The National Assembly of Armenia (, Hayastani Hanrapetyut'yan Azgayin zhoghov or simply Ազգային ժողով, ԱԺ Azgayin Zhoghov, AZh), also informally referred to as the Parliament of Armenia (խորհրդարան, khorhrdaran) is the legislative branch of the government of Armenia.

Overview
The National Assembly was originally established in 1918 as the Khorhurd () by the Armenian National Council following their declaration of independence. Acting as the nation's provisional legislative body, the Armenian National Council tripled its membership, forming an interim coalition government composed of Dashnaks and Populists.

Following the Armenian parliamentary elections of 1919, the National Assembly's membership increased again up to 80 deputies including several minority representatives. The Khorhurd continued to function with an overwhelming Dashnak majority through four Prime Ministers in the span of two years, until the Sovietisation of Armenia in 1920.

From 1938, the National Assembly of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was referred to as the Supreme Council of Armenia. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the adoption of the new Constitution of Armenia in 1995, the formation of the current National Assembly was established.

The National Assembly is a unicameral body. The National Assembly consists of at least 101 seats, but with additional seats allocated, it may grow and reach to about 200 seats in extremely rare cases. The President of the National Assembly is Alen Simonyan.

Electoral system

After electoral system amendments introduced in April 2021 members of parliament are elected only through closed party lists by party list proportional representation method.

Four mandates are reserved for national minorities, provided they are included in corresponding section of party lists.  Any top segment of a party list can not include over 70% of representatives of the same sex.

Parties need to pass 5% of votes and alliances (blocs) 7% threshold respectively to be included in mandate distribution.

By law, parliament must have at least 3 political forces present, even if one or more of them did not pass the electoral threshold. In this case, the sheer percentage decides which party enters parliament, regardless of whether it is a party or a bloc.

If neither party wins over 50% of mandates in the first round and no coalition with sufficient mandates is established within 6 days after the election results announcement a second round of elections will be carried out on 28th day of the first round voting. Two best-performing political forces are allowed to participate in the second round. All mandates received as per first round will be preserved. The party (or a newly formed coalition) which wins second round of elections will be given additional number of mandates to reach 54% of all seats (provided the newly formed coalition does not already have over 54% of mandates from the results of the first round).

If any party or bloc wins over 2/3 of mandates sufficient additional mandates are distributed among all other political forces represented in the parliament to ensure that at least 1/3 of all seats are held by forces other than the winning one.

Since the requirement of assignment of 1/3 of all mandates to non-ruling parties is stipulated by the Constitution some argue, that when withdrawal of oppositional MPs leads to violation of that rule the ruling party shall be forced to call new snap elections.  This is however not a consensus opinion and probably shall be dealt with in Constitutional Court.

Historically, significant share of cast votes (1995: 12.8%, 1999: 18.6%, 2003: 24.0%, 2007: 24.7%, 2012: 1.6%, 2017: 9.1%,  2018: 14.9%, 2021: 19.8%) fell below election threshold and was disregarded in mandate distribution.

Representatives

Speakers of the Parliament of the First Republic of Armenia (1918–1920)
Avetik Sahakyan 1 August 1918 – 1 August 1919
Avetis Aharonyan 1 August 1919 – 4 November 1920
Hovhannes Kajaznuni 4 November 1920 – 2 December 1920

Chairmen of the Supreme Council (1990–1995)
Levon Ter-Petrosyan 4 August 1990 – 11 November 1991
Babken Ararktsyan 24 December 1991 – 27 July 1995

Presidents of the National Assembly (1995–)

Babken Ararktsyan 27 July 1995 – 4 February 1998
Khosrov Harutyunyan 4 February 1998 – 11 June 1999
Karen Demirchyan 11 June 1999 – 27 October 1999
Armen Khachatryan 2 November 1999 – 12 June 2003
Artur Baghdasaryan 12 June 2003 – 1 June 2006
Tigran Torosyan 1 June 2006 – 26 September 2008
Hrayr Karapetyan (acting) 26 September 2008 – 29 September 2008
Hovik Abrahamyan 28 September 2008 – 21 November 2011
Samvel Nikoyan 6 December 2011 – 31 May 2012
Hovik Abrahamyan 31 May 2012 – 13 April 2014
Galust Sahakyan 29 April 2014 – 18 May 2017
Ara Babloyan 18 May 2017 – 14 January 2019
Ararat Mirzoyan 14 January 2019 – 2 August 2021
Alen Simonyan 2 August 2021 – present

Vice-Presidents of the National Assembly
Babken Ararktsyan 1990 – 1991
Gagik Harutyunyan 1990 – 1991
Ara Sahakian 1991 – 1998
Artashes Tumanyan 1991 – 1995
Karapet Rubinyan 1995 – 1998
Albert Bazeyan 1998 – 1999
Yuri Bakhshyan 1998 – 1999
Ruben Miroyan 1999
Gagik Aslanian 1999 – 2003
Tigran Torosyan 1999 – 2006
Vahan Hovhannisyan 2003 – 2008
Ishkhan Zakarian 2007
Arevik Petrosyan 2007 – 2010
Hrayr Karapetyan 2008 – 2009
Samvel Nikoyan 2009 – 2012
Samvel Balasanyan 2010 – 2012
Hermine Naghdalyan 2012 – 2017
Eduard Sharmazanov 2011 – 2019
Arpine Hovhannisyan 2017 – 2019
Mikayel Melkumyan 2017 – 2019
Alen Simonyan 2019 – 2021
Lena Nazaryan 2019 – 2021
Vahe Enfiajyan 2019 – 2021
 Ruben Rubinyan 2021 – present
 Hakob Arshakyan 2021 – present

Latest election

Current political representation in the National Assembly following the 2021 Armenian parliamentary election:

Committees

Standing Committees
The National Assembly has eleven standing committees:
 Standing Committee on Defense and Security
 Standing Committee on Economic Affairs
 Standing Committee on European Integration
 Standing Committee on Financial and Budgeting Affairs
 Standing Committee on Foreign Relations
 Standing Committee on Health Care and Social Affairs
 Standing Committee on Human Rights and Public Affairs
Standing Committee on Science, Education, Culture, Diaspora, Youth and Sport
 Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs
 Standing Committee on Territorial Administration, Local Self-Government, Agriculture and Environment
Standing Committee on Territorial Integration

Changes according to the Constitutional Reform of 2015
According to the new constitution of Armenia (2015 Constitutional Reforms), the functions of committees previously defined as ad hoc committees are divided into temporary and inquiry committees. As stated in article 107 of the new Constitution, temporary committees may be developed only by the decision of the National Assembly to discuss certain draft laws and acts of the National Assembly and present views or statements connected to the National Assembly.

Article 108 is about the inquiry committees of the National Assembly.

1. The inquiry committee should be formed if at least the twenty-five percent of the total number of parliamentarians present the demand, in order to acquaint facts of public interests to the National Assembly.

2. The National Assembly regulates the number of members of an inquiry committee. The places of the inquiry committees should be proportional to the number of faction's members. The chair of the committee should be the member of the parliament who presented a request.

3. If minimum one-quarter of an inquiry committee demands; state, local self-government bodies and officials are compelled to introduce to the committee required information regarding its remit, if the information is not classified as secrets protected by law.

All the other regulations concerning temporary and inquiry committee should be established by the Law on Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly.

Concerns relating to the ad hoc committees and the international experience

According to the latest Constitutional Reforms Armenia will have a parliamentary state governance system. This means that compared to the semi-presidential system the powers of the Parliament will be enhanced, an example of this is the right of oversight of the executive power of the republic which is and will be exercised by the Government (as of article 85 of the current and article 145 the new Constitutions). So, the Parliament will have more powers and functions; therefore, it needs more tools to exercise these powers and perform its functions. An inquiry committee is a great tool for the parliament to exercise oversight and that is why according to articles 107 and 108 of the new Constitution there is a differentiation between temporary and inquiry committees.

However, in late 2015, there was a concern relating to the powers of these committees as prescribed by the article 108 of the new Constitution. Edmon Marukyan, the only non-party Deputy of the National Assembly of Armenia, suggested an addendum to the point 3 of article 108. According to him, the addendum should prescribe that the inquiry committees should be empowered to demand state and local self-government body officials to be present in the sittings of the committees and provide relevant explanations.
The improvement was suggested for the first time on 11 September 2015, during the session of the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs of the National Assembly. By then, the suggestion received a positive feedback and the committee members stated that it could be approved on the constitutional level. However, the decision on the official proposal to the National Assembly was to include the addendum in the rules of procedure of the NA rather than in the Constitution.

The international experience shows that giving such powers to inquiry committees is a common thing. Point 7 of rule 176 of the Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament states that "A committee of inquiry may contact the institutions or persons referred to in Article 3 of the Decision referred to in paragraph 2 with a view to holding a hearing or obtaining documents."
Even though it was prescribed neither by the Constitution nor the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly that temporary committees have the power to hold a hearing with the presence of state and local self-government body officials, there was such a case when the committee held a closed-door hearing. On 23 October 2008 with the order of the President of Armenia, a temporary committee of experts was formed on obtaining facts and evidence on the incidents of 1 March 2008. So as to gain the necessary information the committee was given the tools typical to a real parliamentarian inquiry committee.

Ad hoc committees as prescribed by the Constitution and Laws

Ad hoc committees are special temporary committees established by the decision of the National Assembly to discuss certain draft laws, or investigate certain issues, events or facts and to submit conclusions to the National Assembly. The aim of these committees is to draw attention to exceptional cases that are not covered by the standing committees.

According to the Constitution of Armenia, Article 73
"If appropriate, interim committees may be established as prescribed by the law on the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly for preliminary discussion of certain draft laws or for submitting to the National Assembly opinions, statements on certain issues, events and facts".
Following the consideration and definition in the Constitution the Law on Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly clearly defines all the issues concerning the add hoc committees. More particularly, according to the article 22 of the mentioned law, add hoc committees are created by the decision of the National Assembly. The decision should contain information relating to the tasks, terms and procedures of an add hoc committee, meaning that the committee should operate only in very strict limitations set to the spheres of its investigation, the resources it may gain access to and also to the timeframes.
The ultimate reason for existence of such committees is to deliver a report on its finding during a session of the National Assembly. Based on these reports, the Deputy may create a draft resolution in 2 days and if agreed by the Lead Committee, the resolution may be included in the draft agenda for upcoming four-day session.

Ad hoc committees: their goals, procedures, and results

Committee on Ethics
One of the current add hoc committees of the National Assembly of Armenia is the Committee on Ethics. This is not a classical add hoc committee as it does exist during every session of the National Assembly but the committee functions till the beginning of the successive session when a new committee is formed.

According to the Article 24.1 of the Law of the Republic of Armenia on the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly, each faction has the right to nominate at least 1 Deputy to the ethics committee. The chairperson of the committee and the vice-chairperson are appointed from the members of the committee by the nomination of faction, although the Chairperson of the National Assembly is the one to appoint the chairperson of the ethics committee, the vice chairperson, and to approve other members. If the chairperson of the ethics committee is from a non-opposition faction, the vice chairperson should be from the opposition faction and the vice versa. Factions have the right to change their representative in the ethics committee.

According to the Article 24.2 of the Law of the Republic of Armenia on the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly the ethics committee provides conclusion to the National Assembly on violation by a Deputy of the requirements not to be engaged in entrepreneurial activities, not to hold offices in state or commercial organizations, and not to perform other paid work except for scientific, pedagogical or creative work (1st Paragraph of the Article 65 of the Constitution). The committee also decides if there was a violation of 2nd Paragraph of the Article 6.1 of the mentioned law i.e. the very basic requirements to abide the laws, to respect moral norms of the society, to be respectful to the colleagues, not to be guided by personal interests and so on, provides a Deputy with conclusion if his/her job is scientific, pedagogical or creative and more.
The Committee on Ethics can require and obtain materials and documents relevant to the issues examined by the committee from any state agency; it can also demand to the state agencies with the exception of courts, judges and prosecutors to carry out checks, studies and expert examinations on the issues examined in the committee. The members of the ethics committee are free to enter any state institution or to examine any document relating to the case.

Any individual can apply to the committee on ethics in cases prescribed by the law. The applicant should submit a written application with all the relevant documents. By proposal of the chairperson of the ethics committee but no later than ten days the committee starts the examination of the issue raised in the application or rejects its examination. The committee on ethics finishes its examination of the issue in 30 days after starting an examination; it may also extend the deadline by 20 days in case of necessity to implement a deeper research.

The sittings of the committee are closed except of cases when the Deputy in the application suggests holding an open sitting. Sitting of the committee is valid if at least half of the members are present, and the sitting is held by the chairperson of the committee, the vice chairperson, or another member according to the prescriptions of the law. Member of the committee assigned for the examination of the issue is the main reporter and the Deputy indicated in the application is the supplementary reporter. The decisions and conclusions of the committee are adopted by the majority of votes if more than half of the members participated in the voting. The content of the application and name of the Deputy indicated in the application are not publicly available until the adoption of the final decision. The members of the ethics committee and other people participating in the activities of the committee cannot publicize details of the examination.

One of the recent cases in this committee was an application indicating names of several Deputies and reporting that they voted instead for other Deputies during the voting. After examining the application, listening to the committee member appointed for the case and to the accused Deputies the committee on ethics found them guilty of violating the duty to abide the laws. Also, in order to eliminate this kind of issues in the future, the committee made a suggestion to make supplements and changes in the Law of the Republic of Armenia on the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly more specifically consider voting instead for other Deputies disturbance of the order and enforce the presiding officer to take immediate disciplinary measures against these Deputies that is depriving the Deputy from the right to be present during the session of the National Assembly. The National Assembly approved this suggestion.

Ad hoc Committee on Studying the Activity of the Gas Supply System in Armenia
This committee was established in February 2014 to examine the protection level of natural gas consumers' interests (calories of supplied gas, testing gas usage counters, argumentations for the loss), examine the lawfulness of the accumulation of debt for natural gas during 2011–2013 and reasonableness of the amount of debt, to make predictions about the possibilities of alternative gas importers and other thoroughly listed issues relating to the gas supply system in Armenia as a whole including examination of prices for the gas and international practices.

The committee hold closed sittings, the decisions and conclusions were adopted by the majority of votes, the committee had the right to require and obtain materials and documents relevant to the issues examined by the committee from any state agency; it can also demand to the state agencies with the exception of courts, judges and prosecutors to carry out checks, studies and expert examinations on the issues examined in the committee and so on. The committee presented its findings and conclusion during the session of the National Assembly of 7 April 2015.

See also

Elections in Armenia
List of legislatures by country
List of political parties in Armenia
National Assembly of Artsakh
Politics of Armenia
President of the National Assembly of Armenia
Programs of political parties in Armenia

References

Notes

External links

Politics of Armenia
Political organizations based in Armenia
1918 establishments in Armenia
Armenia
Armenia
Armenia

National Assembly (Armenia)


Gless is an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid material that exhibits a glass transeetion, that is the reversible transeetion in amorphous materials (or in amorphous regions athin semicrystalline materials) frae a haird an fair brickle state intae a molten or rubber-lik state. Gless is teepically brickle an can be optically transparent. The maist fameiliar kin o gless is soda-lime gless, that is componed o aboot 75% Silicon dioxide (SiO2), sodium oxide (Na2O) frae soda ess, lime (CaO), an several minor additives. The term gless is aften uised tae refer anerly tae this specific uise.

Dielectrics
Packagin materials
Sculptur materials

Gless


Hale Hōʻikeʻike at the Bailey House (House of Display at Old Bailey House, formerly and commonly the Bailey House Museum) is a museum of Hawaiian history and art located in Wailuku, on the island of Maui, in Hawaii. It is owned and operated by the Maui Historical Society. Old Bailey House is a historic district contributing property within the Wailuku Civic Center Historic District, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Building and history
Seminary
The stone house is situated at the mouth of the Iao Valley, within the former royal residence of Kahekili II (c. 1737–1794), last ruling chief of Maui.
Built in 1833 and being one of the first western-style houses in Wailuku, the "Old Bailey House" is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Originally intended as a mission for adults and children, in 1837 the mission was transformed into the Wailuku Female Seminary, a boarding school that not only taught its students Christianity and academic pursuits, such as the three Rs, but also domestic skills such as sewing and housekeeping. First managed by Theodosia and Rev. Jonathan Smith Green, in 1844 Caroline and Edward Bailey assumed responsibility, shortly after arriving in Hawaii.

Residence
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, abandoned their funding of the Seminary in 1847. The school endured for several more years after 1847 educating boys and girls on a tuition paying basis. The house and land reverted to the Hawaiian crown but were purchased by the Baileys in 1850. Later, the house and the Baileys' sugarcane fields became part of the Wailuku sugarcane plantation, which then became part of C. Brewer & Co.

Museum
The Maui Historical Society was established in 1951. Hale Hoʻikeʻike (Hawaiian for "House of Display") was opened on July 6, 1957.
Masaru "Pundy" Yokouchi purchased the Bailey House in 1991 and donated it to the Maui Historical Society.

Exhibits
Hale Hoʻikeʻike is a history museum and contains diverse exhibits on two floors of the historic residence, and on the grounds. They include:
First floor
 Pre-European contact Hawaiian artifacts include utensils, tools, and weapons.
 Landscape oil paintings by Edward Bailey, the 'Sunday painter' works total over one hundred landscape paintings of 19th-century Maui .
 A wooden statue of Kamapua'a, a Hawaiian demi-god, created before the abrogation of native Hawaiian religious expression and art. Hidden in an upcountry cave for over a century, it is the only wooden statue on Maui to survive the 1819 purge of the indigenous religion by King Kamehameha II.
 A portion of the Land Snails Shell Collection, of David Dwight Baldwin. After the arrivals of introduced species of alien land snails, many of the native non-marine Mollusk species endemic to Maui have become extinct species.
 A model of the Hokulea — which is a modern-day replica of an ancient Polynesian-style sailing vessel.

Second floor
The second floor features the Monarchy Room, which displays information on the Kingdom of Hawaii and artifacts from Hawaii's monarchy era and the Koa Room which displays a large four poster bed and other furnishings made entirely from Koa. The museum also houses a significant number of historical papers available to researchers.

Grounds
A small outlying shelter displays Duke Kahanamoku's 1919 redwood surfboard. Also displayed here is the  Honaunau, a 1900s era  outrigger canoe used for fishing. The vessel was carved from a single koa log, and is one of the last koa fishing canoes made in Hawaii.

The gardens of the museum grounds are designed to display native Hawaiian plants, including endangered species of Maui and the Hawaiian Islands.  A gift shop, featuring locally made artisan items, is located on the south of the Old Bailey House. The museum and grounds are open Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM.

See also
History of Maui
List of single-artist museums

References

External links

Art museums and galleries in Hawaii
Museums in Maui County, Hawaii
History museums in Hawaii
Historic house museums in Hawaii
Houses completed in 1833
Museums established in 1957
1957 establishments in Hawaii
Culture of Maui
History of Maui

Bailey House Museum


Strand Theatre is a heritage-listed cinema at 159–167 Margaret Street, Toowoomba City, Toowoomba, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by George Henry Male Addison and built from 1915 to 1933 by Luke Halley. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.

History
This three-storeyed brick picture theatre was erected in 1915-16 for James Patrick Newman, a Toowoomba City alderman.

It was constructed during the early and enthusiastic adoption of cinema by Australian audiences in the first two decades of the 20th century, when the new nation boasted a truly vibrant local film industry which competed healthily with imported British and American product. Its construction was illustrative of the early 20th century attempt to legitimise cinema as a respectable middle-class entertainment in Australia.

In 1915 Newman commissioned established Brisbane architect George Henry Male Addison to design a picture theatre on a site in Margaret Street adjoining the Crown Hotel. This site had operated as the Crystal Palace Picture Gardens since early 1914. Addison called tenders in July 1915, and the contract was awarded to Luke Halley.

The American-derived design was similar to picture theatres erected in other Australian cities during the 1910s. In particular, the large semi-circular glazed arch was reminiscent of the Majestic (1912) and Britannia (1913) in Melbourne and the Pavilion (1913) in Brisbane. It was, however, unorthodox in that the top level was designed as additional accommodation for the Crown Hotel, which was also owned by JP Newman. This third storey was accessed via a staircase from the hotel.

Newman leased the theatre to moving picture exhibitor Senora Spencer, who named the venue the Strand, like her theatres in Brisbane and Newcastle. The first screening, which was accompanied by the Strand Symphony Orchestra and an opening ceremony performed by the Mayor of Toowoomba, took place on the evening of Saturday 15 April 1916.

In 1918 the lease was taken over by Union Theatres, an early Australian distribution-exhibition conglomerate, who repainted and redecorated the theatre early in 1919, when the building was closed temporarily during the Spanish influenza epidemic.

From the mid-1920s the Strand was leased by independent exhibitors.

In mid-1930 sound projection equipment was installed and the theatre was host to some of Toowoomba's earliest "talkies".

In 1933 the owners of the Strand arranged with Birch Carroll & Coyle for Sydney architect and theatre designer Guy Crick, who was then designing Toowoomba's rebuilt Empire Theatre for Birch Carroll & Coyle, to revamp the interior of the Strand in art moderne (Art Deco) style. At the same time the first floor foyer and office space was extended to the upper level of a newly constructed two-storeyed building along the east wall.

So popular were movies during the depression that the Strand continued evening screenings throughout the renovations, although most of the daily matinees were cancelled. The newly refurbished theatre was opened officially in early December 1933, with the local newspaper claiming that the Strand was the first picture theatre in Australia to be refitted completely in the art moderne style.

The Strand flourished during the 1930s, proudly advertising "Always first with the latest and the greatest", and screened premier features from Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers and United Artists to large audiences.

In 1957 the current owners acquired the theatre and introduced a wide screen format, and renovated the main foyer in the 1960s and again in the 1970s.

A major redevelopment of the theatre and the adjoining buildings was completed in 1992. The adjoining Crown Hotel and the amusement centre were demolished and four small cinemas were erected around the original cinema which was stripped of seating and refurbished to become a large foyer for the new cinema complex.

Description

The Strand Theatre, fronting Margaret Street to the south, is a three-storeyed rendered brick building with a hipped corrugated iron roof concealed behind a shaped gable parapet.

Framed by pilasters, the decorative symmetrical street facade consists of a large semi-circular arch at the first floor level with a quatrefoil window to either side, and is surmounted by a deep cornice, giving the impression of a heightened entrance. This is bisected by a large turret, with three circular leadlight windows, which projects over the entrance and is supported by four large rendered brackets surrounding a statue of a female figure holding a lamp. Lunette windows to either side have leadlight panels.

The second floor has five arched windows with Art Nouveau style leadlight panels, above which is a deep cornice, with rendered relief work to the shaped gable above which is surmounted by three large finials. The street level has display arches either side of the entrance, with a recent cantilevered metal awning above.

Internally, little remains of the 1916 decor apart from the pressed metal ceiling and cornices of the auditorium, tessellated tiling in the ground floor foyer, and the finishes to the former hotel rooms on the second floor. The latter are partitioned in four inch vertical tongue and groove boarding and have pressed metal ceilings. Rooms open off a central corridor previously accessed from the former neighbouring hotel, now demolished. This area is now sealed off. The floor is supported by spanning steel beams which divide the auditorium below into seven bays. The original balcony remains intact although this is now used only as a link between the projection rooms of the new cinema.

Many of the 1933 decorative elements, such as the attached pilasters constructed of rendered canvas over a timber frame, are simply fixed over existing surfaces. Lyrebird motif grilles of gilded timber were adopted to cover the former window openings, and a mechanical ventilation system was installed. Art Deco banding which once surrounded the proscenium remain only as a frieze, following widening of the stage in the late 1950s to accommodate a cinemascope screen. The mezzanine floor foyer features an intact 1933 ceiling and wall grilles.

Heritage listing
Strand Theatre was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992 having satisfied the following criteria.

The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history.

The Strand Theatre at Toowoomba, erected 1915-16, is important in demonstrating the pattern of Queensland's history, in particular the emergence of cinema as a 20th-century social phenomenon.

The place demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage.

It demonstrates rare and uncommon aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage, in particular as a rare, purpose built picture theatre of the early 20th century, and is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of early 20th century picture theatres.

The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places.

It demonstrates rare and uncommon aspects of Queensland's cultural heritage, in particular as a rare, purpose built picture theatre of the early 20th century, and is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of early 20th century picture theatres.

The place is important because of its aesthetic significance.

It is important in exhibiting a range of aesthetic characteristics valued by the Toowoomba community, in particular its prominent siting and contribution through scale, form and materials to the streetscape of Margaret Street and to the Toowoomba townscape; and the quality of its 1930s interior decoration.

The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons.

It has a special association with cinema audiences of Toowoomba and the Darling Downs.

The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.

It has a special association with the work of noted Brisbane architect, GHM Addison, and with important cinema architect, Guy Crick.

References

Attribution

External links

Queensland Heritage Register
Buildings and structures in Toowoomba
Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register
Cinemas in Queensland
Toowoomba City, Queensland

Strand Theatre, Toowoomba


Hybrid vigour (or hybrid vigor) is the improved  activity and survival of hybrid offspring. The technical term in genetics is heterosis.

Inbreeding in a normal population leads to the offspring getting worse, less fit, less fertile and usually not living as long as the parents. The opposite, outbreeding, leads to fit, healthy, fertile offspring. This effect has been known for a long time. Animal breeders have known it since the 18th century, and Darwin investigated it in detail with plants.

On the other hand, when two parents are from widely different populations, such as different subspecies, this usually does not apply. In that case it is more usual for the hybrids to have lower fitness. Mules are usually not fertile, and that automatically makes them of lower fitness, as that term is used in biology. They are very hardy animals, but they leave few offspring. The puzzle for scientists has been to explain these facts.

Genetic theories
When a population is small or inbred, it tends to lose genetic diversity. The loss of fitness is due to loss of genetic diversity. Inbred strains tend to be homozygous for recessive alleles. Recessive alleles tend to be mildly harmful. Heterosis or hybrid vigor, on the other hand, is the tendency of outbred strains to exceed both inbred parents in fitness.

In the early 20th century, after Mendel's laws came to be understood and accepted, two explanations were proposed.

 Dominance hypothesis. Undesirable recessive alleles from one parent are suppressed by dominant alleles from the other. Inbred strains lose genetic diversity, because they become homozygous at many loci.
 Overdominance hypothesis. Certain combinations of alleles that can be obtained by crossing two inbred strains are advantageous in the heterozygote. Cases such as sickle-cell anaemia show this at one gene locus, and overdominance is explained by this happening at many loci.

Present status
At present, the first idea seems to fit the facts best. "The current view ... is that the dominance hypothesis is the major explanation of inbreeding decline and the high yield of hybrids".

An epigenetic effect heterosis has been found in plants, and also in animals. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs which repress the translation of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) or degrade mRNAs. The miRNAs may also have an effect on hybrid vigour.

References

Hybrids

Hybrid vigour


Yvonne Ploetz (born 28 September 1984 in Saarbrücken) is a German politician and member of SPD former member of The Left (die Linke). On 1 February 2010, she became a member of the German Parliament when she succeeded Oskar Lafontaine.

Background and education
After completing her Realschule requirements at the Gesamtschule Gersheim and passing the Abitur in 2004 at the Helmholtz-Gymnasium in Zweibrücken, she attended the University of Trier, where she studied political science, art history, and sociology. In 2011, she earned her (Magisterium), the German equivalent of a master's degree. From 2006 to 2010, she received a scholarship from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is a research foundation associated with The Left. Her research emphasis revolved around east Asian political science, as well as gender and postcolonial studies. She speaks German, English, French, and Chinese.

Politics

Party politics
At the age of 14, Ploetz became a member of the Young Union, which is the youth wing of the conservative CDU and CSU parties. She remained a member until 2002. In 2005, she became a member of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the political successor of the Socialist Unity Party, which dominated East German politics. In 2007, the PDS merged with other left parties to become The Left. In November 2005, Ploetz founded the local chapter of The Left in Blieskastel, and she has been the chairperson of this chapter ever since. From 2006 to 2008, she was the spokesperson for education in the Saarbrücken statewide chapter of The Left. Since 2008, she has been a member of the executive committee of the Saarbrücken/Rheinland-Pfalz regional party chapter. In October 2010, she was elected to the state committee of the Left Youth Solid, which is the official youth wing of The Left. Her focus has been on improvements in youth and education policies.

Public office
In the 2009 German Federal election, held 27 September 2009, Ploetz was third on the party list of The Left in Saarland and was, as a result, not elected to parliament. After the resignation of Oskar Lefontaine, who left parliament for health reasons, Ploetz was able to assume his seat on 1 February 2010 and become a member of parliament. In the 2013 election she stood unsuccessfully in the Homburg constituency, but was elected from the Saarland land list. She is a regular member of the Committee for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth and a substitute member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment.

Political positions

Plloetz's work lies primarily in the arena of domestic policy, with her core policy interests concerning youth, education, women and the poor. She extensively uses popular media, such as social networks and the internet in general, to disseminate relevant information and concerns related to these policy efforts. She bases her efforts on what is submitted to her from her constituency.

Specifically, Ploetz has called for limitations to executive salaries, the introduction of a nationwide minimum wage, the regulation of internships, the introduction of a fundamental right to education, the full equality of men and women, the end of the nuclear age, lowering the voting age to 16, and the termination of foreign missions for the German Army.

She often combines science and politics. In this style, she criticized, for example, the "Green Deal" for being too technocratic and not doing enough to consider underlying social contexts,. Additionally, she focused German political attention on the environmental disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and was involved in an analysis of the program of the Youth in Science Forum in February 2011.

She also supported education-reform strikes in 2010, and in 2011, she launched the outreach program "Jugend.Arm? Courage!" which sought to address youth poverty. In particular, the initiation of a crash program to combat youth unemployment has been a key policy point.  Regarding the German education system, she has criticized the BAföG as well as the national scholarship program of the federal government, which, she has argued, only further reinforces social inequality, rather than fighting it.
Nowadays she's a member of SPD and works as an SPD group advisor  in the local Parliament of the state of Saarland.

Personal life
Ploetz has a brown belt in Judo and, in 2008, became the Saarland women's leader in the 70 kilogram class.  For many years, she has played soccer with SG Parr Medelsheim. Additionally, she is a member of IG Metall (a metal-workers' union), the Judo Club of Gersheim, the  Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the Alumni Association of Trier Political Scientists, as well as the Peter Imandt Society.

Footnotes

References

 Die Website von Yvonne Ploetz
 Yvonne Ploetz auf der Seite der Kampagne Jugend.Arm?Mut!
 Biographie beim Deutschen Bundestag
 Yvonne Ploetz und ihr Ortsverband Blieskastel
 Yvonne Ploetz auf Facebook
 Yvonne Ploetz auf Twitter
 Yvonne Ploetz auf der Seite der Fraktion DIE LINKE im Bundestag
 Yvonne Ploetz auf abgeordnetenwatch.de

1984 births
Living people
People from Saarbrücken
University of Trier alumni
Members of the Bundestag for Saarland
German female judoka
Female members of the Bundestag
Party of Democratic Socialism (Germany) politicians
21st-century German women politicians
Members of the Bundestag 2009–2013
Members of the Bundestag for The Left

Yvonne Ploetz


Sechsschartenturm, heavy MG bunker, La Mare Mill, or 4-S WaKoFest, Wn La Mare Mill, consists of a sechsschartenturm () and a personnel bunker. The Organisation Todt built it to an Atlantic Wall standard on a commanding position near the demolished La Mare Mill during the Occupation of Jersey.

Sechsschartentürme turrets were common place along the Atlantic Wall and the Germans constructed nine in Jersey, but today only this and one other example at Mont Mathieu survive. The Channel Islands Occupation Society now operates the turret and bunker as a museum.

The Turret

A sechsschartenturm is a non-rotating turret made of steel up to 12 inches thick, pierced by six loopholes. Each turret operated two MG34 machine guns on rotating mounts. This turret only has four loopholes; the other two were sealed as they faced the cliff and were of no military value. The interior of the turret was brightly painted into 6 sectors (one for each loophole), and each sector was also numbered. One MG34's fire would be directed via the colours while the other MG34's fire would be directed via the numbers, this was to an Atlantic Wall standard. A thick steel door, with an asbestos gas seal, would close off each loophole when it was not in use.

The MG 34s were fitted into specially designed hinged mounts for ease of use. The gunner could quickly withdraw his MG34 from one loophole and push it along a rail to another. In fact, this would have been the only time the crew of the turret would have been exposed to the outside world (albeit for a few seconds). The MG 34 mounts are equipped with telescopic sights. In addition, the turret had a periscope and a searchlight, all of which could be operated from the turret. Each MG 34 fired a 7.92mm round at a fire rate in excess of 1000 rounds per minute to a range of approximately 1500 yards. The design of the machine gun mounts permitted the gun crew easily to change the gun's barrel; the gunner would stop firing, lift the hinged scope out of position, open up the gun, slide out the barrel and insert a new one. For a well trained crew this would only take seconds. The mounting also incorporated a chute which emptied spent casings into bags below.

The bunker

The bunker is an early variant of what became the Type 632 design and is found only in the Channel Islands. It features a series of rooms in a triangular mass of concrete (a similar shape to the 632). The first large room is the command room, which also served as the dormitory. The small rectangular room beyond the command room is the magazine, where the bunker's ammunition was stored. The last, circular room held the bags of spent ammunition; the cupola sat directly above this room.

The entrance to this bunker is down a rock cut alley that would provide an attacker absolutely no cover or room to maneuver, making the entrance defence, which consisted of one MG34 or MG42 that fired through a small embrasure, quite formidable. The entrance defence was also the most exposed area. Because the defenders could not seal its loophole to the same standard as the loopholes on the turret, the fortress engineers decided to separate the entrance defence from the rest of the structure with a series of gas doors.

The bunker when in operation would have been pressurized. The pressurization would keep out poison gas should the Allies use it, and ensure that when the guns fired, almost all the smoke from the burnt powder exited the bunker. When the gunners fired, the pressurized air in the bunker would push the gasses out through the guns' barrels. The reduction in smoke would allow the crew to operate effectively even when firing constantly. The pressurization also meant that the spent cases contained less residual gas, meaning they could just be fed out of the cupola via pipes into bags with no danger of smoking out the bunker's other occupants.

As with most, if not all bunkers along the Atlantic Wall, the bunker featured an escape shaft. To escape, the occupants of the bunker would first have to remove a metal door, revealing two rows of steel bars. After the crew had cleared the steel bars, they still would have to shift an area of soil and demolish a brick wall. The escape shaft was not convenient to use, but with the bunker having a good ventilation system and walls several metres of concrete thick, the chances are the shaft would never have to be used.

Another feature of the bunker is the interior decor. Like the decor of most bunkers, it is spartan, apart from the wooden cladding. The cladding provided sound damping; we do not know whether this was intended or accidental.

On top of the bunker there is a tobruk, a concrete foxhole where the defenders could station an additional MG34. Later in the war the Germans constructed a railway embankment towards the south side of the bunker, limiting its field of fire. This may have been temporary while construction work was being carried out in the area.

Location
The turret sits approximately 10 metres above the road level and halfway up the headland. From there it commands the flat plain between the headland and the beaches. The turret also guards two roads leading to the interior of the island.

There were several of these bunkers lining the headland of St. Ouen's bay and overlooking the low-lying areas beneath. Their locations permitted the bunkers to achieve interlocking fields of fire. Anti-tank ditches, barbed wire, mines and excellent camouflage complemented the bunkers, creating a formidable defensive position. In order to land there, the Allied landing craft would first have had to run the gantlet of artillery fire from the cliffs above to arrive on the beach. The troops would then have to scale an antitank wall and deal with various anti-tank emplacements and bunkers. Once past the beach, the Allied troops would have faced minefields, barbed wire, flooded areas and ditches while still under fire from the artillery, and now from the sechsschartentürme. Luckily for Allied soldiers, Allied High Command decided that the invasion of Normandy would bypass the Channel Islands.

Photographs

See also
Coastal fortifications of Jersey
Battery Moltke
Battery Lothringen

References

German occupation of Jersey during World War II
World War II sites in the Channel Islands
Museums in Jersey
Military history of the Channel Islands during World War II
Fortifications in Jersey

Sechsschartenturm, Heavy MG bunker, La Mare Mill


Quantum Gate is an interactive movie created by Hyperbole Studios in 1993 and published by the now defunct Media Vision Technology. Quantum Gate sold over 100,000 units (a commercial benchmark achieved by few titles in 1993) and was regarded as a technical and artistic breakthrough in PC entertainment design. The game also received a novelization and was followed by a sequel titled Vortex.

Plot
The player takes on the role of Private Drew Griffin, an army medical student in the year 2057 who is recruited by the UN on a secret mission to an alien world where water is scarce.

During the mission briefing Drew discovers that an advanced environmental simulation program called Earth-5 has predicted that there are only five years remaining before irreversible ecological damage caused by industrialisation, pollution and the overuse and destruction of natural resources will cause the Earth's demise. The Eden Initiative, of which this mission is the major part, is a project aimed at saving Earth from this Armageddon. The key to this is the rare mineral iridium oxide, found on the harsh alien planet AJ3905. AJ3905 is a world accessible only through an interplanetary device called the Quantum Gate and the mission involves a series of mining expeditions to extract the mineral and bring it back to Earth. However, AJ3905's hellish atmosphere consists of a poisonous, caustic gas that promises an agonising death for unprotected humans which requires the wearing of a protective suit (known as a 'Tophat'). Furthermore, it is occupied by a hostile life form that appear as frighteningly skeletal anthropomorphic forms through the Tophat's virtual reality display. It is the role of Griffin and his fellow army recruits to protect the scientific mining crew during their repeated forays to the planet.

During mission downtime, the player's interaction with other characters such as the commanding officer, Colonel Saunders, and the inventor of the Quantum Gate, Dr. Elizabeth Marks, start to raise concerns about the nature of the mission. Further enhanced when Griffin's apparently paranoid army buddy, Private Michaels, starts telling tales of great conspiracy to hide the true agenda of the Eden Initiative. These start to suggest to the player that the nature of the planet itself and the possible reason for the protective suits are elaborate fabrications. The extreme interpretation is that the Earth is doomed no matter what and instead of protecting peaceful miners from a hostile alien race, the army is involved in the genocide of a native species prior to human colonisation.

Between these sequences and the occasional training mission or visit to the planet, a series of flashbacks and electronic messages from home reveal a dark backstory about Private Griffin. Through events for which Griffin feels remorse his girlfriend has become partially disfigured, although it is never made clear what those events were or that they were even Griffin's fault. They appear to have spurred Griffin, who had previously been pursuing a promising career in medicine, to run away from home and join the military. The full history of Griffin is never completely explained in the game and the details are kept deliberately vague and unresolved leaving the player to decide whether Griffin's remorse is for an accident for which he is to blame, or merely for having run away. Additional touches such as the heavy censorship of messages from home suggest that, for the army recruits at least, participation in this mission may be punitive.

During the final mission of the game Griffin is attacked and immobilised. His Tophat and life support system start to fail and an alien looms over him. Despite his pleas for mercy the alien works his helmet loose and removes it. However, without the VR filter, the planet is revealed as a green and living world, and the demonlike alien as a curious-looking female humanoid (revealed in the sequel to be a peaceful, winged race known as the Alylinde). Griffin's last words as the screen goes black are "My God. They're human".

Gameplay
As the game progresses the overall feel becomes increasingly dark; from the initial briefing which consists of confronting images of dying animals, famine and industrial pollution, through the increasingly paranoid rantings of Private Michaels to the distressed and teary messages from Griffin's mother and girlfriend. The gameplay itself is extremely linear in nature, as is normally exhibited by interactive movies and the player's input is limited to conversing with other characters (through a choice of pre-existing phrases) and some involvement during missions. The game is unusual in that the player 'wins' only by having their character die (or possibly fall unconscious as this, like so much else in the game, is never made completely clear). This allows the shock-conclusion reveal of the true nature of the planet and its inhabitants, and hence the most likely truth of the character's own participation in genocide. For these reasons the game and its message are quite confronting.

Reception
Computer Gaming World said in March 1994 that Quantum Gate had good acting and was "one of the most engaging CD titles yet to appear". In April 1994 the magazine said that it "packs a good entertainment punch" and "interesting", but "it's still a game—not the great leap beyond the marketing folks would have you believe". Charles Ardai in June 1994 complained that Quantum Gate was—contrary to its marketing—"hardly a game at all [but] a movie", as players could not affect the plot. He denounced the first-person tank sequences as "the less said about which the better", and said that as a game "Quantum Gate deserves a scathing review". Ardai praised it as a science-fiction movie (the best since Blade Runner), however, citing "simply outstanding" acting and video and comparing the "shockingly adult and shockingly good" script to Philip K. Dick and Fredric Brown. He concluded that Quantum Gate "is a hell of a good movie, period, with a story that sticks with you long after the final credits roll". The game was reviewed in 1994 in Dragon #212 by Ken Rolston in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Rolston states, "I casually recommend it as a quick, simple entertainment, and of special interest to students of narrative multimedia, but it's not much of a game, and not completely successful on
its own narrative terms."

Production
Greg Roach wrote and designed the title which follows the story of Drew Griffin, a military recruit in a base on a far off planet, preparing for a war with an alien species.

Originally the two releases, Quantum Gate and The Vortex, were written and designed as a single story/experience, but the publisher, Media Vision, exercised an acceleration clause in the development contract and demanded the title months ahead of the original release date - causing the developers to have to split the title into two. As a result, The Vortex was redesigned to allow its story to stand alone.

Sequel

Vortex (also known as The Vortex: Quantum Gate II) is the 1994 sequel to Quantum Gate by Hyperbole Studios for Mac and Windows. The game tells the adventures of an army grunt in a futuristic (but medieval like) society where water is scarce. The game was developed using Softimage and VirtualCinema.

Entertainment Weekly gave the game a C.

References

External links

1993 video games
Adventure games
Full motion video based games
Interactive movie video games
Classic Mac OS games
PlayStation (console) games
Sega Saturn games
Video games developed in the United States
Video games set on fictional planets
Windows games
Single-player video games

Quantum Gate (video game)


St. Luke's Church, also known as Old Brick Church, or Newport Parish Church, is a historic church building, located in the unincorporated community of Benns Church, near Smithfield in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, United States.  It is the oldest church in Virginia and oldest church in British North America of brick construction. According to local tradition the structure was built in 1632, but other evidence points to a date of 1682; see Dating controversy.

On October 15, 1966, St. Luke's was designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its historic and architectural distinction.  In 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated the site a National Shrine in concert with the 350th anniversary of Jamestown.

Since 1954 Historic St. Luke's Restoration, doing business as Historic St. Luke's Church, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that maintains, preserves, promotes, and interprets the 17th-century, 100-acre historic site.  Historic St. Luke's does not receive any federal, state, or municipal funding.  All funding comes from private corporations, foundations, and individuals.

Architecture

Once known as "Old Brick Church", St. Luke's is described by College of William & Mary professor and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation architectural historian Carl Lounsbury as an Artisan Mannerism style in which masons and other builders both designed and built without the guiding hand of an architect. Other examples of such architecture include Bacon's Castle in nearby Surry County, Virginia and exhibit Cavalier or Royalist sensibilities.  St. Peter's Church in New Kent, Virginia is a later, less ornate style reflecting the Glorious Revolution of Dutch-English monarchs William & Mary.

The plan is that of a single room ( × ) with a twenty-foot-square () tower at the west end. The walls are laid in a rough Flemish bond. The buttresses with sloping set-offs project prominently from three bays of the north and south walls. At both the east and west end of the church are crow-stepped gables, while unadorned turrets, corbelled slightly at their bases, decorate the corners of the building.

The original windows were replaced in the 19th century. Those Victorian windows remain in place today. The stained glass windows above the altar were produced in Germany.  The current doors were added in the 1950s.

Architectural details

Parish affiliation

Newport Parish dates from the formation of Warrosquyoake plantation. The details of parish and political entities are as follows:
 1629  Warrosquyoake Parish formed
 1634  Included in the list of original shires
 1634  Isle of Wight County formed
 1643  Divided into upper (Warrosquyoake) and lower parish (Newport)
 1733  Brunswick Country formed from Isle of Wight County
 1743  Lower sections of Warrosquyoake and Newport Parishes combined as Newport Parish and upper sections into Nottoway Parish (later Nottoway Parish became Southampton Parish).
 1749  Southampton County formed from Isle of Wight County
 1836  Christ Episcopal Church of Newport Parish in Smithfield, Virginia

Architecture

The architecture of Newport Parish Church is a combination of the 17th century room church embellished with Gothic features. Unlike the English Gothic church characterized by separate wings containing the nave, aisles and chancel, the room church reduces these divided spaces into a single rectangular space. All Virginia vernacular churches employ this room structure. In the case of Newport Parish, a simplified form of a rood screen, as in several extant English room churches, separates the nave from the chancel. In fact, in this edifice, the oldest Anglican church in the state, the essential features of the room church are all in place. They are:
 Rectangular building
 General ratio of 2:1 length to width
 Oriented east-west
 Main entrance via west door
 Southeast vestry door
 Single story sidewall elevation
 East window.

Gothic features are principally in embellishments to the structure rather than major structural details:
 steeply pitched A-roof with crow-stepped or curvilinear gables
 Y-tracery windows with brick modillions
 semi-circular arches at doorways with "embryonic pediments"
 beamed ceilings with plaster
 plain cornices
 porches, buttresses, or towers.

Brickwork

The church itself is  east-west and  north-south in the clear.

The church is laid in Flemish bond in water tables, walls, and tower. The tower is an integral part of the structure unlike that of the Jamestown Church tower whose unfinished mortar joints on its east wall indicate that it was erected after the main church building and the clearly documented, added tower at St. Peter's Church, New Kent County. Unlike any other standing Virginia colonial church, there are two water tables each nine bricks high. The transitions from the water tables are accomplished using beveled bricks. There are no glazed headers in the walls that are  wide at the foundations,  thick in the walls, and  thick in the tower.

Three buttresses with three ramps each support the north and south sides of the church, separating the walls into three bays and a chancel, each of which contains a Y-tracery window. The bevels of the buttresses follow the water table in height, each being nine bricks tall. The church is singular among standing churches in having buttresses: the only other documented buttresses are at the Jamestown Church of 1639 to 1647 and the second Bruton Parish Church of 1680.

The walls continue for 38 courses above the water tables. Obvious repairs are present throughout the building due to a storm that collapsed the walls in 1887 and include:
 entire upper east wall
 crow steps and towers on the gables
 windows on the south and north walls
 east side of the tower along the gables
 two elliptical windows on the north and south sides of the porch
 sills of some of the principal windows.

Two thousand bricks from the Jamestown Church of 1639–1647 were included in repairs during the 1890s.

Roof

The present roof, replaced in the 1950s is constructed internally of massive tie-beams and a plastered ceiling, though the original was most likely a principal rafter roof similar to that of the third Bruton Parish Church. The roof beams are decorated with chamfer and lamb's tongue moldings. The present slate shingles are, of course, not the original roofing material which most likely was cedar shingles or clapboards painted or covered with tar.

The ends of the east gable consist of a corbelled turret on the outside corners with eight crow steps rising to the middle. The crow steps on the west wall are truncated by the presence of the tower and so have only 1½ steps. Other colonial structures with gables are few and include Bacon's Castle(1665) the second Bruton Parish Church, (1680s), and St. Peter's Church, New Kent County (1701) all of which are characterized by Flemish curved gables instead of crow step gables. All of the cornices are modern replacements.

Tower

The tower, the only one known to be an original feature of a colonial church in Virginia, stands to the west of the main church building and is  east-west and  north-south at the outside ground level. It is  tall and consists of three stories. The corners of the first two stories of the three-story tower are embellished by rusticated brick quoins of a row of two horizontally raised bricks divided by a projecting row of thin bricks with a vertical V in the center. The third story, presumably added some time after the rest of the tower, is surmounted by a slate shingled, hipped roof with a modern weather vane at the crest. The southern and northern faces of the tower bear a single window on each story. From bottom to top they are: 1) an open oval ellipse three feet horizontally and two feet vertically; 2) a Y-tracery window matching the principal windows; and 3) a compass widow with a brick arch and louvers. The west façade is identical except that the lower story contains a round bricked arch with a simple, whitewashed tympanum above it. The bottom of the tower is open and serves as a porch.

Windows

The windows of St. Luke's Church are unique among colonial windows and the major element that gives the edifice an artisan mannerism character. The east window is a "great lancet consisting of two tiers of four circular-headed windows." The two bottom courses consist of rows of four round-headed windows above which are a row of gothic arched windows, three diamond-shaped windows, and a pair of elongated, horizontal triangles as spandrels. Each of the east windows as well as the Y-tracery windows in the rest of the church are separated by modillions of molded, rubbed brick consisting of an ovolo (convex) and fillet (flat) shapes and an ovolo sill. There is a small, elliptical window above the great window. The presence of a great window is indicated in a few other, early churches in Virginia, namely St. Peter's, New Kent County (1701) and Upper and Lower Middlesex Country churches (1714 and 1717). Later churches without exception had chancel windows matching the principal windows on the north and south walls.

There are eight lancet windows on the north and south edifices and three on the tower (second story south, west, and north faces) similar in general construction to the great window. They each consist of a pair of steeply arched windows with a single, smaller spandrel window completing the arch and separated with rubbed brick in the form of ovolo and fillet moldings. The sills are also of identical ovolo molded bricks.

The present Tiffany-style, stained glass windows, despite local tradition to the contrary, do not replicate the original material that was diamond-paned, leaded glass. No Virginia colonial church had stained glass windows.

Doorways

The church displays the first recorded instance of the use of a main west entrance and a south entry placed in the extreme southeast corner of the church. Both doors are recent replacements, and the exact form of the western door is unknown.

The principal entrance is through the tower archway by way of a large, semi-circular arch that is decorated by rubbed brick and am impost three bricks high at the lower end of the arch. The arch itself consists of voussoirs with plastered over, white bricks forming the interior of the arch. Above the arch is a primitive, triangular tympanum the lower line of which extends beyond the raked borders. It is embellished by a fascia on the outer course with a fillet and ovolo on the inner course. It was alternately decorated with white cement, a marble tablet, and now a wash of mortar.

The western inner entrance is now a wicket door patterned after that of Yeocomico Church although it is unpainted. Previously, there were two central opening, compass-headed doors at the outer entrance of the porch arch. The southern entrance is a square-headed, battened door with decorative, molded bricks in the shape of an ovolo surrounding it. The images from the Library of Congress site are worth study, for they show in the late 1950s a compass headed door at this entrance that is evidenced by brick repairs above the doorway.

Interior

The only written record of the interior is from 1746 in which the wives of justices and vestrymen were assigned a box pew in the northern corner of the chancel and young women of the parish were assigned their former pews. There is one original baluster (the second from the left end on the altar rail). The rood screen is based on footings discovered in the 1950s while the sounding board, that is 17th-century in origin, was found in 1894 in a barn at Macclesfield, a nearby plantation. The single baluster and sounding board are the only original interior appointments.

The original interior appointments were long ago destroyed and the present is a restoration from the 1950s. It consists of a square pew of each side of the altar, two box pews west of the chancel screen, and seventeen slip pews in the nave.

The pulpit is a reconstruction three-decker of 1950s origin; Rawlings postulates that a two-decker pulpit originally was built due to the lack of space for a clerk's desk.

The main aisle is T-shaped and paved with square bricks whose pattern is derived from the original floor. Under the pews are wooden, reproduction floors. At the west end of the church is a gallery that originally had oak balusters and was restored during the 1950s The interior of the tower shows a portion of original plaster under a piece of glass, and it is covered with "mortar wash on the walls and exposed beams". Portions of the wooden interior sills of the second-story tower windows may be original.

Much of the interior (such as the rood screen, the kneeling rail, and a medieval-style bench east of the rood screen) are suppositions based the error prone 1950s restoration. The interior also contains a reproduction wooden baptismal font, various items of furniture, and various ecclesiastical furnishings of period 17th-century origin, though not original to the church itself.

Summary
St. Luke's Church is Virginia's oldest church.  Its construction demonstrates the progression from the crude, wooden churches of the early 17th century to more permanent brick structures leading to the simple room churches characteristic of the Virginia vernacular church in its full development, such as in Ware Church (1710–1715), a rectangular church with an unadorned exterior and elaborate triangular and semi-circular pediments. Like Yeocomico Church, such features as the bell tower, enclosed west porch, elaborate quoins, and Y-tracery windows belong to a formative period of church building whose features were soon to pass. The present restoration, according to architectural historians, leaves much to be desired in its fanciful and poorly documented elements:
 "...the restorers let the assumed date of St. Luke's shape their assessment of the physical evidence."
 "Although so much has been done for the church by so many – and a great deal of it admirable in both intention and execution – it must reluctantly be acknowledged that several false steps have been taken ..."

Cemetery
Burials in the church cemetery include those of Virginia Lieutenant Governor Allie Edward Stakes Stephens and his wife; the couple were active in the movement to preserve the church. Also interred in the cemetery is Archibald Atkinson, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1843 to 1849.

Dating controversy

The dating of this church with Gothic elements is a matter of disagreement between local traditions and academic researchers. Some local sources had insisted that the church can be dated to 1632 until recent dendrochronology dated the building to 1682.

The basic argument that the current brick church (rather than an earlier building on the same site) was built in 1632 had been:
 The vestry records were concealed by burial during the Revolutionary War by Colonel Josiah Parker. After they were dug up, they were read by his daughter, a Mrs. Cowper and other reliable witnesses, but then either used as wadding for muskets during the War of 1812. or simply crumpled into dust.
 Local tradition links the name of a militia Colonel Joseph Bridger who is interred in the chancel of the church to its construction.
 Bricks discovered in a roof collapse in 1887, or 1886, may bear the date 1632.
 While the predominant gothic architectural elements or the church date to the late 1680s, others, such as buttresses, crow step gables, and the principal rafter roof were also found in some early 17th-century churches.

Other evidence calls into doubt the accuracy of these assertions:
 It was common for several churches to be built on the same site generations apart. The presence of a brick church on this site does not mean that it was this brick church.
 Joseph Bridger was born in 1628 and was four years old in 1632. Some sources cite clumsy efforts to link Bridger's father with the site, but his name was Samuel, and he cannot be documented as having come to America.
 The bricks have indeterminate numerals that can be read as 1632 or 1682, and the numerals' style does not match colonial scripts. The bricks also have a mortar coating indicating that they may have been re-used as interior bricks in later repairs, alterations, or new construction. The best case scenario is the bricks were part of an earlier church at the same site, then re-used as interior bricks in the 1680 church. However, Upton asserts the bricks are clearly forgeries.
 Two other local figures, Charles and Thomas Driver, are also associated with the church, but they, like Colonel Bridger, are associated with records in the later 17th century when they were adults. There are two bricks in the third story of the tower bearing the initials CD and TD usually associated with these two men.
 The architectural features of the building can all be documented in English churches of the later 17th century or much later time periods.

General historical data militate against the establishment of such an elaborate edifice in 1632 and generally agree with a date in the 1680s:
 Other Virginia buildings from this period:
 Bacon's Castle 1665;
 Jamestown Church circa 1690;
 2nd Bruton Parish Church 1681–83;
 St. Peter's Parish Church 1690;
 Yeocomico Church 1706.

It is unlikely that one of these stylistically related buildings predates the others so significantly.
 The association of Joseph Bridger with the church agrees with a date in the 1680s as do the local links to the Driver brothers (Rawlings 8; Upton 60).
 Funding for the Jamestown Church of 1639 was such a problem that it took until 1647 to complete the church. Could a more elaborate church been constructed in sparsely populated Isle of Wight in 1632?
 A compromise theory that the church was begun in the 1630s and then completed or modified fifty years later, resulting in the present edifice is also posited. According to this assertion, the church walls were laid in 1632 while the interior, and possibly the roof, were not completed until the 1680s. Evidence for this can be found in the bell tower that clearly shows that the lower two stories were built earlier than the upper story.

Mason, Rawlings, and Upton all agree that 1632 is far too early a date for this edifice:
 Mason states, "Since... [All evidence]... point[s] to a later date than the traditional one,... it seems probable that the Old Brick Church was completed by Charles and Thomas Driver, as master workmen, under the direction of Colonel Joseph Bridger, about 1682, and that it succeeded an earlier brick church built on the same site, about 1632...".
 Rawlings says, "Suffice it to say here that is seems hazardous to claim any date before 1665 and wiser to accept 1682 as the most likely year for its erection, as probably a second church on the same site."
 And Upton asserts, "St Luke's similarities to [the previously cited buildings]... suggests [sic] a date in the fourth quarter of the seventeenth century for the Isle of Wight county building... [in] the years around 1680... when a rectangular building based on the room churches, developed in rural England early in the same century, became the characteristic form of the Virginia vernacular church."
 A recent study by The James River Institute for Archaeology, Inc., cites dendrochronological and architectural evidence that the church was constructed in the early 1680s.

Current operations
Since 1954, St. Luke's Church has been administered by Historic St. Luke's Restoration. The 100-acre historic site and museum provide guided tours for individuals and groups seven days per week between February and December – only closed in January. Visitors receive 45-minute guided tours beginning from the origins of the Anglican church through its restorations.

The Site is also available for private rentals including weddings, funerals, baptisms, and other special events.  An independent board of directors administers ultimate oversight of annual operations, budgets, and fund raising projects.

Current condition
Since the most recent restoration project of 2012, St. Luke's is structurally well-preserved for years to come.  Daily maintenance of the buildings and property remains a challenge.

As of April 2015 a major project is underway – the Historic St. Luke's Grounds Restoration Project (Phase 1).  This $500,000 capital project is designed to restore the ponds, bridge, roadway, approaches, and landscaping and will provide responsible grounds management and access for decades to come.  Phase 2 of this project is presently being explored.

See also
 National Register of Historic Places listings in Virginia
 List of National Historic Landmarks in Virginia
 Oldest buildings in the United States
 Oldest churches in the United States

References

Resources

External links
 Owner's website
 National Historic Landmarks page on St. Luke's
 St. Luke's Church, State Route 10 vicinity, Smithfield, Isle of Wight County, VA at the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS)
 Archiplanet page on St. Luke's
 St. Luke's churchyard tombstone inscriptions 19th & 20th centuries
 Old Brick Church – proof of 1632 construction
 Christ Episcopal Church, Smithfield

1682 establishments in Virginia
17th-century Episcopal church buildings
Churches in Hampton Roads, Virginia
Churches in Isle of Wight County, Virginia
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia
English-American culture in Virginia
Episcopal churches in Virginia
Historic American Buildings Survey in Virginia
Jacobean architecture in Virginia
Gothic Revival architecture in Virginia
Museums in Isle of Wight County, Virginia
National Historic Landmarks in Virginia
National Register of Historic Places in Isle of Wight County, Virginia
Religious museums in Virginia

St. Luke's Church (Smithfield, Virginia)


In engineering, abutment refers to the substructure at the ends of a bridge span or dam. This is where the structure's superstructure rests or contacts. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end. These provide vertical and lateral (side to side) support for the bridge. They also act as retaining walls to resist lateral movement of the earthen fill of the bridge approach. Multi-span bridges require piers to support ends of spans that are not supported by abutments. Dam abutments are generally the natural valley walls. They may also be artificial in order to support arch dams such as Kurobe Dam in Japan.

The term may also refer to the structure supporting one side of an arch, or masonry used to resist the lateral forces of a vault. The word derives from the verb "abut", meaning to "touch by means of a mutual border".

References

Civil engineering

Abutment


Riversdale, is a five-part, large-scale late Georgian mansion with superior Federal interior, built between 1801 and 1807. Also known as Baltimore House, Calvert Mansion or Riversdale Mansion, it is located at 4811 Riverdale Road in Riverdale Park, Maryland, and is open to the public as a museum.

Once the manor house and centerpiece of a  slave plantation, Riversdale was built for Belgian émigré Henri Joseph Stier, Baron de Stier, who lived in the William Paca House in Annapolis, Maryland immediately prior to building Riversdale. Stier planned the house in 1801 to resemble his Belgian residence, the Chateau du Mick.  Four years later, Stier returned to Belgium, leaving the unfinished Riversdale to be completed by his daughter, Rosalie Stier Calvert and her husband, George Calvert, the son of Benedict Swingate Calvert, who was a natural son of The 5th Baron Baltimore.  Rosalie and George Calvert's son, Charles Benedict Calvert, established the Maryland Agricultural College, now the University of Maryland, College Park, on part of the Riversdale property.

While its design has been attributed to William Thornton, this is not supported by available evidence on Thornton's career.  The house is architecturally significant as a well-preserved five-part Federal mansion, and historically important for its association with the Calverts, an important Maryland family.  It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997.

History
The house was begun in 1801 by Henri Josef Stier and his wife Marie Louise Peeters on almost  of land north of Bladensburg. Stier first commissioned Benjamin Henry Latrobe to do design work, but could not wait for Latrobe's late response. The local builder-architect William Lovering carried out the design work to Stier's direction, while Latrobe's rejected design was eventually used at Clifton, in Richmond, Virginia. The east wing was completed first, and the Stiers occupied it in August 1802. However, the elder Stiers returned to Belgium in June 1803, and Rosalie and George Calvert took up residence at Riversdale, bringing with them a large number of enslaved people. Plans for the grounds were developed by landscape architect William Russell Birch in 1805, although much of his plan was unrealized. The west wing was completed in 1806, completing the full five-part ensemble, one of the last of its kind.

For thirteen years Riversdale housed the Peeters/Stier collection of European paintings, which was unique in the United States at that time.  It included more than 63 paintings by such artists as Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jan Breughel and Titian. However, most of the larger pieces were kept in storage, and in 1816 they were returned. However, before they were packed, Rembrandt Peale persuaded Rosalie Calvert to display them for two weeks at Riversdale in April 1816. Rosalie became the owner of Riversdale in the same year, but died in 1821.  George Calvert continued to live there until his death in 1838. The estate was divided between his sons George Henry and Charles Benedict Calvert.  Charles Benedict lived his whole life at Riversdale, pursuing agricultural studies. His unique octagonal "cow-house" was particularly notable, but it burned in 1910. Charles Benedict died in 1864. The property was then divided between his widow Charlotte and five children, with Charlotte in the mansion. The  core of the property was eventually sold to John Fox and Alexander Lutz of New York in 1887.

Fox and Lutz acquired an adjacent  property that belonged to George Henry Calvert and began to develop it as the town of Riverdale Park. The new town offered convenient transportation into Washington on the B&O railroad line that ran through the property. The mansion was preserved in a park, but was eventually used as a boarding house. Thomas H. Pickford bought the house in 1912 and undertook renovations, making significant alterations to the wings and moving some of the original mantels to his house in New York. From 1917 to 1929 the house was occupied by California U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson. The sale of Riversdale in 1926 to Senator  Thaddeus Caraway of Arkansas, was a consternation to Johnson, whose lease ran until 1929. Johnson moved out in the spring of 1929, the Caraways moved in. The Caraways undertook other renovations but Thaddeus died in November 1931. His widow, Hattie Wyatt Caraway, took over his seat and was twice elected but was unable to meet the mortgage. A foreclosure sale ensued, and in 1932, Thomas H. Pickford purchased the property, selling the following year to former Oregon congressman Abraham Walter Lafferty. Lafferty lived at Riversdale from 1933 to 1949, attempting to buy the parcel to the south of the mansion from Hattie Caraway. Mrs. Caraway, however, sold the parcel to a developer in 1947, who drained the small lake and built houses. Lafferty sold Riversdale in 1949 to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission for its Prince George's County regional office. The offices remained there until 1982, when structural concerns caused the offices to be moved to other quarters. Restoration ensued, and the house opened to the public in 1993.

Description
Riversdale is a Federal style five-part mansion with a 2-story main block and -story end pavilions linked by -story hyphens. The seven-bay stucco-covered brick central block features a hip roof. An entry porch with Tuscan columns and a small pediment shelters double entry doors on the front The porch sits in a three-bay indentation, which is symmetrical to both the north and south sides of the house. The front doors are topped by a fanlight The north porch has a dairy storage area beneath. A low brick basement story is lighted by fixed four-light windows. The south, or garden porch has a hipped roof supported by four Tuscan columns. Triple-sash windows open onto the porch, permitting passage from the porch to the center parlor. Both porches have floors of black, white and pink marble. Apart from the windows on the south porch, windows are typically nine-over-nine sashes on the first floor and six-over-nine on the second. The roof is clad in wood singles, painted red, with four stucco-covered chimneys, one of which is a dummy for the sake of symmetry. Similarly, one second-floor window on the north side is false.

The three-by-one-bay end pavilions are turned so that their narrow ends face north and south, with pedimented windows in the center of the main bay. The east pavilion served as the kitchen and has a central entrance on the east side. The west wing contained the stable and carriage house, but was altered in the 1930s as a music room. The 1993 renovation has returned the west elevation to its original form with two doors and three windows.  The connecting hyphens each have entrances centered in the north elevations.

The interior of the first floor contains three parlors across the south side of the house. On the north side is a central entry hall, with a stair hall on the right and a service hall on the left. All spaces have elaborate original woodwork. The central parlor, or salon de milieu, is the most elaborate space, with wood Ionic pilasters, plaster ceiling decoration and a plaster cornice. The east parlor served as the dining room. The west parlor was the salle de compagnie. The second floor is arranged similarly to the first, with the chief chambers above the east and west parlors. Each chamber has an adjoining dressing chamber. A smaller bedchamber with curved walls on the east and west occupies the center. The north side has several smaller chambers. One window is partially obstructed at the stair hall, blanked on the northeast bedchamber. An unusual mezzanine level with a ceiling height of just over six feet lies between the first and second floors on the northeast side, connected with areas on the same level in the east hyphen and pavilion. The main level of the east hyphen housed a breakfast room, which was altered in 1912 by the removal of the rooms above into a banquet room. The upper levels have since been restored to provide a caretaker's apartment. The west hyphen was the slave plantation proprietor's study. The former carriage house and stables, damaged by fire in the late 1920s, was converted into a two-story music room.

The basement contains a number of spaces, used principally for storage, including a wine cellar and an interior connection to the dairy under the front stairs. There are crawl spaces under the wings, with impressive brick arches.

A three-by-one-bay secondary structure, or dependency, stands to the east of the east wing. The 2-story stucco-covered brick building was used as a kitchen, with single spaces on each level. Archeological studies have revealed the foundations of other structures, including a water tower, wash house and hothouse.

Gallery

References

External links

Riversdale Historical Society website
, including photo in 2003, at the Maryland Historical Trust

Belgian-American history
National Historic Landmarks in Maryland
Historic American Buildings Survey in Maryland
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maryland
Historic house museums in Maryland
Houses completed in 1807
Calvert family residences
Federal architecture in Maryland
Plantation houses in Maryland
Museums in Prince George's County, Maryland
Houses in Prince George's County, Maryland
National Register of Historic Places in Prince George's County, Maryland
1807 establishments in Maryland

Riversdale (Riverdale Park, Maryland)


Flowering plant sexuality describes some of the technical terms for common arrangements of flowers.

Flowers
Terms for the sexuality of individual flowers:
 Perfect flowers have both male (androecium) and female (gynoecium) reproductive structures. They include stamens and an ovary. Flowers that contain both androecium and gynoecium are called hermaphroditic. Examples of plants with perfect or bisexual flowers include the lily, rose, and most plants with large showy flowers. A complete flower is a perfect flower with petals and sepals.
 Unisexual: Reproductive structure that is either functionally male or functionally female. In angiosperms this condition is also called imperfect, or incomplete.

Individual plants

Many plants have complete flowers with both male and female parts, others only have male or female parts, and still other plants have flowers on the same plant that are a mix of male and female flowers.

Some plants even have mixes that include all three types of flowers, where some flowers are only male, some are only female and some are both male and female.

A distinction needs to be made between arrangements in single plants versus the larger plant population.

Some plants also undergo what is called sex-switching, like Arisaema triphyllum which express sexual differences at different stages of growth. In some arums smaller plants produce all or mostly male flowers and as plants grow larger over the years the male flowers are replaced by more female flowers on the same plant. Arisaema triphyllum thus covers a multitude of sexual conditions in its lifetime; from nonsexual juvenile plants to young plants that are all male, as plants grow larger they have a mix of both male and female flowers, to large plants that have mostly female flowers.

Other plant populations have plants that produce more male flowers early in the year and as plants bloom later in the growing season they produce more female flowers. In plants like Thalictrum dioicum all the plants in the species are either male or female.

Specific terms are used to describe the sexual expression of individual plants within a population.
 Hermaphrodite, a plant that has only bisexual reproductive units (flowers, conifer cones, or functionally equivalent structures). In angiosperm terminology a synonym is monoclinous from the Greek "one bed".
 Monoecious, an individual that has both male and female reproductive units (flowers, conifer cones, or functionally equivalent structures) on the same plant; from Greek for "one household". Individuals bearing separate flowers of both sexes at the same time are called simultaneously or synchronously monoecious. Individuals that bear flowers of one sex at one time are called consecutively monoecious; plants may first have single sexed flowers and then later have flowers of the other sex. Protoandrous describes individuals that function first as males and then change to females; protogynous describes individuals that function first as females and then change to males.
 Dioecious refers to a plant population having separate male and female plants. That is, no individual plant of the population produces both microgametophytes (pollen) and megagametophytes (ovules); individual plants are either male or female. From Greek for "two households". Individual plants are not called dioecious; they are either gynoecious (female plants) or androecious (male plants).
 Androecious, plants producing male flowers only, produce pollen but no seeds, the male plants of a dioecious population.
 Gynoecious, plants producing female flowers only, produces seeds but no pollen, the female of a dioecious population. In some plant populations, all individuals are gynoecious with non sexual reproduction used to produce the next generation.
 Polygamy, plants with male, female, and perfect (hermaphrodite) flowers on the same plant. A polygamous inflorescence has both unisexual and bisexual flowers.
 Trimonoecious (polygamous) - male, female, and hermaphrodite floral morphs all appear on the same plant.

Related pages
 Alternation of generations

References

Biological reproduction

Flowering plant sexuality


An appliance is a machine that only has limited functionality. A prosthesis is an example. Many appliances need electricity to work.
Household appliances can be used for cleaning (like the vacuum cleaner) or cooking. If they are easy to carry around, they are small appliances.
Major appliances are big machines like dishwashers and refrigerators.
A Fire appliance is the name of a fire engine the firefighters use to extinguish a fire

Machines

Appliance


Lily's Crossing is a 1997 young adult novel by American author Patricia Reilly Giff. It received a Newbery Honor award in 1998.

Plot
Lily's Crossing is set in the United States in the 1940s. The story is about Lily and Albert, two children who face grief at a young age and must help and learn from each other through the summer.

Lily lives in St. Albans, Queens with her father and grandmother. Her mother died when Lily was a small girl. Each summer Lily and her father (Poppy) stay in Far Rockaway near the Atlantic Ocean at her grandmother's (Gram) house. She loves going there because it is far from her house and she is able to relax and explore the neighborhood. Lily has a friend, Margaret, and they spend most of their summer days together gossiping and watching movies. Lily feels she needs to fix some problems in her life, one of which is lying because it has become a habit for her and she finds it fun.

This summer is different because the story starts in 1944, which was when World War II was occurring in Europe. Her whole world begins to change because her father must go overseas and her friend Margaret is moving to Detroit with her family for her father to work on planes. Lily must find a new friend to replace Margaret. She meets a new friend called Albert Orban. Lily begins to follow Albert, which makes him uncomfortable and distanced from her, until a series of events leads them to cross paths and become friends. Albert is a refugee from Hungary who has escaped from the Nazis and dreams of reuniting with his family one day. He is not interested in making friends. While Poppy is away, Gram becomes very worried for him because she does not have a way to contact him and Lily and new view of the war. Lily becomes a support system for Albert because he is alone and his family is far away. Lily wants to help him pass his hard time by taking him on new adventures. Albert learns to swim giving him some trust in Lily. Albert begins to open up to Lily about his life in Hungary which Lily describes each conversation his voice being restless. Albert has a sister Ruth that he is desperately trying to find. She was left behind because she had measles and they could not escape together. Albert is willing to put his life in danger to find her

Themes
Lily has a difficult time being honest with the other characters. She has a habit of lying, which causes conflict in her life. Lily's only family is her father and grandmother and are a huge part of her life. When her father is sent to fight the war, her life changes completely. She usually tells lies when she wants to get out of doing something. She lost her mother at a young age which may explain why she is always looking for a new friend. Albert was left as an orphan after being separated from his family because of the war. Another theme is when Lily and Albert become friends. Lily and Albert develop a friendship, even with their differences they manage to help each other through a difficult period. He had a hard time accepting Lily as his friend and at first Albert was resisting any communication with Lily. However, Albert and Lily's friendship became strong,  and they found trust in each other. Albert feels guilty for escaping the Nazis and the separation from his family. Albert was separated from his family, the only family he has left is his sister, Ruth. He does mention that his parents died for writing negative comments about Hitler and Nazis. Lily has a hard time accepting that her father left to go into the war, she mentions him a few times in her conversations with Albert. Margaret's brother is also missing during the war, and Lily becomes concern for his safety because she heard thousands of men had already died fighting the war.

Reception
Lily's Crossing has received some critical praise. In the review of the New York Times, Jane Langton wrote that the novel was "For today's children, to whom World War II must seem as remote as the Civil War, Lily's story places history in real time" and "With Ms. Giff's usual easygoing language and swift, short paragraphs, the impact of the war on an American child is brilliantly told". Although he also noted "Still, what will the parents who buy so many of Ms. Giff's books think of this one, if they pause to read it themselves? Is Lily Mollahan a good role model for their children?". Publishers Weekly had a positive review, stating that  "Exceptional characterizations and a robust story line turn this WWII home front novel into far more than a period piece.".  The Delacorte Press Kathy Hunt wrote a positive review stating  "Yet because of the moral clarity of the situation, these youngsters end up stronger.". In Crocker Review Carol Otis gave the book good standards stating  "The book portrays very well the World War II era and the feelings that drive Lily. Gram is wonderful: she's strong, often difficult and she has a sense of propriety that often frustrates Lily, but sustains them both.". In the Horn Book Magazine, Mary Burns states "Details such as snatches of popular songs, movie titles, and blackout precautions are woven with great effect into a realistic story of ordinary people who must cope with events beyond their comprehension."  Kirkus Reviews called it "a deftly told story."

Awards
Newbery Medal Honor Book in 1998.
ALA Notable Children's Book in 1998
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book
1999 – Arkansas Charlie May Simon Master List
1999 – Kentucky Bluegrass Master List
1998 – Maine Student Book Master List
1999 – Massachusetts Children's Book Master List

References

1997 American novels
Newbery Honor-winning works
American young adult novels
Novels set during World War II
Novels set in New York City
1997 children's books
Children's books set in New York City
Children's books set in the 1940s
Children's books set during World War II

Lily's Crossing


Stefan Rozental (13 August 1903, Łódź – 2 August 1994, Copenhagen), was a nuclear physicist, specialising in quantum mechanics. Trapped outside Poland when World War I started, he and his parents ended up in Denmark and spent four years from 1915 there before they returned to their native Poland in 1919 after the war. He received his PhD from the University of Kraków in 1928.

He later held an assistant position with Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig between 1929 and 1934 and lectured in Kraków between 1934 and 1938. Due to the rising Antisemitism in Poland he emigrated to Denmark and arrived in Copenhagen in March 1938 where Niels Bohr admitted him to his institute.  From 1940, after Hendrik Anthony Kramers (from 1916) and Léon Rosenfeld (from 1934), he was Niels Bohr's personal assistant for almost fifteen years, whom he assisted even into the early sixties after both returned to Copenhagen in 1945.

Literature

 Stefan Rozental, ed., Niels Bohr: His Life and Work As Seen by His Friends and Colleagues, John Wiley & Sons, 1964.
 Stefan Rozental, Schicksalsjahre mit Niels Bohr, DVA, 1991. (This is a German translation of Rozental's Danish account NB - erindringer om Niels Bohr of his years with Niels Bohr, published 1985 in Kopenhagen. No English translation available.)

External links

 http://www.nba.nbi.dk/icos/rozen.htm Biographical Informationen from on the web site of the Niels Bohr Institute
 Short biography at the Stefan Rozental and  foundation  (DTU) — in Danish, includes a photo

1903 births
1994 deaths
Polish emigrants to Denmark
Polish nuclear physicists
Academic staff of Leipzig University
Jagiellonian University alumni
Academic staff of Jagiellonian University
20th-century Polish Jews
Scientists from Łódź
Jewish physicists

Stefan Rozental


Guillaume de Barrême de Châteaufort (6 January 1719, in Arles – 6 November 1775, in Arles), chevalier, was a French painter. He was descended from a converted Jewish family from Navarre which had moved to Arles under the doctor Salomon de la Rabissa (baptised as Jean de Barrême at the start of the 16th century and made a naturalised Frenchman in 1541). Guillaume married to Élisabeth de Campan in 1750 and had a daughter with her before leaving her around 1758 to live with Catherine Raspal, sister of his friend the painter Antoine Raspal. The couple had 4 children between 1760 and 1772, including the painter Jacques Réattu. Some years before his death Guillaume moved to Rome and was there received into a painting academy.

1719 births
1775 deaths
People from Arles
18th-century French painters
French male painters
18th-century French male artists

Guillaume de Barrême de Châteaufort