The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail (M&M Trail) is a  hiking trail that traverses the Metacomet Ridge of the Pioneer Valley region of Massachusetts and the central uplands of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Although less than  from Boston and other large population centers, the trail is considered remarkably rural and scenic and includes many areas of unique ecologic, historic, and geologic interest. Notable features include waterfalls, dramatic cliff faces, exposed mountain summits, woodlands, swamps, lakes, river floodplain, farmland, significant historic sites, and the summits of Mount Monadnock, Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke. The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail is maintained largely through the efforts of the Western MA Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC).  Much of the trail (but not all) is a portion of the New England National Scenic Trail.

Trail description

The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail extends from the Connecticut/ Massachusetts border through Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and northwestern Worcester counties in Massachusetts, and Cheshire County in New Hampshire. The southern terminus of the trail is located in southeast Southwick, Massachusetts, at Rising Corner Road and is identified with a kiosk. Geographically it begins near the gap between West Suffield Mountain and Provin Mountain, southwest of the city of Springfield; the northern terminus is located on the summit of Mount Monadnock in southern New Hampshire. The Metacomet Trail in Connecticut and the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway Trail in New Hampshire continue where the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail leaves off. These trails extend the overall hiking possibilities another  to the south (along the Metacomet Trail and its logical extension, the Mattabesett Trail), and  farther north into central New Hampshire.

Other long hiking trails that intersect the M&M Trail include the  Robert Frost Trail (Massachusetts) in the Pioneer Valley region, and the  Tully Trail in the Royalston area. Significant networks of shorter hiking trails intersect the M&M trail, most notably on the Holyoke and Mount Tom ranges, in Wendell and Erving State Forests, on Northfield Mountain, and on Mount Monadnock.

The M&M trail is primarily used for hiking, backpacking, and in the winter, snowshoeing. Portions of the trail are suitable for, and are used for, trail running, mountain biking, and cross-country skiing. Site specific activities enjoyed along the route include hunting, fishing, horseback riding, boating (on the Connecticut River), bouldering, rock climbing, and swimming.

Southern section

The southernmost  of the M&M Trail traverse a northern section of the trap rock Metacomet Ridge which extends from Long Island Sound to the Massachusetts/ Vermont border. This ridge, rising hundreds of feet above the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts, is a prominent landscape feature. Mount Tom, at  above sea level and with vertical cliff faces of several hundred feet, is the high point. From south to north, the M&M Trail uses the ridges of Provin Mountain, East Mountain, the Mount Tom Range, and the Holyoke Range. Abrupt vertical cliffs with visible talus slopes and frequent viewpoints are common throughout. Views are generally to the west on Provin Mountain, East Mountain, and the Mount Tom ranges; and to the north on the Holyoke Range. The Connecticut River cuts through the ridgeline between the Mount Tom and Holyoke ranges in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and the Westfield River separates Provin Mountain from East Mountain in Westfield. Historic features along the trail include the Horse Caves on Mount Norwottuck, the ruins of the 19th-century hotel Eyrie House on Mount Nonotuck, and the refurbished Mount Holyoke Summit House on Mount Holyoke. The Mount Holyoke Summit House has been restored as a museum, open during weekends in the summer. The trap rock ridges and talus slopes are also home to several unique microclimate ecosystems that support species of plants that are unusual or endangered in this part of New England, and are a seasonal migration path for raptors. Viewsheds from the ledges include agrarian land, suburbs, small towns, river corridors, the eastern Berkshires ridgeline, metropolitan Springfield, and the skyline of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Northern section

Where open to public access, the remaining  of trail follows an elevated plateau of 400 million year old metamorphic rock punctuated by occasional monadnocks. The terrain is a rural and largely wooded, post-glacial landscape with sparse viewpoints, deep ravines, and a few bare mountain summits. The trail follows the western edge of this plateau in a northerly direction, then jogs east along the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border before turning north again to reach Mount Monadnock. Prominent features on or easily accessible from this part of the M&M Trail include, from south to north, Rattlesnake Gutter (a boulder-filled chasm), Ruggles Pond in Wendell State Forest, the Millers River, Farley Ledges, Briggs Brook Falls, Northfield Mountain and reservoir (a hydroelectric reservoir carved out of a mountain top), the historic Hermit Cave, Crag Mountain, Mount Grace, Highland Falls, and Royalston Falls. In New Hampshire, the trail crosses the summits of Little Monadnock Mountain (in Rhododendron State Park), Gap Mountain, and Mount Monadnock. All three of these peaks have exposed summit ledges. Mount Monadnock is the most prominent peak of southeast New England. At  high, it is  higher than any mountain peak within  and rises  above the surrounding landscape. Its bare, rocky summit provides expansive views.

Trail communities
The M&M Trail passes through land located within the following incorporated towns. In Massachusetts (from south to north): Southwick,  Agawam, Westfield,  West Springfield,  Holyoke,  Easthampton, Hadley,  South Hadley,  Amherst,  Granby,  Belchertown,  Pelham,  Shutesbury, Leverett,  Wendell,  Erving,  Northfield,  Warwick,  Royalston; and in New Hampshire: Richmond, Fitzwilliam, Troy, and Jaffrey.

History

The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail receives its name from the Metacomet Trail in Connecticut, of which it is a logical extension, and from Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. The name Metacomet is derived from Metacom, the 17th-century Native American leader and son of Massasoit of the Wampanoag tribe of southern New England. The term Monadnock is an Abenaki-derived word used to describe a mountain. It has come to be used by American geologists to describe any isolated mountain formed from the exposure of a harder rock as a result of the erosion of a softer rock that once surrounded it.

The M&M Trail was designed in the 1950s by the late Professor Walter M. Banfield of the University of Massachusetts Amherst as an extension of the  Metacomet Trail in Connecticut. The route was constructed utilizing newly blazed paths, abandoned farm roads, and existing hiking trails (many of them several hundred years old) where available. Portions of the route on Mount Monadnock and the Holyoke and Mount Tom ranges date back as far as the 18th century. Early trail-building was supported by various summit resort hotels popular in the 19th century. Such resorts once stood on Mount Holyoke, Mount Nonotuck, Mount Tom, and Mount Monadnock (at the Halfway House site). Most of them had burned down or had become defunct by the early 20th century and never recovered. Encroaching development and modern transportation hastened the demise of these businesses by shifting tourism to more remote and exotic locations. Many of these properties were eventually bought, taken, or donated for inclusion in various state parks.

The terminus of the trail, Mount Monadnock, barren from  to its  summit and known for its fine views and rugged topography, was once mostly wooded. Fires deliberately set in the early 19th century by nearby farmers concerned with wolves denning in blowdown snags resulted in the denudation of the mountain. The fires burned so hot that the soil was destroyed and subsequently washed away. Since then, the summit has recovered to the degree that it appears natural and scenic, although it is still very barren and reminiscent of the alpine peaks of the White Mountains to the north. Vegetation has begun to slowly reclaim some of the ledges and ravines, but the process of soil generation on windy slopes will likely take many hundreds of years.

As described in #Conservation and maintenance of the trail corridor below, the M&M Trail is part of the New England National Scenic Trail.

Landscape, geology, and natural environment

The geology and natural environment of the M&M trail can be divided into two distinct sections: the Metacomet Ridge of the Pioneer Valley and the upland plateau of central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. One common denominator, evidence of recent glacial activity, can be found throughout all parts of the M&M Trail. Such evidence includes glacial erratics, glacial scouring, glacial striations, deranged drainage, mountain notches, U-shaped valleys, highland swamps, and roches moutonnées, so called "sheepback mountains" because they often resemble the shape of a sheep in profile. The extremely steep south and/or east faces of these hills were carved by the movement of glacial ice down lee slopes.

The Metacomet Ridge

The ridge that forms the spine of the M&M Trail across Provin Mountain, East Mountain, and the Mount Tom and Holyoke ranges was formed 200 million years ago during the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods and is composed of trap rock, also known as basalt, an extrusive volcanic rock. Basalt is a dark colored rock, but the iron within it weathers to a rusty brown when exposed to the air, lending the ledges a distinct reddish appearance. Basalt frequently breaks into octagonal and pentagonal columns, creating a unique "postpile" appearance. Huge slopes made of fractured basalt talus are visible beneath many of the ledges; they are particularly visible along the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail on Bare Mountain. The basalt ridges are the product of several massive lava flows hundreds of feet deep that welled up in faults created by the rifting apart of North America from Eurasia and Africa. These basalt floods of lava happened over a period of 20 million years. Erosion occurring between the eruptions deposited deep layers of sediment between the lava flows, which eventually lithified into sedimentary rock. The resulting "layer cake" of basalt and sedimentary sheets eventually faulted and tilted upward. Subsequent erosion wore away the weaker sedimentary layers a faster rate than the basalt layers, leaving the abruptly tilted edges of the basalt sheets exposed, creating the distinct linear ridge and dramatic cliff faces visible today. One way to imagine this is to picture a layer cake tilted slightly up with some of the frosting (the sedimentary layer) removed in between. One of the best places to view this layer-cake structure is just beneath the summit of Mount Norwottuck. The summit of Norwottuck is made of basalt; directly beneath the summit are the Horse Caves, a deep overhang where the weaker sedimentary layer has worn away at a more rapid rate than the basalt layer above it. The Horse Caves are located a short distance off the M&M Trail via the Robert Frost Trail. The sedimentary rock of the Connecticut River Valley is also well known for its fossils, especially dinosaur tracks, which have been discovered in several locations near the ridges that the M&M Trail traverses.

The Metacomet Ridge hosts a combination of microclimates unusual in New England. Dry, hot upper ridges support oak savannas, often dominated by chestnut oak and a variety of understory grasses and ferns. Eastern red cedar, a dry-loving species, clings to the barren edges of cliffs. Backslope plant communities tend to be more similar to the adjacent Berkshire plateau containing species common to the northern hardwood and oak-hickory forest forest types. Eastern hemlock crowds narrow ravines, blocking sunlight and creating damp, cooler growing conditions with associated cooler climate plant species. Talus slopes are especially rich in nutrients and support a number of calcium-loving plants uncommon in Massachusetts. Many bogs, ponds, and reservoirs lie cupped between trap rock ridge shelves, demonstrating the value of these ridges as important aquifers and wetland ecosystem habitats. Because the trap rock ridges generate such varied terrain, they are the home of several plant and animal species that are state-listed or globally rare.

Other ecosystems on the southern sections of the M&M Trail include the northern riverine community which supports species such as willow, American elm, and sycamore; this ecosystem can be found along the Westfield and Connecticut rivers.

The upland plateau
North of the Holyoke Range, the M&M Trail traverses an upland plateau composed of much older metamorphic rock, mostly schist, gneiss and quartzite. The plateau, averaging  above sea level, is geologically related to the higher White Mountains of New Hampshire, farther to the north. The terrain is rugged, with deep ravines and isolated mountain peaks called monadnocks. Notable monadnocks along the M&M Trail include Mount Grace and Mount Monadnock. Other mountains on this section of the M&M Trail, including Mt. Lincoln, Mt. Orient, and Northfield Mountain, represent high points on the steeply ravined edges of a dissected plateau.

The upland plateau section of the M&M Trail supports transitional forests of species common to both the oak-hickory and northern hardwood forest types. Ravines support significant stands of eastern hemlock, and stands of white pine are common throughout. Tree and shrub species also include sugar maple; red maple; gray, black, paper, and yellow birch; white ash; black oak and red oak; striped maple; mountain laurel; and, on exposed dry ledges, pitch pine. Northern boreal species, particularly red spruce, become apparent on peaks in the northern part of the M&M Trail. The high, exposed ledges of Mount Monadnock support several alpine and sub-alpine species of plants, including mountain ash, cotton grass, sheep laurel, mountain sandwort, and the mountain cranberry. Krummholz, trees stunted by harsh weather, are found on Mount Monadnock, as are several alpine bogs. The northernmost stand of native rhododendron (growing naturally, not planted) in eastern North America is located just off the M&M Trail on Little Monadnock Mountain in Rhododendron State Park, New Hampshire.

Hiking the trail

The trail is blazed with white rectangles. It is regularly maintained, and is considered easy hiking, with sections of rugged and moderately difficult hiking along the Holyoke and Mount Tom ranges. Mount Monadnock is regarded as a challenging hike for novice hikers during favorable weather conditions. Guidebooks recommend hikers take a map and compass. Hikers should contact the Berkshire Section of the AMC or review on-line updates for the latest trail relocations. As the crow flies, the M&M Trail route is never more than a mile or two from a public road; however, cliffs and steep terrain on the Metacomet Ridge and on Mount Monadnock and other peaks make access much more difficult in some areas. There are several primitive lean-tos and campsites, and a few state park campsites with facilities along the trail. However, camping is discouraged in many areas. Campfires are generally prohibited, except in established fire rings in state park campgrounds. Trail descriptions are available from a number of commercial and non-commercial sources, and a complete guidebook with topographic maps is published by the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Weather along the route is typical of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, with slightly warmer temperatures in the Connecticut River Valley versus the upland plateau to the east. Conditions on exposed hill tops and summits may be harsher during cold or stormy weather. Weather atop the exposed and isolated  summit of Mount Monadnock can be much more severe than conditions below; high winds are common year round and winter storms on the summit can be life-threatening. Lightning is a hazard on exposed peaks and ledges during thunderstorms.  High flooding is common during rainy periods on the portions of trail that dip into the Connecticut River Valley and the Westfield River Valley, sometimes obliterating the trail. The Westfield River can be forded only during dry periods, and even then not without risk. The Connecticut River is not fordable; the trail terminates where it meets it (one must walk or drive to the Northampton Route 9 bridge or arrange for boat passage to the opposite bank). Snow is common in the winter and may necessitate the use of cross country skis or snowshoes. Ice can form on exposed ledges and summits, making hiking dangerous without special equipment. Snow and ice tend to linger on Mount Monadnock well into the spring.

Biting insects can be bothersome during warm weather. Parasitic deer ticks (which are known to carry Lyme disease) are a hazard. The trail passes through black bear habitat (especially the northern portions), although problems with bears are rare. More likely are problematic encounters with feral and domestic dogs. Skunks, raccoons, and porcupines are common and active after dark. Venomous snakes are considered extinct along most of the route, with the possible exception of the warm, dry microclimates on the Metacomet Ridge. Poison ivy is native to the M&M Trail ecosystems, but it occurs with less frequency north of the Holyoke Range, and does not thrive on Mount Monadnock at all.

Many water sources along the trail flow through inhabited areas or swamps and may be contaminated. Except during the winter, trap rock ridges tend to be dry, leaving long stretches of trail with no dependable water source. Various portions along the trail are road walks due to private ownership; contacting the AMC will provide the latest updates. Hikers seeking 'on the ground', current information regarding the status of the M&M trail should read hiker journals available on the Internet, such as Trail Journals.com

Conservation and maintenance of the trail corridor

The M&M Trail passes through public land (state parks, forests, and wildlife management areas), land managed by conservation non-profit organizations, private land under conservation easement, and unprotected private land via permission of individual land owners.

Significant threats to the trail, its ecosystems, and its viewshed included quarrying (especially on the trap rock ridges) and suburban sprawl.

The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail is maintained by volunteer efforts largely facilitated by the Berkshire Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Many groups are invested in preserving the pathway and viewshed of the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail, including The Trustees of Reservations, Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, Friends of the Mt. Holyoke Range, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the Amherst Conservation Commission, the State of New Hampshire, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In 2000, the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail was included in a study by the National Park Service for inclusion in a new National Scenic Trail. This study, completed in 2006, is available on-line at the New England Scenic Trail website.  It was designated in 2009 as part of the New England National Scenic Trail, which includes the Mattabesett and Metacomet trails in Connecticut. Some sections of the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail are also designated as a National Recreation Trail (not the same as a National Scenic Trail).

See also
 Metacomet Ridge
 Metacomet Trail
 Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway
 Robert Frost Trail
 Tully Trail

References

External links
 U.S. Congress New England National Scenic Trail Designation Act.
 Berkshire Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club
 Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation
 New Hampshire Department of Parks and Recreation
 Sportsman's Land Trust
 The Kestrel Trust
 The Valley Land Fund
 Pascommuck Conservation Trust
 Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests
 Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust
 The Trustees of Reservations
 Western Massachusetts Access (Farley Ledges rock climbing preserve)

Hiking trails in Massachusetts
Hiking trails in New Hampshire
Long-distance trails in the United States
Metacomet Ridge, Massachusetts
National Recreation Trails in Massachusetts
National Recreation Trails in New Hampshire
Protected areas of Cheshire County, New Hampshire
Protected areas of Hampden County, Massachusetts
Protected areas of Hampshire County, Massachusetts
Protected areas of Franklin County, Massachusetts
Protected areas of Worcester County, Massachusetts

Metacomet-Monadnock Trail


Café philosophique (or café-philo) is a grassroots forum for philosophical discussion, founded by philosopher Marc Sautet in Paris, France, on December 13, 1992.

There were about 100 cafés-philo operating throughout France and some 150 cafés-philo internationally at the time of Sautet's death in 1998.

Concept

The subjects discussed at the cafés had a range that varied from the Santa Claus myth to truth to beauty to sex to death. They posed such questions as What is a fact? and Is hope a violent thing? Sautet made the discussions seem fun and exciting. The concept was to bring people together in a public friendly forum where they could discuss ideas. A café tended to have this type of atmosphere where people were relaxed drinking coffee and carrying on conversations. This concept ultimately developed into the Café Philosophique that he founded.

Thousands of participants in philosophy cafés worldwide have adopted Sautet's idea as a way to enhance their thinking. Ideas are thrown out with concern for accuracy and philosophical rigor. The concepts discussed were in the spirit of tolerance and openness. The idea of Sautet's philosophy cafés have spread around the world. The concept that started in France and subsequently entered England, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and eventually throughout Europe is now in Canada, South America, Greece, Australia, Japan and the United States. Due to this success, the French president Jacques Chirac sent a founding member on a good will mission to Latin America to introduce the concept there.

History

Predecessors

The French Institute for Scotland in Edinburgh also runs a café philosophique in Edinburgh - continuing a tradition that dates back to the days of the great Francophile philosopher David Hume. Staff of The French Institute for Scotland are also involved in teaching philosophy in Scottish primary schools, as an example in Clackmannan. In England, a Café Philosophique has been meeting in a Cromford (Derbyshire) bookshop café since being founded by Wirksworth philosopher-potter Evan Rutherford in 1993, and by 2009 had held around 100 meetings. The public evenings are usually led by members and associates of the ever-changing group rather than by professional philosophers, but prospective speakers are welcome to propose topics; the text of some of the talks can be read online.

The Ottoman empire expanded throughout Europe in the 17th century. From Vienna came the idea of a place where men could meet and discuss various topics over coffee or tea (Viennese coffee house culture). Adapted to Western culture, the Turkish "cafés" became the place where friends met for a drink. The tradition of the Agora was moved from the public square to the center city café. Philosophers, poets, writers, and intellectuals of all types made these places their new meeting places.The first Oxford coffee house opened in 1650 and in London in 1652

In 1686 the Sicilian Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli started Café Procope in rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, in the Latin Quarter of Paris known as the 6th arrondissement. It was the first café in Paris. Certain intellectuals that have frequented the café for philosophical discussions throughout history have been Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Honoré de Balzac, Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, François-Marie Arouet, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, and Denis Diderot amongst others.

For about 30 years in Paris, poets, painters, writers and part of the surrealist movement went to cafés of Montparnasse. Also in Paris after World War II the cafées of the Latin quarter saw a form of existentialism. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre conducted philosophical discussions at the Café de Flore. These "cafés philo" were the historical beginnings of Sautet's cafés-philo.

Café philosophique

Sautet started the idea of philosophy cafés in the Place de la Bastille neighborhood of Paris at the Café des Phares on December 13, 1992. He would gather some friends at his "café philo" each Sunday at 11 am and opened up philosophical debates ("conceptual fisticuffs") for some two hours. His philosophy was a return to the basic principles of reasoning intended for the general public, not aristocrats. The first meetings started with only a dozen or so people. Soon university students showed up, followed by eccentric citizens off the street, off-duty cab drivers, and idle wealthy women. This became a weekly event that grew in popularity to about 200 people at each meeting. Sautet returned philosophy to the general public in Café Philosophique. In so doing, he was rejected by scholars as being unfaithful to the normal philosophy taught in higher education.

See also
Lincoln Philosophy Café
Philosophy For All
Philosophy Now
Pub Philosophy
Socrates Cafe
Society for Philosophical Inquiry
Think (journal)
Viennese café
Sofia kafe

References

Further reading

Chaplin, Tamara, Turning on the mind: French philosophers on television, University of Chicago Press, 2007,
Marinoff, Lou, Philosophical practice, Academic Press, 2002,
Raabe, Peter B., Issues in philosophical counseling, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002,
Sautet, Marc, Un café pour Socrate : comment la philosophie peut nous aider à comprendre le monde d'aujourd'hui, Paris : R. Laffont, 1995,

External links
The list of all cafés-philo in the world and registering new ones
What is a Philosophy Café? in Spanish, by the Philosophical and Legal Investigations Circle.
The philosophy café by Dr. Óscar Brenifier, in Spanish.
Britannica Online Encyclopedia: "French literature" - Café Littéraire
Philosophical cafes in Poland by Guido Giacomo Gattai, complete videos and information about upcoming events
Philosophical kafe in Banja Luka, Serb Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina By Ana Galić

Unconferences
Philosophy education
Philosophy events
Philosophy organizations
Types of coffeehouses and cafés
Public philosophy

Café philosophique


The accumulator is the register for storing results of operations inside the CPU. Accumulator's name or representation depend upon CPU architecture and manufacturer, for example in intel x86 architecture accumulator's name is AX in 16bits or EAX in 32bits mode. An accumulator is manipulated by machine code or assembly for example assembly code:

"add ax, 3" add 3 in accumulator register.

Computer hardware

Accumulator


Samuel Rowlands (c. 1573–1630) was an English author of pamphlets in prose and verse which reflect the follies and humours of lower middle-class life in his day. He seems to have had no literary reputation at the time, but his work throws much light on the development of popular literature and social life in London, where he spent his life. His contact with the middle and lower classes of society included working in 1600–1615 for William White, and then George Loftus, booksellers, who published Rowlands's pamphlets in this time.

Selected sacred and secular poems
The Betraying of Christ (1598)
The Letting of Humour's Blood in the Head-vaine (epigrams and satires) and A Mery Meetinge, or tis Mery when Knaves mete (1600) – the two latter being publicly burnt by order, but republished later under other names (Humors Ordinarie and The Knave of Clubbes)
Greene's Ghost haunting Conie-Catchers (1602), which he pretended to have edited from Greene's papers, but which is largely borrowed from his printed works
Tis Merrie when Gossips meete (1602), a dialogue between a Widow, a Wile, a Maid and a Vintner
 (1604), in which Death describes the tyrants, careless divines and other evil-doers whom he will destroy
Hell's broke loose (1605), an account of John of Leyden. In the same year a Theatre of Divine Recreation (not extant), poems founded on the Old Testament, and a collection of epigrams entitled Humor's Antique Faces
A Terrible Battle between ... Time and Death (1606)
Democritus, or Doctor Merry-man his Medicines against Melancholy humors, reprinted, with alterations, as Doctor Merrie-man, and Diogenes Lent home (1607), in which Athens is London
The Famous History of Guy, Earl of Warwick (1607), a long romance in Rowlands's favorite six-lined stanza, and one of his hastiest, least successful efforts
Humors Looking Glasse (1608)
(dubiously) Martin Mark-all, Beadle of Bridewell (1608 or 1610), a history of roguery containing much information about notable highwaymen (q.v. kings of gypsies) and the completest vocabulary of thieves' slang up to that time, usually attributed to Samuel Rid.

Later works
Of his later works may be mentioned Sir Thomas Overbury; or the Poysoned Knights Complaint, and The Melancholic Knight (1615), which suggests a hearing of Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle. The last of his humorous studies, Good Newes and Bad Newes, appeared in 1622, and in 1628 he published a pious volume of prose and verse, entitled Heaven's Glory, Seeke it: Earts vanitie, Flye it: Hells Horror, Fere it.,

Nothing is known of him after that. Edmund Gosse, introducing Rowlands's complete works, edited in 1872–1880 for the Hunterian Club in Glasgow by Sidney John Hervon Herrtage, sums him up as a small, non-political Daniel Defoe, a pamphleteer in verse whose talents were never exercised except when their possessor was pressed for means, and a poet of considerable talent, yet without a spark or glimmer of genius.

Gosse's notice is reprinted in his Seventeenth Century Studies (1883). A poem by Rowlands, The Bride (1617), was reprinted at Boston, USA, in 1905 by A. C. Potter.,

See also

National poetry
English poetry

References

External links

The complete works of Samuel Rowlands at Internet Archive
The knave of clubbes at Internet Archive

1570s births
1630 deaths
16th-century English poets
English male poets
English non-fiction writers
Writers from London
English pamphleteers
17th-century English poets

Samuel Rowlands


Éire Óg Carrickmore is a hurling club from County Tyrone. Their seniors have won the Tyrone Senior Hurling Championship a record 30 times, with the most recent in 2023, and their first in 1972.

Founding
While memories exist of the ancient game of camán, a precursor to the modern game of hurling, having been played locally in the 19th century, it was not until 1968 that hurling was revived in the parish by Kerryman Gerry Ryle. Gerry had come to teach at Dean Brian Maguirc School and upon coming across unused hurleys in the school gym in 1968, hurling came to life in Carrickmore. From that point Gerry bestowed his passion and enthusiasm for the game hurling upon the youth of the Dean who continued their interest after leaving school to the natural progression of forming Carrickmore's hurling club under the umbrella of St Colmcille's in 1970.. However, it was not until 1974 that the club was named Éire Óg and separated from the football club.

Achievements
In 1970, history was made when the Juveniles won the Tyrone Championship, beating Dungannon in the final The club struggled to survive in those early days and only for the determination of people like Oliver Kerr, the club would not have made it. In 1976, the club colours of black and amber, inspired by All Ireland winning champions Kilkenny, were first worn.

The Seniors first won the County Championship and took home the Benburb Cup in 1972, and during the 70s twice again took it back but it was during the 80s that Éire Óg first had its great success with the underage players of the 70s coming of age. They won the County Championship a remarkable 8 times in a row from 1982 to 1989. By 1990 they had appeared in the County final a staggering 13 times in a row. In 1998, the Seniors broke through to the next level and won the Ulster Shield, while in 2001, the Dean won their first Ulster Vocational Schools U16 championship and then the Minors won the Ulster Championship in 2003. Success was had as well in the Armagh League which was won for the first time in 2004, the historic year of the "clean sweep" in which Carrickmore hurlers and footballers won all county titles at all levels, while the U16s won their first Armagh League title in 2006.

Camogie
The woman's game Camogie was established in the parish in 1978, and flourished until 1989. During those years the camogs enjoyed a lot of success and participated at U14, Minor, U21 and Senior while a number of the players also represented Tyrone at county level. However in Camogie's centenary year 2004, Camogie was re-established in Carrickmore under Éire Óg by Bríd Uí Dhonnghaile and they now compete at U10, Post Primary, U14, U16, Minors and seniors.

References

External links
 "Eire Óg Carrickmore", GAA Info, https://web.archive.org/web/20120515012041/http://m.gaainfo.com/club.php?co=tyrone&club=eireogcarrickmore&width=1280&height=1024 Accessed 23 December 2011.

Hurling clubs in County Tyrone

Éire Óg Carrickmore


Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Joseph Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his vast range of interests, and has been honoured with the title "Master of a Hundred Arts". He taught for more than 40 years at the Roman College, where he set up a wunderkammer. A resurgence of interest in Kircher has occurred within the scholarly community in recent decades.

Kircher claimed to have deciphered the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptian language, but most of his assumptions and translations in the field turned out to be wrong. He did, however, correctly establish the link between the ancient Egyptian and the Coptic languages, and some commentators regard him as the founder of Egyptology. Kircher was also fascinated with Sinology and wrote an encyclopedia of China, where he revealed the early presence of Nestorian Christians while also attempting to establish links with Egypt and Christianity.

Kircher's work in geology included studies of volcanoes and fossils. One of the first researchers to observe microbes through a microscope, Kircher was ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to prevent its spread. Kircher also displayed a keen interest in technology and mechanical inventions; inventions attributed to him include a magnetic clock, various automatons and the first megaphone. The invention of the magic lantern has been misattributed to Kircher, although he conducted a study of the principles involved in his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae.

A scientific star in his day, towards the end of his life he was eclipsed by the rationalism of René Descartes and others. In the late 20th century, however, the aesthetic qualities of his work again began to be appreciated. One modern scholar, Alan Cutler, described Kircher as "a giant among seventeenth-century scholars", and "one of the last thinkers who could rightfully claim all knowledge as his domain". Another scholar, Edward W. Schmidt, referred to Kircher as "the last Renaissance man". In A Man of Misconceptions, his 2012 book about Kircher, John Glassie wrote "many of Kircher's actual ideas today seem wildly off-base, if not simply bizarre," but he was "a champion of wonder, a man of awe-inspiring erudition and inventiveness," whose work was read "by the smartest minds of the time."

Life
Kircher was born on 2 May in either 1601 or 1602 (he himself did not know) in Geisa, Buchonia, near Fulda (Thuringia, Germany). From his birthplace, he took the epithets Bucho, Buchonius and Fuldensis which he sometimes added to his name. He attended the Jesuit College in Fulda from 1614 to 1618, when he entered the novitiate of the Society.

The youngest of nine children, Kircher studied volcanoes owing to his passion for rocks and eruptions. He was taught Hebrew by a rabbi in addition to his studies at school. He studied philosophy and theology at Paderborn, but fled to Cologne in 1622 to escape advancing Protestant forces.  On the journey, he narrowly escaped death after falling through the ice crossing the frozen Rhine — one of several occasions on which his life was endangered. Later, traveling to Heiligenstadt, he was caught and nearly hanged by a party of Protestant soldiers.

From 1622 to 1624 Kircher was sent to begin his regency period in Koblenz as a teacher. This was followed by assignment to Heiligenstadt, where he taught mathematics, Hebrew and Syriac, and produced a show of fireworks and moving scenery for the visiting Elector Archbishop of Mainz, showing early evidence of his interest in mechanical devices. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1628 and became professor of ethics and mathematics at the University of Würzburg, where he also taught Hebrew and Syriac. Beginning in 1628, he began to show an interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

In 1631, while still at Würzburg, Kircher allegedly had a prophetic vision of bright light and armed men with horses in the city. Würzburg was attacked shortly afterwards and captured, leading to Kircher being accorded respect for predicting the disaster via astrology, though Kircher privately insisted that he had not relied on it. This was the year that Kircher published his first book (the Ars Magnesia, reporting his research on magnetism), but having been caught up in the Thirty Years' War he was driven to the papal University of Avignon in France. In 1633 he was called to Vienna by the emperor to succeed Kepler as Mathematician to the Habsburg court. On the intervention of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the order was rescinded, and he was sent instead to Rome to continue with his scholarly work, but he had already embarked for Vienna.

On the way, his ship was blown off course and he arrived in Rome before he knew of the changed destination. He based himself in the city for the rest of his life, and from 1634 he taught mathematics, physics and Oriental languages at the Collegio Romano (now the Pontifical Gregorian University) for several years before being released to devote himself to research. He studied malaria and the plague, amassing a collection of antiquities, which he exhibited along with devices of his own creation in the Museum Kircherianum.

In 1661, Kircher discovered the ruins of a church said to have been constructed by Constantine on the site of Saint Eustace's vision of a crucifix in a stag's horns. He raised money to pay for the church's reconstruction as the , and his heart was buried in the church upon his death.

Works

Kircher published many substantial books on a wide variety of subjects such as Egyptology, geology, and music theory. His syncretic approach disregarded conventional boundaries between disciplines: his Magnes, for example, ostensibly discussed magnetism, but also explored other modes of attraction such as gravity and love. Perhaps Kircher's best-known work is Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–54), a vast study of Egyptology and comparative religion.

His books, written in Latin, were widely circulated in the 17th century, and contributed to the wide dissemination of scientific information. Kircher is not considered to have made any significant original contributions, although some discoveries and inventions (e.g., the magic lantern) have sometimes been mistakenly attributed to him.

In his foreword to Ars Magna Sciendi Sive Combinatoria (The Great Art of Knowledge, or the Combinatorial Art), the inscription reads:

Linguistic and cultural studies

Egyptology

The last known example of Egyptian hieroglyphics dates from AD 394, after which all knowledge of hieroglyphics was lost. Until Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion found the key to hieroglyphics in the 19th century, the main authority was the 4th-century Greek grammarian Horapollon, whose chief contribution was the misconception that hieroglyphics were "picture writing" and that future translators should look for symbolic meaning in the pictures.

The first modern study of hieroglyphics came with Piero Valeriano Bolzani's Hieroglyphica (1556). Kircher was the most famous of the "decipherers" between ancient and modern times and the most famous Egyptologist of his day. In his Lingua Aegyptiaca Restituta (1643), Kircher called hieroglyphics "this language hitherto unknown in Europe, in which there are as many pictures as letters, as many riddles as sounds, in short as many mazes to be escaped from as mountains to be climbed". While some of his notions are long discredited, portions of his work have been valuable to later scholars, and Kircher helped pioneer Egyptology as a field of serious study.

Kircher's interest in Egyptology began in 1628 when he became intrigued by a collection of hieroglyphs in the library at Speyer. He learned Coptic in 1633 and published its first grammar in 1636, the Prodromus coptus sive aegyptiacus. Kircher then broke with Horapollon's interpretation of hieroglyphs with his Lingua aegyptiaca restituta. Kircher argued that Coptic preserved the last development of ancient Egyptian. For this Kircher has been considered the true "founder of Egyptology", because his work was conducted "before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone rendered Egyptian hieroglyphics comprehensible to scholars". He also recognized the relationship between hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts.

Between 1650 and 1654, Kircher published four volumes of "translations" of hieroglyphs in the context of his Coptic studies. However, according to Steven Frimmer, "none of them even remotely fitted the original texts". In Oedipus Aegyptiacus, Kircher argued under the impression of the Hieroglyphica that ancient Egyptian was the language spoken by Adam and Eve, that Hermes Trismegistus was Moses, and that hieroglyphs were occult symbols which "cannot be translated by words, but expressed only by marks, characters and figures." This led him to translate the simple hieroglyphic text ḏd Wsr ("Osiris says") as "The treachery of Typhon ends at the throne of Isis; the moisture of nature is guarded by the vigilance of Anubis"

Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge mentioned Kircher as the foremost of writers who "pretended to have found the key to the hieroglyphics" and called his translations in Oedipus Aegyptiacus "utter nonsense, but as they were put forth in a learned tongue many people at the time believed they were correct." Although Kircher's approach to deciphering texts was based on a fundamental misconception, some modern commentators have described Kircher as the pioneer of the serious study of hieroglyphs. The data which he collected were later consulted by Champollion in his successful efforts to decode the script. According to Joseph MacDonnell, it was "because of Kircher's work that scientists knew what to look for when interpreting the Rosetta stone". Another scholar of ancient Egypt, Erik Iversen, concluded:

Kircher was also actively involved in the erection of the Pamphilj obelisk, and added "hieroglyphs" of his design in the blank areas. Rowland 2002 concluded that Kircher made use of Pythagorean principles to read hieroglyphs of the Pamphili Obelisk, and used the same form of interpretation when reading scripture.

Sinology

Kircher had an early interest in China, telling his superior in 1629 that he wished to become a missionary to that country. In 1667 he published a treatise whose full title was  China monumentis, qua sacris qua profanis, nec non variis naturae & artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata, and which is commonly known simply as China Illustrata, i.e. "China Illustrated". It was a work of encyclopedic breadth, combining material of unequal quality, from  accurate cartography to mythical elements, such as a study of dragons. The work drew heavily on the reports of Jesuits working in China, in particular Michael Boym and Martino Martini.

China Illustrata emphasized the Christian elements of Chinese history, both real and imagined: the book noted the early presence of Nestorian Christians (with a Latin translation of the Nestorian Stele of Xi'an provided by Boym and his Chinese collaborator, Andrew Zheng), but also claimed that the Chinese were descended from the sons of Ham, that Confucius was Hermes Trismegistus/Moses and that the Chinese characters were abstracted hieroglyphs.

In Kircher's system, ideograms were inferior to hieroglyphs because they referred to specific ideas rather than to mysterious complexes of ideas, while the signs of the Maya and Aztecs were yet lower pictograms which referred only to objects. Umberto Eco comments that this idea reflected and supported the ethnocentric European attitude toward Chinese and native American civilizations:

"China was presented not as an unknown barbarian to be defeated but as a prodigal son who should return to the home of the common father". (p. 69)

Biblical studies and exegesis
In 1675, he published Arca Noë, the results of his research on the biblical Ark of Noah —  following the Counter-Reformation, allegorical interpretation was giving way to the study of the Old Testament as literal truth among Scriptural scholars. Kircher analyzed the dimensions of the Ark; based on the number of species known to him (excluding insects and other forms thought to arise spontaneously), he calculated that overcrowding would not have been a problem. He also discussed the logistics of the Ark voyage, speculating on whether extra livestock was brought to feed carnivores and what the daily schedule of feeding and caring for animals must have been.

Other cultural work
Kircher was sent the Voynich Manuscript in 1666 by Johannes Marcus Marci in the hope of Kircher being able to decipher it. The manuscript remained in the Collegio Romano until Victor Emmanuel II of Italy annexed the Papal States in 1870, though scepticism as to the authenticity of the story and of the origin of the manuscript itself exists.  In his Polygraphia Nova (1663), Kircher proposed an artificial universal language.

Physical sciences

Geology

On a visit to southern Italy in 1638, the ever-curious Kircher was lowered into the crater of Vesuvius, then on the brink of eruption, to examine its interior. He was also intrigued by the subterranean rumbling which he heard at the Strait of Messina. His geological and geographical investigations culminated in his Mundus Subterraneus of 1664, in which he suggested that the tides were caused by water moving to and from a subterranean ocean.

Kircher was also puzzled by fossils. He understood that fossils were the remains of animals. He ascribed large bones to giant races of humans. Not all the objects which he was attempting to explain were in fact fossils, hence the diversity of explanations. He interpreted mountain ranges as the Earth's skeletal structures exposed by weathering.

Mundus Subterraneus includes several pages about the legendary island of Atlantis including a map with the Latin caption "Situs Insulae Atlantidis, a Mari olim absorpte ex mente Egyptiorum et Platonis Description," translating as "Site of the island of Atlantis, in the sea, from Egyptian sources and Plato's description."

Biology
In his book Arca Noë, Kircher argued that after the Flood new species were transformed as they moved into different environments, for example, when a deer moved into a colder climate, it became a reindeer. He wrote that many species were hybrids of other species, for example, armadillos from a combination of turtles and porcupines. He also advocated the theory of spontaneous generation. Because of such hypotheses, some historians have held that Kircher was a proto-evolutionist.

Medicine

Kircher took a modern approach to the study of diseases as early as 1646 by using a microscope to investigate the blood of plague victims. In his Scrutinium Pestis of 1658, he observed the presence of "little worms" or "animalcules" in the blood and concluded that the disease was caused by microorganisms. That was correct, although it is likely that what he saw were red or white blood cells and not the plague agent, Yersinia pestis. He also proposed hygienic measures to prevent the spread of disease, such as isolation, quarantine, burning clothes worn by the infected and wearing facemasks to prevent the inhalation of germs.

Technology

In 1646, Kircher published Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, concerning the display of images on a screen using an apparatus similar to the magic lantern developed by Christiaan Huygens and others. Kircher described the construction of a "catoptric lamp" that used reflection to project images on the wall of a darkened room. Although Kircher did not invent the device, he improved it, and suggested methods by which exhibitors could use his device. Much of the significance of his work arises from Kircher's rational approach towards the demystification of projected images.

Previously,  such images had been used in Europe to mimic supernatural appearances (Kircher himself cites the use of displayed images by the rabbis in the court of King Solomon). Kircher stressed that exhibitors should take great care to inform spectators that such images were purely naturalistic, and not magical.

Kircher constructed a magnetic clock, which he explained in his Magnes (1641). The clock had been invented by another Jesuit, Fr. Linus of Liege, and was described by an acquaintance of Line's in 1634. Kircher's patron Peiresc had claimed that the clock's motion supported the Copernican cosmological model, arguing that the magnetic sphere in the clock rotated by the magnetic force of the sun.

Kircher's model disproved that hypothesis, showing that the motion could be produced by a water clock in the base of the device. Although Kircher disputed the Copernican model in his Magnes, supporting instead that of Tycho Brahe, his later Itinerarium exstaticum (1656, revised 1671), presented several systems — including the Copernican — as distinct possibilities. The clock has been reconstructed by Caroline Bouguereau in collaboration with Michael John Gorman and is on display at the Green Library at Stanford University.

The Musurgia Universalis (1650) sets out Kircher's views on music: he believed that the harmony of music reflected the proportions of the universe. The book includes plans for constructing water-powered automatic organs, notations of birdsong and diagrams of musical instruments. One illustration shows the differences between the ears of humans and other animals. In Phonurgia Nova (1673) Kircher considered the possibilities of transmitting music to remote places.

Other machines designed by Kircher include an aeolian harp, automatons such as a statue which spoke and listened via a speaking tube, a perpetual motion machine, and a Katzenklavier ("cat piano"). The Katzenklavier would have driven spikes into the tails of cats, which would yowl to specified pitches, although Kircher is not known to have constructed the instrument.

In Phonurgia Nova, literally "new methods of sound production", Kircher examined acoustic phenomena. He explored the use of horns and cones in amplifying sound for architectural applications. He also examined echoes in rooms using domes of different shapes, including the muffling effect of an elliptical dome from Heidelberg. In one section he explored the therapeutic effects of music in tarantism, a theme from southern Italy.

Combinatorics
Although Kircher's work was not mathematically based, he did develop systems for generating and counting all combinations of a finite collection of objects (i.e., a finite set), based on the previous work of Ramon Llull. His methods and diagrams are discussed in Ars Magna Sciendi, sive Combinatoria, 1669. They include what may be the first recorded drawings of complete bipartite graphs, extending a similar technique used by Llull to visualize complete graphs.  Kircher also employed combinatorics in his Arca Musarithmica, an aleatoric music device capable of composing millions of church hymns by combining randomly selected musical phrases.

Legacy

Scholarly influence
For most of his professional life, Kircher was one of the scientific stars of his world: according to historian Paula Findlen, he was "the first scholar with a global reputation". His importance was twofold: to the results of his own experiments and research he added information gleaned from his correspondence with over 760 scientists, physicians and above all his fellow Jesuits in all parts of the globe. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls him a "one-man intellectual clearing house". His works, illustrated to his orders, were extremely popular, and he was the first scientist to be able to support himself through the sale of his books. His near-exact contemporary, the English philosopher-physician, Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82) collected his books avidly while his eldest son Edward Browne in 1665 visited the Jesuit priest resident at Rome. Towards the end of Kircher's life, however, his stock fell, as the rationalist Cartesian approach began to dominate (Descartes himself described Kircher as "more quacksalver than savant").

Cultural legacy
Kircher was largely neglected until the late 20th century. One writer attributes his rediscovery to the similarities between his eclectic approach and postmodernism.

As few of Kircher's works have been translated, the contemporary emphasis has been on their aesthetic qualities rather than their actual content, and a succession of exhibitions have highlighted the beauty of their illustrations. Historian Anthony Grafton has said that "the staggeringly strange dark continent of Kircher's work [is] the setting for a Borges story that was never written", while Umberto Eco has written about Kircher in his novel The Island of the Day Before, as well as in his non-fiction works The Search for the Perfect Language and Serendipities. In the historical novel Imprimatur by Monaldi & Sorti (2002), Kircher plays a major role. Shortly after his death, some travelers are locked up in a hotel in Baroque Rome by the papal health authorities because of an epidemic of plague. Kircher's theory about the healing power of music is remembered by the protagonists in various flashbacks and finally provides the key to the puzzle. In Where Tigers Are At Home, by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès, the protagonist works on a  translation of a bogus 17th-century biography of  Kircher. The contemporary artist Cybèle Varela has paid tribute to Kircher in her exhibition Ad Sidera per Athanasius Kircher, held in the , in the same place where the Museum Kircherianum was.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles has a hall dedicated to the life of Kircher. His ethnographic collection is in the Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome.

John Glassie's book, A Man of Misconceptions, traces connections between Kircher and figures such as Gianlorenzo Bernini, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton. It also suggests influences on Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Anton Mesmer, Jules Verne, and Marcel Duchamp.

In the end, Glassie writes, Kircher should be acknowledged "for his effort to know everything and to share everything he knew, for asking a thousand questions about the world around him, and for getting so many others to ask questions about his answers; for stimulating, as well as confounding and inadvertently amusing, so many minds; for having been a source of so many ideas—right, wrong, half-right, half-baked, ridiculous, beautiful, and all-encompassing."

In popular culture
Kircher's life and research are central to the plot of James Rollin's 2015 novel The Bone Labyrinth.

He is also mentioned in The Book of Life, the third book in the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness.

He further appears in two separate episodes in Daniel Kehlmann's novel Tyll (2017).

The permanent exhibition The World Is Bound with Secret Knots at the Museum of Jurassic Technology is based on the life and work of Kircher and uses elaborate 3D technology to highlight the magical quality of many of his ideas and images.

He is also a character (though largely off-stage, he is often mentioned by other characters) in the "Ring of Fire" alternate history series (published by Baen). In it, he was sent back to Germany in the early 1630s, where he became the unofficial pastor of the Catholic church in the temporally-transplanted town of Grantville, Thuringia-Franconia.

Kircher features as a favourite author of Father Chmielowski in Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob.

Bibliography
Kircher's principal works, in chronological order, are:

See also
Abacus Harmonicus
Decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs
List of Jesuit scientists
List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
Library of Sir Thomas Browne
Filippo Bonanni, S.J., pupil of Kircher
Cat organ, hypothetical musical instrument invented by Kircher

Notes

References

Further reading
Edward Chaney: "Roma Britannica and the Cultural Memory of Egypt: Lord Arundel and the Obelisk of Domitian", in Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, eds. D. Marshall, K. Wolfe and S. Russell, British School at Rome, 2011, pp. 147–70.
Umberto Eco: Serendipities: Language and Lunacy. Columbia University Press (1998). .
Paula Findlen: Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything. New York, Routledge, 2004. .
 John Edward Fletcher: A brief survey of the unpublished correspondence of Athanasius Kircher S J. (1602–80), in: Manuscripta, XIII, St. Louis, 1969, pp. 150–60.
 John Edward Fletcher: Johann Marcus Marci writes to Athanasius Kircher. Janus, Leyden, LIX (1972), pp. 97–118.
 John Edward Fletcher: Athanasius Kircher und seine Beziehungen zum gelehrten Europa seiner Zeit. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung, Band 17, 1988.
 John Edward Fletcher: Athanasius Kircher : A Man Under Pressure. 1988
 John Edward Fletcher: Athanasius Kircher And Duke August Of Brunswick-Lüneberg : A Chronicle Of Friendship. 1988
 John Edward Fletcher: Athanasius Kircher And His Correspondence. 1988
 John Edward Fletcher: A Study of the Life and Works of Athanasius Kircher, 'Germanus Incredibilis'. Edited by Elizabeth Fletcher. Brill Publications, Amsterdam, 2011.
John Glassie, Athanasius, Underground The Public Domain Review, November 1, 2012.
John Glassie: A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change. New York, Riverhead, 2012. .
Godwin, Joscelyn: Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World: The Life and Work of the Last Man to Search for Universal Knowledge. Inner Traditions (2009).
Michael John Gorman, Between the Demonic and the Miraculous: Athanasius Kircher and the Baroque Culture of Machines, unabridged version of essay published in The Great Art of Knowing: The Baroque Encyclopedia of Athanasius Kircher, ed. Daniel Stolzenberg, Stanford: Stanford University Libraries, 2001, pp. 59–70.
Michael John Gorman, The Angel and the Compass: Athanasius Kircher's Magnetic Geography, in Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, New York, Routledge, 2004, pp. 229–249.
 Nathalie Lallemand-Buyssens, « Les acquisitions d'Athanasius Kircher au musée du Collège Romain à la lumière de documents inédits », in Storia dell'Arte, no. 133, oct.–déc. 2012, pp. 103–125.
Caterina Marrone, I geroglifici fantastici di Athanasius Kircher, Viterbo: Nuovi Equilibri, 2002, p. 166, .
Caterina Marrone, Le lingue utopiche, Viterbo: Nuovi Equilibri, 2004 [1995], p. 338 .

Tiziana Pangrazi, La Musurgia Universalis di Athanasius Kircher, Firenze: Olschki 2009, pp. 206, .
Schmidt, Edward W. :The Last Renaissance Man: Athanasius Kircher, SJ. Company: The World of Jesuits and Their Friends. 19(2), Winter 2001–2002.
Stolzenberg, Daniel. Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.  (10).  (13).
Jean-Pierre Thiollet, Je m'appelle Byblos, Paris, H & D, 2005 (p. 254). .
Giunia Totaro, L'autobiographie d'Athanasius Kircher. L'écriture d'un jésuite entre vérité et invention au seuil de l'œuvre. Introduction et traduction française et italienne, Bern: Peter Lang 2009, p. 430 .
Cybèle Varela: Ad Sidera per Athanasius Kircher. Rome, Gangemi, 2008.
Zielinski, Siegfried. Deep Time of the Media. The MIT Press (April 30, 2008) . pp. 113–157.

External links

Works by Kircher
Athanasius Kircher Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbütteler Digitale Bibliothek... search for Athanasius Kircher)
The Correspondence of Athanasius Kircher in EMLO
Athanasius Kircher ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Online)
Athanasius Kircher Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Athanasius Kircher Gallica
Athanasius Kircher Titles; Athanasius Kircher as author books.google.com
Athanasius Kircher archive.org
Athanasius Kircher Munich Digitisation Centre (MDZ)
Athanasius Kircher University of Strasbourg
Ars magna lucis et umbrae in decem libros digesta (1646) in the digital collections of the Linda Hall Library
Iter exstaticum coeleste, quo mundi opificium... (1660) in the digital collections of the Linda Hall Library
Mundus subterraneus (1665) in the digital collections of the Linda Hall Library
Arca Noë (1675) in the digital collections of the Linda Hall Library
 An English translation of China Illustrata appearing as an "Appendix" in: Johan Nieuhof, An embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, emperor of China : delivered by their excellencies Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keyzer, at his imperial city of Peking wherein the cities, towns, villages, ports, rivers, &c. in their passages from Canton to Peking are ingeniously described by John Nieuhoff ; also an epistle of Father John Adams, their antagonist, concerning the whole negotiation ; with an appendix of several remarks taken out of Father Athanasius Kircher ; Englished and set forth with their several sculptures by John Ogilby (1673),

Sources
Athanasius Kircher Project at Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University
Athanasius Kircher, Dude of Wonders Retrieved Mar. 9, 2009.
Athanasius Kircher Image Gallery Retrieved Mar. 9, 2009.
Athanasius Kircher's Magnetic Clock Internet Archive.

Catholic Encyclopedia Retrieved Oct. 16, 2004.
Glasgow University Library: Musurgia Universalis Retrieved Oct. 16, 2004.
Infoplease: Athanasius Kircher Retrieved Oct. 16, 2004.
The Correspondence of Athanasius Kircher in EMLO
The Correspondence of Athanasius Kircher Internet Archive

The Galileo Project Retrieved Oct. 16, 2004.
Owners of the Voynich Manuscript Retrieved Feb. 3, 2005.
The World is Bound With Secret Knots Retrieved Oct. 16, 2004.
Voynich MS – Biographies Retrieved Oct. 16, 2004.

Other links
Fairfield University: Athanasius Kircher
An extensive subcategorized link directory about A. Kircher
Geology and A. Kircher (PDF files, in German)
The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California includes models of Kircher's inventions.
University of Lucerne, Switzerland: Kircher-research project (in German)
International Bibliography of Athanasius Kircher Research
Kircherianum Virtuale: A link directory about Kircher and related subjects
Athanasius Kircher: Contains a short biography, an English translation of Kirchers most well-known work about the Magic Lantern and of a letter from Kircher to a Swedish prince
Athanasius Kircher Project at Stanford University. Includes high-quality scans of many illustrations from his books.

1600s births
1680 deaths
17th-century German Jesuits
Christian Hebraists
Christian Kabbalists
Combinatorics
Coptologists
German Egyptologists
17th-century German inventors
German male non-fiction writers
German music theorists
German philologists
17th-century German scientists
German sinologists
Jesuit scientists
Museologists
People from Wartburgkreis
Academic staff of the Pontifical Gregorian University
Proto-evolutionary biologists
17th-century German mathematicians
Archaeologists from Thuringia

Athanasius Kircher


The Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre (NASC) provides seed and information resources to the International Arabidopsis Genome Project and the wider research community. It is based in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham's Sutton Bonington Campus, in the English county of Nottinghamshire.

It holds more than 800,000 different stocks of seed representing nearly a million genotypes  and provided a Genechip service from 2002-2013. Newly generated research stocks, mutants or lines of Arabidopsis thaliana are donated as samples to NASC where they are maintained and thus are made available to scientists worldwide.

Established in 1990  as part of the Plant Molecular Biology initiative of the Agricultural and Food Research Council (AFRC), the Centre is currently funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the University of Nottingham.

The Stock Centre was founded by Dr Bernard Mulligan; Directed from 1991 to 1999 by Dr Mary Anderson and from 1999–present by Prof. Sean Tobias May.

NASC's activities are coordinated with those of the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center, (ABRC) based at Ohio State University, USA. This facilitates a unified and efficient service for the research community.

The stock centres have a distribution agreement. NASC distributes to Europe and ABRC distributes to the Americas. Laboratories in other locations may establish their primary affiliation with either centre.

When NASC started in 1990 it inherited hundreds of stocks from the Arabidopsis Information Service (AIS) - Started by Robbelen in 1965 and continued by Burger (1971), Kranz (1978), and Kranz and Kirchheim (1981, 1987), the AIS donated its complement of stocks listed in the 24th edition of the AIS stock book. Stock numbers held at NASC/ABRC in the 1990s then increased steadily by many hundreds mainly due to new technologies of mass transformation (e.g. seed transformation by Ken Feldmann, University of Arizona); but also due to many new mutagenesis programs encouraged by the development of Arabidopsis as a major model organism accompanied by generous donations of seed from many international members of the community.

In 1999 NASC received a large influx of thousands of stocks generated through T-DNA transformation and donated by Pelletier and Bechtold from INRA. This was the first of many very large populations that came out of the community and which took the complement of stocks held by the stock centres into the hundreds of thousands. The largest (most populous) seed donations have been the GABI-kat lines from Germany via Bernd Weisshaar; and the SALK lines from Joe Ecker. Between them, these two populations account for more than half of all stocks held by the stock centres today.

References

External links
NASC Tweets
NASC (arabidopsis.info)
Weedsworld Archive

1991 establishments in England
Arabidopsis thaliana
Agricultural organisations based in England
Organisations based in Nottingham
Rushcliffe
Science and technology in Nottinghamshire
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The Mexican Secretariat of Public Security or Secretariat of Public Safety, also known as Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Public Safety (, SSP), was the federal ministry of the Mexican Executive Cabinet that aimed to preserve freedom, order, and public peace and safeguard the integrity and rights of the people. The Assistant Attorney General uses the Powers of the Union to prevent the commission of crimes, develop public security policies of the Federal Executive, propose policies on crime, administer the federal prison system, and administer justice to juvenile offenders based on the Organic Law of the Federal Public Administration and other federal laws, regulations, decrees, agreements, and orders of the President of the Republic. It had its headquarters in Álvaro Obregón, Mexico City.

Then-President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto announced on November 15, 2012, that he would eliminate the Secretariat of Public Security, as part of his planned administrative reforms, after taking office. It was dissolved on January 3, 2013, and was replaced by the "National Security Commission" (), an internal organ of the Secretariat of the Interior as seen on its website.

Coinciding with new president Andrés Manuel López Obrador taking office, a new Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection was established in 2018.

Functions
The Secretariat will plan and conduct their activities in accordance with the objectives, strategies and priorities, National Development Plans and the National Program are issued by the Head of the Federal Executive. According to Organic Law of the Federal Civil Service in its 'Article 30a' has an office on the following main functions, to develop security policies and propose public policy on crime at the federal level, including the rules, instruments and actions to effectively prevent the commission of crimes, to propose Federal Executive measures to ensure consistency of policy between the criminal divisions of the federal public service, chairing the National Council for Public Security, at the Council of National Security, policies, actions and strategies of coordination in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice policy for the entire national territory, dealing expeditiously with complaints and citizens' complaints regarding the exercise of its powers, organize, manage, administer and monitor the PFP and to ensure the honest performance of their staff and implement its disciplinary system, safeguard the integrity and heritage of the people, prevent the commission of federal crimes, and to preserve the Freedom, order and public peace, establish a system to collect, analyze, examine and process information for the prevention of crime, using methods that ensure strict adherence to human rights and run the penalties for federal crimes and to administer the federal prison system, as well as organize and conduct activities to support the released.

Organization
For the study, planning, and dispatching of the matters within its competence, the Secretariat will be composed of the following administrative units and bodies:

 I. Subsecretary Strategy and Police Intelligence;
 II. Subsecretary Prevention, Linkage and Human Rights;
 III. Subsecretary Federal Prison System;
 IV. Subsecretary Assessment and Institutional Development;
 V. Major Official;
 VI. General Coordination of Legal Affairs;
 VII. General Coordination of Mexico Shelf;
 VIII. General Directorate of Social Communication;
 IX. Directorate General for International Affairs;
 X. Directorate General for Coordination and Development of State and Municipal police;
 XI. Directorate General of Private Security;
 XII. General Crime Prevention;
 XIII. DG Entailment and Civic Participation;
 XIV. Directorate General of Human Rights;
 XV. General Directorate of Standardization and Development Facility;
 XVI. General Directorate of Security Transfer of Offenders and Prison;
 XVII. Directorate General of Planning and Evaluation;
 XVIII. Directorate General of Transparency and Regulatory Improvement;
 XIX. General Directorate of Professional Police Career and regulations;
 XX. Directorate General of Planning and Budget Organization;
 XXI. Directorate General of Human Resources;
 XXII. Department of Material Resources and General Services;
 XXIII. Directorate General of Public Works and Services;
 XXIV. Directorate General of Administrative Systems and
 XXV. Decentralized administrative bodies:
 a) Federal Police;
 b) Executive Secretary of the National System of Public Security;
 c) Prevention and Social Rehabilitation and
 d) Council of Children.

List of secretaries
 President Vicente Fox Quesada
 (2000 - 2004) : Alejandro Gertz Manero
 (2004 - 2005) : Ramón Martín Huerta
 (2005 - 2006) : Eduardo Medina Mora
 President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
 (2006 - 2012): Genaro García Luna
 President Enrique Peña Nieto
 (2012 - 2013): Manuel Mondragón y Kalb

Sources

External links
Official Website of Public Security
Official site of the President's Cabinet

Public Safety
2000 establishments in Mexico
2013 disestablishments in Mexico

Secretariat of Public Security


Samaveda is third in the usual order of the four Vedas, the ancient core Hindu scriptures. It is the second oldest Veda . It is written in sanskrit
There are 1825 verses (except 75 verses, all have been taken from Rigveda)
There are two Upanishads embedded in Samaveda – Chandogya Upanishad and Kena Upanishad
The Samaveda is considered as the root of the Indian classical music and dance
It is considered as the storehouse of the melodious chants
Though it has lesser verses than Rigveda, however, its texts are larger
There are three recensions of the text of the Samaveda – Kauthuma, Raṇayaniya and Jaimaniya
Samaveda is categorised into two parts – Part-I includes melodies called Gana & Part-II includes three verses book called Archika.
Samaveda Samhita is not meant to be read as a text, it is like a musical score sheet that must be heard.

Vedas

Samaveda


Freetown is the capital city of the African country of Sierra Leone. With a population of  951,000 people, it is the largest city in that country. The city is a port on the Freetown Peninsula on the Atlantic coast. The port is a very important part of the economy of Freetown. It handles the main exports of the country. Industries include fish, rice, petroleum, and making cigarettes.

History
The area was first settled in 1787 by 400 freed former slaves and Black American Loyalists sent from London. Many of these men had joined the British Army because the British promised to free them if they fought the American colonists. Before that time it was said to be a slave market. These people created the 'Province of Freetown' on land bought from local Temne leaders. After many of these original settlers died from disease, it was burnt by the local people in 1790.

The Sierra Leone Company tried to settle the area again in 1792. They resettled Freetown with 1,100 former slaves and Loyalists from Nova Scotia. Many of these people were born in the colonial United States. They were led by former slave Thomas Peters. Around 500 free Jamaican Maroons joined them in 1800.

The city survived being attacked by the French in 1794. In 1800 the people revolted but the British retook control.  From 1808 to 1874, the city was the capital of British West Africa.  The city grew quickly as many freed slaves came to live there. African soldiers who had fought for Britain in the Napoleonic Wars also came to live in Freetown.  During World War II, Britain had a naval base at Freetown.  Descendants of the freed slaves, called Creoles, have a large role in the city, even though they are only a small amount of the population.

The city had much fighting in the late 1990s. In 1998, it was captured by ECOWAS soldiers who were trying to make Ahmad Tejan Kabbah the President again.

Features
One of Freetown's most most known features is its famous cotton tree. The cotton tree is said to have been in the same position since colonists came to the area in 1787. At that time, the tree was still a young sapling. It now stands outside the Freetown Museum.

Notable buildings in the city include Freetown Law Courts, the Slave Gate and Portuguese Steps, St John's Maroon Church (built around 1820), St George's Cathedral (completed in 1828), Foulah Town Mosque (built in the 1830s) and the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart Cathedral.  Also in Freetown are many beaches and markets, and the Sierra Leone Museum.

The city is the home of Fourah Bay College and the Njala University college.

Lungi International Airport  is the international airport of Sierra Leone. Freetown also has a heliport on Aberdeen Island. It connects the city with the airport.  There is a helicopter, hovercraft and ferry-service from the city to the airport.

References

Other websites

 Sierra Leone National Tourist Board
 LiveFromFreetown
 Cry Freetown
 FreeTown photos
 Lungi International Airport

Cities in Sierra Leone
National capitals in Africa
1792 establishments
Establishments in Africa

Freetown


An illustrator is an artist who draws. The drawings can be on books, internet webpages or other things. They can describe ideas or objects that are hard to describe with just words. A cartoon illustration can make a humorous essay funnier. Illustrators also helped greatly in times when many people could not read.

Illustrator