The Elz Valley Railway (German: Elztalbahn) is a  long, single-tracked, standard gauge branch line in the Black Forest area of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The line branches off the Freiburg im Breisgau to Offenburg section of the Rhine Valley Railway at Denzlingen and runs up the valley of the River Elz to Waldkirch and Elzach.

Whilst the track is owned by DB Netz AG, passenger services on the Elztalbahn are provided by the Breisgau S-Bahn, whose trains continue over the Upper Rhine Valley line to Freiburg Central Station. Typical service is two trains per hour from Freiburg to Waldkirch, with one train continuing to Elzach.

History
Because no private investors were willing to finance a connection to the Elz Valley, the town of Waldkirch took the initiative and had the 7.1 kilometre-long line from  Waldkirch to Denzlingen built as a private railway. The Baden government established the legal basis for the construction on 30 March 1872 and a concession for it was granted on 29 August of the same year. Operation of the line, which was opened on 1 January 1875, was transferred to the Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways (Großherzoglich Badische Staatseisenbahnen) in 1887.

Extension to Elzach
Although traffic—especially passenger transport—developed satisfactorily, the financial burden for the town of Waldkirch was too high in the long run. So it gratefully accepted the offer of the state to purchase the railway on 1 April 1886. The Elz Valley Railway was extended by twelve kilometres to its current terminus in Elzach in 20 August 1901. An electrified 750 mm gauge railway to the Gütermann sewing thread factory connected at Gutach station. Different options for an extension via Oberprechtal to Hausach were often planned—most recently in the 1950s—but never realised.

Pilot line for the Breisgau S-Bahn

In 1997 the Elz Valley Railway was selected by the Zweckverband Regionalverkehr Breisgau (Breisgau regional transport association, ZRF) together with the Freiburg–Breisach railway, as a pilot line for the Breisgau-S-Bahn 2005 integrated regional transport concept. In the following years the passenger service was expanded and the railway facilities were completely refurbished and renewed. As a first step, operations were closed on Sundays in 1997. Two years later, an hourly service was introduced to Elzach, with additional trains between Freiburg and Waldkirch. The planned improvements to the service were implemented in December 2001 with half-hourly  services to Waldkirch and hourly services to Elzach on workdays. In the evenings and on Sundays and public holidays there were hourly services to Elzach.

From May to June 2009 the tracks between Waldkirch and Elzach were renewed. The original trough-shaped steel sleepers were replaced by steel Y-shaped sleepers. The superstructure allows an axle load of 22.4 tons and it should be 70 to 80 years before the tracks need to be relayed.

Operations

Today the line is owned by DB Netz. Since 15 December 2002, local rail transport services have been provided by Breisgau-S-Bahn, which was merged into its parent company Südwestdeutsche Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft (Southwest German transport, SWEG) in December 2017. Regio-Shuttle railcars run regularly from Freiburg to Elzach every hour with trains crossing in Waldkirch at the usual symmetry minute, that is shortly before the half hour. In addition, there are additional trains to Waldkirch on weekdays, so that there is a half-hourly cycle between Freiburg and Waldkirch, but in the opposite direction services run at a less regular alternating interval of 39 and 21 minutes.

Rolling stock
Deutsche Bundesbahn and DB Regio used locomotives of DB Class 218 until 2002, previously DB Class 212 locomotives hauling Silberling coaches and control cars were used. From around 1960, class V 10010 (211) locomotives had hauled rebuilt three-axle coaches, which in turn had replaced Baden VI c (class 75.4) tank locomotives. The Breisgau S-Bahn has been using Regio-Shuttle railcars since December 2002. Due to the lack of rolling stock, multiple units from other SWEG networks are also used. The SWEG, who will operate the Elztalbahn after its modernization and electrification in 2020, ordered 12 Talent 3 railcars which are supposed to replace the old Regio-Shuttle railcars in December 2020.

Planning
The cooperation agreement between RVG and Nahverkehrsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg (Baden-Württemberg local transport company; NVBW) of 11 March 2009 provides for the development of the Elz Valley Railway. The electrification of the line, the construction of a crossing loop in Gutach and the modernisation of the signal technology with the building an electronic control centre in Waldkirch were planned to be completed by 2018. However, the upgrade, including the electrification of the future S 2 line, was not commenced until 2020. After the timetable change on 15 December 2019, the old diesel railcars operated until March 2020. Afterwards the line was under reconstruction and trains only ran between Freiburg and Denzlingen. A substitute bus service was due to run to Elzach until mid-December 2020.

References

Footnotes

Sources

Railway lines in Baden-Württemberg
Railway lines in the Black Forest
Railway lines opened in 1875
Emmendingen (district)

Elz Valley Railway


Sylvie Faucheux (born 29 May 1960 in the 20th arrondissement of Paris) is a French professor and politician. She specialized in the fields of economy of the natural environment and sustainable development. She was President of the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines from 2002 till the 12 April 2012.

Faucheux graduated from the Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University which she founded in 1995. She managed the Center for economics and ethics environment and sustainable development, which, in 2002, became a joint research unit between UVSQ and the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) (Institute of Development Research).

Faucheux is a politician as well as an educator. She was a SP candidate at the parliamentary elections for the first district of Yvelines in June 2007.

In December 2002, she was named President of the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. She was president until 12 April 2012, when Jean-Luc Vayssière was made president. She is the current head of Université du grand ouest parisien. Faucheux is a member of the Board of Research and Higher Education in France. She has been a member since 2002. She is responsible for the working group on sustainable development.

Sylvie Faucheux is Chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques (14 July 2004 promotion), Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite (14 November 2005 Decret), Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and owner of the Marianne d'Or 2009 for her actions in favor of the sustainable development.

References

Further reading
 Sylvie Faucheux, Jean-François Noël, Économie des ressources naturelles et de l'environnement, Armand Colin, 1999, 320 p. ()
 Sylvie Faucheux, H. Joumni, Économie des changements climatiques, La découverte - slf, 2005, 128 p. ()
 Sylvie Faucheux, Catherine Moulin, T.I.C. et développement durable, De Boeck, 2010 ()
 Who's Who in France 2011, 2010 ()
 Who's Who in France 2012, 2011 ()

Living people
1960 births
Politicians from Paris
Presidents of the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University faculty
Socialist Party (France) politicians

Sylvie Faucheux


Sky Replay is a British pay television channel operated by Sky as a sister channel to Sky Max and Sky Witness. The current channel began broadcasting (as Sky One Mix) in December 2002. The 'Sky 2' name and format had earlier been used for a similar service which broadcast on analogue platforms for a year from 1996. On 27 August 2020, the service rebranded as Sky Replay. The channel broadcasts repeats of programmes from Sky Max and Sky Witness.

Branding and presentation

Original Channel (1996–1997)
Sky 2 originally was launched on 1 September 1996 and served as a sister channel to Sky 1 in the evening, timesharing with Fox Kids. The channel was introduced to offer an expanded range of general entertainment programming, with Sky 2 airing a mixture of programmes already carried on Sky 1 along with programmes exclusive to the channel. Sky 2 however was not as successful as Sky had hoped, and would close nearly a year later without any notice on 31 August 1997. The channel was then replaced by the UK's version of National Geographic.

Sky One Mix/Sky Mix (2002–2005)
On 7 October 2002, Sky announced that they would launch their first digital channel in over a decade; Sky One Mix, functioning as Sky One's sister channel and catch-up service. The channel's launch was announced for 9 December on 13 November 2002 and launched on Sky Digital that day.

The channel, initially broadcasting from noon to midnight, offered up the best of Sky One's programmes, as well as a dedicated children's block called "Animix", which broadcast from 3:30pm every weekday.  The channel used a logo and presentation design similar to that used by Sky One at the time, but with a yellow and black theme as opposed to the orange and white used by Sky One at the time.

Initially exclusive to Sky Digital, the channel was added to NTL at the end of July 2003 as part of a two-year contract extension between BSkyB and NTL.

On 21 September 2004, to coincide with Sky One's new look, Sky One Mix was rebranded as simply Sky Mix, although it kept with Sky One's previous branding as before and kept the same idents without the mention of the word "One".

Sky Two (2005–2008)

On 18 July 2005, rumours circulated that Sky was planning to extend the Sky One brand by rebranding Sky Mix as Sky Two, and launching a Sky Three as well. The channel rebranded effectively to Sky Two in November of that year and began using Kaktus Films' animated idents in line with those introduced on Sky One the prior year.

On Thursday 1 March 2007, Sky Two, alongside other non-premium Sky networks, were removed from Virgin Media following a contract dispute between Virgin Media and BSkyB caused by the expiry of their carriage agreement and their inability to reach a new deal.  When Sky Two was removed, Virgin Media renamed the slot on the EPG as "Old Sky Two Try Living", before it was removed completely.

In February 2008, Sky Two began utilising the same short-lived range of idents that its sister channels used, except using a "Green" range of graphics.

Sky 2 (2008–2020)
On 31 August 2008, the channel adopted a revised branding of Sky 2, when Sky's entertainment channels relaunched with numeric names and shared branding elements, utilising blue solids (Sky 1), green liquids (Sky 2) and pink particles (Sky 3).

On 13 November 2008, following the agreement of a new deal between BSkyB and Virgin Media, Sky Two along with Sky's other non-premium channels returned to Virgin Media's television service.

From 10 May to 9 August 2010, Sky conducted an experimental revision of service, under which Sky Two ceased to run its own full-time programme schedule, and instead predominantly operated a one-hour timeshift of programming on Sky One. Sky Two would, however, retain standalone branding. A Sky spokesperson said: "We are experimenting with different channel schedules to bring maximum value to our customers." Some programmes were excluded from the timeshift device and replaced by alternate content on Sky Two during this period; shows which weren't shown on the time-delay included the premiere of Sky One's Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, the station's adaptation of the author's Discworld novel. Also not seen on a timeshift basis was the final ever episode of Lost, which was aired at 5am, as a simultaneous being broadcast with the US transmission. The last episodes of 24 (which Sky showed as a two-part finale) also weren't shown an hour later on Sky Two. The non-timeshifted programming would often be found an alternative slot on Sky Two (Terry Pratchett's Going Postal would be shown later in the week), essentially making Sky Two a 4seven-style 'time shuffle' channel during these periods. The timeshift trial concluded on 9 August 2010, with Sky Two reverting to its previous scheduling pattern.

On 1 February 2011, Sky refreshed the presentation on many of its channels. Sky Two's new idents would follow along the same themes as Sky One's, but the action is in close-up, featuring a small metal '2' icon (in contrast to Sky One's giant '1' symbol). Sky One would later switch to programme-themed idents, whilst Sky Two largely continued to use the 2011 sequences; in April 2016, when Sky One got new animated identity sequences, Sky Two received a revised version of its 2011 films, with a larger Sky Two logo caption appearing at the end of the sequence, and the backing music changed to that previously used by the Sky One version of the films.

Whilst it initially enjoyed a prominent position on the Sky guide close to Sky One, Sky Two had since 2011 progressively been moved down the programme guide on the Sky satellite platform to make room for other services. In February 2011, to make way for the relaunched Sky Living, Sky Two moved to channel 129, previously home to Syfy. On 21 February 2012, it moved up to 121, previously owned by Sky Living +1. In 2015, with the re-combination of Sky Arts into a single channel and its move up the grid, Sky Two moved back to 129. And in summer 2017, the relaunch of Sky Sports into genre-based channels saw the move of Sky Sports Mix into the entertainment guide, resulting in the relocation of other services including Sky Two. On 1 May 2018, Sky Two moved up to channel 123 as part of another reshuffling by Sky. It replaced ITV Encore, which closed on the same day. On 22 October 2018, the channel moved down to 151, swapping places with E!. On 1 October 2019, the channel moved down to 170 following the closure of Real Lives and launch of Sky Crime, and moved again to 168 on 19 November 2019 following the closure of YourTV.

On 9 October 2017, the branding and presentation on Sky's entertainment channels was revised again; as part of this the names Sky One and Sky Two were reintroduced nine years after the switch to numerals. Sky Two dropped its previous filmed idents in favour of using an animated sting featuring the new channel logo.

Whereas Sky One had been available in HD since the launch of Sky HD in 2006, Sky Two has always been exclusively available in standard definition.

Sky Replay (2020–present)
On 27 August 2020, Sky Two was rebranded as Sky Replay and moved to Sky channel 145 as a result, while its previous owner, Sky Sports Mix, moved to channel 416.

On 8 November 2022, Sky Replay swapped channel numbers with Challenge.

Programming

Sky Replay is in many ways a catch-up service for Sky's main entertainment channels, Sky Witness and Sky Max (formerly the now defunct Sky One) broadcasting their popular shows. Doing so, Sky Two is described as a time shuffle channel, so called to distinguish it from timeshift channels, which rebroadcast their principal channel, delayed by one hour.

Following the closure of the original Sky Real Lives in 2010, some of its factual and reality programming was relocated to Sky Two. Following the closure of Bravo in 2011, Sky Two adopted some of its programming, particularly in the science-fiction, drama and documentary fields.

With the retooling of Sky Living into the crime-focused Sky Witness, some former Sky Living programming (such as Four Weddings, My Kitchen Rules and Most Haunted) has transferred into the Sky Replay daytime schedule.

International
A version of Sky Replay for Germany launched on Sky Deutschland and Sky Ticket on 4 October 2021, replacing the previous local box-set channel Sky Serien & Shows.

References

External links
TV Listings at sky.com

Sky television channels
Television channels and stations established in 2002
English-language television stations in the United Kingdom
Television channels in the United Kingdom
2002 establishments in the United Kingdom

Sky Replay


Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. (November 14, 1934 – April 1, 2020) was an American jazz pianist and educator. Marsalis became known in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a member of a well known musical family in New Orleans, with sons Branford Marsalis and Wynton Marsalis becoming internationally known. He was born in New Orleans.

In the 1950s and 1960s he worked with Ed Blackwell, Cannonball Adderley, Nat Adderley, and Al Hirt. During the 1970s he taught at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. His students have included Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick Jr., Donald Harrison, Kent Jordan, Marlon Jordan, and Nicholas Payton.

In 2008, Marsalis was added into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

On April 1, 2020, Marsalis died at the age of 85 after being hospitalized in New Orleans with COVID-19 symptoms.

References

1934 births
2020 deaths
Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
American jazz musicians
Educators from New Orleans
American pianists
Musicians from New Orleans

Ellis Marsalis Jr.


Jane Sutherland (26 December 1853 – 25 July 1928) was an Australian landscape painter who was part of the pioneering plein-air movement in Australia, and a member of the Heidelberg School. Her advocacy to advance the professional standing of female artists during the late nineteenth century was also a notable achievement.

Early life
Jane Sutherland was born in New York to Scottish parents; the family emigrated to Sydney in 1864 and moved to Melbourne in 1870. The Sutherland family soon became an important part in the formation of Melbourne's cultural influence in Australia. Uncommon at the time, Sutherland had the support and encouragement from her family to pursue a career as an artist.  Due to the support of her family, Sutherland was able to live comfortably as an unmarried, working woman.

In the late nineteenth century, there were two contrasting movements concerning women's education. The first being the view that a woman's role and purpose was reproduction; their importance was valued by their maternal care.

The second view came from the Australian women's suffrage movement, which not only called for the female right to vote, but the need for equal education to access confidence, achievement and employment. This included the visual arts and gradually saw the inclusion of women into the National Gallery School. The intrepid leader that was Sutherland, had enrolled as early as 1871, a good 14 years before the Women's Suffrage Society was formed in Melbourne. Unlike fields such as medicine, the study of visual arts was considered an easier area to transition into as it was already considered a suitable hobby for upper-class women.  The likelihood of female artist being equal to a male artist in commission, exhibitions and respect was harder to gain.

Career

From 1878, Sutherland exhibited at the Victorian Academy of Arts, then with the Australian Artists' Association, and with the Victorian Artists' Society (from 1888) until 1911. By the standards of the time, she was held in high regard for her artistry, which was supported by the fact she was reviewed on the same terms as male artists, rather than grouped in a general remark of works by lady artists in an exhibition. Critics justified the distinction due to Sutherland's landscapes being a comparable to the strong form of male artist's work. In 1884 she became one of the first women members of the Buonarotti Club and, as Mead shown, membership formed relationships between Sutherland, Withers, Roberts, McCubbin, Abrahams and others leading to them painting together in plein air camps as the Heidelberg School of artists.

Sutherland was the leading female artist in the group of Melbourne painters who worked outside the studio; she took plein-air sketching trips to the outlying rural districts of Alphington, Templestowe and Box Hill with her male contemporaries of the Heidelberg School. Unlike her contemporaries, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Conder, Sutherland, as a female, was unable to stay with the men at the campsites overnight, and instead made day journeys to the campsites.

From 1888, Sutherland shared a studio for teaching with artist Clara Southern. The studio at Grosvenor Chambers in Collins Street, Melbourne, was considered a centre for the Heidelberg School with Tom Roberts and Jane Price later securing studios there.
Jane Sutherland and Clara Southern both created works for 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition held in Melbourne, 1889. The exhibition held many works by artists from the Heidelberg School and is considered the beginning of the style known as Australian Impressionism. However, Sutherland's and Southern's works were not exhibited.  There is a continuing debate, highlighted by art historians Juliet Peers and Humphrey McQueen, if the exclusion of Sutherland and Southern was due to gender roles of the time or merely that their work did not fit the curator's, Elsie Goode, overall vision. In 1900 Sutherland and May Vale were the first women elected as Councillors of the Victorian Artists' Society. During her years of active work, she was valued for her efforts in the visual arts scene of Melbourne.

Sutherland's body of work mainly focus on Australian landscapes with the inclusion of women and children interacting with nature. Narrative is suggestive in her works as she leaves an impression of the land and her figures turn away from the viewer.
Despite her efforts and success, Sutherland found difficulties in being considered a serious and professional artist. Sutherland was forced to price her paintings at a tenth of the value of her male peers. In one example from 1894 exhibition, Sutherland's work To the Dandenong asking price was eighteen guineas, while David Davies sold his piece Moonrise for seventy-five pounds.

Illness and death
In the early years of the 1900s, Sutherland suffered from a serious stroke and became fully reliant upon the care of her brother, William Sutherland.  With William's assistance for mobility, Sutherland was able to continue painting and exhibiting her work as well as teach art to a new generation. However, the impact of her illness can be seen by the diminishing the size of her works, from large canvases to small pastels.

Following William's death in 1911, Sutherland was forced to retire and remained so until her death in 1928. Unable to paint, it was during these years that she was gradually forgotten during the turn of the century. By the time of her passing on the 28th of July, there was little to no public acknowledgment.

Legacy
Jane Sutherland was an important figure in a generation of Australian women who chose to pursue a career in art over marriage and creating a family. Her niece, Ruth Sutherland, was a painter. While little is known of her personality and motivations, Sutherland's art now resides in national institutions for continuous interpretation.

Jane Sutherland Circuit in the Canberra suburb of Conder is named in her honour.

Awards
Wallen Prize, National Gallery School, Annual Students' Exhibition, 1883

Representation
Art Gallery of South Australia

Ballarat Fine Art Gallery

LaTrobe Library Picture Collection

National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Victoria

Newcastle Region Art Gallery

Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery

State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

University of Melbourne Art Museum

Gallery of works

References
Burke, Janine. Australian Women Artists 1840-1940. Victoria: Greenhouse Publications Pty Ltd, 1980.
Hammond, Victoria and Peers, Juliet. Completing the Picture. Victoria: Artmovers, 1992.
Kerr, Joan. Heritage: The National Woman's Art Book. Australia: G+B Arts International Limited, 1995.
Lindsay, Frances. Sutherland. Melbourne: Victorian College of the Arts, 1977.
National Gallery of Victoria. Completing the Picture: Woman Artists and the Heidelberg Era. Parkdale: Artmovers Inc. 1992.
Peers, Juliet "The Leader Amongst the Lady Artists". Australian Journal of Art, Volume 14, 1999.
Whimpress, Bernard. Heidelberg School. South Australia: Axiom Distributors, 2013.

Notes

External links

Field Naturalists, 1896 at The National Gallery of Victoria
A Cabbage Garden, 1896 at The National Gallery of Australia
After Autumn Rain, Private Collection
Obstruction, Box Hill, 1887 at The Art Gallery of Ballarat
 Women of the Heidelberg School, by Andrew MacKenzie, sponsored by the Victorian Government.

1853 births
1928 deaths
Heidelberg School
Australian landscape painters
American emigrants to the British Empire
Artists from the Colony of Victoria
Australian women painters
Australian Impressionist painters
Australian people of Scottish descent
Burials at Box Hill Cemetery
19th-century Australian women artists
20th-century Australian women artists
20th-century Australian artists
Painters from New York City
American emigrants to Australia
American people of Scottish descent
National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni

Jane Sutherland


"Go On Lad" is a British television and cinema advertisement launched by Premier Foods in 2008 to promote its Hovis brand of bread. The 122-second piece was commissioned as part of a £15,000,000 brand relaunch designed to reverse Hovis' declining market share and profits. The commercial follows the journey of a young boy through 122 years of British history, from the establishment of the Hovis brand in 1886 to the current day. The campaign was handled by advertising agency Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy. Production of the commercial itself was contracted to London-based production company Rattling Stick, with post-production handled by The Mill. It was directed by Ringan Ledwidge. "Go On Lad" premiered on British television on 12 September 2008.

The advertisement, and its associated campaign, proved a popular, critical, and financial success. Its launch was covered by several national newspapers within the United Kingdom, including The Independent and the Daily Mirror, on television programmes including the Granada Reports and Loose Women, and by over 300 local and national radio stations. Sales of Hovis products jumped by over £12,000,000 in the weeks following the launch of Go On Lad, and over 1,000 unsolicited letters and e-mails were sent to Hovis praising the piece. The campaign received dozens of awards from the advertising and television industries, including Golds at the Creative Circle Awards, the Marketing Society Awards, and the British Television Advertising Awards. In 2009, the British public voted "Go On Lad" the best television commercial of the decade.

Sequence
"Go On Lad" begins in 1886, with an over-the-shoulders view of a boy in a flat cap and brown jacket buying a loaf of bread in a bakery. After making his purchase, the boy leaves the shop into a bustling Victorian-era street, narrowly avoiding being run down by a horse and cart. He is chased into an alleyway by the cart's driver, losing his flat cap in the pursuit, and he passes a poster about the Titanic. When he exits through the other side the alley, a suffragette protest is underway. The boy weaves through a crowd of marching women bearing placards, emerging into an open square during World War I, where he spies a column of young soldiers on parade. The boy accompanies the soldiers for a few moments before peeling away to climb a nearby wall. After saluting the soldier he had marched next to, he climbs down the other side into the interbellum, and runs past a couple engaged in a conversation beside a period car. He kicks a can through another alley, following it into another street; one in ruins from The Blitz.

The music turns sombre for a moment as a family of refugees passes by, and an excerpt from Winston Churchill's delivery of the "We shall fight on the beaches" speech plays from a radio in a nearby home. A Spitfire flies overhead as the boy climbs over a pile of rubble to enter a new street, in which residents were engaged in a street party celebrating the accession of Elizabeth II. He crawls under the table, takes a biscuit and a glass of lemonade, then runs on into 1966, where a group celebrating England's victory in the 1966 FIFA World Cup chant "Champions!" as they pass him in a car. From here, changes to the boy's costume are made with every transition, reflecting the fashions of the periods he passes through. Farther down the road from 1966, the boy passes a British Asian couple in the 1970s, reflecting the spike in immigration in the community during that period. He turns a corner, running into a conflict between police and striking miners in the 1980s. One of the miners jeers the boy, and he continues running. As he runs alongside a river during the Millennium celebrations on New Year's Day 2000, fireworks go off in the background. Finally, the boy makes a turn into a council estate in  2008 and sits down with the loaf of bread at his kitchen table. His mother calls to him, 'Is that you home, love?', to which the boy replies 'Yeah'. And the piece closes on a shot of the boy's hand reaching for a slice of the Hovis loaf over the tagline "As good today as it's always been."

Production

Background
From 1967 to 2007, the Hovis brand of bread was owned by Rank Hovis McDougall, and for much of that time was the market leader in the United Kingdom. However, following a "chop and change" marketing strategy, including several "confused" brand relaunches through the first half of the 2000s, rival brand Warburtons had increased sales and profits, and in 2006 both brands had approximately 28% of the £1.6b UK bread market. Despite continuing to show profits of £387m, Hovis continued to lose ground to Warburtons. Sales of the latter had increased by 24% in 2007 alone; by 2008, for every two loaves of Hovis sold in the UK, Warburtons sold three. The continuing failure of the brand began to affect Premier Foods as a whole, with the company's share price dropping from £3.50 to £1.80 in the 18 months following the acquisition.

Despite this, Hovis was still a valuable brand. Its reported profits, while declining, still amounted to £387m, making it the fourth largest grocery brand in the UK, behind Coca-Cola, Warburtons, and Walkers Crisps. Premier Foods hired a new head of marketing, Jon Goldstone, known for a strong branding background at Procter & Gamble. Goldstone quickly identified the issue facing Hovis, surmising that "[Hovis] had got into a situation where Warburtons was synonymous with healthier bread from real bakeries and Kingsmill had cornered the value end of the market. We were being squeezed and were falling fast." Goldstone's solution was to re-launch the brand, changing the formula of the bread, redesigning the packaging, and putting £15m into a new advertising campaign. To this end, Premier Foods consolidated its marketing across all brands into two advertising agencies, Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy (MCBD) and McCann Erickson, with the latter originally taking on Hovis. But the CEO Helen Calcraft and Account Director Muna Nageh stayed close to the Hovis client and eventually had a chance to win the account out of McCann Erickson, who had failed to crack the brief whilst MCBD had been doing well on the brands they had won. The relaunch was the first campaign by MCBD for the brand, though it had done work on other Premier Foods labels such as Branston, Batchelors and OXO previously.

Production
In April 2008, Goldstone met with the creative director of MCBD, Danny Brooke-Taylor, to discuss the advertising campaign which was to accompany the relaunch. The two  reviewed previous Hovis advertising for ideas, paying particular attention to the 1973 television advertisement Boy On Bike. Directed by Ridley Scott, Boy On Bike was an iconic piece of British culture; in a 2003 poll, over 60% of British people over 40 years old could still hum the theme used in the commercial ("New World Symphony by Dvorak), and in 2006 it was voted the greatest advertising campaign of all time by the public. From this, the campaign's theme was established: nostalgia. A pitch was put together by creative team Gavin Horrance and Danny Hunt of MCBD, comprising a set of "mood films" constructed from stock footage, and the idea of "the perilous journey a young boy takes through 122 years of British history to bring the small brown load back to his mam." The pitch was presented to Qualitative Assessment, a focus group of consumers, where it met a very positive response. From there, Goldman took the proposal directly to Robert Schofield, the head of Premier Foods, who greenlit the project immediately. A budget of £1,000,000 was put aside for production of the commercial alone, over three times as much as had ever been spent on production of a Premier Foods commercial to that date.

With permission to go ahead, MCBD began searching for a director to lead the production, eventually settling on Ringan Ledwidge. Ledwidge, who was working with Daniel Kleinman at the London-based production company Rattling Stick, had a reputation for good work on "magical realism" projects, with previous work including Forever for Volkswagen in 2002, and Rewind City for Orange earlier in 2008. The Hovis campaign, now assigned the title Go On Lad, was the most expensive and complex commercial Ledwidge had directed to date.

With only four months set aside for production of the commercial, work began in earnest on scouting for locations and cast capable of presenting the desired tone for Go On Lad. Several locations across the United Kingdom were looked at as potential sites for the six-day shoot, but while the producers of Boy On Bike had dressed a street in Dorset to appear Northern, Ledwidge opted to film in Northern England itself. Liverpool's Sweeting Street was dressed for use as the setting for the opening Victorian scene, while Falkner Street appeared as the World War I and interbellum scenes. Workers for the City Council partially demolished three buildings to set the scene for the Blitz section, bringing in over fifty tonnes of rubble for the set dressing. Locals of Hardy Street in Garston were recruited as extras for the Coronation scene, which was filmed at that location.

In all, over 1750 people were hired to act as extras in Go On Lad, including over 200 members of historical reenactment societies for the World War I scene alone. In casting for the role of the boy, Ledwidge wanted to eschew the "stylised blonde healthy child seen in most modern European advertising" in favour of someone who would evoke memories of the actors in productions such as Kes or Great Expectations. The boy eventually settled on for the role was Brian Mackie, a thirteen-year-old with no prior acting experience.

Post-production
Post-production was contracted to The Mill, who were given the brief to make it appear as though no computer-generated imagery or other visual effects had been used at all. The majority of the visual effects work was done using the Autodesk software Flame and Maya. This included simple work such as removing anachronistic yellow road markings, satellite dishes, and replacing PVC windows. More complex work included the removal of several buildings with modern architectural styles or features, the creation of a CGI colliery, a Spitfire and a Concorde jet aeroplane (which was later cut in editing), crowd multiplication for the striking miners and suffragettes, and the recreation of the Millennial fireworks display.

For editing of the commercial, Ledwidge looked to Richard Orrick, an editor he had collaborated with several times in the past. Several angles had been shot for each scene, as well as a number of cutaways establishing the era that the boy was travelling through. However, the brief for the commercial was specifically for a 122-second cut, one second for every year since the establishment of Hovis in 1886. For this reason, and to reinforce the viewer's connection with the boy, almost every shot which didn't feature Mackie was cut. Additional editing work was done to smooth the transitions between eras and maintain a steady pace within the commercial's narrative. Until half-way through editing, the music accompanying Go On Lad was to have been "Town Called Malice" by The Jam. However, after the right to use the piece had been purchased, alterations to the pacing of the narrative led Ledwidge to commission a new piece via Woodwork Music from Philip Kay of the Mancunian independent act Working for a Nuclear Free City, titled "History".

Release and reception

Release
The campaign surrounding Go On Lad was conducted on a budget of £15m, and comprised extensive public relations work by Frank PR, the launch of a new Hovis website, new packaging using a bolder typeface and stronger colours, the re-launch of the unsliced "little brown loaf" featured in the campaign, and changes to the formulae of other Hovis lines, as well as a series of in-store deals and promotions.

Public relations work in the lead-up to the release of Go On Lad included stunts such as the deliberate leaking of a false rumour that footballer Wayne Rooney would be appearing in the ad as the new face of Hovis, the inclusion of several tabloid journalists as extras in the production, and the release of a making-of documentary featuring extra scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with the cast and crew. The impact of the PR work was such that the Hovis campaign received an estimated £2.5m of free publicity even before Go On Lad'''s first broadcast, prompting competitors Kingsmill and Warburtons to vastly increase the number of in-store special offers and deals on their products as a defence tactic in the four weeks leading up to the ad's debut.

The first broadcast of Go On Lad was at 8:45pm on Friday 12 September 2008, as the final advertisement of a commercial break in the popular soap opera Coronation Street."Hovis: Britishness", Utalkmarketing.com, 13 September 2008. Retrieved 18 May 2010. ITV, the broadcaster of Coronation Street, were persuaded to cut the length of the programme by two seconds to accommodate the ad's unusual 122-second length. The full version of the commercial continued to air in cinemas for four weeks, with 90- and 10-second cuts appearing on television into early 2009.

Reception

Reaction to the release of the campaign within the media industry was immediate. Features on the campaign and on Brian Mackie appeared in several national newspapers, including The Independent, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star. Coverage was also given to the story in local newspapers in Northern England and Scotland such as the Yorkshire Post, the Liverpool Echo, the Eastern Daily Press, and the Scottish edition of the Daily Record. Stories on the launch also appeared in other media: in television, the ad was discussed during segments of ITV programming such as the Granada Reports and Loose Women; in radio, over 300 national and regional stations made mention of the campaign; online, a version of the commercial uploaded to video sharing website YouTube received over 180,000 hits and 1,000 comments.

The public's response was equally impressive; within 24 hours of the first broadcast of Go On Lad, Hovis received over 1,000 unsolicited e-mails and letters praising the commercial."The Thinkboxes Winner - September 2008: Hovis - Go On Lad ", Thinkbox, September 2008. Retrieved 18 May 2010. Research by the qualitative assessment organisation Millward Brown showed that Hovis' brand image improved by 8% in terms of "product value", and 6% in terms of perception of quality and tastiness of the product. In addition, the communication of the brand's tagline, "As good today as it's always been", increased from its 52% norm to 86%, and research showed that consumers were far more likely to talk about the brand amongst themselves than prior to the campaign's launch.

The response by the public translated directly into financial gains for the brand. Sales of Hovis products jumped by £12m in the three weeks following the campaign's launch. By the end of the following month, Hovis' share of the UK bread market increased by 3.5%, with £60m added to the top line of the business. By the end of November 2008, sales figures had increased by 14% from same period the previous year. The success of the campaign was such that it lent a halo effect to Premier Foods as a whole. By January 2009, the company's profit margins had increased from 2.8% to 12.2% and its share price had more than doubled.

The impact of the campaign did not go unnoticed by Hovis' competitors. Warburtons increased its annual marketing budget from £2m to £22m. Over half of this larger budget went towards the production and release of a new television and print campaign designed to emphasise the family-owned nature of the brand.<ref>"Warburtons to take on Hovis with pounds 22m push.", Marketing", 1 October 2008. Retrieved 19 May 2010.</ref> The 60-second television component of the campaign, titled Foreign Businessman, premiered on 4 October 2008, during a commercial break in the talent show The X Factor. Foreign Businessman was largely panned by the advertising community; it was declared one of the ten worst campaigns of 2008 by Campaign magazine. Mark Ritson of Marketing magazine criticised Warburton's decisions on length and ad space purchases, saying: "Warburtons got similar audience numbers when it premiered its ad during The X Factor, but totally missed the context. It's a similar story with the length of the ads: Warburtons' 60-second spot is longer than the usual, but hardly breaks the mould.

Ritson went on to praise the Go On Lad campaign, adding: "Choosing 122 seconds, one for every year in its history, was a stroke of genius by Hovis. It not only makes for an epic ad, but also emphasised the brand's heritage in the launch PR backing the campaign." Indeed, Go On Lad proved a critical success, winning a slew of honours and awards from the television and marketing industries. These included becoming Campaign magazine's "Campaign of the Year" the Film4 Director's Cut Award, the Brand Revitalization Award at the Marketing Society Golden Jubilee Awards, the Television Commercial of the Year award (and golds in three other categories) at the British Television Advertising Awards, a Gold at the Creative Circle Awards, and a Bronze at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The annual Gunn Report recorded Go On Lad as the 32nd most-awarded commercial of the year, and in 2009, the British public voted Go On Lad the best commercial of the decade, ahead of competition such as Carlsberg's Old Lions and Cadbury's Gorilla.

Legacy
As a result of the success of the campaign, several other companies followed suit with nostalgia-themed campaigns of their own, with mixed results. Particularly singled out for derision were campaigns by Persil and Sainsbury's, with Leon Jaume of WCRS commenting on the latter in Campaign magazine: "This is meagre fare, frankly, and allows the blogsters to concentrate on the elephant on the bacon counter: that the ad doesn't so much nod to the recent Hovis epic as pick a fight with it, shouting: 'I've got decades of British history, me! Hear my tinkling piano track! Look at my loveable urchin! Watch my wartime reconstruction!' The bloggers are less than whelmed by the similarities, and I feel the uncomfortable frisson of kinship with them."

Several members of the crew behind Go On Lad went on to assist in Hovis' 2009 advertising campaign for its newly launched line of bread rolls. Simply titled Rolls, the 60-second television commercial continued the theme of switching from the Victorian period to the present day, and was once again written by Gavin Torrance and Danny Hunt of MCBD. While Ledwidge was originally interested in reprising his role as director, production company Rattling Stick eventually assigned Ivan Bird to oversee the project. The Mill returned to perform post-production of the commercial.

Several requests were made by teachers to Hovis for permission to use the commercial as a teaching tool in lessons on British history. Headteacher Jennifer Bailey wrote: "After the advert first aired, it was a huge talking point among our pupils. With TV being such a popular medium nowadays, it's a fun way of highlighting key historical British moments." The positive response to Go On Lad within the teaching community led Hovis to establish the "Hovis Educational Programme" in 2009, providing educational resources to a number of schools in a pilot scheme aimed at getting children more interested in history.

Accolades

References

External links
Go On Lad at the Hovis website

2008 works
2008 in British television
2000s television commercials
British television commercials

Go On Lad


Barton Wood Currie (March 8, 1877 – May 7, 1962) was an American journalist, author, and book collector. Writer of hundreds of articles and stories for publications such as New York Evening World, New York Evening Sun, Harper's Weekly and Good Housekeeping in the early part of the 20th century, Currie went on to become the editor of The Country Gentleman, Ladies Home Journal, and World's Work. He also authored several books. Currie acquired an important collection of material related to Joseph Conrad when that author was out of favor in the 1920s.

Early life and education
Currie was born in New York City. He graduated from Harvard University in 1899.

Writing career

Currie began his writing career in about 1905 at Joseph Pulitzer's New York Evening World, where he worked under Charles Chapin, the "Rose Man of Sing Sing" who shot and killed his wife. According to James Morris, "At the heart of Chapin's news-gathering operation remained his prize rewrite team. Barton Currie was his star". Albert Payson Terhune said, "He could take a bare handful of semi-statistical notes and turn them, on demand, either into a tensely dramatic or roaringly funny column story". One of his most memorable assignments for the New York Evening World was a report on the landing of Admiral Robert Peary in Labrador upon his historic return from the North Pole in 1909.

Currie was a staff reporter for the New York Evening Sun and The New York Times, and also wrote for Harper's Weekly and Good Housekeeping (1909-1911). In all, he wrote hundreds of articles and stories.

From 1912 to 1917 he was the associate editor of The Country Gentleman, and worked as editor of that publication from 1917 to 1920. From 1920 to 1928 he was the editor of Ladies Home Journal. At both journals, he solicited Zane Grey to write articles and serialized novels, but their eight-year relationship soured when Currie began to criticize the quality of Grey's work. In 1928 Currie joined Doubleday Doran as editor of World's Work.

An example of Currie's versatility is Officer 666, a comic novel written with Augustin MacHugh (1912). Officer 666 was adapted as a stage play on Broadway, produced by George M. Cohan and Sam Harris, which toured the United States in 1912. It was made into the silent film Officer 666 in Australia in 1916, and was also filmed in 1914 and 1920. Currie also wrote The Tractor and Its Influence Upon the Agricultural Implement Industry (1916), reprinting his articles on tractors from his stint on Country Gentlemen.

Collecting
Currie wrote from personal experience of the effect of bibliomania on the collector in his memoir Fishers of Books (1931):
The first symptom of bibliomania ... manifests itself by producing a form of somnambulism. You come out of a bookshop carrying a first edition of something or other. You cannot explain how or why you got it, or what you paid for it.  But you have it; and when you arrive home with it you creep off to some secluded room and examine it. Then occurs the first little burning exaltation. Just a little glow to begin with, then by infinite gradations a consuming fire.

Other topics in the book included the pros and cons of different methods of collecting, the techniques of various dealers, fellow collectors, highlights from his collection and the effect of the Wall Street Crash on the values of collectible books. In 1935 he defined an antiquarian book-seller as someone "who can charge $1,000 for a ten-dollar item and make you feel that he has done you a favor".

Currie assembled an important collection of material relating to the novelist Joseph Conrad, including a number of manuscripts that he acquired from Dr. Rosenbach, who had obtained them at the John Quinn sale of 1924. After Currie's death in 1962, much of the Conrad material was sold at auction at the Parke-Bernet Galleries on 7 and 8 May 1963.

Sometime around 1931, Currie acquired, via Gabriel Wells, the original manuscript for Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal. It was purchased for less than the $75,000 reported in the press at the time. It was then acquired by Robert H. Taylor and ultimately by Princeton University, who received Taylor's collection.

Death
Currie died on 7 May 1962 in Philadelphia and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery, Hillside, Union County, New Jersey.

Papers
A collection of Currie's papers is held at the Princeton University Library.

Selected publications
Officer 666. H.K. Fly Company, New York, 1912. (With Augustin MacHugh)
The Tractor and Its Influence Upon the Agricultural Implement Industry. Curtis Publishing Co., Philadelphia, 1916.
Fishers of Books. Little, Brown, and Company, Boston, 1931.
Booth Tarkington: A Bibliography. Doubleday, Doran & Co., Garden City, New York, 1932.

References

External links

Fishers of Books at Hathi Trust
Officer 666 by Barton Wood Currie and Augustin McHugh, Library of Alexandria

1877 births
1962 deaths
Journalists from New York City
American book and manuscript collectors
Harvard University alumni
Burials at Evergreen Cemetery (Hillside, New Jersey)

Barton Currie


Hrefnesholt is a location in Beowulf where the Geatish king Hæþcyn had taken the Swedish queen. The Swedish king Ongenþeow arrived to save her and killed Hæþcyn. The Geatish force was, however, reinforced by Hygelac, whereupon the Swedes sought refuge in a hillfort, but were stormed by the Geats. Ongenþeow was killed and Hygelac became their new king.

A place by this name, Ramshult (the modern Swedish form), actually exists and it has a hillfort. It is located on the island of Orust, an island which was Geatish territory at this time according to Nordisk familjebok.

Geats
Beowulf

Hrefnesholt


Kyinkyinga (pronounced chin-chin-gá) or Cincinga (Hausa orthography), is a grilled meat skewer or kebab that is common and popular in West Africa and is related to the Suya kebab. Kyinkyinga is a Ghanaian Hausa dish popularised by traders in the Zango areas of town and cities, and has since becoming popular among other Ghanaians. It is hence very similar to or synonymous with the suya kebab in Nigeria and Niger, also known as suya, tsinga, cinga, cicinga, cincinga, tsire agashi, cacanga or tankora in the Hausa language.

It is prepared by coating the meat in what is called tankora or yaji, a spice mix typical to Hausa cuisine. It is a mixture of dried hot peppers, dried ginger, dried onion, other spices, and toasted peanut flour. The meat is then threaded onto a skewer, often interspersed with onions and bell peppers, then grilled. It has been described as a staple street food in Ghana.

See also

 Dibi
 List of kebabs
 List of street foods
 Suya

References

African cuisine
Street food
Grilled skewers
Ghanaian cuisine

Kyinkyinga


Mather Brown (baptized 11 October 1761 – 25 May 1831) was an American painter who was born in Boston, Massachusetts and was active in England.

Early life

Brown was the son of Gawen and Elizabeth (Byles) Brown, and descended from the Rev. Increase Mather on his mother's side. He was taught by his aunt and around 1773 (age 12) became a pupil of Gilbert Stuart. He arrived in London in 1781 to further his training in Benjamin West's studio, entered the Royal Academy schools in 1782 with plans to be a miniature painter, and began to exhibit a year later.

Painting career

In 1784, he painted two religious paintings for the church of St. Mary's-in-the-Strand, which led Brown to found a partnership with the painter Daniel Orme for the commercialization of these and other works through exhibition and the sale of engravings. Among these were large paintings of scenes from English history, as well as scenes from Shakespeare's plays. However, despite their success he began to concentrate on portraiture. His first successes were with American sitters, among others his patron John Adams and family in 1784–85; this painting is now in the Boston Athenæum. In the spring of 1786, he began painting the earliest known portrait of Thomas Jefferson, who was visiting London. He also painted Charles Bulfinch the same year. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1798.

His 1788 full-length portrait of Prince Frederick Augustus in the uniform of Colonel of the Coldstream Guards led to appointment as History and Portrait Painter to the Prince, later the Duke of York and Albany. Other paintings include the Prince of Wales, later George IV (about 1789), Queen Charlotte, and Cornwallis. A self-portrait now belongs to the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.

Later life and death

A falling off patronage in the mid-1790s, and failure to be elected to the Royal Academy, led Brown to leave London in 1808 for Bath, Bristol, and Liverpool. He settled in Manchester, returning to London almost two decades later, in 1824, where, even after West's death, he continued to imitate his teacher's style of painting. Unable to secure commissions, Brown eventually died in poverty in London.

Gallery

References

Sources
 Evans, Dorinda, Mather Brown: Early American Artist in England. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 1982.

External links

 Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies. ULAN Full Record Display for Mather Brown. Getty Vocabulary Program, Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California.

1761 births
1831 deaths
18th-century American painters
18th-century American male artists
American male painters
19th-century American painters
American history painters
American portrait painters
Artists from Boston
Alumni of the Royal Academy Schools
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
18th-century English painters
English male painters
19th-century English painters
English portrait painters
American emigrants to England
American people of English descent
19th-century American male artists
19th-century English male artists
18th-century English male artists

Mather Brown


Train a Comin' is the fifth studio album by Steve Earle (his first in five years), released in 1995. In addition to Earle, it features Peter Rowan, Norman Blake, Roy Huskey, and Emmylou Harris.  The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Background

Train a Comin''' was the first album recorded after Earle overcame his addiction to drugs in the fall of 1994, after being convicted for possession.  Earle's last studio album had been the 1990 album The Hard Way, and he essentially stopped touring by 1992 as his addiction worsened.

Most of the songs on the album are older material written when Earle was in his late teens and twenties, including "Hometown Blues," "Sometimes She Forgets," "Mercenary Song," "Ben McCulloch," "Nothin' Without You," and "Tom Ames' Prayer." "Goodbye" was written while Earle was in court-ordered rehab in the fall of 1994.  In concerts, Earle introduces the song as the first song he wrote clean, and as a "ninth step in the key of C," referring to the step in which an addict seeks to make amends.  According to the liner notes of the album, "Angel is the Devil" was one of only four songs written during his hiatus, which he refers to as his "vacation in the ghetto," and the mandolin line of "Mystery Train part II" was written in the early 1990s with the lyrics finished the day it was recorded. The album also includes an instrumental by Norman Blake and three covers: Townes Van Zandt's "Tecumseh Valley", the Beatles' "I'm Looking Through You" and The Melodians' reggae standard "Rivers of Babylon."

Earle drew on established bluegrass and acoustic instrumentalists for the album, which was a departure from his earlier work with backing band the Dukes.   He said to an interviewer at the time that he was seeking an older sound, and the album was recorded in just five days. "I was goin' for a sound where it sounded like old Opry stuff, where everybody stepped around the mike, which is real close to what we actually did. It ended up being even more of an organic record than I thought it was gonna be."

Earle co-produced the album with his friend William Alsobrook.   Tension arose when the album was resequenced by Winter Harvest/Warner Brothers before release.   Subsequent pressings of the album used Earle's initial sequencing.

Reception

The album was well received by critics.  The album was nominated for a 1996 Grammy in the "Best Contemporary Folk" category, losing out to Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball'', which included a cover of Earle's "Goodbye" with him on guitar.  USA Today named the album the number one country album of the year.

Album art

The cover artwork was created by Nashville artist Robin Gustlin (Rogers).

Track listing
All songs written by Steve Earle unless otherwise noted.  Listing reflects Earle's sequencing of the record.

"Mystery Train Part II" - 2:31
"Hometown Blues" - 2:41
"Sometimes She Forgets" - 3:01
"Mercenary Song" - 2:39
"Goodbye" - 4:57
"Tom Ames' Prayer" - 3:02
"Nothin' Without You" - 3:02
"Angel Is the Devil" - 2:12
"I'm Looking Through You" - 2:28  (John Lennon, Paul McCartney)
"Northern Winds" - 1:40 (Norman Blake)
"Ben McCulloch" - 4:10
"Rivers of Babylon" - 3:03 (Brent Gayford Dowe, James Augustus McNaughton, Frank Farian, George Reyam)
"Tecumseh Valley" - 4:28 (Townes Van Zandt)

Personnel
Steve Earle - guitar, high string guitar, 12 string guitar, harmonica, mandolin, vocals
Peter Rowan - mandolin, mandola, gut string guitars, vocals
Norman Blake - Hawaiian guitar, dobro, mandolin, fiddle, guitar
Roy Huskey, Jr. - acoustic bass (and inspiration on "I'm Looking Through You")
Emmylou Harris - vocals on "Nothin' Without You" and "The Rivers of Babylon"

References

External links

1995 albums
Steve Earle albums
Warner Records albums

Train a Comin'


Oin-Oin is a character of Swiss folklore in the Romandy, somewhat comparable to Till Eulenspiegel.
Oin-oin is a simpleton who still manages to get out of difficulties with humour and a unique sense of retort.

From 1958, Oin-oin was played on radio by Claude Blanc, with Emile Gardaz his alter ego Milliquet. In France, the character appeared in sketches by Antoine de Caunes on Canal+.

The historical model of Oin-oin is Amédée-Célestin Rossillon (1852-1923). Rossillon worked as watchmaker in La Chaux-de-Fonds. His nickname was due to his  pronunciation of oui "yes" due to a hare lip which he covered with a moustache.

References
 Le Retour de Oin-Oin, c'est comme une fois y'avait, Éditions Cabédita, 2002.

Culture of Switzerland

Oin-Oin


In physics, pair production can happen when a photon with a lot of energy is near the nucleus of an atom. This most commonly makes an electron and a positron. It can also make other subatomic particles, but it has to make the antiparticle (opposite particle) of that subatomic particle too. The two particles go in opposite directions.

Pair production is more common if the photon has a lot of energy. It is also more common if the nucleus has a bigger atomic number. Pair production usually happens with energy levels over 25 MeV. Pair production happens sometimes in radiation therapy treatments that use photon beams with a lot of energy.
It is somewhat related to photoelectric effect.

Wave physics

Pair production


The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies () was a kingdom in Southern Italy from 1816 to 1861 under the control of a cadet branch of the Spanish Bourbons. The kingdom was the largest sovereign state by population and size in Italy before Italian unification, comprising Sicily and most of the area of today's Mezzogiorno in covering all of the Italian Peninsula south of the Papal States.

The kingdom was formed when the Kingdom of Sicily merged with the Kingdom of Naples, which was officially also known as the Kingdom of Sicily. Since both kingdoms were named Sicily, they were collectively known as the "Two Sicilies" (Utraque Sicilia, literally "both Sicilies"), and the unified kingdom adopted this name. The king of the Two Sicilies was overthrown by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860, after which the people voted in a plebiscite to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. The annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies completed the first phase of Italian unification, and the new Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861.

The Two Sicilies were heavily agricultural, like the other Italian states.

Name
The name "Two Sicilies" originated from the partition of the medieval Kingdom of Sicily. Until 1285, the island of Sicily and the Mezzogiorno were constituent parts of the Kingdom of Sicily. As a result of the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302), the King of Sicily lost the Island of Sicily (also called Trinacria) to the Crown of Aragon, but remained ruler over the peninsular part of the realm. Although his territory became known unofficially as the Kingdom of Naples, he and his successors never gave up the title "King of Sicily" and still officially referred to their realm as the "Kingdom of Sicily". At the same time, the Aragonese rulers of the Island of Sicily also called their realm the "Kingdom of Sicily". Thus, there were two kingdoms called "Sicily": hence, when they were reunited, Two Sicilies. This is readopted by Two Sicilies national football team, an Italian football club since December 2008.

Background

Origins of the two kingdoms

In 1130 the Norman king Roger II formed the Kingdom of Sicily by combining the County of Sicily with the southern part of the Italian Peninsula (then known as the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria) as well as with the Maltese Islands. The capital of this kingdom was Palermo, which is on the island of Sicily.

During the reign of Charles I of Anjou (1266–1285), the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1302) split the kingdom. Charles, who was of French origin, lost the island of Sicily to the House of Barcelona, who were from Aragon and Catalonia. Charles remained king of the peninsular region, which became informally known as the Kingdom of Naples. Officially Charles never gave up the title of "The Kingdom of Sicily"; thus there existed two separate kingdoms calling themselves "Sicily".

Aragonese and Spanish direct rule

Only with the Peace of Caltabellotta (1302), sponsored by Pope Boniface VIII, did the two kings of "Sicily" recognize each other's legitimacy; the island kingdom then became the "Kingdom of Trinacria" in official contexts, In 1442, Alfonso V of Aragon, king of insular Sicily, conquered Naples and became king of both.

Alfonso V called his kingdom in Latin "Regnum Utriusque Siciliæ", meaning "Kingdom of both Sicilies". At the death of Alfonso in 1458, the kingdom again became divided between his brother John II of Aragon, who kept the island of Sicily, and his illegitimate son Ferdinand, who became King of Naples. In 1501, King Ferdinand II of Aragon, the son of John II, agreed to help Louis XII of France conquer Naples and Milan. After Frederick IV was forced to abdicate, the French took power, and Louis reigned as Louis III of Naples for three years. Negotiations to divide the region failed, and the French soon began unsuccessful attempts to force the Spanish out of the peninsula.

After the French lost the Battle of Garigliano (1503), they left the kingdom. Ferdinand II then re-united the two areas into one kingdom. From 1516, when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, became the first king of Spain, both Naples and Sicily came under direct Holy Roman Empire rule and after that navigated between Habsburg and Spanish Rule  In 1530 Charles V granted the islands of Malta and Gozo, which had been part of the Kingdom of Sicily, to the Knights Hospitaller (thereafter known as the Order of Malta). At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 granted Sicily to the Duke of Savoy, until the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714 left Naples to the Emperor Charles VI. In the 1720 Treaty of The Hague, the Emperor and Savoy exchanged Sicily for Sardinia, thus reuniting Naples and Sicily.

History

1816–1848

The Treaty of Casalanza restored Ferdinand IV of Bourbon to the throne of Naples and the island of Sicily (where the constitution of 1812 virtually had disempowered him) was returned to him. In 1816 he annulled the constitution and Sicily became fully reintegrated into the new state, which was now officially called the Regno delle Due Sicilie (Kingdom of Two Sicilies). Ferdinand IV became Ferdinand I.

A number of accomplishments under the administration of Kings Joseph and Joachim Murat, such as the Code Civil, the penal and commercial code, were kept (and extended to Sicily). In the mainland parts of the Kingdom, the power and influence of both nobility and clergy had been greatly reduced, though at the expense of law and order. Brigandage and the forceful occupation of lands were problems the restored Kingdom inherited from its predecessors.

The Vienna Congress had granted Austria the right to station troops in the kingdom, and Austria, as well as Russia and Prussia, insisted that no written constitution was to be granted to the kingdom. In October 1815, Joachim Murat landed in Calabria, in an attempt to regain his kingdom. The government responded to acts of collaboration or of terrorism with severe repression and by June 1816 Murat's attempt had failed and the situation was under government control. However, the Neapolitan administration had changed from conciliatory to reactionary policies. The French novelist Henri de Stendhal, who visited Naples in 1817, called the kingdom "an absurd monarchy in the style of Philip II".

As open political activity was suppressed, liberals organized themselves in secret societies, such as the Carbonari, an organization whose origins date back into the French period and which had been outlawed in 1816. In 1820 a revolution planned by Carbonari and their supporters, aimed at obtaining a written constitution (the Spanish constitution of 1812), did not work out as planned. Nevertheless, King Ferdinand felt compelled to grant the constitution sought by the liberals (13 July). That same month, a revolution broke out in Palermo, Sicily, but was quickly suppressed. Rebels from Naples occupied Benevento and Pontecorvo, two enclaves belonging to the Papal States. At the Congress of Troppau (Nov. 19th), the Holy Alliance (Metternich being the driving force) decided to intervene. On 23 February 1821, in front of 50,000 Austrian troops paraded outside his capital, King Ferdinand cancelled the constitution. An attempt at Neapolitan resistance to the Austrians by regular forces under General Guglielmo Pepe, as well as by irregular rebel forces (Carbonari), was smashed and on 24 March 1821 Austrian forces entered the city of Naples.

Political repression then only intensified. Lawlessness in the countryside was aggravated by the problem of administrative corruption. A coup attempted in 1828 and aimed at forcing the promulgation of a constitution was suppressed by Neapolitan troops (the Austrian troops had left the previous year). King Francis I (1825-1830) died after having visited Paris, where he witnessed the 1830 revolution. In 1829 he had created the Royal Order of Merit (Royal Order of Francis I of the Two Sicilies). His successor Ferdinand II declared a political amnesty and undertook steps to stimulate the economy, including reduction of taxation. Eventually the city of Naples would be equipped with street lighting and in 1839 the railroad from Naples to Portici was put into operation, measures that were visible signs of progress. However, as to the railroad, the Church still objected to the construction of tunnels, because of their 'obscenity'.

In 1836 the kingdom was struck by a cholera epidemic which killed 65,000 in Sicily alone. In the following years the Neapolitan countryside saw sporadic local insurrections. In the 1840s, clandestine political pamphlets circulated, evading censorship. Moreover, in September 1847 an uprising saw insurrectionists crossing from mainland Calabria over to Sicily before government forces were able to suppress them. On 12 January 1848, an open rebellion began in Palermo and demands were made for the reintroduction of the 1812 constitution. King Ferdinand II appointed a liberal prime minister, broke off diplomatic relations with Austria and even declared war on the latter (7 April). Although revolutionaries who had risen in several mainland cities outside Naples shortly after the Sicilians approved of the new measures (April 1848), Sicily continued with her revolution. Faced with these differing reactions to his moves, King Ferdinand, using the Swiss Guard, took the initiative and ordered the suppression of the revolution in Naples (15 May) and by July the mainland was again under royal control and by September, also Messina. Palermo, the revolutionaries' capital and last stronghold, fell to the government some months later on 15 May 1849.

1848–1861

The Kingdom of Two Sicilies, over the course of 1848–1849, had been able to suppress the revolution and the attempt of Sicilian secession with their own forces, hired Swiss Guards included. The war declared on Austria in April 1848, under pressure of public sentiment, had been an event on paper only.

In 1849 King Ferdinand II was 39 years old. He had begun as a reformer; the early death of his wife (1836), the frequency of political unrest, the extent and range of political expectations on the side of various groups that made up public opinion, had caused him to pursue a cautious, yet authoritarian policy aiming at the prevention of the occurrence of yet another rebellion. Over half of the delegates elected to parliament in the liberal atmosphere of 1848 were arrested or fled the country. The administration, in their treatment of political prisoners, in their observation of 'suspicious elements', violated the rights of the individual guaranteed by the constitution. Conditions were so bad that they caused international attention; in 1856 Britain and France demanded the release of the political prisoners. When this was rejected, both countries broke off diplomatic relations. The Kingdom pursued an economic policy of protectionism; the country's economy was mainly based on agriculture, the cities, especially Naples – with over 400,000 inhabitants, Italy's largest – "a center of consumption rather than of production" (Santore p. 163) and home to poverty most expressed by the masses of Lazzaroni, the poorest class.

After visiting Naples in 1850, Gladstone began to support Neapolitan opponents of the Bourbon rulers: his "support" consisted of a couple of letters that he sent from Naples to the Parliament in London, describing the "awful conditions" of the Kingdom of Southern Italy and claiming that "it is the negation of God erected to a system of government". Gladstone's letters provoked sensitive reactions in the whole of Europe and helped to cause its diplomatic isolation before the invasion and annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the Kingdom of Sardinia, with the following foundation of modern Italy. Administratively, Naples and Sicily remained separate units; in 1858 the Neapolitan Postal Service issued her first postage stamps; that of Sicily followed in 1859.

Until 1849, the political movement among the bourgeoisie, at times revolutionary, had been Neapolitan respectively Sicilian rather than Italian in its tendency; Sicily in 1848–1849 had striven for a higher degree of independence from Naples rather than for a unified Italy. As public sentiment for Italian unification was rather low in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the country did not feature as an object of acquisition in the earlier plans of Piemont-Sardinia's prime minister Cavour. Only when Austria was defeated in 1859 and the unification of Northern Italy (except Venetia) was accomplished in 1860, did Giuseppe Garibaldi, at the head of the Expedition of the Thousand, launch his invasion of Sicily, with the connivance of Cavour (once in Sicily, many rallied to his colours); after a successful campaign in Sicily, he crossed over to the mainland and won the battle of the Volturno with half of his army being local volunteers. King Francis II (since 1859) withdrew to the fortified port of Gaeta, where he surrendered and abdicated in February 1861 after the Siege of Gaeta. At the encounter of Teano, Garibaldi met King Victor Emmanuel, transferring to him the conquered kingdom, the Two Sicilies were annexed into the Kingdom of Sardinia, which became the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Arts patronage

The Real Teatro di San Carlo was commissioned by the Bourbon King Charles VII of Naples who wanted to grant Naples a new and larger theatre to replace the old, dilapidated, and too-small Teatro San Bartolomeo of 1621. Which had served the city well, especially after Scarlatti had moved there in 1682 and had begun to create an important opera centre which existed well into the 1700s. Thus, the San Carlo was inaugurated on 4 November 1737, the king's name day, with the performance of Domenico Sarro's opera Achille in Sciro and much admired for its architecture the San Carlo was now the biggest opera house in the world.

On 13 February 1816 a fire broke out during a dress-rehearsal for a ballet performance and quickly spread to destroy a part of building. On the orders of King Ferdinand I, who used the services of Antonio Niccolini, to rebuild the opera house within ten months as a traditional horseshoe-shaped auditorium with 1,444 seats, and a proscenium, 33.5m wide and 30m high. The stage was 34.5m deep. Niccolini embellished in the inner of the bas-relief depicting "Time and the Hour". Stendhal attended the second night of the inauguration and wrote: "There is nothing in all Europe, I won't say comparable to this theatre, but which gives the slightest idea of what it is like..., it dazzles the eyes, it enraptures the soul...".

From 1815 to 1822, Gioachino Rossini was the house composer and artistic director of the royal opera houses, including the San Carlo. During this period he wrote ten operas which were Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra (1815), La gazzetta, Otello, ossia il Moro di Venezia (1816), Armida (1817), Mosè in Egitto, Ricciardo e Zoraide (1818), Ermione, Bianca e Falliero, Eduardo e Cristina, La donna del lago (1819), Maometto II (1820), and Zelmira (1822), many premiered at the San Carlo. An offer in 1822 from Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the San Carlo, which followed the composer's ninth opera, led to Gaetano Donizetti's move to Naples and his residency there which lasted until the production of Caterina Cornaro in January 1844. In all, Naples presented 51 of Donizetti's operas. Also Vincenzo Bellini's first professionally staged opera had its first performance at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples on 30 May 1826.

Historical population

The kingdom had a large population, its capital Naples being the biggest city in Italy, at least three times as large as any other contemporary Italian state. At its peak, the kingdom had a military 100,000 soldiers strong, and a large bureaucracy. Naples was the largest city in the kingdom and the third largest city in Europe. The second largest city, Palermo, was the third largest in Italy. In the 1800s, the kingdom experienced large population growth, rising from approximately five to seven million. It held approximately 36% of Italy's population around 1850.

Because the kingdom did not establish a statistical department until after 1848, most population statistics before that year are estimates and censuses that were thought by contemporaries to be inaccurate.

Military
The Army of the Two Sicilies was the land forces of the Kingdom, it was created by the settlement of the Bourbon dynasty in Southern Italy following the events of the War of the Polish Succession. The army collapsed during the Expedition of the Thousand.

The Real Marina was the naval forces of the Kingdom. It was the most important of the pre-unification Italian navies.

Economy

A major problem in the Kingdom was the distribution of land property - most of it concentrated in the hands of a few families, the landed nobility. The villages housed a large rural proletariat, desperately poor and dependent on the landlords for work. The Kingdom's few cities had little industry, thus not providing the outlet excess rural population found in northern Italy, France or Germany. The figures above show that the population of the countryside rose at a faster rate than that of the city of Naples herself, a rather odd phenomenon in a time when much of Europe experienced the Industrial Revolution.

Agriculture

As registered in the 1827 census, for the Neapolitan (continental) part of the kingdom, 1,475,314 of the male population were listed as husbandmen which traditionally consisted of three classes the Borgesi (or yeomanry), the Inquilani (or small-farmers) and the Contadini (or peasantry), along with 65,225 listed as shepherds. Wheat, wine, olive oil and cotton were the chief products with an annual production, as recorded in 1844, of 67 million liters of olive oil largely produced in Apulia and Calabria and loaded for export at Gallipoli along with 191 million liters of wine that were for the most part consumed domestically. On the island of Sicily, in 1839, due to less arable lands, the output was much smaller than on the mainland yet approximately 115,000 acres of vineyards and about 260,000 acres of orchards, mainly fig, orange and citrus, were cultivated.

Industry
One of the most important industrial complexes in the kingdom was the shipyard of Castellammare di Stabia, which employed 1800 workers. The engineering factory of Pietrarsa was the largest industrial plant in the Italian peninsula, producing tools, cannons, rails, and locomotives. The complex also included a school for train drivers and naval engineers, and, thanks to this school, the kingdom was able to replace the English personnel who had been necessary until then. The first steamboat with screw propulsion known in Italy was the Giglio delle Onde, with mail delivery and passenger transport purposes after 1847.

In Calabria, the Fonderia Ferdinandea was a large foundry where cast iron was produced. The Reali ferriere ed Officine di Mongiana was an iron foundry and weapons factory. Founded in 1770, it employed 1600 workers in 1860 and closed in 1880. In Sicily (near Catania and Agrigento), sulfur was mined to make gunpowder. The Sicilian mines were able to satisfy most of the global demand for sulfur. Silk cloth production was focused in San Leucio (near Caserta). The region of Basilicata also had several mills in Potenza and San Chirico Raparo, where cotton, wool and silk were processed. Food processing was widespread, especially near Naples (Torre Annunziata and Gragnano).

Sulfur

The kingdom maintained a large sulfur mining industry. In the increasingly industrialized Great Britain, with the repeal of tariffs on salt in 1824, demand for sulfur from Sicily surged. The growing British control and exploitation of the mining, refining, and transportation of sulfur, combined with the failure of this lucrative export to transform Sicily's backward and impoverished economy, led to the 'Sulfur Crisis' of 1840. This was precipitated when King Ferdinand II granted a monopoly of the sulfur industry to a French company, in violation of an 1816 trade agreement with Britain. A peaceful solution was eventually negotiated by France.

Transport

With all of its major cities boasting ports, transport and trade in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was most efficiently conducted by sea. The kingdom possessed the largest merchant fleet in the Mediterranean. Urban road conditions, compared to Northern Italy, did not comply with the best European standards; by 1839, the main streets of Naples were gas-lit. Efforts were made to tackle the tough mountainous terrain; Ferdinand II built the cliff-top road along the Sorrentine peninsula. Road conditions in the interior and hinterland areas of the kingdom made internal trade difficult.

Technological and scientific achievements
The kingdom achieved several scientific and technological accomplishments, such as the first steamboat in the Mediterranean Sea (1818), built in the shipyard of Stanislao Filosa at the Vigliena dock, near Naples, the first railway in the Italian peninsula (1839), which connected Naples to Portici, and the first iron-suspension bridge (the Real Ferdinando Bridge) in Italy. However, until the Italian unification, the railway development was highly limited. In the year 1859, the kingdom had only 99 kilometers of rail, compared to the 850 kilometers of Piedmont. Other achievements included the first volcano observatory in the world, l'Osservatorio Vesuviano (1841). The rails for the first Italian railways were built in Mongiana, Calabria, as well. All the rails of the old railways that went from the south to as far as Bologna were built in Mongiana.

Education
The kingdom was home to three universities namely those in Naples founded in 1224, Catania founded in 1434 and Palermo founded in 1806. Also in Naples, established by Matteo Ripa in 1732, was the Collegio dei Cinesi today the University of Naples "L'Orientale teaching Sinology and Oriental studies. Despite these institutions of higher learning the kingdom however had no obligation for school attendance nor a recognizable school system. Clerics could inspect schools and had a veto power over appointments of teachers who were for the most part from the clergy anyhow. The literacy rate was just 14.4% in 1861.

Social spending and public hygiene
The situation of the time in terms of social expenditure and public hygiene is mainly known today thanks to the writings of the historian and journalist Raffaele De Cesare. It is well known that public hygiene conditions in the regions of the Kingdom of the Two-Siciles are very poor and especially in the central and rural regions. Most small municipalities do not have sewers and have a low water supply due to the lack of public investment in the construction of pipes, which also means that most private houses do not have toilets. Paved roads are rare, except in the area around Naples or on the main roads of the country, and they are often flooded and have many potholes.

Moreover, most rural inhabitants often live in small old towns which, due to lack of social expenditure, become unhealthy, allowing many infectious diseases to spread rapidly. While the municipal administration has few economic means to remedy the situation, the gentlemen often have whole sections of streets paved in front of the entrance of their home

Geography

Departments

The peninsula was divided into fifteen departments and Sicily was divided into seven departments. In 1860, when the Two Sicilies were conquered by the Kingdom of Sardinia, the departments became provinces of Italy, according to the Urbano Rattazzi law.

Peninsula departments
  Province of Naples - Naples
  Terra di Lavoro - Capua / Caserta from 1818
  Principato Citra - Salerno
  Principato Ultra - Avellino
  Basilicata - Potenza
  Capitanata -
  Terra di Bari - Bari
  Terra d'Otranto - Lecce
  Calabria Citra - Cosenza
  Calabria Ultra I - Reggio
  Calabria Ultra II - Catanzaro
  Contado di Molise - Campobasso
  Abruzzo Citra - Chieti
  Abruzzo Ultra I - Teramo
  Abruzzo Ultra II - Aquila

Insular departments
  Province of Caltanissetta - Caltanissetta
  Province of Catania - Catania
  Province of Girgenti - Girgenti
  Province of Messina - Messina
  Province of Noto - Noto
  Province of Palermo - Palermo
  Province of Trapani - Trapani

Monarchs

In 1860–61 with influence from Great Britain and William Ewart Gladstone's propaganda, the kingdom was absorbed into the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the title dropped. It is still claimed by the head of the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

Flags of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

Orders of knighthood
Order of St. Januarius
Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George
Order of Saint George and Reunion
Order of Saint Ferdinand and Merit
Royal Order of Francis I

See also

 Dictatorship of Garibaldi
 List of historic states of Italy
 List of monarchs of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
 Southern Italy
 Southern Italy autonomist movements

Notes

References

Further reading
 Alio, Jacqueline. Sicilian Studies: A Guide and Syllabus for Educators (2018), 250 pp.

 Eckaus, Richard S. "The North-South differential in Italian economic development." Journal of Economic History (1961) 21#3 pp: 285–317.
 Finley, M. I., Denis Mack Smith and Christopher Duggan,  A History of Sicily (1987) abridged one-volume version of 3-volume set of 1969)
 Imbruglia, Girolamo, ed. Naples in the eighteenth century: The birth and death of a nation state (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
 Mendola, Louis. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 1734-1861 (2019)
 Petrusewicz, Marta. "Before the Southern Question: 'Native' Ideas on Backwardness and Remedies in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, 1815–1849." in Italy's 'Southern Question''' (Oxford: Berg, 1998) pp: 27–50.
 Pinto, Carmine. "The 1860 disciplined Revolution. The Collapse of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies." Contemporanea (2013) 16#1 pp: 39–68.
 Riall, Lucy. Sicily and the Unification of Italy: Liberal Policy & Local Power, 1859–1866 (1998), 252pp

 Zamagni, Vera. The economic history of Italy 1860–1990'' (Oxford University Press, 1993)

External links

 Brigantino – Il portale del Sud, a massive Italian-language site dedicated to the history, culture and arts of southern Italy
 Casa Editoriale Il Giglio, an Italian publisher that focuses on history, culture and the arts in the Two Sicilies
 La Voce di Megaride, a website by Marina Salvadore dedicated to Napoli and Southern Italy
 Associazione culturale "Amici di Angelo Manna", dedicated to the work of  Angelo Manna, historian, poet and deputy
 Fora! The e-journal of Nicola Zitara, professor; includes many articles about southern Italy's culture and history
Regalis, a website on Italian dynastic history, with sections on the House of the Two Sicilies

19th century in Sicily
History of Campania
History of Calabria
History of Apulia
History of Basilicata
Italian unification
States and territories established in 1816
1816 establishments in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
1861 disestablishments in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Two Sicilies
Two Sicilies
Two Sicilies

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies


Allen J. Quist (born October 14, 1944) is a Minnesota politician, a former state representative, and a two-time candidate for governor of the state.

State representative
A Republican, Quist was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in November 1982. He served three terms from January 4, 1983 until January 2, 1989. He was defeated for re-election by St. Peter School Board Chair and Gustavus Adolphus College Professor Don Ostrom in November 1988. He represented the old District 23B, which included portions of Blue Earth, Brown, Le Sueur, Nicollet, and Renville counties in the south central part of the state. He chaired the Health and Human Services Subcommittee on Social Services during the 1985-1986 biennium.

In 2013, he ran in a special election to fill a vacancy in House District 19A, winning the January Republican nominating convention  but losing the general election to Clark Johnson on February 12, 2013.

In December 1986, Quist's first wife, Diane, died in a car accident. He subsequently married conservative activist Julie Morse in 1987. He has ten children, nine by his first wife and one by his second.

1994 and 1998 gubernatorial runs
A stalwart conservative, Quist challenged incumbent Governor Arne Carlson in the 1994 gubernatorial election, with former U.S. Senate candidate Doug McFarland as his running mate. He campaigned on the premise that the pro-choice Carlson was too liberal to lead the Republican Party. Although he won endorsement at his party's convention, he was defeated by Carlson in the state's open primary. He ran for governor again in 1998, but withdrew before the state convention in favor of Saint Paul Mayor Norm Coleman.

Dinosaur comments
Quist is the editor of CurriculumModules.org (CMod), a children's education and learning website that "challenges the worldwide views of established education," and offers lessons that contradict modern science and history. In one of CMod's lessons it suggests that dinosaurs lived alongside humans as recently as the 12th century. His lessons suggest that history books and science books have falsely determined that dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago, and that "the only reasonable explanation for the Stegosaurus carved in the stone on the wall of the Cambodian temple is that the artist had either seen a stegosaurus or had seen other art works of a stegosaurus. Either way, people and stegosaurs were living at the same time."

Political positions

Abortion
Quist believes that abortion should be a first degree homicide, and has said that "Abortion is a genuine evil act, except when used to save the mother's life, it must be legally restrained."

Quist is the author of the book The Abortion Revolution and the Sanctity of Life. In the book, Quist talks about his anti-abortion stance and the need to overturn Roe V. Wade, saying that it is "one of the most dreadful Supreme Court rulings in history," and that "a majority of the justices legalized the murder of more people in just a few years than Herod and Hitler killed in a lifetime." "If our Nation would return to Christian ethical codes, the abortion revolution would come to an end and many other evils mentioned would be largely restrained as well."

LGBT rights/marriage
During his time in the Minnesota House of Representatives, Quist campaigned against the advent of same-sex marriage in Minnesota. He led efforts against extending human rights protections to gays and lesbians, supported by former Governor Arne Carlson.

Quist also led the sponsorship of a failed bill to require AIDS testing for all marriage license applicants.
Quist has drawn criticism for a past statement he made suggesting that supporting a gay counseling center at Minnesota State University, Mankato would be similar to supporting one for the Ku Klux Klan, and saying that "its presence suggests university approval for the homosexual lifestyle and the practice of sodomy... You wouldn't have a center for the Ku Klux Klan," and that "both would be breeding grounds for evil—AIDS, in this case."

While in the Minnesota House, Quist racked up a cumulative 30 hours in the 1988 session speaking on the House floor about sex.

2010 congressional race
On November 19, 2009, Quist announced his candidacy for U.S. Representative in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District in the 2010 race against incumbent Representative Tim Walz. Quist lost the Republican primary to Minnesota State Representative Randy Demmer.

In early December 2009, Quist claimed that a marriage penalty exists in the U.S. House and Senate health care bills.

Quist garnered controversy for his December 7, 2009, speech at a Christmas Party of the Wabasha County Republicans. The following remarks (included in the speech which lasted a total of seven and a half minutes) were criticized by some members of the media:

""Our country is being destroyed. Every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom… Terrorism? Yes. That's not the big battle," he said. "The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals. They aren't liberals. They are radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz: They're not liberals, they're radicals. They are destroying our country."

Quist also spoke against the health care bill at the event. "This is the most insidious, evil piece of legislation I have ever seen in my life… Every one of us has to be totally committed to killing this travesty… I have to kill this bill."

2012 congressional race

In December 2011, Quist announced he would again run for Minnesota's 1st Congressional District against incumbent Tim Walz in 2012. In the congressional primary, Quist won with 54% of the vote over Minnesota State Senator Mike Parry, who later endorsed Quist and said that the two were uniting together in the effort to defeat Walz. Following his announcement, he was praised by Minnesota 6th District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

In October 2012, it was reported that Quist had failed to file the required financial disclosure form with federal authorities by the May 15 filing deadline, apparently because he could not figure out the mailing address.  The New Ulm Journal reported that: "... Quist now claims that he printed off the form from online and that this form lacked the address. He said that he now has the address and will have the form turned in within two days. He said he taking a little while longer so auctioneers get his exact land values because he wants all information he submits to be completely accurate."

In the November 2012 general election, Walz defeated Quist by a margin of 58%–42%.

References

External links

Allen Quist Campaign Web Site

1944 births
Living people
Republican Party members of the Minnesota House of Representatives
College Republicans
People from St. Peter, Minnesota
American Lutherans
Minnesota State University, Mankato alumni
Bethany Lutheran College alumni

Allen Quist


Ammophila breviligulata (American beachgrass or American marram grass) is a species of grass native to eastern North America, where it grows on sand dunes along the Atlantic Ocean and Great Lakes coasts. Beachgrass thrives under conditions of shifting sand, sand burial, and high winds; it is a dune-building grass that builds the first line of sand dunes along the coast. Beachgrass is less vigorous in stabilized sand, and is only infrequently found further inland than the coastal foredunes. On the Atlantic coastline of North America, Ammophila breviligulata has been observed as far south as North Carolina, and is often planted in dune restoration projects. Ammophila breviligulata was introduced to the Pacific coast of North America in the 1930s. It is proving to be invasive, and is increasingly important to coastal ecology and development in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Description

Ammophila breviligulata is perennial grass which produces an extensive rhizome system. The leaves have deeply furrowed upper surfaces and smooth undersides, and grow  tall. The plant's inflorescence is a spike-like panicle that can reach  long; The spikelet is single-flowered, awnless. The seed head appears in late July or August. The species name breviligulata derives from the Latin brevis ("short") and ligula ("tongue"), which refers to a feature of grass leaves called the ligule.

Ammophila breviligulata is quite similar in appearance and ecology to a second species of beachgrass, Ammophila arenaria (European beachgrass). As Nick Page has summarized, "Ammophila breviligulata is distinguished from A. arenaria by smaller ligules (1–3 mm versus 10–30 mm long in A. arenaria), wider and less inrolled leaves, longer flower spike (25–35 cm versus 15–25 cm long in A. arenaria), and scaly rather than puberulent leaf veins on the upper leaf surface."

Ecology
Both species of beachgrass are noted for their association with stable sand dunes, and observations in regions where they were introduced to coasts indicate that they build the first line of dunes on coasts (the foredunes). The plants spread rapidly –  annually – through the sand by subsurface runners (rhizomes), and can produce up to 100 stems per clump annually. They can tolerate burial in as much as  of sand; sand burial stimulates the rhizomes to grow vertically, and is essential to plant vigor. The beachgrass species are also very good examples of xerophytes, being able to thrive on arid to semi-arid beach dunes. The plant has several mechanisms for adapting to heat stress or wind. The long narrow leaves can roll or fold, and the rough upper leaf surface, which contains the gas exchange openings (stomata), can orient itself away from the wind.

Beachgrass is a dominant species on foredunes, and is sometimes the only plant found there, but is unable to grow farther inland on stabilized dunes and soil. One reason for this that has been extensively studied by Wim van der Putten and his colleagues is based on the susceptibility of Ammophila species to soil pathogens such as nematodes. The density of these pathogens is low in freshly deposited sand, but builds up in the roots of beachgrass on stabilized sand. While the details are complex, the result is that beachgrass is largely limited to the foredunes that it builds, which are immediately adjacent to the water's edge and where sand is removed and redeposited fairly frequently.

Around the Great Lakes, it is limited to active dune habitats along the shores, and it is listed a threatened species in Minnesota where it reaches its most westerly natural range around Duluth.

Invasiveness
Starting in the 19th century, A. arenaria was introduced to the Pacific coast of North America to help control beach sands; it serves this role so well that it is now considered invasive not only along this coast (from California north to British Columbia), but along nearly every coast worldwide where it has been introduced. Ammophila arenaria built foredunes (the dunes closest to the beach) that are typically about  high, which is much higher than the dunes associated with the native dune grass species Leymus mollis.

In the 1930s, A. breviligulata was introduced to about  on the Clatsop Peninsula in Oregon. Since then, A. breviligulata has gradually supplanted A. arenaria in Oregon and Washington; the precise reason for the relative success of A. breviligulata isn't known. The most recognizable aspect of the changeover between the beachgrass species is that the foredunes of A. breviligulata are shorter than the foredunes of A. arenaria; foredunes of A. breviligulata are about  high in this region. The diversity of other species that co-exist with mature stands of A. arenaria is comparable to the species diversity with A. breviligulata. However, the lower foredune height for the latter means that coastal ecosystems that had adapted to the fairly tall foredunes of A. arenaria are again changing, especially in the regions just behind the foredune and sheltered by it. Similarly, buildings and roads that were constructed under the presumption of continuing protection by the tall A. arenaria foredunes may now be threatened by shifting sand and by increased exposure to wind and water in storms.

References

Pooideae
Grasses of the United States
Grasses of Canada
Flora of the Great Lakes region (North America)
Flora of Eastern Canada
Flora of the Eastern United States
Plants described in 1920

Ammophila breviligulata