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J. Paul Getty

Jean Paul Getty Sr. (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American-born British petroleum industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and was the patriarch of the Getty family. A native of Minneapolis, he was the son of pioneer oilman George Getty. In 1957, Fortune magazine named him the wealthiest living American, while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records declared him the world's wealthiest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approximately $ billion in ). At the time of his death, he was worth more than $6 billion (approximately $ billion in ). A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th wealthiest American who ever lived (based on his wealth as a percentage of the concurrent gross national product).

Getty is considered to have been frugal, notably negotiating his grandson's kidnapping ransom in 1973. He had five children and divorced five times. Getty was an avid collector of art and antiquities. His collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; more than $661 million of his estate was left to the museum after his death. He established the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1953. The trust, which is the world's wealthiest art institution, operates the J. Paul Getty Museum Complexes: the Getty Center, the Getty Villa and the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the Getty Conservation Institute.

Early life and education
Getty was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Sarah Catherine McPherson (Risher) and George Getty, who was an attorney in the insurance industry. His parents raised him as a Methodist; his father was a devout Christian Scientist, and both were strict teetotalers. He was of part Scottish descent. In 1903, when Getty was 10 years old, George Getty traveled to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and bought the mineral rights for 1,100 acres of land. The Getty family subsequently moved to Bartlesville, where J. Paul Getty attended the Garfield School. Within a few years Getty had established wells on the land that were producing 100,000 barrels of crude oil a month.

As newly minted millionaires, the family moved to Los Angeles, but J. Paul Getty later returned to Oklahoma. At age 14, he attended Harvard Military School for a year, followed by Polytechnic High School, where he was given the nickname "Dictionary Getty" because of his love of reading. He became fluent in French, German and Italian, and conversational in Spanish, Greek, Arabic and Russian. A love of the classics led Getty to acquire reading proficiency in Ancient Greek and Latin.

Getty enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, but did not complete a degree. Enamored of Europe after traveling abroad with his parents in 1910, he enrolled at the University of Oxford on November 28, 1912. A letter of introduction by then-President of the United States William Howard Taft enabled him to gain independent instruction from tutors at Magdalen College. Although he was not registered at Magdalen, he claimed the aristocratic students "accepted me as one of their own" and he fondly boasted of the friends he made, including the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom. He obtained a diploma in economics and political science from Oxford in June 1913, then spent months traveling throughout Europe and Egypt before meeting his parents in Paris and returning with them to the U.S. in June 1914.

Career
In the autumn of 1914, George Getty gave his son $10,000 to invest in expanding the family's oil field holdings in Oklahoma. The first lot he bought, the Nancy Taylor No. 1 Oil Well Site near Haskell, Oklahoma, was crucial to his early financial success. The well struck oil in August 1915 and by the next summer the 40 percent net production royalty he accrued from it had made him a millionaire.

In 1919, Getty returned to business in Oklahoma. During the 1920s, he added about $3 million to his already sizable estate. His succession of marriages and divorces so distressed his father that Getty inherited only $500,000 of the $10 million fortune his father left at the time of his death in 1930. Getty was left with one-third of the stock from George Getty Inc., while his mother received the remaining two-thirds, giving her a controlling interest.

In 1936, Getty's mother convinced him to contribute to the establishment of a $3.3 million investment trust, called the Sarah C. Getty Trust, to ensure the family's ever-growing wealth could be channeled into tax-free, secure income for future generations of the Getty family. The trust enabled Getty to have easy access to ready capital, which he was funneling into the purchase of Tidewater Petroleum stock.

During the Great Depression, Getty acquired Pacific Western Oil Corporation and began the acquisition (completed in 1953) of the Mission Corporation, which included Tidewater Oil and Skelly Oil. In 1967, Getty merged these holdings into Getty Oil.

In 1948–49, Getty paid Ibn Saud $9.5 million in cash, guaranteed $1 million a year, and a royalty of 55 cents a barrel for the Saudi Arabian Neutral Zone concession, which was 2.5 times more than what other major oil companies were paying in the Middle East at the time. Oil was finally discovered in March 1953. Since 1953, Getty's gamble produced 16 million barrels a year, which contributed greatly to the fortune responsible for making him one of the richest people in the world.

Getty's wealth and ability to speak Arabic enabled his unparalleled expansion into the Middle East. He owned the controlling interest in about 200 businesses, including Getty Oil. Getty owned Getty Oil, Getty Inc., George F. Getty Inc., Pacific Western Oil Corporation, Mission Corporation, Mission Development Company, Tidewater Oil, Skelly Oil, Mexican Seaboard Oil, Petroleum Corporation of America, Spartan Aircraft Company, Spartan Cafeteria Company, Minnehoma Insurance Company, Minnehoma Financial Company, Pierre Hotel, Pierre Marques Hotel, a 15th-century palace and nearby castle at Ladispoli on the coast northwest of Rome, a Malibu ranch home, and Sutton Place, a 72-room mansion near Guildford, Surrey.

Art collection
Getty's first forays into collecting began in the late 1930s, when he was inspired by the collection of 18th-century French paintings and furniture of the landlord of his New York City penthouse, Amy Guest, a relation of Sir Winston Churchill. A fan of 18th-century France, Getty began buying furniture from the period at reduced prices because of the depressed art market. He wrote several books on collecting, including Europe and the 18th Century (1949), Collector's Choice: The Chronicle of an Artistic Odyssey through Europe (1955) and The Joys of Collecting (1965). His stinginess limited the range of his collecting because he refused to pay full price. Getty's companion in later life, Penelope Kitson, said, "Paul was really too mean ever to allow himself to buy a great painting." Nonetheless, at the time of his death he owned more than 600 works valued at more than $4 million, including paintings by Rubens, Titian, Gainsborough, Renoir, Tintoretto, Degas, and Monet. Getty's reluctance to donate any more artworks to Los Angeles County after he realized how his first donations had been shabbily presented at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art caused Edward W. Carter to orchestrate the fundraising effort for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. During the 1950s, Getty's interests shifted to Greco-Roman sculpture, which led to the building of the Getty Villa in the 1970s to house the collection. These items were transferred to the Getty Museum and the Getty Villa in Los Angeles after his death.

Marriages, divorces and children
Getty was a notorious womanizer from the time of his youth, which horrified his conservative parents. His lawyer, Robin Lund, once said, "Paul could hardly ever say 'no' to a woman, or 'yes' to a man." Lord Beaverbrook called him "priapic" and "ever-ready" in his sexual habits.

In 1917, when he was 25, Elsie Eckstrom filed a paternity suit against Getty in Los Angeles, claiming he was the father of her daughter, Paula. Eckstrom said that Getty had taken her virginity while she was drunk and fathered the child. His legal team tried to undermine her credibility by claiming that she had a history of promiscuity. Getty agreed to a settlement of $10,000, upon which Eckstrom left town with the baby.

Getty was married and divorced five times. He had five sons with four of his wives:
 * 1) Jeanette Demont (married 1923 – divorced 1926); one son, George F. Getty II (1924–1973).
 * 2) Allene Ashby (1926–1928); no children. Getty met 17-year-old Ashby, the daughter of a Texas rancher, in Mexico City while he was studying Spanish and overseeing his family's business interests. They eloped to Cuernavaca, Mexico, but the marriage was bigamous as he was not yet divorced from Jeanette. The two quickly decided to dissolve the union while still in Mexico.
 * 3) Adolphine Helmle (1928–1932); one son, Jean Ronald Getty (1929–2009), whose son, Christopher Ronald Getty, married Pia Miller, sister of Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece. Like his first and second wives, Adolphine was 17 when Getty met her in Vienna. She was the daughter of a prominent German doctor who opposed her marriage to the twice-divorced, 36-year-old Getty. The two eloped to Cuernavaca, where he had married Ashby, then settled in Los Angeles. After their son was born, Getty lost interest in her and her father convinced her to return to Germany with their son in 1929. After a protracted and contentious battle, their divorce was finalized in August 1932, with Adolphine receiving a huge sum for punitive damages and full custody of Ronald.
 * 4) Ann Rork (1932–1936); two sons, John Paul Getty Jr. (1932–2003) and Gordon Peter Getty (born 1933). Getty was introduced to Rork when she was 14, but she did not become his romantic partner until she was 21 in 1930. Because he was in the midst of his divorce from Adolphine, the couple had to wait two years to marry. He was largely absent during their marriage, staying for long stretches of time in Europe. She sued him for divorce in 1936, alleging emotional abuse and neglect. She described an incident while the two were abroad in Italy in which she claimed Getty forced her to climb to view the crater of Mount Vesuvius while she was pregnant with their first son. The court ruled in her favor and she was awarded $2,500 per month in alimony plus $1,000 each in child support for her sons.
 * 5) Louise Dudley "Teddy" Lynch (1939–1958); one son, Timothy Ware Getty (1946–1958).

In 2013, at age 99, Getty's fifth wife, Louise, known as Teddy Getty Gaston, published a memoir recounting how Getty had scolded her for spending money too freely in the 1950s on the treatment of their six-year-old son, Timmy, who had become blind from a brain tumor. Timmy died at age 12, and Getty, living in England apart from his family, who were in the U.S., did not attend the funeral. Gaston divorced Getty that year. She died in 2017 at the age of 103.

Getty was quoted as saying "A lasting relationship with a woman is only possible if you are a business failure" and "I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my marriages. I would gladly give all my millions for just one lasting marital success."

Kidnapping of grandson John Paul Getty III
In Rome on July 10, 1973, 'Ndrangheta kidnappers abducted Getty's 16-year-old grandson, John Paul Getty III, and demanded $17 million (equivalent to $ in ) for his safe return. The family suspected a ploy by the rebellious teenager to extract money from his miserly grandfather. John Paul Getty Jr. asked his father for the money, but was refused, arguing that his 13 other grandchildren could also become kidnapping targets if he paid.

In November 1973, an envelope containing a lock of hair and a human ear arrived at a daily newspaper. The second demand had been delayed three weeks by an Italian postal strike. The demand threatened that Paul would be further mutilated unless the victims paid $3.2 million. The demand stated: "This is Paul's ear. If we don't get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits."

When the kidnappers reduced their demand to $3 million, Getty agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million (equivalent to $ in ), the maximum that would be tax-deductible. He lent his son the remaining $800,000 at four percent interest. Getty's grandson was found alive on December 15, 1973, in a Lauria filling station, in the province of Potenza, shortly after the ransom was paid. After his release, the younger Getty called his grandfather to thank him for paying the ransom but Getty refused to come to the phone. Nine people associated with 'Ndrangheta were later arrested for the kidnapping, but only two were convicted. Getty III was permanently affected by the trauma and became a drug addict. After a stroke brought on by a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in 1981, he was rendered speechless, nearly blind, and partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. He died on February 5, 2011, at age 54.

Getty defended his initial refusal to pay the ransom on two grounds. He argued that his 13 other grandchildren could also become kidnapping targets if he paid and said: "The second reason for my refusal was much broader-based. I contend that acceding to the demands of criminals and terrorists merely guarantees the continuing increase and spread of lawlessness, violence and such outrages as terror-bombings, "skyjackings" and the slaughter of hostages that plague our present-day world."

Nine of the kidnappers were apprehended, including Girolamo Piromalli and Saverio Mammoliti, high-ranking members of the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia organization in Calabria. Two of the kidnappers were convicted and sent to prison; the others were acquitted for lack of evidence, including the 'Ndrangheta bosses. Most of the ransom money was never recovered.

Reputation for frugality
Many anecdotal stories exist of Getty's thriftiness and parsimony, which struck observers as comical, even perverse, because of his extreme wealth. The two best-known examples are his reluctance to pay his grandson's kidnapping ransom and a pay phone he had installed at Sutton Place. A darker incident was his fifth wife's claim that Getty had scolded her for spending too much on their terminally ill son's medical treatment, though he was worth tens of millions of dollars at the time. He was well known for bargaining on almost everything to obtain the lowest possible price, including suites at luxury hotels and virtually all purchases of artwork and real estate. In 1959, Sutton Place, a 72-room mansion, was purchased from George Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 5th Duke of Sutherland, for £60,000, about half of what the duke paid for it 40 years earlier.

 * Getty's secretary claimed that Getty did his laundry by hand because he did not want to pay for his clothes to be laundered. When his shirts became frayed at the cuffs, he would trim the frayed parts rather than buy new shirts.
 * Reusing stationery was another obsession of Getty's. He had a habit of writing responses to letters on the margins or back sides and mailing them back, rather than using a new sheet of paper. He also carefully saved and reused manila envelopes, rubber bands, and other office supplies.
 * When Getty took a group of friends to a dog show in London, he made them walk around the block for 10 minutes until the tickets became half-priced at 5 pm, because he did not want to pay the full 5 shillings per head.
 * Getty moved to Sutton Place in part because the cost of living was cheaper than in London, where he had resided at the Ritz. He once boasted to American columnist Art Buchwald that it cost 10 cents for a rum and coke at Sutton Place, whereas at the Ritz it was more than a dollar.
 * Getty drove his own car to work every day.

Author John Pearson attributed part of Getty's extreme penny-pinching to the Methodist sensibility of Getty's upbringing, which emphasized modest living and personal economy. His business acumen was also a major factor in Getty's thriftiness. "He would allow himself no self-indulgence in the purchase of a place to live, a work of art, even a piece of furniture, unless he could convince himself that it would appreciate in value." Getty claimed his frugality toward others was a response to having been taken advantage of. "It's not the money I object to, it's the principle of the thing that bothers me", he said.

Coin-box telephone
Getty famously had a pay phone installed at Sutton Place, helping to seal his reputation as a miser. He placed dial locks on all the regular telephones, limiting their use to authorized staff, and the coin-box telephone was installed for others. In his autobiography, he described his reasons:

"Now, for months after Sutton Place was purchased, great numbers of people came in and out of the house. Some were visiting businessmen. Others were artisans or workmen engaged in renovation and refurbishing. Still others were tradesmen making deliveries of merchandise. Suddenly, the Sutton Place telephone bills began to soar. The reason was obvious. Each of the regular telephones in the house has direct access to outside lines and thus to long-distance and even overseas operators. All sorts of people were making the best of a rare opportunity. They were picking up Sutton Place phones and placing calls to girlfriends in Geneva or Georgia and to aunts, uncles and third cousins twice-removed in Caracas and Cape Town. The costs of their friendly chats were, of course, charged to the Sutton Place bill."

In a 1963 televised interview with Alan Whicker, Getty said that he thought guests would want to use a pay phone. After 18 months, he said, "the in-and-out traffic flow at Sutton subsided. Management and operation of the house settled into a reasonable routine. With that, the pay telephone [was] removed, and the dial locks were taken off the telephones in the house."

Later years and death
On June 30, 1960, Getty threw a 21st birthday party for a relative of his friend, the 16th Duke of Norfolk, which served as a housewarming party for the newly purchased Sutton Place. Partygoers were irritated by Getty's stinginess, such as not providing cigarettes and relegating everyone to using creosote portable toilets outside. At about 10 p.m. the party descended into pandemonium as party crashers arrived from London, swelling the already overcrowded halls and causing an estimated £20,000 in damage. A valuable silver ewer by the 18th century silversmith Paul de Lamerie was stolen, but returned anonymously when the London newspapers began covering the theft. The event's failure made Getty the object of ridicule and he never threw another large party.

Getty remained an inveterate hard worker, boasting at age 74 that he often worked 16 to 18 hours per day overseeing his operations across the world. The value of Getty Oil shares quadrupled during the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War of 1973, which caused a worldwide oil shortage for years. Getty's earnings topped $25.8 million in 1975.

Getty met the English interior designer Penelope Kitson in the 1950s and entrusted her with decorating his homes and the public rooms of the oil tankers he was launching. From 1960, Kitson resided in a cottage on the grounds of Sutton Place. Getty and Kitson maintained a platonic relationship and Getty held her in high respect and trust.

Getty's insatiable appetite for sex also continued into his 80s. He used an experimental drug, H3, to maintain his potency. Mistresses who resided at Sutton Place included Mary Teissier, a distant cousin of the last Tsar of Russia; Lady Ursula d'Abo, who had close connections to the British Royal Family; and Nicaraguan-born Rosabella Burch.

The New York Times wrote of Getty's domestic arrangement that he "ended his life with a collection of desperately hopeful women, all living together in his Tudor mansion in England, none of them aware that his favorite pastime was rewriting his will, changing his insultingly small bequests: $209 a month to one, $1,167 to another." Only Kitson received a significant bequest upon Getty's death: 5,000 shares of Getty Oil, which doubled in value during the 1980s, and a $1,167 monthly income.

On June 6, 1976, Getty died of heart failure at age 83 in Sutton Place.

Media portrayals
Rudy De Luca portrayed Getty in the 1991 Mel Brooks film Life Stinks, in which Brooks plays a real estate tycoon who takes a bet that he can't live in the streets as a derelict for a month. Several times in the film he runs into a homeless man who claims to be Getty in a similar situation, but neither believes the other. It is never confirmed whether this character was supposed to actually be Getty or just a homeless person with a personality disorder, but he is credited as "J. Paul Getty".

Christopher Plummer portrayed Getty in the 2017 film All the Money in the World, which dramatizes his grandson's kidnapping. Getty was originally portrayed by Kevin Spacey, but after sexual misconduct allegations surfaced against Spacey before the film premiered, Plummer refilmed Spacey's scenes. For his performance, Plummer received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The kidnapping is also dramatized in the first season of the American anthology drama series Trust, in which Donald Sutherland portrays Getty.

Quotations
J. Paul Getty has one entry in the 8th Edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations: "If you can actually count your money, then you are not really a rich man."

Published works

 * Getty, J. Paul. The history of the bigger oil business of George F.S. F. and J. Paul Getty from 1903 to 1939. Los Angeles?, 1941,
 * Getty, J. Paul. Europe in the Eighteenth Century. [Santa Monica, Calif.]: privately printed, 1949,
 * Le Vane, Ethel, and J. Paul Getty. Collector's Choice: The Chronicle of an Artistic Odyssey through Europe. London: W.H. Allen, 1955,
 * Getty, J. Paul. My Life and Fortunes. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1963,
 * Getty, J. Paul. The Joys of Collecting. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1965,
 * Getty, J. Paul. How to be Rich. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1965,
 * Getty, J. Paul. The Golden Age. New York: Trident Press, 1968,
 * Getty, J. Paul. How to be a Successful Executive. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1971,
 * Getty, J. Paul. As I See It: The Autobiography of J. Paul Getty. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1976. ISBN 0-13-049593-X,

title: J. Paul Getty


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Saṃsāra

Saṃsāra (Devanagari: संसार) is a Pali and Sanskrit word that means "wandering" as well as "world," wherein the term connotes "cyclic change" or, less formally, "running around in circles." Saṃsāra is referred to with terms or phrases such as transmigration/reincarnation, karmic cycle, or Punarjanman, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence". When related to the theory of karma it is the cycle of death and rebirth.

The "cyclicity of all life, matter, and existence" is a fundamental belief of most Indian religions. The concept of saṃsāra has roots in the post-Vedic literature; the theory is not discussed in the Vedas themselves. It appears in developed form, but without mechanistic details, in the early Upanishads. The full exposition of the saṃsāra doctrine is found in Śramaṇic movements such as early Buddhism and Jainism, as well as various schools of Hindu philosophy after about the mid-1st millennium BCE. The saṃsāra doctrine is tied to the karma theory of Hinduism, and the liberation from saṃsāra has been at the core of the spiritual quest of Indian traditions, as well as their internal disagreements. The liberation from saṃsāra is called Moksha, Nirvāṇa, Mukti, or Kaivalya.

Etymology and terminology
Saṃsāra (Devanagari: संसार) means "wandering", as well as "world" wherein the term connotes "cyclic change". Saṃsāra, a fundamental concept in all Indian religions, is linked to the karma theory and refers to the belief that all living beings cyclically go through births and rebirths. The term is related to phrases such as "the cycle of successive existence", "transmigration", "karmic cycle", "the wheel of life", and "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence". Many scholarly texts spell saṃsāra as samsara.

According to Monier-Williams, saṃsāra is rooted in the term Saṃsṛ (संसृ), which means "to go round, revolve, pass through a succession of states, to go towards or obtain, moving in a circuit". A conceptual form from this root appears in ancient texts as saṃsaraṇa, which means "going around through a succession of states, birth, rebirth of living beings and the world", without obstruction. The term shortens to saṃsāra, referring to the same concept, as a "passage through successive states of mundane existence", a transmigration, metempsychosis, a circuit of living where one repeats previous states, from one body to another, a worldly life of constant change, that is rebirth, growth, decay and redeath. The concept is then contrasted with the concept of moksha, also known as mukti, nirvāṇa, nibbāna or kaivalya, which refers to liberation from this cycle of aimless wandering.

The concept of saṃsāra developed in the post-Vedic times, and is traceable in the Samhita layers such as in sections 1.164, 4.55, 6.70 and 10.14 of the Rigveda. While the idea is mentioned in the Samhita layers of the Vedas, there is lack of clear exposition there, and the idea fully develops in the early Upanishads. Damien Keown states that the notion of "cyclic birth and death" appears around 800 BC. The word saṃsāra appears, along with Moksha, in several Principal Upanishads such as in verse 1.3.7 of the Katha Upanishad, verse 6.16 of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, verses 1.4 and 6.34 of the Maitri Upanishad.

The word saṃsāra is related to Saṃsṛti, the latter referring to the "course of mundane existence, transmigration, flow, circuit or stream".

Definition and rationale
The word literally means "wandering through, flowing on", states Stephen J. Laumakis, in the sense of "aimless and directionless wandering". The concept of saṃsāra is closely associated with the belief that the person continues to be born and reborn in various realms and forms.

The earliest layers of Vedic text incorporate the concept of life, followed by an afterlife in heaven and hell based on cumulative virtues (merit) or vices (demerit). However, the ancient Vedic Rishis challenged this idea of afterlife as simplistic, because people do not live an equally moral or immoral life. Between generally virtuous lives, some are more virtuous; while evil too has degrees, and the texts assert that it would be unfair for god Yama to judge and reward people with varying degrees of virtue or vices, in an "either or,” and disproportionate manner. They introduced the idea of an afterlife in heaven or hell in proportion to one's merit, and when this runs out, one returns and is reborn. This idea appears in ancient and medieval texts, as the cycle of life, death, rebirth and redeath, such as section 6:31 of the Mahabharata and section 6.10 of the Devi Bhagavata Purana.

History
The historical origins of a concept of a cycle of repeated reincarnation, or Punarjanman, are obscure but the idea appears in texts of both India and ancient Greece during the first millennium BC.

The idea of saṃsāra is hinted in the late Vedic texts such as the Rigveda, but the theory is absent. According to Sayers, the earliest layers of the Vedic literature show ancestor worship and rites such as sraddha (offering food to the ancestors). The later Vedic texts such as the Aranyakas and the Upanishads show a different soteriology based on reincarnation, they show little concern with ancestor rites, and they begin to philosophically interpret the earlier rituals, although the idea is not fully developed yet. It is in the early Upanishads where these ideas are more fully developed, but there too the discussion does not provide specific mechanistic details. The detailed doctrines flower with unique characteristics, starting around the mid 1st millennium BC, in diverse traditions such as in Buddhism, Jainism and various schools of Hindu philosophy.

The evidence for who influenced whom in the ancient times, is slim and speculative, and the odds are the historic development of the Saṃsāra theories likely happened in parallel with mutual influences.

Punarmrityu: redeath
While saṃsāra is usually described as rebirth and reincarnation (Punarjanman) of living beings (Jiva), the chronological development of the idea over its history began with the questions on what is the true nature of human existence and whether people die only once. This led first to the concepts of Punarmṛtyu ("redeath") and Punaravṛtti ("return"). These early theories asserted that the nature of human existence involves two realities, one unchanging absolute Atman (Self) which is somehow connected to the ultimate unchanging immortal reality and bliss called Brahman, and that the rest is the always-changing subject (body) in a phenomenal world (Maya). Redeath, in the Vedic theosophical speculations, reflected the end of "blissful years spent in svarga or heaven", and it was followed by rebirth back in the phenomenal world. Saṃsāra developed into a foundational theory of the nature of existence, shared by all Indian religions.

Rebirth as a human being, states John Bowker, was then presented as a "rare opportunity to break the sequence of rebirth, thus attaining Moksha, release". Each Indian spiritual tradition developed its own assumptions and paths (marga or yoga) for this spiritual release, with some developing the ideas of Jivanmukti (liberation and freedom in this life),  while others content with Videhamukti (liberation and freedom in after-life).

The Sramanas traditions (Buddhism and Jainism) added novel ideas, starting about the 6th century BC. They emphasized human suffering in the larger context, placing rebirth, redeath and truth of pain at the center and the start of religious life. Sramanas view saṃsāra as a beginningless cyclical process with each birth and death as punctuations in that process, and spiritual liberation as freedom from rebirth and redeath. The saṃsāric rebirth and redeath ideas are discussed in these religions with various terms, such as Āgatigati in many early Pali Suttas of Buddhism.

Evolution of ideas
Across different religions, different soteriology were emphasized as the saṃsāra theories evolved in respective Indian traditions. For example, in their saṃsāra theories, states Obeyesekere, the Hindu traditions accepted Ātman or Self exists and asserted it to be the unchanging essence of each living being, while Buddhist traditions denied such a soul exists and developed the concept of Anattā. Salvation (moksha, mukti) in the Hindu traditions was described using the concepts of Ātman (self) and Brahman (universal reality), while in Buddhism it (nirvāṇa, nibbāna) was described through the concept of Anattā (no self) and Śūnyatā (emptiness).

The Ajivika tradition combined saṃsāra with the premise that there is no free will, while the Jainism tradition accepted the concept of soul (calling it "jiva") with free will, but emphasized asceticism and cessation of action as a means of liberation from saṃsāra it calls bondage. The various sub-traditions of Hinduism, and of Buddhism, accepted free will, avoided asceticism, accepted renunciation and monastic life, and developed their own ideas on liberation through realization of the true nature of existence.

In Hinduism
In Hinduism, saṃsāra is a journey of the Ātman. The body dies, assert the Hindu traditions, but not the Ātman, which it assumes to be the eternal reality, indestructible, and bliss. Everything and all existence is connected, cyclical, and composed of two things: the Self, or Ātman, and the body, or matter. This eternal Self called Ātman never reincarnates, it does not change and cannot change in the Hindu belief. In contrast, the body and personality, can change, constantly changes, is born and dies. Current karma impacts the future circumstances in this life, as well as the future forms and realms of lives. Good intent and actions lead to good future, bad intent and actions lead to bad future, in the Hindu view of life. The journey of samsara allows the atman the opportunity to perform positive or negative karmas throughout each birth and make spiritual efforts to attain moksha.

A virtuous life, actions consistent with dharma, are believed by Hindus to contribute to a better future, whether in this life or future lives. The aim of spiritual pursuits, whether it be through the path of bhakti (devotion), karma (work), jñāna (knowledge), or raja (meditation) is self-liberation (moksha) from saṃsāra.

The Upanishads, part of the scriptures of the Hindu traditions, primarily focus on self-liberation from saṃsāra. The Bhagavad Gita discusses various paths to liberation. The Upanishads, states Harold Coward, offer a "very optimistic view regarding the perfectibility of human nature", and the goal of human effort in these texts is a continuous journey to self-perfection and self-knowledge so as to end saṃsāra. The aim of spiritual quest in the Upanishadic traditions is to find the true self within and to know one's Self, a state that it believes leads to blissful state of freedom, moksha.

Differences within the Hindu traditions
All Hindu traditions and Darśanas share the concept of saṃsāra, but they differ in details and what they describe the state of liberation from saṃsāra to be. The saṃsāra is viewed as the cycle of rebirth in a temporal world of always changing reality or Maya (appearance, illusive), Brahman is defined as that which never changes or Sat (eternal truth, reality), and moksha as the realization of Brahman and freedom from saṃsāra.

The dualistic devotional traditions such as Madhvacharya's Dvaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism champion a theistic premise, assert the individual human Self and Brahman (Vishnu, Krishna) are two different realities, loving devotion to Vishnu is the means to release from saṃsāra, it is the grace of Vishnu which leads to moksha, and spiritual liberation is achievable only in after-life (videhamukti). The nondualistic traditions such as Adi Shankara's Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism champion a monistic premise, asserting that the individual Atman and Brahman are identical, and only ignorance, impulsiveness and inertia leads to suffering through saṃsāra. In reality they are no dualities, meditation and self-knowledge is the path to liberation, the realization that one's Ātman is identical to Brahman is moksha, and spiritual liberation is achievable in this life (jivanmukti).

In Jainism
In Jainism, the saṃsāra and karma doctrine are central to its theological foundations, as evidenced by the extensive literature on it in the major sects of Jainism, and their pioneering ideas on karma and saṃsāra from the earliest times of the Jaina tradition. Saṃsāra in Jainism represents the worldly life characterized by continuous rebirths and suffering in various realms of existence.

The conceptual framework of the saṃsāra doctrine differs between the Jainism traditions and other Indian religions. For instance, in Jaina traditions, soul (jiva) is accepted as a truth, as is assumed in the Hindu traditions, but not assumed in the Buddhist traditions. However, saṃsāra or the cycle of rebirths, has a definite beginning and end in Jainism.

Souls begin their journey in a primordial state, and exist in a state of consciousness continuum that is constantly evolving through saṃsāra. Some evolve to a higher state, while some regress, a movement that is driven by karma. Further, Jaina traditions believe that there exist Ābhāvya (incapable), or a class of souls that can never attain moksha (liberation). The Ābhāvya state of soul is entered after an intentional and shockingly evil act. Jainism considers souls as pluralistic each in a karma-saṃsāra cycle, and does not subscribe to Advaita style nondualism of Hinduism, or Advaya style nondualism of Buddhism.

The Jaina theosophy, like ancient Ajivika, but unlike Hindu and Buddhist theosophies, asserts that each soul passes through 8,400,000 birth-situations, as they circle through saṃsāra. As the soul cycles, states Padmanabh Jaini, Jainism traditions believe that it goes through five types of bodies: earth bodies, water bodies, fire bodies, air bodies and vegetable lives. With all human and non-human activities, such as rainfall, agriculture, eating and even breathing, minuscule living beings are taking birth or dying, their souls are believed to be constantly changing bodies. Perturbing, harming or killing any life form, including any human being, is considered a sin in Jainism, with negative karmic effects.

A liberated soul in Jainism is one who has gone beyond saṃsāra, is at the apex, is omniscient, remains there eternally, and is known as a Siddha. A male human being is considered closest to the apex with the potential to achieve liberation, particularly through asceticism. Women must gain karmic merit, to be reborn as man, and only then can they achieve spiritual liberation in Jainism, particularly in the Digambara sect of Jainism; however, this view has been historically debated within Jainism and different Jaina sects have expressed different views, particularly the Shvetambara sect that believes that women too can achieve liberation from saṃsāra.

In contrast to Buddhist texts which do not expressly or unambiguously condemn injuring or killing plants and minor life forms, Jaina texts do. Jainism considers it a bad karma to injure plants and minor life forms with negative impact on a soul's. However, some texts in Buddhism and Hinduism do caution a person from injuring all life forms, including plants and seeds.

In Buddhism

Saṃsāra in Buddhism, states Jeff Wilson, is the "suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end". Also referred to as the wheel of existence (Bhavacakra), it is often mentioned in Buddhist texts with the term punarbhava (rebirth, re-becoming); the liberation from this cycle of existence, Nirvāṇa, is the foundation and the most important purpose of Buddhism.

Saṃsāra is considered permanent in Buddhism, just like other Indian religions. Karma drives this permanent saṃsāra in Buddhist thought, states Paul Williams, and "short of attaining enlightenment, in each rebirth one is born and dies, to be reborn elsewhere in accordance with the completely impersonal causal nature of one's own karma; This endless cycle of birth, rebirth, and redeath is saṃsāra". The Four Noble Truths, accepted by all Buddhist traditions, are aimed at ending this saṃsāra-related re-becoming (rebirth) and associated cycles of suffering.

Like Jainism, Buddhism developed its own saṃsāra theory, that evolved over time the mechanistic details on how the wheel of mundane existence works over the endless cycles of rebirth and redeath. In early Buddhist traditions, saṃsāra cosmology consisted of five realms through which wheel of existence recycled. This included hells (niraya), hungry ghosts (pretas), animals (tiryak), humans (manushya), and gods (devas, heavenly). In latter traditions, this list grew to a list of six realms of rebirth, adding demi-gods (asuras), which were included in gods realm in earlier traditions. The "hungry ghost, heavenly, hellish realms" respectively formulate the ritual, literary and moral spheres of many contemporary Buddhist traditions.

The saṃsāra concept, in Buddhism, envisions that these six realms are interconnected, and everyone cycles life after life, and death is just a state for an afterlife, through these realms, because of a combination of ignorance, desires and purposeful karma, or ethical and unethical actions. Nirvāṇa is typically described as the freedom from rebirth and the only alternative to suffering of saṃsāra, in Buddhism. However, the Buddhist texts developed a more comprehensive theory of rebirth, states Steven Collins, from fears of redeath, called amata (death-free), a state which is considered synonymous with Nirvāṇa.

In Sikhism
Sikhism incorporates the concepts of saṃsāra (sometimes spelled as Saṅsāra in Sikh texts), karma and cyclical nature of time and existence. Founded in the 15th century, its founder Guru Nanak incorporated the cyclical concept of ancient Indian religions and the cyclical concept of time, state Cole and Sambhi. However, states Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, there are important differences between the Saṅsāra concept in Sikhism from the saṃsāra concept in many traditions within Hinduism. The difference is that Sikhism firmly believes in the grace of God as the means to salvation, and its precepts encourage the bhakti of One Lord for mukti (salvation).

Sikhism, like the three ancient Indian traditions, believes that body is perishable, there is a cycle of rebirth, and that there is suffering with each cycle of rebirth. These features of Sikhism, along with its belief in Saṅsāra and the grace of God, is similar to some bhakti-oriented sub-traditions within Hinduism such as those found in Vaishnavism. Sikhism does not believe that ascetic life, as recommended in Jainism, is the path to liberation. Rather, it cherishes social engagement and householder's life combined with devotion to the One God as Guru, to be the path of liberation from saṅsāra.

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

title: Saṃsāra


text:
H. L. Hunt

Haroldson Lafayette Hunt Jr. (February 17, 1889 – November 29, 1974) was an American oil tycoon. By trading poker winnings for oil rights according to legend, but more likely through money he gained from successful speculation in oil leases, he ultimately secured title to much of the East Texas Oil Field, one of the world's largest oil deposits. He acquired rights to East Texas oil lands initially through a $30,000 land purchase from oil speculator Dad Joiner, and founded Hunt Oil in 1936. From it and his other acquisitions, which included diverse interests in publishing, cosmetics, pecan farming, and health food producers, he accrued a fortune that was among the world's largest. In the 1950s, his Facts Forum Foundation supported highly conservative newspaper columns and radio programs, some of which he authored and produced himself, and for which he became known. At his death, he was reputed to have one of the highest net worths of any individual in the world, a fortune estimated between $2–3 billion dollars.

Life
Hunt was born near Ramsey, in Carson Township, Fayette County, Illinois, the youngest of eight children. He was named after his father, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, who was a prosperous farmer-entrepreneur. His mother was Ella Rose (Myers) Hunt.

Hunt was homeschooled. He did not go to elementary school or to high school. Later, he said that education is an obstacle to making money. As a teenager, Hunt traveled to different places before he settled in Arkansas, where he was running a cotton plantation by 1912. He had a reputation as a math prodigy and was a gambler. Hunt is reported in internal FBI memoranda to have run prostitution activities in Arkansas and, later in the 1950s, a private horse racing and gambling bookmaking operation from his office in Dallas.

It was said that after his cotton plantation was flooded, he turned his last $100 into more than $100,000 after he had gambled in New Orleans. With his winnings, he purchased oil properties in the neighborhood of El Dorado, Arkansas. He was generous to his employees, who, in turn, were loyal to him by informing him of rumors of a massive oil field to the south, in East Texas. In negotiations over cheese and crackers, at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, with the wild-catter who discovered the East Texas Oil Field, Columbus Marion "Dad" Joiner, Hunt secured title to what was the largest known oil deposit in the world. Hunt had agreed to pay Joiner $1,000,000 and to protect him from liability for his many fraudulent transactions surrounding the property.

In 1957, Fortune estimated that Hunt had a fortune of $400–700 million, and was one of the eight richest people in the United States. J. Paul Getty, who was considered to be the richest private citizen in the world, said of Hunt, "In terms of extraordinary, independent wealth, there is only one man—H. L. Hunt."

Personal life
Hunt had fifteen children by three wives.

He married Lyda Bunker of Lake Village, Arkansas, in November 1914 and remained married to her until her death in 1955. His seven children by her were: Margaret (1915–2007), Haroldson ("Hassie", 1917–2005), Caroline (1923–2018), Lyda (born and died in 1925), Nelson Bunker (1926–2014), William Herbert (1929–2024), and Lamar (1932–2006). Their home on White Rock Lake in Dallas was styled after Mount Vernon though much larger.

His first son, Hassie, who was expected to succeed him in control of the family business, was lobotomized in response to increasingly erratic behavior. He outlived his father. Lamar founded the American Football League and created the Super Bowl, drawing on the assistance of his children in selecting the game's name. Two other children, Herbert and Bunker, are famous for their purchasing much of the world's silver, in an attempt to corner the market. They ultimately owned more silver than any government in the world before their scheme was discovered and undone. Bunker Hunt was briefly one of the wealthiest men in the world, having discovered and taken title to the Libyan oil fields, before Muammar Gaddafi nationalized the properties.

While still married to Lyda, H. L. Hunt is said to have married Frania Tye of Tampa, Florida, in November 1925 by using the name Franklin Hunt. Frania claimed to have discovered the bigamous nature of her marriage in 1934, and in a legal settlement in 1941, Hunt created trust funds for each of their four children, and she signed a document stipulating that no legal marriage between them had ever existed. About the same time, she briefly married then divorced Hunt's employee, John Lee, taking the last name Lee for herself and her four children. Her four children by Hunt were: Howard (born 1926), Haroldina (1928), Helen (1930), and Hugh ("Hue", 1934). Frania Tye Lee died in 2002.

Hunt supported and had children by Ruth Ray of Shreveport, Louisiana, whom he had met when she was a secretary in his Shreveport office. They married in 1957 after the death of Hunt's wife Lyda. His four children by her were: Ray Lee (born 1943), June (1944), Helen (1949), and Swanee (1950). His youngest son, Ray Lee, ultimately inherited the business and was a major supporter of President George W. Bush.

His 15 children in birth order are:
 * 1) Margaret Hunt Hill (October 19, 1915 – June 14, 2007): philanthropist and co-owner of Hunt Petroleum.
 * 2) H. L. "Hassie" Hunt III (November 23, 1917 – April 20, 2005): diagnosed with schizophrenia in the early 1940s; co-owner of Hunt Petroleum.
 * 3) Caroline Rose Hunt (January 8, 1923 – November 13, 2018): Founder and Honorary Chairman of Rosewood Hotels & Resorts which operates The Mansion on Turtle Creek.
 * 4) Lyda Bunker Hunt (February 19, 1925 – March 20, 1925) (Died as an infant).
 * 5) Nelson Bunker Hunt (February 22, 1926 – October 21, 2014): A major force in developing Libyan oil fields. Eventually attempted to corner the world market in silver in 1979, and was convicted of conspiring to manipulate the market. Legendary owner-breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses.
 * 6) Howard Lee Hunt (October 25, 1926 – October 13, 1975)
 * 7) Haroldina Franch Hunt (October 26, 1928 – November 10, 1995)
 * 8) William Herbert Hunt (March 6, 1929 – April 9, 2024) A major and defining force in the oil industry, he was also a legendary businessman and oilman. At times, ran Hunt Oil, Hunt Petroleum, Hunt Energy, Placid Oil, etc. The founder of Petro-Hunt LLC.
 * 9) Helen Lee Cartledge Hunt (October 28, 1930 – June 3, 1962) died in the Air France Flight 007 disaster, the worst single aircraft disaster up until that time.
 * 10) Lamar Hunt (August 2, 1932 – December 13, 2006): co-founder of the American Football League and the North American Soccer League; owner of the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League; owner of the Columbus Crew and FC Dallas of Major League Soccer; backer of World Championship Tennis; impetus behind 1966 AFL-NFL merger, coined the name "Super Bowl".
 * 11) Hugh S. Hunt (October 14, 1934 – November 12, 2002): lived in Potomac, Maryland, founder of Constructivist Foundation.
 * 12) Ray Lee Hunt (born c. 1943): chairman of Hunt Oil.
 * 13) June Hunt (born c. 1944): host of a daily religious radio show, Hope for the Heart.
 * 14) Helen LaKelly Hunt (born c. 1949): a pastoral counselor in Dallas; co-manager of the Hunt Alternatives Fund, one of the family's charitable arms.
 * 15) Swanee Hunt (born May 1, 1950): former U.S. ambassador to Austria; now head of the Women and Public Policy Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and president of Hunt Alternatives Fund.

A scandal emerged in 1975, after his death, when it was discovered that he had a hidden bigamous relationship, with his second wife living in New York. After marriage to Ruth Ray, Hunt became a Baptist and was a member of the First Baptist Church of Dallas. He was a major financial contributor toward the establishment of the conservative Christian evangelical Criswell College in Dallas.

After several months at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, Hunt died at age 85, and was buried in Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery.

The founder of the "transcendental black metal" band Liturgy, Haela Hunt-Hendrix, is his grandchild.

Hunt served as inspiration behind the character J. R. Ewing from the television show Dallas.

Connection to white supremacy
Multiple sources, including American civil rights icon Malcolm X, implicate Hunt, a Democrat, as a lifelong racist who provided major financial assistance to several far-right organizations, such as the Minutemen and the John Birch Society. Hunt considered African Americans a political threat and made this clear in his radio interviews and broadcasts. One of Hunt's chief allies, Allen Zoll, said that since 1936 Hunt advocated deporting all African Americans to Africa. For this reason, Hunt supplied Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad continuous financial support due to the latter's belief in racial separation from whites.

In 1965, Hunt encouraged the Democrat Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, a white supremacist, to use the scheme of running his wife, Lurleen Wallace, for election as governor in a bold effort to evade the state's constitutional rule that a governor could not succeed himself.

JFK conspiracy allegations
Madeleine Duncan Brown, an advertising executive who claimed to have had both an extended love affair and a son with President Lyndon B. Johnson, said that she was present at a party at the Dallas home of Clint Murchison Sr. (another oil tycoon), on the evening prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy that was attended by Johnson as well as other famous, wealthy, and powerful individuals including Hunt, Murchison, J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Nixon.

According to Brown, Johnson had a meeting with several of the men after which he told her: "After tomorrow, those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That's no threat. That's a promise." Brown's story received national attention and became part of at least a dozen John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories.

Kennedy assassination investigator Dave Perry refuted this theory with evidence showing neither President Johnson nor Hoover were in Dallas at the time of the alleged party and Murchison had not lived in his Dallas home for a number of years. Witnesses place Murchison at his East Texas ranch.

Publications
Books
 * Fabians Fight Freedom. Dallas: H. L. Hunt Press.
 * Alpaca. Dallas: H. L. Hunt Press (1960)
 * Alpaca Revisited. Dallas: HLH Products (1967)
 * H. L. Hunt: Early Days. Dallas: Parade (1973)
 * Hunt Heritage: The Republic and Our Families. Dallas: Parade (1973)
 * Right of Average. Dallas: HLH Products (1960s)

Articles
 * "From H. L. Hunt." American [Odessa, Texas] (February 2, 1967).
 * "Reducing Hospital Costs." Life Lines, vol. 16, no. 4 (January 9, 1974), p. 4..

General sources

 * Brown, Stanley H. (1976) H. L. Hunt. Chicago: Playboy Press. ISBN 978-0872234499..
 * Burrough, Bryan. (2010) The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0143116820..

title: H. L. Hunt


text: Talk:J. Paul Getty

title: Talk:J. Paul Getty


text:
Talk:Prescott Bush

Prescott Bush, the Business Plot, and Nazi-entanglement.
I first learned of Prescott Bush's involvement with the Business Plot from reading Wikipedia. Now both the articles about the Business Plot and Prescott Bush have been scrubbed of reference to each other. I read the talk page for Prescott Bush, and found that the great editors determined that there was flimsy evidence to support the claims. And while I think it is admirable to clear a man's name decades after his death on the basis of good sense, I think their is ample evidence to link Prescott Bush to both incidents. Just a quick Googling of "Prescott Bush Business Plot" links you to this article from Harper's Magazine. http://harpers.org/blog/2007/07/1934-the-plot-against-america/ And a quick search for "Prescott Bush Nazi" returns this article from The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

Now Harper's and the Guardian are not rags dedicated to the cause of paranoia, and to say that they don't rise to the level of credible Wikipedia sources is, to my mind, a little nuts. Even if this is not enough citation to prove Prescott Bush's guilt, I think it is more than enough to warrant mentioning the allegations.

 * The connection between Prescott Bush and the Business Plot is the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional committee, the precursor of what became the House Un-American Activities Committee. That committee investigated both Bush (or a company he was involved in; I rather doubt Bush himself was investigated) and the plot - but in separate investigations. Bush was of interest due to his involvement with the Hamburg America Line, suspected of Nazi links, and that's what Harper's Blog is talking about. The Guardian similarly discusses Bush's business connections to Nazi Germany and to German businessmen that supported the Nazi Party. The Business Plot was completely unrelated. It had nothing to do with Germany, Nazis, the Hamburg America Line and, by extension, Prescott Bush. This article already discusses Bush's Nazi ties (or lack thereof), based on more reliable sources than Harper's Blog, but there simply is nothing but a misunderstanding connecting Bush to the Business Plot. Huon (talk) 20:50, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The Guardian article contains more info that could be used in this article. It also mentions several books which could probably be used. --WikiHannibal (talk) 19:32, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, this information should be included as it is a matter of record. Harper's and the Guardian are both top-tier primary sources.98.207.14.143 (talk) 22:55, 15 June 2015 (UTC)
 * There's clearly some whitewashing going on here. Prescott was a goddamned Nazi, he made money doing business with other Nazis, and his son went into the family business as head of the CIA, a key institutional enemy of liberty.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:647:4F00:34D1:780B:76A2:643F:A13A (talk) 22:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

 * Interest in issue may increase due to the release of the film Amsterdam.(2022) Parmets article also suggests that the sins of the father are not the sins of the son(s).Johnsagent (talk) 16:53, 17 October 2022 (UTC)
 * My friend you good, or just intellectually illiterate? NewDealChief (talk) 08:40, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

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Business Plot
12 years after Scott Horton's article in Harper's Magazine, there is still no clear evidence of Bush's involvement in the Business Plot.

Since so many people apparently believe this as fact, I have re-inserted a short section about the plot and quickly explained that no evidence has been found to support it. My reasoning is that it is better to record it in the article as false rather than not have it in the article at all.

I have also contacted Scott Horton by email and requested he make an updated statement about his 2007 article.

--One Salient Oversight (talk) 06:49, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Interesting facts reported in the Guardian
There is a lot of interesting factual information in this article I was thinking of adding, because the wiki article is currently spare on the war-time subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

I don't know when I will have time, but perhaps someone else here might be up to it anyway Pythagimedes (talk) 04:50, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Prescott Bush


text:
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Koninklĳk Concertgebouworkest, ) is a Dutch symphony orchestra, based at the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw (concert hall). Considered one of the world's leading orchestras, Queen Beatrix conferred the "Royal" title upon the orchestra in 1988.

History
The Concertgebouw opened on 11 April 1888. The Concertgebouw Orchestra was established several months later and gave its first concert in the Concertgebouw on 3 November 1888. This performance was conducted by the orchestra's first chief conductor, Willem Kes.

1888–1945: Kes and Mengelberg
Willem Kes served as the orchestra's chief conductor from its 1888 founding to 1895. In 1895, Willem Mengelberg became chief conductor and remained in this position for fifty years, an unusually long tenure for a music director. He is generally regarded as having brought the orchestra to a level of major international significance, with a particular championing of such then-contemporary composers as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss.

For approximately its first 75 years, the Concertgebouw Orchestra had a somewhat complicated roster of conductors. In addition to the chief conductor, the orchestra had conductor positions titled "eerste dirigent" ("first conductor"), who assisted the chief conductor with programming, and "tweede dirigent" ("second conductor"), who did "what he was told." During Mengelberg's time as chief conductor, several of these first conductors included Karl Muck (1921–1925), Pierre Monteux (1924–1934), Bruno Walter (1934–1939), and Eugen Jochum (1941–1943), each of them internationally respected and holding positions at other orchestras as well. Musicians who served as "second conductor" were all Dutch and included the composer Cornelis Dopper, Evert Cornelis and Eduard van Beinum.

In 1945, because of the controversy over his relationship with the Nazi occupying forces during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, Mengelberg was removed as chief conductor and subsequently banned from conducting in The Netherlands. The ban was initially imposed for the remainder of his life, but after an appeal, reduced to six years, applied retroactively from 1945. Mengelberg died in 1951 just before the end of his sentence, and thus never conducted the orchestra again after 1945.

1945–1988: Van Beinum and Haitink
From 1945 to 1959, the orchestra's principal conductor was Eduard van Beinum, who had debuted with the orchestra in 1929. He had become the second conductor of the orchestra in 1931, and co-principal conductor in 1938. One of his specialties was the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, and Van Beinum made commercial recordings with the orchestra of Bruckner's Eighth and Ninth Symphonies for the Philips Records label. Van Beinum served as sole chief conductor of the orchestra after World War II until his sudden death on the Concertgebouw podium from a heart attack in April 1959.

Bernard Haitink made his debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra on 7 November 1956. After Van Beinum's death, from 1961 to 1963, Haitink and Eugen Jochum shared the post of chief conductor of the orchestra. Haitink became sole chief conductor in 1963, and served in this post until 1988. At some point during Haitink's time, the conductor system was simplified to have an assistant conductor instead of first and second conductors. Conductors who served in this capacity included Edo de Waart and Hans Vonk. The recording profile of the orchestra increased most dramatically under Haitink, with many recordings for Philips Records, as well as EMI and Columbia Records. In the early 1980s, the Dutch government threatened the orchestra with reductions in its government subsidy that could potentially have led to the dismissal of 23 musicians from the orchestra. Haitink threatened to resign in protest, and the financial situation was eventually settled. In 1999, Haitink was named the orchestra's conductor laureate (eredirigent), following a rapprochement negotiated by the then-new managing director of the orchestra, Jan Willem Loot. In March 2014, Haitink suggested to the Dutch newspaper Het Parool that he wished to renounce the title of RCO conductor laureate and no longer to guest-conduct the orchestra, in protest at the orchestra's current administrative management. In September 2015, the orchestra announced a rapprochement with Haitink, with a scheduled guest-conducting engagement with the RCO in the 2016–2017 season. Haitink retained the title of eredirigent with the orchestra through his 2019 retirement and until his death in October 2021.

1988–2018: Chailly, Jansons and Gatti

Riccardo Chailly made his debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1985, and was elected that year as their next chief conductor to succeed Haitink. As the first non-Dutchman to hold the post, Chailly served as chief conductor from 1988 to 2004. His recordings with the orchestra include complete Mahler and Brahms symphony cycles and several Bruckner symphonies. He is a strong advocate of modern music and recorded shorter works of Shostakovich, the complete Kammermusiken of Paul Hindemith, and the orchestral works of Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen and Edgard Varèse. After his departure in 2004, Chailly was named Conductor Emeritus of the RCO.

Mariss Jansons made his RCO debut in 1988. On 22 October 2002, the RCO elected Jansons as its next chief conductor. His tenure officially began on 1 September 2004, with an initial contract of three years. Premières during Janson's tenure have included Hans Werner Henze's Sebastian im Traum, a RCO co-commission. In April 2014, the orchestra announced the scheduled conclusion of Jansons' tenure as chief conductor after the 2014–15 season. Jansons subsequently held the title of conductor emeritus of the RCO until his death in 2019.

Daniele Gatti first guest-conducted the RCO in 2004. In October 2014, the RCO announced the appointment of Gatti as its seventh chief conductor, effective in 2016. On 2 August 2018, the orchestra dismissed Gatti as chief conductor with immediate effect, following complaints of "inappropriate" behaviour with female musicians.

2020–present
In October 2020, the RCO announced the appointment of Iván Fischer as its honorary guest conductor (honorair gastdirigent), effective with the 2021–2022 season.

In September 2020, Klaus Mäkelä first guest-conducted the RCO. The RCO re-engaged Mäkelä twice in the 2020–2021 season, and subsequently in the 2021–2022 season for further guest-conducting appearances, including tours to Hamburg and Reykjavík. In June 2022, the RCO announced the appointment of Mäkelä as an artistic partner for the period of 2022–2027, and subsequently as its next chief conductor, effective with the 2027–2028 season, with an initial contract of 5 years.

In March 2024, the RCO announced the establishment of the Bernard Haitink Associate Conductorship, through a donation from Patricia Haitink and the Haitink family, and the appointment of Aurel Dawidiuk as the orchestra's inaugural associate conductor under this programme.

Character
The orchestra enjoyed a close relationship with Gustav Mahler and championed many of his symphonies, with an especially worthy festival of his music being the 1920 Mahler Festival. Other conductors who worked closely with the Concertgebouw Orchestra included Pierre Monteux, Eugen Jochum, George Szell and Kirill Kondrashin, who was principal guest conductor from 1978, following his defection from the USSR, until his death in 1981. More recently, Nikolaus Harnoncourt served as Honorary Guest Conductor of the RCO, beginning in 2000, and leading his final performance with the RCO in October 2013.

Another factor in creating the orchestra's distinct character is that the Concertgebouw Orchestra has had only eight chief conductors, setting it apart from orchestras of similar age and caliber. The nearly one thousand recordings that the orchestra has to its credit have also contributed to this reputation. The orchestra also serves as one of the opera orchestras for productions of the Dutch National Opera.

Jan Raes served as executive director of the orchestra from December 2008 to December 2019. Prior executive directors included Jan Willem Loot. In January 2020, the orchestra announced David Bazen as its interim managing director, with immediate effect. In August 2020, the orchestra announced the appointment of a new three-person managing board, naming Dominik Winterling as Chairman.

Past artistic directors of the Concertgebouw Orchestra have included Rudolf Mengelberg (1925–1955), Marius Flothuis (1955–1974), Hein van Royen (1974–1991) and Peter Ruzicka, and more recently as head of artistic administration, Joel Ethan Fried. In August 2020, the orchestra announced the appointment of Ulrike Niehoff as its new artistic director, effective 1 January 2021. Niehoff stood down from the post at the close of the 2022-2023 season.

The RCO has issued CDs on its own label, RCO Live, as conducted by Jansons and Haitink among others.

Chief conductors

 * Willem Kes (1888–1895)
 * Willem Mengelberg (1895–1945)
 * Eduard van Beinum (1945–1959)
 * Eugen Jochum (1961–1963; co-chief conductor with Bernard Haitink)
 * Bernard Haitink (1961–1988)
 * Riccardo Chailly (1988–2004)
 * Mariss Jansons (2004–2015)
 * Daniele Gatti (2016–2018)
 * Klaus Mäkelä (designate, effective 2027)

title: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra


text:
Seraph

A seraph (: seraphim ) is a celestial or heavenly being originating in Ancient Judaism. The term plays a role in subsequent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Tradition places seraphim in the highest rank in Christian angelology and in the fifth rank of ten in the Jewish angelic hierarchy. A seminal passage in the Book of Isaiah used the term to describe six-winged beings that fly around the Throne of God crying "holy, holy, holy". This throne scene, with its triple invocation of holiness, profoundly influenced subsequent theology, literature and art. Its influence is frequently seen in works depicting angels, heaven and apotheosis. Seraphim are mentioned as celestial beings in the semi-canonical Book of Enoch and the canonical Book of Revelation.

Origins and development

In Hebrew, the word saraph means "burning", and is used seven times throughout the text of the Hebrew Bible as a noun, usually to denote "serpent", twice in the Book of Numbers, once in the Book of Deuteronomy, and four times in the Book of Isaiah. The reason why the word for "burning" was also used to denote a serpent is not universally agreed upon; it may be due to a certain snake species' fiery colors, or perhaps the burning sensation left by its venomous bite. Regardless, its plural form, seraphim, occurs in both Numbers and Isaiah, but only in Isaiah is it used to denote an angelic being; likewise, these angels are referred to only as the plural seraphim – Isaiah later uses the singular saraph to describe a "fiery flying serpent", in line with the other uses of the term throughout the Tanakh.

There is emerging consensus that the motifs used to display seraphs in Hyksos-era Canaan had their original sources in Egyptian uraeus iconography. In Egyptian iconography, the uraeus was used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, divinity and divine authority, and later iconography often showed uraei with wings. In the early monarchic period of Israel and Judah, Egyptian motifs were evidently borrowed by the Israelites en masse, as a plethora of personal seals belonging to classes ranging from commonfolk to royalty have been discovered, which incorporate several pieces of ancient Egyptian iconography, including the winged sun, ankh, the hedjet and deshret crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, scarabs, and the uraeus cobra. These uraei often had four wings, as opposed to the Egyptian standard which only gave them two. These images have been connected with the seraphim angels associated with Isaiah's visions, or perhaps more directly to the aforementioned "fiery flying serpent", but this continues to be debated – and an image of serpentine seraphim clashes with Isaiah's own vision, which clearly envisioned seraphim with heads, legs, and arms.

The vision in Isaiah Chapter 6 of seraphim in an idealized version of Solomon's Temple represents the sole instance in the Hebrew Bible of this word being used to describe celestial beings. "... I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." (Isaiah 6:1–3) And one cried to another, "Holy, holy, holy, is YHWH of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory." (verses 2–3) One seraph carries out an act of ritual purification for the prophet by touching his lips with a live coal from the altar (verses 6–7) "And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged."

The text describes the "seraphim" as winged celestial beings with a fiery passion for doing God's good work. Notwithstanding the wording of the text itself, at least one Hebrew scholar claims that in the Hebrew Bible the seraphim do not have the status of angels, and that it is only in later sources (like De Coelesti Hierarchia or Summa Theologiae) that they are considered to be a division of the divine messengers.

Seraphim appear in the 2nd-century BC Book of Enoch, where they are mentioned, in conjunction with cherubim, as the heavenly creatures standing nearest to the throne of God. In non-biblical sources they are sometimes called the Akyəst ( "serpents", "dragons"; an alternate term for Hell).

In the Second Book of Enoch, two classes of celestial beings are mentioned alongside the seraphim and cherubim, known as the phoenixes and the chalkydri (χαλκύδραι khalkýdrai, compound of χαλκός khalkós "brass, copper" + ὕδρα hýdra "hydra", "water-serpent"—lit. "brazen hydras", "copper serpents"). Both are described as "flying elements of the sun" that reside in either the 4th or 6th heaven, who have twelve wings and burst into song at sunrise.

In the Book of Revelation (4:4–8), the beasts are described as being forever in God's presence and praising him: "[A]nd they rest not day and night, saying, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.'" This account differs slightly from the account of Isaiah, stating in the eighth verse, "And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within". They appear also in the Gnostic text, On the Origin of the World.

In Judaism
The 12th-century scholar Maimonides placed the seraphim in the fifth of ten ranks of angels in his exposition of the Jewish angelic hierarchy. In Kabbalah, the seraphim are the higher angels of the World of Beriah ("Creation", first created realm, divine understanding), whose understanding of their distance from the absolute divinity of Atziluth causes their continual "burning up" in self-nullification. Through this they ascend to God, and return to their place. Below them in the World of Yetzirah ("Formation", archetypal creation, divine emotions) are the Hayot angels of Ezekiel's vision, who serve God with self-aware instinctive emotions ("face of a lion, ox, eagle"). Seraphim are part of the angelarchy of modern Orthodox Judaism. Isaiah's vision is repeated several times in daily Jewish services, including at Kedushah prayer as part of the repetition of the Amidah, and in several other prayers as well. Conservative Judaism retains the traditional doctrines regarding angels and includes references to them in the liturgy, although a literal belief in angels is by no means universal among adherents. Adherents of Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism generally take images of angels as symbolic.

A Judean seal from the 8th century BCE depicts them as flying asp (snake), yet having human characteristics, as encountered by Isaiah in his commissioning as a prophet.

In Christianity

Medieval Christian theology places seraphim in the highest choir of the angelic hierarchy. They are the caretakers of God's throne, continuously singing "holy, holy, holy". Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in his Celestial Hierarchy (vii), drew upon the Book of Isaiah in fixing the fiery nature of seraphim in the medieval imagination. Seraphim in his view helped God maintain perfect order and are not limited to chanting the trisagion. Taking his cue as well from writings in the Rabbinic tradition, the author gave an etymology for the Seraphim as "those who kindle or make hot"

"The name seraphim clearly indicates their ceaseless and eternal revolution about Divine Principles, their heat and keenness, the exuberance of their intense, perpetual, tireless activity, and their elevative and energetic assimilation of those below, kindling them and firing them to their own heat, and wholly purifying them by a burning and all-consuming flame; and by the unhidden, unquenchable, changeless, radiant and enlightening power, dispelling and destroying the shadows of darkness"

Origen wrote in On First Principles that the Seraphim, in the Book of Isaiah, are the physical representation of the Christ and the Holy Spirit. His rationale comes from the idea that nothing "can wholly know the beginnings of all things and the ends of the universe" aside from God. Origen concludes this section in writing about the Seraphim as beings that have the knowledge of God revealed to them which elevates the role of the Seraphim to divine levels:

"Nevertheless whatever it is that these powers may have learned through the revelation of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit-and they will certainly be able to acquire a great deal of knowledge, and the higher ones much more than the lower-still it is impossible for them to comprehend everything; for it is written, 'The more part of God's works are secret."This quote suggests that Origen believed the Seraphim are revealed this knowledge because of their anointed status as Son of God and the Holy Spirit. He was later criticized for making such claims and labeled a heretic by the Christian church. However, his theory about the Seraphim, as referred to in Isaiah, would be reflected in other early Christian literature, as well as early Christian belief through the second century.

Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae offers a description of the nature of seraphim:

"The name 'Seraphim' does not come from charity only, but from the excess of charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds the name 'Seraphim' according to the properties of fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things. First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God.

Secondly, the active force which is 'heat,' which is not found in fire simply, but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor; whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those who are subject to them, rousing them to a like fervor, and cleansing them wholly by their heat.

Thirdly we consider in fire the quality of clarity, or brightness; which signifies that these angels have in themselves an inextinguishable light, and that they also perfectly enlighten others."

The seraphim took on a mystic role in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (1487), the epitome of Renaissance humanism. Pico took the fiery Seraphim—"they burn with the fire of charity"—as the highest models of human aspiration: "impatient of any second place, let us emulate dignity and glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing", the young Pico announced, in the first flush of optimistic confidence in the human capacity that is the coinage of the Renaissance. "In the light of intelligence, meditating upon the Creator in His work, and the work in its Creator, we shall be resplendent with the light of the Cherubim. If we burn with love for the Creator only, his consuming fire will quickly transform us into the flaming likeness of the Seraphim."

Bonaventure, a Franciscan theologian who was a contemporary of Aquinas, uses the six wings of the seraph as an important analogical construct in his mystical work The Journey of the Mind to God.

Christian theology developed an idea of seraphim as beings of pure light who enjoy direct communication with God.

In Islam
The Bearers of the Throne (ḥamlat al-arsh) are comparable to seraphim, described with six wings and four faces according to tradition. No description of their features is given in the Quran, only that their number is eight in.

Their affiliation is not always clear and sometimes their role is swapped with the cherubim. In a book called Book of the Wonders of Creation and the peculiarities of Existing Things, these angels rank the highest, followed by the spirit, the archangels and then the cherubim. The Bearers of the Throne are entrusted with continuously worshipping God. Unlike the messenger angels, they remain in the heavenly realm and do not enter the world.

Seraphim (Sarufiyyun or Musharifin) are directly mentioned in a hadith from Al-Tirmidhi about a conversation between Muhammad and God, during the Night Journey, concerning what is between the Heavens and the Earth, often interpreted as a reference to the "Exalted assembly" disputing the creation of Adam in Surah Ṣād.

In Islamic traditions, they are often portrayed in zoomorphic forms. They are described as resembling different creatures: An eagle, a bull, a lion and a human. Other hadiths describes them with six wings and four faces. While according to a hadith transmitted from At-Targhib wat-Tarhib authored by ʻAbd al-ʻAẓīm ibn ʻAbd al-Qawī al-Mundhirī, the bearers of the throne were angels who were shaped like a rooster, with their feet on the earth and their nape supporting the Throne of God in the highest sky. a number modern Islamic scholars from Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, and other institutes of Yemen and Mauritania also agreed the soundness of this hadith by quoting the commentary from Ibn Abi al-Izz who supported this narrative.

Al-Razi identifies the seraphim with the angels around God's throne, next to the cherubim. They circulate the throne and keep praising God. Ibn Kathir, on the other hand, identifies the seraphim with those who carry the throne, the highest order of angels.

Arts, entertainment, and media

 * In the real time strategy game Supreme Commander, Seraphim is the name given to a faction of aliens who represent the first contact of aliens to human civilization. After the first Seraphim are killed by human colonists, they launch a massive assault on humanity, which is the premise of the expansion, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.
 * The manga and anime series Seraph of the End (2012), written by Takaya Kagami, contains several Seraphs.
 * In the strategy game Monster Train, the primary villain, Seraph the Traitor, is a transcended, six-winged being and the de facto ruler of Heaven. In a bid to bring peace and stability to the collective Realm of Heaven, Hell, and Humans, Seraph helps forge a mutual covenant between Heaven and Hell. He later betrays this agreement and invades Hell, massacring the Hellborne and imposing his moral absolutism upon the survivors.
 * In the MMORPG Wizard101, a prominent character Lady Oriel is a seraph, and a spell titled "Seraph" may be cast by the player in which a seraph is summoned to attack the enemy.
 * Galeem, from the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate single-player campaign "World of Light", resembles a seraph. It is an ethereal being of light with six wings. Also, Galeem attempted to destroy everything in existence and turn everyone (except the fighters) into spirits.
 * In the voxel-based video game Vintage Story, the species of the main character are called Seraphs.
 * In Final Fantasy VII there is a major boss named "Safer Sephiroth", which some believe is mistranslation of "Seraph Sephiroth".
 * In Doom (2016 video game), it is mentioned that a Seraph uses the Divinity Machine on the Doom Slayer, a device meant to bless him with great strength and speed in his fight against the Titan on Taras Nabad. In Doom Eternal, it is confirmed that the character Samuel Hayden is in fact the Seraphim who blessed the Doom Slayer.
 * In The Bastard Executioner, the Order of Seraphim are charged with preserving and protecting Jesus Christ's nine-volume, handwritten Libro Nazareni (New Testament) from the Church, which, as Annora and Ventrishire's manor priest, Father Ruskin, discuss in episodes 7 ("Behold the Lamb / Gweled yr Oen") and 8 ("Broken Things / Pethau Toredig"), and 9 ("The Bernadette Maneuver / Cynllwyn Bernadette"), could be toppled by the book's release to the public. For that reason, the Church's leaders, such as Robinus, the Archdeacon of Windsor, and their Knights of the Rosebud/Rosula, have targeted both the book and its protectors to be hunted and destroyed. In episode 3, some young Welsh people who want to earn credibility with the rebels against the government unwisely masquerade as members of the Order of Seraphim, by adorning themselves with seraphim face paint and attack the Baroness' wagon and its knights, which causes repercussions throughout the season for those captured, for their village, and for those affected by escalated hunts for rebels and for members of the Order of Seraphim.
 * Seraphim are the name of a species within Tales of Zestiria. The main character, Sorey, is heavily implied to become one by the end.
 * The second phase of Dogma, from The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, resembles a seraph, being a being with many wings that also uses light attacks. "Seraphim" is also the name of one of the attainable transformations in the game (gained by gathering a certain quantity of specific items), although it does not resemble a seraph aesthetically.
 * Seraphs also appear in the CW TV show Supernatural (American TV series). They are shown as more powerful angels, but still weaker than an Archangel. When the angel Castiel (originated from "Cassiel") dies, he is brought back as a Seraph, although he still does not possess the power to go up against the archangel who killed him, Raphael.
 * Seraph is a supporting character in the second and third films of The Matrix Trilogy. Seraph is an exile program who is seen acting as a "guardian angel" of the Oracle, and is described as the personification of a sophisticated challenge-handshake authentication protocol which guards the Oracle.
 * In Mega Man Zero, Copy X transforms into a Seraph-like appearance in his second form.
 * In the Armored Core series, the villain Nine-Ball is featured as a recurring antagonist. Its second and most powerful form, debuting in Armored Core: Master of Arena, is known as Nine-Ball Seraph.
 * From the Street Fighter series, the character Gill uses a move called Seraphic Wing, in which he reveals six wings and unleashes godly energy that does several hits. In Street Fighter III, it is the strongest move in the game and can one-hit KO an opponent if they are not blocking. In Street Fighter V, it is his critical art. While it cannot instantly defeat an opponent like before, it deals a lot of damage.
 * Seraph is also the name of the first Jewish superhero who debuted in Super Friends # 7 by E. Nelson Bridwell, Ramona Fradon, and Bob Smith in 1977.
 * Multiocular O is an exotic glyph variant of the Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the Old Church Slavonic phrase "" (, "many-eyed seraphim").
 * LE SSERAFIM is the five-member K-pop girl group from HYBE and Source Music that debuted in 2022 whose name is partly inspired by the Seraphim.
 * In One Piece, the elite models of the antagonistic Pacifista cyborgs are called, and are loosely based on, Seraphim.
 * In Destiny 2, the 19th season is titled Season of the Seraph, named after a team of human operatives, the Seraphs, who worked closely with central character Rasputin, an AI "Warmind", to ensure the safety of humanity.
 * In the manga Seraphim 266613336Wings, "Seraphim" is the name of a disease that is decimating the population of the world.
 * In season one, episode six ("Welcome to Heaven") of Hazbin Hotel, two Seraphim, Sera, the head Seraph, and Emily, a junior Seraph, hold a meeting with Charlie Morningstar over her plan to redeem souls that are in Hell.
 * In League of Legends and Legends of Runeterra, there is a champion named Seraphine, whose name is likely derived from Seraphim.  During her release campaign, Seraphine had an online presence through Twitter, Instagram, SoundCloud, and Spotify, and became a guest member of K/DA on their 2020 single More (K/DA song).  In addition, League of Legends also includes an item named Seraph's Embrace.

Logos and mascots

 * Several Catholic schools use a seraph or a seraph-related symbol as their mascot:
 * Koinonia Academy, Plainfield, New Jersey, United States
 * Mater Dei Catholic Preparatory School, Middletown, New Jersey, United States
 * St. Bonaventure High School, Ventura, California, United States
 * St. Madeleine Sophie Catholic School, Bellevue, Washington, United States
 * Kingswood College in Randles Hill, Kandy, Sri Lanka, a public school, claims the seraph as its mascot.
 * Both the University of Pisa and Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, feature a seraph as their logo.

title: Seraph


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Talk:Shirley Q. Liquor

Discussion
Anyone who does think that this is racist, just take a look and see if this stereotype holds true. Go to the Southern USA and see for yourself. The only good thing that could come of this is that some ignorant black people might try to become educated.

Sure sounds racist to me. -- Zoe

 * Any performance that focuses on stereotypes to fihd humor could be contrued as bigoted. But is it not the intent behind the performance and material that drives the ultimate message? It is almost assured that were a black female doing the same performances it wouldn't be protested; she would be heralded as finding humor in a legitimate sect of her culture that is often overlooked or demonized.

Easter Bradford's public response seems to have been limited to an email to "LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, GAY CITY NEWS/New York" orthogonal 03:03, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I chopped out all the PR puff-piece language to just present the facts. Alcarillo 19:35, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

From VfD

 * Shirley Q. Liquor looks like a vanity page. --Jia ng 00:32, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. >1000 Google hits.  Tempshill 01:41, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Looks like self-promotion by user 66.32.144.63. --Imran 03:11, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. - UtherSRG 05:56, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, but prune. silsor 07:39, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, but must be pruned. RedWolf 08:11, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep ledgerbob 10:42, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep because it has a lot of Google hits. SpellBott 12:22, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sounds racists
The fact that the performer so easily discounts the comments of the many black people who find this racist, is very revealing of true attitudes towards blacks as a group. (unsigned comment)
 * And the fact that I have black friends that laugh right beside me while pointing fingers at each other while listening his antics shows that not every black person considers it offensive for a white man to poke fun of racial stereotypes that are quite true of some black people, including some in my small circle alone. Chris Rock makes fun of white people in the Southern United States as well as rednecks in general from time to time and I never hear about people wanting to boycott him. It is not intended as racism, but it isn't humor that everyone will appreciate or will enjoy, either. — CobraWiki ( jabber 07:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Changes to article
I cut out a big chunk of the "personal history" for "Shirley" in the article. I understand that it's part of her act, but I think listing sixty names of "her children" is a bit of overkill, and not what Wikipedia is here for. The remaining text relays the essence of the act, and people who are interested in her material can springboard from there and find her skits. NickBurns 02:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Merge Discussion
It has been suggested that this article should be merged with Chuck Knipp. Discuss. — CobraWiki ( jabber
 * I will give my view now: Oppose. The articles should not be merged because, within a specific group, this is a well-known character. The voices of all cartoon characters are not merged in with the people who voice them. They have their own articles. Why should this be different? — CobraWiki ( jabber 18:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I found this page while searching Google, I would have never found it had I searched for the male character that actually plays Shirley Q Liquor... This page rightfully deserves a place on Wiki, and for those who say he is racist, how can he be, he's a black man portraying a female Black preacher in Church, and this is purely for entertainment, NOT for offending people. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.8.112.119 (talk) 22:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC).
 * Chuck Knipp is a white man, not a black man. He plays this woman in blackface, and that's VERY offensive. 172.146.210.244 06:21, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Agree, simply because Chuck Knipp is "famous" ONLY for this character. He has done nothing notable outside of Shirley Q. Liquor, and had no career before it. 172.146.210.244 06:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Not true- Betty Butterfield is another persona of Knipp who is famous on Youtube. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.138.202.82 (talk) 09:20, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:Shirley Q. Liquor


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Talk:List of biosphere reserves in the United States

Untitled
Would this list be more useful in alphabetical order instead of order in which the reserve was created? -- Zoe
 * Merge done. Rmhermen 23:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I added Grandfather Mountain NC, since it became a UN biosphere preserve in Nov 1992 (source http://www.grandfather.com/conservation_interpretation/biosphere_reserve.php) 20:31, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Grandfather Mountain was removed from the list - and I checked. It doesn't appear on the UN list. Anyone know what is going on with this site? Rmhermen (talk) 04:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)