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I'm Gaverne Bennett, and my poster on Black History, published in the Guardian to mark the inauguration of President Obama, proved to be one of the paper's most popular supplements. It wouldn't have been possible without the British Library.
Always interested in history, I began my research into something I felt had been left out of programmes and documentaries during the millennium celebrations. Spending a month in the British Library, I completed a timeline that aimed to tell the full story. In the late 1990s it was published in 'Untold' Magazine, and I received a huge amount of positive feedback from readers who wanted to know more.
In 2007 I received a request to undertake a similar project to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Originally published for a number of Trade Unions, it was suggested that I should create a special version for the Guardian, adapting it to tie in with Obama's inauguration.
From May to September 2008 I visited the Library every week to research the subject. Drawing mainly on sources in the Africa and Asia sections I also spent a lot of time in Humanities – adopting seat 2214 as my 'thinking seat'!
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"I started to use the British Library in 2007 when I embarked on a PhD examining Japanese photography of the 1990s. I was amazed to discover how much subject related material was available: from rare Japanese photobooks to obscure historical accounts. Because I sought to situate photography in a social, political and economic context, I also referred to material that was not necessarily related to Japan or photography as such, but which nevertheless informed my research. My PhD supervisor would intermittently supply me with a list of essential readings which I could access quickly and free of charge at the British Library.
After a year or so, I started to get addicted to the British Library. I had my favourite spots on Humanities Floor 2, where, superstitiously, I felt I was the most productive. Particularly in the writing up period, the scholarly atmosphere of the British Library helped me to concentrate and stay focused on my research. Now that I have passed the Viva, I secretly recognize that the British Library was a major force in completing my PhD. I still go back to the British Library, though not as often as I used to. It remains a great place for meetings with friends and colleagues. Going back to Reading Rooms fills me with nostalgia, particularly when I recognize some of the readers and their often peculiar research interests. That is what a library is supposed to be: a place in which the imagination can travel without prohibitions. As a platform to emerging research interest, my blog can be found at visualcultureblog.com."
"I am a writer of fiction, and my first novel The Fever Tree is being published by Penguin in March 2012. The novel is set on the diamond fields of South Africa at the end of the 19th Century, and it could not have been written without the extraordinary resources of the British Library, which made available to me countless diaries and first-hand accounts of life in South Africa. I started my research by reading general overviews of the period. Then - using the bibliographies of these books - I was able to track down the primary sources from which much of their material was drawn. This gave me the historical detail to think and see just as my characters would have done over a hundred years ago. I read guide books on the Cape published in 1880 and sifted through women's magazines from the 1870s - turning over patterns for embroidered glove boxes and lace cushion covers - just as my character might have done. I delved into manuals on social etiquette, cooking, botany, and what to bring on a hunting expedition to the Transvaal. There are books in the British Library which you simply couldn't find in a lending library. Books that might have had a tiny print run, and aren't useful to anyone but a handful of historians, which proved priceless for my research.
One afternoon, I was reading about African labour forces on the diamond fields, when I came across a reference to a smallpox epidemic which had ravaged the diamond town of Kimberley in the 1880s. I looked at the notes at the back of the book, and they cited the diary of a doctor called Hans Sauer. I tapped it into the British Library catalogue, and sure enough, they had a copy. In just over an hour Sauer's diary was sitting on my desk, and it told the extraordinary story of a smallpox outbreak which had been covered up by Cecil Rhodes. As a result hundreds of men, women and children had died, who might otherwise have been saved. This story became the centrepiece of my novel. I am hugely grateful to the British Library and all their staff for making the writing of The Fever Tree such an exciting, enjoyable experience."
My exhibitions, books, papers and articles are based on stories people tell me. But I use the Library for my background research: theoretical interpretations, autobiographies, histories. I've been a fan – no other word will do - for thirty years and still remember my elation when first I got that ticket.Talk about a lottery win! My appreciation of the BL's preserving role increased a hundred-fold when I was given a behind-the-scenes tour at Colindale: so many obscure yet nurtured volumes bound in scarlet leather; those microfilmers ironing pages like elite launderers.
In 2011 an email came saying my blog (http://genderedseas.blogspot.com) was one of those selected to be archived (http://www.webarchive.org.uk/). Not only was it peculiarly affirming. Knowing that the Library is saving my blog for posterity makes me write more carefully and vividly. It also means I feel more integral to the important work of disseminating and looking after knowledge.
Books I've written have been in the library for years, but having the blog stored there feels extra special.
I could no more do without the BL's sustenance than I could forego food
We have recently gained a celebrity following, have been featured in regional, national and international press and have appeared on TV. Tammam was named as one of the designers Kate Middleton might chose for her big day.
I have used the Business & IP Centre to find market research, which I used to inform my business plan and to present to investors. I have also attended networking events, including a recent 'creative meet-up'. The library has been a fantastic resource. The Business & IP Centre has been a one-stop-shop for so much relevant and useful information and the networking events and workshops have been invaluable.
One project I worked on for National Geographic was Seconds from disaster: Inferno at Guadalajara. One of the books I consulted at the British Library to make this documentary was a compelling account of some of the people who survived this terrible human disaster in Mexico. Once I finished my research, I packed my bags and travelled to Mexico, in search of one particular survivor depicted in this book: a Mexican woman with an incredible story to tell. Eventually, I did find her and she became one of our contributors, which was all down to this extraordinary book.
The British Library has been a constant and constructive road companion for me over the last fifteen years. It keeps the films that I work on, accurately informed. It gives them focus. More importantly, it fuels my pen.
Together we set about designing our own device and came up with 'Breathing Relief' - a discreet device that gently dilates the user's nostrils so they do not collapse. I now run the commercial side of the business and found the help that the British Library offered invaluable. I researched our markets in the Business & IP Centre as well as coming to a number of talks and advice sessions.
We have got off to a great start. Breathing Relief, which costs £18.99, launched in independent health shops last year, and we now have a contract to supply the Waitrose supermarket chain.
To research each of these anthems, I have visited British Library to further my investigations. Luckily I'm in love with the British Library, and I do enjoy the investigative side of it.
On a more general basis, I also visit the Library to research classical, traditional and new music, as well as current affairs for documentaries I am for scoring for, always sitting in the Rare Books and Music Reading Room.
I like everything about the Library - If I have a creative block I often come in to sit amongst other creative people working in silent concentration. This is contagious and helps me to meet my deadlines in a very stressful creative job. Also, the staff are so helpful and friendly. The building is brilliantly designed, there are always excellent temporary exhibitions, and the Ritblatt Gallery is breathtaking. My children love coming here too, as there's always something that ties in with schoolwork - whether the History, Science, Religion or the Beatles!
For well over two hundred years, even while they were denouncing the barbaric cannibals of the New World, educated Europeans were using human fat, flesh, blood, bone, brains and skin as medicine, along with the powdered substance of Egyptian mummies. Whilst it was usually the poorer classes who drank fresh blood at execution scaffolds to cure their epilepsy, more élite users or prescribers of other corpse medicines included Francis I, Elizabeth Countess of Kent, Charles II, Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, and Queen Mary. Charles actually bought a recipe for the distillation of powdered skull, and probably made it himself: it became so closely associated with him that it was known as 'the king's drops'.
In Britain, educated users began to turn against medicinal cannibalism around the middle of the eighteenth century; in Dr Johnson's dictionary, these therapies are described as 'horrid medicines'. For all that, well into the Georgian period England was importing human skulls from Ireland, and then exporting them over into Germany, where demand remained particularly strong; in this period there was actually a customs' duty of one shilling on human skulls.
Beyond this, there was popular culture: the poorer classes could still be found grating up human skulls and swallowing them in Bradford in 1847, and Ruabon in Wales, in 1865. As late as 1909, one epileptic in Scotland was known to have drunk from the skull of a suicide as part of a cure for his condition. Meanwhile, over in Ireland in the 1880s many people believed that the blood of the Keogh family was an effective medicine against toothache. One of the clan had had his flesh punctured scores of times for this reason.
These days there are some remarkable databases of early modern books available online. But there are also some gems that one can still dig up only in the Reading Rooms: one recent example was 'A Hangman's Diary' - the gruesome but compelling journal of a Nuremburg executioner, Franz Schmidt, kept between 1573 and 1617. There is, too, the faintly intoxicating scent of four hundred year old books - the authentic smell of the past, which you just don't get from computers. I look forward to my next visit, and that special atmosphere of collective concentration found only in the world's great libraries.
In 1911 a young art student at the Slade, Phyllis Gardner, spotted the handsome poet Brooke on a train from London to Cambridge and finding him striking, drew a sketch that she showed to friends until she found one who recognised him. She pursued him to Grantchester, and they had a stormy and secret relationship which was not fully consummated, although not through lack of trying (on Brooke's part). The fact that Phyllis, who died a spinster in 1948, had left the letters in the care of her sister with instruction not to be opened for fifty years meant that previous biographers had not included them in studies of Brooke.
One surprise that this cache of letters springs is that Brooke's poem Beauty and Beauty - assumed to be written about his only recorded male conquest, Denham Russell-Smith - was surely written for Phyllis, as a hand-written copy from Rupert is included and mimics phrases from his letters to her.
Brooke was especially talented at letter writing. He demonstrated a dazzling array of literary tricks and disguises. He could be, I felt, any character he wanted, including any number of 'true' selves - and this aspect of him, or of any person, became the real subject of my novel.
The British Library is the most inspirational and awe-inspiring place for a writer to work and research and I feel fondness and gratitude towards it. As a sixth former my summer job was to work in the lending library at Boston Spa in Yorkshire where I grew up. In my breaks I would read a very old, frail copy of Melville's Moby Dick that had been a gift to the Library, in preparation for my forthcoming degree in American studies. I remember feeling a slight panic during my working hours stocking shelves, wondering how much time I'd be able to snatch at my next break to continue reading. Little did I know of all the indulgent, glorious years ahead, reading and researching at the British Library in London to my heart's content, and how much a part of my life it would become.
I continue to work there most weeks, waiting for the next surprise to turn up.
The children I work with are from two special schools and one Asperger's unit in Wales. I use birdsong to point out how the bird will sing then listen for a response. This is then used to help them play as a group and adds structure to improvisation. It helps them develop a creative and sensitive mindset when they are making music.
If anyone would like further details of the Hand made Orchestra Project please contact Celf o Gwmpas - Arts Round About firstname.lastname@example.com
"Long ago, in the year 2000, a woman was making furniture lovingly by hand for anyone who asked her. One day a mother wanted a desk for her little girl and she wanted it very quickly. Unable to make one in time the furniture maker offered to find one for the little girl. She searched high and low, asking in many towns and cities to find a shop that sold children's furniture. Every time she asked the shop keepers told her that they could not find any to sell. No-one made children's furniture unless it was bedroom furniture.
"Right" thought the furniture maker "I will make it. But it seems such a shame that a little girl's desk should look like a man's desk. Why can't it be fun, something she could play with, climb into, have lights…" Her head filled with many, many ideas for chairs, toy boxes, clocks and lights. All of them designed especially for children to have fun with and play with. Now the furniture maker knew that children love their own special things and that children love stories so the furniture maker wrote a story book for each piece of children's furniture she made.
It took her many years and a long winding journey before she was ready but in the year 2008, just before Christmas, the furniture maker launched her company selling Fairytale Children's Furniture®. She started with five animal shaped chairs, each with their own illustrated story book. There were four wooden rocking chairs in the shape of a dog, two ponies and a zebra and a double chair, perfect for twins, in the shape of an elephant. Just for fun the furniture maker also made dolly sized chairs exactly the same so the toys could have one to match. She sells all her chairs and books from a magical virtual shop at www.fairytalechildrensfurniture.co.uk and now she wants the children to find their furniture in proper shops and so she asks shop keepers to sell them too.
Along her winding journey the furniture maker often visited the British Library. There she researched her market, searched for manufacturers, learned how to run a business and use the internet, make the best use of her website and listen to many, many inspiring lectures. Without the help received in The British Library the furniture maker would not have had the courage to start her business and it would have always remained just a dream.
That would have been a pity for she would never have had the joy of seeing the faces of the little children as they played in their imagination whilst using her furniture."
This year my new book 'The Story of Your Life: A history of The Sporting Life newspaper (1859 – 1998)' has generated wide acclaim, with comments from major figures in the sport, including the famous racehorse trainer Sir Mark Prescott - "I love the book. An unmissable read for anyone with an interest in sporting life and social history." The press have also applauded it, with The Sun claiming "Lambie's Life story is essential reading", and the Daily Mail stating "If you love racing, you'll love 'The Story of Your Life'."
I'm indebted to the British Library, using editorial material and illustrations gleaned from that national treasure house for historical research, the Newspaper Library in Colindale. In particular, I thank the British Library staff for digging out hundreds of volumes and reels of microfilm essential to my research.
From May to September 2008 I visited the Library every week to research the subject. Drawing mainly on sources in the Africa and Asia sections I also spent a lot of time in Humanities – adopting seat 2214 as my 'thinking seat'!
I'm currently working on a book on 'public issue radio', due for publication this year, and contributing to a radio programme as part of the BBC's marking of the 40th anniversary of 'Analysis' as well as the Radio 4 blog.
I came to the British Library's Sound Archive, and listened to a range of news and current affairs radio programmes from the 1960s, especially Today and World at One. Like most people, I had not had the opportunity to hear these broadcasts before, but being able to access BBC material via the Sound Archive is wonderful.
It is critically important to me. It would be almost impossible now to write about radio history and more specifically about the history of programming without being able to listen to the programmes themselves. I love the idea of being able to sit in a listening booth and access such a wide range of material.
I think that the service the Library offers is excellent and very easy to use. The appointment of a curator of radio has been a big help – it has transformed the way I use the service.
Researching the rose book has taken me to libraries in New York, California, Paris and elsewhere in London, but I consider the British Library my home. Where else can you dip in to such an eclectic and challenging mix of sources? While researching my chapter on roses, sex and sorcery, for instance, I stumbled across a wonderfully rude Valentine's verse in an eighteenth-century primer of verses, written 'For Both Sexes' and subtitled The High Road to Love, and Helkiah Crooke's early seventeenth-century anatomical comparison of a woman's maidenhead to 'a little rose half blowne'. (Hunting for the same in Freud, I discovered his comparison flower was a camellia, not a rose. Academics don't always know their flowers.) Another chapter took me into the strange world of the Rosicrucians, and again the Library gave me everything I might need: early texts full of arcane illustrations which would later reverberate in Borges, Goethe and W B Yeats, and blossom into Althea Gyles's intricately gilded cover to Yeats's The Secret Rose of 1897.
When you have such a particular focus as a single flower, the Library's limit of ten books a day can be a bit constricting (although they have relaxed it for me on at least one occasion), and I have made great use of the books on open access – especially an Encyclopedia of Rose Science up in the Science collection, the complete Arden Shakespeare in Humanities I, books of maps and Persian sourcebooks in the upper Reading Rooms, plus the electronic resources in Rare Books (where I usually work), especially the online version of Brill's Encyclopaedia of Islam. Running between the different Reading Rooms became a form of exercise, and I will sometimes extend the circuit across the top-floor walkway, which makes you feel as if you are flying.
The book is out now and receiving its first reviews. The Daily Telegraph called it 'the finest disquisition on the early history of the rose' while the Literary Review concluded a little more cautiously that it 'might now be judged the standard work on the history of the rose'. I am especially pleased with Mary Keen's comment (in Gardens Illustrated) about the book's astonishing scope – a tribute I pass directly onto the British Library, which made possible the book's discoveries and the joy of making connections.
Many times with my Pass I've summoned up fabulous books and when I arrive they are handed to me courteously in a Reading Room. And even without a pass what a generous place the British Library is! Those floors, like the white decks of the Ship of Knowledge, all so busy with people in every nook and cranny eating, drinking, talking, doing their emails, phoning, reading, courting, musing around the glass Tower of Books! So many books! And the millions more in store below.
You step off the streets of a city which has 300 native tongues and cross for free into the cool and beautiful housing of an abundant portion of the infinite sum of what in century after century in all four quarters of the teeming world humanity has thought, imagined, longed for, written down and bequeathed – so far. For the mix of people, the ceaseless coming and going, is a good image and reminder that this great library, solid as it is, can no more stay still than can the life it witnesses. Even what's there already, held in perpetuity, stacked and catalogued, is no more still than the expanding universe is still. Every Reader reads differently. The stock shifts and its living relations alter daily under the attention of different minds and imaginations.
At present there's an exhibition on the subject of that archetype, the Ancient Mariner, under a white awning very much like sails. Truly in the British Library you fare forward! And downstairs (down the apples and pears) there's the wondrous zone of Evolving English, where you can bank your voice, your unique accent, and hear Ben Crystal read 'Now is the winter of our discontent …' with a rural burr you quite believe was Shakespeare's own.
There could be no more appropriate place to write a book on George Gissing than the British Library, since Gissing not only researched his novels in the old Reading Room of the British Museum, but he set parts of his greatest book, New Grub Street (1891) there.
My main research interest is in nineteenth-century printed material, so most of my time in the British Library is spent in the Rare Books and Music Room. For Unsettled Accounts, I was looking in particular for material that might have shaped Gissing's thinking about the subject matter of his fiction, as well as reading Gissing's own novels.
I was consulting, for example, nineteenth-century guides to London and Victorian textbooks on political economy. My research brought with it the additional pleasure of reading the same copies of the books as Gissing himself would have done a hundred years ago.
I have also edited four H G Wells novels in Penguin Classics and conducted a 'treasure hunt' in the reference materials for my explanatory notes. Here, the British Library's unparalleled collection of Victorian periodicals has been invaluable, especially when combined with the electronic version of the Wellesley Index and with other online materials.
I cannot imagine how I would have published the research that I have done to date without the ready availability of these collections.
I'm currently finishing an edition of Jonathan Swift's The Journal to Stella: Letters to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley, 1710-1713 for the new Cambridge University Press Complete Works of Jonathan Swift.
The 65 letters, written from 1710 to 1713, were first published in 1766, and a third of the originals survive in the British Library. My work involves studying these manuscripts, and trying to decipher their content. This is much easier for me than for earlier scholars, because for the first time I've been able to examine digital images of the letters with image analysis software, separating out different components of the complex handwriting.
The letters were written by Swift to his beloved 'Stella'– Esther Johnson – and her companion, Rebecca Dingley, and they reveal in detail Swift's bizarre mixture of bawdry and baby talk. He addressed Stella as his "poo poo ppt" – his poor poor poppet.
The baby talk passages are in tiny writing, and often lightly crossed out, and it's been assumed this was done after Swift's death to protect the reputation of the author of Gulliver's Travels. But working closely with the originals kept in the Library, I've discovered that Swift probably crossed out his own words. I think the effect was intended to be a kind of guessing game with his readers. The women he was writing to needed to undress the text before they could fully enjoy it.
Although this all sounds a bit fanciful, this disguising of affectionate endearments makes sense in the context of the rest of the Journal. I think it's part of a secret code of intimacy that characterises the letter series as a whole, which uses baby language and a series of special names to emphasise the closeness between Swift and his readers. My three-year-old son's repeating of the words aloud also helped unravel the meaning of some of the trickier bits of baby language!
The real discovery of my research has been that you can only really know the secrets of a text if you go back to the original. I couldn't have done any of this detective work if I hadn't had access to these manuscripts, held in the Library.
My love affair with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight began in Cambridge, in 1978, when I fell thoroughly under his spell, wanting only to be a medievalist. Being a medievalist began with a three-year PhD that had Gawain and his headless green antagonist at its heart. I sat in the old British Library Manuscripts Room with the 'snow snittering full snart' outside and read the poem in manuscript. We were blissfully happy together.
To cut a short story shorter...Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a verse romance. It doesn't rhyme particularly (only a bit), but in the tradition of the time and place of its composition it is alliterative, and would have been recited, probably from memory, to an audience. The poetry is stunning, even in modern English translation if you're not up to the unfamiliar letters. But most touching is the gentle humanity with which Gawain is depicted. The blend of heroism, pride, fear, love of life, self-doubt, shame and smugness make him the first fully-drawn character in English literature.
The poem shines like a jewel through the intervening centuries and says, as clearly as Chaucer does, that human beings are as they have always been. It is a golden thread that holds us to our past, and it raises issues as relevant now as when it was written, over 600 years ago.
But it so nearly didn't link us to our past. The author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is unknown. The poem is preserved in a single manuscript which now lies safely in the British Library but narrowly escaped being lost forever when it was singed in the Cotton library fire of 1731. I spent three years untangling the symbolism of the hunts in Sir Gawain and other Middle English literature and the poem became increasingly jewel-like and complex. Its anonymity and quality of lost-ness make it seem ethereal and precious. It was not read between 1400 and the 19th century, was unknown to Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Samuel Johnson and all the others who might have had something to say about it and so has none of the accreted crust of use and misuse of Chaucer or other medieval poets who remained in circulation. It is clear, clean, complex, self-contained and perfect.
Initially I worked in the British Museum's North Library and Manuscript Room; the latter a wonderful 'inner sanctum' of peace and tranquillity away from the bustle of the Museum galleries. The move to Euston Road was a bit of a shock for someone not in their first youth and lacking IT skills but the Library staff proved to be as helpful and patient as ever and now I find its benefits outweigh any loss of atmosphere.
My doctoral thesis was concerned with an English virtuoso and royal exile, Richard Symonds (1617-60) who composed one of the most informative surviving accounts of art in Rome in the middle years of the seventeenth century. Several of Symonds's notebooks are in the Library's Manuscript Collection. The notebooks that Symonds wrote while he was in Rome provided an excellent subject for my thesis. They revealed that his thirst for knowledge was not only for works of art and architecture, but also extended to social and religious customs and early ventures into science and medicine. My thesis was published by The Walpole Society. Subsequently I have used the Library for research into other seventeenth-century English travellers and collectors for further articles. I would not have been able to produce any of my work without access to this wonderful Library.
This project was very multidisciplinary, as in addition to covering the legislation, engineering and chemistry involved, I needed to review the literature on the medical effects of ingesting oil. The British Library's a one stop shop for all sorts of different journals, making it very easy to get hold of literature spanning such a wide variety of disciplines.
I've been using the Library for other research too. Whilst doing my PhD at Cambridge on the application of remote sensing to forest ecology, I sourced several hard-to-find journal articles. I also used older collection items in research for Alan Davidson on game birds for the Oxford Companion to Food. Having qualified as a barrister with an interest in environmental law, I now use the Library to find the latest legal and scientific literature in this field.
Working with the Library has enabled me to access, and contribute to, a world-class collection of research materials including a unique oral history archive. Our work included the collection and analysis of a series of life history interviews with people involved at all stages in the UK's food supply chain 'from farm to fork'. At the end of our research, the interviews were deposited with the Library as part of the National Life Stories' Food: from source to salespoint collection. Working with experts at the Library also enabled us to produce an educational website called Food Stories which has since been used by students and teachers across the UK, greatly increasing the impact of our research.
Besides the professionalism and enthusiasm of their curatorial staff, the Library also provides a marvellous venue for the public dissemination of academic work through conferences and workshops. We have recently begun the next phase of our collaborative research including a joint PhD studentship on the history of British food activism and a bid to fund a public exhibition on recent innovations in food technology and taste. I've learnt a lot about life history research from working with colleagues at the Library. Being associated with a prestigious institution like the British Library also gives our work greater visibility, encouraging people from all walks of life - from public figures to ordinary citizens - to record their life histories and make them available to the public through this amazing national resource. The Library has helped me at all stages of my research from writing grant applications and securing research funding to publishing and making our findings widely available.
Researching my latest book, Probiotic Allies, I realised there was a limit to the resources I could find elsewhere. At the British Library I was able to draw upon the full extent of the science collections to explore a wide range of biomedical journals, books and supporting texts.
As an independent researcher, the British Library is essential in providing access to an extraordinary breadth and depth of good quality information.
As an intermediate or interpreter between doctors and patients, I aim to communicate evidence-based scientific information and health advice in plain English – my books provide an overview of relevant information with careful referencing to help readers distinguish fact from fiction.
At the Library, I've discovered recent articles in biomedical journals showed the level of interest in the therapeutic potential of probiotics to be a hot topic. Studies demonstrated there was mounting evidence of the benefits of manipulating gut micro-organisms to influence diabetes, obesity and chronic gastrointestinal diseases.
The Library is a great place to work, and one of the great things is that everyone I have dealt with was calm, clear and went out of their way to help me find the information when I wasn't sure where to look.
To research my book, I investigated songs collected by, amongst others, Ralph Vaughan Williams. Many of the songs have not been published until now.
When Vaughan Williams was a young man he caught the folksong collecting bug. He visited Cambridgeshire pubs, workhouses and other places where he could hear people singing .The results of his collecting work are found in the British Library. Most of the songs have no texts - it is difficult to collect words at the same time as notating the music. He concentrated on getting the melodies written down accurately.
His handwriting is often difficult to decipher. It is obvious that he was racing against time to keep up with his informants. Some of them must have presented considerable problems of pitch and intonation, as is evidenced by many corrections.
Vaughan Williams always noted the collection date and place. He usually named the singer, though he often didn't know their real names. 'Hoppy Flack', 'Ginger' Clayton, 'Billy Waggs' are just three delightful examples that emerge from his notebooks.
Recognising his intention of rescuing these songs from obscurity I was determined to make them more available for others to hear and love. I found texts that may have accompanied the tunes and reconstructed them as singable songs. I researched the source singers and photographed the places where the songs had been collected.
The Library gave permission for the reproduction of a section of the manuscript in my book which was published last year. The review in the English Folk Dance and Song Society's magazine was complementary. I was even more amazed when my book was given an award by the Cambridgeshire Association for Local History. The free access to the Vaughan Williams papers has been crucial in my publication - nothing compares to holding the real thing in your hand and being able to see and feel the paper in your fingers. My grateful thanks go to the expertise and help from the British Library staff.
The book not only highlights the challenges the country is facing in war, but also the issues with drug trafficking. One of my aims for my year in Afghanistan was to help poppy farmers make a legal living by providing them with alternative income. During my work there, I found myself confronted by Helmand's drug trafficking warlords, the Taliban and gun-toting bandits in police uniform.
The book depicts the aid effort's trials and terrible tragedies, while shedding light on how far there is to go to achieving anything even vaguely resembling harmony in Afghanistan.
My research at the Library helped to prepare me for the first-hand experiences in store, and I could never have found the books I needed anywhere else. It's absolutely invaluable.
My book has gone on to trigger comments such as:
"A wrenching account of lofty hopes and bitter disappointments" New York Times
Together with director Tricia Thorns, I've made prolific use of the British Library's Humanities collection and spent many Saturdays calling up old plays and reading through as many as we could. After ploughing through close to 100 plays, the 12 plays we decided to do were a marvellous revelation, a forgotten hoard.
So since 2003, my company 'Two's Company' has presented the 'Forgotten Voices from the Great War' series, comprising of the war plays found in the British Library. They have received critical acclaim from the press and public alike, attracting audience members such as Harold Pinter. Included were plays by the actor Miles Malleson, which were censored and confiscated by military authorities when they were published during World War One.
The final play in the series was 'My Real War 1914 - ?' which toured twice and appeared in the West End's Trafalgar Studios in October 2009. The play is based on a privately published book of letters by the young Lieutenant Havilland Le Mesurier, written home until he was killed at the Somme, aged 22.
The British Library is still proving invaluable. Inspired by the great classic of the French Resistance 'Le Silence de la Mer' by Vercors, I tracked the author's own stage adaptation of 1947, long out of print, in the Library. I've made an English translation of the play, which will be produced in London for the first time in 2011.
I've written eight of my eleven books here. A mantle of concentration falls over me as I enter: it's the quiet intensity of everybody else working, concentrating - the hum of other brains ticking. I spy on their book piles: what are they working on? What are they thinking about? Because you have to respect what they are doing, you have to respect your own work. So, I work far better here than I do at home. I've produced novels (Orange-nominated), children's novels (published in 36 languages), and non-fiction - a cultural history of the human heart (that was fun. I was in here every day for two years). As I wander through the catalogue I have found myself steered in many different and unexpected directions simply by the titles which have grabbed my eye - Mark Twain's journalism; plate tectonics; London's underground rivers; ancient Egyptian magic; Lyme's disease; 17th-century heart emblem series; cordiform maps; country and western lyrics, maxillo-facial plastic surgery in the first world war....
My most recent book - a first world war novel, 'My Dear I wanted to Tell You' - is published on 31 March 2011, and lined up to be Waterstone's 'This Week's Must Read'. Meanwhile, I'm at my usual seat, writing the sequel. What have we got on Jewish childhood under Italian fascism in the 30s? What a surprise: everything I could want.
One of the key challenges of this type of research is gaining access to sufficient, detailed observational data to draw meaningful conclusions. At many volcanoes, the typical interval between eruptions can be many decades to hundreds of years – so we need to be able to extract as much information as we can from scientific accounts of past eruptions in order to add to what we know from well-observed events of the recent past. Unfortunately, many of these earlier reports are hard to find, since they were often published in ephemeral, or 'one off' reports, rather than in journal papers.
My team and I used the British Library to gain access to rare observations which gave detailed accounts of volcanic explosions on the Kameni Islands (Santorini, Greece) during periods of eruption in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From these sources, I was able to reassess the original observational data and make comparisons with data from more recent examples.
As well as these key resources, I also identified other unique information on volcanic activity, including a medical PhD on the effects of volcanic eruptions on human health; and a range of maps illustrating Santorini's changing morphology over the centuries.
Volcanology is like many areas of science; you are running so hard to keep up with what's going on now, you forget that there is real research value in revisiting original sources of evidence.
The outcome of this work was published in two papers:
DM Pyle and JR Elliott, 2006, Quantitative morphology, recent evolution and future activity of the Kameni islands volcano, Santorini, Greece, Geosphere 2 (5), 253-268, doi:10.1130/GES00028.1 (http://geosphere.gsapubs.org/content/2/5/253)
C Oppenheimer and DM Pyle, 2009, 'Volcanoes'. Chapter 15, In: JC Woodward (ed), The Physical Geography of the Mediterranean Basin, Oxford University Press, pp 427-460. (ISBN 978-0-19-926803-0)
I had no background in food and drink, so I researched the fruit and its health properties and how it might be processed, then learned more about the juice market in the UK. I spent probably six months visiting the Centre, where I learned about production techniques in fruit juice, the size of the market, using the various reports that were available, and it allowed me, from a point of zero understanding of a fruit juice business to have a good understanding of the UK market, the size of the market, various production techniques, trade marking, and just what the opportunity may be if I was able to bring pomegranate juice to the masses.
I had a thirst for knowledge that could only be satisfied by a resource of the strength of the Business and IP Centre. I'd had two previous businesses which had both failed and what I promised myself before launching with 'Pomegreat', was a complete understanding of the market that I was entering into, and the only way to achieve that was to have this knowledge satisfied and the Business and IP Centre achieved that for me.
I found the staff very helpful, when I asked them questions about pomegranates, there were question marks put against my name, I think, by various members of staff, but in term of helping me find reports and the information I needed in the Centre, I've got to say that the resource was second to none.
Using the Centre, where I practically lived for the first month, I made the most of the advice on offer on how to write a business plan, research markets and gain access to real time data, a crucial commodity in the changing economic times. I've also used the databases and marketing publications to access information on marketing contracts. I continue to research potential prospects and clients and have also attended a number of events organised by the Centre and find they're great for networking opportunities.
By setting the access point low but not compromising on the quality and volume of knowledge available, the BIPC ensures that every idea can be explored, and that everyone with either a thirst for knowledge, or the drive to achieve and create has the best resources available. It empowers, arms and informs all who seek to find answers. This is essential.
Everyone who reads a piece of research and uses it to create a new service not only provides an immediate return on the investment that the research took to create and house but goes on further to provide more research material to ensure that the return keeps growing with every subsequent use.
People like me who wish to create wealth understand that the British Library and in particular the IP Centre is not simply a place to come and work, it is a place where the work we wish to do is made possible.
Any reduction to services in the British Library which either restricts access or limits resources is a false economy, and one which deprives society of the profits of enterprise and endeavour.
Interactive Mix Ltd was established in 2008, and in 2009/10 we achieved a turnover of £500,000.
I've encouraged my students to explore many of the Library's various collections and displays when researching their projects, taking inspiration in particular from the Sound Archive. Working with the Learning team together with RNIB, the students explored how they can unlock the star items of the Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library for an audience that is visually impaired.
These days everyone is so visually centred, it's refreshing to step back and just listen to the artist or author. The oral recordings open up your imagination, and let you pick up on something you wouldn't have noticed before.
While my background in education made me well aware of the market, I had no idea as to how to run a company. Many hours were spent in the Business & IP Centre, researching marketing, trade marking and IP, and I was inspired by a number of entrepreneurial events and workshops held at the British Library. I launched EGAR in early 2009, gaining praise from Peter Jones, Boris Johnson and the Chair of the London Assembly Darren Johnson amongst others. Meanwhile, I have received a number of personal accolades, such as a 'Special Recognition' award from The British Female Invention and Innovation Network BFIIN, reaching National Finalist Position at the Blackberry Women and Technology Awards and I've spoken to the House of Lords' Crime Prevention board.
I've used the Library's Sound Archive to listen to speeches, language and communication to support my work with the development of my 'Let's Get Talking', choice discussion card sets covering 50 different teenage and youth issues. EGAR is built on words so the sound archive was an excellent resource to use.
I credit much of my success to the British Library, and have even spoken to one of the workshop groups that inspired me. I have told everyone just how wonderful the British Library is and how it has helped me develop my business, which in turn will make a huge difference to young people, and has helped to change my life.
The latest film I've directed, 'The Arbor', was released to media acclaim, with online reviews on national press sites. It tells the true story of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar (The Arbor, Rita, Sue and Bob Too) and her daughter Lorraine, revisiting the short life and harsh vision of the 'genius straight from the slums' who enjoyed a precocious burst of success in the 1980s.
This film has attracted significant attention through its use of voices – I'd initially discovered recordings of Andrea Dunbar in the Library's Sound Archive. I found it incredibly moving to hear her voice – the softness of it, and her youth.
The human voice remains central to 'The Arbor' film, following interviews – sound only – that I subsequently recorded with members of the Dunbar family and others. These interviews were edited to form an audio 'screenplay.' which forms the basis of the film as actors lip-synch to the voices of the interviewees.
My book Views of Ancient Egypt, part of the series Encounters of Ancient Egypt (Oxbow Books), was very popular, used by at least several hundred students as course material, with the series winning the American Libraries Association 'Outstanding Academic Title of the Year' award.
The Manuscripts collection is where I found the vital material for my most recent book, The Survey of Memphis VII. The Hekekyan Papers and other sources for the Survey of Memphis.
Public access to all holdings provides a resource that is often the last or only resource available to many researchers. I would not have been able to produce the Hekekyan Papers without access to the Library and their help at the time, so I'm very grateful for that.
Joseph Hekekyan was a talented and pioneering archaeologist in the mid 19th century, but is surprisingly unknown today. While shunned by the Egyptian elite, he was respected by western visitors and residents, but by the turn of the century was entirely forgotten.
Developing such an innovative product meant that intellectual property - protecting their ideas - was an essential topic to crack. The pair visited the Business & IP Centre to learn more about how intellectual property applied to them. They describe the advice sessions that the Centre hosts as "absolutely crucial for a start-up".
They also benefited from the support of Striding Out, a Library partner organisation, getting help on everything from business planning to meeting new contacts.
"We've got a whole bag of ideas that we're going to produce in our pipeline. We're a bestseller online with an umbrella, but we just have one product, so our next step is to design a whole range, to give our customers a choice. With the help of the Business & IP Centre we'll definitely be looking into how we can protect all the different unique ideas that we produce."
The pair have been regular visitors to the Business & IP Centre since they started developing the business. They investigated the jewellery and luxury markets using the Centre's market research collections, then used databases such as GrantFinder to find funding opportunities for social enterprises.
La Diosa jewellery is stocked in Astley Clarke and the pair have a showroom in London's jewellery hub, Hatton Garden and has been worn by well-known figures including HRH The Duchess of Cornwall and Kim Cattrall.
"We used lots of a market research tools and databases such as Keynote and Mintel. They were very useful for researching the jewellery market, looking at our competition, seeing where the trends were, what seasons were high, what seasons where low for them. It was great to just have in-depth knowledge on how they carry out their business, and how that could work for La Diosa, because we were in the beginning stages of the company.
We have quite a few followers of La Diosa jewellery including Sarah Brown and Naomi Campbell. La Diosa's just moved into a Hatton Garden showroom and we're also planning to move into different fashion accessories. We're going to use the Centre to research into these different markets and we'd definitely recommend people to use the Centre for that purpose."


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I quit bowhunting because the more I did it, the more I could see it was just a matter of time before I screwed things up and wounded and lost an animal. I was a traditional Archer, but it wasn't about that, it was about spending time outdoors.
I know a lot of rifle hunters that don't practice very much, and get through a lot of seasons without wounding an animal. They can get away with it, technology (albeit from the 1850s) is on their side.
With Archery the amount of practice and personal responsibility a guy has to have is huge. I am tired of watching archers wound animals on TV, only to find them 3 days later. That animal suffered, and it shows a huge sense of irresponsibility on the part of the hunter that he or she shot at the animal in the first place if they didn't have a 90% chance of killing the animal.
Responsibility is all about obligation, obligation to the animal that it doesn't suffer, responsibility to the hunting community that we are not portrayed as slobs, and more than anything else personal responsibility to ourselves that when someone shouldn't be bowhunting they aren't allowed to.
Modern Bowhunting is not the "Zen of Hunting", it's not pure, considering that crossbows have been on this planet for fully 500 years longer than compounds, it's not even traditional. I have a lot of respect for archers that don recurves and longbows, but everyone needs to take a step back and rethink what is going on here.
The Archery community seems to think it is ok to wound and loose an animal, and that is a complete 180 from responsible game management.

subset: commoncrawl


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My grandfather used to call me always when I was younger, 'falcon, falcon' – doesn't make any sense in English, but in our language it does.
- Novak Djokovic at his Indian Wells presser discussing the falcon theme of his current adidas duds
Er, I would've picked a peacock for you Nole. Just sayin'.
(image via adidas)


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Hey Everyone,
We encourage all of our users to configure their email accounts as IMAP accounts when they desire to use a mail client (like Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or the client on their smartphone/tablet). The only time our users connect via POP is because they set it up by mistake. Every once and a while we have to help a user who accidentally POPed all of their email off the server get their email back on the server (not hard, but something we shouldn't have to do!)
So, my question is this. With just about everything supporting IMAP, is there a reason to allow POP connections?
What do my fellow Zimbra sysadmins think?
EDIT: Dang! I noticed the options for a poll AFTER I clicked submit! Can a mod add a poll by chance?


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maybe this would rather go into developers forum, but lemme try here first.
Well, I am wondering if it would be possible (and recommended) to do something like this:
- attach an iSCSI 2 TB NAS storage to ZCS server (Open Source Edition)
- mount it as a new partition
- configure ZCS to use this partition for messages...
- ...but ONLY FOR messages in every user's "ARCHIVE" folder in webmail
- and exclude this folder from regular search (would be searchable only under advanced search)
So the result would be, that all users would instantly see new folder in Webmail, named "ARCHIVE", and on backend this folder would reside on newly attached iSCSI NAS storage.
My idea is to off-load the primary Zimbra disk storage and to enable simple archiving for users.
The next step would be to create custom archiving Wizard, where you would just click "Archive all mail, older than 12 months" and all those mail would go into ARCHIVE folder, releasing space on primary Zimbra store.
Anyone did something simillar?


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Marian Finucane, Saturday, 26th January 2013
Live stimulating mix of news, interviews, reports and discussion.
Marian talks to Sebastian Hamilton, editor in chief of the Mail Group in Ireland, about the effect on his family of the suicide of his mother.
You can listen back to Sebastian Hamilton talking to Marion by listening to the podcast (see link below) or by going to the listen back button.
This is the copy of the original article which appeared in the Mail on Sunday on the 16th December 2012 .
Irish Mail on Sunday
2012 Associated Newspapers. All rights reserved
I DON'T know what went through my mother's mind the day she killed herself. In truth, I don't know much about that day at all. (I was only 2½). My brother and I were kept from her funeral: for years I believed she had died in a car crash. She was never to be spoken of. I didn't know her name - Hannelore Hildegard Hamilton, née Pfeifer - or even see a picture of her until I was a teenager. Only by accident did I learn how she really died: that she had sat into the back seat of the family car, poured petrol all over herself and struck a match.
Is it possible even to imagine the unremitting physical torture that she endured for the few weeks until she died? Probably not. But I do remember that documentary about Falklands burns victim Simon Weston: his shrill screams still hang in my ears, his plaintive voice shrieking 'Leave! Leave!' as he pleaded with medics not to even touch him as they fought to save his life.
We all know what it's like to burn yourself - how searing and unstoppable that pain is, even for a few hours. Now try and imagine every single millimetre of your body, every nerve ending you possess, tortured in that same relentless way every second, every minute, every hour, week after week. I just hope they stuffed mum full of morphine till it was bursting out of her, keeping her on a drugged-up cloud until her poor body finally shut down.
AND that's just the physical horror inflicted by her suicide.
For years, because I was in the middle of it all, I didn't fully appreciate the absolute emotional holocaust that it had wreaked: on me, on my father, my brother, my grandfather, my grandmother, my uncle, my cousins. Terrible consequences for each and every one of us, many of which can never be undone. Bonds which should be loving have been smashed, shattered beyond any hope of repair. Things have been said which can never be unsaid. Every relationship I had for over 20 years - including one marriage - was affected, usually damaged or destroyed. I grew up itinerant, rootless and fearful. And I particularly hated Christmas: it reminded me every year that all my friends had mums and dads.
I also missed out on all the love a mother gives a child. I never even knew it existed. I had no idea that mums made breakfast: I thought you did that yourself. I didn't know that mums tucked you in at night, drove you to matches, brought you a cup of tea, consoled you when some girl broke your heart, listened to you about your day. I used to think I was remedially stupid because I, and I alone, always forgot my proper Scouts kit on a Saturday morning: in the end, I used to hide in the school toilets for an hour rather than see our troop penalised again. How DID the other eight-year-olds remember their woggle every week? Only now do I realise that they didn't: they had mums who packed their kit for them.
First day at university: I saw 18-year-olds turning up with two parents and a sibling, car loaded with plants and books and kettles and posters. Together they all ferried the stuff to the student's room, and it always ended in blubbering goodbyes. I arrived on the bus. Standing at the front gate, wordly goods over my shoulder, I marvelled at these pathetic, babyish freaks who cried at leaving their parents.
It took me a long time to realise who was really the odd one out.
Only now, seeing my beloved son in his mother's arms, can I really appreciate what my own mum must have felt when she held me as a baby - and what I would have felt for her. I have a black-and-white picture of us, taken when I was 18 months or so. I've climbed out of my little buggy and the pair of us are just staring at each other, the love simply shining out of our eyes. At last, thankfully, I can feel how that would have felt. I miss it.
I miss her. And that's why I have to talk about suicide: because we need to stop avoiding it. If my mum had died of cancer, we would have talked about her, celebrated her, missed her, championed her. But because she died of suicide, we were emotionally cluster-bombed. And it wasn't just us: having taken part in an academic study of the children of suicide victims, I've learned that every single family that suffers a suicide is just obliterated.
The evil spreads and multiplies: it tears the survivors apart, it sets them against each other, it's magnified and handed down generations.
BUT because we don't talk about suicide, people don't know that. They're ashamed: ashamed of what their loved one did; ashamed to be associated with it, ashamed to admit that it's ripping them apart. And they always, always, try to find someone to blame.
Who triggered this? Whose fault is it? Who's to blame? Who made my father/mother/sister/ brother/son/daughter do this? Who drove them to it? And the answer always, always, is nobody. There may be factors, sure: but ultimately only one person took those pills or struck that match. And no, you can't find a reason why: because there can BE no reason for doing the most irrational thing any human being can do. You can't apply logic, or set out a sequence of events that led to it as if it were some plane crash or medical mishap.
Believe me, going down the route of trying to find the person 'responsible' is just another brilliant way of extending your suffering and drawing other people into hell. It won't give you answers, and it won't heal your pain, because it can't.
We also need to stop lying about suicide. We need to stop pretending that someone 'died unexpectedly', or 'accidentally' fell off the Hill of Howth, or strung themselves up as a 'cry for help'. We need to accept that suicide is as real and common and ordinary as cancer (which, 50 years ago, was just as taboo). We need to embrace the families of suicide victims - just as if they were victims of any other disease.
Most of all, we need to educate everyone. We need to teach people that suicide, like breast cancer, is real; that suicide, like breast cancer, isn't shameful.
We need to see the signs and we need to act. We need to ensure that the potential victims, like cancer victims, get the best possible treatment as fast as possible.
Above all, we need to grow up: and we can't do that as long as suicide remains this nation's dirty little secret.
If you have been affected by this interview and want to talk to someone about it, please contact some of these organisations. Samaritans, Tel: 1850 609090; Aware 1890 303302; 1 Life
1800 247 100 and ISPCC Childline 1800 66 66 66
or log on to http://www.yspi.eu/ Console 1800 201 890 / Pieta House 01-6010000
Irish Association for Humanistic & Integrative Psychotherapy (IAHIP)
Tel: 01-2841665;
Website: iahip.org
Irish Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (IACP)
Tel: 01-2723427
Website: iacp.ie
Also on today's show was Professor Ian Robertson, author of "The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure."
Also on today's show was Professor Ian Robertson, author of "The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure." Ian Robertson is Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin and was the founding Director of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
Here are articles written by Ian Robertson from http://professorianrobertson.wordpress.com// on the topics he spoke about on the show ..
The website he referred to is http://www.letstrail.com/
Dave Fanning and Paul Whitington joined Marian in studio to review "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Lincoln" and to preview the pick of next week's TV.


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Give your business users easy access to SAP data and processes via their familiar Microsoft applications and technologies – with SAP NetWeaver Gateway productivity accelerator for Microsoft. This new framework offers seamless integration and interoperability between your SAP and Microsoft environments, allowing you to engage users, increase productivity, and reduce IT costs
Achieve real business growth by empowering your team with intelligent information. Learn how SAP Gateway for Microsoft makes it easy for users to access, update and analyze data so informed decisions are timely and proactive actions can be made quickly.
Optimize your SAP and Microsoft investments. Achieve rapid deployment of business solutions and deliver seamless user experience. Learn how to quickly and securely integrate SAP software with familiar Microsoft productivity applications to unlock the value of your SAP data.
Learn about SAP and Microsoft interoperability solutions and how SAP Gateway for Microsoft can help run your business better – without an IT overhaul. Connect with peers, SAP professionals, and industry experts to gain product knowledge and share insights.
Want to learn more about SAP for content and collaboration?
* All implementation results are for informational purposes only and the examples provided while based on actual SAP customers' experiences do not represent commitments or guarantees by SAP and/or its partners. Actual pricing, costs, and implementation results may vary, based on customer-specific requirements and needs. The only warranties for SAP products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.


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- Congo (Dem. Rep.)AgricultureFunding via Programme d'Appui aux Initiatives de Développement Economique au Kivu (PAIDEK)
Mapendo Kak...Congo (Dem. Rep.)RetailFunding via Programme d'Appui aux Initiatives de Développement Economique au Kivu (PAIDEK)
Safina/panz...Congo (Dem. Rep.)ClothingFunding via Programme d'Appui aux Initiatives de Développement Economique au Kivu (PAIDEK)
Eden Plus Group
Additional Information
About HOPE DRCHOPE International has been providing small business loans and savings services to thousands of entrepreneurs in DRC since 2004. HOPE DRC targets small business owners who can use loans to increase their inventories or invest in assets that have the potential to increase their incomes. Funds from Kiva lenders play a major role in expanding access to affordable, flexible capital for micro-entrepreneurs, 80% of whom are women.
This is a Group Loan
In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.
Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.
About Congo (Dem. Rep.)
9View loans »
US Dollars
Success!! The loan was 100% repaid
- Repayment Term
- 6 months (Additional Information)
- Repayment Schedule
- Monthly
- Pre-Disbursed:
- Oct 7, 2009
- Listed
- Oct 17, 2009
- Currency Exchange Loss:
- Ended:
- Mar 15, 2010


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The Prophet Jesus (as) and Hazrat Mahdi will come this century
Many hypocrites will appear during the time of Hazrat Mahdi's (as) occultation, the times when he is not to be seen among people, when he is not known or recognized, when he suffers imprisonment, exile, slander, oppression and cruelty. These people will fall into depravity because of the mistreatment towards Hazrat Mahdi (as) and his followers and the difficult conditions stemming from the world not being ruled by the moral values of Islam. However, when the time appointed by Allah comes, Hazrat Mahdi (as) will appear with various signs that have come down from the prophets to the present day. One of these is the Holy Mantle and the Battle Standard of our Prophet (saas) which are now in Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.
Salih ibn Uqba related from his father, and he from Imam Muhammad Baqir, and he from his fathers that the Messenger of Allah (saas) said: "Hazrat Mahdi (as) is one of my children, THERE will BE A TIME WHEN HE DISAPPEARS. DURING THAT TIME, MANY OF THE COMMUNITY will FALL INTO MADNESS. HE will COME WITH THE SIGNS OF THE PROPHETS... (Qamal ud-din, Vol. 1, p. 287 and Bihar al-Anwar, Vol. 51, p. 72)
The standard brought during the Battle of Badr for the MESSENGER OF ALLAH (SAAS) BY HAZRAT JIBRIL (as) will BE RAISED BY IMAM AZ-ZAMAN [HAZRAT MAHDI (as)]. THE SPECIAL ATTRIBUTE OF THIS STANDARD IS THAT IT will INSTIL FEAR IN THE HEARTS OF ENEMIES all around at a month's distance. Equally important, IT will INCREASE THE CONTENTMENT AND HEALTH IN BELIEVERS' HEARTS. (Bihar al-Anwar, Vol. 51, p. 135; Vol. 52, p. 328 from Kaamil Al-Ziyaaraat; Vol. 52, p. 360; Sheikh Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Numani, al-Ghaybah al-Numani, Vol. 78, p. 391; Yawm al-Khalaas, p. 288; Mikyaal al-Makaarem, Vol. 1, p. 241)
From Abdullah Ibn Sinan: I heard Imam Jaffar Sadik say: "Moses' staff was the branch of one of the trees of Paradise, which Jibril gave to Moses (as) when he wished to go to the city of Madyan. THAT STAFF IS IN LAKE TIBERIAS TOGETHER WITH THE COFFIN OF THE PROPHET ADAM (as). THEY NEITHER DECAY NOR ALTER. WHEN THE QAIM [HAZRAT MAHDI (as)] EVENTUALLY APPEARS, HE will BRING THEM BOTH FORTH." (Sheikh Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Numani, al-Ghaybah al-Numani, p. 278)
From Abul Jarud Ziyad Ibn Mundhir: Imam Abu Jaffer Muhammad Ibn Ali said: "WHEN THE QAIM [HAZRAT MAHDI (as)] COMES, HE will APPEAR WITH THE FLAG OF THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH (SAAS), THE RING OF SOLOMON (as), AND THE STAFF AND STONE OF MOSES (as)..." (Sheikh Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Numani, al-Ghaybah al-Numani, p. 279)
... HE [HAZRAT MAHDI (as)] will HAVE THE STAFF OF MOSES AND THE RING OF SOLOMON. ...Allah will keep him hidden from sight until He wills. Then he will appear and fill the Earth with justice, in the same way it was formerly filled with oppression. (Bihar Al-Anwar, Vol. 52, p. 32; Al-Hurr al-Amili, Ithbat al-Hudat, Vol. 6, p. 19)
The reason he is called Hazrat Mahdi (as) is that he shows the way to a hidden thing. HE will BRING FORTH THE ARK (ARK OF THE COVENANT) IN A PLACE KNOWN AS ANTIOCH. (As-Suyuti, Al-Hawi li al-Fatawa, II. 82)
HAZRAT MAHDI (as) will BRING THE ARK OF THE COVENANT OUT OF THE CAVE OF ANTIOCH. (Ibn Hajar al-Haythami, Al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar fi `Alamat al-Mahdi al-Muntadhar, 54)
The reason he is called Hazrat Mahdi (as) is that he shows the way to a hidden thing. He will bring forth the Ark (Ark of the Covenant) in a place known as Antioch. (As-Suyuti, Al-Hawi li al-Fatawa, II. 82)
He [Hazrat Mahdi (as)] will bring forth the Ark of the Covenant from the cave of Antioch. (Nuaim Ibn Hammad, Kitab Al-Fitan)
"Hazrat Mahdi (as) will bring the Ark of the Covenant out of the cave of Antioch." (Ibn Hajar al-Haythami, Al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar fi `Alamat al-Mahdi al-Muntadhar, 54)
Hazrat Mahdi (as) will appear in the evening time with the standard, mantle, sword, signs, light and beautiful expression of our Prophet (saas). (Ali ibn Sultan Muhammad al-Qaari al-Hanafi, 'Risalat al-Mashrab al Vardi fi Mazhabi 'l Mahdi)
He will produce the treasures of Jerusalem, the Ark of the Covenant, the table of the People of Israel and the tablets, the robe (jubba) of the Prophet Adam (as), the staff of the Prophet Solomon (as) and the milk-white glove sent by Allah to the People of Israel. (Ibn Hajar al-Haythami, Al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar fi `Alamat al-Mahdi al-Muntadhar, p. 33)
Hazrat Mahdi's (as) banner is the standard of our Prophet (saas):
He will appear with the woolen standard of our Prophet (saas). That standard has four corners, is unstitched and black in color. There is a halo on it. It has not been unfurled since the death of our Prophet (saas), but it will be opened when Hazrat Mahdi (as) appears. (Al-Muttaqi al-Hindi, Al-Burhan fi Alamat al-Mahdi Akhir al-zaman, p. 22)
The features of Hazrat Mahdi's (as) banner are described as follows in other hadiths:
Certain it is that in the End Times one known as the Hazrat Mahdi (as) will emerge from the furthest part of the country of Magrib (West). and help will go 40 miles before him. Hazrat Mahdi's (as) flags are striped and white and yellow. The great name of Allah is written upon them. No unit under his banner will be defeated. (Ash-Sharani, Mukhtasar Tazkirah al-Qurtubi, p. 438)
"Obedience is to Allah" is written on Hazrat Mahdi's (as) banner. (Al-Muttaqi al-Hindi, Al-Burhan fi Alamat al-Mahdi Akhir az-Zaman, p. 65)
The hadiths also note the city that Hazrat Mahdi (as) will spiritually conquer with his banner. It is said he will plant his banner in Constantinople, in other words in Istanbul:
During the [spiritual] conquest of Constantinople he [Hazrat Mahdi (as)] will plant a standard when he goes to make ablution for the morning prayer, and the water will divide in two and withdraw from him. He will cross to the other side through this path that opens... (Ibn Hajar al-Haythami, Al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar fi `Alamat al-Mahdi al-Muntadhar, p. 57)
It appears from the information provided in the hadith that Hazrat Mahdi (as) will use the seal of our Prophet (saas) in his works and in everything auspicious, excellent and useful that he does.
It is particularly noted in this hadith that this seal will be golden, in other words, that a gold-colored seal will be used.
Jaffar Sadik says: "It is as if I literally see Qaim [Hazrat Mahdi (as)]. HE will TAKE THE SEAL OF THE PROPHET'S (SAAS) GOLD-SEALED agreement OUT OF HIS POCKET and READ ALOUD to people." (Bihar al-Anwar, Vol. 52, p. 326)


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Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of this esteemed Commission, for the opportunity to share my views on the critical issue of oil and corruption and how we can put a stop to it. This is not a remote problem, but one that affects us squarely here at home. For when a kleptocrat in a region like Central Asia decides to exact higher bribes, angers the local population, kicks out Western companies, cuts off energy supplies, and provokes local insurgencies, oil prices jump up and U.S. energy security is suddenly threatened.
When I started working on this issue over ten years ago, oil-related corruption seemed like a problem that we would never solve. After all, real thieves will find a way around any system of safeguards – particularly if the payoff is hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenues. But in those ten years, I have been surprised at how many steps forward we've actually taken – from criminal bribery investigations to transparency of payments schemes. But the problem is far from solved, Mr. Chairman, particularly at a time when oil prices are at an all-time high, and political leaders in autocratic and energy-rich nations are using their windfall profits to consolidate power and undermine democracy. We need to inject new lifeblood into solutions now, and the key is transparency.
My testimony will outline the key problems of oil and corruption, how it affects us in the U.S., what solutions have been tried to combat it, and what the U.S. role should be in preventing it.
1. The Facts
Mr. Chairman, the reality is that energy-related corruption involves huge sums of money, is bad for the people in oil-rich countries, and is worse for U.S. energy security. Let me present three key facts that illustrate this point.
Fact One: Six of the top ten sources of U.S. crude oil imports rank in the bottom third of the world's most corrupt countries, according to Transparency International's latest global survey.
This is a very disturbing development, and three major energy suppliers in Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan rank as three of the most corrupt. All three fall in the bottom third of the 'most corrupt' list. Corruption in these nations not only affects the citizens of those countries, but it comes back to us squarely here in the U.S. and Europe in terms of energy security. The linkage works along the following lines: corruption and kleptocracy in resource-rich countries lead to political instability, drive up oil prices, and present significant risks to U.S. investments. As citizens in oil-producing countries become disgruntled with governments and foreign investors whom they believe to be corrupt, such citizens can foster political unrest and threaten oil supplies.
Energy security mainly refers to the security of supply – a stable, reliable energy supply at affordable prices. As such, the insecure political climate described above has led to disruptions of energy supply in several nations. Gas from one of Europe's main suppliers – Turkmenistan – was shut off twice over the past two years because of non-transparent squabbles and dealings with intermediary companies, including the Russian-Ukrainian RosUkrEnergo. Or to take an example from outside the OSCE, between 500-800,000 barrels of oil a day are lost from Nigeria alone – the U.S.' fifth largest importer of crude oil – due to attacks by rebel groups angry at the corruption of oil revenues and the secrecy of government budgets, made up mainly of oil revenues.
As President Bush stated in 2006, "Some of the nations we rely on for oil have unstable governments, or agendas that are hostile to the United States. These countries know we need their oil, and that reduces our influence, our ability to keep the peace in some areas. And so energy supply is a matter of national security. It's also a matter of economic security." Simply put, non-transparent, unaccountable, autocratic governments are unreliable sources of oil over the long term.
Fact Two: Turkmenistan is Central Asia's main exporter of gas, which flows through Russia to Ukraine and on to Europe. In Turkmenistan 75% of the gas revenues are kept off-budget, and Deutsche Bank still keeps a $2 billion Turkmen bank account which ex-Turkmen leader Saparmurat Niyazov maintained personal control over.
Turkmenistan holds the 6th largest natural gas reserves in the world but has a track record of bad governance, poverty, and mismanagement of public assets. These factors make it an unreliable energy supplier. Nearly 60 percent of its population lives below the poverty line despite $2 billion in annual gas revenues, freedom of the press is ranked as the 3rd lowest in the world, just behind North Korea; and it has been labeled as "one of the worst totalitarian systems in the world". Under President Saparmurat Niyazov, who passed away last December, schooling was actually cut by a year, while Niyazov ordered a multi-million dollar ice rink to be built in the desert and constructed a number of golden statues of himself across the country, one of which rotates with the direction of the sun.
Between two and three billion US dollars of Turkmenistan's public funds are currently held by the Turkmen Central Bank at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. The existence of these bank accounts was confirmed to Global Witness by Germany's banking regulator Bafin and later, by Deutsche Bank itself. Further billion-dollar foreign reserve funds of oil, gas, and cotton revenues, which were under the sole control of Niyazov, are also believed to be held at Deutsche Bank. Evidence suggests that many of Niyazov's bizarre prestige projects, including golden statues and palaces, were paid for out of these funds.
Deutsche Bank claims it is living up to the anti-corruption and pro-human rights principles of the UN Global Compact. But without a proper system for checking what its members like Deutsche Bank are doing in places like Turkmenistan, the Global Compact is little more than a marketing tool. Its members may only be paying lip-service to the principles they claim to support. I call on the Helsinki Commission to write to Deutsche Bank to explain its dealings with the former Turkmen regime and to Germany's banking regulatory office, the Bafin, to explain how such a situation can happen in the first place.
Fact three: 80-90% of Russian and Central Asian gas transits through Ukraine, but these supplies were cut off in 2006 because of a pricing dispute between Russia and Ukraine. The solution – the involvement of mysterious intermediary company RosUkrEnergo – raises alarming questions of transparency and good governance.
On New Year's Day 2006, Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, demanding an increase in the price Ukraine was paying. The solution involved a new private company, RosUkrEnergo (RUE), who agreed to supply gas to Ukraine at a lower price than what Gazprom was demanding from Ukraine. However, it was unclear why RosUkrEnergo was needed in the first place: Gazprom delivers Turkmenistan's gas to the Ukrainian border. Why did Gazprom not simply hand it over to Ukraine's state oil and gas state Naftohaz Ukrainy? Defenders of the scheme state that RUE was needed because it paid on time, unlike Naftohaz, and could maintain relations between the two sides, while keeping the gas relatively price low for Ukraine. However, for the first two years of existence, the owners of 50% of the company were not disclosed, raising concerns that RUE had ties to the ruling elites of Russia and Ukraine. The then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Carlos Pascual, highlighted news reports that linked the company to figures in Russian organized crime. Though RUE has denied all such links, the U.S. Department of Justice is now investigating RUE.
Recent revelations show a close personal friendship between Ukraine's current energy minister Yuri Boiko and RUE's 45% private shareholder Dmitri Firtash. Boiko was even for a time on a key RUE committee at the behest of Firtash. Boiko has yet to explain this apparent conflict of interest. I would urge the Commission to pursue this matter further.
Fact four: Kazakhstan is a major energy exporter with over 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, but it ranks in the bottom third of the world's most corrupt countries (111/163) and is implicated in a $78 million Foreign Corrupt Practices Act legal case in New York.
Lack of energy transparency has led to corruption scandals in a number of oil-producing countries in recent years, both tainting energy companies and seriously retarding economic development. Kazakhstan, which produces over 1.2 million barrels of oil per day, is a case in point. In 2003, the largest-ever foreign corruption investigation in U.S. legal history uncovered a major international corruption scandal that "defrauded the Government of Kazakhstan of funds to which it was entitled from oil transactions and defrauded the people of Kazakhstan of the right to the honest services of their elected and appointed officials". The scheme was based around Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Oil Minister Nurlan Balgimbayev demanding that international oil companies such as Chevron (now Chevron-Texaco) and Mobil (now ExxonMobil) pay a series of fees to middleman James Giffen on behalf of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This arrangement, the indictment alleges, helped Giffen to skim money from the deals and send some US$78 million in kickbacks to President Nazarbayev and others through dozens of overseas bank accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the British Virgin Islands. The case is currently awaiting trial in New York.
Another $1 billion of Kazakh oil money has also been uncovered offshore and out-of-sight under Nazarbayev's direct control in a secret fund in Switzerland. Despite the country's vast oil wealth, Kazakhstan's economy grew an average of only 0.3% from 2000-2005. Today, 19% of the population lives below the poverty line and one in three people die before age 60. The corruption scandals have tainted not only the Kazakh government, but also U.S. oil companies trying to foster a better global business reputation.
2. Solutions
With energy security growing in significance over the coming years, fostering better, more transparent investment climates in oil-producing countries is quickly assuming a new, more prominent role. The foremost step in promoting such an environment and combating corruption is through energy revenue transparency. Energy revenue transparency works through four main measures, but the progress made to date on this issue has in reality only been drops in the bucket rather than a glass that is half full.
A. A Reporting requirement on transparency
The most significant of these measures would be through a reporting requirement for corporations to regularly report payments made to all foreign governments for oil, gas, and mineral extraction on an annual and quarterly basis. Setting up such a requirement is a critical role the U.S. should play, and I will go into this in more detail shortly.
B. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)
A second transparency policy measure is the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which serves to improve investment climates through the audited disclosure of revenue payments. In this process, all oil companies operating in an EITI implementing country, including state-owned companies and non-western companies, first disclose all payments to governments, including production sharing agreement payments, taxes, royalties, and signature bonuses. Then governments disclose the revenues they receive, and the two sets of figures are independently audited by an auditing company and publicly examined by civil society.
Launched in September 2002, EITI has produced concrete results in two countries (Azerbaijan and Nigeria), where independently audited and reconciled reports have been published. In Azerbaijan, GDP growth per capita increased from 10.4% in 2000 to 25% in 2005, and following its participation in EITI, Azerbaijan has had the world's 12th most improved business environment score from 2001 to 2006, according to the Economist magazine.
But much remains to be done in the other 51 resource-rich countries. Of the 27 countries that have signed on to EITI, only ten have formulated a work plan, and a further eight have not taken the first step of appointing an official to lead the EITI process. Moreover, 33 resource-rich countries – including all OPEC members excluding Nigeria – have not signed up to EITI.
C. Budget transparency
The next step, once there is transparency about revenues flowing into the public finances, is transparency about how the money is spent. Civil society groups in developing countries are often most concerned about transparency in spending, because they can see the oil money that is meant to go to schools and healthcare being drained away by vested interests. For example, despite progress on the revenue transparency side with EITI, civil society groups in Azerbaijan cite continued corruption despite the EITI process. They have called for budget expenditure transparency as a means to significantly further reduce poverty and eliminate corruption. Oil-producer governments and donors can partner to establish transparency of budgets, either through special aid arrangements or the conditioning of aid on progress in budget transparency.
D. Accountability through civil society
Transparency alone will not solve the oil-corruption problem. Critically, it also requires accountability, which is a longer term process but one which we can influence. In other words, getting the revenue and budget numbers out in the public is a key first step. But if citizens do not understand these numbers, or civil society groups and the media do not have the capacity to analyze the figures and put pressure on the government to come clean on any discrepancies, then the revenue numbers alone will not combat corruption. Likewise, if there are not a key group of reformers in the government – a critical mass who can influence policy – then the voices of civil society groups will go unheard. So we also need to influence these figures, the policy decision makers within the governments of the oil-rich countries.
For example, the Kazakhstan coalition of Publish What You Pay, comprised of many Kazakh civil society groups and led by the Open Society Institute of Kazakhstan, has achieved a number of advocacy successes over the past several years. Most recently, the coalition convinced the government to sign the EITI decree in December 2006, in which the government obligated all extractive companies to endorse EITI and made endorsement of EITI a condition for awarding of any future energy contracts. We need to ramp up support for these type of watchdog civil society groups, to ensure they have the capacity they need to promote accountability.
3. The U.S. role
Now is the time for the U.S. to make transparency a key element of a reinvigorated energy policy. The U.S. should play a lead role in this policy drive, given the U.S. nationality of many of the largest international oil companies, and join other governments such as Norway and the UK who have taken a number of lead initiatives already. Doing so would save U.S. taxpayer money by making resource-rich countries use their oil, gas, and mining revenues for development, and make them less dependent on foreign aid.
Two targeted policy measures should make up the U.S. energy revenue transparency strategy.
? First and foremost, we call on Congress to pass legislation on the statistical reporting of oil, gas, and mining revenue payments. And when I say we here, I represent the voice of the entire Publish What You Pay coalition, made up of over 300 nongovernmental organizations worldwide dedicated to energy revenue transparency. The legislation should require extractive industry companies to publicly disclose payments to all governments on a country-by-country basis, as a small additional element to the information that is already routinely disclosed by these companies through SEC filings and their foreign equivalents. The U.S. should take the lead on this issue, but other major securities market regulators should follow suit, including the U.K., Hong Kong, Japan, and India, so as to level the playing field for all companies.
Companies often disclose revenue payments to governments but these payments are not reported by country. This would be a simple addition to existing disclosure, which should not be unduly burdensome since companies need country-by-country financial data for their own internal accounting purposes. Nonetheless, this form of disclosure would be a powerful tool for increasing transparency because even the most opaque of oil-producing countries, which may impose strict confidentiality requirements on U.S. oil companies, typically waive these requirements for disclosures that are required by regulators in a company's home jurisdiction.
More than any other measure, this would introduce transparency as an international standard to be practiced widely. While EITI covers a small handful of oil-producing countries, a legislative statistical reporting requirement and the other relevant regulation bodies would be comprehensive – able to capture all payments made to all governments by every major oil and gas company listed in the U.S. and other global securities exchanges. Full revenue payment disclosure is already normal guideline practice in the Alternative Investment Market in the U.K., as well as among several oil and mining companies, including Talisman Energy and Newmont Mining.
? Second, the U.S. should ramp up with a much more significant diplomatic push for EITI. This should involve three separate components.
First, EITI is coming up to a crucial moment in September. Since the end of last year, there has been a new validation mechanism in place which determines whether or not a country is truly making its revenues more transparent. This system was agreed by governments, civil society and oil companies, so it has consensus support. To qualify as an EITI member, a country has to take four basic steps which show its commitment to the process, including talking to industry and civil society, appointing a government official to steer the process and drawing up a workplan.
This September is the deadline for countries that claim to be in EITI to show that they have completed these four basic steps. A number have not. If EITI does not get rid of the free-riders, those countries who sign up with no real intention of reform, its credibility will collapse. These countries will have to be firmly told that they are not in EITI, and the U.S. should play an especially key role in this. I'm optimistic that together all of us in EITI will make the right decisions.
Second, it is vital that the U.S. more actively support EITI implementation in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan will soon become a top ten oil producer with geopolitical importance. Yet a number of companies have not signed up or publishing their payments under EITI, particularly TengizChevroil, a Joint Venture between Chevron, ExxonMobil, Kazakhstan's state oil concern. For EITI to prove itself a truly global initiative that improves transparency and reduces corruption, it has to be shown to be working in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's current bid for OSCE chairmanship provides just such an opportunity. The U.S. should require commitments and significant progress on EITI from Kazakhstan in exchange for any consideration to chair the OSCE in 2009.
Third, the U.S. should increase financial support to EITI focused on enabling civil society to interpret revenue data and to be protected in the case of civil harassments. This is the other diplomatic push – to work out a mechanism whereby civil society can participate. Journalists and civil society representatives have been threatened, arrested, and beaten across Central Asia for merely being interested in oil revenue issues. But this cannot go on. There is no point in delivering revenue transparency in order to create accountability of governance if civil society doesn't have the space or protection to monitor accountability. The EITI is a key mechanism for getting this civil society protection right, and the U.S. has to be more fully behind it.
Overall, Mr. Chairman, we ignore the close link between oil and corruption at our own peril. Gone is the day when we could simply look the other way when foreign leaders ask for bribes, and it would not come back around to us. Global oil is in shorter supply by the day, Mr. Chairman, so we cannot afford to play games with our energy security. While alternative energy may be the future, transparency is the key to both helping secure our energy for the present and ensure that oil actually benefits the people of energy-rich countries. Thank you.


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Eating outdoors should be fun, hassle-free, and low-key, not---except, perhaps, for the rare outdoor wedding reception---al fresco interpretations of a formal dinner party. Keeping a few basic principles in mind will ensure that things stay loose and enjoyable. Essentially, you just want to make sure your outdoor dining area is situated in a spot that's cozy, protected, and comfortable, that the menu is not overly complex, and that you anticipate and prevent potential problems.
Make An Outdoor Dining "Room"
Creating a cozy outdoor dining area is easy. Just remember that most people are more comfortable in a situation where there's a wall (or preferably two) anchoring the dining area. That's why attached patios and decks are so popular. If you don't already have a patio or a deck, though, it's still quite easy to create a pleasant outdoor dining area. Enclosure on at least two sides is the key. Use an exterior wall of your house as one of the sides of the outdoor dining area (try to make it convenient to the kitchen), and plant a hedge to form another, adjacent "wall" of the dining area, as well as to screen out any distractions or eyesores. One of the fastest ways to do this is by planting sunflowers, which can quickly grow very tall. For a somewhat more formal yet still casual look, consider a hedge of hydrangeas. Or, if a very formal look and feel is what you're after, choose classic boxwood. It will take a few years for these shrub hedges to fill in, but a fence could be put up in the meantime, then removed as the shrubs put on some size. The goal in any case is to create a bit of privacy and enclosure, as well as a sense of place.
Define A Space
Consider using structures like an arbor or trellises to help define a dining area in the yard. Containers with plants or planters with attached trellises are an easy and portable way to create the feel of an outdoor dining room, especially on a deck or patio.
Metal fencing or screening, or portable willow screening, are also easy and pleasing ways to help establish a cozy outdoor dining area. Another way of setting off and highlighting an open dining set in the yard is to add a pergola or gazebo as a decorative feature over the dining furniture.
Serve Up Simplicity
Keeping the menu straightforward is also important to relaxed outdoor dining. Save the five-course extravaganza for a special indoor dinner party when the weather's not so fabulous. For balmy summer dining, however, you want to keep things simple. Basic barbecued fare is always delicious, but the addition of cool summer soups (like gazpacho) and fresh garden salads---whether a traditional green salad, a spinach salad, or freshly dug new potatoes scrubbed and tossed with olive oil and chives---make for a more memorable and enjoyable dining experience, and they're easy to prepare ahead of time.
Ensure A Stress-Free Dining Experience
Just as critical as creating the right kind of space and serving simple yet inspired fare is making sure that minor but annoying things don't destroy the mood and drive you indoors on a beautiful July or August evening. Citronella-scented candles or oil lanterns can help keep mosquitoes at bay, and food covers can keep other pesky insects off of your carefully prepared dishes. Unbreakable dinnerware and serving platters can eliminate the possibility of a treasured dish being broken, spoiling your evening. And something as simple as a napkin holder can keep you and your guests comfortably in your seats rather than scurrying across the lawn chasing a flock of fluttering napkins.
Find Comfortable Seating
The kind and style of outdoor dining furniture you choose will help set the stage for beautiful meals. Choose dining furniture that will complement the look and feel of your home so the outdoor dining area can be come a natural extension of the overall style of your indoor and outdoor rooms. Wooden dining furniture made from teak, eucalyptus or cedar has the warm appeal of natural wood, is very durable, and low-maintenance. Resin wicker furniture offers the classic, casual outdoor look and comfortable feel without the fragility and extensive upkeep of traditional wicker. Cast aluminum can be elegant, comfortable, highly durable and easy to maintain. Wrought iron and steel dining furniture are great choices for value and style that will fit in anywhere, but occasional touch-up painting may be necessary. For more information on these materials, check out our Outdoor Furniture Buying Guide.
The Difference Is In The Details
Adding an umbrella not only provides comfortable shade, but a splash of contrasting color, as well. Durable outdoor seat cushions help keep everyone comfortable right through dessert. New cushions are also a quick and easy way to update an older dining set.
Furniture covers are available that cover the entire dining set. Using covers will extend the furniture life and insure that it is clean and ready to use.
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BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:1.0 BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART:20130717T000000 DTEND:20130717T010000 LOCATION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Carl Solway Gallery (424 Findlay St., Cincinnati, Ohio) DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:
Carl Solway Gallery presents an exhibition to be held at Findlay Street Project Space, a new, independent gallery located in the Carl Solway Gallery building in the West End. The show features the work of Jean-Pierre Hébert, a pioneer in creating art through the use of computer programming. Creating algorithms, sets of step-by-step mathematical calculations, he generates amazingly subtle and intricate drawings in sand, air, water and on paper. A concern with line as a direct expression of the thought process pervades his work. His Findlay Street Project Space exhibition encompasses a sand installation, an air and sound installation and ten drawings related to the two sculptural works.
SUMMARY;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:JEAN-PIERRE HÉBERT: Sculptures and Drawings