Santiago Nonualco is a municipality in La Paz department of El Salvador.

"Nonualco" means tribe of mutes ("tribo de mudos") in the native Nahuat language. There are three "Nonualcos" in the area, the other two are San Juan Nonualco and San Pedro Nonualco.

Santiago Nonualco is a relatively poor community even by El Salvadoran standards. The primary historical economic activity has been subsistence farming and the cultivation of sugar cane, providing back-breaking work for those willing to bake in the sun swinging their "corvos," curved tobacco-knife like machetes, for a couple of dollars a day. Currently there are very few employers in the area. Santiago Nonualco has a small central market, a few modest stores (tiendas), diners (comedores), bars, doctor's office, pharmacy, a couple of dentists, a small bank (casa de credito), some lawyers, and not much else. The nearest factories are located near the airport at El Pedregal, about 25 minutes away by bus.

Warrior son
Santiago Nonualco has one famous native son, one warrior. Anastasio "Indio" Aquino, gained fame leading an uprising against the Spanish in 1832-3. He led his insurgency from a cave located just north of what is now El Salvador International Airport. "La cueva de Indio Aquino" (Indio Aquino's cave) is a little-visited site located in Cerro El Tigre overlooking the Jiboa River and the airport. After a seven-month-long rebellion, Indio Aquino was captured and executed by firing squad in San Vicente.

References

External links
 Santiago Nonualco official website

Municipalities of the La Paz Department (El Salvador)

Santiago Nonualco


History

Sangam Sadhu Kuppuswami Memorial College, formerly known as Nadi Secondary School, was founded in 1958, when Shri Vivekananda High School (now Shri Vivekananda College) became a grant aided school. During those days, Shri Vivekananda High School was the only secondary school in Nadi and being a grant-aided school it could not enroll students who were unsuccessful in their Fiji Secondary School Entrance Examination. Thus, the need arouse for another secondary school, to retain the youths in school. It was Swami Rudrananda's timely initiation that led to the opening of another secondary school, Nadi Secondary School, as a sister institution to Shri Vivekananda High School. In 1958, the number of students at the Sarda Girls' Hostel decreased to a sustainable level and this was seen as an opportunity by Swami Rudrananda to use that premises as the new Nadi Secondary School.

To manage the affairs of this new school, Swamiji formed the Nadi Education Society, with Dr. C. T. Mehta as the President; Mr. H. M. Lodhia (Manager); Mr. Krishna Murti (Secretary/Treasurer) and a few other members. Some time later, due to his demise, Mr Krishna Murti was replaced by Mr. M. K. Pillai.

The pioneer Principal of the school was Mr. Shantilal N. Patel, with Mr. Satya Mani Masih and Pandit Vivekanand Sharma as his assistants. The school had a roll of sixty-eight students during its first year.

At the beginning of term three, 1958, Shri Vivekananda High School , which was

located on the bank of the Nadi River (the site of the old Nadi Temple), moved to its present site in Malolo. Nadi Secondary School moved into that premises, flourishing in the warmth of the temple environment.

Mr. S. N. Patel resigned as the Principal in 1962 and he was succeeded by Mr. S. Sadasiwan. 1964 saw the introduction of a form five in the school. The student

population had increased to around four hundred. In 1965, Mr. Sadasiwan resigned to join the government service. He was succeeded by Mr. J. R. Achal in 1966.

1967 witnessed yet another significant event; Nadi Secondary School was handed over by the Nadi Education Society to T.I.S.I.Sangam Central Board. This was followed by the election of a new Board of Governors: Rev. Swami Rudrananda (Manager); Mr. Shankaran Nair (President); Mr. Venkat Swami Naodu (Secretary); Mr. M. K. Pillai (Treasurer) and Messrs. Ram Sami Pillai, Jag Nath Naidu, Nacovi Narayan, Chinnaiya Gounder, Pullaiya Dass, R. Raman, V. S. Naidu and Changaiya Naidu (Committee Members).

Later, in 1969, the school moved into its new premises, where it is since located. On receiving a substantial building grant, a doublestorey building consisting of nine classrooms, two science laboratories (Physics and Chemistry), a library and a Home Economics Room, was constructed.

Sangam Sadhu Kuppuswamy Memorial College (SSKMC)


J D H Catleugh  (April 16, 1920 – January 7, 2009) was a British abstract artist whose career began in the 1950s and continued until his death in 2009.

Timeline of career
J. D. H. Catleugh was born on April 16, 1920. He was originally named King's Lynn and was the son of the late John Harwood Catleugh. In 1949, after serving in World War II, he became qualified as an architect and created a series of Perspex and wood reliefs in 1949 - 50. His series of "Space/Time" paintings was strongly influenced by a Jackson Pollock exhibition he attended in Venice. In 1951, he designed sets for Picasso's play, Desire Caught by Tail, at the Watergate Theatre in London. He began designing furniture in 1952 and, a year later, was the winner of the 1953 Furniture Makers Guild, Coronation Design Competition. The accompanying textile designs were produced by David Whitehead Ltd. He created a series of collages in 1953-54. For the next five years (1954-59), he did a series of relief paintings on plaster, followed by a Scottish landscape series in 1959–62. Catleugh lived in London, England, from 1988 until his death in 2009.

Exhibitions
One-man exhibitions in 1953 and 1954 at Gimpel Fils.

Group exhibitions:- 1951 British Abstract Art, Gimpel Fils, The Redfern Gallery, Summer Exhibition, The Mirror and the Square, A.I.A. - 1952:- Tomorrow's Furniture, I.C.A., Gimpel Fils, Summer Exhibition. - 1953:- Bradford, 60th Spring Exhibition, Gimpel Fils, Collectors' Choice, Collectors' Items from Artist's Studios, I.C.A., Paintings into Textiles, I.C.A. - 1954 Of Light and Colour, Gimpel Fils.1956 - This is Tomorrow, Whitechapel, London. - 1988 Reflections of the Fifties, England & Co.

His work was included in British Abstract Art at Gimpel Fils in 1951 and was displayed alongside the works of  British abstract artist John Milnes-Smith, in that same year they also exhibited at The Mirror and the Square organised by the A.I.A.
J D H Catleugh was part of what Herbert Read described as the 'Tachiste Tornado' of the 1950s; ( Herbert Read-Art Since 1945, Thames & Hudson, Chapter 7) and he showed a highly refined sense of organisation in his work, perhaps a reflection of Catleugh's early architectural training.

In 1949 J D H Catleugh, influenced by Jackson Pollock, became fascinated by the possibilities of the 'drip and pour' technique. He eliminated his own colour mixtures and worked/poured directly from the paint manufacturer's tin. The result is a rhythmic and polychromatic 'net-work of trails which loop, entwine and lose themselves in an indecipherable complexity'-(Review of Gimpel Fils exhibition, Manchester Guardian, 19-1-1953 ) These 'Space/Time' paintings may remind us of 'electrons around a nucleus' or 'the trial of a jet plane',-(Colin St John Wilson, Notes on paintings by J D H Catleugh, January 1953 ) but they have no subjects as such.  Titles like Space-Time Configuration and Bi-planar Structure remind us that these are products of a post atomic world and as contemporary in 2007 as they were then.

October 1953 Painting onto Textiles exhibition at the ICA organised by Hans Juda, editor of The Ambassador to promote textile designs by contemporary painters.  Three designs from this exhibition were put into production by David Whitehead Ltd, these same textile designs were included in Artist's Textiles in Britain 1945–1970 exhibition at the Fine Art Society 2003.

By the mid-1950s J D H Catleugh, moving towards Victor Passmore and the British Constructionists, was working on a series of paper collages.  Vertical black stripes were cut and pasted down, their orderly rows broken only by the addition of strips of coloured paper.  Oswell Blakeston described them as having the effect of 'looking through slats at a confetti world''-(Oswell Blakeston, Popular Art, Art News & Review, 30-10-1954 )

In 1956 the Tate Gallery exhibition, Modern Art in the United States, devoted one gallery to abstract expressionism.  It was followed in 1957 by the landmark Metavisual Tachiste Abstract exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, which registered the influence of the Americans.  This American impact was strengthened by the 1959 exhibition of abstract expressionism, New American Painting, also at the Tate Gallery.

In 1959–62 his direction and style changed, using 'oils and a knife' his series of  landscapes, moves closer to the lyrical abstractions of the painters of St Ives, such as Peter Lanyon.  Catleugh quotes; 'As Lawrence Alloway said of St Ives', 'the landscape is so nice that nobody can quite bring themselves to leave it out of their art'-(Lawrence Alloway, Nine Abstract Artists, Alec Tiranti Ltd 1954 )

1984 - A series of Red/Black paintings started around the time of the 40th anniversary of the Normandy Landings, also many painful images were being shown on TV of the war in Bosnia and elsewhere, these led to the red/black figurative paintings which are often of just a single figure, sometimes reminiscent of a/the crucifixion which after all is the ultimate symbol of pain.

In 1988 - Reflections of the Fifties a two-man exhibition with John Milnes-Smith, whose career in the 1950s ran parallel with that of Catleugh's, although each had a different response to post-war directions in abstract art, this exhibition was focussing on two artists whose work reflects a post war world, and was like a time capsule opening to reveal directions in British abstract art of the nineteen fifties and early sixties.

Catleughs's overall career, was that predominately of an architect and who painted purely for the love, passion and the expression in which art can give and bring.  He was a world-renowned expert in the works of William De Morgan and was the author of William Morris Tiles (1983) and many articles on nineteenth century and Islamic tiles.  His interest in two-dimensional patterns extends to textiles particularly those from India and Indonesia, of which he had a small collection, in addition he was a devoted collector of William De Morgan's Tiles of which he had an extensive collection.

He became the third chairman of the De Morgan Foundation in 1996 and during his term 'The De Morgan Centre for the Study of 19th Century Art and Society' was set up in Wandsworth, London.  From 2002, until its closure in June 2014, this exhibited a large collection of the ceramics of William De Morgan and the paintings of Evelyn De Morgan together with considerable archive material.

References
J. D. H. Catleugh's obituary

1920 births
2009 deaths
British landscape painters
British abstract artists
20th-century British painters
British male painters
20th-century British male artists

J. D. H. Catleugh


"Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design" (alternate title "Conspiracy Theories and Soft Defenses") is the ninth episode of the second season of the American comedy television series Community, and the 34th episode of the series overall. It aired in the United States on NBC on November 18, 2010.

Plot
Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) accuses Jeff (Joel McHale) of creating a fake course in conspiracy theories taught by "Professor Professorson." Jeff leads the Dean and Annie (Alison Brie) to Professorson's supposed office, which is revealed to be a closet. He starts explaining this must be a conspiracy to test him until a nearby man (Kevin Corrigan) introduces himself as Professorson. He explains that he usually teaches night school, congratulates Jeff, and departs. Satisfied, the Dean leaves, but when Annie apologizes for doubting Jeff, Jeff admits he faked the class and has never seen "Professorson" before.

Troy (Donald Glover) and Abed (Danny Pudi) build a blanket fort in Abed's dorm; other students help to expand the fort. Annie discovers that Professorson's real name is Professor Woolley. Despite threatening messages, the two explore the night school, which they discover is a sham. After a chase through the now-sprawling fort, they catch Woolley. He explains that like Jeff, he once forged a course for credit; to maintain the charade, he had to fake an entire night school. Suspicious, Jeff recognizes Woolley as drama professor Sean Garrity; Garrity drops the façade and reveals the Dean staged everything to teach Jeff a lesson. Jeff decides to get even.

Jeff and Annie bring in the Dean and pretend to expose "Woolley"'s sham. Feigning a lack of forgiveness, Annie "shoots" Garrity with a prop gun. The Dean suddenly shoots Annie; in response, Jeff shoots the Dean. Annie sits up and tells Jeff she and the Dean created the night school ploy to teach Jeff a lesson about academic dishonesty. The Dean then sits up, and Jeff, who had deduced that Annie helped the Dean, reveals he and the Dean wanted to teach Annie about being a better friend. Upset, Annie reveals another gun and shoots Jeff. When she confronts the Dean over betraying her for Jeff, he admits that he spontaneously decided to side with Jeff, due to being unable to keep track of the increasing number of conspiracies. Jeff sits up and explains that he and Annie created the ploy with another prop gun because the Dean switches alliances too quickly. Garrity rises and collects the guns, but a security officer (Craig Cackowski) enters and shoots Garrity, horrifying the other three until they realize it was yet another prop gun – the officer and Garrity wanted to show the dangers of misusing prop guns. However, the Dean, having been traumatized by the mass shootout, still denies Jeff credit for the class.

Later, Abed and Troy see the fort town mentioned in Greendale's newspaper, making it "mainstream." With that, they collapse the entire fort.

Production
The episode was written by Chris McKenna, his fourth writing credit on the series. It was directed by Adam Davidson, his fourth time directing the series. He has previously directed episodes for series like Big Love, Fringe and United States of Tara.

Harmon stated in the DVD commentary that the third act was written at the last minute, and that they did not know how the conspiracy storyline would resolve for much of the episode's production.

Trivia
The episode features a Latvian independence parade, and aired on Proclamation Day of the Republic of Latvia.

Reception
In its original American broadcast, "Conspiracy Theories And Interior Design" reached approximately 4.4 million households with a 1.9 rating/6% share in the 18–49 demographic.

The episode received positive reviews from the critics. Cory Barker, of TV Surveillance, said, "good lord [it] is hilariously funny and flat-out fun" and "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design" is simply an amazingly fun episode of the best comedy on television at the height of its powers."

Furthermore, Kelsea Stahler, of hollywood.com, said "The "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design" episode is a departure from the outlandish, grand zombie- space-simulator-Betty White fueled romps and a return to the formula that the show perfected back in season one. The show also keeps the childish wonder and the ensuing hilarity that Donald Glover's Troy brings to it with a subplot in which he and Abed create a blanket-fort city that takes over an entire dorm. Say what you will about relying on formula, but Community formula is 100 percent its own and when it comes to this stuff, nobody does it better."

References

External links
"Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design" at NBC.com

Community (season 2) episodes
2010 American television episodes
Works about conspiracy theories

Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design


Fanboy and Chum Chum is an American CGI animated television series. It is based on the short cartoon known simply as "Fanboy". This was from the 2007 Nickelodeon television series Random! Cartoons. The series is about two young boys with wild imaginations. They love anything relating to superheroes and comic books. Each wears their own unique superhero costume that include underwear worn over their pants. The series was created by Eric Robles. It features a voice cast that includes David Hornsby, Nika Futterman, Jamie Kennedy, Josh Duhamel, Jeff Bennett, and Candi Milo.

Its first show premiered on November 6, 2009. The second season premiered on April 25, 2011. Merchandise of the show was released to Toys "R" Us stores in August 2011. It went on hiatus from November 3, 2012 to July 11, 2014. The final episode premiered on July 12, 2014. The show is aired in reruns on Nickelodeon and Nicktoons to this day.

Characters

 Tobias "Fanboy" Cranapple lll is a fan of anything like comic books, fantasy, science fiction and action figures. He wears a purple mask which almost covers his all of his face and wears a green costume.
 Chum Chum is Fanboy's best friend. He is younger than the characters, despite being younger, he's in the same class as them and the show's creator Eric Robles explained on the Nickelodeon message board that this is because Fanboy snuck him into his class and the teacher never noticed the age difference. Chum Chum wears an orange and yellow uniform with white briefs worn outside his costume.
 Kyle Bloodworth-Thomason is a preteen wizard who dislikes Fanboy and chum Chum due to their lack of intelligence, but secretly enjoys their friendship with the boys. He got expelled from his wizarding school due to turning his teacher into a raspberry flan ("delicious old fool" he called him) and has to go to a regular public school (Galaxy Hills Elementary School), then he realizes he has real friends and Galaxy Hills is his true home. He has red shaggy hair, large crooked buck teeth and braces on his teeth, very pale skin with freckles that are on his face and he speaks in a British accent.  He wears a red and yellow striped sweater, black jeans, red converse, and a black cape.
 Yo is another of Fanboy and Chum Chum's classmates. She is a happy-go-lucky girl and loves her Yamaguchi (a parody of Tamagotchi) digital pets, especially a cat named Scampers. She has a crush on Chum Chum, and often wants to play with him like he's a toy. She is shown to be a very talented prankster, dominating Fanboy on Prank Day. Although she can have a villainous side, she is overall very nice. She has black hair styled in pigtails, she  wears a yellow shirt, a plaid skirt, and a frog backpack.
 Mr. Hank Mufflin is Fanboy and Chum Chum's teacher with a lazy eye and is  grouchy yet often very playful.
 Boogregard "Boog" Shlizetti is a short-tempered is a short-tempered bully who is obsessed with the video game Chimp Chomp (a parody of Donkey Kong), which he plays at the Frosty Mart, very often instead of working.
 Leonard "Lenny" Flynn-Boyle is the accident-prone junior manager of the Frosty Mart. He finds Fanboy and Chum Chum quite stressful which he gets a "stress twitch" when the boys would annoy him.
 Ozwald "Oz" Harmounian is the owner of the local comic shop, Oz Comix. Oz is a friend of the boys, who consider him as  "the most knowledgeable human being ever," though he is a nerdish know-it-all man who lives with his elderly mother.
 Man-Arctica is an ice-based superhero who scours the cosmos looking for scofflaws. He balances a mild disdain for humanity against his duty to save everyone from harm like all super-heroes. He often refers to the children he meets as "earth larvae".

2000s American animated television series
American children's television series
2009 American television series debuts
American television spin-offs
English-language television programs

Fanboy and Chum Chum


Simon Brown was the director of music at King's College School in Cambridge from 1999-2014. and was the director of King's Voices from 2001 to 2013.  He was a choral scholar in King's College Choir in the late 1970s, and since then has sung in the choirs of New College, Oxford, Winchester Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Her Majesty's Chapels Royal (St James' Palace). His teaching career began at Bradford Grammar School in Yorkshire, and was followed by 12 years as Head of Academic and Choral Music at the Purcell School. His time at the Purcell School included conducting the youngest ever choir to sing Tallis' 40-part choral work Spem In Alium.

Brown's work with King's Voices included evensongs in chapel on Mondays in full term, visits to Ely Cathedral and St George's Chapel, Windsor, and tours to Venice, Florence, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Copenhagen, Bologna, Rome, Malta, Barcelona, Toulouse and Berlin. Simon is a keen composer (the introit Thee We Adore, O Hidden Saviour, Thee was premiered on BBC Radio 3's Choral Evensong in 2006 and his new carol There is no rose was sung in the Advent Procession at York Minster in 2011) and enjoys playing many instruments including recorder, viola, clarinet and harp. He is also an excellent piano teacher and accompanist.

Since 2015, Brown has been Director of Chapel Music at Robinson College, Cambridge.

References

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
English conductors (music)
British male conductors (music)
21st-century classical composers
British classical composers
British male classical composers
Alumni of New College, Oxford
21st-century British conductors (music)
21st-century British male musicians

Simon Brown (musician)


Stephen Clarkson,  (21 October 1937 – 28 February 2016) was one of Canada's preeminent political scientists and a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto.

Life and career
Clarkson's work focused mainly on two areas: the evolution of North America as a continental state, reinstitutionalized by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and two decades of neoconservatism; and the impact of globalization and trade liberalization on the Canadian state. His trilogy on these themes include Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism and the Canadian State, published in 2002; Does North America Exist? (2008) and Dependent America? How Canada and Mexico Construct US Power (2011); as well as: Global Governance and the Semi-peripheral State: The WTO and NAFTA as Canada's External Constitution in Governing under Stress: Middle Powers and the Challenge of Globalization".
His latest projects looked at Interregionalism in the triangle Europe, North America and South America and at the Investor-State Dispute Arbitration.

Clarkson had taught and written on Canadian foreign policy and federal party politics. Following an unsuccessful campaign as Liberal candidate for the mayoralty of Toronto in 1969, Clarkson was active in the Liberal Party for six years. After Pierre Trudeau's retirement from politics in 1984, Clarkson spent a decade co-authoring the book, Trudeau and Our Times, with his wife Christina McCall, which won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction.

Clarkson's knowledge and experience in Canadian politics led to the commissioning of a history of federal election campaigns in Canada from 1974 onward. These essays were the basis of his 2005 book, The Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics. Clarkson was renowned for his teaching, receiving many teaching awards in his tenure at the University of Toronto. He was a great encourager of "the engaged" life, taking his students on extra-curricular field studies to Washington, D.C., Mexico, Brazil, Madrid and Lisbon, and urging them to resist the world around them if they felt so inclined.  Clarkson was a frequent commentator of Canadian politics, in both English and French. A lover of languages, he was also proficient in Spanish, German, Russian and Italian.

Clarkson earned a B.A. from the University of Toronto, an M.A. from New College, Oxford, and a D. de Rech. from the University of Paris. He was a Senior Fellow at Massey College, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Ontario and, in 2004, was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2010, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2013 Clarkson was adjudged the Konrad Adenauer Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in connection with his academic work at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

The "Stephen Clarkson Scholarship in Political Economy" was established in his honor at the University of Toronto.

Clarkson's first wife was then broadcaster and future Governor General of Canada Adrienne Clarkson. His second wife was the late political writer Christina McCall.
Clarkson died in Germany of pneumonia which had developed into sepsis, while on a research trip with his students. He is survived by wife Nora Born, whom he married in 2014.

Bibliography
 1970 L'analyse soviétique des problèmes indiens du sous-développement, 1955-1964 1972 City lib: parties and reform 1978 The Soviet theory of development: India and the Third World in Marxist-Leninist scholarship 1982 Canada and the Reagan challenge: crisis in the Canadian-American relationship 1990 Trudeau and Our Times: Volume 1: The Magnificent Obsession (with Christina McCall)
 1994 Trudeau and Our Times: Volume 2: The Heroic Delusion (with Christina McCall)
 1998 Fearful asymmetries: the challenge of analyzing continental systems in a globalizing world 2000 "Apples and oranges": prospects for the comparative analysis of the EU and NAFTA as continental systems 2001 After the catastrophe: Canada's position in North America 2002 Lockstep in the continental ranks: redrawing the American perimeter after September 11th 2002 Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the Canadian State 2005 Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics 2008 Does North America Exist?: Governing the Continent after NAFTA and 9/11 2010 A Perilous Imbalance: The Globalization of Canadian Law and Governance (with Stepan Wood)
 2011 Dependent America? How Canada and Mexico Construct US Power'' (with Matto Mildenberger)

References

External links
 Audio interview with THECOMMENTARY.CA
 Stephen Clarkson: Author, teacher was a giant of Canadian political science Obituary by Gloria Galloway, Globe and Mail Mar. 04, 2016
 Remembering Stephen Clarkson
 Remembering Stephen Clarkson
 Canadians remember scholar Stephen Clarkson
 In Memoriam - Stephen Clarkson

1937 births
2016 deaths
Alumni of New College, Oxford
Canadian political scientists
Canadian Rhodes Scholars
Governor General's Award-winning non-fiction writers
Members of the Order of Canada
Trinity College (Canada) alumni
University of Toronto alumni
University of Paris alumni
Upper Canada College alumni
Academic staff of the University of Toronto
Ontario municipal politicians
British emigrants to Canada
Canadian expatriates in France

Stephen Clarkson


Jack Singer (1917 – February 2, 2013) was a Canadian real estate developer, financier, and philanthropist. Although he owned numerous properties across Canada and the USA, he is most famous for his acquisition of Zoetrope Studio in Hollywood, once the primary film property of director,  Francis Ford Coppola.   Furthermore, the impressive and world-class Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary is named after him.

Personal life
Jack Singer was born in Calgary in 1917, one of four siblings:  Hymie, Diane (Aceman), and Rosalie (Franks).    Singer and his late wife, Shirley (née Cohen), had two sons, Alan Singer and the late Stephen Singer, plus five grandchildren:  JL, Leslie, Adam, Quinn, and Carly.

His mother, Bella Singer, was born in 1880 in Radom, Poland, the eighth of eleven children.  In 1905 she married Abraham Singer and  the couple soon left to seek a better life in Canada. Bella first worked as a housekeeper at the Palliser Hotel, and then ran rooming houses during the early years, while Abraham began a number of successful business ventures. He was a scrap dealer, a second-hand store operator, a Banff hotelier, and later owned a number of farming and commercial realty operations. Singer's immigrant parents used their savings to help hundreds of Jews escape persecution before and during the Second World War, and in doing so, instilled in their son an entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit.  The Singers required each person they brought over to bring somebody else, ready to work. Perhaps 1,600 Canadians now count themselves descended from Bella's "pyramid scheme."

In 1944, Singer married Shirley Cohen. At the urging of a close friend who was smitten with Cohen, Singer reluctantly agreed to date her, fully intending to hand off Cohen to his buddy.    However, upon their first meeting, Singer fell madly in love and, instead of a matchmaker, he became a groom. It would not be long before the Singers were a fashionable power couple in Calgary social circles and, until her death in 2001, their impact upon the city's culture was most significant.

Singer always held a special fondness for the entertainment business.  Over the years, as he spent more time in Southern California,  he became friends with many  Hollywood actors, including Peter Lorre, Truman Capote, and George Burns.

Business Interests

By the age of 11, Singer was helping  his mother with the books while collecting rents from the family owned rooming houses.

At the age of 17,  Singer turned to business, and found a partner in Abraham (Avrum) Belzberg.  Singer approached Belzberg with a business proposition, suggesting that they could buy the Foothills Building in Calgary for $60,000.  That successful deal inspired them to form a partnership, United Management, a real estate business venture that continued for four decades thereafter and, at one point, held 200 pieces of property.

During the '50s and '60s, Singer and his older brother, Hymie,  introduced Alberta to the strip mall.  They would land anchor tenants such as banks and grocery stores, which would help them get financing and snap up land. They would go on to develop other commercial sites around Calgary  and they built several Calgary landmarks such as the Southland Commercial Centre and Alberta Place.  Ultimately, they expanded their real estate empire through Western Canada and into California, Arizona and Texas.

Singer also formed the Atlas Finance and Realty Corporation.  Most famously known for providing loans to finance "One from the Heart," by Francis Ford Coppola, the company also owned 50 percent of Cornwall Petroleum and Resources Ltd. with oil properties in the United States and New Zealand.

Hollywood Center Studios

In 1981, Jack Singer was golfing in Palm Springs when he was asked if he was interested in touring  Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studio, where the director of The Godfather films was shooting, "One From The Heart."  At that time, Coppola's studio was located in Hollywood. Singer loved movies, so he tagged along looking for an autograph, not a deal.  But he met the director, the pair hit it off, and soon Singer injected $3-million into the film. However, the film was an expensive box-office flop that pushed Coppola into receivership. In 1984, the Singer family bid $12.3-million at auction for the studio and, since they were the only bidders, they won, subsequently renaming it, the Hollywood Center Studios.  Several lawsuits followed, along with the inevitable falling-out with Coppola, who, according to the Los Angeles Times, accused Singer of "using the loan as a wedge to take away his studio." Coppola privately believed the Singer family was trying to ruin him; however, eventually, the matter was settled out of court.

Over the years, the Singers pumped more than $20 million into various upgrades at the Hollywood Center Studios:  the lot's control rooms, camera packages and infrastructure were upgraded to HDTV. This was done to support numerous television clients. Three cvc stages were added and a virtual set stage was also built to provide a cost-effective way to produce high-quality content for broadcast and the web. Additionally, production office space more than doubled, providing homes for dozens of independent companies, representing every niche in the industry.  Finally, the studio installed a solar panel, the largest of its kind in Hollywood that provides renewable, environmentally-friendly power to the entire lot.   As such, it was a source of tremendous pride when, in 2011,  the Los Angeles City Council, via  Councilman Tom LaBonge, issued a proclamation thanking Singer for his inspiration in leading the revitalization of the District of Hollywood and his dedication to the film industry.  The LA City Council underscored one particular point:  "Jack Singer came for an autograph and ended up saving the community."

In May, 2017, a Los Angeles based real estate company, Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., purchased Hollywood Center Studios from the Singer family for $200 million, then immediately renamed the property as the "Sunset Las Palmas Studios"

Sports Interests

An all-round athlete as a teenager, Singer was a star pitcher on the Central Memorial High School baseball team, a quarterback, and a Canadian Golden Gloves boxer with 17 straight wins.   As a teenager, Singer won the Canadian lightweight amateur boxing championship, and had his sights set upon a professional career.   However, injuries in the form of two perforated eardrums ultimately convinced him otherwise.

As a friend to athletes from all types of events, Singer raised money for WWII causes, bringing in top boxers for exhibition matches.

Singer co-owned a thoroughbred racehorse named Tyhawk. In 1959, Tyhawk set a world record over  six-and-a-half furlongs at one minute 14.4 seconds at Turf Paradise Race Course in Phoenix.  In 1960, Tyhawk won the Highlander Stakes at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, matching a course record of 1 minute 10.2 seconds over six furlongs on dirt.  Tyhawk was inducted later into the British Columbia Horse Racing Hall of Fame,  and has been considered "possibly the top BC sprinter of all time."

In 1997, Singer launched an unsuccessful $70 million bid for the Toronto Blue Jays, a Major League Baseball team.

Philanthropy

Jack Singer Concert Hall

Named after Jack Singer (thanks to a $1.5M contribution from his sons, Alan Singer and the late Stephen Singer), the concert hall opened its doors in 1985.   The Jack Singer Concert Hall is located at the Arts Commons, a performing arts complex occupying 10 acres (4.5 hectares) in downtown Calgary. The Jack Singer Concert Hall is described as one of the most beautiful and acoustically acclaimed venues in North America.  Artec consultants designed the adjustable acoustics system that includes a canopy, clad in laminated spruce wood. Suspended high above the stage and weighing 185,000-pounds (90-tons), this massive acoustical reflector can be raised or lowered to adjust the acoustical environment to meet the needs of the broad spectrum of music performed in the hall. Another prominent feature is the Carthy Organ.  As one of Canada's largest pipe organs, the Carthy Organ is hand-carved from solid oak and contains more than 1600 polished alloy and wood pipes. The acquisition of the organ was made possible through the Carthy Foundation, thanks to a $750,000 donation from the Mannix Family. With 2021 seats, the Jack Singer Concert Hall is home to the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, BD&P World Music, and TD Jazz. The hall also welcomes a spectrum of events each season from TED (conference) talks and National Geographic speakers to wedding dinners on the stage and rock stars on tour.

Sources

References

1917 births
2013 deaths
Businesspeople from Calgary
Canadian financiers
Canadian real estate businesspeople
Canadian sports businesspeople
Canadian racehorse owners and breeders
Jewish Canadian philanthropists
Canadian people of Polish descent
Canadian expatriates in the United States
Sportspeople from Calgary
20th-century Canadian philanthropists

Jack Singer


In Greek mythology, Medea (; , Mēdeia, , Medea) is a sorceress of Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios. She married the hero Jason, and had two children with him, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of Corinth, offers him his daughter, Glauce. The play tells of Medea avenging her husband's betrayal by killing their children.

The myths involving Jason have been interpreted as part of a class of myths that tell how the Hellenes of the distant heroic age, before the Trojan War, faced the challenges of the pre-Greek "Pelasgian" cultures of mainland Greece, the Aegean and Anatolia. Jason, Perseus, Theseus, and above all Heracles, are all figures on the threshold between the old world of shamans, earth deities, and the new Bronze Age Greek ways.

Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, a myth known best from a late literary version worked up by Apollonius of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC and called the Argonautica. However, for all its self-consciousness and researched archaic vocabulary, the late epic was based on very old, scattered materials. Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and is often depicted as a priestess of the goddess Hecate or a witch. The myth of Jason and Medea is very old, originally written around the time Hesiod wrote the Theogony. It was known to the composer of the  Little Iliad, part of the Epic Cycle.

References

People in Greek mythology

Medea


A cooperative video game, often abbreviated as co-op, is a video game that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more non-player character opponents (PvE). Co-op games can be played locally using one or multiple input controllers or over a network via local area networks, wide area networks, or the Internet.

Co-op gameplay has gained popularity as controller and networking technology has developed. On PCs and consoles, cooperative games have become increasingly common, and many genres of games—including shooter games, sports games, real-time strategy games, and massively multiplayer online games—include co-op modes.

Description
A cooperative video game is a video game that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more non-player character opponents (PvE). Cooperative video games are often abbreviated as co-ops. The gameplay of cooperative games may be entirely cooperative or be limited to cooperative modes.

History
Co-op gameplay has gained popularity as controller and networking technology has developed. On PCs and consoles, cooperative games have become increasingly common, and many genres of games—including shooter games, sports games, real-time strategy games, and massively multiplayer online games—include co-op modes.

Arcade co-op gaming
The first video game to feature co-op play dates back to 1973, with Atari's arcade video game Pong Doubles, which was a tennis doubles version of their hit arcade game Pong (1972). Co-op play was later featured in another Atari coin-op, Fire Truck (1978).

Several early 1980s arcade coin-op games allowed for co-op play. Wizard of Wor offered solo, competitive two-player, or cooperative two-player gaming while Williams Electronics' Joust encouraged players to alternatively compete and cooperate by awarding bonus points for co-op play in some rounds and awarding bonuses for attacking the other player in others. Two-player games of Nintendo's Mario Bros. could be played as competitively or cooperatively.

Co-operative games became particularly popular among operators of coin-op video games as they had the potential to net double the revenue per game. Drop-in/drop-out co-op was pioneered by Gauntlet (1985) which came in models of two and four players for different locations. This trend was followed by the likes of Quartet (1986), Ikari Warriors (1986), and Rampage (1986) which became high-earners for American operators.

Beat 'em up games, exemplified by Double Dragon (1987), were among the most successful games of the late 1980s. Their co-operative nature often included mechanics such as friendly fire, providing more opportunities for dynamic play. The feature became expected in the beat 'em up genre and was present in megahits such as Final Fight (1989), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989), and The Simpsons (1991). Ports of these games to home consoles were often criticized for their lack of co-operative functionality.

In 1998, Time Crisis II launched as the first in the series as a two-player arcade rail shooter where two players could provide cover for each other. In 2009 Konami and Activision released Guitar Hero Arcade, a co-op rhythm game which allowed players to work together to complete a song of their choosing or the two players could fight each other in the battle mode with each guitarist striving for a higher score.

Console co-op gaming

Early-generation home consoles typically did not offer co-op options, due to technical limitations which hindered the increased graphics required for simultaneous co-op play. Though consoles from the second generation of video games onward typically had controller ports for two-player games, most systems did not have the computing or graphical power for simultaneous play, leading most games that billed "2-player gameplay" as a feature to merely include the single player game mode with alternating players.

During this early era, many video games which featured co-op play (including beat 'em ups such as Double Dragon) were ported to less advanced home systems. Alternating play replaced the arcade's co-op play in the NES version (although Double Dragon II and III, for the same system, did retain their co-op gameplay). Most other titles featuring two-player were head-to-head sports titles. Though most of the console beat 'em ups were arcade ports, original franchises such as Streets of Rage and River City Ransom also became popular.

In the run-and-gun shooter genre, Contra was more successful in its NES incarnation than it was in the arcades in the North American market. Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis and the Metal Slug series for the Neo Geo were also well-received titles.

Electronic Arts has produced key co-op sports games, including the original NHL Hockey (1991) and Madden NFL (1990) installments on the Sega Genesis. These games allowed two players or more to play against the CPU.

Due to the lack of online multiplayer, co-op games in the RPG genre have generally been less common on console systems than on PCs. Nevertheless, some of the earliest co-op action RPGs were console titles, including the TurboGrafx-16 game Dungeon Explorer (1989) by Atlus which allowed up to five players to play simultaneously, and Square's Secret of Mana (1993) for the Super NES which offered two- and three-player action once the main character had acquired his party members. Secret of Mana's co-op gameplay was considered innovative in its time, as it allowed the second or third players to drop in and out of the game at any time. This function influenced future titles, such as Dungeon Siege III. Final Fantasy VI (1994) offered a form of alternating co-op play for its battles, with the second player taking control of half of the characters in the party. Namco's Tales series allowed multiple players to take control of individual members in its real-time battles in some of the titles, such as Tales of Symphonia, while the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games replicated the Diablo formula for consoles, offering two-player simultaneous play through the game's campaign.

With the release of the Nintendo 64 (1996, 1997), having four controller ports started to become a standard feature in consoles, as the Dreamcast, GameCube and Xbox all later featured them. As larger multiplayer games became feasible, cooperative gameplay also became more available. The 7th and current generations of video game consoles all feature wireless controllers, removing port-based local player limits.

PC co-op gaming

First-person shooters

The release of Doom in 1993 was a breakthrough in network gaming. Up to four players could travel through the entire game together, playing on separate computers over a LAN. The game's campaign mode was designed primarily for single player, but the difficulty was tweaked to compensate for extra human players. The following three games produced by id Software (Doom II, Quake and Quake II) all featured co-op modes.

Starting from the early 2000s, however, many FPS developers have forsaken co-op campaign play, opting to focus more purely on either a more detailed and in-depth single player experience or a purely multiplayer game. Epic's Unreal Tournament series had shifted almost entirely towards deathmatch modes, and significant FPS releases such as Doom 3, Quake 4, and both Half-Life titles shipped without cooperative gameplay modes. However, Killing Floor, originally a total conversion mod for the game Unreal Tournament 2004, first released in 2005, introduced the wave-based survival cooperative game mode. After the Gears of War franchise introduced the "Horde" four-player cooperative mode, the game mode has undergone a resurgence, starting a trend which included Halo 3: ODSTs "Firefight" mode and Call of Duty: World at Wars "Nazi Zombies" mode. More games in the genre from the 2010s include the Payday and Destiny series.

Role-playing games

Most early role-playing video games were inspired by multiplayer tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons, but were restricted to single player due to the technology of the era. The earliest RPGs featuring something resembling co-op play were MUDs, which would later evolve into the MMOG genre.

In 1989, Image Works released Bloodwych for MS-DOS and various other platforms which featured a two-player cooperative mode via split screen where 2 players needed to cooperate in order to solve puzzles and eliminate enemies.

Later PC RPGs became more powerful and flexible in simulating the shared real life RPG experience, allowing players to collaborate in games over the Internet. Blizzard Entertainment's immensely successful Diablo (1996), which incorporated Blizzard's online matchmaking service, battle.net, allowing the game's players to play through the entire single player campaign together. The D&D-sanctioned Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games, released in 1998 and 2000, respectively, allowed up to six players to play through the campaign mode over a network. Atari's Neverwinter Nights (2002) was an official and comprehensive D&D simulator, featuring even more robust game-creation tools and developing a sizable online community. It allowed one player to serve as a Dungeon Master, shaping and altering the game world against a party of human-controlled players, playing cooperatively. (An earlier game, Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption (2000) was the earliest CRPG to feature this sort of "storyteller" mode.)

Contemporary MMORPGs such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft feature a mixture of single-player goals ("quests") and larger end-game challenges that can only be completed via intensive co-op play, of up to twenty-five (formerly forty) players in end-game raids, and up to forty versus forty in battlegrounds.

Gameplay characteristics

Couch co-op and online co-op modes

Co-op games can be played locally using one or multiple input controllers or over a network via local area networks, wide area networks, or the Internet. Cooperative games designed to be played by multiple players on the same display screen have come to be known as "couch co-op", "local co-op" or "single-player co-op" games. Cooperative games in which players each use their own display system are known as "online co-op", "network co-op" or "multiplayer co-op" games due to the majority of such systems utilizing telecommunications networks to synchronize game state among the players. Games have also been brought to market in which both modes can be combined—accommodating more than one display with each display accommodating one or more players.

While there are no practical technical limits to how many players can be involved in a cooperative game, the industry has settled on games that support up to four players as an informal standard. This comes from a combination of factors. Historically, cooperative arcade video games maxed out at four players. Similarly, consoles which supported local co-op play on the same screen also maxed out at four players. There is also a human factor according to various developers. While having more than four players involved could make a game more interesting to play, this starts to exceed a comfortable number related to social interactions between players and may cause segmenting of the larger group into smaller ones, while up to four players encourages cooperation and coordination within that group.

Display features

Many video games support split screen displays in order to show two or more players in different regions of the game. Split screen displays would usually split the main screen into either two or four sub-regions so that 2–4 players can roam freely within the game world. Many first-person and third-person shooter games use this technique when played in multiplayer co-op mode, such as the console versions of games in the Rainbow Six series, the Halo series or the fifth installment of the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: World at War.

Split screen modes have also been combined with 3D Television technology by hobbyists, using alternate-frame sequencing for the purpose of presenting each of two couch co-op players with their own 2D full-screen image on the same display, rather than for stereoscopy. Due to the complexity involved in correcting the resulting aspect ratios, and that in obtaining 3D glasses which allowed both lenses to synchronize to the same eye-frame, this remained the purview of enthusiasts until 2011, when Sony Computer Entertainment America began to market a 3D display product for their consoles. This display system supported this practice under the trademark SimulView. While the SimulView feature set was designed to work only with the Sony 3D monitor, the move renewed interest in this technology, and it was not long before the gaming community circumvented this vendor lock-in gambit, allowing SimulView-supporting games to utilize the feature on third-party 3DTV equipment.

By contrast, in cooperative platform games, both players typically occupy the same screen and must coordinate their actions, particularly with regard to the scrolling. If the scrolling is limited to a forward direction only, players can potentially kill each other. For example, one player lagging behind could cause problems for his partner, as the screen will not scroll onward. If a player was attempting to complete a jump over a chasm, the "safe" surface on the far side of the chasm could be prevented from scrolling into view by a slow player.

Developers have attempted to counter these frustrations by using a camera that can zoom in and out over an entire level as needed, keeping both players within the scope of the camera. This type of camera was used to enable the display of four player cooperative gameplay in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Another strategy allows player screens to be split when the player characters are far apart, but combine into one full-screen image when player characters are close enough together. The 2005 video game The Warriors is considered notable for attempting this in a 3D third-person perspective format.

Resource management

A common concept in cooperative games is the sharing of resources between players. For example, two players managing one team in a real-time strategy game, such as StarCraft, will often have to draw off the same pool of resources to build and upgrade their units and buildings. The sharing of resources, however, can be as simple as the system used in the Contra games (and other shoot-'em-up/beat-'em-up games) where a player who is out of spare lives could "steal" a life from the other player so both players could continue to play at the same time.

Role of the second player
The second player role is vital in a co-op video game. Many co-op video games adapt the single player mode of a game, allowing additional characters to have the same roles to directly take control of another character. This means that they are separate from the first player visually and physically, but play by the same rules as the first player (i.e., a separate health bar) on different levels. Some games create an entire new cooperative system including maps, characters, and more to enhance players experience, and additionally there are opportunities for co-operative video games to involve split screen and other display options. Some games, like Super Mario Galaxy, the Wii version of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Super Mario Odyssey and some versions of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, however, limit the second player to an omniscient, invulnerable helper role, where they can assist the first player. This may include the ability to attack enemies within the first player's view, typically via a targeting reticle. Other co-op games such as It Takes Two and Evolve give the other player special roles, tasks or abilities.

See also
 List of cooperative video games
 Player versus environment

Further reading
 Thanh Bui and Hung Nguyen. "Essential Feature - Cooperative Gameplay" ART 108: Introduction to Games Studies (2018).

References

Video game gameplay

Video game terminology

Cooperative video game


Antoine Sibierski (born 5 August 1974) is a French former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He started his career at hometown club Lille OSC, going on to play for AJ Auxerre, Nantes, with whom he won the Coupe de France twice, and RC Lens. He then moved to England and played for Manchester City, Newcastle United, with whom he won the UEFA Intertoto Cup, Wigan Athletic, and Norwich City. At international level, he made three appearances for France at the 1996 Summer Olympics. He is currently sporting director of his former club, RC Lens.

Club career

Early career
Born in Lille, Sibierski began his career at hometown club Lille OSC, where he moved up the ranks and played for four complete seasons in the first team before playing for AJ Auxerre and FC Nantes, where he won the 2000 French Cup, in the final of which Sibierski scored both of Nantes' goals. He then joined RC Lens, and eventually became club captain during his three-year stay.

Manchester City
Sibierski moved to Manchester City for a fee of £700,000 in August 2003, where he scored on his debut against Charlton Athletic.

He was a regular substitute for the team, having started only eighteen of the thirty-three games he participated in, during an all important first season in which he scored seven goals.

The 2005–06 season saw him fighting for a new contract at the club. Early on in the season he won a place up front due to the injury of Andrew Cole but was soon reverted to the bench. Antoine was subsequently released by the club that summer.

Newcastle United
Newcastle United signed Sibierski on 31 August 2006 on a one-year contract, just two hours and twenty minutes before the close of the transfer window.

He scored on his Newcastle debut in the UEFA cup first round tie against Levadia. His league debut for the club came at West Ham United on 17 September, and he scored his first domestic goal for Newcastle on 7 November against Watford in the League Cup. He scored his first league goal for the club in a 1–0 win over Portsmouth. Sibierski then went on to score his second league goal for the Magpies against Reading in a thrilling encounter in which the Magpies went on to win 3–2. His goal scoring form at the start of the season proved many doubters wrong, as Sibierski went on to be a key European figure. In Europe, Sibierski made 7 appearances and scored 4 essential goals against Levadia Tallinn, Fenerbahçe, Celta Vigo and Zulte-Waregem respectively.

He quickly became a Newcastle favourite and an important member of the first team loved by the Newcastle faithful. Due to injuries on Tyneside, including England striker Michael Owen, Sibierski mainly played as a striker, where his partnership with Nigerian Obafemi Martins proved successful. He also played as an attacking midfielder in a 4–5–1 formation. He played a part in an exciting 2–2 draw with Manchester United, later saying he was disappointed not to get on the scoresheet against his former club's main rivals. He scored his first European goal of 2007 with a brilliant individual effort against Zulte-Waregem in the UEFA Cup on 15 February. Sibierski nut-megged a defender, took it round another, took it round the keeper and tapped home the last goal in a 3–1 win.

However, Newcastle were not willing to match Sibierski's wish of a new two-year contract at the club, instead offering just another one-year contract, which he rejected. Sibierski's agent Willie McKay stated that whilst negotiations were still ongoing, it looked increasingly likely that Sibierski would be leaving the club as his contract came to an end, especially with newly appointed manager Sam Allardyce bringing fresh ideas and tactics. Following his season with Newcastle, Sibierski described himself as a Newcastle fan. He is affectionately known among Newcastle United fans as 'Sib The Sexist' in homage to Tyneside's Silver Tongued Cavalier 'Sid The Sexist'.

Wigan Athletic
Sibierski agreed a two-year deal with Wigan Athletic on a free transfer from Newcastle United on 4 June 2007 along with Titus Bramble, who played at Newcastle with Sibierski the previous season but was also released. He scored on his debut in the 2–1 defeat at Everton on 11 August 2007. He followed this up with a second goal for the Latics on his home debut at the JJB Stadium on 15 August against Middlesbrough, and a third for Wigan's third game in a row, completing a 3–0 victory over Sunderland on 18 August. Subsequently, Sibierski suffered several injuries and his form slumped, as Wigan slipped from the top 4 to the relegation zone.

However, on 12 January 2008, Sibierski scored a crucial winner within seconds of coming off the bench against Derby County with a low drive into the bottom left corner of the net from 25 yards out. He then followed this up with another spectacular goal against Chelsea, in the FA Cup.

On 1 September 2008, Sibierski joined Norwich City on loan. He scored what proved to be the winning goal on his debut against Plymouth Argyle on 13 September 2008 from a free-kick. However, after this he made little impact and returned to Wigan in January when his loan ended. He was released by Wigan at the end of the 2008–09 season, after not being offered a new contract.

International career
Sibierski is of Polish descent through his paternal grandfather, who came to France from Poland to work in the mines. He represented France at the 1996 Summer Olympics, making three appearances.

Post-playing career
After finishing his playing career, Sibierski briefly became a football agent with his brother. He is currently the Sporting Director of Ligue 1 club RC Lens.

Personal life
Former Lille teammate Frédéric Dindeleux, who had been his friend since the age of eight, was best man at Sibierski's wedding to Isabelle. The couple had three children together: two daughters and a son. Following the unfortunate passing of his 18-year-old elder daughter Sibylle on 1 February 2010, a charity "Fonds de Dotation Sibylle Sibierski" has been formed in her name with the support of football legends such as Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane, former Arsenal captain and Manchester City midfielder Patrick Vieira, Chelsea striker Didier Drogba and Kevin Keegan of England and Newcastle and more.

Honours
Nantes
 Coupe de France: 1998–99, 1999–2000
 Trophée des Champions: 1999

Newcastle United
 UEFA Intertoto Cup: 2006

Individual
 Goal of the season for Wigan Athletic: against Chelsea, 26 January 2008

References

External links

1974 births
Living people
French people of Polish descent
French men's footballers
Footballers from Lille
Men's association football forwards
Olympic footballers for France
Footballers at the 1996 Summer Olympics
Ligue 1 players
Premier League players
English Football League players
Lille OSC players
AJ Auxerre players
FC Nantes players
RC Lens players
Manchester City F.C. players
Newcastle United F.C. players
Wigan Athletic F.C. players
Norwich City F.C. players
French expatriate men's footballers
French expatriate sportspeople in England
Expatriate men's footballers in England

Antoine Sibierski


Barry Louis Larkin (born April 28, 1964) is an American former professional baseball player. He played shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds of  Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1986 to 2004.

He briefly played in the minor leagues before making his MLB debut in 1986. He quickly won the starting shortstop role for the Reds and enjoyed a long run of strong seasons with the team. Larkin struggled with a string of injuries between 1997 and 2003, limiting his playing time in several seasons.

Larkin retired after the 2004 season and worked in a front-office position for the Washington Nationals for several years until he joined ESPN as a baseball analyst. He served as a coach for the American team in the 2009 World Baseball Classic and managed the Brazilian national team for the same event in 2013.

Larkin is considered one of the top players of his era, winning nine Silver Slugger awards, three Gold Glove awards, and the 1995 National League Most Valuable Player Award. He was selected to the Major League All-Star Game twelve times, and was one of the pivotal players on the 1990 Reds' World Series championship team. Larkin was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in January 2012 and was inducted on July 22, 2012.

Early life and education
Born and raised in the Cincinnati suburb of Silverton, Ohio, and raised Catholic, Larkin attended Archbishop Moeller High School. Larkin accepted a football scholarship to the University of Michigan to play for coach Bo Schembechler, but during his freshman year, he decided to play baseball exclusively. He was a two-time All-American and led the Wolverines to berths in two College World Series, in 1983 and 1984 (the last time until 2019). Larkin was also named Big Ten Player of the Year in 1984 and 1985. Larkin's number 16 was retired by the school on May 1, 2010. Baseball at the 1984 Summer Olympics saw Larkin playing for the United States team.

Minor league career
Barry Larkin played with the Vermont Reds on their team that won the 1985 Eastern League Championship and in 1986 was the Rookie of the Year and AAA Player of the Year with the Denver Zephyrs. In all, he played only 177 minor league games in his professional career.

MLB career

Early career

After arriving in the majors, Larkin battled fellow prospect Kurt Stillwell for the starting shortstop spot before establishing himself as the starter in 1987. In 1988, Larkin led all major leaguers by striking out only 24 times in 588 at bats. Larkin batted .353 in the 1990 World Series to help lead the Reds to a four-game sweep of the Oakland Athletics. On June 27–28, 1991, Larkin became the first shortstop ever to hit five home runs in the span of two consecutive games. He earned his fourth consecutive All-Star Game selection that season.

After the 1991 season, Larkin questioned whether the Reds had a commitment to winning. He said he was likely to leave the team when his contract expired the next year, but he was encouraged when the Reds acquired pitchers Tim Belcher and Greg Swindell in the offseason. In January 1992, the Reds signed him to a five-year, $25.6 million contract. At that time, only four players had larger contracts and Larkin was the highest-paid shortstop. Larkin was not selected as an All-Star in 1992, but he won his fifth consecutive Silver Slugger Award. In 1993, he won the Roberto Clemente Award, which recognizes players who display sportsmanship, community service and on-field ability. In 1995, Larkin finished sixth in batting (.319) and second in stolen bases (51) to win the National League's MVP award, the first by a shortstop since Maury Wills in 1962. He led the Reds to the National League Central division title and the 1995 National League Championship Series, where he batted .389 during the series loss to the eventual champion Atlanta Braves.

In 1996, Larkin hit a career-high 33 home runs and stole 36 bases, becoming the first shortstop in Major League history to join the 30–30 club. He arguably had a better season in 1996 than he had in his MVP year of 1995, as his on-base percentage and slugging percentage were both improved.

Middle career
Larkin was named the Reds' captain before the 1997 season, making him the first player to hold the honor since Dave Concepción's retirement. Beginning that season, Larkin suffered a series of injuries throughout the last few years of his career. He missed 55 games that year due to injuries to his calf and his Achilles tendon.  About three weeks before the opening of the 1998 season, Larkin decided to undergo neck surgery for a perforated disk. He was not in severe pain, but he was unable to lift his arm enough to play his defensive position.

On September 27, 1998, Barry, his brother Stephen Larkin, second baseman Bret Boone, and third baseman Aaron Boone all played the infield at the same time for the last game of the 1998 season, making it the first time in MLB history that two sets of siblings were on the field at the same time. In 1999, Larkin was nearly traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He later said that he was approached by a Los Angeles clubhouse attendant, who gave him a Dodgers jersey with his name on it. The jersey had been prepared as trade negotiations advanced so that the teams could be prepared for a trade-related press conference. Also in 1999, Larkin served as a pre-game analyst for NBC's coverage of the World Series alongside host Hannah Storm.

In July 2000, Larkin blocked a trade to the New York Mets to remain with the Reds. The trade would have sent three players – top minor league outfielder Alex Escobar, pitcher Eric Cammack and pitcher Jason Saenz – from the Mets to the Reds in exchange for Larkin. Larkin said that he would have gone to New York, as he enjoyed playing there, but the Mets did not want to sign him to a multi-year contract. The Reds signed him to a three-year contract extension worth $27 million. In the 2000 season, Larkin missed 59 games after he injured his finger twice and he suffered a knee sprain. He underwent finger surgery in April and knee surgery in September.

Later career

Larkin struggled with a groin injury in 2001, prompting criticism of his play. Broadcaster Joe Nuxhall said on air that Larkin had "lost it". By August, the injury had limited Larkin to 45 games. He underwent season-ending surgery for a hernia that had been diagnosed during an evaluation of the groin injury. During the 2002 season, Larkin played in 145 games but hit for the lowest batting average (.245) since his first full year in the major leagues. Though he did not miss many games, Larkin dealt with injuries to his rib cage, hamstring, shoulder, neck and toe.

In 2003, Larkin had spent two stints on the disabled list with calf injuries by late May. During strained contract negotiations with Reds COO John Allen in late 2003, Larkin almost left the team. Larkin and the Reds agreed to a one-year contract for 2004. Larkin called off a planned retirement ceremony scheduled for October 2, 2004, because he was not sure if he would retire. In that season, Larkin hit for a .289 batting average. He announced his retirement in February 2005.

Commenting on Larkin's retirement after such a strong season, sports columnist Terence Moore drew a comparison to the retirement of Ted Williams. He wrote, "Barry Larkin wasn't quite Williams at the end, but he was in the vicinity when it comes to the big picture... After years of injuries, he showed what a healthy Larkin still could do, but he also showed that he preferred to leave the game more like Williams than just about anybody else you can name in baseball history." In his 19-year career with Cincinnati, Larkin hit .295 with 2,340 hits, 198 home runs, 960 RBI, 1,329 runs scored and 379 stolen bases. Baseball historian and expert Bill James has called Larkin one of the greatest shortstops of all time, ranking him #6 all time in his New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Despite missing significant playing time in six seasons, Larkin won the Gold Glove Award three times (1994–1996) and was a 12-time All-Star (1988–1991, 1993–1997, 1999, 2000, and 2004). He became the first major league shortstop to join the 30–30 club when he had 33 home runs and 36 stolen bases in 1996.

Post-retirement

After his retirement, Larkin was hired as a special assistant to the general manager in the Washington Nationals organization. With the Nationals, he worked under former Reds general manager Jim Bowden. Larkin had hoped to work for the Reds, but USA Today reported that his 2003 contract disagreement with Allen eliminated that opportunity. In 2008, he signed with the MLB Network as a studio analyst.

He was the bench coach for the United States at the 2009 World Baseball Classic and managed the United States' second-round game against Puerto Rico when U.S. manager Davey Johnson left to attend his stepson's wedding. On July 20, 2008, the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum inducted Larkin, César Gerónimo, August "Garry" Herrmann, and Joey Jay. The induction was held at the Duke Energy Center in downtown Cincinnati. On Tuesday, March 24, 2009, the College Baseball Foundation announced the names of the ten players and coaches comprising the 2009 National College Baseball Hall of Fame Induction Class, which included Barry Larkin.

In 2011, Larkin left Washington for ESPN to serve as a Baseball Tonight analyst. Larkin received great applause from Reds fans when he helped host Baseball Tonight's on-the-road coverage of Sunday Night Baseball at GABP on July 24, 2011. Crowd chants of "Barry Larkin" and "Hall of Fame" often caused the anchors to have to talk very loud to be heard. Larkin was coincidentally in Cincinnati for Baseball Tonight on the day of the 2011 Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

In 2012, Larkin was voted into the Hall of Fame with 86.4% of the vote. He was the eighth Reds player and 24th shortstop inducted to the Hall of Fame. On August 25, 2012, his number 11 was retired in an official ceremony at Great American Ball Park. In 2010, his first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame, Larkin had received 51.6% of the vote (75 percent is needed for election). In 2011, he received 62.1% of the vote, the highest of non-inducted players and third overall.

He was invited by the Brazilian Baseball Federation to manage their national team in the qualifiers for the 2013 World Baseball Classic. Brazil beat host country Panama in Brazil's first time to qualify for the event. They were originally scheduled to play in Puerto Rico, but because of the huge Japanese baseball influence in Brazil, they played in Japan. The team played Cuba and China besides the home country.
 The team went winless in its WBC debut and was eliminated after the first round.

Larkin built the Champions Sports Complex to use sports in the social, emotional, and educational development of youth. In 2008, Larkin released a charity wine called "Barry Larkin's Merlot", with 100% of its proceeds supporting Champions Sports Foundation.

In November 2013, Detroit Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski confirmed that the organization had intended to interview Larkin for its open managerial position. Larkin declined the interview due to the time commitment associated with the job. Brad Ausmus was named the new Tigers manager on November 3, 2013.

In November 2014, the Tampa Bay Times reported that Larkin was among 10 candidates interviewed for the Tampa Bay Rays' managerial job. Larkin was not among the team's three finalists, and the job ultimately went to Kevin Cash.
Larkin joined the Cincinnati Reds as a minor-league roving infield instructor in May 2015. He helped out the big-league club during spring training 2016. When asked whether he hoped to manage in the future, he said, "Never say never. The conditions have to be right and, you know, the manager's job, at least in my opinion, is not about just having the manager's position. It's about having the support system to support that manager's position."

On February 16, 2021, it was announced that Larkin joined the Reds' television broadcast team on Fox Sports Ohio.

Sports diplomacy
Larkin has also been an active participant in the SportsUnited Sports Envoy program for the U.S. Department of State. In this function, he has traveled to Colombia, Ecuador, India, Lithuania, Taiwan, where he worked with to conduct baseball clinics and events that reached more than 2,200 youth from underserved areas. In so doing, Larkin helped contribute to SportsUnited's mission to reach out to youth populations in order to promote growth and a stable democratic government.

Personal life

Larkin's brother, Stephen Larkin, was also a professional baseball player; he made it to the major leagues for one game with the Reds. Another brother, Byron Larkin, was a second-team All-American basketball player at Xavier University and is the color commentator on Xavier basketball radio broadcasts.  Larkin's eldest brother, Mike, was a captain of the University of Notre Dame's football team in 1985. They were all raised Catholic.

Larkin and his wife Lisa have two daughters, Brielle D'Shea and Cymber, and a son, Shane. The family lives in Orlando, Florida. Shane played two seasons at the University of Miami before declaring himself eligible for the 2013 NBA draft. Shane was subsequently traded to the Dallas Mavericks and made his NBA debut in November 2013. Shane started as a guard for the Boston Celtics in 2017.
Larkin's daughters play lacrosse. Brielle D'Shea is named in honor of Shea Stadium, as Larkin enjoyed playing there.

See also

List of Major League Baseball career hits leaders
List of Major League Baseball career runs scored leaders
List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders
List of Major League Baseball players who spent their entire career with one franchise
30–30 club

References

External links

Barry Larkin at Baseballbiography.com

1964 births
Living people
African-American baseball managers
African-American baseball players
All-American college baseball players
Baseball in Brazil
Baseball players at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Baseball players from Cincinnati
Cincinnati Reds announcers
Cincinnati Reds players
National College Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
Denver Zephyrs players
ESPN people
Gold Glove Award winners
Major League Baseball broadcasters
Major League Baseball players with retired numbers
Major League Baseball shortstops
Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Michigan Wolverines baseball players
MLB Network personalities
Nashville Sounds players
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
National baseball team managers
National League All-Stars
National League Most Valuable Player Award winners
Olympic silver medalists for the United States in baseball
Silver Slugger Award winners
Vermont Reds players
Washington Nationals executives
World Baseball Classic managers
African-American Catholics
21st-century African-American people
20th-century African-American sportspeople

Barry Larkin


Boronia exilis is a plant in the citrus family, Rutaceae and is endemic to a small area in the south-west of Western Australia. It is a slender, erect perennial with well-spaced, simple, more or less cylindrical leaves and pink, four-petalled flowers in groups of between three and nine on the ends of the branches.

Description
Boronia exilis is an erect perennial with slender stems that grows to a height of about  and has many slender, glabrous branches. The leaves are simple, more or less cylindrical  long and fall off early so that there are few leaves on the lower part of the stems. The flowers are pink and are borne in groups of between three and nine, each on a pedicel  long with hairy bracts at the base that fall off as the flower develops. The four sepals are dark red, hairy on both sides and about  long. The four petals are pink, oblong to elliptic and about  long and the eight stamens are hairy.

Taxonomy and naming
Boronia exilis was first formally described in 1998 by Paul G. Wilson and the description was published in Nuytsia from a specimen collected in the Scott National Park. The specific epithet (exilis) is a Latin word meaning "thin" or "slender". referring to the stems of this boronia.

Distribution and habitat
This boronia grows is only known from the Scott River area where it grows in seasonally wet heath.

Conservation
Boronia exilis is classified as "endangered" under the Australian Government Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and as "Threatened Flora (Declared Rare Flora — Extant)" by the Department of Environment and Conservation (Western Australia). An interim recovery plan has been prepared. The main threats to the species include inappropriate fire regimes, disease caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi and road maintenance activities.

References

exilis
Flora of Western Australia
Plants described in 1998
Taxa named by Paul G. Wilson
Endemic flora of Southwest Australia

Boronia exilis


Self-ownership is a term which was first used in anarchism. It is the idea that a person has the right to decide about his or her own body, and about his or her way of life.  It is also used to say that people have the right to keep what they earn through work (unless they made a contract to give it to someone else). The word was first used at the end of the 19th century. It was also used in other kinds of philisophy.

Bodily integrity is a direct consequence of self-ownership.

Liberalism
Anarchism

Self-ownership


Carles Aleñá Castillo (born 5 January 1998) is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for La Liga club Getafe.

Club career

Barcelona
Born in Mataró, Barcelona, Catalonia, Aleñá moved to Barcelona's youth system, La Masia, in 2005 at the age of 7, after a successful trial. Highly rated by the club, he made his debut with the reserves on 29 August 2015, coming on as a late substitute for David Babunski in a 0–0 Segunda División B home draw against Pobla de Mafumet.

On 24 November 2015, Aleñá scored a spectacular goal in a UEFA Youth League game against Roma. He scored his first senior goal on 19 December, in a Barcelona B 2–4 away loss to Eldense.

Aleñá was first included in Barcelona's main squad on 10 February 2016, remaining an unused substitute in their 1–1 away draw against Valencia in the second leg of 2015-16 Copa del Rey semi-finals. He made his first team debut on 30 November of that year, starting and scoring the equalizer in an away draw against Hércules for the same scoreline, in the same competition.

Aleñá made his La Liga debut on 2 April 2017, coming on as a second-half substitute for Ivan Rakitić in a 4–1 away routing of Granada. On 28 June, he signed a three-year professional deal with Barcelona, including a release clause of €75 million. In July 2018, he was nominated for the Golden Boy award. On 4 December 2018, Aleñá was officially promoted to the first team, two days after scoring his first league goal for Barcelona against Villarreal.

Loan to Real Betis
On 28 December 2019, Barcelona announced that they had reached an agreement with Real Betis for the loan transfer of Aleñá until the end of the season. He played 19 games for the team from Seville, and scored in a 3–0 home win over Osasuna on 8 July.

Loan and permanent transfer to Getafe
On 6 January 2021, it was announced that Barcelona reached an agreement with Getafe over a loan move for Aleñá until the end of the season. On 27 February, he scored his first goal for Getafe after coming off the bench in the final minutes of his team's 3–0 win against Valencia.

On 10 July 2021, Getafe reached an agreement with Barcelona to permanently sign Aleñá for five seasons. Barça also reserved the right to 50% of any future sale of the player, a buy back option plus first right of refusal on any offer.

Personal life
Aleñá's father Francesc was also a footballer; a forward, he played for several clubs in the 1980s and 1990s.

Career statistics

Honours
Barcelona
La Liga: 2018–19
Copa del Rey: 2016–17, 2017–18

Individual
 2015 UEFA European Under-17 Championship Team of the Tournament

References

External links

Profile at the Getafe CF website

1998 births
Living people
People from Mataró
Footballers from the Province of Barcelona
Spanish men's footballers
Men's association football midfielders
La Liga players
Segunda División players
Segunda División B players
FC Barcelona Atlètic players
FC Barcelona players
Real Betis players
Getafe CF footballers
Spain men's youth international footballers
Spain men's under-21 international footballers
Catalonia men's international footballers

Carles Aleñá


Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher (2 August 1799 Dillenburg, Hessen, Germany – 13 December 1858 Cape Town), was a botanical and insect collector who collected extensively in South Africa.  He was the author, with Christian Friedrich Ecklon, of Enumeratio Plantarum Africae Australis (1835-7), a descriptive catalogue of South African plants.

In 1816 Zeyher was apprenticed to his uncle Johann Michael Zeyher who was head gardener at the ducal gardens of Schwetzingen.  Here he met Franz Sieber and was talked into a partnership with the aim of collecting and selling natural history specimens - a burgeoning industry in the 19th century.  They sailed for Mauritius in August 1822, however Zeyher was left at the Cape while Sieber went on to Mauritius and Australia.  On his return in April 1824, Sieber picked up the specimens collected by Zeyher, assuring him of payment in due course.  No payment ever materialised and Zeyher became aware that he would be forced to operate on his own.  He journeyed east to Uitenhage in 1825 and north beyond Clanwilliam in 1828.  The resulting specimens were sent to his uncle at Schwetzingen.

In 1829 Ecklon returned to the Cape from Europe where he had sold his specimens through the Unio Itineraria run by Christian Ferdinand Friedrich Hochstetter (1787-1860) and Ernst Gottlieb von Steudel (1783-1856) at Esslingen.  Zeyher and Ecklon decided to collaborate in their collecting. Ecklon sailed for Algoa Bay to collect in the Eastern Cape and Zeyher travelled north by ox-wagon.  Zeyher's route took him through the Clanwilliam and Cederberg area, from where he followed the Olifants River to its mouth.  Here Zeyher ran across Drege on 23 May 1831.  He collected in the area for some time, travelling on to Bitterfontein and the Kamiesberge.  From here he went further north up to the Orange River, eventually reaching its mouth.  Little rain had fallen and the landscape was parched, causing considerable losses among his oxen.

In the meanwhile Ecklon had returned to Cape Town from his trip, and put some work into his collection while awaiting Zeyher.  They met up again at Tulbagh, where they scaled the mountains in the area as well as going up the Groot Winterhoekberg, gathering a rich collection of plants.

Expedition to Kaffraria 1831-32
Ecklon and Zeyher left Cape Town in October 1831 on a collecting trip to the eastern borders of the Cape Colony.  Passing through Caledon they went down to Cape Agulhas and back to Swellendam, where they once again came across Drege on 5 November 1831. Crossing the Langeberg into the Karoo, they collected extensively along the Gourits River and the Swartberg.  Turning south again they crossed the Outeniqua Mountains, visiting George and Knysna, before following the Langkloof to Uitenhage and Algoa Bay, from where they shipped their collection back to Cape Town.

Travelling further north through the Albany and Somerset East districts, then east over the Fish, Koonap and Kat Rivers, and again north over the Winterberg, they came to Tamboekieland in the area of the present Queenstown.  From here they followed the Kei River to its source in the Stormberg.

By this time their collections had grown so large that Ecklon was detailed to leave for Europe in 1832 to dispose of the specimens.  Zeyher remained in Tamboekieland since Drege notes that he met him at Shiloh Mission south of Queenstown on 29 November 1832.  Zeyher then returned to Uitenhage where he found employment in the service of Joachim Brehm, an apothecary and collector who had created one of the finest gardens in the Eastern Cape.  At this time Ecklon was in Hamburg seeing to the publication of their joint paper Enumeratio Plantarum Africae Australis which appeared in three parts between 1834 and 1837.  Apparently Ecklon's visit to Hamburg was cut short by a warehouse fire that destroyed the greater part of their collections. Financially Ecklon was crippled and sold his personal set of specimens to Sonder before returning to the Cape in late 1837 or early 1838.  He lived for another 30 years, but his mental and physical strength had been broken by the setbacks and he ceased collecting.

Zeyher had in turn become dispirited by events, and had struck out on his own before Ecklon's return.  He went back to the Uitenhage area and forwarded his new collections to WJ Hooker and N. B. Ward of London. While in Uitenhage, Zeyher had put together an extensive collection of indigenous wood samples together with flowering and fruiting herbarium specimens. These were destined for the Berlin Museum and a favourable price had been agreed upon. Misfortune continued to haunt Zeyher, however, and the ship carrying this precious collection was lost at sea.

Expedition to the South African plateau with Joseph Burke 1840-1842
Zeyher accompanied Joseph Burke in an organised expedition under the sponsorship of lord Derby and collected a substantial quantity of botanical specimens.

Zeyher is commemorated in the genera Zeyheria Mart., Zeyherella (Engl.) Aubrèv. & Pellegr. and in a large number of specific names. His personal herbarium is at the South African Museum, though Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Pappe (1803-1862) replaced most of the labels with his own.

References

General references
Enumeratio Plantarum Africae Australis (1835-7)
Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa Mary Gunn and LE Codd (Balkema 1981)
A Botanist in Southern Africa John Hutchinson (London 1946)

19th-century German botanists
German entomologists
German explorers
German natural history collectors
1799 births
1858 deaths

Karl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher


John Solomon Sandridge (born May 10, 1950) is an American painter, sculptor, illustrator, author, educator, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.  He is notably recognized as the first and only black artist licensed during the early 1990s by The Coca-Cola Company to incorporate African-American themes in their artwork, and being selected as a commissioned sculptor by the Olympic Soccer Committee during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia.

Early life
Sandridge was born and raised in Gadsden, Alabama, where he lived with his parents and six siblings in a three-room house. He graduated from Carver High School and attended Gadsden State Community College.

Although his family was poor, what they lacked in resources Sandridge made up for it with his creative and imaginative spirit. As early as four years old, Sandridge began creating art, his first a stick person figure drawn in the family Bible.  He would later use whatever scraps of paper or materials his mother would give him, along with number two pencils, to imagine and draw. Inventive for his age, he once took an old bed sheet and fashioned it into a canvas to draw a painting that he still has today.

As a teenager, his passion and desire for art grew, especially when he was paid $15 for three sketched cartoons he submitted to The Alabama Sunday Weekly. Convinced that he could make a living as an artist, he took his first job as a painter in the commercial display industry.

Professional career

Artistic influencer

Even though Sandridge had no formal training or art education, his intuitively unique style and hand painted talent of billboards caught the attention of The Coca-Cola Company in the early 1970s. Working for an outdoor sign company, Sandridge painted a realistically, eye-catching image of Niagara Falls featuring the iconic Coca-Cola bottle and logo design on a 14 ft x 48 ft billboard. So popular was the sight that the billboard won an award, prompting representatives from The Coca-Cola Company to drive from Atlanta, Georgia, to Gadsden, Alabama, to preview Sandridge's artwork. Feeling proud of the attention his craftsmanship had attracted, Sandridge recognized that the weight of the adverse racial overtones of the time would not allow him the recognition he deserved. He was not even given a formal introduction to the men who were captivated by his work. But not one to sit idly by and accept racism or tolerate blatant disrespect towards his work ethic and creative abilities, he soon left that company.

With a wife and six children to support, he formed his own sign company, Sandridge Signs, while also working part-time at Sears, Roebuck & Co.  Recognizing that his sign company was in competition with more established sign companies and needing to set himself apart, Sandridge saw a golden opportunity on a brick wall at a busy intersection that set aside a foreign car parts store.  One day Sandridge approached the owner about an idea for a mural.  Interested, the owner invited him to return with sketches.  Sandridge returned and the result was a realistically painted three-dimensional image of a Volkswagen crashed into the wall, creating an illusion of half of the car resting inside the store and the other half sticking out.  It became an instant success and was deemed "the talk of the town," helping Sandridge's sign business to finally take off.

He was licensed by Coca-Cola International from 1990 to 1996 allowing him to use their images and bottle designs in his artwork, making him the first Black American licensed by the company to create paintings. He would go on to design paintings using Black American themes that would become Coca-Cola art collectibles in the form of serving trays, note cards, prints and other memorabilia. His first original Coca-Cola painting sold for $30,000, which at that time was the highest he had earned for a single painting. The value of his later works reached up to $1.5 million.

Sandridge continued to maintain a relationship with The Coca-Cola Company in which he was commissioned in 1997 to paint a portrait of Wendy's founder, Dave Thomas, and served as a feature artist for The Coca-Cola Company's Las Vegas gift store opening.  After working with the global soft drink manufacturer, Sandridge became an art educator for the Gadsden, Alabama City School system, and was instrumental in helping to develop The Gadsden City Arts Program.

Prior to that, however, as metro Atlanta prepared for the 1996 Centennial Summer Olympic Games, Sandridge was commissioned by the Olympic Soccer Committee to create limited edition prints and a limited edition bronze sculpture. Sandridge has also illustrated numerous books, including The Bridal Wreath Bush and The Little Known Black History Facts, featured on The Tom Joyner Morning Show and through a marketing venture in 2000 with The McDonald's Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company and celebrity radio personality Tom Joyner.

Entrepreneurial accomplishments

Sandridge Signs was the first of many ventures that Sandridge established over a forty-year period. In the late 1980s, he closed the sign company and worked as a full-time painter while opening Sandridge Art Studio and Gallery. For nine years he taught private classes and art groups. In 1994, Black Enterprise Magazine recognized Sandridge's successful art distribution niche selling limited edition prints and figurines. Next, he began focusing on natural healing and well-being while studying naturopathic medicine and developing and marketing an herb supplement line.

Inventor

Creatively imaginative, Sandridge developed and holds copyright and trademark rights to several artistic concepts, including Papa-Cause™ and Numinousneoism™ Art, as well as creating and sharing a universal message of everyone practicing  "One Great Thing" to have successful relationships and a happy life.

Papa-Cause

Sandridge created, illustrated and wrote about a jovial black character he named Papa-Cause, described as a friend of Santa Claus.  Papa-Cause delights the whims of children of all ages because of his warm, caring spirit, affable nature, and wise advice. Influenced by Sandridge's rich cultural heritage, the imagery of Papa-Cause™ manifested as a distinctly unique character, bearing his own nostalgic tales of holiday joy and family love. In February 2018, The City of Gadsden, Alabama, recognized Sandridge and his Papa Cause character for "reinvigorating the spirit of unity and positivity" with a proclamation acknowledging the first Saturday in February as Papa Cause Day.

Numinousneoism Art

An aesthetically, divinely and ancestral-inspired art style, Numinousneoism Art, was developed in 2010 when Sandridge created 100 pieces of uniquely original artwork. The transformative art style focuses on using spiritual messages and imagination coupled with a diverse collection of visual elements to create artwork infused with Black American heritage and feminine energy principles of warmth, surrender, openness and trust. Sandridge says that the art "contains all previous and future art styles – cubism, expressionism, impressionism, realism, etc. – and most importantly, captures the expressions of our ancestors, the original Black Africans."  More than 400-plus Numinousneoism™ Art paintings and sculptures, along with six original handwritten books, have been produced and sold or for sale with Sandridge creating more on a daily basis.

!One-Great-Thing!

!One-Great-Thing! (OGT) is a movement to promote individual change and mindset shift to achieve successful relationships and a happy life.  Sandridge birthed the concept and wrote a 35-page book of the same title based on his experience studying and practicing self-help and personal growth for over forty years. His message to "change your attitude" is simple yet powerfully motivated by his desire to influence a generation of children, youth and young adults to use their imagination to change the world, save the future, and create a better place for everyone.  To spread the OGT message, Sandridge has assembled a powerhouse creative and consulting team to develop videos, music and content, that includes accomplished music producer and songwriter Terry Coffey, videographer Jason Knotts, videographer Nick Lang, actors David "Dae" Sandridge and Judah Sandridge, and author and radio host Frances Irene. The team plans to launch the OGT campaign in summer 2015.

Philanthropic involvement

Sandridge established the Number 2 Pencil Foundation, Inc., in 2011 as a 501(c)(3) art education nonprofit in Chelsea, Alabama. The organization's mission is to inspire creativity and imagination through visual arts while helping students to develop cognitive, critical thinking, verbal and reading skills.  The Foundation hosts workshops, trainings and art education programs and creates products, such as books, art kits and T-shirts for youth and young adults throughout Alabama. In 2014, Sandridge through the Number 2 Pencil Foundation, instructed a group of high school and college students in a mural workshop and guided them in creating an outdoor mural for a local business.

While the organization sustains itself through public and private contributions, Sandridge donates his Numinousneoism™ Art to the Foundation, which in return receives 100% of sales proceeds from the artwork to use for programming and operations.

Public recognition

Sandridge has been publicly recognized for his artistic contributions with the Distinguished Service Award from Gadsden State Community College (2011), Governor of Alabama Award, City of Gadsden Award, and the keys to the cities of Birmingham, Alabama; Gadsden, Alabama; Rainbow City, Alabama; and Fairfield, Alabama. In February 2019, Solomon was named 19th on the list of 100 notable people in Shelby County, Alabama.

Notable collectors

Sandridge's artwork has been collected internationally and some notable collectors include celebrity radio personality Tom Joyner, retired business executive Al Joyner, Atlanta business executive Mack Wilbourn, business executive Bernard Bronner and president of Bronner Bros., former NFL offensive tackle Howard Ballard, actress Beverly Todd, singer Larry Blackmon of Cameo, singer Dionne Warwick, and President Barack Obama, who was given a Sandridge painting by Mack Wilbourn during a 2012 visit to Atlanta. Dr. Douglas Highland, former director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, commissioned a painting of his wife, Tedia Highland, and six of Sandridge's Black Western-themed sculptures were bequeathed in 2013 by the Wideman family to Athens State University in Athens, Alabama.

Quotes
"I was born for Art."

"Be careful what you ask for, you will get that."

"Without imagination there is no creation."

"Looking at Art is spiritual. Making Art is the spiritual full experience. Art is my religion….reconnection with the Creator of Life (God)."

"Art flows through my mind and hands as luminous messages: paintings, sculptures, books, music, and videos."

"Art is a tool that young people can use to develop their imagination, to change their life situation and to change the world for the better. I always tell the kids that your imagination will take you anywhere you want to go."

Artistic and creative works

Exhibitions

Tubman African American Museum, Macon, GA
Burritt Museum, Huntsville, AL
Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL
Talladega Museum, Talladega, AL
Talladega College, Talladega, AL
The Graham Collection Gallery, Washington, DC
36th Annual Spring Arts Festival, Talladega, AL
Atlanta Life Exhibit, Atlanta, GA
Featured artist on the Tom Joyner's Fantastic Voyage Cruise (2013)
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Numinousneoism™ Art, Opening exhibit (January 11 – March 23, 2014)

The Red Book and Cotton Series
Lucy-Crat Laney Museum, August, GA
Chattanooga African-American Museum, Chattanooga, TN
Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL
Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, AL

The Wake Up and Live Series
Southern Roots Exhibition, Birmingham, AL

Books

1998 – Papa-Cause: The Friend of Santa Claus,
2010 – Red Book and Cotton,
2013 – The Black-Artist Tale: A Real True Story,
2014 – One Great Thing,

References

External links
 http://www.johnsolomonsandridge.com

1950 births
African-American writers
American writers
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
Living people
Artist authors
Writers from Alabama
Artists from Alabama
People from Gadsden, Alabama
People from Chelsea, Alabama
20th-century African-American painters
21st-century African-American artists
20th-century American male artists

John Solomon Sandridge