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Kahlil Gibran

Gibran Khalil Gibran (جُبْرَان خَلِيل جُبْرَان,, , or , ; January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931), usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran ( pronounced ), was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist; he was also considered a philosopher, although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.

Born in Bsharri, a village of the Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate to a Maronite Christian family, young Gibran immigrated with his mother and siblings to the United States in 1895. As his mother worked as a seamstress, he was enrolled at a school in Boston, where his creative abilities were quickly noticed by a teacher who presented him to photographer and publisher F. Holland Day. Gibran was sent back to his native land by his family at the age of fifteen to enroll at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut. Returning to Boston upon his youngest sister's death in 1902, he lost his older half-brother and his mother the following year, seemingly relying afterwards on his remaining sister's income from her work at a dressmaker's shop for some time.

In 1904, Gibran's drawings were displayed for the first time at Day's studio in Boston, and his first book in Arabic was published in 1905 in New York City. With the financial help of a newly met benefactress, Mary Haskell, Gibran studied art in Paris from 1908 to 1910. While there, he came in contact with Syrian political thinkers promoting rebellion in Ottoman Syria after the Young Turk Revolution; some of Gibran's writings, voicing the same ideas as well as anti-clericalism, would eventually be banned by the Ottoman authorities. In 1911, Gibran settled in New York, where his first book in English, The Madman, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1918, with writing of The Prophet or The Earth Gods also underway. His visual artwork was shown at Montross Gallery in 1914, and at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. in 1917. He had also been corresponding remarkably with May Ziadeh since 1912. In 1920, Gibran re-founded the Pen League with fellow Mahjari poets. By the time of his death at the age of 48 from cirrhosis and incipient tuberculosis in one lung, he had achieved literary fame on "both sides of the Atlantic Ocean", and The Prophet had already been translated into German and French. His body was transferred to his birth village of Bsharri (in present-day Lebanon), to which he had bequeathed all future royalties on his books, and where a museum dedicated to his works now stands.

In the words of Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Gibran's life was "often caught between Nietzschean rebellion, Blakean pantheism and Sufi mysticism." Gibran discussed different themes in his writings and explored diverse literary forms. Salma Khadra Jayyusi has called him "the single most important influence on Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of [the twentieth] century," and he is still celebrated as a literary hero in Lebanon. At the same time, "most of Gibran's paintings expressed his personal vision, incorporating spiritual and mythological symbolism," with art critic Alice Raphael recognizing in the painter a classicist, whose work owed "more to the findings of Da Vinci than it [did] to any modern insurgent." His "prodigious body of work" has been described as "an artistic legacy to people of all nations".

Childhood
Gibran was born January 6, 1883, in the village of Bsharri in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Syria (modern-day Lebanon). His parents, Khalil Sa'ad Gibran and Kamila Rahmeh, the daughter of a priest, were Maronite Christian. As written by Bushrui and Jenkins, they would set for Gibran an example of tolerance by "refusing to perpetuate religious prejudice and bigotry in their daily lives." Kamila's paternal grandfather had converted from Islam to Christianity. She was thirty when Gibran was born, and Gibran's father, Khalil, was her third husband. Gibran had two younger sisters, Marianna and Sultana, and an older half-brother, Boutros, from one of Kamila's previous marriages. Gibran's family lived in poverty. In 1888, Gibran entered Bsharri's one-class school, which was run by a priest, and there he learnt the rudiments of Arabic, Syriac, and arithmetic.

Gibran's father initially worked in an apothecary, but he had gambling debts he was unable to pay. He went to work for a local Ottoman-appointed administrator. In 1891, while acting as a tax collector, he was removed and his staff was investigated. Khalil was imprisoned for embezzlement, and his family's property was confiscated by the authorities. Kamila decided to follow her brother to the United States. Although Khalil was released in 1894, Kamila remained resolved and left for New York on June 25, 1895, taking Boutros, Gibran, Marianna and Sultana with her.

Kamila and her children settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second-largest Syrian-Lebanese-American community in the United States. Gibran entered the Josiah Quincy School on September 30, 1895. School officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. His name was registered using the anglicized spelling 'Kahlil Gibran'. His mother began working as a seamstress peddler, selling lace and linens that she carried from door-to-door. His half-brother Boutros opened a shop. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at Denison House, a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer and publisher F. Holland Day, who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. In March 1898, Gibran met Josephine Preston Peabody, eight years his senior, at an exhibition of Day's photographs "in which Gibran's face was a major subject." Gibran would develop a romantic attachment to her. The same year, a publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers.

Kamila and Boutros wanted Gibran to absorb more of his own heritage rather than just the Western aesthetic culture he was attracted to. Thus, at the age of 15, Gibran returned to his homeland to study Arabic literature for three years at the Collège de la Sagesse, a Maronite-run institute in Beirut, also learning French. In his final year at the school, Gibran created a student magazine with other students, including Youssef Howayek (who would remain a lifelong friend of his), and he was made the "college poet". Gibran graduated from the school at eighteen with high honors, then went to Paris to learn painting, visiting Greece, Italy, and Spain on his way there from Beirut. On April 2, 1902, Sultana died at the age of 14, from what is believed to have been tuberculosis. Upon learning about it, Gibran returned to Boston, arriving two weeks after Sultana's death. The following year, on March 12, Boutros died of the same disease, with his mother passing from cancer on June 28. Two days later, Peabody "left him without explanation." Marianna supported Gibran and herself by working at a dressmaker's shop.

Debuts, Mary Haskell, and second stay in Paris
Gibran held the first art exhibition of his drawings in January 1904 in Boston at Day's studio. During this exhibition, Gibran met Mary Haskell, the headmistress of a girls' school in the city, nine years his senior. The two formed a friendship that lasted the rest of Gibran's life. Haskell would spend large sums of money to support Gibran and would also edit all of his English writings. The nature of their romantic relationship remains obscure; while some biographers assert the two were lovers but never married because Haskell's family objected, other evidence suggests that their relationship was never physically consummated. Gibran and Haskell were engaged briefly between 1910 and 1911. According to Joseph P. Ghougassian, Gibran had proposed to her "not knowing how to repay back in gratitude to Miss Haskell," but Haskell called it off, making it "clear to him that she preferred his friendship to any burdensome tie of marriage." Haskell would later marry Jacob Florance Minis in 1926, while remaining Gibran's close friend, patroness and benefactress, and using her influence to advance his career.

It was in 1904 also that Gibran met Amin al-Ghurayyib, editor of Al-Mohajer ('The Emigrant'), where Gibran started to publish articles. In 1905, Gibran's first published written work was A Profile of the Art of Music, in Arabic, by Al-Mohajer's printing department in New York City. His next work, Nymphs of the Valley, was published the following year, also in Arabic. On January 27, 1908, Haskell introduced Gibran to her friend writer Charlotte Teller, aged 31, and in February, to Émilie Michel (Micheline), a French teacher at Haskell's school, aged 19. Both Teller and Micheline agreed to pose for Gibran as models and became close friends of his. The same year, Gibran published Spirits Rebellious in Arabic, a novel deeply critical of secular and spiritual authority. According to Barbara Young, a late acquaintance of Gibran, "in an incredibly short time it was burned in the market place in Beirut by priestly zealots who pronounced it 'dangerous, revolutionary, and poisonous to youth. The Maronite Patriarchate would let the rumor of his excommunication wander, but would never officially pronounce it.

In July 1908, with Haskell's financial support, Gibran went to study art in Paris at the Académie Julian where he joined the atelier of Jean-Paul Laurens. Gibran had accepted Haskell's offer partly so as to distance himself from Micheline, "for he knew that this love was contrary to his sense of gratefulness toward Miss Haskell"; however, "to his surprise Micheline came unexpectedly to him in Paris." "She became pregnant, but the pregnancy was ectopic, and she had to have an abortion, probably in France." Micheline had returned to the United States by late October. Gibran would pay her a visit upon her return to Paris in July 1910, but there would be no hint of intimacy left between them.

By early February 1909, Gibran had "been working for a few weeks in the studio of Pierre Marcel-Béronneau", and he "used his sympathy towards Béronneau as an excuse to leave the Académie Julian altogether." In December 1909, Gibran started a series of pencil portraits that he would later call "The Temple of Art", featuring "famous men and women artists of the day" and "a few of Gibran's heroes from past times." While in Paris, Gibran also entered into contact with Syrian political dissidents, in whose activities he would attempt to be more involved upon his return to the United States. In June 1910, Gibran visited London with Howayek and Ameen Rihani, whom Gibran had met in Paris. Rihani, who was six years older than Gibran, would be Gibran's role model for a while, and a friend until at least May 1912. Gibran biographer Robin Waterfield argues that, by 1918, "as Gibran's role changed from that of angry young man to that of prophet, Rihani could no longer act as a paradigm". Haskell (in her private journal entry of May 29, 1924) and Howayek also provided hints at an enmity that began between Gibran and Rihani sometime after May 1912.

Return to the United States and growing reputation
Gibran sailed back to New York City from Boulogne-sur-Mer on the Nieuw Amsterdam on October 22, 1910, and was back in Boston by November 11. By February 1911, Gibran had joined the Boston branch of a Syrian international organization, the Golden Links Society. He lectured there for several months "in order to promote radicalism in independence and liberty" from Ottoman Syria. At the end of April, Gibran was staying in Teller's vacant flat at 164 Waverly Place in New York City. "Gibran settled in, made himself known to his Syrian friends—especially Amin Rihani, who was now living in New York—and began both to look for a suitable studio and to sample the energy of New York." As Teller returned on May 15, he moved to Rihani's small room at 28 West 9th Street. Gibran then moved to one of the Tenth Street Studio Building's studios for the summer, before changing to another of its studios (number 30, which had a balcony, on the third story) in fall. Gibran would live there until his death, referring to it as "The Hermitage." Over time, however, and "ostensibly often for reasons of health," he would spend "longer and longer periods away from New York, sometimes months at a time [...], staying either with friends in the countryside or with Marianna in Boston or on the Massachusetts coast." His friendships with Teller and Micheline would wane; the last encounter between Gibran and Teller would occur in September 1912, and Gibran would tell Haskell in 1914 that he now found Micheline "repellent."

In 1912, the poetic novella Broken Wings was published in Arabic by the printing house of the periodical Meraat-ul-Gharb in New York. Gibran presented a copy of his book to Lebanese writer May Ziadeh, who lived in Egypt, and asked her to criticize it. As worded by Ghougassian, "Her reply on May 12, 1912, did not totally approve of Gibran's philosophy of love. Rather she remained in all her correspondence quite critical of a few of Gibran's Westernized ideas. Still he had a strong emotional attachment to Miss Ziadeh till his death." Gibran and Ziadeh never met. According to Shlomit C. Schuster, "whatever the relationship between Kahlil and May might have been, the letters in A Self-Portrait mainly reveal their literary ties. Ziadeh reviewed all of Gibran's books and Gibran replies to these reviews elegantly."

In 1913, Gibran started contributing to Al-Funoon, an Arabic-language magazine that had been recently established by Nasib Arida and Abd al-Masih Haddad. A Tear and a Smile was published in Arabic in 1914. In December of the same year, visual artworks by Gibran were shown at the Montross Gallery, catching the attention of American painter Albert Pinkham Ryder. Gibran wrote him a prose poem in January and would become one of the aged man's last visitors. After Ryder's death in 1917, Gibran's poem would be quoted first by Henry McBride in the latter's posthumous tribute to Ryder, then by newspapers across the country, from which would come the first widespread mention of Gibran's name in America. By March 1915, two of Gibran's poems had also been read at the Poetry Society of America, after which Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, the younger sister of Theodore Roosevelt, stood up and called them "destructive and diabolical stuff"; nevertheless, beginning in 1918 Gibran would become a frequent visitor at Robinson's, also meeting her brother.

The Madman, the Pen League, and The Prophet
Gibran acted as a secretary of the Syrian–Mount Lebanon Relief Committee, which was formed in June 1916. The same year, Gibran met Lebanese author Mikhail Naimy after Naimy had moved from the University of Washington to New York. Naimy, whom Gibran would nickname "Mischa," had previously made a review of Broken Wings in his article "The Dawn of Hope After the Night of Despair", published in Al-Funoon, and he would become "a close friend and confidant, and later one of Gibran's biographers." In 1917, an exhibition of forty wash drawings was held at Knoedler in New York from January 29 to February 19 and another of thirty such drawings at Doll & Richards, Boston, April 16–28.

While most of Gibran's early writings had been in Arabic, most of his work published after 1918 was in English. Such was The Madman, Gibran's first book published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1918. The Processions (in Arabic) and Twenty Drawings were published the following year. In 1920, Gibran re-created the Arabic-language New York Pen League with Arida and Haddad (its original founders), Rihani, Naimy, and other Mahjari writers such as Elia Abu Madi. The same year, The Tempests was published in Arabic in Cairo, and The Forerunner in New York.

In a letter of 1921 to Naimy, Gibran reported that doctors had told him to "give up all kinds of work and exertion for six months, and do nothing but eat, drink and rest"; in 1922, Gibran was ordered to "stay away from cities and city life" and had rented a cottage near the sea, planning to move there with Marianna and to remain until "this heart [regained] its orderly course"; this three-month summer in Scituate, he later told Haskell, was a refreshing time, during which he wrote some of "the best Arabic poems" he had ever written.

In 1923, The New and the Marvelous was published in Arabic in Cairo, whereas The Prophet was published in New York. The Prophet sold well despite a cool critical reception. At a reading of The Prophet organized by rector William Norman Guthrie in St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, Gibran met poet Barbara Young, who would occasionally work as his secretary from 1925 until Gibran's death; Young did this work without remuneration. In 1924, Gibran told Haskell that he had been contracted to write ten pieces for Al-Hilal in Cairo. In 1925, Gibran participated in the founding of the periodical The New East.

Later years and death
Sand and Foam was published in 1926, and Jesus, the Son of Man in 1928. At the beginning of 1929, Gibran was diagnosed with an enlarged liver. In a letter dated March 26, he wrote to Naimy that "the rheumatic pains are gone, and the swelling has turned to something opposite". In a telegram dated the same day, he reported being told by the doctors that he "must not work for full year," which was something he found "more painful than illness." The last book published during Gibran's life was The Earth Gods, on March 14, 1931.

Gibran was admitted to St. Vincent's Hospital, Manhattan, on April 10, 1931, where he died the same day, aged forty-eight, after refusing the last rites. The cause of death was reported to be cirrhosis of the liver with incipient tuberculosis in one of his lungs. Waterfield argues that the cirrhosis was contracted through excessive drinking of alcohol and was the only real cause of Gibran's death.

Gibran had expressed the wish that he be buried in Lebanon. His body lay temporarily at Mount Benedict Cemetery in Boston before it was taken on July 23 to Providence, Rhode Island, and from there to Lebanon on the liner Sinaia. Gibran's body reached Bsharri in August and was deposited in a church near-by until a cousin of Gibran finalized the purchase of the Mar Sarkis Monastery, now the Gibran Museum.

All future American royalties to his books were willed to his hometown of Bsharri, to be used for "civic betterment." Gibran had also willed the contents of his studio to Haskell. "Going through his papers, Young and Haskell discovered that Gibran had kept all of Mary's love letters to him. Young admitted to being stunned at the depth of the relationship, which was all but unknown to her. In her own biography of Gibran, she minimized the relationship and begged Mary Haskell to burn the letters. Mary agreed initially but then reneged, and eventually they were published, along with her journal and Gibran's some three hundred letters to her, in [Virginia] Hilu's Beloved Prophet."

In 1950, Haskell donated her personal collection of nearly one hundred original works of art by Gibran (including five oils) to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia. Haskell had been thinking of placing her collection at the Telfair as early as 1914. Her gift to the Telfair is the largest public collection of Gibran's visual art in the country.

Forms, themes, and language
Gibran explored literary forms as diverse as "poetry, parables, fragments of conversation, short stories, fables, political essays, letters, and aphorisms." Two plays in English and five plays in Arabic were also published posthumously between 1973 and 1993; three unfinished plays written in English towards the end of Gibran's life remain unpublished (The Banshee, The Last Unction, and The Hunchback or the Man Unseen). Gibran discussed "such themes as religion, justice, free will, science, love, happiness, the soul, the body, and death" in his writings, which were "characterized by innovation breaking with forms of the past, by symbolism, an undying love for his native land, and a sentimental, melancholic yet often oratorical style." According to Salma Jayyusi, Roger Allen and others, Gibran as the leading poet of the Mahjar school belongs to Romantic (neo-romantic) movement.

About his language in general (both in Arabic and English), Salma Khadra Jayyusi remarks that "because of the spiritual and universal aspect of his general themes, he seems to have chosen a vocabulary less idiomatic than would normally have been chosen by a modern poet conscious of modernism in language." According to Jean Gibran and Kahlil G. Gibran, "Ignoring much of the traditional vocabulary and form of classical Arabic, he began to develop a style which reflected the ordinary language he had heard as a child in Besharri and to which he was still exposed in the South End [of Boston]. This use of the colloquial was more a product of his isolation than of a specific intent, but it appealed to thousands of Arab immigrants." The poem "You Have Your Language and I Have Mine" (1924) was published in response to criticism of his Arabic language and style.

Influences and antecedents
According to Bushrui and Jenkins, an "inexhaustible" source of influence on Gibran was the Bible, especially the King James Version. Gibran's literary oeuvre is also steeped in the Syriac tradition. According to Haskell, Gibran once told her that "The [King James] Bible is Syriac literature in English words. It is the child of a sort of marriage. There's nothing in any other tongue to correspond to the English Bible. And the Chaldo-Syriac is the most beautiful language that man has made—though it is no longer used." As worded by Waterfield, "the parables of the New Testament" affected "his parables and homilies" while "the poetry of some of the Old Testament books" affected "his devotional language and incantational rhythms." Annie Salem Otto notes that Gibran avowedly imitated the style of the Bible, whereas other Arabic authors from his time like Rihani unconsciously imitated the Quran.

According to Ghougassian, the works of English poet William Blake "played a special role in Gibran's life", and in particular "Gibran agreed with Blake's apocalyptic vision of the world as the latter expressed it in his poetry and art." Gibran wrote of Blake as "the God-man," and of his drawings as "so far the profoundest things done in English—and his vision, putting aside his drawings and poems, is the most godly." According to George Nicolas El-Hage, "There is evidence that Gibran knew some of Blake's poetry and was familiar with his drawings during his early years in Boston. However, this knowledge of Blake was neither deep nor complete. Kahlil Gibran was reintroduced to William Blake's poetry and art in Paris, most likely in Auguste Rodin's studio and by Rodin himself [on one of their two encounters in Paris after Gibran had begun his Temple of Art portrait series]."

Gibran was also a great admirer of Syrian poet and writer Francis Marrash, whose works Gibran had studied at the Collège de la Sagesse. According to Shmuel Moreh, Gibran's own works echo Marrash's style, including the structure of some of his works and "many of [his] ideas on enslavement, education, women's liberation, truth, the natural goodness of man, and the corrupted morals of society." Bushrui and Jenkins have mentioned Marrash's concept of universal love, in particular, in having left a "profound impression" on Gibran.

Another influence on Gibran was American poet Walt Whitman, whom Gibran followed "by pointing up the universality of all men and by delighting in nature. According to El-Hage, the influence of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche "did not appear in Gibran's writings until The Tempests." Nevertheless, although Nietzsche's style "no doubt fascinated" him, Gibran was "not the least under his spell": "The teachings of Almustafa are decisively different from Zarathustra's philosophy and they betray a striking imitation of Jesus, the way Gibran pictured Him."

Critics
Gibran was neglected by scholars and critics for a long time. Bushrui and John M. Munro have argued that "the failure of serious Western critics to respond to Gibran" resulted from the fact that "his works, though for the most part originally written in English, cannot be comfortably accommodated within the Western literary tradition." According to El-Hage, critics have also "generally failed to understand the poet's conception of imagination and his fluctuating tendencies towards nature."

Overview
According to Waterfield, "Gibran was confirmed in his aspiration to be a Symbolist painter" after working in Marcel-Béronneau's studio in Paris. Oil paint was Gibran's "preferred medium between 1908 and 1914, but before and after this time he worked primarily with pencil, ink, watercolor and gouache." In a letter to Haskell, Gibran wrote that "among all the English artists Turner is the very greatest." In her diary entry of March 17, 1911, Haskell recorded that Gibran told her he was inspired by J. M. W. Turner's painting The Slave Ship (1840) to utilize "raw colors [...] one over another on the canvas [...] instead of killing them first on the palette" in what would become the painting Rose Sleeves (1911, Telfair Museums).

Gibran created more than seven hundred visual artworks, including the Temple of Art portrait series. His works may be seen at the Gibran Museum in Bsharri; the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia; the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha; the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; and the Harvard Art Museums. A possible Gibran painting was the subject of a September 2008 episode of the PBS TV series History Detectives.

Religious views

According to Bushrui and Jenkins,

"Although brought up as a Maronite Christian, Gibran, as an Arab, was influenced not only by his own religion but also by Islam, especially by the mysticism of the Sufis. His knowledge of Lebanon's bloody history, with its destructive factional struggles, strengthened his belief in the fundamental unity of religions."

Besides Christianity, Islam and Sufism, Gibran's mysticism was also influenced by theosophy and Jungian psychology.

Around 1911–1912, Gibran met with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Baháʼí Faith who was visiting the United States, to draw his portrait. The meeting made a strong impression on Gibran. One of Gibran's acquaintances later in life, Juliet Thompson, herself a Baháʼí, reported that Gibran was unable to sleep the night before meeting him. This encounter with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá later inspired Gibran to write Jesus the Son of Man that portrays Jesus through the "words of seventy-seven contemporaries who knew him – enemies and friends: Syrians, Romans, Jews, priests, and poets." After the death of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Gibran gave a talk on religion with Baháʼís and at another event with a viewing of a movie of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Gibran rose to proclaim in tears an exalted station of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and left the event weeping.

In the poem "The Voice of the Poet" (صوت الشاعر), published in A Tear and a Smile (1914), Gibran wrote:

In 1921, Gibran participated in an "interrogatory" meeting on the question "Do We Need a New World Religion to Unite the Old Religions?" at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.

Political thought
According to Young,

"During the last years of Gibran's life there was much pressure put upon him from time to time to return to Lebanon. His countrymen there felt that he would be a great leader for his people if he could be persuaded to accept such a role. He was deeply moved by their desire to have him in their midst, but he knew that to go to Lebanon would be a grave mistake. 'I believe I could be a help to my people,' he said. 'I could even lead them—but they would not be led. In their anxiety and confusion of mind they look about for some solution to their difficulties. If I went to Lebanon and took the little black book [The Prophet], and said, 'Come let us live in this light,' their enthusiasm for me would immediately evaporate. I am not a politician, and I would not be a politician. No. I cannot fulfill their desire.'"

Nevertheless, Gibran called for the adoption of Arabic as a national language of Syria, considered from a geographic point of view, not as a political entity. When Gibran met ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in 1911–12, who traveled to the United States partly to promote peace, Gibran admired the teachings on peace but argued that "young nations like his own" be freed from Ottoman control. Gibran also wrote the famous "Pity the Nation" poem during these years, posthumously published in The Garden of the Prophet.

On May 26, 1916, Gibran wrote a letter to Mary Haskell that reads: "The famine in Mount Lebanon has been planned and instigated by the Turkish government. Already 80,000 have succumbed to starvation and thousands are dying every single day. The same process happened with the Christian Armenians and applied to the Christians in Mount Lebanon." Gibran dedicated a poem named "Dead Are My People" to the fallen of the famine.

When the Ottomans were eventually driven from Syria during World War I, Gibran sketched a euphoric drawing "Free Syria", which was then printed on the special edition cover of the Arabic-language paper As-Sayeh (The Traveler; founded 1912 in New York by Haddad). Adel Beshara reports that, "in a draft of a play, still kept among his papers, Gibran expressed great hope for national independence and progress. This play, according to Khalil Hawi, 'defines Gibran's belief in Syrian nationalism with great clarity, distinguishing it from both Lebanese and Arab nationalism, and showing us that nationalism lived in his mind, even at this late stage, side by side with internationalism.

According to Waterfield, Gibran "was not entirely in favour of socialism (which he believed tends to seek the lowest common denominator, rather than bringing out the best in people)".

Legacy
The popularity of The Prophet grew markedly during the 1960s with the American counterculture and then with the flowering of the New Age movements. It has remained popular with these and with the wider population to this day. Since it was first published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. It has been translated into more than 100 languages, making it among the top ten most translated books in history. It was one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century in the United States.

Elvis Presley referred to Gibran's The Prophet for the rest of his life after receiving his first copy as a gift from his girlfriend June Juanico in July 1956. His marked-up copy still exists in Lebanon and another at the Elvis Presley museum in Düsseldorf. A line of poetry from Sand and Foam (1926), which reads "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you," was used by John Lennon and placed, though in a slightly altered form, into the song "Julia" from the Beatles' 1968 album The Beatles (a.k.a. "The White Album").

Johnny Cash recorded The Eye of the Prophet as an audio cassette book, and Cash can be heard talking about Gibran's work on a track called "Book Review" on his 2003 album Unearthed. British singer David Bowie mentioned Gibran in the song "The Width of a Circle" from Bowie's 1970 album The Man Who Sold the World. Bowie used Gibran as a "hip reference," because Gibran's work A Tear and a Smile became popular in the hippie counterculture of the 1960s. In 1978 Uruguayan musician Armando Tirelli recorded an album based on The Prophet. In 2016 Gibran's fable "On Death" from The Prophet was composed in Hebrew by Gilad Hochman to the unique setting of soprano, theorbo and percussion, and it premiered in France under the title River of Silence.

In 2018, Nadim Naaman and Dana Al Fardan devoted their musical Broken Wings to Kahlil Gibran's novel of the same name. The world premiere was staged in London's Theatre Royal Haymarket.

Memorials and honors
A number of places, monuments and educational institutions throughout the world are named in honor of Gibran, including the Gibran Museum in Bsharri, the Gibran Memorial Plaque in Copley Square, Boston, the Gibran Khalil Gibran Garden in Beirut, the Kahlil Gibran Memorial Garden in Washington, D.C., the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, and the Khalil Gibran Elementary School in Yonkers, NY.

A crater on Mercury was named in his honor in 2009.

Family
American sculptor Kahlil G. Gibran (1922–2008) was a cousin of Gibran. The Katter political family in Australia was also related to Gibran. He was described in parliament as a cousin of Bob Katter Sr., a long-time member of the Australian parliament and one-time Minister for the Army, and through him his son Bob Katter, founder of Katter's Australian Party and former Queensland state minister, and state politician Robbie Katter.

title: Kahlil Gibran


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George Santayana

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952), was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Born in Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the US from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always retained a valid Spanish passport. At the age of 48, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe permanently. His last will was to be buried in the Spanish Pantheon in Rome.

Santayana is popularly known for aphorisms, such as "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", "Only the dead have seen the end of war", and the definition of beauty as "pleasure objectified". Although an atheist, he treasured the Spanish Catholic values, practices, and worldview in which he was raised. Santayana was a broad-ranging cultural critic spanning many disciplines.

Early life
Santayana was born on December 16, 1863, in Calle de San Bernardo of Madrid and spent his early childhood in Ávila, Spain. His mother Josefina Borrás was the daughter of a Spanish official in the Philippines and he was the only child of her second marriage. Josefina Borrás' first husband was George Sturgis, a Bostonian merchant with the Manila firm Russell & Sturgis, with whom she had five children, two of whom died in infancy. She lived in Boston for a few years following her husband's death in 1857; in 1861, she moved with her three surviving children to Madrid. There she encountered Agustín Ruiz de Santayana, an old friend from her years in the Philippines. They married in 1862. A colonial civil servant, Ruiz de Santayana was a painter and minor intellectual. The family lived in Madrid and Ávila, and Jorge was born in Spain in 1863.

In 1869, Josefina Borrás de Santayana returned to Boston with her three Sturgis children, because she had promised her first husband to raise the children in the US. She left the six-year-old Jorge with his father in Spain. Jorge and his father followed her to Boston in 1872. His father, finding neither Boston nor his wife's attitude to his liking, soon returned alone to Ávila, and remained there the rest of his life. Jorge did not see him again until he entered Harvard College and began to take his summer vacations in Spain. Sometime during this period, Jorge's first name was anglicized as George, the English equivalent.

Education
Santayana attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College, where he studied under the philosophers William James and Josiah Royce and was involved in eleven clubs as an alternative to athletics. He was founder and president of the Philosophical Club, a member of the literary society known as the O.K., an editor and cartoonist for The Harvard Lampoon, he joined one of Harvard's "Final CLubs - the Delphic Club and co-founder of the literary journal The Harvard Monthly. In December, 1885, he played the role of Lady Elfrida in the Hasty Pudding theatrical Robin Hood, followed by the production Papillonetta in the spring of his senior year. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in 1886 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

After graduating from Harvard in 1886, Santayana studied for two years in Berlin. He then returned to Harvard to write his dissertation on Hermann Lotze (1889). He was a professor at Harvard from 1889 to 1912, becoming part of the Golden Age of the Harvard philosophy department. Some of his Harvard students became famous in their own right, including Conrad Aiken, W. E. B. Du Bois, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Horace Kallen, Walter Lippmann and Gertrude Stein. Wallace Stevens was not among his students but became a friend. From 1896 to 1897, Santayana studied at King's College, Cambridge.

Later life
Santayana never married. His romantic life, if any, is not well understood. Some evidence, including a comment Santayana made late in life comparing himself to A. E. Housman, and his friendships with people who were openly homosexual and bisexual, has led scholars to speculate that Santayana was perhaps homosexual or bisexual, but it remains unclear whether he had any actual heterosexual or homosexual relationships.

In 1912, Santayana resigned his position at Harvard to spend the rest of his life in Europe. He had saved money and been aided by a legacy from his mother. After some years in Ávila, Paris and Oxford, after 1920, he began to winter in Rome, eventually living there year-round until his death. During his 40 years in Europe, he wrote 19 books and declined several prestigious academic positions. Many of his visitors and correspondents were Americans, including his assistant and eventual literary executor, Daniel Cory. In later life, Santayana was financially comfortable, in part because his 1935 novel, The Last Puritan, had become an unexpected best-seller. In turn, he financially assisted a number of writers, including Bertrand Russell, with whom he was in fundamental disagreement, philosophically and politically.

Santayana's one novel, The Last Puritan, is a Bildungsroman, centering on the personal growth of its protagonist, Oliver Alden. His Persons and Places is an autobiography. These works also contain many of his sharper opinions and bons mots. He wrote books and essays on a wide range of subjects, including philosophy of a less technical sort, literary criticism, the history of ideas, politics, human nature, morals, the influence of religion on culture and social psychology, all with considerable wit and humor.

While his writings on technical philosophy can be difficult, his other writings are more accessible and pithy. He wrote poems and a few plays, and left ample correspondence, much of it published only since 2000. Like Alexis de Tocqueville, Santayana observed American culture and character from a foreigner's point of view. Like William James, his friend and mentor, he wrote philosophy in a literary way. Ezra Pound includes Santayana among his many cultural references in The Cantos, notably in "Canto LXXXI" and "Canto XCV". Santayana is usually considered an American writer, although he declined to become an American citizen, resided in Fascist Italy for decades, and said that he was most comfortable, intellectually and aesthetically, at Oxford University. Although an atheist, Santayana considered himself an "aesthetic Catholic" and spent the last decade of his life in Rome under the care of Catholic nuns. In 1941, he entered a hospital and convent run by the Little Company of Mary (also known as the Blue Nuns) on the Celian Hill at 6 Via Santo Stefano Rotondo in Roma, where he was cared for by the sisters until his death in September 1952. Upon his death, he did not want to be buried in consecrated land, which made his burial problematic in Italy. Finally, the Spanish consulate in Rome agreed that he be buried in the Pantheon of the Obra Pía Española, in the Campo Verano cemetery in Rome.

Philosophical work and publications

Santayana's main philosophical work consists of The Sense of Beauty (1896), his first book-length monograph and perhaps the first major work on aesthetics written in the United States; The Life of Reason (5 vols., 1905–06), the high point of his Harvard career; Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923); and The Realms of Being (4 vols., 1927–1940). Although Santayana was not a pragmatist in the mold of William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, or John Dewey, The Life of Reason arguably is the first extended treatment of pragmatism written.

Like many of the classical pragmatists, and because he was well-versed in evolutionary theory, Santayana was committed to metaphysical naturalism. He believed that human cognition, cultural practices, and social institutions have evolved so as to harmonize with the conditions present in their environment. Their value may then be adjudged by the extent to which they facilitate human happiness. The alternate title to The Life of Reason, "the Phases of Human Progress", is indicative of this metaphysical stance.

Santayana was an early adherent of epiphenomenalism, but also admired the classical materialism of Democritus and Lucretius. (Of the three authors on whom he wrote in Three Philosophical Poets, Santayana speaks most favorably of Lucretius). He held Spinoza's writings in high regard, calling him his "master and model".

Although an atheist, he held a fairly benign view of religion and described himself as an "aesthetic Catholic". Santayana's views on religion are outlined in his books Reason in Religion, The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, and Interpretations of Poetry and Religion.

He held racial superiority and eugenic views. He believed superior races should be discouraged from "intermarriage with inferior stock".

Legacy
Santayana is remembered in large part for his aphorisms, many of which have been so frequently used as to have become clichéd. His philosophy has not fared quite as well. He is regarded by most as an excellent prose stylist, and John Lachs (who is sympathetic with much of Santayana's philosophy) writes, in On Santayana, that his eloquence may ironically be the very cause of this neglect.

Santayana influenced those around him, including Bertrand Russell, whom Santayana single-handedly steered away from the ethics of G. E. Moore. He also influenced many prominent people such as Harvard students T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, Horace Kallen, Walter Lippmann, W. E. B. Du Bois, Conrad Aiken, Van Wyck Brooks, Felix Frankfurter, Max Eastman, and Wallace Stevens. Stevens was especially influenced by Santayana's aesthetics and became a friend even though Stevens did not take courses taught by Santayana.

Santayana is quoted by the Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman as a central influence in the thesis of his famous book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). Religious historian Jerome A. Stone credits Santayana with contributing to the early thinking in the development of religious naturalism. English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead quotes Santayana extensively in his magnum opus Process and Reality (1929).

Chuck Jones used Santayana's description of fanaticism as "redoubling your effort after you've forgotten your aim" to describe his cartoons starring Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.

In popular culture
Santayana's passing is referenced in the lyrics to singer-songwriter Billy Joel's 1989 music single, "We Didn't Start the Fire".

The quote "Only the dead have seen the end of war" is frequently attributed or misattributed to Plato; an early example of this misattribution (if it is indeed misattributed) is found in General Douglas MacArthur's Farewell Speech given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point in 1962.

Awards

 * Royal Society of Literature Benson Medal, 1925.
 * Columbia University Butler Gold Medal, 1945.
 * Honorary degree from the University of Wisconsin, 1911.

Posthumous edited/selected works

 * 1955. The Letters of George Santayana. Daniel Cory, ed. Charles Scribner's Sons. New York. (296 letters)
 * 1956. Essays in Literary Criticism of George Santayana. Irving Singer, ed.
 * 1957. The Idler and His Works, and Other Essays. Daniel Cory, ed.
 * 1967. The Genteel Tradition: Nine Essays by George Santayana. Douglas L. Wilson, ed.
 * 1967. George Santayana's America: Essays on Literature and Culture. James Ballowe, ed.
 * 1967. Animal Faith and Spiritual Life: Previously Unpublished and Uncollected Writings by George Santayana With Critical Essays on His Thought. John Lachs, ed.
 * 1968. Santayana on America: Essays, Notes, and Letters on American Life, Literature, and Philosophy. Richard Colton Lyon, ed.
 * 1968. Selected Critical Writings of George Santayana, 2 vols. Norman Henfrey, ed.
 * 1969. Physical Order and Moral Liberty: Previously Unpublished Essays of George Santayana. John and Shirley Lachs, eds.
 * 1979. The Complete Poems of George Santayana: A Critical Edition. Edited, with an introduction, by W. G. Holzberger. Bucknell University Press.
 * 1995. The Birth of Reason and Other Essays. Daniel Cory, ed., with an Introduction by Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. Columbia Univ. Press.
 * 2009. The Essential Santayana. Selected Writings Edited by the Santayana Edition, Compiled and with an introduction by Martin A. Coleman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
 * 2009. The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy and Character and Opinion in the United States (Rethinking the Western Tradition), Edited and with an introduction by James Seaton and contributions by Wilfred M. McClay, John Lachs, Roger Kimball and James Seaton Yale University Press.
 * 2021. Recently Discovered Letters of George Santayana / Cartas recién descubiertas de George Santayana, Edited and with an introduction by Daniel Pinkas translated by Daniel Moreno, and a Prologue by José Beltrán.

The Works of George Santayana
Unmodernized, critical editions of George Santayana's published and unpublished writing. The Works is edited by the Santayana Edition and published by The MIT Press.
 * 1986. Persons and Places. Santayana's autobiography, incorporating Persons and Places, 1944; The Middle Span, 1945; and My Host the World, 1953.
 * 1988 (1896). The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outline of Aesthetic Theory.
 * 1990 (1900). Interpretations of Poetry and Religion.
 * 1994 (1935). The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel.
 * The Letters of George Santayana. Containing over 3,000 of his letters, many discovered posthumously, to more than 350 recipients.
 * 2001. Book One, 1868–1909.
 * 2001. Book Two, 1910–1920.
 * 2002. Book Three, 1921–1927.
 * 2003. Book Four, 1928–1932.
 * 2003. Book Five, 1933–1936.
 * 2004. Book Six, 1937–1940.
 * 2006. Book Seven, 1941–1947.
 * 2008. Book Eight, 1948–1952.
 * 2011. George Santayana's Marginalia: A Critical Selection, Books 1 and 2. Compiled by John O. McCormick and edited by Kristine W. Frost.
 * The Life of Reason in five books.
 * 2011 (1905). Reason in Common Sense.
 * 2013 (1905). Reason in Society.
 * 2014 (1905). Reason in Religion.
 * 2015 (1905). Reason in Art.
 * 2016 (1906). Reason in Science.
 * 2019 (1910). Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, Critical Edition, Edited by Kellie Dawson and David E. Spiech, with an introduction by James Seaton
 * 2023 (1913). Winds of Doctrine, Critical Edition, Edited by David E Spiech, Martin A. Coleman and Faedra Lazar Weiss, with an introduction by Paul Forster

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: George Santayana


text:
User:G-Man

Please leave any comments or insults at User Talk:G-Man

Hello there, well seem as you've got here. I live in the town of Rugby in the UK. I was born in 1981.

My first name begins with a G, and, and, guess what, I'm a Man, hence the name G-Man. It took me hours to think that up :-)

I've been contributing to wikipedia since February 2003.

Images
Here's some of the images I have added to Wikipedia at my photo gallery.

I have also downloaded loads of historic pictures onto the Wikimedia Commons, you can see my contributions Here.

Articles
Here's a list of significant articles I have either created or added significantly to.

You do understand of course that this list is purely for my own benefit so I can remember what I've written, and has nothing to do with me bragging......Honest

Articles which I started are in normal text. Articles which I contributed a lot to but did not start are marked in italics.

English Midlands
I've worked on many articles relating to the English Midlands. Mostly towns, cities villages, counties and local history, especially in my home county of Warwickshire and the surrounding counties of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and the West Midlands: Amongst these are:

Towns, cities and villages

 * Atherstone, Alcester, Banbury, Bedworth, Birmingham, Black Country, Corby, Coventry, Daventry, Dudley, Dunchurch, Leamington Spa, Leicester, Lutterworth, Market Harborough, Northampton, Nuneaton, Polesworth, Rugby, Warwickshire, Shipston-on-Stour, Southam, Warwick, West Bromwich.

Counties

 * Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands (county) also West Midlands (region).

Local history

 * History of Birmingham, History of Coventry, History of Rugby, Warwickshire, History of Warwickshire, Tripontium, History of London, Roman London, Anglo-Saxon London.

Misc

 * Warwick Castle

Transport
I've done stuff relating to railways stations canals trams and old roman roads.

Stations

 * Euston station, Birmingham New Street station, Birmingham Snow Hill station, Curzon Street railway station, Marylebone railway station, Rugby railway station.

Railway lines

 * Ffestiniog Railway, Great Central Main Line, Leighton Buzzard Railway, London and Birmingham Railway, Midland Main Line, Settle and Carlisle Railway, Snowdon Mountain Railway, Welshpool & Llanfair Railway, West Coast Main Line,

Railway companies

 * FEVE, Great Central Railway, Midland Railway, Midland Counties Railway,Northern Ireland Railways, RENFE, Stratford-Upon-Avon & Midland Junction Railway, Stockton and Darlington Railway, Stratford and Moreton Tramway,

 * List of railway companies

History

 * Beeching axe

Technical

 * Vacuum brakes, Locomotive, Railway signaling, Rail tracks, Third rail.

Tram systems

 * Midland Metro, Manchester Metrolink.

Roman roads

 * Watling Street
 * Fosse Way

Canals

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 * History of the British canal system

Bicycle/Cycling related articles

 * Bicycle touring, List of bicycle manufacturers, Raleigh (bicycle), Moulton Bicycle, Safety Bicycle, Hub gears, John Kemp Starley, Bicycle brake systems.

Music articles:

 * Slade, Yazoo, Vince Clarke, Electropop, New Romantic, Level 42, Talk Talk, T'Pau (band), The Troggs, Oasis (band).

Political articles
Political Parties

 * Labour Party (UK) + History of the British Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Liberal Party (UK), Communist Party of Great Britain, Green Party of England and Wales.

People

 * Clement Attlee, Ramsay MacDonald, Hugh Gaitskell.

Misc history

 * Ancient Britain, Great Depression in the United Kingdom, History of the Soviet Union 1985-1991.

Articles about people

 * Richard Beeching
 * James Brindley
 * Thomas Hughes
 * Egon Krenz
 * Norman Lockyer
 * L.S. Lowry
 * Percy Pilcher
 * Arthur Scargill
 * Richard Trevithick
 * James Howard Kunstler
 * John Kemp Starley

Articles which fit into none of the above categories:

 * Quarry
 * Slum
 * St John's wort
 * Only Fools and Horses
 * Love Thy Neighbour
 * Morris Motor Company
 * Thrust2
 * ThrustSSC
 * Duel (movie)
 * Passenger Transport Executive

 * Plus a number of other minor articles which I havn't bothered to list, I have also made edits to many other articles.

Stuff about me
Just in case you're wondering (which you're probably not, but I'll tell you anyway) here are some things about my beliefs etc.

Religion. I don't follow any particular religion, but I believe that all the world's religions teach basically the same common sense rules of morality and behaviour, like treating your fellow men with respect and dignity and loving thy neighbour etc. (it's a shame more people who call themselves religious don't follow them really). I generally regard organised religion as a divisive and destructive force in the world.

Politics. I am on the liberal/left-wing side of politics. I would describe myself as a democratic socialist of Social Democrat. I believe that it's the government's job to re-distribute wealth and ensure that everyone in society has a minimum standard of living, and has the basics of life. Although I tend to vote for the Liberal Democrats or sometimes the Green Party.

Oh yes, I am also a keen Cyclist.

And I am not a Fish

There I hope you found that interesting.

Stuff

 * User:G-Man/works in progress
 * User:G-Man/sandbox
 * Wikipedia talk:UK Wikipedians' notice board

Useful sources

 * http://www.computerhope.com/htmcolor.htm Web colours
 * http://www.encyclopedia.com/
 * http://concise.britannica.com/
 * http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/
 * http://1911encyclopedia.org/
 * http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRsearch.htm

title: User:G-Man


text:
Timberline Lodge

Timberline Lodge is a mountain lodge on the south side of Mount Hood in Clackamas County, Oregon, about 60 mi east of Portland. Constructed from 1936 to 1938 by the Works Progress Administration, it was built and furnished by local artisans during the Great Depression. Timberline Lodge was dedicated September 28, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The National Historic Landmark sits at an elevation of 6,000 ft, within the Mount Hood National Forest and is accessible through the Mount Hood Scenic Byway. Publicly owned and privately operated, Timberline Lodge is a popular tourist attraction that draws two million visitors annually. It is notable in film for serving as the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980).

The lodge and its grounds host a ski resort, also known as Timberline Lodge. It has the longest skiing season in the U.S., and is open for skiers and snowboarders all 12 months of the year. Activities include skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, hiking, biking, and climbing.

Design and construction

Timberline Lodge, a mountain lodge and resort hotel, is a four-story structure of about 40,000 ft2. The ground-level exterior walls are heavy rubble masonry, using boulders from the immediate area, and heavy timber is used from the first floor up. The central head house section is hexagonal and 60 ft in diameter, with a six-sided stone chimney stack 90 ft high and 14 ft in diameter. Each of the six fireplace openings—three on the ground floor, three on the first floor—is 5 ft wide and 7 ft high. Two wings, running west and southeast, flank the head house. Oregon woods used throughout the building include cedar, Douglas fir, hemlock, western juniper and ponderosa pine.

The architect of Timberline Lodge is Gilbert Stanley Underwood, noted for the Ahwahnee Hotel and other lodges in the U.S. national park system. He produced the designs. Then, his central head house was modified from an octagon to a hexagon by U.S. Forest Service architect W. I. (Tim) Turner and the team of Linn A. Forrest, Howard L. Gifford and Dean R. E. Wright. A recent graduate of the University of Washington, forest service engineer Ward Gano was structural designer.

Timberline Lodge was constructed between 1936 and 1938 as a Works Progress Administration project during The Great Depression. Eighty percent of the WPA's $695,730 total expenditure on building costs went toward labor. Skilled building trade workers received ninety cents an hour; unskilled laborers received fifty-five cents an hour. Some of the skilled stonemasons on the project were Italian immigrants brought in after working on The Historic Columbia River Highway and other roads in Oregon. About a hundred construction workers were on site at a given time, and lived at a nearby tent city. Jobs were rotated to provide work.

Materials costs were minimized by the skillful use of recycled materials. Women wove draperies, upholstery, and bedspreads. Hooked rugs were made from strips of old Civilian Conservation Corps camp blankets. Discarded cedar utility poles became newel-posts with their crowns hand-carved into birds, bears, and seals. Fireplace screens were fashioned from tire chains. Andirons and other iron work were forged from railroad tracks. WPA workers used large timbers and local stone from the site.

"All classes, from the most elementary hand labor, through the various degrees of skill to the technically-trained, were employed," reported the WPA's Federal Writers' Project. "Pick and shovel wielders, stonecutters, plumbers, carpenters, steam-fitters, painters, wood-carvers, cabinet-makers, metal workers, leather-toolers, seamstresses, weavers, architects, authors, artists, actors, musicians, and landscape planners, each contributed to the project, and each, in his way, was conscious of the ideal toward which all bent their energies."

Federal Art Project
Federal Art Project contributions to the project were directed by Margery Hoffman Smith, Oregon Arts Project administrator. Smith created many designs for textiles and rugs. She designed the iconic "snow goose", the 750 lb bronze weather vane above the head house. Smith based the abstract forms incised into the lodge chimney on the art of the local Tenino people. Likely-acquainted with William Gray Purcell, a fellow resident of Portland, Smith saw the Prairie School aesthetic carried through in tables, chairs, sectional sofas, columns, bedspreads, draperies, lampshades, and pendant lighting fixtures. She commissioned murals, paintings and carvings from Oregon's WPA artists.

Dedication
During an inspection tour of government activities in the western U.S., President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Timberline Lodge on September 28, 1937. In his speech, he said:

This Timberline Lodge marks a venture that was made possible by WPA, emergency relief work, in order that we may test the workability of recreational facilities installed by the Government itself and operated under its complete control.

Here, to Mount Hood, will come thousands and thousands of visitors in the coming years. Looking east toward eastern Oregon with its great livestock raising areas, these visitors are going to visualize the relationship between the cattle ranches and the summer ranges in the forests. Looking westward and northward toward Portland and the Columbia River, with their great lumber and other wood using industries, they will understand the part which National Forest timber will play in the support of this important element of northwestern prosperity.

Those who will follow us to Timberline Lodge on their holidays and vacations will represent the enjoyment of new opportunities for play in every season of the year. I mention specially every season of the year because we, as a nation, I think, are coming to realize that the summer is not the only time for play. I look forward to the day when many, many people from this region of the Nation are going to come here for skiing and tobogganing and various other forms of winter sports."

He dedicated the lodge, saying, "I am here to dedicate the Timberline Lodge and I do so in the words of the bronze tablet directly in front of me on the coping of this wonderful building: 'Timberline Lodge, Mount Hood National Forest dedicated September 28, 1937, by the President of the United States as a monument to the skill and faithful performance of workers on the rolls of the Works Progress Administration'".

FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt enjoyed a celebratory luncheon including salmon and huckleberry pie. In her My Day column, Mrs. Roosevelt praised the lodge's architectural features: "It is built exclusively of native products and by WPA labor. The interesting central fire place with its many openings is a feature I have seen in no other building of its kind and no where have I seen such big timbers used. All the furniture, all the hangings, all the iron work as well, were made by WPA workers. Here is a group of workers who have the makings of a handcraft organization, and I hope their work will be appreciated. Mr. Griffith, the state WPA administrator, must be happy over the work done here."

Most work was complete at the time of the dedication. After some interior details were finished, the lodge opened to the public February 4, 1938.

Operation
Franklin Roosevelt's vision of winter sports at Timberline Lodge took hesitant steps the following year. A portable rope tow was installed, and construction began on the Magic Mile chairlift, which opened November 1939.

In the lodge's early years, none of its four operators were willing or able to maintain it. By 1955, Timberline Lodge was closed.

Richard Kohnstamm, the next operator, recalled difficulties due to financing problems because the government claimed they owned it. Kohnstamm decided to maintain the place as if he owned it; he lost money during his first five years of operation, but his timing was fortuitous. He took over only a few years before skiing exploded in popularity in the late 1950s. That popularity helped the family generate a profit starting in 1960. Kohnstamm, "the man who saved Timberline", died at the age of 80 on April 21, 2006. Kohnstamm's son Jeff is the Area Operator of Timberline Lodge.

Film
Exterior views of Timberline Lodge were used in The Shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of Stephen King's 1977 novel set at the fictional Overlook Hotel. The staff and owners were concerned that guests would be reluctant to stay in Room 217 if it were featured in a horror movie; the management requested the room number be changed to the fictional Room 237, which Kubrick granted.

Other feature films shot at or around Timberline Lodge include Jingle Belles (1941), Bend of the River (1952), All the Young Men (1960), Lost Horizon (1973), Ski School (1991), Hear No Evil (1993), and Wild (2014).

Television
Brief exterior views of a snowy Timberline Lodge were used as a stand-in for a "Bavarian Ski Resort" in multiple episodes of Hogan's Heroes. Director Boris Sagal was killed in an accident on the third day of filming the NBC-TV miniseries World War III (1982), after he walked into the tail rotor blades of a helicopter in Timberline Lodge's parking lot.

Events
In 2017, the inaugural Overlook Film Festival was held at Timberline Lodge. The following year, the festival moved to New Orleans, Louisiana.

On April 18, 2024 a fire broke out at the lodge requiring multiple fire agencies to respond.

title: Timberline Lodge


text:
Athlone

Athlone is a town on the border of County Roscommon and County Westmeath, Ireland. It is located on the River Shannon near the southern shore of Lough Ree. It is the second most populous town in the Midlands Region with a population of 22,869 in the 2022 census.

Most of the town lies on the east bank of the river, within the townland of the same name; however, by the terms of the Local Government Act of 1898, six townlands on the west bank of the Shannon, formerly in County Roscommon, were incorporated into the town, and consequently, into the county of Westmeath.

Around 100 km west of Dublin, Athlone is near the geographical centre of Ireland, which is 8.85 km north-northwest of the town, in the area of Carnagh East in County Roscommon.

History
Athlone Castle, situated on the western bank of the River Shannon, is the geographical and historical centre of Athlone. Throughout its early history, the ford of Athlone was strategically important, as south of Athlone the Shannon is impassable until Clonmacnoise, where the Esker Riada meets the Shannon, while to the north the Shannon flows into Lough Ree. In 1001 Brian Bóru sailed his army up river from Kincora and through Lough Derg to attend a gathering in Athlone. The following year, Brian met the High King of Ireland Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill at Athlone, intending to engage him in a battle for the High Kingship – only to have Máel Sechnaill, abandoned by his kinsmen of the Northern Uí Néill, submit to Brian without a fight.

A bridge was built across the river in the 12th century, approximately 100 m south of the current structure. In 1129, to protect the bridge, the High King Turloch Mór Ó Conor constructed a fort on the river's west bank, within Athlone. On a number of occasions both the fort and bridge were subject to attacks, and towards the end of the 12th century the Anglo-Normans constructed a motte-and-bailey fortification there. This earthen fort was followed by a stone structure built in 1210 by Justiciar John de Gray. The 12-sided donjon, or tower, dates from this time; however, the rest of the original castle was largely destroyed during the 1691 Siege of Athlone and subsequently rebuilt and enlarged.

In 1607, Athlone was granted a municipal charter by James I. This entitled it to send two MPs to the Irish House of Commons.

Throughout the wars that wracked Ireland in the 17th century, Athlone contained the vital, main bridge over the River Shannon into Connacht. During the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–53), the town was held by Irish Confederate troops until it was taken in late 1650 by Charles Coote, who attacked the town from the west, having crossed into Connacht at Sligo.

Forty years later, during the pan-European War of the Grand Alliance (1688–97), the town was again of key strategic importance. In the Irish phase of the conflict (the Williamite War in Ireland of 1688–1691), Athlone was one of the Jacobite strongholds that defended the river-crossings into the Jacobite-held Province of Connacht following the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July 1690. That same year, Colonel Richard Grace's Jacobite forces in Athlone repelled an attack by 10,000 men led by Commander Douglas. In the following year's campaign, the Siege of Athlone saw a further assault by a larger allied force, during which the invading troops of King William and Queen Mary eventually overran the entire city. The defenders were forced to flee further west, toward the River Suck, at such speed that eyewitness accounts record that they "flung their cannons into the morass" as they fled. The most recently discovered account of the Siege of Athlone, written after the attack, on 5 July 1691, was found in 2004 in an archive in the Netherlands. The account was penned by the victorious commanding officer from the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, general lieutenant Godard van Reede, in letters written to his family in mainland Europe. In the account, the commanding allied officer reported that half of Athlone's defenders retreated westward, towards the rest of their army, leaving almost 2,000 dead within the city walls and more than 100 taken prisoner, including dozens of officers.

Following the Acts of Union 1800, Athlone continued as a constituency, sending one MP to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1885.

In the 1970s the Republican Éire Nua programme proposed making Athlone the capital of a federal United Ireland.

Location and access
With the two counties divided by the river, the part of the town that lies east of the Shannon is in the province of Leinster, the county of Westmeath, the barony of Brawny, and the civil parish of St Mary's. Unusually, the barony is coterminous with a single civil parish. In terms of ecclesiastical boundaries, the eastern part of the town is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise and the parish of St Mary's. There are several other churches in the town including a Church of Ireland (St. Mary's, Anglican), the St. Peter and St. Pauls, a Franciscan friary and a chapel of the Society of Saint Pius X.

However, seven townlands, or sections of the town, lie west of the Shannon: Athlone and Big Meadow, Bellaugh, Bogganfin, Canal and Banks, Doovoge, part of Monksland, and Ranelagh. Although surrounded by County Roscommon in the province of Connacht, they are designated as part of County Westmeath to preserve the integrity of the town. These townlands lie in St Peter's civil parish in the barony of Athlone South. In terms of ecclesiastical boundaries, the townlands west of the Shannon are part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Elphin and the parish of Saints Peter and Paul.

River
Athlone is a popular stop for pleasure craft along the River Shannon. Lough Ree, the largest lake on the Shannon, is a short distance upstream from Athlone, and many boat companies are based out of the town. For craft to pass through Athlone, it is necessary to use a lock in the river, which is beside the weir and downstream of the current road bridge. The lock, weir, and bridge were all constructed by the Shannon navigation commissioners in the 1840s. Before then, boats used a canal, about a mile and a half long, to the west of the river. The canal was built by Thomas Omer for the Commissioners of Inland Navigation. Work started in 1757 and involved the work of over 300 men. Omer built a single lock, 120' X 19' with a rise of 4.5', but there was also a guard lock, further upstream, with a single set of gates to protect the canal against floods. There were also two lay-bys, or harbours, one above the lock and another at the upstream end. The old canal is no longer navigable.

Rail
Athlone railway station opened on 3 October 1859, with Irish Rail services travelling eastwards to Portarlington, Kildare and Dublin Heuston and westwards to the Westport/Ballina lines as well as to Athenry, Oranmore and Galway.

Connections from Athlone via a train transfer at Athenry railway station extend to Ennis and Limerick, while a transfer at Portarlington connects Limerick Junction and Limerick. There are trains from Portarlington to Mallow, and from Mallow to Cork, Killarney, Farranfore and Tralee. Travel between Athlone and Killdare enables connections to Carlow, Kilkenny and Waterford.

Bus
For many years state-owned bus operator Bus Éireann provided hourly services to Dublin and Galway from its bus station in Athlone located beside the railway station, but in July 2021 these routes, 20 and X20 Expressway, were cancelled indefinitely. The company cited "continuing losses [..] resulting from the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic" as the reason. Bus Éireann services between Dublin and Belfast, Cork and Limerick were also cut following a "viability review" of 18 routes in September 2020. It was noted that from July 2021 onwards, bus journeys between Athlone and Galway, Ballinasloe, Moate, Dublin city or Dublin airport would be operated by private companies only, with passengers being dropped off or picked up at the Arcadia Retail Park and Athlone Institute of Technology rather than the bus station. Such private bus companies that stop in Athlone include Citylink and a new Aircoach bus route (Galway-Athlone-Dublin) which was established soon after Bus Éireann's decision, to cope with the demand.

There are also services to Limerick, Dundalk, Waterford, Cavan, Belfast, Longford and Roscommon. The town is also home to a number of privately operated services, including the Flagline bus company, which operates local bus routes as well as service to Tullamore.

Bus Éireann continues to operate a local Athlone bus service in and around the town. The local services are as follows: Route A1: Bus Station, Willow Park (Norwood Court) via Golden Island Shopping Centre, Dublin Road and Athlone Institute of Technology; and Route A2: Monksland (River Village); Garrycastle (Moydrum Road) via Galway Road, St. Peter's Avenue, Saint Anne's Terrace, the Batteries, Connaught Street, Northgate Street, Bus Station, Golden Island Shopping Centre, Dublin Road and Athlone Institute of Technology. The Athlone Town service became Ireland's first fully electric bus service in January 2023.

Road
The town is located alongside the N6 dual carriageway, which is effectively a section of the M6 motorway connecting Galway to Dublin. The N6 passes along the northern side of the town, crossing the River Shannon into County Roscommon. A number of national secondary roads connect Athlone with other towns and regions, namely the N55 to Ballymahon and Cavan, the N61 to Roscommon and the N62 to Birr, Roscrea, and Southern Ireland.

Administration
Athlone was granted a municipal charter by James I in 1607. This created a parliamentary borough with a right to elect two MPs to the Irish House of Commons until 1801. After the Acts of Union 1800, it was represented in the United Kingdom House of Commons by one MP. A commissioners' report dated 1833 stated: "To the prosperity of Athlone the corporation have at no time contributed, nor is it likely that, as at present constituted, they ever will. The strongest feeling of hostility exists between the inhabitants and its members." The municipal corporation was abolished under the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840. It was disfranchised by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.

Athlone was later granted town commissioners under the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act 1854. Following the Public Health (Ireland) Act 1878, Athlone was designated as an urban sanitary district. Under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, the town became an urban district and the board of commissioners was upgraded to an urban district council. The portion of the urban sanitary district which had been in County Roscommon was transferred to County Westmeath. In 2002, the urban district council became a town council. In 2003, the area of jurisdiction of the town was enlarged. In 2014, in common with all town councils in Ireland, it was abolished. The urban district council was based at the old civic offices, which had been crudely extended over time and were demolished to make way for the new Athlone Civic Centre, which was completed in 2004.

In County Roscommon, Athlone is a six-seat local electoral area (LEA) to Roscommon County Council which forms its own municipal district. In County Westmeath, Athlone is a five-seat LEA to Westmeath County Council which is part of the municipal district of Athlone—Moate.

Culture
Theatres in Athlone include the Dean Crowe Theatre & Arts Centre and the Little Theatre.

RTÉ All-Ireland Drama Festival takes place annually in Athlone, bringing together nine amateur drama groups from across Ireland. The festival is supported by an active fringe which involves street theatre, art exhibitions, workshops and events for young people.

Athlone Literary Festival is an annual event which began in 1999, originally as a weekend celebration of the life and works of John Broderick, but which now features a great variety of speakers and debaters.

Count John McCormack was born in Athlone, and for many years, an annual festival held in the town has celebrated this world-renowned tenor.

Athlone School of Music opened in 2005 and is a grant-aided project aimed at developing music education and services in the Midlands region.

Abbey Road Artists' Studios launched in 2011 in a unique building constructed in 1841. The studios offer a dedicated space in Athlone for local and visiting artists. The artists' studios consist of four individual artists' studios as well as a large multi-purpose upstairs space suitable for a variety of community cultural events, including exhibitions, performances, workshops and seminars. The Abbey Road artists' studios work closely with the Luan Art Gallery.

In 1954, Athlone became the first branch of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland and the town had a large part in the organisation's creation.

Literature
American crime writer James M. Cain refers to Athlone in his 1937 book, Serenade, in a passage where two characters discuss tenor John McCormack: "--There's the language he was born to. John McCormack comes from Dublin". "He does not. He comes from Athlone". "Didn't he live in Dublin?". "No Matter. They speak a fine brogue in Athlone, almost as fine as in Belfast". "It's a fine brogue, but it's not brogue. It's the English language as it was spoken before all the other countries of the world forgot how to speak it. There are two things a singer can't buy, beg or steal, and that no teacher, coach or conductor can give him. One is his voice, the other is the language that was born in his mouth. When McCormack was singing Handel he was singing English, and he sings it as no American and no Englishman will ever sing English".

The Irish poet Aubrey Thomas de Vere wrote a poem The Ballad of Athlone which is an account of an incident in the 1691 siege.

Tourism and amenities
The promenade on the River Shannon is popular among anglers, birdwatchers and swimmers. The lakeshore is accessed from Coosan Point and Hodson Bay. The town is also home to Lough Ree Yacht Club. Athlone is a major retail destination within the Midlands region of Ireland. The town centre extends from Church Street in the west to Seán Costello Street in the east. Located centrally is the Athlone Town Centre, a shopping centre built in 2007, containing 54 shops, cafés and a four-star hotel.

The Golden Island Shopping Centre, which opened in 1997, is also located in the town centre.

Athlone has a number of hotels, including chains such the Radisson Blu and Sheraton hotels, as well as a number of locally owned ones. Athlone Regional Sports Centre, developed by the former Town Council in 2002, is located on the outskirts of the town. The facility contains a swimming pool, gym and AstroTurf pitches.

Burgess Park stands near the centre of the town, on the banks of the River Shannon.

Sean's Bar, located on the west bank of the river, is certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest pub in Ireland.

Athlone Castle is open to the public as a museum.

The Luan Gallery was opened in 2012. It is the first purpose-built, modern visual art gallery in the Midlands. It was designed by Keith Williams, who also designed the Athlone Civic Centre. The gallery was opened by Jimmy Deenihan, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The Luan Gallery opened with an exhibition from the Irish Museum of Modern Art, featuring the work of several national and international artists.

Other attractions include the Glendeer Open Farm and the Viking Cruise of the Shannon. Baysports, a boat training and watersports centre with the world's largest floating inflatable water slide, is located a ten-minute drive from the town. There is a tourist office on Church Street.

There are many fine golf courses within easy reach of Athlone including Athlone Golf Club, Glasson Golf & Country Club and Mount Temple Golf Club.

Greenway
The Old Rail Trail greenway runs for 42 kilometres from Athlone to Mullingar, along the disused Athlone-Mullingar Railway. It will eventually form part of the Dublin–Galway Greenway. A new cycle and pedestrian bridge over the River Shannon is planned to be built beside the Luan Gallery.

Education and industry

Athlone's major employers include Alkermes, a pharmaceutical company that succeeded Elan in Athlone; Bioclin Laboratories, another pharmaceutical company; Ericsson, a telecommunications business; Tyco Healthcare, a medical equipment supplier; Utah Medical, another medical equipment supplier; Pharmaplaz, another pharmaceutical company; Alienware, a computer hardware business; ICT Eurotel, a contact centre; and Athlone Extrusions, a polymer supplier.

Athlone is the regional centre for a large number of state-run and semi-state-run organisations. The Department of Education, State Examinations Commission, Revenue Commissioners, FÁS Midlands Region, Bus Éireann, Iarnród Éireann, IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland all have bases in the town. Athlone is also a major Irish military centre, as the Custume Barracks, which lie on the west bank of the Shannon in the town, is the headquarters of the Western Command of the Irish Army.

The Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT) is a constituent institute of the Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest, (TUS). Athlone forms part of the Midlands Gateway, an in-progress infrastructure initiative, along with Mullingar and Tullamore. The AIT has a campus size of 44 acres, and has new, purpose-built facilities include the Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Studies building, built in 2003; the Nursing and Health Science building, built in 2005; the Midlands Innovation and Research Centre, also built in 2005; the Engineering and Informatics building, built in 2010; and the Postgraduate Research Hub, also built in 2010. RTÉ's Midlands studio and office are located at AIT.

The Athlone Institute of Technology has memorandum of understanding with the Rio de Janeiro State University, one of the largest universities in the Brazilian city. AIT also has agreements with the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, one of the largest Brazilian private universities. The institute also founded agreements with two leading Beijing universities, the Capital University of Economics and Business and the Beijing Union University. The agreements were signed by the Chinese Ambassador to Ireland and university representatives. Other agreements exist between the AIT and TVTC, in Saudi Arabia, and a memorandum of understanding exists with the Georgia Institute of Technology. Further agreements exist with the Bharati Vidyapeeth, one of the largest universities in India.

There are four major secondary schools in the Athlone area, the Athlone Community College, a coeducational school; Our Lady's Bower School, a girls' school; Marist College, a boys' school; Coláiste Chiaráin, the new secondary school resulting from the amalgamation of St. Aloysius' College and St Joseph's College, Summerhill.

In June 2010, Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced his support of a proposed European and Chinese training hub in Athlone. In May 2012, the project was granted permission by An Bord Pleanála. It was planned to comprise a total of nine exhibition halls, nine smaller independent exhibition buildings, one temporary exhibition space, several offices, administrative services, some living quarters, hotels, shops, restaurants, pubs, a school and railway station. It was never built.

Broadcasting

Between 1931 and 1975 the main radio transmission centre for Irish radio was located at Moydrum, Athlone (53.42056°N, -7.88111°W). The original call sign was 2RN, a wordplay on the song "Come back to Erin". The station subsequently became known as "Radio Athlone" and could clearly be heard throughout Europe, and as far away as Moscow. This changed as bandwidth allocations were accorded at the Helsinki Declaration.

The station originally operated at a power of 60 kW, which during the 1950s, was increased to 100 kW. For an antenna, a T-antenna was and is still used, which spins between two 100-metre tall guyed masts with square cross-sections and which are insulated against ground. Many old radio sets in Europe had the "Athlone" dial position marked near the end of their tuning scales.

In the late 1970s the station reopened on a new dial position of 612 kHz for "Radio 2", later known as RTÉ 2fm. Moydrum was also the location of Ireland's short-lived Shortwave international radio service, which was closed down in 1948 due to lack of money. Today, RTÉ's Midlands studios are located in Athlone, at St. Mary's Square. The local radio station is Midlands 103. Many also tune into the Shannonside station.

A radio station, i102-104FM, was launched in 2008, geared to the 15–34 age group of the Midlands and Northeast.

The Athlone Community Taskforce and several members of the Roscommon community radio station, RosFM, have begun broadcasting from the Athlone area under the banner of Athlone Community Radio. Their first broadcast was on 15 March 2008 and the broadcasts were originally set to run every Saturday and Sunday for the following 15 weeks, until their temporary licence expired. They received a 10-year licence on 14 January 2011 from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, and they currently broadcast on the frequency of 88.4 FM.

Print
Local newspapers include the Westmeath Independent located on Sean Costello Street which was established in 1846 and the Athlone Topic.

Sport

In addition to being home to the Athlone Regional Sports Centre, the town has a variety of sporting organisations. Namely, there is the Athlone Town Football Club, who play their home games at Athlone Town Stadium in Lissywollen, an arena with a 5,000 person capacity. The Athlone Town Football Club won the League of Ireland Championship in 1981 and 1983, as well as the FAI Cup in 1924. The team also qualified for the 1975–76 UEFA Cup, where they played 0–0 against AC Milan.

The newly opened, ten million Euro, Athlone IT International Arena, is now Ireland's first world-class indoor athletics arena, boasting a floor space of nearly 10,000 square metres. The arena was opened by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, and has been admired by sporting legends such as Sonia O'Sullivan. It has also hailed by Senator Eamonn Coghlan as the "best news story in Irish athletics history". The stadium hosts the annual AIT Grand Prix event, broadcast by TG4 on the Island of Ireland and internationally via Vinco and Runnerspace.

Athlone hosted the European Triathlon Championships in 2010 when approximately 5,000 athletes participated in the event. Alistair Brownlee of Great Britain won the event. Two years later he won a gold medal in the triathlon at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Athlone is home to several Gaelic football teams, including Tubberclair GAA, Garrycastle GAA, and Athlone GAA, with St. Brigids (Roscommon) GAA and Clann na nGael GAA being located outside Athlone itself. Garrycastle GAA qualified for the 2012 All-Ireland Senior Club Football Championship for the first time in the club's history by beating Connacht Champions, St. Brigids GAA, in an all-Athlone semi-final. Garrycastle eventually lost the final to Crossmaglen Rangers in a replay of the final, the first match having ended in a draw by a scoreline of 1–12 to 0–15.

Athlone is also home to Buccaneers RFC, whose club's grounds are at Dubarry Park. Dubarry Park, with a 10,000 person capacity, is also home to the Connacht Eagles, the team that represents Connacht in the British and Irish Cup and in the All Ireland Inter-provincial Championship.

The European Capital of Sport awarded Athlone the title of European Town of Sport for 2013.

People

 * The Earls of Athlone
 * Pat Barlow, (1914–1986) professional footballer.
 * Robbie Benson, (b.1992) professional footballer.
 * Paul Brock, (b.1989) accordionist.
 * John Broderick, (1924–1989) Irish novelist.
 * James J. Browne, former president of the National University of Ireland, Galway (2008–2018)
 * Jack Carty (b.1992) Connaught and Ireland rugby union player
 * Michael Joseph Curley, (1879–1947) Catholic Archbishop and educationalist.
 * Stephen Donohoe, (b.1984) jockey and sailor.
 * Thomas Duffy, (1806-1868) recipient of the Victoria Cross.
 * Lisa Dwan, (b.1977) actress.
 * Jimmy Elliott, (1838–1883) Irish-American world heavyweight boxing champion from 1865 to 1868.
 * Thomas Flynn, (1842–1892) an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross.
 * John Ellard Gore, (1845–1910) astronomer one of the founding members of British Astronomical Association.
 * Robbie Henshaw, (b.1993) Irish rugby union player.
 * Henry Kelly, (b.1946) journalist and television presenter, born in Athlone.
 * Ralph Kenna, (b.1964) physicist, born in Athlone.
 * Declan Lynch, (b.1961) novelist and playwright.
 * David Madigan, (b.1962) statistician.
 * John McCormack, (1884-1945) tenor.
 * Nicky McFadden, (1962–2014) Teachta Dála.
 * Seán McLoughlin, (b.1990) YouTube game commentator known by the name of Jacksepticeye.
 * Stefan Molyneux, (b.1966) far-right podcaster and former YouTuber.
 * T. P. O'Connor, (1848–1929) journalist and Member of Parliament.
 * Caroline O'Donnell, (b.1974) architect and author.
 * Mary O'Rourke, (b.1937) a politician of various ministry roles and an author.
 * Feargal O'Rourke, (b.1964) accountant and taxation pioneer.
 * Richard Rothwell, (1800–1868) a nineteenth-century Irish portrait and genre painter.
 * Marcus Seoige, (b.1976) actor.
 * Brendan Shine, (b.1947) folk/country singer.
 * George Thomas Stokes, (1843–1898) ecclesiastical historian.

Sister cities

 * 🇦🇺 Athlone, Victoria, Australia

Twin towns

 * Chateaubriant, France

title: Athlone


text:
Long Buckby

Long Buckby is a large village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England. In the 2021 census the parish of Long Buckby, which includes the hamlet of Long Buckby Wharf, was recorded as having a population of 4,511.

Long Buckby is a hill top village, located around 4.5 mile north-east of the town of Daventry, and roughly midway between Northampton and Rugby, with each being around 9 mile to the south-east and north-west respectively. The west of the parish has the A5 road, Grand Union Canal, West Coast Main Line railway and M1 motorway all passing through the Watford Gap, with Watford, Northamptonshire being the next village to the north.

Just south of the village is Long Buckby railway station on the Northampton Loop corollary of the West Coast Main Line.

History
The origin of the name of the village is uncertain. 'Bukki's farm/settlement' or 'Bucca's farm/settlement'. Alternatively, 'billy-goat farm/settlement'.

Long Buckby has a history going back approximately 1,000 years to the Vikings when all of northern, central and eastern England came under the Danelaw. The village was recorded in Domesday Book as Buchebei and its prefix was first recorded in the Elizabethan era in reference to the length of the village.

Near the centre of the village are the remaining earthworks of a medieval castle, which was probably built by the lords of the manor, the de Quincy family, in the 12th century. The castle was likely an earth and timber construction, built by 1150 AD and occupied until some time after 1200 AD. The surviving earthworks, known locally as The Mounts, consist of an oval ring surrounded by a ditch.

The tower of the parish church of St Lawrence dates to the 12th century, with the rest of the building added later.

Long Buckby was once a thriving industrial village: In the 17th century a woollen industry was established and Long Buckby became a centre of weaving and woolcombing. After 1800 this went into decline and was replaced by a thriving shoemaking industry. This was enhanced by the arrival of the Grand Union Canal in the early 19th century, upon which Long Buckby had a busy wharf. The shoemaking industry went into gradual decline in the 20th century and had died out by 2000.

Since the 1960s the construction of the nearby M1 motorway has spurred expansion of the village from around 2,500 inhabitants to more 4,000 and has caused the nature of the village to change into a residential and commuter village.

Nonconformity was a strong tradition in the village, with a chapel of the United Reform Church built here in 1707. The present building was built in 1771.

The small hamlet of Long Buckby Wharf is separate from the main village but within the parish. It is located alongside the Grand Union Canal and was once a thriving community with its own post office, church and village hall.

The village offers a wide range of amenities and services, including a doctor's surgery, two dentists, four churches, two schools, a public library, a veterinary surgery, a boarding cattery, a post office, a community centre, Long Buckby Mill Park Nature Reserve and Cotton End Park. There are three pubs in the village (The Pigeon, Old King's Head & a micro-pub Badger's Arms). A fourth pub, The Admiral Rodney, is closed and now a hair salon and rented flats. Local shops include two grocery stores, a butcher’s, several hairdressers, a card and gift shop, a chemist and a wide range of restaurants and take-aways.

The English comedian Stanley Unwin moved to Long Buckby in 1940 when he got a job with the BBC at the nearby Borough Hill transmitting station. He lived there until his death in 2002.

Long Buckby railway station was opened in 1881 on the Northampton Loop Line. Until the mid-1960s Long Buckby boasted its own goods-marshalling yard, which played a very significant role in the once thriving village economy, providing for the import of fuel and consumables for local business and residents as well as delivering the mail and packages to the village post office and newspapers to the village newsagents. Local agricultural produce and to a lesser extent livestock were exported from the facility.

Long Buckby railway station, as the nearest stop to Althorp, was the final stop on the rail journey by the then Prince of Wales, his two sons and others following the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales and as such it was seen on television across the world.

Notable buildings and monument
The Historic England website contains details of 37 listed buildings in the parish of Long Buckby. All of them are Grade II apart from the following, which are Grade II*.
 * St Lawrence's Church, Church Street
 * Holly House, 22 High Street

There is also one scheduled monument in the parish:
 * Long Buckby Castle, ringwork and bailey

Transport
The A5 road and M1 motorway run a short distance to the west of Long Buckby. The nearest motorway junctions on the M1 are numbers 16 and 18. In addition, the A428 trunk road runs a short distance to the east of Long Buckby.

Long Buckby railway station is served by West Midlands Trains. It lies on the Northampton Loop of the West Coast Main Line running between Birmingham New Street and London Euston.

Regular local bus services connect Long Buckby to the nearby towns of Northampton, Rugby and Daventry.

Schools
Long Buckby has two schools, Long Buckby Infants School for reception, Year 1 and Year 2, and Long Buckby Junior School which takes pupils from Year 3 to Year 6, leading up to the Key Stage 2 tests.

The village is within the catchment area of Guilsborough School, a secondary school which takes local pupils on to Key Stage 3 (Year 7 to Year 9), followed by Key Stage 4 for Years 10 and 11. Guilsborough School also offers a Sixth Form centre for students wishing to take AS and A2 courses.

Sport
Long Buckby A.F.C. plays at Station Road. They are members of the United Counties League First Division. The club's highest achievement was reaching the 2nd round of the FA Vase in 1985–86. The club's most successful players include Gary Mills, Darren Harman, Alex McKenzie, Dan Holman and Richard Ryan. The football club on the same site as the rugby union club has its own clubhouse and a second pitch which the reserves and Sunday League sides use.

Long Buckby Rugby Football Club was founded in 1875 fielding three senior sides, a colts team and other junior teams. All are given coaching by qualified rugby coaches. Club training nights include week nights. Youth rugby is on Sundays. The club has a licensed clubhouse. The club's colours are green. Its emblem is a castle with an archway with a cross above.

Tennis tournament
The Long Buckby Tennis Tournament is an event which started in 1907, and is played annually in mid-July on the sports ground. It is a doubles tournament with each team playing all the others in their section.

Economy
Maclaren, the pushchair manufacturer founded by Owen Finlay Maclaren, was based in the village until 2000 when the company went into receivership and manufacturing went to China.

Notable residents

 * William Wadsworth (1594–1675), likely born in Long Buckby, emigrated to America and became a founder of Hartford, Connecticut.
 * The comedian and inventor of Unwinese, Stanley Unwin (1911–2002), lived in the village for many years and is buried in the local churchyard.

title: Long Buckby