The Palace of the Arabian Nights

The Palace of the Arabian Nights () is a 1905 silent fantasy film directed by Georges Méliès. The film, inspired by the "One Thousand and One Nights", follows the adventures of a prince whose bravery and devotion are tested in a magical quest to win the hand of his beloved.
Plot.
In a mythical Arabian kingdom, the noble but penniless Prince Sourire (French for "smile") loves the beautiful Princess Indigo, and asks her father, a mighty Rajah, for her hand in marriage. The Rajah angrily sends the Prince away; he has already promised Indigo's hand to an old friend of his, the wealthy usurer Sakaram. Indigo protests vehemently as Sourire is driven away by guards.
Returning to his private chamber, Sourire weeps with grief and accidentally overturns an incense burner. Smoke pours out of the burner, from which appears the sorcerer Khalafar. After hearing the prince's story, the sorcerer takes him under his protection and presents him with a magic sword, promising that if the prince is courageous and determined, the sorcerer will lead him to an abundant treasure that will allow him to win his love. Sourire willingly agrees and sets off on the adventure, followed soon after by his friends, who wish to stop him from doing anything foolhardy.
Arriving in a temple, the prince falls to his knees in supplication at an altar to a goddess, Siva (presumably inspired by the Hindu deity Siva). The statue of the goddess above the altar comes miraculously to life and sends Sourire off in an ornate boat driven by a blue dwarf. The boat navigates a sacred river and brings Sourire to an impenetrable forest, which magically opens up to reveal secret caverns guarded by a Fairy of Gold. Sourire and his friends descend into a Crystal Grotto, where their courage is tested by attacks from genii of fire, will-o'-the-wisps, phantom skeletons, a fire-breathing dragon, and a flock of monstrous toads. Sourire remains steadfast and puts the monsters to flight. Khalafar appears and congratulates the prince for passing the trial period; he will now be rewarded for his efforts. Sourire is led into the Palace of the Arabian Nights and given an enormous treasure.
Back in the Rajah's kingdom, the day of Indigo's marriage to Sakaram has arrived. Just as the two are about to be married in the palace courtyard, trumpets sound and Prince Sourire appears, bedecked in his newly found finery and followed by a procession revealing his riches. The astounded Rajah allows Indigo to marry Sourire at last. The delighted crowd casts Sakaram out of the courtyard and celebrates the marriage of the Prince and Princess.
Production.
Though clearly inspired by the "One Thousand and One Nights", the plot of the film is not taken from any single story in that collection; rather, Méliès combined the visual iconography of the work and elements from various stories, including the liberated genie from the folk tale of Aladdin, into an original adventure narrative that would allow ample scope for spectacle and special effects. The result is a simple story full of exotic settings and spectacular moments, highly reminiscent of the plots of "féeries", spectacular French stage productions popular in the nineteenth century.
Méliès appears in the film as the sorcerer Khalafar. One of Méliès's costume sketches lists the other actors he planned to cast: "Mlles Calvière, Bodson, Billuart et Pelletier. MM. Docky, d'Hubert, Dufresne, etc."
"The Palace of the Arabian Nights" was the second Méliès film, after "The Barber of Seville" (1904), to be longer than 400 meters. The film, one of Méliès's most opulently designed, is notable for a stronger emphasis on spectacle, and slightly more relaxed pace, than Méliès's earlier films had shown; this change of style may have been influenced by Edwin S. Porter's 1903 film version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" or by the lavish historical dramas then in vogue among Italian filmmakers.
To costume his film, Méliès took advantage of the availability of a sizable stock of costumes he had purchased the same year from a bankrupt stage costuming house, the Maison Lepère. The film's numerous props include almost all of those that had previously been seen, or would later be seen, in other Méliès films: thus, the Moorish door for the Temple of Gold was borrowed from "The Human Fly" (1902), the puppet dragon returns in "The Witch" (1906), the ruins reappear in "Sightseeing Through Whisky" (1907), and so on. The Palace of the Arabian Nights itself, painted in "trompe l'oeil" style on a flat backdrop, looks exactly like the "salle de glaces" (hall of mirrors) featured at the Paris Exposition of 1900. (A very similar room was established more permanently in Paris six years later, as part of the Musée Grevin.)
Along with the lavish costumes and scenery, another main focus of the film is the spectacular special effects. Méliès's techniques for creating these effects included stage machinery, pyrotechnics, substitution splices, superimpositions, and dissolves. The transparency effect of phantom skeletons was created through multiple exposure, with the images of the fighting protagonists and the ghostly skeletons recorded over each other so that both would be visible. Méliès's catalogue description for the film shows particular pride in the scene in which an apparently impenetrable forest, painted on flats arranged to show depth of space, magically parts to reveal a temple: "This decoration which was made only after considerable labor is a veritable marvel of achievement. It possesses a great artistic beauty."
Release and reception.
The film was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 705–726 in its catalogues, where it was advertised as a "grande féerie orientale nouvelle". Both a complete print running 28 minutes and an abridged version running 22 minutes were sold by Méliès; both versions were available in either black-and-white or hand-colored prints. (The running times listed in Méliès's catalogues indicate that he intended a frame rate of 14 frames per second for the film.)
In a study of cinematic depictions of Arabic culture, the writer Jack Shaheen criticizes "The Palace of the Arabian Nights" for including some of the imagery that would become stereotypical in Hollywood versions of the Middle East, citing the opening scene in which "submissive maidens attend a bored, greedy, black-bearded potentate" while "a stocky palace guard cools the ruler" with a giant fan. By contrast, the historian Robert Irwin, in an essay on Méliès's film and other screen versions of the "One Thousand and One Nights", argues that "not too much should be made" of this stereotyping, saying that "film-makers have treated British medieval history in a similarly cavalier fashion in films about the adventures of Robin Hood, while a fantasy history of the Old West has been conjured up by the thousands of cowboy films made in Hollywood."
Film critic William B. Parrill, reviewing silent films in the 2010s, highlighted the skeleton fight scene, saying it "foreshadows similar and not necessarily more imaginative scenes in the films of Ray Harryhausen". Academic theorist Antonia Lant, in an analysis of haptics in cinema, lauded the scene with the magically parting forest, writing: "Melies chose motifs that probed or highlighted the alluring yet illusory depths of the cinema, the impossible compressions and expansions of far and near, the unclear identities of figure and ground." Cultural historian Richard Abel highlighted that the cultural milieu evoked by Méliès "turns into a kind of world tour, eclectically combining" various real and imaginary exotic locations across the Middle East and Asia, "and, in a clever twist that exposes the mask of the 'other' and its dangers, the Palace of the Arabian Nights, where the treasure is hidden, turns out to look much like the Musée Grévin in Paris."


Bergin

Bergin is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:


Order of Civil Merit (France)

The Ordre du Mérite civil (Order of Civil Merit) of France was created on 14 October 1957 to reward individuals who have rendered services reported to the state as part of the Ministry of Interior, or to departments, municipalities and public institutions. The order is managed by the Interior minister, assisted by a Council of the Order.
The Order was deprecated by decree on 3 December 1963, and superseded by the Ordre national du Mérite. Extant members may continue to display their decorations.
Classes.
The Order has three classes:


Minchiate

Minchiate is an early 16th-century card game, originating in Florence, Italy. It is no longer widely played. "Minchiate" can also refer to the special deck of 97 playing cards used in the game. The deck is closely related to the tarot cards, but contains an expanded suit of trumps. The game was similar to but more complex than tarocchi. The minchiate represents a Florentine variant on the original game.
History.
Florence is one of the contenders for the birthplace of tarot. The earliest reference to tarot cards, then known as trionfi, is dated to 1440 when a notary in Florence recorded the transfer of two decks to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta.
The word "minchiate" comes from a dialect word meaning "nonsense" or "trifle", derived from "mencla," the vulgar form of "mentula", a Latin word for "phallus". The word "minchione" is attested in Italian as meaning "fool", and "minchionare" means "to laugh at" someone. The intended meaning may be "the game of the fool", considering that the card "The Fool", also called "The Excuse", features prominently in the game play of all tarot games. In tarocchini, "sminchiate" is a signal used to communicate to a teammate.
The earliest reference to minchiate is found in a 1466 letter by Luigi Pulci to Lorenzo de' Medici. However, this game was believed to be played by a 78-card deck as evidenced by the Rosenwald sheets, uncut sheets of Florentine tarots dated from 1480 to 1500. There are two other differences from 97-card minchiate. First, in 97-card minchiate the sequence for some of the lower trumps goes from lowest to highest: Fortitude, Justice, Wheel, and Chariot. In the Rosenwald ordering it is Justice, Fortitude, Chariot, and Wheel. Second, the Rosenwald sheets contains the Popess as the second trump which is not found in the 97-card deck. In a Florentine song written around 1500, the trumps in a tarot deck were listed as almost exactly as the Rosenwald sheets with the exception of the missing Popess which likely means that this card was dropped from the deck by that time. The song also ranks the other trumps as Fortitude, Justice, Chariot, and Wheel, which suggests it is a transitional stage from the Rosenwald sheets to the 97-card deck's order.
97-card minchiate was first known as "germini", after the Gemini (XXXV) card, the highest of the newly introduced trumps. The earliest record of germini dates to 1506. This deck was created by inserting the 20 new trumps as a single block between trump 15 and The Star, which is now trump 36. The new deck proved so much more popular that the 77-card deck ceased production and the older name of minchiate was transferred over to the larger deck during the 17th century. The game spread from Florence to the rest of Italy and France during that century. In Sicily, it was called "gallerini" while in Liguria it was known as "ganellini" but the rules used in these regions are lost save for cryptic references that they were quite different from the Florentine game. All surviving rules are derived from the type played in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States.
By the 18th century, minchiate had overtaken the original game of tarot in popularity in Italy. Paolo Minucci published a commentary on the game in 1676, and the game is described in detail by Romain Merlin in "Origine des cartes à jouer", published in Paris in 1869. It was also known in Germany during the late 18th century. The game was still played in Genoa in the 1930s, but its popularity declined in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Deck.
The minchiate deck differs from other tarot decks in several features. The first and most obvious difference is that the trumps have almost doubled in number; there are 40 trumps in the minchiate, in addition to the unnumbered card the Madman, The Fool or the excuse. Minchiate uses additive Roman numerals for its trumps. Due to the large number of trumps, players generally called them by their number with the exception of the "arie".
Minchiate decks come in two standard patterns, earlier and later, which coexisted for almost two centuries. Earlier Minchiate dates from the early 16th century or even the late 15th century. There are the four standard Latin suits of swords, batons, coins, and cups; these contain pip cards from ace to ten, and four face cards: a jack, a knight, a queen, and a king. In the minchiate deck, however, in the suits of cups and coins, the "knaves" or "pages" (Italian "fanti") have been replaced by "maids" ("fantine"). The knights, mounted figures in the tarot of Marseilles and similar designs, are centaurs or sphinxes in many minchiate decks. The suits follow the Portuguese pattern with the exception of the batons which follows the northern Italian suit-system. This pattern died out around 1900.
The Republic of Lucca produced their own version of Minchiate decks which were very similar to the ones used in nearby Florence but with several graphical differences. Kings are seated under arches, knights are humans riding horses, all knaves are male, and the Fool is playing with a dog. This pattern died out in the eighteenth century.
The Later Minchiate pattern appeared around the early 18th century as a luxury edition. In this version, the eight highest trumps lose their red backgrounds. Around 1820, this pattern was redesigned to give it a flatter, plainer appearance with changes to a quarter of the trump and court cards while restoring the red background to the high trumps. This pattern survived in Liguria until the 1930s.
The trumps of the minchiate deck, and their corresponding tarot of Marseilles cards and the esoteric Rider-Waite tarot deck are:
By comparing the Rosenwald sheet with 16th century trump lists, the Popess (II) was likely dropped in the late 15th century which shifted every trump above the first down one rank. The Empress, Emperor, and Pope became the new II, III, and IIII respectively, the latter now wearing a secular crown as opposed to a papal tiara. Since the five lowest trumps were collectively known as the "papi" (popes), Love was added to this group after its demotion. The identification of middle "papi" was largely forgotten for centuries as players generally called cards by their number (pope 2, pope 3, etc.) French writer Romain Merlin (1869) is the only source that called trumps II, III, and IIII the Grand Duke, Western Emperor, and Eastern Emperor.
Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance were three classical "cardinal virtues" depicted in the more familiar tarot trumps. The minchiate supplies the remaining cardinal virtue — Prudence — and inserts them with the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. The only other deck to have the theological virtues was the Cary-Yale deck. This is the only deck to include all seven virtues.
Minchiate is a southern tarot pattern so it shares many qualities with the Bolognese and Sicilian tarots as opposed to the western patterns like the tarot of Marseilles. While the Tower is called The House of God in the Marseilles tarot, it is called the House of the Devil or Hellmouth in the minchiate deck and it depicts a nude woman fleeing a burning building. The Moon depicts an astrologer studying the moon instead of the tarot of Marseilles howling dogs and lobster. The card corresponding to the Hermit is often called Time, or the Hunchback; it depicts an elderly man on crutches with an hourglass in the background. Like other southern decks, the final card in the series is not the World, but Judgement. The minchiate completes the series by adding all the zodiac signs (in random order) and the four classical elements.
The eight highest ranking trumps have a red background while the top five (the "arie") are unnumbered. A 98th card was made for some decks. It is a trump with a red background and is also unnumbered like the "arie". It depicts a nude woman running in a wheel, probably representing Fortuna. While 98-card decks were mentioned as being played in Sicily during the early 18th century, only a few examples from Genoa survive. It is uncertain how this card ranked and how it affected the versicole sequences in the game. Also unknown is how it relates to the 98-card version of the Minchiate Francesi described below.
Educational Minchiate.
Educational decks were produced in Florence during the 18th century. Instead of the usual figures and pips, each card would have text explaining a certain topic. One history deck has each suit teaching the history of Assyria, Persia, Greece, or Rome with the trumps teaching myths and legends. Geography decks contained maps of the known world.
Minchiate Francesi.
The Minchiate Francesi, also called Minchiate de Poilly after its attribution to engraver François de Poilly (1623–93) and his son (1666-1741) who had the same name, refer to 3 different French decks utilizing the same set of engravings. The first has 42 numbered trumps, the second has 40 numbered trumps and Momus as an unnumbered card and lacks the first's "Le Chaos" card, the third has 21 numbered trumps and Momus as an unnumbered card. The intended game for the first deck is unknown, but the second appears to be intended to be played like the Italian Minchiate while the third deck appears to be intended for ordinary Tarot (despite still being called a Minchiate deck). The order of the motifs for the two latter decks have been rearranged compared to the first deck to more closely resemble their Italian counterparts. All three decks have the same 56 plain suit cards with French suits with each suit representing a different continent; spades for Africa, hearts for Europe, clubs for the Americas, and diamonds for Asia. The engravings share motifs with both the Italian Minchiate and the Tarot Nouveau as well as taking unique motifs from Roman Mythology.
98 cards with 42 trumps order:
97 cards with 40 trumps and Fool order:
78 cards with 21 trumps and Fool order:
Austrian Minchiate.
Mysterious French suited decks produced by Piatnik of Vienna around 1930 also featured forty trumps. It resembles the Industrie und Glück decks used for Central European tarock. Like the 54-card Industrie und Glück pattern, the plain suits consists of only 32 cards while the 40 trumps feature rustic genre scenes. With the "Sküs" (the Fool), the total number of cards is 73. Compounding the mystery is that the packaging is in French. Industrie und Glück type decks are not known to have a community of players in any French speaking country while the game of Minchiate is thought to have been restricted to only a few players in Genoa by the 1930s.
Game.
Minchiate can be played by two to four players with the most common version played by four players divided into two partnerships. The game, like other tarot games, is a trick taking game in which points are scored by capturing certain cards and sets of cards. As in most tarot games, the pip cards in cups and coins are in reverse order and play is counter-clockwise. The lowest five trumps were called "papi" ("popes") while the highest five trumps (Star, Moon, Sun, World, Trumpets) were called "arie" ("airs") and have a special high scoring value in the game. Minchiate is similar in many ways to tarocchini played in Bologna. In these games, combinations (melds) of cards are more important than the value of individual cards.
The last trick is worth 10 points. Trump 29 is a unique card, by itself it is worth nothing but when used in combinations ("versicole"), it is worth 5 points. "Versicole" are formed through a sequence of three or more of consecutive point cards. In addition, there are four irregular "versicole":
All "versicole" have to be declared at the beginning of the game. At the end of the round, each team will assemble "versicole" from their captured tricks. Trumps 1, 3, 13, 20, 28, 30-33, and 38 are considered valuable cards because they are required to form some "versicole" or to deny the opposition the same. The Fool can be added to every "versicola".
The minchiate deck was also used to play two games that don't use normal tarot rules, "Al Palio" and "A sei tocchi".
2-player rules.
This is the simplest version of the game; it was not considered serious but only as an introduction to the more complex four player versions. Jetons are used to keep track of scoring. The dealer gives 25 cards to his opponent and himself. His opponent leads the first trick but instead of letting the dealer play, she declares any meld she has and scores. The dealer then declares his melds and scores. Each takes back their own cards and the dealer finishes the first trick. Players must follow suit. If they are unable to do so, they must play a trump. If unable to play a trump, then any card can be discarded. The winner of each trick immediately scores from the captured cards and leads to the next trick.
The Fool excuses the player from following suit, it can neither capture nor be captured. The player gives a worthless card from his trick pile in exchange to his opponent.
At the end of the round, each player adds to their running total the captured cards, melds from the captured cards, and the last trick bonus. The player who has captured more than 25 cards gets a bonus point for each extra card. The two players then compare their sums with the loser having to pay the winner the difference.
In cartomancy.
Although no divination system using this pack of cards ever existed in previous centuries, and because of this allegorical and cosmological content, in recent years tarot occultists have proposed systems of divination and cartomancy that use the minchiate deck. In Charles Godfrey Leland's 1890 book "Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches", an incantation is given that mentions the use of "40 cards", which are renamed in the spell as 40 gods who are being invoked to compel the goddess Laverna to do the caster's bidding. Paul Huson has speculated that these 40 cards are the 40 trumps of the minchiate deck. He has also pointed out that Leland's book "Etruscan-Roman Remains in Popular Tradition" (1892) contains a spell that is cast with "tarocco" cards, to invoke Janus.


List of New York State Historic Markers in Bronx County, New York

This is a complete list of New York State Historic Markers in Bronx County, New York.


Countess Donelli

Countess Donelli (German: Gräfin Donelli) is a 1924 German silent drama film directed by G. W. Pabst and starring Paul Hansen, Henny Porten and Ferdinand von Alten. The film is considered to be lost. The film's sets were designed by the art director Hermann Warm.


Edith Morley

Edith Julia Morley, (1875–1964) was a literary scholar and activist. She was the main twentieth century editor of the works of Henry Crabb Robinson. She was a Professor of English Language at University College, Reading, now the University of Reading, from 1908 to 1940, making her the first woman to be appointed to a chair at a British university-level institution. She was a proud Socialist and member of the Fabian society, active in various suffrage campaigns, and received an OBE for her efforts coordinating Reading's refugee programme during the Second World War.
Birth, childhood, and family life.
Edith Julia Morley was born at 25 Craven Hill Gardens, Bayswater, central London, in 1875. The house belonged to her grandmother, and the family rented it from her. Morley was the fourth of six children to her mother Leah Reyser (1840-1926) and her father Alexander Morley (d. 1915), a surgeon-dentist. She describes her oldest brother as 'an invalid'. There were twenty-five years between the eldest and the youngest children.
She recalled in her memoir that she had not liked being a girl, being impatient of the restrictions placed on her activities by Victorian notions of decorum, such as wearing gloves and a veil to preserve her complexion.
The family home had nine bedrooms, and on Morley's 'coming-out dance' comfortably accommodated 250 people. The family had a telephone installed in 1903 or 1904, which Morley notes was earlier than most of their friends.
Education.
From the age of five Morley was sent to a local kindergarten which was run by a natural history enthusiast, nicknamed 'Brownie' by the family. She spent 'long and happy hours' at the Natural History Museum, London, recalling a memorable experience of being asked to tea by the Director and helping him and his assistant identify shells. She wrote that she 'was fully convinced that they needed my assistance', and was pleased that her brother hadn't been similarly invited. She described it as a 'delightful and wonderful experience and one which filled me with self-importance'.
Morley received a comprehensive education. Her father wanted her to be educated at home by a governess, but she insisted on being sent to school. She was sent to Boarding School for three years and was then educated at Doreck College, Kensington, for four years. At the age of 14, she was sent to Hanover to learn German and to be 'turned into a 'young lady' and acquire some of the feminine accomplishments I refused to have anything to do with at home'. Her teaching was entirely in German, and she learned German, French, English Literature, universal history and history of art. She was not instructed in Latin, mathematics, or science, noting that absence would also have been reflected in private schools in England.
In 1892, she took a course at Kings College London Ladies Department, where her abilities were noticed and it was suggested that she transfer to the Oxford Honour School of English and English Literature, alongside Caroline F. E. Spurgeon. Although she was placed in the first class following examination in 1899, women were not allowed to matriculate from Oxford at the time and she was awarded an 'equivalent' degree rather than a standard Oxford degree. Along with the few other women at Oxford University in that period, she was kept rather isolated, with limited access to the university's resources. She was later awarded an Associateship of King's College. In 1926 she was granted an Oxford honorary MA degree.
Career.
Morley began teaching at King's College in 1899, taking a class in Gothic and Germanic philology.
The difficulties Morley experienced getting an education helped to shape her political views towards Fabianism and she joined the Fabian Society around 1908 and became a member of the Fabian Executive Committee in 1914. She was also a champion of women's rights, arguing that marriage and motherhood were used to hold women back from professional careers. In her 1914 book "Women Workers in Seven Professions", she describes how women academics tend to be found in restricted markets like women's colleges, creating a situation of artificial scarcity under which women are forced to compete against each other (rather than against both men and women) for the few available resources.
Morley was an active although not an exhibitionist suffragist. She refused to pay her taxes in protest at having no vote and had her goods seized by the authorities. She also refused to take part in the 1911 census for the same reason and she spent the night of the census walking up and down Aldeburg High Street with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.
In 1908, Morley was appointed Professor of English Language at University College in Reading, thereby becoming the first woman appointed to a chair at an English university-level institution. She held this post until 1940, by which time the erstwhile University College had become the University of Reading. Her speciality was English literature, and for many years she regularly published a lengthy roundup of recent scholarship in her field under the heading "The Eighteenth Century" in the bibliographical review entitled "The Year's Work in English Studies". She is known for her comprehensive 1935 biography of the writer and traveller Henry Crabb Robinson and as the primary 20th century editor of Robinson's writings.
Awards, honours and remembrance.
In 1950, she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), an honour awarded for her work setting up the Reading Refugee Committee and assisting Belgian Jewish refugees in World War II. For this work, she was included among the hundred or so women in Sybil Oldfield's book "Doers of the Word: A Biographical Dictionary of British Women Humanitarians Active Between 1900–1950".
The University of Reading holds a collection of her papers, including correspondence (1914–1939), lecture notebooks (1893–1914), photographs, and a memoir entitled "Looking Before and After", which was published posthumously in 2016. In 2014, the university held her up as a role model during its celebration of International Women's Day. An annual lecture was established in her honour.
The Edith Morley Annual Lecture has been given by:
The University of Reading's Humanities and Social Sciences Building was renamed the Edith Morley Building in 2017.


Halatafl


The Border Wireless

The Border Wireless is a lost 1918 American silent Western film produced and directed by William S. Hart and distributed by Artcraft Pictures, an affiliate of Famous Players-Lasky and Paramount Pictures. Hart stars in the film along with Wanda Hawley as his leading lady.
Cast.
"unbilled"


Bernard M. L. Ernst

Bernard Morris Leon Ernst (March 17, 1879 – November 28, 1938) most well known as Bernard M. L. Ernst was an American lawyer, magician and associate of Harry Houdini.
Career.
Ernst was born in Uniontown, Alabama. He received his LL.B from Columbia University in 1905. He began working as a lawyer for a firm in Boston in 1909, he also worked on the legal counsel for the Eastern Massachusetts Street Railway. In the 1930s he was a council member of the Metropolitan League of Jewish Community Associations in New York City.
Personal life.
He married Roberta C. Claus on 4 August, 1908. Ernst was Jewish. He was a member of many organizations including the American Bar Association, New York County Lawyers' Association, Phi Delta Theta, National Vaudeville Artists Association, American Society for Psychical Research and the International Brotherhood of Magicians. His son, Richard C. Ernst, married Susan Bloomingdale, daughter of Samuel Bloomingdale.
Magic.
Ernst took interest in magic and became the personal attorney for the magician Harry Houdini and the legal representative of his estate. Ernst had lectured on Houdini and magic at Columbia University. He managed the correspondence and private papers for Houdini, he also collected magic memorabilia. In 1926, he succeeded Houdini as President of the Society of American Magicians.
His son Richard Charles Ernst (1915-1984) was given his father's memorabilia which he made available for Houdini biographers


List of New York State Historic Markers in Niagara County, New York

This is an incomplete list of New York State Historic Markers in Niagara County, New York.


The Bunkhouse (venue)

The Bunkhouse Coffeehouse, downstairs at 612 Davie Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was an influential venue for folk music and poetry readings in the 1960s.
Some of the performers at The Bunkhouse included Josh White, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Jose Feliciano, 3's a Crowd, David Wiffen, Brent Titcomb, Tom Northcott, Ann Mortifee, Gary Fjelgard, Joe Mock, Yeoman, The Travellers, and Blake Emmons, as well as impressionist Rich Little and comedian Pat Paulson.
Sonny Terry and McGhee recorded one of their best known albums there : "At The Bunkhouse" (Smash, 1965). Having moved to Vancouver, Wiffen was invited to perform at The Bunkhouse club on a live ensemble album. It became Wiffen's first solo album, "At The Bunkhouse Coffeehouse" (Universal International, 1965), when the other invited musicians failed to show up.
Gerry Berg of Yeoman said "We were the first group to play for Les Stork at the Bunkhouse in Vancouver. Blake Emmons got his start there and played the second week after us."
Proprietor Les Stork operated The Bunkhouse, which served coffee and pizza, but did not serve alcohol.


Maria Ramita Martinez

Maria Ramita Simbolo Martinez "Summer Harvest" (1884 - October 1969) was a Picuris Pueblo potter. Martinez learned traditional methods of creating pottery and has been recognized for preserving a cultural tradition of the Picuris Pueblo. Martinez collaborated with her husband, Juan José Martinez, who decorated her finished pots.
Biography.
Martinez was born in Picuris Pueblo in 1884 to the Simbola family. She learned to make pots by watching her mother, Solidad Simbola, make her own. In the pueblo, she was known as "Summer Harvest." She married Juan José Martinez, and the couple had six children together. She and her husband collaborated on the pottery she made and sold their items together from the back of a wagon.
Martinez died in October 1969 and was buried in Picuris. A historic marker in New Mexico describes her contribution to the preservation of traditional pottery methods.
Work.
Martinez gathered clay from the hills outside Picuris. Martinez used traditional methods to work on her pots which were generally red-brown in color and had a sparkles from the mica in the clay. She would shape the pots and then her husband, Juan José Martinez, would decorate them before firing.
Martinez's work is part of the collections of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and the Leonard D. Hollister Collection at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.


Ten Modern Commandments

Ten Modern Commandments is a 1927 American silent romantic comedy-drama film that starred Esther Ralston and was distributed through Paramount Pictures. It is based on an original screen story and was directed by Dorothy Arzner.
Preservation status.
The film is now considered a lost film.


Lawrence Rothman

Lawrence Rothman (born May 18, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles. Their debut album "The Book of Law" was released on October 13, 2017 via Downtown Records/Interscope. The album was produced by Rothman and Justin Raisen (Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira), and features contributions from Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon Marissa Nadler, Charli XCX, Kristin Kontrol, Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses, among others. Rothman has toured North America with Marissa Nadler, Cass Mccombs, Rhye, Twin Shadow, Little Dragon and Tei Shi, and internationally with Iggy Pop, Active Child, Majical Cloudz, and Jennylee (Warpaint). As a producer and songwriter, Rothman has worked with Angel Olsen, SASAMI, Girl in Red, Kali Uchis, Alison Mosshart, Marissa Nadler, Kim Gordon, Courtney Love, and more.
Biography.
Early life.
Rothman was born and raised in a middle class area of St. Louis, Missouri. They are Jewish. From a young age, Rothman identified as gender-fluid, wearing makeup and presenting in an androgynous style. Rothman's mother was receptive, but their father pressured them into growing a beard and acting more masculine, which left them depressed and suicidal. Rothman was homeschooled until the fourth grade and was bullied after entering the public school system.
From the age of 13, Rothman formed a number of punk, alternative rock and hip-hop bands, and toured throughout the United States. During this period, Rothman was physically assaulted by three off-duty National Guardsmen after performing a club in Texas. At 17, they left home and moved to Chicago with no support from their parents. Living with a cousin, Rothman encountered artists and musicians who helped them come to terms with their non-binary identity. From 2002 to 2011, Rothman fronted the punk rock band Living Things under the name Lillian Berlin.
2013–2014: Early singles.
After moving to Los Angeles, Rothman began writing music under their own name and signed to Mamaroma, the independent label founded by renowned director Floria Sigismondi, known for her music videos for David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, and Fiona Apple and for TV work including The Handmaid's Tale and American Gods. In June 2013, Rothman released their debut single, "Montauk Fling", with an accompanying video directed by Sigismondi. This marked the start of a long-term creative collaboration between the two – Sigismondi has since directed all of Rothman's music videos to date. Throughout 2013, Rothman released subsequent singles on Mamaroma: “#1 All Time Low”, “Kevin”, and “Fatal Attraction”. These saw a largely positive response from press outlets including The Huffington Post, The Guardian, and Stereogum.
2015–2017: "The Book of Law".
In 2014, Rothman signed to Downtown Records and began work on their debut album, The Book of Law, with producer Justin Raisen. Rothman came up with a list of dream collaborators, including Duff McKagan from Guns N' Roses, Kim Gordon, Angel Olsen, and Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, whom Raisen brought into their studio. The two used Rothman's journals as the basis for the lyrics and emotional mood of the record. In an interview with The FADER, Rothman stated that the recording process was fraught and dramatic, with “drug ODs [from others in the camp], fist fights, jail, police getting called on [Raisen] by record companies, threatening to cut a guy's neck off on Thanksgiving".
2020: "Good Morning, America" and "Not a Son".
In 2020, Rothman announced sophomore album "Good Morning, America" and spoken word counterpart album "Not a Son". The first single was "Decent Man" a duet with Grammy award winning singer songwriter Lucinda Williams. The song a politically charged statement on 2020 America was Written and Produced By Lawrence Rothman.
Career.
Along with Rothman's music career they produced and mixed albums by Marissa Nadler "For My Crimes" additional production on Angel Olsen "My Woman" as well as acting with their first role in Drake Doremus' "Endings, Beginnings", premiering at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Rothman's song "Wolves Still Cry" was featured in season 2 Episode 1 of Netflix original series "13 Reasons Why" that song along with "Die Daily" were featured in "Endings, Beginnings" and "H" in "Lucifer" season 1 finale episode. In November 2019 it was announced that Rothman produced and wrote the soundtrack for DreamWorks Pictures "The Turning". The soundtrack out on Rothman's record label KRO featured artist such as Courtney Love, Mitski, Soccer Mommy, Kim Gordon, Warpaint, and Finn Wolfhard. Rothman wrote and produced the first single performed by Courtney Love, "Mother". Their own track "SkinDeepSkyHighHeartWide" featured Pale Waves and their track "Judas Kiss' featured MUNA. Rothman authored a book "Postmortem Bliss", which was turned into a short film for Tuner Classics in 2006.
KRO Records.
In 2019, Rothman launched their own record label, KRO Records, with Justin Raisen, Yves Rothman and Thomas Winkler. KRO’s first release included two tracks from River Phoenix's band, Aleka's Attic, along with a single from Rain Phoenix featuring Michael Stipe. This was followed by a Double A-Side Single, "Poison" by Marissa Nadler feat. John Cale of The Velvet Underground. Other releases in 2019 included Kills Birds’ self-titled debut LP, Buzzy Lee’s (Sasha Spielberg) EP, “Close Encounters of Our Own Kind”, and a single titled “Mother” by Courtney Love. In 2020, KRO Records released Steven Spielberg produced "The Turning" soundtrack under exclusive license to Sony Music Entertainment. The film's soundtrack features tracks from Mitski, Kali Uchis, Soccer Mommy, Cherry Glazerr, Finn Wolfhard & Courtney Love. Rothman was the film's music supervisor and producer of the soundtrack.
Composing and scoring.
In 2010, Rothman scored "The Runaways", a biopic film on the Joan Jett fronted female rock band The Runaways, starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. In 2017, Rothman scored the News Emmy nominated "New York Times Great Performers" 2017 series short films starring Nicole Kidman, Timothy Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, Jake Gyllenhaal and more. In 2018, Rothman scored a short film on the life of occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger for Gucci and Systems Magazine. Additionally, Rothman has scored short films for Levis, Prada, MAC Cosmetics and Alexander McQueen.


Helen Holmes (actress)

Helen Holmes (June 19, 1892 – July 8, 1950) was an American silent film actress, producer, director, screenwriter and stuntwoman. She is most notable for starring in the 1914–1917 serial "The Hazards of Helen".
Life.
Helen Holmes was born on June 19, 1892, in Illinois. While there is uncertainty about her place of birth, Holmes stated in an interview that she was born on a farm in South Bend, Indiana, but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. A 1917 article indicates Holmes was born on her father's private railroad car, "Estevan".
Holmes was the daughter of Norwegian immigrant Louis A. Holmes (born in Norway in October 1862), a railroad clerk employed by the Illinois Central Railroad, who had migrated to the United States in 1867, and his wife Sophia (born April 1869 in Indiana), and was the sister of Frank O. Holmes (born June 1889 in Illinois) and Florence (born in May 1896 in Illinois), and two other siblings who died in infancy.
Holmes was educated in St Mary's Convent in South Bend, Indiana. Holmes began working as a photographer's model but turned to acting, performing in live theatre and making her Broadway debut in 1909. She became friends with film star Mabel Normand.
Due to tuberculosis in the family, about 1910 Holmes and her widowed mother and siblings moved to California Valley, a few miles east of Shoshone in Death Valley, California, where they lost their life savings in a real estate swindle buying a property by the Colorado River. Meanwhile, Mabel Normand moved to Hollywood in 1912 to work at Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, and she encouraged Holmes, after her brother had died, to try the film business in the balmier climes of the West Coast.
Throughout her career Helen Holmes had occasionally gone back to performing in the theatre, and with the end of her marriage in 1925 she returned to the stage, making her last appearance on Broadway in 1935. She eventually married film stuntman Lloyd A. Saunders and as a result of the popularity of the Rin Tin Tin dog films, the two began training animals for use in the movies. After retiring from movies Helen ran a small antique business in her San Fernando home. She had an extensive collection of rare dolls.
Lloyd died in 1946, and Helen died in 1950 as a result of heart failure. She had been ill for five years with a heart condition. She died in Burbank, California at her home, 1401 West Olive Street. She was 58 years old. Funeral services were conducted at Pierce Brothers Hollywood Chapel at 5959 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, California. She was interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Career.
Holmes began her film career in 1912 with Keystone Studios in a bit part arranged by Mabel Normand. She made only a few more appearances in Keystone films and, although attractive, her lack of glamorous beauty relegated her to secondary roles until late 1913 when she signed with the Kalem Company's new Hollywood studio. Helen Holmes' first film at Kalem was directed by J.P. McGowan, with whom she would develop a relationship and soon marry. In her first two years with Kalem Studios, Holmes appeared in more than thirty film shorts during which time her athletic ability to do physically demanding stunts led to her big break.
In March 1914, at a time when the women's suffrage movement was much in the news, Kalem Studios' competitor Pathé Frères released an adventure film serial titled "The Perils of Pauline". Starring Pearl White as a bold and daring heroine, the Pathé serial became an enormous box-office success. As a result, Kalem Studios jumped on the bandwagon and in November 1914 released their own adventure series called "The Hazards of Helen".
Cast as the series star, during the twenty-six "thrill-a-minute" episodes in which Helen Holmes performed, she did almost all of her own stunts. Playing an independent, quick-thinking and inventive heroine, as part of her dangerous exploits Helen did such things as leap onto runaway trains or treacherously chase after the film's villainous train robbers. While occasionally the plot called for Helen to be rescued by a handsome male hero, in most episodes it was the dauntless Helen herself who found an ingenious way out of her dire predicament and single-handedly collared the bad guys, bringing them to justice.
"The Hazards of Helen" made Holmes a major star and she and her now husband, director J.P McGowan, decided to capitalize on her fame and left Kalem to work for Thomas H. Ince Productions and Universal Pictures. After a few films, Holmes and McGowan formed Signal Film Productions to make their own adventure films. Between late 1915 and early 1917, they made a dozen films together that met with reasonable success but financial and distribution problems ended the production partnership and Holmes did not appear in another film until 1919, this time as the star in another film company's production.
In 1919 and 1920 she made only one film each year and only two in each of the next three years. During those years she not only starred in, but also produced, a seral film by the Warner Brothers called "The Tiger Band" (1920). Between 1924 and 1926 Helen Holmes made eighteen more short adventure films, but her popularity began to wane in a market over-saturated with female cliffhanger films. Holmes made several Westerns opposite actor and rodeo performer Jack Hoxie in the mid-1920s.


Hopkins County Courthouse (Texas)

The Hopkins County Courthouse is a historic courthouse located in Sulphur Springs, Texas, the seat of Hopkins County. It was designed by San Antonio-based architect James Riely Gordon and constructed in 1894 and 1895. The courthouse was built in the Romanesque Revival architectural style with red sandstone and pink granite, and its design includes a number of unusual features, such as a double-helix staircase, a clockless tower, and entrances that are located on its northwest and southwest corners, instead of on its sides.
The building was restored in 2001 and 2002 at a cost of $3.66 million to the State of Texas and $1.3 million to Hopkins County, and it continues to serve as an operating courthouse that is open to the public on a daily basis. The courthouse has also received numerous awards and accolades, including its designation as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1975 and its addition to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
Background.
After Hopkins County was created by the Texas Legislature in 1846, Tarrant was initially designated as the county seat, and a courthouse was constructed there in 1853. In 1868, during the Reconstruction Era, the United States military moved the county seat to Sulphur Springs, which was at the time known as Bright Star. In 1882, Hopkins County constructed its first brick courthouse there; in 1894, this building burned along with the jail and a number of Sulphur Springs' commercial buildings, which necessitated the creation of a replacement courthouse.
Design and construction.
The courthouse, which was designed by San Antonio-based architect James Riely Gordon, was constructed in 1894 and 1895. It was one of approximately 18 Texas county courthouses designed by Gordon, whose architectural designs could also be found in Texas cities such as Decatur, La Grange, New Braunfels, San Antonio, Stephenville, Waco, Waxahachie, and Victoria.
The Hopkins County Courthouse was built in the Romanesque Revival architectural style with red sandstone and pink granite. It also features an unusual double-helix staircase with cast-iron stairs as well as marble wainscoting, masonry interiors, oak woodwork, and stone and tile flooring. The building was constructed with a clockless tower because, as one of the town's early leaders declared, "[i]f you get up when the sun rises and go to bed when it sets, you don't need a clock."
Due to its alignment on Courthouse Square, the building's entrances are somewhat unusually located on its northwest and southwest corners, instead of on its sides. Its entrances feature Roman arches with second-story porticos and third-story open porches above them.
Dallas-based Sonnerfield & Ammins received the contract to build the courthouse at a price of $52,410, although the cost ultimately climbed to $75,000, due largely to the added expense of installing steel bracing rods for enhancing the safety of the building.
Restoration.
The Hopkins County Courthouse was restored in 2001 and 2002. Prior to its full restoration, the building had only been repaired three times: in 1945, 1971, and 1979–80, the latter of which restored the appearance of the third-floor jury room. By the turn of the 21st century, years of wear and exposure to the elements had caused deterioration of the building's sandstone and windows as well as a persistent problem with groundwater infiltration. Other major problems afflicting the building included rotting window casings, a roof turret in danger of collapse, overloaded wiring, lack of an elevator, and the general sense that the entire courthouse was a fire hazard.
Completed in December 2002, the restoration refurbished both the interior and the exterior of the building, upgraded its systems, and brought it into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The restoration was handled by the Paris-based construction firm Harrison, Walker & Harper, while other companies such as Waco-based Johnson Roofing participated in the project as well. In total, the State of Texas spent $3.66 million on the restoration while Hopkins County contributed $1.3 million; the remainder of the funding was raised by private donors, $100,000 of which was contributed by Mary Bonham. After nearly two years of restoration, the courthouse was publicly rededicated on December 7, 2002.
Operation.
The Hopkins County Courthouse is an operating courthouse that is open to the public on a daily basis. , it is still home to the 8th and 62nd Judicial Districts; it contains courtrooms, jury rooms, and the offices of the auditor, commissioners, county judge, district clerk, and treasurer. In 2005 the building was also available for use as a concert and wedding venue.
Awards and accolades.
The Hopkins County Courthouse was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1975, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. It also received Round One of a Texas Historical Commission Courthouse Preservation Grant in 2000, shortly before its restoration began; this grant program was an initiative of then-Governor George W. Bush, who personally toured the Hopkins County Courthouse in October 1998 while the program was still a proposal.
The courthouse also won the East Texas Historical Association's Lucille Terry Historical Preservation Award in 2005. In December 2013, "County Line Magazine" awarded the building the honor of "Best County Courthouse" in its annual "Best of the Upper East Side of Texas" survey, the third time it had received this designation.


Old City Hall (Guelph)

Old City Hall is a historic building and a National Historic Site of Canada in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, which until April 2009 served as the headquarters of the city government. The building is now used as the Provincial Offences Courthouse, which handles matters such as traffic tickets, trespassing and liquor license violations.
History.
The hall was designed in the Renaissance Revival style by Toronto architect William Thomas, and constructed 1856–1857.
The building, which included an indoor market area, administrative offices, and a large assembly hall, was constructed from locally quarried stone.
In 1984, it was designated a National Historic Site because
The building is also designated under Part 4 of the "Ontario Heritage Act".


Joseph Knight (critic)

(John) Joseph Knight (1829–1907) was an English dramatic critic and theatre historian.
Life.
Born at Leeds on 24 May 1829, he was elder son of Joseph Knight, a cloth merchant from Carlisle, and Marianne, daughter of Joseph Wheelwright. He was educated at Bramham College near Tadcaster.
Joining his father in business at age 19, Knight began collecting books. With Alfred Austin, his junior by six years, he helped to found a Mechanics' Institute at Leeds, at which he lectured on literary subjects. On 7 April 1854 he lectured on "The Fairies of English Poetry" to the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. At Leeds, too, he made the acquaintance of William Edward Forster, who stayed at Knight's house while he was parliamentary candidate for the constituency in 1859. Knight seconded Forster's nomination.
In 1860 Knight moved to London as a journalist. He found early employment as dramatic critic for the "Literary Gazette", through a chance meeting with the editor John Morley. He then concentrated on writing about the contemporary stage. In 1869 he succeeded John Abraham Heraud, as dramatic critic of the "Athenæum", and retained the post for the rest of his life.
In 1871, during the siege of Paris, Knight used his influence to secure the invitation to the Comedie Française to act at the Gaiety Theatre in London. He also acted as dramatic critic for the "Sunday Times", "The Globe", and for the "Daily Graphic" from 1894 to 1906.
In London Knight moved in literary and dramatic circles. Early associates included John Westland Marston and Sebastian Evans. At Marston's house he met authors and playwrights; Thomas Purnell introduced him to Swinburne, to whom and Dante Gabriel Rossetti he became close.
Knight contributed the causerie signed "Sylvanus Urban" to the "Gentleman's Magazine" from 1887 till near his death, and he was a reviewer of general literature for the "Athenæum". In July 1883, on the death of Henry Frederic Turle, he became editor of "Notes and Queries", and retained the position for life. A bohemian and clubman, he was a leading member of the Arundel Club; after 1883, when he was elected to the Garrick Club (3 March), he was mainly found there. On 4 July 1905 the dramatic profession entertained him, as the oldest living dramatic critic, to dinner at the Savoy Hotel. Sir Henry Irving took the chair, and Benoît-Constant Coquelin and Gabrielle Réjane were among the guests.
On 4 May 1893 Knight was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. A book collector through life, he twice had to sell up, on the second occasion in 1905. He died at his house, 27 Camden Square, on 23 June 1907, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. A posthumous portrait in oils by Margaret Grose was presented to the Garrick Club in 1912 by Knight's friend Henry Benjamin Wheatley.
Works.
Knight wrote on theatre history, and was the main contributor of the lives of actors to the "Dictionary of National Biography", first edition and first supplement. His articles numbered over 500. The biography of David Garrick was the basis of a separate memoir (1894). He published in 1893 "Theatrical Notes 1874-1879" (1893), a collection of articles on the drama from the "Athenæum", and he edited in 1886 the "Roscius Anglicanus" of John Downes. In 1887 Knight published the "Life of Rossetti" in the "Great Writers series".
Family.
Knight married at the parish church, Leeds, on 3 June 1856, Rachel (d. 1911), youngest daughter of John Wilkinson of Gledhall Mount near Leeds. He had issue a son Philip Sidney, b. 2 Feb. 1857, who emigrated to Australia; and two daughters, Gertrude who married Ian Forbes Robertson, parents of Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale; and Florence Mabel, who married Edward Mansel Sympson, of Lincoln, on 3 October 1888.


Paloma Pedrero

Paloma Pedrero (born 3 July 1957 in Madrid) is a Spanish actress, theatre director and playwright.
Life.
Spanish playwright Paloma Pedrero studied Sociology at Madrid's Universidad Complutense before becoming involved in the reestablishment of Madrid's theater scene following the death of Franco as a member of the "Cachivache" theater group. Her first play, "La llamada de Lauren", in which she also played the role of Rosa, was staged in 1985.
Since then she has written much more material, acted both on the stage and on television, and directed productions of her own works. She has also cultivated a prolific career as a conference speaker and essayist.
Paloma Pedrero won the 1987 Premio Tirso de Molina for "Invierno de luna alegre".
Work.
Pedrero's plays are, for the most part, short quasi-comedies that explore questions of identity, the subversion of gender roles, and the nature of individual freedom in postmodern society, based around a neorealist model.
Her typical plot is structured simply (many works have only one scene) and the timeframe is seldom of any extended duration. The scenes dramatized are ones of daily life and the characters are reasonably familiar; they are, Pedrero writes in her monograph "Sobre mi teatro", "historias que nacen de mi experiencia en algunos casos y de la observación en otros" ("stories that arise from my own experiences in some cases and from observation on others"). This succinct, extremely focused writing style and realistic treatment of plot structure are exemplified by the series of one-act plays that make up "Noches de amor efímero"; each dramatizes a brief nighttime encounter between a man and a woman as a result of which their lives are profoundly changed. The action takes place in real time over the course of the few minutes that each play takes to stage.
Pedrero's settings are everyday locations, predominantly urban and always familiar, whether the apartment of "La llamada de Lauren", the metro station of "Solos esta noche" or the park of "La noche que ilumina". "Busco, generalmente, escenarios simples" ("I generally look for simple settings"), writes Pedrero, "me gusta la calle, los parques, los bares, los metros, las habitaciones del hotel, las estaciones... escenarios teatrales que no necesitan de grandes aparatos ni parafenalias" ("I like the street, parks, bars, the metro, hotel rooms, stations... dramatic settings that don't need complex apparatus or paraphernalia"). Though settings often have important symbolic impact within each play (for instance, the enclosed, limited space of the apartment in "La llamada de Lauren" is starkly contrasted with the freedom of the carnival going on in the street outside) they are inevitably handled in a realist aesthetic.
Major works.
List from:


Luminalia

Luminalia or The Festival of Light was a late Caroline era masque or "operatic show", with an English libretto by Sir William Davenant, designs by Inigo Jones, and music by composer Nicholas Lanier. Performed by Queen Henrietta Maria and her ladies in waiting on Shrove Tuesday, 6 February 1638, it was one of the last and most spectacular of the masques staged at the Stuart Court.
Text.
Modern critics have disputed how much of the masque's text was actually generated by Davenant. The current view is that "Davenant was responsible for the songs, and perhaps for the prose descriptions, but the action and argument were plagiarized from Italian sources by Inigo Jones." This was in keeping with Jones's primacy in the courtly masque in the 1630s. After "Chloridia" in 1631, Jones's contentious, quarter-century-long masquing collaboration with Ben Jonson came to an end; in their long-running contest of wills and egos, Jones had won and Jonson had lost. With Aurelian Townshend's 1632 masques, "Albion's Triumph" and "Tempe Restored," Jones's influence became paramount. Jones, however, was not a literary man; the text of "Luminalia" has been called "in terms of poetry and literary ideas...the most incoherent and meaningless of the masques..."
Davenant's-or-Jones's story for the masque involves the Muses of classical Greek mythology. Driven from Greece by Thracian invaders, and then from Italy by the Vandals and Goths, the Nine wander in search of a new home, finally finding it in Britain, "the garden of Britanides," with a welcoming king and queen. The production was unusual in that the comic and grotesque figures in the anti-masques were played by "gentlemen of quality," including the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Devonshire. This was a major departure from earlier practice: when Jonson first introduced the anti-masque in his "The Masque of Queens" (1609), the roles in the anti-masque were filled by professional actors, and no aristocrat would have lowered himself to such an activity.
Illumination.
As its title indicates, "Luminalia" featured remarkable lighting effects. This was entirely consistent with what Jones had achieved in the masque form over the previous three decades; contemporary accounts of Jacobean and Caroline Court masques often stress the sheer dazzling abundance of light in the productions. In a world limited to candlelight and firelight, the spectacles of the masques showed audiences a brilliance of illumination they saw nowhere else. The season's previous masque, "Britannia Triumphans," had ended with the fall of night, and "Luminalia" picked up from that point, opening with a moonlit forest scene with deep shadows of trees and artificial moonlight glinting off a "calm river." The anti-masques, featuring thieves and watchmen and various dream figures, are set in a City of Sleep. ("Luminalia" has been interpreted as a work of Catholic propaganda, in which the Queen of Night is the Protestant Queen Elizabeth.) Innovative lighting effects continued through the work: it concluded with an "aerial ballet" in which Henrietta Maria, portraying the "Earthly Deity," descended from the clouds in "a glory of rays, expressing her to be the queen of brightness."
The sheer abundance of illumination forced a change of venue for the masque's performance. Masques were usually staged in the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace—but it was feared that the new Rubens murals on the ceiling there would be damaged by candle soot. "Luminalia" was moved to a temporary structure, which Puritan detractors dubbed "the Queen's dancing barn."
Publication.
The text of the masque was published shortly after its 1638 performance, in a quarto printed by J. Haviland for the bookseller Thomas Walkley, with the fulsome title "Luminalia or the Festivall of Light Personated in a Masque at Court by the Queenes Majestie and her Ladies." Davenant's name is not mentioned in the first edition, while Jones's is prominent. Early scholars and critics, confused by similar titles in the historical records, actually tried to attribute "Luminalia" to Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene, though both men were long dead by 1638.
Music.
The music for the masque was composed by Nicholas Lanier. One of his songs for the work, called the Song of Night (beginning with the line "In wet and cloudy mists I slowly rise"), was something of a popular hit in its era; its verses were often reprinted.


John Blumenthal

John Blumenthal (born 1949) is an American novelist and screenwriter, known for co-writing the screenplays for the films "Short Time" and "Blue Streak".
Early life and education.
Blumenthal was born in Middletown, New York. He attended Tufts University, graduating in 1971.
Career.
Early work in magazines.
Blumenthal was hired as a fact-checker at "Esquire" magazine in the early 1970s, when he has 24. His first editorial job, he served under the editor Harold Hayes. In 1973, Nora Ephron, at the time an "Esquire" columnist, helped Blumenthal get a job at "Playboy" as an editor and writer. In addition to "Esquire" and "Playboy", Blumenthal has also written for "Salon".
Novels and nonfiction.
Several of Blumenthal's books have been loosely based on his experiences in Hollywood, including the 1984 parody "The Official Hollywood Handbook". Also in 1984, Blumenthal and his friend and fellow "Playboy" editor Barry Golson wrote a period-piece romance novella spoof called "Love's Reckless Rash", published by St. Martin's Press under the pen name Rosemary Cartwheel. In 2013, the duo wrote "Passing Wind of Love", a novel-length expansion of "Love's Reckless Rash".
Blumenthal wrote a pair of detective novel spoofs published by Simon & Schuster in 1985, both featuring private detective Mac Slade and set in modern-day Manhattan: "The Tinseltown Murders" and "The Case of the Hardboiled Dicks".
Blumenthal's 1988 nonfiction book "Hollywood High" is a history of the Los Angeles public high school founded in 1903 that was attended by numerous celebrities, including Lana Turner, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, John Ritter and Carol Burnett.
In 1999, Blumenthal returned to literature with the comic novel "What's Wrong With Dorfman?" His agent sent it to about 20 publishers; it was rejected by all of them, and in 2000 Blumenthal decided to self-publish. In 2002 St. Martin's Press bought the book, republishing it the following year. The novel is about the midlife crisis of Hollywood screenwriter and hypochondriac Martin Dorfman, as he faces up to painful childhood memories and deals with a variety of physical ailments and professional setbacks. "The Wall Street Journal" called it "a funny and surprisingly moving story written at the intersection of shtick and angst", and "Publishers Weekly" described it as "frequently hilarious and unexpectedly touching." It was named one of "January Magazine"'s favorite books of the year for 2000.
Blumenthal's 2004 comic novel "Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour" was also published by St. Martin's. The book's central character, Plato G. Fussell, obsesses over writing a 10-volume definitive biography of Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States. Fussell is a death-obsessed dysfunctional divorced wealthy loner who engages in a relationship with his psychoanalyst's wife after his first wife leaves him.
His 2011 novel "Three and a Half Virgins" is also about a man whose wife leaves him: newly single Jimmy Hendricks is a lonely, middle-aged man revisiting his past by looking up his old girlfriends.
Screenwriting.
Blumenthal co-wrote the 1990 action comedy "Short Time", directed by Gregg Champion and starring Dabney Coleman and Teri Garr, and the 1999 action comedy film "Blue Streak", directed by Les Mayfield and starring Martin Lawrence. "Blue Streak" brought in over $117 million at the box office worldwide.
Personal life.
Blumenthal is married with two daughters.


Manzoor Ali Khan

Ustad Manzoor Ali Khan () (1922 – 9 September 1980) was a Sindhi classical singer belonging to the Gwalior gharana (singing style). He was the first classical musician of the twentieth century who knew about the regional music of Sindh.
Early life.
Manzoor's father had migrated from Gurdaspur, Punjab, British India and came to live at Khairpur, Sindh because of the ruling Talpurs, who were quite fond of his music. In a short period of time, the family shifted to Shikarpur.
Manzoor was born in 1922 in Shikarpur, Sindh, Pakistan. He studied there up to secondary school level and later moved to Tando Adam Khan with his father in 1940.
Musical career.
Manzoor Ali Khan took musical lessons from his father, Jamalo Khan and another musician Seendo Khan. His parents took him to musical events in Sindh and Punjab. He was a maestro in singing "Tappa", a kind of classical music, in Pakistan. He made various compositions. He composed and sang Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai's poetry in all forms. He performed at Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation Karachi and then at Hyderabad since 1955, and Pakistan Television Corporation Karachi center in the same years. Many cassette companies have released the volumes of his programs.
Mother tongue.
His mother tongue was Punjabi, however he used to speak and write in Sindhi. His children also received education in Sindhi language.
Awards.
Manzoor Ali Khan received several awards. He was honored with the title of "Bahar-e-Moseeqi" by Makhdoom Talib ul Mola at the Urs of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai in 1960.
Government of Pakistan awarded him "Tamgha-e-Husne Karkardagi" (Pride of Performance) in 1978.
Death and legacy.
He died from a heart attack on 9 September 1980.
In December 2010, Sindh Minister for Culture Sassui Palijo, paying tributes to Manzoor Ali Khan, called him the symbol and identity of Sindhi classical music.
Former Chief Minister of Sindh, Ghous Ali Shah was a fan of Manzoor Ali Khan for a long time. He recalled that he could not forget the excellent performance of Manzoor Ali Khan at the wedding ceremony of brother of noted story writer Naseem Kharal. He also said that Manzoor Ali Khan could sing, with equal mastery, poetry of almost all Sufi poets of Sindh including Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai.


Gesaffelstein

Mike Lévy (; born June 13, 1987), known professionally as Gesaffelstein (), is a French musician, DJ, songwriter and record producer from Lyon. He has worked alongside artists as varied as The Weeknd, Daft Punk, Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, Electric Youth, Haim, Miss Kittin, The Hacker, Jean-Michel Jarre and Pharrell Williams.
Name.
Gesaffelstein is a portmanteau of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork" in German, also title of an album by the American electro group Dopplereffekt) and Albert Einstein.
Career.
Mike Lévy was born in Lyon, France, in June 1987. He started producing music at the age of sixteen when he first played an analog synthesizer. He released his first EP in 2008 through the label OD Records. In 2009, he founded with The Hacker, Alex Reynaud and David Rimokh, the independent label Zone.
In July 2012, Gesaffelstein made the cover of DJ Mag with Brodinski. The same year, his track "Viol" was used by Citroën and Givenchy advertisings. He co-produced two tracks on "Yeezus", the sixth album of American rapper Kanye West, including the lead single "Black Skinhead" and "Send It Up", both tracks produced with Kanye West, Daft Punk, Brodinski and Mike Dean. On October 28, 2013, Gesaffelstein released his debut album "Aleph" under Parlophone Records and OWSLA (in North America only), which had been recorded since 2011. His remix of "Shockwave" by The Hacker is featured in the 2013 video game "Grand Theft Auto V", on the Soulwax FM radio station.
In 2015, Gesaffelstein released the single "Conquistador" in collaboration with Jean-Michel Jarre, which is present on the album "". He also produced the soundtrack for the French-Belgian 2015 film "Maryland", directed by Alice Winocour. In early 2018, he produced the tracks "I Was Never There" and "Hurt You" from The Weeknd's "My Dear Melancholy," EP.
Gesaffelstein signed to Columbia Records in November 2018, with whom he released the lead single "Reset" from his second studio album "Hyperion" in the same month. In January 2019, he released a collaboration with The Weeknd titled "Lost in the Fire" as the second single from "Hyperion", and later in March 2019 released another collaboration with Pharrell Williams titled "Blast Off". "Hyperion" was released on March 8, 2019 to mixed reviews. On October 3, 2019, Gesaffelstein announced his surprise EP "Novo Sonic System", consisting of 6 tracks, which was released the following day.
Musical style.
Mixmag describes Gesaffelstein's style as being a "dark and threatening techno, though enchanting"; The Inrocks see it as "black, ultra-violent music, [which] revives the techno fundamentals, the intransigence of Underground Resistance, the mental and obsessive structures of Drexciya, the contemporary power and more". Megan Buerger from the Washington Post describes his style has a mixture of dark and underground music, and notes that a specialty of the artist is his use of silences to create a "tension" before a "raucous explosion of bass and percussion".
"Rolling Stone" magazine sees his music as being "a little more aggressive and punk-rock than normal".
Influences.
Gesaffelstein cites as references Dopplereffekt, Kraftwerk, but also new wave formations from the 80s such as D.A.F. or Nitzer Ebb. He also appreciates Joy Division and The Hacker also influenced him a lot.


Kanha Khiangsiri

Kanha Khiangsiri (, also spelled Khiengsiri; 26 February 1912 – 23 June 1999), née Chuen Watthanaphat (), was a Thai novelist. Writing under the pen name K. Surangkhanang (), her 45 novels include the highly popular "Ban Sai Thong" and the influential "The Prostitute (Ying Khon Chua)", which reflected issues in Thailand's developing modern society. She was named a National Artist in literature in 1986.


Seppo Kuusisto

Seppo Kuusisto (13 November 1945 – 3 January 2005) was a Finnish historian, estophile.
He was the head of Tuglas Society ().
In 2001, he was awarded with Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, IV Class.


Christmas, His Masque

Christmas, His Masque, also called Christmas His Show, was a Jacobean-era masque, written by Ben Jonson and performed at the English royal court at Christmas of 1616. Jonson's masque displays the traditional folklore and iconography of Christmas at an early-modern and pre-commercial stage of its development.
The masque.
The masque opens with the entrance of a personified Christmas and his attendants, one of whom leads the way in, beating a drum. Christmas is dressed in a doublet and hose (color unspecified) and a "high-crowned hat;" he has a "long thin beard" and white shoes. Christmas is soon followed by his ten children, who are led in, on a string, by Cupid (who is dressed like a London apprentice, with his wings at his shoulders). The "Sons and Daughters" of Christmas are Carol, Misrule, Gambol, Offering, Wassail, Mumming, New-Year's-Gift, Post and Pair, and even Minced-Pie and Baby-Cake. Each has his or her own fantastic get-up. Carol, for instance, wears a tawny coat and a red cap, and has a flute in his belt. Mince-Pie is attired "like a fine cook's wife, drest neat," while Gambol is dressed "like a tumbler, with a hoop and bells." Each of the ten is followed by a torchbearer-attendant, carrying marchpanes, cakes, bottles of wine, and other holiday gear. (The specific details of the costumes and furnishings, like "an orange and rosemary, but not a clove to stick in it," participate in a dense web of folklore connections. Baby-Cake comes last in the procession of children, for example, because miniature "twelvetide" cakes were associated with Twelfth Night, the last day of the Christmas holiday season.)
Cupid is soon joined by his mother Venus, who like her son is dressed down in contemporary London garb: the goddess appears as a "deaf tire-woman" who lives in Pudding Lane. The speeches of Venus and the other characters are rich in contemporary allusions and references; Venus, for example, mentions Richard Burbage and John Heminges, prominent actors with the King's Men. The masque proceeds to singing and dancing, with the stated intent to present "A right Christmas, as of old it was."
Publication.
"Christmas, His Masque" was produced too late to be included in the first folio collection of Jonson's works in 1616; it was the first masque in the second folio of 1641. It also exists in manuscripts.
Critical significance.
Early commentators tended to dismiss Jonson's masque as a piece of holiday fluff, often noting that the work is less a true masque and more of a mummers' show. Modern critics have looked beneath its surface to detect serious political, social, and cultural implications. Jonson's text, in promoting a traditional Christmas, was taking a position favored by King James I and opposed to the contemporary culture of the merchants of the City of London and especially that of the Puritans, who were overtly hostile to the traditional holiday. The text of the masque shows an abundant and rather biting satire aimed at the anti-Christmas forces in Jacobean society.
King James had made an important speech before the Star Chamber earlier in 1616, in an attempt to promote traditional country life and pastimes, which were plainly in decline in an era of ever-greater urbanization and economic development. James would soon issue his proclamation known as the "Book of Sports" (1618), another attempt to support and reinforce the traditional country life in the face of rapid social change. Jonson's masque is one element in this larger cultural debate.


List of Tangible Folk Cultural Properties of Japan (Okinawa)

This list is of the Tangible Folk Cultural Properties of Japan in the Prefecture of Okinawa.
National Tangible Folk Cultural Properties.
As of 1 January 2015, zero properties have been designated at a national level.
Prefectural Tangible Folk Cultural Properties.
As of 1 May 2014, nineteen properties have been designated at a prefectural level.
Municipal Tangible Folk Cultural Properties.
As of 1 May 2014, a further one hundred and fourteen properties have been designated at a municipal level.
Registered Tangible Folk Cultural Properties.
As of 1 January 2015, one property has been registered (as opposed to designated) at a national level.


BIG Star Entertainment Awards

The Big STAR Entertainment Awards were presented annually by Reliance Broadcast Network Limited in association with Star India to honour personalities from the field of entertainment across movies, music, television, sports, theatre and dance. The award is touted to be a completely viewer driven award where in audience participation right from nominations to the final winners through SMS and online voting across the categories is used for deciding the winners. The award was announced on 12 December 2010 and the first ever nominations for 2010 Awards were published online through various entertainment websites on 15 December. The last award ceremony happened in 2015.
History.
Reliance Broadcast Network joined hands with Star India Ltd. in an alliance to create a unique platform called Big Star Entertainment Awards, which honours entertainers across genres like movies, music, television and sports. The awards were conceptualised by RBNL's marketing arm, Big Live. The organisers announced during the launch ceremony that the Big Star Entertainment Awards would have a completely audience driven selection process, from nominations to the final winners, ensuring the award recipients are truly the people’s choice in various field of movies, music, theatre, television series and sports. The Big Star Entertainment Awards was started with the ain of reaching out to Indian Audience across the country through each of the media platforms of both companies, ensuring multiple touch points to audiences. The first ever Big Star Entertainment Awards was held on 21 December 2010 at Bhavan's Grounds in Mumbai. The Awards were given immense promotion through various media outlets like Reliance Broadcast Network's verticals like 92.7 BIG FM, Big Street, Big Live and Big Digital.
The awards were launched in a public ceremony with Arshad Warzi unveiling the statuette of Big Star Entertainment Awards. Reliance Broadcast Network CEO Tarun Katial said, "We are very proud to announce the Big Star Entertainment Awards, an award with a high degree of consumer centricity and representing all Entertainment genres Indian’s love." He added the aim of the award was to celebrate entertainment the way audiences consume and enjoy it. Through this award, the audience are empowered to decide who their favourite entertainers are. He said "Delivered through engaging ideas and multiple touch points, this is a truly integrated property that is bound to create unprecedented impact, in its first year itself."
Star India COO Sanjay Gupta said, "The Big Star Entertainment Awards will witness the coming together of Star India and Reliance Broadcast Network, two of India’s biggest media companies, with complementary capabilities. Star India is the leading television network in the country reaching more than 400 million viewers weekly; and together we are all set to create superlative entertainment reaching out to our viewers across all platforms." He added, "Today, almost 50 per cent of TV viewing happens in the entertainment space and December 31 night is a time when television viewing actually increases manifold because people are willing to sit together and watch TV. Therefore, we are sure that the property will pull in good eyeballs." Price Waterhouse Coopers were the auditors for the first award ceremony held in 2010.
Awards.
There were 21 categories in the 2010 Big Star Entertainment Awards. These included 8 categories for the mainstream Hindi films, 4 for the Hindi television programmes and a set of 9 awards which honored the best shows and personalities of the 2000–2010 Decade.


Ursulines of Quebec

The Ursuline Monastery of Quebec City, (), was founded by a missionary group of Ursuline nuns in 1639 under the leadership of Mother Marie of the Incarnation, O.S.U. It is the oldest institution of learning for women in North America. Today, the monastery serves as the General Motherhouse of the Ursuline Sisters of the Canadian Union. The community there also operates an historical museum and continues to serve as a teaching centre.
The complex was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1972.
Background.
The Ursulines are a Roman Catholic religious order founded at Brescia, Italy by Angela de Merici in 1535, primarily for the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy. Their patron saint is Saint Ursula.
The Viceroyalty of New France was the area colonized by France in North America starting with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534. The French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Québec in 1608 among the Algonquin people as the administrative seat for New France. Colonization was slow and difficult. Many settlers died early, because of harsh weather and diseases. In 1630, there were only 103 colonists living in the settlement, but, by 1640, there were 355.
History.
The Ursuline Sisters were the first Catholic nuns to land in New France (now known as Canada). The history of the Ursulines in Quebec begins on 1 August 1639, when its first members landed in Canada. The monastery was established under the leadership of Mother (now Saint) Marie of the Incarnation (1599–1672), an Ursuline nun of the monastery in Tours, and Madame Marie-Madeline de Chauvigny de la Peltrie (1603–1671), a rich widow from Alençon in Normandy. The letters patent sanctioning the foundation issued by King Louis XIII are dated 1639.
When they arrived in the summer of 1639, the nuns studied the languages of the native peoples and then began to educate the native children. They taught reading and writing as well as needlework, embroidery, drawing and other domestic arts.
After three years spent in the Lower Town of Quebec City, the nuns moved to a new monastery built on ground ceded to them by the Company of New France. Their first pupils were Indian girls, with whom they succeeded better than the Jesuits with their native boys. The first monastery burned down in 1650, but was soon rebuilt. The community was attacked by the Iroquois in 1661–2, when one of its chaplains, the Sulpician Abbé Vignal, was slain and devoured near Montreal.
The Constitutions, written by Father Jérôme Lalemant (1593–1673), uncle of the Jesuit martyr Gabriel Lalemant, combined the rules of the two Congregations of Paris and Bordeaux, and were observed until Bishop François de Laval decided in 1681 in favor of the former, which binds its members by a fourth vow to teach girls.
The monastery endured the siege and bombardment of Quebec under William Phips in 1690, and a second siege by James Wolfe on 13 September 1759, known as the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, where the garrison of Quebec was defeated by Wolfe's army. After the battle, the French governor, Montcalm, who had died in it was buried by night in the monastery chapel. The first English governor, Murray, used part of the monastery as his headquarters. On that occasion the rations served to the nuns for nursing the wounded and sick saved them from perishing of starvation. The governors and viceroys, both English and French, were always friendly to the institution.
The Quebec Monastery founded new communities at Three Rivers in 1697, Roberval in 1882, Stanstead in 1884, and Rimouski, with a normal school, in 1906, besides sending missionaries to New Orleans in 1822, Charlestown (Boston) in 1824, Galveston in 1849 and Montana in 1893.
Development and expansion.
The Ursuline Monastery of Quebec, established in 1639, founded the following monasteries and convents which were autonomous until 1953:
The era is coming to a close. Article from Globe and Mail, July 26, 2018. Of 52 sisters only four will remain when 48 move to a care facility in September 2018. "When the last nuns pad out the door, it will not be easy to return. The massive wooden door to the Ursuline Monastery only has a doorknob on the inside. It was designed to keep outsiders from getting in. Ultimately, though, it could not keep out the realities of advancing age and a secular world."
Notable people.
Mother Marie of the Incarnation, the foundress, practiced devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and had established it in the cloister years before the revelation to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690). The first celebration of the feast in the New World took place in the monastery on 18 June 1700. The register of the Confraternity of the Sacred Heart begins in 1716. Pope Clement XI (1718) enriched it with indulgences. Mother Marie mastered the local languages and composed dictionaries in Algonquin and Iroquois, a sacred history in Algonquin, and a catechism in Iroquois.
Geneviève Boucher, more commonly known as Mère de Saint-Pierre, (1676-1766) served in the Order for over 60 years and is referred to in its annals as a "perfect Ursuline" and "the Methuselah of our history". Anne Bourdon, known as Mère de Sainte-Agnès (1644-1711), was the first Canadian-born superior for the order.
The first superior elected after the conquest of the colony by England (1760) was Esther Wheelwright, a New England captive, rescued from the Abenakis by the Jesuit Father Bigot, and a protégée of the first governor, Vaudreuil. The Irish, Scottish and American elements in Canada have given distinguished subjects to this cloister, prominent among whom was Mother Cecilia O'Conway of the Incarnation, the first Philadelphia nun, one of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton's earliest associates. The list of alumnae includes Jeanne Le Ber (1662–1714), the saintly "recluse of Montreal", and Saint Marie-Marguerite d'Youville(1701–1771), foundress of the Grey Sisters at Montreal.
During the French Revolution (1789–1799) several French refugees were chaplains to the monastery, the most notable being Abbé L.P. Desjardins, who died in France as the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Paris. Through him were procured the valuable paintings by Philippe de Champaigne, Charles Le Brun, Hyacinthe Collin de Vermont, Pietro da Cortona and others, that adorn the chapel.
Affiliations.
The Museum is affiliated with the CMA, CHIN and Virtual Museum of Canada.


Connla

Connla or Conlaoch is a character in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology, the son of the Ulster champion Cú Chulainn and the Scottish warrior woman Aífe. He was raised alone by his mother in Scotland. He appears in the story "Aided Óenfhir Aífe" ("The Tragic Death of Aífe's Only Son"), a pre-tale to the great epic "Táin Bó Cúailnge".
Story.
Connla was the son of Cú Chulainn and Aífe Ardgeimm, identified in this text as the sister of his teacher Scáthach. Leaving to return to Ireland, Cú Chulainn gives Aífe a token, a gold thumb-ring, telling her that when his son is old enough to wear it, he should be sent to Ireland. However, he imposes three "geasa" or prohibitions on him. Connla cannot turn back once he starts his journey, he must not refuse a challenge, and must never tell anyone his name.
Connla comes ashore at Tracht Eisi, where he practises his martial feats. The Ulaid, observing these, recognise his skill as a warrior, and Conchobar observes that any land which produces young boys of such skill must be home to warriors who would 'pound [the Ulaid] to dust'. They send Condere son of Echu to encounter him, and Condere asks Connla for his name and lineage, which he refuses to give. Condere then welcomes Connla, complimenting his skill as a warrior and inviting him to meet the Ulaid. But Connla only asks whether the Ulaid would like to fight him in single combat, or as a group, telling Condere that he is not worth fighting.
Condere returns to the Ulaid, and Conall Cernach goes out to meet Connla, saying, "The Ulaid will not be shamed while I am alive." Connla strikes Conall with a stone from his slingshot that knocks him off his feet, and then disarms him. Conall returns shamed to the rest of the Ulaid.
Cú Chulainn then approaches Connla, but Emer, his wife, warns him not to fight him, identifying the boy as "Conla, the only son of Aífe". Cú Chulainn rebukes her, saying that heroic deeds "are not performed with a woman's assistance", and that for the sake of the Ulaid, he would fight any intruder no matter who they were. He asks Connla to identify himself, warning him that he will die if he does not, but Connla refuses. They wrestle in the water, with Connla gaining the upper hand, until Cú Chulainn resorts to the gae bolga, a weapon whose use Scáthach taught only to him, and Connla is fatally wounded.
Cú Chulainn carries Connla to the shore and identifies him to the Ulaid as his son. Connla greets each of the heroes of the Ulaid in turn before bidding his father farewell and dying. He is grieved, and a marker is raised for his grave, "and for three days not a calf of the cattle of the Ulaid was left alive after him".
Versions and Date.
There are two versions of "Aided Óenfhir Aífe". The earliest is a late Old Irish text, found in the Yellow Book of Lecan, which is the most well-known version and the source of the narrative above. It has been dated to the 9th or 10th century. There is also a later version in TCD 1336, appended with legal commentary about accountability and compensation.
Versions of the story also appear in the "dinnsenchas of Lechtán Óenfhir Aífe", Geoffrey Keating's "History of Ireland", and in an Early Modern Irish version, entitled "Oidheadh Chonlaoich".
The tale of Connla shares many key aspects with stories from other traditions. In the Greek story of Theseus the hero is also born of an irregular union and raised by his mother in a far off place. When of a similar stature to his unknown father he must take certain tokens left and set out to claim his birthright. He then combats with a series of opponents before meeting his father, Aegeus, and being recognised. A later unknowing father-son element in the story occurs when he returns from Crete, having killed the Minotaur, and the failure to reveal himself leads to the father's death. There are also strong similarities with the lost Greek epic poem the Telegony were father and son fight. In its surviving summary, found in the "Chrestomathy of Proclus", it is the unrecognised father rather than the son that is killed in combat. Telegonus, the son seeking his father, born of a woman in foreign lands (to the enchantress Circe), after travelling as a stranger to his paternal land, inadvertently fights and kills his father Odysseus. This he does with a lance tipped with the venomous spine of a stingray which could stand, as argued by Edward Petit, as the inspiration for the deadly Gáe Bulg of Cú Chulainn made from the bone of a sea monster, the Curruid. Again there is a scene as Odysseus lies dying, when he and Telegonus recognize one another, and in this case the son Telegonus laments his mistake.
The story also closely resembles the tenth-century tale of Rostam and Sohrab from the Iranian epic the Shahnameh; with an unknowing father-son in a closely matched wrestling duel in which the son is killed, a jewel token-memento and in some versions the use of a poisoned weapon as option of last resort. This in turn probably derives from the story of Babruvahana son of Arjuna in the Mahabharata part of the Indic epic tradition, with an unknowing father-son duel, a jewel-memento, the use of a divine weapon, the Pashupatastra, which cannot be resisted and is not to be used against lesser enemies, and particular to these two stories a following-a-horse element.
In Literature.
The story of Connla's death by his father's hand is related in the WB Yeats poem "Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea," first published in 1892. The poetic retelling differs in several respects from the original myth, including portraying Connla as the son of Emer and not Aífe.


Safita

Safita ( ""; , "Sōpūte") is a city in the Tartous Governorate, northwestern Syria, located to the southeast of Tartous and to the northwest of Krak des Chevaliers. It is situated on the tops of three hills and the valleys between them, in the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Safita had a population of 20,301 in the 2004 census.
Geography.
Safita is situated at the southeastern end of the Syrian Coastal Mountain Range. It is southeast of the Mediterranean port city of Tartus and northwest of Homs. The average elevation of Safita is above sea level, while the Crusader fortress stands about .
History.
Safita is located on a site where remains of the Phoenician settlement were discovered. The archaeological remains at the site of Tell Kazel were identified as the Phoenician city of Sumur mentioned in the Amarna letters.
Crusader era.
Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse founded the County of Tripoli. The Knights Templar, to whom the lands of the region were given, built the fortress known today as the "Chastel Blanc". The fortress sits on a strategic observation point, and from there it maintains eye contact with the network of fortresses of the Templar Order, Arwad and Tartus on the coast in the northwest, Chastel Rouge in the southwest and Krak des Chevaliers in the southeast. The Mamluk Sultan Baibars managed to capture Safita in 1271, bringing it under Muslim rule.
Ottoman era.
Safita was the center of the principal nahiya (subdistrict) of the southern Syrian Coastal Mountain Range during the Ottoman rule through the 16th and early 17th centuries, spanning about forty villages and, at times, including the subdistricts of Mi'ar, Qulay'a and Tartus within its jurisdiction. The Sayfa dynasty, based in the hinterland of Tripoli, controlled the town until 1640, often using its fortress in their wars with the Druze Ma'an dynasty of Mount Lebanon. In 1621 Yusuf Sayfa dispatched a force against his nephew, and ally of the Ma'anid Fakhr ad-Din II, Sulayman, in Safita for not forwarding the subdistrict's tax revenue to Tripoli.
After 1640, Safita is seldom mentioned in the historical chronicles of the middle Ottoman period. However, court records in Tripoli Sanjak, of which Safita was part, the earliest of which date to 1666 and 1667 indicate the iltizam (tax farms) of the Safita nahiya were sold to the Alawite brothers Muhammad and Zaydan, sons of Shamsin in 1667–1668. They were charged with collecting taxes on behalf of the government on fruit trees, agricultural lands, falcons, bees, silk, flour mills, buffalo, wave labor, festivals, weddings and wintering camps of Turkmen and Arab nomads. The Shamsin family emerged as the dominant local force of Safita until the late 17th century, but resumed the role in 1721.
Modern era.
In 1943 its population of 3,500 largely consisted of Greek Orthodox Christians. At the time, its houses were described as well-built and made of alternating black and white stones and clustered around the Crusader-era fortress. In 1960 Safita had a population of 4,300 Christians and 1,900 Alawites.
Landmarks.
The Crusader fortress "Chastel Blanc", a square tower built in 1202, is well preserved and rises to a height of 28 meters. It is 18 meters wide and 31 meters long. Among its walls, 3 meters high, is a chapel dedicated to St. Michael and serving the Greek Orthodox community of the city. The second floor of the building, which can be ascended in a stone staircase, was originally used as a dormitory and is illuminated by firing slits. Beneath the tower was a water cistern that was used by the inhabitants of the fortress.


Bulgarian customs

The main Bulgarian celebration events are :
Other Bulgarian customs, specific for Bulgaria, worship God, the saints, the nature, the health, and chase away bad spirits :