David John (29 January 1833 – 24 December 1908) was a leading figure in Utah at the dawn of the 20th century. He served as a stake president in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and a member of the Brigham Young University (BYU) board of trustees.

John was born in Little Newcastle, Pembrokeshire, Wales. He was raised in a Baptist family and studied for the ministry. He joined the LDS Church in 1847. His parents were so opposed to the Church at that time that, on the advice of Orson Pratt, John ended his association with it for a time and continued to study for the Baptist ministry.

In 1856 he returned to association with the LDS Church. He was rebaptized on 6 February 1856. John was ordained an elder on 29 March 1856 and in June began to serve as an LDS missionary in various parts of Wales. By December he was the president of the Flintshire Conference in which position he served a year. He also served as a counselor in the Presidency of the Welsh Mission from December 1857 to December 1858. In January 1859 he was reassigned to the Nottingham Conference in the British Mission. He also served as president here from that time until March 1860. He then served about a year as pastor of the "pastorate" which consisted of Nottingham and two other conferences, for a total of about 100 Branches. This is a position that has only really existed in mid-19th Century Britain in the history of the LDS Church. In modern usage if pastor is applied to any specific LDS position it would be to the bishops who preside over individual Wards.

John emigrated to Utah in 1861. In 1860 he had married Mary Wride in Cardiff. In 1862 John was called as a counselor in the bishopric of the Provo 3rd Ward. He served in the bishopric for 15 years. John was called as superintendent of the Utah Stake Sunday School in 1865 in which position he served until 1893. From 1877 to 1901 John was a counselor in the Utah Stake to first Abraham O. Smoot and then Edward Partridge, Jr. At this time the Utah stake covered all of Utah County. In 1883 he was ordained a bishop and appointed the regional presiding bishop of Utah Stake, overseeing the activities of the various bishops in Utah County in temporal matters. John was simultaneously regional presiding bishop and a counselor in the stake presidency and Stake Sunday School Superintendent. However, his position of regional presiding bishop was a paid full-time position, somewhat like various full-time positions in the Presiding Bishops office today. He also served another mission to Great Britain in the early 1870s.

At the start of his time in Utah John worked as a school teacher and then was trustee of the Provo district schools for 15 years.  He was also a partner in the firm of Smoot and John, a lumber business he ran with Abraham O. Smoot.

John married a second wife, Jane Cree, in 1865. He had nine children with Mary and 11 children with Jane. In 1887 he spent time in prison for violating the Edmunds Act.

Among John's children was Mary John who married Benjamin Cluff, who served as president of BYU during part of the time John was the vice president of the Board of Trustees.

John served as president of the stake from 1901-1908. At the time of his call as president the stake was divided, and reduced to Provo, Springville, Utah and the farm area that would latter become part of Orem, Utah. He also served as vice president of the Brigham Young University Board of Trustees, with Joseph F. Smith, who was also president of the LDS Church as president, making John the senior member of the board who could devote a large amount of his time to its operations. John served on the Brigham Young Academy and then BYU board of trustees from 1891 to 1908.

David John wrote a diary that has been cited for historical purposes, including his comments on Utah receiving statehood.

One of Helaman Halls at BYU is named for David John.

Sources

Further reading
Andrew Jenson. Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia: a compilation of biographical sketches of prominent men and women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Volume 1, pages 488-490.
Orson F. Whitney. History of Utah: Biographical. p. 348.
Frederick S. Buchanan. "Education Among the Mormons: Brigham Young and the Schools of Utah" in History of Education, 1982.

External links
David J. Evans letter to David John at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University

1833 births
1908 deaths
19th-century Mormon missionaries
Brigham Young University people
Mormon missionaries in England
Mormon missionaries in Wales
Mormon pioneers
Converts to Mormonism from Baptist denominations
Welsh emigrants to the United States
Welsh Latter Day Saints
Welsh Mormon missionaries
Welsh Baptists
Welsh leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Latter Day Saints from Utah

David John (Mormon)


Larry Grossman (born September 3, 1938) is an American composer for theatre, television, film, concerts, and cabaret.

Life and career
Grossman, a native of Chicago, graduated from Northwestern University School Communication in 1960.

He started working in New York City as a vocal coach and accompanist. One of his songs was used in the revue No Shoestrings (1962). He began working with lyricist Hal Hackady in 1968, and their first piece together was the title song for the play Play It Again, Sam. Their collaboration led to Grossman's Broadway debut in 1970 where he went on to write the scores for four Broadway musicals Minnie's Boys. and Goodtime Charley  and in collaboration with theatre legend Harold Prince, A Doll's Life and Grind for which he received Tony nominations.

In 1975, Grossman composed Snoopy: The Musical with lyricist Hal Hackady which has been performed in six languages worldwide with the first London production receiving an Olivier award nomination.

He composed the musical Paper Moon in 1993. Based on the novel Addie Pray and the 1973 film, it premiered at the Paper Mill Playhouse. A revised version was then presented at the Goodspeed Opera House, Walnut Street Theatre, and Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC. Paper Moon then had two successful tours in Japan.

In 2008, Off-Broadway's York Theatre Company produced a retrospective of his Broadway work, remounting Minnie's Boys, Grind, Goodtime Charley, and "Compose Yourself," new revue of his music.

In 2010, Grossman composed A Christmas Memory with lyrics by Carol Hall and the book by Duane Poole, based on the Truman Capote short story.  The show was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical and has been performed nationally.

Grossman's most recent show is Scrooge in Love! which was presented in 2015 by 42nd Street Moon. The first production received four San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle awards including Best Score. It was honored with a new production in 2016.

Film work includes the song score for The Walt Disney Company's Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, The Great Mouse Detective and The Princess Diaries 2 and  MGM's That's Dancing!. Dramatic film scores include Kurt Vonnegut's Displaced Person and the remake of Hitchcock's Suspicion, both for American Playhouse.

Grossman co-wrote the Michael Jackson song "Gone Too Soon" with Buz Kohan for Jackson's multi-platinum album Dangerous which sold 32 million copies worldwide.  They also co-wrote the Christmas classic "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy" for David Bowie and Bing Crosby, performed on Crosby's Christmas Special.

Grossman's Emmy Award-winning television work includes nearly 100 musical specials, concerts and cabaret for artists including Julie Andrews, Shirley MacLaine Liza Minnelli & Goldie Hawn, Andy Williams, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme, Joel Grey, Glen Campbell, Sandy Duncan and Ann-Margret.

He has written music for four Academy Awards telecasts, three Emmy telecasts, two Tony telecasts The Songwriters Hall of Fame and Liberty Weekend produced by David Wolper.

Grossman served as music consultant and composer for The Muppet Show (three seasons), Make Way For Noddy (five years), Christmas in Washington (32 years) and A Capitol Fourth (12 years).

For his work in television, Grossman has been awarded six Emmy's, with a total of 17 nominations, as well as a Peabody Award for his contributions to The Muppet Show.

Currently, Grossman is serving as music supervisor and composer for Julie's Greenroom, the Netflix original children's series starring Julie Andrews and The Muppets. He is also serving as a co-producer on The World According to Snoopy the re-imagined production of Snoopy: The Musical.

Theatre productions
 Play it Again, Sam (1969)
 Minnie's Boys (1970)
 Goodtime Charley (1975)
 Snoopy! The Musical (1975)
 A Doll's Life (1982) Nominated for a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award
 Ann Reinking...Music Loves Me (1984)
 Diamonds (1984)
 Grind (1985) Nominated for a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award
 Paper Moon (1993)
 The Gay Century Songbook (2000)
 Tom Jones (2001)
 It Must Be Him (2010)
 A Christmas Memory (2010)
 Scrooge in Love (2015)

References

External links

 Larry Grossman at the Internet Off Broadway Database

1938 births
American musical theatre composers
Broadway composers and lyricists
Living people
Male musical theatre composers
Musicians from Chicago
Northwestern University School of Communication alumni
Primetime Emmy Award winners

Larry Grossman (composer)


The Chopin University of Music (, UMFC) is a musical conservatorium and academy located in central Warsaw, Poland. It is the oldest and largest music school in Poland, and one of the largest in Europe.

History

Named for the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (whose birth name was Fryderyk Chopin and who studied there from 1826 to 1829), the University dates from the Music School for singers and theatre actors that was founded in 1810 by Wojciech Bogusławski. In 1820 it was transformed by Chopin's subsequent teacher, Józef Elsner, into a more general school of music, the Institute of Music and Declamation; it was then affiliated with the University of Warsaw and, together with the University, was dissolved by Russian imperial authorities during the repressions that followed the November 1830 Uprising. In 1861 it was revived as Warsaw's Institute of Music.

After Poland regained independence in 1918, the Institute was taken over by the Polish state and became known as the Warsaw Conservatory. The institution's old main building was destroyed during World War II, in the Warsaw Uprising. After the war, in 1946, the school was recreated as the Higher State School of Music. In 1979 the school assumed the name: Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy. In 2008 the school once again changed its name to the Chopin University of Music.

Buildings

The main building, at ulica Okólnik 2 in Central Warsaw, was constructed between 1960 and 1966. It contains 62 sound-proof classrooms; a concert hall (486 seats), the Szymanowski Lecture Theater (adapted for film projection; 155 seats), the Melcer Chamber Music Hall (196 seats and a Walcker organ sampled by Piotr Grabowski), the Moniuszko Opera Hall (53 seats), a rhythmics room, three music-recording and sound-track studios, a tuner's studio, a library and reading room, rector's offices, deans' offices, management offices, guest rooms, the GAMA cafeteria, and doctor's and dentist's clinics. There is also a music book shop and antiquarian book shop.

The University also has its own dormitory, Dziekanka, at 58/60 Krakowskie Przedmieście. The latter has its own 150-seat concert hall.

Structure
The University is divided into the following departments:

 Department of Symphony and Orchestra Conducting
 Department of Composition and Theory of Music
 Department of Instrumental Studies
 Department of Vocal and Acting Studies
 Department of Choir Conducting and Choir Studies, Music Education and Rhythmics
 Department of Sound Engineering
 Department of Church Music
 Department of Dance
 Department of Jazz and Stage Music
 Department of Instrumental and Educational Studies, Music Education and Vocal Studies in Białystok

Directors and rectors

 Wojciech Bogusławski (1810–1814)
 Ludwik Osiński (1814−1816)
 Józef Elsner (1816–1830)
 Apolinary Kątski (1861−1879)
 Aleksander Zarzycki (1879−1888)
 Rudolf Strobl (1888−1891)
 Gustaw Roguski (1891−1903)
 Emil Młynarski (1903−1907)
 Stanisław Barcewicz (1910−1918)
 Emil Młynarski (1919−1922)
 Henryk Melcer-Szczawiński (1922−1927)
 Karol Szymanowski (1927−1929)
 Zbigniew Drzewiecki (1929−1930)
 Karol Szymanowski (1930–1931)
 Zbigniew Drzewiecki (1931–1932)
 Eugeniusz Morawski-Dąbrowa (1932−1939)
 Kazimierz Sikorski (1940−1944)
 Stanisław Kazuro (1945−1951)
 Stanisław Szpinalski (1951−1957)
 Kazimierz Sikorski (1957−1966)
 Teodor Zalewski (1966−1969)
 Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz (1969−1971)
 Regina Smendzianka (1972−1973)
 Tadeusz Wroński (1973−1975)
 Tadeusz Maklakiewicz (1975−1978)
 Bogusław Madey (1978−1981)
 Andrzej Rakowski (1981−1987)
 Kazimierz Gierżod (1987−1993)
 Andrzej Chorosiński (1993−1999)
 Ryszard Zimak (1999−2005)
 Stanisław Moryto (2005−2012)
 Ryszard Zimak (2012−2016)
 Klaudiusz Baran (from 2016)

Doctors honoris causa

 Igor Bełza
 Nadia Boulanger
 Plácido Domingo
 Jan Ekier
 Joachim Grubich
 Andrzej Jasiński
 Witold Lutosławski
 Andrzej Panufnik
 Arvo Pärt
 Krzysztof Penderecki
 Jean-Pierre Rampal
 Mstislav Rostropovich
 Arthur Rubinstein
 Witold Rudziński
 Jerzy Semkow
 Kazimierz Sikorski
 Stefan Śledziński
 Regina Smendzianka
 Stefan Sutkowski
 Tadeusz Wroński

Notable professors

 Tadeusz Baird
 Henryk Czyż
 Zbigniew Drzewiecki
 Irena Dubiska
 Paweł Łukaszewski
 Witold Maliszewski
 Aleksander Michałowski
 Stanisław Moniuszko
 Witold Rudziński
 Ada Sari
 Tadeusz Szeligowski
 Karol Szymanowski
 Józef Turczyński
 Kazimierz Wiłkomirski
 Stanisław Wisłocki
 Władysław Żeleński

Notable students

 Kari Amirian
 Grażyna Bacewicz
 Thomas Böttger
 Elisabeth Chojnacka
 Frédéric Chopin
 Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis
 Ignacy Feliks Dobrzyński
 Marian Filar
 Grzegorz Fitelberg
 Mieczysław Karłowicz
 Stefan Kisielewski
 Paweł Klecki
 Tomasz Konieczny
 Hilary Koprowski
 Bernard Ładysz
 Wanda Landowska
 Jerzy Lefeld
 Maciej Łukaszczyk
 Witold Lutosławski
 Jan Maklakiewicz
 Maciej Małecki
 Zygmunt Noskowski
 Jakub Józef Orliński
 Ignacy Jan Paderewski
 Andrzej Panufnik
 Olha Pasichnyk
 Piotr Perkowski
 Sergiusz Pinkwart
 Hania Rani
 Ludomir Różycki
 Sanah
 Antoni Szalowski
 Stanisław Szpinalski
 Adam Sztaba
 Tomasz Szukalski
 Alexandre Tansman
 Piotr Tomaszewski
 Zbigniew Turski
 Eugenia Umińska
 Moshe Vilenski
 Małgorzata Walewska
 Mieczysław Weinberg
 Kazimierz Wiłkomirski
 Roger Woodward

Competitions
The University organizes the following music competitions:
 the Tadeusz Wronski International Solo Violin Competition (Międzynarodowy Konkurs T. Wrońskiego na Skrzypce Solo)
 an International Organ Competition (Międzynarodowy Konkurs Organowy)
 the Wanda Landowska Harpsichord Competition (Międzynarodowy Konkurs Klawesynowy im. W. Landowskiej)
 the Witold Lutoslawski International Cello Competition (Międzynarodowy Konkurs Wiolonczelowy im. W. Lutosławskiego)

Orchestras
The University has two orchestras: a symphony orchestra, and the Chopin University Orchestra, as well as a choir.

Notes
a  Since at that time the Warsaw Conservatory was affiliated with  Warsaw University's Art Department, Chopin is also counted among the University's alumni.

Citations

References
  Home page
  Akademia Muzyczna w Warszawie, Encyklopedia WIEM

University of Music
Buildings and structures completed in 1966
Educational institutions established in 1810
Music schools in Poland
Universities and colleges in Warsaw

1810 establishments in Poland

Chopin University of Music


THX is the trade name of a high-fidelity sound reproduction standard. It was used for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, and car audio systems.

THX stands for "Tomlinson Holman's eXperiment".  THX was developed by Tomlinson Holman at George Lucas's company Lucasfilm founded in 1983 to ensure that the soundtrack for the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, would be accurately reproduced in the best venues.

The THX system is not a recording technology, and it does not specify a sound recording format. All sound formats, whether digital (Dolby Digital, SDDS) or analog (Dolby SR, Ultra-Stereo), can be "shown in THX."  THX is mainly a quality assurance system.  THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any movie soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer.  THX also provides certified theaters with a special crossover circuit whose use is part of the standard.  Certification of an auditorium entails specific acoustic and other technical requirements; architectural requirements include a floating floor, baffled and acoustically treated walls, no parallel walls (to reduce standing waves), a perforated screen (to allow center channel continuity), and NC30 rating for background noise.

Applications

THX sets strict standards for high quality sound and images.

According to Tomlinson Holman, the inventor of the THX system, the name of the technology was deliberately chosen because it contained both a reference to his name, and to Lucas's early movie THX 1138. The original name was "Tom Holman's Crossover" (Crossover being sometimes referred to as Xover) or the "Tom Holman eXperiment."

THX Ltd., the company that licenses THX and the associated technology, is based in San Rafael, California, but has offices in Burbank and Hollywood.

THX launched a certification program for HD video products to ensure HD projectors, LCDs, plasmas and DVRs meet high standards for quality. The TiVo Series3 HD DVR and a number of projectors from Runco and Vidikron became the first THX Certified HD products.

The THX II Certified Car Audio System can be found in many Lincoln automobiles produced since 2003. The system was recently recognized among the Best Car Audio Systems of 2006 by the editors of CNET.

THX Ltd. started a licensing program for home screening rooms in 2005, which requires standards similar in concept, though not in detail, to its cinema certification program; before this happened, there was a very small number of (very expensive) home theatres which were actually constructed to THX Cinema standards, most notable of actor and comedian Eddie Murphy.

The world's largest THX cinema is the Colosseum Kino in Oslo, Norway.

The distinctive crescendo used in the THX trailers is known as the "Deep Note."

The character in the THX trailers is called "Tex" and was created by John Lasseter at Pixar.

The THX trailer entitled "Cimarron", which first appeared at the start of the 1988 movie Willow, used music composed by James Horner, while "Grand", which first appeared in theaters, featured a variation of the "Deep Note".

The THX Broadway logo on a DVD has a lower-pitched deep note, while the VHS/Laserdisc logo had a higher-pitched deep-note that was similar to "Wings" (1983).

The first theater THX was used in was at the University of Southern California's Eileen Norris Cinema Theatre as a part of USC's acclaimed film school.  The Norris Theatre's THX system is currently second-best in California to that of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Movie references

Some trailers have references to, or are stylized to match, various movies and video games.  Examples include:

 Shrek (series):  The THX logo appears with its characteristic sound, followed shortly by the logo falling over, revealing that it is really just a wooden cutout. Behind the logo, Shrek and Donkey are shown playing the "Deep Note" sound with various instruments. Shrek rights the cutout/logo, and the sequence finishes as Shrek and Donkey poke their heads in from off-camera, for one final exchange.
 Terminator 2:  A change of the "Cavalcade" trailer shows a floating, electrified ball of energy on the screen, which is quickly replaced with an identity scanning device. The device fires beam that scans left to right, as if scanning the viewer's eyes, after which the "T2" logo appears. The logo is then shot by the Terminator (his reflection is slightly visible on the logo) causing it to explode into small, irregular pieces. Sparks fall as the pieces slowly melt into a silvery liquid, which then transforms back into the THX logo, and then plays the "Deep Note" sound.
 Toy Story: The THX logo and the "Deep Note" sound start as usual, which then breaks down as if due to an electrical failure. A blue light is switched on as Tex rolls in from off-camera, opens a panel on the X, grabs a rocket pack, and flies off screen, pulling out a hammer just before he goes off screen. Tex hammers at something on the right side of the screen, drills at something on the left side, audibly complains after dropping one of his tools, flies over to the T, and moves a large switch. The switch causes the logo to re-activate and complete its usual sequence, and then re-plays the "Deep Note" sound.
 Taz Wanted: A Looney Tunes video game have a lot of the THX Tex trailers as one of the Easter eggs:
 The THX logo and the "Deep Note" sound start as usual, which then breaks down as if due to an electrical failure. A blue light is switched on as Taz spins in from off-camera, opens a door on the X, grabs a ACME jetpack, and flies off screen, pulling out a golden hammer just before he flies off screen. Taz hammers at something on the right side of the screen, drills at something on the left side, audibly complains after dropping one of his tools, flies over to the T, and moves a large switch. The switch causes the logo to re-activate and complete its usual sequence, and then re-plays the "Deep Note" sound.

Parodies
 Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny: A short animated segment of Jack Black and Kyle Gass performing a sound check which consists of the duo farting precedes the appearance of a change reading "THC" with the subtitle, "The audience is baking." The classic THX tone is replaced by two gas-passing sounds in the same tone.
 Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation: A movie begins with a hand holding a wand as if to call an orchestra to order, which then touches off a dischordant, ridiculously loud, powerful trailer. The force of the sound is shown blasting characters from their seats. As the trailer comes to a close, text appears on the screen reading: "THUD Sound Systems, a division of Mucasfilm LTD". The trailer ends with a voice speaking the words "The audience is now deaf."
 The Simpsons: In the episode "Burns' Heir", the THX logo and the "Deep Note" sound play extremely loudly causing the ground to shake, people's teeth to shatter and one man's head to explode. Despite this, Grandpa Simpson still demands that they turn the volume up.
 The Simpsons Movie: The DVD and Blu-ray releases have an unauthorized parody of the THX Tex trailers as an Easter egg, where Homer Simpson becomes annoyed by a "Tex" caricature and eventually smashes it. A disclaimer after the trailer explains that neither the trailer nor The Simpsons Movie itself involved THX's input. Because of this, an imitation of the "Deep Note" sound is used and the logo used in the parody reads "TH\".
 Over the Hedge: During the scene where the animals are in a house, one of the characters were trying to setup a camera with a television, but accidentally tune the TV to a movie starting with the THX logo and the "Deep Note" crescendo.
 Boondocks: In the episode "...Or Die Trying", Grandpa mimics the THX deep note crescendo when reassuring Jazmin that the theater they are going to is a quality theater.
 2001: In 2000, rapper Dr. Dre was sued by Lucasfilm, then-owner of THX, for using an unauthorized sample of Deep Note on his album 2001. The sample is used at the very beginning of his intro song and is almost entirely unedited and played in full.
 Phineas and Ferb: The Movie: The DVD and Blu-ray have an unauthorized parody of the THX Tex trailers as an Easter egg like The Simpsons Movie, where Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz becomes annoyed by Tex and eventually smashes it, then Perry the Platypus flies in from off-camera. Because of this, an imitation of the "Deep Note" sound is used and the logo used in the original Tex trailer.
 The Curse of Monkey Island: At the beginning of the video game, the THX logo that appears is replaced with the letters CMI, and instead of the "Deep Note" crescendo, we can hear a "Monkeys Screaming" crescendo. At the end, text appears on the screen reading: "The monkeys are listening".
Johnny Test: The Movie: The DVD and Blu-ray have an unauthorized parody of the THX Tex trailers as an Easter egg like The Simpsons Movie, where Mr. Wacko becomes annoyed by Tex and eventually smashes it. Because of this, a cyber-tronic version of the "Deep Note" sound is used and the logo used in the Tex 2 trailer.

Other websites
 THX Official Website
 Official THX Create a Trailer Contest 2006
 Home Theatre Program launch

Movie industry
Sound

THX


The interwar period was a time in history from 9 November 1918 to 1 September 1939, between the two world wars, World War I and World War II.

The period began with many changes internationally. The League of Nations was created, which was made to bring peace to the world, but did not prevent problems with Nazi Germany, which soon left the League. Also occurred was the growing threat of Japan, which invaded China. Soon the Soviet Union and Italy had begun to rise as international powers. All of that happened in the 21 years and soon triggered World War II.

Related pages
 League of Nations

References
 McDonough, Frank (1997). The Origins of the First and Second World Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .

World War I
World War II
1910s
1920s
1930s

Interwar period


The Gutland (Luxembourgish: Guttland) is the middle and the south of Luxembourg. It is about two-thirds of the country. About 90 percent of the people in Luxembourg live here (about 540,000 people).

The Gutland has low hills with an altitude of 200 to 300 meters.

The Gutland used to be Grevenmacher and Luxembourg Districts, and also the very southern parts of the Diekirch District.

Related pages
 Oesling is the north of Luxembourg.

Geography of Luxembourg

Gutland


Headlong is a 1980 alternate history novel by Emlyn Williams.

Plot summary
The story takes place in the United Kingdom in the mid-1930s. During the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary in May 1935, the entire British Royal Family is killed in a freak accident after the explosion of a large dirigible (similar to the Hindenburg disaster), and the search is on to find a surviving heir of British blood. After an extensive search, the choice falls on Jack Green, a 24-year-old stage actor who, unbeknownst to him, is the grandson of the philandering Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, George V's elder brother, and the nearest living heir. He is virtually kidnapped and brought to Buckingham Palace, where he is placed in the care of William Millingham (known as Willie) who is to be his Private Secretary. Millingham assists the new king during a period of adjustment to his new status. He is duly installed as King John II.

After the new king refuses to marry any of several potential queens offered to him, and also makes a speech drawing attention to the problem of unemployment, which is considered highly radical by "The Powers That Be," a plot is discovered to discredit him. At the same time, the King begins to chafe at the rigid, ceremonial routine of royal life and the limitations inevitably placed upon his freedom. He also misses his girlfriend Kathy, who is deeply uncomfortable with him in his new role.

The king decides to try to do some good from the throne. After trying to assert his new-found authority, conservatives led by Cabinet Secretary Sir Godwin Rodd (known as "Sir God"), "suggest" that he abdicate. It is then revealed to him that "Willie" is also a direct descendant of British Royalty, but that he refused the position, deferring to Green. After much soul-searching, Jack decides to abdicate, leaving Willie to take the throne as King William V. Jack leaves the palace, his reign of just over 200 days at an end, to be happily reunited with his girlfriend Kathy and go into seclusion in Mexico. Later, he returns to England and writes his memoirs - this book.

Film
The 1991 film King Ralph is a loose, comic adaptation of the novel. John Goodman stars as Ralph Jones, an American lounge singer who improbably becomes the British king.

References

1980 British novels
British alternative history novels
British political novels
British novels adapted into films
Fiction set in the 1930s
Welsh novels

Headlong (Williams novel)


Hermann Neubacher (24 June 1893 – 1 July 1960) was an Austrian Nazi politician who held a number of diplomatic posts in the Third Reich. During the Second World War, he was appointed as the leading German foreign ministry official for Greece and the Balkans (including Serbia, Albania and Montenegro).

Austrian activism
Born in Wels, he was educated in Kremsmünster and Vienna before his service on the Italian Front in World War I. Initially connected to the Social Democratic Party of Austria through his friendship with a number of leading members whilst in charge of a housing project in Vienna, Neubacher became attracted to Pan-Germanism and in 1925 founded his own Österreichisch-Deutscher Volksbund as a society for this school of thought. He was also a member of the Deutsche Gemeinschaft secret society and in this group he built up friendships with fellow members Engelbert Dollfuß and Arthur Seyss-Inquart.

Neubacher became a member of the Nazi Party in Austria because he felt it was the best way to bring about Anschluss, although he was more in tune with the Anton Reinthaller-led moderate faction than the extremists under Theodor Habicht. After a spell as assistant to Josef Leopold he became Landesleiter of the Austrian Nazi party in 1935, attempting to restructure the banned group. His tenure came to an end the same year when he was imprisoned for distributing illegal material and upon his release, he dropped out of politics to take up a role with IG Farben.

Under the Nazis he was chosen to serve as Mayor of Vienna, although he soon incurred disfavor for his habit of working with former Social Democrats and his lax attitude towards the Jews and before long he was downgraded to the role of general representative of Josef Bürckel.

Greece

When war broke out Neubacher took on the role of a special plenipotentiary envoy in the Balkans and Greece, initially serving as an economic adviser in Romania before taking on the role of ambassador to the same country and afterwards Greece as well. In Greece he was joined by Italian Alberto D'Agostino, with the two men given full authority over economic and financial matters after discussions between the Greek government and the occupiers aimed at reducing occupation costs. Neubacher was the general manager of DEGRIGES a German monopoly company for trade in Greece.

During the final days of the occupation of Greece the more moderate Neubacher became embroiled in a struggle with Sicherheitspolizei chief Walter Blume, after Blume suggested that the Nazis should undertake a policy of executing all members of the political elite suspected of having links to the United Kingdom, so as to leave the country leaderless (the so-called "Chaos thesis"). Neubacher rejected this as counterproductive, arguing that as long as politicians opposed the work of the communist-controlled National Liberation Front and the Greek People's Liberation Army their British ties would not help them in establishing control. In the end Neubacher's line was approved and Blume was withdrawn, a move that ultimately left in place a strong anti-communist right wing governing class in post-liberation Greece.

Yugoslavia

In 1943 he devised the Neubacher Plan as a means to improve German occupation in the Balkans. In a wide-ranging raft of reforms Neubacher suggested five main ideas to Joachim von Ribbentrop. These were:
 The re-unification of Montenegro and Serbia in a federal type of state.
 Installing General Milan Nedić as President of the resulting Greater Serbia.
 Autonomy in Montenegro.
 The re-opening of the University of Belgrade and an end to German supervision of cultural life.
 Reduction in German military presence and the establishment of a gendarmerie controlled by the new government.
Ultimately only point 4 of his proposals was approved, although he did succeed in ending German military reprisals and in combating to an extent the Ustaše genocide against Serbs.

Later life
After the war Neubacher faced trial in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in 1946 a military court in Belgrade sentenced him to 20 years of hard labor, although he was not ultimately required to serve the full sentence. He served his prison term in Belgrade, in the building of the former Gestapo headquarters.  He was released from prison in November 1952 due to poor health. Back in Austria, he worked as a building constructor in Salzburg, and from 1954–1956, he worked in Ethiopia as a consultant to Emperor Haile Selasie. He died in Vienna, aged 67.

References

External links

1893 births
1960 deaths
People from Wels
Austrian diplomats
Austrian Nazis
Mayors of Vienna
Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I
Austrian anti-communists
Austrian people imprisoned abroad
Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross
Prisoners and detainees of Austria
Prisoners and detainees of Yugoslavia
German occupation of Greece during World War II
Nazi politicians

Hermann Neubacher


Sir George Herbert Duckworth, CB, FSA (5 March 1868 – 27 April 1934) was an English public servant.

Early life and family
The son of Herbert Duckworth, a barrister, of Orchardleigh Park, Somerset, by his marriage to Julia Prinsep Jackson, a niece of the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, Duckworth had a younger brother, Gerald, who later founded the London publishing firm of Duckworth & Co, and a sister, Stella (1869–1897).

After Herbert Duckworth's death, Julia married secondly the author Leslie Stephen, and Duckworth was thus a half-brother of the painter Vanessa Bell and the writer Virginia Woolf, leading members of the Bloomsbury Group, and of Thoby and Adrian Stephen. Both sisters, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf later accused their two Duckworth half-brothers of sexually abusing them for many years as children and adolescents.

Duckworth was educated at Eton, where in 1886 he was a member of the First XI for cricket, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Career

From 1892 to 1902, Duckworth acted as secretary (without pay) to the philanthropist Charles Booth, and then from August 1902 to 1905 as private secretary to Austen Chamberlain, at a time when Chamberlain was in the Cabinet, first as Postmaster General and then as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

From 1906 to 1908, Duckworth was secretary to the Treasury Committee on War Risks of Shipping, and from 1908 to 1933 Secretary to the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments. During the First World War he was appointed deputy Director of Munitions Finance, serving from 1915 to 1918, and, in 1918, as Controller of Labour Finance. In 1919, he became a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

After the war, from 1919 to 1920, he was Controller of Munitions Housing Schemes. In 1924, he became a Trustee and first Chairman of the Irish Land Trust, which had the aim of providing houses and land for ex-service men in Ireland.

In 1927, he was knighted and the same year served as a member of the Royal Commission on London Squares and Open Spaces. The next year, 1928, he was on the Advisory Committee on the New Survey of London Life and Labour.

Private life
On 10 September 1904, Duckworth married Lady Margaret Leonora Evelyn Selina Herbert (1870–1959), a daughter of Henry Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, and together they had three sons:
 Henry George Austen de l'Etang Herbert Duckworth (29 June 1905 – 9 February 1992)
Captain Auberon Charles Alan Campbell Duckworth (15 February 1907 – 17 April 1987)
 Anthony John Stanhope Duckworth (2 October 1913 – 12 July 1993)

They lived at Dalingridge Place, West Hoathly, Sussex, while in London Duckworth was a member of the Travellers and Garrick Clubs.

Duckworth was Honorary Treasurer of the Royal Archæological Institute and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

In 1947, Duckworth's son Henry George married Mary Katherine Medina (1911–2009), the younger daughter of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield. Their twin daughters Harriet Angela Victoria and Sarah Margaret Katharine were born in 1951.

Anthony Duckworth-Chad is Duckworth's grandson.

Notes

1868 births
1934 deaths
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Companions of the Order of the Bath
Knights Bachelor
People educated at Eton College
Virginia Woolf

George Herbert Duckworth


Ignazio Gardella (30 March 1905 in Milan, Lombardy – 16 March 1999) was an Italian architect and designer.

Biography
Born into a family of architects, the first of whom was his namesake  (1803–1867). Gardella graduated in engineering from the Politecnico di Milano university in 1928, and later earned a degree in architecture from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) in 1949.

In his university years he came into contact with other young protagonists of the Milanese scene together with whom he took part in the creation of the Italian Modern Movement.

Professional activity
His long professional activity, which began before his graduation at the end of the 1920s with his father  (1873–1928), produced an enormous quantity of projects and realizations.

The CIAM
In the same years he was a leader of important cultural events, like CIAM (in 1952 he founded, with others, the summer session in Venice; in 1959 he participated in CIAM X in Otterlo in the Netherlands), or the first INU conferences (starting in 1949).

International maestro

The figure of Gardella remained at the pinnacle of Italian architecture for all of the 1960s and '70s, with intense professional activity whose importance is proven by his presence in international publications.  In the last phase of his life, Gardella, now among the eminences grises of Italian architecture, still produced significant projects, like the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Genova (1975–1989), which brought him once more to the front lines of the architectural debate.

The designer activity

Gardella's activity has had a determining role in the field of design as well, starting as early as 1947, when he founded the Azucena Agency with Luigi Caccia Dominioni, the first that inaugurated Italian design production of high quality.  Gardella designed primarily decorative furniture objects.

Architecture according to Gardella
If one looks for Ignazio Gardella's style, one is likely to be disoriented.  His projects, over the years, changed according to changing architectural tendencies, often anticipating them, but always containing elements that diverged from the current with which they might be associated.  Gardella is one of the Italian Rationalists, but his use of local construction techniques, like the famous brick screen of the Dispensario in Alessandria, makes him in some ways a heretic.

In the 1950s he came closer to regionalist currents, but his buildings also maintained an abstraction that distanced them from the most famous works of Neoliberty or Neorealism.

In the 1960s and 1970s he seemed to adhere to a strictly professional form of practice like the Modern Movement or the International Style.  His Uffici Alfa Romeo (1969) opposed the use of industrial materials and the development of a complex program.  But Gardella strictly controlled the form, imposing a symmetrical composition.

In the 1980s he seemed to stick to the Post Modern, but he did not in reality share its principles.  Thus he himself said, "It is always difficult to say who are the fathers and who the sons.  But Mario Ridolfi and I said, jokingly, that if we were really the fathers of all the works exhibited (at the 1980 Venice Biennale) we would have to admit (...) to having gone to bed with women of every type and every race." (s. Guidarini, 2002).

In reality there are aspects of his work that remain the same throughout his long career and constitute a continuity.  These aspects can be synthesized in two complementary points:

- Gardella's architecture always maintains a composure that could be called 'classic'.  This can be deduced from the extreme refinement of his details, which are comparable to those of his contemporary and friend Franco Albini, whether by control of the complete design of a building or because of the design of architectural spaces.  In his architecture there is a preoccupation with and emphasis on the immediate, on the style of the moment, and a research for a kind of timelessness.

- Complementing this aspect is his capacity to change registers, to adapt himself to the genius loci (the spirit of a place), as few other architects have succeeded to do.  If the almost contemporary Case Borsalino in Alessandria are compared with the Casa alle Zattere in Venice, one realizes that there is a great difference.  The materials have changed, as have the decorative elements and the conception of volume.  This is clearly owed to his will to take up influences from the built environment or context.

Works and important projects

From among his first buildings one could note the Antitubercular Dispensary of Alessandria (1934–38) which is one of the masterpieces of rationalist architecture.

Before World War II
Before the war he also participated in several important architecture competitions such as:
1933-36 Extension of the Villa Borletti in Milan.
1934 Progetto di concorso per la torre littoria di Piazza del Duomo a Milan (non realizzato).
1934-38 Dispensario Antitubercolare di Alessandria.
1944 The Milano-Verde (Green Milan) Plan (with the Casabella group, including Franco Albini, Giuseppe Pagano e Giovanni Romano);

After the War

In the early postwar period, Gardella took up once more his activity with full vigor, producing many important works and some masterpieces such as:
1944-47 Casa del Viticultore
1947-54 Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan (PAC) (which he rebuilt himself – with his son Jacopo Gardella - in 1996 after the attack of 1993).
1947-54 Casa Tognella [Casa al Parco] in Milan.
1951-54 INA-Casa a Cesate, Milan. With BBPR, Franco Albini and Gianni Albricci.
1952 Case Borsalino in Alessandria.
1953-58 Casa alle Zattere in Venice
1955 "Giardini d'Ercole", residential building, Via Marchiondi in Milan, with Anna Castelli Ferrieri.
1958 Mensa Olivetti in Ivrea.
1967 Kartell headquarters  in Noviglio, with Anna Castelli Ferrieri.
1968-70 , with Anna Castelli Ferrieri
1969 Uffici Alfa Romeo in Arese, with Anna Castelli Ferrieri.
1969 Project for the theater of Vicenza (not realized).
1969-75 Piano particolareggiato for the area of San Donato and San Silvestro in Genoa (partially carried out with Silvano Larini, Jacopo Gardella, Daniele Vitale, Giuliano Nardi) .
1975-89 Faculty of Architecture of Genoa.
1981-90 Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa (with Aldo Rossi, Bruno Reichlin and Angelo Sibilla).

Writings
The publications of Gardella, though they include many articles and projects published in all of the major international reviews, are not just of theoretical interest.  A list of his publications is available at:
 Interview with Ignazio Gardella by Antonio Monestiroli, in L'architettura secondo Gardella, Bari-Roma, Laterza, 1997.

University professor
Gardella also had an important role in education, from his invitation in 1949 by Giuseppe Samonà to be part of the staff of the IUAV.  His academic career brought him to the post of Professore Ordinario in 1962, which he held until 1975.

Awards
Gardella won many prizes, among which are the: Premio Nazionale of Olivetti for Architecture (1955), the 1977 Medaglia d'oro del Presidente della Repubblica ai benemeriti della Scuola, della Cultura e dell'Arte (Gold Medal), the Leone d'Oro alla carriera dalla Biennale di Venezia (1996), Honorary membership in the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and member of the Accademia di San Luca and socio onorario of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.

Publications
 Ceriani, AA. VV. a cura di Franco Buzzi; Ignazio Gardella progetti e architetture 1933-1990, Venezia, Marsilio, 1992.
 Guidarini, Stefano; Ignazio Gardella nell'architettura italiana. Opere 1929-1999, Milan, Skira, 2002.
 Loi, AA. VV. a cura di Maria Cristina; Ignazio Gardella. Architetture, Electa, Milan 1998.
 Porta, AA. VV. a cura di Marco; L'architettura di Ignazio Gardella, presentazione di Giulio Carlo Argan; saggio introduttivo di Roberto Gabetti; testimonianze di Franco Purini, ... (e altri), Milan, Etas libri, 1985.
 Samonà, Alberto; Ignazio Gardella e il professionismo italiano, Romae Officina, 1981c.
 Zermani, Paolo; Ignazio Gardella, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1991,
 Palandri, Alessio; BBPR, Franco Albini e Franca Helg, Ignazio Gardella. Tre architetture in Toscana, Edizioni Diabasis, Parma, 2016.

References

External links

 pagina monografica del sito Vitruvio
 Casa alle Zattere in Venice (with drawings)

1905 births
1999 deaths
Architects from Milan
20th-century Italian architects
Polytechnic University of Milan alumni
Olivetti people

Ignazio Gardella


Winston Jarrett (born 14 September 1940) is a Jamaican reggae singer who was part of Alton Ellis's group The Flames in the 1960s before recording with The Righteous Flames and as a solo artist.

Biography
Born in 1940 in Lime Tree Gardens, Saint Ann Parish, Jarrett grew up in the Jones Town area of Kingston after moving there with his mother at the age of five. There, he was taught to play guitar by Jimmy Cliff and Alton Ellis. Jarrett's introduction to the music industry was as a member of Alton Ellis's backing band The Flames in the early 1960s, formed when Ellis's original singing partner Eddie Perkins emigrated to the US, singing on hits such as "Dancecrasher", "Cry Tough", "Rocksteady" and "Girl I've Got a Date". While with Ellis he wrote songs such as "Sunday Coming" and "True Born African". In 1967, Jarrett parted ways with the UK-bound Ellis and with fellow Flame Edgar "Egga" Gardner formed The Righteous Flames with Junior Green, and the trio recorded for Arthur "Duke" Reid's Treasure Isle label and then for Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One label. In 1969 they also recorded for Lee "Scratch" Perry ("Zion I Love You"). In the 1970s, they were generally billed as 'Winston Jarrett and the Righteous Flames'. Among the members of The Righteous Flames was Danny Clarke, who left to form The Meditations in 1974.

In the 1970s, tired of recording for others without receiving adequate payment, Jarrett self-produced much of his output, releasing it on his own Attra, Human Rights and Humble labels. Jarrett recorded as a solo artist in the late 1970s and 1980s, releasing the Wise Man album in 1979 and Rocking Vibration in 1984. He re-formed the Flames, releasing the album Jonestown in the late 1980s, and in the early 1990s recorded a tribute album to Bob Marley, also featuring Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.

Discography
The Kingston Rock (1974), RCA – split with Horace Andy
Man of the Ghetto (1977), Sonic Sounds – Winston Jarrett & the Righteous Flames
Wise Man (1979), Tamoki Wambesi
Ranking Ghetto Style (1980), Gorgon
Rocking Vibration (1984), Culture Press
Jonestown (1989), Nighthawk
Kingston Vibrations (1991), RAS
Sings Tribute to Bob Marley (1994), Original – Winston Jarrett & the Righteous Flames
Solid Foundation (1995), Heartbeat
Too Many Boundaries (1995), RAS
Crucial Times (2003), Studio One
Children of the Ghetto (2006), Jah Shaka Music
Bushwhackers Gangbangers (2010), Bigmore

Compilations
Rise Up! Classics from the 60's (2001), Sankofa – Winston Jarrett & the Righteous Flames
Survival Is the Game (2005), Young Tree
Unity & Livity (1999), JDC

References

External links
Winston Jarrett at Roots Archives
Winston Jarrett on MySpace
Winston Jarrett musician page on Facebook
Winston Jarrett Facebook profile
True Born African: The Story of Winston Jarrett documentary film on Kickstarter

1940 births
Living people
People from Saint Ann Parish
Jamaican reggae singers

Winston Jarrett


Dr. Kildare Goes Home is a 1940 American drama film directed by Harold S. Bucquet, starring Lew Ayres, Lionel Barrymore and Laraine Day. It is the fifth in the MGM series of nine films with Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare made from 1938–1942.

Plot
Upon the completion of their internships, the young physicians of Blair General Hospital are sent out into the world. Dr. James Kildare is appointed as a resident staff physician under his mentor, the eminent but cranky diagnostician Dr. Leonard Gillespie. Calling his mother to announce the news, he becomes worried about his parents because of her lack of enthusiasm.

Kildare returns to his home town of Dartford, Connecticut and discovers that his father Stephen, a smalltown physician, is in failing health due to the strain of attending patients in nearby Parkersville, where poor economic conditions have forced the doctors there to abandon their practices. Kildare volunteers to help out with a few cases but because of his age and inexperience is not well accepted. His instinctive talents as a diagnostician makes Kildare suspect that one of them, George Winslow, is denying some secret affliction.  Kildare decides to stay on as his father's assistant, which upsets Gillespie but still receives the mentor's approval.

Torn between pursuing his own career and saving his father's health, Kildare conceives of the idea of establishing a community clinic where, at a cost of ten-cents-per-week and using preventive medicine, patients can avail themselves of medical services offered by three young doctors without positions who agree to join the project. Gillespie helps Kildare by procuring basic medical supplies from his hospital and donating them to the Parkersville clinic. However, the ignorance and prejudice of the people of Parkersville, led by the obstinate Winslow, make them equally skeptical of the new clinic as they were of Kildare.

He soon finds the enterprise jeopardized, the townspeople about to vote on its future. Kildare tricks Winslow into a blood test, and consulting Gilespie, suspects Winslow has contracted meningitis from daily swims in a nearby lake. His father concurs with the diagnosis but Winslow rejects further treatment. Certain now that the clinic will fail, Kildare elopes with Mary, but does not get very far before he is called back to attend to Winslow, who has collapsed. Kildare saves Winslow and with his support, wins over the townspeople, who now realize the value of the clinic. His father is able to take a long rest, while his son returns to New York to wed Mary and take his post with Gillespie.

Cast
 Lew Ayres as Dr. James Kildare
 Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Leonard Gillespie
 Laraine Day as Mary Lamont
 Samuel S. Hinds as Dr. Stephen Kildare
 Gene Lockhart as George Winslow
 John Shelton as Dr. Davidson
 Nat Pendleton as Wayman
 Emma Dunn as Mrs. Martha Kildare
 Alma Kruger as Molly Byrd
 Walter Kingsford as Dr. Walter Carew
 Nell Craig as Nurse "Nosey" Parker
 Cliff Danielson as Dr. Jordan
 Henry Wadsworth as Dr. Collins
 Tom Collins as Dr. Joiner
 George Reed as Conover (as George H. Reed)

Production
MGM produced nine Dr. Kildare movies:
 Dr. Kildare's Victory (1942) Played by Lew Ayres (as Dr. James 'Jimmy' Kildare)
 Dr. Kildare's Wedding Day (1941) Played by Samuel S. Hinds (as Dr. Stephen Kildare) / Lew Ayres (as Dr. James 'Jimmy' Kildare)
 The People vs. Dr. Kildare (1941) Played by Lew Ayres
 Dr. Kildare's Crisis (1940) Played by Lew Ayres (as Dr. James 'Jimmy' Kildare)
 Dr. Kildare Goes Home (1940) Played by Lew Ayres / Samuel S. Hinds (as Dr. Stephen Kildare)
 Dr. Kildare's Strange Case (1940) Played by Samuel S. Hinds (as Dr. Stephen Kildare) / Lew Ayres (as Dr. James 'Jimmy' Kildare)
 The Secret of Dr. Kildare (1939) Played by Samuel S. Hinds (as Dr. Stephen Kildare) / Lew Ayres (as Dr. James 'Jimmy' Kildare)
 Calling Dr. Kildare (1939) Played by Samuel S. Hinds (as Dr. Stephen Kildare)
 Young Dr. Kildare (1938) Played by Lew Ayres / Samuel S. Hinds (as Dr. Stephen Kildare)

References

External links

1940 films
1940 drama films
American black-and-white films
American drama films
Films about surgeons
Films based on short fiction
Films directed by Harold S. Bucquet
Films set in Connecticut
Films set in New York City
Films set in hospitals
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
1940s English-language films
1940s American films

Dr. Kildare Goes Home


Castanets are percussion instruments which come from Spain.  They are often used in an orchestra.  Castanets are hollowed-out wooden shells.  A hardwood such as ebony or rosewood is used.

Castanets are used in pairs.  Traditionally two pairs are played together, one pair held in each hand.  There is a string which passes through small holes in the shells.  The player winds the string around the thumb and finger so that the two shells can be clicked together.  The two pairs of castanets used are slightly different sizes so that they make a slightly different pitch. The higher pair, known as hembra (female), is usually held in the right hand, with the larger macho (male) pair held in the left.

Castanets are traditionally played by singers and dancers.  Spanish folk dancers often use castanets.  They are often associated with flamenco dancing.

When they are played in an orchestra they are often attached to a stand.  The technique of playing is therefore different.  They can be tapped by the fingers and palm of the hand.  They are often used in music which is supposed to sound Spanish.  In ballet and opera they are used to accompany Spanish dances.  Carmen, the character in Bizet's opera Carmen, sings a song and accompanies herself on the castanets.  Usually the opera singer does not have the skill to play them, so the castanets are played by a percussion player in the orchestra while Carmen pretends to be playing them.

References
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments, Könemann;

Percussion instruments

Castanets


A supercar – also called exotic car – is loosely defined or described as a street-legal, superlative performance sports car – both in terms of power, speed, and handling. The term 'supercar' is therefore frequently used for low-bodied sportscars with powerful, rear mid-mounted engines. Since the 2000s, the term hypercar has also come into use for the most high-end performance cars.

Supercars commonly serve as the flagship model within a vehicle manufacturer's line-up of sports cars and typically feature various performance-related technology derived from motorsports. Some examples include the Ferrari 458 Italia, Lamborghini Aventador, and McLaren 720S. By contrast, automotive journalism typically reserves the predicate 'hypercar' for (very) limited, (two- to low 4-figure) production-number cars, with new-prices in the 21st century often exceeding a million Euros, dollars or pounds. Contrary to the "regular" range-topping supercars, many hypercars are more rare, even in an exotic car maker's history – appearing as one-offs, like Porsche's Carrera GT, or just occasionally made specialty models, built over and above the marque's typical product line-up, like the Ford GTs or Ferrari's F40, F50 and Enzo lineage. Very few car makers, like Bugatti and Koenigsegg, only make hypercars.

In the United States, muscle cars were often referred to as "supercars" during the 1960s.

History

Europe
The Lamborghini Miura, produced from 1966 to 1973, is often said to be the first supercar. By the 1970s and 1980s the term was in regular use, if not precisely defined. One interpretation up until the 1990s was to use it for mid-engine two-seat cars with at least eight cylinders (but typically a V12 engine), a power output of at least  and a top speed of at least . Other interpretations state that "it must be very fast, with sporting handling to match", "it should be sleek and eye-catching" and its price should be "one in a rarefied atmosphere of its own" or regard exclusivity (i.e. limited production volumes) as an important characteristic (such as those made by Ferrari or Lamborghini). Some European manufacturers specialize in only producing supercars, such as McLaren, Pagani, and Koenigsegg.

It is also claimed that the definition of a supercar has always been subjective and a matter of blind prejudice.

United States

During the 1960s, cars that are now considered to be muscle cars were then referred to as supercars. The term was sometimes spelled with a capital S. In 1966 the sixties supercar became an official industry trend. For example, the May 1965 issue of the American magazine Car Life includes multiple references to supercars and "the supercar club" and a 1968 issue of Car & Driver magazine refers to "the Supercar street racer gang" market segment. In the model name of the AMC S/C Rambler, the "S/C" is an abbreviation for "SuperCar".

Since the decline of the muscle car in the 1970s, the word supercar came to mean a car that has high performance interpretations of the term are for limited-production models produced by small manufacturers for enthusiasts, and, less so, standard-looking cars modified for increased performance.

The 1990s and 2000s saw a rise in American supercars with similar characteristics to their European counterparts. American sports cars which have risen to be referred to by the supercar name include the Chevrolet Corvette, Dodge Viper, and Ford GT. Smaller American manufacturers have also made supercars, such as the Saleen S7, SSC Ultimate Aero, SSC Tuatara, Hennessey Venom GT, and Hennessey Venom F5.

Japan
During the early 1990's Japan began to gain global recognition for making high-performance sports cars, but the automotive media first recognized the Honda NSX produced from 1990 to 2005 as Japan's first supercar, with its lightweight mid-engined, rear-wheel-drive layout. The NSX was praised for being more reliable and user-friendly than contemporary European supercars.

In the 21st century, other Japanese brands also decided to make their own supercars. From 2010 to 2012, Lexus produced the Lexus LFA, a two-seat front-engine coupe powered by a  V10 engine producing . The 2009–present Nissan GT-R has also been praised as a modern supercar with every day practicality. It features a twin-turbo V6 producing between , and has been lauded for its acceleration and handling through its all-wheel-drive drivetrain and dual-clutch transmission.

The second generation of the Honda NSX from 2016 to 2022 marked a change in approach for Honda, by using all-wheel drive, a hybrid powertrain producing up to , turbocharging and a dual-clutch transmission, elevating the NSX marque to contemporary supercar standards.

Hypercar
A more recent term for high-performance sportscars is "hypercar", which is sometimes used to describe the highest performing supercars. As per supercars, there is no set definition for what constitutes a hypercar. An attempt to define these is "a limited-production, top-of-the-line supercar with a price of around or more than US$1 million."

Some people consider the 1993 McLaren F1 to be the first hypercar, while others believe the 2005 Bugatti Veyron was the first hypercar.

With a recent shift towards electrification, many recent hypercars use a hybrid drivetrain, a trend started in 2013 by the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, and LaFerrari, then continued in 2016 with the Koenigsegg Regera, in 2017 with the Mercedes-AMG One, and the McLaren Speedtail.

Modern hypercars such as Pininfarina Battista, NIO EP9, Rimac Nevera, and Lotus Evija have also gone full-electric.

Hypercars have also been used as a base for the Le Mans Hypercar class after rule changes come into effect from 2021.

See also
 List of sports car manufacturers
 List of fastest production cars
 Supercar Season

References

External links

Car classifications
Sports cars

Supercar


Havlík's law is a Slavic rhythmic law dealing with the reduced vowels (known as yers or jers) in Proto-Slavic. It is named for the Czech scholar Antonín Havlík (1855–1925), who determined the pattern in 1889. While Havlík's law was a precursor to the loss of the yers, that process is part of the individual history of the various Slavic languages. Havlík's law was already in effect at the end of the Common Slavic period, and ended the era of the "law of open syllables", a major phonological innovation of the Common Slavic period.

Strong and weak yers
The front and back yer come from the Early Proto-Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic short high vowels */i/ and */u/, respectively. As vowels, they played a role in the law of open syllables, which states that every syllable must end in a vowel. Old Church Slavonic, for example, had no closed syllables at all.

Word-final yers, which were abundant, including in declensional patterns, were reduced in length to ultrashort, or "weak", variants (/ɪ̆/ and /ʊ̆/). These weak yers were then often elided. In words with multiple yers, the weak variants were not limited to word-final position.

Havlík's law describes the pattern in which weak and strong yers occur. Counting from the last yer in a word, the final yer is weak, the previous yer is strong, the previous yer is weak, etc., until a full vowel is reached, and then the pattern is started again with alternating weak then strong yers.

References
 Schenker, Alexander M. (1995). The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology. New Haven: Yale University Press.  .
 Townsend, Charles and Laura Janda (1996). Common and Comparative Slavic Phonology and Inflection: Phonology and Inflection: With Special Attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian. Bloomington, IN: Slavica.  .

Proto-Slavic language
Sound laws

Havlík's law


Sobekhotep VIII was a Pharaoh of northern Egypt during the 16th Egyptian dynasty. He was one of the ancient Egyptian kings people have little knowledge about. Historians estimate that Sobekhotep VIII was their sovereign leader for 16 years.

It is most likely that Sobekhotep VIII. was the successor of Djehuti and followed by Neferhotep III.

References

2nd-millennium BC pharaohs

Sobekhotep VIII


Septic shock is a medical condition which can result from sepsis. Sepsis is a special form of infection. With septic shock, the circulation of blood changes or stops. This makes septic shock a medical emergency, which is usually treated in intensive care. Between a quarter and half the people with the condition die.

Treatment is usually done in the following steps:
 Stabilizing, restarting blood circulation, usually by giving fluids
 Treatment of the infection
 Coping with organ failures

Medical emergencies

Septic shock


Additional Solicitor General of India abbreviated as Addl. SGI is a law officer of India who assists the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General. Addl. SGI is governed by Law Officers (Conditions of Service) Rules, 1987.

List of incumbent Additional Solicitor Generals
The list of incumbent Law Officers (i.e. AGI, SGI, Addl. SGIs) as of 2 September 2022 are as follows:

Duties
Duties of Solicitor General of India and other law officers are laid out in Law Officers (Conditions of Service) Rules, 1987:
to give advice to the Government of India upon such legal matters, and to perform such other duties of a legal character, as may from time to time, be referred or assigned to him by the Government of India.
to appear, whenever required, in the Supreme Court or in any High Court on behalf of the Government of India in cases (including suits, writ petitions, appeal and other proceedings) in which the Government of India is concerned as a party or is otherwise interested;
to represent the Government of India in any reference made by the President to the Supreme Court under Article 143 of the Constitution; and
to discharge such other functions as are conferred on a Law Officer by or under the Constitution or any other Law for the time being in force.

Restrictions of private practice
As law officers represent government of India, there are certain restrictions which are put on their private practice. A law officer is not allowed to:
hold briefs in any court for any party except the Government of India or the government of a State or any University, Government School or College, local authority, Public Service Commission, Port Trust, Port Commissioners, Government aided or Government managed hospitals, a Government company, any Corporation owned or controlled by the State, any body or institution in which the Government has a preponderating interest;
advise any party against the Government of India or a Public Sector Undertaking, or in cases in which he is likely to be called upon to advise, or appear for, the Government of India or a Public Sector Undertaking;
defend an accused person in a criminal prosecution, without the permission of the Government of India; or
accept appointment to any office in any company or corporation without the permission of the Government of India;
advise any Ministry or Department of Government of India or any statutory organization or any Public Sector Undertaking unless the proposal or a reference in this regard is received through the Ministry of Law and Justice, Department of Legal Affairs.

References

External links
Official website of Supreme Court of India
List of law officers of India

Indian lawyers
Supreme Court of India

Additional Solicitor General of India


Sorcerer is an occult-themed indie role-playing game written by Ron Edwards and published through Adept Press.  The game focuses on sorcerers who summon, bind, and interact with demons, powerful non-human entities who work with and against the sorcerer.

Setting
The game has no definite default setting beyond a few guidelines. Examples of these guidelines include the unknown nature and origins of demons and authorities who do not believe in the supernatural. The rule examples, however, assume a modern fantasy world which to mundane people resembles our own.

System

Humanity
Play focuses on a particular theme defined by each group as "Humanity".  Players make conscious decisions throughout play to commit their characters towards actions that support or negate Humanity, often risking it in the process of acquiring or utilizing the power of demons. Through doing so, players are making strong thematic statements about the issue defined by Humanity.

Bang
A "bang" is a situation that requires a choice from the player as to how the character will respond to the situation. The choice will often be thematically relevant, based on the Humanity definition and earlier events in the game. For a bang to be effective, the game master shouldn't force a specific choice, and the player doing nothing should also have consequences.

The game master should prepare a number of bangs for each session in what Edwards calls a bandoleer of bangs, but be prepared to alter them on the fly or discard them if necessary. A bang doesn't have to be initiated by the game master; another player or even the player himself could identify a bang situation that requires a choice.

The term was introduced by Edwards in the Sorcerer book.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is handled with opposed rolls in dice pools. These dice can be any size, but must be uniform (that is, you only play with ten-sided dice, or six-sided dice, etc., but never mix them.) During conflict, each opposing force rolls their dice pool. The single highest die result wins, where ties are removed from the pool before looking at the next highest result. After a winner is established, the other dice are compared to determine the degree of success: the winner receives one 'Victory' for each die that shows a higher value than the highest of the loser's dice.

 Player 1 rolls 10, 10, 5, 3 and Player 2 rolls 10, 9, 4, 4. Here Player 1 wins with 1 Victory.
 Player 1 rolls 7, 6, 5, 2 and Player 2 rolls 3, 2, 1. Here Player 1 wins with 3 Victories.
 Player 1 rolls 10, 4, 4, 2 and Player 2 rolls 10, 7, 5, 4. The 10s cancel and Player 2 wins with 2 Victory (because Player 2 did not gain a Victory from their 4).
 Player 1 rolls 10, 6, 4, 4 and Player 2 rolls 3, 2, 2, 1. Player 1 wins with 4 Victories.

The number of victories determine how close the contest was: a single victory means a close win, and four or more victories is total domination. If the player receives Victories equal to their number of dice, it is considered a Total Victory. That character should receive some sort of additional advantage.

History
Ron Edwards began working on Sorcerer while he was a biology instructor at the University of Florida, working on his PhD and writing his dissertation focused on evolutionary theory. He sent his game to an existing RPG publisher and received a standard contract, which gave the publisher the right to control artwork and marketing, to revise the book in the future if the author did not want to and to terminate the contract at their discretion; Edwards, who was inspired by comic creator Dave Sim and his position on indie comics, found this contract unacceptable and felt that creators should have control over their own works.  He self-published Sorcerer in 1996, mailing a copy to anyone who asked for it and asking for $5 in return if they liked the game, and soon afterward he produced an ashcan of the game to sell at conventions. He continued to playtest and produced a fully rewritten version of the game that he began selling in PDF form after acquiring the sorcerer-rpg.com domain. He put out two PDF supplements – Sorcerer & Sword (1999) and The Sorcerer's Soul (2000) – and also licensed Concept Syndicate to sell Sorcerer on a CD-ROM. After seeing Obsidian: The Age of Justice, an independently published RPG,  at GenCon 33 Edwards decided he could publish his own RPG while retaining ownership. Edwards published Sorcerer through his own company Adept Press, as a 128-page hardcover volume in early summer 2001. Ron Edwards and Sorcerer won the second Diana Jones Award for "excellence in gaming" in 2002.

Sorcerer was first self-published on-line as a free text document.  It gradually built up an audience and Edwards has claimed that it made a profit at every stage of its growth. It is currently published as an annotated softcover (the original rules with clarifications and commentary on each facing page) with the three originals supplements bundled together as a separate softcover or PDF. Sorcerer has received numerous reviews on various web forums, such as RPGnet, and in print magazines, such as Realms of Fantasy. It played a substantial part in Ron Edwards' receipt of the "Diana Jones Award" in 2002.

Main rulebook and supplements
Sorcerer
The core rulebook. (Hardcover)

Sorcerer & Sword
A supplement for adapting the Sword and sorcery subgenre and Sorcerer to each other. (Paperback)

The Sorcerer's Soul
 Re-examines Humanity and demons and introduces angels. (Paperback)

Sex and Sorcery
A look at player interactions, gender and story creation in the game. (Paperback)

Mini-supplements
Edwards employs a system for smaller official and fan-written supplements where the author keeps all earnings as long as Edwards has editorial control and the mini-supplement is sold in PDF format at the Adept Press website. A mini-supplement can include rule tweaks, new setting information other variations of the basic Sorcerer concept.

List of mini-supplements
 Charnel Gods by Renee Knipe
A supplement to the Sorcerer & Sword supplement in which Sorcerers wield demon-infested weapons at the end of the world.

Demon Cops by Ron Edwards
An urban anime-style police-setting.

Electric Ghosts by Ravenscrye Daegmorgan
Demons infest technology, and communicates through the sound of electrical devices.

Hellbound by Dav Harnish
Humanity is the Sorcerer's immortal soul, something that can be sold or traded.

Schism, by Jared A. Sorensen
A psychic powers Cronenberg-inspired setting where Sorcerers are telepaths and clairvoyants.

Urge by Clinton R. Nixon
Sorcerers are people infested with an animal spirit, and has to fight the animal urges to remain human.

References

External links
 The Sorcerer PDF for sale
 The Adept Press forum on The Forge website with discussions on Sorcerer, moderated by Ron Edwards
 RPGnet -  Lisa Padol
 RPGnet - Eric Brennan

Adept Press games
Diana Jones Award winners
Fantasy role-playing games
Horror role-playing games
Indie RPG Awards winners
Indie role-playing games
Role-playing games introduced in 2002

Sorcerer (role-playing game)


Joseph Kalichstein (15 January 1946 – 31 March 2022) was an American classical pianist who performed in the concerto, solo recital and chamber music repertoire, the latter mainly with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson in the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio.  He was also a professor at the Juilliard School in New York.

Biography
Joseph Kalichstein was born in Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine, in 1946. He studied piano with Joshua Shor in his native land. His talent came to the attention of the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, who arranged for Kalichstein to train at the Juilliard School in New York in 1962.  There, he studied under Edward Steuermann and Ilona Kabos.  He won the Young Concert Artists' Award in 1967, and in 1968 he appeared with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein, playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4, a concert that was nationally televised.  In 1969 he gained his master's degree from Juilliard, and that same year won the Leventritt Competition (the unanimous jury included George Szell, Rudolf Serkin, and William Steinberg). The Leventritt prize included performances with leading orchestras around the US; this included two concerts conducted by Szell, one with the Cleveland Orchestra and one with the New York Philharmonic. Kalichstein also appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra under André Previn in 1970, giving his first performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5.

He later collaborated with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnányi, Zubin Mehta, Erich Leinsdorf, Leonard Slatkin and many others, with many of the world's greatest orchestras.
In 1977 he performed with violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson at the inauguration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. They continued to play together, and in 1981 formally established themselves as the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio. The Trio was still touring in 2012, and has recorded most of the classic piano trio literature including the complete trios of Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Johannes Brahms, the complete chamber music for their instruments by Maurice Ravel, and also a number of new works written for them by such composers as Richard Danielpour, John Corigliano, and Daron Hagen.

Kalichstein became a member of the Juilliard School faculty in 1983.  In 1997, he was appointed Artistic Advisor for Chamber Music and Artistic Director of the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts, by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2003 he was appointed to Juilliard's newly established Edwin S. and Nancy A. Marks Chair in Chamber Music Studies.

He made many recordings, and regularly performed internationally. Kalichstein died on 31 March 2022, aged 76.

Notable students
 Ran Dank
 Tiffany Poon
 Di Wu

References

External links
 , WNCN-FM, 22 April 1983
 Photo: He completed two acclaimed tours of Southern Africa, 1976, 1978

1946 births
2022 deaths
Musicians from Tel Aviv
Israeli classical pianists
Israeli emigrants to the United States
American classical pianists
Male classical pianists
American male pianists
American music educators
Juilliard School faculty
Piano pedagogues
Juilliard School alumni
Jewish classical pianists
20th-century American pianists
21st-century classical pianists
20th-century American male musicians
21st-century American male musicians
21st-century American pianists
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Mandatory Palestine emigrants to the United States

Joseph Kalichstein


Irina Borisovna Ratushinskaya (; , 4 March 1954, Odesa – 5 July 2017, Moscow) was a Russian Soviet dissident, poet and writer.

Biography
Irina Ratushinskaya was born in Odesa, Ukraine on 4 March 1954. Her father, Boris Leonidovich Ratushinsky, was an engineer; her mother, Irina Valentinovna Ratushinskaya, was a teacher of Russian literature. Irina had one sister. Her mother's family originated from Poland: her maternal great-grandfather was deported from Poland to Siberia, shortly after the  January 1863 Uprising against forced conscription into the Russian Imperial Army.

Ratushinskaya was educated at Odesa University and graduated with a master's degree in physics in 1976. Before and after her graduation she taught from 1975 to 1978 at a primary school in her native Odesa.

Political persecution

On 17 September 1982 Ratushinskaya was arrested and accused of anti-Soviet agitation for writing and circulating her collections of verse.

Between 1 and 3 March 1983, she was tried in Kyiv and convicted of "agitation carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet regime" (Article 62). Ratushinskaya received the maximum sentence of seven years in a strict-regime labor camp, followed by five years of internal exile. After being imprisoned three and a half years, including one year in solitary confinement in an unheated cell while temperatures fell to minus 40C in the winter, she was released on 9 October 1986, on the eve of the summit in Reykjavík, Iceland between President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev.

While imprisoned Ratushinskaya continued to write poetry. Her previous works usually centered on love, Christian theology, and artistic creation, not on politics or policies as her accusers stated. Her new works that were written in prison, which were written with a matchstick on soap until memorized and then washed away, number some 250. They expressed an appreciation for human rights; liberty, freedom, and the beauty of life. Her memoir, Grey is the Colour of Hope, chronicles her prison experience. Her later poems recount her struggles to endure the hardships and horrors of prison life. Ratushinskaya was a member of International PEN, who monitored her situation during her incarceration.

Exile
In 1987, Ratushinskaya moved to the United States, where she received the Religious Freedom Award of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. In the same year the Politburo deprived both Irina and her husband of their Soviet citizenship. She was Poet-in-Residence at Northwestern University in Illinois (USA) from 1987 to 1989. For the next ten years Ratushinskaya lived in London, UK, until December 1998, when the family returned to Russia to educate their seven-year-old twins in Russian schools. Irina and her husband Igor had spent one year undergoing various procedures to regain their Russian citizenship, including letters and appeals to President Boris Yeltsin.

Life in Russia
In Russia Irina continued to write, including least scripts for sitcoms, and give occasional poetry readings.

In 2017 she died from cancer. She was survived by her husband, human rights activist Igor Gerashchenko, and their two sons. Memorial events were held for Irina in Moscow and other cities of Russia, including in Chelyabinsk in August 2019. A request was sent by her son  to Google to dispel the false claims of kidney cancer as the cause of death. Though the cause of death was, indeed, cancer, the details are not to be published and speculation behalf people who were not present
Ratushinskaya died in Moscow on 5 July  to support Irina during her final days was considered inappropriate by her sons.

Legacy
Irina's life has had a long-lasting impact on many throughout the world, serving as a source of spiritual inspiration. Her books have been translated into English, German, French, Japanese and other languages and published in many countries.

A Russian edition of Grey is the Colour of Hope was to be launched at the Museum of the Gulag history in Moscow in January 2019. Meanwhile, the 7-lesson English course Irina wrote has been enhanced by Oleg and turned into a broad range of courses for children, teens, students and adults. They have been taught in Russia and China, and today provide full-time self-employment for her son Oleg.

Books

 Poems/Cтихи/Poèmes (1984), Hermitage. .
 A Tale of Three Heads / сказка о трех головах (1986), Hermitage. .
 No, I'm Not Afraid (1986) trans David McDuff, Bloodaxe. .
 Beyond the Limit (1987) trans. Frances Padorr Brent and Carol J. Avins, Northwestern University. .
 Pencil Letter (1989) trans. various, Bloodaxe/Hutchinson, UK ; Alfred A. Knopf, USA. .
 Grey Is the Color of Hope (1989), Sceptre, UK  Vintage, USA. .
 In the Beginning (1991), Sceptre. .
 Dance With a Shadow (1992) trans. David McDuff, 1992, Bloodaxe. .
 The Odessans (1996), Sceptre. .
 Fictions and Lies (1999) trans. Alyona Kojevnikova, Sceptre. .
 Wind of the Journey (2000), Cornerstone Press, Chicago. .

Adaptations
 Sally Beamish has set some of her poems into music (No, I'm not afraid, 1998).
Irina Leskova set her poems into songs

What was never published

Not all of Irina's works got to be published.

In 1996, the family set off for a vacation in Greece together with their two sons (aged 4 at the time), family friends and their two children (aged 6 and 8). The mothers took turns looking after all 4 children, and Irina's way of keeping all of them somewhat disciplined and entertained was manifested in a series of stories she invented about the adventures of a naughty girl called Cinderella, who wore shoes size 45 and enjoyed robbing banks together with the naughty prince of Bencionia, and giving a headache to the strict King Bencione. The series was loved by all four of the children who, eager to hear what was to happen next, were glad to do as they were told. Eventually, the storytelling was attended by the other 3 parents, who loved the series, particularly after hearing of Cinderella and the prince's vacation in Cuba, where they shaved Fidel Castro bald in his sleep. The series were told but never written down by Irina.

A play 'Борцу не больно' (the wrestler does not hurt) was written in 2 parts for a film on sambo, however, it was not used in the film, apart from some of the character's names.

Irina died of cancer before she could finish her last novel, Azor's paw. The 13 written chapters are kept by her family, the first chapter being translated to English by her son Oleg at Irina's final request for him.

References

Further reading

External links

 The plight of poet Irina Ratushinskaya (early 1980s) — actors, writers and others speak.
 Archive of Irina Ratushinskaya at Wheaton College (Ill.)
 "The Mordovian labour camps and my wonderful nanny", Interview with Oleg Kashin for Russian Life magazine, No 1, 2007. Retrieved 9 April 2019

1954 births
2017 deaths
Writers from Odesa
Odesa University alumni
Russian memoirists
Soviet dissidents
Women memoirists
Russian women poets
Ukrainian poets in Russian
People denaturalized by the Soviet Union
Russian screenwriters
Soviet emigrants to the United Kingdom
Soviet emigrants to the United States
Inmates of Lefortovo Prison
Northwestern University fellows
Dubravlag detainees

Irina Ratushinskaya


Cantus is an eight-member male a cappella ensemble based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Biography

Cantus is a full-time, professional vocal chamber ensemble, made up of eight men singing in a TTBB (tenor, tenor, baritone, bass), changed male voice arrangement. The artists are self-led, with programming and musical direction coming from within the group itself. The ensemble is known for innovative concert programming, often tying together works of numerous genres to explore a selected narrative, including classical music, orchestral-vocal repertoire, folk music, art song, popular songs, spirituals, and newly commissioned works.

The vocal group maintains a schedule of around 70 live concert performances and 30-40 education/outreach activities in a given season, both in the United States of America and abroad.  Cantus is an active proponent of music education, encouraging people of all ages - especially men - to sing. The ensemble has worked with tens of thousands of singers throughout the country in educational activities ranging from master classes to festivals and collaborations.  New members are acquired through annual national auditions.
The ensemble began as a student-run organization at St. Olaf College in 1995. After a successful northeast tour in the summer of 1998, Cantus transitioned into a professional ensemble and non-profit organization by 1999, based out of Minneapolis, MN.

Notability

Cantus is the only artist-led full-time vocal ensemble in the United States, and is one of two professional classical male vocal ensembles in the United States that pays its artists full-time salaries, while maintaining a year-round schedule of performances, the other being San Francisco's Chanticleer.

The ensemble received the 2009 Chorus America Margaret Hillis Award, the first collaborative ensemble to do so. The ensemble's regular work with students nationwide also garnered Chorus America's Education Outreach Award in 2011.

Cantus was selected by Minnesota Public Radio to be Artists in Residence for the 2010–11 season.  The residency included supported touring, radio co-hosting, and international broadcasts via Performance Today.

In recent seasons, Cantus has been featured with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Boston Pops, and on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor.  2014  marked the final year of the group's critically acclaimed collaboration with Theater Latte Da, All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, which tells the true story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, when World War I soldiers set down their arms to celebrate the holidays with the enemy.

Current members

 Jacob Christopher (2016), tenor
 Alex Nishibun (2019), tenor
 Paul Scholtz (2015), tenor
 Paul John Rudoi (2008-2016, present), tenor
 Rod Kelly Hines (2021), baritone
 Jeremy Wong (2021), baritone
 Chris Foss (2008), bass
 Samuel Green (2013), bass

Recordings
Cantus has released numerous critically acclaimed recordings in 24-bit, High-Resolution Compact Disc format, most of which were recorded by noted engineer and Stereophile Magazine Editor, John Atkinson.  The group's 2010, 2011, and 2012 releases That Eternal Day, Christmas with Cantus, and On the Shoulders of Giants brought in the Grammy Award-winning production team of Steve Barnett and Preston Smith for recording, engineering, and mastering.

A Harvest Home (2014)
Song of a Czech (2013)
On the Shoulders of Giants (2012)
Christmas with Cantus (2011)
That Eternal Day (2010)
Outside the Box (Limited Release) (2009)
All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914 (2008)
While You Are Alive (2008)
Cantus (2007)
There Lies the Home (2006)
Cantus Live:  Vol. 2 (2006)
Comfort and Joy: Volume Two (2005)
Comfort and Joy: Volume One (2004)
Cantus Live: Vol. 1 (2004)
Deep River" (2003)
"...against the dying of the light" (2002)
Let Your Voice Be Heard (2001)

Student recordings
Vagabond (1999 - Student Recording)
Tidings (1998 - Student Recording)
Introit (1997 - Student Recording)

Former members
Kurt Anderson, baritone    (1996–1999)

Brian Arreola, tenor    (1995–2005)

Nathan Bird, tenor    (2010-2011)

Dashon Burton   (2005–2009)

E. Mani Cadet, tenor   (2006–2007)

Kelvin Chan, baritone    (2000–2005)

Zachary Colby, tenor    (2014-2019)

Brad Cramer-Erbes, tenor    (2002–2005)

Alan Dunbar, bass-baritone    (1998–2004)

Adam Fieldson, tenor     (2015-2018)

David Geist, baritone    (2016-2020)

Matthew Goinz, baritone     (2014-2018)

Michael Hanawalt, tenor    (1996–2004)

Eric Hopkins Ellingsen, tenor    (2008-2011)

Curt Hopmann, tenor    (2000–2001)

Aaron Humble, tenor   (2005–2015)

Brook Jacobsen, baritone/tenor    (1995–1999)

Albert Jordan, tenor    (1995–2006)

Michael Jones, tenor (2006-2008)

Sam Kreidenweis, baritone  (2018-2020)

Erick Lichte, bass-baritone    (1995–2003)

Mitch Lewandowski, bass    (1995–1996)

Tom McNichols, bass (2004-2008)

Phillip Moody, baritone    (1996–2000)

Blake Morgan, tenor (2014-2015)

Alberto de la Paz, tenor (2017-2022)

Tom Phelps, bass    (1996–1998)

Adam Reinwald, baritone (1997-2014)

Gary Ruschman, tenor (2004-2014)

Joe Shadday, tenor (2015-2016)

Shahzore Shah, tenor (2005-2015)

Matthew Shorten, tenor (2022-2023)

Kjell Stenberg, baritone    (1995–1998)

Timothy C. Takach, bass (1996-2013)

Matthew Tintes, baritone (2009-2016)

Lawrence Wiliford, tenor    (1995-2002)

David Walton, tenor (2011-2014)

Paul Wilson, baritone    (1999–2002)

Peter Zvanovec, tenor    (1999–2006)

External links
 Cantus Sings
 Soundcloud
 Meet Cantus! on YouTube
 Featured on the PBS program MN Original from the TPT St. Paul, MN Station: MN Original Videos

References

Choirs in Minnesota
Musical groups from Minnesota
A cappella musical groups
Musical groups established in 1995

Cantus (vocal ensemble)


Stepmonster is a 1993 American comedy horror film directed by Jeremy Stanford, executive produced by Roger Corman, and starring Alan Thicke, Robin Riker, George Gaynes, Ami Dolenz, Corey Feldman, Edie McClurg, John Astin,  and Billy Corben. It was a direct-to-video film. After its release, it was sometimes aired on The Disney Channel.

In the film, a boy's mother is kidnapped by a shapeshifting monster, called a tropopkin. The woman is declared missing, and her husband presumes that she has died. He is not particularly concerned, as he is engaged to marry another woman. The woman in question is the shapeshifting tropopkin, and plans to kill him during the next summer solstice. Her prospective stepson witnesses her killing various victims, and tries to expose her real identity.

Plot
The film starts off with art supplies and dramatic music. The art supplies draw an EC Comics knockoff that the camera zooms into, showing a family on vacation.

The family sees a "No Hunting" sign that seemingly says you can only hunt monsters called "tropopkins", and the kid of the family, Todd (Billy Corben), just happens to have a comic detailing what a tropopkin is. Todd's mom Abby (Molly Cheek) has a weird sense of humor and suggests that the sign could mean only tropopkins are allowed to hunt. Almost instantly the roar of a tropopkin is heard. Todd doesn't see the tropopkin, but he does find a giant chicken-like footprint, which matches the tropopkin footprint in his comic.

Just then a beautiful woman appears and seems to be flirting with Todd's dad George (Alan Thicke), who acts like a seemingly generic grumpy 1950s dad - humorless, irritating, and super-serious. Sometime later, a monster appears one night in the woods and chases Abby until catching her, and wrapping her in a cocoon.

6 months later, Todd is sadly living with his grandparents Shirley and Norman (Alice Hirson and George Gaynes) after the incident, with all, except Todd, believing the mother to be dead. George arrives and reveals that he will marry Denise Gore (Robin Riker), the suspicious beautiful woman from earlier, and has been dating her for the entire six months following Abby's disappearance and the time Todd got left with his grandparents. Todd has been unaware of this, and even the grandparents call out George for it.

There is a short little heartwarming scene between Todd and his grandpa Norman, filled with random sports metaphors, in the style of Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, on how everything is like baseball, or how everything ties into baseball.

Todd begins to get suspicious of Denise after her sees her gnawing on a bone, just like how he saw a tropopkin do the same thing in a comic book that details various things. Denise also has some tiny creature in a box that she talks to, and feeds it a live goldfish. George enters, notices a missing fish automatically, and blames Todd for it. The scene cuts to Todd being a peeping tom and watching his neighbor Wendy (Ami Dolenz) strip down. This ties into the plot, because Todd catches Denise eyeing a jogger at night.

She flirts with some fat, bald, middle-aged jogger (Mark Barbolak) who follows her, steps in a gooey dog mess leftover from a pet dog she seemingly ate, doesn't find this suspicious at all, and continues following her. The jogger seemingly finds a half eaten dog with her shoe, and he doesn't find this at all suspicious, and off-camera, Denise eats the jogger.

The next morning, the newspaper headline states "Jogger Found Dead", presumed to have been eaten by a dog. That night, George and Denise decide to go out and hire a babysitter for Todd, which happened to be Wendy, the neighbor that Todd was peeping on earlier. Wendy's boyfriend "Phlegm" (Corey Feldman) comes in, and he and Wendy have a date, much to Todd's dismay. Phlegm turns out to be smart, as he explains about how Denise is waiting on the summer solstice to eat George, and reveals that he knows this because he also reads comic books. It just happens that the summer solstice is on the same day as the wedding.

The next night, Denise is following a young paperboy (Eric Mettner) around, but this time Todd is there to watch her become her monstrous form. Todd watches her eat the little kid alive, tries to take photos for evidence that he wasn't just reading too many comic books about monsters, and runs off.

Todd gets the photos developed and shows them to his neighbor/babysitter without looking at them. However, they all seem to be photos from when he was peeping on her, as the ones of Denise in her real form instead came out in nothing but fuzz. Later that day, Todd found out the thing Denise keeps in her box is a giant bat-like monster. Todd goes after it with a baseball bat, breaks a bunch of things in the process, and ends up reprimanded by his dad.

Todd tries to tell George that the bat-like thing is called a harpy, and that harpies help tropopkins, but a disbelieving George grounds Todd and throws away his comics. George goes off to leave Todd alone with Denise. Due to this, Todd runs off to tell his grandfather all about tropopkins, but his grandfather doesn't believe him. With no one believing Todd, the evil monster forces Todd to do chores, during which Todd gets the idea to make a big trap to catch Denise in her monster form. Predictably, she turns back into a human the second George comes back.

Todd gets taken to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Emmerson (Edie McClurg). He tells Dr. Emmerson the whole truth and nothing but, and she predictably ignores it all and assumes that he's just exaggerating things and that the two would get along if Todd gave her a chance. Denise is then sent to go see Dr. Emmerson, and predictably, she turns into her tropopkin form and eats her, destroying evidence that Todd knew what he was talking about.

Todd's grandpa takes him out to a comic shop run by a flamboyant, cleanfreak Spock-like guy (Sean Whalen), and they look for a comic book on tropopkins so Todd can find out how to defeat them. Sadly, the comic book is $500, being a collector's copy.

Todd then seemingly goes to peep on Wendy again, but sees Denise going after her. He goes to warn her, and instead sees her in her underwear. As Wendy freaks out, the monster bursts through her door. The monster instead freaks out when it's covered by a blanket, and then flees. This convinces Wendy what Todd had been saying.

Todd then comes up with a plan: to get a loan on his violin to buy the $500 comic book—simply to gain the defeating information and then return the comic book and pay the pawnbroker right back, but Todd's dad George catches Todd in the act and threatens to throw the comic book away. Upon finding out that Todd got a loan on the violin, George angrily and rashly ripped up the $500 comic book into shreds. Todd and Wendy search through the garbage that night for the comic pieces and find all but the one piece of the comic book that reveals the monster's one weakness—just what Todd needed.

The wedding day arrives, and there is a shot of Denise, in monster form, in her wedding dress, using a deep voice—her real voice, which George doesn't find suspicious for more than a split second. Todd waxes the steps in the hopes Denise will fall and reveal her true form. Denise falls down the steps as expected but turns out completely fine. The minister (John Astin) then pronounces George and Denise man and wife.

By coincidence, Todd manages to find the last piece of the comic book hidden under the couch that reveals the weakness: Violin music, which explains Denise's hatred of the violin. Todd gets out his cassette recording of violin music, and Phlegm brings a bunch of Marshall amps to make the music loud to defeat the monster. Now believing Todd, Norman arrives to help blare the violin music to defeat the monster. They carry out their attack when George and Denise are alone in their bedroom that night, and George finally witnesses his wife transform. She doesn't kill him though, simply knocking him out with a wine bottle before running outside and being incapacitated by the violin music.

It turns out to be a trick, as the monster soon gets back up and goes after Todd, while her harpy arrives to destroy the cords that connect the amps, stopping the violin music and wrecking the cassette.  Just then George, having recovered, comes out with a violin (George had paid the loan back), and plays it at the monster—a Deus ex machina. The grandfather's non-sequitor baseball reference from earlier turns out to be useful, as the kid ends up killing the harpy with it.  The violin music kills Denise, and she disintegrates into nothingness. Todd and his dad reconcile.

The next day, as part of the reconciliation, Todd and George go hiking in the area from the beginning of the film. They find Denise's cave, complete with cocoons where Denise stored food for the winter. Todd and his dad free the victims from the cocoons, and the 3rd and final cocoon turns out to be Todd's mom Abby, who is alive! The film ends with the family happily walking away together while the camera pans down to reveal the comic book shown throughout the film, depicting the ending scene in panel-form.

Cast
Alan Thicke as George Dougherty
Molly Cheek as Abby Dougherty
Robin Riker as Denise Gore
George Gaynes  as Norman
Ami Dolenz as Wendy
Corey Feldman as Phlegm
Edie McClurg as Dr. Emmerson
John Astin as Minister
Billy Corben as Todd Dougherty

Reception
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 0% of five surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average review is 2.4/10.  TV Guide rated it 1/6 stars and wrote, "This blithely unambitious film succeeds on its own, limited terms." In a retrospective, John Campopiano of Dread Central described it as "full of ridiculous humor, a fun monster, and enjoyable cast performances".

References

External links

1993 films
1993 direct-to-video films
1993 comedy horror films
1990s monster movies
American comedy horror films
1993 comedy films
Films scored by Terry Plumeri
Films about missing people
Films about comics
Films about shapeshifting
1990s English-language films
1990s American films

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