Eero Saarinen (August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century. He was known for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.

Biography
Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father, Eliel Saarinen. Saarinen emigrated to the United States of America in 1923 at the age of thirteen. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where his father was a teacher at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He took courses in sculpture and furniture design there. He had a close relationship with fellow students Charles and Ray Eames. He became good friends with Florence Knoll (née Schust).

Beginning in September 1929, he studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France. He then studied at the Yale School of Architecture until 1934. Later, he toured Europe and North Africa for a year and returned for a year to his native Finland. He returned to Cranbrook to work for his father and teach at the academy. He became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1940. Saarinen was recruited by his friend, who was also an architect, to join the military service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Saarinen was assigned to draw illustrations for bomb disassembly manuals and to provide designs for the Situation Room in the White House. Saarinen worked full time for the OSS until 1944. After his father's death in 1950, Saarinen founded his own architect's office, "Eero Saarinen and Associates".  Eero Saarinen died of a brain tumor in 1961 at the age of 51.

Personal life
He married the sculptor Lilian Swann Saarinen. They divorced in 1954. He had two children from his first marriage, Eric and Susan. Saarinen then married Aline Bernstein Louchheim (March 25, 1914 – July 13, 1972), an art critic at The New York Times. They had a son, Eames, named after his collaborator Charles Eames.

Work

Furniture
Saarinen first received critical recognition, while still working for his father, for a chair designed together with Charles Eames for the "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition in 1940, for which they received first prize. The "Tulip Chair", like all other Saarinen chairs, was taken into production by the Knoll furniture company, founded by Hans Knoll, who married Saarinen family friend Florence (Schust) Knoll.

During his long association with Knoll he designed many important pieces of furniture including the "Grasshopper" lounge chair and ottoman (1946), the "Womb" chair and ottoman (1948), the "Womb" settee (1950), side and arm chairs (1948–1950), and his most famous "Tulip" or "Pedestal" group (1956), which featured side and arm chairs, dining, coffee and side tables, as well as a stool. All of these designs were highly successful except for the "Grasshopper" lounge chair, which, although in production through 1965, was not a big success.

Buildings
One of Saarinen's earliest works to receive international acclaim is the Crow Island School in Winnetka, Illinois (1940).

While Saarinen was still working for his father, he took first prize in the 1948 competition for the design of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis. His arch not completed until the 1960s. The competition award was mistakenly sent to his father.

The first major work by Saarinen, in collaboration with his father, was the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It follows the rationalist design Miesian style: incorporating steel and glass, but with the added accent of panels in two shades of blue. The GM technical center was constructed in 1956, with Saarinen using models. These models allowed him to share his ideas with others, and gather input from other professionals. With the success of the scheme, Saarinen was then invited by other major American corporations to design their new headquarters: these included John Deere, IBM, and CBS. Despite their rationality, however, the interiors usually contained more dramatic sweeping staircases, as well as furniture designed by Saarinen, such as the Pedestal Series. In the 1950s he began to receive more commissions from American universities for campus designs and individual buildings; these include the Noyes dormitory at Vassar. Saarinen designed an ice rink, Ingalls Rink, and Ezra Stiles College at Yale University.

He served on the jury for the Sydney Opera House commission and was crucial in the selection of the  design by Jørn Utzon.

Saarinen's architectural firm was called "Eero Saarinen and Associates". He was the principal partner from 1950 until his death in 1961. The firm was initially known as "Saarinen, Swansen and Associates", headed by Eliel Saarinen and Robert Swansen from the late 1930s until Eliel's death in 1950. The firm was located in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan until 1961 when the practice was moved to Hamden, Connecticut. Under Eero Saarinen, the firm carried out many of its most important works, including the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (Gateway Arch) in St. Louis, Missouri, the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport that he worked on with Charles J. Parise, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C.. Many of these projects use catenary curves in their structural designs. Saarinen designed one of the best-known thin-shell concrete structures in America, the Kresge Auditorium (MIT). Another thin-shell structure that he created is the Ingalls Rink (Yale University), which has suspension cables connected to a single concrete backbone and is nicknamed "the whale." He is known for the TWA Flight Center, which represents the culmination of his previous designs and demonstrates his expressionism and the technical marvel in concrete shells.

Eero worked with his father, mother and sister designing elements of the Cranbrook campus in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, including the Cranbrook School, Kingswood School, the Cranbrook Art Academy and the Cranbrook Science Institute. Eero's leaded glass designs are a prominent feature of these buildings throughout the campus.
http://www.arkitekturanyc.com/cat3.htm

Saarinen died while undergoing an operation for a brain tumor at the age of 51. His widow, Aline, died of the same disease. His partners, Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, completed his ten remaining projects, including the St. Louis Arch. Afterwards, the name of the firm was changed to "Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates", or Roche-Dinkeloo.

Reputation
Eero Saarinen was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1952. He is also a winner of the AIA Gold Medal.

Saarinen is now considered one of the masters of American 20th Century architecture. There has been more interest in Saarinen's work in recent years, including a major exhibition and several books. This is partly due to the Roche and Dinkeloo office having donated their Saarinen archives to Yale University, but also because Saarinen's work seems to fit in with present-day concerns about pluralism of styles. He was criticized in his own time—most vociferously by critic Vincent Scully—for having no identifiable style; one explanation for this is that Saarinen adapted his modernist vision to each individual client and project, which were never exactly the same.

Works

 Remodelling of the Swedish Theatre, Helsinki (with Jarl Eklund)
 Concordia Senior College campus, now Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana
 The Law School at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
 The Miller House, Columbus, Indiana.
 Berkshire Music Center, Opera Shed Tanglewood, Massachusetts.
Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri
 TWA Terminal at JFK International Airport
 Washington Dulles International Airport
 Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel at MIT
 Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in Holmdel, New Jersey
 Case Study House #9, the John Entenza House (collaboration with Charles Eames)
 CBS Building (Black Rock) New York
 Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center, New York
 General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan
 US Embassies in Oslo and London
 North Christian Church in Columbus, Indiana
 Law School and Woodward Court dormitory (demolished 2002) at the University of Chicago
 Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, New York; designed in collaboration with his father Eliel Saarinen
 Ezra Stiles College, Morse College, and Ingalls Rink (affectionately known as "The Whale") at Yale University
 Noyes House dormitory at Vassar College. Its lounge is affectionately called the Jetsons lounge because of its curved architecture.
 Hill College House at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally a women's dormitory, the building was made with a "drawbridge" to symbolically keep men out.
 IBM Pavilion, 1964-1965 New York World's Fair
 IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York
 IBM Rochester, a plant in Rochester, Minnesota
 John Deere World Headquarters, Moline, Illinois
 The "Tulip chair", popularized by its use on the original Star Trek television series (1966–69).
 The "Womb" chair
 North Campus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
 Earl V. Moore Building, housing the University of Michigan School of Music
 East Terminal at Ellinikon International Airport, Athens Greece, posthum finished.
 Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
 Medbury, Fitch and Harvey Ingham Halls, Quadrangle Dormitories ("The Quads"), Hubbell Dining Hall, and Oreon E. Scott Chapel at Drake University in Des Moines, IA* Firestone Baars Chapel at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
 Crow Island School

Related pages
Eero Saarinen structures
Thin-shell structureTensile architecture
List of notable brain tumor patients

References

Further reading
A&E with Richard Guy Wilson, Ph.D.,(2000). America's Castles: Newspaper Moguls, Pittock Mansion, Cranbrook House & Gardens, The American Swedish Institute. A&E Television Network.

 *

An exhibition of Saarinen's work, Eero Saarinen: Realizing American Utopia, has been organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York in collaboration with Yale School of Architecture and the Museum of Finnish Architecture. The exhibition will tour in Europe and the USA from 2006 to 2010. The exhibition is accompanied by the book Eero Saarinen. Shaping the Future.

In 1973, the Aline and Eero Saarinen papers were donated to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, by Charles Alan, Aline Saarinen's brother and executor of her estate.  In 2006, these primary source documents on the couple were digitized in their entirely and posted online on the Archives' website.

Other websites

 http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Crow_Island_School.html
 Eero Saarinen letter to Florence Knoll Bassett, 1935-1936 , Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Lines of Authority  Time Magazine retrospective article
Eero Saarinen - Design Dictionary Illustrated article about Eero Saarinen
Saarinen rising: A much-maligned modernist finally gets his due
Great buildings online entry
Earl V. Moore Building  School building designed by Eero Saarinen
860 photos of 19 buildings designed by Saarinen from the Balthazar Korab Collection at the Library of Congress
Saarinen's Village: The Concordia Campus Through Time
 Digital image database at the Yale University Library, contains 1296 images and drawings from Saarinen's archives
 Finding aid to the Eero Saarinen Collection at Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
 Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future  The 50th Anniversary Exhibition of the Museum of Finnish Architecture
 Saarinen Tulip Chair
 Eero Saarinen: Realizing American Utopia
 Eero Saarinen Exhibitions at Cranbrook Art Museum
National Building Museum
 http://www.nbm.org/about-us/publications-news/blueprints/eero-saarinen.html

American architects
Cancer deaths in Michigan
Deaths from brain cancer
Finnish artists
Naturalized citizens of the United States
1910 births
1961 deaths
People from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Eero Saarinen


Jacques Félix Duban () (14 October 1798, Paris – 8 October 1870, Bordeaux) was a French architect, the contemporary of Jacques Ignace Hittorff and Henri Labrouste.

Life and career
Duban won the Prix de Rome in 1823, the most prestigious award of the École des Beaux-Arts.  He was much influenced by his five-year stay in Italy, particularly his sense of color, influenced by the polychrome paintings of ancient Pompeii, newly uncovered Etruscan tombs, and the tradition of the great decorations painted in the Renaissance.

By far Duban's most visible work is the main building of the École, undertaken in 1830.  The main building, the Palace of Studies, was designed with integral paintings and interior sculpture for artists' education.  His redesign and alignment of the entire campus frames the main building from the entrance on Rue Bonaparte.  With other expansions towards the Seine, this work was completed around 1861.

Duban was elected as member of the Academy of Fine Arts in 1854.  Among his many students was Charles-Auguste Questel; he was the brother-in-law of fellow architect François Debret.

Work

 Restoration of the castles of Château de Blois, Château de Gaillon, and Château de Dampierre
 Completion and restoration of the Apollo Gallery in the Louvre, beginning in 1848. It reflects and reinforces its structure and repairs coverage that protects the valuable decorated barrel vault, built in 1661 on the orders of the young Louis XIV.
 Restoration of the Sainte-Chapelle, with Jean-Baptiste Antoine Lassus and a young Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
 Restoration of various historical monuments and private monuments

External links

1798 births
1870 deaths
19th-century French architects
Prix de Rome for architecture
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
Members of the Académie des beaux-arts
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
Architects from Paris

Félix Duban


Ezio Domenico Flagello (January 28, 1931 – March 19, 2009) was born in New York City to Italian Americans.  He sang at the Metropolitan Opera from 1957 to 1984; a bass particularly associated with the Italian repertory.

Career
Flagello first studied at the Manhattan School of Musicwhere he was a pupil of Friedrich Schorr and John Brownleeand then at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory, Rome, with Luigi Ricci.

Flagello made his professional debut at the Empire State Festival, in Ellenville, New York in 1955, as Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut on November 9, 1957, as the Jailer in Tosca. Four days later, as a last minute replacement, he sang Leporello in Don Giovanni. He quickly became a favorite with the audience in comic roles, such as Bartolo in The Barber of Seville and Dulcamara in Elisir d'amore, though he also excelled in more lyrical and dramatic repertory. In his 27 seasons with the company, he sang, notably, Rodolfo in La sonnambula, Giorgio in I puritani, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Silva in Ernani, Wurm in Luisa Miller, Sparafucile in Rigoletto, Fra Melitone in La forza del destino, Philippe II in Don Carlos, Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Timur in Turandot, and other roles. He created the role of Enobarbus in Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center on September 16, 1966.

Flagello possessed a dark and very rich voice with a remarkable upper register extending to high A. He left an impressive discography which includes Così fan tutte, opposite Leontyne Price, Tatiana Troyanos, George Shirley, Sherrill Milnes, under Erich Leinsdorf, Lucrezia Borgia, opposite Montserrat Caballé, Alfredo Kraus, Shirley Verrett, Lucia di Lammermoor and Luisa Miller, both opposite Anna Moffo and Carlo Bergonzi, Rigoletto, opposite Robert Merrill and under  Georg Solti, Ernani, Ballo in maschera, Forza del destino, all opposite Leontyne Price. He also recorded Handel's Alcina and Bellini's I Puritani, both opposite Joan Sutherland. He also interpreted the role of Harapha in the famous Archiv recording of Handel's oratorio Samson (1968).

Flagello also enjoyed a successful international career, appearing frequently in Vienna, Milan, Berlin, London, and other places. In addition to his operatic career, he had a small role in the flashback sequences in The Godfather Part II (1974) as an impresario threatened by Don Fanucci. Ezio Flagello retired from the stage in 1987. He was the brother of the composer Nicolas Flagello. He was married to Italian-American writer Anna Mione, with whom he had four children. He died at his Palm Bay, Florida home on March 19, 2009.

Filmography

References
 The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia, edited by David Hamilton, (Simon & Schuster, New York 1987).
 The Complete Dictionary of Opera & Operetta, James Anderson, (Wings Books, 1993)

1931 births
2009 deaths
20th-century American male opera singers
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia alumni
American operatic basses
Burials at Kensico Cemetery
Classical musicians from Florida
Classical musicians from New York (state)
Grammy Award winners
People from Palm Bay, Florida
Singers from Florida
Singers from New York City

Ezio Flagello


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration (something said in an important way) by the United Nations General Assembly. It talks about basic human rights -- rights that all people have just because they are human. It was adopted (agreed to) by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

The UDHR (initialism for Universal Declaration of Human Rights) is translated into over 300 languages. This is more languages than any other document, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Important ideas

The UDHR may be broken into 30 parts or articles. Each article says one idea about human rights. Most people think these are the most important ideas:

 All people are born free and equal, because they have reason and conscience.
 Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and security of their person.
 Everyone should be protected from any kind of discrimination.
 Everyone has a right to have a nationality and change one's nationality.
 Everyone has a right to an education.
 Everyone has a right to get a job.
 Everyone has a right to vote and take part in the government of one's own country.
 Everyone has a right to take part in cultural life—to choose a way of life.
 No person may be tortured, or treated in a cruel or unkind way.
 Everyone has the right to seek and gain asylum from persecution.
 Everyone has a right to have ideas or opinions, to decide what is right and what is wrong, and to choose a religion.
 Everyone has a right to speak or write freely and right to join a peaceful group to express one's opinion.
 Everyone has a right to security if suffering unemployment, disease, disability, old age or loss of a partner.
 Everyone has duties to the community where one's personality can be developed freely.
 No one can use the Declaration as a reason to take away these rights and freedoms.

Rights
Below is a simplified list of all of the UDHR rights.

1. We Are All Born Free & Equal. We are all born free. We all have our own thoughts and ideas. We should all be treated in the same way.

2. Don't Discriminate. These rights belong to everybody, whatever our differences.

3. The Right to Life. We all have the right to life, and to live in freedom and safety.

4. No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave.

5. No Torture. Nobody has any right to hurt us or to torture us.

6. You Have Rights No Matter Where You Go. I am a person just like you!

7. We're All Equal Before the Law. The law is the same for everyone. It must treat us all fairly.

8. Your Human Rights Are Protected by Law. We can all ask for the law to help us when we are not treated fairly.

9. No Unfair Detainment. Nobody has the right to put us in prison without good reason and keep us there, or to send us away from our country.

10. The Right to Trial. If we are put on trial this should be in public. The people who try us should not let anyone tell them what to do.

11. We're Always Innocent Till Proven Guilty. Nobody should be blamed for doing something until it is proven. When people say we did a bad thing we have the right to show it is not true.

12. The Right to Privacy. Nobody should try to harm our good name. Nobody has the right to come into our home, open our letters, or bother us or our family without a good reason.

13. Freedom to Move. We all have the right to go where we want in our own country and to travel as we wish.

14. The Right to Seek a Safe Place to Live. If we are frightened of being badly treated in our own country, we all have the right to run away to another country to be safe.

15. Right to a Nationality. We all have the right to belong to a country.

16. Marriage and Family. Every grown-up has the right to marry and have a family if they want to. Men and women have the same rights when they are married, and when they are separated.

17. The Right to Your Own Things. Everyone has the right to own things or share them. Nobody should take our things from us without a good reason.

18. Freedom of Thought. We all have the right to believe in what we want to believe, to have a religion, or to change it if we want.

19. Freedom of Expression. We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people.

20. The Right to Public Assembly. We all have the right to meet our friends and to work together in peace to defend our rights. Nobody can make us join a group if we don't want to.

21. The Right to Democracy. We all have the right to take part in the government of our country. Every grown-up should be allowed to choose their own leaders.

22. Social Security. We all have the right to affordable housing, medicine, education, and childcare, enough money to live on and medical help if we are ill or old.

23. Workers' Rights. Every grown-up has the right to do a job, to a fair wage for their work, and to join a trade union.

24. The Right to Play. We all have the right to rest from work and to relax.

25. Food and Shelter for All. We all have the right to a good life. Mothers and children, people who are old, unemployed or disabled, and all people have the right to be cared for.

26. The Right to Education. Education is a right. Our parents can choose what we learn.

27. Copyright. Copyright is a special law that protects one's own artistic creations and writings; others cannot make copies without permission. We all have the right to our own way of life and to enjoy the good things that art, science and learning bring.

28. A Fair and Free World. There must be proper order so we can all enjoy rights and freedoms in our own country and all over the world.

29. Responsibility. We have a duty to other people, and we should protect their rights and freedoms.

30. No One Can Take Away Your Human Rights.

Criticism
The United Nations Human Development Report (UNHDR) has been criticised by different people. Mainly Islamic countries have pointed out that its understanding is mainly that of Christians or Jews. Muslims could not implement certain parts of the declaration, without trespassing Islamic law. On 30 June 2000, Muslim nations that are members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference officially resolved to support the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, an alternative document that says people have  "freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari'ah".

References

Other websites
Text of the UDHR at the United Nations website explained in Plain English
Text of the UDHR at the United Nations website

United Nations
1948
Human rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights


Vltava is a river which flows through the Czech Republic and its capital city, Prague. It starts as two small springs and ends at the Elbe. Composer Bedřich Smetana wrote a symphonic poem about this river, sometimes called "The Moldau".

Rivers of the Czech Republic

Vltava


Oprichnina (опричнина) is a state policy used by Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible between 1565 and 1572. The origin of its name is old Russian опричь, what means 'apart', 'except', or 'special'. Oprichnina included secret police, mass repressions, public executions, and confiscation (taking somebody's property) of land from the boyars. It was created because Ivan didn't trust the boyars (Russian feudal aristocrats) anymore.

Russian tsars
History of Russia
16th century in Europe

Oprichnina


Flour is grains that have been dried and ground into powder. It is usually made of wheat, but can also be made from many other grains, nuts and other substances. Flour is used to make many foods.

Flour is an important part of bread, pasta, cookies, cakes, tortillas. Flour is made in a flour mill where the grain is put between two stones or steel wheels which are rubbed together to make the grains into powder.

The main kinds of flour used in cooking are all-purpose flour, self-raising flour and cake flour. Self-raising flour contains a leavening agent. This makes the food rise (expand) during baking. It produces lighter and softer baked foods by creating small bubbles. Flour that does not have a leavening agent is called all-purpose flour, or plain flour.

Flour can also be made at home. Some people like to make flour at home because when flour comes from the factory, the outer shells of the grains have usually been removed. The outer shells have fiber which is needed for metabolism. Flour has many nutrients. You can even make flour out of things such as pumpkins, pumpkin seeds, brown and white rice, wheat, etc.

History

It was discovered around 6000 BC that wheat seeds could be crushed between simple millstones to make flour. The Romans were the first to grind seeds on cone mills. Most mills were driven by wind (windmills) or water. Later, they were driven by steam. In the 1930s, some flour began to be enriched with iron, niacin, thiamine and riboflavin. In the 1940s, mills started to enrich flour and folic acid was added to the list in the 1990s.

Related pages
 Kinako
 Wheat flour

References

Other websites

Flour


A birdfeeder, bird table, or tray feeder is a device placed outdoors to supply bird food to birds (bird feeding).  The success of a bird feeder in attracting birds depends upon its placement and the kinds of foods offered, as different species have different preferences.

Most bird feeders supply seeds or bird food, such as millet, sunflower (oil and striped), safflower, nyjer seed, and rapeseed or canola seed to seed-eating birds.

Bird feeders often are used for birdwatching and many people keep webcams trained on feeders where birds often congregate, with some even living just near the bird feeder.

Types of feeders

Seed feeders

Seed feeders are the most common type of feeders. They can vary in design from tubes to hoppers and trays. Sunflower seeds or mixed seeds are popular for use in these feeders and will attract many songbirds such as cardinals, finches, and chickadees. Black oil sunflower seeds are especially popular with bird enthusiasts.  The outer shell of the black oil sunflower seeds are thinner and easier to crack than other types of sunflower seeds.  In addition, the kernel is larger than the striped or white sunflower seeds. Black oil sunflower seeds also contain a large amount of fat; therefore they are especially good to use in the winter. Most bird feeders are designed to dispense sunflower-sized foods, but there are specialty "finch feeders" with smaller openings to dispense the tiny Guizotia abyssinica (Niger seed), which is a favorite of smaller finches.

Seed feeders are mainly squirrel proof, tube-like or hopper. Due to the need of keeping squirrels away from the bird food, manufacturers have created different defense mechanisms that may deter squirrels from getting close to the seed. Some seed feeders come with weight sensitive technology which shuts off the access to the seed ports whenever a heavy weight is detected (as most squirrels are heavier than birds). Birds can still feed as they weigh less and the ports remain open under their weight. Other seed feeders are designed to be mounted on poles as it is believed that squirrels reach seed feeders more easily from trees than from poles. The simplest type of squirrel proof feeder is a tube-like feeder surrounded by a metal cage. These feeders also offer protection from larger and more aggressive birds. Tube seed feeders are primarily made of clear plastic tubes with plastic or metal caps, bases and perches. Hopper bird feeders look like a house and attract a wide range of birds such as finches, cardinals, blue jays, sparrows and titmice.

Hummingbird feeders

Hummingbird feeders, rather than dispensing seed, supply liquid nourishment to hummingbirds in the form of a sugar solution. The solution is normally 4 parts water to 1 part white sugar. Only pure refined white cane or beet sugar should be used, according to experts:
 Brown, turbinado, or raw sugar must not be used because they contain levels of iron that could be lethal.
 Honey must not be used, because it promotes dangerous fungal growth.
 The nectar should be changed every 3–5 days.

Hummingbird feeders usually have red accents or red glass to help attract hummingbirds. The sugar mixture is sometimes colored with red food coloring to attract birds, though this is not necessary if the feeder itself is red, and may actually be harmful to the birds. Yeasts tend to grow in hummingbird feeders and spoil the solution, so they must be refreshed frequently and kept very clean to avoid harm to the birds. See the article on hummingbirds for more details.  Ants and other insects are also attracted to hummingbird nectar. Smearing petroleum jelly on the stem or cap of the feeder (away from the perch or flower part where the bird may come into contact with it) may prevent the ants from crawling to the feeder. When placing a hummingbird feeder, the feeder is best suited 15 to 20 feet from windows; 10 to 15 feet from the nearest cover, like shrubs or bushes; and in an open area that receives partial sun, so that hummingbirds can move from nectar source to nectar source.

Hummingbird top-fill feeders are popular among bird lovers because they are easy to fill and clean and also because they do not need to be turned upright which means that there are less chances that the nectar is spilled. The sports bottle top-fill hummingbird feeders have the design of a sports bottle, with a mechanism that works similarly to such a bottle. With this type of feeder, one has to push down the plastic container in order to close the nectar reservoir and then to unscrew the cap and pour the nectar. After the cap is replaced, the body of the nectar reservoir can be pulled up. This type of bird feeder has the advantage that the feeder does not need to be turned upside down to be refilled and which results in less nectar wasted by spilling. The traditional top-fill hummingbird feeders are one of the most popular types. There is also a plunger type of top-filling hummingbird feeder which comes with a small plunger in the container that creates the vacuum seal when the lid is tightened and the nectar will start flowing only when the lid is sealed correctly to the feeding ports.

The bottom-fill hummingbird feeders include a traditional bottom-fill feeder and several variations of it. The traditional ones are filled from an opening at the bottom of the nectar container but many manufacturers have come up with improved variations of the traditional style of feeder, to make feeding birds easier and with less nectar wasted. Some bottom-fill feeders come with a funnel-like opening at the bottom of the container, through which the feeder is filled. Other bottom-filled hummingbird feeders can be attached to one's window to provide a close-up of the birds.

In 1932, W. R. Sullivan invented a hummingbird feeder designed to prevent other birds or insects from drinking from it, which he produced and sold locally around Kerrville, Texas.

Oriole feeders
Oriole feeders, which are traditionally colored orange, also supply such artificial nectar and are designed to serve New World orioles, which have an unusually shaped beak and tongue.  These orioles and some other birds also will come to fruit foods, such as grape jelly, or half an orange on a peg. Hummingbirds will also feed from Oriole feeders.

Oriole feeders usually have nectar containers made of glass or plastic, which are designed to attract the orioles. Oriole feeders should be cleaned at least once a week and even more often when the temperatures are higher.  Oriole feeders also come in top fill, bottom fill and dish-like designs.

Suet feeders

A suet feeder is typically a metal cage-like construction with a plastic coating that contains a cake or block of suet to feed woodpeckers, flickers, nuthatches, and many other species of insect eaters. Suet logs are also very common. These wooden logs have holes drilled out for suet to be inserted. Suet is high in fat which helps to keep birds warm and nourished during the cold winter. Suet cakes consist of sunflower seeds and wheat or oat flakes mixed with suet, pork fat, or coconut oil.

Other

Birds housed in wired or glass cages can be fed with electronic bird feeders. The electronic bird feeders are capable of storing bird food for days and even weeks, depending on the feeder type and automatically replenish the dish once it is empty.

Providing a varied array of tastes and feeding venues will result in less competition for food and dining spots for birds, just as well-planned and maintained gardens provide many plants which supply different types of seeds and nectars. A shallow bird bath can attract as many birds as a feeder but it must be safe from cats, kept clean, and refreshed frequently with clean water to avoid mosquitoes. The birdbath should be placed where a frightened bird can fly up easily to an overhanging limb or resting place if disturbed or attacked.

Squirrels

Squirrels may also help themselves to the contents of bird feeders, often not merely feeding, but carrying away the food to their hoard. There are various anti-squirrel techniques and devices available to thwart attempts by squirrels to raid bird feeders. Several manufacturers produce feeders with perches that collapse under the weight of anything heavier than a bird, or that use battery power to shock an intruder lightly or spin the perching area to fling it off.  Caged feeders are often designed so that squirrels cannot reach the seed inside, but birds can easily fly through the cage's holes. A UK company, The Nuttery, held the original patent on this cage-within-a-cage design. Caged feeders are best to keep out gray squirrels. Chipmunks and red squirrels can usually enter caged feeders.  Hot pepper in bird seed and suet has also been shown to be effective against squirrels without harming birds, as birds are not sensitive to capsaicin oleoresin, but mammals experience a strong burning sensation when exposed to it.

The placement of a bird feeder can also prevent squirrels from accessing the seed.  In addition, baffles can be used that prevent squirrels from gaining their footing above feeders.  Below feeders, baffles can prevent squirrels from climbing any further, however squirrels are very agile and acrobatic and often find a way to overcome devices of any nature.

Negative impacts

Feeding wild birds does carry potential risks.  Birds may contract and spread diseases like salmonellosis by gathering at feeders; poorly maintained feeding and watering stations may also cause illness.  Birds at feeders risk predation by cats and other animals, or may incur injury by flying into windows.  Steps should be taken to reduce the risks to birds, such as: regular disinfecting of feeders and watering stations, ensuring feed has not become moldy or rancid, and proper positioning of feeders to reduce crowding and window collisions.  Birds are less likely to fly into windows that have a wooden lattice.  Collisions with windows can also be reduced by using window decals.<ref>[http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/helpingbirds/feeding/index.asp Feeding birds] , The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.  Retrieved on May 25, 2008</ref>

Depending on the feeder design and the type of feed used, species such as the house sparrow can dominate the use of the feeder.  As a result, the house sparrow population can become inflated locally where feeders are used.  In North America, where the house sparrow is an invasive species, competition from house sparrows can exclude the indigenous bluebirds from available nest sites as well as attack indigenous birds.

The use of bird feeders has been claimed to cause many other environmental problems; some of these were highlighted in a 2002 front-page article in The Wall Street Journal, which provoked responses nationwide from bird enthusiasts and scientists who refuted the article's arguments.

Prior to the publication of the Wall Street Journal article, Canadian ornithologist Jason Rogers also wrote about the environmental problems associated with the use of bird feeders in the journal Alberta Naturalist''. In this article, Rogers explains how the use of bird feeders is inherently fraught with negative impacts and risks such as fostering dependency, altering natural distribution, density, and migration patterns, interfering with ecological processes, causing malnutrition, facilitating the spread of disease, and increasing the risk of death from cats, pesticides, hitting windows, and other causes.

See also

Bird bath
Bird feeding
Bird food
Birdwatching
Conservation ecology
 Manger
Do not feed the animals
Wildlife garden
Natural landscaping
Naturescaping
Sustainable landscaping

References

External links

Bird feeding
Garden features
Birdwatching
Organic gardening
Articles containing video clips

Bird feeder


WinFax (also known as WinFax PRO) is a discontinued Microsoft Windows-based software product designed to let computers equipped with fax-modems communicate directly to stand-alone fax machines, or other similarly equipped computers.

History
The product was created by developer Tony Davis at Toronto-based  Delrina in 1990, and soon became the company's flagship product. Delrina started out by producing a set of electronic form products known as PerForm and later, FormFlow.

In 1990 Delrina devoted a relatively small space to WinFax at that year's COMDEX, where it easily garnered the most attention of any Delrina product being demonstrated at that show. This interest convinced Delrina of the commercial viability of the product. The rapid acceptance of this program in the market soon overtook that of the initial forms product in terms of revenues, and within a few years of its launch, WinFax would account for 80% of the company's revenues.

Several versions of WinFax were released over the next few years, initially for Windows 3.x and then a Windows 95-based version. Versions were also created for the Apple Macintosh ("Delrina Fax Pro") and DOS ("DosFax"). The Windows versions were also localized to major European and Asian languages. The company made further inroads by establishing tie-ins with modem manufacturers such as U.S. Robotics and Supra that bundled simple versions of the product (called "WinFax LITE") that offered basic functionality. Those wanting more robust features were encouraged to upgrade to the "PRO" version, and were offered significant discounts over the standalone retail version. All of this rapidly established WinFax as the de facto fax software. By 1994, almost 100 companies were bundling versions of WinFax, including IBM, Compaq, AST Research, Gateway 2000, Intel and Hewlett-Packard.

WinFax was frequently used by business travelers as an ad hoc printer. By connecting to a regular phone line, or to an office/hotel room phone via an adapter, a user could send a document to a fax machine (in an era when nearly all business class hotels had a fax machine at the front desk, but very few offered printers for guest use).  While the 200DPI was not as smooth as the (max) 300DPI offered by high-end laser printers, it was generally superior to dot matrix.

WinFax PRO 3.0 was launched in November 1993 for Windows 3.x machines. This was followed by a version for Macintosh systems. This version of this product saw long life as a "non-PRO" version that was bundled with various fax modems by the end of its product cycle.

The release of WinFax PRO 4.0 in March 1994 brought together a number of key features and technologies. It introduced an improved OCR engine, introduced improvements aimed specifically at mobile fax users, better on-screen fax viewing capabilities and a focus on consistency and usability of the interface. It also included for the first time the ability to integrate directly with popular new email products such as cc:Mail and Microsoft Mail. It was soon followed by a networked version of the same product, which allowed a number of users to share a single fax modem on a networked system. This version of the product was also bundled with a grayscale scanner manufactured by Fujitsu, and sold as WinFax Scanner.

In 1994 the firm acquired AudioFile, a company that specialized in computer-based voice technology. The company created a product called TalkWorks, which enabled users to use certain fax/modems as a voice mail client. This program would later be bundled with subsequent versions of WinFax and the CommSuite 95 product.

Fate
In January 1995 The New York Times called WinFax "the leader in fax software with two-thirds of the market." By mid-1995, "more than 10 million copies of WinFax" were sold (worldwide).

The final Delrina-made version of WinFax was WinFax PRO 7.0, which shipped in November 1995. There was no intervening version 5.0 or 6.0, and the jump to version 7.0 was purely a marketing decision, based on keeping up with Microsoft's suite of Office products which were then at the same number. It was the first Delrina product designed to work with the Windows 95 operating system, and was a full 32-bit application, setting it apart from its competition at the time.

By the time WinFax PRO 7.0 was being sold from retail shelves, Delrina had been acquired by Symantec in 1995. Symantec continued to market, develop and release four additional major versions of the WinFax PRO software product under the Symantec WinFax PRO banner.

WinFax PRO 10, released in February 2000, was the last major version of WinFax PRO to be developed. In 1999, John W. Thompson, a former IBM executive in sales, marketing and development, replaced Gordon Eubanks as Symantec's CEO. Thompson decided to focus on one technology category: security. Symantec's business model changed from the retail channel software company, to an enterprise security software based company with a retail channel. In a Black Enterprise September 2004 article, Thompson is quoted "We (Symantec) had Java development tools, we had personal contact management systems. We had a whole range of things that didn't relate to anything in common, except they could be moved through the same distribution channel. And my answer is: Who cares about that?".

By the end of 2001, the remaining WinFax PRO developers and support personnel were terminated from their positions. Technical support for WinFax PRO from 2002 through 2006 was outsourced to third-party call centers based out of Oregon, Texas and later India. Symantec discontinued sales and support of WinFax PRO on June 30, 2006.  A web based community support forum exists for users of WinFax PRO.

Version history

 WinFax 1.0 — 1990 (Windows 3.x)
 Delrina WinFax PRO 2.0 — 1991 (Windows 3.x)
 DosFax — 1992 (DOS)
 Delrina WinFax PRO 3.0 — November 1992 (Windows 3.x)
 Delrina WinFax PRO for Networks 3.0 - (Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.1x)
 Delrina Fax PRO – 1993 (Macintosh)
 Delrina WinFax PRO 4.0 — March 1994 (Windows 3.x, later revisions supported Windows 95)
 Delrina WinFax PRO for Networks 4.0 - (Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.1x)
 Delrina WinFax PRO for Networks 4.1 - (Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.1x, Windows 95)
 Delrina WinFax Scanner — 1994 (Windows 95)
 Delrina WinFax PRO 7.0 — November 1995 (Windows 95)
 WinFax PRO 7.5 (bundled with TalkWorks) — October 1996 (Windows 95)
 WinFax PRO 8.0 (bundled with TalkWorks PRO) — March 1997 (Windows 95, Windows NT)
 WinFax PRO for Networks 5.0 Server — July 1997 (Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.1x, Windows 95)
 TalkWorks PRO 2.0 — August 1998 (Windows 95, Windows NT)
 WinFax PRO 9.0 — August 1998 (Windows 9x, Windows NT/2000/XP)
 TalkWorks PRO 3.0 — August 1999 (Windows 9x, Windows NT/2000/XP)
 WinFax PRO 10.0 — February 2000 (Windows 9x, Windows NT/2000/XP)
 WinFax PRO 10.01 — January 2001 (Windows 9x, Windows Me, Windows NT/2000/XP)
 WinFax PRO 10.02 — August 2001 (Windows 9x, Windows Me, Windows NT/2000/XP)
 WinFax PRO 10.03 — November 2002 (Windows 9x, Windows Me, Windows NT/2000/XP)
 WinFax PRO 10.04 — January 2005 (update patch only from version 10.03)

French WinFax, FaxTools elsewhere
BVRP (Bruno Vanryb and Roger Politis), a French startup, partnered with Hayes Microcomputer Products, and used their boosted sales of their "database program called Directory" to "change to software that runs facsimile machines" since they were concerned that they "would be crushed" in the database market. In France they chose to use the name WinFax, whereas elsewhere their product
is sold as "FaxTools."

References

External links
 WinFax PRO Support forums (Not affiliated with Symantec)
 WinFax PRO Technical Support site (Not affiliated with Symantec)
 Federal Junk Fax Prevention Act

Fax software
Communication software
Gen Digital software
Windows-only proprietary software

WinFax


Jane Marian Joseph (31 May 1894 – 9 March 1929) was an English composer, arranger and music teacher. She was a pupil and later associate of the composer Gustav Holst, and was instrumental in the organisation and management of various of the music festivals which Holst sponsored. Many of her works were composed for performance at these festivals and similar occasions. Her early death at age 35, which prevented the full realisation of her talents, was considered by her contemporaries as a considerable loss to English music.

Holst first observed Joseph's potential when he was teaching her composition at St Paul's Girls' School. She began to act as his amanuensis in 1914, when he was composing The Planets, her special responsibility being the preparation of the score for the "Neptune" movement. She continued to assist Holst with transcriptions, arrangements and translations, and was his librettist for the choral ballet The Golden Goose.

During her short professional life she became an active member of the Society of Women Musicians, was the prime mover behind the first Kensington Musical Competition Festival, and helped to found the Kensington Choral Society.  She also taught music at a girls' school, where Holst's daughter Imogen was one of her pupils, and became a leading figure in the musical life of Morley College. Two memorial prizes and scholarships were endowed in her name.

Most of Joseph's compositions were never published and are now considered lost. Of her published works, two early short orchestral pieces, Morris Dance and Bergamask won considerable critical praise, although neither became part of the general orchestral repertory.  Two choral works, A Festival Venite and A Hymn for Whitsuntide were admired during her lifetime, but never commercially recorded. Since her death, her work has seldom been performed, but occasionally been broadcast. Her carol "A Little Childe There is Ibore" was thought by Holst to be among the best of its kind.

Biography

Family background and early childhood
Jane Joseph was born on 31 May 1894 at 23 Clanricarde Gardens, in the Notting Hill district of the Borough of Kensington, London, to a prosperous Jewish family. Her father, George Solomon Joseph (1844–1917), a solicitor in his family's firm, had married Henrietta, née Franklin (1861–1938) in 1880. Jane was their fourth child; the youngest of her three brothers was seven years older than her. George Joseph had a deep interest in music, which he passed on to his children; two sons, Frank (1881–1944) and Edwin (1887–1975), became competent string players, while Jane learned piano (she took her first examination at the age of seven) and later, double-bass. In time, Frank's musical children, with Jane and friends, formed the basis of a "Josephs orchestra" that performed concerts at Frank's home for many years.

St Paul's Girls' School and Gustav Holst

In 1909 Joseph won a scholarship to St Paul's Girls' School (SPGS) in Hammersmith. The school had opened in 1904, as an offshoot of the long-established St Paul's School for boys. Its high mistress, Frances Ralph Gray, was a formidable figure with traditional views about female education, who nevertheless provided a lively and varied learning environment in which Joseph excelled.  Apart from her academic successes, Joseph played double-bass in the school orchestra, gave an acclaimed piano performance of Bach's D minor keyboard concerto, began to compose, and won a prize for sight-reading. While at the school she composed "The Carrion Crow", a song setting which, in 1914, became her first published work. Outside music she supported the school's Literary Society, where she presented papers on Charlotte Brontë and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. She also won Honours in the examinations of the Royal Drawing Society.

Among the music teachers at SPGS, most significantly in terms of her musical development, Joseph encountered the emergent composer Gustav Holst, then little known, who taught her composition. After leaving the Royal College of Music in 1898 Holst had earned his living as an organist, and as a trombonist in various orchestras, while awaiting critical recognition as a composer. In 1903 he gave up his orchestral appointments to concentrate on composing, but found that he needed a regular income. He became a music teacher, initially at the James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich; in 1905 he was recommended to Frances Gray by Adine O'Neill, a former pupil of Clara Schumann, who taught piano at SPGS. He was first appointed on a part-time basis to teach singing, and later extended his activities to cover the school's wider music curriculum including conducting and composition. According to the composer Alan Gibbs, Joseph quickly came under Holst's spell, and adopted his principles as her own. Holst later described her as the best girl pupil he ever had: "From the first she showed an individual attitude of mind and an eagerness to absorb all that was beautiful".

Student, scribe and teacher, 1913–1918

Girton

In the autumn of 1913, at the age of 19, Joseph began studying Classics at Girton College, Cambridge. At that time, under Cambridge University regulations that were not fully repealed until 1948, women were ineligible to receive degrees, although they could sit the degree examinations, in Joseph's case the Classical Tripos.  She soon found much in the university's life to divert her from her regular studies: debating, drama and, above all, music. In her first term she became a double-bass player in the Cambridge University Musical Society orchestra, under its conductor Cyril Rootham. She also sang alto in the society's choir, and may have participated in a performance of Berlioz's La damnation de Faust that was praised in the Cambridge Review of 17 June 1914. During vacations she continued her composition studies under Holst; in 1916 her "Wassail Song", a companion piece to "The Carrion Crow", was published. At Girton she wrote incidental music for a performance of W. B. Yeats's verse play The Countess Cathleen, in which she acted the part of the First Dragon.

From 1915 Joseph's association with Holst became closer.  Overextended by his teaching duties and other commitments, Holst required assistance in the task of organising his music for publication and performance, and used a group of young women volunteers—his "scribes"—to make fair copies of his scores, write out instrumental or vocal parts, or prepare piano arrangements. In 1915 the composer was working on his largest and best-known work, the orchestral suite The Planets, and invited Joseph, in her vacations, to join his scribes. Among these were Vally Lasker, a piano teacher from SPGS, and Nora Day, who had been a pupil with Joseph at the school and since 1913 had been teaching there. Joseph's main assignment for The Planets was to copy the "Neptune" movement, of which almost the entire original manuscript is written in her hand. For the rest of her career she remained one of Holst's most regular amanuenses, and he came to rely on her more than on any other. Her commitments to musical activities at Girton, combined with her work for Holst, had an adverse effect on her formal studies. In the 1916 Classical Tripos examinations she was awarded only a Class III pass, a disappointing result duly noted in her parting testimonial from the college.

Early career
When Joseph left Girton, the First World War was at a critical state; the Battle of the Somme had begun on 1 July 1916. Joseph wanted to assist the war effort, and after considering work on the land or in a munitions factory, took up part-time welfare work in Islington. In the autumn of 1916 she began teaching at Eothen, a small private school for girls in Caterham, founded and run by the Misses Catharine and Winifred Pye. In 1917 Holst's ten-year-old daughter Imogen started at the school; soon, under Joseph's guidance the young pupil was composing her own music. Joseph extended her own musical activities by joining the orchestra at Morley College, where Holst was the director of music and where her brother Edwin had played the cello before the war. At first she played the double-bass, but later took French horn lessons, possibly from Adolph Borsdorf; later still, at very short notice, she taught herself the timpani part for a summer concert. By 1918 she was a member of the Morley committee that on 9 March organised and produced an opera burlesque, English Opera as She is Wrote, in which English, Italian, German, French and Russian opera styles were parodied in successive scenes. The performance was a great success and was repeated at several venues. It may have inspired Holst to use parody in his own opera, The Perfect Fool, which he began composing in 1918. In her spare time Joseph founded and ran a choir for Kensington nannies, which took part in local singing contests as the "Linden Singers".

Joseph increased her teaching commitments by often deputising for Holst, both at James Allen's and at SPGS. She also continued in her role of the composer's amanuensis, and was invited to attend the private premiere of The Planets, on 29 September 1918 at the Queen's Hall, where Adrian Boult conducted the Queen's Hall orchestra. She later wrote: "From the moment of Mars ... to the last sound of Neptune, it was a big thing that will last all our lives, I think". She was able to draw on her classical education at Girton when she helped to translate the  apocryphal work The Acts of John from the original Greek, to provide the text for Holst's Hymn of Jesus (1917); for the same work she prepared a vocal score and an arrangement for piano, strings and organ. She and Holst combined to produce a women's voices version (two sopranos and an alto) of William Byrd's Mass for Three Voices, and Joseph worked alone to produce an orchestral accompaniment for Samuel Wesley's Sing Aloud with Gladness. This latter work was prepared for the 1917 Whitsun musical festival, one of an annual series of such festivals that Holst masterminded, first at his home town of Thaxted, in later years at assorted venues including Dulwich, Chichester and Canterbury. Joseph became a key figure in these festivals, as organiser, performer and composer. At Thaxted in 1918 two of her compositions were performed: Hymn for female voices (now lost), and an orchestral piece, Barbara Noel's Morris, which Joseph wrote to mark her friendship with the daughter of Conrad Noel, Thaxted's vicar.

The years 1917 and 1918 also brought personal sadness. On 22 October 1917 Joseph's father died from a heart attack. On 27 May the following year, just after the Whitsun festival, her brother William was killed in action on the western front; in September, Edwin was severely wounded in the final Allied offensive of the war. In his monograph on Joseph's life and music, the composer Alan Gibbs writes that "there is no hint in Jane's letters of the effect these events had on her". Gibbs quotes Duff Cooper, who wrote of those times: "... if we wept—as weep we did—we wept in secret".

Teacher, facilitator and composer, 1918–1928

Postwar years

In 1919, seeking to consolidate her musical career, Joseph joined the Society of Women Musicians (SWM), founded in 1911 by the violinist and musicologist Marion Scott and others to promote the interests of women in music. Scott was known to Joseph, having been leader of the Morley orchestra. Joseph became a member of the SWM's Composers' Sectional Committee, and occasionally gave lectures to the society on subjects such as "The Necessity of Practical Experience for Composers", and "The Composer as Pupil". In the summer of 1919 she took conducting lessons from Adrian Boult, whom she described as "the most chinless man I have ever met". The purpose of the lessons was to enable her to conduct her orchestral work Bergamask, which was performed at the Coliseum Theatre under a scheme devised by Sir Oswald Stoll to showcase new British music. In that same summer she met Ralph Vaughan Williams, a close friend of Holst. She played him some of her music, probably a piano reduction of Bergamask, and described him as "a very appreciative critic".

Towards the end of 1918 Holst had asked Joseph to provide a libretto for his opera The Perfect Fool, feeling that she might possess the required light touch that he thought his own writing lacked. It is not clear whether she declined, or whether Holst changed his mind, but he eventually wrote the text himself. Joseph did, however, write the story for a ballet based on Holst's music The Sneezing Charm; the ballet, entitled A Magic Hour, was performed at Morley in October 1920. Meantime, Joseph's works were being performed at SWM concerts: two songs, probably from her Mirage cycle, in January 1920, and some of her settings of Walter de la Mare poems in December.

At Eothen, Joseph continued to supervise Imogen Holst's musical education, aspects of which had earlier been causing Holst some concern. In a letter to his wife dated February 1919, written when he was serving as YMCA musical organiser for British troops stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean, Holst reported that "I've had a very kind and wise letter from Jane about Imogen". Whatever issues had troubled Holst were resolved satisfactorily, and Joseph became Imogen's theory teacher: "Theory with Jane is ripping", the young pupil enthused. In the summer term of 1920, with help from Joseph, Imogen devised and composed a "Dance of Nymphs and Shepherds" which was performed at the school on 9 July. At the beginning of 1921 Imogen started at SPGS; before becoming a boarder at Bute House (one of the school's residences for pupils), she stayed in the Joseph family home.

The Whitsun festivals, suspended during Holst's absence, resumed at Dulwich in 1920. Joseph's part in this event is unrecorded, but she made a major contribution to the following year's festivities, which began beside the Thames at Isleworth and concluded on Whit Monday at SPGS in the gardens of Bute House. For the Monday's celebrations Joseph devised a presentation of Purcell's semi-opera from 1690, Dioclesian. Writing of the occasion after Joseph's death, Holst recalled that she had woven Purcell's music and Thomas Betterton's text, both long neglected, "into a delightful out-door pageant founded on a fairy story, complete with lost princess, dragon and princely hero". Not satisfied with planning every aspect of the outdoor performance, Joseph prepared an indoors version of the entertainment, should the weather require this. The production was a great success, and was repeated that summer in Hyde Park and, in October 1921, at the Old Vic theatre. Throughout this considerable organisational task, Holst wrote, "Jane gave the minimum of worry to each person concerned by giving herself the maximum of hard work and forethought".

Career zenith

In November 1921 Joseph organised the Morley forces to perform a large-scale pageant, celebrating the bicentenary of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. The text was by Laurence Housman and the music, directed by Holst, was taken from the Morley repertory. In the following year Joseph's increasing recognition as a composer was confirmed when her Seven Two-Part Songs were performed at a SWM concert that included works by Ethel Smyth and other women composers. Two of Joseph's works, A Hymn for Whitsuntide and A Festival Venite were introduced during the 1922 Whitsun festival at All Saints' church, Blackheath, with Holst conducting. After the Venite premiere Joseph wrote appreciatively to Holst: "Do you suppose for one moment that any other conductor takes trouble like that? If you do, you are quite wrong". The Venite was performed on 13 June 1923 at the Queen's Hall, by the Philharmonic Choir under Charles Kennedy Scott; the Spectators critic thought it a "very notable addition to modern British music". Amidst her compositional and other activities, Joseph found time, in 1922, to organise the first Kensington Musical Competition Festival, and to orchestrate many of the competition songs. In due course this festival became an important annual event in Kensington; Vaughan Williams was among the adjudicators. On 12 October 1922, Vaughan Williams's 50th birthday, Joseph organised a choir which gave an early-morning surprise performance in the composer's garden of a song she had written to mark the occasion.

As early as 1919, Joseph had written to her brother Edwin expressing concern about Holst's health. When following a physical breakdown in 1923 Holst gave up his duties at Morley College, Joseph wrote him a supportive letter congratulating him on his decision which would enable him to concentrate on composition. The following years were particularly fruitful for Holst, and Joseph assisted in many of the works he produced in the 1924–28 period. She helped him prepare the score for his Choral Symphony, for which assistance he presented her with his original draft sketches, as a gesture of gratitude. Together with Lasker and Day she worked to prepare vocal and full scores for the opera At the Boar's Head, and attended the rehearsals in March 1925. After the opera's premiere on 3 April she wrote to Holst with mildly critical comments on some of the singers, though with praise for the conductor, the young Malcolm Sargent. When Holst composed a short choral piece to celebrate the 21st birthday of the Oriana Madrigal Society, Joseph provided words which humorously reflected the conductor Kennedy Scott's working methods; the work was greatly appreciated by the choir. In that same year, 1925, she helped to found the Kensington Choral Society. By this time the Joseph home in Kensington, where Jane lived for her whole life, was becoming a recognised musical gathering-place; a visitor recalled meeting Vaughan Williams, Boult, and the harpist Sidonie Goossens there, among others.

In 1926 Joseph provided Holst with the libretto for his choral ballet The Golden Goose, based on a story by the Brothers Grimm, and arranged its first performance at the 1926 Whitsun festival, held at the James Allen school. Joseph also assisted Holst and the librettist Steuart Wilson in the production of a second choral ballet, The Morning of the Year—the first work commissioned by the BBC's newly formed music department—which was performed at the Royal Albert Hall in March 1927. The Morley College Annual Report of 1927 recorded the formation of a folk dance club, and noted Joseph's "skilful direction" of the group. Her increasing interest in dance led her, that year, to join the English Folk Dance Society and the Kensington Dance Club.

Illness, death and tributes
The main feature of the 1928 Whitsun festival, held at Canterbury, was a religious drama, The Coming of Christ, commissioned by George Bell, then Dean of Canterbury, and written by John Masefield. Holst provided the incidental music.  In a photograph described by Gibbs, taken of the festival's organisers and performers, Joseph is sitting between Holst and Mrs Bell, "taller than either, an efficient-looking lady in her early thirties, clearly of some importance to the festival". This was Joseph's last Whitsun. Towards the end of the year her health began to fail; there is a mention in Holst's diary for 29 November 1928, "Jane's concert 8.15", but no indication is given of whether she was a performer. In February 1929 she paid off the final amount owing to the piano manufacturer C. Bechstein, for Morley's new piano for which she had been fundraising since 1926. On 9 March 1929 Joseph died at home, in Kensington, of kidney failure. After a private funeral she was buried in Willesden Jewish Cemetery.

Holst was in Venice when the news of Joseph's death reached him; although Imogen records that he received it stoically, he was privately devastated. Joseph had, wrote Imogen, "come nearest to his ideal of clear thinking and clear feeling". In his own tribute, Holst drew attention to Joseph's "infinite capacity for taking pains which amounts to genius". No Whitsun festival was held in 1929, but in early July, at an open-air production of Holst's The Golden Goose at Warwick Castle, a special performance of his St Paul's Suite was played in Joseph's memory. On 5 December 1929, at a competitive music festival, Vaughan Williams conducted the choir in Joseph's Hymn for Whitsuntide while the audience stood in tribute. The same hymn was played at the first resumed Whitsun festival, at Chichester in May 1930. In July 1931 Holst included her music in a concert that he conducted at Chichester Cathedral, alongside works by William Byrd, Thomas Weelkes and Vaughan Williams. Over the course of the next few years Joseph's works were played at concerts and events organised by Morley College, the SWM, SPGS and the English Folk Dance Society. At Eothen a "Jane Joseph Memorial Prize" was established, and music scholarships were endowed in her name at Eothen and SPGS.

A friend who expressed personal sadness on hearing of Joseph's death revealed another aspect of her character: "England won't be the same without Jane. She was terribly difficult to get to know at all, and awfully lonely, I thought, in spite of all her friends—don't you think so?—but I can't imagine Music without her".

Music

Much of Joseph's music was written for performances at modest-scale events by amateur performers. As such it was never published, and over the years many works have been lost. The published works and the few others that survive, Gibbs believes, place Joseph in the category of "progressive" English composers. Although her first few compositions were mainly songs, she demonstrated early abilities as an orchestral composer. Gibbs finds in her two short pieces, Morris Dance (1917) (originally Barbara Noel's Morris) and Bergamask (1919), three and five minutes respectively, a "fine feeling for orchestral sound". The Morris Dance has added sparkle from a glockenspiel, while Bergamask has a festive Italianate feel. The music writer Philip Scowcroft praises Joseph's confident handling of the sizeable orchestral forces required for the Morris Dance, while the composer Havergal Brian, Holst's contemporary, found Bergamask "exhilarating" and "full of promise". Gibbs suggests that these two works presage Holst's late choral ballets, and comments:  "That these carefree pieces did not find a permanent place in the repertory is unfortunate".

In Joseph's  Mirage  song cycle of 1921 (five songs with string quartet accompaniment), a Holstian influence is evident alongside her own distinctive compositional voice. Gibbs highlights the first in the cycle, "Song", which initially echoes "To Varuna" from Holst's Rig Veda hymns, but evolves into "a different creation, distinguished by its own uncluttered quartet writing in which the viola has a special part to play". The final song, "Echo", has as much in common with Brahms as with Holst. Joseph's Festival Venite from 1922 is an example of her use of the Modern Dorian mode (an ascending scale from D to the next D on the white piano keys), which became a feature of some of her later works. Scowcroft and Gibbs both point to Tudor influences in the Venite in which also, says Gibbs, "the congenial influence of Vaughan Williams in melody and harmony is felt". The orchestral score for this work lost, but an organ accompaniment has been devised. Joseph's unaccompanied choral Hymn for Whitsuntide  also uses the Dorian Mode in what Holst described as a "flawless little motet"; this was first work of Joseph's to be broadcast, in 1968. A Short String Quartet in A minor was performed by the Winifred Smith Quartet in December 1922 and was accepted for publication by J.B. Cramer and Co. However, it was not published, and subsequently disappeared.

Joseph's carol "A Little Childe There is Ibore", is a setting of a 15th-century poem for three female voices and piano or strings. Holst considered this "the best of Jane's many carols, and perhaps the hardest to perform well." Written in alternate bars of five and seven beats, it was praised by Brian for its originality. It was eventually broadcast by the BBC on 21 December 1995. Brian was also an admirer of Joseph's many instructional piano pieces: "pleasingly simple and unaffected".  These were published between 1920 and 1925; Gibbs writes that these pieces "focus on technical aspects in tuneful and often modal contexts", with occasional excursions into other forms such as chaconne and rondo.

Notes and references

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

 Holst, Gustav (1931). "Jane Joseph: An Appreciation". Monthly Musical Record, 1 April 1931, p98. Reprinted on the website British Classical Music: The Land of Lost Content

1894 births
1929 deaths
20th-century classical composers
British music educators
British women classical composers
English classical composers
English Jews
Jewish classical composers
People educated at St Paul's Girls' School
Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge
Burials at Willesden Jewish Cemetery
Deaths from kidney failure
20th-century English composers
20th-century English women musicians
British women music educators
20th-century women composers

Jane Joseph


George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville, PC (26 January 1716 – 26 August 1785), styled The Honourable George Sackville until 1720, Lord George Sackville from 1720 to 1770 and Lord George Germain from 1770 to 1782, was a British soldier and politician who served as Secretary of State for the American Department in Lord North's cabinet during the American War of Independence.

His ministry received much of the blame for Britain's loss of thirteen American colonies. His issuance of detailed instructions in military matters, coupled with his failure to understand either the geography of the American colonies or the determination of their colonists, may justify that conclusion. He had two careers, a military career, in which he rose to the rank of Major-General, and a political career, in which he rose to the rank of Secretary of State for the Colonies. His military career had distinction, but ended with his court martial. Sackville served in the British Army in the War of the Austrian Succession of 1740–1748 and in the Seven Years' War of 1756–1763, including at the decisive Battle of Minden.  His political career ended with the fall of the North government in March 1782.

Background and education
Sackville was the third son of Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Lieutenant-General Walter Philip Colyear. His Godfather George I attended his baptism. He was educated at Westminster School in London and graduated from Trinity College in Dublin in 1737. Between 1730 and 1737 and again from 1750 to 1755, his father held the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. While in Dublin he befriended the celebrated writer Jonathan Swift. He also encountered Lord Ligonier who would later assist his career in the military.

He then entered the army. Sackville was elected Grandmaster of the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1751 and served for two years.

Family
He married Diana Sambrooke, daughter of John Sambrooke and Elizabeth Forester, on 3 September 1754. They had two sons and three daughters, including:
Diana Sackville (8 July 1756 – 29 August 1814).
Charles Sackville (27 August 1767 – 29 July 1843), later changed his name to Charles Sackville-Germain.
George Sackville (7 December 1770 – 31 May 1836)
Elizabeth, married Henry Herbert, MP

Early military career

Sackville started as a captain in the 7th Horse (later the 6th Dragoon Guards). In 1740, he transferred to the Gloucestershire Regiment of Foot as a lieutenant colonel. The regiment was sent to Germany to participate in the War of the Austrian Succession. In 1743. Sackville was advanced to brevet colonel.

Battle of Fontenoy

He saw his first battle, leading the charge of the Duke of Cumberland's infantry in the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. He led his regiment so deep into the French lines that when he was wounded and captured he was taken to the tent of Louis XV. When he was released and returned home, it was to duty in Scotland as the Colonel of the 20th Foot Regiment.

In 1747 and 1748, he again joined the Duke of Cumberland. He became colonel of the 7th Irish horse and served in Holland. There was a break in his military career between wars (1750–1755) when he served as first secretary to his father.

During the Seven Years' War, Sackville returned to active military service. He had been considered for the post of Commander-in-Chief in North America, which eventually went to Edward Braddock, who led his force to disaster during the Braddock Campaign. In 1755, he was promoted to major general and returned to active service to oversee ordnance. In 1758, he was given a fourth regiment and joined the Duke of Marlborough as a lieutenant general. He was sworn of the Privy Council in January 1758.

Raid on St Malo

In June 1758 Sackville was second in command of a British expedition, led by Marlborough, which attempted an amphibious Raid on St Malo. While it failed to take the town as instructed, the raid was still considered to have been largely successful as a diversion. Follow-up raids were considered against Le Havre, Caen and other targets in Normandy, but no further landings were attempted, and the force returned home.

Later in 1758 they joined the allied forces of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick in Germany, with the first detachment of British troops sent to the Continent. When Marlborough died, Sackville became Commander of the British contingent of the army, although still under the overall command of the Duke of Brunswick.

Battle of Minden

In the Battle of Minden on 1 August 1759, British and Hanoverian infantry of the centre made an advance on the French cavalry and artillery in that sector. They apparently went in without orders and their attacking line formation even repulsed repeated French cavalry charges, holding until the last moment then firing a massive volley when the charge came within ten yards. As the disrupted French began to fall back on Minden, Ferdinand called for a British cavalry charge to complete the victory, but Sackville withheld permission for their advance. Ferdinand sent his order several times, but Sackville was estranged from Lord Granby, the force commander. He continued to withhold permission for Granby to "gain glory" through an attack. For that action, he was cashiered and sent home. Granby replaced him as commander of the British contingent for the remainder of the war.

Court martial
Sackville refused to accept responsibility for refusing to obey orders. Back in England, he demanded a court martial, and made it a large enough issue that he obtained his demand in 1760. The court found him guilty, and imposed one of the strangest and strongest verdicts ever rendered against a general officer. The court's verdict not only upheld his discharge but also ruled that he was "unfit to serve His Majesty in any military Capacity whatever", then ordered that their verdict be read to and entered in the orderly book of every regiment in the army. The king had his name struck from the Privy Council rolls.

Early political career

Member of Parliament

Sackville had been a Member of Parliament at intervals since 1733. He had served terms in both the Dublin and the Westminster bodies, sometimes simultaneously, but had not taken sides in political wrangles.

Between 1750 and 1755 he served as Chief Secretary for Ireland, during his father's second term as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

When George III took the throne in 1760, Sackville began his political rehabilitation. There did not seem to be negative repercussions to the European stalemate of the Seven Years' War. The victories over the French within the colonial empire provided a chance for events of the war to be forgotten. The difficulty of repaying the debts incurred to fight the war caused a period of unstable ministries and shifting political alliances. In 1765, King George quietly returned him to the rolls of the Privy Council.

Initially he was a follower of George Grenville's faction, but he increasingly lined up as a supporter of Lord North and, in 1769, he made the alliance formal. Then, in 1769, Lady Elizabeth Germain died without natural heirs, and left her estates, including Drayton, Northamptonshire, to him. That not only improved his finances but also gave him the chance to take that name formally. After 1770, he was known as Lord George Germain.

Secretary of State

Appointment
On 10 November 1775, Germain was appointed Secretary of State for the American Department replacing Lord Dartmouth in the post. At that time, North's cabinet had three secretaries of state; one each for Europe (the Northern Department), America, and the rest of the world (the Southern Department). Besides international relations, the secretaries were responsible for a great deal of Colonial administration and for military operations within their area. That made Germain the primary minister responsible for suppressing the rebellion that had broken out in 1775 in the colonies. He promoted or relieved generals, took care of provisions and supplies and became involved with the strategic planning of the war.

American War of Independence

Sackville and Lord North made three assumptions about the war they were about to face: firstly, the American forces could not withstand the assaults of the British; secondly, the war would be similar to wars they had fought successfully in Europe; and lastly, their victory would bring about their goal of having the colonies' allegiance. All of their assumptions proved to be false and wrong.

In 1776, he worked with General John Burgoyne to plan, support and issue orders for the Saratoga campaign. However, his unclear orders to General William Howe contributed to the campaign's failure. Following the entry of France, Spain and the Dutch Republic into the conflict, British emphasis shifted to focus increasingly on a global war. British troops were withdrawn from Philadelphia and reinforcements were sent to the valuable sugar-producing West Indies. In 1779 one of Germain's associates, Richard Cumberland, was sent to Madrid for failed talks designed to reach a separate peace settlement with Spain.

Yorktown

In 1781, the confusion involving orders sent to Charles Cornwallis from Henry Clinton contributed to the loss at the Siege of Yorktown.

The news of Yorktown reached London on 25 November 1781, and the messenger went first to Germain's residence at Pall Mall. Germain then went to tell other ministers. Together they went to Lord North, who reportedly cried out "Oh God – It's all over". It was agreed that Germain, rather than North, should take the news to the King who was at Kew. The King's Speech two days later had to be re-written in light of Yorktown. News of the surrender galvanised the opposition, and the government majorities began to shrink over the following months with calls for resignations of senior ministers. Germain drew up a plan to continue the war by using the existing British bases in Charleston, New York, Savannah and Canada to harass the American coastline and frontiers. He also advocated re-occupying Newport in Rhode Island to give a foothold in New England.

Departure from office
Germain became a target for the opposition and was eventually persuaded to step down in exchange for a peerage, and in February 1782, he was made Baron Bolebrooke, in the County of Sussex, and Viscount Sackville, of Drayton in the County of Northampton. That was considered essential if the North government was to survive by bringing in factions of the opposition to which Germain was personally objectionable. He was replaced by Welbore Ellis. In spite of Germain's departure, the North government fell shortly afterwards in February 1782 and was followed by a period of political instability. Shortly after the fall of the North government, news arrived of the decisive British naval victory at the Battle of the Saintes in the Caribbean, which would have boosted the government if it had still been in power. The Shelburne government agreed to the Peace of Paris, which brought an end to the war in 1783 and recognised the independence of the United States.

Later life

The controversy over Lord Sackville's handling of the war continued. Some members were opposed to his taking a seat in the House of Lords, an almost unprecedented incident. However, he was admitted to the Lords, where he was staunchly defended by Lord Thurlow, and his declining health soon made the issue irrelevant. He retired to his country home at Stoneland Lodge and died there in 1785. He maintained to his dying day that he had not been a coward at Minden. Following his death, a defence of Sackville's reputation, The character of the late Viscount Sackville, was written by Richard Cumberland. A trove of the subject's letters were published by the Historical Records Commission beginning in 1904 under the title Report on the manuscripts of Mrs. Stopford-Sackville, of Drayton House, Northhamptonshire / with a new introduction and preface by George Athan Billias.

The Drayton House estate passed to his son Charles, who later became the 5th (and last) Duke of Dorset. The Stoneland estate (or Buckhurst Park as it came to be known) passed via the wife of the late 3rd Duke of Dorset to her daughter Countess de la Warr on the Dowager Duchess's death in 1825.

Legacy
 Namesake of Fort Sackville (Nova Scotia), Canada
 Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia and Upper Sackville, Nova Scotia
 Germain Street, Saint John, New Brunswick
 Sackville, New South Wales
 Town of Sackville, New Brunswick.  Established in 1762 by settlers ("New England planters") from Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, the Sackville Township, named for Viscount Sackville, was formally created in 1765; by 1772 it was sufficiently populated to send a representative to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. It became part of the Province of New Brunswick in 1784. The Town was incorporated in 1903.

References

Further reading

 Brown, Gerald S. "The Court Martial of Lord George Sackville, Whipping Boy of the Revolutionary War." William and Mary Quarterly (1952): 317–337 online.

 Clark, Jane. "Responsibility for the Failure of the Burgoyne Campaign." American Historical Review (1930): 542–559 online.
 Guttridge, George H. "Lord George Germain in Office, 1775–1782." American Historical Review 33.1 (1927): 23–43. online
 Gruber, Ira D. "Lord Howe and Lord George Germain, British Politics and the Winning of American Independence." William and Mary Quarterly (1965): 225–243. in JSTOR
 Jones, Robert W. "9 "Unfit to Serve": Honour, Masculinity, and the Fate of Lord George Sackville." in The Culture of the Seven Years' War: Empire, Identity, and the Arts in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (2014): 213+ online
 Kyte, George W. "Plans for Reconquest of the Rebellious Colonies in America." Historian 10.2 (1948): 101–117.
 Mackesy, Piers. Coward of Minden: The Affair of Lord George Sackville (1979).
 Nelson, Paul David. "British Conduct of the American Revolutionary War: A Review of Interpretations." Journal of American History 65.3 (1978): 623–653. online
 O'Shaughnessy, Andrew Jackson. The Men who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (Yale UP, 2014).
 Robson, Eric. "Lord George Germain and the American Colonies." History Today (Feb 1953) 3#2 pp 115–121.
 Valentine, Alan,  Lord George Germain  (1962), full biography that casts heavy blame on him for all British failures; reviews call it an unreliable book; online review
 Weddle, Kevin J. "A Change of Both Men and Measures": British Reassessment of Military Strategy after Saratoga, 1777–1778." Journal of Military History 77.3 (2013).
 Willcox, William B. "British Strategy in America, 1778." Journal of Modern History (1947): 97–121. in JSTOR

|-

1716 births
1785 deaths
12th Royal Lancers officers
2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays) officers
British Army lieutenant generals
British Army personnel of the Jacobite rising of 1745
British Army personnel of the War of the Austrian Succession
British Army personnel who were court-martialled
British MPs 1761–1768
British MPs 1768–1774
British MPs 1774–1780
British MPs 1780–1784
British officials in the American Revolution
Carabiniers (6th Dragoon Guards) officers
Irish MPs 1727–1760
Lancashire Fusiliers officers
Members of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) for County Kilkenny constituencies
Germain, George|Germain, George
Members of the Privy Council of Great Britain
Members of the Privy Council of Ireland
People educated at Westminster School, London
People expelled from the Privy Council of Great Britain
Viscounts in the Peerage of Great Britain
Peers of Great Britain created by George III
Younger sons of dukes
George
Chief Secretaries for Ireland
Secretaries of State for the Colonies
Presidents of the Board of Trade
British people of the American Revolution
Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
British duellists

George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville


Seng Guan Ssu () is a prominent Buddhist edifice on Narra Street, near Divisoria, in Tondo, Manila, Philippines. It contains a stupa, a huge repository for urns of human ashes, several meditation rooms, and various shrines.  It is a major cultural center for the Chinese Filipino community. It is a Chan Buddhist temple built by the father of Buddhism in the Philippines, Master Xing Yuan from the South Putuo Temple in Xiamen, Fujian Province.

Seng Guan Ssu was established by Wu Jianglu, Wang Zhenwen, and members of their Chinese Buddhist Society in the Philippines.  It is regarded as the first Buddhist temple in the Philippines, being the first temple with a resident monk, Venerable Seng Guan (1889-1962), after whom the temple was named.  Seng Guan from Fu Kien (Fujian), China, was active in teaching and organizing work in Southern China, Manila, and Rizal.  His work laid the foundations for several institutions, including the Samantabhadra Institute in Santa Cruz, Manila, and the Hwa Chong Buddhist Temple complex in Tugatog, Malabon, Rizal (now Malabon, Metro Manila), where his ashes are enshrined in a stupa.

In 1960, the Seng Guan Ssu set up the Philippine Academy of Sakya, Manila.  Over the years, Seng Guan Ssu also conducted many charity works for the poor, orphans, elderly, refugees, and government welfare projects.

References

External links

Buddhist temples in Metro Manila
Buildings and structures in Tondo, Manila
Chinese-Filipino culture
20th-century Buddhist temples
20th-century religious buildings and structures in the Philippines

Seng Guan Temple


Landwasserschlepper (LWS) was an unarmed amphibious tractor produced in Germany during World War II.

Origins and development
Ordered by the Heereswaffenamt in 1935 for use by German Army engineers, the Landwasserschlepper (or LWS) was intended as a lightweight river tug with some capacity to operate on land.

Intended to aid river crossing and bridging operations, it was designed by Rheinmetall- of Düsseldorf. The hull was similar to that of a motor launch, resembling a tracked boat with twin rear-mounted tunnelled propellers and twin rudders. On land, it rode on steel-shod tracks with four bogies per side.

By the autumn of 1940 three prototypes had been completed and were assigned to Tank Detachment 100 as part of Operation Sea Lion. It was intended to use them for pulling ashore unpowered assault barges during the invasion and for towing vehicles across the beaches. They would also have been used to carry supplies directly ashore during the six hours of falling tide when the barges were grounded. This involved towing a Kässbohrer amphibious trailer (capable of transporting 10-20 tons of freight) behind the LWS.

The Landwasserschlepper was demonstrated to General Franz Halder on 2 August 1940 by the Reinhardt Trials Staff on the island of Sylt and, though he was critical of its high silhouette on land, he recognized the overall usefulness of the design. It was proposed to build enough LWSs that each invasion barge could be assigned one or two of them, but difficulties in mass-producing the vehicle prevented implementation of that plan.

Operational history
Due to protracted development, the Landwasserschlepper did not enter regular service until 1942 and, though it proved useful in both Eastern Front and North Africa campaign, it was produced in only small numbers. In 1944 a completely new design was introduced, the LWS II. This vehicle was based on a Panzer IV tank chassis and featured a small raised armored driver's cabin and a flat rear deck with four fold-down intake and exhaust stacks.

Landwasserschlepper remained operational until the end of the war in May 1945.

See also
Beach armoured recovery vehicle

Notes

References

External links
Land-Wasser-Schlepper
Achtung Panzer Vehicles of the Wehrmacht

Amphibious military vehicles
Soft-skinned vehicles
Landing craft
Research and development in Nazi Germany
World War II military vehicles of Germany
Amphibious vehicles of World War II
Military vehicles introduced from 1940 to 1944

Landwasserschlepper


The Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is a group of colleges and universities, mostly in the Western United States, that play NCAA Division I sports against one another each season.

The WAC currently has 10 member schools:
 University of Denver
 University of Idaho
 Louisiana Tech University
 New Mexico State University
 San José State University
 Seattle University
 Texas State University–San Marcos (Texas State)
 University of Texas at Arlington (UT Arlington)
 Utah State University
 University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA)

Its future is now in serious question due to a wave of departures set for July 2013.

History

Creation
The WAC was formed in 1962 by six western schools—the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Brigham Young University (BYU), the University of New Mexico, the University of Utah, and the University of Wyoming. Three other schools, the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Washington State University, were part of the original discussions, but chose to join what is now the Pacific-12 Conference. New Mexico State and Utah State applied for charter membership, but were turned down, and would not join until 2005.

First expansion
The WAC grew to eight members in 1967, when Colorado State University and the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) joined. However, in the 1970s, massive population growth in Arizona led to the two Arizona schools dominating the conference, especially in football. Arizona and Arizona State left for the Pacific-8 Conference in 1978, which then became the Pacific-10 (now the Pacific-12). The WAC reloaded by adding San Diego State University in 1978, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (Hawaiʻi) in 1979, and the United States Air Force Academy (Air Force) in 1980. This nine-team lineup defined the WAC for the next 15 years.

Second expansion
In 1990, the WAC added women's sports when it absorbed the High Country Athletic Conference, a women's sports conference that included most of the schools then in the WAC. Two years later, California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) joined the WAC. Several years later, the demise of the Southwest Conference (SWC) led to many schools changing conferences. In 1996, six schools joined the WAC. Three of them—Rice University, Southern Methodist University (SMU), and Texas Christian University (TCU)—were from the SWC. The others were San Jose State and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), both from the Big West Conference, and the University of Tulsa from the Missouri Valley Conference. At the same time, Air Force and Hawaiʻi brought their women's sports into the WAC. These moves meant that the WAC now had 16 members.

Breakup
Most of the pre-1990 members were soon unhappy in a 16-team league. The conference now ranged from Hawaii to Oklahoma, spanning five time zones and , making travel costs a major concern. In 1999, the conference split largely along pre-1990 and post-1990 lines. Seven of the pre-1990 members—Air Force, BYU, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah, and Wyoming—joined with newcomer UNLV to form the Mountain West Conference (MW).

In the 2000s
The post-breakup WAC quickly added a new member in the University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada), which joined from the Big West in 2000. Later that year, the Big West announced that it would no longer play football. Four of that conference's schools—Boise State University, the University of Idaho, New Mexico State University, and Utah State University—wanted to keep playing football. Boise State was immediately accepted by the WAC, joining in 2001. Louisiana Tech University also joined the WAC alongside Boise State. The three other Big West football schools did not join the WAC at that time.

Later in the 2000s, the WAC was affected by another wave of conference realignment. After the Big East Conference lost three of its members to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) in 2004 and 2005, it reloaded by "raiding" Conference USA (C-USA). In turn, C-USA sought new members from other conferences, and four WAC schools—Rice, SMU, TCU, and Tulsa—accepted invitations to join C-USA in 2005. The WAC responded by adding the three other schools that had played Big West football (Idaho, New Mexico State, and Utah State).

Turmoil and possible demise
Another major cycle of conference realignment began in 2010 when the Big Ten Conference and the then-Pacific-10 announced plans to expand. This started a chain of moves that affected all eleven conferences that play football in the top-level Division I FBS. No conference was more affected than the WAC, whose future as a Division I conference is now in serious doubt.

The first move affecting the WAC came in June 2010. After the MW lost Utah to the Pacific-12, Boise State accepted an invitation to join the MW in 2011. Two months later, BYU also left the MW, which responded by inviting two WAC members, Fresno State and Nevada. Both accepted, and would leave for the MW in 2012.

In November 2010, Denver, Texas State, and UTSA were invited to join the WAC in 2012, with all accepting. In the same month, Hawaiʻi announced it would leave the WAC in 2012 to join the Big West for most sports and the MW for football. The summer of 2011 saw two other schools accept invitations to join in 2012—Seattle and UT Arlington. These moves meant that for the first time in WAC history, the conference would have non-football members, as Denver, Seattle, and UT Arlington do not have football teams. One month later, Boise State announced that it would rejoin the WAC for most of its sports in 2013, with its football team moving to the Big East.

However, the WAC suffered major blows in spring 2012, with five members stating they would leave in July 2013. Three of the new 2012 members will spend only one year in the WAC—UTSA will join C-USA, and Texas State and UT Arlington will move to the Sun Belt Conference. Louisiana Tech will also join C-USA, while San Jose State and Utah State will join the MW. Making matters worse for the WAC, Boise State decided not to join the WAC in 2013, instead choosing to put its non-football sports in the Big West.

These moves will leave the WAC with four members in 2013—fewer than the six required by the NCAA for full Division I membership.

References

1962 establishments in the United States

Western Athletic Conference