankfurt along with the most famous group, the "Feathered Brotherhood of Fencers" with their seat in Prague. These enjoyed many imperial privileges in the 15th and 16th centuries and on into the 17th - the Master of both groups was accorded the same rank as a lawyer and representative in the imperial court.
In the 15th century, after the certification of the fechtbuchs, we find rules for the duel with various weapons. These were: the longsword wielded with two hands, the rapier for cut and thrust, dagger, short sword, Dusack/Tresack/Dysack - a single edged sword, short, without grip or handle, with only a grasp hole for the hand which wields the weapon, furthermore war hammer, axe, staff, and sword and shield; about which different forms for the fight were covered such as offensive versus defensive stances and the basic rules for fighting.
Together with the study of fighting with these individual weapons, the study of the simultaneous handling of two rapiers, or the rapier in the right hand and a dagger in the left, as well as the attack of any one of these weapons against the defense of any other was also taught. In addition, the appropriate use of a cloak or coat as well as the proper behaviour of an unarmed combatant against an armed one were explored.
The art of fencing stood in its most primitive form as the use of any of these weapons. Even so, the certification of a number of illustrated manuscripts describing the fighting arts and teaching the techniques would have lent early fencing a reputation as an artful skill.
This "way of the fight" and all of these weapons based fighting styles, which often finished with fist fighting and grappling, were taught in all fencing schools and were included in the lessons illustrated in the fechtbuchs. The only value these hold for us today is historical in nature in that they exerted little influence on the further development of fencing as a fighting art.
Talhoffer's illustrated manuscript, one of the oldest German fighting manuscripts, represents many of the different types of fighting then common in Germany, combining description and illustration to familiarize us with the subjects of the artwork.
As a source for amplification and development, these illustrated works give us the oldest printed German fencing manuals. Several of these are well known, such as:
Joachim Meyer, Free Fencer of Strasbourg, 1570: "Thorough descriptions of the knightly and noble art of fencing are often found containing many beautiful and informative illustrated figures which are most useful and well received." and "With Roman Imperial freedoms as they are, in ten years time we will no longer be in a position to ignore these works." There is also the strange fechtbuch with the title page "Hanns Goerg Deckinger, I am known around my native land by my beloved handicraft, as a Master and Free Fencer, and an instructor of the manful and knightly free art of fencing to my fellow citizens and inhabitants of the great city of Munich." Even consider this quote from the fechtbuch at Augsburg, dated 1600: "Hope to God and don't lose faith, and the luck will come with every day." This fechtbuch covers the subject in five chapters where the various forms of fighting on foot are explored.
Meyer was one of the more successful old German masters, his works, along with those of Lebkhommer and Sutor whose works expanded from his, were the most important fencing manuals to appear in Germany. Meyer created with his efforts a well thought out original work which made us familiar with the various forms of fencing then common in Germany. These fighting methods took root and developed in the German schools in the 16th and 17th centuries. We can still find the same style of illustrated combat techniques in the fechtbuch just mentioned.
Jacob Sutor in his "New Illustrated Fechtbuch" gives detailed descriptions of the noble and knightly art of fighting using varous weapons, such as longsword, sword, dusack, rapier, pole weapons, and techniques for the fight with these weapons. With its definitive lessons, much can be learned from the illustrations, even in a short time, based on its informative and skillful instructions and its quite useful and delicately drawn figures. Now, to serious fencing students, this fechtbuch in particular provides the immersion medium which would be practiced each and every day in order to advance their skills in the free fencing style of Jacob Sutor of Baden. (Frankfurt, 1612)
In addition, as will be examined later, the Italian fencing arts had advanced by the 16th century to a rather developed level and had begun to influence fencing in Germany by the end of the same century. As is evident in all fencing books from that time, the long sword wielded with both hands was then considered the main combat weapon and only later did the cut and thrust rapier assert itself. Following Sutor, fencing with the longsword was practiced with "Starting, Middle and End" phases.
The starting phase is proto-fencing, appropriate to any man whether or not he has fenced before. Proto-fencing is basically the fight opening moves following the lead of the basic strikes which can be executed from the primary guards. Thus are the leading strikes and following strikes undertaken.
The translator pauses, rubs his eyes, and stops here as he has returned the German copy of the fechtbuch to its rightful owner. All additional work with Talhoffer's 1467 fechtbuch is with the tafels themselves and is dealt with separately.
The studies continue with other manuscripts, at the time of this writing, Goliath is being examined.
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City Tour Package
See the old and the new Iloilo!
- 3,000 Philippine pesos₱3,000
- Luna Street
Iloilo is known for preserving colonial Churches and historical mansions come and learn interesting facts about our history and also see the modern architecture along the main streets of Iloilo. Inclusive: 2 NIGHTS and 3 DAYS Hotel accommodations Car Transportation Food Accommodations (breakfast, lunch, & dinner) Tour guide services Exclusive: Entrance Fees MINIMUM OF 5 PAX
Luna Street, La Paz, Iloilo City, Iloilo, Philippines


These Original Series artifacts were Screen Worn by Commodore Decker and Captain Tracey in the episodes titled "The Doomsday Machine" 1967 and "The Omega Glory" 1968.
This set of rank insignias are very rare costume accessories, as they were custom made for filming and only worn in these two episodes.
Both came directly from the Bill Theiss estate when his collection was sold at Butterfields & Butterfields.
Tantalus Colony Production Patch
From the estate of William Theiss


Electro Magnetic Motor Patent.
“Be it known that I, NIKOLA TESLA, a subject of the Emperor of Austria, from Smiljan, Lika, border country of Austria-Hungary, residing at New York, in the county and State of New York, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Electro-Magnetic Motors, of which the following is a specification, reference being had to the drawings accompanying and forming a part of the same.”
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system.
Find out more about Nikola Tesla here.
Find more about the Electro Magnetic Motor Patent 416,195 here.


Where skiing began
7kms down the road from Selwyn lies Kiandra, the place where skiing began in Australia during the Kiandra Gold Rush in the 1860s. Now a skeleton of the once booming town, Kiandra is arguably the birthplace of the world’s first ski club, the Kiandra Pioneer Ski Club. Back then skis were made out of wooden planks and the only way down the hill was straight down! Speed control was achieved by digging a long pole into the snow between your legs and there were no lifts to carry you back to the top after a run.
The Kiandra Pioneer Ski Club operated for the next century. A major turning point for the club was when the president of the day, Peter Fountain, obtained the blue prints for a Mueller t-bar and had it manufactured in 1957 by a Newcastle firm by the name of James Engineering. The t-bar was installed on Township Hill at Kiandra and was the first t-bar in Australia and one of the only ones to this day to be built by an Australian company.
In 1958, Ken Murray, founder of Perisher Valley, obtained a copy of Peter’s blue prints and had a second identical t-bar produced by the same Newcastle company. This t-bar was installed at Perisher Valley and operated there until the late 1960s. In 1962, Peter Fountain made a decision to sell the t-bar at Kiandra to Bill Mathew & Colin Myers who later became the founder of Selwyn. At this stage, Colin was the president of the Tumut Ski Club that owned a Nutcracker Rope Tow on New Chum Hill at Kiandra. In 1964 Colin purchased Bill’s share in the t-bar and became the sole operator.
The birth of Selwyn
Skiing began at Selwyn in 1966 when a portable rope tow that had been built by Colin the previous year, was moved and installed on the run we now know as Township. This occurred towards the end of the season when the snow became too marginal at Kiandra for skiing. This was so successful that it continued for several years and in the late 1960s Colin purchased the Perisher Valley t-bar that had been built off the identical plans to the Kiandra t-bar and installed it at Selwyn on the Township run. The t-bar was installed by hand and was ready for operation for the 1972 ski season.
Back then life was simple. Tickets were sold out of a duffle bag at the bottom of the lift. Tins of pineapple juice was the only commodity on sale and were sold out of the make shift shop front of Colin’s car. Many times visitors couldn’t make the drive in because the roads would be closed, so Colin, his wife Marnie and their team of helpers would just ski all day and have the slopes all to themselves.
Throughout the late 1970s, the National Parks and Wildlife Service along with the Roads and Traffic Authority protested against the congestion that was being caused on the Snowy Mountains Highway due to lack of designated parking at Kiandra and as a result all facilities at Kiandra were removed or shut down in 1978. Colin moved his t-bar from Kiandra and installed it at Selwyn the same year. The t-bar was placed along side its replica from Perisher and these original t-bars operated in this location for a further 31 years! Only in 2009 were they replaced by the new Township Triple Chairlift, an exciting addition to the resort.
In 1982 the company Mount Selwyn Snowfields Pty Ltd was created with shares holders Col and Marnie Myers, Bob and Janelle Heatley and John and Debbie Myers, John and Janelle being the son and daughter of Col and Marnie. In 1984 this company signed a 45 year lease with the National Parks and Wildlife Service for the area surrounding Selwyn and this lease is still in place today. In 1995 Colin and Marnie retired and Janelle and Bob became the sole shareholders.
The Future of Selwyn Snow Resort
In July 2016 Selwyn was sold to Selwyn Snow Resort Pty Ltd and is now a part of the Blyton Group of companies.


3137 Whittier Street in St Louis, was home to Chuck Berry for eight years in the 1950s, a time during which he wrote some of his best loved hits including Maybelline, Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little Sixteen and Johnny B Goode.
But the project doesn’t stop there, the city is planning on expanding it into a cultural district aptly named “Chuck Berry Cultural District” which they hope will increase tourism and promote a sense of community and creativity. All things going well, we can hope to have the area considered a must see attraction in St Louis.
Chuck Berry’s old home in St Louis has been considered as the site for a new cultural museum, honouring and celebrating African American culture and Berry’s legacy.
The neighbourhood, which is more commonly known at “The Greater Ville” has its own historical significance in the story of equality and black rights. One of the few areas in the infamously segregated city of St Louis, The Greater Ville was a place where African American people at the time were legally able to own property. The district became home to other iconic musicians and celebrities including Josephine Baker, Tina Turner, comedian Dick Gregory and tennis player Arthur Ashe.
In speaking about his home when it was added to the National Register of Historic places in 2008, Berry fondly reminisces “Many of my favourite songs came about while in that house”.
Continuing to perform in the area up until his death, Chuck Berry was a pillar of not only the music community but also that of St Louis. We are definitely adding the new site to the list of must-sees next time we’re in the USA.


- Archdiocese of Louisville
- Becoming a Member
- Financial Reports
- ERE Registration
- Letter from the Pastor
- Lifelong Education
- Map to St. Martha
- Parish Council
- Sacramental Life
- St. Martha Boosters
- St. Martha School
- Staff Contacts
- Volunteer Requirements
- Youth Ministry
History of St. Martha Parish
In the 1950's, there was a great exodus of Catholics from the west end of Louisville, who were buying houses and settling in the Hikes Point area of Louisville, Kentucky, and this necessitated the establishment of Sts. Barnabas and Pius X parishes in the early and middle 1950's. In June 1960, when these parishes became overcrowded, Archbishop Floersh appointed Reverend James J. Dalton as pastor of St. Martha Catholic Church. Seventeen acres of land were acquired on Klondike Lane.
Construction of the church and school began and the first Mass was offered on Thanksgiving of 1961, with folding chairs as pews. The men of the parish constructed the rectory, garage and walk. The sisters lived in a rented house on Glenmeade until a convent was built in 1965. The first bulletin on file reveals that there were 424 families registered and the collection in January 1962 was $890.00. The Masses on Sunday were at 6:00am, 7:30am, 9:00am and 11:00am. The church and school were blessed by the Bishop on Sunday, March 4, 1962.
School for the children was held at St. Pius X in the afternoons from September through November 1961. There were three sisters and three lay teachers on staff. There were only 25 children in each grade, with the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th being taught by one teacher.
Almost immediately, St. Martha parish experienced a very rapid growth. In the fall of 1964 there were 131 children registered for the first grade. The graduation class in 1965 totaled 110 students.
By 1967, enrollment increased to 756 students and the faculty grew to 24 persons. In 1977, St. Martha was the second largest school in the archdiocese. Our faculty peaked at 25 persons. Two major additions were built to the school to accommodate this growth.
During the latter part of 1960, Vatican II's impact played an important role in reshaping our parish community, both physically and intellectually. The altar was turned to face the people. Later in 1970, the altar was moved to the side of the church building and the pews were place so that all parishioners were in closer contact with the celebration of Mass.
In 1968 the first Parish Council was formed and the laity was called upon to accept a much greater responsibility in the administration of parish affairs.
In May 1984 Bethany Center, a community center for the entire parish, was dedicated. The interior of the church was totally renovated and refurbished.
In 1990, St. Martha became a stewardship parish. Kindergarten became part of our school in 1993. In 1994, the interior of our church was repainted and carpeted. Electric service was updated, an audiovisual room was added, classrooms were carpeted, and a new phone system was installed.
1994 saw the renovating of the Parish Office basement to provide a large and well-equipped area for youth activities and a separate area for parish meetings. In the summer, we finished the addition of a new office for the Principal, a new computer room and two classrooms for the school. A new roof for the school, cafeteria and rectory were also added.
Deacon Ray Kramer who came to St. Martha with Fr. John Deatrick in 1993 was officially appointed to the position of Pastoral Associate. In 1996 Charles Brown and John Maher were ordained Permanent Deacons and assigned to St. Martha. In 1996, the Parish also paid off the debt in the Phase II program. In 1997 Fr. Michael Greenwell completed three years as a weekend associate and was replaced by Fr. Fred Hendrickson. Pam Berry was appointed DRE in 1997.
1998 saw the installation of a totally new heating and air conditioning system for the church and school. New flooring and ceiling were installed in the school and cafeteria. Mr. Jim Bennett, our long time Deacon, passed away on February 10, 1998.
In 1999 Annette Bergamini was appointed RCIA director. St. Martha took charge of the Child Care Center from the YMCA.
Completion of the Sr. William Carrico Hall was a highlight of the year 2000. This welcome addition to the school was paid for without borrowing any money and will be a tremendous asset to the entire Parish. The parish office basement was totally refurbished and a large room was dedicated to our youth program.
We were saddened by the death of Dean Ray Kramer on April 18, 2001. The parish office was named the Kramer Center in his honor. The large meeting room in the Kramer Center was named in honor of the late Dean Jim Bennett. Deacon Ken Ward joined the St. Martha staff. School opened with 551 students.
In 2002, Geoff Gnau, our parishioner, was ordained as a permanent deacon and assigned to St. Martha parish.
A new faculty room was added to the school in the spring of 2003. In the fall, we began our full day kindergarten classes and added a new weekday pre-kindergarten program.
In 2004, Fr. John Deatrick retired after 11 years as our pastor and we welcomed Fr. Don Springman as our new pastor. We also joined with the other BAMP parishes in building a Habitat for Humanity home.
There were many changes in 2005; the church was painted and updated, we completed building a new concession stand for the athletic field, and our new weekend Mass schedule changed.
Priests: Revs. James Dalton, Robert Osborne, Francis Smith, John Lehmenkuler, John Sohan, Clarence Nord, Robert Gray, John Birk, Kenneth Kamber, Michael Rankin, John Deatrick, Robert Huber, Terry Bradshaw, Harry Gelthaus, Anthony Chandler, Peyton Badgett, Scott Wimsett, Don Springman, and Mark Hamilton.


The Marikana Massacre is a fatal incident that took place at the Lonmin Platinum mine on 16 August 2012. During this time, 37 workers were killed during a peaceful protest.
To commemorate this anniversary, the annual Marikana Massacre commemoration and wreath-laying ceremony took place at the koppie in Marikana where the 37 mineworkers were murdered.
Wonderkop Koppie in Marikana – North West, has become a reference of the struggle for a R12 500 basic salary.
Six years ago, on 16 August 2012 the South African Police Service opened fire on Lonmin Platinum mineworkers who were striking for the R12 500 basic salary. This fateful day forever became entrenched in South African history and came to be known as the Marikana Massacre.
This event has formed the cornerstone of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union’s (AMCU) notion that 16 August should be declared Worker’s Day. It was the lives of South African mineworkers that perished in the Marikana Massacre and that can never be erased from the history books.
It was (AMCU) regalia that dominated the commemoration event held in Marikana on 16 August 2018, where the slain mineworkers were celebrated and remembered for their selfless sacrifice. . AMCU President Joseph Mathunjwa along with members of AMCU’s leadership comprising of General Secretary Jeff Mphahlele, National Treasurer Jimmy Gama were joined by the widows and families of the fallen comrades at the commemoration event.
All images, text, and other materials posted on this site are subject to copyright owned by AMCU under South African copyright laws. Any reproduction, retransmission, distribution or replication of all or part of any images, text, and other materials found on this site is prohibited, unless express permission has been granted in writing by AMCU.


Last week we attended the ASLMS (American Society for Laser Medicine & Surgery) meeting in Phoenix. One of the highlights of the meeting, besides celebrating the 50th anniversary of the operation of the laser, was the Special Recognition Award given to Dr. Charles Townes, an American Nobel Prize-winning physicist and educator. We were excited to see this award presented, as Townes is known worldwide as the “Father of Lasers,” having developed laser technology to the benefit of millions, both in military and medical uses.
Townes, born in 1915 in South Carolina, graduated summa cum laude from Furman University at the tender age of 19. He completed a master’s degree in physics at Duke and a PhD from Cal Tech with a thesis about isotope separation and nuclear spins. Keep in mind that this was back in 1939, when these technologies were in their infancy. As an early member of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, his work in radar bombing systems and microwave technology, which led to his appointment to the faculty at Columbia University, led to uses of ammonia gas in masers (microwave amplification through radiation), which ultimately produced laser technologies. He and his research assistants were the first to detect complex molecules in the galaxy, as well as the measurement of the mass in the black hole in our galaxy’s center. With the assistance of Arthur Schawlow, he wrote Microwave Spectroscopy, which was published in 1955. During his tenure at Bell Labs, Dr. Townes was asked to help with the development of a radar system for WWII aircraft. Although Dr. Townes did not serve in the military, he and his team contributed to the war efforts by creating more accurate and precise radar systems, though none of them were ever mass-produced by the military. Some of the new systems developed were used as prototypes in the early B-52 bombers.
Dr. Townes went on to become the VP and Director of Research for Washington DC-based Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit group that advised the government. After 2 years in that position, he became Provost and Professor of Physics at MIT, specializing in research of quantum electronics and astronomy. In 1967, he became a professor at University of California, on the Berkeley campus.
We'll be posting more details from the event later this week! Don't miss our upcoming info about the ASAPS (American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery) conference this weekend!