Todd Russell Dodge (born July 21, 1963) is an American football coach and former player, and recently retired head coach at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin where he played quarterback for the Longhorns, Dodge went into coaching, primarily at the high school level. At Southlake Carroll he was head coach of four 5A state championship teams in a seven-year span. He moved on to the college level as head coach of the University of North Texas football team, but he was released after acquiring a 6–37 record. After coaching the quarterbacks at the University of Pittsburgh for the 2011 season, he returned to high school coaching in Marble Falls and Austin Westlake.

Playing career
Dodge played quarterback at Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur, Texas, under coach Ronnie Thompson where he set several state records. As a senior in 1980, Dodge set the record for most passing yards in a season and became the first quarterback in Texas high school football history to pass for more than 3,000 yards in a season (3,135 yards). That same season, he led Jefferson High to the 1980 Class 4A state championship game against Permian High School of Odessa, Texas. He also set Texas high school records for most career completions (382) and most completions in a season (221); while finishing his career with the second most career passing yards behind Gary Kubiak.

Dodge went on to play quarterback at the University of Texas at Austin under coach Fred Akers. From 1982-1983, Dodge was a backup quarterback, though he did get his first start as a freshman in the 1982 Sun Bowl when Robert Brewer broke his hand 5 days before the game. In that game the #8 Longhorns were upset by North Carolina 26-10, in the snow, with Dodge going 6-22 for just 50 yards.

In 1983, Dodge was named the starter for the opening game, but a shoulder injury in the final preseason scrimmage on Sep 9, sidelined him for a month and he didn't reclaim the starting role until early November. In late October he twice came in off the bench to replace starter Rob Moerschell and rally the Longhorns to wins. He came in late to throw the go-ahead touchdown pass in the 15-12 win over SMU, and early the following week to lead the Longhorns to a 20-3 win over Texas Tech. The next week he got his first start of the season in a 9-3 lackluster win over Houston. But after struggling in the TCU game the next week and being replaced by Moerschell, he didn't play the remainder of the year. Despite the quarterback troubles that resulted in rotating starters, the Longhorns went undefeated during the regular season and, but for a disappointing loss to Georgia in the Cotton Bowl, would have won the national championship.

The Longhorns entered the 1984 season ranked #4 with Dodge again as the starter. The team started with back-to-back wins over ranked opponents, #11 Auburn and #4 Penn State. Texas rose to a #1 ranking, which it lost after a controversial 15-15 tie with #3 Oklahoma, but went on to win 3 more games, including a win over #14 SMU to start the season 6-0-1. But the title run was ended during a 29-15 loss to Houston in which Dodge threw 0 completions in his first 13 passes (but 4 of his 5 record interceptions) and was benched for Bret Stafford. Dodge led the team to a win over #12 TCU the next week, but lost again to Baylor in the following game—while setting school records for single season passing yards and completions. The season finished with two more losses, to Texas A&M when Dodge was benched for Stafford, and to Iowa in the 1984 Freedom Bowl when the Longhorns gave up 55 points, the most since 1904.

Dodge and Stafford started the 1985 season in the middle of a heated quarterback battle, which Stafford won. After splitting time in the first three games, Dodge got a chance to retake the quarterback position when Stafford was pulled six plays into the Oklahoma game, but Dodge threw 2 interceptions and could only muster 53 yards allowing Stafford to retain the starting role the next week against Arkansas. Dodge would not see significant playing time again until the final game of the regular season when he came off the bench versus Texas A&M to score the Longhorns only touchdown that day.

Dodge finished with a career record of 9-5-1 and several passing records. He still ranks ninth on the UT all-time passing list with 2,791 yards and stands ninth in TD passes with 18. His 359 passing yards in Texas' 44–16 win over Rice in 1985 stood as the Longhorn single-game record for 13 years before James Brown broke it with a 397-yard passing day against Texas Tech in 1997. Dodge's passing effort currently ranks fourth on the UT single-game chart, behind Major Applewhite, Colt McCoy, and Brown. His 96-yard touchdown pass to Donovan Pitts in the 1985 Rice game is still tied for the second longest in school history.

Records
Texas High School Record- Most passing yards, season (3,135), surpassed by Wilbur Odom in 1986
UT - Passing Yards, Game (359); surpassed by James Brown in 1997
UT - Passing Yards, Season (1,599), surpassed by Bret Stafford in 1986
UT - Highest Average Gain per completion, game (32.6)
UT - Passes intercepted, Game (5) tied with Zeke Martin, Stafford, Garrett Gilbert
UT - Passes intercepted, Season (19)
UT - Longest Pass Play (96 yards), pass to Donovon Pitts; surpassed by Major Applewhite in 1998
UT - Longest Scoring Play (96 yards), pass to Donovon Pitts; surpassed by Major Applewhite in 1998

Italic means active

High school coaching career

Soon after graduation, Dodge pursued a coaching career at the high school level. His first stop was at Rockwall in 1987, where he coached the quarterbacks and wide receivers.  That year, the team made an appearance at the 4A state championship game against West Orange–Stark. Dodge then became offensive coordinator at McKinney High School under head coach Ron Poe. By 1991, Poe yielded to Dodge's persuasion and agreed to try the spread offense. Dodge came up with a hybrid between the Houston's run and shoot offense, the Miami's three- and five-step drops, and a zone running game. McKinney reached the 4A Regionals in 1991.

After a two-year stint as an assistant coach at North Texas, Dodge became a head coach, first at C.H. Yoe High School in Cameron, then at Carrollton Newman-Smith and Keller Fossil Ridge high schools.

In 2000, Dodge became head coach at Southlake Carroll, where he had his greatest success. Southlake Carroll had won 3A state championships in 1988, 1992 and 1993, but had since then moved on to 5A, the largest classification in the state.  Dodge coached his first state championship team in 2002, when the school won the 5A (Division II) state championship with a 45–14 victory over Smithson Valley High School. A year later, he led them back to the championship game where they lost by one point to Katy High School. Dodge's Southlake Carroll then proceeded to win three straight championships from 2004 to 2007, tying the state record set by Abilene High School's in the 1950s. In addition, each of those teams was recognized as mythical national champions by either USA Today (2004, '06) or National Prep Poll (2004, '05). Schutt Sports named Dodge "National Coach of the Year" in 2004 and by USA Today in 2005.  After the 2006 season, Dodge left Southlake Carroll to coach at the University of North Texas. During his seven seasons at Southlake Carroll, Dodge's teams had a 98–11 record overall.

College coaching career

North Texas
The North Texas Mean Green hired Dodge on December 12, 2006 as the new head football coach of the football team, replacing former coach Darrell Dickey, who was fired on November 8 after going 2–9 in 2005 and 3–9 in 2006.

2007

During his first season as head coach, UNT went 2-10.  Dodge's spread offense averaged 408.4 total yards and 24.8 points per game while giving up 39 sacks.  Dodge brought most of his original college coaching staff from the high school ranks, and the team struggled to compete against non-conference and Sun Belt foes.  UNT's defensive squad, directed by Ron Mendoza, gave up an FBS-worst 45.1 points per game. Soon after the season ended, Dodge dismissed Mendoza.

2008

For the 2008 season, Dodge hired Gary DeLoach as the team's new defensive coordinator.  Deloach had a terrific run as UNT's secondary coach from 1998 to 2000 and was a fan favorite for his stellar work as defensive coordinator from 2000 to 2002. Even with dramatically improved coaching, the Mean Green defense lacked experienced, developed talent.  The defense allowed 47.6 points per game in 2008, the worst number at the FBS level that year.  The offense also regressed, averaging only 20.0 points per game and allowing 25 sacks.  The team's special teams units were among the worst in the country in most categories.  That year, quarterback Riley Dodge, Todd Dodge's son, joined the team. The team finished with a dismal 1-11 record, its only win over FBS transitional Western Kentucky.

2009

Dodge focused heavily on upgrading the team's defensive talent with several good recruits from the junior college ranks in 2009.  The defense improved, giving up an average of 36.4 PPG, including 28.8 PPG in the last four games when the new talent jelled.  Although the offensive line held opposing teams to 12 sacks all season, the offense had 21 fumbles and 17 interceptions during the season.  The kicking game suffered from several blocked field goals, and the team finished the 2009 season with a 2–10 record.

2010

UNT opted to retain Todd Dodge for the 2010 season.  It was understood that Dodge had to produce a winning season to keep his job.

On October 20, 2010, UNT athletics director Rick Villarreal fired Dodge. Dodge had compiled a 6–37 record.

During his tenure, UNT was consistently rated in the bottom ten by ESPN.

Offensive coordinator Mike Canales took over as interim head coach.

Going into the 2013 season, Athlon Sports rated Todd Dodge as the seventh worst college football tenure in the BCS era.

Pittsburgh

Dodge was named the quarterbacks coach at the University of Pittsburgh on January 18, 2011. He held the position for one season before returning to coach high school football in Texas.

Return to high school coaching
In January 2012, Dodge return to the high school coaching ranks, taking over as head coach at Marble Falls High School. The school had a 4–6 record in 2011. Dodge chose Marble Falls, Texas, a city of 6,000 located about  northwest of Austin, because it was "a one-school town."

In 2014, Dodge move on to powerhouse Austin Westlake High School in Eanes Independent School District. Dodge took the Westlake Chapparrals to the State Championship game in 2015 but lost to Galena Park North Shore 21-14 in overtime. He took the Lone Star Gridiron Class 6A Coach of the Year honors for the season.  He went on to win State Championships in the 6A division in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 seasons, becoming the first Texas high school football coach to win 3-straight championships with 2 different schools. He announced after the 2020 season that he will be retiring from high school football coaching after the 2021 season.

Personal life
Dodge is married to Elizabeth Neptune, daughter of Ebbie Neptune, longtime athletic director and football coach at Westlake High School of Austin, Texas. The couple have a son, Riley Dodge, who played wide receiver and quarterback at North Texas, and a daughter, Molly.

In 1985, while finishing up his degree at Texas, Dodge was badly injured in a fire. While working as an electric meter technician for the city of Austin, his equipment overloaded and exploded. The fire left 2nd and 3rd degree burns on his hands, arms and face and nearly cost him some of his fingers.

Head coaching record

High school

College

Notes

References

External links

1963 births
Living people
American football quarterbacks
North Texas Mean Green football coaches
Pittsburgh Panthers football coaches
Texas Longhorns football players
High school football coaches in Texas
Players of American football from Port Arthur, Texas

Todd Dodge


Pixie (Megan Gwynn) is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Pixie belongs to the subspecies of humans called mutants, who are born with superhuman abilities, and to the species of humanoid magical beings named fairies, who are born with supernatural powers. Her hybrid mutation grants her pixie-like eyes, colorful wings that allow her to fly, and "pixie dust" that causes hallucinations.

After a confrontation with the revived former member of the New Mutants, Magik, she gains the ability to use magic and a magical weapon called the "Souldagger." Her main use of magic is a massive teleportation spell, which makes her a key asset to various X-Men missions and teams and places her as one of the titles' primary magic users. She was first introduced as a student on the Paragons training squad at the Xavier Institute in New X-Men: Academy X #5 (November 2004), later joining the New X-Men team, and then graduating to the Uncanny X-Men team.

Pixie has been described as one of Marvel's most notable and powerful female heroes. Since her original introduction in comics, the character has been featured in various other Marvel-licensed products, including video games, animated television series, and merchandise.

Publication history

2010s
Pixie debuted in New X-Men: Academy X #5 (November 2004), created by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, and Michael Ryan. She appeared in the 2008 X-Men: Pixies and Demons one-shot, her first solo comic book one-shot. She appeared in the 2010 X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back series, her first solo comic book series. She appeared in the 2010 Avengers vs. X-Men anthology series. She appeared in the 2019 Age of X-Man: Nextgen series.

2020s
Pixie appeared in the 2020 Cable series. She appeared in the 2021 Children of the Atom series. She appeared in the 2022 Legion of X series.

Fictional character biography
Megan Gwynn is a Welsh teenager from a fictional mining town called Abergylid. Her father died in the mine. She developed a fear of it and left Wales owing of his death. She would later discover that he was not her actual father, but the villainous Mastermind. Lady Mastermind and Mastermind II are her half-sisters. In her original inception, Gwynn had short pink hair, pure black eyes and butterfly-like rainbow wings.

After enrolling at Xavier Institute, Gwynn is assigned to be part of the Paragons training squad under the tutelage of former New Mutant member Rahne Sinclair. She wears a bicycle helmet during training sessions, due to her uncertainty with flying. During this time, she develops a crush on the X-Man Cyclops and is considered a cheerful girl who fits in well with other students. Gwynn was voted Friendliest Student.

M-Day
Following the events of House of M, almost all of the Institute's students are depowered, which leads to the dissolution of the school's training squad system. Gwynn is one of only twenty-seven students, including her fellow Paragons Trance, Wolf Cub, and Match, not to have lost her mutant abilities.

She participates in Emma Frost's battle royal, which determines who will train to be an X-Man, but does not make the team. She remains at the school, appearing occasionally as a side character. Later, forty-two of Gwynn's former classmates are killed when their bus is blown up by a missile sent by William Stryker, an anti-mutant crusader. Among the confirmed deaths are Gwynn's fellow Paragon, DJ.

Quest For Magik
Gwynn, alongside Anole, Loa, Wolf Cub, Rockslide, and Match, are told a frightening ghost story by fellow student Blindfold one night at the school. However, they discover that the story is not fictitious, but rather a prophecy. Telling Gwynn that she is "sorry for [her] loss," Blindfold and her classmates are sucked into the realm of Limbo, where they are immediately attacked by a mob of demons.

Gwynn stays by Blindfold's side during the fight, who cautions Gwynn and the others that Gwynn must not "fall to darkness." Gwynn uses her powers on-panel for the first time during the fight, incapacitating several demons with her "pixie dust." After Darkchilde saves the small group, she asks N'astirh to bring Gwynn to her, recognizing that her soul is the most innocent and therefore the most powerful in Limbo. Despite her friends' pleas, Gwynn submits to Magik's request to use her soul to create a Soulsword and Bloodstones, magical stones forged from an innocent soul that grant great power to their owners, but is freed from the process by Anole. His intervention saves her, but leaves the spell unfinished, resulting in the creation of only one Bloodstone and a "Souldagger" instead. Magik then explains that the Souldagger is actually a portion of Gwynn's own soul and that black magic has now filled the hole left behind in the knife's creation, leaving Gwynn no longer an innocent. This is represented graphically by a great portion of her pink hair changing to black.

Magik teaches Gwynn a teleportation spell and she uses it to teleport herself and her friends to Belasco to prevent him from torturing the rest of the students. She saves the students and ultimately kills Belasco by stabbing him with the Souldagger. After defeating Belasco, Magik wants to use more of Gwynn's soul to create more Bloodstones to gain more power, but becomes disgusted with herself when her brother calls out to her. She instead sends Gwynn and the others back to the Xavier Institute and seals all entrances to Limbo. Gwynn and Anole are then made official members of the New X-Men for their bravery in Limbo at the insistence of Rockslide. Gwynn later reveals that Doctor Strange will tutor her in magic when she comes of age and begins receiving additional training.

Messiah Complex
When the first new mutant since M-Day appears, Gwynn joins X-23, Hellion, Anole, Surge, Armor, and Rockslide in attacking the Washington, D.C., base of the ant-mutant Purifiers by teleporting them there. They are confronted by Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers with Hellion receiving a near mortal injury. Outnumbered Gwynn panics and cannot teleport the team out until Rictor, who infiltrated the Purifiers as a spy, helps her concentrate. She manages to cast a hazardous "blind teleport," which scatters the New X-Men between Washington, D.C., and the Xavier Institute. The students are then recovered and taken back to the Institute by Iceman, and the wounded sent to the infirmary. However, Predator X later attacks the Institute, going after the weaker, wounded students in the infirmary. Gwynn, realizing that X-23 had killed this type of creature before, attempts to teleport Predator X to X-23's location. However, she mistakenly takes the majority of the students and Beast alongside her and the creature, dropping them in the middle of the X-Men's fight for the mutant baby with the Marauders on Muir Island. During the fight, Gwynn is brutally beaten by the Malice-possessed Omega Sentinel, who taunts her, until Gwynn manages to defeat her by unexpectedly stabbing her with the Souldagger, exorcising Malice from Omega Sentinel's body.

Pixies and Demons
Gwynn returns to her hometown after the X-Men disband following the conclusion of Messiah Complex. However, she finds the demonic N'Garai are plaguing the town and are kidnapping people to feed Kierrok the Damned, their leader. She calls in the X-Men to help defeat the N'Garai, and Gwynn has to face her fear of the mine in which her father was killed in order to defeat the demons. After defeating Kierrok, Cyclops and the rest of the X-Men take her back to America and she joins the newly reformed X-Men in San Francisco.

Manifest Destiny
After leaving one of Dazzler's gigs, Gwynn is ambushed by a group of masked anti-mutant men calling themselves the Hellfire Cult. She is overpowered by the attackers and is subjected to beatings that leave her incapacitated. She manages to make her way back to the X-Men's new base and is immediately taken care of by Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Karma, and Beast. The attack and the events of the previous year cause her to question whether or not she wants to continue as part of the X-Men, but a discussion with Wolverine causes her to stay and assist them against Empath, whose powers have grown out of control. After beating him up, she stabs him in the head with her Souldagger, leaving him blind and his powers weakened. She decides to remain with the X-Men, assisting them in various other missions, including the Skrull invasion of San Francisco. According to writer Matt Fraction, her role is that of Kitty Pryde and Jubilee when they first joined the X-Men. Her strong magical ability as a teleporter with nearly unlimited distance and capacity also causes Nightcrawler, who is much more limited and traditionally serves as the X-Men's primary teleporter, to question his future usefulness to the team, though he later comes to terms with his own abilities.

X-Infernus

Despite her cheerful persona, Gwynn begins to reveal her anger and bitterness over her initial experience in Limbo and her incomplete soul, feeling that she is less than human. During a training session, Nightcrawler points out that her personality changes when she uses the Souldagger. This causes her to summon it and her personality turns sinister. She stabs him in the chest, causing him to pass out. Upon regaining her senses and removing the dagger, she finds that it has freed the Soulsword housed within Kurt's body. Sensing the Soulsword, Magik teleports to Earth to reclaim it. However, Gwynn engages her in a fight, demanding to have the stolen portion of her soul returned, and refuses to hand over the sword. Magik defeats her and regains her Soulsword, teleporting away and leaving Colossus distraught. The X-Men learn that they are now able to enter Limbo through Gwynn's teleportation spell, and a team consisting of Colossus, Wolverine, Mercury, Rockslide, Gwynn, and Nightcrawler is formed to reclaim Magik. Nightcrawler is put in charge due to Gwynn's and Colossus' personal stakes in the mission.

While the X-Men battle various demons in Limbo, Belasco's daughter, Witchfire defeats Magik and adds Gwynn's Bloodstone to her amulet, causing her to lose control and teleport herself to Belasco's castle. There, Witchfire forces her to become her new apprentice and begins forging a final new Bloodstone from Gwynn's soul, causing her to nightmarishly transform completely into a demon. Witchfire uses the Bloodstones to summon the Elder Gods to her aid. Gwynn is reluctantly forced to work together with Magik to defeat Witchfire. While the X-Men battle the Elder Gods, Illyana fights Witchfire and strips her of the amulet containing the Bloodstones. Illyana and Gwynn use their blades to destroy the amulet, but Witchfire escapes the crumbling castle into the Elder Gods' dimension, claiming to return for her "apprentice." Gwynn is despondent over losing more of her soul and tries to attack Magik with her Souldagger, but the glowing stone in its blade indicates that the additional stolen piece of her soul is inside it. She flies away in tears into the wilds of Limbo, upset over the additional loss of her soul.

Return from Limbo
Gwynn returns to the X-Men, but demonstrating noticeably improved fighting ability and greater anger when she hears about "Proposition X," a piece of anti-mutant legislation seeking to control mutant reproduction. She continues to work with the X-Men, using her abilities to defeat enemies such as Empath and rescue several students and team members, such as when the Sisterhood, a team of mutant villainesses led by a revived Madelyne Pryor, attack the X-Men's headquarters. During the protests between anti-mutant and pro-mutant movements about mutant reproductive rights, Gwynn is injured when a riot breaks out. Later, she teleports Rogue, Gambit and Danger to San Francisco for assistance. She is later made a part of a team to battle Emma Frost's Dark X-Men. After Emma Frost, Namor and Cloak and Dagger betray the Dark X-Men and Norman Osborn and relocate to Utopia, Gwynn and Magik begin teleporting everyone to their new island base. During the final battle, Gwynn joins Armor and X-23 in fighting Daken.

Pixie Strikes Back
Gwynn finds herself and several of her teenage teammates under a spell, causing them to live under the impression that they are ordinary high school girls. However, the illusion begins to fade, with Gwynn finding herself in confrontation with the demon Saturnyne.  Meanwhile, a woman arrives on Utopia claiming to be her mother, demanding to see her. Later, her mother shows up in the Wyngarde mansion, where Lady Mastermind is fighting with Martinique. She tells them to stop acting like the babies of the family and that they have been usurped while Gwynn is seen in the next panel, revealing that Jason Wyngarde is her biological father, and the Mastermind sisters are her siblings.

X-Men: Second Coming
When Cable and Hope Summers return from the future, Bastion starts putting his plans into action in taking her out. He first begins by taking out the X-Men's teleporters with Magik the first to fall, sending her to Limbo with a weaponized spell. After Ariel is taken out, Gwynn requests to take her place only to be refused by Cyclops. She is then placed on a rescue team to get Magik back from Limbo where she encounters N'Astirh who tries to convince her to kill Magik and in exchange he will give her back the rest of her soul. After Gwynn turns on him and frees Magik, they assist Anole and Cannonball against Gambit and the corrupted Dazzler and Northstar. After the battle is over the two girls come to understand each other better.

New Mutants
Following the events of Second Coming, like the New Mutants, Gwynn goes for a holiday to relax. Magik comes to request her help in her own personal war but she dismisses her, claiming that the last time she helped Magik, she ripped out a piece of her soul and she just rescued her from Limbo. She is then ambushed and captured by Project Purgatory who steal her Souldagger. After Project Purgatory capture the New Mutants, they use Magik's Soulsword to separate the bloodstone from Gwynn's Souldagger. Escaping with Magik and Karma, Gwynn is returned to Utopia, where she recovers while the rest of the X-Men begin to battle the Elder Gods. Once the Elder Gods and Project Purgatory have been defeated, Magik comes to Gwynn with a golden box containing her Souldagger and both her bloodstones.

Hell To Pay
Gwynn, along with a few other X-Men, is summoned to a town by Danielle Moonstar, where an attack decades earlier by some demons led to them becoming trapped in one of the town's residents to protect them all. Now that she is dying they need to figure out how to deal with the demons. Gwynn demonstrates she has some knowledge in sealing spells and entrapment wards. After the arrival of the new Ghost Rider, the demons are released and a battle ensues. Working together with Ghost Rider, they send the demons back to Hell with Gwynn reciting a spell, sealing them for good.

X-Men: Schism
During the events of Schism, Gwynn has been teleporting various teams of X-Men around the world to combat all the sentinels. During one fight she injures her hands and has to sit out as she can no longer teleport. According to her, without painkillers, it hurts too much to concentrate, and with them, she cannot think straight enough but will still stand by her fellow students to help take on the giant sentinel approaching Utopia.

Regenesis
Recovering from the events of Schism, Gwynn approaches Velocidad at first to get help with her medication but when they start talking, things become quite flirty between them and eventually start kissing. Hope walks in and catches them in the act and storms out. Gwynn then slaps Velocidad and leaves. She is later packing to return to Westchester when Hope approaches and begs her to join her team, as they need a teleporter.

After a training exercise, Hope finds a new light on Cerebra and has Gwynn teleport the group to Pakistan to locate the mutant. The group splits up with Pixie teamed with Velocidad. They are ambushed by soldiers and separated. Gwynn ends up captured by them and after being rescued, teleports the team and an amnesic Sebastian Shaw back to Utopia.

Wolverine and the X-Men
Gwynn graduated from the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning and became an official X-Man in the final issue of Wolverine and the X-Men.

Powers and abilities
Megan Gwynn possesses insect-like wings (depicted of various colors depending on the artist) that allow her to fly. Initially, her wings were broad and multicolored, similar to a butterfly's, but recent depictions show her to have iridescent, translucent wings, more like those of a dragonfly. It has been suggested that her wings' appearance is affected by her psychological state. In addition, her mutation allows her to produce a "pixie dust" that causes hallucinations, often with comedic effects, such as demons seeing bright bubbles and teddy bears, or in one instance, causing Wolverine to see and try to fight a herd of unicorns. In another instance, Gwynn uses her dust seemingly harmlessly to enhance the audience's perceptions of Dazzler's light show during a concert. She states that she has no idea what individuals affected by her dust are seeing.

After Magik takes part of Gwynn's soul in an attempt to create a Soulsword, her appearance changes, reflecting the portion of her soul lost to black magic. Artists' depictions of this change in her personality are inconsistent, but typically depict her pink hair with black streaks. She also has the ability to detect the supernatural, as evidenced when she fought the N'Garai who were under a cloaking spell. When asked how she knows where they are she replies, "there's a sliver of darkness that Magik put inside my soul... And it's like a compass needle for other dark... stuff."

Because the spell to steal Megan Gwynn's soul was interrupted, a new Soulsword could not be formed. Instead, Gwynn can summon a Souldagger, a mystical item that disrupts magical constructs and harms magical beings. Because of her connection with Magik, as Gwynn uses the Souldagger, her personality changes and becomes darker and more disturbing. Her dagger later changes from silver to red after it absorbs Gwynn's Bloodstone. It is unclear if this change is merely cosmetic. Like recent depictions of the Soulsword, Gwynn's Souldagger appears to have physical effects beyond disrupting magic and harming magical creatures. For instance, while the abilities of the mutant Malice are psionic and based on mutation and not magic, the Souldagger is able to exorcise Malice's psyche from Karima Shapandar. It also appears to have physically harmed Empath, disrupting his psychic abilities and leaving him blind after she stabs him in the head with it.

Though untrained in the mystic arts, Megan Gwynn is able to wield magic, largely due to black magic which has filled the missing portions of her soul. She can recite the incantation taught to her by Illyana Rasputin ("Sihal Novarum Chinoth") to teleport over long distances and to the dimension of Limbo. She is capable of teleporting herself and large groups over vast distances and across dimensions with relative ease, though teleporting without focusing ("blind teleporting") can be hazardous, causing those transported to be scattered and potentially causing injury to Pixie herself. Gwynn has also been able to banish demons using magic. She has demonstrated that she is capable of casting a sleeping spell. Following the events of "Quest for Magik," Gwynn is approached by both Doctor Strange and Amanda Sefton to receive formal tutelage in sorcery after she has come of age.

Additionally, she has been trained in hand-to-hand combat at the institute.

Reception

Critical response
Mike Fugere of Comic Book Resources wrote, "Megan Gwynn, the adorably cheerful mutant with rainbow fairy wings known as Pixie, was created by husband and wife writing team Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir along with artist Michael Ryan (Mystique, New Excalibur). Pixie made her first appearance in New X-Men: Academy X #5 back in 2004. Her exuberant attitude towards her fellow classmates at the Xavier Institute earned the title of Xavier's "Friendliest Student." Considering Pixie's effervescent attitude and pink haired, iridescent-winged exterior, there's really no better candidate for the superlative. Even Jubilee, at her most jovial, was never as warm and welcoming as Pixie. But don't let her adorable veneer lead you astray. Megan Gwynn packs quite a punch." Deirdre Kaye of Scary Mommy called Pixie a "role model" and a "truly heroic" female character. Chris Condry of Looper stated, "Pixie, whose real name is Megan Gwynn, is just as fun and fascinating as her older, bluer counterpart and has far more potential in the coming decades. Unlike Nightcrawler, Gwynn is far from a one-trick pony. In addition to teleportation, Gwynn's powers include flight, emitting hallucinogenic pixie dust, daggers made from her own soul, and most importantly, spell-casting. As a budding sorcerer, Gwynn's potential is almost limitless. During the "Dark Reign" event, she was even considered as a candidate to replace Doctor Strange as the next Sorcerer Supreme. Both mutant and magic, Pixie has a rare place in multiple Marvel arenas and could slot into the MCU in a few different ways. Though Pixie has mostly been relegated to the kids' table and considered a "Young X-Men" or "New Mutant," her power, personality, and promise are starting to make her too big for her highchair."

Timothy Adams of ComicBook.com called Pixie a "fan-favorite." Robert Mclaughlin of Den of Geek said, "While Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Gambit and some of the more popular characters have already made their screen debut, there's still over one hundred-and-ninety-eight mutants for the filmmakers to play with, and if Riptide and Azazel can be made to look cool, then some more of these more obscure, yet visually exciting mutants can too. Megan Gwynn is a Welsh mutant with a visually fun physical mutation. Sporting pink hair, large fairy wings and pointy ears, her mutant power is the ability to teleport and to sprinkle hallucination-based pixie dust on her opponents. A current fan favourite, she's a relatively recent addition to the X-Men team, having originally appeared in the continually re-titled X-Men Academy/New X-Men. The addition of a bright, visually appealing and fun character with a jovial light-hearted 'bubble gum pop' personality would replace the flying character of Angel from the first movie. And having an upbeat, positive member of the team would make a break from the angst of the rest of the team," while Marc Buxton included her in their "40 X-Men Characters Who Haven't Appeared in the Movies But Should" list. George Marston of Newsarama included Pixie in their "20 X-Men Characters That Should Make The Jump From Marvel Comics To The MCU" list and said, "Marvel Studios is doubling down on its magical wing as one of the tentpoles of its current era, and there are few better mutants to connect a new X-Men team to that corner of the MCU than the ethereal, effervescent Pixie—whose fae codename is a perfect indicator of her powers, which include a pair of gossamer wings, teleportation, and a natural aptitude for magical skill. And not for nothing, if the MCU needs some youthful mutants for a younger-skewing X-Men team—or even some students in some capacity—Pixie makes for a spot-on addition as an ingenue for a team that always has at least one young, impressionable mutant in its ranks." ComicsAlliance gave Pixie a score of 38 out of 50 in their "100 X-Men: How Do Sunspot, Pixie, Leech, Revanche And Quicksilver Rate As Great X-Men?" list.

Trudy Graham of Zavvi included Pixie in their "10 Characters From Marvel Comics We Want To See In The MCU" list, writing, "There are several X-Men that act as a supportive glue for teams, and she's one of them. Her powers are also a lot of fun" Andrew Ceco of Sideshow included Pixie in their "Marvel's Most Masterful Witches" list. John Tibbetts of WhatCulture ranked Pixie 2nd in their "Marvel Phase 4: 10 Mutants Who Should Be MCU X-Men" list and said, "Pixie is one of those characters that you have to actually be dead inside to not absolutely love. She's bubbly, friendly, has boundless optimism, but is also the first one to kick your ass six ways from Sunday if you cause trouble. Her pixie wings give her the ability to fly, almost twice as fast as Angel when she sets her mind to it, she can release "pixie dust" that gives anyone it hits powerful hallucinations, and also she's a witch. Like a straight up candidate for sorcerer supreme should Doctor Strange ever bite it. Sure right now she can just barely conjure up a sleeping spell and the ability to teleport, but all of this alone makes her a natural fit for the X-Men should Marvel be smart enough to realize the money printer Pixie could prove to be in marketing if they pull her off right." Anya Crittenton of Gay Star News ranked Pixie 3rd in their "7 LGBTI Heroes We Want to See in Marvel's New All-Female TV Series" list. Alyssa Gawaran of MovieWeb ranked Pixie 8th in their "8 LGBTQ+ Marvel Comics Characters That Need to Be in the MCU" list. Matthew Perpetua of BuzzFeed ranked Pixie 41st in their "95 X-Men Members Ranked From Worst To Best" list, saying, "Pixie is basically like a mashup of Magik and Jubilee—she's got the former's teleportation and magical powers, but has the spunky, sarcastic qualities of the latter. For a while it seemed like she was brought into the cast to fill the obligatory "teenage girl" role, but she's developed into a more nuanced character over time despite having an increasingly smaller role in the franchise." Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly ranked Pixie 64th in their "Let's Rank Every X-Man Ever" list.

Screen Rant ranked Pixie 6th in their "15 Most Powerful X-Men Members Who Joined in the 2000s (Ranked)" list. Comic Book Resources ranked Pixie 9th in their "10 Best Fights From Avengers Vs X-Men" list, 20th in their "20 Most Powerful Supernatural Marvel Characters" list, 20th in their "20 X-Men Who Are Much More Powerful Than They Look" list, and 25th in their "25 Most Powerful Young X-Men" list.

Literary reception

Volumes

X-Men: Pixies and Demons (2008)
According to Diamond Comic Distributors, X-Men: Pixies and Demons #1 was the 123rd best selling comic book in November 2008.

X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back  (2010)

Issue 1
According to Diamond Comic Distributors, X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #1 was the 114th best selling comic book in February 2010.

James Hunt of Comic Book Resources called X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #1 an "interesting spin on the character," saying, "One of the reasons Pixie has been steadily growing in popularity is that the character's visual is rather more striking than many of her peers. The fairy wings, pink hair and dark eyes make her as iconic as any of the "classic" X-Men, and Sara Pichelli does the character justice with her artwork. Indeed, all the characters. In Immonen and Pichelli, Marvel have managed to find a fantastic creative team (and, letterer aside, an all-female at that) with a distinctive and original take on the X-Men. Compared to the rather dour and homogenous feeling most of the line has at the moment, this can't help but stand out. It might not have an event to piggyback on, but it is, undoubtedly, a worthwhile purchase for all current X-fans." Bryan Joel of IGN gave X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #1 a grade of 7.2 out of 10, writing, "All signs point to Pixie Strikes Back veering more into traditional territory down the line, but as far as this issue's concerned, it's a welcomed alternate take on the junior team with some unexpected wit from Immonen and more than a few charming qualities. Basically, if you were put off by the idea of a mini-series called Pixie Strikes Back, issue #1 is probably not going to change your tune. If you can get past that, however, it's a cool little X-curio."

Issue 2
According to Diamond Comic Distributors, X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #2 was the 154th best selling comic book in March 2010.

Greg McElhatton of Comic Book Resources described X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #2 as an "enticing read," asserting, "X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back! may look like another disposable mutant mini-series, but Immonen's snappy script is strong enough that it's quietly beating the odds. If all mini-series and one-offs were this strong, I think we'd have a lot more happy customers in the store buying them." Dan Iverson of IGN ranked the cover of the comic book X-Men: Pixie Strikes Back #2 78th in their "Top 100 Comic Book Covers of 2010" list, writing, "Our picks for best cover of the year were chosen based on artistic quality, representation of the content within, entertainment value, and our editors' personal leanings."

Other versions

Age of X
An alternate version of Megan Gwynn appears in the "Age of X" reality. She is known as "Nightmare" and her "pixie dust" causes frightening hallucinations. Her appearance is different as well, with her skin tone lavender and her wings having a bat-like appearance. Her personality is also more sassy and unreserved.

Ultimate Marvel
An alternate version of Megan Gwynn appears in  the Ultimate Marvel universe. Her wings and hair share a similar rainbow coloration, her main power is her teleportation, which is natural to her rather than a mystical spell. She requires recharging to teleport, and each teleportation confers a natural high to her. She helps Kitty Pryde to make a final stand against Jean Grey and her nation of Tian. Gwynn is knocked unconscious during the destruction of Tian. The X-Men find her and a group of survivors she managed to save in the ruins of Tian. A mutant named Amp, who can amplify others' powers, gives Gwynn a boost and she attempts to teleport everyone back to Utopia, only to accidentally teleport them into a barren dimension filled with the Gah Lak Tus drone swarm. She manages to save an infected Jimmy Hudson by teleporting the individual infected cells out of his body. The X-Men and Rick Jones (Captain Marvel) hold off the swarm until Gwynn can recharge, but she is stabbed by a drone before she can teleport the group away.

Avengers vs X-Men
An alternate version of Megan Gwynn appears in a bonus story of Avengers vs. X-Men: Versus #6. She is depicted competing against Squirrel Girl in a game resembling HeroClix, where the toys are based on various superheroes. Thing walks in, stopping the game to reveal that the figurines actually belong to the Puppet Master and are made out of his Mind Control Clay. The next day, Squirrel Girl and Gwynn read in the Daily Bugle that the clash between the Avengers and X-Men has occurred, and have been mirroring the results from their game, jokingly implying that they were the cause of the feud.

Secret Wars
An alternate version of Megan Gwynn appears in the Secret Wars crossover event. She is a member of the Runaways, and is a high school student at the Victor Von Doom Institute for Gifted Youths. She is best friends and exes with Jubilee, and is established to be bisexual. She is paired up with the other characters for their Institute's final exam. During the Institute's battle examination, Gwynn is killed by a rival team. It was believed by the school's students that the exam was only virtual, and those dead in it were swiftly expelled, but her team discovers her body by accident, and decide to run away from the institute.

In other media

Television
Pixie appears in Wolverine and the X-Men, voiced by Kate Higgins.

Video games
 Pixie appears in X-Men: Destiny, voiced by Aileen Ong Casas. This version is an associate of Caliban in rescuing mutants until she is captured by the Purifiers, who seek to acquire her teleportation powers. She attempts to escape them, but is ultimately killed.
 Pixie appears as a playable character in Marvel Super War.

References

External links

British superheroes
Characters created by Christina Weir
Characters created by Nunzio DeFilippis
Comics characters introduced in 2004
Fictional bisexual women
Fictional characters with evocation or summoning abilities
Fictional fairies and sprites
Fictional knife-fighters
Fictional Welsh people
Marvel Comics characters who can teleport
Marvel Comics characters who have mental powers
Marvel Comics characters who use magic
Marvel Comics female superheroes
Marvel Comics hybrids
Marvel Comics LGBT superheroes
Marvel Comics mutants

Pixie (X-Men)


The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a Roman Catholic parish church belonging to the Bielawa deanery of the Diocese of Świdnica.

History
The temple was built in the years 1868–1876 in the neo-gothic style according to the design of architect Alexis Langer from Wrocław. On November 15, 1876, the dean of Dzierżoniów, Adolf Rinke, consecrated the new church. The ceremony was presided over by the new parish priest, Father Karol Stein. As a personal gift to the new temple, the priest. Franciszek Krauze donated a 30-voice organ, which is still used today. In 1892, Cardinal Georg Kopp consecrated the temple. It is a three-nave building, on a cruciform plan, with a tower height of 101 meters. The interior furnishings were made in the neo-gothic style. The image of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Assumption placed in the main altar, painted on canvas, was made in 1913.

In 1961–1966 the roof, both towers, windows and organs were renovated. The floor was replaced and the interior was painted. The new polychrome was consecrated by Bishop Wincenty Urban on October 29, 1966. In 1976, the roof together with the large tower was covered with copper sheet. In 1992, the cathedral altar and rood screen in the neo-gothic style were made. In 1992–1993 the tower and the temple were grouted. In 1993, the organ underwent a major renovation, and in 1994 a new sound system was installed. In 1996, a new lightning protection system was installed and the floor under the benches was renovated. In 1996–1997, downpipes were installed and the roof flashing was made. In 1995, the boiler room was modernized and gas heating was installed. A pipeline was brought to the sacristy together with water. In 1996, the roof was renovated. In 1997, the steel aquifer pipes were replaced by copper pipes. In 1998, three bells were ordered which were mounted on the tower after consecration. In 1999, the heating system was replaced. In 2000, the clocks were installed on the tower and the external lighting of the temple was made.

References

Roman Catholic churches completed in 1876
Roman Catholic churches in Poland
1870s establishments in Poland

Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bielawa


A voting advice application or voting aid application (VAA) or vote matcher or vote compass or election compass is an application that helps voters find a political candidate or political party that stands closest to their preferences. VAAs are a recent phenomenon in modern election campaigning.

In some of the countries with popular VAAs an intense debate has broken out. Some maintain that VAAs are a fraud that can never give correct and neutral voting advice. Others contend that these applications must be commended as they focus people's attention on the party programmes and on policy issues, compelling parties to discuss substance instead of personalities, images and campaign events.

A study of VAAs by the University of Antwerp ends with a plea for a careful selection of VAA statements and for a proper process of benchmarking based on survey data. Without appropriate calibrating VAAs produce invalid results.

VAA questionnaires should be completed by the candidate or party for maximum accuracy, but also VAAs completed by the journalist are published, with supposed positions taken from party programmes and debates.

Usage
In 2007, of 22 European countries, 15 had at least one VAA. Some of the most successful ones were the Dutch Stemwijzer with 4.7 million consultations in 2006 (40% of the electorate) and the German Wahl-O-Mat with 6.7 million consultations in 2009 (12% of the electorate). Research showed that usage was higher in countries with proportional electoral systems and a larger number of parliamentary political parties, including Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

In Finland, the VotingAid phenomenon has even produced a little rivalry between the most popular news channels and voters eagerly compare the results between different VAA's. Out of Finland's electorate of 4,3 million, it is reported that over 20% of them found voting advice on the most popular VAA, launched by MTV3.

During the 2023 Czech presidential elections, there were about 2.4 million visitors of VAA Volební kalkulačka compared to 5.8 million voters in the elections.

Effects on voting behaviour
Empirical research has indicated three ways in which voting behavior can be influenced by VAAs: by motivating users to engage in further research about party policies, motivating participation in the election and affecting vote intentions. A 2005 survey in Germany reported that more than half of the VAA users declared to have been motivated to do further research after taking the test. The effect of motivating participation has been confirmed by several surveys, and quantified as 22% in the 2003 elections in Finland, 8% in the 2005 elections in Germany elections and 12% in the 2003 elections in the Netherlands. The proportion of voters declaring to have changed their preferences as result of VAA has been 3% in Finland, 6% in Germany and 10% in the Netherlands, however a post-election survey conducted in Belgium showed only 1% actual change. The floating, undecided voters, however, have received a lot more help by VAA's. In a study conducted in Finland, three out of four voters say that the VAA has some effect on their voting decision. VAA helps one person out of four to make the decision straight based on the VAA's results.

On an internal, psychological level, Eric Armstrong argues that "not wanting to feel ignorant" causes voters to stay home. Rather than facing ballot choices on dozens of candidates and issues they know nothing about it, voters sit it out. They also stay home because their vote doesn't matter, either because it is superfluous (they are part of the majority) or pointless (they are part of the minority). And then there is the difficulty of acquiring and comparing information, and evaluating its reliability—especially in era when a "Clean Water Act" can be one that opens the door to increased pollution. Who or what is the voter to trust?

A Voting Advice Application can help to address those issues—if it is under the voter's control. Last century's answer was the "party slate"—the set of choices preferred by a given political party. But that option led to a concentration of power in the hands of the parties. Such a "single-source" Voting Advice Application is to Social Media Voting Advice what the Editorial Page is to Twitter. One gives you access to millions of feeds, from which you choose sources you trust. The other gives you a handful of selected sources that the provider deems worthy.

Benefits for democracy
Although the help that voters receive from VAA is proven to be great, it is not the only benefit that VAA's produce. Most of the VAA's collect and save the data given by users anonymously and that way they are able to create reports that show the overall opinion of that country's political status. Some of VAA tools are more sophisticated in the reporting, and they can generate automatically many kind of different reports such as average distribution reports, comparisons between parties or voter groups and between voters and candidates. These different reporting methods help for example media channels to create interesting news and raise topics of conversation in debates. The best case of democracy-making is to have the candidates answer personally on VAA's statements. This way the VAA automatically generates full see-through to the politics, everyone can see what the candidates think. Changing your opinions is a lot harder when your answers on hot political topics are in public for everyone to see.

But the benefits for democracy go well beyond the gathering of statistics. Eric Armstrong argues that social media voting advice can raise voter turnout by providing convenient, "one stop shopping" for advice up and down the ballot, all from (and only from) trusted advisors the voter has subscribed to. Such advice can launch the careers of local candidates the voter might otherwise never have heard of, or pay attention to. And it can end the corrosive effect of the huge campaign contributions required to pay for the advertising that (today) is needed to win, and make elected officials more responsive to the electorate than their donors.

Prominent Voting advice applications

Election Compass USA
Election Compass USA, developed in cooperation with the Wall Street Journal, was presented on January 2, 2008. Election Compass USA provides information about the 2008 US presidential elections. Within 3 weeks 1 million people visited Election Compass USA. At the end of the campaign, up to 3.8 million people used the website to obtain information about the candidates.

Israel Election Compass
In collaboration with the Israel Democracy Institute a compass was developed for the Israeli Knesset elections of 2009. Over 40.000 voters visited the website in the first hour after launch alone. Around election day, a total number of 600.000 people visited the compass.

EU Profiler
Together with the European University Institute and the Swiss Smartvote, Election Compass created the EU Profiler, a voting advice website for the European Parliament election in 2009.

Other
Vote Compass - United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Germany
Election calculator (Volební kalkulačka, Volebná kalkulačka, Voksmonitor) - Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and European Union
smartvote - Switzerland
Kieskompas - Netherlands
Vote Match - UK and EU
Wahl-O-Mat - Germany
Numerous, if not dozens, go by the name of "vaalikone" (in Finnish) or "valmaskin" (in Swedish). They are often offered in different languages, such as Finnish, Swedish or English and hosted by prominent media outlets, such as Yle, Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanomat. For the parliamentary elections in 2023, hyviaasioita.fi listed 13 voting advice applications - Finland

References

 "Voting Aid Applications between charlatanism and political science: the effect of statement selection", University of Antwerp.
 Cedroni, L. & Garzia, D. (eds.): Voting Advice Applications in Europe: The State of the Art, Napoli: ScriptaWeb, 2010.

Election technology

Voting advice application


San Paolo is a former convent in central Parma, Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. It is best known for housing the Camera di San Paolo (Chamber of St Paul), decorated by a masterpiece of fresco work (1519) by Correggio.

History
Tradition holds that the monastery was erected on the spot where Godescalco, the son-in-law of the Lombard king Agilulf, converted to Christianity and took the name Paolo. Supposedly he endowed the convent after his young wife had died during childbirth between 599 and 602.

However, documents speak of a Benedictine convent, one of nearly a handful in Parma, present around the year 1000, and it was adjacent to the former and contemporary church of San Ludovico, now also deconsecrated.

The convent mainly admitted women from aristocratic or wealthy lineage. It was to this monastery that Margherita Farnese (1567–1643), daughter of the Duke of Parma and great-granddaughter of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, was admitted after the failure and annulment (1583) of her marriage (1581) with Vincenzo II Gonzaga, the heir to the Duchy of Mantua.

By 1767, the monastery only held about eighty nuns or candidates, after the arrival of Napoleonic rule in 1810, the monastery was suppressed. The convent came into the management of the comune.

Camera di San Paolo (Chamber of St Paul)

In February to September 1519, Correggio was commissioned by the Abbess Giovanna Piacenza to decorate the domed ceiling of her private room, now called the Camera di San Paolo or Camera della Badessa. He painted between the ribs to simulate a pergola, pierced by ovals (small windows) with smiling puttoes and hunting representations. Below the oculi are lunettes with monochromic scenes painted to simulate marble. The fireplace is frescoed with a depiction of the goddess Diana.

Apart from its mastery of style and "delightful vivacity", the Correggio frescoes have spurred a debate as to the underlying significance of the iconography, in part debating the significance of pagan and hunting scenes for a nunnery. The convent was known for the laxity of its rules, and had been embroiled, along with the abbess in various local land disputes. Critics including Roberto Longhi and Erwin Panofsky have dedicated monographs to the subject.

The private room of the abbess was frescoed (1514) by  Alessandro Araldi with grotteschi. The monastery contains a chapel of Santa Caterina d'Alessandria frescoed with scenes of her life also by Araldi. The rooms are open to the public as a museum.

Pinacoteca Stuard
In 2002, a wing of the monastery was converted into the Pinacoteca Stuard. This  collection was left to the Congregation of Charity by Giuseppe Stuard (Parma, 1790–1834), administrator of the Congregation of San Filippo Neri and wealthy collector. Over three hundred paintings from the 14th-century to the last century is displayed in various rooms. It includes works by Bernardo Daddi; Paolo di Giovanni Fei; Maestro della Misericordia; Bicci di Lorenzo; Niccolò di Tommaso; and schools of Pietro di Giovanni di Ambrogio, Paolo Uccello, Filippino Lippi, and Parmigianino. Later works were by Sebastiano Ricci, Bartolomeo Schedoni, Guercino, Guido Reni, Giovanni Lanfranco, Bernardo Bellotto, Lodewijk Toeput called Pozzoserrato, Anthony Mor, Enrico Bandini, and Giovanni Gaibazzi. The city has included archeologic items in the museum.

References

External links
Official website

Paolo
Paolo
Art museums established in 2002
Art museums and galleries in Emilia-Romagna
Monasteries in Emilia-Romagna
2002 establishments in Italy

San Paolo, Parma


Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, producer and director. In a career spanning over four decades, Washington has received numerous accolades, including a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and two Silver Bears. He was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2019, and in 2020 The New York Times named him the greatest actor of the 21st century. In 2022, Washington received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After training at the American Conservatory Theater, Washington began his career in theatre, acting in performances off-Broadway. He first came to prominence in the NBC medical drama series St. Elsewhere (1982–1988), and in the war film A Soldier's Story (1984). Washington won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his role as an American Civil War soldier in Glory (1989) and for Best Actor for playing a corrupt cop in Training Day (2001). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in Cry Freedom (1987), Malcolm X (1992), The Hurricane (1999), Flight (2012), Fences (2015), Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) and The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021).

He established himself as a leading man with starring roles in Mo' Better Blues (1990), Mississippi Masala (1991), Philadelphia (1993), Courage Under Fire (1996), Remember the Titans (2000), Man on Fire (2004), Inside Man (2006), and American Gangster (2007). He starred in The Equalizer trilogy (2014–2023). Washington directed and starred in the films Antwone Fisher (2002), The Great Debaters (2007), and Fences (2015).

Washington made his Broadway debut in Checkmates (1988). He won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for starring in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's play Fences in 2010. He later directed, produced, and starred in the film adaptation in 2016. Washington has since returned to Broadway in the revivals of Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun (2014) and the Eugene O'Neill play The Iceman Cometh (2018).

Early life and education
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. was born in Mount Vernon, New York, on December 28, 1954. His mother, Lennis "Lynne", was a beauty parlor owner and operator born in Georgia and partly raised in Harlem, New York. His father, Denzel Hayes Washington Sr., a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, was an ordained Pentecostal minister, who was also an employee of the New York City Water Department, and worked at a local S. Klein department store.

Washington attended Pennington-Grimes Elementary School in Mount Vernon until 1968. When he was 14, his parents divorced and his mother sent him to the private preparatory school Oakland Military Academy in New Windsor, New York. Washington later said, "That decision changed my life, because I wouldn't have survived in the direction I was going. The guys I was hanging out with at the time, my running buddies, have now done maybe 40 years combined in the penitentiary. They were nice guys, but the streets got them." After Oakland, he attended Mainland High School in Daytona Beach, Florida, from 1970 to 1971. He was interested in attending Texas Tech University: "I grew up in the Boys Club in Mount Vernon, and we were the Red Raiders. So when I was in high school, I wanted to go to Texas Tech in Lubbock just because they were called the Red Raiders and their uniforms looked like ours." Instead, he earned a BA in Drama and Journalism from Fordham University in 1977. At Fordham, he played collegiate basketball as a guard under coach P. J. Carlesimo. After a period of indecision on which major to study and taking a semester off, Washington worked as creative arts director of the overnight summer camp at Camp Sloane YMCA in Lakeville, Connecticut. He participated in a staff talent show for the campers and a colleague suggested he try acting.

Returning to Fordham that fall with a renewed purpose, Washington enrolled at the Lincoln Center campus to study acting, where he was cast in the title roles in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Shakespeare's Othello. He then attended graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California, where he stayed for one year before returning to New York to begin a professional acting career.

Career

1976–1989: Early roles and rise to prominence
Washington spent the summer of 1976 in St. Mary's City, Maryland, in summer stock theater performing Wings of the Morning, the Maryland State play, which was written for him by incorporating an African-American character/narrator based loosely on the historical figure from early colonial Maryland, Mathias de Sousa.

Shortly after graduating from Fordham, Washington made his screen acting debut in the 1977 made-for-television film Wilma which was a docudrama about sprinter Wilma Rudolph, and made his first Hollywood appearance in the 1981 film Carbon Copy. He shared a 1982 Distinguished Ensemble Performance Obie Award for playing Private First Class Melvin Peterson in the Off-Broadway Negro Ensemble Company production A Soldier's Play which premiered November 20, 1981.

A major career break came when he starred as Dr. Phillip Chandler in NBC's television hospital drama St. Elsewhere, which ran from 1982 to 1988. He was one of only a few African-American actors to appear on the series for its entire six-year run. He also appeared in several television, motion picture and stage roles, such as the films A Soldier's Story (1984), Hard Lessons (1986) and Power (1986). In 1987, he starred as South African anti-apartheid political activist Stephen Biko in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom, for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1989, Washington won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of a defiant, self-possessed ex-slave soldier in the film Glory. That same year, he appeared in the film The Mighty Quinn; and in For Queen and Country, where he played the conflicted and disillusioned Reuben James, a British soldier who, despite a distinguished military career, returns to a civilian life where racism and inner city life lead to vigilantism and violence.

1990–1999: Hollywood stardom
In the summer of 1990, Washington had appeared in the title role of the Public Theater's production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. Mel Gussow of The New York Times praised Washington as "an actor of range and intensity, is expert at projecting a feeling of controlled rage". Also that year Washington starred as Bleek Gilliam in the Spike Lee film Mo' Better Blues. Charles Murray of Empire praised Washington's performance as a "taut portrayal of the driven musician" and "like all Lee's film, Mo' Better Blues is a real ensemble piece, and the standard of the performances is uniformly excellent: but Washington [and] Lee deserve extra plaudits."
In 1991, he starred as Demetrius Williams in the Mira Nair directed romantic drama Mississippi Masala opposite Sarita Choudhury. Set primarily in rural Mississippi, the film explores interracial romance between African Americans and Indian Americans. Critic Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times praised the chemistry of the two leads writing, "Washington is an actor of immense and natural charm, and he makes a good match with Sarita Choudhury".

Washington was reunited with Lee to play one of his most critically acclaimed roles, the title character of the historical epic Malcolm X (1992). The New York Times gave the film it's Critic's Pick with Vincent Canby declaring, "In Denzel Washington it also has a fine actor who does for "Malcolm X" what Ben Kingsley did for "Gandhi". Mr. Washington not only looks the part, but he also has the psychological heft, the intelligence and the reserve to give the film the dramatic excitement". His performance as the Black nationalist leader earned him another nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Also that year, he established the production company Mundy Lane Entertainment. The next year, he played the lawyer defending a gay man with AIDS played by Tom Hanks in the Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia (1993). Sight & Sound wrote, "Casting Washington in the lead guaranteed the film the black audience that otherwise might not have had much interest in the problems of a rich white homosexual with Aids. But Aids is rampant in inner cities, where it attacks not just gay men, but IV drug users and women."

During the early and mid-1990s, Washington starred in several successful thrillers, including The Pelican Brief with Julia Roberts in 1993, and Crimson Tide with Gene Hackman in 1995, as well as the Shakespearean comedy Much Ado About Nothing directed by Kenneth Branagh. In 1996, he played a U.S. Army officer who investigates a female chopper commander's worthiness for the Medal of Honor in Courage Under Fire, opposite Meg Ryan. Variety wrote, "All of [the] predicaments are palpably and convincingly registered through Washington's probing, reserved and sensitively drawn performance in a role that, in another era, might have been played by the likes of a Montgomery Clift or William Holden." In 1996, he appeared with Whitney Houston in the romantic comedy The Preacher's Wife. In 1998, Washington starred in Spike Lee's film He Got Game. Washington played a father serving a six-year prison term when the prison warden offers him a temporary parole to convince his top-ranked high-school basketball player son (Ray Allen) to sign with the governor's alma mater, Big State. The film was Washington's third collaboration with Lee. The same year he starred in Gregory Hoblit's supernatural horror film Fallen, with John Goodman, James Gandolfini, and Donald Sutherland.

In 1999, Washington starred alongside Angelina Jolie in The Bone Collector. Also in 1999, Washington starred in The Hurricane, a film about boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, whose conviction for triple murder was overturned after he spent almost 20 years in prison. Although less successful at the box office than The Bone Collector, Hurricane had a better reception from critics. He received a Silver Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for his role as Carter. Roger Ebert, film critic for The Chicago Sun-Times, wrote of Washington's performance, "This is one of Denzel Washington's great performances, on a par with his work in Malcolm X."

2000–2009: Established actor and acclaim

At the 57th Golden Globe Awards in 2000, Washington won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his work in The Hurricane. He was the first black actor to win the award since Sidney Poitier in 1963. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle declared, "Washington gives a penetrating portrait of life at its most extreme. He takes the viewer into the mind of a man experiencing confinement and physical deprivation. More profoundly, he shows what it's like to deal every day with the torments of wild rage and impotence, despair and hope." The following year he portrayed Herman Boone, the high school football coach in the Disney sports drama film Remember the Titans which grossed over US$100 million in the U.S. Andrew O'Hehir of Salon wrote, "Washington is of course the linchpin of Remember the Titans; he's a commanding actor in a commanding role, and as memorable as he was in The Hurricane.

Washington starred in the Antoine Fuqua directed crime thriller Training Day (2001) acting opposite Ethan Hawke. He portrayed Detective Alonzo Harris, a corrupt Los Angeles cop. Roger Ebert wrote of his performance, "For Denzel Washington, [its] a rare villainous role; he doesn't look, sound or move like his usual likable characters...he's like a monster from a horror film, unkillable and implacable." Washington won an Academy Award for Best Actor becoming the second African-American actor to win the category after Poitier, who was presented with an Honorary Academy Award the same night. He also received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.

The following year he starred in the Nick Cassavettes directed healthcare-themed drama John Q. (2002) portraying John Quincy Archibald. Washington acted opposite James Woods, Robert Duvall, and Ray Liotta. The film was a financial success but received mixed reviews with critics praising Washington's performances. BBC film critic Neil Smith wrote, "What credibility there is comes from Washington's intense, humane performance and the supporting players' sterling attempts to rise above the stereotypical roles with which they have been saddled." That same year Washington directed his first film, a well-reviewed drama called Antwone Fisher (2002), in which he also co-starred as a Navy psychiatrist. Stephen Holden of The New York Times praised his direction writing, "Mr. Washington shows a confident grasp of cinematic narrative in a hearty meat-and-potatoes style. But the most remarkable aspect of his behind-the-camera debut is his brilliantly surefooted handling of actors." He also praised his acting adding, "[He] is so sensitively reactive that his performance seems more lived than acted".

Between 2003 and 2004, Washington appeared in a series of thrillers that performed generally well at the box office, including Carl Franklin's Out of Time opposite Eva Mendez and Tony Scott's Man on Fire alongside Dakota Fanning. In 2004 he acted opposite Meryl Streep in the remake of the 1962 film of the same name, The Manchurian Candidate. In 2006, he starred in Inside Man, a Spike Lee-directed bank heist thriller co-starring Jodie Foster and Clive Owen. Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, it's "flashy cast, clever script and vibrant showcasing of New York City are strong plusses for Spike Lee's most mainstream studio venture". Later that year he starred in the time travel movie Déjà Vu released in November.

In 2005, he was back onstage again as Brutus in a Broadway production of Julius Caesar. Theatre critic Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote, "Washington does not embarrass himself, as leading citizens of Hollywood have been known to do on Broadway. But even brilliantined in the glow of his inescapable fame, he can't help getting lost amid the wandering, mismatched crowd and the heavy topical artillery that have been assembled here." Despite mixed reviews, the production's limited run was a consistent sell-out. In 2007, he co-starred with Russell Crowe for the second time (the first was 1995's Virtuosity) in Ridley Scott's American Gangster for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama nomination. He also directed and starred in the drama The Great Debaters with Forest Whitaker. He next appeared in Tony Scott's 2009 film The Taking of Pelham 123 (a remake of the 1974 thriller of the same name), where he played New York City subway security chief Walter Garber opposite John Travolta's villain.

2010–2019: Return to theatre

Washington returned to Broadway playing Troy Maxson, opposite Viola Davis, in the revival of August Wilson's Fences (2010). Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Washington has the fluid naturalness we associate with good screen actors... face and stance alone provide fascinating (and damning) glimpses into Troy's attitudes toward his son from an earlier relationships". Washington won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play on June 13, 2010. That same year, Washington starred in The Book of Eli (2010), a post-apocalyptic action-drama set in the near future. Also in 2010, he starred as a veteran railroad engineer in the action film Unstoppable, about an unmanned, half-mile-long runaway freight train carrying dangerous cargo. The film was his fifth and final collaboration with director Tony Scott, following Crimson Tide (1995), Man on Fire (2004), Déjà Vu (2006) and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009).

In 2012, Washington starred in Flight, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as an alcoholic airline pilot facing investigation for his part in a plane crash. He co-starred with Ryan Reynolds in Safe House, where he prepared for his role by subjecting himself to a torture session that included waterboarding. In 2013, Washington starred in 2 Guns, alongside Mark Wahlberg.
From April to June 2014, Washington played the leading role in the Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry's classic drama A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Kenny Leon. The show received positive reviews and won the 2014 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. That same year he starred in The Equalizer (2014), an action thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Richard Wenk, based on the television series of same name starring Edward Woodward. He reprised his role in his first sequel, The Equalizer 2 (2018) and the third and final sequel The Equalizer 3 (2023).

In 2016, Washington starred in The Magnificent Seven, a remake of the 1960 western film of the same name, alongside Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett, and Peter Sarsgaard. Principal photography began on May 18, 2015, in north Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The film premiered on September 8 at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released in the United States in conventional and IMAX theatres on September 23, 2016. In The Magnificent Seven, Washington plays Sam Chisolm ("the Bounty Hunter"), a duly sworn warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas. His character was renamed from Chris Adams (played by Yul Brynner in the original film) to Sam Chisolm. It is Washington's first Western film. Washington did not watch Westerns growing up, as it was the end of the Western era in the movies. Moreover, he and his siblings were barred from going to the cinema by his father, a minister in a church. They grew up watching Biblical films instead, like King of Kings and The Ten Commandments, although he has said that he watched portions of the shows Rawhide and Bonanza. He did not view the original film in preparation, but has watched Seven Samurai. Fuqua flew to New York City to negotiate with Washington, who accepted the offer.

In 2016, Washington directed the film Fences, co-starring Viola Davis and Stephen McKinley Henderson and based on August Wilson's play of the same name, with a script by Wilson. Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, Washington plays a former Negro league baseball player working as a garbage collector who struggles to provide for his family and come to terms with the events of his life. The film was released on December 16, 2016, by Paramount Pictures. Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote, "Washington, as both actor and director, gets the conversation humming with a speed and alacrity that keeps the audience jazzed...Washington tears through it with a joyful ferocity, like a man possessed." For his performance, Washington was nominated in the Best Actor category for a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Academy Award. The film was nominated for three other Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and won Davis her first Oscar, in the Best Supporting Actress category.

The following year, Washington starred in the legal drama film Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017). Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, "[He]'s a star player, styling out his character's complicated and tricky mix of attributes...However contrived, this character is always fully and comfortably inhabited, and Washington brings off the funny moments". While the film received mixed reviews, his performance was praised by critics and led to nominations for a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Academy Award, Washington's ninth Oscar nomination overall, and his sixth for Best Actor.

Beginning March 22, 2018, Washington starred as Theodore "Hickey" Hickman in a Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. The production, directed by George C. Wolfe, began regular performances April 26 and ran for 14 weeks. Washington received positive reviews with Alexis Soloski of The Guardian writing, " For most of it, Washington is playing Washington, letting his good looks and irrepressible charm do most of the character work, though the play's most exciting moments are when he lets that charm falter (something he's also been exploring in his recent film work, too) showing something uglier and more ravaged underneath."

2020–present
In 2020 he produced the Netflix film adaptation of the August Wilson play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom starring Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis. The film was directed by George C. Wolfe and received positive reviews. The following year he portrayed Deputy Sheriff Joe "Deke" Deacon in the crime thriller The Little Things acting opposite Rami Malek and Jared Leto. The film was released during the Covid-19 pandemic and was released in theatres and on HBO Max. Also in 2021, Washington portrayed the titular character in the 2021 film adaptation of the William Shakespeare tragedy Macbeth. He received universal acclaim for his performance and was nominated for several awards, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. That same year, Washington directed the drama A Journal for Jordan, based on the memoir A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy. It received a wide theatrical release on December 25, 2021 and received mixed reviews from critics.

Upcoming projects
In 2023, Washington was cast in Ridley Scott's epic historical drama Gladiator 2 alongside Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Derek Jacobi. The film is a sequel to Scott's Gladiator (2000). Also in 2023, Washington served as a producer to The Piano Lesson, the Netflix film adaptation of the August Wilson play of the same name starring John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Personal life

Marriage and family
On June 25, 1983, Washington married Pauletta Pearson, whom he met on the set of his first screen work, the television film Wilma. They have four children: John David (born July 28, 1984), also an actor and a former football player, Katia (born November 27, 1986) who graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 2010, and twins Olivia and Malcolm (born April 10, 1991). Malcolm graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in film studies, and Olivia played a role in Lee Daniels's film The Butler. In 1995, Washington and his wife renewed their wedding vows in South Africa with Desmond Tutu officiating.

Religious beliefs
He is Pentecostal Evangelical Christian and a member of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, located in Los Angeles. He has considered becoming a preacher. He stated in 1999, "A part of me still says, 'Maybe, Denzel, you're supposed to preach. Maybe you're still compromising.' I've had an opportunity to play great men and, through their words, to preach. I take what talent I've been given seriously, and I want to use it for good." In 1995, he donated  to help build the new West Angeles Church of God in Christ facility in Los Angeles. Washington says he reads the Bible daily.

Service and recognition
Washington has served as the national spokesman for Boys & Girls Clubs of America since 1993 and has appeared in public service announcements and awareness campaigns for the organization. In addition, he has served as a board member for Boys & Girls Clubs of America since 1995. Due to his philanthropic work with the Boys & Girls Club, PS 17X, a New York City Elementary School decided to officially name their school after Washington.

In mid-2004, Washington visited Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) at Fort Sam Houston, where he participated in a Purple Heart ceremony, presenting medals to three Army soldiers recovering from wounds they received while stationed in Iraq. He also visited the fort's Fisher House facilities, and after learning that it had exceeded its capacity, made a substantial donation to the Fisher House Foundation; this program focuses on building and providing homes for military personnel and their families free of charge while they receive medical care. Washington's other charitable contributions include  to Nelson Mandela's Children's Fund in 1995 and  to Wiley College to resuscitate the college's debate team.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) named Washington as one of three people (the others being directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore) with whom they were willing to negotiate for the release of three defense contractors the group had held captive from 2003 to 2008. That effort by FARC went nowhere.

On May 18, 1991, Washington was awarded an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Fordham University, for having "impressively succeeded in exploring the edge of his multifaceted talent". In 2011, he donated US$2 million to Fordham for an endowed chair of the theater department, as well as  to establish a theater-specific scholarship at the school. He also received an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Morehouse College on May 20, 2007 and an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania on May 16, 2011.

On October 11, 2021, the United States Army made Washington the 2021 Honorary Sergeant Major of the Army at the Annual Association of the U.S. Army conference for his work with the Fisher House Foundation (providing free homes for military families while receiving medical care). Sergeant Major of the Army Michael A. Grinston presented Washington with the award and said that Washington represented everything he was looking for in this year's honoree: humility, dedication to soldiers, and respect for the Army.

In 2022 Washington received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Filmography

Awards and honors

Washington has received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and two Silver Bears. He has also received nominations for a Grammy Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Washington has also received numerous honorary awards such as the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award in 2007, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2016 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2019. He was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022. He is also a 13-time NAACP Image Award winner with four consecutive wins in the Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture award category from 1993–1997 and again from 2000–2003.

Over his distinguished career he has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:
 60th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, nomination, Cry Freedom (1987)
 62nd Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, win, Glory (1989)
 65th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Malcolm X (1992)
 72nd Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, The Hurricane (1999)
 74th Academy Awards: Best Actor, win, Training Day (2001)
 85th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Flight (2012)
 89th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Fences (2016)
 90th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017)
 94th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

References

External links

 Denzel Washington at Rotten Tomatoes

 Denzel Washington at Moviefone

 Denzel Washington at FutureMovies.co.uk
 Denzel Washington interview with KVUE in Austin about Cry Freedom in 1987 from Texas Archive of the Moving Image

1954 births
Living people
20th-century American male actors
20th-century Christians
20th-century American philanthropists
21st-century American philanthropists
21st-century American male actors
21st-century Christians
AFI Life Achievement Award recipients
African-American Christians
African-American film directors
African-American male actors
American male film actors
American male Shakespearean actors
American male stage actors
American men's basketball players
American Pentecostals
Best Actor Academy Award winners
Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners
Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe (film) winners
Cecil B. DeMille Award Golden Globe winners
Film directors from New York (state)
Fordham Rams men's basketball players
Mainland High School alumni
Male actors from New York (state)
Members of the Church of God in Christ
New York (state) Independents
Obie Award recipients
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role Screen Actors Guild Award winners
People from Mount Vernon, New York
Point guards
Silver Bear for Best Actor winners
Tony Award winners
American Conservatory Theater alumni
African-American history of Westchester County, New York
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Mount Vernon High School (New York) alumni

Denzel Washington


The geology of Ceres consists of the characteristics of the surface, the crust and the interior of the dwarf planet Ceres. The surface of Ceres is comparable to the surfaces of Saturn's moons Rhea and Tethys, and Uranus's moons Umbriel and Oberon.

The spectrum of Ceres is similar to that of C-type asteroids. However, since it also has spectral features of carbonates and clay minerals, which are usually absent in the spectra of other C-type asteroids, Ceres is sometimes classified as a G-type asteroid.

Ceres's surface has an albedo of 0.09, which is quite dark compared to the moons in the outer Solar System. This might be a result of the relatively high temperature of Ceres's surface, the maximum temperature with the Sun overhead was estimated from measurements to be  on 5 May 1991. In a vacuum, ice is unstable at this temperature. Material left behind by the sublimation of surface ice could explain the dark surface of Ceres compared to the icy moons of the outer Solar System.

Internal structure

Ceres's oblateness is consistent with a differentiated body, a rocky core overlain with an icy mantle.

This 100-kilometer-thick mantle (23%–28% of Ceres by mass; 50% by volume) contains up to 200 million cubic kilometers of water, which would be more than the amount of fresh water on Earth. Also, some characteristics of its surface and history (such as its distance from the Sun, which weakened solar radiation enough to allow some fairly low-freezing-point components to be incorporated during its formation), point to the presence of volatile materials in the interior of Ceres.

It has been suggested that a remnant layer of liquid water (or muddy ocean) may have survived to the present under a layer of ice. Measurements taken by Dawn confirm that Ceres is partially differentiated and has a shape in hydrostatic equilibrium, the smallest equilibrium body known.

Ceres has a rocky, dusty crust with large deposits of salts such as magnesium sulfate.

Orientation
Ceres has an axial tilt of about 4°, a small part of its pole is currently not observable to Dawn. Ceres rotates once every 9 hours 4 minutes in a prograde west to east direction.

Craters

The craters exhibit a wide range of appearances, not only in size but also in how sharp and fresh or how soft and aged they look. Large number of Cererian craters have central pits, and many have central peaks. The central peak is like a snapshot, preserving a violent moment in the formation of the crater. By correlating the presence or absence of central peaks with the sizes of the craters, scientists can infer properties of Ceres' crust, such as how strong it is. Rather than a peak at the center, some craters contain large pits, depressions that may be a result of gases escaping after the impact.

The surface of Ceres has a large number of craters with low relief, indicating that they lie over a relatively soft surface, probably of water ice. Kerwan crater is extremely low relief, with a diameter of 283.88 kilometers, reminiscent of large, flat craters on Tethys and Iapetus. It is distinctly shallow for its size, and lacks a central peak, which may have been destroyed by a 15-kilometer-wide crater at the center. The crater is likely to be old relative to the rest of Ceres's surface, because it is overlapped by nearly every other feature in the area.

Faculae
Several bright surface features were discovered on the dwarf planet Ceres by the Dawn spacecraft in 2015. The brightest spot is located in the middle of Occator crater, and is called "bright spot 5". There are 130 bright areas that have been discovered on Ceres, which are thought to be salt or ammonia-rich clays. Scientists reported that the bright spots on Ceres may be related to a type of salt in 2015, particularly a form of brine containing magnesium sulfate hexahydrite (MgSO4·6H2O); the spots were also found to be associated with ammonia-rich clays.

Canyons

Many long, straight or gently curved canyons has been found by Dawn. Geologists have yet to determine how they formed, and it is likely that several different mechanisms are responsible. Some of these might turn out to be the result of the crust of Ceres shrinking as the heat and other energy accumulated upon formation gradually radiated into space. When the behemoth slowly cooled, stresses could have fractured the rocky, icy ground. Others might have been produced when being struck by other objects, rupturing the terrain.

Montes

The best known mons on Ceres is Ahuna Mons, a possible cryovolcano about 6 kilometers high and 15 kilometers wide at the base. It was discovered on images taken by the Dawn spacecraft in orbit around Ceres in 2015.

Bright streaks run top to bottom on its slopes; these streaks are thought to be salt, similar to the better known Cererian bright spots. The low crater count on Ahuna mons suggests that the cryovolcano could be no older than 200 million years, and indeed models of plastic relaxation of ice at the latitude of Ahuna Mons is consistent with that age.

There are twenty-two identified montes on Ceres. Most of these have relaxed substantially over time, and it was only after modeling of the expected shapes of old cryovolcanoes that they were identified. It has been calculated that Ceres averages one such cryovolcano every 50 million years. Yamor Mons (previously named Ysolo Mons), near the north pole, has a diameter of 16 km and is the only other Cererian with the shape of Ahuna Mons, though old and battered, the cold temperatures at the pole have preserved its shape. Liberalia Mons is near the equator and has a diameter of 90 km.

References

Further reading

Ceres
Ceres (dwarf planet)

Geology of Ceres


Chromecast is a digital media player from Google. It plugs into the HDMI port on a TV. The Chromecast shows content from a smart phone, tablet or PC on the TV.

The Chromecast has an HDMI plug, and a micro-USB port. Power comes from a USB port on a TV or from the included power adapter.

Chromecast needs both Wi-Fi and a phone, computer, tablet, etc. to work. Many apps support Chromecast, such as Spotify, Youtube, Viaplay, Netflix, Dplay, Disney+, HBO, and Hulu.

There is also a newer Chromecast with Google TV a USB-C port instead of micro-USB. It has up to 4K resolution.

Google

Chromecast


was a Japanese-American mathematician known for his work in differential geometry.

Life and career
Nomizu was born in Osaka, Japan on the first day of December, 1924. He studied mathematics at Osaka University, graduating in 1947 with a Master of Science then traveled to the United States on a U.S. Army Fulbright Scholarship. He studied first at Columbia University and then at the University of Chicago where in 1953 he became the first student to earn a Ph.D. under the thesis direction of Shiing-Shen Chern. The subject was affine differential geometry, a topic to which he would return much later in his career. He presented his thesis, Invariant affine connections on homogeneous spaces in 1953.

Returning to Japan, he studied at Nagoya University, obtaining a doctor of science in 1955. He published his first volume, Lie Groups and Differential Geometry dedicated to his wife Kimiko whom he had married that same year. Nomizu taught at Nagoya University until 1958 when he accepted a position at Catholic University in Washington D.C. His first Ph.D. student there was Fr. Andrew Whitman, SJ, founder of the Clavius Research Group, who maintained a close relationship with his advisor over the years.

In 1960 he began his thirty-five-year career with Brown University, first as associate professor, then becoming full professor in 1963. During this time he embarked on a major collaborative project with Professor Shoshichi Kobayashi at the University of California, Berkeley, resulting in the classic two-volume work, Foundations of Differential Geometry in 1963.  A second volume completed the project in 1969. A mark of the style of these two mathematicians is that in the more than 700 pages in this work on geometry, there is not a single diagram or picture.

Katsumi Nomizu was well known for his devotion to meticulous exposition in a very formal style and to high-quality teaching at the undergraduate level. His 1966 text, Fundamentals of Linear Algebra includes these words in the dedication, "It is my hope that this book will continue to serve those students of mathematics and science for whom a more than rudimentary background in linear algebra is an indispensable part of their training." When the book came out in a new edition in 1979, Nomizu specifically acknowledged help from a student, Marty Magid, who started as a freshman at Brown in his linear algebra class and ended up writing a Ph.D. thesis under his direction in 1978.

Over the course of his career, Katsumi Nomizu was influential in determining the course of differential geometry by stressing what he called the structural approach. In 1965, he edited the Proceedings of a United States-Japan Seminar in Differential Geometry that he helped to organize for the National Science Foundation. He was invited to visiting positions in Berlin, Bonn, Strasbourg, and Rio de Janeiro. Among his nearly one hundred papers and articles and seven books, he had twenty-three co-authors from Belgium, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, Yugoslavia and the U.S.

In his teaching career he helped 13 students from Brown and 1 from MIT obtain a Ph.D. According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, Professor Nomizu has seventeen mathematical grandchildren. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday in 1994, a large group of students, co-authors and colleagues gathered for a six-day celebration co-sponsored by the Catholic Universities of Brussels and Leuven, leading to a Festschrift in his honor containing 62 papers with authors from 18 countries.  Also in 1994 his final book was published: Affine Differential Geometry, co-authored with Takeshi Sasaki.

Katsumi Nomizu retired from Brown University in 1995 as the Florence Pierce Grant University Professor. He served as editor of a collection of papers on number theory and algebraic geometry published by the American Mathematical Society in 1996. He received international awards from Germany, Japan and Italy for his writing and leadership.

Nomizu died on November 5, 2008, in Providence, Rhode Island. He is survived by his wife Kimiko and his four children: Naomi, Yvonne, Simone and Raymond and now ten familial grandchildren. In his obituary his family noted that he was known for his "fierce intellect, wry humor, and gentle soul".

Awards
 1991 Humboldt Prize
 1994 Honorary Socio Corrispondanti, Accademia Peloriana dei Pericolanti, Messina, Italy
 1997 Wilhelm Blaschke medal

Notes

References
.
 "Memorial Minutes for Prof. Katsumi Nomizu, Brown University Faculty Meeting, February 3, 2009

External links
 Katsumi Nomizu from Ancestry.com
 Katsumi Nomizu at Mathematics Genealogy Project

1924 births
2008 deaths
People from Osaka
Japanese emigrants to the United States
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
20th-century Japanese mathematicians
21st-century Japanese mathematicians
Osaka University alumni
Nagoya University alumni

Katsumi Nomizu


Cranham Marsh is a 15.3 hectare Local Nature Reserve and a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation in Cranham in the London Borough of Havering. It is owned by Havering Council and managed by the Essex Wildlife Trust.

The habitats on the site are woodland, wet meadow and marsh, and it has one of the few areas of fen to survive in the area. There are three small woods, including Spring Wood, which has species indicative of ancient woodland. Locally uncommon plants in wetland areas include southern marsh-orchid, fine-leaved water-dropwort and golden dock. Insects include a rare bee, Macropis europaea, and 23 species of butterfly have been recorded. It is also a good site for water voles. A tributary of the River Ingrebourne runs through the site.

There is access by footpaths from Park Drive and The Chase.

References

External links

Parks and open spaces in the London Borough of Havering
Local nature reserves in Greater London
Nature reserves in the London Borough of Havering
Essex Wildlife Trust

Cranham Marsh