May 15, 2011

"There are no exceptions to the rule that everybody likes to be an exception to the rule." --- Malcolm Forbes

Lesbia eucharis

THE SHORE OF THE TURQUOISE SEA

RUINS OF LAWRENCE, KANSAS

Controversy swirls around William Clarke Quantrill. Some people would consider him a patriot of the South, doing his part again Northern tyranny. Others would consider him to be a lawless butcher that took advantage of the disarray brought about by the Civil War to assuage his need for brutality and cruelty. If we judge Quantrill by today's standards, most would agree with the latter description. Historians, however, look at an individual such as Quantrill in the context of his own time. Following is a critical, historical look at this controversial figure. Quantrill was born in Ohio in 1837. He decided to become a schoolteacher as a young man and started his profession. However, he decided to leave Ohio to try and make more money for himself and his family. At this time, Kansas was deeply embroiled in violence between pro-slavery and free soil proponents. He had grown up in a Unionist family, and he himself espoused Free Soil beliefs. He found it hard to make any more money in Kansas and after returning home for a time decided to quit his profession and sign up as a teamster from Fort Leavenworth. His mission was to resupply the Federal Army embroiled in a fight against the Mormons in Utah. During this mission, he met numerous pro-slavery Southerners who deeply affected his beliefs. By the time of his return from this mission, he had become a staunch Southern supporter. He also found that he could make much more money through thievery. Thus, Quantrill began a much less legitimate career. When the Civil War began, he gathered a small band of men and began making profitable hit-and-run attacks against the Federal troops. Quantrill and his men staged numerous raids into Kansas during the early part of the Civil War. He was quickly labeled an outlaw by the Union for his attacks on pro-Union forces. He was involved in several skirmishes with Jayhawkers (pro Union guerilla bands) and eventually was made a Captain in the Confederate Army. His attitude toward his role in the Civil War drastically changed in 1862 when the Commander of the Department of Missouri, Major General Henry W. Halleck ordered that guerrillas such as Quantrill and his men would be treated as robbers and murderers, not normal prisoners of war. Before this proclamation, Quantrill acted as if he were a normal soldier adhering to principles of accepting enemy surrender. After this, he gave an order to give 'no quarter.' In 1863, Quantrill set his sights on Lawrence, Kansas which he said was full of Union sympathizers. Before the attack occurred, many female relatives of Quantrill's Raiders were killed when a prison collapsed in Kansas City. The Union Commander was given the blame and this fanned the already fearsome flames of the Raiders. On August 21, 1863, Quantrill led his band of about 450 men into Lawrence, Kansas. They attacked this pro-Union stronghold killing over 150 men, few of them offering resistance. In addition, Quantrill's Raiders burned and looted the town. In the North, this event became known as the Lawrence Massacre and was vilified as one of the worst events of the Civil War.

Quantrill died of wounds received in Kentucky in 1865, with only a few staunch supporters left.  Among these appear to have been Frank James and his younger brother, Jesse James.

BATTLE OF LAWRENCE, KANSAS

FROM THE DIARY OF JESSE JAMES Lawrence, Kansas August 22, 1863

"Yesterday was a great day for us guerillas. We are in Lawrence, Kansas, and yesterday over two hundred Union soldiers died. 180 buildings also burned to the ground. It was indescribable, I've never seen anything so magnificent but so violent. It was a heavenly hell. It was absolutely marvelous, and to think that I took part in it, it was a perfect day. At the break of dawn, the fog was thick enough to wear we could sneak into the city undetected. When we reached Lawrence, all hell broke loose. We rode through the town, killing every soldier we saw. William Quantrill, our leader, told us to leave nothing of this city when we leave, so we used torches and matches to burn every building in sight. I killed seventeen people that day, a new record! The attack will be remembered as a preempt for the rest of the Union and Confederate. A turnaround for us, the Union won't judge us as weaklings, but a strong force ready to win this war!"

SUMMER SONG

STILL LIFE

Edo--once also spelled Yedo or Yeddo--is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868.
The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the last masterwork of the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige (also known as Ando), is a series of landscape ukiyo-e prints whose subject matter is views of the city of Edo and its outskirts. It is composed of 118 prints designed by Hiroshige I, one print by Hiroshige II and a Table of Content, totaling 120 prints as a complete set. The series, along with his Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, is not only the most renowned polychrome woodblock prints of famous placesby Hiroshige, but also, with its bold compositional contrast between foreground and background and assimilation of the Western linear perspective, represents an apex of the landscape ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period.	Its superb artistic quality was also recognized in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, and the marked influence it exerted on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters such as Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin is well-known. Furthermore, since the Tokyo Association for the Crafts of Traditional Woodblock Printmaking completed its project of reprinting the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo in 2003, the number of exhibitions and publications related to the series has risen. At the same time, new scholarly works on its development of pictorial compositions and its place in a wider historical background have been undertaken in recent years, showing its continuing vitality as an object of research.

ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO) NUMBER FIFTY-TWO

AKASAKA KIRIBATAKE

The place name "Kiribatake" in Hiroshige's day referred to a stretch of land along the southern shore of Tameike, an elongated reservoir which formed part of the outer moat of Edo Castle. In Hiroshige's view, we see Tameike curving northward in the distance, where the water then passed over a spillway and into the lower moats.  As we see here, lotus plants were scattered through the shallow, swampy pond. In the immediate foreground, Hiroshige has placed two paulownia trees.  These dominate the composition, their gigantic leaves and spent flowering crests depicted in careful detail. Across Tameike to the left is the hill surmounted by Samo Shrine, whose festival we encountered in the previous print.  The shrine itself is out of sight, but the elegant vuildings along the pond are part of a cluster of Buddhist temples affiliated with it.

Jomanda	Jugendstiel

Tarbosaurus Tarbosaurus ("Terrifying lizard") is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that flourished in Asia between 70 and 65 million years ago, near the end of the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils have been recovered in Mongolia with more fragmentary remains found further afield in parts of China. Although many species have been named, modern paleontologists recognize only one, T. bataar, as valid. Some experts contend that this species is actually an Asian representative of the North American genus Tyrannosaurus. Tarbosaurus lived in a humid floodplain criss-crossed by river channels. In this environment, it was an apex predator at the top of the food chain, probably preying on other large dinosaurs like the hadrosaur Saurolophus or the sauropod Nemegtosaurus.

The African Wood Owl, Strix woodfordii, is a medium-sized owl with dark eyes and no ear tufts. It is 30 to 36 cm long and weighs from 240 to 350 grams. It lives in Africa from Senegambia to Sudan and south to Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and on the east coast to South Africa.

It lives mainly in forest and woodland though it sometimes inhabits plantations. It eats mostly insects but will also eat reptiles, small mammals, and other birds.

It breeds from July to October and lays 1 to 3 eggs in a hollow in a tree. It will then incubate the eggs for about 31 days. Five weeks after the eggs hatch, the young will leave the nest and can fly 2 weeks later. The young will remain with the parents for about four months and will sometimes stay till the next breeding season. Its call is a loud series of fast hoots. It is not threatened and is common in almost all of its range.

GEISHA FIGURINES

VIEW OF CAPRI

The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 hit the Florida Keys.  Over 400 were killed and the railroad to Key West was destroyed.  It was the most powerful hurricane to ever hit the U.S., with winds estimated at 200 mph. Looking at the facts behind this storm, the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 was the first ever Category Five Hurricane on record to hit the United States. It held the distinction of being the only Cat Five storm to hit the United States coastline for 34 years until Hurricane Camille roared ashore in August, 1969. Nevertheless, it still does hold the distinction of being the most intense hurricane to make landfall in the United States. Forming on August 29th, 1935, this monstrous hurricane was only the second named storm of the 1935 season, which was overall a fairly quiet season by most standards with six named storms the entire year. Five of those storms went on to become hurricanes, and three of them became major hurricanes of Category Three strength or better on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. In addition, there was one Category Two Hurricane that year as well. The Labor Day Hurricane, which was the longest lasting storm of 1935 with a duration of 13 days, was a very small storm, on the order of Hurricane Andrew, which also had a similar path. Andrew moved just to the north of the Labor Day Hurricane's track when both storms were near Florida while the Labor Day Hurricane hooked to the north much sooner than Andrew did. The storm actually made two landfalls, both in Florida. The other landfall was in the area of the Big Bend region of Florida, where it came ashore as a Category Two Hurricane according to records from the NHC archives. Another interesting fact about this storm was how long it maintained hurricane strength. The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 was still a Category One Hurricane over a week after striking the Keys when it was beyond the Canadian Maritimes, and heading into the much colder waters of the North Atlantic.

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