The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin is an Episcopal church located on South Greeley Avenue in Chappaqua, New York, United States. It was built in the early years of the 20th century on land donated by Horace Greeley's daughter Gabrielle and her husband, himself a priest of the Episcopal Church. In 1979 it was one of several properties associated with Greeley in Chappaqua listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Church of Saint Mary Virgin and Greeley Grove.

During his 1872 campaign for President, in which he ran unsuccessfully as the first and only nominee of the Liberal Republican Party against eventual winner Ulysses S. Grant, Greeley, then editor of the New York Tribune, had hosted a massive lunch and reception on the property. He had planted the large grove of evergreen trees 16 years earlier as a windbreak for his farm, part of his campaign to promote reforestation and conservation. After the election but before the counting of the electoral votes, Greeley died, and Gabrielle inherited the farm, which at the time covered most of what is now downtown Chappaqua.

When Gabrielle's daughter Muriel died in childhood in 1903, she and her husband, The Rev. Dr. Frank Clendenin, built the church as a private chapel. Architect Morgan O'Brien designed a stone Gothic Revival building that closely copied the 15th-century Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in Monken Hadley, England. Two years later, an original stained glass window from that church was given to the Chappaqua copy. In 1916 the Clendenins transferred it to the Diocese of New York, with some stipulations in the deed, among them that they and their children remain buried in a small plot at the rear of the church. It has since become a parish church; its annual Strawberry Festival is one of Chappaqua's most popular events.

Buildings and grounds

The church is located just south of downtown Chappaqua, on a  parcel on the east side of South Greeley Avenue. It is in a level area along the headwaters of the Saw Mill River between the hills that otherwise dominate northern Westchester County. To its north is Robert E. Bell Middle School. Both buildings have large lawns on their deep setbacks from the street. Greeley Grove, with many evergreen trees over  high,  is to the south, east and some of the west. In the former direction it provides a buffer between the church and the more modern Chappaqua library; in the latter the ground rises sharply to residential property along Aldridge Road.

Across the street is a baseball diamond, providing open space between the church and the New Castle town hall to the southwest. Beyond it, and beyond the diamond's outfield fence, are the parking lots of the Chappaqua station on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line, whose tracks parallel both the Saw Mill River and eponymous parkway to their west. The old stone station building, currently used as a waiting area and café, is also listed on the Register along with the semicircular plaza across from it, which features a statue of Horace Greeley since his daughter and son-in-law also donated the land for the station.

From the middle school parking lot a driveway goes south to the church building. It is a cruciform-plan one-and-a-half-story fieldstone structure topped by a steeply pitched gabled roof covered in shingles. At the west (front) end is a three-story square tower with a round turret on its northwest corner. On its north side is a small one-story flat-roofed extension. A parish hall, with a gabled roof pierced by gabled dormer windows, is off to the northeast.

The church's corners have stone buttresses, alternately smooth-faced and fieldstone. At the main and rear (east) end are entrances with a pointed-arched wooden door set in a gray square surround; a set of stone steps with iron railings lead to the main entrance from the driveway, flanked by rhododendrons and other trimmed shrubbery. Its windows are either round-arched or pointed-arched, with sills and lintels of smooth stone. The east end is set with a single round oculus. At the gables a low parapet marks the roofline.

On the tower, the buttresses rise two stories to a stone cornice, which separates the two stages. It has a slight rise above the pointed-arch window below corresponding to the width of the round-arched window above. Above that story, another cornice sets off the battlements at the roofline. The turret has two narrow windows. It, too, is topped by battlements but not divided into stages. The extension on the north wall also has battlements.

History

From its settlement by Quakers in the early 18th century, Chappaqua had been a small self-sufficient farming community clustered around the meetinghouse, today at the center of the Register-listed Old Chappaqua Historic District a half-mile (800 m) north of downtown along King Street (New York State Route 120). The construction of the New York and Harlem Railroad through the area in the middle of the 19th century changed that. The farmers started growing cash crops for the New York City market newly available to them, and the city began coming to Chappaqua.

Its first commuter was Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. He saw a chance to distance himself from his professional life in the city and give his wife and daughter a quiet life in the country. In addition, he wanted to test out the experimental farming techniques he advocated in his column, widely read in much of rural America. One of them was the planting of the grove, which in addition to being visually appealing also fit in with his support for conservation and reforestation. By 1872, it had grown so large and impressive he held a large reception there in support of his candidacy for president that year on the Liberal Republican and Democratic lines.

He ultimately lost that year, as Ulysses S. Grant was re-elected. After the election but before the Electoral College voted, he died. His daughter Gabrielle inherited the family farm, which then consisted of  in what is now downtown Chappaqua.

Later in the century Gabrielle and her husband, The Rev. Dr. Frank Clendenin, priest rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in the city, began subdividing the property. When their daughter Muriel died of polio in 1903 at the age of five, they commissioned a memorial chapel next to the grove Horace Greeley had planted. Architect Morgan O'Brien produced a Gothic Revival design that closely copied Saint Mary the Virgin Church, a parish church built in 1494 in Monken Hadley, England, on the outskirts of London. It was completed in 1904 and consecrated in 1906, with a stained glass window, now in the north transept, donated from the English church.

In 1913 the church became a mission church of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. Three years later, the Clendenins transferred title of the four-acre (1.6-ha) parcel to the Diocese. They made several stipulations:
 that the church would forever remain free,
 that it always be named Saint Mary the Virgin,
 that no mortgage or other legal or financial encumbrance be placed on the property, and
 the family retain the rights to a  burial plot behind the church.
In the event the diocese failed to meet any of those conditions, ownership would revert to the Clendenins or any living heirs. They are still in force today; an heir, Gabrielle and Frank's grandson, lives in Germany.

Three years later, in 1919, a malfunctioning basement furnace caused a fire which did significant damage to the interior. In its aftermath several changes were made. Large screens and a baldachin which had closed off the transepts were never replaced. Instead a large pulpit was installed, with altar rails and prayer stalls lining the sanctuary. A carillon, dedicated to the memory of Alfred Smith Holland, a railroad executive close to the Clendenins, was added to the tower in 1924.

Frank Clendenin had retired from St. Peter's in 1917. Gabrielle Clendenin Stahl, another daughter, died three years later, in 1920. The family continued to worship at the church they had built through their deaths in the 1930s. The Clendenins and all four of their children are buried in the small plot they arranged for, per their stipulations with the diocese. Sometime later in that decade, the pulpit installed after the 1919 fire was removed.

In 1938 the church's women's auxiliary organized the first Strawberry Festival. It has been held ever since, featuring many events for children, including rides and walks through the paths of Greeley Grove.  The following year it organized a social event for adults that also became an annual tradition, the Black Tie Dance. In 1943, the church was incorporated as a parish; the following year it was admitted into the diocese. The new parish took over the diocese's title to the property in 1949, with the Clendenins' stipulations remaining in effect.

As the only Episcopal church in Chappaqua, Saint Mary's needed to be able to serve the needs of its new parish. Construction began on the parish hall in the 1950s. The first floor was done in 1951 and the entire building was complete three years later. In 1955 a baptistry, copied from the original in Monken Hadley and made in England, was installed.

The church building remained unchanged, save for a replacement organ in the mid-1960s, until 1982. Renovations to the sanctuary that year removed the altar rails and prayer stalls installed after the fire over 60 years earlier. The masonry altar and altar stone were replaced with a freestanding altar and moved to the outdoors, where they were placed on the hillside.

Programs and services

On Sunday mornings the church offers two services. The Holy Eucharist is performed using Rite I at the earlier time, and Rite II at the later. An extensive lay ministry assists the pastor, currently Father Joel Mason, with the ceremonies.

The church also has an extensive music program. A senior choir of adults performs at the later morning service every week, daily during Holy Week and four times a year during Evensong services. Its repertoire is mainly focused on traditional Anglican music, but also includes more modern work by Igor Stravinsky and John Tavener. The children's choir sings at services once a month. The religious music is supplemented by Ars Antiqua secular performances held three times a year at the church.

Every June, the church holds its annual Strawberry Festival, considered the longest-running community event of its kind in Westchester County, attracting visitors from all over the county. The main attraction is food prepared by the church's members based around the titular fruit, such as strawberry shortcake, strawberry pancakes, chocolate-covered strawberries and strawberry smoothies. Other traditional summertime festival fare, such as ice cream donated by Ben & Jerry's, hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn and cotton candy, is also available. Craft vendors sell hand-made textile and wooden items. There are also attractions for children like bouncy houses, pony rides in the Grove, and face painting. Money raised by the festival goes to support the church's involvement in local charitable programs like food pantries.

While not affiliated with the church, Chappaqua's popular farmer's market is held in the parish house during the winter months.

See also

List of Episcopal churches
National Register of Historic Places listings in northern Westchester County, New York

References

External links

Church website

Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state)
National Register of Historic Places in Westchester County, New York
Gothic Revival church buildings in New York (state)
Churches completed in 1904
20th-century Episcopal church buildings
Churches in Westchester County, New York
Christian organizations established in 1943

Church of Saint Mary the Virgin (Chappaqua, New York)


Legionnaires 3 is a four-issue comic book limited series published by DC Comics in 1986, the second limited series to feature the Legion of Super-Heroes. It was written by Keith Giffen and Mindy Newell, pencilled by Ernie Colón, and inked by Karl Kesel. The series pits the Legion's three founders against one of their deadliest enemies, the Time Trapper.

Plot
In his citadel at the End of Time, the Time Trapper plays a game of chess with Brainiac, the intergalactic android criminal from the 20th century. He interrupts the game to confront the Controller who once masqueraded as him and was captured by the Legion of Super-Heroes. The Trapper previously saved the doppelganger from being destroyed in the Crisis, only to now kill him. Obsessed with defeating the Legion, the Trapper observes the moment in time that gave birth to the team: the attempted assassination of billionaire R. J. Brande, which is foiled by Rokk Krinn (Cosmic Boy), Imra Ardeen (Saturn Girl) and Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad). He decides that Lightning Lad is the group's weak link, and that the plan to destroy the Legion will focus upon him.

In Metropolis, the Legion's three founders, now retired from active duty, enjoy an evening at the Ranzz home when they are attacked by the Time Trapper's militia. While they successfully repel the soldiers (who are immediately killed by the Trapper), the heroes soon realize that the entire attack was a diversion which allowed one of the soldiers to kidnap Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl's baby son Graym Ranzz. In the child's place is a doll wrapped in a blanket containing a message: "Only four players in this game — any Legion interference and the child dies!"

Lightning Lad's twin sister Lightning Lass arrives for a visit, but he concocts a story to keep her away. Upon leaving to rendezvous with Cosmic Boy, he and Saturn Girl must avoid Colossal Boy and his wife Yera. Sneaking into the Time Institute, the three founders seek the aid of honorary Legionnaire Rond Vidar in obtaining a time-travelling device, without revealing anything about Graym's kidnapping. When Rond refuses, Saturn Girl uses her mental powers to render him unconscious. The three of them steal the Time Cube, disappearing into the timestream. Unexpectedly finding a gap in the Trapper's Iron Curtain of Time, they arrive at the End of Time. They are soon captured by the Trapper's militia, with Lightning Lad imprisoned separately from his wife and best friend. Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl escape from their cell and — after a perilous journey through the Citadel — discover baby Graym, completely unharmed. It is only then that they realize that the Trapper's true target all along has been Lightning Lad.

The Time Trapper subjects Lightning Lad to a variety of psychological attacks, in an attempt to crush his spirit and his sanity. After a series of illusions fails to break the Legionnaire, the Trapper reveals that he caused the shuttle accident that killed Lightning Lad's parents years earlier. Rather than destroying the Legionnaire, the revelation allows him to call upon an inner strength that he did not realize he had, and vow to make the Trapper pay for his parents' deaths. In the very next instant, the three founders and baby Graym are all returned to the Ranzz home in 30th century Metropolis. At the End of Time, the Trapper concedes momentary defeat, noting that "there will be other games".

References

Legion of Super-Heroes storylines
1986 comics debuts
Comics about time travel
Comics by Keith Giffen

Legionnaires 3


Vietnamese iced coffee () is a traditional Vietnamese coffee recipe. It is created using coffee roasted between medium and dark. The drink is made by passing hot water through the grounds into a cup that already contains condensed milk. To serve the drink cold, ice is added to the cup.

Variations

Variations involve additions of ice, sugar or condensed milk. A popular variation is cà phê sữa đá (or nâu đá in the North), which is iced coffee served with sweetened condensed milk. This is done by putting two to three teaspoons or more of condensed milk into the cup prior to the drip filter process. Other variations include:

 Black coffee (hot or cold) - Cà phê đen
 White coffee/Saigon style coffee - bạc xỉu: Hot or iced milk with some added coffee, similar to a macchiato. Popular in Saigon.
 Pandan coffee - Cà phê lá dứa: Made with coffee, Pandan paste, and honey.
 Coconut coffee - Cà phê dừa: Made with coffee, coconut milk, and condensed milk.
 Blended coffee/Coffee shake - Sinh tố cà phê-
 Egg coffee - Cà phê trứng: Made with brewed coffee, chicken egg yolk, and condensed milk. It has a similar taste and texture to tiramisu and eggnog. Popular in Hanoi.
 Salted cream coffee - Cà phê kem mặn: a variation from Huế.
 Avocado coffee - Cà phê bơ: coffee grounds, avocado, condensed milk, and vanilla powder

History

Coffee was introduced to Vietnam in 1857 by a French Catholic priest in the form of a single Coffea arabica tree. The beverage was adopted with regional variations.  Because of limitations on the availability of fresh milk, as the dairy farming industry was still in its infancy, the French and Vietnamese began to use sweetened condensed milk with a dark roast coffee.

Vietnam did not become a major exporter of coffee until the Đổi Mới reforms and opening of the economy after the war. Now, many coffee farms exist across the central highlands. Vietnam is now the largest producer of the Robusta variety of coffee and the second largest producer of coffee worldwide.

Vietnamese coffee chains

See also

 Egg coffee
 Cuban espresso, similar sweetened coffee.
 Indian filter coffee, similarly produced (drip from metal filter) coffee.
 List of coffee beverages

References

External links

 Cà phê sữa đá, it's what's should be in your cup [sic] at ChestBrew.com
 History of Vietnamese Coffee and photographed step-by-step brewing at HungryHuy.com
 Illustrated instructions at wanderingspoon.com
 Vietnamese coffee recipe and notes at Coffeefaq.com

Vietnamese drinks
Coffee drinks
1857 introductions

Vietnamese iced coffee


Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, or simply Precious, is a 2009 American drama film, directed and co-produced by Lee Daniels. Its script was written by Geoffrey S. Fletcher, adapted from the 1996 novel Push by Sapphire. The film stars Gabourey Sidibe and Mo'Nique, alongside Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, and Lenny Kravitz. This marked the acting debut of Sidibe, who portrays a young woman struggling against poverty and abuse. Filming took place in New York City from October to November 2007.

Precious, then without a distributor, premiered to acclaim at both the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, under its original title of Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire. At Sundance, it won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize for best drama, as well as a Special Jury Prize for supporting actress Mo'Nique. After Precious'''s screening at Sundance in January 2009, Tyler Perry announced that he and Oprah Winfrey would be providing promotional assistance to the film, which was released through Lionsgate Entertainment. Precious won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. The film's title was changed from Push to Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, to avoid confusion with the 2009 action film Push. Precious was also an official selection at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival (particularly the un certain regard section).

Lionsgate gave the film a limited release in North America on November 6, 2009, with an expanded release on November 20. Precious received widespread critical acclaim; the performances of Sidibe and Mo'Nique, the story, and its message were highly praised. The film was a box office success, earning over $63 million on a $10 million budget.Precious received six nominations at the 82nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Daniels, and Best Actress for Sidibe. Mo'Nique won the award for Best Supporting Actress, while Geoffrey Fletcher won for Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the first African-American to win a screenplay award at the Oscars.

Plot
In 1987, 16-year-old Claireece Precious Jones lives in New York City's Harlem neighborhood with her unemployed mother, Mary, who has long subjected her to physical and verbal abuse. Precious has also been raped by her now-absent father, Carl, resulting in two pregnancies. The family resides in a Section 8 tenement and survives on welfare. Precious's first child, a daughter named "Mongo" (short for Mongoloid), has Down syndrome and is being cared for by Precious's grandmother. However, Mary forces the family to pretend that Mongo lives with her and Precious so she can receive extra money from the government. When Precious's second pregnancy is discovered, her junior high principal, Mrs. Lichtenstein, arranges for her to attend an alternative school program called Each One Teach One, where she hopes Precious can change her life's direction. Precious finds a way out of her traumatic daily life by escaping into daydreams in which she is loved and appreciated.

Despite her mother's insistence to get on welfare, Precious goes to the location of the alternative school and enrolls. She meets her new teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, as well as several other girls who all come from troubled backgrounds and are looking to get their GED to advance their educations. Precious's life begins to turn around when she slowly starts to learn to read and write with the help of Ms. Rain and finds herself inspired by her. While she learns, she starts to meet with social worker Ms. Weiss, who learns about the sexual assault in the household when Precious reveals who fathered her children.

One day, while telling a story in class, Precious's water breaks and she is rushed to the hospital. She gives birth to a healthy son named Abdul and is acquainted with a kind nursing assistant named John McFadden. While in the hospital, Precious writes letters to Ms. Rain through her notebook that is taken to and from her by Joann, one of the girls in her class.

Once discharged from the hospital, Precious returns home to find Mary waiting for her. Mary asks to hold Abdul, but purposely drops him before attacking Precious, angrily declaring Precious's revelation about the abuse has resulted in termination of welfare payments. Precious throws her against a wall, retrieves Abdul, and flees the apartment. After falling down the stairs, Precious and Abdul are nearly killed when Mary deliberately tries to drop her television set on them from the top of a stairwell. Precious eventually breaks into her school classroom for shelter. When Ms. Rain discovers Precious and Abdul sleeping the next morning, she frantically calls local shelters looking for a safe place for Precious and Abdul to live, but they end up staying with Ms. Rain and her live-in girlfriend for the holiday. The next morning, Ms. Rain takes Precious and Abdul to find assistance. Precious is able to continue her schooling while raising Abdul in a halfway house.

Mary soon returns to inform Precious of her father's death from AIDS. Precious later learns that she is HIV-positive, though Abdul is not. Feeling dejected, Precious distracts Ms. Weiss and steals her case file from her office. As she shares the details of her file with her fellow students, she begins to hope for the future. Later, Precious meets with her mother, who brings Mongo to Ms. Weiss's office. Ms. Weiss confronts Mary about her and Carl's abuse of Precious, going back to when Precious was a toddler. Mary tearfully confesses that she always hated Precious for "stealing her man" by "letting him" abuse her and for eventually "making him leave." Precious tells Mary that she finally sees her for who she really is and severs ties with her, leaving with both Mongo and Abdul. Mary begs Ms. Weiss to retrieve her daughter and grandchildren, but Ms. Weiss silently walks away, leaving Mary distraught.

Planning to complete a GED test to receive a high-school diploma equivalency, followed by college, Precious walks into the city with her children, ready to start a new life with a brighter future.

Cast
Gabourey Sidibe as Claireece Precious Jones. The film's casting director, Billy Hopkins, found her at an open-call audition held at New York City's Lehman College. Sidibe was chosen over 300 others who auditioned in nationwide casting calls and had no prior acting experience.
Mo'Nique as Mary Lee Johnston, Precious's unemployed, profane, and abusive mother. Mo'Nique and Daniels had previously worked together in Shadowboxer (in which her character was named Precious).
Paula Patton as Ms. Blu Rain, Precious's alternative-school teacher. Patton said that her character teaches Precious to "learn and read and write from the very beginnings, and pushes her to believe in herself, and pushes her to realize that anything is possible." She is a lesbian.
Mariah Carey as Ms. Weiss, Precious's social worker who supports her during her struggles. In September 2008, Carey described her character as "not really a likable person, but she does bring this to the surface." Carey and Daniels had previously worked together on Tennessee. Daniels said that he cast Carey because he was "so impressed" by her performance in Tennessee. According to director Daniels, Helen Mirren, who starred in his previous film Shadowboxer, was originally set to play the part of Ms. Weiss, but obtained a role in a "bigger project."
Sherri Shepherd as Lisa "Cornrows", the receptionist at Each One Teach One
Lenny Kravitz as Nurse John McFadden, a nurse who shows kindness to Precious. This film is Kravitz's feature film acting debut. Later in 2011, he released the song "Push", inspired by the novel and movie.
Nealla Gordon as Mrs. Sondra Lichtenstein, Precious's school principal.
Stephanie Andujar as Rita Romero, a 16-year-old former heroin addict and prostitute, who attends the same alternative school in Harlem as Precious and later befriends her. During Andujar's audition, Daniels was so impressed that he interrupted her dialogue and stated, "I want you in my movie."
Chyna Layne as Rhonda Patrice Johnson, Precious's Jamaican American classmate who is religious
Amina Robinson as Jermaine Hicks, Precious's classmate who hits on Ms. Rain on the first day
Xosha Roquemore as Jo Ann Rogers, Precious's classmate who is a Valley Girl and is in the music business
Aunt Dot as Toosie, Mary's mother and Precious's grandmother who fails to intervene Mary's abuse. Aunt Dot is the real-life aunt of director Lee Daniels.
Angelic Zambrana as Consuelo Montenegro, who attends the same alternative school as Precious and gets into a fight with her after calling her fat.
Quishay Powell as Mongo, Precious's daughter who has Down syndrome.
Grace Hightower as Social Worker, who visits Precious's family.
Kimberly Russell as Katherine, Ms. Rain's partner.
Bill Sage as Mr. Wicher, Precious's math teacher.
Ramona "Sapphire" Lofton (the author of the novel) makes a cameo appearance as a woman at a daycare center near the film's end.
Jamie Foxx as Frank Mason (deleted cameo).
Rodney 'Bear' Jackson as Carl Kenwood Jones, the incestuous father and rapist of Precious, who sexually abuses and impregnates her.

Production
Daniels had said that he was attracted to the initial novel based on how "raw and honest" it felt. In an interview with AMC, he noted that reading the book brought back a memory from his childhood of a young abused girl who knocked on his family's door, claiming that her mom was going to kill her. Daniels recalls that the incident was the first time he saw his mother frightened, specifically noting the helplessness of the situation, and stating "she knew that she'd have to send this little girl home, and that was what disturbed her — that she couldn't save her. She tried to make it easier for her. That's all she could do." In creating the movie, Daniels hoped that the experience would be cathartic and that "maybe I could heal. And maybe I could heal other people, too." Another stated goal Daniels had was to challenge the general public's perception of incest.

The film was co-produced by Daniels's company, Lee Daniels Entertainment, and the Sarah Siegel-Magness and Gary Magness-owned Smokewood Entertainment Group. The two production companies had previously collaborated with Daniels on Tennessee (2008). Precious had, in total, thirteen producers: Daniels, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Heller, Tyler Perry, Lisa Cortes, Gary Magness, Valerie Hoffman, Asger Hussain, Mark G. Mathis, Andrew Sforzini, Bergen Swason, Simone Sheffield and Sarah Siegel-Magness. Initially, Daniels did not expect the movie to generate much buzz, expecting the movie to go straight to video, stating "That it made it to the big screen says there was an angel looking after me." Principal photography began on October 24, 2007 and concluded on November 24, 2007. It took place on location in various parts of New York City. Despite the dark subject matter, Sidibe has stated that the mood on the set was lighthearted, that "Every day was a party" and that the cast would frequently sing and tell jokes to "lighten the atmosphere."  The production budget was $10 million.

After Precious was screened at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival in January, it was picked up for distribution by Lions Gate Entertainment and received promotional assistance from Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions and Tyler Perry's 34th Street Films. Precious was the first theatrical film to be affiliated with Perry's company. In February 2009, Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company filed lawsuits contesting ownership of the rights to release Precious. Both companies claim that they had purchased distribution rights to Precious: The Weinstein Company claimed that they had "secured" their rights while Lionsgate stated that they owned the rights to the film's distribution in North America. Preciouss sales agent Cinetic Media denied Weinstein's claims, stating that they failed to finalize the deal.

Music

Lionsgate, in association with Matriarch/Geffen Records released the soundtrack online as a digital download on November 3, 2009, and in stores on November 23. Daniels confirmed that Mary J. Blige's "I Can See in Color" song would be released as a single from the soundtrack. The song was written by Blige, Raphael Saadiq and LaNeah Menzies and is produced by Raphael Saadiq. The soundtrack consists of various artists (Labelle, Donna Allen, Jean Carn, Sunny Gale, and MFSB); with some artists having recorded songs that were covers and other songs that were recorded specifically for the album. The album received positive praise; mainly the song "I Can See In Color" – which was released as a single – that was recorded and co-written by Blige. The trailer features the song "Destiny" taken from Blige's 2001 album No More Drama. A song titled "My Good Lovin' (Back Like That Remix)", featuring Da Brat and Lil' Mo, was featured in the film but exempted from the soundtrack.

Composer Robin Thicke, then married to the film's costar Paula Patton, wrote and produced "Push", the film's original main theme music. Later announcements confirmed that the song would be replaced by Mary J. Blige's "I Can See In Color". Leona Lewis's song, "Happy" (from her album Echo) is featured in the film's trailer. Daniels stated that the artists featured on the film's soundtrack were selected because they "resonate not only in Precious's world, but speak to your soul no matter who you are." Two other songs, performed decades earlier by Queen Latifah and Mahalia Jackson, were also chosen for the film's soundtrack. The soundtrack features LaBelle (Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, and Patti LaBelle), Donna Allen, Jean Carn, Sunny Gale, and MFSB.People Magazine Daily noted that the film "mainly had a music supervised soundtrack, but not much of a score, so there were popular songs placed in the movie." Peter Travers, of Rolling Stone, described "I Can See In Color" as being "a knockout song...expressing the goal of Precious to see the world in color."

Track listing

ReceptionRolling Stone praised the album, and described the song, "I Can See In Color" as being "...a knockout song...expressing the goal of Precious to see the world in color." Allmusic a majority of the album and its artists. Allmusic described the album as featuring "solid offerings from both contemporary and classic", crediting the contributions from Latifah, Hightower, Jackson and LaBelle, and stated that the album resulted "in a solid and empowering collection that (in the words of [the film's director Lee] Daniels) "resonate not only in Precious's world, but speak to your soul no matter who you are."

Release

MarketingPrecious was screened during the 2009 Sundance Film Festival from January 15, 2009, until January 25 in Park City, Utah. At Sundance, Precious was listed under its original title of Push: Based On The Novel By Sapphire; however, the title was later altered to avoid confusion with another 2009 film entitled Push. Precious appeared in the Un Certain Regard, an award section recognising unique and innovative films, at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in May 2009. At Cannes, the film received a fifteen-minute standing ovation from the audience after the film was screened. Daniels commented that, at first he was "embarrassed" to show Precious at Cannes because he did not want "to exploit black people" and wasn't sure if he "wanted white French people to see our world". After the success at Precious's screenings at Sundance, reporters took note that the film could mirror the success of other films that had been screened and praised at the festival. S. James Snyder, of Time, compared Precious's success at Sundance to that of 2008's The Wrestler and Slumdog Millionaire; both films later were nominated for multiple Academy Awards, and Slumdog itself won Best Picture at the 81st Annual Academy Awards.

Winfrey used her status as both a celebrity and a media personality to give the film what was described by Ben Child of The Guardian, as a "high-profile promotional push." At a press conference Winfrey announced her intention to lead a promotional campaign on behalf of Precious along with her other various platforms, hoping to be able to "bring in different audiences" by promoting the film on her show, in her magazine and on her satellite-radio channel. Katie Walmsley of CNN remarked, based on the film's positive reception at the Toronto Film Festival, that the film "at the very least, the [Toronto] award will guarantee "Precious" substantial distribution, as well as exposure for two-time director Daniels." The trailer for Precious was shown during previews of the film's producer Perry's film I Can Do Bad All By Myself in September 2009.

Box officePrecious was given a limited-theatrical release on November 6, 2009, and was originally scheduled to appear on screens only in North America. During its opening weekend, the film earned $1,872,458, which placed twelfth on that weekend's box office list, despite being in only 18 theaters. The film saw a 214 percent increase in its second week of release, earning $5,874,628 at 174 theaters, which catapulted it up to third place in that weekend's box office, with a per-theater average of $33,762. On November 20, 2009, the film received a wider release, showing at 629 theaters (thus tripling the number of theaters showing the film). In its third week, Precious, as studios had previously estimated, placed sixth at the box office, with the revenues estimated $11,008,000an 87.4% increase from the previous week.

After riding that three-week wave of success, Precious began to see a decrease in box office earnings. Brandon Grey of Box Office Mojo described Precious as having had a "robust expansion" in its second week of release, and he confirmed that the film holds the record for having the second-highest grossing weekend for a movie playing at fewer than 200 sites, behind only Paranormal Activity. Precious grossed a total of $40,320,285 in over six weeks of release. The film opened at ninth place in the United Kingdom, with revenues totaling £259,000 in its opening weekend from a limited release of 47 cinemas, generating a £5,552 screen average.

Home media
The film was released on DVD-Video and Blu-ray Disc formats on March 9, 2010, reaching number one on the top DVD sales chart in the United States with 1.5 million DVDs sold in its first week of release. It also reached the top position on the rental charts for iTunes and Amazon.com.

Reception

Critical responsePrecious received favorable reviews from film critics, particularly for Sidibe's and Mo'Nique's performances. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 92% of 238 critics gave the film a positive review, with a rating average of 7.80/10. The site's consensus is that "Precious is a grim yet ultimately triumphant film about abuse and inner-city life, largely bolstered by exceptional performances from its cast." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from film critics, gave the film a rating score of 79 based on 36 reviews, indicating "Generally favorable reviews".

John Anderson of Variety said "to simply call it harrowing or unsparing doesn't quite cut it," having felt that the film is "courageous and uncompromising, a shaken cocktail of debasement and elation, despair and hope." Anderson cited Carey's performance as "pitch perfect" and Patton's role as Ms. Blu Rain as "disarming." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised Carey's performance, describing it as having been "an authentically deglammed compassion" and praised the film for capturing "how a lost girl rouses herself from the dead" and for Daniels showing "unflinching courage as a filmmaker by going this deep into the pathologies that may still linger in the closets of some impoverished inner-city lives." Gleiberman described the film as being a movie "that makes you think, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' [...] It's a potent and moving experience, because by the end you feel you've witnessed nothing less than the birth of a soul", and felt that the "final scene of revelation" between Sidibe's and Mo'Nique's characters was strong enough to be able to leave viewers "tearful, shaken, [and] dazed with pity and terror." He identified how Daniels uses one of the rich scenes created by Fletcher to position Mo'Nique in a painful confrontation with Sidibe that results in a masterful and thought-provoking performance that delivers the final "push" needed by Sidibe: "The more Precious tries to get away from her mother, the more she's pulled back".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised Mo'Nique and Sidibe's performances. Ebert described Mo'Nique's performance as being "frighteningly convincing" and felt that "the film is a tribute to Sidibe's ability to engage our empathy" because she "completely creates the Precious character." He noted that Carey and Patton "are equal with Sidibe in screen impact." Ebert praised Daniels because, rather than casting the actors for their names, "he was able to see beneath the surface and trust that they had within the emotional resources to play these women, and he was right." Betsey Sharkey, of the Los Angeles Times described the film as being a "rough-cut diamond... [A] rare blend of pure entertainment and dark social commentary, it is a shockingly raw, surprisingly irreverent and absolutely unforgettable story." Claudia Puig of USA Today said that while there are "melodramatic moments" in the film, the cast gives "remarkable performances" to show audiences the film's "inspiring message." Peter Travers, of Rolling Stone called Mo'Nique "dynamite," a performance that "tears at your heart."

Mary Pols of Time praised the film's fantasy sequences for being able to show the audience a "joyous Wizard of Oz energy" that is able to "open the door into Precious's mind in a way even [the author] Sapphire couldn't." Pols felt that, while not implying that the film has "a lack of compelling emotional material" but that the film's "few weak moments" are the "ones that dovetail with typical inspirational stories." Marshall Fine of The Huffington Post praised the film as being "a film that doesn't shy away from the depths to which human beings can sink, but it also shows the strength and resilience of which we are capable, even at our lowest moments." Scott Mendelson, also of The Huffington Post, felt that when you put the "glaring issues aside," the film "still works as a potent character study and a glimpse inside a world we'd rather pretend does not exist in America." But while the film "succeeds as a powerful acting treat and a potent character study, there are some major narrative issues that prevent the film from being an accidental masterpiece." Mendelson described the film as being "an acting powerhouse" based on its many emotional themes.

Critic Jack Mathews wrote: "Without being familiar with the source material, you really have no idea how much work went into the adaptation or how well it was done.... 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire'... First-time screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher did yeoman's work turning Sapphire's graphic, idiomatic novel into a coherent and inspiring story about the journey of an abused Harlem teenager."

Erin Aubry Kaplan wrote on Salon.com that the question posed by the film is how to assess the "hopeless story of a ghetto teen... in the Age of Obama." She went on to say that "'Precious' proves you don't always have to choose between artistic and commercial success; the film's first opening weekend was record-breaking. It's a sign how much we needed to tell this story. And, perhaps, how many stories there are left to tell."

A. O. Scott identified the script's precise use of force and adept use of language, including a memorable line created by Fletcher for the adaptation: a "risky, remarkable film adaptation, written by Geoffrey Fletcher, the facts of Precious's life are also laid out with unsparing force (though not in overly graphic detail). But just as Push achieves an eloquence that makes it far more than a fictional diary of extreme dysfunction, so too does Precious avoid the traps of well-meaning, preachy lower-depths realism. It howls and stammers, but it also sings...Inarticulate and emotionally shut down, her massive body at once a prison and a hiding place, Precious is also perceptive and shrewd, possessed of talents visible only to those who bother to look. At its plainest and most persuasive, her story is that of a writer discovering a voice. 'These people talked like TV stations I didn't even watch,' she remarks of Ms. Rain and her lover (Kimberly Russell), displaying her awakening literary intelligence even as she marvels at the discovery of her ignorance."

Conversely, reflecting the transformation from script to screen, Dana Stevens of Slate disagreed with Gleiberman's suggestion that the "film makes you think" and argued that the film's "eagerness" to "drag" the audience "through the lower depths of human experience" leaves little space for independent "conclusions". Stevens noted that, while the film is about improvement and self-actualization, "it wields an awfully large cudgel", in contrast to Scott's view of balance: "unsparing force (though not in overly graphic detail)". Perhaps sharing Mathews's view regarding the daunting challenge of adapting the harsh story of Push, Stevens observed that "Daniels and Fletcher no doubt intended for their film to lend a voice to the kind of protagonist too often excluded from American movie screens: a poor, black, overweight single mother from the inner city."Precious also received some negative responses from critics. Writing for the New York Press, Armond White compared the film to the landmark but controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) as "demeaning the idea of black American life," calling it "an orgy of prurience" and the "con job of the year." He further characterized the source novel as a relic of 1990s identity politics and noted that the film "casts light-skinned actors as kind [...] and dark-skinned actors as terrors." In two separate articles, writers for The New York Times cited White's article as the most powerful negative review of Precious, adding that in a recent interview he had remarked that the film's popularity is a result of the "fact" that "black pathology sells." Courtland Milloy, of The Washington Post said Precious was "a film of prurient interest that has about as much redeeming social value as a porn flick." David Edelstein, of New York Magazine commented that, while the film has "elements" that are "powerful and shocking," he felt the movie was "programmed", and that the film had "its own study guide." Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York felt that the film did not live up to its "long hype", and felt that it was "bewildering" to discover the film's praise at the Sundance Film Festival, because Uhlich characterized the film as having "shrug-worthiness."
Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian that the film catalogues a "horrendous, unending nightmare of abuse" and then abruptly turns into something resembling the 1980s musical Fame. Bradshaw commended the film's acting and energy, but said it was not quite the "transcendent masterpiece" some had made it out to be. Sukhdev Sandhu wrote in The Daily Telegraph that he found the film "a dispiriting mix of cliché and melodrama," although he acknowledged that Precious does feature some superb acting.

Noting Daniels's admiration of the work of John Waters and Pedro Almodóvar and the joking attitude he and the actors sometimes took towards their material while making the movie, Jim Emerson argued that Precious is best understood as a deliberately over-the-top piece of camp in the vein of Waters's Female Trouble.

AccoladesPrecious received dozens of nominations in award categories, including six Academy Award nominations, not only for the film itself but for the cast's performances, the direction and cinematography, and the adaptation of the novel to the screenplay. Director Lee Daniels won the People's Choice Award, an award given by audience members at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Daniels won both awards for which he was nominated at the San Sebastián International Film Festival—the TVE Otra Mirada Award and the Audience Award. He was also nominated in the category of Bronze Horse at the Stockholm Film Festival, and won the Best Feature Film Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival.Precious received five awards at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards (ISA) in the categories for Best Film, Best First Screenplay, Best Direction, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.Precious received nominations from the 67th Annual Golden Globes for the film and for the performances of Mo'Nique and Sidibe; Mo'Nique won Best Supporting Actress.

The film was nominated in all three major categories at the 2009 Screen Actor Guild Awards: Best Cast, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress (in which Mo'Nique won).Precious was considered for the BAFTA awards in several categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Leading Actress (Sidibe), and Best Supporting Actress (Mo'Nique).

On February 2, 2010, the film received Academy Award nominations at the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actress (Sidibe), Best Supporting Actress (Mo'Nique), Best Director (Daniels), Best Adapted Screenplay (Fletcher), and Best Film Editing (Klotz). On March 7, 2010, Mo'Nique and Fletcher won Academy Awards in their respective categories. The film was also nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for "Outstanding Film – Wide Release" during the 21st GLAAD Media Awards.

See also
 Cinema of the United States
 List of American films of 2009

References

External links

 Precious'' at the TCM Movie Database

 Precious at the Sundance Film Festival website

2009 drama films
2009 independent films
2009 films
American coming-of-age drama films
American independent films
2000s coming-of-age drama films
African-American drama films
BAFTA winners (films)
Down syndrome in film
Films about child sexual abuse
Films about domestic violence
Films about dysfunctional families
Films about educators
Films based on American novels
Films directed by Lee Daniels
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award-winning performance
Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe-winning performance
Films set in 1987
Films set in the 1980s
Films set in Harlem
Films shot in New York City
Films whose writer won the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award
Harpo Productions films
American LGBT-related films
HIV/AIDS in American films
Incest in film
Independent Spirit Award for Best Film winners
Toronto International Film Festival People's Choice Award winners
Lionsgate films
Films about mother–daughter relationships
Teenage pregnancy in film
Films scored by Mario Grigorov
Films about rape
Films about teacher–student relationships
2000s English-language films
2000s American films
Films about disability
Sundance Film Festival award-winning films

Precious (film)


Jane Marcus (1938–2015) was a pioneering feminist literary scholar, specializing in women writers of the Modernist era, but especially in the social and political context of their writings. Focusing on Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, and Nancy Cunard, among many others, she devised groundbreaking analyses of Woolf's writings, upending a generation of criticism that ignored feminist, pacifist, and socialist themes in much of Woolf's work and critique of imperialism and bourgeois society. Marcus's understanding of Woolf's place within the larger context of English literature has become prevailing wisdom today in the fields affected by her theorization and research, despite the controversial nature of her positions when they were originally formulated and how much opposition she garnered from earlier scholars and critics.

Illuminating aspects of their work that had been overlooked or undervalued, Marcus was also an expert and groundbreaking scholar in relation to other key figures of the 20th century, such as Dame Rebecca West, the British composer Ethel Smyth, and Nancy Cunard. During the course of her research on West, Marcus and West became friends in the last years of West's life, and the two shared a passion for women's writings and women's perspectives, as well as for controversy, outspokenness, and original thinking from a feminist perspective. The Jane Marcus Collection is newly housed at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, and includes manuscripts of her books, talks, correspondence and research files. Her correspondence with Rebecca West as well as the poet Adrienne Rich are of particular interest to scholars working in the fields of feminist theory, gender studies, modernism, and women's history, among others.

Education
Jane Marcus did her undergraduate A.B. cum laude in English, 1960, at Radcliffe College, her M.A. at Brandeis University, 1965, and her Ph.D. at Northwestern University, 1973.

Appointments (selected list)
Marcus was a Distinguished Professor of English at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center, CUNY, whose faculty she joined in 1986. Marcus also taught at the University of Texas, Austin and helped found women's studies programs at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Texas. She was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 1993. She was an IRADAC Fellow (Rockefeller) CCNY 2002-2003; March–April 1997, Rockefeller Bellagio Residency, Fall 1996; Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Cassis, France, 1995-6; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Harry Ransome Humanities Research Center, University of Texas (June 1996); 1994-5 Visiting Fellow Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis; Visiting fellow, Clare Hall Cambridge University, 1993-4, Scholar Incentive Award, The City College of New York, 1993 (Spring); Eisner Fellow, CCNY (Strasbourg, France, 1991-3; Coordinator of Women's Studies Certificate Program, CUNY, 1991-1994; 1990 Iris Howard Regents Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Texas.

Personal life
Marcus was of Irish Catholic descent. Born in Vermont, she grew up in the Boston area. She was the mother of Lisa Marcus, Professor of English, Pacific Lutheran University; Jason Marcus; and the novelist Ben Marcus and is portrayed in his book Notable American Women; through him, her daughter-in-law is writer Heidi Julavits. Her husband, Michael Marcus, is a Professor Emeritus at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in the Department of Mathematics.

Works

Books
(ed.) Selected Writings of Caroline Norton, with intro by James Hoge. New York: Scholars' Facsimile Press, 1978.
New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf. London: Macmillan; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981; ppbk 1984.
 The Young Rebecca West: 1911-1917. London: Macmillan/Virago, New York: Viking Press, 1982); ppbk: Virago 1983; Indiana University Press, 1989) (ed.) Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
 (ed.) Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury: A Centenary Celebration. London: Macmillan, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987.Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
(ed.) Suffrage and the Pankhursts. London: Routledge, 1987
 Art and Anger: Reading Like a Woman. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988.Virginia Woolf and Cambridge: The Proper Upkeep of Names. London: Cecil Woolf Publishers, Bloomsbury Heritage Series #11, 1996.
 Hearts of Darkness: White Women Write Race. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

Articles and essays
 'Britannia Rules The Waves' in Decolonizing Tradition: The Cultural Politics of Modern British Literary Canons, Ed. Karen Lawrence. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991; rpt in New Century Views: Virginia Woolf: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Margaret Homans, New York: Prentice Hall 1993; rpt in Virginia Woolf: Critical Assessments, ed. Virginia McNees, London: Helm, 1993.
"Registering Objections: Grounding Feminist Alibis" in Reconfigured Spheres: Feminist Explorations of Literary Space, ed. Margaret Higonnet and Joan Templeton, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994, 171-193.
"Bonding and Bondage: Nancy Cunard and the Making of the Negro Anthology" in Borders, Boundaries and Frameworks (Essays from the English Institute) ed. Mae Henderson, New York: Routledge, 1994, 33-63.
"Wrapped in the Stars and Stripes: Virginia Woolf in the U.S.A.," South Carolina Review, 1996.
"Working Lips, Breaking Hearts: Class Acts in American Culture," SIGNS, Spring, 1997, vol 22 #3, 715-34.
"Post Scriptum...Triste," LitCrit: Journal of the Indian School of Aesthetics 44 & 45, vol 23, 21-33.
"Afterword" to Merry Pawlowski, ed., Virginia Woolf and Fascism. Macmillan 2001, 194-5.
"Nancy Cunard and the Writing of Race in the Spanish Civil War," in Women Write the Thirties, ed. Robin Hackett, Jane Marcus, and Gay Wachman, University of Florida Press, 2004.
Suptionpremises," Negrophilia, Modernism/Modernity, vol 9 #3, 2002, 491-502.
"Amy Lowell, Body and Sou-ell" in Amy Lowell: American Modern, ed. Adrienne Munich and Melissa Bradshaw, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004, 186-197.
 "Rebecca West" for Rediscovering Rebecca West, ed. Bernard Scweizer.

Reviews
 "A Tale of Two Cultures" Review essay covering MFS Woolf Issues, Vita and Virginia by Suzanne Raitt, and the play Vita and Virginia, the Sally Potter film of Orlando and three Woolf conferences, The Women's Review of Books, January 1994, 11-13.
 "An Embarrassment of Riches," Review Essay on Virginia Woolf in new Oxford, Penguin and Blackwell editions of the Works, The Women's Review of Books, March 1994, 17-18.
 "Domestic Interiors: The Art of Dora Carrington," The Women's Review of Books, October, 1994,11-12.
 The World Book Encyclopedia, 1995; entries on Margaret Drabble and Muriel Spark.
 "What I Want for Feminism," in Revisioning Feminism Around the World, Florence Howe, The Feminist Press, 1995, 47.
 Review essay on Woolf and Lessing, SIGNS, 1997.
 Note in Virginia Woolf Miscellany, 1999.
 "Putting Woolf in Her Place," Women's Review of Books, March 2001, 4-5 (with Snaith, Nicolson, Glenny, Light, Peach).
 "Nancy Cunard" Curtis Moffat Portfolio, London: 2001.
 "Nancy Cunard" in new Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, UP, 2003.

Unfinished manuscripts
 A Key to a Room of One's Own. Unfinished manuscript; see, The Jane Marcus Collection, Mount Holyoke College
 White Looks: Modernism, Primitivism and Nancy Cunard. Unfinished; currently being annotated and edited by Jean Mills
 Ethyl SmythDissertation
 Elizabeth Robins: A Biography'', 1973. Northwestern University

References

University of Illinois Chicago faculty
American academics of English literature
City College of New York faculty
Virginia Woolf
American women critics
20th-century British women writers
1938 births
2015 deaths
Northwestern University alumni
Brandeis University alumni
Radcliffe College alumni

Jane Marcus


Leontia (, fl. 610) was an empress of the Eastern Roman Empire as the wife of Phocas.

Empress

Maurice reigned in the Byzantine Empire from 582 to 602. He led a series of Balkan campaigns and managed to successfully re-establish the Danube as a northern border for his state (Limes Moesiae). By Winter 602, his strategic goals included securing control of Pannonia and the area which would later be known as Wallachia. When he decreed that the Byzantine army was to spend the winter of 602/603 on the northern bank of the Danube, the exhausted troops instead mutinied against their emperor.

Phocas would emerge as the leader of the mutinous army during its march to Constantinople. Maurice also faced citywide rioting within the capital due to a famine. He fled the city prior to the arrival of Phocas and his troops.

The Chronicon Paschale gives the chronological account of the rise of Phocas and Leontia to the throne. On 23 November 602, Phocas was crowned emperor by his troops outside the capital. On 25 November, Phocas entered Constantinople and was accepted as emperor by the general populace. He proclaimed chariot races in honor of his elevation and had Leontia escorted to the city as his new Empress. They had already been married for some time.

According to the chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, Leontia was officially crowned an Augusta on 27 November. According to the history of Theophylact Simocatta, the new imperial couple led a procession through the city as per custom. The festive occasion was marked with renewed conflicts between the Blues and Greens, the two major chariot racing clubs. The Blues questioned the legitimacy of the new Emperor by reminding him that Maurice was still alive. Phocas reacted by ordering the execution of Maurice and his sons, which took place before the end of the day.

"The tyrant (Phocas) also had a wife whose name was Leontia; he placed a royal crown on her. Since it is customary for emperors to proclaim their consorts with processions as well, the tyrant openly honoured the custom and decided to lead the queen Leontia in triumph. On this day then, there was a conflict between the factions about their station, since they contested the arrangement of places: for the Greens wanted to take up station in the Ampelion, as it is called (this is a forecourt of the emperor's dwelling), and to serenade the queen with the customary applause, but the Blue faction objected, for they regarded this as contrary to custom and alien. Accordingly, since very great commotion arose, the tyrant sent in Alexander to quell the strife of the disputants".

The only known child of Leontia and Phocas was their daughter Domentzia. She was reportedly named after her paternal grandmother. She was married to Priscus, who served as Comes excubitorum (Commander of the Excubitors).
Theophanes places the marriage in 607. The Chronicles of John of Antioch report this celebration to have initiated hostility between Phocas and his son-in-law. The chariot racing factions honored the occasion by placing images of Phocas, Leontia, Domentzia, and Priscus in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. The images of the reigning imperial couple belonged there by tradition. The latter two images implied that Priscus was the heir or co-emperor of Phocas. Phocas was enraged at the implication and ordered the depictions of his daughter and son-in-law to be destroyed. The incident supposedly caused Priscus to turn against his father-in-law.

Deposition

Phocas was deposed and executed by Heraclius in October, 610. His brothers Domentziolus and Comentiolus were also executed. Whether Leontia was also executed is unknown.

Priscus had supported Heraclius and continued to serve as commander of the Excubitors to 5 December 612. He was then replaced by Nicetas, a first cousin of Heraclius, and forced to take monastic vows. According to the Chronicon Paschale, he died in the Chora monastery in 613. Whether Leontia had further descendants through the marriage of her daughter to Priscus is unknown.

References

External links
- The Page of the Prosopography dealing with Priscus

6th-century births
7th-century deaths
6th-century Byzantine women
7th-century Byzantine empresses
Augustae

Leontia


Æthelwold of Winchester (also Aethelwold and Ethelwold, 904/9 – 984)  was Bishop of Winchester from 963 to 984 and one of the leaders of the tenth-century monastic reform movement in Anglo-Saxon England.

Monastic life had declined to a low ebb in England in the ninth century, partly because of the ravages caused by Viking attacks, and partly because of a preference for secular clergy, who were cheaper and were thought to serve the spiritual needs of the laity better. Kings from Alfred the Great onwards took an interest in the Benedictine rule, but it was only in the middle of the tenth century that kings became ready to commit substantial funds to its support. Æthelwold became the leading propagandist for the monastic reform movement, although he made enemies by his ruthless methods, and he was more extreme in his opposition to secular clergy than his fellow reformers, Saint Dunstan and Oswald of Worcester. He is nevertheless recognised as a key figure in the reform movement, who also made a major contribution to the revival of learning and the arts. He was an important political figure, backing Æthelred the Unready against Edward the Martyr, and playing a major advisory role during Æthelred's minority.

Early life
Æthelwold was born to noble parents in Winchester. From the late 920s he served in a secular capacity at the court of King Athelstan, and according to Æthelwold's biographer, Wulfstan, "he spent a long time in the royal burh there as the king's inseparable companion, learning much from the king's witan that was useful and profitable to him". The king arranged for him to be ordained a priest by Ælfheah the Bald, Bishop of Winchester, on the same day as Saint Dunstan. After a period in the late 930s studying under Ælfheah at Winchester, Æthelwold moved to Glastonbury Abbey, where Dunstan had been made abbot. Here Æthelwold studied grammar, metrics and patristics, subsequently being made dean. During the reign of King Eadred (946–955), Æthelwold wished to travel to Europe to learn more about the monastic life, but Eadred refused permission, and instead appointed him abbot of the former monastic site of Abingdon Abbey, which was then served by secular priests. The years he spent in Abingdon were extremely productive, and he undertook the building of a church, the rebuilding of the cloister and the establishment at Abingdon of the Benedictine Rule.

When Eadred died, he was succeeded by his nephew, Eadwig, who drove Eadred's chief advisor, Dunstan, into exile. However, Æthelwold attended Eadwig's court in at least some of the years of his reign, 955–59. The future King Edgar had been taught from boyhood by Æthelwold, who evidently inspired his pupil to take an interest in the rule of Saint Benedict. When Eadwig died, Æthelwold naturally backed Edgar's succession. He seems to have been in the personal service of King Edgar in 960–963, as he wrote many of the charters of this period.

Bishop of Winchester

On 29 November 963, Æthelwold was consecrated Bishop of Winchester, and the following year, with the connivance of King Edgar and the support of an armed force led by a royal official, he had the clerics of the Winchester Old and New Minsters expelled and replaced by monks from Abingdon. The king had sought the permission of the pope for the expulsion the previous autumn. Between 964 and 971, Æthelwold refounded monasteries at Chertsey, Milton Abbas, Peterborough, Ely and Thorney, and the Nunnaminster nunnery in Winchester. He was also zealous in recovering land which he believed had once belonged to religious communities and subsequently been alienated, and if necessary charters were forged to prove claims to title.

Æthelwold was one of the principal advocates for the Benedictine reform movement during Edgar's reign, the author of all the major works of propaganda produced in England. He had the strong support of Edgar and his wife, Ælfthryth, and his works emphasise the role of Edgar, who he saw as Christ's representative, in restoring the monasteries. He envisaged a major role for Edgar in supervising monasteries, and for Queen Ælthryth supervising Benedictine nunneries. However, he was more extreme in his espousal of monasticism than Dunstan and Oswald, the other great leaders of monasticism in the reign of King Edgar. They followed continental practice in maintaining both monks and secular priests in their households, and did not follow Æthelwold in his dramatic expulsions of secular clerks and replacement by monks. Æthelwold links the terms 'filth' and 'clergy' several times in his writings, regarding them (like other Benedictines) as impure and unfit to serve altars or engage in any form of divine service, because many of them were married and they did not follow a monastic rule.

To Æthelwold's admirers, the epithets "father of monks" and "benevolent bishop" summarize his character as reformer and friend of Christ's poor; though he suffered much from ill-health, his life as scholar, teacher, prelate and Royal counsellor was ever austere, and he was said to be "terrible as a lion" to the rebellious, yet "gentler than a dove" to the meek. He is said to have written a treatise on the circle and to have compiled the "Regularis Concordia".

The Benedictines were greatly superior to the secular clergy in their learning and their schools. Æthelwold personally taught the older pupils at Winchester, and their works show that they regarded him with great respect and affection. His surviving works in both Latin and Old English show that he was a great scholar, and his vernacular writings are believed to have played an important role in the development of Standard Old English. Some of the wealth he accumulated was used to rebuild churches, and he was also a major patron of ecclesiastical art, although unfortunately none of his works survive, and only written accounts remain. The artistic workshops he established continued to be influential after his death, both at home and abroad.

A century later Æthelwold had acquired a great reputation as a goldsmith, and was credited with the production of a range of metal objects at Abingdon, including many figures and objects in precious metal, bells and even a pipe organ.  While his later, disreputable successor at Abingdon Spearhafoc clearly was, like Dunstan, a significant artist, that Wulfstan's contemporary Life of Æthelwold mentions him undertaking other forms of manual work, in the gardens and in building, but nothing about metalwork, suggests this legend was a later elaboration, though one that shows the high status of goldsmithing at the time. Æthelwold was certainly bishop during the period when the Winchester school of manuscript illumination reached its peak, and the most important surviving manuscript of the school, the Benedictional of Saint Æthelwold (British Library), was commissioned by him.  He also rebuilt the Old Minster at Winchester, completed in 980.

Political role
Æthelwold also played an important political role. When the succession became an issue late in Edgar's reign, Æthelwold supported the claim of Æthelred, the son of his major patron, Ælfthryth, whereas Dunstan and Oswald appear to have supported Edgar's son by an earlier wife, Edward the Martyr, who succeeded to the throne. After Edward was murdered in 978, Æthelwold seems to have played a major advisory role in Æthelred's minority. It is significant that it was only after Æthelwold's death in 984 that Æthelred started acting against the interests of some of the reformed monastic houses. One victim was Abingdon Abbey, and in a charter restoring its privileges in 993 the king acknowledged that Æthelwold's passing had deprived the country "of one whose industry and pastoral care ministered not only to my interest but also to that of all the inhabitants of the country."

Death and reputation
Æthelwold died on 1 August 984 at Beddington in Surrey. He was buried in the crypt of the Old Minster at Winchester, but twelve years later Ælfhelm, a citizen of Wallingford, claimed to have been cured of blindness by visiting Æthelwold's tomb. This was taken as the necessary sign for his formal recognition as a saint, and his body was translated from the crypt to the choir. By the 12th century, Abingdon Abbey had acquired an arm and a leg.

One of Æthelwold's pupils, Wulfstan of Winchester, wrote a biography which seems to have played a major role in promoting his cult, and in about 1004 Ælfric, another disciple and abbot of Eynsham, abridged Wulfstan's work in Latin and Old English. However, the Æthelwold of Wulfstan's life inspired respect rather than devotion, and his cult never seems to have achieved great popularity. Wulfstan's saint is a formidable authoritarian, who, for instance, commands a monk to show his devotion by plunging his hand into a pot of boiling stew. He has a reputation for ruthless insensitivity which is not shared by the other tenth-century monastic reformers. His importance to the reform movement has always been appreciated, but the range of his contributions to scholarship has only been recognised in recent years.

Æthelwold's liturgical feast is kept on 1 August.

Citations

Bibliography
Anglo-Saxons.net Charter S567 accessed on 5 September 2007
Barrow, Julia, The Ideology of the Tenth-Century English Benedictine 'Reform''', in Patricia Skinner (ed.), Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter, 2009, Brepols,
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909: St. Ethelwold

Catholic Online Saints and Angels: St. Ethelwold accessed on 5 September 2007

Foot, Sarah (2011) Æthelstan: The First King of England, Yale University Press

Lambertson, Reader Isaac. Commemoration of Our Father among the Saints Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester
Walsh, Michael A New Dictionary of Saints: East and West London: Burns & Oates 2007
Wulfstan of Winchester (1991), Life of St. Æthelwold, Lapidge, M. & Winterbottom, M. (ed. and trans.), OUP
Yorke, Barbara, Æthelwold, Online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004

Further reading
 (an abbreviation of Wulfstan's Life'')

Æthelwold of Winchester, The Old English Rule of St. Benedict with Related Old English Texts, translated by Jacob Riyeff (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2017)

External links

900s births
984 deaths
Year of birth uncertain
Abbots of Abingdon
Anglo-Saxon saints
Bishops of Winchester
10th-century English bishops
10th-century Christian saints
10th-century writers in Latin
10th-century English writers
Eastern Orthodox saints
Anglican saints

Æthelwold of Winchester


Lt. Colonel Jhr.
Bodo Sandberg (September 23, 1914 – May 2, 2005) was a fighter pilot in the Royal Netherlands Air Force and 'Engelandvaarder' during World War II. He was awarded the Cross of Merit and the Airman's Cross for his bravery during the German invasion of May 1940.

Biography

Bodo Sandberg was born in Rotterdam on September 23, 1914. From early childhood he wanted to fly so much that, at the age of 16, he built his own airplane. He had no money for an engine so he built himself a glider. When he finished it, a friendly pilot in an old bi-plane on a local airfield pulled him up in the air and he flew.

In those early days, if someone wanted to fly they had to join the Air Force. And so he did.

On August 26, 1939, Sandberg made history in Dutch aviation: he made the first successful belly landing.

On May 13, 1940, three days after the Germans had invaded the Netherlands, Sandberg was called into action. Because the Nazis had destroyed almost all the planes of the Dutch Air Force, Sandberg had to fly one of the few Fokker G-I fighters that were still airworthy. Along with one other G-1 fighter, he had to protect the last Dutch bomber, a Fokker T-5, against a deluge of German Messerschmitt aircraft. The small squadron's task was to bomb the Moerdijkbruggen (Moerdijk bridges), the Netherlands' largest bridges over the wide estuary of the Haringvliet, to hold back the German invasion. Just beyond Dordrecht, the squadron was attacked by nine Messerschmitt fighters, three of which attacked the T-5. The other six split up and attacked the two G-1s. The T5 went down in flames and crashed in the Grienden along the Noord, near Ridderkerk. The other G-1 was also shot down and crashed in a polder at Nieuw-Lekkerland. Pilot Sgt. Paul Schoute perished in the violently burning wreck. Hans Lindner was thrown out of the plane and ended up against the verge of a waterway with his leg shot off. His hair still burning. Someone rushed to help him, extinguished it with water from the canal, but he died shortly thereafter. Shot by the machine guns from the Messerschmits, Sandberg was bleeding from bullet holes in his leather pilot's jacket, but he found a cloud in which he escaped from the German attackers. He managed to keep his damaged plane in the air long enough to find a highway near the Hague where he could make an emergency landing. It was a close call but Sandberg and his crewmman V. D. Breemer survived this mission. They were the only two.

Escape to England and fighting on two fronts
Immediately after the German invasion Sandberg tried to escape from the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to reach England to continue his fight against the invaders.

His first attempt was with four others (Ch. A. den Hoed, G. Reels, E.A. Plate and J. Versteegh). On their way through Belgium, France and Spain to Portugal (from where they could fly to England), they made it as far as Poligny, just east of Paris, but there they were betrayed and arrested. They ended up in a German prisoner-of-war camp outside Lyon. However, they escaped by stealing the camp commander's car. They were starved and sick, but all five made it back to the Netherlands.

Sandberg did not give up and made a second attempt. This time he escaped from the Netherlands with three fellow fighter pilots from the Dutch Air Force, Jan Bosch, Faam Janssens and A. C. H. Kanters, and this time they made it to England.

From England Bodo was sent to the US where in 1944 he trained on American fighters (the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk) at the Royal Netherlands Military Flying-School in Jackson, Mississippi. After completing his training, he was sent to Australia and New Guinea in the South Pacific, where he fought against the Japanese.

As the Second World War was entering its final phase, Bodo Sandberg came home to the Netherlands from the US, Australia and New Guinea, albeit for a fleeting moment, as he was sent out into action again, this time to Dutch Indonesia, Singapore and Ceylon (now Malaysia). In February 1946 he flew from Batavia (now Jarakrta) via Singapore to Penang, where he worked with Peter Tazelaar, one of the Netherlands' most heroic resistance fighters and fellow "Engelandvaarder".

In 1947 Bodo was awarded the "Ereteken voor Orde en Vrede 1947" for his contributions to the Netherlands' efforts to re-establish peace and order in Dutch-Indonesia after the Japanese capitulation.

Jhr. Bodo Sandberg lived to be 90, dying on May 2, 2005, in Bentveld, Netherlands.

Sandberg was awarded the Cross of Merit and the Airman's Cross, both Knight's Orders, by H.R.H. Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands.

After the war
After the war, Bodo stayed active in the Dutch Air Force as a fighter pilot and flight instructor. He commanded a squadron of Supermarine Spitfires at Dutch Air Force Base Soesterberg. After Sandberg was injured in a crash with a Spitfire at Soesterberg, he became Air Attaché for the four Nordic countries in the Dutch Embassy in Oslo, Norway. Sandberg completed his more than 30 year Air Force career as commander of Dutch Air Force Base Ypenburg.

Private life
Sandberg married Catharina Elisabeth (Lies) Sandberg-Brugsma in Haarlem, the Netherlands, on November 23, 1939.

They had two sons, Jhr. Steven W.H. Sandberg (Haarlem, August 25, 1940 – Aerdenhout, March 18, 2016) and Jhr. Job B.B. Sandberg (Job Sandberg), Haarlem, March 23, 1946.

Military and Knight's Orders

Sandberg's awards: On the left side, two pilot wings of the Royal Dutch Air Force, a Pilot-Observer-wing of the ML-KNIL, and an embroidered Pilot-Observer-wing of MLD-model.
 Commander of the Royal Order of St. Olav
 Airman's Cross, 1941 (For: "Netherlands, May 10–14, 1940, attack on the Moerdijk bridges")
 Cross of Merit (Netherlands), 1941
 Oorlogsherinneringskruis with two stars 1941
 Ereteken voor Orde en Vrede 1947
 Distinction of Honor for Long Term Service as Officer, with number 30
 Royal Order of the Sword (Sweden)

References

External links
 The Story of Bodo Sandberg

Royal Netherlands Air Force officers
1914 births
2005 deaths
Royal Netherlands Air Force personnel of World War II
Royal Netherlands Air Force pilots
Recipients of the Order of the Sword
Recipients of the Airman's Cross
Recipients of the Cross of Merit (Netherlands)
Military personnel from Rotterdam

Bodo Sandberg


Boulevard Park was a ballpark located in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. It served as the home park of the Worcester Busters, Worcester Boosters and Worcester Panthers. It lasted approximately two decades, opening on April 19, 1906, and burning in 1926. The capacity of the ballpark was 3,500.

The field was located near the intersection of Shrewsbury Street and Casco Street, just east of Union Station. The location is now occupied by a shopping plaza.

References

Sports venues in Worcester, Massachusetts
Baseball in Worcester, Massachusetts

Boulevard Park (Worcester, Massachusetts)


Howard Leroy Vickery (April 20, 1892 – March 21, 1946) was a decorated U.S. naval officer with the rank of Vice admiral. He was renowned merchant shipbuilder and served as Vice Chairman, U.S. Maritime Commission during World War II.

Early life and career
Vickery was born in Bellevue, Ohio to Willis Vickery and Anna Louise Schneider.  He went to public schools and later attended East High School in Cleveland.  He took the entrance examination for the United States Naval Academy in 1910 but failed.  He made another attempt the following year and passed.  In 1915 he took a B. S. degree from Annapolis and was appointed an ensign in the United States Navy.  Though Vickery had hoped to go to Asia, he was instead assigned to Boston.  There he met Marguerite Blanchard, whom he married in 1917.  Shortly prior to his marriage was the start of World War I, and a few days after the wedding he left for sea on a ship to France to guard the first convoy there.  He had earned two stripes on his sleeve by the end of the war, as well as being able to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  In 1921 he received an M. Sc. degree from there.  By the next year he was made a supervisor of submarine construction for the United States Navy superintendent constructor's office in San Francisco.  Alongside this, from 1921 to 1925 he acted as the Boston Navy Yard's docking and outside superintendent.

Vickery left these positions in 1925 when he was sent to work as a treaty engineer for the Haitian Government.  He stayed in Haiti for the next three years before returning to the United States.  He stayed in Washington, D.C. as a member of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, but the next year in 1929, a requested to be transferred to Panama.  There he was made technical adviser on shipping to the Governor General of the Philippines.  During this time he left for Germany to see the construction of the Philippine ships.  There he was able to witness the rebuilding of the German navy.  He returned to the Bureau of Construction and Repair in 1934, this time as head of the secret War Plans Section of the Design Branch.  He also took graduate courses at the Army Industrial College the same year.  One of Vickery's first jobs was the investigation of the SS Morro Castle disaster.  The report that was presented after a year of work by him and his subordinates made dramatic reforms to shipbuilding by calling for many new safety features in ships.

During World War II
Vickery was an assistant to Emory S. Land, chairman of the United States Maritime Commission, between 1937 and 1940.  Land oversaw all shipbuilding, design, and construction work for the United States Merchant Marine.  Together the two were described as "one of the most remarkable combinations in Washington", and played a critical role in the foundation of the United States Merchant Marine Academy.  By 1940 he was made a full member of Maritime Commission by President Roosevelt.  There was much demand for shipbuilders at this time, including a request from a British commission to use American shipyards to build British freighters.  Due to the shortage, Vickery hired Henry J. Kaiser as one of his shipbuilding experts, despite many advising against it. Vickery was appointed vice-chairman of the United States Maritime Commission and deputy administrator of the War Shipping Administration by 1942.  Roosevelt asked that he produce 8,000,000 tons of shipping during 1942, and gave him enough steel and his choice of shipyards and shipbuilders.  Vickery delivered on this order, and by July could declare that more new ships had been produced than had sunk since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Admiral Vickery was responsible for vessel construction programs of the Commission commencing with the early Long Range Program to build 500 new merchant vessels in 10 years and then the much larger Emergency Shipbuilding program of World War II where under his leadership close to 6000 ships were built in only five years for the war effort. At its peak in 1943 there were over 650,000 men and women employed in shipyards on all coasts and the Great Lakes building ships for the commission.  Without the tremendous feats of production accomplished by the Emergency Program the lifeline to Great Britain may have been severed by Germany's U-Boat offensive and the ability for U.S. forces to project their newfound military power across both Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would have been severely diminished.

A man with an amazing ability to retain information about shipyards and the vessels being built during the war, Vickery was tireless in his efforts to stay on top of the program.  The strain of which eventually brought about a serious heart attack on September 25, 1944 which required him to be bedridden until early 1945 when he resumed his duties.  His health never fully recovered, Admiral Vickery was granted retirement from the Navy in October 1945 and ended his duties at the Maritime Commission on December 31. By then, the phenomenal construction program of World War II was completed and both ships and shipyards were being liquidated as surplus to postwar requirements. For his service with the Maritime Commission, Vickery was decorated with Navy Distinguished Service Medal.

Vice admiral Howard L. Vickery died of heart attack on March 21, 1946, aged 53, in Palm Springs, California. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. He was survived by his wife Marguerite Blanchard Vickery (1892–1974) and their two children, a daughter Barbara Vickery Bowie (1923–2002) and a son Hugh Blanchard Vickery (1919–2001), who retired from the Navy as Commander.

Vickery Gate, the main public entrance and security facility at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York is named in his honor. He was also appointed posthumously Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his service for the allied cause.

Decorations

References

External links
 Arlington National Cemetery

1892 births
1946 deaths
People from Bellevue, Ohio
United States Naval Academy alumni
United States Navy admirals
American shipbuilders
United States Navy personnel of World War I
United States Navy World War II admirals
Recipients of the Navy Distinguished Service Medal
Honorary Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Burials at Arlington National Cemetery

Howard L. Vickery


In chemistry and physics, the atomic theory explains how our understanding of the atom has changed over time. Atoms were once thought to be the smallest pieces of matter. However, it is now known that atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. These subatomic particles are made of quarks. The first idea of the atom came from the Greek philosopher Democritus. A lot of the ideas in the modern theory came from John Dalton, a British chemist and physicist.

The theory applies to solids, liquids and gases. It does not apply in the same way to plasmas or neutron stars.

Democritus' atomic theory

Democritus thought that if you cut something in half again and again, you would at last have to stop. He said that this last piece of matter could not be cut any smaller. Democritus called these small pieces of matter atoms, which means "indivisible". He thought that atoms would last forever, never change and could not be destroyed. Democritus thought that there was nothing between the atoms and that everything around us could be explained if we could understand how atoms worked.

Some other philosophers agreed, and others disagreed. They had no way to experiment to show whether his theory was true or not.

Boscovich's atomic theory
In 1758, Roger Joseph Boscovich described a precursor of the atomic theory.

Dalton's atomic theory
In 1803, the English scientist John Dalton reworked Democritus' theory, as follows:

 All matter is formed of atoms.
 That atoms are indivisible and invisible particles.
 That atoms of the same element are of the same type and mass.
 The atoms that make chemical compounds are present in set proportions.
 Chemical changes correspond to a reorganisation of the atoms taking part in the chemical reaction.

Dalton defined the atom as the basic unit of an element that can take part in a chemical combination. Dalton and another chemist, Joseph Proust had discovered two laws: the law of definite composition and the law of multiple proportions. They discovered these laws when they measured how elements combined into compounds. These were the basis for Dalton's theory.

The law of definite composition says that the masses of elements that join to form a compound are always in the same ratio, or proportions.
The law of multiple proportions says that when two chemical elements combine with each other to form more than one compound, the masses of one element that combine with a fixed mass of the other are in a ratio of small whole numbers.

Together, these were good evidence that atoms existed.

Thomson's atomic model

In 1850, Sir William Crookes constructed a 'discharge tube', that is a glass tube with the air removed and metallic electrodes at its ends, connected to a high-voltage source. When creating a vacuum in the tube, a light discharge can be seen that goes from the cathode (negatively-charged electrode) to the anode (positively-charged electrode). Crookes named the emission 'cathode rays'.

After the cathode ray experiments, Sir Joseph John Thomson established that the emitted ray was formed by negative charges, because they were attracted by the positive pole. Thomson knew that the atoms were electrically neutral. He established that, for this to occur, an atom should have the same quantity of negative and positive charges. The negative charges were named electrons (e-).

According to the assumptions established about the atom's neutral charge, Thomson proposed the first atomic model. It was described as a positively-charged sphere in which the electrons were inlaid (with negative charges). It is known as the plum pudding model.

In 1906, Robert Millikan determined that the electrons had a Coulomb (C) charge of -1.6 * 10−19. This allowed calculation of its mass as tiny, equal to 9.109 * 10−31 kg.

In the same time, experiments by Eugene Goldstein in 1886 with cathode discharge tubes allowed him to establish that the positive charges had a mass of 1.6726 * 10−27 kg and an electrical charge of +1,6 * 10 −19 C. Lord Ernest Rutherford later named these positively charged particles protons

Rutherford's atomic model

In 1910, the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford put forward the idea that the positive charges of the atom were found mostly in its center, in the nucleus, and the electrons (e-) moved around it.

Rutherford showed this when he used an alpha radiation source (from helium) to hit the very thin gold sheets, surrounded by a Zinc sulphide lampshade that produced visible light when hit by alpha emissions. This experiment was called the Geiger–Marsden experiment or the Gold Foil Experiment.

By this stage the main parts of the atom were clear. It was known that atoms of an element may occur in isotopes. Isotopes vary in the number of neutrons present in the nucleus. Although this model was well understood, modern physics has developed further. Present-day ideas cannot be made easy to understand. Some idea of present-day atomic physics can be found in the links in the table below.

Modern physics
Atoms are <u/l>not</u/l> elementary particles, because they are made of subatomic particles like protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are also not elementary particles. They are made of even smaller particles called quarks joined together by other particles called gluons (because they "glue" the quarks together in the atom). Quarks are elementary because quarks cannot be broken down any further.

References

Nuclear physics
Chemistry

Atomic theory


King's Wood is an area of ancient woodland in the parish of Heath and Reach in Bedfordshire, England.  The wood lies north of the village of Heath and Reach and east of Great Brickhill and with neighboring Bakers Wood forms the largest area of ancient woodland in Bedfordshire. Much of the wood lies within Kings Wood and Rushmere National Nature Reserve, jointly owned and managed by the Greensand Trust, Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, Central Bedfordshire Council and Tarmac Aggregates. Kings Wood and many parts of the National Nature Reserve are part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest named Kings and Bakers Woods and Heaths, which also includes Rammamere Heath in Buckinghamshire and Shire Oak Heath in Bedfordshire.

References

See also
List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Bedfordshire
List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Buckinghamshire
List of Ancient Woods in England
National nature reserves in Bedfordshire

National nature reserves in England
Ancient woods in England

King's Wood, Heath and Reach


A blucher ( or , , ) is a style of shoe with open lacing, its vamp made of a single piece of leather ("one cut"), with shoelace eyelets tabs sewn on top.

The blucher is similar to a derby since both feature open lacing, in contrast to the Oxford shoe, which uses closed lacing. However, in the derby, the upper has large quarters with eyelets sewn on top, and in the blucher, the upper is made of one cut, with only the small eyelet tabs sewn on top. In American English, the terms are sometimes confused, with "blucher" also being used to refer to derby shoes and "Oxford" also being used to refer to bluchers.

The blucher is named after the 18th-century Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, who commissioned a boot with side pieces lapped over the front in an effort to provide his troops with improved footwear. The design was adopted by armies across Europe.

References

Shoes

Blucher shoe


The olfactory system is the sensory system used for olfaction or the sense of smell.

Most mammals and reptiles have two parts to their olfactory system.
There is a main olfactory system, which detects volatile, airborne substances.
There is secondary, or accessory, system. The accessory olfactory system senses fluid-based stimuli. Behavioral evidence indicates that most often, the stimuli detected by the accessory olfactory system are pheromones.

The olfactory system is often spoken as being similar to the gustatory system (taste system). Both are chemosensory senses. They change chemical signals into nerve impulses, which are translated into perceptions in the brain.

The part of the brain which deals with olfaction is the rhinencephalon, a small part in the human brain, but much more important in other vertebrates. The piriform cortex is probably the area most closely associated with identifying the odor. The medial amygdala is involved in social functions such as mating and recognising animals of the same species. The entorhinal cortex pairs odors with memories. The exact functions of these higher areas is still being researched.

Linda B. Buck and Richard Axel won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on the olfactory system.  By analyzing rat DNA, they estimated that there were about one thousand different genes for olfactory receptors in the mammalian genome.

Damage
Damage to the olfactory system can happen through brain injury, cancer or toxic gases. The damage is usually measured by doctors giving the patient something to smell and having the patient try to guess what it is.

Related pages
Olfaction

References

Sensory system

Olfactory system


Women's Rights National Historical Park (est.1980) consists of four historical properties in Seneca Falls and Waterloo, New York. These properties are important to women's rights. They are the Wesleyan Chapel (the site of the first Women's Rights Convention); the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House; the M'Clintock House; and the Richard Hunt House. The park consists of 6.83 acres (27,600 m²). It includes a visitor center and an education and cultural center.

The Votes For Women History Trail (est. 2009) is administered through the Park. It is a motor vehicle route of sites in upstate New York important to women's rights. Sites include the Susan B. Anthony House; the Mount Hope Cemetery; Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell Childhood Home; the M'Clintock House; and The Women's Rights National Historic Park itself.

Gallery

Other websites
 Women's Rights National Historic Park

National Historical Parks of the United States

Women's Rights National Historical Park


Calfee Park is a stadium in Pulaski, Virginia, United States. It is primarily used for baseball, and is the home ballpark of the Pulaski River Turtles in the Appalachian League, a summer collegiate baseball league. It was built in 1935 as a Works Progress Administration project, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Calfee Park was named after the mayor of Pulaski in 1935, Ernest W. Calfee. It holds approximately 3,200 people. Calfee Park is owned and operated by David Hagan and Larry Shelor, owners of Shelor Motor Mile. Calfee Park was voted the best rookie-level ballpark in America in 2019 and 2020 by a fan vote in Ballpark Digest's annual Best of the Ballparks competition.

The park is set off of U.S. Route 11 in a valley within a residential neighborhood. As a result, a number of houses that surround the park have good views of games. The park had major renovations prior to the 1999 season, with a new grandstand behind the plate and along the first-base side as well as "open-air suites" (railed-in areas with picnic tables) farther down on the first-base line. A new scoreboard was also installed.

After the Shelor ownership group purchased Calfee Park from the Town of Pulaski in 2015, over $9 million in renovations were made to the historic park. The park has received a new press box and VIP towers, renovated home clubhouse, new visiting clubhouse, a jumbotron, 18 additional outdoor suites, new concession stand, upgraded souvenirs, additional general admission seating, upgraded padded club seating, renovated ticket offices, and several additional parking lots. Additional renovations since the 2015 season have included a picnic pavilion, three-tiered party deck in left field, and walk-in retail store.

Renovations
 Opened in 1935
 In 1999 the area behind homeplate was renovated, adding individual seats that are sold as reserved seats. There was a fairly large grandstand added to the first base side stretching from homeplate to first base. "open air suites" stretch down the first base line right along the field, past the dugout there is a deck that is sectioned off and used as box seating. There are 13 boxes stretching down the right side of the field. There was a new Concession stand and home clubhouse added in as well.
 In 2009, the town added a 14th box behind homeplate and above the general admission seating. The box looks directly down the first base line. Views of left field are somewhat obstructed when in the "sky box" because of the roof above the old grandstands. Earlier in 2009 there was a new indoor facility constructed on site. It showcases two hitting tunnels that can also be used for pitching work.
 The New York Yankees and the new owners of the Park announced on Sept. 9, 2014 the plan for over $3.5 million of improvements to the park for the 2015 season. The Yankees replaced the Mariners in Pulaski for 2015.
 In July 2018, the Pulaski Yankees announced upcoming renovations to include the addition of approximately 675 seats and a new upper concourse along the third baseline featuring a new concession stand, additional restrooms, and a rooftop "party deck" area. The renovations will bring the main concourse sections to the same level with the new concourse providing access from one end of the park to the other.
 Prior to the 2019 season, the Pulaski Yankees added a new concourse along the third-base line, a three-tiered party deck in left field, and a walk-in retail store. The party deck was named the Best Ballpark Improvement (under $1 million) by Ballpark Digest.

References

External links
 Ballparkreviews.com – Calfee Park
 Charlie's Big Baseball Parks – Calfee Park
 Calfee Park Views – Ball Parks of the Minor Leagues
 Stadium Journey Reviews – Calfee Park

Event venues on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia
National Register of Historic Places in Pulaski County, Virginia
Sports venues completed in 1935
Baseball venues in Virginia
Minor league baseball venues
Buildings and structures in Pulaski County, Virginia
Works Progress Administration in Virginia
Sports venues on the National Register of Historic Places
1935 establishments in Virginia
Pulaski, Virginia

Calfee Park