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Bird ringing

Bird ringing (UK) or bird banding (US) is the attachment of a small, individually numbered metal or plastic tag to the leg or wing of a wild bird to enable individual identification. This helps in keeping track of the movements of the bird and its life history. It is common to take measurements and examine conditions of feather molt, subcutaneous fat, age indications and sex during capture for ringing. The subsequent recapture or recovery of the bird can provide information on migration, longevity, mortality, population, territoriality, feeding behavior, and other aspects that are studied by ornithologists. Other methods of marking birds may also be used to allow for field based identification that does not require capture.

History
The earliest recorded attempts to mark birds were made by Roman soldiers. For instance during the Punic Wars in 218 BC a crow was released by a besieged garrison (which suggests that this was an established practice). Quintus Fabius Pictor used a thread on the bird's leg to send a message back. Or in another case in history a knight interested in chariot races during the time of Pliny (AD 1) took crows to Volterra, 135 mi away and released the crows with information on the race winners.

Falconers in the Middle Ages fit plates on their falcons with seals of their owners. In England from around 1560 or so, swans were marked with a swan mark, a nick on the bill.

Storks injured by arrows (termed as pfeilstorch in German) traceable to African tribes were found in Germany in 1822 and constituted some of the earliest evidence of long-distance migration in European birds.

In North America John James Audubon and Ernest Thompson Seton were pioneers although their method of marking birds was different from modern ringing. To determine if the same birds returned to his farm, Audubon tied silver threads onto the legs of young eastern phoebes in 1805 (although the veracity of the dates has been questioned ), while Seton marked snow buntings in Manitoba with ink in 1882. Ringing of birds for more extensive scientific purposes was started in 1899 by Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen, a Danish schoolteacher, using aluminium rings on European starlings (Mortensen had tried using zinc rings as early as 1890 but found these were too heavy). The first banding scheme was established in Germany by Johannes Thienemann in 1903 at the Rossitten Bird Observatory on the Baltic Coast of East Prussia. This was followed by Hungary in 1908, Great Britain in 1909 (by Arthur Landsborough Thomson in Aberdeen and Harry Witherby in England), Yugoslavia in 1910 and the Scandinavian countries between 1911 and 1914. Paul Bartsch of the Smithsonian Institution is credited with the first modern banding in the U.S.: he banded 23 black-crowned night herons in 1902. Leon J. Cole of the University of Wisconsin founded the American Bird Banding Association in 1909; this organization oversaw banding until the establishment of federal programs in the U.S. (1920) and Canada (1923) pursuant to the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1918.

Terminology and techniques

Bird ringing is the term used in the UK and in some other parts of Europe and the world. Bird banding is the term used in the US. Organised ringing efforts are called ringing or banding schemes, and the organisations that run them are ringing or banding authorities. (Birds are ringed rather than rung) Those who ring or band birds are known as ringers or banders, and they are typically active at ringing or banding stations.

Birds may be captured by being taken as young birds at the nest, or as adults, captured in fine mist nets, baited traps, Heligoland traps, drag nets, cannon nets, or by other methods. Raptors may be caught by many methods, including bal-chatri traps.

When a bird is caught, a ring of suitable size (usually made of aluminium or other lightweight material) is attached to the bird's leg, has a unique number, and a contact address. The bird is often weighed and measured, examined for data relevant to the ringer's project, and then released. The rings are very light, and are designed to have no adverse effect on the birds – indeed, the whole basis of using ringing to gain data about the birds is that ringed birds should behave in all respects in the same way as the unringed population. The birds so tagged can then be identified when they are re-trapped, or found dead, later.

When a ringed bird is found, and the ring number read and reported back to the ringer or ringing authority, this is termed a ringing recovery or control. The finder can contact the address on the ring, give the unique number, and be told the known history of the bird's movements. Some national ringing/banding authorities also accept reports by phone or on official web sites.

The organising body, by collating many such reports, can then determine patterns of bird movements for large populations. Non-ringing/banding scientists can also obtain data for use in bird-related research.

At times in North America, the bands have just a unique number (without an address) that is recorded along with other identifying information on the bird. If the bird is recaptured the number on the band is recorded (along with other identifying characteristics) as a retrap. All band numbers and information on the individual birds are then entered into a database and the information often shared throughout North American banding operations. This way information on retrapped birds is more readily available and easy to access.

Mist net

Mist nets are fine mesh nets with shelves that create pockets to temporarily restrain birds. Mist nets come in a variety of mesh sizes, heights, lengths, weights, materials, and colors. The mesh size of the net is calculated differently in different countries; in the US and Canada the given mesh size is equivalent to two sides of a mesh square, while in the UK it is equivalent to one side. Ringers must choose a mesh size that appropriately targets the desired species, with smaller birds requiring a smaller mesh size. Nets can range from 1.5 to 18 meters in length, and from 1 to 3 meters in height depending on the number of panels. The weight of the thread and the ply (number of strands) can also vary. Common construction materials include nylon, polyester, and monofilament. Mist nets are typically black, but may also be shades of green or brown. While mist nets are capable of capturing a variety of species, they require supervised training in order to use properly and when they are deployed must be checked frequently.

Ringing pliers
Ringing pliers are an essential tool that helps place the band around a bird's leg. These pliers come in different sizes as determined by how wide a bird's leg is. Pliers are sized between 0A-1A, 2–3, and 3B, 3A, and 4.

Leg gauge
The band size is determined by using the leg gauge. A leg gauge is placed around the bird's leg which determines the circumference of the leg. After identifying the size of a band it is then placed on around the leg with the help from the banding pliers. Most waterfowl are leg banded, while occasionally some waterfowl are banded via neck collar. In Australia, band size range from 1 to 15, plus special sizes for birds whose leg shapes require special bands, such as parrots and pelicans.

Wing ruler
When looking through the Pyle textbook some birds can be identified by the wing cord. The next essential piece of equipment is the wing ruler, which is used to determine the length of the wing for data collection, research purposes, or determining species.

Digital scale
Once the processing of the bird's morphology has been completed the last piece of equipment used is a digital scale. This helps with determining the weight of the bird. This is the last step before releasing the bird.

Limitations
Certain bird species are for various reasons unsuitable for ringing. In some countries, such as Australia, there exist laws prohibiting banding of such species.

Many very large birds, such as ratites, flamingos and the largest swans, are extremely difficult to band because the cost of making a band which is capable of securely fitting their strong, heavy legs is prohibitive. At the other extreme, the smaller species of river and tree kingfishers, todies and certain lories, have such narrow tarsi that a band placed around the bird's foot may impose danger to blood circulation. For some gamebirds, such as the Indian peafowl, spurs on the legs interfere with the bands, which thus can cause injury to the birds.

Many species of cockatoo – which even if able to be banded require special bands to fit the unique shape of their legs – will crush bands with their powerful bills and claws. The ability to overcome this problem varies between species, and with some such as the Gang-gang cockatoo, it is known to be too dangerous to attempt banding. New World vultures also cannot be banded on their legs because they urinate onto their legs, causing corrosion of the bands into a powdery oxide that sticks to the vulture's leg and injures the bird. Dippers are also dangerously handicapped by ringing because the rings induce drag that makes it extremely difficult for them to catch prey in fast-flowing water.

Among species which can be safely ringed, there are major limitations among nomadic species of the deserts of the Eastern Hemisphere and cardueline finches of the taiga. The highly unpredictable movements inherent in these species' lifestyles means that recovery rates are extremely low, especially given generally low population densities within their habitats.

Wing tags

In some surveys, involving larger birds such as eagles, brightly coloured plastic tags are attached to birds' wing feathers. Each has a letter or letters, and the combination of colour and letters uniquely identifies the bird. These can then be read in the field, through binoculars, meaning that there is no need to re-trap the birds. Because the tags are attached to feathers, they drop off when the bird moults.

Another method is imping in a brightly colored false feather instead of a natural feather.

A patagial tag is a permanent tag held onto the wing by a rivet punched through the patagium.

Radio transmitters and satellite-tracking
Where detailed information is needed on individual movements, tiny radio transmitters can be fitted on to birds. For small species the transmitter is carried as a 'backpack' fitted over the wing bases, and for larger species it may be attached to a tail feather or looped to the legs. Both types usually have a tiny (10 cm) flexible aerial to improve signal reception. Two field receivers (reading distance and direction) are needed to establish the bird's position using triangulation from the ground. The technique is useful for tracing individuals during landscape-level movements particularly in dense vegetation (such as tropical forests) and for shy or difficult-to-spot species, because birds can be located from a distance without visual confirmation.

The use of satellite transmitters for bird movements is currently restricted by transmitter size – to species larger than about 400g. They may be attached to migratory birds (geese, swans, cranes, penguins etc.) or other species such as penguins that undertake long-distance movements. Individuals may be tracked by satellites for immense distances, for the lifetime of the transmitter battery. As with wing tags, the transmitters may be designed to drop off when the bird moults; or they may be recovered by recapturing the bird.

Motus wildlife tracking network is a program of Birds Canada, it was launched in 2014 in the US and Canada, by 2022 more than 1,500 receiver stations have been installed in 34 countries, most receivers are concentrated in the United States and Canada.

Field-readable rings
A field-readable is a ring or rings, usually made from plastic and brightly coloured, which may also have conspicuous markings in the form of letters and/or numbers. They are used by biologists working in the field to identify individual birds without recapture and with a minimum of disturbance to their behaviour. Rings large enough to carry numbers are usually restricted to larger birds, although if necessary small extensions to the rings (leg flags) bearing the identification code allow their use on slightly smaller species. For small species (e.g. most passerines), individuals can be identified by using a combination of small rings of different colours, which are read in a specific order. Most colour-marks of this type are considered temporary (the rings degrade, fade and may be lost or removed by the birds) and individuals are usually also fitted with a permanent metal ring.

Leg-flags
Similar to coloured rings or bands are leg-flags, usually made of Darvic and used in addition to numbered metal bands. Although leg-flags may sometimes have individual codes on them, their more usual use is to code for the sites where the birds were banded in order to elucidate their migration routes and staging areas. The use of colour-coded leg-flags is part of an international program, originated in Australia in 1990, by the countries of the East Asian - Australasian Flyway to identify important areas and routes used by migratory waders.

Other markers
Head and neck markers are very visible, and may be used in species where the legs are not normally visible (such as ducks and geese). Nasal discs and nasal saddles can be attached to the culmen with a pin looped through the nostrils in birds with perforate nostrils. They should not be used if they obstruct breathing. They should not be used on birds that live in icy climates, as accumulation of ice on a nasal saddle can plug the nostrils. Neck collars made of expandable, non-heat-conducting plastic are useful for larger birds such as geese.

Education
Many institutions that ring birds offer demonstrations for the public, where experts ring live birds while highlighting the steps of the process and answering questions from the public. Educating visitors about the technique helps to spread accurate information about it to the public. While live bird ringing is not the only method of educating the public on bird conservation, it can be an especially engaging and unique method for visitors.

Regulation
Ringing activities are often regulated by national agencies but because ringed birds may be found across countries, there are consortiums that ensure that recoveries and reports are collated. In the UK, bird ringing is organized by the British Trust for Ornithology. In North America the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory collaborates with Canadian programs and since 1996, partners with the North American Banding Council (NABC). Waterfowl hunters may report the band number of the bird they killed or observed, and find out the details of that specific bird such as breed, age, and banding location. Bird bands are often seen as a prize because they are still relatively rare. The European Union for Bird Ringing (EURING) consolidates ringing data from the various national programs in Europe. In Australia, the Australian Bird and Bat Banding Scheme manages all bird and bat ringing information. while SAFRING manages bird ringing activities in South Africa. Bird ringing in India is managed by the Bombay Natural History Society. BirdRing rings in the Neotropics and Africa. The National Center for Bird Conservation (CEMAVE) coordinates a national scheme for bird ringing in Brazil.

title: Bird ringing


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Happy Days (play)

Happy Days is a play in two acts, written by Samuel Beckett first performed in 1961. Viewed positively by critics, it was named in The Independent as one of the 40 best plays of all time.

Winnie, buried to her waist, follows her daily routine and prattles to her husband, Willie, who is largely hidden and taciturn. Her frequent refrain is "Oh this is a happy day." Later, in Act II, she is buried up to her neck, but continues to talk and remember happier days.

Act I
Winnie is embedded waist-deep in a low mound under blazing light, with a large black bag beside her. She is awakened by a piercing bell and begins her daily routine with a prayer. Talking incessantly to herself, she brushes her teeth, drinks the last of a bottle of tonic, and puts on her hat. She struggles to read the writing on the toothbrush. She awakens her husband Willie, who is hidden by the mound, and prattles to him. He occasionally responds with headlines from his newspaper, one of which reminds her of her first kiss. They both look at an apparently saucy postcard. Winnie explains that Willie's listening enables her to go on talking, and is delighted when he responds even briefly to one of her many questions. After Willie briefly doffs his cap, Winnie instructs him to return to his hole, which he laboriously does. After he is within she repeatedly asks if he can hear her at different volumes, to which he replies, with increasing exasperation, "yes!" Winnie attempts to discover if Willie can see her if she leans backward, but he does not respond. Winnie spots an 'Emmet'(an archaic term for 'ant') carrying an egg. Willie comments "formication" (A sensation of ants creeping on the skin). Both of them laugh hysterically at the homophone. Winnie declares that she never thought she would hear Willie laugh again. She then asks if he finds her loveable. After some deliberation with herself, she pulls a revolver out of her bag, recalls how Willie asked her to take it away from him, and banishes it to the ground beside her. She begins to feel sad about her life, but shakes it off. She puts up a parasol to protect herself from the sun, and holds it over her head for a long time. When this becomes tiring, she discovers she cannot move to put it down. She begs Willie for assistance, but he is unresponsive. The parasol then abruptly catches fire, and she throws it away. Willie still unresponsive, she cajoles him to prove he is conscious, which he eventually does, by raising a finger. Winnie speaks of the difficulty of dealing with the relentless sun and remembers when she was not trapped in the earthen mound. She thinks about the future, and the existential threat of being buried deeper in the mound. She finds a music box in her bag, to the music of which Willie briefly sings (though he ignores Winnie's request for an encore). Winnie files her nails and remembers the last people who passed, a Mr. and Mrs. Shower (or perhaps Cooker), who asked what she was doing stuck in the ground. She prepares her bag for the night. Willie emerge and Winnie wishes that he would come round and live where she could see him better. He reads his newspaper. Winnie asks Willie about the nature of hogs, to which he replies "castrated male swine, raised for slaughter." Darkness overcomes the pair.

Act II
Winnie is now embedded up to her neck, still wearing her hat, still with the bag and revolver beside her. She is awakened by the bell, which rings again each time she falls back asleep. She senses that Willie is looking at her but can no longer see him, and he does not respond to her calls. She continues to talk, examining her nose and recalling a time when a little girl called Mildred undressed her doll in the nursery at night, but is interrupted by anxiety about Willie and further memories of Mr. and Mrs. Shower. Willie crawls out from behind the mound, smartly dressed, which reminds her of the day he asked her to marry him. She encourages him as he tries to crawl up the mound towards her, and is delighted when he grunts "Win". She sings the music-box tune, a love song.

Winnie
"Winnie is one of those parts, I believe, that actresses will want to play in the way that actors aim at Hamlet—a 'summit' part. – Dame Peggy Ashcroft"

Winnie is a "woman of about fifty", who passes her time between "the bell for waking and the bell for sleep" by following a very exact daily routine. In Act 1, after she methodically removes the items from her bag—a comb, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of patent medicine, lipstick, a nail file, a revolver and a music box. The routine is raised to the level of ceremony. Beckett's instructions to Billie Whitelaw in 1979 emphasize this:

"The bag is all she has—look at it with affection … From the first you should know how she feels about it … When the bag is at the right height you peer in, see what things are there and then get them out. Peer, take, place. Peer, take, place. You peer more when you pick things up than when you put them down. Everything has its place."

At the end of the day she carefully collects her possessions—bar the gun—and places them back in the bag. Winnie never plumbs (never dares plumb) the bottom ("The depths in particular, who knows what treasures"), so it is also her hope chest.

The items in her bag also have secondary functions, they serve as aides-mémoire. But more, like Krapp's tapes or Lucky's bones they provide her with what Mary Doll describes as "touchstones of existential meaning". Winnie's perception of these objects connects her to the memories of specific days and important incidents within them.

Her possessions are all wearing out or running out. At the start of Act I she takes the last swig of her medicine before throwing away the bottle, her toothbrush has hardly any hairs left and the lipstick, to use Beckett's expression, is "visibly zu ende", the parasol is faded with a "mangy fringe" and even her pearl necklace is "more thread than pearls".

Winnie is the eternal optimist—Robert Brustein called her a "hopeful futilitarian" —but the available sources of her optimism are being used up and she has to work harder and harder to keep up her positive front which is already wafer-thin when we first meet her. Her effortful optimism is expressed in her carefully precise, self-correcting refrain, "Oh this is a happy day, this will have been another happy day. After all. So far."

Beckett described her as being "like a bird" and she makes every effort to rise above her predicament but she keeps getting pulled down. She never questions or explains why she finds herself in the predicament she is in, but her dream is that she will "simply float up into the blue … And that perhaps some day the earth will yield and let me go, the pull is so great, yes, crack all round me and let me out."

Willie
Willie is a man of "about sixty". In marked contrast to Winnie's loquacity, the henpecked Willie is laconic to a fault. In the whole of the second act Willie utters only one, barely audible monosyllabic word. Much of his dialogue consists of his reading notices from his paper; his responses to Winnie—when he can be bothered to respond at all—are terse and barely communicative. He functions mainly as something for her to talk at—being used as a stooge by the old music hall pro that Winnie is—"just to know that in theory you can hear me though in fact you don't is all I need."

He keeps himself out of Winnie's gaze, only occasionally surfacing from his tunnel. His only interest is to bury himself, figuratively, in an old newspaper or erotic picture postcards, or literally, underground in his cave asleep and seemingly unaffected by the bell that jars Winnie.

There is a childlike, if not exactly innocent, quality to him and there are many times in the play one might think Winnie was talking to a young boy rather than a grown man. Winnie also serves as his protector, the custodian of "Brownie" the revolver she keeps safe from him in case he uses it on himself.

Whereas Beckett aligns Winnie with a bird, albeit one with oil on its feathers, he likens Willie to a "turtle" although many of the metaphors in the play associate him with pigs:

"[I]n Act I Winnie speaks of envying 'the brute beast' only a moment before Willie's 'hairy forearm' appears above the mound; throughout the play Willie never rises to his feet, but crawls on all fours; and when Winnie notes that the bristles on her toothbrush are 'pure ... hog's ... setae' Willie gives this comment a sexual dimension by revealing that a hog is a 'Castrated male swine.' In context, this phrase seems to relate to Willie, since various hints are made that he has been metaphorically emasculated by his domineering wife."

Origin
Beckett began the play on 8 October 1960 and the English version was completed on 14 May 1961. Beckett finished the translation into French by November 1962 but amended the title. In a moment of inspiration, he borrowed the title Oh les beaux jours, from Verlaine's poem, "Colloque sentimental".

Cyril Cusack claimed that Happy Days was, by Beckett's own admission, "influenced" by Cusack's wife, Maureen Cusack's request that he "write a happy play" after Krapp's Last Tape.

Beckett confided to Brenda Bruce what was going through his mind as he sat down to write the play:

"He said: 'Well I thought that the most dreadful thing that could happen to anybody, would be not to be allowed to sleep so that just as you're dropping off there'd be a 'Dong' and you'd have to keep awake; you’re sinking into the ground alive and it's full of ants; and the sun is shining endlessly day and night and there is not a tree … there’s no shade, nothing, and that bell wakes you up all the time and all you've got is a little parcel of things to see you through life.' He was referring to the life of the modern woman. Then he said: 'And I thought who would cope with that and go down singing, only a woman.'"

Happy Days was first published by Grove Press in 1961 followed by Faber in 1963. By this stage in his writing career Beckett was becoming more aware of the importance of revising his work in actual performance and so wrote to Grove Press about Happy Days on 18 May 1961 to advise them that, "I should prefer the text not to appear in any form before production and not in book form until I have seen some rehearsals in London. I can't be definitive without actual work done in the theatre."

Setting
Winnie is embedded in a "low mound", "the mother earth symbol to end all other mother earth symbols". She lives in a deluge of never-ending light from which there is no escape: even the parasol she unfolds at one point ignites, leaving her without protection. We learn that she has not always been buried in this way but we never discover how she came to be trapped so.

A number of suggestions have been put forth to explain where the idea for the original imagery originated. James Knowlson has suggested images from Luis Buñuel's 1928 film, Un chien andalou or a photograph by Angus McBean of Frances Day.

Beckett required the set to have "a maximum of simplicity and symmetry" with a "very pompier trompe-l'œil backcloth to represent unbroken plain and sky receding to meet in far distance". "What should characterise [the] whole scene, sky and earth", he wrote, "is a pathetic unsuccessful realism, the kind of tawdriness you get in a 3rd rate musical or pantomime, that quality of pompier, laughably earnest bad imitation."

The scene is reminiscent of a seaside postcard with Winnie buried in the sand and Willie with his knotted handkerchief and his boater. The fake backdrop calls to mind also the kind used by photographers that feature a painted body on a sheet of wood with a hole cut out where the head belongs popular at holiday venues. Even the title of the play, "Happy Days", is the kind of expression typically used when reminiscing about these kinds of holidays. Of note is the fact that he worked on the play while in the English seaside resort of Folkestone during the two weeks he was obliged to be resident in the area before his marriage to Suzanne could officially take place.

The play is also reminiscent of the music hall. The boater Willie sports at a "rakish angle" places his character clearly in the music hall tradition as does his formal wear in the second half of the play. Historically boaters were fashionable headgear up till about the 1920s at which time sunbathing started to become fashionable; prior to this ladies would commonly be seen making use of parasols to protect their white skin from the sun's harmful rays.

Themes
This play, with Winnie embedded in the earth and Willie crawling on it, is evidently strange. "Strangeness," Beckett informs us, "was the necessary condition of the play— of Winnie’s plight in the play." During Berlin rehearsals he said, "In this play you have the combination of the strange and the practical, the mysterious and the factual. This is the crux of both the comedy and the tragedy of it."

The question of "What does it mean?" is voiced in the play by the passer-by Mr Shower (or Cooker). Beckett explained this in a letter to Alan Schneider:

 * Shower & Cooker are derived from German "schauen" & "gucken" (to look). They represent the onlooker (audience) wanting to know the meaning of things.

Winnie comments sourly, "Usual drivel". But Mrs Shower provides an oblique answer: "What’s the idea of you, she says, what are you meant to mean?".

The play resists answers. When Kay Boyle asked Beckett why Willie reaches up towards Winnie, he replied:

 * The question as to which Willie is 'after' – Winnie or the revolver – is like the question in All That Fall as to whether Mr Rooney threw the little girl out of the railway-carriage or not. And the answer is the same in both cases – we don’t know, at least I don’t. All that is necessary as far as I’m concerned – technically and otherwise – less too little, more too much – is the ambiguity of motive, established clearly I hope by Winnie, 'Is it me you’re after, Willie, or is it something else? Is it a kiss you’re after, Willie, or is it something else?’ and by the conspicuousness of revolver requested in the stage-directions at beginning of Act II. To test the doubt was dramatically a chance not to be missed, not be bungled either by resolving it."

Nevertheless, the central metaphor is clear: Winnie is sinking inexorably in the slow sands of time and disappointment.

 * In Happy Days the existential condition of the characters is visualized in the mound tightening around Winnie who is sinking deeper and deeper. The nearer she gets to the end, the slower does Winnie sink, and never does the end come to release her from the pain of being smothered in the mound. What Beckett wants to represent is the endless repetition of dying moments rather than death itself. His characters wish to finish life but the end never comes because the clock becomes slower and slower. There is still time, always.

The two-act structure emphasises the passing of time. Act II is bleaker than Act I, and Winnie knows it: "To have been what I always am – and so changed from what I was." By Act II she can no longer imagine any relief, and she can no longer pray, as she did at the play's start. Although she still intones the phrase 'happy day', it no longer triggers her smile."

The play, like life, has a strong sexual undercurrent. "In the Happy Days of 1979, Beckett very particularly played upon the physical attractiveness of [Billie] Whitelaw … Where most Winnies, such as Peggy Ashcroft and Irene Worth, look rather matronly, Beckett made Whitelaw’s Winnie into a siren, with black, low cut gown, haunting eyes, exaggerated lipstick … a woman, who while not any longer young, still manifests a powerful erotic dimension". Her memories often have a sexual edge: sitting on Charlie Hunter's knees; her first kiss; the two balls; an encounter in a toolshed; when handed the erotic postcard from Willie, she takes time to examine it before returning it in feigned offense and the story she tells of the small girl Mildred's (Beckett's original name for Winnie) sexual curiosity is genuinely disturbing. A mouse, in Freudian terms, is a phallic symbol and Beckett's protagonists often speak autobiographically in the third person. Also the doll wears a pearl necklet, as does she. It should not be taken from this that the terrified child (assuming the story is figurative) has become the frigid wife; she talks knowledgeably about sex and early drafts of the play even show how their sex life has dwindled over the years. It does appear that sexual relations between her and Willie – a common British euphemism for penis – have been lacking, at least from her perspective:

 * There was a time when I could have given you a hand … And then a time before that again when I did give you a hand … You were always in dire need of a hand, Willie.

Perhaps this is why she teases him with her recollection of other men, to bring him out both sexually and imaginatively. The play is full of sexual innuendo. "And it is sex which is responsible for the contuation of the life that plunges man inevitably into suffering. The sexual innuendos contrast, then, with images of sterility or 'discreation.'"

Language
Many of the play's jokes are plays on language. There is a running joke about the writing on Winnie's toothbrush. She struggles to read it, starting with "pure", and progressively seeing more adjectives but not the key noun. Finally learning that it is made of "hog’s setae", she presses Willie to define "hog". His definition ("Castrated male swine. Reared for slaughter") encapsulates his plight. They ignore the more unusual word: “setae" are stiff bristles, whose purpose on a worm is to grip the surface and help the worm move without going backwards.

Winnie struggles to recall quotations from the classics in contrast to Willie's quotes from the popular press:

 * In Beckett’s selection of quotation and oblique references, virtually every historical epoch is represented: pre-Christian Greek philosophies, the blind religiosity and Christian idealism of the Middle Ages, Renaissance Humanism, eighteenth-century Rationalism and nineteenth-century romanticism. The philosophers, literature and religions of Western man comprise the fragmented mythology against which Winnie fails and suffers and like a jeweller’s foil, mythology highlights the suffering.

Speaking is Winnie's raison d'être; words flow from her in an endless stream. She uses "clichés to insulate [herself] from the harshness of existence". In Beckett's texts, language conceals the world and provides comfort by insulating the individual. "Language generally in Beckett’s world is not a means of conveying meaning, but a balm for the sores of existence".

The final song is the waltz duet, 'I love you so' from The Merry Widow.

Performance history
The first production was at the Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City, on 17 September 1961, directed by Alan Schneider with Ruth White as Winnie (for which she won an Obie) and John C. Becher as Willie. The first London production was at the Royal Court Theatre on 1 November 1962 directed by George Devine and Tony Richardson with Brenda Bruce as Winnie and Peter Duguid as Willie. The Irish premiere at the Eblana Theatre in 1963 was well received.

When Happy Days was first performed in London there were disagreements about every aspect of the text and production. Even Kenneth Tynan, one of the saviours of Godot, felt that Happy Days was "a metaphor extended beyond its capacity", nevertheless, he admitted Beckett's strange, insinuating power and urged his readers to buy tickets for the play.

1962 Danish version starring Bodil Udsen, who later performed it on television in 1964.

In 1964, an audio recording in French with Madeleine Renaud as Winnie was released by Disques Adès (TS 30 LA 568) as part of their "	L'Avant-Scène" series. A German recording, with Grete Mosheim as Winnie and Rudolf Fernau as Willie, was released the same year by Deutsche Grammophon (LPMS 43 049).

In October 1968, a production with Sada Thompson as Winnie and Wyman Pendleton as Willie directed by Alan Schneider was performed at the Billy Rose Theatre in New York City, but only ran for three performances.

In 1972, Jessica Tandy played Winnie and Hume Cronyn played Willie in a production directed by Alan Schneider at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater in New York City.

Billie Whitelaw played Winnie and Jocelyn Herbert designed the sets in a revival at the Royal Court Theatre in June 1979.

In 1979, Andrei Serban directed a production produced by Joseph Papp at the Newman Theater in New York City, with Irene Worth as Winnie and George Voskovec as Willie. In 1980, a television movie version was broadcast, directed by David Heeley (based on the 1979 stage version), again with Worth as Winnie and Voskovec as Willie, with an audio recording of the production released the same year by Caedmon Records on both LP (TRS 366) and audio cassette.

On 31 March 1996, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a production directed by Peter Wood with Geraldine McEwan as Winnie, Clive Swift as Willie and Phil Daniels as the Narrator.

In March 1998, a German production at the Theater im Zimmer, Hamburg, with Gerda Gmelin as Winnie and Karl-Ulrich Meves as Willie was recorded and released on CD by Litraton (LIT 5 8725, ISBN 3-89469-725-3).

More recent revivals on stage have occurred in 2003 at the Arts Theatre in London's West End with Felicity Kendal as Winnie, directed by Peter Hall, in 2008 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City, directed by Deborah Warner and starring Fiona Shaw as Winnie and Tim Potter as Willie, in 2014 at the Young Vic, starring Juliet Stevenson, and in New York City (The Flea Theater) and Pasadena (Boston Court Theatre) in 2015 starring Tony Shalhoub and Brooke Adams (who on 16 May 2020 as part of the "Stars in the House" series did a production from their home which was streamed online).

In 2016, The Yale Repertory Theatre mounted a production with Dianne Wiest as "Winnie" and Jarlath Conroy as "Willie", directed by James Bundy. That production subsequently transferred to Downtown Brooklyn, New York's Theatre for a New Audience with Wiest and Conroy reprising their roles in April & May 2017.

In 2018, Maxine Peake played the role of Winnie at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, directed by Sarah Frankcom.

In 2019, the Yale Repertory Theatre production in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum featured Dianne Wiest as Winnie and Michael Rudko as Willie, directed by James Bundy.

In 2019, Theatre Kingston, in Kingston, Ontario produced Happy Days, starring Rosemary Doyle as Winnie and Richard Sheridan Willis as Willie, directed by Craig Walker and designed by Andrea Robertson Walker.

In early 2020, Thinking Cap Theatre in Fort Lauderdale, Florida produced Happy Days, starring Karen Stephens as Winnie and Jim Gibbons as Willie, directed by Nicole Stodard.

In June 2021, Trevor Nunn directed Lisa Dwan in a 60th anniversary production at Riverside Studios, London.

In May 2023, the Melbourne Theatre Company produced Happy Days, starring Judith Lucy as Winnie, directed by Petra Kalive.

Film
The film version of Happy Days was produced in 2001 as part of the Beckett on Film project. The film was directed by Patricia Rozema and starred Rosaleen Linehan as Winnie.

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

title: Happy Days (play)


text:
Western screech owl

The western screech owl (Megascops kennicottii) is a small owl native to North and Central America, closely related to the eastern screech owl. The scientific name commemorates the American naturalist Robert Kennicott.

Description
Length averages 22 cm, wingspan 55 cm, and weight 143 g. Weight ranges from 88 to 220 g. Females are larger than males and northern populations are notably larger than southern populations. Adults are larger than whiskered screech owls, with larger feet and a more streaked plumage pattern.

There are several morphs: brown Pacific, grey Pacific, Great Plains, Mojave, and Mexican. All have either brown or dark gray plumage with streaking on the underparts. There is no red morph. This brown and gray streaky coloring allows the owl to camouflage with trees and hide from predators.

They have a round head with ear tufts, yellow eyes, and a yellowish bill. Their appearance is quite similar to whiskered and eastern screech owls, so it is best to identify them by their calls. They were previously considered to be the same species as the eastern screech owl.

Call
The primary call is an accelerating series of short whistles at an increasing tempo or a short then long trill falling slightly at end. Other calls: barking and chuckling, similar to the eastern screech owl. They also make a high pitched screech.

The two primary songs for the Western Screech Owl are the bounce and double trill. In a recent study, researchers utilizes sonographic analysis of tape-recorded vocalizations to analyze whether the songs differ in male and females and if so, how accurately could songs be classified by sex. It was discovered that on average, male bounce songs were ~30% lower in frequency than bounce songs of females. However, song duration, note duration, number of notes per bout, and internote duration did not differ. For trill songs, males were also significantly lower in frequency compared to those of females. In addition, female double trill songs had greater internet distances in the leading portion.

Range and habitat
The western screech owl is native to Canada, United States, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. Its habitat includes temperate forests, subtropical and tropical montane forests, shrubland, desert, rural fields, and even suburban parks and gardens.

Breeding
Western screech owls are permanent residents of the northwest region of North and Central America, breeding in open woods or mixed woods at forest edges. When attracting a female, a male brings her food and creates a series of clicking noises. During courtship, the pair preens each other's feathers and sing duets with each other. Once a male and female become a pair, they produce a clutch of 2–7 eggs. The male delivers food to the female as she broods, and once the eggs hatch, the male continues to provide food which the female feeds to the owlets. Both mates then protect their owlets by guarding their tree cavity from dangers such as snakes, jays, and crows. The female is inseparable from her young for their first three weeks of life, but afterwards she joins the male in hunting for two weeks until the baby owls are ready to leave the nest.

Nesting
Rather than living in traditional nests, Western Screech Owls reside in cavities in trees, banks, or cliffs. Of these cavities, the tree species vary. They include, but are not limited to oaks, willows, cottonwoods, and cacti. These cavities are around 1 feet in diameter and up to 1.5 feet deep.

More often than not, these cavities are found by the male owl and were made by natural causes or other species such as woodpeckers. They could nest in these cavities for several years.

The cavities serve not only as shelter, but also as a camouflaging device against potential predators. The height for these nests range from approximately 10 to 30 feet above ground.

Hunting and prey
These nocturnal birds wait on perches to swoop down on unsuspecting prey; they may also catch insects in flight. They are active at dawn, night, or near dusk, using their excellent hearing and night vision to locate prey. Their diet consists mainly of small mammals (such as mice, rats, flying squirrels, and bats), birds (such as northern cardinals and white-throated sparrows), and large insects (such as cicadas); however they are opportunistic predators, even taking to small trout, annelid worms, scorpions, crayfish, reptiles, amphibians, and smaller birds. Their diet varies based on the season and where exactly they reside.

Motion-activated cameras have photographed the birds eagerly scavenging a road-kill opossum. They have also been known to hunt mallard ducks and cottontail rabbits, occasionally. Hatching of their young is synchronized with the spring migration of birds; after migrants pass through screech-owls take fledglings of local birds.

Conservation status
Although the western screech owl is slowly declining in the Pacific Northwest, the species is considered "of low conservation concern" due to their nocturnality and general ability to live alongside humans in surrounding trees. Their population is estimated to be 180,000 according to the Avian Conservation Assessment Database Scores. In areas densely populated by people, human noise can be a disturbance to their creation of nest cavities and human devastation of forests negatively affects their habitat. Climate disasters such as fires and heat waves can endanger their livelihood. Humans have made efforts to provide manmade shelter, such as nest boxes, for western screech owls. The owls have proven to be receptive to these habitats.

Subspecies
There are 9 recognized subspecies:
 * Megascops kennicottii aikeni Brewster, 1891
 * Megascops kennicottii bendirei (Brewster, 1882)
 * Megascops kennicottii cardonensis (Huey, 1926)
 * Megascops kennicottii kennicottii (Elliot, 1867)
 * Megascops kennicottii macfarlanei Brewster, 1891
 * Megascops kennicottii suttoni (R. T. Moore, 1941)
 * Megascops kennicottii vinaceus Brewster, 1888
 * Megascops kennicottii xantusi Brewster, 1902
 * Megascops kennicottii yumanensis (A. H. Miller & L. Miller, 1951)

title: Western screech owl


text:
Doctors' Trial

The Doctors' Trial (officially United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.) was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany, after the end of World War II. These trials were held before US military courts, not before the International Military Tribunal, but took place in the same rooms at the Palace of Justice. The trials are collectively known as the "subsequent Nuremberg trials", formally the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT).

Twenty of the 23 defendants were medical doctors and were accused of having been involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. The indictment was filed on 25 October 1946; the trial lasted from 9 December that year until 20 August 1947. Of the 23 defendants, seven were acquitted and seven received death sentences; the remainder received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment.

Background
Twenty of the 23 defendants were medical doctors (Viktor Brack, Rudolf Brandt, and Wolfram Sievers were Nazi officials), and were accused of having been involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. Philip Bouhler, Ernst-Robert Grawitz, Leonardo Conti, and Enno Lolling died by suicide, while Josef Mengele, one of the leading Nazi doctors, had evaded capture.

The judges, heard before Military Tribunal I, were Walter B. Beals (presiding judge) from Washington, Harold L. Sebring from Florida, and Johnson T. Crawford from Oklahoma, with Victor C. Swearingen, a former special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, as an alternate judge. The Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution was Telford Taylor and the chief prosecutor was James M. McHaney. In his opening statement, Taylor summarized the crimes of the defendants. "'The defendants in this case are charged with murders, tortures, and other atrocities committed in the name of medical science. The victims of these crimes are numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A handful only are still alive; a few of the survivors will appear in this courtroom. But most of these miserable victims were slaughtered outright or died in the course of the tortures to which they were subjected. For the most part they are nameless dead. To their murderers, these wretched people were not individuals at all. They came in wholesale lots and were treated worse than animals.'"

Indictment
The accused faced four charges, including:

 * 1) Conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity as described in counts 2 and 3;
 * 2) War crimes: performing medical experiments, without the subjects' consent, on prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, in the course of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts. Also planning and performing the mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians of occupied countries, stigmatized as aged, insane, incurably ill, deformed, and so on, by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums during the Euthanasia Program and participating in the mass murder of concentration camp inmates.
 * 3) Crimes against humanity: committing crimes described under count 2 also on German nationals.
 * 4) Membership in a criminal organization, the SS.

The tribunal largely dropped count 1, stating that the charge was beyond its jurisdiction.

I — Indicted  G — Indicted and found guilty

All of the criminals sentenced to death were hanged on 2 June 1948 at Landsberg Prison.

For some, the difference between receiving a prison term and the death sentence was membership in the SS, "an organization declared criminal by the judgement of the International Military Tribunal". However, some SS medical personnel received prison sentences. The degree of personal involvement and/or presiding over groups involved was a factor in others.

title: Doctors' Trial


text:
PT&T

The  Philippine Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (PT&T) is a telecommunications services provider in the Philippines since its establishment in 1962. The company caters to corporate, small/medium business, and residential segments across the country. PT&T's business is categorized into two major services: Connectivity and IT Services.

History
PT&T was incorporated on October 16, 1962, and subsequently registered with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission on November 14, 1962, under the laws of the Philippines.

PT&T was granted a 25-year national legislative franchise on June 20, 1964, under Republic Act (“RA”) No. 4161, as amended by RA Nos. 5048 and 6970. On July 21, 2016, under RA No. 10894, the company was granted an extension of its franchise for another 25 years.

PT&T was listed on January 10, 1990, for the trading of its common shares but requested voluntary suspension of trading effective December 13, 2004. It was a major competitor of PLDT in the 1990s prior to the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

In 2017, a consortium led by businessmen Lucio Tan, Jr., Salvador Zamora II, and Benjamin Bitanga acquired a majority stake of 70% in the ownership of PT&T from its previous owner Republic Telecommunication Holdings. The acquisition price was not disclosed.

In November 2017, the company announced that it entered negotiations with China Telecom and Datang Telecom Technology regarding plans to form a consortium for its bid. In 2018, PT&T bid to become the country's third telecommunications provider. PT&T was disqualified, thus the winner of the bid were the Mislatel consortium (which became Dito Telecommunity). The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) said that PT&T failed to meet the technical requirements it set for bidders.

title: PT&T


text:
John Graham, 1st Viscount Dundee

John Graham, 7th of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount Dundee (21 July 1648 – 27 July 1689) was a Scottish soldier and nobleman, a Tory and an Episcopalian. He was responsible for policing southwest Scotland during and after the religious unrest and rebellion of the late 17th century, and went on to lead the Jacobite rising of 1689.

Later, as a general in the Scottish army, Claverhouse remained loyal to King James VII of Scotland after the Revolution of 1688. He rallied those Highland clans loyal to the Jacobite cause and, although he lost his life in the battle, led them to victory at Killiecrankie. This first Jacobite rising was unsuccessful, but Claverhouse became a Jacobite hero, acquiring the soubriquet "Bonnie Dundee".

Life
The Graham family was descended from King Robert III, through his second daughter Princess Mary. John Graham was the elder son of Sir William Graham and Lady Madeline Carnegie, from a junior branch of the family that had acquired the estate of Claverhouse near Dundee. His date of birth is disputed but generally assumed to be in 1648. He had two sisters and was educated with his younger brother David at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 1661.

While closely related to James Graham, 1st Marquess Montrose, known as the "Great Montrose", William Graham did not join his Highland Campaign of 1644–1645. John and David became wards of their uncles and other relatives after his death around 1652. In 1660, they were listed as burgesses of Dundee, 'by reason of their father's privilege' and John Graham inherited the Claverhouse estate when he came of age in the summer of 1669.

The Claverhouse properties included a house in Glen Ogilvie in the Sidlaw Hills to the north of Dundee (since demolished), Claypotts Castle, and a house at Mill of Mains. In 1669 Graham's maternal uncle, David Carnegie, Lord Lour, secured him an appointment as a Commissioner of Excise and Justice of the Peace for Angus.

Service during the Franco–Dutch War 1672–1678
As a result of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, many in both Scotland and England viewed standing armies as a threat to individual liberty and society itself. Lack of opportunities at home meant those like Claverhouse who wanted a military career joined units in foreign service, such as the French Irish Brigade or the Dutch Scots Brigade. Loyalties were often based on religion or personal relationships, while officers frequently moved between armies; Marshal Turenne (1611–1675), considered the greatest French general of his time, was a Protestant who served in the Dutch army from 1625 to 1630 before changing allegiance.

When the Franco-Dutch War broke out in 1672, England was allied with France, largely due to secret payments made by Louis XIV to Charles II. Claverhouse was appointed Captain in Sir William Lockhart's Scots Regiment, part of an Anglo-Scots brigade commanded by the Duke of Monmouth that served with the French during 1673–1674. Supporting Catholic France against the Protestant Dutch Republic was unpopular, especially in Scotland which had close cultural end economic links and England withdrew from the war after the 1674 Treaty of Westminster. Many members of the Anglo-Scots Brigade now enrolled with the Dutch, including Claverhouse. This unit had been part of the Dutch army since the 1580s and despite the name, normally contained a mixture of regiments recruited in Scotland and England. Withdrawn in 1672, the English units were restored in 1674 but since the Scots regiments had also lost much of their national identity, a deliberate policy was adopted to re-establish them as English and Scottish units. Claverhouse fought at the Battle of Seneffe in 1674, where it is alleged he rescued the young William of Orange, although this appears doubtful. In the absence of a permanent army, the Scots Brigade was an important source of military professionals for both Charles II and James II, who nominally controlled the appointment of officers. In reality, this required negotiation and many Brigade officers were political and religious exiles, particularly after the 1679–81 Exclusion Crisis; in 1680, Charles tried to appoint the Catholic Earl of Dumbarton as Brigade commander but William refused. James in particular tracked the careers of potential supporters, like the Catholics Thomas Buchan and Alexander Cannon, also officers in the Scots Brigade and who replaced Claverhouse after his death at Killiecrankie. In early 1678, Claverhouse resigned his commission and returned to Scotland; one suggestion is this was due to a disciplinary incident which led to him being passed over for promotion.

Military service in Scotland
With James' recommendation, in September 1678 Claverhouse was given command of one of the 'Highland' companies employed to police South-West Scotland; unlike the earlier semi-private 'Independent' companies, these were funded by the government. While the primary objective was the suppression of illegal Presbyterian field meetings or Conventicles, it was also driven by the conflict between the Presbyterian Earl of Argyll and the equally Presbyterian Macleans over control of Mull.

Demarcation disputes between Claverhouse and regional magnates such as the Earl of Queensberry meant he had to tread carefully; in December 1678, the regular clergy complained when he told them that he had no orders to apprehend anyone for past misdemeanours. The situation then exploded when Covenanter militants killed Archbishop James Sharp on 3 May 1679. Hearing news of a large conventicle on 1 June 1679, Claverhouse located it near Loudoun Hill but "little to our advantage; for, when we came in sight of them, we found them drawn up in batell, upon a most advantagious ground, to which there was no coming but through mosses and lakes. They were not preaching... They consisted of four battalions of foot, and all well armed with fusils and pitchforks, and three squadrons of horse." The Covenanter force was led by 19-year-old William Cleland, who had positioned them at the top of a hill, with a marsh in front; after exchanging fire, the 240 dragoons advanced but became stuck in the wet ground and seeing this, the Covenanters charged. Claverhouse's horse was wounded and maddened by pain, carried him away from the battle, with his troopers following; the Battle of Drumclog was little more than a skirmish but cost the government 36 men and raised Covenanter morale. He later wrote to the Earl of Linlithgow that the Covenanters: "'resolved a generall engadgment, and immediately advanced with there foot, the horse folowing: they came throght the lotche ... they recaived our fyr, and advanced to shok: the first they gave us broght down the Coronet Mr Crafford and Captain Bleith, besides that with a pitchfork they made such an opening in my rone horse's belly, that his guts hung out half an elle, and yet he caryed me aff an myl: which so discoraged our men, that they sustained not the shok, but fell into disorder'." Claverhouse returned to Glasgow, which the Covenanters briefly besieged but could not take without artillery. On 3 June, Claverhouse and his troops headed for Stirling Castle, the strongest fort in Scotland to await the arrival of reinforcements under Monmouth, which included the militia and two regiments of dragoons. He escaped censure for Drumclog but was made subordinate to Monmouth; on 22 June, the sides met again at the Battle of Bothwell Brig and this time the Covenanters were routed.

Nearly 1200 Covenanter prisoners were held at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh; Claverhouse was dispatched to London to protest against Monmouth's alleged leniency towards them. This began his close relationship with James, who in 1680 awarded him the barony of Freuch in Galloway.

In January 1681, he was appointed to the sheriffships of Wigtown, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright and Annandale. In December 1682, he was appointed colonel of a new regiment to be raised in Scotland. He had still greater honours in view. In January 1683, the case of the Earl of Lauderdale was debated in the House of Lords. Lauderdale was proprietor of the lands and lordship of Dundee and Dudhope, and the decree of the Lords against him was issued in March 1683 for the sum of 72,000 pounds. Claverhouse succeeded in having the Castle of Dudhope (part of the property of the defaulter) and Lauderdale's title of Constable of Dundee transferred to him by royal grant in 1684. In May 1683, he was nominated to the Privy Council of Scotland.

Marriage and promotion
In 1684, he married Lady Jeane Cochrane, granddaughter of William Cochrane, 1st Earl of Dundonald, a staunch Covenanter. Shortly after the death of Charles II in 1685, Claverhouse incurred a temporary disgrace – he stood up for the rights of ordinary soldiers who were being poorly treated – by his deposition from the office of privy councillor; but he was reinstated in May, although his commission of justiciary, which had expired, was not renewed. In 1686, he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and given the additional position of Constable, the dignity of Lord Provost of Dundee. One of his first acts as Provost was to abolish the death penalty for theft under his jurisdiction. In 1688, he was second-in-command to General Douglas in the army which had been ordered to England to aid the falling dynasty of the Stuarts. In the same year, however, he was created Viscount Dundee by James VII while with the Scots army in England. He was also given military command of all the King's forces in Scotland.

Service after the Revolution of 1688
Dundee returned to Scotland in anticipation of the meeting of the Convention of Estates in Edinburgh, and at once exerted himself to bolster the waning resolution of the Duke of Gordon, the governor of Edinburgh Castle, with regard to holding it for the King. The Convention proving hostile, he conceived the idea of forming a rival convention at Stirling to sit in the name of James VII, but the hesitancy of his associates rendered the design futile, and it was given up. Prior to this, on 18 March 1689, he had left Edinburgh at the head of a company of fifty loyal dragoons, who were strongly attached to his leadership. He was not long gone before the news was brought to the alarmed convention that he had been spotted clambering up the castle rock and holding a conference with Gordon.

Dundee retired to Dudhope. On 30 March, despite a letter to the Convention stating that he was not in arms and that he was living peacefully at home awaiting the birth of his first child, he was publicly denounced as a traitor. He had offered to give a bond or parole to no avail and in the latter half of April attempts were made to apprehend him at Dudhope, and at his residence in Glen Ogilvy; but the secrecy and speed of his movements outwitted his pursuers, and he retreated to the north.

In 1689, after the overthrow of King James VII, he continued to support the Stuart dynasty in his capacity as commander-in-chief of all Scottish forces. On 13 April, Dundee raised the Scottish Royal Standard on Dundee Law in support of his king, country and the Jacobite cause. However, in spite of his subsequent association with the city of Dundee, he was to face what the historian of Jacobitism, Bruce Lenman, has described as a "stony faced" reception from its townsfolk. It is claimed that Dundee's association with the city was brief and unpopular as he was seen as the representative of an arbitrary authoritarian monarchy that was eroding the self-autonomy the burgh had enjoyed.

Indeed, when he returned to Dundee with a small troop of horse (Dundee Law at that time lay outside the burgh walls) he was to find the walls guarded and the gates firmly shut. The city was heavily garrisoned by Williamite forces at the time which may better explain why the gates were barred to him. The fact that the large force in Dundee made no attempt to give battle or capture him may actually suggest they were to some degree sympathetic to his cause. Later events show that cavalry based in Dundee at the time later attempted to defect and join his forces. For four months he rallied support in the hope that King James would return from Ireland, showing considerable skill in letter-writing and diplomacy and deploying successful skirmishing tactics to buy himself time. His greatest victory was won at the Battle of Killiecrankie later that year against much greater Williamite forces led by General Hugh Mackay. Scott believes that Dundee's death in victory as he led the Jacobite charge down the hill at sunset was the final desperate act of a man who was aware that he had been betrayed by Melfort, the King's adviser, and was trying to overcompensate for their lack of support. The Highlanders were completely victorious, but Dundee, in the act of encouraging his men, was pierced beneath the breastplate by a musket ball of the enemy and fell dying from his horse. Dundee reputedly asked a soldier "How goes the day?", to which the man replied, "Well for King James, but I am sorry for your lordship." The dying Dundee then replied, "If it goes well for him, it matters the less for me."

The battle, disastrous as it was to the government forces, was in reality the end of the insurrection, for the controlling and commanding genius of the rebellion was no more. The death of Dundee, in the midst of the confusion of a cavalry charge, became the subject of numerous legends, the best known of which was the long prevalent but of course, entirely false tale that he was invulnerable to lead (due to having made a pact with the Devil) and was killed by being penetrated by a silver button from his own coat. He died on the battlefield and was carried the few miles to the nearby parish church of St Bride, above Blair Castle, where he was buried. The stone which commemorates him at the crypt gives his age (erroneously) as 46, when he was actually 41. Dundee's helmet and breastplate, removed from the vault below the church in the 19th century, are preserved in Blair Castle.

The tune under the title of "Bonnie Dundee" (or "Bonny Dundee") predated Claverhouse's appointment as Viscount Dundee, and several 18th-century songs under that title refer to the city of Dundee and not Claverhouse. With Walter Scott's publication around 1828 of his poem adapting the old tune to praise Claverhouse, the phrase "bonnie Dundee" became generally associated with the Viscount rather than the town, though the older ballads were still published.

Covenanter historiography
After his death, Presbyterian historians dubbed Dundee "Bluidy Clavers". Contemporary evidence for the fairness of this soubriquet in the Covenanting tradition is mixed. Tales of the Covenanters and Covenanter monuments hold Claverhouse directly responsible for the deaths of adherents of the movement. On the other hand, Claverhouse's own letters frequently recommended lenient treatment of Covenanters, and in 1684 he married into a prominent Covenanter family.

In Claverhouse (1887) by Mowbray Walter Morris, cruelty in the area of Dumfriesshire to Covenanters is largely attributed to Robert Grierson of Lag. In contrast Thomas Buchan of the Earl of Mar's Regiment, in south-west Scotland for the repressive "killing time" period of harsh enforcement against Covenanters, was considered by Presbyterian chroniclers to have stayed within legal limits. In the case of the execution of John Brown of Priesthill in Muirkirk parish, Ayrshire, on 1 May 1685, Claverhouse himself ordered Brown to be shot summarily by his troops, on the basis of incriminating evidence.

In literature

 * The Grameid, an epic poem in Latin on the Claverhouse campaign of 1689 was written by James Philip of Almerieclos, an Angus laird who was Dundee's kinsman and standard-bearer.
 * Claverhouse's campaign is the subject of a poem called Bonnie Dundee written by Sir Walter Scott in 1830 (later adapted into a song known as Bonnets o' Bonnie Dundee"'')
 * Claverhouse is one of the central characters in Sir Walter Scott's novel, Old Mortality (1816), and appears as one of the Royalist characters doomed to hell in Wandering Willie's tale in Redgauntlet. He also features in James Hogg's novel The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818) and John Galt's novel of the Killing Times, Ringan Gilhaize (1823).
 * Claverhouse is the subject of Rosemary Sutcliff's 1983 young adult novel, "Bonnie Dundee". (In exile in Holland, Hugh Herriot recalls the exploits of his youth as a follower of Bonnie Dundee who tried to win back Scotland for the Catholic King James and whose death during a victorious battle proved to be a final blow for the Jacobite cause.)
 * "The Phoenix and the Laurel" (1954), a historical novel by Jane Lane also takes the story of Claverhouse as its subject.
 * In The Dagger with Wings, one of the Father Brown short stories of G.K. Chesterton, a character tells Father Brown that Dundee sold his soul to the Devil. Father Brown dismisses the idea, saying that "John Graham was simply a seventeenth-century professional soldier, rather better than most".
 * Robert Burns wrote in "The Braes O'Killiecrankie", that "The bold Pitcur fell in a furr', and Claver'se gat a clankie -O/ Or I had fed an Athole gled, on the Braes o' Killiecrankie-O", the meaning of which is that the speaker would have been carrion but for the misfortunes of the two Jacobite stalwarts.
 * John Watson under the pen name Ian Maclaren wrote the historical novel Graham of Claverhouse, which was published in 1907. The novel also appeared serialized in newspapers, an example of which was the Muncie, Indiana Star Press.
 * In 1984, Dutch author A. Alberts published his 'De Zilveren Kogel' (The Silver Bullet) with Claverhouse as the central character.

title: John Graham, 1st Viscount Dundee


text:
Catastrophe (play)

Catastrophe is a short play by Samuel Beckett, written in French in 1982 at the invitation of A.I.D.A. (Association Internationale de Défense des Artistes) and “[f]irst produced in the Avignon Festival (21 July 1982) … Beckett considered it ‘massacred.’” It is one of his few plays to deal with a political theme and, arguably, holds the title of Beckett's most optimistic work. Beckett "wrote the short play Catastrophe about control and censorship" and dedicated it to the Czech dramatist Václav Havel, who was in prison at the time. Havel wrote a play called Mistake "as a response to the one Beckett had written in solidarity." "In February 1984, in one of the most significant milestones in the history of Index on Censorship, both plays were published for the first time." In January 2022, after almost 38 years, in 50th birthday celebration of Index, they asked "Iranian playwright Reza Shirmarz to write his own response to Beckett's Catastrophe." Shirmarz wrote his play Muzzled which was published by Index as a dramatic response to Beckett's Catastrophe. Giving his viewpoints on Beckett's play in an interview with Index, Shirmarz said that "Catastrophe is about censored communication, the ritualistic representation and the symbolic image of human relationship constrained by external forces, a deterministic, political and post-dramatic text which demonstrates how humans are coerced to be and live in a torturous limbo. [In Catastrophe], Beckett's Protagonist is deprived of free will by the systems surrounding him and the systematic control imposed by others, except at the moment he moves his head up and looks at the spectators. Despite his psychosomatic pain, he talks through his silence and protests through his immobility. As so-called social factors and audiences, we are reminded by the playwright that we are not able to get out of the cage the sociopolitical conventions have imprisoned us in and we must abide by the unbreachable laws brought in by the global structures and conglomerates in order to survive."

Synopsis
An autocratic Director and his female Assistant put the “‘[f]inal touches to the last scene’ of some kind of dramatic presentation”, which consists entirely of a man (The Protagonist) standing still onstage.

The Assistant has arranged the man as she has seen fit to, atop a “black block 18” high”, draped in a “black dressing gown [down] to [his] ankles” and – peculiarly – sporting a “black wide-brimmed hat.” The bulk of the drama consists of the Director wresting control from her and moulding the man on stage to suit his personal vision. “The Director call for light, both for his cigar which is constantly going out and for the spectacle of the Protagonist on stage.”

The Director is an irritable and impatient man, his annoyance likely exacerbated by the fact that he has another appointment, “a caucus”, to attend and his time there is limited. He expresses concern with the overall appearance and demands that the coat and hat be removed leaving the man “shivering” in his “old grey pyjamas.” He has the man's fists unclenched and then joined, the only suggestion of his Assistant's that he pays any heed to; once arranged at breast-height he is satisfied. (Beckett explained to James Knowlson that when he was composing Catastrophe, “In my mind was Dupuytren’s contracture (from which I suffer) which reduces hands to claws.” ) The Director dismisses his Assistant's proposal to have the man gagged (“This craze for explicitation! ” ) or to “show his face … just for an instant.” He also has her make notes to whiten all the exposed flesh.

In a moment of respite, when the Director leaves the stage, his Assistant collapses into his chair then springs out and wipes it vigorously, as if to avoid contamination, before reseating herself. This helps the audience appreciate better her relationship to each of the parties. She is after all the one who dressed the Protagonist warmly and who – twice – highlights the fact that he is shivering. In some ways she is just “another victim rather than a collaborator.”

Finally they rehearse lighting with the theatre technician (the never-seen "Luke"). The play-within-a-play lasts only a few seconds: from darkness, to light falling on the man's head and then darkness again. Finally the Director exclaims: "There's our catastrophe! In the bag" and asks for one last run through before he has to leave. He imagines the rising of the expectant applause on the opening day (“Terrific! He’ll have them on their feet. I can hear it from here ). The man has become, as John Calder puts it, “a living statue portraying, from the director’s point of view, the quiescent, unprotesting victim, a symbol of the ideal citizen of a totalitarian regime.”

However, in an act of defiance, the man looks up into the audience (after having been looking down the entire time); the “applause falters and dies.” A Pyrrhic victory perhaps. However “the figure’s unexpected movement seems to happen not in the director’s imagined timespace but in the timespace of [actual] performance. The moment is unsettling … We do not know why the figure has reacted like this; we do not know when the reaction happens; we do not know where the reaction takes place.” Beckett told Mel Gussow that “it was not his intention to have the character make an appeal … He is a triumphant martyr rather than a sacrificial victim … and it is meant to cow onlookers into submission through the intensity of his gaze and stoicism,”

Interpretations
The title requires some clarification. “In the words of Aristotle: ‘catastrophe is an action bringing ruin and pain on stage, [where] wounds and other similar sufferings are performed,’”. Malone refers to “Catastrophe … in the old sense … [t]o be buried alive in lava and not turn a hair, it is then a man shows what stuff he is made of.” The more obvious definition applies of course to the act of defiance itself; the effect is nothing less than catastrophic.

The play is often singled out amongst the Beckett canon as being overtly political even though similar claims could be made for What Where and Rough for Radio II. The play is still a Beckett play and as such it is unwise to limit ones reading of it. "When ... asked about the political significance of Catastrophe, he raised his arms in a gesture of impatience and made just one remark: 'It is not more political than Pochade Radiophonique’”, Rough for Radio II, as the latter is known in English."

Political
The play can be viewed as an allegory on the power of totalitarianism and the struggle to oppose it, the protagonist representing people ruled by dictators (the director and his aide). By "tweak[ing] him until his clothing and posture project the required image of pitiful dejectedness", they exert their control over the silenced figure. “The Director’s reifying of the Protagonist can be seen as an attempt to reduce a living human being to the status of an icon of impotent suffering. But, at the end of the play, he reasserts his humanity and his individuality in a single, vestigial, yet compelling movement.” In answer to a reviewer who claimed that the ending was ambiguous Beckett replied angrily: “There’s no ambiguity there at all. He’s saying, you bastards, you haven’t finished me yet.”

Theatrical
A filmed version of Catastrophe was directed by David Mamet for the Beckett on Film project. It starred playwright and Beckett enthusiast Harold Pinter as the Director, and featured the last on-camera appearance of the British actor, John Gielgud as the Protagonist (he died only a few weeks later).

This version has been somewhat controversial, as Mamet chose to film it as a realist piece: the scene takes place in an actual theatre, and the principals are dressed as a director and his assistant might look. “When the director (D) made his peremptory demands for light from his female assistant (A) he received it not for his cigar, as in the original, but in the form of torchlight for his script. This weakened the sense of gratuitous offensiveness hanging about the character. D., played by Pinter, received rather too much camera attention and a patient John Gielgud rather too little, above all at the final moment” when he raises his head in defiance. Some critics have argued that this interpretation takes away from the tyrannical theme of the play. Mamet also changes Beckett's stage direction concerning the Protagonist's hands, substituting a finger pointing for the hands joined.

This is not the only version that has taken liberties with the staging. “When Catastrophe was performed in the Beckett Festival on 15 September 1999, the director Robert O’Mahoney, interpreted the climax very differently [from the way Beckett had]. After Johnny Murphy raised his head and glared with great dignity at the audience, his lips parted and stretched into an imitation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. This nullified the impact of the ending, as Protagonist was reduced to nothing more than an abject silently screaming victim.”

Catastrophe is not only about a political situation and the place of the artist in it. The victim or “protagonist” is also representative of all actors, having to portray what writers write for them in the way directors tell them to do it (Beckett is not unaware of his own relationship with actors, particularly those who in the past have resisted his stage directions). The director in the play catches two prototypes, that of the political commissar and of the all-powerful personality director like Peter Brook, Vitez, [Mamet or O’Mahoney], who bend a performance to their own interpretation, where often the victim is the author himself; there are many “in” theatrical jokes. The director's assistant coolly carries out her instructions, and it matters little if we are in a concentration camp or a film studio: all humane considerations are ruled out to achieve the ultimate work of art. The two-pronged metaphor is incredibly effective for all its surface simplicity. In time, as with all of Beckett's work, more strands and allusions will be discovered.

Personal
“The play has also been related to Beckett’s own horror at self-exposure, and linked to the essentially exhibitionist nature of theatre. It has been seen as demonstrating the impossibility for an artist to shape his work in such a way that it reveals what he intends it to reveal; art in the end escapes him.”

title: Catastrophe (play)


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User talk:Audriusdo

Go to Lithuania: lt.wikipedia.org

title: User talk:Audriusdo


text:
Spectacled cormorant

The spectacled cormorant or Pallas's cormorant (Urile perspicillatus) is an extinct marine bird of the cormorant family of seabirds that inhabited Bering Island and possibly other places in the Commander Islands and the nearby coast of Kamchatka in the far northeast of Russia. The modern distribution was shown to be a relic of a wider prehistoric distribution in 2018 when fossils of the species from 120,000 years ago were found in Japan. It is the largest species of cormorant known to have existed.

Taxonomy
It was formerly classified in the genus Phalacrocorax, but in 2021, the IOC reclassified it and several other Pacific cormorant species into the genus Urile, based on a 2014 study that supported reclassifying the Brandt's, red-faced, and pelagic cormorants into that genus. Although the spectacled cormorant was not mentioned in the 2014 study and its current taxonomic position is unresolvable by the current phylogenies, it was also reclassified into Urile based on its perceived relatedness to those species.

Description
The species was first identified by Georg Steller in 1741 on Vitus Bering's disastrous second Kamchatka expedition. He described the bird as large, clumsy and almost flightless – though it was probably reluctant to fly rather than physically unable – and wrote "they weighed 12–14 pounds, so that one single bird was sufficient for three starving men." Though cormorants are normally notoriously bad-tasting, Steller says that this bird tasted delicious, particularly when it was cooked in the way of the native Kamchadals, who encased the whole bird in clay, buried it, and baked it in a heated pit.

With a body mass estimated to be from 3.5 to 6.8 kg and a length up to around 100 cm, the spectacled cormorant was rather larger than all other known cormorants. In a similar fashion to the extant flightless cormorant, which may have rivaled it in length but not weight, the spectacled cormorant is thought to have at least largely lost the power of flight which is borne out by the reduced sternum and wing chord of museum specimens. This species was largely glossy black in color with a reported greenish gloss that may have been fairly vivid in bright light.

A contrasting large white patch could be seen on its lower flanks just above the legs. Like other cormorants, they had small patches of bare skin about the face including a small gular patch and a small amount of bare skin around the eyes; these areas usually appeared to have been dull-yellow or grayish in hue, but during breeding stages, they may have changed to a bright orangey-reddish hue.

Extinction
Apart from the fact that it fed on fish, almost nothing else is known about the life history of this bird. The population declined quickly after further visitors to the area started collecting the birds for food and feathers. Their reports of profitable whaling grounds and large populations of Arctic foxes and other animals with valuable pelts led to a massive influx of whalers and fur traders into the region; the last birds were reported to have lived around 1850 on Kamen Ariy (Арий Камень ) islet, off the northwestern tip of Bering Island.

A presumed prehistoric record from Amchitka Island, Alaska, is based on misidentification of double-crested cormorant remains.

title: Spectacled cormorant


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Glenfield, Leicestershire

Glenfield is a large village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Glenfields, in the Blaby district of Leicestershire, England. At the 2011 Census, Glenfields had a population of 9,643.

The village is directly to the west of Leicester and is just off junction 21A of the M1. It is the site of the headquarters of Leicestershire County Council, and of Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service. It also gives its name to Glenfield Hospital, although the hospital is actually across the city border in Leicester.

The heart of the community is around the Square, with St Peter's Church (CofE), the church hall, the ruins of the former church, the Methodist Church and Hall and the public library just inside Station Road, and Park House (parish council), the Memorial Hall, Scout Hut, playground, Glenfield Primary School and the nursery school all located just inside Stamford Street. The Hall County Primary School is located on Glenfield Frith Drive. Situated close to the Hall school is Faire Road commonly known for the row of shops situated there.

History
The name "Glenfield" means "clean field", possibly suggesting that it was clear of weeds.

Glenfield is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, at which time it lay in Guthlaxton hundred and contained 12 households.

The village was greatly enlarged between the 1920s and the 1950s when the Faire Estate was built. In the 1980s and 1990s, another large estate was built on former farmland behind Ellis Park.

Glenfield was the site of the first station from Leicester West Bridge on the Leicester and Swannington Railway, opened on 17 July 1832 as the world's third steam railway. Just before reaching the station, the line passed through Glenfield Tunnel, which was built by Robert Stephenson and was, at 1 mile 36 yards, the world's longest railway tunnel at the time. The Glenfield end of the tunnel can still be seen.

In 1931 the parish had a population of 1,590. On 1 April 1935 the parish was abolished to form "Glenfields".

Parish facilities
Glenfield has its own village newspaper, The Glenfield Gazette. The parish council owns several areas of recreational land, including Ellis Park, Station Park and the Playing Fields. Near to the A50 and the boundary with Groby is the "Millennium Green", which is managed by a local trust. The Gynsills Nature Area can be found at the junction of Gynsill Lane and Stelle Way. A small area of mature trees and a pond, once part of the Gynsills Estate parkland, is now an area promoting biodiversity and nature conservation.

The area known as "The Square" was once more of a road and contained many more shops, mostly owned by the Stockley family. These were demolished in the 1950s and 1960s to accommodate the roundabout and the maisonettes were built in place of the grocers, post office and butcher's shop.

On Station Road, there is a large Morrisons supermarket, petrol station, a pharmacy, and other shops. There are also shops around the Square, Stamford Street and Faire Road. The Square has a butchers shop.

The Co-operative Food superstore on Station Road was closed down in January 2020 and was replaced with a Morrisons superstore which opened in August 2020 and the Morrisons petrol station to open late February 2020.

There are a variety of pubs, take-aways, restaurants and a hotel in Glenfield. These include the Nag's Head, the Forge (formerly the Griffin), the Gynsills, and the Railway Inn (near to the site of the former Glenfield Station). There are Chinese, pizza and fish and chip takeaways, and Indian restaurants in the village. The parade of shops on Faire Road includes Aquarius Fish Bar, Golden Orient Chinese, and Sameeha Indian Restaurant and takeaway.

Notable residents
The Australian pioneer and explorer Charles Throsby was born in Glenfield in 1777. Stamford Street was the home of painter Bryan Organ. Salcombe Drive was the home of the pundit Graham Barnfield. Leicester Road was the home of Alderman Bertram Powell, Lord Mayor of Leicester 1959–60, from the late 1930s to his death in 1969. During the late 1990s Leicester City players Robbie Savage and Pontus Kåmark lived in Glenfield. The British dramatist and playwright David Campton was a resident of Liberty Road, Glenfield up until his death in 2006. Footballers David Nugent and Chris Wood lived in Glenfield when playing for Leicester in the mid-2010s.

Commercial
Although Glenfield is mainly residential there are a few businesses located in the area, notably the Widdowson Group and others located on the Mill Lane Industrial Estate. Next door to Mill Lane is Optimus point, home to major brands such as Boden, Mattel, Everards and delivery company DPD.

Transport
Glenfield is 3 mi away from Leicester, and 1.5 mi from the Beaumont Leys Shopping Centre. Glenfield railway station served the village between 1832 and 1928. The nearest railway station is now Leicester

Roads
The M1 can be easily accessed at Junction 21A to the south of the village (southbound only), which makes Fosse Shopping Park accessible. The M1 North can be reached in minutes along the A50 towards Markfield, Groby and Coalville.

The A46 leads around the north of Leicester, with access to Anstey and then the A6 to Loughborough.

Bus
The village is currently served by First Leicester service 13 and Centrebus 40 CircleLine buses.

title: Glenfield, Leicestershire


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Talk:Thanjavur

Geography of Thanjavur
Though the Thanjavur district is known for its fertility and arable soil good for rice cultivation, Thanjavur city and its surrounding areas aren't. The Thanjavur and Pattukkottai taluks are generally rugged and less fertile than the northern taluks of Kumbakonam and Papanasam. This is a well-known fact.- Ravi My Tea Kadai 13:02, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Surrounding as in where? The TNAU references provided clear agricultural divisions - the vallam/pudukottai road sides are table lands/non-arable. I specifically kept those details about soil texture for this confusing part. Well within the town limits, there are fertile agricultural areas. The routes like tanjore-mannargudi, tanjore-kbk, tanjore- tiruvarur are more than fertile. Thanjavur taluk being less fertile is highly relative and doesnt mean there are no arable lands at all.
 * Also the historical roadways from Chola period connected all major ports to the capital. If Tower of London had a route connecting Thames to ports, the Chola capital also had similar routes linking the rajapattai with important cities & ports. Historic roads with no link to capital cities is never a possibility. Ssriram mt (talk) 02:49, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

 * I've modified the statement as per Pg 261 of Hemingway's Tanjore Gazetteer and Pg 5 of Gough's book.- Ravi My Tea Kadai 11:44, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Ga
The following coordinate fixes are needed for

—71.163.191.76 (talk) 12:03, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
 * You haven't said what fix you think is needed, but I've moved the coordinates nearer to the center of the settlement. Deor (talk) 17:02, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

This has passed as a Wikipedia Good Article
(I have "duplicated" this here for when the review is no longer transcluded.)

What a well-done and thorough article! This passes as a Wikipedia Good Article. I usually try to offer suggestions for further improvement/development and am hard-pressed to do so except for two small ones. It would be a nice addition to add an image of a typical part of the city, possibly it's center. Most of the images are for "special" places and items. Also, you might want to note on the talk page header that the article uses British English so that there is clarity / no confusion on that. Congratulations! Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:24, 23 May 2013 (UTC) Reviewer

External links modified
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title: Talk:Thanjavur