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Mammaplasty

Mammaplasty (also called mammoplasty or mastoplasty) refers to a group of surgical procedures, the goal of which is to reshape or otherwise modify the appearance of the breast. There are two main types of mammoplasty:
 * 1) Augmentation mammaplasty is commonly performed to increase the size, change the shape, and/or alter the texture of the breasts. This usually involves the surgical implantation of breast implant devices.
 * 2) Reduction mammaplasty is commonly performed to reduce the size, change the shape, and/or alter the texture of the breasts. This involves the removal of breast tissue.

Social context
Mammaplasty started a surgical procedure to help relieve women of the excess weight of their breasts; it was only later that it was used for cosmetic purposes. There is social pressure on women to subscribe to socially prescribed beauty standards of how their bodies must be, and one part of this is the pressure on women to have 'perfect breasts'. Earlier records of such surgery were either for medical purposes or to make a person fit in more easily with a certain social group. It was in the beginning of the 20th century that Hippolyte Morestin and Eugene Hollander started breast reduction (reduction mammoplasty) for beauty purposes only. By the 1930s though, breast reduction had become more of aesthetic surgery than reconstructive surgery.

It is still however used for medical purposes and female celebrities vocally getting such surgery has allowed for more to undertake it and speak up openly about it, a recent example of it being Ariel Winter, who plays Alex in Modern Family, undergoing breast reduction surgery after years of back and neck pain.

Augmentation mammaplasty
Breast augmentation, sometimes referred to as a "boob job" by patients, involves using breast implants or fat transfer to increase the size of one's breasts. This procedure can also restore breast volume lost after weight reduction or pregnancy, achieve a more rounded breast shape or improve natural breast size asymmetry. For some women, breast augmentation is a way to feel more confident. For others, it is part of rebuilding the breast for various conditions.

Breast augmentation is performed with implants (see below) that can be placed under a chest muscle or over a chest muscle. In general, all breast augmentations are minimally invasive procedures, involving incisions that are usually between 3 and 5 cm in length. Breast augmentation is a relatively straightforward procedure. As with any surgery, some uncertainty and risk are associated with breast augmentation surgery.

What breast augmentation surgery can do

 * Increase fullness and projection of the breasts
 * Improve balance of breast and hip contours
 * Enhance self-image

Risks
Breast augmentation poses various risks, including:
 * Scar tissue that distorts the shape of the breast implant (capsular contracture)
 * Breast pain
 * Infection
 * Changes in nipple and breast sensation
 * Implant leakage or rupture

Reduction mammaplasty
Breast reduction surgery is also known as reduction mammaplasty or mammoplasty. It is a cosmetic surgical procedure aimed at reducing large or sagging breasts to a more comfortable size and shape. Large ptotic (sagging) breasts can become troublesome for patients, leading to potentially debilitating symptoms and a poor quality of life. Patients seeking breast reduction commonly present with complaints of migraines, back pain, neck pain, severe discomfort, unwanted harassment, poor self-image and anxiety among other symptoms. These patients can benefit greatly from a reduction in breast size, as most symptoms are relieved by reduction mammaplasty.

Reasons for treatment
Many women with large breasts experience varying degrees of physical and psychological distress, often including:
 * Pain in the breasts, neck, back or shoulders;
 * Bad posture;
 * Inability to participate in sports;
 * Low self-esteem; and
 * Increased self-consciousness.

The goal of the surgery is to reduce the breast size so that they are more comfortable and proportional to the woman's physique.

Benefits
Thousands of mammaplasties are performed every year, and most women are happy with the results. A study of 66 women who had undergone breast reduction reported that the women showed a 94% satisfaction with the results of the procedure (in terms of size, shape, nipple position, and sensation in the breast). This study also reported great improvement in self-esteem, and problems with appearance, exercise and embarrassment over breast size were substantially reduced.

Overall, this and other studies have shown that breast reduction improves function, wellbeing and quality of life for women with excessively large or sagging breasts.

Risks
Specific risks of breast reduction surgery include:
 * Infection;
 * Wound breakdown;
 * Bleeding;
 * Asymmetry of breasts (size and shape);
 * Abnormal scarring;
 * Loss of sensation in the nipple or breast skin;
 * Breastfeeding problems; and
 * Need for repeat surgery.

Breast cancer and mammaplasty
Research has indicated that breast reduction surgery, for women who are at high risk for breast cancer, may serve as an effective primary prevention strategy for tackling breast cancer and is not shown to increase chances of the breast cancer coming back or making it harder to check this through a mammography. As opposed to mastectomy, therapeutic mammoplasty has emerged as a way to address breast cancer in women with larger breasts and where early breast cancer is detected, this helps align with the cosmetic needs of the person in question and has positive health benefits as well.

Many reports have also addressed the relationship between breast cancer and augmentation mammaplasty using implants. Most of them report that there is no increased rate of breast cancer in patients with augmentation mammaplasty. On the contrary, several studies have reported that the rate of breast cancer is actually lower in patients with augmentation mammaplasty. These studies argue that the lower incidence rate of breast cancer is probably due to the lower calorie intake of patients who wish to have augmentation mammaplasty. These patients, being on the thinner side, do not have a tendency toward breast cancer.

A concern for breast cancer survivors can be the physical appearance of their breasts after the surgical procedures required to cure breast cancer in several cases. Reconstructive mammaplasty is breast reconstruction that is done after mastectomy to give the breasts an appearance that is more normal/familiar. Some factors that are considered before deciding whether such surgery would be apt are the size and shape of the breasts before operation, the amount of tissue remaining after the mastectomy, chance of the cancer returning, and what the mastectomy scar looks like and where it is. Mammoplasty has also evolved as a way for women to address physical changes that mastectomy brings about to their bodies. Surgery to reconstruct the breasts can be started along with the mastectomy or after the body has healed from the mastectomy.

Mammograms in general are not performed on reconstructed breasts that have had implants, it is recommended that a woman who has had a breast implant let the radiology technician know of it, before a mammogram, as special steps may be necessary for ensuring correct results and not causing harm to the implant.

title: Mammaplasty


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Martin of Aragon

Martin the Humane (29 July 1356 – 31 May 1410), also called the Elder and the Ecclesiastic, was King of Aragon, Valencia, Sardinia and Corsica and Count of Barcelona from 1396 and King of Sicily from 1409 (as Martin II). He failed to secure the accession of his illegitimate grandson, Frederic, Count of Luna, and with him the rule of the House of Barcelona came to an end.

Background
Martin was born in 1356, in either Girona or Perpignan, both then in the Principality of Catalonia. He was the second son of King Peter IV of Aragon and Eleanor of Sicily (Leonora), princess of the Sicilian branch of the House of Aragon.

As a cadet prince of the Aragonese royal family, Martin was given the County of Besalú. In Barcelona on 13 June 1372, Martin married María López de Luna (d. Villarreal, 20 December 1406), the daughter and heiress of Lope, Lord and 1st Count of Luna and Lord of Segorbe and his wife Brianda de Got, who was born in Provence and was related to Pope Clement V.

In 1380 his father appointed him lord and regent of the island of Sicily, then known also as Trinacria, since its queen Maria of Sicily, who was also Martin's cousin, was underage (Maria's father, Frederick III the Simple, died in 1377). As a son of Eleanor of Sicily, Martin was himself an heir to the island, should Maria's family die out.

Kingship
In 1396, Martin succeeded his elder brother John I, who had died sonless, on the throne of Aragon. However, Sicilian nobles were causing unrest and so Martin was kept in Sicily. Meanwhile, Martin's wife, María López de Luna, claimed the throne on his behalf and acted as his representative until he arrived in 1397. Still, the delay opened the way for more problems and quarrels to surface in Aragon. His right to the throne was contested, first by Count Matthew of Foix on behalf of his wife Joanna, elder daughter of John I. However, Martin succeeded in quashing an invasion by troops of the count. After the death of the childless Joanna, John I's younger daughter Yolande of Aragon, who had married the Angevin King Louis II of Naples, continued the claim, as did her sons.

Martin launched crusades against the Moors in North Africa in 1398 and 1399.

Aragon had been trying to subjugate Sardinia since the reign of James II, and gradually the Aragonese had conquered most of the island. However, in the 1380s, during the reign of Martin's father Peter IV, the remaining independent principality of Arborea became a fortress of rebellion and the Aragonese were rapidly driven back by Eleanor of Arborea, so that practically the whole of Sardinia was lost. King Martin sent his son Martin the Younger, by then king of Sicily through his marriage to Queen Maria, to reconquer Sardinia. The son won the Battle of Sanluri (San Luis, San Luigi) in 1409, drove away the Genoese allies of the Sardinians, and subjugated a vast number of Sardinian nobles. This soon caused Arborea's total loss of independence. Soon after the battle, however, Martin the Younger died suddenly, due to malaria. Martin of Aragon then succeeded his son as King of Sicily, taking the title of Martin II.

Overall, the Crown of Aragon enjoyed external peace during Martin's reign and he worked to quell internal strife caused by nobles, factions and bandits. He supported the Avignon line of Popes and Pope Benedict XIII, who was Aragonese, held the seat throughout Martin's reign. Martin's military intervention rescued the imprisoned Benedict in 1403 from the clutches of his rivals and the Pope settled in Valencia's countryside.

Issue
Martin had four legitimate children by Queen Maria: Martin the Younger (b. 1374/1376), James (b. 1378), John (b. 1380), and Margaret (b. 1384/1388). The three younger children all died early, and so after Martin the Younger's death, King Martin appointed his cousin James II, Count of Urgell, the closest legitimate agnate of the House of Barcelona, as Governor-General of all the kingdoms of Aragon, a position that belonged traditionally to the heir presumptive. Martin still married secondly on 17 September 1409 to his cousin Margaret of Prades, daughter of Peter of Aragon, Baron of Entenza, but the short marriage was childless.

Succession
Martin died, in the monastery of Valldonzella, outside the city walls of Barcelona on 31 May 1410. While the reason remains unclear, it is supposed that the cause was either plague (present in the area at the time), uremic coma (the king suffered from severe obesity that affected his health) or the possibility of having been poisoned, only supported by Renaissance chronicler Valla. The story of the king's death associated with laughter (following a joke told by Borra the jester while Martin was suffering from indigestion) although lacking in historical evidence, has been recorded. Despite the demands to have an heir declared, the physical incapacity of the king prevented him from giving a clear name, and to the question of giving permission to give to the throne to the person who would be most legitimate for it he gave a terse "Hoc" (Yes).

All of Martin's legitimate descendants, born of his marriage with Queen Maria, were already dead, and his second marriage did not produce any children. Only an illegitimate grandson, Frederick, Count of Luna, a natural son of Martin the Younger, and an illegitimate daughter – ineligible for succession due to the rules established during the reign of James I of Aragon – continued the direct line of inheritance. The king, despite his desire and some effort, was unable to obtain sufficient confirmation of Frederick as his successor prior to his death. As a result, Martin's death led to a two-year interregnum, during which at least five contenders for the throne came forward, including Frederick of Luna and James II of Urgell. Succession of the Crown of Aragon was determined by the Compromise of Caspe on 28 June 1412, in which Martin's nephew Ferdinand, infante of Castile was chosen as the next king, establishing the House of Trastámara.

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

title: Martin of Aragon


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Gastric distension

Gastric distention is the enlargement of the stomach, and can be due to a number of causes.

Physiologic (normal) gastric distension occurs when eating. Distension of the upper stomach stimulates the secretion of stomach acid, while distension of the lower stomach stimulates gastrin secretion. Distension of the stomach also stimulates the secretion of ghrelin.

Other causes include:
 * binge eating associated with bulimia nervosa
 * tumors causing obstruction
 * diabetic neuropathy
 * scarring due to pyloric gastritis
 * delayed gastric emptying

To identify the cause of gastric distention, an upper endoscopy or barium upper GI imaging should be done.

title: Gastric distension


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Jacob Epstein

Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910.

Early in his career, in 1912, The Pall Mall Gazette described Epstein as "a Sculptor in Revolt, who is in deadly conflict with the ideas of current sculpture." Revolting against ornate, pretty art, he made bold, often harsh and massive forms in bronze or stone. His sculpture is distinguished by its vigorous rough-hewn realism. Avant-garde in concept and style, his works often shocked audiences. This was not only a result of their, often explicit, sexual content, but also because they abandoned the conventions of classical Greek sculpture favoured by European academic critics and sculptors, to experiment instead with the aesthetics of art traditions as diverse as those of India, China, ancient Greece, West Africa and the Pacific Islands. His larger sculptures were his most expressive and experimental, but also his most vulnerable.

Such factors may have focused disproportionate attention on certain aspects of Epstein's long and productive career, throughout which he aroused hostility, especially challenging taboos surrounding the depiction of sexuality. He often produced controversial works that challenged ideas on what was appropriate subject matter for public artworks. Epstein would often sculpt the images of friends, casual acquaintances, and even people he spotted on the street. He worked even on his dying day. He also painted; many of his watercolours and gouaches were of Epping Forest, where he lived for a time. These were often exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London.

Bronze portrait sculpture formed one of Epstein's staple products, and perhaps the best known. These sculptures were often executed with roughly textured surfaces, expressively manipulating small surface planes and facial details.

Epstein was Jewish,   and negative reviews of his work sometimes took on an antisemitic flavour, though he did not attribute the "average unfavorable criticism" of his work to antisemitism.

After Epstein died, Henry Moore wrote a tribute in The Sunday Times which included a recognition of Epstein's central role in the development of modern sculpture in Britain. "He took the brickbats, he took the insults, he faced the howls of derision with which artists since Rembrandt have learned to become familiar. And as far as sculpture in this century is concerned he took them first.... We have lost a great sculptor and a great man."

Early life and education
Epstein was born at 102 Hester Street on the Lower East Side of New York City. His parents were Max Epstein, formerly Jarogenski or Jarudzinski, and Mary Epstein, née Solomon, both of whom were Orthodox Jews and whose families had emigrated from Augustów in Poland. The family was middle-class, owning a number of businesses and tenements, and Jacob was the third of their eight surviving children.

As a child Epstein suffered from pleurisy and he left school aged thirteen. Between 1893 and 1898 he attended classes at the Art Students League of New York. In 1898 he organised an exhibition at the Hebrew Institute for a group of local Jewish artists and in 1899 opted to stay at Hester Street when his family moved to Madison Avenue, supporting himself by working as a tenement inspector and, briefly, as a physical education instructor. He also began selling his drawings and provided illustrations for two articles by the journalist Hutchins Hapgood. Epstein spent the winter of 1899 working as an ice-cutter with his friend Bernard Gussrow at Greenwood Lake in New Jersey.

In 1900, the Hester Street tenement Epstein was living in burnt down and, as well as losing all his sketches and drawings, he became homeless. With the help of the local settlement movement he took a job as a farmhand in Southboro, Massachusetts. Returning to Manhattan in June 1901 he worked in a bronze foundry while taking classes for sculptor's assistants at the Art Students League of New York. Epstein's first major commission was to illustrate Hutchins Hapgood's 1902 book The Spirit of the Ghetto. Epstein used the money from the commission to leave New York City for Paris in September 1902.

Paris 1902–1905
On his second full day in Paris, during October 1902, Epstein saw the funeral procession of Emile Zola and witnessed some of the anti-semitic abuse directed at the passing cortège. Epstein studied at the École des Beaux-Arts from October 1902 until March 1903 and then, from April 1903 to 1904, at the Académie Julian where he was taught by Jean-Paul Laurens. He shared a studio in Montparnasse with Bernard Gussrow and throughout 1904 and 1905 appears to have studied independently in various Paris museums. He regularly visited the Louvre to view its collection of non-European sculpture, studied Indian and Far Eastern art in the Musée Guimet and artworks from China in the Musée Cernuschi.

Epstein visited Rodin in his studio and met Margaret Dunlop, known as Peggy, (1873-1947) who encouraged him to visit London, which he did in 1904. There he spent some time viewing sculptures from African and Polynesian cultures in the British Museum, all of which were to have a profound influence on his future work.

London 1905–1907
After destroying the contents of his Paris studio, Epstein moved to London in 1905 with Dunlop, whom he married in November 1906. The couple lived at Stanhope Street near Regent's Park before moving to the Stamford Street Studios in Fulham. With a reference from Rodin, Epstein gained access to a number of society figures, notably George Bernard Shaw and Robbie Ross and to a circle of artists associated with the New English Art Club, NEAC, including Muirhead Bone and Augustus John. He had a wax model shown in a large exhibition of Jewish art at the Whitechapel Art Gallery during 1906 and an oil painting included in the NEAC's December 1906 show. In 1907, Epstein moved his studio to 72 Cheyne Walk where he began working on his first major public commission, a series of statues for the new British Medical Association building in London.

The Strand sculptures, 1908
Throughout 1907 and 1908, Epstein created eighteen large sculptures for the second-floor façade of Charles Holden's new building for the British Medical Association, BMA, on The Strand (now Zimbabwe House) in central London. Epstein created models of each figure in his studio and these were then cast in plaster. The plaster models were taken to the Strand where they were copied in stone by a firm of commercial architectural carvers, John Drymond of Westminster Bridge Road. Epstein then made minor adjustments and changes to the stone figures. This process of using models, casts and commercial carvers was the norm for architectural sculpture at the time and was one Epstein soon came to reject. Although the six figures representing aspects of medicine and science attracted little attention, the twelve statues representing different stages of life were greatly criticised, notably by the National Vigilance Association, whose offices were opposite the building. Their view that the figures, particularly that of the heavily pregnant Maternity and the male nudes, were sexually explicit and insulting to Edwardian sensibilities was taken up by various newspapers. In June 1908 the London Evening Standard described the sculptures as "statuary which no careful father would wish his daughter, or no discriminating young man his fiancée to see." A police officer was called to climb the scaffolding to inspect the statues as was the Bishop of Stepney, Cosmo Gordon Lang, who approved of them. Several other public figures and artists defended the works and, at a meeting of its governing council in July 1908, the BMA agreed to keep them in place.

In art-historical terms, the Strand sculptures represented Epstein's first thoroughgoing attempt to break away from traditional European iconography in favour of elements derived from classical India sculpture. The female figures in particular incorporated the posture and hand gestures of Buddhist, Jain and Hindu art from the subcontinent.

While working on the Strand statues, Epstein was asked by Augustus John to create a portrait of his two-year-old son, Romilly. This 1907 bronze Romilly John became the first of a series of such portraits of the child. In 1909, Epstein carved a stone version that he retained for the rest of his life. The 1908 controversy over the Strand statues left Epstein depressed and short of money. For the rest of 1908 he worked on portraits and small pieces, notably busts of Euphemia Lamb and his first portrait bust of Mary McEvoy.

The Tomb of Oscar Wilde, 1908–1912
Near the end of 1908, without any prior discussion or advance warning, Robbie Ross announced that Epstein was the chosen sculptor for a new tomb of Oscar Wilde in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. After a period spent studying Wilde's writings, Epstein designed a monument featuring a large statue of Narcissus. After several months, he changed his mind and destroyed that, almost-complete, monument in favour of a new design carved directly in stone. The decision to carve directly in stone, then a new and radical departure for contemporary sculptors, may reflect the influence of Epstein's then friend and collaborator Eric Gill. Throughout the second half of 1910, Epstein and Gill met on an almost daily basis, but eventually they fell out. Earlier that year they had held long discussions with other artists, including Augustus John and Ambrose McEvoy, about the formation of a religious brotherhood. They also planned the construction on the Sussex Downs of a colossal monument to art, which Gill referred to "as a sort of twentieth-century Stonehenge." During the time they worked together, both Epstein and Gill produced significant works on similar themes, notably Epstein's Sun God and Gill's Cocky Kid and they both carved portrait heads of Romilly John. Epstein's third Romilly John head, entitled Rom, was carved from a rectangular limestone block, which he retained, complete with chisel-marks, as a base for the child's head, so that it appeared as if the figure had emerged from the rock. Both Rom, and another carving called Sun Goddess, show the influence of oriental and Egyptian art on Epstein and how far he was moving away from more classical and accepted traditions of sculpture. Epstein spent nine months in Gill's studio at Ditchling carving, from a block of Hopton Wood stone, the new design for Wilde's tomb and for which Gill designed the inscription. This design was clearly influenced by the massive Assyrian sculptures Epstein knew from the British Museum and featured, in his words "a vast, winged figure ... the conception of poet as messenger" with smaller figures representing Fame, Intellectual Pride and Luxury. In June 1912, Epstein had the completed tomb displayed in his London studio for public viewing. The work received positive reviews and was highly praised in the British press, including by publications that had been critical of the Strand statues.

Following an introduction from Augustus John in 1910, John Quinn, a wealthy American collector and patron to the modernists, visited Epstein's studio to view the Wilde tomb and quickly became the artist's major patron and collector of his work. After his death in 1924, several of Quinn's Epsteins were acquired by public collections in the United States.

By September 1912, after a prolonged dispute with the French customs authorities over the import duty payable, Wilde's tomb was installed in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. The Paris authorities deemed the monument offensive due to the flying creature's testicles and had it covered with a tarpaulin. They demanded that Epstein remove the offending parts or cover them up. He refused and on several occasions visited the cemetery and, with the help of friends including Nina Hamnett and Brancusi, removed the tarpaulin only for the cemetery authorities to replace it later. This standoff, with Epstein travelling between London and Paris on a frequent basis, continued until August 1914 when Robbie Ross, against Epstein's wishes, had a butterfly-shaped plaque made as a fig-leaf to cover the creature's testicles. Epstein refused to attend the official unveiling, which was performed by Aleister Crowley. Crowley subsequently presented Epstein with the fig-leaf from the tomb one evening at the Café Royal in London.

During his time in Paris defending the Wilde tomb, as well as Brancusi, Epstein met and befriended Modigliani and Picasso, each of whom influenced his future work. In May and June 1912, Epstein was among the artists hired to produce artworks for a new London nightclub, The Cave of the Golden Calf, which brought him into contact with a number of younger artists, notably Wyndham Lewis and the poet T. E. Hulme. This led to Epstein becoming associated with the short-lived Vorticism movement and contributing two illustrations to the first edition of the Vorticist magazine Blast.

Pett Level 1913–1916
Early in 1913, after living in rented rooms in Montparnasse for three months, the Epsteins moved to a secluded bungalow in the village of Pett Level in East Sussex. Using the garden shed there as a studio, over the next three years Epstein produced a number of notable works.

At Pett Level, Epstein became aware of the dark green mineral Serpentinite, which he called Flenite, and used it for sculptures, including Flenite Women and Flenite Relief, which showed an infant emerging from the womb. He carved two figures of pregnant women, one of which was eventually acquired by the Tate. Cursed Be the Day wherein I was Born was the plaster figure of a child, painted red, apparently crying or screaming. He created three marble sculptures of pairs of doves mating, the first two of which were shown in group exhibitions during 1913 and at his solo exhibition at the Twenty-One Gallery in December 1913. The reviews of all these works, in both the popular press and the art journals, were almost universally hostile and insulting to Epstein.

In London, Epstein rented a room above a bookshop in Devonshire Street and used a garage in the adjacent mews to began work on Rock Drill, which was too large for the Pett Level shed. By the summer of 1914 he was close to completing the work but could not afford to have it cast in steel and made the upper figure in plaster instead.

World War I
The start of World War I in 1914 saw the closure of a number of London art galleries and left Epstein in financial difficulties, unable to sell any work and with a large number of unfinished pieces. In March 1915, at a London Group exhibition at the Goupil Gallery, Epstein exhibited several works, including the Flenite pieces and Doves plus, for the first, and only, time in public, Rock Drill. By making an actual, unaltered, industrial drill an integral part of the sculpture, Epstein must have expected criticism. The menacing body mounted on the drill appeared to be assembled from machine parts, including a head on a shaft with the only organic feature the foetus within the creature's open rib-cage. The critic's response was almost universally hostile and abusive. P.G. Konody described Rock Drill as "unutterably loathsome" and Augustus John persuaded John Quinn not to buy it. Even the supportive reviewer for The Guardian concluded that the 'incongruity' of the work was 'too difficult for the mind to grasp'. In May 1916, Epstein, apparently mortified at the continuing slaughter of the war, made the decision to break up the sculpture. He removed the drill entirely and reduced the upper figure to a legless one-armed torso, which he had cast in gunmetal. When shown at the London Group in the summer of 1916, the torso appeared more of a victim than the menacing figure of the original sculpture. At this point Epstein began to concentrate less on avant-garde sculpture and embrace more figurative forms of working.

Later in 1915 Epstein showed a number of portrait busts, including those of Iris Beerbohm-Tree and Lilian Shelley, at a National Portrait Society exhibition, all of which received positive reviews and sold well. He subsequently produced a notable portrait bust of Admiral Lord Fisher. During 1916, the Epsteins left Pett Level and moved to Guildford Street in the Bloomsbury area of central London. As Epstein had become a naturalized British subject in December 1910 he was eligible for conscription into the British armed forces. After lobbying by Margaret Epstein, John Quinn and others, a three-month exemption from conscription was granted, which allowed Epstein to prepare for a major solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in February and March 1917. The exhibition drew large crowds and was a critical and commercial success. A further three-month exemption from conscription was granted, but after a press campaign featuring objections from, among others, G. K. Chesterton and the sculptor Adrian Jones, plus a question in the House of Commons, the concession was withdrawn. By September 1917 Epstein was a private in the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, known as the Jewish Legion, stationed at the Crownhill barracks, Plymouth.

Several attempts were made to have Epstein created an official war artist. His release from active service and secondment to the newly formed Imperial War Museum was approved by Field Marshal Haig in December 1917 but promptly withdrawn after the sculptor George Frampton raised objections. The scheduled departure of his regiment to the Middle East precipitated a breakdown in Epstein. After he was found wandering on Dartmoor, and spent a period in hospital, he was discharged from the army in July 1918 without having left England. After the war ended, Muirhead Bone purchased, for the Imperial War Museum, three portrait busts of military subjects by Epstein including The Tin Hat and Sergeant D F Hunter, VC.

The Risen Christ
Epstein spent most of 1919 making portrait sculptures but also returned to work on a large bronze, The Risen Christ, which he had abandoned when called up. When exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in February 1920, the seven-foot figure of a gaunt, accusing Christ figure provoked a torrent of abuse towards Epstein, some of which was racist in nature. The controversy brought over a thousand people a day through the turnstiles of the Leicester Galleries for the exhibition. The Risen Christ was bought by the explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard and eventually acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland.

The Hudson memorial
In 1922, Epstein secured a commission from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, RSPB, for a memorial in Hyde Park, London to the author and naturalist W. H. Hudson. By early 1923, he had produced a model of Hudson beside a tree, looking at a bird. The RSPB approved the design but the park authorities objected and requested a new design. Epstein's new design focused on the character, Rima, from Hudson's novel Green Mansions and, after submitting numerous treatments of the figure, a final design was approved in February 1924. When Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin unveiled the memorial on 19 May 1925, there were gasps of horror at the sight of the bare-breasted figure Epstein had created. Arthur Conan Doyle organised a petition to have the memorial removed. The Daily Mail ran the headline "Take this horror out of the Park" while the Morning Post described Rima as "hideous, unnatural, unEnglish" and a question was asked in the House of Commons about "this specimen of Bolshevik art". The abuse aimed at Rima and Epstein lasted for years. The memorial was vandalised with paint in November 1925 and, at different times, during the 1930s was defaced with swastikas and fascist slogans.

In January 1924 the Leicester Galleries held their third exhibition of Epstein's works. The exhibition attracted few sales but did elicit a critical and damaging review in the New Statesman by Roger Fry and an unsigned and overtly racist article in The New Age. Through Muirhead Bone, Epstein was commissioned by the government of Poland to create a portrait bust of Joseph Conrad. Epstein, wrote Conrad, "has produced a wonderful piece of work of a somewhat monumental dignity, and yet—everybody agrees—the likeness is striking." The Polish government refused to accept the work, completed a few months before Conrad died, and it was eventually, in 1960, acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London.

America 1927
In 1927 Epstein agreed to hold an exhibition in New York at the Ferargil Gallery on West 47th Street and spent most of that year preparing fifty works for the show. The exhibition was a success, with several pieces selling including two bought by public collections. During his four months in America, Epstein made three portrait busts, most notably one of the singer Paul Robeson.

In early 1928 the Epstein family moved to 18 Hyde Park Gate, a five-storey house with a ballroom that became Epstein's studio and allowed him to start gathering together his unsold and unfinished works from various sheds and garages around London. He also retained Deerhurst, a cottage and studio at Loughton in Epping Forest.

Night and Day
A commission from Charles Holden for two sculptures for the new headquarters building of the London Electric Railway generated further controversy in 1929. Epstein's sculptures Day and Night above the entrances of 55 Broadway were criticised as indecent, ugly and primitive although some critics, notably R. H. Wilenski, regarded them as a major achievement. Starting in October 1928 Epstein carved the two figures in-situ as the upper floors of the building were being built above him. Aware of the potential for controversy, he was not identified, in public at least, as the sculptor until May 1929 when Night was completed to a storm of criticism. A debate raged for some time over demands to remove the statues. To placate the railway board, Holden persuaded Epstein to modify the penis of the smaller of the two figures represented on Day. An attempt to vandalise Night was made in October 1929, a few days before the Hudson memorial was defaced. The controversy affected Epstein's ability to gain commissions for large public works, which largely dried up for twenty years.

Early 1930s
Without any commissions for large public monuments throughout the 1930s, Epstein worked on a number of large sculptures on religious subjects of personal significance to himself, while supporting his family with commissions for portrait busts and by selling paintings of flowers and landscapes.

In 1929, Epstein carved Genesis, a massive, marble, three-ton figure of a pregnant woman with a swollen belly and a face based on an African mask. When shown as part of Epstein's February 1930 exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, the response to Genesis was vicious, not just from the popular press but from more serious journals. Epstein took particular exception to an insulting review by the artist Paul Nash. After a break of almost twenty years, Epstein returned to the sculpture Sun God and began, in 1932, to carve a new relief on the rear side of the block, a hunched male figure with two infant forms across his body, titled Primeval Gods.

Epstein spent the summer of 1933 at his cottage in Epping Forest and, in the space of two months, painted over a hundred landscapes and flower compositions. These were shown at Tooth's Gallery that Christmas and these Christmas exhibition of his paintings became a popular annual event. During September 1933, on his way to America, Albert Einstein spent some weeks at Roughton Heath, Norfolk, and agreed to sit for Epstein over seven days. Epstein remembered his meeting with Einstein as, "His glance contained a mixture of the humane, the humorous and the profound. This was a combination which delighted me. He resembled the ageing Rembrandt."

Ecce Homo, 1934
Throughout 1934 Epstein struggled with carving a huge block of marble that proved so tough it regularly broke his tools until he had a new set of instruments made for the work. Behold the Man (Ecce Homo) depicted a squat Christ with a huge head that, in Epstein's words, was 'a symbol of man, bound, crowned with thorns and facing with a relentless and over-mastering gaze of pity and prescience our unhappy world'. First shown, unfinished, at the Leicester Galleries in March 1935, Ecce Homo led to a storm of criticism including accusations of blasphemy. Some newspapers considered the work so grotesque they refused to publish photographs of it. Anthony Blunt wrote a positive review for The Spectator, stating that the scale of the work was more suitable for a large church rather than an art gallery. Epstein never sold the work and it remained in his studio throughout his life. In 1958 he was approached by the rector of Selby Abbey in Yorkshire, who asked if Epstein would leave Ecce Homo to the abbey in his will. He agreed but local church members raised a petition that persuaded the church authorities to overrule the rector and refuse the gift. It was not until 1969, that Ecce Homo, donated by Epstein's widow Kathleen Garman, was finally installed in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral.

The Strand sculptures, 1935–1937
By 1926, the British Medical Association had vacated their Strand headquarters and the building was sold to the government of New Zealand which, in 1928, commissioned a structural survey of Epstein's 1908 statues. This survey found extensive signs of erosion, weathering and other damage among them. No further action was taken at that time but in 1935 the building was sold to the government of Southern Rhodesia and the new owners soon announced their intention to remove Epstein's statues from the building. A vigorous campaign was again launched to preserve the figures. The leaders of nine of Britain's leading art organisations, but notably not the Royal Academy, signed a letter supporting the preservation of the statues. That campaign was a success until 1937 when, as some bunting, erected for the coronation of George VI, was being removed from the building, a piece of one figure was knocked off and fell to the pavement below. The London County Council instructed the owners to make the building safe. The owners declared all the projecting features of the statues to be unsafe and were to be removed. Attempts to find an alternative solution, such as removing and re-carving elements of the statues, were hindered when Epstein insulted the Southern Rhodesian High Commissioner in a press interview. The parts hacked off included the heads and hands of all eighteen figures, the feet of most of them and other key defining elements, such as the foetus from the Matter statue and the figure of a new-born baby from Infancy. Several of these pieces were eventually acquired by the National Gallery of Canada and one of the heads was later found at a school in Bulawayo.

Late 1930s
In the second half of the 1930s alongside his sculpture work, Epstein took on other projects in different media. With the artist Bernard Meninsky, he designed and painted the stage curtain for the ballet David at the Duke of York's Theatre in central London. The curtain, now lost, was considered a great success. Considerably less appreciated was Epstein's illustrations for an edition of Les Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire. Commissioned to produce twenty drawings, Epstein created sixty illustrations that he considered among his best work in any medium, but when shown at Tooth's Gallery in December 1936, met with near universal disapproval.

During 1936, Epstein started carving a large block of alabaster in his Hyde Park Gate studio. Inspired by Bach's Mass in B minor, he carved Consummatum Est, a horizontal figure of the crucified Christ with the stigmata wounds on his hands and feet visible. Epstein began, in 1938, to sculpt Adam, a seven foot high figure carved from a three-ton block of alabaster. The directors of the Leicester Galleries were reluctant to include the naked giant figure with his oversized genitals and muscles in Epstein's June 1939 exhibition but feared he would withdraw all his work from the gallery if they didn't accept it. Adam was of great personal significance to Epstein who had, throughout the first half of 1939, worked day and night on the figure. Alongside the usual outrage that greeted much of Epstein's work, Oswald Mosley's fascist group threatened to attack it.

A photograph of the unfinished Adam formed the frontispiece of the first edition of Epstein's autobiography Let There Be Sculpture which was published in 1940. Forty pages, a fifth of the book, was devoted to Epstein's account of the Strand sculptures controversy.

World War II
During the Second World War, Epstein was asked to undertake six commissions for the War Artists' Advisory Committee. After completing bronze busts of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, General Sir Alan Cunningham, Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal and Ernest Bevin, Epstein accepted a commission to create busts of John Anderson and Winston Churchill. He completed the bust of Winston Churchill in early 1947. By then, Churchill was living in Hyde Park Gate across the road from Epstein and the two became friendly. Epstein had numerous casts of the Churchill bust made and it was among his most popular works. Throughout the war, Epstein continued to paint flowers and woodland scenes of Epping Forest and hold commercially successful Christmas exhibitions of those works. He also worked on two large private projects, Jacob and the Angel and Lucifer. First exhibited in February 1942, Jacob and the Angel, based on a Bible story, depicts two figures, one winged, locked in an embrace carved from a four-ton block of alabaster, streaked with veins of pink and brown.

Epstein imagined the fallen angel Lucifer as a tall, winged, androgynous figure with male genitals and a female face, that of the Kashmiri model Sunita Devi, all cast in a golden patinated bronze. The front of the Leicester Galleries had to be removed to get the statue inside for its first public showing in October 1945. Despite positive reviews, Lucifer remained unsold until 1946 when A. W. Lawrence, the brother of T. E. Lawrence, and the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust purchased it with the intention of donating it to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The Fitzwilliam refused the donation as did both the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate but several other museums did show interest and Epstein was pleased when the statue entered the collection of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where it remains.

Jacob and the Angel was bought by a businessman, Charles Stafford, who already owned Epstein's Adam, which he had been exhibiting in local fairs and fetes for its shock value. In Blackpool, he installed Jacob and the Angel in an old song booth on the promenade behind an 'Adults Only' sign. Eventually Stafford sold Jacob and the Angel and Adam, plus Consummatum Est which he also owned, to Louis Tussaud. Tussaud returned the works to Blackpool where, along with Genesis, they were exhibited in the anatomical curiosities section of his waxworks. The works were displayed alongside dancing marionettes, diseased body parts, and conjoined twin babies in jars. Placing his work within the context of freakish curiosity was a constant source of anguish to Epstein.

1950s
After the Second World War there was a notable change in attitudes to Epstein and, nearing seventy, he was about to enjoy a sustained period of recognition and one of the busiest periods of his artistic life. Early in 1950, he received his first commission in twenty years for a public monument, the statue Youth Advancing, for the 1951 Festival of Britain. Epstein's 1947 carving of Lazarus was bought by New College, Oxford and installed in the chapel there in January 1952.

In 1947, the architect Louis Osman was employed by the nuns of the Convent of the Holy Child to rebuild their bomb-damaged buildings on Cavendish Square in central London. Osman's design featured a bridge that linked two parts of the complex and would support a large sculpture. The nuns were keen to have a sculpture of the Madonna and Child and planned to employ a Catholic sculptor for the work. Osman was determined to have a work by Epstein and, without consulting the nuns, had him produce a maquette. When the convent rejected Epstein's design on cost grounds, he and Osman, with help from Kenneth Clark and the Arts Council, agreed to cover the cost themselves. The convent agreed to Epstein's design provided he would listen to any suggestions they made. After Epstein accepted their concerns about the face of the Madonna and changed the head from one based on Kathleen Garman to one modelled on her friend Marcella Bazrtti, the convent began working hard to raise funds for the sculpture to be cast in lead. Unveiled on 14 May 1953 by Rab Butler, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Cavendish Square Madonna and Child met with near universal praise.

While working on Madonna and Child during 1951 and 1952, Epstein undertook other major projects. In August 1951 he travelled to the United States to view the site in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia where the Philadelphia Museum of Art had commissioned him to create a large sculpture group, Social Consciousness; he was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held there in the summer of 1949. In London, the Tate hosted a large retrospective exhibition of his work in September 1952 with fifty-nine sculptures and twenty drawings.

Final works
The success of Madonna and Child in 1953 led to a dramatic reappraisal of Epstein's work in general and to more public commissions. That year he received commissions from Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff and, from the British Government, a commission for a statue of Field Marshall Jan Smuts to be placed in Parliament Square. Such was the scale and quantity of work Epstein took on, he was given the use of an extra large studio in the Royal College of Art. There he worked on the three large figure groups comprising Social Consciousness during 1953, the Liverpool Resurgent figure and parts of the giant Christ in Majesty for Llandaff Cathedral. The cathedral had originally commissioned the figure to be made in gilded plaster but, after Epstein offered to pay for it to be cast in metal, the church authorities agreed to cover the cost of an aluminium casting. It was not until April 1957, that Christ in Majesty, was unveiled, suspended above the nave of the cathedral on a concrete arch designed by George Pace. Epstein was appointed an Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1954 New Year Honours. Epstein strongly suspected that Winston Churchill had nominated him for the honour. In 1955, he received a request from Basil Spence, the architect building the new Coventry Cathedral, to produce a small maquette for a giant sculpture of St Michael's Victory over the Devil; he also received a commission from the Trade Union Congress, TUC, for a war memorial for their new headquarters building. The following year, Westminster Abbey commissioned a memorial to William Blake for Poet's Corner. As soon as he finished the maquette for Coventry Cathedral, Epstein began making the head and wings of the full-size figure without waiting for the cathedral authorities to approve the project. When reports of the work appeared in the press, Spence made it clear to Epstein that the cathedral was under no obligation to accept it. Epstein said he would do it for his own benefit. When the bishop and cathedral officials visited Epstein's studio to view the work they were greatly impressed and quickly approved the contract for the work. In a 1956 letter to a friend, Epstein wrote that he was "inundated with requests for work on buildings, large works which I don't know I will ever be able to accomplish. I was for so long without any commissions, I don't feel like turning down anything that comes my way, but it is all coming too late I'm afraid."

During 1958, Epstein was too ill to attend the unveiling of the war memorial he had carved at the centre of the TUC Headquarters in London, being in hospital with pleurisy and a thrombosis. While the TUC leadership made no secret of their hatred of the carving, several Labour MPs were greatly impressed and the critic Terence Mulally praised it as "a tragic monument on a grand scale." After spending time convalescing in Italy and France, Epstein resumed working, creating a portrait sculpture of Princess Margaret and starting work on the large Bowater House Group sculpture. Epstein's final works included a posthumous portrait of David Lloyd George for the Houses of Parliament and the Bowater House Group, which he completed on the day he died in August 1959.

Personal life
Despite being married to and continuing to live with Margaret Dunlop, Epstein had a number of relationships with other women that brought him his five children: Peggy Jean (1918–2010), Theodore Garman, known as Theo, (1924–1954), Kitty Garman (1926–2011), Esther (1929–1954) and Jackie (1934–2009). In 1921, Epstein began the longest of these relationships, with Kathleen Garman, one of the Garman sisters, mother of his three middle children, which continued until his death. Margaret tolerated Epstein's infidelities, allowed his models and lovers to live in the family home and raised Epstein's first child, Peggy Jean, who was the daughter of Meum Lindsell, one of Epstein's previous lovers, and his last, Jackie, whose mother was the painter Isabel Nicholas. Evidently, Margaret's tolerance did not extend to Epstein's relationship with Kathleen Garman, as in 1922 Margaret shot and wounded Kathleen in the shoulder.

Margaret Epstein died in 1947 and he married Kathleen Garman in 1955. Their eldest daughter, also named Kathleen but known as "Kitty", married the painter Lucian Freud in 1948 and was the mother of his daughters Annie and Annabel. She is the subject of Freud's painting Portrait of Kitty. In 1953 they divorced. She married a second time in 1955, to economist Wynne Godley. They have one daughter.

Death and legacy
Epstein died in August 1959 at his Hyde Park Gate home and was interred in Putney Vale Cemetery on 24 August 1959 with a service conducted by Dr Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury. A memorial service was held on 10 November 1959 at St Paul's Cathedral with a plaster cast of Christ in Majesty hung in the cathedral for the event.

A memorial exhibition of 170 sculptures by Epstein was held during the Edinburgh Festival in 1961. The exhibition included the four works that had been at Blackpool in Louis Tussaud's shows. After Epstein died the four works, Jacob and the Angel, Adam, Consummatum Est and Genesis, were bought by a group led by Lord Harewood and Jack Lyons. Adam is now in the entrance hall of Harewood House, Consummatum Est is in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Genesis is at The Whitworth in Manchester. Since 1996, Jacob and the Angel has been part of the Tate collection alongside several other works by Epstein including Sun God / Primeval Gods, a version of Doves and Torso in Metal.

In 1961, two hundred plaster casts by Epstein were donated by Kathleen Garman to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. With Epstein's former pupil Sally Ryan, Garman created the Garman Ryan Collection, a collection of works by Epstein and other artists that she donated, in 1973, to the people of Walsall, exhibited at The New Art Gallery Walsall. Ryan also donated Epstein's 1927 seated bronze Madonna and Child, which she had bought in the 1930s, to the Riverside Church, New York City in 1960.

By 1912, Epstein had begun collecting west African, ancient Egyptian, pre-Columbian American, Oceanic and other non-western artworks, having purchased pieces of Fang work, including a reliquary figure, in Paris that year. By 1931 he owned over 200 pieces of ethnographic art and, eventually, built up one of the largest such private collections in existence with over a thousand objects. After his death, when the collection was broken up and sold at auction, the British Museum purchased several substantial pieces.

Epstein's art is to be found all over the world. Highly original for its time, it substantially influenced the younger generation of sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. According to June Rose's biography, during the early 1920s Moore visited Epstein in his studio and was befriended by the older sculptor. Epstein, Moore, and Hepworth all expressed deep fascination with non-western art in the British Museum.

Selected major pieces
For a more comprehensive list, see List of sculptures by Jacob Epstein.
 * 1907–08 Ages of Man – British Medical Association headquarters, Strand, London – mutilated / destroyed 1937
 * 1910 Rom – limestone – portrait of Romily John – National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff
 * 1911–12 Oscar Wilde's tomb – Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
 * 1913–14 Rock Drill – bronze — Tate Collection (symbolising 'the terrible Frankenstein's monster we have made ourselves into')
 * 1917 Venus – marble – Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
 * 1919 Christ – bronze – Wheathampstead, England
 * 1921 Bust of Jacob Kramer – Leeds Art Gallery
 * 1922–30 Head of Hans Kindler – Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
 * 1924–25 Rima – W. H. Hudson Memorial, Hyde Park, London
 * 1926 bronze bust of Ramsay MacDonald – Palace of Westminster, London
 * 1927 Madonna and Child – seated bronze – donated to the Riverside Church, New York City in 1960
 * 1928–29 Night and Day – Portland stone – 55 Broadway, St. James', London
 * 1933 Head of Albert Einstein – bronze – numerous casts
 * 1939 Adam – alabaster – Harewood House, near Leeds
 * 1940–41 Jacob and the Angel – alabaster – Tate Britain
 * 1944– 45 Lucifer – bronze – Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
 * 1947–48 Lazarus – Hopton Wood stone – chapel of New College, Oxford
 * 1950 Madonna and Child – lead – Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, London
 * 1954 Social Consciousness – University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
 * 1954–55 Christ in Majesty – 5.5m aluminium figure – Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff
 * 1956 Liverpool Resurgent – Lewis's Building, Liverpool
 * 1956 statue of Field Marshall Jan Smuts – bronze – Parliament Square, London
 * 1957 bust of William Blake – Westminster Abbey, London
 * 1958 Trade Union Victims of Two World Wars – The Spirit of Trade Unionism – stone – Congress House, London
 * 1958 St Michael's Victory over the Devil – bronze – Coventry Cathedral
 * 1959 The Rush of Green (also known as Pan or The Bowater House Group) – Hyde Park, London
 * After 1959 Christ in Majesty – gilded plaster – Riverside Church, New York City

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Media links content dispute.
It is evident there is a content dispute about the inclusion of a link to a local media source in this article.

I have removed the link until editor consensus can be achieved.

All parties are reminded to discuss content changes in the Talk page, and to not engage in edit warring. Constant reverting of article content without attempting to achieve consensus (or in violation of consensus) will invite administrative action such as blocking. Manning (talk) 05:56, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I am a private citizen of Prattville, I work closely with the City government and Prattville Mayor Jim Byard Jr. I have no affiliation with either the Prattville Progress or Our Prattville. I believe that both of these news media outlets are well respected and recognized by the City government which legitimizes them for there inclusion on the Prattville Media section as they were for the best part of a year. Both of them do charity work such as "Prattville Pets of the Week" etc. with Our Prattville covering and working with the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Linking to these sites may indeed help save the life of an innocent animal, think about that. If any of you have any questions about these two outlets I ask you to call the City of Prattville and verify the veracity of my claim. They are also mentioned on this recognized media directory: http://www.abyznewslinks.com/uniteal.htm under the city of Prattville. You will see they are the only two listed there. This comment was added by 98.89.12.105 at 06:22, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Your personal passion is noted. For the record I know nothing about Prattville, Alabama as I live in Sydney, Australia. However I am an administrator here and I also know a fair bit about how Wikipedia works, so I will attempt to provide some informal mediation.

 * I'm going to wait to hear the opposing arguments. However, I note that existing articles for towns of a similar size (eg. Wagga Wagga, New South Wales) DO mention local newspapers, so opposing arguments would need to explain why this case differs. Manning (talk) 06:44, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm fairly certain you are affiliated with Our Prattville, but am willing to let that go. I reinserted the link to the website under the media section, but have no particularly strong feelings about it one way or the other. I honestly don't know if this publication is notable or not. I made a suggestion of filing an OTRS ticket, as a way to establish the credentials behind Our Prattville. Leave it in or take it out, but please don't insert it as an external link on every subject your news service has written about. AniMate   draw  06:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow, not to get off the subject at hand but Wagga Wagga, New South Wales is simply gorgeous, I am envious. Thanks for the link.
 * (ec)I would also like to note that the Prattville Progress seems like a legitimate news service. It has an address, for whatever that is worth. I do think it should be included. Our Prattville on the other hand is on much shakier ground. AniMate   draw  07:10, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Here are the Alexa rankings for both outlets: Our Prattville 550,698 World Traffic Rank & 93,292 in the USA; The Prattville Progress 1,353,317 World Traffic Rank 284,142 in the USA. Our Prattville has its offices in Prattville, AL. The TV Guide mentions Our Prattville Here http://tvguide.ca/Soaps/Suds/Articles/090911_suds_report_NB.htm

Our Prattville is recognized far more than the Prattville Progress in media circles worldwide. They have interviewed Major celebrities and mentions of their articles are on major sites web wide.

Here they are in the green room as major press interviewing the cast of the CBS show The Young and The Restless http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rftomOjPcSE

Here is yet another mention of a major press article from Our Prattville http://daytimeconfidential.com/news/terri-colombino where Our Prattville is mentioned on a major media site.

Another example http://www.welovesoaps.net/2009/08/video-y-stars-at-silver-star-casino.html

Journalist Melissa Parker is well known in Hollywood, California in media circles.

Our Prattville's Melissa Parker has interviewed major stars of all formats as well as TV star on All Major US Networks ABC, NBC and CBS. Here is a link to some of her interviews http://www.ourprattville.com/tag/interviews Click on NEXT at the bottom of the site to see the next 10 and so on...

Recent OP Story covering the Prattville City Council with upclose media access shots and quotes from the councilmen and Mayor. http://www.ourprattville.com/article/prattville-city-council-passes-0910-budget http://www.ourprattville.com/article/prattville-city-council-passes-0910-budget

One of the true tests of a legit news outlet is if they have close access to these types of government people and Our Prattville does.

Our Prattville also covers the LPGA, trust me getting media credentials for World wide women's pro golf LPGA is a task and they don't hand them out like candy. http://www.ourprattville.com/article/navistar-lpga-classic-returns-to-prattville
 * I'm redacting the address because according to the street view from google maps that is a residence, not an office. Furthermore, both welovesoaps.com and daytimeconfidential.com are fan run websites. Both feature interviews with major soap stars and TV Guide Canada often cites them as well. That doesn't make them bona fide news organizations. You're going to have to do better than that, I'm afraid. Is your website affiliated with another major news organization. The Prattville Progress appears to be affiliated with The Montgomery Advertiser and appears to have an actual office, which shows legitimacy. Our Prattville doesn't seem to be affiliated with a major news organization, appears to be run from a residence, and the bulk of the articles are written by either Melissa or Marc Parker. AniMate   draw  08:34, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I have conducted my own research and independently came to the same conclusions as AniMate regarding both of these publications. For the moment a link to the Progress seems valid but not to the magazine. Manning (talk) 08:37, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Erasure of comment - An anonymous user posted a long and in many cases off-topic comment. As it was too difficult to edit for relevance, I deleted the entire comment and have invited the IP user to resubmit. This is not an attempt to suppress their viewpoint, merely an attempt to stay in accordance the talk page guidelines. Manning (talk) 12:19, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Prattville Mayor jim Byard Jr. wishes to have all of his media outlets listed in the media section of the Prattville Wiki. This is of utmost importance to him. Please contact Mayor Byard before any rash decision is made. The link to Our Prattville in the media section is the link that he wants. The only media outlet that is here in Prattville is Our Prattville. The Prattville Progress is only a part of the Montgomery Advertiser and the brick and mortar building that they have in Prattville is only here to sell ads to the citizens of Prattville. The Prattville Progress only publishes twice a week and Our Prattville updates as many as five articles a day. I did not send football scores in my last posting - I was sending a copy of an email that was sent from from Mayor Jim Byard Jr. to the Prattville High School Coach telling him that Our Prattville was the legitimate media for the city so that Our Prattville could cover the games for their magazine. I also have a copy of many other emails sent by the Mayor to the Our Prattville staff in reply to many requests for quotes by him for their articles.

Our Prattville is not asking that the other links (from legitimate interviews) be replaced, only that their link be permanently placed on the media section of the Prattville Wiki. Our Prattville does indeed have a brick and mortar building that they work out of. That google map you were looking at is old. Our Prattville is located right in the heart of the business district of the city. There are no home - it is zoned for business. I don't see that the number of writers is germane, but Melissa and Marc and contributing writers have worked tirelessly to bring fair and balanced news articles to the City of Prattville. Please also contact Teresa M. Lee as she is the City of Prattville's webmaster and she will tell you that Our Prattville is the media outlet in the city. Also, the City Council members can be contacted.

 * That's all well and good, but I'm afraid it's not how Wikipedia works. We don't publish material based on what anybody wants. We publish based on our internal standards of relevance, notability, verifiability and neutrality. We would never contact your mayor, and if he/she contacted us we would actually ignore their wishes. Having said all of that, this does not mean that your publication doesn't deserve inclusion, only that the criteria you are giving me so far is irrelevant for our standards. What I need is independedent and impartial sources verifying that your publication is respected. Personal correspondence does NOT qualify (too easily forged). IF you had a web link from an official City of Prattville web site indicating such that would be useful for example. Manning (talk) 13:21, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

 * (ec)If the IP address had not tried to spam this link into other articles, and just kept it here, maybe it could have stayed under the radar and could have been allowed here. Self-promotion is not allowed in wikipedia. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 13:22, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

My 2 cents. I'm not entirely sure there needs to be en external link to the newspaper in the article, but there should be a mention of it in text form under media. That is how Wagga Wagga has it. It's probably notable enough to receive its own article (and have an external link there), if need be. MahangaTalk 13:34, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Given its spam and self-promotion so far, I'm not sure its own article is the right direction to be taking at this time. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 13:52, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Here is a link to Mayor Byard's Twitter - http://twitter.com/mayorbyard and here I will copy and paste a couple of many mentions he makes of Our Prattville's news articles: Event honors artist Charlie "Tin Man" Lucas RT @OurPrattville: Lucas featured at Prattville ARTrek event http://cli.gs/vRBM0,The fun begins in just 3 weeks! RT @OurPrattville: @NavistarLPGA Navistar LPGA Classic returns to Prattville http://cli.gs/X87td

As for independent sources to verify credibility, there is Bill Lang, PR Director, Navistar LPGA Classic - bill.lang@pchresorts.com;Branch Kloess, Director of Riverfront Facilities, Montgomery, AL - bkloess@montgomeryal.gov; John Ford Coley (musical artist) - emailjohnfordcoley@gmail.com; David W. Biediger, Senior Communications Director, Academy Sports + Outdoors - David.biediger@academy.com; Steve Hughes, Publicist in California - steve@bridgeandtunnelcomm.com. If more is necessary, I can add them. Our Prattville has also recently interviewed two gubernatorial candidates - Judge Roy Moore and Ron Sparks. Both men can be contacted also to verify media legitimacy. Do you wish for me to copy and paste emails from some of these people here? I do not mind doing that at all.

Here is a link to the latest Prattville City Council Meeting (September 15) video - you can see in about 28 minutes into it the Our Prattville photographer up on the dais behind the Council taking photos. This person has to be media credentialed and given permission to have access - http://www.prattvilleal.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=585&catid=98&Itemid=8

In numerous articles, someone with the Our Prattville staff is talking to the Mayor, City Council members, department heads, etc., and there are also videos there. These people do not grant access to people who are not in the bona fide media. They are up-close photos, direct quotes from them to Our Prattville, etc. All of these things legitimate them as media. You can also see hundreds of comments on the site made by Prattville citizens.

Our Prattville is simply asking for a link under media or a mention of it in text under media. I appreciate your time and attention in this matter.
 * You should sign your posts by using 4 tildes (upper left corner of keyboard). Do you intend to continue trying to spam this link into other articles? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:00, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Our Prattville only had links that were led to legitimate articles. There is no money made by Our Prattville. The links did nothing to promote Our Prattville - they promoted the person who had been interviewed. Most of those links were put up by publicists or the celebrities themselves wanting to link out to their own interviews in the Our Prattville News Magazine. Our Prattville is requesting a link under media or a mention of it in text under media on the Prattville wiki.

Our Prattville also has a link out on the Autauga Humane Society site (home page) as a media partner. That would be www.autaugahumanesociety.com. They, too, can vouch for media legitimacy. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 14:21, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Thank you for signing. The Tim Conway link said "Exclusive interview!" or some such. No indication why that particular interview was notable. Obvious self-promotion. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 14:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Sure, no problem, sorry I have not been signing before. An Our Prattville Exclusive Interview. That was an exclusive interview that Tim Conway gave Our Prattville. Those were his words. Mr. Conway (a comedy legend, in the United States and around the world) does not normally give interviews. His own website has been down for quite a while, and other than just general info, nothing much is found on the internet about him of a particular personal nature. The interview was notable because there was information contained in that interview that was not found anywhere else. Many of Our Prattville interviews are noted that way for the same reason. They were giving Our Prattville an "exclusive" meaning the interview contained certain information that was rare or could not be found anywhere else. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 14:57, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

To further clarify the above, an "exclusive" further means that the actor, author or whatever is talking only to you and will not be giving the same interview to someone else ten minutes after that or the next day, etc. You know, Tim Conway is an actor of huge merit. By the way, if this has not been mentioned before, Our Prattville's articles/interviews go directly to Google News. If you go to Google News and type in Prattville you will see many Our Prattville articles. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 15:02, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Here is an Our Prattville link off of a Facebook page of Ron Sparks - Ron Sparks is one of the gubernatorial candidates who will be running for Alabama governor next year. He put a link to his interview with Our Prattville on his Facebook page. This also verifies Our Prattville as a legitimate media outlet and news source - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ron-Sparks/62999974874?v=feed&story_fbid=122454683433 98.89.12.105 (talk) 15:09, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Someone needs to 'splain things to this user. Wikipedia's purpose is not to enable individual organizations to promote themselves. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 15:24, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Manning Bartlett asked for direct links off of websites to prove the legitimacy of Our Prattville. That is why I cited Ron Sparks' Facebook link. That is a link that he made himself to an interview that he gave to Our Prattville. He is doing the self-promoting, not Our Prattville. Many publicists and celebrities make their own links to Our Prattville articles as well as other places to self-promote themselves, not to self-promote Our Prattville. Our Prattville makes no money - there are no products on the site. There is nothing for sale. Our Prattville does not spam, nor will it spam in the future. They make no money off of their articles or interviews. They are a legitimate news media outlet in Prattville.

The only thing that Our Prattville requests is to be listed under media in the Prattville wiki, either by link or by mention. Thank you. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 15:34, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Outside of accusations of users' behaviour, the link in question fails WP:ELNO as it is not about the subject of the article, and the information is transcient. It doesn't help the reader develop an encyclopedic understanding of the town, it only informs of current news developments and Wikipedia is not the news.  Them  From  Space  15:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand, please. What link are you referring to? Our Prattville is not asking for an external link on the wiki, only the mention or link under the media section as all legitimate media for the city should be listed. Thank you for your time. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 15:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Clarifying
OK this discussion has gotten out of hand. I'll try and rein it back in.
 * There is an established precedent for identifying local print media sources in regional towns.
 * There is no precedent for providing external links to these news sources. (If a news source is sufficiently notable to have its own article, then an external link can be used there).
 * The Prattville Progress has passed scrutiny as a reliable news source and merits identification.
 * Our Prattville magazine also seems to also deserve inclusion based on evidence of its status as a local news resource.
 * There is evidence of inappropriate external linking of Our Prattville articles to other Wikipedia entries. This does not have any direct relevance to THIS discussion, which is about identifying the appropriate content for an article about the town of Prattville. (However improper linking remains a conduct issue which WILL be monitored on an ongoing basis.)

Anything I missed? Can we close this discussion down? Manning (talk) 16:20, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and thank you for including Our Prattville in the media section of the Prattville Wiki. I really appreciate that. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 16:23, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me, one more thing. Neither the Prattville Progress or Our Prattville is linked our under media. That will be a hot link, right? Thank you again for your time. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 16:31, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

How can I find out if Our Prattville is sufficiently notable to have its own article? Thank you. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 16:46, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

 * The site would have to actually establish notability, which it does not appear to have done to date. The conduct to date would also factor into the equation, as there are real and warranted concerns regarding the apparent attempt to use Wikipedia for promotional purposes. As well, several of your statements are troubling as they appear to contradict each other.
 * You are clearly the same person who is behind the account User:Mtp1960, based on editing patterns and coinciding events. However, your statements have attempted to suggest you are different individuals.
 * You have said you "have no affiliation with either the Prattville Progress or Our Prattville", yet another of your posts said "We are a media organization in the city of Prattville, Alabama" and one of the posts under Mtp1960 said "I am a highly respected, high profiled journalist". Which is it?
 * Based on the posts you have made, it appears certain that you are not being entirely forthcoming about your interest in this matter. Your posts strongly suggest that you are probably one of the two Parkers associated with the site, given the mentions of being a reporter and the staunch defense of the site's journalism. Even if we were to consider a stand-alone article, what assurances would we have that it would not repeatedly be used as a promotional tool for the site? --Ckatz chat spy  18:15, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I do not understand why the links cannot be as they were before for the two press organizations in town, Prattville Progress and Our Prattville, linking to the sites (not a Wiki article on either one, as Admin Animate had it). From our experience, this is standard operating procedure for numerous wiki article media sections for cities. Citing examples: Auburn, Alabama, which is a similar size city - in this particular example, the three newspapers are all links back to their organizations' websites. Same goes for Birmingham, Alabama - these are all neighboring cities of ours (in close proximity to Prattville, within 50 miles). Please review these entires and inform us as to why we cannot be treated in a similar manner as we were for almost a year prior to this situation. There are hundreds of these examples.

As far as promotions go, these links are to exclusive interviews. The nomenclature has nothing to do with promotion for Our Prattville. The article/interview names are not a self-promtional tool - they are done for Google placement purposes only and and SEO purposes. It has nothing to do with self-promotion. IWe do not have to self-promote in that way and have actually not thought of doing that. Our name is well known in the industry. These articles and interviews do not make a dime for Our Prattville. The organization makes no money.

The names we give our articles/interviews are done for our own editorial purposes. Our name is well known in the industry, so that when people see it they will read the interview because of our good interviews and good name. It has nothing to do with self-promotion. Please read some of them to find out that they are indeed germane. As a matter of fact, we realize that the wikipedia links have no effect on google rankings because they use the no-follow tag. Some publicists and celebrities have put the links up themselves to promote their own selves and interviews unbeknownst to Our Prattville. In an Our Prattville wiki we would never use links for self-promotion and would just cite examples of our work inside the wiki. We would just like to know why Our Prattville doesn't get to link out and other newspapers in local cities get to link out. Please clarify. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 21:57, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Please tell me why CKatz deleted our very short, succinct wiki. We were following the guidelines set out by Wiki as stated that anyone can create an article. Admin Mahanga said that Our Prattville was probably notable enough to have its own page and so we created on. Under notable criteria, Our Prattville met 4 items of the 5. We feel like we are being singled out here for some reason and do not understand why. I have said that we would not use this Wiki for self-prmotion links and the Admins at wiki have my word on that. We did not do anything in that wiki that millions of others have not done. I would like to have a mediator for this issue, please, and get the chance to talk to other Admins. Thank you. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 23:54, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

 * First off, with respect to the terminology, it was an article, not a wiki. This entire encyclopedia site is a wiki, whereas we consider a single page as an article. Secondly, it is most important to understand that it was not your article, it was an article about your website. All articles are required to meet our standards for notability, a subsection of which specifically deals with web sites. (You can find it at Notability (web).) Your publication is already mentioned in the Prattville article, but an independent assessment (i.e. not that of the site's principals) is required in order to decide if a stand-alone article is warranted. --Ckatz chat spy  00:03, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It is also interesting to note that someone, obviously directly associated with the site, has been posting requests to the al.com forums requesting assistance in changing the status of the site on Wikipedia. Several of the comments are worth noting:"'To be very blunt a group consisting of Wiki admins from Canada, Mexico and Australia are trying to determine for Alabama which Media is legit and which they feel is not.'""'In my mind this is nothing short of a fascist move on Wikimedia's part.'"This does not look good, especially when combined with the other events that have occured over the past while. --Ckatz chat spy  00:14, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, sorry, it is an "article." Yes, it is an article about our news magazine.  I see the Criteria - Our Prattville meets #1 and #3 and it says that "is deemed notable based on meeting any one of the following criteria and Our Prattville meets 2 of them; #1 and #3, with a possibility of #2 in the near future.  Please tell me how you conduct an independent assessment (i.e., not that of the site's principals)?  Thank you.  98.89.12.105 (talk) 00:10, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I do not know what you are talking about regarding comments on a board. But, just let me say that we have a huge following here in the city and many know (such as the earlier poster who was not us) what has been going on here, unhappy that Our Prattville and the Prattville Progress, the two media outlets for the City of Prattville cannot even have an outside link placed for them in the Prattville wiki article under media. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 00:22, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems to me they could, if you would lay off the puffery attached them them, and stop spamming other articles. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 00:30, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * You may wish to follow the link to the eal.com forum, as the poster is clearly a part of the web site. They also use similar terminology to your posts, referring to the "bricks-and-mortar" office. As for the "earlier poster who was not us", are you referring to User:Mtp1960? If so, that user and your IP are clearly one and the same. Or, perhaps, are you referring to the user User:MiltonMac, who first appeared on Wikipedia mere moments ago and yet was able to recreate most of the article you posted at exactly the same title (Our Prattville - A News Magazine)? --Ckatz chat spy  00:33, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

No, that IP address was mistakenly put down as ours. I have no reason to lie about that. That was not us. I do not know or care about anything on a message board. Why was this last article deleted when clearly it was not us who created it? Our Prattville is frequently cited by other reliable sources, it definitely serves a historic purpose, it is frequently cited by other reliable sources, it is a significant publication in ethnic and other non-tricial niche markets. Our Prattville also has been suggested for nomination for a Pulitzer Prize in photography. 98.89.12.105 (talk) 00:41, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

There's no accounting for small-town self-promotion. But when I see this article, I'm reminded of a newspaper quote I read once, about a ballplayer named Pratt, who upon stealing second base was reported to have "slid in on his surname". Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 00:43, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Small town self-promotion? These people have no interest in self-promoting themselves. Now, that one I really don't understand. The citizens here are interested very much in having their two media outlets showcased because they enjoy reading both The Prattville Progress and Our Prattville - A News Magazine. Our Prattville has many many readers here in the local area and all around the world. That's what happens when your articles go straight to Google News. Oh no, this is no small town. This city of 40,000 people is part of a large Metropolitan area of 500,000 people and just a few miles north of us is another metro area of about 2,000,000 people. The Prattville Mayor sits on the Board of the League of Cities of the United States of America. Prattville itself was founded by Daniel Pratt, "Alabama's First Industrialist." 98.89.12.105 (talk) 00:55, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Why is the Prattville Progress not an external link to their website? I have read the history for this talk and I agree with the parties that wrote that the Media section should have links to either the website or an article if one exists. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Prattville,_Alabama&oldid=314858899 read the bottom of the link where for some reason this legitimate discussion was hastily removed. Nearly every Wikipedia Media article uses the format that person was describing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.73.141.205 (talk • contribs)

 * The site is linked by way of the "References" section; we don't do "in-line" links in body copy. --Ckatz chat spy

 * The examples given at the bottom of that link I posted are all done in that manner. I have been reading Media sections of Wikipedia articles for a long time and I have rarely if ever seen them done in the fashion you mentioned as references. They are mostly always done as links to the website or the article. Also I noticed that you have deleted the "Our Prattville" article directly after I reverted the changes where I stated why it should exist. My goodness, both it and the Prattville Progress are mainstream Alabama media outlets and are recognized as such. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.73.141.205 (talk • contribs)

 * Many (many many) web sites similar to the OP also do not have stand-alone articles, because they do not have sufficient notability on an international scale. Given that links to this particular site have been spammed and edit-warred over by the site's core members, it makes the plausibility of an article even more remote as it would be very difficult to ensure that such a relatively low-traffic page would not be "hijacked" for promotional purposes. (People associated with the site even went so far as to post messages in a local Mongomery forum requesting "help" in adding links to their site. They have also been cautioned by members of that forum for adding spam links in posts there.) --Ckatz chat spy  04:45, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

If you are referring to the al.com forum that was linked in this article I would not use that as an example here. The reason is that forum is full of anonymous users who could be anyone and not someone affiliated with Our Prattville. I also did not see any request from that text that would suggest that party was asking for links, that was never mentioned. That source is a rather specious example my friend. They asked for people to verify that they were a news outlet of note here, and they indeed are that.

You have still not answered as to why THE PRATTVILLE PROGRESS is not being linked in the same manner as the other news outlets of their stature are in the Media Sections of most of the other city articles. As I said before I have almost always seen them as in-line links not refs. I really do not care about OP and am mostly interested in the way the Progress is being handled.

Removed link to Our Prattville. No updates have been made to their website content in *6* years. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.73.142.30 (talk) 14:20, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

External links added
I went ahead and linked to the homepages for Our Prattville and The Prattville Progress. Other articles about cities in the same area do so, and at this point I feel we have spent far too much time debating a trivial point. That being said, if there are any more ham-fisted attempts to spam links to their articles or attempts to create an article on the magazine, I'll remove them. I hope we can focus on something else now. AniMate  draw  01:03, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I fully concur with AniMate on these points. No more discussion please. Manning (talk) 01:11, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've converted the external links to references, which still provide a link but are more in line with the Manual of Style (and which also avoid inline external links). --Ckatz chat spy  02:15, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, per WP:MOS. Manning (talk) 02:27, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Admin CKatz just took the links down after Manning and and Animate agreed to change them. Please do not change them back and forth and please let this matter rest. We are not doing anything further, we agreed on what was said and agreed to not do an article on wiki, so we're entitled to have our link. CKatz has accused us again of self-promotion - we are not the ones who changed the links, Manning and Animate were. CKatz is about to ban us if we change them back again. This is not right and we have been treated very badly in this matter for no reason. Mtp1960 (talk) 02:29, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * You have NOT been treated badly. The links still exist, they have simply been reformatted in line with our Manual of Style. Enough. Drop it. Manning (talk) 02:32, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Why hasn't that little sockfarm been blocked yet, or at least given a prattfall. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 02:34, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Bugs - I am obviously aware of the potential sockpuppetry (or meatpuppetry) at play here. If the discussion doesn't die away very soon, action will certainly be ensuing. We've reached a satisfactory content outcome that provides the external links and accords with our MOS, so the matter *should* be closed. Manning (talk) 02:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Oh, I know. I'm just waiting to see if they ever get it. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 02:45, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

No, this is not fair enough. This was already agreed upon. Either we can have a link like all of the other cities have or we can have an article page. This was agreed upon, in I thought, a gentleman's agreement in which we took the words of two Admins here. I will come back and cite more and more examples of newspapers in cities that have external links (even the smallest of neighborhood newspapers), etc. We are being singled out here and being discriminated against for no reason. We have not even been given a reason why Our Prattville cannot have an article after it meets the wiki requirements. Mtp1960 (talk) 12:38 pm, Today (UTC+10)

 * You HAVE a link in the references section. If there are external inline links in other city articles then we will go and remove those links, not the other way around. This is in accordance with our manual of style. Manning (talk) 02:42, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A link to their website is more than sufficient. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 02:44, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * Mtp1960 has been blocked (7 days) for disruptive behavior. Manning (talk) 02:49, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've mirrored that block on IP 98.89.12.105 as the registered account and the IP are clearly one and the same. --Ckatz chat spy  02:57, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Good call on both blocks and the format change. AniMate   draw  02:59, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

My patience on this meat/sock puppetry has run out so I deleted another tenditious edit. Here is the diff. If another admin feels I have exceeded my authority they are free to revert. Manning (talk) 08:28, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I have now blocked User:76.73.141.205 for the same reasons as the above. Manning (talk) 05:44, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Ms Parker was recently featured in the Montgomery Advertiser for being a well known celebrity interviewer who is also the ownwer of her own national magazine Smashing Interviews at smashinginterviews,con http://www.topix.com/forum/city/montgomery-al/TCQSME8HI4PNLPRQ6 She interviews at least two major celebrities a week on this site and a quick search on Google News will bring back many of these current interviews. She has been mentioned by TV Guide, FOX, CBS etc... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.227.255.251 (talk) 01:06, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

 * There's no point in posting a red-link. If she's truly notable, she might qualify for her own article, and then maybe could be posted here. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:26, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Bay Minette, Alabama