text:
Bruce Jackson
Silver Bullets
(Antioch Review 64:1 Winter 2006, 6-23)
Billy's gun
In late August 1972, my son Michael, then ten years old,
and I were in a junk store near Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The owner pointed to an
old pistol in a locked glass case. He said it had once belonged to Billy the
Kid, whose grave was nearby. I said that if Billy had owned half the guns people
around there said he owned he couldn't have climbed onto a horse. "Don't know
about that," the man said, "but I do know that Billy owned that gun."
Michael stared at the pistol. It was clear he believed it was Billy's and equally clear that he was seriously disappointed. "It doesn't have a front sight and it's rusty and it looks like a capgun," he said. The man told Michael that hardly anybody in those days owned the kind of fancy pistols you saw on television; Michael looked at the man as if he were deranged.
When we were back in the car and once again heading east
along US 60 toward Clovis he was silent a long time. Then he told me that if the
pistol in the glass case was the real thing he preferred what he saw on
I started to explain what was wrong with his attitude. I said that he couldn't ignore facts just because he liked fictions better. Then I stopped talking because we both knew I agreed with him: it wasn't for reality that Michael or I or anyone else watched Western films, or most other films either. It was the stories that hooked us; facts were incidental. Facts were outside, something else entirely.
Say "Billy the Kid" and everybody knows who you're talking about, or believes they do. The most common line on him is that his real name was William Bonney, that he died at 21, a notch on his pistol grip for every man he'd killed.
But some people insist his name was really Henry Antrim, that he didn't mutilate his pistol grip because like anyone else he could remember the body count, and it wasn't 21 anyway and neither was he.
Who cares what they know or say? The notched gun is easy to visualize, 21 dead men coupled with 21 years of life has a nice symmetry, and William Bonney works better than Henry Antrim: good William, good Billy. Which is to say, with Billy the Kid, as with most heroes of folklore and legend, we opt for the better, not the more factual, story.
Billy figures as the central character in scores of films and novels. The films include The Outlaw, Howard Hughes' 1943 homage to Jane Russell's breasts (starring Jack Beutel as Billy, Thomas Mitchell as Pat Garrett, Walter Huston as Doc Holliday and Jane Russell's breasts as themselves); Arthur Penn's 1958 The Left-Handed Gun (starring Paul Newman as a moody and introspective Actor's Studio Billy who, out of guilt and depression, tricks Garrett into killing him when he pretends to draw a pistol from a holster everyone in the scene but Garrett knows is empty), Sam Peckinpah's 1973 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson as the cynical and doomed eponymous heroes, with a songtrack by Bob Dylan), and William Beaudine's 1966 Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966, with Chuck Courtney as Billy and John Carradine as the Vampire).
One of the best known books about Billy the Kid is by the man who shot him down, Pat F. Garrett's The authentic life of Billy the Kid, the noted desperado of the Southwest, whose deeds of daring and blood made him a terror in New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico (1882). Two of the novels are N. Scott Momaday's The Ancient Child (1989) and Larry McMurtry's Anything for Billy (1988).
Then there is Michael Ondaatje's Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1974 ), a book that defies category. It is polyphonic and transgeneric: there are poems, ostensible newspaper stories, interior monologs by Billy, Sallie Chisum, Garrett, and by the author. And photographs, sort of. The top two-thirds of the first page is an empty frame. The text below it begins, "I send you a picture of Billy made with the Perry shutter as quick as it can be worked...." The text continues in specific detail about the sender's photographic experiments and darkroom techniques. All in the service of an empty frame, which perhaps translates as: 'I'm sending you an image, but you have to figure out what it looks like.' Collected Works is a place word and image and you meet or merge. The near figure in the second photograph seems to be a bearded army officer in silhouette standing next to a litter of bones. Beyond him is someone who might be a soldier, also in silhouette. Between them, sitting on the ground, a man painting what looks like a grave marker: "7 CAV." The Seventh Cavalry was Custer's outfit, massacred at Little Big Horn. What does that have to do with Billy the Kid? Perhaps nothing, other than it too was the stuff of legend that trumped fact.
The book's final photo has no caption, nor is it alluded
to or identified anywhere in the text. The image—small, the size of a large
postage stamp—is in the lower right corner of the book's last recto page; the
verso after it is blank.. The photo is of a young boy, perhaps seven or eight,
wearing a cowboy suit, around his waist a holster with a toy pistol, on his head
a broad-brimmed hat. The boy is the young Michael Ondaatje years before he
emigrated to Canada from what was then Ceylon.
The identity of the boy in the photograph is perhaps of far less importance than what the boy wears. For much of the middle part of the 20th century, parents in various parts of the world bought their young male children costumes that were based on someone's idea of the outfits worn by 19th century American cowboy gunmen. The children were sufficiently fascinated with the stories to want to act out their own versions of them, and their parents were sufficiently enamored of those roles and stories to be willing to pay for those cowboy suits, toy guns and broad-brimmed hats.
Silver Bullets
My parents among them. My cowboy suit differed from
Ondaatje's in that mine came with two cap pistols and a black mask. My cousin
Marvin Ort and I, along with our pals Alan Hyber, Danny Rich and Teddy Tuchman,
all of us five or six years old, regularly dressed up to the extent our
individual cowboy suits permitted and enacted cowboy stories. We also enacted
pilots-fighting-the-Japs-in-the-Pacific stories, but most of the time we were
cowboys. We lived on Vernon Avenue in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section, a
street then occupied almost entirely by Jewish and Italian working-class
families. We made up some of our stories, but mostly we adapted them from radio
programs. I don't remember where we got our war stories, but our primary western
source was the "The Lone Ranger" radio program that aired every Monday,
Wednesday and Friday evening out of Mutual Broadcasting System's WXYZ in
Detroit, and which aired locally on New York's WJZ. The smallest among us–not I,
happily–had to play Tonto, the Indian, who had only three possible lines— "yes,
kemo sabe," "do you have a plan, kemo sabe," "and "ugh," and got to help but
never to initiate.
Like James Bond and Billy the Kid, The Lone Ranger was and remains more famous than any of the actors who played him. He is so famous that, decades after the several radio and television series in which he was the eponymous hero stopped running, his name survives in global metaphor:
"Di's little lone ranger flies like an heir with the greatest of ease." (Headline of an April 1985 People article on Prince William)
"Jackson and the pols: will Jackson be the Lone Ranger?" (Headline of a 1984 New Republic article on Jesse Jackson. The article included this line: "But black politicians' principal objection to Jackson is that he may assume the role of a political Lone Ranger, riding into San Francisco in August to single-handedly save the day."
"Oliver North; a lone ranger or just a good soldier?" (Time, January 5, 1987) included this sentence: "No one is yet certain whether North is a cause or an effect, a Lone Ranger who rode out of control or a good soldier who followed orders from above."
"The Lone Ranger". (Time, March 25, 1996, on presidential candidate Bob Dole)
"Lone Ranger" (Time, December 13, 1999, on presidential candidate John McCain)
"A lot of entrepreneurs are Lone Rangers." (Singapore Business Times, March 19, 2003)
"Lone Ranger in Iraq." (San Jose Mercury News, 8 April 2003)
Tony Blair... "definitely isn't happy playing Tonto to Bush's Lone Ranger." (Glascow Herald, May 18, 2004)
"In 1972, 47-year-old Rehnquist became an associate justice on a decidedly liberal Supreme Court. Among the first cases he heard, Roe versus Wade. He voted against legalized abortion. He voted against affirmative action. As the court's perennial soul dissenter, he developed a nickname, the Lone Ranger." Paula Zahn on CNN, June 18, 2005
Only a few real or fictional characters are so deeply embedded in popular culture that their names can be used with no explanation to characterize the behavior or condition of so many different people engaged in so many different activities in so many different places. In the imaginative life of modern America, the Lone Ranger is up there with Rambo, Hillary, Dirty Harry, and Marilyn.
The 2,956 episodes of the radio show ran from 1933 to 1955. There were two 15-episode film serials, both of them edited down to features. The television series began September 15, 1949, with an episode titled "Enter the Lone Ranger," and continued through June 6, 1957, 221 episodes later, with "Outlaws in Greasepaint, " in which the masked man and Tonto help arrest DeWitt & Lavinia Faversham, two members of a defunct Shakespearean repertory company who turned to robbing Wells Fargo Offices. A cartoon series – 30-minute programs with three episodes per show – began September 10, 1966 and ran through January 6, 1968. In 1981, Lone Ranger cartoons appeared as part of the "Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour," with two Lone Ranger episodes per show. With the huge demand for product resulting from 300-channel cable and inexpensive tv dishes, some of the old tv episodes have begun reappearing.
In nearly every episode, the Lone Ranger came upon ordinary people in distress, being abused, falling between two parts of a system in disarray, or confronted by bullies. All the Lone Ranger radio and tv programs were built around a small number of regular themes (e.g.: local law enforcement is ineffective or a deputy is corrupt; innocent folks are pursued by malefactors or are charged with crimes they didn't commit; innocent people have fortunes they don't know about that the bad guys try to steal it from them), which is one reason it was so easy for us kids to enact and adapt the stories to our yards and streets and alleys.
In order to operate without being noticed (that mask was a dead giveaway), the Lone Ranger would adopt disguises: there was the Lone Ranger, already disguised, disguising himself even more as Pancho the Mexican, an Eastern dude, a professor with a medicine wagon, a miner, a Swede, an old Soldier, Othello. (Yes, Othello. That was in episode #221, with the crooked Shakespearians.)
Tonto would say, "Do you have a plan, kemo sabe?" to which the Lone Ranger would invariably respond,"Yes, I do," and either he'd tell it to Tonto then and there or we'd hear it enacted over the next several minutes. Sometimes it was a way to trick the bad guy into revealing his misdeed. Sometimes it was merely physical–being in the right place to catch the crooks. Sometimes it was one of those fabulous disguises.
Week after week, the masked man never once said "No" when the Indian asked if he had a plan. "Do you have a plan" translates as, "Do you know what to do next?" When you're five or six or seven you never know what to do next. You don't even know what to do now. I don't know what adults got out of those programs – adults comprised as much of the audience as kids did – but I know I loved those plans and disguises and the fact that the plans and disguises worked. It meant you could always hide if you wanted or had to, and that there were ways to deal with things you didn't think you could deal with.
We listened to those stories on radio but we saw what we
heard. Ondaatje knew exactly what he was doing when he left that opening frame
of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid empty: all us kids were all
trained in filling empty visual frames. (We did have help in the visualizing:
comics and illustrated books, a board game, snowglobes, bubblegum cards, a first
aid kit, ViewMaster cards, clicker guns and cap guns and costumes. You can go on
eBay and see them all, all of them selling for lots of money.)
Restoring the centers
The series was set about 1875 or so, but the themes, like all successful historical fiction, were contemporary. The Lone Ranger came to birth at the nadir of the depression, a time when all the institutions seemed in the process of betraying ordinary folks, and he matured in an America full of bad guys.
In 1932, the year Detroit radio station WXYZ owner George W. Trendle was midwifing the Lone Ranger with writer Fran Stryker, America was coming off a decade of gangsterdom engendered by prohibition. My late friend George Beto – a Lutheran minister, prison director and criminal justice professor – was fond of saying that the most significant social error in his lifetime had been the 18th Amendment. Prohibition, he said, for the first time made it acceptable for noncriminal citizens to seek out and have regular congress with professional criminals. The result was a measure of criminality and public corruption theretofore unknown, and still with us.
1932 was the year of the Lindbergh kidnapping. It was the year of the "Bonus Army" in the capitol. FDR was elected and the next year the 21st amendment repealed Prohibition but didn't get rid of the gangsters. They found other things to do with the techniques they had developed and connections they had made and politicians they had bought. Two of the big movies of those transitional two years were Little Caesar (1930) with Edward G. Robinson ("Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?") and The Public Enemy (1931) with Jimmy Cagney (who with an unforgettable sneer grinds a grapefruit half into Mae Clarke's astonished face).
Prohibition, as Andrew Bergman notes in We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films (1971), gave us the legendary murderous bootleggers (Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond); the Depression gave us the legendary murderous bank robbers (Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Creepy Alvin Karpis, and Machine Gun Kelly). The bootleggers drove big cars around town, shooting one another to pieces; the bank robbers drove big cars across state lines, escaping the jurisdiction of local police, thereby providing the rationale for what became our first armed national police force–the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The center seemed not to hold. The system was in disarray and the agencies that were supposed to protect seemed more and more corrupt or impotent. It was a time for heroes. Enter the masked man with the never-ending supply of silver bullets.
He owed nothing to anybody and his only close friend was Tonto, a tribeless Indian in a white world, another outsider. The Lone Ranger had one living relative, his nephew Dan (who would be the father of the next century's crime fighter also crafted by Trendle and Stryker: The Green Hornet, who, in his time, would have his own exotic companion, a faithful Japanese sidekick named Kato. The format was exactly the same, only the costumes and mode of transportation were altered.)
And he's nearly nonviolent: he has those gorgeous guns and bullets but never kills anybody, he shoots bad guys in the hand or he shoots their guns out of their hands. He doesn't hang around for thank you. He's the archetypal hero who comes upon the scene when needed, solves the problem and then goes away.
The Lone Ranger was restricted to no place and was based nowhere. The chorus of Woody Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty" could have been written about him:"I come with the dust and I'm gone with the wind." He found and defeated evil in desert, mountain, ranchland, open plains, mining country. His territory was delineated by where evil could flourish and good was short-handed, not by any map, not by any topography.
In the world of the Lone Ranger (as in the world of
Green Hornet, Batman, Superman, Dick Tracy, Wonder Woman and all the others)
evil is never defeated for good; it's just defeated for now, in this place on
this day. The battle continues episode after episode, year after year. The
Cavendish gang, the villains who ambushed the posse of six Texas Rangers and
killed them all but the one who was nursed back to health by Tonto and became
the Lone Ranger, were always breaking out of jail. You could lock evil back up,
but it always loose again. That was its nature, just as it was the hero's nature
to meet it one more time. The story wasn't of triumph, but of transient
"Where you get that 'we,' white man?"
There was a joke a few decades back: The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by hordes of hostile Indians. The Lone Ranger says, "Well, we're really in trouble this time." Tonto says, "Where you get that 'we' white man?"
The joke marks the pivot time: the Lone Ranger and Tonto
were still around but they were starting to become embarrassing. In the 1930s
and 1940s and 1950s you could have mass media narratives in which a smart Indian
gave up all home life, all association with family, friends and tribe, to become
the devoted sidekick of a white man who got all the credit for righting the
world's wrongs. But in 1969, real Indians occupied Alcatraz island in San
Francisco Bay to protest centuries of mistreatment and betrayal, and a few years
later there would be the siege of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
White-Indian relations were no longer a joke. In these later years people would
ask what was wrong with that Indian. How come he talked funny: "Me go" and "Him
come" and "Ugh"? Indeed, how come most of those guys never had any girlfriends?
The comedian Lenny Bruce would quip, "Mandrake and Lothar, Daddy Warbucks and
the Asp, Green Hornet and Kato, Lone Ranger and Tonto–all those couples." Once
their sexuality became a matter for nightclub jokesters their days were
numbered. The only places left for them were high-camp and late-night cable tv.
The Lone Ranger was a hero for a time when you didn't have to explain why you needed to do good other than that you wanted to, a time when you could have a relationship like the Lone Ranger's and Tonto's with hardly anyone wondering who was doing what for or to whom, a time when you could tell stories about the west with no nod to the real history and condition of the west, a time when you could wear eccentric clothes and not be thought campy or cartoonish.
Where the West was
Before the American west was explored European painters imagined it as a "New Golden Land," full of spectacular landscapes and wonderful animals. Some of America's most important 19th and early 20th century artists focused on the West and the people who inhabited it: George Catlin, Frederick Remington, Charles Russell.
In print, dime Westerns were best sellers in the 19th century and now you'll find their equivalent–Louis Lamour's novels, for examples – in any large airport newsstand right next to the section of romance paperbacks. Cormac McCarthy began writing novels set in Tennessee but now lives in Laredo and writes novels set in Texas and Mexico: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Blood Meridian. Larry McMurtry's best-selling novel Lonesome Dove, was also an Emmy-winning TV miniseries. The image of the manly Westerner is so powerful that it continues to be used by Marlboro to peddle cancer, no longer permissible on billboards or television, but a frequent image still in magazines and bars.
One of the first narrative films and what is often cited as the first film with real editing was a Western: The Great Train Robbery, ten minutes long and made in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1903. More than 7000 Westerns followed. In the early 1950s nearly 25% of American film production was Westerns. There were hundreds of western serials back in the days when going to the movies on Saturday afternoons mean two features, up to fifteen cartoons, Movietone News, coming attractions (it would be years before anyone outside the film industry called them 'trailers') and episodes of one or more serials. And there were dozens of television series set in the imaginative 19th century American west. One of them–"Gunsmoke"–ran for two full decades (1955 – 1975). Clint Eastwood's first important role was Rowdy Yates in "Rawhide," a series about a cattle drive that was always en route but never seemed to get anywhere, Sergio Leone saw those programs and hired Eastwood for the trilogy that rejuvenated the theatrical western and made Eastwood an international star: A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dolleri, 1964), For a Few Dollars More (Per qualchi dollari in piú, 1965) , and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, 1966). "Gunsmoke," "Bonanza" and "Rawhide" still appear on cable.
The action of most films advertised or characterized as "westerns" was situated in the American southwest, but they were also set in Florida, Alaska, California, Washington, and the Adirondacks. Some westerns are about cowboys, but others are about farmers, sheep herders, or migrants or miner or pimps and whores. Some are about war and some about love. Some are about whites, some about blacks, some about Mexicans, some about Indians; some are about relations between any or all of them. Some are about space. Some are up-close, like classical drama; some are broad, like classical epic. In some the battles were enormous and in others the battles were intimate. The American west was a great canvas upon which myriads of stories got told. It was a very large real place, and it was and remains a much larger imaginative space.
The global West
Peter Fonda tells about being on location in Peru with Dennis Hopper in 1971, filming The Last Movie. A horse fell off a cliff, landed on a ledge and broke its back. It was screaming in pain, so one of the stunt men climbed down and shot it with the chrome-plated .44 revolver Peter carried with him everywhere in those days. The gun had originally belonged to the famous western actor Tom Mix and had been given to Peter by his father, Henry.
Within a few hours two helicopters of heavily armed police arrived and lined up the entire film crew. The officer in charge demanded the gun. They were in a remote town, a full day's drive from the nearest city, and there were no telephones, but somehow that police official had found out about the gun and had arrived with his troops to get it and to arrest its owner. Real pistols were illegal there for anyone but police and military, Peter said. Except for "Old Tom," all the guns used by the film crew were made of rubber.
At first Peter insisted there was no gun, but when it
was clear that they were all going to be taken away and the production shut
down, he got it out of his bag and gave it to the officer. Now only he and
Hopper were to be taken away. Peter told the policeman to be careful with the
gun, that it was valuable, it had belonged to Tom Mix.
The policeman froze, looked at the gun, then asked Hopper, "Is true, jefe? The gun of Tom Mix?" Hopper said it was indeed true, it was the gun of Tom Mix. The policeman, Peter said, walked along the two rows of his men, all of whom still had automatic weapons pointing at the film crew, holding the pistol as if it were religious object, saying again and again, "The gun of Tom Mix. The gun of Tom Mix. The gun of Tom Mix." Then he gave the gun back to Peter, herded his men into the helicopters, and they all flew away.
Tom Mix hadn't made a film since 1935 and had been dead
since 1940, 31 years before . Yet the iconic power of Tom Mix as western hero
and the real gun he had held in those fictive silent and sound films was
powerful enough to turn a criminal incident into a sacred moment.
A Grand time
The world of Tom Mix, the Lone Ranger, and all the other filmic Gunfighters was a time and place when the world was grand, when the pistols and gestures were beautiful (as Michael insisted when we left that Fort Sumner junkstore)and the issues unambiguous.
Hollywood producers justify graphic violence in recent films in the name of "realism," but in the case of the Gunfighter Western, earlier films were probably more realistic than most of what came later. The quick and simple gunfight in the 1923 Virginian was closer to reality than any gunfight in any film directed by Sergio Leone or Howard Hawks. The first men to play cowboys in Westerns made in California were cowboys who had driven herds of cattle to California. Silent era actors Tim McCoy and Tom Mix, who had been real western marshals, played western marshals in their films.
Few real-life cowboys or sheriffs or badmen had the time or skill or money to be the superb marksmen they so often were in the films. Putting a bullet where you want it to go is like putting a tennis or golf ball where you want it to go: accuracy requires diligent and regular practice. One may practice the day long with a tennis or golf ball for little cost, but revolver cartridges were and are expensive. Few men trying to get by in the 19th century American West would have shot up a month's pay putting holes in targets, but I remember only one film – Warlock (1959) – in which the hero discussed the great cost of the ammunition he consumed in his daily practice.
The splendid Buntline Special and Navy Colt pistols so common in film were rare in reality. Few men had use for them: gunfights beyond a few paces were avoided or negotiated with rifles or shotguns. Only an ill-prepared fool would put all his trust in a weapon as inaccurate as a pistol, and ill-prepared fools did not have great life expectancies in the West, real or fictive.
Backshots, common enough in reality, appeared in the films only when they were of special narrative moment, as in Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950). In that film, an ambitious punk named Hunt Bromley shoots famed gunfighter Jimmy Ringo in the back. The sheriff is about to arrest Bromley but the dying Ringo insists he went for his gun first. The sheriff says everybody knows that isn't true and Bromley says he doesn't need any favors. Ringo tells Bromley he's not doing him any favors, he's sentencing him to a life in which he will never be free of ambitious homicidal punks like Bromley himself.
In a 1973 episode of the television series "Gunsmoke," a farmer pressed into a Dodge City posse inadvertently shoots in the back the killer being pursued. The entire town turns against him and the town children even slaughter his young daughter's cat. Marshall Matt Dillon, the protagonist of the series, finally ends the abominations, but he is uncomfortable about his interference, for not even he can abandon the rules of good sportsmanship for proper killing in the film's version of the great American West.
Only villains and noncombatants fudge the rules and only women are excused from them. Marshall Will Kane's Quaker wife in High Noon (1952) shoots a villain in the back when his guns are unloaded, and a few minutes later she distracts another badman about to have a gun duel with her wounded husband, enabling Kane to kill him. Ordinarily, a gunfight won by improper means is a spoiled triumph. "I remember when I first killed a man," says the gunfighter marshal in Warlock (played by Henry Fonda). "It was clear and had to be done, though I went home afterwards and puked my insides out. I remember how clear it was. Afterwards, nothing was ever clear again, except one thing: that's to hold strictly to the rules, it's only the rules that matter, hold on to them like you were walking on eggs. So you know yourself you've played it as fair and as best you could."
Did any of this have anything to do with real life in
the real west? No more than the Lone Ranger's silver bullets had to do with
anything that ever existed anytime or anywhere. In the world of the storied
heroes, the rules are clear, the consequences are absolute, and the guns do not
Writing in 1954, critic Robert Warshow famously said that the Western is "an art form for connoisseurs, where the spectator derives his pleasure from the appreciation of minor variations within the working out of a pre-established order." Warshow was writing about Gunfighter westerns in particular, those in which the action is resolved by a gun battle between two opponents. The gunfight was an early theme: like the chase and the cattle drive, it was easy to depict on screen and didn't require much explanation for the audience to understand what was going on.
But it changed over time. In the second film version of The Virginian, made in 1923, the gunfight toward which the entire film has been heading is over in two or three seconds and is seen wide angle from more than a hundred yards away. The only way we know it happened is one of the two men in the scene falls down. The gunfight in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), is exquisitely choreographed and scored, and takes four minutes, an eternity in screen time. At some points a single eye fills the entire screen. The fight is between a mysterious wanderer played by Charles Bronson and an unmediated malefactor played by Henry Fonda (ten minutes into the film he murders a father and three children preparing for a wedding reception). At the end of this ballet, Bronson whips out his pistol, fans the hammer, and Fonda's character falls to the ground, a bullet in his heart.
In real life, that bullet had as much chance of hitting a crow flying overhead. Fanning – a swift slap on the hammer with the heel of one's free hand to cock the pistol and advance the cylinder – came into films sometime in the 1920s when a director said to actor Tim McCoy that he needed something new and different in his gunfight scene. Either McCoy or the director came up with the idea of fanning the hammer. McCoy said he'd never heard of anyone in a real life gunfight fanning a pistol: fanning makes it nearly impossible to control the vertical position of the muzzle, which means the pistol is nearly impossible to aim. Nonetheless, fanning quickly became a film standard. Reality was not at issue.
All art is in some measure about other art. Like other artists, filmmakers are aware of the workers and work they follow. In 1961, the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, a fan of western films, made Yojimbo, which is about a samurai who comes to a small town where there are two warring gangs. He hires out to both of them and, by the time he leaves, nearly everyone in both gangs is dead. Three years later, the Italian director Sergio Leone plagiarized the plot for A Fistful of Dollars. In 1995 Walter Hill used Kurosawa's plot, with full acknowledgement, for Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis.
Schlock filmmeister Roger Corman used the plot to make a
sword-fighting movie starring David Carradine, The Warrior and the Sorceress
(1984). It differed from the others in two primary regards: the location was
a mythical planet with two suns, and the leading lady plays the entire film
naked from the hips up. In his autobiography, Carradine says he called Corman to
say he liked the script but was worried about the similarity to Yojimbo.
Roger said, "Yes, it is rather like Yojimbo.
I said, "It's not like Yojimbo. It IS Yojimbo."
Roger said, "Let me tell you a story. When Fist Full of Dollars opened in Tokyo, Kurosawa's friends called him up and said, 'You must see this picture.' Kurosawa replied, 'Yes, I understand it's rather like Yojimbo.' His friends corrected him, 'No, it's not like Yojimbo, it IS Yojimbo. You have to sue these people.' 'I can't sue them,' he responded. 'Why not?' 'Because,' Kurosawa confessed, 'Yojimbo IS Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.'" (Carradine, Boston and Tokyo: Journey, 1995, p. 539)
The repeated transformation of the basic story is
exactly what happens to tales in oral tradition when they move from place to
place: the core narrative remains fairly constant but the details are changed to
fit the new context.
Individual combat and master status
The American heroic western took shape in a new space and received its most powerful dissemination in a new medium, but the action is old. Fran Stryker and George W. Trendle invented the Lone Ranger, but not the imaginative world he inhabited. Nor did the authors of the 19th century dime novels and the producers of the late 20th century filmic bloodbaths. I quoted Robert Warshow saying the Western was "an art form for connoisseurs." Warshow thought that the order was one that had been defined in the Western film tradition itself. He didn't look far enough. The Gunfighter Western is a recent avatar of a much older narrative order.
The great epics – Odyssey, Iliad, Aeneid, Beowulf, and many others – deal with the same concerns: power, law, peace, order, death, chaos. Just as those older narratives, the Western film with the gunfight as central dramatic device is always predicated on a sense of unendurable disorder hovering just outside whatever boundaries are established or assumed: outside town, outside the ranch, beyond the range, forces which may from no internal provocation but quite on their frivolous and gratuitous own come in and screw up everything.
The action is always one of restoring equilibrium: the beast Grendel violates the peace of Hrothgar's castle in Beowulf, the suitors violate the security of Odysseus' home in Odyssey, Paris violates the rules of visitation in Iliad. The film Warlock begins with the senseless murder of an unarmed barber. The action which begins Clint Eastwood's 1976 western, The Outlaw Josey Wales, is the senseless slaughter of a farmer's wife and child by a gang of wandering thugs; no reason is ever offered for that violence.
Such is the enemy – the random and sudden violence that rudely shatters the boundaries of normal life – for those mythic and legendary heroes of the epics, and for those Gunfighter heroes of the film's recreation of the American West.
The mainspring of the Gunfighter Western is individual or single combat, which is grounded in the notion that physical performance can be equated with virtue, and that through a single well-done act a person may achieve all the status he might want or need. Killing the "Fastest Gun in the West" immediately makes the killer the new "Fastest Gun in the West." No need for intermediate steps, no slow ascendance through the ranks. The win immediately engenders a radical change in status, and the opportunity is there for anyone who encounters the present title holder on the street, at a bar or in the alley.
Real life isn't like that. With rare exceptions, the slow progress that leads to success is boring. Usually, it is meaningless except in retrospect, it needs the stretched-out-dimension of time past to have any apparent meaning at all, and it needs a decent social nexus and some luck to occur. That is the way most people have to do it, but it surely isn't the way most people would prefer, which is why folk and popular literature and films are filled by narratives documenting a faster kind and style of certification. (It's also why state lotteries, lousy investments by any standard, have done so well: "Hey, you never know," say the lottery ads in New York.)
We hear in folktales of the magic wish heard and fulfilled, the dreadful beast properly slain, the king's beautiful daughter won and married. In the folktales all king's daughters are beautiful, and the marriages mean that the poor country boys get to move from farm to castle, from amorphous rural space to the center of power. In the Westerns, we see the quiet cowboy enduring the insults and outrages for just so long, then letting go with the fastest forearm reflexes in local memory; we see the badman outdrawn and blown away.
We can go back for examples at least four thousand years
– to the great Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, in which the
young god Marduk kills Tiamat, the great and malevolent mother, in one of the
goriest homicides in folk literature. Tiamat had created evil beings to destroy
her own children, so the gods hired Marduk as their marshal to go against her in
battle. He takes the contract, but demands authority to commence creation anew,
to rebuild the world his own way. The elder gods are desperate and drunk, so
they quickly agree to his terms. Marduk and Tiamat assemble spectacular armies,
but they meet in single combat to decide the fate of the world.
Marduk first immobilizes Tiamat with his net, then orders Imhullu, the wind, to blow in her mouth so forcefully her belly bloats; he shoots an arrow through the belly to the womb, then kills her with his sword. In a grim parody of parturition, he uses her split cadaver to form the universe we know. Even the masters of slice and dice teenage slasher movies would blanch filming this encounter.
After Tiamat is dead, nobody knows quite what to do with Marduk. He got rid of the beast, he restored order, but how does one live with a character so powerful? The problem of what to do with the successful hero after he's done his job appears regularly in myth and legend and Western films.
The Babylonians solved the problem by making Marduk abstract. They affixed to him all the powers of all the fifty gods in their pantheon, then had him assign his day-to-day powers to some local officials who would be his earthly representatives – the priests of Babylon. Marduk was kicked upstairs and out of town.
Heroic success invokes alienating stigma. When Beowulf
defeats Grendel, the poet tells us there is no man more worthy of kingship. That
isn't just because he destroyed the most pressing evil and is therefore
considered capable of managing the general good; it is also because they had no
idea what else to do with so capable a person when there was no combat in
progress. Either elevate him to a form of kingship or run him out of town –
those are the two alternatives. In similar fashion, the outside hero who comes
in to save the town in the Gunfighter films nearly always leaves at the end. It
happens in Warlock, My Darling Clementine (1946), Death of a
Gunfighter (1969), and scores of other westerns. It happens in every radio,
television and film episode of the Lone Ranger. Even when the savior is the
insider heroically risen to the occasion, he is sufficiently changed by the
experience so he no longer fits his old role once his job of curing the
community's infection is over. Owen Wister's Virginian begins as a ranchhand,
rises to foreman and then, after lynching his best friend and killing his enemy
Trampas in a gun duel, he gets the girl and, in the novel, becomes a wealthy
America's last romance
Star Wars writer and director George Lucas told a
Rolling Stone reporter in 1977, "One of the significant things that
occurred to me is I saw the western die. We hardly knew what happened, one day
we turned around and there weren't any westerns anymore." Lucas wasn't at all
right. Westerns continue to be made, though far fewer of them than in decades
past. Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990) won an Academy Award for
Best Picture, as did Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). Lonesome Dove
(1989) won an Emmy. Mel Gibson starred in a film version of TV's Maverick
(1994) and Kevin Costner starred as Wyatt Earp (1994). Sharon Stone
played a gal gunfighter in Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995).
Jeff Bridges starred in Walter Hill's Wild Bill the same year. Hill, who
directed The Long Riders (1980) directed Bruce Willis in Last Man
Standing (1995). The following year Jim Jarmusch directed what might be the
first hallucinatory Western: Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp as "William
Blake" and Gary Farmer as an Indian named "Nobody." In spring 2004, HBO followed
its immensely popular "Sopranos" with the western series "Deadwood," set
primarily in a mining town's whorehouse and hardware store. The filmic mud was
fabulous; how much it had to do with the real west was anyone's guess.
The real West was only incidental to the action going on in all those westerns anyway. It may have been, as I've suggested here, just a local backdrop against which a far more basic action could be played out, just as was the undifferentiated universe of the Enuma Elish for the final battle between Marduk and Tiamat and the black sky for the final battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
And that is why young Michael looked with such loathing at the ostensible gun of Billy the Kid and the Peruvian policeman viewed with such reverence the gun of Tom Mix and why Michael Ondaatje and I and millions of other kids wore those cowboy suits when we were little kids. The scholars are still mining and parsing this material, but every one of us kids understood perfectly well what those symbols and stories were about all along, and we still do.
(© Bruce Jackson 2006. Do not quote without ascription.)


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Welcome to Minerva Institute of Management & Technology
Minerva Institute of Management & Technology (MIMT) is a premier Institute for creativity courses managed by Dev Bhumi Educational Society. It has been established to provide quality education in consistence with the changing world by integrating the best infrastructure and qualified faculty so that students can become competent professionals and be of utmost benefit to the society. It is a gate to those having creative mind. Courses which are followed at the Institute may not be common but requires upliftment & development of innovation with a deep sense of aesthetics ,which has to be inculcated from within .Professional courses followed at Minerva have immense employment opportunities in present time and institute has complete practical training facilities within campus for all courses .
We at Minerva make sure that all provisions are made for the requirement of every Netegrity that a professional needs in that particular field. Needless to say that Institute believes in conjugation as faculty & each staff play their role so well that the working culture and support is smooth & soothing giving an ideal ambiance to its students. Presently Degree and Professional Diploma Courses are followed in the field of Animation, Fashion Designing, Mass Communication, Drawing & Painting, Fine Arts and Commerce.
MIMT has a placement cell and is dedicated to advising students on career options and providing latest information regarding jobs available in the market .Time to time workshops, Seminars and camps are also held. Annual events in respective fields are also organized to enrich students with cultural heritage of India. The motto of institute is "SUCCESS THROUGH WISDOM". We believe that the quality education leads to wisdom which in turn paves way to the success of an individual. The institute is affiliated to UTTARAKHAND TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY & SRI DEV SUMAN UTTARAKHAND UNIVERSITY duly approved by Govt of Uttarakhand.

subset: commoncrawl


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lunedì 15 ottobre 2012
Rombo di Tuono ...
Pubblicato da Garage
1 commento:
Will you please post a link to your Blog at The Kustoms Community? Our members will love it.
Members include: Kustom Owners, Enthusiasts, Experts, Dealers, Collectors, Customizers, etc.
It's easy to do, just cut and paste the link and it automatically links back to your website. You can also add Photos, Videos and Classifieds if you like.
Email me if you need any help or would like me to do it for you.
Please feel free to share as often and as much as you like.
The Kustoms Community: http://www.vorts.com/kustoms/
I hope you consider sharing with us.
Thank you,
James Kaufman, Editor
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Hello Everyone,
I am a very new member and hoping to get some help and support from you all.
I have to lose weight in order to have an operation. I have tried every slimming club going and every diet too. In desparation today I have sent for the Censored and also the Gabreil Method I didn't see that until after I had ordered the Censored.
I have some serious health issues in that I have a condition called Barrett's Oesaphagus that requires surgery, an operation called a Nissen Fundoplication. Very Very scary operation looked at it on UTube shouldn't have done that!
Anyway I am trying to be a positive person, I really do eat a very healthy diet, I just eat too much of it. I have always had a good appetite and when I was young my parents (who had been through the War) used to make us clear our plates before we could leave the table. I am sure there are some of you out there who can attest to that!
Anyway upshot is this - I need to lose weight, I am at the heaviest I have ever been weighing 1 stone more than the day before giving birth to my first child. I feel very depressed today, as the sun is shining and I am FAT! but hey ho I will never get anywhere with that attitude. I have read a lot of reports from you guys about the Gabriel Method and I can't wait until the book arrives and I can get stuck in. In the meantime, I welcome you all into my life and hope we can love and support each other on our respective journeys.


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China; 02, September 2015: The demand for molding equipment has increased with time due to their strength and efficiency. Instead of looking for cheaper alternatives one needs to make a proper research and get the equipment from an experienced company. There are huge amount of companies coming up with their plastic ecomolding equipment but instead of going for cheap alternatives it is important to focus on quality. One of the companies selling quality plastic molding products for a long time now are ecomolding.
These molding equipment are mainly used in the automotive sectors for manufacturing various accessories and parts for the cars. One cannot compromise on the quality or it can affect the built of the car. The professional have huge experience in this field and make sure that the quality of the equipment is not compromised and the buyer gets value for their money. At ecomolding one can have a look at their 6 set CNC machines, 5 set EDM machines, CMM, 18 set injection machine and various other products. The company makes sure that the customers don't go unsatisfied and they get what they had been looking for. Along with quality the mold design also matters as the machine needs to create the design with precision.
Buying machinery through innovative companies that keep their stock updated according to the modern industrial needs is really important. They provide durable products to make sure that the client requirements are not compromised. The ecomolding mould has enough strength to work at higher temperatures and providing greater efficiency. The structures need to be clearly laid out and the professional can never compromise on the intricate designs of the end product. Buying quality equipment enables the company to easily use it for multiple purposes and makes the process much easier.
These molding equipment are much different when compared with the traditional equipment. They add flexibility to the manufacturing processes and their increased strength helps in reducing any wastage in the end product. The Injection molding company is well aware of the current market trends and helps the manufacturers to develop phone cases, door holder, bottle carrier, GPS cover, door parts, pegs and much more. The flexibility of these products helps the manufacturers in various fields. They also focus on fiber optics and develop even the smallest of the items with precision. The buyers can read the knowledge base of the company and know more about the processes involved in developing these machines.
About Ecomolding:
Ecomolding is a China based company that has been producing industrial equipment for more than 15 years now. They special in producing ecomolding equipment that make add flexibility and strength in various industrial manufacturing processes. They ship their products in almost all the parts of the world and make sure that the end customer gets quality products. To know more about their products one can have a look at the above mentioned link.
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You control what apps can notify you and how
Send messages throughout your home
Automatically enables when home and disables when you leave
Quickly use intercom from notification tray
Only broadcast to the rooms you choose
Customize broadcast with custom tones and voices
Only Sonos speakers. Contact your speaker manufacturer if you'd like your speaker to be supported as well.
Yes as long as the original source was started from Sonos app.
It's on the way...


text:
MNCs in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are having to adjust their expectations, and re-think their strategies – and in many cases, their business models – to succeed in the region's complex environment. Although Sub-Saharan Africa is the third-fastest growing region globally (and the second-fastest, if you exclude Nigeria and South Africa), changing market dynamics are causing major shifts in customer demand, forcing MNCs to reconsider their value propositions.
At the same time, operational challenges ranging from FX shortages to regulatory changes are requiring SSA executives to make difficult decisions. Many executives are managing expectations from headquarters, which were in many instances set during the pre-commodities slump period, when double-digit growth figures went hand-in-hand with the "Africa Rising" narrative.
These were some of the strategic issues raised by the 26 executives who attended Frontier Strategy Group's roundtable breakfast in Johannesburg last week. Representing an array of industries, from consumer durables, FMCG and technology, to healthcare and industrials, they are all seeking to grow by tapping new markets and customer segments, while re-thinking (and in some cases, radically restructuring) their product and route-to-market strategies.
Most MNCs believe SSA markets still offer opportunities:
- Long-term prospects underpinned by fundamentals are central to how MNCs are prioritizing SSA markets. Kenya, which ranks highly on FSG's Resilience Index, featured as the market executives believed offered the greatest growth prospects, as well as the market where they would direct their largest investment in 2017. Nigeria emerged as the market posing the largest risk to overall SSA performance, which is unsurprising given its challenges, as well as its size and share of most SSA portfolios. Nevertheless, no MNCs said they were exiting Nigeria, indicating the market still offers opportunities in under-penetrated segments.
- Headline figures for several tier two 'frontier' markets remain compelling. This is evident in how executives at our event viewed Cote d'Ivoire. 25% of MNCs planned to enter Cote d'Ivoire for the first time in 2017, with another 25% planning to expand their presence there. Meanwhile, 10% of MNCs at the event considered Ethiopia promising, due to its strong headline growth, though its relatively closed economy and low average incomes mean it is only suitable for certain types of companies, for instance ones in the FMCG sector.
Across SSA, demand drivers – affecting governments to businesses to consumers – are shifting as a consequence of economic flux, making many customer types more price sensitive and demanding. This is forcing MNCs to tailor their products and services to better align with changing customer needs – reflecting the growing importance of sophisticated customer insights capabilities – while also refining and expanding their route-to-market approaches.
To achieve this:
- MNCs are adjusting their product lines and market positioning. The most important levers MNCs are using to capture evolving demand profiles are their product mix and positioning in the market. For example, for FMCG this may involve introducing premium lines to attract wealthy consumers (a relatively resilient segment), or stripped-down versions that allow financially-squeezed customers to trade down, though for the latter offering value for money appears to be more important than simply lower price points. Meanwhile, B2B and B2G-focussed companies' offerings increasingly are providing solutions tailored to specific problems, often as part of an extensive package, rather than as off-the-shelf products or services.
- They are also leveraging novelty, based on still-strong customer appetite for goods from abroad. Nearly half (45%) of MNCs at our event believed it is important to bring in innovative new products to keep pace with changing demand trends. This holds true even where MNCs are localizing production (itself usually a tactic to circumvent FX problems or capitalize on low-cost local labor). Nevertheless, many MNCs are making product adaptations, notably around packaging, to better suit local retail environments or logistics challenges.
- MNCs are trying to upgrade their channel management strategies to better understand and capture opportunities. In most cases, this involves investing heavily in their sales presence through an expanded network of distributors, though a few firms are also going direct. Local distributors' inadequate skills pose a major hurdle to MNCs' ability to implement strategy, however. 24% of executives said that among channel capabilities, business development skills are the ones that can have the largest impact on their ability to hit 2017 targets.
Clearly, a strategy of 'business as usual', even with some adaptations, will prove inadequate in SSA's post-commodities boom reality. MNCs that succeed will be those that couple a longer-term view with agility in their ability to course correct, while successfully tailoring their product and channel management strategies to the region's increasingly complex macro environment.
For our latest updates and insights, FSG clients can visit the client portal. Not a client? Contact us to learn more.


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Happy New Year! Doesn't it seem auspicious that the new year, already brimming with possibilities, also begins with a new moon? It's very exciting. This year I continue my efforts to synchronize myself with the moon and other rhythms of nature -- with my lifestyle, the things I make, gardening, and even my inner work.
A new moon enhances and strengthens any kind of beginning. A full moon is a time of completion and acknowledgment. And the dark moon is a time for inner discovery. This will be a kind of template for me -- and you, too, if you wish to join in -- to refer to throughout the month. It may change or expand with time, but the focus will hold true.
And so I begin. Each new moon I draw two cards for insight, one from each deck -- a ritual that I've practiced for a long time. I see the cards as an unencumbered method of communicating and being honest with myself. Last month, both of the cards I drew had a theme of strength, which was unsettling at first. I wondered why I would need to be strong because life was easy-going at the time. As the month unfolded, however, it proved to be difficult and pretty darn sad at times. I returned to those strength cards over and over to reread their messages and I think they helped.
I recently watched Sanna make pomegranate juice with a regular citrus juicer, a new technique for me -- I've only ever made pomegranate juice by putting the seeds in the blender and then straining them out of the liquid. This was much nicer and it tastes sweet and delicious.
Beginning anew is a good way to describe my sewing project. I'm returning to the black velvet long cloth with new ideas. It was started a few years ago during one of the first classes I took with Jude. Blogging was new to me then, on-line classes were new, and stitching freely with no pattern was really new -- lots of things have changed.
A dye bundle was made. I rolled and steamed a scrap of wool with eucalyptus leaves & stems, and pomegranate parts -- to be completed and unrolled on the full moon.
I thank you for visiting. I'm only doing things I love to do today and being here is one of them. Looking forward now -- it's going to be a great year, isn't it? xo


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Oct 30, 2013
Time for more great freebies for you! This time I've made a brief selection of some top-notch website templates that look simply amazing, and I've also selected a couple UI Kits, because that's never too much.
Thanks to the designers behind these freebies! These will definitely come handy in some of our next projects. To download these, click the images and visit the download page. Also, if you want to share your own freebies or any other you might have saved in your bookmarks, let us know! The community will appreciate it. Cheers! ;)


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Thursday, April 9, 2009
Great and Holy Thursday
Receive me today, Son of God, as a partaker of Your mystical supper; for I will not reveal Your mystery to Your enemies, nor give you a kiss as did Judas. But as the thief I confess to You: Lord, remember me in Your kingdom.
On Great & Holy Thursday the Holy Fathers draw our attention to four events: the washing of the feet, the Mystical Supper, the agonizing Prayer and the Seizing of the Lord.
The Church turns to the events that occurred in the Upper Room and at the garden of Gethsemane. In the Upper Room, Jesus established and instituted the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist. At the Mystical Supper, He gave a radically new meaning to the food and drink of the sacred meal. He identified Himself with the bread and wine: "Take, eat, this is my Body.... Drink of it all of you, for this is my Blood of the New Covenant."
We have learned to equate food with life because it sustains our earthly existence. In the Eucharist the distinctively unique human food--- bread and wine--- becomes our gift of life. Consecrated and sanctified, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. This change is not physical but mystical and sacramental. While the qualities of bread and wine remain, we partake of the true Body and Blood of Christ. In the eucharistic meal God enters into such a communion of life that He feeds humanity with His own being, while still remaining distinct. In the words of St. Maximos the Confessor, Christ, "transmits to us divine life, making Himself eatable." The Author of Life shatters the limitations of our createdness, Christ acts that "we might become sharers of divine nature."
The Eucharist is at the center of the Church's life. It is her most profound prayer and principal activity. It is at one and the same time the source and the summit of her life. In the Eucharist, the Church manifests her true nature and is continuously changed from a human community into the Body of Christ, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and the People of God. In the Eucharist the Church remembers and enacts sacramentally the redemptive event of the Cross and participates in its saving grace. The Eucharist goes not repeat what cannot be repeated. Christ is not slain anew and repeatedly. Rather the Eucharistic food is changed concretely and really into the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, "Who gave Himself up for the life of the world." In the Eucharist we receive and partake of the resurrected Christ. We share in His sacrificed, risen and deified Body, "for the remission of sins and life eternal." In the Eucharist Christ pours into us-- as a permanent and constant gift-- the Holy Spirit, "Who bears witness with out spirit that we are children of God-- and if children-- then heirs with Christ."
The events initiated by Jesus at the Mystical Supper were profoundly significant. By teaching and giving his disciples His final instructions and praying for them as well, He revealed again His divine Sonship and authority. By establishing the Eucharist, he enshrines to perfection God's most intimate purposes for our salvation, offering Himself as Communion and life. By washing the feet of His disciples, He summarized the meaning of His ministry, manifested His perfect love and revealed His profound humility.
The act of washing of the feet (John 12:2-17) is closely related to the sacrifice of the Cross. Both reveal aspects of Christ's kenosis. While the Cross constitutes the ultimate manifestation of Christ's perfect obedience to His Father, the washing of the feet signifies His intense love and the giving of Himself to each person's ability to receive Him.
Another significant episode leading to the Passion was the prayer and agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Although Jesus was the Son of God, He was destined as man to accept fully the human condition, to experience suffering and to learn obedience. Divesting himself of divine prerogatives, the Son of God assumed the role of a servant. He lived a truly human existence. Though He Himself was sinless, He allied Himself with the whole human race, identified with the human predicament and experienced the same tests. The moving events in the Garden of Gethsemane dramatically and poignantly disclosed the human nature of Christ. The sacrifice He was to endure for the salvation of the world was imminent. Death, with all its brutal force and fury, stared directly at Him. Its terrible burden and fear-- the calamitous result of the ancestral sin-- caused Him intense sorrow and pain. Instinctively, as a man He sought to escape it. He found Himself in a moment of decision. In His agony he prayed to His Father: "Abba, Father, all things are possible to Thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what Thou will."
Jesus offered His unconditional love and trust to the Father. He reached the extreme limits of self-denial-- "not what I will"-- in order to accomplish His Father's will. His acceptance of death was not some kind of stoic passivity and resignation but an act of absolute love and obedience. In that moment of decision, when He declared His acceptance of death to be in agreement with the Father's will, he broke the power of the fear of death with all its attending uncertainties anxieties and limitations. He learned obedience and fulfilled the divine plan.
Prayer is the power that fuels the spiritual life. As breathing, eating, drinking, and thinking are essential to human existence, prayer is a fundamental element and activity of the Christian life. Authentic Orthodox spirituality is constituted by a vibrant prayer life rooted in the life of the Church, her faith and her sacraments; and related, as well, to the practice of fasting, which is seen primarily as obedience to and love for God, the transformation of the passions, and acts of charity. Prayer is the most sublime experience of the human soul. Without it the soul is left cold and spiritless. It cannot enter into a sustained personal relationship with God.
Prayer is an act of faith. It brings us to the threshold of another world. Through it we reach and cross the ultimate frontier. We touch another world, which we come to experience as extraordinary peace, beauty, goodness, joy and trust. We encounter the living God and converse with Him. The Holy One, who alone has existence, embraces us with his tender mercy, compassion and love. Divine light penetrates the depths of our soul to reveal our sins, purge our iniquities, heal our brokenness, illumine our intellect, strengthen our will, and gladden our heart.
At the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss, the sign of friendship and love. The betrayal and crucifixion of Christ carried the ancestral sin to its extreme limits. In these two acts the rebellion against God reached its maximum capacity. The seduction of man in paradise culminated in the death of God in the flesh. To be victorious evil must quench the light and discredit the good. In the end, however, it shows itself to be a lie, an absurdity and sheer madness. The death and resurrection of Christ rendered evil powerless.
On Great Thursday light and darkness, joy and sorrow are so strangely mixed. At the Upper Room and in Gethsemane the light of the kingdom and the darkness of hell come through simultaneously. The way of life and the way of death converge. We meet them both in our journey through life.
Posted by padre seraphim at 12:53 AM
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Click here to view handouts from 2010 - 2013 conferences. (Under agenda, then archives)
Click here to view past conference highlights.
Presented at the 21st Annual Research Conference
Download Handouts: 2.5mb pdf
Presenting: Joy Kaufman; Kim Shepardson Watson
All Authors for this paper: Joy Kaufman; Kim Shepardson Watson; Ellen Vaughan; Amy Griffin; Elaine Fitzgerald; Kathy Carrier
Presentation Type: element of symposium
Synopsis: Systems of care for children under the age of 6 who experience severe emotional and behavioral difficulties yield the greatest success when delivered within a family context and attend to the issues of stress and strain that the caregivers of these children experience. This presentation will describe the family-based intervention being provided in an early childhood system of care and will present data examining the reciprocal relationship between child functioning and caregiver stress and strain.
Download Handouts: 4.5mb pdf
Presenting: Cindy Crusto; Meghan Finley
All Authors for this paper: Cindy Crusto; Meghan Finley; Jo-Ann Gargiulo; Lesby Payne
Presentation Type: element of symposium
Synopsis: This presentation will focus on the potentially traumatic experiences of young children in the systems of care. Data collected using the Traumatic Events Screening Inventory - Parent Report Revised will be used to describe the different types of potentially traumatic events which children in the evaluation have experienced. The study also will explore the potential mediating role of socio-demographic variables, children's emotion regulation, and caregiver stress.
Download Handouts: 1.5mb pdf
Presenting: Elizabeth Masten; Robin Orlando
All Authors for this paper: Elizabeth Masten; Robin Orlando
Presentation Type: element of symposium
Synopsis: This presentation will discuss the development, implementation, and continued maintenance of partnerships that led to the creation of Allegheny County's Early Childhood Strategic Plan, Logic Model, and local evaluation plan. Topics discussed will include the key activities that led to these partnerships, lessons learned, and suggestions for replication in other communites. Additionally, tips on how to engage family members and youth in meaningful ways in a strategic planning process that results in productive family-professional partnerships will be shared.
Download Handouts: 5.6mb pdf
Presenting: Ilene Berson; Maria Garcia-Casellas
All Authors for this paper: Ilene Berson; Maria Garcia-Casellas
Presentation Type: element of symposium
Synopsis: Using outcome data from the national evaluation in conjunction with measures selected for implementation by a collaborative of early childhood systems of care, this presentation will describe an analysis of the reciprocal interaction between stress in the parent-child relationship and disruptions in young children's primary caregiving placements. Preliminary findings suggest that parental distress predicts the continuity of the chid's relationships with caregivers in the home and in early learning and care settings.
We're sorry, handouts are not available for this presentation.
Session Number: 46 Room: Salon H
Presenting: Ilene Berson; Gary Blau
All Authors for this paper: Ilene Berson; Gary Blau
Presentation Type: brief symposium
Synopsis: In 2005 six early childhood system of care sites were funded by SAMHSA to begin to strengthen the connection between mental health services for young children, the early intervention system, the child welfare system, primary health care for young children, and child care providers and preschool programs. The Early Childhood Systems of Care have been working to evolve promising practices that establish and improve existing linkages between the children's mental health system and the early childhood, child welfare, and health care systems. Key stakeholders from these systems have engaged in collaborative planning processes designed to actively implement early childhood mental health systems of care. Over the six-year federal funding period, the early childhood systems of care are designed to improve and increase mental health and non-mental health services and supports provided for very young children consistent with system-of-care principles and best practices; link a newly created system of care with elements of the early childhood, child welfare, and health care systems; and provide comprehensive training and technical assistance to ensure that these linkages remain in place. Baseline data on young children and families served in the systems of care will be presented, and findings will highlight the effects of diverse collaborative efforts that have been implemented to provide young children and their families with intensive services that promote resilience and reduce risk factors.
Date: Monday, February 25, 2008
Session Time: 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM


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I reminded of my old maths lecturer who would call in at the after class chess club. He had this annoying habit that half way through the game he would say " You'll move your knight next, then the castle, then the pawn, and then I'll capture your queen". He was invariably right. But he was the Lancashire chess champion. Obviously the EU have got it all mapped out and are about 10 moves in front of us.
Look back into European history and see how the Monarchies would twist and turn to keep their loot and status. They would do anything to keep in control of the money and the rules that maintained their position. Change their religion, marry into 'suitable' families, bribes and back stabbing. As we know the Monarchy dynasty has ended but their are some of the leading Brexiters who are hankering after 'the Henry VIII' powers. The old days of serfs, plebs, and peasants could be on the horizon.


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I am going to Edinburgh tomorrow to visit the zoo and their pandas! I am very excited. And it is my graduation (again) next Wednesday ... so there are tonnes of excitement in my life.
On to updates.
|July 2013
|2013 so far and July
|2013 so far with July
Some finishes and a new favourite shop:
The new shop came recommended by the amazing Sarah of 'Sarah in Stitches'. Click HERE to see her blog.
And the shop (you might ask) is The Floss Box. To check it out click HERE.
It has long been my desire to stitch a biscornu or two, so I have asked Sarah what shop would she recommend, and she was kind enough to respond with some suggestions. At the Floss Box the charts can be either downloaded, sent to you by email or post. I stuck to downloading ... and had them immediately on payment. They are also quite cheap and could be bought with paypal. I bought 4 so far, and have stitched 2 already (3rd is in progress).
The finishes include:
Biscornu #105:
|love the spots ...


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Your Gift is Waiting
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Copyright @ 2019 Sixred. All rights reserved.


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Feedback from students, teachers and parents includes comments like:
"Many of my students who never expressed an interest in Science before really excelled and produced excellent work." Grade 7 teacher
"The students were really motivated and didn't need much encouragement. They really applied concepts I had taught them and I was surprised by their creativity." Grade 5 teacher
"I came in to class to hear my son's Alien presentation. He spoke really well and was so proud of what he did. This was the first time I'd seen him so keen on an activity and he definitely wants to do it again next year. " Grade 4 parent
"I tried Alien with my class for the first time this year. I was worried that it was going to be difficult and that some parents would call and complain about how much work their child did at home. I had no complains and some even told me what a great project it was." Grade 5 teacher
"My son read about Invent and Alien on the Web site and wanted to do it. He told his teacher about it and made her enter him and his partner. It was amazing how much he learned. He definitely wants to do it again next year." Mother of Grade 4 student
"I loved doing Invent an Alien. The best part was building the alien. The scariest past was having to present before the judges in French." Grade 4 student
"My dad and I had lots of talks about my alien. I told him what I wanted to do about a certain system like the digestive system and he asked me lots of questions and make me really think about it. It was a really fun project." Grade 6 student


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10 reasons this infographic might not be the best in the world
This graphic is supposedly the best infographic produced by any news organization in the entire year of 2013. Come play judge ...
Malofiej 2002: John Grimwade showed various examples of gold medal winners throughout the 10 years of Malofiej Awards. The first years were dominated by the spanish papers with mega-sportsgraphics, that could really blow you away. (And blow the readers away oftentimes too).
Next came the era of Clarín. The 'Builder Graphics'. Graphics departments was turned into construction sites, where you might hear the editor shouting through the noise of hammering, sawing and drilling 'Have you build that graphic yet? – I need it now!'. Clarín has been and still are so succesful in getting awards, that John suggested it would be easier to save them the trouble of submitting graphics each year, and just send them an 'automatic' gold medal.
The simple style of Newsweek was the next trend to win the goldens. Heavily influenced by their Graphics Director, Bonnie Scranton. (Who in turn subscribes to the Edward Tufte way of doing infographics).
And growing out of that came in 1998 NY Times under Charles Blow. They have routinely won lots of gold since then in much the same way as Clarín …
John Grimwade made a point about how in the first years the category of breaking news 'couldn't bear the competition from magazine color features. Not even be in the same room.' He noted with satisfaction how they reappeared because of the Oklahoma bombing in 1995.
Another point was how graphics can't be truly international. Not yet at least. He urged us to allow for cultural differences when judging graphics. The style and the colors of Brazilian and Spanish graphics just doesn't fit at the foggy British Isles.
Lastly, John now sees the infographics getting ready to enter the next stage of development with the new possibilities of animation.
(This article was first published in 2002 in the former version of VisualJournalism.com)


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Former South Gate Treasurer Albert Robles was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in federal prison for plundering more than $20 million from the small, working-class city.
A federal judge handed down the sentence after Robles said in an impassioned speech that he had acted "immorally" during his years as leader of South Gate, but never broke the law.
"There are different levels of hoodwinking, but I didn't think hoodwinking was a crime," Robles said. "During that period I decided not to be a very good man every day. But I did not decide to be a criminal."
At times teary-eyed, Robles, 41, said he managed to make people think he was an "all powerful being in the city," but that he did not really wield such power.


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Jaipur: Breaking her silence on the Alwar lynching case, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said on Tuesday that none of the culprits would be spared and no such incident would be tolerated in the state.
"Such incidents would not be tolerated in Rajasthan. Seven people have been arrested and further appropriate action will be taken on the basis of facts that will emerge after investigation," Raje told reporters in the state assembly premises here.
"None of the culprits will be allowed to get away," she asserted.
The lynching incident occurred in Behror town in Alwar district when Pehlu Khan and four others were attacked by a mob of cow vigilantes while they were on their way to Haryana after purchasing cattle in Rajasthan's Ramgarh on 1 April.
55-year-old Khan succumbed to his injuries at a hospital on 3 April leading to massive outrage.
The incident also led to uproar in the Rajasthan Assembly on Monday as the opposition Congress attacked the government over the law and order situation in the state.
Raje was also asked by reporters about certain controversial comments made by her party MLA about Bhimrao Ambedkar.
The chief minister said her party's stand is clear about Ambedkar that he was the architect of the constitution. She said that Ambedkar is a respectable ideal for all.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.
Updated Date: Apr 25, 2017 21:16:16 IST


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This section contains 419 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)
World of Mathematics on Jean Robert Argand
Jean Robert Argand invented a method of geometrically representing complex numbers and their operations. The Argand diagramis a graphic representation of complex numbers as points on a plane and their additions. He is also credited with giving proof, although with a few gaps, of the fundamental theorem of algebra. In 1814, Argand published a proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra, which may be the simplest of all proofs of this theorem.
Argand was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on July 18, 1768, to Jacques Argand and Eves Canac. Historians have limited knowledge of Argand's background and nothing is known of his education. Apparently, he was a self-taught mathematician, belonging to no mathematical societies or organizations. Mathematics appeared to be just a hobby to Argand. He has often been confused with Aime Argand, the physicist and chemist who had invented the Argand lamp, however, they are not related.
In 1806, Argand, his wife...
This section contains 419 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page)


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Win Keech of course is somewhat responsible for ushering in Simon Parkes on to the wider stage. There's a wonderful interview from back in the day when Simon was deferential to Win, though he now struts the contactee/experiencer stage in full jungle loin-cloth and chest wig expounding on any subject callers care to ask questions of, as well as charging for remote healings, a sideline I could easily get into if I started to believe my own BS.
This is still an excellent interview for just thought-provoking information grounded in Keech's obvious engineering credentials. I'm not saying it's all kosher. I'm just saying it's interesting.


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Tuesday, April 24, 2012
By Shilpa Chopra
Toyota Dealership in Cochin Hosts Exciting Motorsport Activities to Popularize Etios Motor Racing
Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) unveiled the concept cars of its Etios Motor Racing (EMR) Series along with exciting motorsport activities at Nippon Toyota in Cochin. This new venture is in line with its global philosophy of introducing 'WAKU DOKI', which in Japanese means 'excitement, joy and fun.' Showcased earlier this year for the first time at the Delhi Auto Expo 2012, the new sporty avatar of the Toyota Etios will re-emphasize Toyota's efforts in reaching out to the younger target group through the Etios Brand. And, more importantly take motorsports closer to its customers and the youth of the country.
See More Auto Expo Pictures
Apart from the EMR concept cars on display, there was a host of motorsport based activities for all age groups visiting the dealership. Racing simulators and remote controlled cars on race tracks were installed to enthrall motorsport enthusiasts. Children who accompanied their parents were given a crash course in basic automobile technology in a zone called the 'Children's Automotive Learning Area', apart from other relevant contests and activities.
See More Auto Expo Photos
This year will be dedicated to popularizing the EMR brand, apart from the dealership activations in 14 cities and 24 dealerships, there will be exhibition races, road shows and a whole lot of activities lined up before the Series next year.
See More Auto Expo Images
Addressing the media, Mr. Hitoshi Fukui, Managing Coordinator-Marketing, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said "Toyota wants to make our customers happy by providing what we call 'Waku Doki' in Japanese, meaning 'excitement', 'joy' and 'fun'. And for that sake, our mission is to keep renovating ourselves for sustainable growth of our brand. Here in India, I am pleased that Toyota Kirloskar Motor has decided to start motorsports in the same global direction."


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By Lee Seung-hoon and Minu Kim
South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group and China's Baidu entered into a nonbinding strategic alliance in Internet of Vehicles (IoV) on Tuesday to further strengthen their cooperation in next-generation connected car technologies. The two have maintained partnership in the development of vehicle connectivity and autonomous driving since 2014. The latest MOU between the world's fifth-largest auto-making group and the leading Chinese language Internet search provider aims to accelerate the development of disruptive innovations in vehicle connectivity and bring new value to customers, said a senior official at Hyundai Motor Group, focusing on four areas: connected car service, voice recognition, artificial intelligence (AI) robot and Internet of Things (IoT). As a first step on the partnership's roadmap, the two will co-develop a connected car service that provides a wide range of in-car content based on maps, big data, AI and portal services. Hyundai and Baidu will also work together to develop an in-car AI robot that helps control the vehicle though human language communications with the driver. This service dubbed Xiaodu was first released at the Baidu Create 2018 AI developer conference earlier this month.


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$ 1,900.00 (double occupancy)
$ 2,360.00 (single occupancy)
Day 1: Hotel Frón or Best Western Htl Reykjavík
Day 2: Edda Vík or Icelandair Hotel Vík
Day 3: Edda Vík or Icelandair Hotel Vík
Day 4: Hotel Frón or Best Western Htl Reykjavík
Day 5: Hotel Frón or Best Western Htl Reykjavík
The rare and ever-changing glacier ice caves are a spectacular phenomenon and during our Ice Cave Tour to Vatnajokull Glacier, the largest ice cap in Europe, you will experience the adventure of a lifetime. Encounter other natural highlights of Iceland's south coast, including views of the famous Eyjafjallajokull volcano, Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon, boiling hot springs, and cascading waterfalls.
Come and explore the geological features dominating Iceland's rugged landscape!
You will stay in quality accommodation both in the bustling city of Reykjavik and in a rural location perfectly based for exploring the wonders of the region.
All departures are guaranteed with minimum of 2 participants
Upon arrival, head through passport control, collect your bags and go through customs to the Arrival Hall. The FlyBus airport buses wait for passengers outside the Arrival Hall. Show your FlyBus Plus transfer information to the attendant on the bus and let him or her know which hotel you're staying at in Reykjavik. Please note that this is not a guided transfer and you will not be met at the airport.
Once in Reykjavik, check into your hotel. If you arrive early in the day, you might want to explore Reykjavik´s old town, location of many museums and galleries. You might also enjoy visiting one of the city's outdoor geothermal swimming pools where you can shake off your jetlag. In the afternoon, you could take one of our day tours, such as whale watching or horseback riding, both bringing you close to Iceland's nature and landscape.
Overnight stay in Reykjavik.
Eyjafjallajokull Area – Waterfalls - Black Sand Beaches
Breakfast at your hotel. Start today by exploring the region close to the towering, strato-volcano Eyjafjallajokull, which is probably the most famous volcano in the world today. Located at the very edge of the volcano, visit the Thorvaldseyri Volcano Centre. Here you can see both in photos and on film, the 2010 volcanic eruption and its impact on the countryside, Iceland and the whole world.
Journey along the south shore, an area that is especially beautiful in winter, when you can see mystical shapes in the lava and mountains. Stop at the ribbon-like Seljalandsfoss, a waterfall you can sometimes walk behind. Nearby is another beautiful waterfall, Skogafoss. Local folklore has it that Medieval treasure is hidden here. Pass by volcanic landscapes and pretty Icelandic farms on your way to Reynisfjara beach. It is truly an experience to stand on this black-sand beach and view the extraordinary rock formations while North Atlantic waves thunder against the shore.
Overnight stay in the Vik area.
Europe's Largest Glacier – Ice Cave Exploration
Breakfast at your hotel. Today you enter the region of Vatnajokull National Park, named after Europe´s largest glacier. The park covers about 14% of Iceland, making it one of the largest national parks in Europe. Your group will visit one of its areas, Skaftafell, a breathtakingly beautiful region of volcanic landscape ringed by glaciers, most of them connected to Vatnajokull itself. After an exciting day, return to your hotel for dinner and overnight.
Ice caves, like the one you will explore today, can be found in several different locations on the south side of Vatnajokull. Some ice caves are very special, while others might not seem as special but become extraordinary in the right light and conditions.
Your glacier guide is a highly- qualified mountain- and ice cave specialist who will decide which cave is best to visit.
The ice caves that are chosen depend on the time of winter, time of day, weather and other conditions. Some ice caves are very stable to visit. Others are less safe and you might not be able to reach them, even if they are very beautiful. Some caves are only accessible in subfreezing conditions.
Normally one cave per trip is explored, always the most interesting and safest cave available at the time.
You will be in the ice cave for at least 45 minutes, in very cold temperatures.
Preparation for today's trip:
Shoes: It's extremely important to wear good, waterproof hiking boots that cover your ankle. Trainers or sneakers are not appropriate footwear. (hiking boots can be rented during tour).
Clothing: Dressing for Icelandic winter weather is crucial to enjoy this trip. Start with a thin layer, like thermal long underwear and a T-shirt (not cotton). Followed by fleece, wool or polyester sweater and pants. Finish with water- and windresistant coat and snow pants for outerwear. Never wear jeans.
Backpack: For any personal items that you might bring along (extra clothes, snacks and bottled water). One backpack for two people should be sufficient.
Warm hat and gloves: Your hat should be able to fit comfortably under a helmet.
Sunglasses and sunscreen: Essential as the sun reflects off glaciers and snow.
Glacier hiking equipment: You will be provided with all necessary glacier hiking equipment, including crampons, helmet and harness. Your guide will assess the conditions and hand out the equipment necessary for each tour. Crampons available for shoe sizes starting from European number 35 or US number 4.
Explosive Geysers - The Famous Golden Falls - National Park with Geological Wonders (UNESCO)
Breakfast at your hotel. After experiencing the glaciers, it is time to see a warmer side of Iceland. Start the day with a visit to the geothermal fields of Geysir. Here you´ll see steam and boiling water in the bubbling mud pools and spouting hot springs, including the high-shooting Strokkur geyser. A short drive away is the dramatic two-tiered Gullfoss waterfall, a spectacular sight in winter when frozen mid-cascade. Then it´s onwards to Thingvellir National Park (UNESCO) where the world's oldest parliament met for centuries on the shores of Iceland's largest lake.
Tour ends in Reykjavik. The evening is at your leisure.
Overnight in Reykjavik.
Colourful Capital – Bathe in a Geothermal Lagoon
Breakfast at hotel. Today you´ll discover more about the world's northernmost capital city. You will see the Reykjavik coast and the old Hofdi House, where the 1986 summit between former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former U.S.S.R. Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev took place. Visit Hallgrimskirkja church, whose design was inspired by basalt lava columns, a common volcanic rock formation in Icelandic nature.
In the afternoon, travel to Reykjanes Peninsula for a dip in the famous Blue Lagoon, a unique wonder of nature with mineral-rich geothermal water in a middle of a black lava field.
Return to Reykjavik where the evening is at your own leisure.
Breakfast at your hotel. FlyBus Transfer to Keflavik International Airport. You should arrange to depart your hotel approximately 3 hours before departure time of the flight from Keflavik.
Maximum number of passengers on this tour: 17
Minimum age: 13 years old
Ice caves are a rare natural phenomenon, and the weather and conditions around the glaciers are constantly changing. There is a possibility the ice caving tour may need to be cancelled for weather or safety reasons. In this case, alternative activities will be offered or the cost of the ice cave portion of the tour will be refunded.


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Shelby Williams and Jim Loberg are engaged and plan a Sept. 12 wedding at Blue Lodge #6, Jamestown, N.D.
Parents of the couple are Roger and Robin Williams of Langford, S.D., and Rod and Dianne Loberg of West Fargo.
The bride-to-be is a graduate of the U of MN - Twin Cities and is a PhD candidate there.
The groom-to-be is a graduate of NDSU and works for Agri-cover.