John Elliot Hart (April 4, 1824 – June 11, 1863) was an officer in the Union Navy during the American Civil War. He died in June 1863 on board his ship USS Albatross while taking part in the Union attempt to blockade the Mississippi River. He is best known for the unusual circumstances of his burial in Louisiana, which the town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, commemorates every year in a three-day festival called "The Day the War Stopped."

Early life
Hart was born in 1824 in New York City to a family with 200-year roots there. His father was Benjamin Franklin Hart and his mother was Sarah Ann Copp. The family had a strong Navy tradition. His grandfather John Elliot Copp, for whom he was named, and his uncle Ezekiel Bishop Hart were both killed serving in the Navy during the War of 1812.

He moved to Schenectady, New York, in the 1850s, and in 1855 he married Harriet "Hattie" Van Vorst, the mayor's daughter. They had one surviving child, Abraham Elliot Hart, as well as a son and daughter who died in infancy. In 1857 he joined the local Masonic lodge and rose to the rank of Master.

Naval career
Hart was appointed a midshipman in the Navy on February 2, 1841. He served in the Brazil Squadron aboard USS Marion and USS John Adams, and in 1846 he circumnavigated the globe aboard USS Constitution.  In late 1846 he was admitted to the newly opened United States Naval Academy and graduated as a Passed Midshipman in the class of 1847.

He served on various ships including USS St. Lawrence, USS Michigan, and USS Jamestown. While serving on Jamestown he was promoted to Lieutenant. He took a leave of absence in the late 1850s, then served in the Mediterranean aboard USS Iroquois.

Following the outbreak of the Civil War he served aboard USS Vincennes, and was part of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron on the Mississippi River under Admiral David Farragut. He was appointed a Lieutenant Commander on July 16, 1862. In August 1862 he was transferred to the gunship USS Albatross, and in October 1862 he was put in command of Albatross when the captain was relieved of his post. The Albatross and other ships engaged two Confederate steamers in the Red River near Fort DeRussey on May 4, 1863. It was later claimed that Albatross had shelled St. Francisville under Hart's command, but no such incident can be found in the ship's log, and the historic shelling of St. Francisville actually took place in January 1864, six months after his death.

Death and burial
In June 1863, while Albatross was stationed above Port Hudson, Louisiana, he contracted yellow fever. A few days later he became delusional, and on June 11, 1863, he committed suicide in his cabin with his own revolver. He was officially listed as "killed in battle."

His officers were unable to send his body home to Schenectady for burial, and knowing he would wish a Masonic burial, Executive Officer Theodore B. Dubois went ashore under a flag of truce to ask if there were any Masons in the area who would conduct a funeral. They were put in contact with Confederate Army Captain William Walter Leake, a company commander with the 1st Louisiana Cavalry, who was home on furlough. Leake was Senior Warden of Feliciana Lodge No. 31 in the nearby town of St. Francisville, and he made arrangements for Hart to be buried at Grace Episcopal Church there. A truce was arranged so that the Union officers could bring his body ashore, attend the funeral, and return to their ship to resume their blockade. A joint party of Union and Confederate officers, all Masons, participated in the funeral on June 12, 1863. The pastor of Grace Church, Rev. Daniel S. Lewis, conducted an Episcopal service, and Leake as acting Master of the lodge led the Masonic service.

Leake, who later became Master of the St. Francisville lodge, maintained Hart's grave and decorated it with flowers for the next 49 years, until his own death in 1912. Leake was buried near Hart, and the two former enemies are commemorated with a single marble slab, placed in 1955 by the Grand Lodge of the State of Louisiana and "dedicated to the universality of Freemasonry."

In 1906 Hart's son Abraham Elliot Hart, who had been 7 when his father died, learned from his mother about his father's burial by a Confederate officer. The son, who went by the name A. Elliot Hart, wrote to Leake, who still lived in St. Francisville, to thank him for his service to his fallen father. He said he had only then learned about it and that Leake's kindness had made a profound impression on him.

Frank Karwowski, the historian of the Masonic lodge in Schenectady, became interested in the story and began researching it. In 1999 he and the St. Francisville lodge cooperated in staging a reenactment of the truce and burial, billed as "The Day the War Stopped;" the tradition has been continued annually in June ever since. It is now a three-day festival with lectures and a parade in addition to the re-enactments. Karwowski himself plays Hart for a talk on Friday night and Hart's second-in-command Dubois for the funeral re-enactment on Saturday. Members of the St. Francisville lodge portray Leake; past portrayers have included a U.S. Congressman and Leake's great-great-grandson. During the 2000s Karwowski began to contact descendants of Hart and Leake, inviting them to attend the re-enactment weekend, and several have done so, particularly in 2013 for the 150th anniversary of the event.

Namesake
USS Hart (DD-110) was named for him and his uncle Ezekiel B. Hart.

References

External links
John E. Hart Letters, 1861-1863 MS 392 held by Special Collection & Archives, Nimitz Library at the United States Naval Academy
The Day the War Stopped, at exploresouthernhistory.com

Union Navy officers
United States Naval Academy alumni
People of New York (state) in the American Civil War
Military personnel from New York City
Military personnel from Schenectady, New York
American Freemasons
1863 deaths
1824 births
Suicides by firearm in Louisiana
American military personnel who committed suicide
People from St. Francisville, Louisiana
1860s suicides

John E. Hart


Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the first novel by British author Alan Sillitoe and won the Author's Club First Novel Award.

It was adapted by Sillitoe into a 1960 film starring Albert Finney, directed by Karel Reisz, and in 1964 was adapted by David Brett as a play for the Nottingham Playhouse, with Ian McKellen playing one of his first leading roles.

Sillitoe later wrote three further parts to the Seatons' story, Key to the Door (1961), The Open Door (1989) and Birthday (2001).

Plot

The novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is split into two unequal parts: the bulk of the book, Saturday Night, and the much smaller second part, Sunday Morning.

Saturday Night

Saturday Night begins in a working man's club in Nottingham. Arthur Seaton is 22 years old, and enjoying a night out with Brenda, the wife of a colleague at work. Challenged to a drinking contest, Arthur defeats "Loudmouth" before falling down the stairs drunk. Brenda takes him home with her and they spend the night together. Arthur enjoys breakfast with Brenda before her husband Jack gets home from a weekend at the races.

Arthur works at a lathe at a bicycle factory with his friend Jack. Arthur keeps his mind occupied during the mundane and repetitive work through a mental collage of imagined fantasies, and memories of the past. He earns a good wage of 14 pounds a week, and Robboe, his superior, fears he may get in trouble for letting Arthur earn so much. Soon Arthur hears the news that Jack has been switched to nights, which pleases Arthur as he can now spend more time with Jack's wife. At the same time, Arthur carries on with Brenda's sister Winnie.

During another night out at the pub, Arthur meets Doreen, a young unmarried girl with whom he begins a relatively innocent courtship — all the while keeping Brenda and Winnie a secret. However, although Jack is oblivious to his wife's infidelity, Winnie's husband Bill catches on — and Arthur's actions catch up with him when Bill and an accomplice jump Arthur one night, leaving him beaten and bed-ridden for days.

Sunday Morning

Sunday Morning follows the course of events after Arthur's assault. When Doreen comes to check up on him, Arthur finally comes clean about his affairs with Brenda and Winnie. Doreen stays in a relationship with Arthur despite his dishonesty; Brenda and Winnie disappear from the story. By the end of the novel, Arthur and Doreen have made plans to marry.

Cultural references
 Miranda Grey in John Fowles's The Collector (1963) found the book and its protagonist Arthur Seaton "disgusting".
 English singer Morrissey was heavily influenced by the book and its 1960 film adaptation. The runout groove on the B-side of vinyl copies of The Smiths' 1986 album The Queen Is Dead feature the line "Them was rotten days" said by Aunt Ada (Hylda Baker) in the film. Also the line said by Doreen before Arthur takes her to the fair "I want to go where there's life and there's people" inspired the song "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" on the same album ("I want to see people and I want to see life").
 The title of Arctic Monkeys' debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not is a direct quote from the book, and many of its songs were inspired by the protagonist Arthur. The art design of the album was influenced by the realist images of British working-class neighbourhoods and night life in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
 During a 2011 BBC interview on Desert Island Discs, the comedian Frank Skinner stated that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was the first book he read at the age of 21.
 In 2013, BBC Radio 4 presented a two-part dramatic adaptation (by Robert Rigby) of the novel.

Critical reception

On 5 November 2019, BBC News included Saturday Night and Sunday Morning on its list of the 100 most influential novels.

References

1958 British novels
Adultery in novels
British novels adapted into films
Novels by Alan Sillitoe
Novels set in Nottingham
Social realism
1958 debut novels
W. H. Allen & Co. books

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning


Ludwig Wilhelm Andreas Maria Thuille (Bozen, 30 November 1861 – 5 February 1907) was an Austrian composer and teacher, numbered for a while among the leading operatic composers of the so-called Munich School of composers, whose most famous representative was Richard Strauss.

Biography
Thuille was born in Bozen, then part of Tyrol, now in Italy.

He lost both his parents in 1872 when he was 11, and moved in with his step-uncle in Kremsmünster, Austria. There he sang in the Benedictine choir and studied organ, piano, and violin. His musical abilities were exceptional, so in 1876 the widow of a composer/ conductor, Matthaus Nagiller, took him to Innsbruck for more advanced musical training. There, in the summer of 1877, he met the young Richard Strauss, whose family was visiting the town; the two became lifelong friends. His Innsbruck teacher of organ and theory recommended him to the distinguished composer Josef Rheinberger in Munich, who took him as a pupil in the  Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, from where he graduated with honors in 1882. A year later he became a teacher, and few years thereafter a professor of theory and composition. His many pupils included Hermann Abendroth, Ernest Bloch, , Richard Wetz, Paul von Klenau, Rudi Stephan, Walter Braunfels, Mabel Wheeler Daniels, Henry Kimball Hadley and Walter R. Spalding, who became the head of the Division of Music at Harvard University, and later taught Leroy Anderson.

A prolific composer, Thuille concentrated on chamber music - he is remembered principally for his Sextet for piano and wind instruments (1886–88), the only one of his works to have kept a toehold on the repertoire - and opera, though his early works include a Piano Concerto and a Symphony. In 1897 his opera Theuerdank gained the first prize and a prestigious staged premiere in an operatic competition sponsored by the Regent of Bavaria, in which Alexander von Zemlinsky was placed second. His second opera Lobetanz was premiered the following year in Karlsruhe and was a considerable, if short-lived, success. He also composed a Symphony in F major, much praised by Strauss, five other chamber works, 13 choral pieces, and 78 songs.

Despite his friendship with Strauss (which extended to making a 2-piano arrangement of the latter's tone poem Don Juan), and despite his devotion to music-drama, Thuille remained a fairly conservative composer during his brief life. He died at the age of 45 in 1907 in Munich of heart failure.  He was married for twenty years to Emma (née Dietl) until his death. They had two children.

Though neglected as a composer, Thuille's posthumously published Harmonielehre (written in collaboration with Rudolf Louis) went through many editions and was highly influential. Widely employed as part of the conservatory curriculum in German speaking countries through the 1960s, the Harmonielehre in two volumes is an important theoretical formulation devoted innovatively to the practices of the Munich School of composers, and remains one of few existing records providing examples of this music.

While Thuille's Sextet has always retained a certain following, several of his other compositions have become commercially available on CD only in recent years — his two Piano Quintets, the Piano Trio in E-flat, the Piano Concerto in D and the Symphony in F among them.

List of selected works
Operas
 Theuerdank
 Lobetanz, Op.10

Orchestral works
 Romantic Overture, Op.16 (Prelude to Act I of Theuerdank)
 Symphonicher Festmarsch, Op.38
 Symphony in F
 Piano Concerto in D

Keyboard
 Organ sonata in A minor, Op. 2
 3 Piano Pieces, Op.3
 3 Piano Pieces, Op.33
 3 Piano Pieces, Op.34
 2 Piano Pieces, Op.37

Chamber
 Violin Sonata in D minor, No.1, Op.1
 Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet in B-flat major, Op.6
 Piano Quintet in E-flat major, No.2, Op.20
 Cello Sonata, Op.22
 Violin Sonata in E minor, No.2, Op.30
 Allegro Giusto, Op.39, for Violin and Piano
 Piano Trio in E-flat major
 Piano Quintet in G minor
 String Quartet in A major, No.1
 String Quartet in G major, No.2, WoO
 Quartett-Satz for String Quartet in A major

Vocal
78 solo songs, including:
 5 Lieder, Op.4
 3 Lieder for female voice, Op. 5
 Song-cycle, Von Lieb' und Leid, Op. 7
 3 Lieder Op. 12
 3 Lieder, Op.15
 3 Lieder, Op.26
 4 Lieder, Op.27
 Urschlamm-Idyll, song for bass voice and piano (1908)

13 choral pieces, including:
 Weihnacht im Walde, Op. 14 for men's chorus
 Traumsommernacht, Op. 25, for women's chorus with harp and violin
 Rosenlied, Op. 29, for three-part women's chorus with piano

References

Further reading
 Munter, Friedrich. Ludwig Thuille: Ein enter Versuch. Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1923.

External links

 Texts of songs by Ludwig Thuille at The LiederNet Archive

1861 births
1907 deaths
Burials at Munich Waldfriedhof
Musicians from Bolzano
Austrian Romantic composers
Austrian opera composers
Male opera composers
German music educators
Austrian people of French descent
German music theorists
University of Music and Performing Arts Munich alumni
Pupils of Josef Rheinberger
Austrian male classical composers
20th-century Italian male musicians
19th-century Italian male musicians
19th-century German musicologists

Ludwig Thuille


A camera flash, sometimes called a strobe or just a flash, is a device used in photography to allow pictures to be taken of dark areas by producing a flash of very bright light.

Flashes are often built into cameras, but external flashes are available and are mostly used by professional photographers, they can be mounted directly to the camera, or used 'off-camera' on a special stand or tripod.

Flashes were first used in the late 1800's in the form of a stick with magnesium on the top that when burned would produce very bright light (the stick was held in the air, and the camera shutter released at the same time), later camera flashes used a special type of light bulb known as a flashbulb, and modern flashes use LED's or a special type of tube which emits a flash of mostly blue light when electricity is applied to it from the flash capacitor (known as a xenon flashtube).

The use of a flash to take photographs is mostly known as 'flash photography'

The use of flashes is not allowed in some places where it may be annoying to other people or where the bright light could damage rare or very old objects (like paintings) such as in a museum.

Photography

Flash (camera)


Clint Patrick Black (born February 4, 1962) is an American country music singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and record producer. Signed to RCA Nashville in 1989, Black's debut album Killin' Time produced four straight number one singles on the US Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts. Although his momentum gradually slowed throughout the 1990s, Black consistently charted hit songs into the 2000s. He has had more than 30 singles on the US Billboard country charts, twenty-two of which have reached number one, in addition to having released twelve studio albums and several compilation albums. In 2003, Black founded his own record label, Equity Music Group. Black has also ventured into acting, having made appearances in a 1993 episode of the TV series Wings and in the 1994 film Maverick, as well as a starring role in 1998's Still Holding On: The Legend of Cadillac Jack.

Black has been nominated for 4 Grammy Awards for best Country Male Vocal Performance (1990 - Killin' Time, 1997 - Like the Rain, 1998 - Something That We Do, 1999 - Nothin' but the Taillights), he was also nominated for 6 Grammy Awards with 1 win in the category of Best Country Collaboration with Vocals  - "Hold On Partner" in 1991 (w/ Roy Rogers), "A Bad Goodbye" in 1993 (w/ Wynonna), "Still Holding On" in 1997 (w/ Martina McBride), "Same Old Train" in 1998 which got the Grammy Award (with Joe Diffie, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Patty Loveless, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, Pam Tillis, Randy Travis, Travis Tritt & Dwight Yoakam), "When I Said I Do" in 1999 (w/ wife Lisa Hartman Black), and "Hey Good Lookin'" in 2004 (Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, and George Strait).

Early life
Black was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, the youngest of four children of Ann (Scherma) and Gwin Augusta "G.A." Black, Jr., and lived in nearby Red Bank. His maternal great-grandfather was of Italian descent, with roots in Palermo, Sicily. The family moved back to Texas, where G.A. Black had been born and raised, before Clint was one year old. He was raised in Katy, Texas. Music was always present in the house.  Black taught himself to play harmonica before he was 13, and at 14 wrote his first song.  His father remarked that it was at that age that the parents "first noticed that he had a great voice". By 15, Black had learned to play guitar. As a teenager Black joined his elder brothers, Mark, Kevin and Brian, in their small band.  On Saturday afternoons, the family would host backyard barbecues and invite the neighborhood to listen to the boys sing.  Some weekends would attract up to 70 people. Black eventually dropped out of high school to play with his brothers, before becoming a solo act.

Music career

1983–1988: Early career
Black was initially drawn to a variety of musical genres.  According to his father, he chose to focus on country music in the early 1980s, after singers George Strait and Reba McEntire moved the genre back toward the more traditional; in the style kept alive by George Jones and Merle Haggard. For six years, Black supported himself as a construction worker, bait cutter, and fishing guide, while singing at various lounges as a solo singer and guitarist. In 1987, at one of the gigs he met another guitarist, Hayden Nicholas.  The two men connected musically and began a song writing partnership that would last decades. In the late 1980s, Black delivered a demo of their collaboration "Nobody's Home" to record promoter Sammy Alfano.  Within two days of that delivery, Black was invited to a meeting with Bill Ham, who managed ZZ Top.

1989–1991: Breakthrough
Black soon signed with RCA in October of 1987, and at the time, RCA was considered one of the "most aggressive" labels in country music. His first album, Killin' Time, was released in 1989.  Each song on the album was penned at least in part by Black; four of them were attributed solely to him, while the rest were collaborations with Nicholas.  In a departure from most other country albums, Black used his road band instead of session musicians to record Killin' Time. The album was a critical and commercial success, reaching number one on the Billboard Country Albums chart and certified platinum in 1990. He made his debut in 1989 with the single, "A Better Man", which reached number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs in early June. This marked the first time in 14 years that a debut single by a male artist had peaked at the top of the chart. In total, five singles off of his debut album reached number one, the first time any country artist had accomplished this feat. Black won the Country Music Association's Horizon Award for best newcomer in 1989. At the end of the year, his singles, "A Better Man" and "Killin' Time" place number one and number two on the year-end country singles charts.  It had been 36 years since another artist had claimed both top spots in a single year. Looking back at the early stages of his career, Black recalled: "'At one point, I knew I crossed this line out of obscurity and I felt like no matter what happened from that point on I would always be remembered for Killin' Time. There was this kind of mixed feeling of remorse and excitement.'"

In late 1990, the Los Angeles Times surveyed country music industry insiders to determine which acts could be expected to sell the most records over the next seven years. Black placed second in the poll, two votes behind Garth Brooks.  The survey results were surprising in that 10 of the top 20 artists named were relative newcomers to the industry; in the past, country music had been dominated by artists with several decades experience. The plethora of new acts confused some reviewers, however.  Many reviewers lumped many of the new acts together; as Newsweeks David Gates wrote: "Good song, good voice, hot band: who cares which one it is this time?"  Black soon became known as one of Nashville's "hat acts"; like other country artists such as Tracy Lawrence, Alan Jackson, and John Michael Montgomery, Black was a relative newcomer who wore a hat, and had "clean, neotraditional sound with pop appeal".

Killin' Time was certified platinum in 1990.  Black's second album, Put Yourself in My Shoes, was released in November 1990.  It reached number two on the country chart and was in the top 20 on the pop album charts. This success on the pop charts resulted from a change in the way Billboard calculated album sales; a new reliance on Nielsen SoundScan instead of information from selected record stores showed that sales of country albums had previously been under counted. The album did not meet with as much critical acclaim as his debut, but nonetheless still included several hit singles. He began touring with Alabama.

Black has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1991.

1992: Lawsuits and The Hard Way
In March 1992, Black sued his manager, Bill Ham, for breach of contract; Black sought $2 million in damages and requested that Ham return $4 million in royalties.  Under the terms of their initial contract, Ham controlled all publishing royalties for any song that Black wrote or co-wrote for his first eight albums.  Because Black wrote all of his own music, this amounted to a fee of 20 to 30 cents per album sold.  Industry standards generally counseled songwriters to form their own publication companies, so they would be able to retain more of the royalties.

Ham promptly countersued, blaming the initial lawsuit on poor advice Black received from his new personal assistant, his mother-in-law Jonni Hartman.  His lawyer told the press that "Mr. Ham invested $1 million of his own money in Clint Black's career at a time when nobody else would do so. For that commitment, Mr. Black should show a little gratitude and honor his contracts".

By mid-1992, Black's first two albums had sold a combined 5 million copies. The difficulties with Ham caused a delay in the release of Black's third album, The Hard Way, which was released on July 14. The album had been expected the year previously, and during the delay the country music scene changed.  Both Alan Jackson and Travis Tritt achieved greater success, and Billy Ray Cyrus became a teen idol.  The competition that Black faced was now much stiffer than with his earlier albums.

According to Black, he and producer James Stroud spent more time putting this album together than either of those preceding and were "a lot more aggressive in the way we cut and mixed the album". Black was also more satisfied with the vocals on this album. Several of the songs on The Hard Way, including "Burn One Down", were initially reported to be Black's responses to his situation with Ham.  Co writer Nicholas refuted the rumors, maintaining that most of those songs were written in the late 1980s.

To promote the album, Black launched The Hard Way Tour on June 26, 1992.  The tour ran for 11 months.  Reviewers noticed that with this album Black presented a "new, sexier image", wearing tighter clothing and in many cases leaving behind his trademark hat.  Black commented simply that he was bored wearing the hat all the time.

1993–1999: Continued success

Black's fourth album, No Time to Kill was released almost a year after The Hard Way.  The album received mixed reviews.  The Houston Chronicle noted that Black's duet with Wynonna Judd, "A Bad Goodbye", was "precisely the kind of radio-ready, big-production ballad that record companies tend to force on their artists when they sense that their careers are in trouble....[I]t sticks out like a sore thumb in his body of work." On the other hand, a review in Time magazine thought the duet helped Black show his emotions more intensely. Some reviewers also noted that in some of the more serious songs on the album, Black's voice sounded strained.

One Emotion followed in late 1994. Also a platinum certified album in the US, this album accounted for five straight top five hits. First was the number four "Untanglin' My Mind", a Merle Haggard co-write. After it came the number three "Wherever You Go", three-week number one "Summer's Comin'", the number two title track and finally the number four "Life Gets Away." The latter two were also number one country hits in Canada.

In 1996, Black became the fourth country music singer to earn a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Later that year, he released his first greatest-hits package. This was led off by the chart-topper "Like the Rain", which spent three weeks at number one. After it came the number six "Half Way Up", his first single since "One More Payment" to miss the top five.

Black's next album, 1997's Nothin' but the Taillights, was released to mediocre reviews. Thom Owens of AllMusic said that the album made no attempt to change his sound, and was "sturdy" but less country than his previous efforts. Lead-off single "Still Holding On", a duet with labelmate Martina McBride, became his first single to land outside the top 10, with a number 11 peak that year. He soon recovered his chart momentum with the number two "Something That We Do" followed by two straight chart-toppers in the album's Steve Wariner-penned title track and "The Shoes You're Wearing". The next two singles – the number 12 "Loosen Up My Strings" and number 29 "You Don't Need Me Now" – were less successful.

In 1998, he ventured slightly into Big Band Jazz when he recorded a cover of the Christmas song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for the soundtrack of the animated movie of the same name.

In 1999, Black released D'lectrified, which relied completely on acoustic instruments.  Nevertheless, USAToday thought the "album sounds as full and brash as an electric album since he used creative arrangements and horn sections". Three of the songs on the albums were remakes of previous Black singles.  Several others featured guest appearances by some of Black's idols, including Waylon Jennings, Kenny Loggins, and Eric Idle.  The songs tended to be longer than most of those played on country radio, with many stretching more than five minutes.

1999–2013: Later career
Black and Hartman welcomed their first child, Lily Pearl Black, in May 2001. Black took a three-year break from the music industry to stay home with his daughter.  He explained that "it ended up not being a smart career move, but it was a real smart dad move. …  I wouldn't go back and try to do anything for my career in exchange for that."

During his sabbatical, Black spent time reassessing his career.  After deciding he was unwilling to work within the current recording industry system, he formed his own record label, Equity Music Group.  Black admitted that it was difficult to leave RCA.  In his 14 years with the label, he had sold over 20 million records.

The new label operated under very different rules than those Black had begun his own career under.  Artists were guaranteed ownership of their songs and were granted an equity stake in the label. The first release from the new label was Black's next album, Spend My Time; his eighth studio album was Black's first release in five years.  The Houston Chronicle called it "arguably the most adventurous of his career".

In 2005, Black released Drinkin' Songs and Other Logic.  Black chose the title of the album to limit himself to simple topics in his past. He explained: "I went out and bought all the music I grew up on that I didn't already have and spent three months listening to only that. Only stuff from before I started making records, so it was pre-1989—Waylon, Willie, Buck Owens, Haggard, Don Williams, Jim Croce. And what I discovered was a simplicity in song that I had moved away from. It was quite an emotional journey because these were all the songs that moved me and inspired me to do what I've been doing ever since."

Black has continued to record new material, however.  In 2007, he released the single "The Strong One" the first original song he has recorded that he did not write. The song was included on his first digital EP, released on March 11, 2008. Titled "The Long Cool EP," the collection features Black's single, "Long Cool Woman", "The Strong One" and a duet with his wife titled "You Still Get to Me". Equity Music Group closed its doors in December 2008 due to economic difficulties.

Black was also a judge for the 8th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists.

2013–present: Return to music
Since the closure of his label in 2008, Black had intermittently hinted at a new album that never materialized.  In 2013, he issued a Cracker Barrel-exclusive album which featured re-recorded versions of some of his biggest hits as well as three new songs.  Black stated that he hired the same musicians that had played on the original versions to perform the new ones, and that some songs were approached from a "fresh angle" while others were made to be as close to the originals as possible.

In early 2015, Black appeared with Joe Nichols on the ACM Superstar Duets special, which featured modern artists teaming up with older icons that had influenced their music.  In July 2015, it was reported that Black had signed a new record deal with independent label Thirty Tigers to release an album of new studio material in the Fall.  The record title was revealed shortly thereafter as On Purpose, with a release date of September 25. Black's next album, Out of Sane, was released in 2020.

Songwriting
Few country singers fill their albums primarily with their own material, and although RCA Records often pushed Black to record the material of other artists, he refused. Black recorded only his own songs until 2007, when he released the single "The Strong One". Many of his songs were the result of a collaboration with Hayden Nicholas. Their first collaboration, "Straight From the Factory", took them only 20 minutes to write, although Nicholas would later comment that "most of 'em weren't that easy".

Many listeners were incredulous that such a young man (27 at the release of his first album) could have such "a remarkably mature perspective". According to Black, "To me, a song is more than just something to sing. It's something to learn from. It's somebody else's true feeling. I'm always trying to get at the meaning. ... When I write a line, I'm doing the same thing. I'm looking at it from the perspective of if I was driving down the road listening to it, what am I gonna get out of it?"

Many of his songs make clever use of puns and other creative turns of phrase. While the wordplay in many of the songs on his earlier albums was widely appreciated, by the fourth album reviewers felt that the songs were not as high in quality. Rick Mitchell of the Houston Chronicle stated his opinion that The Hard Way "clever wordplay is no substitute for heartfelt emotion".

Film and television
Shortly after his music career took off, he began receiving offers for acting roles. He turned down every request until 1994, when he was offered a bit part in the star-studded comedy film Maverick. Although the part required very little actual acting, after the movie's release Black received an increasing number of calls from directors who thought he would be perfect for a particular role. Black has appeared in several television shows, including Wings and The Larry Sanders Show. He has since starred in the 1998 television film, Still Holding On: The Legend of Cadillac Jack, based on the rodeo star Jack Favor, who was falsely accused of double murders in Haughton, Louisiana, in 1967. Lisa Hartman Black portrayed Ponder I. Favor, Jack's wife. Black had a major role in another television movie Going Home, and appeared briefly in the 2003 film Anger Management. In 2000, Black and Hartman guest starred on an episode of King of the Hill.

He has also had a presence on various reality television shows. In 2003, Black appeared on Nashville Star, where he acted as a mentor to the contestants. Later that year, Clint also appeared on the ABC sitcom Hope & Faith in the episode "Hope and Faith Get Randy". He later produced the debut album of series winner Buddy Jewell. In 2004, Clint appeared as himself in the TV show Las Vegas. In 2008, Black was a contestant on a short-lived CBS reality show, Secret Talents of the Stars, in which he practiced stand-up comedy.  The following year, he competed on the second season of Celebrity Apprentice. He was fired after the eleventh task, placing himself in fifth place, although he returned as a member of Joan Rivers's victorious team in the season finale. In 2009, Black appeared on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Black has enjoyed his television experiences, describing acting as "another way for me to expand my creative canvas. ... I love to challenge myself." He believes that most of his fans "just see me as a musician who is stepping into [television and film] temporarily and either doing it alright or not". More recently, he appeared in the movies Flicka 2 in 2010 and Flicka: Country Pride in 2012.

On July 4, 2012, Black appeared on an episode of Lifetime's reality series, Coming Home, which documents servicemen and women returning to their loved ones in surprise reunions. In the episode, he is featured helping two children write a song about their Army captain father, who is returning from Afghanistan to surprise his family.

On July 24, 2012, Black is surprised by History Detectives on PBS. In the episode, the show pays a visit to his Nashville residence, to uncover the story behind an artifact given to him by his wife decades ago.

In 2020, Black and Lisa appeared on the fourth season of The Masked Singer as "Snow Owls", notably competing as the series' first duet competitors while riding in an egg-shaped vehicle.

Clint Black participated in the seventh season of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. His episode aired in 2021.

Musical styles and legacy
Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, George Strait, and Willie Nelson are Black's biggest musical influences. His musical style encompasses traditional country, honky-tonk and Western swing. His voice is described as a smooth baritone and was initially compared to Merle Haggard's. Black was self-taught on harmonica, guitar and bass at an early age. On his studio albums he plays acoustic and electric guitars as well as harmonica. In concert he plays primarily guitar, but does play drums and harmonica.

Personal life
Black began dating actress Lisa Hartman in 1990. The couple kept their relationship very quiet. The first picture of the two of them together was not published until the week they were engaged. The couple married in Katy, Texas, in October 1991.

Black and Lisa Hartman Black have a daughter, Lily Pearl Black, born in 2001. As of 2002, he and his wife reside in Nashville, Tennessee, after living in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, California.

Awards

Academy of Country Music
 1989 Album of the Year – "Killin' Time"
 1989 Top Male Vocalist
 1989 Top New Male Vocalist
 1989 Single Record of the Year – "A Better Man"
 1999 Vocal Event of the Year with Lisa Hartman Black – "When I Said I Do"

American Music Awards
 1990 Favorite Country New Artist

Country Music Association
 1989 Horizon Award
 1990 Male Vocalist of the Year

Grammy Awards
 41st Grammy Awards | Best Country Collaboration with Vocals - "Same Old Train"

Discography

Studio albums
1989: Killin' Time
1990: Put Yourself in My Shoes
1992: The Hard Way
1993: No Time to Kill
1994: One Emotion
1995: Looking for Christmas
1996: Pure Black Greatest Hits
1997: Nothin' but the Taillights
1999: D'lectrified
2004: Spend My Time
2005: Drinkin' Songs and Other Logic
2007: The Love Songs
2015: On Purpose
2020: Out of Sane

Billboard number-one hits
"A Better Man" (1 week, 1989)
"Killin' Time" (1 week, 1989)
"Nobody's Home" (3 weeks, 1990)
"Walkin' Away" (2 weeks, 1990)
"Loving Blind" (2 weeks, 1991)
"Where Are You Now" (2 weeks, 1991)
"When My Ship Comes In" (2 weeks, 1993)
"A Good Run of Bad Luck" (1 week, 1994)
"Summer's Comin'" (3 weeks, 1995)
"Like the Rain" (3 weeks, 1996)
"Nothin' but the Taillights" (2 weeks, 1998)
"The Shoes You're Wearing" (1 week, 1998)
"When I Said I Do" (2 weeks, 1999)

Filmography
 The Masked Singer (2020) - Snow Owls (with wife Lisa)
 Flicka: Country Pride (2012) – Toby
 Flicka 2 (2010) – Toby
 Las Vegas "Good Run of Bad Luck" (2004) - Himself
 Anger Management (2003) – Masseur
The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch (2002) – Himself
 Going Home (2000) – Dr. Warren
 Still Holding On: The Legend of Cadillac Jack (1998) – Cadillac Jack Favor
 Maverick (1994) – Sweet-Faced Gambler
 Wings "I Love Brian" (1993) – Himself
 Montana Christmas Skies (1991) – Clint Black, with John Denver, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless

Notes

References

Further reading

External links
 Official website

1962 births
Record producers from Texas
Grand Ole Opry members
Living people
American country guitarists
American country harmonica players
American country singer-songwriters
American male film actors
Musicians from Houston
People from Katy, Texas
Musicians from Long Branch, New Jersey
People from Red Bank, New Jersey
RCA Records Nashville artists
Equity Music Group artists
Singer-songwriters from New Jersey
Singer-songwriters from Texas
Country musicians from Texas
Country musicians from New Jersey
Participants in American reality television series
The Apprentice (franchise) contestants
Western swing performers

Clint Black


David Allan (born 7 August 1940, in Bury, Lancashire) is an English broadcaster and journalist, best known for his work as a television continuity announcer and radio presenter.

Radio career
Educated at Bury Grammar School, Allan spent nine years working in theatre as a stage manager before he began broadcasting on the offshore station Radio 390 in 1966. In 1968, he joined BBC Radio 2 to present country music programmes, a role he occupied for much of the 1970s and to a lesser extent in the 1980s, also presenting the station's early Sunday morning show from 1989–91 and deputising for the likes of Ray Moore, Chris Stuart and Terry Wogan. In 1994, he presented shows on Country 1035 in London, but did not stay long and was a heavy critic of the station's music playlist. From January 1995, he presented country music programmes on Radio 2 again, but was replaced by Bob Harris from April 1999. He also presented a show on Melody FM, and subsequently returned to Country 1035 and was heard at weekends on PrimeTime Radio before the station closed down. In 2002, he won an International Broadcaster award from the American Country Music Association.

Allan also works as a country music journalist, having regularly written opinion pages in the magazine Country Music People and presented country music programming for BBC TV, including coverage of the Wembley Country Music Festival.

Television career
Allan began freelancing as a network continuity announcer for BBC Television in 1969 and became a regular announcer three years later, remaining with the BBC presentation department until 1994. While announcing for BBC One and BBC Two, Allan also announced for BBC World Service Television during the early 1990s. In April 2012, Allan returned to the BBC as the promotional voice for a season of 1970s-themed programming, including a return to his continuity role on 21 April 2012.

From 1995, he was heard announcing for Carlton Television in London on freelance duties, and during the late 1990s and early 2000s, was heard across much of the ITV network as an announcer for overnight programming. Since 2000, he has also worked as an announcer for the British version of History, working alongside former BBC continuity colleagues David Miles and Charles Nove. He is currently providing continuity for Military History Channel in the UK.

References

External links
 Official site

1940 births
BBC Radio 2 presenters
English radio DJs
English music journalists
Living people
Offshore radio broadcasters
People educated at Bury Grammar School
People from Bury, Greater Manchester
Radio and television announcers

David Allan (broadcaster)


York is a historic walled city in North Yorkshire, England. The Romans called it Eboracum, and it was the capital of the Roman province of Britannia Inferior. The Vikings called it Jorvik.

About 154,000 people live in York. It was the traditional county town of Yorkshire but it is no longer. It is now a "unitary authority". Whatever it is called, York is still the most important city in the NorthEast of England.

The city is one of 15 in England to have a Lord Mayor

History

The city has been important in many political events in its two millennia of existence. The city offers many historical attractions, of which York Minster is the most well-known. For many centuries before the railway, the distance to London meant that York acted as the capital city of the North. Only later did Liverpool on the West become as important, with the growth of sea trading across the Atlantic.

Eboracum
The city was founded by the Romans as Eboracum  in 71 AD.
Its position where the rivers Ouse and Fosse converge was likely one of the reasons the site was chosen.

It was later the capital of the kingdoms of Northumbria and Jorvik. In the Middle Ages, York grew as a major wool trading centre and became the capital of the northern province of the Church of England,

The centre of York is medieval. It has famous old streets and a cathedral called York Minster. To the west of York is Leeds, Wetherby and Harrogate. To the south of York is Selby, and to the east of York is Scarborough.

Archbishop of York
York is home to the Archbishop of York, a high-ranking cleric in the Church of England who is second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The current Archbishop of York is Stephen Cottrell, who has held the post since July 2020.

There are many cultural and sporting activities making it a popular tourist destination for millions.

Gallery

Unitary authorities

York


The Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) was established in 1985 in Tamil Nadu in southeastern India by Tamil refugees fleeing the violence in North and East Sri Lanka. Its initial operation was to provide relief to the refugees in India. After the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and the subsequent fighting between the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force, TRO moved its operation and headquarters to Jaffna in Northern Sri Lanka.

The headquarters moved again to Killinochchi after Jaffna was taken by Sri Lanka Armed Forces in 1995. After the signing of the ceasefire agreement in 2002 between the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka, TRO was recognised by the Government as a legitimate NGO and was granted NGO status. During the period 2002 to 2005 TRO operated from offices across Sri Lanka in both Government and LTTE controlled areas providing post war and post tsunami relief and rehabilitation to Tamil community.

The Financial Investigation Unit  of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Central Bank Financial Investigation Unit which monitor the financial transactions noted the TRO is receiving millions from outside that is being sent to the LTTE in Wanni and LTTE International Procurement cadres to buy weapons, sophisticated communication equipment and other technology for the LTTE. The government quickly sealed off TRO offices in Sri Lanka and froze nearly Rs 72 million but the TRO managed to siphon off most of their funds prior to the freezing. The CID also sent the information through the INTERPOL.

On 15 November 2007, the United States Department of the Treasury designated the TRO as a SDGT in the SDN under Executive Order 13224, aimed to financially isolate US designated foreign terrorist groups and their support network. Under this order, the Department of the Treasury froze all assets held by the TRO and its designees in US territories, and formally prohibited US citizens from transacting with the TRO or its members.

The Department of Treasury stated that "T.R.O. passed off its operations as charitable, when in fact it was raising money for a designated terrorist group responsible for heinous acts of terrorism ... in the United States, T.R.O. has raised funds on behalf of the LTTE through a network of individual representatives.  According to sources within the organization, T.R.O. is the preferred conduit of funds from the United States to the LTTE in Sri Lanka".

See also
British Tamil Association
World Tamil Movement
2006 murder of TRO workers in Sri Lanka

References

External links
 TRO Australia
 Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation and the Projects Implemented by it
 International moves to crack down on LTTE's biggest fund-raising sources
 From relief, rehabilitation to peace

Tamil diaspora in Asia
Overseas Tamil organizations
Refugees in India
Social history of Tamil Nadu

Organisations designated as terrorist by Sri Lanka
India–Sri Lanka relations
Indian Peace Keeping Force
Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States
Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List

Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation


A jury is a group of ordinary people, who aren't employees of the court, who decide the answer to a question in a court room. Usually, this question is whether a person is guilty or innocent of committing a crime. A jury may also be responsible for deciding a penalty for the person if they are found guilty. Normally, all members of the jury have to agree on the decision. Sometimes, the jury can still make a decision even if a few members don't agree with it. However, if the jury is quite clearly divided, the result is known as a hung jury and the case is not decided. A member of a jury is called a juror. A juror is supposed to be impartial. This means that he or she is to be fair and listen to both sides of the story without deciding what side they will take ahead of time.

Types of juries
In the United States there are primarily two types of juries which are the finder of facts in a trial:
 A petit jury also called a trial jury is one made up of from 6 to 12 jurors.
 A grand jury is called by a prosecutor to decide if there is probable cause to believe someone has committed a crime. If so, the grand jury returns an indictment against the defendant.

Juries by country

A jury in the United Kingdom is made up of 12 people for criminal cases and 10 people for civil cases (or 15 people in Scotland) these people are selected at random and are British citizens with no criminal record. Members are chosen from the electoral register for their local area and those chosen must attend jury duty.

In the United States, juries are made up of 12 regular people from the area in which the trial is held and are not members of the court system. They are paid a small amount for their service.

References

Trials

Jury


Sambucus velutina, the velvet elder, is a relatively large, deciduous shrub that is endemic to the Southwestern region of the United States. This particular species is characteristic of Central California and Western Nevada.

Morphological characteristics
The velvet elder has medium-hued, green, pinnate leaves, that are notably hairy to the touch. Generally, there are about 5-9 individual leaflets present, each measuring anywhere from 5-30 centimeters (cm) in length. The plants are capable of growing up to anywhere from 3–8 meters (m) in height, with a typical, relatively thick, stem diameter of approximately 30-60 centimeter (cm). These plants have berries that are black and deep blue in color. These characteristics can be observed amongst many of the similar species that will be briefly discussed below.

Similar species
There are numerous, closely related species that are typically found throughout many regions of North America. Sambucus velutina is exclusively found in the Southwestern portion of the United States, yet multiple other genetically similar species can also be found living in other areas of the country. A few examples of such species include Sambucus canadensis (American elder), Sambucus cerulea (blue elderberry), and Sambucus simpsonii (Florida elder).

References
plant.photos.net
plantmaps.com

velutina
Flora of California
Flora of Nevada
Flora without expected TNC conservation status

Sambucus velutina


The ...for dummies is a series of books that try to explain something very simply. The series was created in 1991 by Dan Gookin. The first book was about the computer operating system  MS-DOS. Dan Gookin created the book, because in 1987 a person wanted a book that was simple and easy to read, as the person considered computer books to be dull at that time. After MS-DOS for dummies, came PC's for Dummies by Gookin, and Andy Rathbone. Other popular ...For Dummies books are The Internet for Dummies by John Levine, Carol Baroudi, and Margaret Levine Young, and Beginning Programming for Dummies by Wallace Wang. The book cover is usually yellow and black, with the name in white letters on the black part.

Other websites
For dummies website

Non-fiction books
Learning

For Dummies


Stanley William McInnis (October 8, 1865 – November 4, 1907) was a Canadian dentist and politician in Manitoba.  He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1899 to 1907 as a member of the Conservative Party, and was briefly a cabinet minister in the government of Rodmond Roblin.

McInnis was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, and was educated at Manitoba College and the Philadelphia Dental College.  He practiced as a dentist before entering political life.  In 1902, he moved a motion at a meeting of the Canadian Dental Association to adopt a code of ethics.

He was first elected to the Manitoba legislature in the 1899 provincial election, defeating Liberal Party incumbent Charles Adams by eight votes in Brandon City.  He served as a backbench supporter of the governments of Hugh John Macdonald and Rodmond Roblin in the legislative sitting that following.  On March 1, 1902, he was named Acting Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba in lieu of a full-time Speaker.

McInnis was re-elected with increased majorities in the 1903 and 1907 elections, and was named to cabinet on June 26, 1907 as Provincial Secretary and Municipal Commissioner.  His time in office was brief, as he died on November 4 of the same year.

References

 Manitoba Historical Society

1865 births
1907 deaths
Canadian dentists
Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba MLAs
Politicians from Brandon, Manitoba
Politicians from Saint John, New Brunswick
19th-century dentists

Stanley McInnis


Rogue Planet is a 2000 novel set in the Star Wars galaxy. It is a prequel novel occurring after the events of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. The book was written by Greg Bear. The cover art was by David Stevenson. The book takes place 29 years before Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Synopsis
The story takes place a few years after the events of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Young Anakin Skywalker chafes under his new life as a Jedi apprentice. He sneaks away from Obi-Wan Kenobi to participate in and gamble on deadly flying games. This is interrupted by a Blood Carver assassin.

The Jedi Council decides Anakin would be best served to send him with Obi-Wan to investigate the remote world of Zonama Sekot, a world that produces organic spacecraft. A Jedi has gone missing on Sekot.

A battle squadron pursues the two Jedi; it is headed by a weapons designer that has already blueprinted the Death Star. Commander Tarkin, the future Grand Moff Tarkin becomes involved as well.

Blood Carver assassins appear again, the Jedi grow their own ship and no less than two fleets threaten the planet.

Links to other Expanded Universe material
The introduction of Zonama Sekot and the mysterious Jedi Vergere provided some of the first major links between the pre-Episode IV and post-Episode IV Star Wars expanded universe materials; both figure prominently in The New Jedi Order series. This may be because Zonama Sekot the rogue planet was really a seed of the original Yuuzhan'Tar, the destroyed homeworld of the Yuuzhan Vong. Actually the Yuuzhan Vong were in the galaxy since the days of the Galactic Republic, but did not interfere until the New Jedi Order Era.

References

External links
 Amazon.com Listing
 Official CargoBay Listing

2000 novels
2000 science fiction novels
Star Wars Legends novels
Del Rey books

Rogue Planet (novel)


The American Quartet was a four-member vocal group that recorded for various companies in the United States between 1899 and 1925.  The membership varied over the years, but the most famous line-up — comprising John Bieling (first tenor), Billy Murray (second tenor), Steve Porter (baritone), and William F. Hooley (bass) — recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company from 1909 to 1913.  The same group of singers also recorded for Edison Records as the Premier Quartet (or Quartette), and for that and other labels as the Premier American Quartet. From 1912 to 1914 the quartet also recorded with countertenor Will Oakland as the Heidelberg Quintet.

History
The name "American Quartet" was first used on some recordings around 1899 by the group that became more widely known as the Haydn Quartet - that is, John Bieling, Jere Mahoney, S. H. Dudley, and William F. Hooley.  That line-up recorded for Edison Records as the Edison Male Quartet, for Berliner as the Haydn Quartet, and for other companies as the American Quartet.  After Harry Macdonough replaced Mahoney, the name was used by Edison on some of the group's recordings.  Another line-up credited with the same name comprised Albert C. Campbell, W. T. Leahy, Dudley, and Hooley, on recordings for Victor from 1901.

The best known line-up of the quartet was formed in 1909, when Victor Records needed a vehicle for their new singing star, Billy Murray.  They formed a group around Murray, with Bieling and Hooley brought in from the Haydn Quartet (in which they continued to sing), and Steve Porter from the Peerless Quartet.  Their debut release, "Denver Town", in the then-popular "cowboy song" genre, was released in February 1909 and, like many of the group's recordings, was arranged (and in this case co-written) by George L. Botsford.  The group also recorded the song for Edison, where it was credited to the Premier Quartette; the record company claimed that Will Oakland sang on the record rather than Macdonough, but according to Jim Walsh this was probably an error.

In 1910, the group recorded "Casey Jones", with Victor Records orchestra leader Walter B. Rogers temporarily replacing Steve Porter. The song was very successful, "perhaps the first recording to sell over a million copies in American music history".  "Casey Jones" was also recorded by Billy Murray, with a chorus, for Edison Records as one of their "Blue Amberol" series.  The group's recordings became hugely popular, their other early successes including "Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon" (with Ada Jones, 1910),  "Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine" (also with Jones, 1911), "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" (1911), "Moonlight Bay" (1912), and "Everybody Two-Step" (1912).

Bieling left the group in mid-1913 because of the strain on his voice, which worsened when he was required to make "cowboy whoops" on some records.  He was replaced by Robert D. Armour, a young tenor from Mobile, Alabama. Armour then left in mid-1915, and was replaced by John Young, who had previously recorded under the name Harry Anthony.  The group continued to make successful recordings, including "Rebecca of Sunny-brook Farm" (1914), "It's A Long, Long Way To Tipperary" (1914), "Chinatown, My Chinatown" (1915), "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!" (1917), "Over There" (1917), and "Turkestan" (1919).

William Hooley died in October 1918, a victim of the 1918 flu pandemic.  The group continued thereafter, with Hooley replaced by bass singer Donald Chalmers who, like Young, had been a member of the Criterion Quartet.  After Murray's exclusive contract with Victor expired, the group of Murray, Porter, Young and Chalmers recorded for many companies, including Edison, Columbia, and Okeh, before retiring as a recording entity in 1920.

Singer and entrepreneur Henry Burr then proposed that Murray should replace him in the Peerless Quartet, and that the new group - Murray, Albert Campbell, John H. Meyer, and Frank Croxton - should record for Victor, as the American Quartet.  This was agreed; the group signed exclusively to Victor, with Murray and Burr receiving $35,000 each per year, and Campbell, Meyer, and Croxton $10,000 each. The new group had some success with songs such as "In The Little Red School House" (1922), but at a much lower level than previously.  Some of the group's later recordings were recorded by Murray with Porter, Young and Chalmers, rather than with the new line-up.  The group's final recording, "Alabamy Bound", was recorded in 1925, just before Victor switched from acoustic to electrical recording; the Quartet did not record with the new technology.

References

External links
Premier Quartette (1909) "Denver Town" No.10155 Edison Standard Record
American Quartet at the Vocal Hall of Fame
Library of Congress listed recordings
Collected works of the American Quartet with Billy Murray
 American Quartet recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
The American Quartet (1917) in 'Traveling Culture: Circuit Chautauqua in the Twentieth Century''

Vocal quartets
Pioneer recording artists
Musical groups established in 1899
Edison Records artists
Victor Records artists

American Quartet (ensemble)


"Light of Other Days" is a science fiction short story by Bob Shaw. It was originally published in August 1966 in Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The story uses the idea of "slow glass": glass through which light takes years to pass. Bob Shaw used this idea again in later stories.

The story's title is derived from Thomas Moore's poem "Oft, in the Stilly Night", which is quoted within the story.

Plot summary
The narrator is touring northwest Scotland with his wife Selina. Their relationship is in trouble, and news of her pregnancy has made it worse. Their holiday, intended to improve the situation, has not been a success. Travelling through a remote area, they find a place that sells panes of slow glass. This is glass that light takes a long time to pass through, even years, so that a pane of this glass shows a scene from the past. People buy slow glass that has been placed in picturesque scenery so that later they can enjoy the view in their homes or workplaces. The best quality slow glass is priced by its "thickness", corresponding to the number of years of scenic view contained within it. The narrator thinks that an extravagant idea like buying slow glass might set right his relationship with Selina.

Leaving the car, they walk along a path, where they see panes of slow glass facing a view of a loch. They meet Mr Hagan, who is sitting on a low wall in front of his stone farmhouse and looking towards the house. Inside, through the window, they see a young woman, presumably Mrs Hagan, and a small boy. Hagan fetches a rug from the house so that Selina can sit on a wall. The narrator, sensing that Mrs Hagan, looking towards them from inside, is not aware of them, wonders if she is blind; Selina remarks that her dress is out of fashion.

The narrator discusses with Hagan the price of his slow glass. Hagan says how fine the view is from there; as he talks, the narrator, still looking at the house, wonders if the small boy is blind as well. Eventually, although Selina is not impressed, the narrator decides to buy. While Hagan is fetching the glass, rain begins, so Selina goes to the house to return the rug. When the door is opened, the interior is seen to be disordered and squalid; Hagan is living alone. The family scene of wife and child was of years ago, seen through slow glass. As the couple leaves with their purchase, Hagan sorrowfully tells them his wife and child were killed in a road accident six years previously.

The narrator, walking with his wife back along the path, feels their relationship is somehow strengthened. He looks back at Hagan, who is sitting at his usual place, looking towards the house.

Reception

"Light of Other Days" was shortlisted for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1966, and for the 1967 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

Calling the story a classic, Algis Budrys said that it "tends to make people weep".

Further reading

References

1966 short stories
Works by Bob Shaw
Irish science fiction
British science fiction
Short fiction about time travel
Works originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Light of Other Days


Formed in 1980, the Australian Garden History Society (AGHS) is an Australian history society dedicated to the study of Australian garden history and the conservation of  significant landscapes and historic gardens.

There are AGHS branches in most states and the national headquarters of the society is in Melbourne, Victoria. Membership of the group increased during the 1980s  and 1990s peaking at over 2,000 at the turn of the 21st century. The society publishes a journal called Australian Garden History and hosts an annual conference which combines the reading of academic papers with garden visits. The organisation has a web site that includes news items and a list of events.

Notable publications produced by the group include: The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens published by the AGHS in association with Oxford University Press in 2002. A history of the society, Visions and Voices, was published in 2006.

See also

 Garden History Society
 Historic garden conservation

References

External links
 Australian Garden History Society

Horticultural organisations based in Australia
Clubs and societies in Australia
1980 establishments in Australia
Garden design history
Historical societies of Australia

Australian Garden History Society


Thomas James Harman Sloan  (14 October 1919 – 13 May 1970) was a British broadcaster and journalist and BBC Head of Light Entertainment in the 1960s.

Early life
Sloan was born in Hertfordshire, England, the son of a Scottish Free Church Minister, and educated at Dulwich College. He entered the BBC Sound Effects Department in 1939, but left at the start of World War II to serve in the Royal Artillery throughout the war. He married Patricia Coverdale in 1943 and had four children.

Broadcasting career
In 1946 he returned to BBC radio as a talks producer and spent several years as the BBC's representative in Canada. In 1956 he joined the BBC Light Entertainment group, under Ronnie Waldman. During this period, he provided the British commentary for the Eurovision Song Contests in 1957, 1958 and later the 1964 on radio (BBC Light Programme), and in 1959 and 1961 on BBC Television. He was also the executive producer of the 1968 contest.

In 1961 he was appointed Head of Light Entertainment, taking over from Eric Maschwitz (who became Assistant Controller of Programmes). One of his first tasks was to attempt to hold on to one of the BBC's biggest stars of the time, Tony Hancock. After he failed to persuade Hancock to sign a golden handcuffs deal designed to prevent him defecting to ITV or the cinema, he wrote a confidential memo to the BBC Controller of Programmes on 13 April 1962, stating "Hancock is a moody perfectionist with a great interest in money and no sense of loyalty to the corporation". He added that nothing short of handing over entire "production control" to Hancock and paying him an unprecedented £150,000 – the equivalent of £2m today – for a further 13 episodes of his TV sitcom would be enough to persuade him to stay with the BBC. In the autumn of 1961 he approached Hancock's writers, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, with the idea of a series called Comedy Playhouse. He had ten half-hour slots and asked them to fill them with anything they wanted, insisting only that his title of Comedy Playhouse be used. The fourth episode of the series, broadcast on 5 January 1962, was entitled The Offer and starred Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell as Steptoe and Son. Sloan badgered Ray Galton and Alan Simpson to write a series of Steptoe and Son episodes, which were broadcast between May and June 1962. A further seven series, totalling 57 episodes, would eventually be made between 1962 and 1974.

In his post as Head of Light Entertainment, Sloan provided viewers with a tougher and socially more critical view of comedy than was available before. The polite, middle-class humour which had previously limited the BBC's vision of what television amusement should offer, was supplemented with the social realism of comedies such as Steptoe and Son and Till Death Us Do Part.  Sloan once said, "Comedy ought to reflect life. It is at its best when it does this. I've no intention of giving viewers a marzipan view of life". It was later claimed that Sloan attempted to invert the BBC's founding principles of "education, information and entertainment", giving priority to entertainment, followed by information and education. This was considered acceptable because entertainment, to him, meant not only what was cheerfully relaxing but also what was vigorous, thoughtful, stimulating and downright disturbing. He found the writers and the stars to provide and embody what he wanted, and created a space and audience for them.

Sloan held the post of Head of Light Entertainment for nine years. In this time he saw the BBC's output of light entertainment programmes dramatically increase. In 1955 BBC Light Entertainment had just six producers and turned out five programmes a week. By 1969, Sloan had thirty-four producers under him, responsible for sixteen programmes a week on two channels. In a lecture given in December 1969, he said "If I drop dead tomorrow, I would not mind being remembered for having some responsibility at least for The Black and White Minstrel Show, Hancock, Steptoe and Son, Till Death Us Do Part, Harry Worth, Not in Front of the Children, Dad's Army, Val Doonican and Rolf Harris shows, and Dixon of Dock Green". During his nine years as Head of Light Entertainment his production group carried off every major professional award in show business, including seven awards at the Montreux International Festival. He was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1969 New Year Honours list. His last project was the Royal Television Gala, recorded on the day of his death.

Death
Sloan died on 13 May 1970, while still in his post as Head of Light Entertainment. He was succeeded by Bill Cotton. A memorial service was held in St Martin-in-the-Fields in the City of Westminster, London on Tuesday 23 June 1970. Harry Secombe read the lesson and Huw Wheldon (managing director of BBC Television) gave the address.

References

External links

 Tom Sloan references at the BBC Archives

1919 births
1970 deaths
British television executives
BBC television producers
BBC radio producers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Mass media people from Hertfordshire
British Army personnel of World War II
Royal Artillery officers
Eurovision commentators

Tom Sloan (television executive)


Built in 1844 by Cottam and Hallen of Cornwall Road, Lambeth; in their works within sight of Waterloo Bridge Erected by the Royal Engineers, the Gibb's Hill Lighthouse is the taller of two lighthouses on Bermuda, and one of the first lighthouses in the world to be made of cast-iron. This is because at that time, steel still was not able to be bent. The optic consists of a Fresnel lens from 1904 revolving on steel bearings.  However, for most of its history, the lens revolved on a bed of 1,200 pounds of mercury. While it is certainly not extremely tall in lighthouse standards, the hill that it stands on is one of the highest on the island. The light's focal plane on Gibbs Hill Lighthouse, therefore, is at  above sea level. Airplanes can see its flashes from over  away.

The lighthouse has 185 steps to the top in eight flights. Until 1964, most of the light was run by hand, but in June of that year, the whole system was automated and runs on electricity. Sixty-thousand people ascended the lighthouse in 1985, and it continues to be a popular tourist attraction.

A radar antenna for marine shipping was installed atop the lighthouse in 1987 supported on a steel space frame fixed at the original bolt locations. The radar and supporting frame were undamaged in September 2003 despite the oscillation of the tower during Hurricane Fabian. This movement caused two gallons of mercury to slop out of the lens support trough and put the light out of operation. The 1904 lens was repaired in 2004 with steel bearings to replace the mercury.

At the base of the tower is the Lighthouse Tea Room, a restaurant converted from the lighthouse keeper's former living quarters, where breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served daily.

See also
 List of lighthouses in Bermuda

Sources

References

External links

 Department of Marine & Ports Services

Lighthouses completed in 1844
Lighthouses in Bermuda
Southampton Parish, Bermuda

Gibbs Hill Lighthouse


Loki (, often Anglicized as ) is a god in Norse mythology. Loki is  the son of Fárbauti  and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. Loki is married to Sigyn. They have a son, Narfi and/or Nari.  Loki is the father of Hel, the wolf Fenrir, and the world serpent Jörmungandr.  While in the form of a horse, Loki was impregnated by Svaðilfari and gave birth to the eight-legged horse Sleipnir. Loki is referred to as the father of Váli in Prose Edda. This source also refers to Odin as the father of Váli twice and Váli is only said to be a son of Loki once.

Loki's relation with the gods varies by source. Loki sometimes helps the gods and sometimes behaves badly towards them. Loki can change his shape. He has appeared in the form of a salmon, a mare, a fly, and possibly an old woman named Þökk . Loki's good relations with the gods end with his role in causing the death of the god Baldr. During Ragnarök, Loki is said to fight against the gods among the forces of the jötnar. He will fight the god Heimdallr, and they two will kill each other.

Loki is talked about in the Poetic Edda,  the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, the Norwegian Rune Poems, in the poetry of skalds and in Scandinavian folklore. Loki may be shown on the Snaptun Stone, the Kirkby Stephen Stone, and the Gosforth Cross. Scholars disagree about Loki's origins and role in Norse mythology. Some have described him as a trickster god.

Other media
Loki has been used in many different forms of media in modern popular culture. Most notable of this is his use in Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tom Hiddleston has played Loki in the movies Thor, Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, The Avengers and Avengers:Endgame. He also played versions of Loki in the TV series Loki on Disney+.

Norse gods and goddesses

Loki


Mary Martín (1927 – October 12, 1982) was a Spanish-Mexican artist whose work has been recognized with membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana.

Life
Martín was born María Luisa Martín in Salamanca, Spain to father Vicente Martín, who drew railways and railway lines. At the end of the Spanish Civil War, her family fled to Madrid, then north to France, but there they were caught and the father sent to a concentration camp by the Germans. The father escaped to help his family flee Europe and become refugees in Mexico. Later in this same country, she married architect Eduardo Vázquez Jiménez. She was a communist but not active in the party because of what she considered the machismo of the male members.

In this new country, Mary studied at the Academia Hispano Mexicana, but when she was a teenager she left school to pursue a career in art. Her father was her first teacher, and later studied with painter and architect Roberto Fernández Balbuena. From 1944 to 1949, she returned to school to study at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", where she studied under teachers such as Alfredo Zalce, Carlos Orozco Romero, Agustín Lazo, Jesús Guerrero Galván, José Zúñiga and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano.

She died of cancer at age 55.

Career
Martín's first exhibition came in 1949 at the Cristal Bookstore just off the Alameda Central in Mexico City, in which she demonstrated her works in painting and drawing. She then became a member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular focusing on printmaking with political and social themes such as images of workers, indigenous people, prisoners and works supporting the Cuban Revolution. In the early 1950s, she met Diego Rivera, who invited her to collaborate on mural projects at the Teatro de Insurgentes and The Olympic Stadium of the Ciudad Universitaria. From 1955 to 1960, she exhibited her work in Europe (Warsaw, Paris, Ljubljana, Stavropol, Moscow and Prague), Beijing and San Antonio, Texas. The student uprising in Mexico prompted her to become a drawing teacher, working with the architecture faculty of the National Autonomous University of Mexico from then until her death in 1982. She was inducted into the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and served on its board.

Artistry
Although she always kept her Spanish accent, her artwork was definitively Mexican. She was attracted to the Mexican Muralism movement. Diego Rivera described Martín as "an artist of great validity and seriousness...solid, honest, and full of emotion." One of her themes was the plight of women in Mexico, with the discovery of the stone disk of the goddess Coyolxauhqui inspiring for her a metaphor, and to whom she dedicated a series of works. Much of her work was drawing, favoring solid heavy black lines, along with ochre tones for dramatic effect.

References

Mexican artists
Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" alumni
1927 births
1982 deaths
People from Salamanca
Spanish emigrants to Mexico

Mary Martín


Abruzzo (historically plural Abruzzi) is an Italian wine region located in the mountainous central Italian region of Abruzzo along the Adriatic Sea. It is bordered by the Molise wine region to the south, Marche to the north and Lazio to the west. Abruzzo's rugged terrain, 65% of which is mountainous, help to isolate the region from the winemaking influence of the ancient Romans and Etruscans in Tuscany but the area has had a long history of wine production.

Today more than 22 million cases of wine are produced annually in Abruzzo, making it the seventh most productive region in Italy, but only 21.5% of which is made under the Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) designation. More than two-thirds of the region's wine is produced by co-operatives or sold in bulk to negociants in other Italian wine regions in Tuscany, Piedmont and the Veneto for blending. The most notable wine of the region is Montepulciano d'Abruzzo produced with the Montepulciano grape that is distinct from the Sangiovese grape behind the Tuscan wine Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Together with Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is one of the most widely exported DOC wine from Italy, particularly to the United States.

While wine is produced in all four of Abruzzo's provinces, the bulk of the production takes place in the province of Chieti which is the fifth largest producing province in all of Italy. Some of the most highly rated wine from Abruzzo comes from the hillside vineyards in the northern provinces of Pescara and Teramo. In the completely mountainous province of L'Aquila in the west, some rosé wine known as Cerasuolo from the Montepulciano grape is produced.

Climate and geography

The Abruzzo region has the Apennines running along its western border and includes Corno Grande, the highest point on mainland Italy. The mountain range serves as a tempering influence on the climate, blocking many storms that come in from the west. However, this does leave the area prone to storm systems originating from the east, which are blocked in their westward progression by the mountains, causing high levels of precipitation to fall on the vineyards, as happened during several rain soaked vintages of the late 1990s.

To the east, the Adriatic Sea provides a moderating Mediterranean climate for the vineyards that run along a west-east orientation in calcareous clay river valleys that flow from the mountains to the seas. In the northern region of Abruzzo, along the Marche border, the microclimates, vineyard soils and altitude of many vineyards are similar to other central Italian wine regions in Tuscany, Umbria and Marche, while the warmer, flatter, more humid and fertile vineyard sites in the southern Chieti have microclimates more similar to southern Italian wine regions like Calabria and Apulia.

Viticulture and grapes

Despite the mountainous region of Abruzzo having only half of the vineyard land of regions like Tuscany, the region still produces more than 22 million cases of wine annually. This is partly because of the high permitted yields of Abruzzo's main DOC region (as much as 100 hectoliters/hectare) as well as the government mandated use of high-producing tendone vine-training systems installed in the 1970s. Particularly on the fertile hillsides and plain of the southern Chieti province, vineyards warmed by the dry Adriatic breezes during the summer can produce prodigious yields. Of all the provinces in Italy, Chieti is the fifth largest producer of wine in Italy.

The dominant varieties of the region are the red Montepulciano (grape) and the white Trebbiano d'Abruzzo grape which was once considered a clone of the "insipid" Trebbiano Toscano. Trebbiano d'Abruzzo is thought not to be a version of Trebbiano at all, but the southern Italian white grape Bombino bianco. Both Trebbiano Toscano and Bombino bianco are still widely planted in Abruzzo with field blends including all 3 varieties labeled as Trebbiano d'Abruzzo still common.

While the Montepulciano d'Abruzzo grape has no known relationship to the Tuscan wine village of Montepulciano or the Sangiovese grape behind the wines of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, it was thought of for a time in the 19th century that the Montepulciano grape and Sangiovese may be related. While this relationship has proven false, it is still not known how the dominant grape of Abruzzo took the name of the Renaissance era town.

Winemaking

Nearly 80% of all the wine in the Abruzzo region is produced by large co-operative wineries with the four largest – Cantina Tollo, Casal Thaulero, Casal Bordino and Citra – dominating wine production in the region. In addition to making the majority of Abruzzo labeled wine, these large co-ops also sell wine to other Italian and French wine regions where they are used for blending. According to wine experts Joe Bastianich and David Lynch, a "good part" of many "better-regarded" French and northern Italian wines come from Abruzzo.

In the late 20th and early 21st century, there has been a trend away from the co-operatives towards growers starting their own boutique or artisanal wineries. Two early proponents of this movement were Emidio Pepe for the province of Teramo, Santoleri for the province of Chieti sub-area Crognaleto (Guardiagrele) and Edoardo Valentini for the province of Pescara (who is described by Bastianich and Lynch as the "Angelo Gaja of Abruzzo" and by Master of Wine Mary Ewing-Mulligan as the "Lord of the Vines") who brought innovative styles of winemaking to the region that combines traditional and modern techniques.

Pepe incorporates some elements of traditional winemaking, including crushing his organically grown grapes by foot similar to the traditional Port wine tradition of using a large stone vats called lagares to tread on wine grapes. He also shuns the use of any fining and filtration aids as well as the use of the sulfur dioxide for preserving and protecting the wine oxidation. However, instead of using oak barrels or stainless steel fermentation tanks, Pepe ferments and ages everything in glass (from using glass lined fermentation vessels, to storing the wine in bottles). When the wines are ready to be released, they are decanted off their sediments and repackaged in a new wine bottle.

Valentini and the new wave of artisanal winemakers often utilize extensive pruning, green harvesting, and low crop yields in the vineyard. As well as extended maceration for red wines, and oak aging for whites to produce wines that have received some critical acclaim. According to Matt Kramer, Valentini's Trebbiano d'Abruzzo maybe "Italy's single greatest dry white wine". Wine expert Jancis Robinson describes it as "one of Italy's most distinctive dry white wines."

Wines

Widely grown throughout Abruzzo and central Italy (and believed by some ampelographers to be indigenous to the region), Montepulciano is the fifth most widely planted red grape variety in Italy – behind Sangiovese, Barbera, Merlot, and Negroamaro. In Abruzzo, it is the principal grape behind the DOC wine Montepulciano d'Abruzzo where the grape is noted for producing darkly colored, tannic wines with low acidity, and some aging potential. According to wine expert Matt Kramer, well made examples from favorable vintages can be inky-black with "fjord-like depth of fruit" and soft, sweet tannins that are never astringent, unless the wine extracted too many tannins from prolong exposure to oak. Jancis Robinson notes that some examples of Montepulciano can exhibit a reductive character likely due to the high levels of phenolics in the grape variety.

While Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is produced in all four provinces of Abruzzo, nearly two-thirds comes from the Chieti province though many of the more critically acclaimed versions come from the lower yields and less fertile ferrous clay and limestone vineyards of the northern Teramo and Pescara provinces.

From the mountainous province of L'Aquila, a rosé made from Montepulciano called Cerasuolo is a specialty of the region. These deep cherry pink wines get their color from the highly pigmented Montepulciano grape that requires only a very brief period (sometimes less than a day) of maceration time prior to pressing. According to wine experts Bastianich and Lynch, these wines tend to be "heartier" than typical rosés with exotic spice aromas along with dried cherry, orange peel, strawberry and cinnamon notes. Matt Kramer describes Cerasuolo as "one of the world's great rosé".

In the Controquerra DOC stretched out among five communes near the Marche border in northern Abruzzo, a novello style wine is produced from grapes that at least 30% of which has undergone carbonic maceration (a technique used in the French wine region of Beaujolais for the wine Beaujolais nouveau). This produces a very fruity wine with low tannins that can be consumed soon after the vintage.

The major white wine of the region is produced by the Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, and Trebbiano Toscano grapes (the later is often labeled simply Trebbiano. The wine gained fame in the early 17th century when it was praised for its high quality by the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes in his work Novelas ejemplares. These wines tend to be low in extract and acidity with faint aromatics that can be lightly floral. However, Trebbiano d'Abruzzo tends to be much more complex when compared to Trebbiano Toscano. When produced with some oak, and often blended with Chardonnay, Bastianich and Lynch note that the wines can have a creamy richness with pear and apple flavors and slight oxidized notes of caramel and nuts.

DOCS and other wine regions

Abruzzo has approximately 30,000 hectares of vineyards planted in the region, with roughly half devoted to DOC production.
Abruzzo DOC - Created in 2010
Controguerra DOC - Created in 1996 and located in the hills and valleys around the commune of Controguerra (whose name means "anti-war" in the local dialect) in the Teramo province. Until its creation, the Trebbiano d'Abruzzo DOC was the only permitted white wine DOC in Abruzzo.  Reds are made predominately from the Montepulciano grape (minimum 60% of the wine) with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet franc permitted to make up to 15% and other local red varieties the remaining 25%. Whites are a blend of Trebbiano Toscano (60-70%) and Passerina (15%) with other local white varieties permitted up to 25%. A sparkling spumante style is produced from Trebbiano Toscano (60%) and at least 30% combine of Chardonnay, Verdicchio and Pecorino with other local white varieties permitted up to 10%. Passito and vino novello styles of wine can also be produced in this DOC as well as varietal Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet franc, Merlot, Chardonnay, Ciliegiolo and Pinot nero.
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC - Created in 1968 as a red/rosé wine only DOC that covers 7,500 hectares throughout Abruzzo. The wines are made from at least 85% Montepulciano with Sangiovese permitted up to 15%. In the sub-zones of Casauria and Terre dei Vestini the wines must be made from 100% Montepulciano. The wines must be aged a minimum of 5 months prior to release. Wines labeled as Vecchio aged at least two years in wood such as oak barrels. Rosés made under the same DOC requirements as the reds (grape varieties, harvest yield and alcohol level) are labeled as Cerasuolo meaning "cherry-red".
Colline Teramane DOCG - Created in 1995 as a DOC and elevated to DOCG status in 2003. This wine is produced from grapes grown only among 30 select communes in the province of Teramo. While harvest, aging and alcohol levels regulations are similar to the Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC the wine must be made from at least 90% Montepulciano with no more than 10% of Sangiovese permitted in the wine.
Trebbiano d'Abruzzo DOC - Created in 1972 as white wine DOC that covers virtually the entire Abruzzo region. This DOC has one of the highest permitted yields in all of Italy at 17.5 hl/ha. The wine is made from the Trebbiano d'Abruzzo grape (local name for Bombino bianco but may be another grape variety) and Trebbiano Toscano, which was once thought to be the same grape as Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, must account for at least 85% of the blend with Malvasia Toscano, Cococciola and Passerina permitted to make up to 15% of the blend. The wines must be aged a minimum of 5 months prior to release and attain a minimum alcohol level of at least 11.5%.
Villamagna DOC - Established as a red wine DOC in 2011. As of 2014 it covers 32 hectares with 172 hl of wine produced. Red: Montepulciano.
Terre Tollesi DOC - Established as a DOC in 2008. It is a small DOC, and as of 2014 it covers 21 hectares with 723hl of wine produced. It allows a wide variety of grapes to be produced. White: Trebbiano d'Abruzzo, Trebbiano Toscana, Falanghina, Malvasia, Moscato, Passerina, and Chardonnay. Red: Montepulciano, Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot.
Ortona DOC - Established as a DOC in 2011. As of 2014 it covers 18 hectares with 100 hl of wine produced. White: Trebbiano d'Abruzzo or Trebbiano Toscana. Red: Montepulciano.

In addition to the region's DOCs, Abruzzo is also home to eight Indicazione geografica tipica (IGT) designations--Alto Tirino, Colli del Sangro, Colline Frentane, Colline Pescaresi, Colline Teatine, Vastese (also known as Histonium), Terre di Chieti and Valle Peligna. Many producers use these IGT to produce proprietary red blends using more international varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

References

Wines of Abruzzo

Wine regions of Italy

Abruzzo (wine region)


A choice is the act of choosing. It is the selection of an optional act, in other words, it has to be an act which allows us a choice. A choice is a decision between alternatives.

We all make choices everyday, from what we are going to have for breakfast to whether we drive or walk to work.

The field of economics examines how people make choices about how to use scarce resources and goods, such as their money or free time. Some ways of thinking such as existentialism argue that people's choices and decisions are very important.

Causality
Economics

Choice


Gordon Lynn Hudson (June 22, 1962 — September 27, 2021) was an American professional football player who was a tight end in the United States Football League (USFL) and National Football League (NFL) for three seasons during the 1980s.  Hudson played college football for Brigham Young University, was a two-time consensus All-American, and set the NCAA record for most career receiving yards by a tight end (2,484).  He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2009.

Early years
Hudson was born in Everett, Washington.  He attended Brighton High School in Salt Lake City, Utah.  He lettered twice in three different sports, football, basketball and baseball. He was an all-conference tight end in football while also earning all-conference honors in basketball.

Brigham Young University
The highly recruited Hudson suited up for some varsity games while playing mostly with the jayvee. As a sophomore, he earned the starting tight end role and was selected by coaches as the most valuable rookie. He received All-WAC Second-team honors as well as Associated Press All-America honorable mention honors  He was second in the WAC in receiving  and fifth in the NCAA with 5.6 receptions per game while averaging 14.3 yards per catch. He totaled 67 catches for 960 yards and 10 touchdowns.

His top outing of the year was a 13 catches for 259 yards and three touchdowns vs. Utah (the 259-yard outing set an NCAA record for most yards by a tight end in a single game)  and he was named WAC player of the week for the effort. He also tied the NCAA record of 67 receptions in a season by a tight end. He made seven grabs for 126 yards and one touchdown vs. Washington State in the Holiday Bowl.

As a junior, in 1982, he was Consensus All-America pick. He was the only unanimous All-WAC selection, Again had 67 catches for 928 yards and six touchdowns, averaging 13.9 yards per catch and 6.1 catches per game. He reportedly made some spectacular one-handed grabs among his seven receptions for 81 yards against Ohio State in the Holiday Bowl.

In 1983, as a senior, Hudson earned consensus All-America honors again  along with quarterback Steve Young, giving BYU two consensus All-Americans in the same season for the first in BYU history. He was All-WAC First-team for the second time and totaled 44 catches for 596 yards and six touchdowns in eight games before having his season shortened by an injury. He averaged 13.5 yards per catch and 5.5 catches per game. Hudson finished career as the NCAA record holder for most career receiving yards by a tight end with 2,484.

USFL
Hudson played for the Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League in 1984 and 1985, where he received All-USFL honors during the league's last season in 1985.

Seattle Seahawks
Drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in the first round (22nd overall) of the 1984 NFL Supplemental Draft of USFL and CFL Players. He played sixteen games and ended with 13 receptions and one touchdown in 1986, which was his only NFL season.

Life after football
Hudson worked as a real estate officer in Murray, Utah. He died from natural causes on September 27, 2021, in San Jose, California. He was 59.

References

1962 births
2021 deaths
All-American college football players
American football tight ends
BYU Cougars football players
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
Los Angeles Express players
Sportspeople from Everett, Washington
Players of American football from Snohomish County, Washington
Seattle Seahawks players

Gordon Hudson


Edmond Halley FRS (8 November 1656 – 25 January 1743) was an English astronomer, the second Astronomer Royal.

He was also a mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist. Halley is best known for computing the orbit of the comet named after him: Halley's Comet.

Career
On leaving Oxford, in 1676, Halley visited the south Atlantic island of St. Helena and set up an observatory with a  telescope which had no tube.

He used the telescope to study stars from the Southern Hemisphere. He later published Catalogus Stellarum Australium which was about the 341 southern stars.

In 1686, Halley published the second part of the results from his St. Helena expedition.  This was a paper and chart on trade winds and monsoons.  He thought solar heating caused atmospheric motions.  He also established the relationship between barometric pressure and height above sea level. His charts were an advance in how to display information visually. Halley also persuaded Sir Isaac Newton to publish a book about his discovery of gravity.

In 1690, Halley built a diving bell, a device in which the atmosphere was replenished by way of weighted barrels of air sent down from the surface. In a demonstration, Halley and five companions dived to 60 feet in the River Thames, and remained there for over an hour and a half. Halley's bell was of little use for practical salvage work, as it was very heavy, but he made improvements to it over time, later extending his underwater exposure time to over 4 hours.

That same year, at a meeting of the Royal Society, Halley introduced a rudimentary working model of a magnetic compass using a liquid-filled housing to damp the swing and wobble of the magnetized needle.

In 1691 Halley sought the post of Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University. As he was well known as an atheist, he was opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Tillotson. The post went instead to a mathematician who had the support of Isaac Newton.

Demography
In 1693 Halley published an article on life annuities (a kind of pension), which featured an analysis of age-at-death on the basis of the Breslau statistics Caspar Neumann had been able to provide. This article allowed the British government to sell life annuities at an appropriate price based on the age of the purchaser. Halley's work strongly influenced the development of actuarial science. The construction of the life-table for Breslau, which followed more primitive work by John Graunt, is now seen as a major event in the history of demography.

Named after Halley
 Halley (lunar crater)
 Halley (Martian crater)
 Halley Research Station, Antarctica
 Halley's method, for the solution of many equations
 Halley Street, a street in Blackburn, Victoria, Australia
 Edmund Halley Road, Oxford Science Park, Oxford,  OX4 4DQ UK
 Halley's Comet [orbital period 76 years]
 Halley Ward, surgical ward at Homerton Hospital in East London

These are generally either , rhyming with valley, or  "Hailey", though some people will use Halley's supposed pronunciation of his own name,  "Hawley". The "Hailey" pronunciation inspired the rock and roll singer Bill Haley to call the rest of his band his "Comets" after Halley's Comet.

References

English astronomers
Atheists
Fellows of the Royal Society
English mathematicians
English physicists
British meteorologists
Scientists from London

Edmond Halley