American poetry is poetry of the United States. It is most often written in English.

Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are the most famous American poets. They lived in the 19th century. She wrote short lyric poems about nature and human feelings.He wrote epic poetry.  There are many poetry movements or styles.

After World War I, Modernist poetry became popular.  The poets were inspired by European poetry, Asian poetry (such as Haikus), and Latin American poetry. The most famous Modernist poets were Ezra Pound (1885–1972) and T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). Pound wrote an epic poem called Cantos.  Eliot wrote the most famous modern American poem, The Waste Land; it is a dramatic poem. He also wrote popular lyrical about cats.

During the Vietnam War, the Beat poets became very popular. Beat poets wrote about the American landscape, human sexuality, United States politics, and the Vietnam war.  Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), Gary Snyder (born 1930), Diane Di Prima (born 1934), Amiri Baraka (born 1934) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born 1919) are Beat poets.

Songwriter and poet Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize in 2016.

The Nuyorican poets emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. They migrated from Puerto Rico to New York City. They wrote poems in Spanish, English, and Spanglish (language). They also perform their poems in clubs such as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Many poems describe racism, drugs, prison, and poverty. Others write with humor and optimism about love and triumph. Nuyorican poets include Pedro Pietri, Miguel Pinero, and Giannina Braschi. Other Latina poets who also wrote in Spanish and Spanglish are Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, Lorna Dee Cervantes, and Ana Castillo. These Latina poets were a part of the Chicano Movement and the Feminist movement.

There are many great African American poets. Black American poets have included Gwendolyn Brooks (born in 1917), Maya Angelou (born in 1928), Ishmael Reed (born in 1938), Nikki Giovanni (born in 1943), Amiri Baraka, Kwame Dawes, Claudia Rankine, Terence Hayes, Tracy K. Smith and Kevin Young.

Feminist poets write about women's rights, female sexuality, female creativity, motherhood, and identity, among other topics. They include Adrienne Rich (1929–2012), Alicia Ostriker, Marilyn Hacker, and Amy Gerstler (born in 1956).

American Poetry Organizations
Academy of American Poets, Library of Congress, Poetry Society of America, Poetry Foundation are organizations that support US poets.

References

American poetry


Joel D. Weisman (February 20, 1943 – July 18, 2009) was an American doctor who was one of the first to identify a pattern of illnesses that was ultimately diagnosed as AIDS in the United States. He later became an advocate for the development of treatments and prevention of the disease.

Early life and education
Weisman was born in Newark, New Jersey, on February 20, 1943. He attended the Kansas City College of Osteopathy (later known as the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, graduating in 1970 with a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (DO). He practiced medicine in his hometown of Carteret, New Jersey, for several years and ended his brief marriage by disclosing that he was gay.

Discovery and treatment of AIDS
He moved to Los Angeles and was hired by a doctor's office in North Hollywood. There, he started to see a number of patients in 1978 who had a series of unusual conditions, including younger men with shingles, a case of Kaposi's sarcoma, and several patients who had symptoms of what appeared to be, but was not, lymphoma.

Weisman referred two of these cases in 1981 to Michael S. Gottlieb, an immunologist at the UCLA Medical Center, who had a patient of his own with a similar pattern of symptoms. A report they jointly wrote published by the Centers for Disease Control in the June 5, 1981, issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, describing how their patients, "5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California" of which "[t]wo of the patients died" by the time of the original report. This notice has been recognized as the first published report marking "the official start" of the AIDS pandemic and as "the first report on AIDS in the medical literature".

In Weisman's obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Gottlieb described him as "a very astute physician" who recognized "that something out of the ordinary was happening" by being "alert to unusual symptoms in his patients". Krim described how Weisman immediately knew that "he was observing something that was never seen before."

Personal
Weisman died at age 66 due to heart disease on July 18, 2009, at his home in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was survived by his domestic partner of 17 years, Bill Hutton, as well as by a daughter and granddaughter, a brother and two nieces. Timothy Bogue, his partner for 10 years, died of AIDS in 1991.

References

1943 births
2009 deaths
HIV/AIDS activists
LGBT people from New Jersey
People from Los Angeles

Joel Weisman


Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Manṣūr (; ; 95 AH – 158 AH/714 CE – 6 October 775 CE) usually known simply as by his laqab al-Manṣūr (المنصور) was the second Abbasid caliph, reigning from 136 AH to 158 AH (754 CE – 775 CE) succeeding his brother al-Saffah (). He is known for founding the 'Round City' of Madinat al-Salam, which was to become the core of imperial Baghdad.

Modern historians regard al-Mansur as the real founder of the Abbasid Caliphate, one of the largest polities in world history, for his role in stabilizing and institutionalizing the dynasty.

Background and early life
According to al-Suyuti's History of the Caliphs, al-Mansur lived 95 AH – 158 AH (714 CE – 6 October 775 CE). Al-Mansur was born at the home of the Abbasid family in Humeima (modern-day Jordan) after their emigration from the Hejaz in 714 (95 AH). His mother was Sallamah, a Berber slave woman. Al-Mansur was a brother of al-Saffah. Both were named Abd Allah, and to distinguish between them, al-Saffah was referred to by his kunya Abu al-Abbas.

Al-Mansur was a great great-grandson of Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, an uncle of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Al-Mansur's brother al-Saffah began asserting his claim to become caliph in the 740s and became particularly active in Khorasan, an area where non-Arab Muslims lived. After the death of the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik in 743 a period of instability followed. Al-Saffah led the Abbasid Revolution in 747 and his claim to power was supported throughout Iraq by Muslims. He became the first caliph of the Abbasid caliphate in 750 after defeating his rivals.

Shortly before the overthrow of the Umayyads by an army of rebels from Khorasan that were influenced by propaganda spread by the Abbasids, the last Umayyad Caliph Marwan II, arrested the head of the Abbasid family, Al Mansur's other brother Ibrahim. Al-Mansur fled with the rest of his family to Kufa where some of the Khorasanian rebel leaders gave their allegiance to his brother al-Saffah. Ibrahim died in captivity and al-Saffah became the first Abbasid Caliph. During his brother's reign, al-Mansur led an army to Mesopotamia where he received a submission from the governor after informing him of the last Umayyad Caliph's death. The last Umayyad governor had taken refuge in Iraq in a garrison town. He was promised a safe-conduct by al-Mansur and the Caliph al-Saffah, but after surrendering the town, he was executed with a number of his followers.

According to The Meadows of Gold, a history book in Arabic written around 947 CE, al-Mansur's dislike of the Umayyad dynasty is well documented and he has been reported saying:
"The Umayyads held the government which had been given to them with a firm hand, protecting, preserving and guarding the gift granted them by God. But then their power passed to their effeminate sons, whose only ambition was the satisfaction of their desires and who chased after pleasures forbidden by Almighty God...Then God stripped them of their power, covered them with shame and deprived them of their worldly goods".

Mansur's first wife was a Yemeni woman from a royal family; his second was a descendant of a hero of the early Muslim conquests; his third was an Iranian servant. He also had a minimum of three concubines: an Arab, a Byzantine, nicknamed the "restless butterfly," and a Kurd.

Caliphate
Al-Saffah died after a short five-year reign and al-Mansur took on the responsibility of establishing the Abbasid caliphate by holding on to power for nearly 22 years, from Dhu al-Hijjah 136 AH until Dhu al-Hijjah 158 AH (754 – 775). Al-Mansur was proclaimed Caliph on his way to Mecca in the year 753 (136 AH) and was inaugurated the following year. Abu Ja'far Abdallah ibn Muhammad took the name al-Mansur ("the victorious") and agreed to make his nephew Isa ibn Musa his successor to the Abbasid caliphate. This agreement was supposed to resolve rivalries in the Abbasid family, but al-Mansur's right to accession was particularly challenged by his uncle Abdullah ibn Ali. Once in power as caliph, al-Mansur had his uncle imprisoned in 754 and killed in 764.

Execution of Abu Muslim and aftermath

Fearing the power of the Abbasid army general Abu Muslim, who gained in popularity among the people, al-Mansur carefully planned his assassination. Abu Muslim was conversing with the Caliph when, at an appointed signal, four (some sources say five) of his guards rushed in and fatally wounded the general. John Aikin, in his work General Biography, narrates that Mansur, not content with the assassination, committed "outrages on the dead body, and kept it several days in order to glut his eyes with the spectacle."

The Execution of Abu Muslim caused uproars throughout the province of Khorasan. In 755 Sunpadh an Iranian nobleman from the House of Karen, led a revolt against al-Mansur, taking the cities of Nishapur, Qumis, and Ray. In Ray, he seized the treasuries of Abu Muslim. He gained many supporters from Jibal and Tabaristan, including the Dabuyid ruler, Khurshid, who was paid with money from the treasures. Al-Mansur ordered a force of 10,000 under Abbasid commander Jahwar ibn Marrar al-lijli to march without delay to Khorasan to fight the rebellion. Sunpadh was defeated and Khorasan reclaimed by the Abbasids.

Al-Mansur sent an official to take inventory of the spoils collected from the battle as a precautionary measure against acquisition by his army. Angered by al-Mansur's avarice, general Jahwar gained support from his troops for his plans to split the treasures evenly, and revolted against the caliph. This raised alarm in the caliph's court and al-Mansur ordered Mohammad ibn Ashar to march towards Khorasan. Jahwar, knowing his troops were at a disadvantage, retired to Isfahan and fortified in preparation. Mohammad's army pressed the rebel forces and Jahwar fled to Azerbaijan. Jahwar's forces were defeated, but he escaped Mohammad's pursuit. This campaign lasted from 756 to 762 CE (138 to 144 AH).

After relieving former vizier ibn Attiya al-Bahili, al-Mansur transferred his duties to Abu Ayyub al-Muriyani from Khuzestan. Abu Ayyub was previously a secretary to Sulayman ibn Habib ibn al-Muhallab, who in the past, had condemned al-Mansur to be whipped and flogged to pieces. Abu Ayyub had rescued al-Mansur from this punishment. Nevertheless, after appointing him as vizier, al-Mansur suspected Abu Ayyub of various crimes, including extortion and treachery, which led to the latter's assassination. The vacant secretary role was granted to Aban ibn Sadaqa until the death of the caliph al-Mansur.

Foundation of Baghdad

In 757 CE, al-Mansur sent a large army to Cappadocia which fortified the city of Malatya. In this same year, he confronted a group of the Rawandiyya from the region of Greater Khorasan that were performing circumambulation around his palace as an act of worship. When in 758/9 the people of Khorasan rioted against al-Mansur in the battle of Al Hashimiya, Ma'n ibn Za'ida al-Shaybani, a general from the Shayban tribe and companion of Yazid ibn Umar al-Fazari, the Umayyad governor of Iraq, appeared at the scene of the uprising completely masked, and threw himself between the crowd and Mansur, driving the insurgents away. Ma'n reveals himself to al-Mansur as "he whom you have been searching" and upon hearing this, al-Mansur granted him rewards, robes of honor, rank, and amnesty from previously serving the Umayyad dynasty.
In 762 two descendants of Hasan ibn Ali rebelled in Medina and Basra. Al-Mansur's troops defeated the rebels first in Medina and then in Basra. This would be the last major uprising against the caliph al-Mansur.

To consolidate his power al-Mansur founded the new imperial residence and palace city Madinat as-Salam (the city of peace), which became the core of the Imperial capital Baghdad. Al-Mansur laid the foundations of Baghdad near the old capital of al-Mada'in, on the western bank of the Tigris River, a location acceptable to him and his commanders. The circular city of about 2.4 km diameter was enclosed by a double-thick defensive wall with four gates named Kufa, Syria, Khorasan, and Basra. In the center of the city al-Mansur erected the caliph's palace and the main mosque. Al-Mansur had built Baghdad in response to a growing concern from the chief towns in Iraq, Basra, and Kufa that there was lack of solidity within the regime after the death of Abu'l 'Abbas (later known as al-Saffah). Another reason for the construction of the new capital was the growing need to house and provide stability for a rapidly developing Abbasid bureaucracy forged under the influence of Iranian ideals. The medieval historians al-Tabari and al-Khatib al-Baghdadi would later claim that al-Mansur had ordered the demolition of the Khosrow palace in Ctesiphon so that the material could be used for the construction of the city of peace.

Al-Mansur pursued his vision of a powerful centralized caliphate in the new Muslim imperial capital of Baghdad. The city was populated with men and women of different faiths and cultures from all over the Islamic world. The Baghdad populace included Christian, Zoroastrian and Jewish minorities and communicated in Arabic. Al-Mansur pursued Islamization by staffing his administration with Muslims of varied backgrounds. Baghdad became one of al-Mansur's lasting achievements. His rule was largely peaceful as he focused on internal reforms, agriculture and patronage of the sciences, thus he paved the way for Baghdad to become a global center of learning and science under the rule of the seventh Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun.

In 764 al-Mansur's son al-Mahdi was made the designated heir to the caliphate, taking precedence over al-Mansur's nephew Isa ibn Musa, who had been named the designated successor when al-Mansur was crowned caliph. This change in succession was opposed by parts of the Abbasid family and some allies of Isa ibn Musa in Khurasan, but was supported by the Abbasid army. Al-Mansur had cultivated support for his son's accession since 754, while undermining Isa ibn Musa's position within the Abbasid military.

Al-Tabari writes in his History of Prophets and Kings: "Abu Ja'far had a mirror in which he could descry his enemy from his friend." Al-Mansur's secret service extended to remote regions of his empire, and were cognizant of everything from social unrest to the price of figs, making Mansur very knowledgeable of his domains. He rose at dawn, worked until evening prayer. He set the example for his son and heir. According to historic sources al-Mansur advised his son: "put not off the work of today until tomorrow and attend in person to the affairs of state. Sleep not, for thy father has not slept since he came to the caliphate. For when sleep fell upon his eyes, his spirit remained awake." Notably frugal, al-Mansur was nicknamed Abu al-Duwaneek ("the Father of Small Change"), kept close tabs on his tax collectors, and made sure public spending was carefully monitored. He is reported as having said "he who has no money has no men, and he who has no men watches as his enemies grow great."

Islamic scholars under him
The Alids, a group descended from Muhammad's closest male relative and cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, had fought with the Abbasids against the Umayyads. They wanted the power to be given to the Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, a great-grandson of Ali and one of the most influential scholars in Islamic jurisprudence at the time. When it became clear that the Abbasid family had no intention of handing the power to an Alid, groups loyal to Ali moved into opposition. When al-Mansur came to power as second Abbasid caliph he started to suppress what he perceived as extreme elements in the broad Muslim coalition that had supported the Abbasid Revolution. He would be the first Abbasid caliph to uphold Islamic orthodoxy as a matter of public policy. While al-Mansur's regime did not intrude into the private realm of elites, orthodoxy was promoted in public worship, for example through the organization of pilgrim caravans. Al-Mansur's harsh treatment towards the Alids led to a revolt in 762–763, but they were eventually defeated.

Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq became the victim of harassment by the Abbasid family and in response to his growing popularity among the people was eventually poisoned on the orders of the caliph in the tenth year of al-Mansur's reign. According to a number of sources, Abu Hanifa an-Nu'man, who founded a school of jurisprudence, was imprisoned by al-Mansur. Malik ibn Anas, the founder of another school, was flogged during his rule, but al-Mansur himself did not condone this. Al-Mansur's cousin, the governor of Madinah at the time, had ordered the flogging and was punished for doing so. Muhammad and Ibrahim ibn Abdallah, the grandsons of Imam Hassan ibn Ali, grandson of Muhammad, were persecuted by al-Mansur after rebelling against his reign. They escaped his persecution, but al-Mansur's anger fell upon their father Abdallah ibn Hassan and others of his family. Abdallah's sons were later defeated and killed.

Patronage for translations and scholarship

Al-Mansur was the first Abbasid caliph to sponsor the Translation Movement. Al-Mansur was particularly interested in sponsoring the translations of texts on astronomy and astrology. Al-Mansur called scientists to his court and became noted as patron of astronomers. When al-Mansur's Baghdad court was presented with the Zij al-Sindhind, an Indian astronomical handbook that included tables to calculate celestial positions, al-Mansur ordered for this major Indian work on astronomy to be translated from Sanskrit to Arabic. The astronomical tables in the Arabic translation of Zij al-Sindhind became widely adopted by Muslim scholars. During al-Mansur reign Greek works were also translated, such Ptolemy's Almagest and Euclid's Elements.

Al-Mansur had Persian books on astronomy, mathematics, medicine, philosophy and other sciences translated in a systematic campaign to collect knowledge. The translation of Persian books was part of a growing interest in ancient Iranian heritage and a Persian revivalist movement which al-Mansur sponsored. The translation and study of works in Pahlavi, a pre-Islamic language of Persia, became fashionable among intellectuals and authors who supported the Abbasid caliphate. Government secretaries of Persian descent in al-Mansur's administration sponsored translations of Pahlavi texts on the history and principles of royal administration. Popular Arabic translations were produced by Ibn al-Muqaffa of texts that documented the systems and hierarchies of the Sasanian Empire.

Al-Mansur was greatly interested in the quality of the translation and paid al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar to translate Euclid's Elements twice. Al-Mansur paid for the physician Jabril ibn Bukhtishu to write Arabic translations of medical books, while the first Arabic translations of medical texts written by Galen and Hippocrates were done by al-Mansur's official translator. In 765 al-Mansur suffered from a stomach ailment and called the Christian Syriac-speaking physician Jurjis ibn Bukhtishu from Gundeshapur to Baghdad for medical treatment. In doing so al-Mansur started the tradition among Abbasid caliphs, who would pay physicians of the Nestorian Christian Bukhtishu family to attend to their needs and to write original Arabic medical treatises, as well as translate medical texts into Arabic.

Foreign policy

In 751 the first Abbasid caliph al-Saffah had defeated the Chinese Tang dynasty in the Battle of Talas. Chinese sources record that al-Mansur sent his diplomatic delegations regularly to China. Al-Mansur's delegations were known in China as Heiyi Dashi (Black Clothed Arabs). In 756 al-Mansur sent 3,000 mercenaries to assist Emperor Suzong of Tang in the An Lushan rebellion. A massacre of foreign Arab and Persian Muslim merchants by former Yan rebel general Tian Shengong happened during the An Lushan rebellion in the Yangzhou massacre (760),

The Byzantine emperor Constantine V had used the weakness of the Umayyad caliphate to regain land from Muslim rulers. After the Umayyad caliphate was defeated by al-Mansur's predecessor al-Saffah, Constantine V invaded Armenia and occupied parts of it throughout 751 and 752. Under al-Mansur's rule Muslim armies conducted raids on Byzantine territory. Al-Mansur was the first Abbasid caliph to hold a ransom meeting with the Byzantine Empire. Diplomats in the service of Constantine V and al-Mansur first negotiated the exchange of prisoners in 756.

In 763 al-Mansur sent his troops to conquer al-Andalus for the Abbasid empire. But the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Rahman I successfully defended his territory. Al-Mansur withdrew and thereafter focused his troops of holding the eastern part of his empire on lands that were once part of Persia.

Some historians credit al-Mansur with starting the Abbasid–Carolingian alliance. In fact, it was the first Carolingian king Pippin III who initiated a new era of Franconian diplomacy by sending diplomatic envoys to al-Mansur's Baghdad court in 765. It is probable that Pippin III sought an alliance with al-Mansur against their common enemies, the Emirate of Córdoba. In 768 the envoys of Pippin III returned to Francia along with caliph al-Mansur's ambassadors. Pippin III received al-Mansur's delegation in Aquitaine and gifts were exchanged as a sign of the new alliance. This alliance was solidified when between 797 and 807 king Charlemagne and caliph Harun al-Rashid established embassies.

Al-Mansur's treatment of his Christian subjects was severe; he "collected from them capitation with much vigor and impressed upon them marks of slavery."

Family
Al-Mansur's first wife was Arwa known as Umm Musa, whose lineage went back to the
kings of Himyar. Her father was Mansur al-Himyari. She had a brother named Yazid. She had two sons, Muhammad (future Caliph al-Mahdi) and Ja'far. She died in 764. Another wife was Hammadah. Her father was Isa, one of al-Mansur's uncles. She died during al-Mansur's caliphate. Another wife was Fatimah. Her father was Muhammad, one of the descendants of Talhah ibn Ubaydullah. She had three sons, Sulayman, Isa, and Ya'qub. One of his concubines was a Kurdish woman. She was the mother of al-Mansur's son Ja'far 'Ibn al-Kurdiyyah' (Nasab translating to "Son of the Kurdish woman"). Unlike his other adult half-brothers, little is known of Ja'far and he likely was not involved in politics or had marriage or issue. However, his death is recorded at 802 AD by palace records suggesting he lived into adulthood and continued to live at court rather than having been banished or dying before adulthood. Another concubine was Qali-al Farrashah. She was a Greek, and was the mother of al-Mansur's son Salih al-Miskin. Another concubine was Umm al-Qasim, whose son al-Qasim died at aged ten. Al-Masnur's only daughter Aliyah was born to an Umayyad woman. She married Ishaq ibn Sulayman.

Death
Al-Mas'udi writes that Mansur died on Saturday 6, Dhu al-Hijja 158 AH/775 CE. There are varying accounts of the location and circumstances of al-Mansur's death. One account narrates that al-Mansur was on a pilgrimage to Mecca and had nearly reached, when death overtook him at a location called the Garden of the Bani Amir on the high road to Iraq at the age of sixty-three. According to this narration, he was buried in Mecca with his face uncovered because he was wearing the ihram clothing. 100 graves were dug around Mecca with the intention to thwart any attempt to find and violate his bones.

A different narration from Fadl ibn Rabi'ah, who claimed to have been with Mansur at his time of death, states that he died at al-Batha' near the Well of Maimun in which he would have been buried at al-Hajun at sixty-five years of age. In this narration, Mansur was sitting in a domed room hallucinating about ill-omen writings on the wall. When al-Rabiah replied "I see nothing written on the wall. Its surface is clean and white," al-Mansur replied, "my soul is warned that she may prepare for her near departure." After reaching the Well of Maimun, he reportedly said "God be praised" and succumbed to death that very day.

When al-Mansur died, the caliphate's treasury contained 600,000,000 dirhams and fourteen million dinars. On his deathbed, Mansur said, "We have sacrificed the life to come for a mere dream!"

See also
 al-Rumiya, city used temporarily by al-Mansur as his seat
 Bay'ah Mosque is a mosque outside Mecca in Arabia, It was built on the orders of al-Mansur.
 Hasan ibn Zayd ibn Hasan Abbasid Governor of Medina 766 to 772.
 Ibn Ishaq
 Sino-Arab relations

References

Sources cited

External links

714 births
775 deaths
Arab Muslims
8th-century Abbasid caliphs
Baghdad under the Abbasid Caliphate
City founders

Al-Mansur


Opisthodontosaurus is an extinct genus of captorhinid reptile from the Early Permian of Oklahoma. The type species Opisthodontosaurus carrolli was named in 2015 on the basis of several articulated skeletons from the Dolese Brothers Limestone Quarry near Richards Spur. Before the description of these skeletons, the jaws and teeth of Opisthodontosaurus carrolli were thought to belong to a species of lepospondyl amphibian called Euryodus primus. Although captorhinid reptiles and lepospondyl amphibians are distantly related, the two species show a remarkable degree of evolutionary convergence in their dental anatomy. Both were likely durophagous, eating hard-shelled invertebrates.

References

Permian reptiles of North America
Captorhinids
Prehistoric reptile genera

Opisthodontosaurus


The Dhruva reactor is India's largest nuclear research reactor. It was the first nuclear reactor in Asia proper. Located in the Mumbai suburb of Trombay at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), it is India's primary generator of weapons-grade plutonium-bearing spent fuel for its nuclear weapons program. Originally named the R-5, this open pool reactor first went critical on 8 August 1985 after 10 years of construction. However, the unit did not attain full power until 1988. The reactor experienced at least one serious accident when  of heavy water overflowed from the reactor core in 1985 following vibration problems.

Designed as a larger version of the CIRUS reactor, Dhruva was an Indian designed project built to provide an independent source of weapons-grade plutonium free from safeguards. The Dhruva project cost 950 million rupees. The reactor uses heavy water (deuterium) as a moderator and coolant. Aluminum clad fuel rods containing natural uranium are used to obtain a maximum thermal power output of 100 megawatts. The reactor can produce  of weapons-grade plutonium per year.

Dhruva, in Indian mythology, is a prince blessed to eternal existence and glory as the Pole Star by Vishnu. It can also mean 'immovable' in Sanskrit.

See also

 N. S. Satya Murthy
 India and weapons of mass destruction

References

External links

Nuclear research reactors
Nuclear technology in India
Atomic and nuclear energy research in India
Military nuclear reactors
1985 establishments in Maharashtra

Dhruva reactor


Simon Rumley (born 22 May 1968) is a British screenwriter, director and author. Mostly associated with the horror genre, he was described by Screen International as "one of the great British cinematic outsiders, a gifted director with the know-how to puncture the conventions". He has won several awards and worked with, among others, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Greta Scacchi, Noah Taylor and Peter Facinelli.

Career
After starting out as a runner, Rumley began writing short and feature scripts, including Club Le Monde, after which he was invited onto the Carlton Television Writing Course. After writing and directing four short films including 'Laughter' which was nominated for a 'Dick Award' at London's ICA, Rumley wrote, produced and directed Strong Language, which was picked up by the company Stranger Than Fiction. Seen as a promising young film maker, he was invited to Austria by the European Film Academy and in 1999 wrote, produced and directed The Truth Game. Both this and Strong Language, were released through the BFI at London's National Film Theatre, both films being noted for their 'intensity and a quest for emotional honesty'

2002's Club Le Monde was released through UGC Cinemas and in 2004 he directed the short film The Handyman in Vermont, USA, starring Greta Scacchi and Bill Sage. The Handyman played several festivals worldwide and won the Best Short Film at Sitges Film Festival in 2006.

During this period, Rumley's parents died within a short space of each other and, having watched his mother suffer from cancer, Rumley began writing a script provisionally titled The Living in the Home of the Dead, a psychological horror-tragedy. The script was picked up by Nick O'Hagan (Pandaemonium, Young Adam) and after being reworked and retitled The Living and the Dead, it was filmed during 2005 at Lord Cardigan's Savernake Estate starring Roger Lloyd-Pack. Executive produced by Elliot Grove, the founder of Raindance, it premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and played over 40 festivals worldwide. Described in Variety as "Near brilliant", it went on to win almost twenty-five awards including 'Best Film' and 'Best Director', 'Best Actor', 'Best Make-Up' and 'Best Supporting Actress' at Austin's Fantasticfest.

In 2008 Rumley wrote the first draft of the screenplay that would become Red White & Blue. Filmed the following year, it starred Noah Taylor, Marc Senter and Amanda Fuller. Premiered in Rotterdam in 2010, it was described as 'exploring the darker side of humanity with bone-chilling results'. It had its American premiere at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas and went on to win Best Film Awards at several festivals including the Boston Underground Film Festival, Lund International Fantastic Film Festival, Fantaspoa Fantastic Film Festival in Brazil and best foreign film/Sequence Award at North America's Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.

Straight after finishing Red White & Blue, Rumley shot the critically lauded and final segment of the seminal British psycho-sexual horror anthology, Little Deaths. Rumley's 'Bitch' starred Tom Sawyer and Kate Braithwaite. The film also featured a performance from the Shoreditch band S.C.U.M, whose lead singer, Tom Cohen, married the late Peaches Geldof. Little Deaths had its world premiere in February 2011, opening Frightfest in Glasgow and then premiering in North America at SXSW.

That same year, Rumley was invited to make a short film for The ABCs of Death, produced by Tim League (executive producer of Red White & Blue) and Ant Timpson. Deciding to shoot in a country he had never visited before, Rumley and his longtime Director of Photography, Milton Kam, went to Kam's country of birth, Suriname, and shot P for Paramaribo, which would ultimately become P for Pressure. Featuring a who's who of independent horror names such as Nacho Vigalondo, Ti West, Adam Wingard, Srdjan Spasojevic and Xavier Gens, the film premiered at Toronto's International Film Festival's Midnight Madness section in 2012.

In 2013 Rumley was hired to direct his first 'Hollywood' feature by Boss Media and producer Frank Mancuso, Jr (Species, Ronin, Internal Affairs). The film was co-produced by Ai7le Films, run by actor Peter Facinelli (Twilight). The Last Word is a horror/curse movie based on the true story of Johnny Frank Garrett, executed in Texas in 1992 for the rape and murder of a 76-year-old nun. Garrett maintained his innocence until the end and left behind a curse in the form of a letter. It stated that his spirit would cause the deaths of all who helped execute him. Soon after, many of those people met mysterious deaths.

Crowhurst is based on the tragic real-life story of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst, a 35-year-old father of four, who set out from England in 1968, joining an international race to be the first or the fastest man to circumnavigate the globe single-handed and non-stop. But his dream quickly turned into a nightmare, ending in insanity and probable suicide. The executive producer of the film was Nicolas Roeg, who had himself attempted to film the story in the 1970s.

Films (as writer/director/producer)
1994 Phew (short)
2000 Strong Language
2001 The Truth Game
2002 Club Le Monde
2006 The Handyman (short)
2006 The Living and the Dead
2010 Red White & Blue
2011 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero (short)
2011 Little Deaths (segment "Bitch")
2012 The ABCs of Death (segment "P Is for Pressure")
2014 The Last Word
2015 Crowhurst
2016 Fashionista
2016 Johnny Frank Garrett's Last Word
2017 Once Upon a Time in London

References

External links

British film directors
British male screenwriters
Horror film directors
Living people
1968 births

Simon Rumley


Russian hip hop refers to hip hop music recorded in Russia or in the Russian language in former Soviet states like Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Hits by Russian rappers are included in the soundtracks of some PC-games and have formed part of several popular internet memes.

Many Russian rap artists have achieved commercial success, including Detsl, Bad Balance, Centr, Kasta, Oxxxymiron and Belarusian artist Seryoga.

Especially at the end of the 2010s and the beginning of the 2020s, rap has become a very political form of music in Russia. In this respect, rap could be compared to rock in the 1980s, which gave voice to young people critical of the Soviet system, expressed, for example, by Viktor Tsoi's Khochu peremen ("I want changes").

The increased politicization was most impressively demonstrated at the end of 2018, when a string of concerts were canceled. Among them was a performance by rapper Khaski (real name Dmitry Kuznetsov) in Krasnodar at the end of November. After the local prosecutor's office banned him from performing at Club Bounce on the grounds that the music contained extremist ideas, drug glorification and a call to suicide, the rapper stood on the roof of a car and began singing to his fans in the street until the police took him away for "hooliganism" (chuliganstvo) leading to him initially being sentenced to several days in prison. As a result, many famous rappers gave a solidarity concert for him in Moscow.

History

1980s
Hip hop culture in Russia began during the mid-late 1970s from the growing influence of the Eurodisco movement in Soviet Russia. However, breaking was one of the first elements of American hip hop culture to become popularized in the country, along with skateboarding, DJing, and MCing shortly after. The beginnings of Russian hip hop's musical form, rap, can be traced back the 1980s. Regarded as the first 'rap group in Russia, the group "Rush Hour" (Chas Pik) created one of the first attempts at rap in their 1984 album, "Rap." The album contained a track called "Rap" which featured lyrics based on multiplication tables and letters and took its inspiration from the funk-based style of the popular track, Rapper's Delight by Sugarhill Gang, released five years earlier. The 1980 Summer Olympics, held in Moscow, was one of the main catalysts for bringing hip hop culture to Soviet Russia, and by 1985 events like the 12th World Festival of Youth and Students and Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of Perestroika further brought Western culture into the country.

1990s
Until the beginning of the 1990s, there were not many rap artists in Russia and the Soviet Union.

The pioneers of Russian rap were Mister Maloy, Bad Balance, Malchishnik, Bogdan Titomir. Russian hip hop, just like Canadian hip hop, is inspired by Jamaican music, which hit an upswing during the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the early and middle of '90s appears hip-hop scenes in Moscow (D.O.B Community, White Hot Ice) and Saint Petersburg (DA-108, Baltic Clan).

In late 90s, many new performers, such as Mikhey and Jumangee, STDK, and Detsl, had become popular. Many of them were former members of pre-existing bands. At the end of the '90s and beginning of the 2000s, Rostov-on-Don was considered the center of Russian hip hop subculture, and the most notable representative was Kasta.

2000s
In the early-2000s, the most popular performers were Kasta, Mnogotochie, Detsl, and Bad Balance.

In the mid-2000s, underground bands began to appear and became popular in Moscow (like Smoky Mo, Dymovaya Zavesa, 25/17, Krovostok, Money Makaz, Supreme Playaz, Underwhat, Ddrop, Kazhe Oboima). At the same time in Russia and Belarus, new R&B performers appeared (Maks Lorens, Bianca, Satsura, Band'Eros). Also this period was marked by the appearance of interesting musical projects such as jazz-rap band KREC, ragga-rap band DA BUDZ, glitch-hop project 2HCompany, comedy gangsta rap Krovostok.

In the late 2000s, the Russian rapper ST1M received scandalous popularity after production of his single "Я Рэп" (I'm Rap), featuring Seryoga, in which he was dissing nearly all of the most notable Russian rappers, similar to "How to Rob" by 50 Cent.

In 2007 the group Centr became increasingly popular, partially due to aggressive promotion on the internet, and in 2008 they won an award at the MTV Russia Music Awards. The members of the group were Aleksey Dolmatov, aka Guf, David Nuriev, aka Ptaha ("ptaha" means "a little bird" in Russian) and Vadim Motylyov, aka Slim. Their two albums, «Качели» (Kacheli/Swing) and «Эфир в норме» (Efir v norme /Ether's Fine) became one of the most popular Russian hip hop albums). In 2008 it won MTV Russia Music Award for Best Hip Hop Project. In 2010 the group disintegrated because of the controversies among its participants and the each of them continued the solo career or joined the other groups. In the 2016 the group reunited and recorded the new album, «Система» (Sistema / The System).

In 2008 Russian musical channel Muz-TV started a hip-hop show Battle for Respect, which led the winner Ant (Zasada Production) to become highly popular. In 2009, Putin spoke at the Battle for Respect competition and on the one hand praised hip-hop culture for the cultural exchange that it reflects. On the other hand, he spoke about drug abuse, which he claimed was linked partly to the scene. Putin warned against the abuse of addictive substances. However, he said that breakdancing was proof that hip-hop could promote a healthy lifestyle, because in his view such impressive and strenuous dances were simply impossible under the influence of drugs.

In the late 2000s - early 2010s the new notable performers appeared on the Gazgolder Records label, owned by Basta (such as AK47,(gamora) Triagrutrica, Tati, Charusha, Slovetsky and Skriptonit, the DJ from Kazakhstan).

2010s
In a 2018 speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced rap music, saying that it would lead to the degradation of Russia and that it rested on the pillars of "sex, drugs and protest." He asked the Council for Culture and Art in St Petersburg to bring rap culture to heel, saying "if it is impossible to stop it, it should be taken over and navigated in a particular way."

2020s
In recent times, Russian Rap has had a cultural impact outside of Russia, with tracks such as "Tripaloski / Tri Poloski - ТРИ ПОЛОСКИ" in 2016. With the emergence of platforms like TikTok, popular internet memes ranging into the English speaking world occurred, in 2020 Ice by Morgenshtern went viral and in 2021 My head is turning like a screw (Моя голова винтом).

Further reading
Philip Ewell: "Sing Vasya, Sing!": Vasya Oblomov's Rap Trios as Political Satire in Putin's Russia, in: Music & Politics 7,2 (2013), pp. 1–20.

Philip Ewell: Russian Rap in the Era of Vladimir Putin. In: Milosz Miszczynski, Adriana Helbig (eds.), Hip Hop at Europe's Edge: Music, Agency, and Social Change. Indiana University Press 2017, pp. 45–62.

Anastasia Denisova / Aliaksandr Herasimenka: How Russian Rap on YouTube Advances Alternative Political Deliberation. Hegemony, Counter-Hegemony, and Emerging Resistant Publics, in: Social Media + Society 5,2 (2019), pp. 1–11.

Sergey Ivanov: Hip Hop in Russia. How the Cultural Form Emerged in Russia and Established a New Philosophy. In: Sina A. Nitzsche, Walter Grünzweig (eds.), Hip Hop in Europe: Cultural Identities and Transnational Flows. Zürich: LIT 2013 (=Transnational and Transatlantic American Studies 13), pp. 87–102.

Ilya Kukulin: Playing the Revolt. The Cultural Valorization of Russian Rap and Covert Change in Russian Society of the 2010s, in: Russian Literature 118 (2020), pp. 79–105.

Yauheni Kryzhanouski: Managing Dissent in Post-Soviet Authoritarianism. New Censorship of Protest Music in Belarus and Russia, 2000–2018, in: Europe-Asia Studies 74,5 (2022), pp. 760–788.

Ilya Kukulin: The culture of ban. Pop culture, social media and securitization of youth politics in today's Russia, in: International Journal of Cultural Policy 27,2 (2021), pp. 177–190.

А.Ю. Завалишин, Н.Ю. Костюрина: Русская рэп-культура. Специфика научного анализа // Журнал интегративных исследований культуры, 2020, т. 2, No. 1, С. 60–68.

See also

 Hookah rap

References

20th-century music genres
21st-century music genres
Hip hop
1990s in music
2000s in music
2010s in music

Russian hip hop


Darryl Banks is an American comic book artist. He worked on one of the first painted comic books, Cyberpunk, and teamed with the writer Mark Ellis to revamp the long-running The Justice Machine series for two publishers, Innovation and Millennium.

Early life
Columbus Eastmoor High School Graduate was born to parents Father Aubrey and Mother Mary Banks (Fowler). A competent artist from central Ohio.
He always loved art but decided in high school that he wanted to pursue a career in comics. Darryl Banks studied at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio.

Comics
After Banks graduated from college, he sent copious samples of his art to DC Comics and Marvel Comics, and went to comics conventions to show his work to publishers. On the advice of friends, he began sending samples to smaller, independent companies. Eventually, Innovation Publishing offered him his first jobs: a two-part Cyberpunk story, followed by a run on Justice Machine.

At Millennium, Banks produced a three-issue mini-series based on The Wild Wild West TV series and a comics adaptation of Doc Savage with The Monarch of Armageddon.

Banks then went to work for DC Comics, illustrating Legion of Super-Heroes. He then became the penciler on Green Lantern vol. 3, starting with the "Emerald Twilight" storyline. Banks drew most of the issues from #50 through #142. Along with co-creating Kyle Rayner, he was responsible for designing costumes for Parallax, Grayven, Fatality, Dr. Polaris, and Dr. Light.

As of 1995 Banks was teaching two courses, one on illustration and one in comic book design at his alma mater, the Columbus College of Art and Design.

References

External links
Gallery of Darryl Banks work at Comic Art Community

African-American comics creators
American comics creators
American comics artists
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Columbus College of Art and Design faculty
21st-century African-American artists

Darryl Banks


The Imperial Sword (, ) is one of the four most important parts of the Imperial Regalia (Reichskleinodien) of the Holy Roman Empire. During a coronation, it was given to the emperor along with the Imperial Crown (Reichskrone), Imperial Sceptre (Reichszepter), and the Imperial Orb (Reichsapfel). All four parts of the Imperial Regalia are displayed in the Imperial Treasury at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. It is also known as Mauritiusschwert, or the sword of Saint Maurice.

History
The Imperial Sword was made for Emperor Otto IV in the twelfth century, possibly for his coronation as King of the Romans in 1198. Its predecessor, the sword of Otto III, is also preserved, in the Essen Abbey treasury.

The first known explicit mention of the sword dates to 1315, in a letter of a lady-in-waiting of Elisabeth of Aragon, wife to Frederick III. It may also be referenced in an inventory of 1246, which mentions merely zwey swert mit zweyn scheiden, gezieret mit edelem gesteyne (two swords, with two scabbards ornamented with gems). The first pictorial representations of the sword date to the fifteenth century, but the first detailed depiction only to the seventeenth century.

By legend, the Imperial Sword was connected with the donation of the sword, lance, and spurs, of Saint Maurice by the Abbey of Saint Maurice to king Henry the Fowler; the actual sword, however, postdates both Maurice and Henry.

Description

Sword

The Imperial Sword has an overall length of 110 cm (43.3 in), with the length of the blade being 95.3 cm (37.5 in). The sword originated during the high medieval period, but was refitted and decorated several times during the late medieval and early modern periods—e.g., the addition of the silver wire wrapping the hilt. The crossguard on one side bears the Middle Latin inscription CHRISTVS : VINCIT : CHRISTVS : REIGNAT : CHRISTVS : INPERAT (Christ triumphs, Christ reigns, Christ rules). On the reverse side, the shorter variant CHRISTVS : VINCIT : CHRISTVS : REINAT. Schulze-Dörrlamm (1995:27) interprets the theological intention of this inscription  as referring to Christ the Victor, Christ the King, and Christ the Emperor—the refrain of the Laudes imperiale and an invocation of Christ as legitimation for secular power and the translatio imperii to the Holy Roman Empire.

The pommel is of the "mushroom" or "tea-cosy" shape typical of the high medieval period. The pommel is engraved with the arms of Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV, who reigned from 1209 to 1215. The lower edge of the pommel is inscribed with BENEDICTVS · DO[minv]S DE[v]S QVI DOCET MANV[s]+ viz (Blessed be the Lord my God, who teaches the hand [to wield]). This is an abbreviated form of Psalm 144:1, Benedictus Dominus Deus meus, qui docet manus meas ad prælium, et digitos meos ad bellum (Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to fight, and my fingers to war).

Scabbard
The scabbard of the sword is adorned with 14 gold plates engraved with depictions of monarchs. These pictures date to the eleventh century, and are thus about a century older than the sword itself.
The figures have been identified as depicting the consecutive German monarchs from Charlemagne to Henry III, who was crowned in 1046.

Gallery

References
Citations

Bibliography

External links

 Kunsthistorisches Museum

European swords
European weapons
1198 works
Imperial Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire
Medieval European swords
Medieval European metalwork objects
Individual weapons
Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor

Imperial Sword


Nikolai  Lugansky (; born 26 April 1972) is a Russian pianist.

Early life and education
Nikolai Lugansky was born on 26 April 1972 in Moscow, Russia, to research scientist parents. When he was 5 years old, before he had learned to read music, he played a Beethoven piano sonata that he learned by ear. He studied piano at the Moscow Central Music School and the Moscow Conservatory. His teachers included Tatiana Kestner, Tatiana Nikolayeva and Sergei Dorensky.

Career
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Lugansky won prizes at numerous piano competitions, most importantly the Silver Medal at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in 1994 (no first prize was awarded). At the same time he began to make recordings on the Melodiya (USSR) and Vanguard Classics (Netherlands) labels. His performance at the Winners' Gala Concert of the 10th International Tchaikovsky Competition was recorded and released on the Pioneer Classics label, on both CD and video laser disc formats. This was followed by more recordings for Japanese labels. He went on to make recordings for Warner Classics, Erato Records, PENTATONE, Onyx Classics, Deutsche Grammophon, and Naïve Records. In 2018, Lugansky signed an exclusive recording contract with Harmonia Mundi.

Lugansky has performed together with Vadim Repin, Alexander Kniazev, Anna Netrebko, Joshua Bell, Yuri Bashmet, Vadim Rudenko, Mischa Maisky and Leonidas Kavakos, among others.

In addition, Lugansky has played piano concertos with conductors like Riccardo Chailly, Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Valery Gergiev, Neeme Järvi, Kurt Masur, Mikhail Pletnev, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Yuri Simonov, Leonard Slatkin, Tugan Sokhiev, Vladimir Spivakov, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yuri Temirkanov and Edo de Waart.

In addition to performing and recording, Lugansky teaches at the Moscow Conservatory.

Personal life
Lugansky lives in Moscow with his wife and three children.

Awards

 Competition prizes

 First Prize, All-Union Competition in Tbilisi (1988)
 Silver Medal, 8th International Bach Competition in Leipzig (1988)
 Second Prize, Rachmaninov Competition in Moscow (1990)
 Best pianist, International Summer Academy "Mozarteum" in Salzburg, Austria (1992)
 Silver Medal, 10th International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (1994)

 Other awards

 Ernest Neizvestny Private Charity Fund Award (1994)
 International Terence Judd Award (1995)
 Diapason d'Or (2000, 2001 and 2002)
 Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (2003)
 Named "Honoured Citizen of Ivanovka"  in Tambov, Russia (2004)
 Named "Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation" (2005)
 Echo Klassik Award (2005)
 Echo Klassik Award (2007)
 BBC Music Magazine Award (2011)
 Echo Klassik Award (2013)
 People's Artist of Russia (2013)
 Sergei Rachmaninov International Award (2016)

References

Other websites

 The Nikolai Lugansky Website
 HarrisonParrott Artist and Project Management
1972 births
Living people
Musicians from Moscow

Nikolai Lugansky


Jouke de Vries (born September 26, 1960 in Deersum) is a Dutch academic.

He studied political sciences at the University of Amsterdam and has been working at the group Leaderships Art  at the University of Leiden since 1984. De Vries was promoted and got his degree in 1989 from H. Daudt. en H. Daalder for the article he wrote on "Ground Politics and Cabinet Crisis in the Netherlands". He almost became faction leader of the Partij van de Arbeid (the Dutch Labour Party), but narrowly lost to Wouter Bos.  He teaches students at Leiden University. He is a professor on Political Sciences (Dutch:Hoogleraar) and teaching is his profession. He is a columnist for a Dutch language website.

Jouke de Vries lives in Leiden near the University where he teaches. He married in 1986 and has two sons and a daughter.

References

1960 births
Living people
Dutch columnists
Dutch political scientists
Writers from Friesland

Jouke de Vries


Jellia Jamb is a fictional character from the classic children's series of Oz books by  American author L. Frank Baum. She is first introduced in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), as the head maid who works in the royal palace of the Emerald City which is the imperial capital of the Land of Oz. In later books, Jellia eventually becomes Princess Ozma's favorite servant out of the Emerald City's staff administration. She is also the protagonist of Ruth Plumly Thompson's novel Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz.  Her name is a pun on the phrase "Jelly or jam?"

Classic Oz books

She is introduced (though unnamed), in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and is described as having pretty green hair and green eyes. She wears a green silk dress with green satin sashes and a green apron. In the novel, she is the young and charming maid who immediately responds to the Soldier with the Green Whiskers after he blows upon his green whistle, informing the staff that guests have arrived at the royal palace in the Emerald City. She handles the separate rooms of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion during their stay and upon their first visit to the city to see the great Wizard. She leads Dorothy through seven hallways and up three grand staircases to her private chambers, and even provides the little girl with a fancy green dress made of brocaded satin. She also adorns Dorothy's pet dog Toto with a green silk ribbon she ties around his neck (both Dorothy's dress and Toto's ribbon become pure white upon leaving the Emerald City. This is because of the green tinted spectacles the city citizens are forced to wear by the Guardian of the Gates to protect their eyes from being blinded by the city's brilliancy). Her character is strictly referred to as "the pretty green girl" in this story, and her youthfulness and kindness are emphasized by Baum.

She is finally introduced by name in the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), where Baum elaborates more about her appearance in detail. She often wears a green silk knee-length skirt, matching silk stockings embroidered with peapods, and green satin slippers with bunches of fresh lettuce for decorations instead of bows or buckles. All around her silken waist four leaf clovers are delicately sewn into the sash and she wears a little jacket trimmed with sparkling emeralds of a uniform size. The reader also learns in the plot that she is a northern Gillikin by birth. Scarecrow, then the ruler of Oz in the Wizard's stead, uses Jellia to act as an interpreter between him and the Gillikin Jack Pumpkinhead, who does not realize that all Ozites speak the same language, so Jellia "translates" Jack's words as insults as a prank. After General Jinjur and Mombi have joined forces and taken over the Emerald City, Jellia is compelled to retain her job. She is brought before Mombi who uses her dark magic to exchange forms with Jellia in order to trick Glinda the Good Witch into thinking Mombi has surrendered herself, but Glinda is not fooled by this trick and undoes Mombi's curse. Jellia refuses to speak about what happened until Glinda promises to protect her from harm.

She is seen briefly in the third Oz book Ozma of Oz (1907), and shown to have an affectionate relationship with the Scarecrow (despite him no longer being the ruler of the Emerald City).

In the fourth Oz book Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908), she and the Omby Amby are among the first to greet the Wizard upon his second return to Oz, and he recognizes them as the "green girl" and the "Soldier with the Green Whiskers", as he does not know them by their real names.

In the fifth Oz book The Road to Oz (1909), Jellia Jamb is among the guests at the royal birthday party held in honor of Oz's official ruler, Princess Ozma.

In other books

Jellia Jamb has supporting parts in some of the sequel books written by Baum's successors. She is prominent in Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz (1939), Ruth Plumly Thompson's nineteenth Oz book.

Portrayals
Jellia has not proven a major figure in Oz adaptations. Glenna Vaughn is the first person credited with the role, who did not appear in any silent versions, in The Land of Oz (1932).  Some fans like to think that the Wash and Brush-Up girl portrayed by Lois January in The Wizard of Oz (1939) is Jellia, while The Wonderful Wizard of Oz anime portrayed her as a woman of middle age.  She appears in The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969) to do the translation bit, but her role in the climax is eliminated, and the actor, a day player, went unbilled.

In the 1988 Polish cutout cartoon series W krainie czarnoksiężnika Oza (In the Land of the Wizard of Oz), which adapts The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz, Jellia is merged with character of Jinjur. She is young woman with blue hair and wearing oriental attire. She served as one of servant of Wizard, but after the Scarecrow became ruler of Emerald City, she change name to Jinjur and became self-appointed general leading an all-woman force "Army of Revolt". She voiced by Ewa Ziętek.

In The Wizard of Oz (1982), she is an unnamed young, tawny-haired girl voiced by Elizabeth Hanna, who is unbilled for that role, and dressed like a soldier instead of a maid.  In the Shirley Temple adaptation of The Land of Oz, she appears for the famous translation scene, and is depicted as a beautiful, yet comical young woman. Perhaps the most substantial portrayal of Jellia has been in the 1981 musical play by Thomas W. Olson, Gary Briggle, and Richard Dworsky, in which her role has been expanded from the novel to accompany Tippetarius on his journey.  In the original production by The Children's Theatre Company and School of Minneapolis, Rana Haugen played the role, also having to mimic the strange movements Wendy Lehr used to create Mombi while portraying Mombi's imperfect disguise, in which she tries to kill Tip.  In the novel, Mombi took on the disguise to stay in the Emerald City and away from Glinda, but she still moves like an old lady in Jellia's form. She is also the titular character in Dave Hardenbrook's Jellia Jamb: Maid Of Oz which is a sequel to The Unknown Witches of Oz.

References

Oz (franchise) characters
Fictional maids
Literary characters introduced in 1900
Female characters in literature

Jellia Jamb


Feng Yanji () (per the Zizhi Tongjian and the History of Song) or Feng Yansi () (per the New History of the Five Dynasties and Spring and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms (903-June 23, 960), alternative name Feng Yansi (), courtesy name Zhengzhong (), was a famed poet and politician of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Southern Tang, serving as a chancellor during the reign of Southern Tang's second emperor Li Jing (Emperor Yuanzong).

Background
Feng Yanji was born in 903, during the reign of the late-Tang Emperor Zhaozong.  He was from Guangling (廣陵, in modern Yangzhou, Jiangsu).  His father was named Feng Lingjun (), who was a military officer at Guangling.  He had at least one younger half-brother named Feng Yanlu, who would later also be a prominent politician.  (Feng Yanlu's mother was described as Feng Yanji's stepmother, so Feng Lingjun probably married her after Feng Yanji's mother's death, although that is not completely clear.)  While Feng Yanji and Feng Yanlu were half-brothers and would eventually be political allies, they did not have a good relationship, and neither did Feng Yanji with Feng Yanlu's mother.

At one point, Xu Zhigao, the adoptive son of Wu (which was the state that succeeded Tang in the lower Yangtze River region) regent Xu Wen, commissioned Feng Lingjun as the secretary of the bureau of salt and iron monopolies at She Prefecture (歙州, in modern Huangshan, Anhui).  Feng Yanji apparently followed his father there, for it was mentioned that, in 916, there was a time when the prefect of She, Gu Yan (), was very ill, and rumors spread that Gu was already dead, causing destabilization of morale among the soldiers.  At Feng Lingjun's request, Feng Yanji, then 13, went to see Gu, and then, after exiting Gu's mansion, relayed Gu's words to the officers, causing the soldiers to be calmed.  As he grew older, he became known for his elegance and writing skills.

During Li Bian's reign
At one point, Feng Yanji, then a civilian, went to see Xu Zhigao — who had, by that point, seized the Wu throne and established a new state of Southern Tang and had changed his own name to Li Bian — and Li Bian made him a Mishulang (秘書郎, assistant at the Palace Library).  After Li Bian's oldest son Li Jing the Prince of Qi was given the title of Generalissimo in 939, Feng was made his secretary, in addition to his then position of Jiabu Langzhong (), a supervisory official at the ministry of defense (兵部, Bingbu).  Feng became a close associate to Li Jing's advisor Chen Jue, and as Chen was closely aligned with the chancellor Song Qiqiu, also became a member of Song's party.  It was said he found ways to expel that of those who worked in Li Jing's headquarters who had higher positions than he did.  He once jokingly spoke to a higher-ranked official, Sun Sheng, who carried the title of Zhongshu Shilang (中書侍郎, deputy head of the legislative bureau of government (中書省, Zhongshu Sheng), stating, "What abilities do you have, Lord, that you get to be Zhongshu Shilang?"  Sun, who had long despised Feng, responded:

While serving at Li Jing's headquarters, Feng Yanji and Feng Yanlu had often advocated reversing the ban disallowing people from selling their sons and daughters into servitude, but Li Bian, agreeing with the advice of the official Xiao Yan () that that effectively would enslave the children of the poor in favor of the rich, disapproved.  The official Chang Mengxi () often spoke to Li Bian against Feng Yanji, Chen, and Wei Cen (), and Li Bian had considered removing them from Li Jing's staff, but had not yet done so by 943, when Li Bian fell seriously ill and thereafter died.  Li Jing then poised to take the throne.  As he was preparing to do so, Feng Yanji, who was happy about Li Bian's death and Li Jing's succession, often went into the palace to make reports to him, up to three to four times a day.  Li Jing responded to his aggressiveness by responding, "A secretary has his own responsibilities.  Why are you being so tedious?"  He and Feng Yanlu were apparently put in charge of drafting the public will/final edict on Li Bian's behalf, and they inserted the provision allowing the sale of sons and daughters that they had advocated but Li Bian had disapproved of.  Xiao submitted a report to Li Jing, pointing out Li Bian's prior disapproval.  Li Jing reviewed Li Bian's archives and realized that this was the case, but decided not to strike that provision from the will, as it had already been published.

During Li Jing's reign
After Li Jing formally took the throne, he entrusted much of the governance to Chen Jue.  Feng Yanji, Feng Yanlu, Wei Cen, and Cha Wenhui () were all in close association with Chen and influential in decision-making, and they were referred to by their detractors as the "Five Ghosts."  Feng Yanji received the positions of Jianyi Daifu () and imperial scholar (翰林學士, Hanlin Xueshi).  He was soon promoted to deputy minister of census (戶部侍郎, Hubu Shilang) and chief imperial scholar (翰林學士承旨, Hanlin Xueshi Chengzhi), and soon received the title of Zhongshu Shilang.

As of 944, Li Jing wanted to eventually pass the throne to his younger brothers Li Jingsui the Prince of Qi and Li Jingda the Prince of Yan.  Feng Yanji and his partisans wanted to use this case to control the officials' access to the emperor, and therefore encouraged him to issue an edict stating, "Li Jingsui the Prince of Qi shall oversee all policy matters.  Of all the officials, only the deputy chiefs of staff Chen Jue and Cha Wenhui shall be allowed to report to the emperor; for all others, they shall not be allowed to do so unless summoned."  This greatly shocked the state, and the imperial guard officer Jia Chong () was eventually able to persuade Li Jing to reverse the decision.

In 945, when Cha was commanding an army attacking Southern Tang's southeastern neighbor Min's then-capital Jian Prefecture (建州, in modern Nanping, Fujian), Feng Yanji, Feng Yanlu, and Wei, as his allies, all greatly advocated for his army to be well-supplied, such that it was said that the imperial treasury was entirely drained, and that the people of nearby prefectures — Hong (洪州, in modern Nanchang, Jiangxi), Rao (饒州, in modern Shangrao, Jiangxi), Fǔ (撫州, in modern Fuzhou, Jiangxi), and Xin (信州, in modern Shangrao) — particularly suffered.  Cha was eventually able to capture Jian Prefecture and force Min's last emperor Wang Yanzheng to surrender, allowing Southern Tang to take over a substantial part of Min territory.  However, Min's traditional capital Fú Prefecture (福州, in modern Fuzhou, Fujian, note different tone) was still in the hands of the warlord Li Hongyi, who was paying nominal allegiance to both Southern Tang and its northern neighbor Later Jin.  When Chen volunteered to go see Li Hongyi to persuade him to give up his control of Fú, Li Hongyi was arrogant to him and refused.  Chen subsequently forged an order in Li Jing's name, conscripting the troops of Jian, Fǔ, Xin, and Ting (汀州, in modern Longyan, Fujian) Prefectures and putting them under the command of Feng Yanlu so that he could lead a campaign against Li Hongyi.  However, the Southern Tang forces were eventually crushed in spring 947 by the relief forces sent by Wuyue's king Qian Hongzuo and were forced to retreat in defeat, ending Southern Tang's hopes of taking all of Min territory.  (In light of the Southern Tang losses, it also soon lost effective control of the Quan (泉州, in modern Quanzhou, Fujian) and Nan (南州, in modern Zhangzhou, Fujian) Prefectures region to the warlord Liu Congxiao, although Liu remained in nominal allegiance to Southern Tang.)

Meanwhile, in 946, Li Jing had made Feng Yanji a chancellor (with the title of Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingzhangshi ()), along with Li Jianxun.  It was said that Li Jianxun was skilled in administrative matters but indecisive, while Feng was capable in literary matters, but was wicked and partisan in his decision making, often covering for his inadequacies by using grand words to persuade people of his correctness.  After Li Jing formalized his intended succession arrangement by creating Li Jingsui the Crown Prince and Li Jingda the Prince of Qi in 947, Feng, wanting to ingratiate Li Jingsui and Li Jingda into believing that he was responsible for this arrangement, once, at a feast held at Li Jingsui's crown prince palace, caressed Li Jingda's back and stated, "You should not forgive me!"  Li Jingda was offended, and immediately went to see Li Jing, demanding Feng's execution.  Li Jing had to spend much time dissuading Li Jingda from the demand.

After Chen's and Feng Yanlu's defeat, Li Jing considered executing them, but when the imperial censor Jiang Wenwei () submitted an article of impeachment that not only dealt with Chen and Feng Yanlu, but also Feng Yanji and Wei, Li Jing was angered by what he saw as its exaggeration, and demoted Jiang.  He subsequently exiled Chen and Feng Yanlu, rather than killing them.  Subsequently, Feng Yanji was demoted to the title of Taidi Shaobao (), an advisor to Li Jingsui.  (Feng Yanji was apparently then given the honorary title of military governor (Jiedushi) of Zhaowu Circuit (昭武, headquartered in modern Guangyuan, Sichuan, then under the control of Later Shu), and then left governmental service for some time to observe a mourning period for his mother — or possibly stepmother (i.e., Feng Yanlu's mother) — and then was restored to a general title, and then made Taidi Taibao (太弟太保, senior advisor to Li Jingsui) and (honorarily) military governor of Zhaoyi Circuit (昭義, headquartered in modern Changzhi, Shanxi, then under the control of Later Jin's successor state Later Han.

In 952, Li Jing again made Feng Yanji chancellor, along with Xu Jingyun () (who was removed not long after) and Sun Sheng.  Feng also received the title of Zuo Pushe (左僕射, one of the heads of the executive bureau of government (尚書省, Shangshu Sheng)).  When the edict announcing the commission of the three chancellors was publicly read, Chang Mengxi publicly ridiculed it by stating, "The edict was wonderfully written, but not as wonderfully as Jiang Wenwei's petition!"  Sun, who did not have a good opinion of Feng, privately stated, "How is it that a golden goblet and a jade bowl now contains dog feces?"  As chancellor again, Feng argued to Li Jing that chancellors should be given full authority to make decisions for the state, and Li Jing agreed, giving Feng full authority to rule on things, but Feng did not actually have the ability to do so, so he relied on his administrators for civilian matters and generals for military matters, without actually ruling on anything himself.  Finding this situation untenable, Li Jing began making his own decisions again.  However, when Xiao Yan, who repeatedly attacked Feng and who was then the chief judge of the supreme court (大理卿, Dali Qing), erroneously sentenced a woman to death, when other officials Zhong Mo () and Li Deming () wanted to use this opportunity to condemn Xiao to death, Feng defended Xiao based on his years of loyal service, and Xiao was spared.  Because of this, Feng was praised by many.  It was said that the reason why Feng was able to gain Li Jing's favor was that he constantly advocated strategies for taking the Central Plains.  Feng became so arrogant that he showed open contempt for Li Bian's insistence on peace, praising Li Jing instead for Li Jing's willingness to use force.

One of the things that Li Jing had to decide shortly after Feng and Sun were made chancellors was what to do with the lands of Southern Tang's southwestern neighbor Chu, whose last ruler Ma Xichong had surrendered to Southern Tang in 951, ending Chu.  Despite Ma's surrender, however, Southern Tang effectively only had control of one of Chu's three main circuits, Wu'an (武安, headquartered in modern Changsha, Hunan, i.e., Chu's former capital Tan Prefecture ().  Wuping Circuit (武平, headquartered in modern Changde, Hunan) was in the hands of the Chu general Liu Yan, and Jingjiang Circuit (靜江, headquartered in modern Guilin, Guangxi) was seized by Chu's southern neighbor Southern Han.  Li Jing's plans in 951 had been to take those circuits by force, but by 952, he was weary of the campaigns, and considered abandoning the Jingjiang project entirely and try to gain Liu's nominal allegiance by making him military governor.  Sun agreed with the idea, but Feng opposed, arguing that acquiescing with just taking Wu'an would make Southern Tang appear weak.  Li Jing agreed with Feng and continued the campaigns, but the general Li Jing sent to attack Jingjiang, Zhang Luan (), was defeated by Southern Han forces with great loss.  Subsequently, Liu launched a surprise attack on Tan, catching Southern Tang's military governor of Wu'an, Bian Hao, by complete surprise.  Bian abandoned Tan and fled, leading to Southern Tang's loss of the circuit and effectively gaining nothing from the Chu adventure.  In light of this, both Feng and Sun resigned their chancellorships, but retained their Pushe titles.  However, Feng was again made chancellor in spring 953.

In 956, in the midst of a major invasion by Later Han's successor state Later Zhou, Li Jing decided to send a high-level delegation to meet with the Later Zhou emperor Guo Rong, hoping to persuade Guo to stop his campaign.  The delegation was to be headed by Sun.  Sun pointed out to Feng that, as Feng's title was more honored than Sun's, Feng should have gone, but that he would nevertheless go despite the dangers.  As Sun feared, his efforts were unsuccessful, and Guo put him to death.  The war only ended in 958 when Southern Tang capitulated and ceded all of its territory north of the Yangtze River, and also agreed to be a vassal to Later Zhou.  After that agreement was reached, Li Jing sent Feng to Guo's court to submit a tribute of silver, textile, money, tea, and grains, for Guo's army to use.  Shortly after, with Southern Tang now being a vassal, many high-level officials' titles were reduced to show submission to Later Zhou.  Feng thus no longer was chancellor, and was made Taizi Taifu (), senior advisor to then-crown prince, Li Jing's son Li Hongji (Li Jingsui's having by that point successfully resigned the crown prince title).  He died on 960.

Feng Yanji was famous for his poetry, which he continued writing into old age.  He particularly favored writing poems that could be set to music.

Notes and references

 Spring and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms, vol. 26.
 Zizhi Tongjian, vols. 283, 284, 285, 286, 290, 291, 293, 294.

903 births
960 deaths
Politicians from Yangzhou
Writers from Yangzhou
Poets from Jiangsu
Yang Wu people
Southern Tang chancellors
Southern Tang jiedushi
Zhaoyi jiedushi
Generals from Jiangsu
Chinese lyricists
Musicians from Jiangsu
Southern Tang musicians

Feng Yanji


A wing chair (also, wing-back chair or wing-back) is an easy chair or club chair with "wings" attached to the back of the chair, typically, but not always, stretching down to the arm rest. The purpose of the "wings" was to shield the occupant of the chair from drafts, and to trap the heat from a fireplace in the area where the person would be sitting. Hence, in the past these were often used near a fireplace. Currently, most examples of wing chairs are fully upholstered with exposed wood legs, but many of the oldest examples of wing chairs have an exposed frame with padded cushions at the seat, arm rests, back and sometimes wings.

They were first introduced in England during the 1600s, and the basic design has remained unchanged since.  They did not become popular until the 1720s.

Though there are many types of wing chairs, there are two standard wing styles - the flat wing and the scroll wing. There are also bat wings and butterfly wings, among other types. The length, depth, vertical position and shape of the wings may vary from chair to chair.

See also
 Fauteuil
 List of chairs
 Woodcutters, a Thomas Bernhard novel in which the narrator repeatedly references the fact that they are sitting in a wing chair.

References

Chairs
Upholstery

Wing chair


AGLA France (Association des Gays et Lesbiennes Arméniens de France) (, ) was a Paris-based advocacy group working to fight widespread homophobia in Armenia and among Armenians in France from 2001 to 2007.

Origins
Founded in December 2001 by gay refugees from Armenia, the group aimed at pressuring the Armenian government to remove its law against gay men, article 116 of the Armenian penal code.

Actions

In May 2003 AGLA France launched "ThePink", the first LGBT online magazine in the Armenian language. By promoting public awareness on such issues as homophobia, coming out and HIV/STI prevention, AGLA sought to prepare the ground for the movement in favor of LGBT rights in Armenia.

In August 2003, President Robert Kocharyan ratified Armenia's new penal code which removes the former anti-gay article 116.

In late 2004, Armen Avetisyan, leader of Armenian Aryan Union (AAU), an ultra-nationalist Armenian political party, announced that some senior Armenian officials were gay. That prompted heated debates in parliament that were broadcast over the public TV channel. Some members of Armenian Parliament stated that any member found to be gay should resign.

AGLA France organized a protest to denounce the AAU's homophobic campaign and the denigration of gays by Armenian lawmakers and media outlets. AGLA France also picketed in front of the Armenian embassy in Paris. The association also wrote an open letter to the President of Armenia that was published a few days later in the newspaper "Haykakan Zhamanak".

In 2005, AGLA France invited two young men from Armenia to participate in ILGA-Europe's annual conference which was held in Paris. A year later Menq/WFCE, the first gay-operated NGO to fight HIV/AIDS, was registered in Yerevan.

In 2006, two members of AGLA France celebrated an informal wedding ceremony in the Etchmiadzin Cathedral (Holy See of the Armenian Apostolic Church). An article published in the newspaper 168 Zham (168 Hours) about this improvised marriage provoked a scandal and indignation at local conservative media outlets and among politicians and religious officials.

AGLA France ceased its activities in 2007.

See also

LGBT rights in Armenia
Human rights in Armenia
LGBT rights in Asia
LGBT rights in France

Notes

External links
 ILGA-Europe's country information on Armenia
 AGLA NY - Gay and Lesbian Armenians of New York (USA)
 GALAS - Gay And Lesbian Armenian Society, Los Angeles (USA)

Armenian diaspora in Europe
Society of Armenia
LGBT rights in France
LGBT political advocacy groups in France
Anti-homophobia
LGBT culture in Paris

AGLA France


A Month by the Lake is a 1995 romantic comedy film starring Vanessa Redgrave, Edward Fox and Uma Thurman. The picture is directed by John Irvin and is based on the story by H.E. Bates. The supporting cast features Alida Valli and Alessandro Gassman.

Plot synopsis
In 1937, two years before World War II, a spinster named Miss Bentley has returned to Lake Como to spend a month's summer holiday to heal herself from the grief of her father's recent death. While there, she meets a bachelor named Major Wilshaw and develops some feelings for him. However, a young American girl named Miss Beaumont arrives and flirts with the major out of sheer boredom, leading him to believe she's actually interested in him.

Cast
 Vanessa Redgrave as Miss Bentley
 Edward Fox as Major Wilshaw
 Uma Thurman as Miss Beaumont
 Alida Valli as Signora Fascioli
 Alessandro Gassman as Vittorio Balsari

Critical reception
In a contemporary review Roger Ebert called the film; "a sly romantic comedy about a collision of sex, ego, will and pride, all peeping out from beneath great thick layers of British reticence. Its delights are wrapped in a lavish production in a beautiful time and place."

Awards
In 1996, Redgrave was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, losing to Nicole Kidman for To Die For. This marks John Irvin's first Golden Globe nominated film.

References

External links

1995 films
1995 romantic comedy films
American romantic comedy films
British romantic comedy films
Films directed by John Irvin
Films set in Italy
Films set in 1937
Films scored by Nicola Piovani
1990s English-language films
1990s American films
1990s British films
English-language romantic comedy films

A Month by the Lake


Kristin Hayter (born June 17, 1986) is an American singer and pianist. From 2017 to 2023, she released music and performed under the name Lingua Ignota (Latin for "unknown language").

Her professional music career began in 2017 with the self-released albums Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him and All Bitches Die, which spread through word-of-mouth. Hayter's music caught the attention of Profound Lore Records, who re-issued All Bitches Die and released her third studio album, Caligula, in 2019, which was met with universal critical acclaim. Her fourth album, Sinner Get Ready, was released in 2021 on Sargent House and received more widespread critical acclaim. Her work as Lingua Ignota drew from her experiences as a survivor of domestic violence for musical and lyrical inspiration, and she describes her music as "survivor anthems".

Citing the unhealthiness of reliving her trauma through her performances, Hayter retired the Lingua Ignota project in 2023. She proceeded to launch a new moniker, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, by announcing the project's debut album, Saved!.

Early life
Hayter was born in Del Mar, California, in 1986. She felt like she didn't fit in in Southern California and was often bullied. About her hometown, she said: "I think of [Del Mar] as a sort of hell in the way that I was so different than everyone else when I was growing up and couldn't situate myself, couldn't find myself there at all." Hayter was raised Catholic and studied in parochial school until the sixth grade, when she entered public school. A teacher noticed her voice's natural vibrato when she was eight years old, which led to her becoming a church cantor, singing every week at her local church and beginning classical voice-training lessons. Despite a religious upbringing, she considered herself to be an atheist for several years starting as a teenager. However, in 2019, Hayter claimed she had "renounced her teenage atheism" and had become particularly interested in Roman Catholic iconography and concepts of divine retribution.

Hayter studied interdisciplinary creative arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Literary Art from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2016. She is also classically trained in piano and voice. Her undergraduate thesis, titled Architect and Vapor, deconstructed Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, and centered its poetry component on anorexia, a disorder Hayter had for over a decade. For her MFA thesis, titled Burn Everything Trust No One Kill Yourself, she created a 10,000-page manuscript (a page count selected because it was approximately Hayter's weight in paper) linking real-world examples of misogyny in music with her own personal life using a Markov chain. In her own words, it was composed of "lyrics, message board posts, and liner notes from subgenres of extreme music that mythologize misogyny, […] [and] court papers, audio recordings, and police filings from my own experiences of violence." In addition to the manuscript, her interdisciplinary performance included music and a black-and-white video projection with footage of serial killer Aileen Wuornos and burning buildings.

Career

Early career

In high school, Hayter played in various metal garage bands with her friends.

Lingua Ignota (2017–2023)

Formation and self-released albums
Kristin Hayter began releasing music in 2017 under the moniker Lingua Ignota. Literally translating to "unknown language", the name is derived from the sacred constructed language Lingua Ignota created by the German Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen. She chose this name because of her interest in glossolalia or ecstatic language, relating it the idea of a "possession" or God speaking through a body. She said, "I'm trying to construct something that speaks the unspeakable, and so I use this sort of amalgam of musical devices to make my own sonic language which is meant to also be ecstatic or outside the self." Hayter released her first album under the name Lingua Ignota on Valentine's Day 2017. Titled Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him, all of the proceeds were donated to the National Network to End Domestic Violence not-for-profit organization and combined original compositions used in her MFA thesis Burn Everything Trust No One Kill Yourself with a cover of the Inner Circle song "Bad Boys", famous for its use as the opening theme on Cops. There are about 10 songs from Hayter's Burn Everything Trust No One Kill Yourself thesis performance that may be released one day.

Four months later, Lingua Ignota self-released its second album, All Bitches Die, through Bandcamp in June 2017. The album consists of four "murder ballads" loosely inspired by Angela Browne's 1987 book When Battered Women Kill, a study of victim violence. Hayter was not expecting to tour in support of the album and only expected to sell a few copies, however, word-of-mouth buzz surrounding All Bitches Die eventually made its way to Chris Bruni, owner of the Canadian extreme metal independent label Profound Lore Records. Profound Lore reissued All Bitches Die with updated artwork and a bonus track in 2018. Hayter said of the label: "Lingua Ignota is not a neutral project by any means and I've been asked to tone it down in various capacities since I've started. But Profound Lore only encouraged me to remain uncompromising and brutal, and that was ultimately what sold me to them as a label. I feel like they really believe in my work and won't ask me to dilute it to make it more fashionable or palatable." Lingua Ignota opened for experimental metal band The Body during their North American June–August 2018 tour, who Hayter credits for welcoming her into the experimental metal scene. The Body was touring in support of I Have Fought Against It, but I Can't Any Longer., an album that features guest vocals from Hayter.

Caligula, pandemic releases and Sightless Pit
After All Bitches Die, Lingua Ignota began working on a full-length album of cover songs that were reinterpreted in her unique music style, often with re-written lyrics. Songs from this session included Eminem's "Kim" and Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is". A split EP with The Rita was released in 2019 that featured covers of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" and Scott Walker's "The Girls from the Streets". With the covers album still unannounced, Lingua Ignota released its third studio album, Caligula, through Profound Lore on July 19, 2019. The album is about one of her abusive relationships, specifically about "speaking out about abuse and feeling invalidated, and people who I thought were my friends no longer being my friends, and the crushing experience of how that feels."

A few years prior to its announcement, Hayter formed the supergroup side project Sightless Pit with Dylan Walker (Full of Hell) and Lee Buford (the Body). The noise project released its debut album, Grave of a Dog, on February 21, 2020 through Thrill Jockey.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly during the lockdowns and typically occurring on a Bandcamp Friday event, Hayter released several singles, EPs and demos. In March 2020, she released the harsh noise single "Above Us Only Sky". The song was a response to the viral "Imagine" video starring Gal Gadot and other celebrities that was intended to boost morale in the early stages of the pandemic but was critically panned. That same month, through the Adult Swim Singles Program she released the single "O Ruthless Great Divine Director," which she described as a song that "both addresses and embodies the hypocrite and the false prophet." Hayter then released three cover song singles: "Jolene" by Dolly Parton in May 2020, "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak in August 2020 and "Kim" by Eminem in October 2020. In December 2020, Hayter released the home-recorded demos for the album Caligula. In February 2021 she released the EP Agnus Dei, which featured covers of songs by the Seattle punk band Iron Lung and the classical composers George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Sinner Get Ready and end of Lingua Ignota
In June 2021, Lingua Ignota shared a new song titled "Pennsylvania Furnace" and announced a new album, Sinner Get Ready, which was released August 6, 2021 on Sargent House.

In November 2022, Hayter announced her plans to retire the early catalog of Lingua Ignota in 2023 to either continue making music under the same name with a new direction or restart her music career under a new name. She cited the physical and emotional toll that writing and performing this material takes on her, elaborating: "This music has been excruciating to perform, and I know that what is healthiest for me is to stop performing it. I am proud of what I have accomplished so far and I look forward to what the future holds, I am in no way leaving music behind and will continue to build this world, but this world will look different." Her final performances of the Lingua Ignota material in the United States took place from April 28–30, 2023 at Chicago's Thalia Hall. Her final European tour was set to take place in May 2023, but was canceled a week before due to Hayter aggravating her spinal injury.

Hayter's final performance as Lingua Ignota took place on October 13 and 14, 2023 at London's Islington Assembly Hall.

Perpetual Flame Ministries and Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter (2022–present)
In December 2022, Hayter founded the Perpetual Flame Ministries record label along with KW Campol of the band Vile Creature, and its first release was the first vinyl pressing of her debut Lingua Ignota album Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him.

On August 22, 2023, she announced her debut album Saved! under the stage name Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter, which was released on October 20, 2023. It is described as "sonically and thematically, [...] both a logical conclusion to and a significant departure from Hayter's previous work as Lingua Ignota".

Musical style and influences

Lingua Ignota's two 2017 releases, Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him and All Bitches Die, have been described using a wide range of musical genres, including baroque, black metal, classical, death industrial, doom metal, electronic, extreme metal, experimental, folk, harsh noise wall, metal, industrial, neoclassical, noise, opera, power electronics and spiritual. Her third studio album, Caligula, features fewer industrial and electronic influences. Hayter herself admits she has difficulty describing her musical genre.

Generally, Hayter draws inspiration from people "who've been through hard shit and keep going. The people who are still strong even if they're struggling to have their voices heard." She first became interested in rock music when she found a cassette tape copy of Nirvana's 1991 album Nevermind left behind by her cousin, and became "obsessed" with Kurt Cobain. She said, "I became enamored of [Cobain] and wanted to be him, wanted to make music like him, wanted to have a voice like him." The interest in Cobain inspired her to take singing lessons in grade school. By high school, her music tastes evolved into underground, extreme and complex artists including grindcore band the Locust, extreme metal band Cattle Decapitation, free jazz founder Ornette Coleman, experimental noise musician Aaron Dilloway, and avant-garde musician John Zorn. Both Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails had an early influence, and she estimates that she likely saw the music video for "Closer" when she was about 12 years old. She said of Nine Inch Nails' seminal 1994 second album: "The Downward Spiral was a gateway into industrial music and then noise and experimental. It's not too difficult to get from Nine Inch Nails to [Einstürzende] Neubauten to Merzbow." She is particularly influenced by vocalists, including German musician Blixa Bargeld (Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), German new wave vocalist Klaus Nomi, American composer Cathy Berberian, Hungarian extreme metal vocalist Attila Csihar and Greek-American avant-garde musician Diamanda Galás. Hayter has also studied traditional Bulgarian polyphony.

Hayter is a survivor of domestic violence and draws from her experiences to write what she describes as "survivor anthems". After reading several books about surviving abuse, she noticed common themes and advice around gentleness, self-love and adopting new hobbies as coping mechanisms, but she felt this "enforced patriarchal models of civilized femininity". Instead, her music seeks to explore other avenues of survivorhood, such as rage and despair, and her lyrical approach to topics of violence are emotionally raw (from "All Bitches Die": "he beat me till my teeth were scattered / like pearls across the red, red ground"). Hayter's interest in performing extreme music, in part, stems from her multiple abusive relationships. One of her relationships was with a prominent figure in the Providence noise music scene, and his abusive behavior changed how she relates to the genre. In a separate interview, Hayter mentioned a relationship with someone who would not allow her to perform music, so as soon as the relationship was over, Hayter used Lingua Ignota to process what she went through. Though her music is empowering for women, Hayter has said her work intentionally has nothing in common with feminism or feminist theory. Instead, she's reclaiming what she describes as a "phallocentric" genre for the benefit of other survivors of abuse. She said:

"I don't find most of the graphic depictions of (forgive my language here) 'sending this dumb slut back to hell hearing her final screams as my throbbing erection pounds her maggot-filled cunt' upsetting to my feminine sensibilities, most of it isn't even well-executed enough to be taken seriously, I just find that it occupies this weird space of being simultaneously very loaded and totally obsolete, especially when we consider that none of these guys are actually sodomizing female corpses in their free time. So my thoughts were to flip this whole paradigm and to try to make it meaningful, to reframe extreme imagery for survivors of violence, upon whom very dark shit has actually been visited, and who may have been confronted with the possibility of committing homicide in self-defense to survive an attack."

Lingua Ignota is known for its energetic and expressionistic live performances. A typical stage setup includes a keyboard with a "believe survivors" sticker and a video projection of violent, beautiful and biblical imagery. Hayter delivers vocals "that oscillate between the venomous and aggressive and the heartbreakingly mournful" and loses control of her body on stage, often hitting herself with objects and leaving bruises. Hayter describes her live performance as an "exorcism" in that, similar to her interest in Hildegard of Bingen's "Lingua Ignota" language given to her by God, she feels like a "conduit" with her performance flowing through her. She says, "I very much try to get to a place where [the performance] no longer feels like me, and where something else is moving through me, whether that's my abuser, or god, or something that can create a voice I wouldn't have myself." Repeatedly performing music about violence and surviving abusers can be emotionally taxing, but Hayter says she is motivated when other survivors tell her how much her music deeply resonates with them.

Personal life
Kristin Hayter is a survivor of domestic violence and has been in several relationships that were "physically, emotionally, sexually, or psychologically" abusive. One abusive relationship lasted five years and in a separate interview she detailed an abusive relationship with "a very powerful noise musician in the Providence community". While the events of her abuse were traumatizing, she says what came after was worse, elaborating: "He was arrested for assaulting me and some of my most traumatic memories are from being re-victimized by police, by my school, and by the court. The system is so fucking broken for victims of sexual and domestic violence."

In December 2021, she released a statement accusing her ex-boyfriend Alexis Marshall, the frontman of Daughters, of sexual assault, rape, and "psychologically, emotionally, and sexually" abusing her throughout their relationship. She alleged that, during "one incident of objectifying, violent sex", Marshall had injured her spine and caused a spinal disc herniation, which led to her developing cauda equina syndrome that required surgery. Marshall denied the allegations and is "investigating legal options".

Discography

As Lingua Ignota
Studio albums
 Let the Evil of His Own Lips Cover Him (2017, self-released)
 All Bitches Die (2017, self-released)
 Caligula (2019, Profound Lore)
 Sinner Get Ready (2021, Sargent House)

EPs
 Commissioned (split with The Rita) (2019, Total Black)
 Agnus Dei (2021, Sargent House)
 The Heart of Man (2021)
 Epistolary Grieving for Jimmy Swaggart (2021)

Singles
 "Above Us Only Sky" (2020)
 "O Ruthless Great Divine Director" (2020)
 "Jolene" (originally by Dolly Parton) (2020)
 "Wicked Game" (originally by Chris Isaak) (2020)
 "Kim" (originally by Eminem) (2020)
 "Katie Cruel" (traditional song) (2022)
 "Ein Traum" (Pentiment soundtrack) (2022)

Guest contributions

As Kristin Hayter
Guest contributions

With Sightless Pit
 Grave of a Dog (2020, Thrill Jockey)

As Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter
 Saved! (2023, Perpetual Flame Ministries)

References

External links

Lingua Ignota on Bandcamp
Lingua Ignota on Sargent House

1986 births
Living people
21st-century American women singers
American multi-instrumentalists
Musicians from California
American noise musicians
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
21st-century American singers
People from Del Mar, California
American industrial musicians
Profound Lore Records artists
American Roman Catholics

Kristin Hayter


Mata may refer to:

Places
 Mata, Iran, a village in Kerman Province, Iran
 Mata, Israel, a Moshav in the Judaean Mountains, south-west of Jerusalem, not far from Beit Shemesh
 Mata, Rio Grande do Sul, town in Brazil
 Mata Island, in the Hudson Bay of Nunavut, Canada
 Mata River, of the East Coast of North Island, New Zealand
 Mata, Afghanistan
 Mata, in Castelo Branco, Portugal
 Mata, Dianbai County (马踏镇), town in Guangdong, China

People
 Mata (surname), for people with the surname Mata
 Mata Amritanandamayi (born 1953), Hindu spiritual leader and guru
 Mata Hari (1876–1917), stage name of exotic dancer, courtesan and spy Margaretha Zelle
 Mata Sundari, Mata Jito, and Mata Sahib Kaur, the wives of Sikh guru Gobind Singh; according to one theory, the first two are the same person
 Mata Tripta, mother of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikhism
 Mata (rapper) (born 2000), Polish rapper

Entertainment
 Mata (2006 film), a Kannada language film
 Mata (1942 film), a Bollywood film
 MATA Festival, short for Music at the Anthology, Inc., a festival of contemporary classical music based in New York
 Mata (album), a 2022 album by M.I.A.

Other uses
 Ma Ta, Marathi newspaper based in Mumbai, India.
 Mata, may refer to Mataji
 Hindi term for mother - for example Skandamata, the mother of war god Skanda
Devi in Hindu religion
 Mata (cicada), a genus of cicadas
 Matha, is a Hindu religious institution

See also
 La Mata (disambiguation)
 Mata (programming language)
 MATA (disambiguation)
 Mata mata, a freshwater South American turtle
 Matas (disambiguation)
 Matos (disambiguation)

Mata


Eileen Favorite (born September 10, 1964, in Chicago) is an American writer and teacher and living in Chicago, Illinois.  She received a B.A. in English with a French concentration from the University of Illinois, Urbana.  In 1999, she received an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Novel
Favorite's first novel, The Heroines, was published in 2007 by Scribner.  It has been translated into Italian, Korean, Russian (in press), and Finnish. The Rocky Mountain News called The Heroines one of the best debut novels of 2008, and the audio version was nominated for best audio recording of 2008 by Booklist.

Other works
Her poems and essays have also appeared in Poetry East, The Chicago Reader, Rhino, Midnight Mind and have aired on Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ).  She's received Illinois Arts Council Fellowships in both poetry and prose.

References

American women writers
Living people
1964 births
21st-century American women

Eileen Favorite


Chris Phillips (born February 26, 1958) is an American voice actor. He is known for his roles in Rockstar video games such as Marty Chonks and El Burro in Grand Theft Auto III and for voicing as Alex Balder, Mercenary and Killer Suit in Max Payne. He is also well known for his roles in Atari games such as Nolanoth, Thunderbelly, Lorne Starling, Koraboros and Prison Leader in Neverwinter Nights 2 and Crowley in Alone in the Dark.

Other websites

1958 births
Living people
American voice actors
American video game actors
Actors from New York City

Chris Phillips