The case for Hillary Clinton- because some people are really stupid!

An old colleague and I were having breakfast this morning when he looked up at the news (I can’t remember which network …MSNBC, I think) and noticed a split screen of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He lamented long about how terrible both candidates are in this election and I guess we just have to choose the lesser of the two evils or, as he put it, “…put on a blindfold and just pick. It doesn’t really make any difference.” And that’s when I went off.

I am really sick and tired of people saying both candidates are equally horrible choices, how much America thoroughly hates both of them to the core, that there’s not a single positive trait in either one of them, and wow, if only we had voted for that guy behind the deli counter or the neighbor’s cat, America would be way better off.

There are only two candidates who stand any mathematical chance of prevailing in this year’s election and one of them is, in fact, eminently qualified to become the 45^th President of the United States, perhaps more so than any of the other 44 previous office holders. She has been dedicated to public service in one capacity or another since 1971. Her accomplishments are tremendous. To name a few:

· First ever student commencement speaker at Wellesley College.

· Distinguished graduate of Yale Law School.

· Editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.

· Co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.

· Former civil litigation attorney.

· Staff attorney for Children’s Defense Fund.

· Faculty member in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

· Former Director of the Arkansas Legal Aid Clinic.

· First female chair of the Legal Services Corporation.

· First female partner at Rose Law Firm, the oldest and one of the largest law firms in Arkansas.

· Twice named by The National Law Journal as one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.

· Former First Lady of Arkansas.

· Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983.

· Chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession.

· Created Arkansas’s Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth.

· Instrumental in passage of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

· First Lady of the United States.

· Promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses.

· Successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.

· Worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War (now recognized as Gulf War Syndrome).

· Helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.

· Initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act.

· First FLOTUS in US History to hold a postgraduate degree.

· Helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.

· Two-term New York Senator and the first ex-FLOTUS in US History to be elected to the United States Senate.

· Served on five Senate committees: Budget (2001–2002), Armed Services (2003–2009), Environment and Public Works (2001–2009), Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (2001–2009) and the Special Committee on Aging.

· Member of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

· Leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders.

· Worked with Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York on securing $21.4 billion in funding for the World Trade Center redevelopment.

· Former United States Secretary of State.

Brokered a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in 2012

Go ahead and try to show what Donald Trump has done in the public interest during his whole worthless life. Go on, try. You cannot do it and here is why.

The other candidate who is supposedly “equally bad” is a real estate developer and television personality who was born into a family whose wealth has been estimated to exceed $300 million and makes racism, sexism, misogyny, nihilism and ultra-nationalism the pillars of his candidacy. So far he has called for:

· Building a wall across the southern border that Mexico is supposedly going to pay for.

· The deportation, by force if necessary, of 11 million undocumented immigrants.

· Banning and deporting all members of a religious faith that total over 1 billion adherents worldwide, even if they are American citizens, because “everybody knows” they’re just a bunch of murdering terrorists.

· Lists among his associates known white supremacists and eugenicists.

· Speaks admiringly of ruthless foreign despots and encourages espionage against the United States by hostile governments.

· Ruminates about not defending our NATO allies against Russian invasion.

· States openly and freely that using nuclear weapons should always be an option to make him more “unpredictable”.

· Did I mention his blithe refusal to offer concrete policy proposals on how any of this neo-Nazi wish list could possibly be achieved? And all the while still finding the time to be rude, nasty, loud, mean, cruel, hateful and boorish

But they’re supposedly “equally awful” and “everybody hates them both”.

But they’re supposedly “equally awful” and “everybody hates them both”. Yes, you can’t vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump because, you know…emails. And Benghazi. And Foundations. And Wall Street. And secret assassinations. And pantsuits. And on and on and on! And, nobody really cares about emails especially since two former Secretaries of State (both Republicans) did the same thing before Hillary.

Furthermore, I would like to know why some people have their knickers in a twist over the tragic deaths of four State Department personnel in Benghazi in 2012 when nobody raised a peep about the 241 armed and ready US servicemen who were blown to bits by a suicide bomber in Beirut in 1983? Deep down, we all know the reason why . It is because some people love to bring it up as often as possible as a political weapon. They want people (especially in right-wing Republican media) to believe that Hillary is some kind of cold, calculating and diabolical monster without any concern for the lives of people who often must work in dangerous places in the name of peace and diplomacy.

I know, I know. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just forget all of her accomplishments and remember that what really matters is the thrill of waiting for indictments which makes for great television? That way we could finally “lock her up” and finally have enough of this stupid woman who thinks that she can run a country.

This election is not about choosing between the lesser of two evils. This is a choice between one great and qualified candidate for the nation’s highest office who you really should be excited about and a dolt with a bad toupee who is a liar, ignorant, untrustworthy and stupid.

We have a great opportunity here, people. We also have the potential for real catastrophe and that’s not being hyperbolic.

Please don’t be stupid.

Geovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Geovanni Girolamo Savoldo, also called Girolamo da Brescia (born c.1480, Brescia, Republic of Venice [Italy]; died c. 1548, Venice?) was a painter of the Brescian school whose style is marked by a quiet lyricism. Although his work was largely forgotten after his death, interest in Savoldo was revived in the 20th century and his work gained a place alongside that of other High Renaissance painters.

The first records of Savoldo’s life show he was in Parma in 1506 and was recorded in the guild at Florence in 1508. Little else is known of his personal life except that he may have left Venice, where he spent most of his life, to live in Milan for a few years and that he had a Flemish wife through whom he may have made Northern contacts. Scholars have found it difficult to pinpoint Savoldo’s training and artistic influences because his style changed very little during his career. His preoccupation with clearly defined shapes in light suggests he was influenced by Cima da Conegliano, who also used light with quiet exactitude and who may have also been based in Parma in 1506. Savoldo also may have been influenced by Flemish painters.

Savoldo’s use of deep, rich color gives his paintings dramatic tonal values. The influence of Giorgione can be felt in the dreamy, poeticized treatment in such works as Portrait of aKnight (c. 1525). Savoldo defined his luminous, meticulously detailed figures by setting them against darkened, twilit skies, a technique that culminated in Saint Matthew and theAngel (1530–35) and St. Mary Magdalene Approaching the Sepulchre (c. 1535). The portrait long known as Gaston de Foix (c. 1532), but no longer identified with that duke of Nemours, attempted to give a sense of three-dimensionality by depicting a figure wearing a suit of armor reflected in a mirror.

Savoldo liked to depict unusual effects of light, and he paid particular attention to reflected or nocturnally lit scenes. His output was small (only about 40 paintings), and he had little influence on the course of Venetian painting, from which he had always stood somewhat aloof. For centuries after his death his work was typically either ignored or wrongly attributed to other artists, but in the early 20th century it was revived by art critics who grouped him, for the first time, with the High Renaissance artists. Exhibitions of his paintings followed, and a 1990 retrospective of his work, held in Brescia and Frankfurt am Main, continued to revitalize his reputation.

* * *

Works by Geovanni Girolamo Savoldo

Virgin and Child

Untitled

Saint Anthony, Abbot, and Saint Paul

The Adoration of the Shepards

The Baptism of Christ with a Donar

The Anunciation

The Flute Player

The Archangel Raphael Refusing Tobias' Gift

Jesus' Ascension Into Heaven

The Birth of Jesus

Portrait of a Knight

Tobias and the Angel

Saint Mark and The Angel

La Vénitienne

An Actual Poster in Vilnius, Lithuania

The Horse's Ass

________________

Quotes about Putin by Trump

Oct. 2007: Trump said Putin's doing a great job

"Look at Putin -- what he's doing with Russia -- I mean, you know, what's going on over there. I mean this guy has done -- whether you like him or don't like him -- he's doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period," Trump told Larry King on CNN.

Dec. 2011: Trump praised Putin's "intelligence" and "no-nonsense way" in his book "Time to Get Tough."

"Putin has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe," Trump said. "I respect Putin and Russians but cannot believe our leader (Obama) allows them to get away with so much...Hats off to the Russians."

June 2013: Trump wonders if Putin will be his "new best friend"

"Will he become my new best friend?" Trump asked of Putin in a tweet wondering whether Putin would attend the 2013 Miss Universe pageant Trump brought to Moscow.

Oct. 2013: Trump says Putin is outsmarting the US

"I think he's done really a great job of outsmarting our country," Trump told Larry King after Putin successfully dissuaded the US from striking Syria by arranging with the US for the removal of Syria's chemical weapons.

July 31, 2015: Trump says they'd get along

"I think I'd get along very well with Vladimir Putin. I just think so," Trump said in one of his first comments about the Russian leader since launching his presidential bid last June.

Oct. 11, 2015: Trump says they had good ratings together

Asked on CBS'"Face the Nation" about similarities between him and Putin, Trump pointed to their appearance on same edition of "60 Minutes."

"I think the biggest thing we have is that we were on '60 Minutes' together and we had fantastic ratings. One of your best-rated shows in a long time," Trump joked. "So that was good, right? So we were stable mates."

Trump said he and Putin "are very different," but that they would "get along very well."

"I think that I would probably get along with him very well. And I don't think you'd be having the kind of problems that you're having right now," Trump said.

Nov. 10, 2015: Trump reiterates that he and Putin "were stable-mates"

"I got to know him very well because we were both on '60 Minutes,' we were stable-mates, and we did very well that night," Trump said, despite the fact that he and Putin had been interviewed in separate countries at different times for the same news program.

It's a comment Trump has repeatedly made at rallies.

Dec. 17, 2015: Trump returns Putin's praise

Donald Trump issued a statement after Putin praised the real estate mogul as a "talented person" and "the absolute leader of the presidential race."

"It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond," Trump said in a statement. "I have always felt that Russia and the United States should be able to work well with each other towards defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from mutual respect."

Trump took heat from his GOP rivals for the statement, but refused to back down.

Dec. 18, 2015: Trump defends against allegations Putin has ordered the killings of journalists

"He's running his country and at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country," Trump said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe.""I think our country does plenty of killing also."

Feb. 17, 2016: Trump says he'd be "crazy" to disavow Putin's praise

"I have no relationship with him other than he called me a genius. He said Donald trump is a genius and he is going to be the leader of the party and he's going to be the leader of the world or something," Trump said, embellishing Putin's praise.

"These characters that I'm running against said, 'We want you to disavow that statement.' I said what, he called me a genius, I'm going to disavow it? Are you crazy? Can you believe it? How stupid are they."

"And besides that wouldn't it be good if we actually got along with countries. Wouldn't it actually be a positive thing. I think I'd have a good relationship with Putin. I mean who knows," he continued.

The last time American astronaut Jeff Williams set foot on Earth was March 18, 2015 and he was in space for 534 day. On September 9, 2016, he returned to our planet, having set a new NASArecord for cumulative time spent in space. During his time working in space, Williams has seen the International Space Station (ISS) grow from a single, crew-less module to the continuously-manned orbiting laboratory that it is today. His first mission was aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis back in 2000, where he worked to prepare the space station for its first crew, spending just 10 days in space. He returned in 2006 and spent six months there, setting up experiments and replacing equipment. In 2009 ,Williams commanded the station for the first time, overseeing the arrival of, among other things, the famous cupola. On his most recent mission, the station had officially been declared complete, but Williams still found work to do, adding a docking adapterand helping to deploy a new module.

Over those 534 days, Williams has shown that he has a great photographic eye for some of Earth’s more spectacular features, sharing many of his shots on social media. He has delighted in spotting the pale blues of coral reefs, unique agricultural plots, and winding river deltas, along with astrological features such as noctilucent clouds, aurorae, and the full moon. “It’s a real thrill for me to be able to bring the experience to you through photography,” Williams said in a NASA video earlier this year, “You never get tired of viewing the beautiful planet that is home to all of us.”

Williams will not have long to enjoy his crown. Peggy Whitson is scheduled to break his record during her next mission, which launches in November.

* * *

The south cape of Hawaii, showing a grid of streets in the lower right.

Bright yellow plots of rape seed growing in Szombathely, Hungary.

Fields in Gaines County, Texas.

Prairie Dog Town Fork Red River, on the border of Texas and Oklahoma.

Coral reefs in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Mozambique.

Part of the Sahara desert, Algeria.

The Richat Structure or “Bulls Eye” in Mauritania.

Salt domes in the Great Salt Desert of eastern Iran.

The Exmouth Gulf, in Western Australia.

Agriculture in South Africa.

The Giza Plateau in Giza, Egypt.

Agriculture in Alpera, Spain.

Kansanshi mine, Africa's largest copper mine, in Zambia.

Karachi, Pakistan and the Indus River delta.

The General Carrera Lake in Patagonia, Chile.

Sunset over Earth.

Noctilucent clouds, formed by ice crystals, high up in Earth's mesosphere.

The full moon rises just before sunset, over western China.

The sun reflects off of Earth as night approaches, April 5, 2016.

Where Were You Fifteen Years Ago?

I was in New York.

On September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed (400 were police officers and firefighters) in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in NYC, at the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C., and in a plane crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Untitled For The Hopeless

All my dreams are gone,
They took off in the wind.
Just like all the songs no one finished.

Nobody is kissing,
Everyone is sighing,
Tired and worn out from another useless day.

Every tear is done,
No hugs for anyone,
Just another song about another hopeless cause.

I no longer wish to live,
In this world of broken promises,
Where loved ones live in lies, then slowly fade away.

I just want to die,
And hope there's some sort of heaven:
Over the rainbow, lie down in meadows.

There's nothing left in the world.
All my dreams are gone;
I'm useless without them sleeping with me.

Goodbye, you stupid world,
Living for nothing, hoping for something,
When all you have to do is die to get your way.

I'm leaving tonight,
While the stars are bright,
So they can catch me in my tears
And fly me straight to heaven.

* * *

My Three Lovers

I cannot remember Yesterday,

He went away.
I asked him what the trouble was,
He would not say;
Just looked at me with a cool kind of conviction,
Wishing things were different,
As he slowly walked away.

Oh! How today bores me!
I can read his mind!
Certainly don't have yesterday's
Charm.
He told me straightforwardly
Oh! He loved me so!
But I told him that it was
Time to go.

Now, Future has a sacred face,
He sneaks and sneaks around.
When I wish to never see his trace,
He lingers for a mile.
He whispers sad tales of mediocrity,
But sometimes makes me dream.

Oh! Where are you Yesterday?
I'm holding out for you.
There's nothing I want more than
You, Yesterday.
All I want is you.

* * *

Identity

I wonder if the trees can hear me

When I scream aloud,
Or if the dandelion screams,
When I pick him out.
There's no telling where life can take us;
One day I'm a blade of grass,
But today I am myself-
Nobody else.
Life chooses for me to be me.

Political website calls Einstein's physics a ‘liberal conspiracy’

The Catholic Church attacked the revolutionary 16th century idea that Earth actually revolves around the sun. But, some conservative Christian groups continue to rail against the Theories of Evolution and Natural Selection.

Einstein might get a good chuckle about "liberal conspiracy" allegations

Many believe the Earth is only about 6,000 years old, despite evidence that it is over 4.5 billion years old. And the war between religion and science just took another weird, political turn.

The website Conservapedia has declared that Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is a liberal conspiracy, according to TPMMuckraker. Andy Schlafly, son of anti-abortion activist Phyllis Schlafly, founded Conservapedia.

In its Counterexamples to Relativitywebsite, Conservapedia says, "The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world." The site lists 28 separate “examples,” some backed by scripture, of why Relativity is incorrect. A footnote in the Conservapedia site adds, “Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.” The site does not, however, give any of the numerous experimental verifications of the theory.

New Scientist magazine picked up on the story and called the “liberal conspiracy” completely baseless, and said there is absolutely no reason to associate the Theory of Relativity with the philosophy of relativism. The New Scientist article also said that fundamentalist groups selectively use Einstein’s ideas and theories acceptable to their beliefs, such as the famous quote, “God does not throw dice,” while ignoring that Einstein did not believe in a personal god.

Conservapedia gives some strange counterexamples to relativity. One cites Genesis 1:6-8 in which God created a firmament in the heavens, which the site equates with the “aether.” The Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887, and further experiments in the 1950s, largely disproved the existence of aether.

In another example citing John 4:46-54, the site claims that Jesus was able perform deeds through “action-at-a-distance,” or instantaneous action, and that would violate Einstein’s theory that nothing can travel faster than light. New Scientist pointed out that action-at-a-distance, however, happens all the time during the quantum entanglement of particles.

Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity revolutionized the way scientists understand light and how massive objects in the universe interact through gravity. The theory was successfully used to explain the motion of Mercury more accurately than Newton’s laws could. Relativity also explained the deflection of light by gravitational fields.

New Scientistpointed out that even though General Relativity has passed many tests, most physicists don’t believe it is ultimately correct because it conflicts with quantum mechanics. But, physicists are working hard to wrap gravity and the three other fundamental forces into a “grand unified theory” through such ideas as String Theory and Supersymmetry.

* * *

The Last Supper and Food

The number of apostles has remained constant and clearly the Middle East millieu has, too. But over the years, artists’ depictions of Jesus’ last supper have upped the ante on the portions- by a whopping 69 percent. This is according to a new study out of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, where a pair of scholarly brothers have teamed up to illustrate how our food habits have changed since Leonardo da Vinci’s famous tempera painting depicting the scene.

By analyzing 52 paintings of the Last Supper, Brian Wansink and his brother, Craig, say “From its depiction circa 1000 AD/CE to the present, the ratio of (the) main course entree has generally increased by 69.2%. Similarly, the ratio of the size of bread has increased by 23.1% and that of the size of plate by 65.6%.”

Setting aside that question for a bit, the Wansinks said on Brian’s Web site, MindlessEating.org, that the portion sizes were indexed, based on the average size of the heads depicted in the paintings. This was aided by the use of a CAD-CAM program that allowed the items to be scanned, rotated and calculated, regardless of their original orientation in the painting. An index of 2.0 for the bread would indicate that the average width of the bread was twice the width of the average disciple’s head.

“The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food,” Brian Wansink said in a press release. “We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner.” Brian Wansink is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics and director of the Food and Brand Lab. His brother, Craig, is a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, Norfolk, Va., and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

The study found that the size of the entrées in paintings of The Last Supper, which according to the New Testament occurred during a Passover evening, has progressively grown 69 percent. And the plate size has increased 66 percent and bread size by about 23 percent, over the past 1,000 years.

Since Leonardo, many artists have had a go at The Last Supper, including Tintoretto, William Blake, Jacopo Bassano, Girolamo da Santacroce and Valentin de Boulogne. All of different takes on the meal itself, but clearly the mise en place has changed, as well as the food itself.

Depictions of The Last Supper

As for Oliver, the English chef whose reality show, The Food Revolution, it is doubtful he would have much of a problem with the nutritional value of the food.

The native religion of the Hawaiian Islands probably originated with Polynesian immigrants who made their way to the archipelago hundreds of years ago. Hawaiian religion is polytheistic, meaning there are many Hawaiian gods of varying importance, and it also incorporates strong animistic beliefs: spirits are believed to reside in the land, sea, volcanoes and other non-human objects. Animals and plants are also imbued with spirit in native Hawaiian belief systems, including the healing plant kava kava.

Kava Kava Plant

Kava Root

Hawaii’s pantheon includes several tiers of Hawaiian gods, as well as spirits that different families claim as their protective familiars. Like other aspects of traditional Hawaiian society, the gods exist in a structured hierarchy in which certain deities are at the top, as the ultimate regulators and protectors of the cosmos, with tiers of lesser deities below. Ironically, some of the most well known Hawaiian gods and goddesses belong to these lower ranks: for instance, you’ve probably heard of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes. Another famous minor deity is Laka, goddess of the hula dance. Below these deities are the ancestral guardian spirits of families and clans, called aumakua, which often appear in the guise of animals such as owls and other birds, lizards, sharks, fish, and sometimes stones. More than a few Hawaiian families can still identify their aumakua today.

Pele

Although the structures that determine the major Hawaiian gods vary from island to island, one hierarchy states that there are four main gods: Kane, Ku, Lono, and Kanaloa, all with specific roles in maintaining the balance of the Hawaiian cosmos.

Kane is the highest of the four deities, and is sometimes considered a creator god in Hawaiian mythology. Legend has it that Kane was the first Hawaiian god to become self-aware and separate himself from Po, the chaos of formless creation. Kane’s emergence allowed two more deities, Ku and Lono, to also become self-aware. Between the three of them they brought sound and substance to the universe, created the minor deities to be their servants, and created the Earth (or at least the Hawaiian Islands). Kane is also called the god of procreation and the ancestor of the human lineage; in one myth, he creates the first man out of red clay with a magical white clay for the head.

Ku is known as the god of warfare and the “Seizer of Land”. Like the other major Hawaiian gods, a specific season of the year was reserved for his worship, in this case during the active summer months of the Hawaiian year. During this time, native Hawaiians observed elaborate kapus including dietary restrictions, and held ceremonies to honor the god. The worship of Ku reportedly included human sacrifice, something not seen with the other principle Hawaiian gods.

At the opposite end we have the Hawaiian god Lono, who represents peace, music, fertility, and agriculture. According to indigenous Hawaiian myth, Lono descended to earth on a rainbow to marry Laka, goddess of the hula dance. The seasonal period between October and February when Lono was honored coincides with winter storms that bring fertilizing rain to leeward areas of the Hawaiian Islands, reflecting Lono’s association with agriculture. During this ritual period, there were corresponding kapus in place against conducting warfare and unnecessary work.

Finally, there’s Kanaloa, who is often represented as a complementary power to Kane, and sometimes as another aspect of Kane. European contact with Hawaii resulted in a muddled impression of Kanaloa’s role in the pantheon, as Christian missionaries tried to cast Kanaloa as the god of evil and the underworld, similar to the Christian devil. A more accurate interpretation is that Kanaloa is a balancing force in the universe who shares power with Kane and governs realms complementary to Kane’s. For instance, Kane holds sway over the northern hemisphere while Kanaloa governs the southern. Kanaloa also appears in Hawaiian mythology as the ruler of the underworld and the teacher of magic.

The drinking of brewed kava played a big part in native Hawaiian religious ceremony and also in mythology; for example, Kane and Kanaloa often drink kava together in ancient Hawaiian myth. Kahuna, the priestly class of the Hawaiian Islands, considered certain varieties of kava especially useful for communing with the gods and spirits. The black hiwa variety was prized by kahuna as a divinatory aid that let them bring back knowledge from the spirit realm. In pre-modern times, several kapus restricted who could drink kava, so for a long time, kava could only be consumed by kahuna and ali’i, or the royal lineage of Hawaiian kings. As a plant imbued with its own spirit, there were and are protocols surrounding how to prepare and drink kava in a way that honors the spirit of the kava.

The next time you have a relaxing bowl of brew, try taking a moment to thank the spirit of the humble root that makes it possible; you’ll appreciate it all the more!

Queen Elizabeth I

· Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn.

King Henry VIII

· Elizabeth was named after both her grandmothers, Elizabeth Howard and Elizabeth of York.

· Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn was executed when Elizabeth was just two years old.

Ann Boleyn

· The majority of historians believe that Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother, was innocent of all charges and that her execution was down to a conspiracy planned by Thomas Cromwell.

· Although Elizabeth I only mentioned her mother a couple of times during her lifetime, she wore a

locket ring which contained a miniature of herself along with a miniature of her mother.

· After her step mother Catherine Howard’s execution, Elizabeth reputedly told her friend (and later

favorite), Robert Dudley, “I will never marry”.

Robert Dudley

· Although her father had her mother executed, Elizabeth was fond of him and revered his memory.

· Elizabeth was born on the 7th September, 1533, at Greenwich Palace.

· Elizabeth I died on 24th March 1603 at Richmond Palace. It is thought that she died of blood

poisoning.

· Nicknames” for Elizabeth I include “The Virgin Queen”, “Good Queen Bess” and “Gloriana”.

· Elizabeth herself gave nicknames to people she loved and trusted – She called William Cecil her “Spirit” and Robert Dudley her “eyes”.

· Elizabeth I reigned between 1558 and 1603.

· Elizabeth I never married, although she had a number of suitors, and thought of herself as married to her country and the mother of her subjects.

· Although Elizabeth was known as “The Virgin Queen”, scandal surrounded her – There were rumors over her close relationships with Robert Dudley (the Earl of Leicester), Robert Devereux (the Earl of Essex), Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Hatton.

· There was scandal in her youth when her governess Kat Ashley found that Catherine Parr’s husband, Thomas Seymour, was tickling and slapping Elizabeth in bed and coming into her room in his nightclothes. Although at first Catherine Parr thought of this as innocent fun, she later sent Elizabeth away and there were even rumors that Elizabeth had a child by Seymour. It is not known how Elizabeth felt about Seymour, but on hearing of his execution she said: “This day died a man of much wit, but very little judgment”.

Catherine Parr

· It has been rumored that Elizabeth I wrote some of William Shakespeare’s plays! There is, in fact, no evidence of this.

· Elizabeth I’s funeral took place on 28th April 1603 and she was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Westminister Abbey

· Elizabeth I’s motto was “Semper Eadem”, meaning “Always the Same”.

· Elizabeth’s main rival was her cousin Mary Queen of Scots (Scotland), who had plotted against her life. Elizabeth had her executed in 1587 after keeping her prisoner for many years. It was a difficult decision for Elizabeth because she believed that anointed sovereigns, such as Mary, were answerable only to God.

Mary,Queen of Scots

· Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a time in Mary I’s reign for suspected involvement in Wyatt’s rebellion. She thought she would be executed.

Queen Mary I

· Elizabeth I became queen at the age of 25 and was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 15th January 1559.

· Although Elizabeth founded the Church of England and was thought to be a Protestant, she was tolerant of both Catholic and Protestant viewpoints and famously said: “There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith, all else is trifles” and that she had “no desire to make windows into men’s souls”.

· Elizabeth I’s skin became badly scarred by smallpox after she suffered from the disease in 1562. She covered these scars with a face paint of white lead and vinegar.

Elizabeth I with a Face Painted White and Wearing a Wig and a Black and White Dress

Her favorite dress colors were white and black which symbolized purity.

· Wigs were in fashion and Elizabeth made good use of them.

· Elizabeth I, like most people of her time, was very superstitious and consulted astronomer and astrologer, John Dee, and it was even said that she asked him to undo a death curse that she thought had been put on her.

John Dee

· Although there were rumors that Elizabeth I was bald, there does not seem to be any truth to them and there are records of people having seen her hair.

· Elizabeth I frequently swore, so when she was angry, she would curse and swear.

· Elizabeth’s reign is known as “The Golden Age” because she made England strong and prosperous.

Whitehall Palace: The Home of Queen Ekizabeth I

* * *

Quotes by Queen Elizabeth I

The past cannot be cured.

A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing.

A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.

Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.

A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.

Brass shines as fair to the ignorant as gold to the goldsmiths.

Though the sex to which I belong is considered weak you will nevertheless find me a rock that bends to no wind.

Monarchs ought to put to death the authors and instigators of war, as their sworn enemies and as dangers to their states.

God forgive you, but I never can.

The stone often recoils on the head of the thrower.

Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-reigning British monarch, turned 90 on April 21, 2016.

1. Queen Elisabeth II was born at 2:40 a.m. on April 21, 1926, at 17 Burton St. in Mayfair, London.

2. She was christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary at Buckingham Palace on May 29, 1926.

Buckingham Palace

3. Elizabeth was named after her mother.

4. In 1930, then-Princess Elizabeth's sister Margaret Rose was born.

Princess Margaret

5. When King Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, Elizabeth's father became King George VI.

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson

King George VI

6. After the 1936 abdication, Princess Elizabeth became first in line to the throne.

7. During World War II, Elizabeth and sister Margaret moved to Windsor Castle for their safety.

8. Elizabeth was educated at home.

9. She studied constitutional history and law, preparing for her future role as queen.

10. She was also instructed in religion by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

11. Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip met at a wedding in 1934.

12. Elizabeth learned how to drive in 1945.

13. Elizabeth and Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, were married at Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.

14. For a while, Elizabeth and Philip enjoyed a somewhat normal existence in Malta between 1949 and 1951. Philip was an officer in the Mediterranean Fleet.

15. Elizabeth became qdogsueen when King George VI died in February 1952.

16. In 1953, Elizabeth II attended her first football match (FA Cup Final).

17. Elizabeth had four children (Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward).

Queen Elisabeth, Prince Philip and their for children

18. She has made five official visits to the United States during her reign.

19. Elizabeth II has answered over 3.5 million items of correspondence.

20. She has owned over 30 corgis. Her first dog was named Susan.

21. Elizabeth says Prince Phillip has been her "strength and stay" during her reign.

Prince Philip

22. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh became the first couple in the Royal Family to celebrate 60 years of marriage, also known as their diamond wedding anniversary.

23. For her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the queen received over 120,000 cards, letter and gifts.

24. Her coronation was the first to be televised in England.

25. Her great-grandson Prince George calls her "Gan-Gan."

26. The oldest recipient of a message from the queen was a man from Canada who turned 116 in December 1984.

27. Elizabeth carries cash in her purse only on Sundays because on that day she donates money to her church.

28. The queen learned of her father's death while she was in Kenya.

29. The last British governor of New South Wales made three films entitled Long to reign over us about Elizabeth's accession and coronation

30. She was crowned in Westminster Abbey in June, 1953.

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

31. It was raining during her coronation.

32. Drives through London, visits to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and a review of the fleet at Spithead followed the coronation.

33. In three months in 1977, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her accession, Elizabeth went on six tours that took her through 36 counties in the UK and Northern Ireland.

34. In that same year, her travels continued overseas to countries including Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and other countries.

Queen Elisabeth in Canada

35. That year, it's estimated that the queen and the Duke of Edinburgh traveled 56,000 miles.

36. That June, she lit a bonfire beacon that began a chain of celebratory beacons across the country.

37. The next day, after making a speech during which she declared she had no regrets in taking on her responsibilities, 4,000 street and village parties were reported to have been held across the country.

38. In 2002, she celebrated 50 years of reign.

39. During that year, she visited every region of the UK, as well as many other countries.

40. June 2002 was the main focus of the celebration, and involved services as well as two concerts including artists such as Paul McCartney and Elton John.

41. During Elizabeth's 80th-birthday celebrations, she held a "Children's Party at the Palace" and invited 2,000 kids.

42. On April 19, two days before her birthday, she invited guests who also turned 80 years old to Buckingham Palace.

43. She spent April 21 meeting the crowds in Windsor before a family dinner with fireworks.

44. During the year, she received almost 40,000 birthday messages from the public.

45. For the queen's 60th wedding anniversary, she returned to her honeymoon location, Broadlands in Hampshire; she and Philip recreated their wedding photos.

46. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee Trust took donations for initiatives like Queen's Young Leaders.

47. The queen's favorite animals are horses and dogs.

The Queen and Four Dogs

Queen Elizabeth and two dogs

48. She regularly attends both the Derby at Epsom and the Summer Race Meeting at Ascot.

49. Elizabeth owns and breeds thoroughbreds and often watches her horses race at other events, where they have won numerous times.

50. She also is interested in Scottish country dancing, and she gives annual dances for the community.

51. She gives to almost 40 animal-related organizations as well as almost 90 medical and health-care charities, in addition to the hundreds of other organizations she is involved with.

52. The queen celebrates her birthday twice (once in April and once in June) because sovereign birthdays are often celebrated twice when not naturally in the summer.

53. Once a week for an hour, she meets with Britain's prime minister.

54. The queen speaks fluent French.

55. Norman Hartnell designed the queen's wedding and coronation gowns as well as her dress for her first visit to the U.S. as monarch.

56. Queen Elizabeth II is the 40th monarch since William the Conqueror was crowned in 1066.

William the Conqueror

57. There have been 12 U.S. presidents since she first began her reign.

Queen Elizabeth and President Obama

58. There have been seven Roman Catholic Popes during her time as monarch.

59. The queen was a Girl Guide as a child, as well as a Sea Ranger (a portion of Girl Guides dedicated to sailing).

60. Elizabeth has 30 godchildren.

61. Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to visit China in 1986.

Queen Elizabeth in China

62. She sent her first email in 1976 from a British research facility.

63. Since she began her reign, there have been six Archbishops of Canterbury.

64. She bred a corgi with a dachshund and created the dorgi, and has continued to breed them since.

65. The queen once had to demote a footman for putting whiskey and gin in one of her corgi's water bowls.

66. She is the oldest to celebrate 60 years in the crown, second only to Queen Victoria who celebrated the milestone at 77.

Queen Victoria

67. In summer 2005, she opened the first children's trail in the Buckingham Palace garden.

68. The British Monarchy YouTube channel launched in 2007 and has almost 56 million views and more than 150,000 subscribers.

69. The queen is the only person in the UK who doesn't need a driver's license or a license plate to drive.

70. Elizabeth also does not need a passport to travel internationally.

71. As a princess, Elizabeth drove a truck and trained as a mechanic in World War II.

72. Whales, dolphins, porpoises and sturgeons are considered “Fishes Royal" and therefore the property of the monarch when caught within three miles of the UK coast.

73. The queen, when gifted rare animals such as jaguars, donates them to the London Zoo.

74. To pay for her wedding dress materials, she collected rationing coupons.

75. She has visited more than 115 countries.

76. After visiting Belfast in 2014, she referenced her June Game of Thrones set tour in her Christmas message. She even met some of the actors.

78. Her love of dogs came from her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria, who owned dachshunds and Scottish collies.

79. Only five other British kings and queens have ruled for 50 years or more.

80. Since her rule began, she has visited Edinburgh nearly every year during Holyrood Week. She stays in the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

The Palace of Holyroothouse

81. Queen Elizabeth II has given royal assent to, or passed, more than 3,500 Acts of Parliament after passed by the houses of Lords and Commons.

82. The Queen has visited the Vatican three times, most recently to visit Pope Francis in 2014.

83. The Royal Yacht Britannia traveled over 1 million miles in the more than 40 years it was in use by the royal family and that is an average of 25,000 miles a year.

The Royal Yacht

84. The Queen has traveled overseas more than 250 times.

85. Elizabeth has attended every Parliament opening with the exception of two, during which she was expecting two of her children.

86. Two of the more recent prime ministers were born during her reign: Tony Blairand David Cameron were born in 1953 and 1966, respectively.

87. Her love of horses began with a gift of a pony for her third birthday.

88. The Queen usually receives around 60,000 letters a year.

89. She made a radio broadcast in 1940 at the age of 14.

90. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have sent more than 45,000 Christmas cards.

Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh

* * *

Quotes by Queen Elizabeth II

Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreement.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.

I have to be seen to be believed.

The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?

The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

September 13, 2916, at 10:49am

I saw Hillary once working a rope line for more than an hour, a Secret Service man holding her firmly by the hips as she leaned over the rope and reached into the mass of arms and hands reaching out to her. She had learned the art of encountering the crowd and making it look personal. It was not glamorous work, more like picking fruit, and it took the sort of discipline your mother instills in you: those people waited to see you so by gosh you can treat them right.

So it’s no surprise she pushed herself to the point of collapse the other day. What’s odd is the perspective, expressed in several stories, that her determination to keep going reveals a “lack of transparency” - that she should’ve announced she had pneumonia and gone home and crawled into bed.

I’ve never gone fishing with her, which is how you really get to know someone, but I did sit next to her at dinner once, one of those stiff dinners that is nobody’s idea of a wild good time, the conversation tends to be stilted, everybody’s beat, you worry about spilling soup down your shirtfront. She being First Lady led the way and she being a Wellesley girl, the way led upward. We talked about my infant daughter and schools and about Justice Blackmun, and I said how inspiring it was to sit and watch the Court in session, and she laughed and said, “I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to show up in a courtroom where a member of my family might be a defendant.” A succinct and witty retort. And she turned and bestowed her attention on Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was sitting to her right. She focused on him and even made him chuckle a few times. I was impressed by her smarts, even more by her discipline.

I don’t have that discipline. Most people don’t. Politics didn’t appeal to me back in my youth, the rhetoric (“Ask not what your country can do for you”) was so wooden compared to “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” so I walked dark rainy streets imagining the great novel I wouldn’t write and was still trying to be cool and indifferent well into my thirties, when other people were making a difference in the world.

Hillary didn’t have a prolonged adolescence and fiction was not her ambition. She doesn’t do dreaminess. What some people see as a relentless quest for power strikes me as the good habits of a serious Methodist. Be steady. Don’t give up. It’s not about you. Work for the night is coming.

The woman who does not conceal her own intelligence is a fine American tradition, going back to Anne Bradstreet and Harriet Beecher Stowe and my ancestor Prudence Crandall, but none has been subjected to the steady hectoring that Mrs. Clinton has. She is the first major-party nominee to be pictured in prison stripes by the opposition. She is the first cabinet officer ever to be held personally responsible for her own email server, something ordinarily delegated to anonymous nerds in I.T. The fact that terrorists attacked an American compound in Libya under cover of darkness when Secretary Clinton presumably got some sleep has been held against her, as if she personally was in command of the defense of the compound, a walkie-talkie in her hand, calling in air strikes.

Extremism has poked its head into the mainstream, aided by the Internet. Back in the day, you occasionally saw cranks on a street corner handing out mimeographed handbills arguing that FDR was responsible for Pearl Harbor, but you saw their bad haircuts, the bitterness in their eyes, and you turned away. Now they’re in your computer, whispering that the economy is on the verge of collapse and for a few bucks they’ll tell you how to protect your savings. But lacking clear evidence, we proceed forward. We don’t operate on the basis of lurid conjecture.

Someday historians will get this right and look back at the steady pitter-pat of scandals that turned out to be nothing, nada, zero and ixnay and will conclude that, almost a century after women’s suffrage, almost 50 years after Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, a woman was required to run for office wearing concrete shoes.

Check back fifty years from now and if I’m wrong, go ahead and dance on my grave.

A torii is a gate with two overhead cross bars or lintels. Torii are found in front of almost every shrine in Japan. Their function is to mark the boundary between the sacred world of the shrine and the profane world outside. Shrines vary in size and design, some being over 25 meters tall and stretching over roadways. Others being just big enough to pass underneath. Indeed,. one theory to explain the etymology of the name suggests that it is related to the Japanese pass into "toori-iru."

No one knows for sure the origin of the torii (aka: tori and tori gate), However, there are several theories to explain the origin of the torii. Among them are:

1. In front of the towers in India where the Buddha's relics are kept there is a gate resembling a torii called a Traana (sic). Since the word and the object both resemble the twin lintelled gate in Japan there is a theory that this Buddhist gate is the origin of the Shinto torii.

2. In front of Chinese palaces and tombs there are "kahyou" (Japanese reading) which resemble torii. The Kanji for Kahyou are sometimes read as "torii" in Japan, and the same Kanji are used to describe the Japanese torii in China.

3. The Japanese had a long tradition of hanging shimenawa or rice straw rope between two poles. There is a theory that these "shime columns" were the origin of the torii.

4. When the goddess Amaterasu hid herself in the heavenly cave (ama no iwato) the other spirits arranged for the "eternal long crowing birds" (cockerels) to crow, which is one of the ways in which Amaterasu was convinced that dawn had arrived without her (that there was "another goddess as beautiful" as her). When she opened the door to the cave a little she was shown a mirror (which she presumably took for another god, but later she refers to it as herself, or her avatar on earth). Ceasing this opportunity, Amaterasu was dragged out of the cave to the relief of the assembled spirits. The place where the cockers perched may have been the origin of the torii. The use of cockerels crowing to fool supernatural things into thinking it is dawn is a theme common to other Japanese traditions.

Whether or not the torii relates to the above incident in the myth or not, since the characters used to represent torii are those of "a bird" and "to be," many interpret torii to mean a place where it is easy for birds to be and there is considerable evidence that torii have something to do with birds.

On at least two occasions in the Japanese creation (Kojiki) myth, birds are messengers between the spirits and humans. In one episode a bird or bird-woman is sent by Amaterasu from heaven to Japan as a messenger. She ends up being shot through the heart with an arrow. In another, when the proto-samurai, warrior hero, Yamatotakeru dies his spirit is taken to heaven by doves. The function of birds as emissaries between spirits and humans suggests it is appropriate that they should "be" at the boundary between the sacred world of the shrine and the profane world outside.

There is further evidence in that there are drawings in ancient Japanese tombs showing birds perched on torii-like structures, and there are wooden bird shaped items that were found at the ancient Oosaka prefectural government offices (Oosaka Fu) and at the top of and surrounding ancient tombs in Nara

Finally, the Aka tribe of Northern Thailand have a tradition of erecting gates resembling Torii at the entrance to their villages, upon the lintels of which are placed wooden effigies of birds. The birds are said to watch out to prevent the entrance of evil spirits into the village.

* * *

Possibly Related of the Torii Gate

India

China

Myanmar

An underwater investigation of coral bleaching in the South Pacific

by Justin Worlland

Richard Vevers has traveled the globe to photograph coral reefs since quitting his advertising job. In 2011 he cofounded the XL Catlin Seaview Survey, a collaboration between the University of Queensland and a number of research institutions, photographing underwater corals as they adapt to climate change. He captured the Great Barrier Reef during its latest and most devastating mass die-off, and documented how coral off the coast of Belize had partially recovered thanks to a no-fishing zone.

However, no dive has stunned Vevers as much as the sight of corals going white during an early March dive in the New Caledonia Barrier Reef, located about 1,000 miles from Australia’s better-known Great Barrier Reef.

Coral die-offs caused by a process known as bleaching tend to look as bland and lifeless, in contrast to the vibrant rainbow colors of thriving coral. Bleached coral reefs usually appear as an endless stretch of white coral and eventually turn to dead brown coral. But in New Caledonia Vevers found something different.

The corals he captures lit up fluorescently as their color left them slowly but surely. The crew captured the moment using their underwater SVX camera system—a technology that captures 360-degree imagery underwater. “In the past people simply haven’t gone to the right location at the right time,” says Vevers. “I was blown away… I’ve never seen something so beautiful, but it’s dying.”

The bleaching in New Caledonia represents just a small fraction of the total bleaching that has occurred across the globe since 2014. The ongoing bleaching event is the worst ever, with reefs affected from Florida to Australia, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It’s also the longest bleaching event in recorded history, and scientists say it shows no evidence of ending any time soon. With the Our Ocean conference scheduled to start today in Washington, there’s no better time to focus on one of the biggest threats to aquatic health.

A number of factors from water pollution to disease can irritate corals, causing them to expel the colored algae known as zooxanthellae that they live with symbiotically. Warm water temperatures caused by a combination of long-term climate change and short-lived weather phenomena like El Niño deserve the blame for the current bleaching episode.

Last year beat out 2014 as the warmest year on record and 2016 is on track to be even hotter. On top of that, sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific rose by more than 2°C (3.6°F) during the latest occurrence of the El Niño climate phenomenon. It only takes a sustained water temperature spike of 1°C (1.8°F) above average to upset corals and lead to bleaching.

“Rather than just being a single event tied to a single El Niño there has been continual bleaching in the Pacific,” says Mark Eakin, a NOAA coral reef scientist. “It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”

The corals in the New Caledonia Barrier Reef have been lucky by most measures—a drop in local temperatures has allowed many of them to recover. But corals in other locations haven’t been so fortunate. A recent survey of some areas of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suggested that more than a third of the corals in the region might have died, leaving a marine graveyard behind.

“The soft corals were just decomposing—animals literally dripping off the rocks,” says Vevers of his dive in the Great Barrier Reef. “The most horrifying part was that we just absolutely stank of rotting animals. That’s when you really realize that reefs are made up of billions of animals.

A full global accounting of how many corals have survived the latest bleaching episode will take months, if not longer, but coral scientists expect the worst. The consequences of losing coral reefs are catastrophic for the oceans. There’s a reason scientists describe reefs as the rainforests of the sea.

Reefs occupy just 1% of the world’s marine environment, but they provide a home to a quarter of marine species—including a unique set of fish, turtles and algae. Many of these species could be lost permanently, but with temperatures only expected to rise in the coming decades chances are slim that reefs will be able to rebuild from scratch.

You can’t grow back a 500-year old coral in 15 years,” says Eakin. “In many cases, it’s like you’ve killed the giant redwoods.”

The death of coral also represents a huge loss—as much as $375 billion annually—for the local economies along the globe they support. Reefs support local tourism and the commercial fishing industry. They also protect coastlines from flooding during extreme storms.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of coral loss is what it suggests about the future. The fragile nature of coral reefs leaves them hypersensitive to climate change, but ecosystems above ground and beneath the ocean will also be vulnerable to rising temperatures in the coming years and decades. And while humans can still stave off the worst effects of climate change, some level of warming remains inevitable.

“If you think of corals as canaries [in a coal mine], they’re chirping really loudly right now,” said Jennifer Koss, NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program director, at a recent press conference. “The ones that are still alive, that is.”

* * *

Pictures

Healthy Corals

Bleaching

The Circumcision of Jesus by Bellini

I was puzzled when I first learned about the Christian Feast of the Circumcision. The celebration, which dates to the sixth century or earlier, commemorates the circumcision of Jesus. Over the centuries Jesus’ foreskin (prepuce), which many churches claimed to possess, was worshiped as the “Holy Grail” of Christian relics. The foreskin relic located in a small Church in Calcata, Italy, was deemed the most authentic. Since the 16th century, the Calcata church has celebrated the Feast of the Circumcision with a parade featuring Jesus’ foreskin carried in a reliquary which villagers stormed to rapturously kiss.

A Jesus' Foreskin Relic

Unfortunately, the Calcata relic disappeared under suspicious circumstances in 1983. Christians in the parish mourned the loss. Was the Vatican the culprit in the theft, as some charged? Since 1900, when Pope Leo XIII threatened excommunication for anyone who spoke of Jesus’ foreskin, the Vatican has sought to shift the focus of the celebration to Mary, mother of Jesus, rather than the foreskin. Nevertheless, foreskin celebrations continued and are favored by traditionalists like Charles Pope.

Why would Christians, I wondered, celebrate - no less worship - Jesus’ circumcision? Weren’t differences about circumcision a major factor in the split between Judaism and Christianity?

Paul, recognized as the founder of Christianity as a separate religion, at first sought to make Judaism a world religion open to everyone – with Jesus, “the Messiah,” at the helm. The earliest converts to Paul’s version of Judaism were Jews. For them, circumcision was not an issue – they were all circumcised. But when Paul extended his reach to Gentiles he quickly realized that requiring circumcision would pose an insurmountable barrier to conversion. Greeks and Romans called circumcision mutilation, and they ridiculed Jews for the practice. Paul knew full well that he would meet fierce resistance if he invited uncircumcised Gentiles into the House of Israel. It’s no wonder then that Paul, a former Torah scholar, was obsessed with circumcision, as evident in many of his epistles. Paul knew that he was challenging the very foundation of Judaism: Abraham’s covenant with God. (Genesis, 17:10-13).

In his circuitous arguments, Paul introduced the notion of “circumcision of the heart” – a symbolic substitute for physical circumcision. He proposed that Abraham’s faith in God made him righteous and that he was pure before he was circumcised. Faith, Paul insisted, trumps physical circumcision: “But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.” (Romans 2:28-29)

Paul returned to Jerusalem three times over a 25-year period in an effort to convince the disciples of Jesus, led by Jesus’ brother James, to accept uncircumcised Gentiles into the Jewish fold. He was not warmly received, but he did, according to Acts of the Apostles, gain limited (if arguable) concessions. However, it was clear to Paul that Judaism as a whole would not accept the uncircumcised, since circumcision, as stated in the Torah, is non-negotiable (Genesis 17:14).

By the end of the first century, pagans were the chief converts to Christianity. Thus circumcision was abandoned and Christianity was on its separate path, a path that increasingly distanced the new religion from Judaism.

Why then the festival of circumcision, which seems to acknowledge, if not embrace, Jesus’ Jewish identity? According to one explanation, since Christianity is founded on Jewish history, prophesy, and lineage, Jesus had to be a Jew of the Davidic line to be a bonafide Messiah - and for that he had to be circumcised as prescribed in the Torah. Without the Jewish foundation, there would be no authentic or rooted Christian story. It’s important to recognize too that the circumcision of Jesus could not be denied; it’s reported in the Gospel of Luke (2:21).

To bond with Judaism and at the same time to deny the connection was a shaky tightrope for Christianity to walk. One way to navigate that precarious passage was to change the meaning of the rite of circumcision to tie it in with later Christian doctrines. For Jews, the circumcision ceremony celebrates the joy and ecstasy of fulfilling Abraham’s covenant, which establishes a unique relationship between Jews and God. The Christian version transforms circumcision into a celebration of pain and suffering.

Stain Glass Window Depicting The Circumcision of Jesus

“The Savior’s circumcision was the occasion of the first shedding of His precious blood. The Cross overshadowed the Lord Jesus even while He lay in a crib by swaddling bands bound. The knife which cut the Lord’s flesh on that day foreshadowed the centurion’s spear which would pierce His side, releasing the saving torrent, the blood and water (John 19:34).”

The Christian interpretation offers the confusing dichotomy that Jesus was circumcised but didn’t have to be circumcised – that his circumcision was primarily symbolic for forecasting the coming of Christianity.

Medieval and Renaissance artists picked up on this double message by showing the newborn Jesus about to be circumcised, as in Fra Angelico’s fifteenth-century painting Circumcision of Jesus.

Other artists of the period did the same. Yet the actual circumcision can’t be found in Medieval and Renaissance depictions of the infant Jesus. In paintings of Madonna and Childin which the genitals of the infant Jesus (looking more than eight days old) are clearly shown, he appears uncircumcised. This is evident in Pietro Perugino’s fifteenth-century Madonna and Child, Jan Mabuse’s sixteenth-century Madonna and Child, and Peter Paul Rubens 17th century, The HolyFamily with Saints Francis and Anne and the Infant Saint John the Baptist, as well as scores of others.

On view in the Renaissance galleries at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, there are numerous Madonna and Child paintings that displayed Jesus not circumcised, including works by master artists Francesco Francia, Cima da Conegliano, Andrea Mantegna, Luca Signorelli, Francesco Grenacci, Andrea del Sarto, Santi de Tito, Geovanni Bellini, Fillipino Lippi, and Bernard van Orley.

For those who wish to worship Jesus’ foreskin, they can easily find it in Medieval and Renaissance artworks.

Uncircumcised Jesus by Caravaggio

Ironically, despite the great effort to establish Jesus’ messianic credentials by connecting him to the Davidic line, in Michelangelo’s famous sculpture David is conspicuously uncircumcised.

Michelangelo's David

One theory explaining David not circumcised is that the circumcision was slight (non-removal of the entire foreskin) and imperceptible in accordance with some ancient Jewish tradition. First, even if there were such a practice, would Medieval and Renaissance artists be familiar with an obscure ancient Jewish variation? This “explanation” brings to mind a line in a Groucho Marx film: ” Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” What I see with my own eyes is Jesus uncircumcised in a vast collection of Medieval and Renaissance artworks. And that observation is consistent with other pervasive falsifications of biblical history in Medieval and Renaissance artworks that convert Jesus, his family, and close followers into Medieval and Renaissance Christians, without providing even a hint of their Jewish heritage and identities.

Some commentators have dismissed these falsifications as the “Renaissance style” of contemporizing figures. But, contemporizing does not justify stealing identities. Whichever color, facial features, attire, or setting an artist envisions for Jesus, he still should remain Jewish.

Other commentators defend falsification with arguments like this one: “Christian artists weren’t ‘falsifying’ Christ’s ethnicity. They were presenting Christ’s ethnicity according to a well-developed theological understanding that saw Christianity as the fulfillment of the shadowy revelations presented in the Hebrew Bible.”

This argument confuses two things: Jesus’ ethnicity and the Christian belief that he fulfilled [Jewish] prophecy. Jesus’ ethnicity was Jewish. The fact that he may have (according to Christian theology) fulfilled biblical prophecy doesn’t erase his identity. There are two sides to the Jesus story: Jesus the dedicated Jew and Jesus whose life and teachings inspired a new religion. There is no justification for eliminating one side of the story.

And this comment: “Isn’t the author committing a fundamental fallacy by ignoring the historical context in which pre-modern artists were producing their works?”

It’s unlikely that Medieval and Renaissance artists were advocating theology. More likely they were giving patrons, on whom they depended for a living, what they wanted: Christianized art. If a painter dared to depict Jesus’ Jewish heritage and identity – let’s say by picturing Jesus preaching and praying in a synagogue (which he did regularly according to the Gospel of Luke 4:16) – this would not only put that artist out of business but would most likely deliver him to the Inquisition for heresy. If anyone doubts that scenario, consider that as late as the 19th century (1879), German painter Max Liebermann incited outrage for his painting of a young Jesus (The12-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple with the Scholars) who appeared Semitic to many viewers. As a result of the public uproar, Liebermann redid the painting with a blond Aryan-looking Jesus. The new version pleased the critics.

Jesus in the Temple with Scholars by Max Liebermann

With respect to “ignoring” historical context, the historical context explains why falsifications could be so pervasive yet stand unchallenged. At the time, Jews were demonized, marginalized, and persecuted – as well as charged with killing Jesus. In that historical context artists wouldn’t dare offer a Jewish Jesus to a patron.

The dismissive comments also ignore the fact that setting Jesus apart from Jews - implying that Jesus and Jews were ethnically and religiously different, and in conflict - gave further license for the absurd charge that Jews were collectively responsible for the crucifixion. And these distortions had dire consequences for Jews.

Art historians, curators, and critics offer extensive commentary on the minutest details and nuances of artworks but ignore the glaring and obvious falsification of biblical history. In today’s spirit of reconciliation, which Pope Francis recently expressed, it’s time to acknowledge these falsifications.

In short, Jesus was born Jewish and was circumcised. He practiced Judaism throughout his life on earth. The Gospels say that and theologians both Christian and Jewish have acknowledged those points. Christianity has celebrated the circumcision of Jesus since the inception of an organized Church. Yet the actual circumcision is omitted from the vast collection of Medieval and Renaissance paintings picturing the infant Jesus. This is consistent with the omission of Jesus’ Jewish heritage in other artworks as well. Your beliefs about Jesus do not address these issues.

I am interested in hearing from you about this topic so please leave a comment. Thank you.

Egyptian mythology has a lot of gods. Some of them have loomed large in pop culture and the public imagination: Ra, Apophis, Anubis, Isis, Bast, Osiris, etc. However, some are far more obscure but that in no way diminishes how scary they are. Here are 10 absolutely terrifying Egyptian gods of whom you probably have not have heard.

Mafdet

Mafdet was an early goddess, usually depicted as a cat, who represented protection from venomous animals and justice/execution. When she wasn't a cat, she was a woman with a cat head. And a headdress of scorpion tales or snakes.

She was very much tied to execution and seeing her wasn't always because she was ridding you of a dangerous snake. One of her depictions was as a cat running up an executioner's staff. If you were unlucky enough to be an enemy of the pharaoh, you could be decapitated in the afterlife by using "Mafdet's Claw."

She was also the goddess that resulted from the Egyptians noticing that cats would drop dead animals at people's feet. Which the Egyptians reasoned meant that there was a cat goddess who did something similar. In Mafdet's case, she deposited the hearts of evildoers at the feet of the pharaoh, hearts that she had ripped out herself.

Ammit

"Ammit, Devourer of the Dead" is another one that you do not want to see in the afterlife. To be fair, she wasn't worshipped as much as feared. Ammit was a demon composed of the biggest animals that could eat an ancient Egyptian: lion, hippopotamus and crocodile. Head of a crocodile, front body of a lion, back body of a hippo.

In Egyptian mythology, gaining entrance to the underworld meant getting some important organs removed and put in jars. Once you died, the god Anubis weighed your heart against the feather of Ma'at, the goddess of justice and truth. If the heart was heavier than then the feather, it was "impure," and Ammit would eat it. Thus dooming you to wander as a restless spirit.

Shezmu

Shezmu was a lesser god of execution, slaughter, blood, and wine. "Wine?" Yes. wine, because he was known to remove the heads of wrong-doers and put them into a winepress to make a beverage with a very distinctive taste. He served the head wine to the righteous dead who probably could have done with a different drink to welcome them to the afterlife.

Babi

The "Bull of the Baboons," Babi's had two things going for him: a mighty phallus, which was used as the mast of the ferry carrying souls, and a tendency to feast on entrails. He is another underworld-associated deity and he was supposed to be either going to be very helpful to your dead self or very, very bad. On one hand, a person was supposed to invoke his name if you want to have successful sex in the afterlife. Dangerously unhinged fertility is one of his characteristics, as he's the alpha baboon with a never-flagging erection. On the other hand, he lives on human entrails and "murders on sight."

Ahti

She was a goddess with the head of a wasp and the body of a hippo, just to make clear how at odds she was with the world. Very little information about her survives except that she was spiteful.

Satet

Satet had two sides, just like the Nile flood she embodied. She was known as a fertility goddess and offered jars of purifying water. But, she was usually depicted as carrying a bow and arrows. Because, along with fertility, her domain was the world of hunting and war. She guarded Egypt's southern frontier by shooting the pharaoh's enemies full of arrows.

Menhit

Another cat goddess, Menhit was a war goddess, with the requisite aggression and murderous tendencies. Lion-headed goddesses are dangerous. She was often depicted as the wife of other war gods like Menthu and Anhur in some stories making them a couple to avoid getting angry. Her name could mean "the slaughterer", "the one who sacrifices", or "she who massacres." It doesn't really matter which one of those is the most accurate.

Maahes

Son of the very famous Bast and Ra (or sometimes Ptah instead), Maahes was a god associated with war and weather, two things that could go very wrong. He added to those big things a smaller connection to lotuses, knives and devouring captives. Vengeance against enemies is a major feature in the most terrifying of Egyptian gods.

Pakhet

Either a lion or a caracal, Pakhet was a regional cat goddess. She was associated with hunting, and spent her nights wandering the desert looking for prey. Do not run into anything given the name "Night huntress with sharp eye and pointed claw" in the dark. It will end very poorly. Her night wanderings also gave the goddess an association with desert storms, an extra but of terrifying on top of the idea of a giant cat goddess searching for prey in the dark.

Am-heh

The Egyptian underworld was a terrifying place. In addition to Ammit and Babi, you could also encounter Am-heh. A man with the head of a vicious hunting dog, Am-heh compounds that terrifying image by living on a lake of fire. His name meant "devourer of millions" and he could only be controlled by Atum, father of the gods. No other god could stop him from eating a person.

Thomas Eakins (self-portrait)

Thomas Eakins (aka: Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins: 1844 - 1916) was an American painter who carried the tradition of 19th-century American Realism to perhaps its highest achievement. He painted mainly portraits of his friends and scenes of outdoor sports, such as swimming and boating (e.g., Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871). The work generally acknowledged as his masterpiece, The Gross Clinic (1875), which depicts a surgical operation was received with distaste by his contemporaries because of its frank and unsentimental nature.

Max Schmitt in a Single Scull

The Gross Clinic

EARLY LIFE AND ARTISTIC TRAINING

Eakins was born in Phildelphia and, except for one extended study trip abroad and a brief trip to the West, virtually his entire life was spent in that city. From his father, a writing master, Eakins inherited not only the manual dexterity and sense of precision that characterizes his art but also the love of outdoor activity and the commitment to absolute integrity that marked his personal life. He did well in school, especially in science and mathematics.

As his interest in art developed, he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Concerned particularly with the human figure, he reinforced his study of the live model at the academy by attending lectures in anatomyat Jefferson Medical College and eventually witnessing and participating in dissections.

Eakins went to France in 1866. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and studied with the leading academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme for over three years. Unaffected by the avant-garde painting of the Impressionists, Eakins absorbed a solid academic tradition with its emphasis on drawing. That period of his life can be explored through his own reports to friends and family in The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins (2009), edited by William Innes Homer.

After completing his study in Paris, Eakins went to Spain late in 1869, where he was greatly influenced by the 17th-century paintings of Diego Velázquez and José de Ribera. Perhaps reacting against the rigors of his academic training, he preferred artists who used paint and brush boldly to express their sense of life, creating what he called “big work.” In Spain, his student days behind him, Eakins undertook his first independent efforts at oil painting.

EARLY CAREER

Eakins returned to Philadelphia in the summer of 1870. His earliest artistic subjects were his sisters and other members of his family and the family of his fiancée, Katherine Crowell. Redolent with the character of each individual in an intimate and personal domestic setting—pensive young ladies at the piano, children engrossed with toys scattered on the floor, Katherine playing with a kitten in her lap—these rich, warm portraits seem to express in color and mood the essence of what Lewis Mumford called “the Brown Decades.” Close family ties were important to Eakins, and the intimate harmony of his home life was seriously disrupted and saddened by the death first of his mother and later of Katherine Crowell.

Eakins resumed the vigorous outdoor life of his earlier years—hunting, sailing, fishing, swimming, rowing. These activities, like his family circle, provided him with subject matter for his art. A candid realist, Eakins simply painted the people and the world that he knew best, choosing his subjects from the life that he lived. Like the poetry of his aged friend Walt Whitman, who lived across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey, Eakins’s art was autobiographical, “a song of himself.” Eakins in fact often included himself as an observer in his own paintings—sculling in the background behind his friend in Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, peering intently at a surgical operation in The Agnew Clinic (1889), or treading water next to his setter dog Harry and watching a group of students swimming in The Swimming Hole(1885). Each of the early outdoor scenes, natural and informal at first glance, was in fact carefully composed on a perspective grid, with each object precisely located in pictorial space. Each image is further informed by Eakins’s personal knowledge of the scene depicted. Thus, color, composition, and the play of lights and darks subtly convey to the viewer a fuller understanding of and feeling for the concentrated energy of a sculler propelling his boat through the water or the taut equilibrium of the moment when a hunter standing in his boat balances himself, sights his target, and slowly squeezes the trigger.

EAKINS’S MASTERPIECE

In 1875 Eakins, who had yet to become well known, decided to paint a major picture for the Centennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia the following year. He took as his subject a scene that had become familiar to him—Samuel Gross of Jefferson Medical College operating in his clinic before his students. Gross was a magnetic teacher and one of the country’s greatest surgeons. Eakins often selected moments that reveal multiple aspects of a scene and in this picture depicts Gross as both surgeon and teacher. Gross stands in the centre of a sombre amphitheatre, starkly top-lighted by a flood of cool daylight cascading down from a skylight above; he is dressed in black street clothes. He has opened an incision in the leg of the anesthetized male patient stretched out before him. While his assistants probe the wound, the doctor turns, one hand holding a scalpel covered with blood, to tell his students what he has done and what he will do next. At the left a seated woman, perhaps the patient’s mother, flings an arm across her face, shielding her eyes from the scene, her fingers clawing the air in anguish. Her emotion and the note of pain and suffering inherent in the subject contrast strikingly with the cool professionalism of Gross, whose calm features reflect assurance and determination as well as compassion. The painting objectively records a realistic drama of contemporary life, full of feeling but free of sentimentality. The Gross Clinic is generally agreed to be Eakins’s masterpiece.

To Eakins’s dismay, The Gross Clinic was rejected for the art exhibition at the Centennial Exposition, and he had to exhibit it in a medical section. Critics and public alike responded to the painting unfavourably. While they could accept historical scenes of grisly martyrdoms or bloody massacres without qualm, The Gross Clinic represented blood and pain and suffering as immediate facts in Philadelphia. That was offensive and unacceptable. Viewers could not appreciate a picture that was neither entertaining nor ennobling but simply a frank statement of contemporary reality. The rejection of the painting was the first of many rebuffs Eakins was to receive from Victorian contemporaries who shared his world but not his values.

Furthermore, the painting underwent extensive changes under the direction of its then owner, Jefferson Medical College, in the years following Eakins’s death. This “restoration” completely altered Eakins’s painstaking, characteristic tonal concerns. The Gross Clinic was newly cleaned and restored in 2009–10, based on Eakins’s own detailed ink-wash drawing and a photograph made by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

MATURE PERIOD

From his earliest student days, Eakins had been primarily interested in studying and portraying the human figure. His early sculling scenes displayed the musculature of athletic men, and The Gross Clinic dealt directly with the subject of human anatomy. But Eakins found few subjects in contemporary Philadelphia that afforded opportunities for portraying the undraped human figure, especially females. He circumvented this by painting repeatedly a partly imaginary scene of William Rush, a much earlier Philadelphia sculptor, carving his statue of the Water Nymphand Bittern from a naked female model in the presence of a chaperon, which provided him with a pictorial pretext for portraying a nude woman.

In the late 1870s Eakins began to teach at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he became professor of drawing and painting in 1879. A popular and influential teacher, Eakins stressed anatomy and drawing from live, nude models as opposed to the study of plaster casts of antique sculpture. The fame of the Pennsylvania Academy as a centre for the best art instruction in the country spread among young artists. Yet notoriety accompanied repute, and objections were voiced increasingly from outside the academy to Eakins’s unrestrained use of nude models in front of mixed classes. The suspicious were unable to accept Eakins’s assurance that the relationship between artist and model was as innocent, objective, and professional as that between doctor and patient. Eakins continued to insist on the importance of teaching from nude human models and was finally forced to resign in 1886. Teaching had become a major part of his life, and this was another severe blow. He continued to teach sporadically at the newly formed Art Students League in Philadelphia and at the National Academy of Design in New York, and his personal relationships with young artists remained close. One bright moment during these difficult years occurred in 1884, when he married one of his pupils, Susan Macdowell.

As a corollary to his interest in anatomy, Eakins was fascinated withlocomotion—human and animal figures in motion. A commission in 1879 to paint Fairman Rogers driving his four-in-hand coach through Fairmount Park in Philadelphia led him to an intensive study of horse anatomy, and he made a number of sculpted wax sketches of horses in motion. He developed a serious interest in sculpture, an aspect of his art that only became appreciated much later. His interest in locomotion led to familiarity with the experiments in sequential photography being made in California byEadweard Muybridge. By 1884 Eakins himself was experimenting with multiple-image photography of moving athletes and animals. And in later years his interest in the human figure in motion led him to make a series of impressive paintings of boxing scenes.

Eakins’s interests ranged widely—sports, anatomy, locomotion, music, sculpture, photography—in directions often reminiscent of his great French contemporary Edgar Degas but without that artist’s innovative stylistic concerns. There is no evidence, however, that Eakins was aware of the work of Degas. Eakins’s art does demand comparison with that of Winslow Homer, the contemporary he most admired and his principal rival claimant to the title of the greatest American artist of the 19th century. Homer, also an objective realist, was similarly interested in outdoor sports and such sporting subjects as hunting, canoeing, and fishing. He also had a similar love for and identification with a specific place—in Homer’s case, Prouts Neck, Maine. Homer’s art is cool, detached, impersonal, and ultimately pessimistic in its view that humans are at the mercy of a deterministic universe. Eakins’s art, although often sad in its reflection of the buffeting each human receives in the course of his years, still is ultimately optimistic in its humanism, in its message that humans, through their individual actions—a doctor with a knife, a sculler with an oar, a hunter with a gun, a boxer with his gloved fist, a musician with his instrument, a singer with her voice, a chess player with his pieces, a scientist with his instruments—can act, do things, have an effect in this world. Despite the wide variety of his subject matter, almost all of Eakins’s art is portraiture, images of real people whom he knew and loved or respected. In his representations of the physical world, Eakins combined a technical ability to depict the external aspect of things with a probing for the essence of each scene. In his portraits of individuals, he similarly combined the faithful representation of the external and anatomical realities of each person with a deeper probing into the subject’s inner being and character. The people he portrays have lived, and often their experiences are etched on their faces. The wear and tear of years is not glossed over but celebrated in staring eyes, wrinkles, and slumping torsos.

SIGNIFICANCE AND INFLUENCE

Although always respected for his ability, Eakins remained throughout his years something of an outcast. His contemporaries, rather than allowing themselves to be shaken by his frank statements of the human condition and his joyous appreciation of the human body, ignored him. He sold few pictures, but fortunately a small private income matched his modest needs. Unfettered by the demands of clients, Eakins was free to paint what and, more importantly, whom he wished. His art was never compromised by the need to flatter patrons or sitters, and honesty was his only policy. Good friends and faithful followers rather than fame and fortune were his lot. Not until 1916, the year of his death, was one of his paintings acquired by museum—Pushing for Rail (1874), acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“the Met”), New York City—and the first major exhibition of his work was held the following year at the Met. But Eakins’s art had its long-range effect, serving as a model and an impetus for the burst of realism in American painting during the early years of the 20th century, especially in the work ofGeorge Bellows and the group called the Ashcan School of painters. And despite the increasing dominance of abstract art during the middle years of the 20th century, a pervasive and stubborn sub-stream of realism surfaced periodically—Regionalism, Pop art, the figurative work of artists such as George Segal and Leonard Baskin—to manifest the continuing debt of American art to the achievement of Thomas Eakins.

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Works by Thomas Eakins

Rowers

Swimming Hole

William Rush and His Model

An Arcadian

The Wrestlers

Cowboys Badlands

The Biglin Brothers Turning The Skate Boat Around

Untitled

Sailing

In the Mid-Time

Mending the Net

Two Boys Boxing at the Artilier

(A Photograph by Thomas Eakins)

Boy at the Artilier

(A Photograph by Thomas Eakins)

Students at the Old Swimming Hole

(A Photograph by Thomas Eakins)

Valerius de Saedeleer

Valerius de Saedeleer (August 4,1867 - September 16, 1941) was a Belgian landscape painter whose works are informed by a symbolist and mystic-religious sensitivity and the traditions of 16th-century Flemish landscape painting. He was one of the main figures in the so-called first School of Latem which in the first decade of the 20th century introduced modernist trends in Belgian painting and sculpture.

Valerius de Saedeleer

He was born in Aalst, Belgium, as the son of a small businessman who operated a soda and soap making factory. As a result of conflicts with his parents and problems at school, he left school at age fifteen and was forced by his father to study an acceptable profession. To this end, he was employed as an apprentice at a Ghent weaving workshop and took classes in weaving at an industrial school in Ghent. Without his parents' knowledge he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, where he met Theo van Rysselberghe and George Minne.

Unhappy with the academic teaching at the Ghent Academy, he moved to Brussels where he studied for four years with the impressionist landscape painter Franz Courtens. He then started working as an independent artist. In his early work, the artist remained indebted to his teacher Courtens and was influenced by Emile Claus. This showed he still searching for his own style.

On November 16,1889, the young artist married Clementina 'Clemmeke' Limpens (1867-1930), a grocer's daughter from Erembodegem, near Aalst. They had five daughters, of which the second, Elisabeth de Saedeleer (1902-1972), became an artist in her own right. The father of de Saedeleer's wife gave her a large sum of money as dowry. The young couple used the funds to establish a grocery in Blankenberge. The bankruptcy that followed quickly led to the couple's wandering and destitute existence.

They lived for short periods in Blankenberge, Wenduine, Damme and Ghent. In 1892 the couple lived in Afsnee, near Ghent, where de Saedeleer met Albijn Van den Abeele. Albijn Van den Abeele was the town clerk of Sint-Marten-Latem (often referred to by its shorter form 'Latem') and an amateur painter. He arranged for cheap lodging for artists in Sint-Marten-Latem and thereby supported the launch of one of the most important artistic movements in early 20th century Belgium. From April to October 1893, de Saedeleer lived in Sint-Martens-Latem. Here he reconnected with his friend George Minne and met the young student and aspiring poet Karel van de Woestijne. Between 1895 and 1898, de Saedeleer and his wife lived in Lissewege where they raised chickens.

In 1898, de Saedeleer moved back to Sint-Martens-Latem. There, he formed part of the first artist colony of the village together with Gustave van de Woestijne (the brother of Karel van de Woestijne) and George Minne. This group of artists were later referred to as the first School of Latem. The first School of Latem comprised mainly artists who had moved to the countryside in search of a close contact with the soil, to discover a primitive world untainted by modern civilization. There they hoped to find values such as integrity, spontaneity and simplicity. In their quest for that purity they re-examined the art of the old masters. They were influenced by the symbolism that sought to imbue reality with values. They were also inspired by a Christian world-view bordering on the mystical. The painters moved away from the then popular luminism of Emile Claus and his followers and turned towards a more somber and sober pallet, with influences of late Medieval Flemish painting. Around 1905, other artists moved to Sint-Martens-Latem. These artists, the most notable of whom included Constant Permeke, Albert Servaes and Gustave de Smet, are referred to as the second School of Latem. They started out as impressionists but would develop towards an expressionist idiom in reaction to their experiences in World War I.

Despite the success of a first exhibition in 1901 in Aalst, de Saedeleer struggled to live solely from his art and was forced to raise poultry for a living. The next year he visited the Exposition des Primitifs Flamands à Bruges, which left a lasting impression and influence on his work. In 1903, he exhibited his landscapes at the Salon in Paris, where he was influenced by the works of Émile-René Ménard. The same year he converted to Christianity. From 1904-1905 onwards, de Saedeleer found his own style. His work started to show a synthetic, purified vision. His landscapes no longer referenced time or space. He represented the still nature in a composed landscape which was almost always limited by a low horizon. The surface of his canvases was smoothed and he used a soft harmony of colors. The landscapes of this time have a sublime, almost unreal sense of space. In these works, the artist was engaged in a symbolic search for the soul of the landscape, likely under the influence of his conversion to Christianity. He often painted winter landscapes.

De Saedeleer exhibited at the 1904 exhibitions of the Berlin, Munich and Vienna Secession and a few exhibitions in Belgium. He started getting attention in the media and collectors started buying his work. By 1907, he had become the most successful of the painters from Latem. He was particularly well received in the German speaking countries, where the influence of Eugène Laermans on his work was noted. He exhibited at the Salon in Ghent in 1906. In 1907, he had an exhibition in Ghent together with Maurits Sys and Gustave van de Woestijne.

In 1908 he moved to Tiegem. The move to this more hilly area of Flanders was reflected in his landscapes. The mostly flat views of the Leie landscapes changed to more hilly landscapes. He remained successful, and in 1909 the Museums of Fine Arts of Ghent and Aalst acquired some of his works. In 1911 the Belgian royal family bought his Smidse in de Winter (Smithy in Winter), a snow landscape. He later exhibited at the "Pour l'Art" exhibitions in 1912 and 1914, and was one of the co-founders of "La Jeune Peinture Belge" in 1924. In 1913 his old friend from Latem, Gustave van de Woestijne, joined him in Tiegem.

From 1914 de Saedeleer and his family lived in Wales as refugees from the First World War. Together with his family and the family of his friend George Minne he lived a number of years in Cwmystwyth. Gustave van de Woestijne and George Minne and their families also resided in Wales during the war. The family de Saedeleer and other Belgian artists were brought to Wales by David, Gwendoline and Margaret Davies. The two Davies sisters were best known for putting together one of the great British art collections of the 20th Century.^[6] The initiative of the Davies family in inviting Belgian artists to Wales was prompted by their expectation that these artists would be able to inject local cultural life with their expertise. De Saedeleer's daughters studied weaving, binding and tapestry at Aberystwyth. The second daughter Elisabeth became acquainted with William Morris' daughter Mary from whom she learned tapestry weaving. The family became so accomplished at weaving that they even started giving courses in the craft themselves. De Saedeleer may have undertaken some conservation work on items from the Aberystwyth University Collection. He also exhibited his paintings of local views in the University's Alexandra Hall and was able to earn a living from his art.

De Saedeleer remained in Wales until 1920, when he moved to Etikhove. In 1933 he became an honorary citizen of the city of Aalst. In 1937 he moved to Leupegem. The work of de Saedeleer became gradually more decorative and he developed a luxuriant and whimsical calligraphy. His compositions often included a row of trees in the foreground, a Japanese-style effect with which he had already experimented before the war. This device is clear in the composition Winter inFlanders. He was also an accomplished colorist.

The work of de Saedeleer was influential on Belgian landscape painters of the next generation such as Albert Claeys and Albert Saverys whose work referenced de Saedeleer and his inspiration, Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

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Works by Valerius de Saedeleer

Winter

Le coin du village

En plein hiver

Winter Landscape

Wales

Winter Landscape

Winter Landscape in Wales

Summer Landscape in Wales

Lente te Etikhove

View of a Valley in Wales

La ferm au bord de l'eau

Road Through A Winter Landscape

Untitled

Mountains in Cartiganshire

De houten standardmolen van tiegem

Penis Envy: How Size Influences Self-Esteem

Penis Envy by Stanley Siegel was published in February, 2012 on PsychologyToday.com and removed two weeks later after public controversy.

The center of a man’s existence is his penis. At the root of his self-worth is how he feels about the size of his penis and what he thinks about its ability to please his partners.

At least that is how many men seem to experience life.

As men, our relationship with our penises is a complicated affair related to our sense of power. For some, life is a dick-wagging contest, a competition played out in the boardroom, bedroom and on the playing field. The guy with the big dick proudly asserts his entitlement with authority while the guy with the small dick bullies co-workers and acts like a-know-it-all.

There isn’t a man who hasn’t compared the size of his penis to other men in the locker room or at the urinal, a sizing-up that leads to either a prideful smile or a sense of inadequacy. It’s the shame, that’s coined a catch phrase: “I’m a grower, not a shower.”

One handsome, straight, young man told me, “Men think about their penis at least ten times a day.”

How often have men worried if they are going to measure up, literally, when getting naked with a new partner’s previous lovers? Will a grin or a smirk greet the bared private part? And when it’s two men about to have sex, isn’t there always that moment of anxiety when they wonder whose dick is bigger?

Then there is the foreskin. Prefer cut or uncut? Do you want to change that ?

Circumcised Penis

Uncircumcised Penis

Of course, if a guy deals with all these size issues and actually starts having sex without a panic attack, there’s always the matter of sexual performance nagging at him. Will he be able to sustain his erection? Let’s face it. There isn’t a man whose uncooperatively limp penis hasn’t embarrassed him at some time during sex.

All of this pales in comparison, though, to the mortal fear of premature ejaculation or taking too long to come and boring, no pun intended, one’s partner to death.

It’s a wonder any man ever has sex.

A penis is tied to a man’s sense of his virility. Beyond athleticism, job prestige or earning potential, the powerful penis is considered the true physical manifestation of masculinity. A man is supposed to spread his seed and have the proper tool to do it with.

Perhaps the anxiety begins in boyhood when, all too often, the first unforgettable penis comparison happens with a much bigger one – a father’s or older brother’s.

A Small Penis

Into adolescence, popular films and television shows like Hung and Sex in the City, where attractive women vocalize their preferences for well-endowed men, doesn’t alleviate the anxiety.

Watching pornography – as do most men – can set off alarm bells. The average human penis is about six inches long, but porn stars set the gold standard higher, at a whopping eight-plus inches.

The rationalization that “It’s not the size of my penis that matters, but who I am as person” doesn’t really seem to put the matter to rest.

To find out more directly what women think, I spoke with my daughter Alyssa, a fellow psychotherapist in Portland, Oregon, whose practice is largely female.

“Most men don’t speak about their penis to their partner, so most women take it for granted that men don’t worry about their penises until they come across the man who asks more than once for reassurance,” she told me. “My male clients express their concern more about maintaining an erection or pleasing their partner at first, but then as they get more comfortable with me, they might acknowledge that size is a concern. There’s isn’t a man with whom I’ve discussed this who hasn’t measured his penis and then gone online to see how his size stands up against others. I think the insecurity comes from a deep sense of male competition that’s inbred in our culture. Most men fear that that they will not be able to attract and keep a mate. Will she will fantasize about another man and leave me for someone better endowed?”

Some female patients have told Alyssa their partners’ sizes was not something they remembered except for those penises outside the average range. One woman said, “The really thick or really small ones are hard to forgot for different reasons, but, personally, I place more of an interest on our emotional relationship than on the size of his penis. When I see a nice one, I think it’s a lovely bonus.”

“I once had a patient who came to therapy,” Alyssa said, “because he felt that his penis was betraying him. When faced with the opportunity for intercourse, his penis would rarely comply. He was erect during masturbating but limp when faced with the actual prospect of intercourse with a woman. Until the therapy progressed, he did not make the connection that his emotions influenced his performance. Instead, he thought his penis had a mind of its own.

“Some women envy men for their ability to become quickly aroused and reach orgasm, but most don’t envy what Freud assumed: that women envy men simply because they have a penis.

Sigmund Freud

“One women had the perfect rejoinder: ‘Men can’t fake it. We can. So we have the power.’”

My own patient Sam, 30, worried about the size of his penis for as long as he could remember. He felt ashamed and depressed because of it.

By the time he came to therapy, he believed his penis was shrinking. He measured it regularly, his findings showing daily fluctuations. On some days, it even grew. Yet this is what he told me: “Overall, the data proves it’s getting smaller.”’

I had once read about Koro, a culturally specific syndrome from Southeast Asia in which there’s an overpowering belief that an evil spirit has the power to shrink a penis until it eventually disappears. But that was not quite Sam’s case.

When I asked Sam about his sex life, he told me he was still a virgin, too shy and self-conscious to have sex. He said he masturbated excessively and wondered if that might be the cause of his problem. When I asked what he thought about when he masturbated, Sam told me that he fantasized having an enormous penis that every woman admired. Unfortunately, though, Sam’s penis embarrassed him.

Naturally, the first thoughts I entertained were that Sam felt deeply inadequate and was metaphorically expressing his obsession with the small size of his penis.

But the truth was actually more interesting.

Sam’s father, a warm and affable fellow, worked as a rabbi in a local synagogue. To earn extra money he served as a mohel in the religious ceremony called a bris when baby boys are circumcised eight days after birth.

A Jewish Bris

After performing a bris, Sam’s father would make jokes at home. “That boy was hung like a horse.

Not anymore!” Sam’s mother, Paula, a math teacher, stifling a big laugh would reply, “Oh, Murray. How many centimeters?”

Sometimes in jest, his father would chase young Sam around the table with his “butcher’s” knife.

Sam was a handsome boy who did well academically. But even his popularity in school didn’t spare him some needling about his father’s religious duty. Sam took it all very personally. He internalized the teasing and began to taunt himself. He focused his attention on his penis and increasingly lived in fear of losing it.

Obvious, right? But when you’re caught in an obsessive spiral, it really is not so clear.

It took several sessions for Sam to make the connection between his past experience and present concerns, and when he did his family’s sense of humor returned.

During the fourth session, I handed Sam a ruler and asked him to go into the restroom and measure his penis. “Four-and-a-half inches flaccid,” he said when he returned.

I took the ruler and went into the bathroom to measure myself.

I came back and sat in my therapist chair. “You’re bigger than I am Sam.”

After a moment he said, with a hearty laugh, “I belittled it.”

It was the perfect beginning to our therapy.

Now Sam could learn to have sex.

As for myself. I have an average sized penis that has certainly changed with age. Like every other part of my 67-year-old body, it has more wrinkles than it once did and works better sometimes than others.

But, of course, it has something that a younger penis does not have: years of experience and the wisdom that comes with that.

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Unhung Hero: A New Cultural Dictum

Following a failed marriage proposal seen on YouTube ’round the world, Patrick Moote was suddenly confronted with a life-long insecurity of the largest proportions: a “small” penis. In a society that promotes the bigger-is-better ideology at every level, Moote decided to take matters into his own hands. If society feels he truly is too small to be a sufficient man, he wants to expose the reasons why and see if it can be resolved.

Like most children, Moote endured an adolescence of torment. Unfortunately, whereas many of those hurtful comments remain unsubstantiated or resolvable (e.g. too fat, too thin, braces, glasses, et. al), having an undersized penis may be the most psychologically damaging of any irreconcilable body feature.

To make this documentary, director Brian Spitz follows Moote on a much-needed journey of self-discovery, starting with trips to each of his ex-girlfriends to see if their dissatisfaction with him was linked to his manhood. Surprisingly, many of his former flames seemed more offended at the question than interested to answer. For Moote, his would-be fiancée’s rejection tapped into a well-known source of cultural conflict between the sexes. In general, men believe women are strongly concerned with penis size, and women believe men are too focused on their penises to understand sexual pleasure. For this reason, men with bigger penises often become arrogant with women because they believe their ability to satisfy them is built-in. Men with smaller penises believe women will never be satisfied with them sexually, and so they often view women as innately superficial or emasculating before any sexual contact has occurred. In Moote’s case, the fact that his girlfriend cited his “small penis” as her reason to end their relationship was both unexpected and, as becomes evident, suspect.

The more people with whom Moote shares his story, the more he begins to realize that the problem in his relationship had much more to do with his ex-girlfriend than his penis. One by one, people are shocked to hear that his girlfriend would stay in a relationship with him if she had such a problem with his body. It seems only rational that for a woman to wait until the possibility of marriage surfaces in a relationship before mentioning such a superficial sexual issue, there must be much more to it than that. But Moote needs a bit more reassurance, and so his journey continues.

Spitz follows Moote on a series of rollicking trips to his pediatrician, a urologist, a sex shop, a “jelqing” expert, and a host of other cultures, examining the peen-scene frankly from all angles. Jelqing, by the way, is a natural enhancement technique where the penis is stretched to induce small tears, much the way bodybuilders tear muscle in order to enhance its growth. Moote even visits a porn industry expo and asks both male and female porn stars and directors their thoughts about the hot topic of cock size.

The consensus: There are plenty of ways men can give pleasure regardless of penis size, or even the penis at all.

One actress explains that her foot fetish can be satisfied without any penile involvement, and when Moote asks legendary actor Ron Jeremy, “Do you have to have a giant dick?” Jeremy notes, “A good tongue is more important.”

According to Moote’s research, we spend over five billion dollars a year in penile-enhancement products. As Moote puts it, “That’s more than the entire budget for the Red Cross.” Within this context, it seems our culture is more concerned with blood flow to the male member than it is with blood flow to those who need it to survive. All of a sudden, the idea that a man’s view of his penis could be of the same magnitude as life-and-death begins to, well, take shape.

Moote then takes his adventure overseas to a place where men apparently have, on average, the smallest penises in the world: Korea. If there is any question about whether his problem is personal or cultural, he will find the answer there. When he arrives, he is surprised to find that, despite the figures, Korea is rather phallocentric. There are sculpture parks dedicated to penises, penis statues outdoors, and animal penises on many restaurant menus. After speaking with locals, he learns that their cultural interest in the penis has much less to do with size than with virility and strength. He begins to recognize the healthier outlook they have developed socially, possibly owing to their generally smaller members. The opinion seems to be that the penis is a source of strength unto itself, regardless of its measurements.

South Korean Penis Statues

Penis Festival, South Korea

Circumcised Korean Man

Moote also frames the concept of penis size in a biological context, citing Sexual Selection as an evolutionary reason why humans tend to have penises much larger than functionally necessary to survive. As the journey trudges on, Moote appears to find more reasons to obsess about his penis size than reasons why it matters. This paradox begs the viewer to question whether Moote’s exotic adventure ultimately results in a Moote point.

One thing is certain: Moote may have a below-average sized penis, but he has far above-average sized balls. Both courageous in his honesty and refreshingly down-to-earth in his exchanges with others, Moote becomes an essential voice in this ongoing, controversial debate. Unhung Hero may be just the type of necessary dick-tum from which we learn to shed this unnecessary stigma.

Unhung Hero was released on November 26, 2013.

This Is Just One Week Of Lies, Falsehoods, Exaggerations, Distortions and Whoppers Made By Donald Trump

by Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns

Sept. 24, 2016

All politicians bend the truth to fit their purposes, including Hillary Clinton. But Donald J. Trump has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in the general election, peppering his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts with untruths so frequent that they can seem flighty or random and even compulsive.

However, a closer examination, over the course of a week, revealed an unmistakable pattern: Virtually all of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods directly bolstered a powerful and self-aggrandizing narrative depicting him as a heroic savior for a nation menaced from every direction. Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, described the practice as creating “an unreality bubble that he surrounds himself with.”

The New York Timesclosely tracked Mr. Trump’s public statements from Sept. 15-21, and assembled a list of his 31 biggest whoppers, many of them uttered repeatedly. This total excludes dozens more: Untruths that appeared to be mere hyperbole or humor, or delivered purely for effect, or what could generously be called rounding errors. Mr. Trump’s campaign, which dismissed this compilation as “silly,” offered responses on every point, but in none of the following instances did the responses support his assertions.

Tall Tales About Himself

Mr. Trump’s version of reality allows for few, if any, flaws in himself. As he tells it, the polls are always looking up, his policy solutions are painless and simple and his judgment regarding politics and people has been consistent - and flawless. The most consistent falsehood he tells about himself may be that he opposed the war in Iraq from the start, when the evidence shows otherwise.

1. A supportive crowd chanted, “Let him speak!” when a black pastor in Flint, Mich., asked Mr. Trump not to give a political speech in the church.

Fox News interview, Sept. 15.

There were no such chants.

2. “I was against going into the war in Iraq.”

Speech in Florida, Sept. 19.

This is not getting any truer with repetition. He never publicly expressed opposition to the war before it began, and he made supportive remarks to Howard Stern.

3. Any supportive comments he made about the Iraq war came “long before” the war began.

Fox News interview, Sept. 18.

He expressed support for the war in September 2002, when Congress was debating whether to authorizemilitary action.

4. He publicly opposed the Iraq war in an Esquire interview “pretty quickly after the war started.”

Fox News interview, Sept. 18.

The Esquire interview appeared in the August 2004 edition, 17 months after the war began.

5. Before the Iraq invasion, he told the Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto something “pretty close” to: “Don’t go in, and don’t make the mistake of going in.”

Fox News interview, Sept. 18.

Not remotely close. He told Mr. Cavuto that President George W. Bush had to take decisive action.

6. When Howard Stern asked him about Iraq in 2002, it was “the first time the word Iraq was ever mentioned to me.”

Fox News interview, Sept. 18.

Mr. Trump expressed alarm about Saddam Hussein and the situation in Iraq in 2000 in his own book.

7. “You see what’s happening with my poll numbers with African-Americans. They’re going, like, high.”

Speech in North Carolina, Sept. 20; made same claim in Ohio, Sept. 21.

Polls show him winning virtually no support from African-Americans.

8. “Almost, it seems, everybody agrees” with his position on immigration.

Remarks in Texas, Sept. 17.

Most Americans oppose his signature positions on immigration.

9. He has made “a lot of progress” with Hispanic and black voters, and “you see that in the polls.”

Fred Dicker radio show, Sept. 15.

No major poll has shown him making up significant ground with black or Hispanic voters.

10. He was “never a fan” of Colin Powell.

Fox News interview, Sept. 18.

In his book “The America We Deserve,” he named Mr. Powell as among the “best and brightest” in American society.

11. “All the women came out and said they think Donald Trump is terrific” after The New York Times published an article scrutinizing his relationships with women.

Fox News interview, Sept. 18.

Only one woman who was quoted in the article came to his defense after its publication.

12. “Unlike other people” who only raise money for themselves during presidential campaigns, he also raises money for the Republican Party.

Fox News interview, Sept. 15.

Every presidential nominee forms a joint fund-raising agreement to share money with his or her national party.

Unfounded Claims About Critics and the News Media

It’s not just Mrs. Clinton whom Mr. Trump belittles and tars with inaccurate information. He also distorted the facts about his Republican critics, including President George Bush and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. And he claimed that Lester Holt, the NBC anchor moderating the first presidential debate, is a Democrat but Mr. Holt is a registered Republican.

13. In the primaries, Mr. Kasich “won one and, by the way, didn’t win it by much- that was Ohio.”

Fox News interview, Sept. 19.

Mr. Kasich crushed him in Ohio, winning by 11 percentage points.

14. Lester Holt, the NBC anchor and debate moderator, “is a Democrat.”

Fox News interview, Sept. 19.

Mr. Holt is a registered Republican, New York City records show.

15. The presidential debate moderators “are all Democrats.” “It’s a very unfair system.”

Fox News interview, Sept. 19.

Only one, Chris Wallace of Fox News, is a registered Democrat.

16. It “hasn’t been reported” that Mrs. Clinton called some Trump supporters “deplorable.”

Speech in North Carolina, Sept. 20.

It would be difficult to find a news organization that didn’t report her remark.

Inaccurate Claims About Clinton

Mr. Trump regularly dissembles about his opponent, attributing ideas to Mrs. Clinton that she has not endorsed, or accusing her of complicity in events in which she had no involvement.

17. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”

Remarks in Washington, Sept. 16.

Mrs. Clinton and her campaign never publicly questioned President Obama’s birthplace; Mr. Trump made it his signature cause for five years.

18. Mrs. Clinton had “the power and the duty” to stop the release of unauthorized immigrants whose home countries would not accept their deportation after they were released from prison.

Numerous speeches, including in Colorado, Sept. 17, and Florida, Sept. 19.

The secretary of state does not have the power to detain convicted criminals after they have served their sentences, and has little power to make foreign countries accept deportees.

19. Mrs. Clinton has not criticized jihadists and foreign governments that oppress and kill women, gay people and non-Muslims. “Has Hillary Clinton ever called people who support these practices deplorable and irredeemable? No.”

Speech in Florida, Sept. 19.

She has denounced jihadists and foreign countries on the same grounds, if not necessarily using the same words.

20. “Do people notice Hillary is copying my airplane rallies — she puts the plane behind her like I have been doing from the beginning.”

Twitter, Sept. 20.

He did not invent the tarmac rally or the campaign-plane backdrop.

21. Mrs. Clinton destroyed 13 smart-phones with a hammer while she was secretary of state.

Speeches in Florida, Sept. 15 and Sept. 19.

An aide told the F.B.I. of only two occasions in which phones were destroyed with a hammer.

22. Mrs. Clinton is calling for “total amnesty in the first 100 days,” including “a virtual end to immigration enforcement” and for unauthorized immigrants to receive Social Security and Medicare.

Speech in Colorado, Sept. 17.

She has never proposed this.

23. Mrs. Clinton is “effectively proposing to abolish the borders around the country.”

Numerous speeches, including in Texas, Sept. 17.

She is not even proposing to cut funding for the Border Patrol.

24. “Hillary Clinton’s plan would bring in 620,000 refugees in her first term alone,” and would cost $400 billion.

Numerous speeches, including in North Carolina, Sept. 20.

She endorsed admitting 65,000 Syrian refugees this year, on top of other admissions. Mr. Trump is falsely claiming that she wants to do this every year and is estimating the cost accordingly.

Stump Speech Falsehoods

Some warped or inaccurate claims have become regular features of Mr. Trump’s stump speech. He routinely overstates the scale and nature of the country’s economic distress and the threats to its national security, and exaggerates the potential for overnight improvements if he were elected.

25. “Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in before — ever, ever, ever.”

Speech in North Carolina, Sept. 20.

No measurement supports this characterization of black America.

26. Fifty-eight percent of black youth are not working.

Numerous speeches, including in Florida, Sept. 16, and Colorado, Sept. 17.

This misleading statistic counts high school students as out of work. Black youth unemployment actually was 20.6 percent in July.

27. Many dangerous refugees are being welcomed by the Obama administration. “Hundreds of thousands of people are being approved to pour into the country. We have no idea who they are.”

New Hampshire speech, Sept. 15.

The Obama administration has admitted more than 10,000 Syrian refugees, using an extensive screening process.

28. “We have cities that are far more dangerous than Afghanistan.”

Numerous speeches, including in Florida, Sept. 16; Colorado, Sept. 17; North Carolina, Sept. 20; Ohio, Sept. 21; and a Fox News interview on Sept. 21.

No American city resembles a war zone, though crime has risen lately in some, like Chicago. Urban violence has fallen precipitously over the past 25 years.

29. Ford plans to cut American jobs by relocating small-car production to Mexico, and may move all production outside the United States.

Fox News interview and New Hampshire speech, Sept. 15.

Mark Fields, Ford’s chief executive, said it was not cutting American jobs.

30. “We have a trade deficit this year with China of approximately $500 billion.”

North Carolina speech, Sept. 20.

He has made this claim repeatedly, but the trade deficit with China is significantly smaller.

Esoteric Embellishments

Mr. Trump often dissembles on subjects of passing interest, like the news of the day or the parochial concerns of his local audiences. But his larger pattern of behavior still holds: These misstatements, too, accentuate the grievances of his supporters, and cast his own ideas in a more favorable light.

31. Senator Bernie Sanders fell victim to “a rigged system with the super-delegates.”

Speeches in New Hampshire, Sept. 15, and North Carolina, Sept. 20.

Mr. Sanders did not lose the Democratic nomination because of super-delegates. Mrs. Clinton beat him in pledged delegates, too.

A Flat Earth model depicting Antarctica as an ice wall surrounding a disc-shaped Earth.

Members of the Flat Earth Society claim to believe the Earth is flat. Walking around on the planet's surface, it looks andfeels flat, so they deem all evidence to the contrary, such as satellite photos of Earth as a sphere, to be fabrications of a "round Earth conspiracy" orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies.

The belief that the Earth is flat has been described as the ultimate conspiracy theory. According to the Flat Earth Society's leadership, its ranks have grown by 200 people (mostly Americans and Britons) per year since 2009. Judging by the exhaustive effort flat-earthers have invested in fleshing out the theory on their website, as well as the staunch defenses of their views they offer in media interviews and on Twitter, it would seem that these people genuinely believe the Earth is flat.

But in the 21st century, can they be serious? And if so, how is this psychologically possible?

Through a flat-earther's eyes

First, a brief tour of the worldview of a flat-earther: While writing off buckets of concrete evidence that Earth is spherical, they readily accept a laundry list of propositions that some would call ludicrous. The leading flat-earther theory holds that Earth is a disc with the Arctic Circle in the center and Antarctica, a 150-foot-tall wall of ice, around the rim. NASA employees, they say, guard this ice wall to prevent people from climbing over and falling off the disc. Earth's day and night cycle is explained by positing that the sun and moon are spheres measuring 32 miles (51 kilometers) that move in circles 3,000 miles (4,828 km) above the plane of the Earth. (Stars, they say, move in a plane 3,100 miles up.) Like spotlights, these celestial spheres illuminate different portions of the planet in a 24-hour cycle. Flat-earthers believe there must also be an invisible "antimoon" that obscures the moon during lunar eclipses.

Furthermore, Earth's gravity is an illusion, they say. Objects do not accelerate downward; instead, the disc of Earth accelerates upward at 32 feet per second squared (9.8 meters per second squared), driven up by a mysterious force called dark energy. Currently, there is disagreement among flat-earthers about whether or not Einstein's theory of relativity permits Earth to accelerate upward indefinitely without the planet eventually surpassing the speed of light. (Einstein's laws apparently still hold in this alternate version of reality.)

As for what lies underneath the disc of Earth, this is unknown, but most flat-earthers believe it is composed of "rocks.

Then, there's the conspiracy theory: Flat-earthers believe photos of the globe are photo-shopped; GPS devices are rigged to make airplane pilotsthink they are flying in straight lines around a sphere when they are actually flying in circles above a disc. The motive for world governments' concealment of the true shape of the Earth has not been ascertained, but flat-earthers believe it is probably financial. "In a nutshell, it would logically cost much less to fake a space program than to actually have one, so those in on the Conspiracy profit from the funding NASA and other space agencies receive from the government," the flat-earther website's FAQ page explains.

It's no joke

The theory follows from a mode of thought called the "Zetetic Method," an alternative to the scientific method, developed by a 19th-century flat-earther, in which sensory observations reign supreme. "Broadly, the method places a lot of emphasis on reconciling empiricism and rationalism, and making logical deductions based on empirical data," Flat Earth Society vice president Michael Wilmore, an Irishman, told Life's Little Mysteries. In Zetetic astronomy, the perception that Earth is flat leads to the deduction that it must actually be flat; the antimoon, NASA conspiracy and all the rest of it are just rationalizations for how that might work in practice.

Those details make the flat-earthers' theory so elaborately absurd it sounds like a joke, but many of its supporters genuinely consider it a more plausible model of astronomy than the one found in textbooks. In short, they aren't kidding.

"The question of belief and sincerity is one that comes up a lot," Wilmore said. "If I had to guess, I would probably say that at least some of our members see the Flat Earth Society and Flat Earth Theory as a kind of epistemological exercise, whether as a critique of the scientific method or as a kind of 'solipsism for beginners.' There are also probably some who thought the certificate would be kind of funny to have on their wall. That being said, I know many members personally, and I am fully convinced of their belief."

Wilmore counts himself among the true believers. "My own convictions are a result of philosophical introspection and a considerable body of data that I have personally observed, and which I am still compiling,” he said.

Strangely, Wilmore and the society's president, a 35-year-old Virginia-born Londoner named Daniel Shenton, both think the evidence for global warming is strong, despite much of this evidence coming from satellite data gathered by NASA, the kingpin of the "round Earth conspiracy." They also accept evolution and most other mainstream tenets of science.

Conspiracy theory psychology

As inconceivable as their belief system seems, it doesn't really surprise experts. Karen Douglas, a psychologist at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom who studies the psychology of conspiracy theories, says flat-earthers' beliefs cohere with those of other conspiracy theorists she has studied.

"It seems to me that these people do generally believe that the Earth is flat. I'm not seeing anything that sounds as if they're just putting that idea out there for any other reason," Douglas told Life's Little Mysteries.

She said all conspiracy theories share a basic thrust: They present an alternative theory about an important issue or event, and construct an (often) vague explanation for why someone is covering up that "true" version of events. "One of the major points of appeal is that they explain a big event but often without going into details," she said. "A lot of the power lies in the fact that they are vague."

The self-assured way in which conspiracy theorists stick to their story imbues that story with special appeal. After all, flat-earthers are more adamant that the Earth is flat than most people are that the Earth is round (probably because the rest of us feel we have nothing to prove). "If you're faced with a minority viewpoint that is put forth in an intelligent, seemingly well-informed way, and when the proponents don't deviate from these strong opinions they have, they can be very influential. We call that minority influence," Douglas said.

In a recent study, Eric Oliver and Tom Wood, political scientists at the University of Chicago, found that about half of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory, from the notion that 9/11 was an inside job to the JFK conspiracy. "Many people are willing to believe many ideas that are directly in contradiction to a dominant cultural narrative," Oliver told Life's Little Mysteries. He says conspiratorial belief stems from a human tendency to perceive unseen forces at work, known as magical thinking.

However, flat-earthers don't fit entirely snugly in this general picture. Most conspiracy theorists adopt many fringe theories, even ones that contradict each other. Meanwhile, flat-earthers' only hang-up is the shape of the Earth. "If they were like other conspiracy theorists, they should be exhibiting a tendency toward a lot of magical thinking, such as believing in UFOs, ESP, ghosts, the Devil, or other unseen, intentional forces," Oliver wrote in an email. "It doesn't sound like they do, which makes them very anomalous relative to most Americans who believe in conspiracy theories."

* * *

Pictures of the Concept of a Flat Earth