text:
User:Roscoe x

I discovered wikipedia 2-3 years ago while searching for information on the internet to do my homework, place them in my Favorites, and ever since come to search for other informations. Since finding valuable information in Internet is just like finding a needle in a haystack.

But just started posting on Nov. 26, 2003, in an article talk:Generation_X.

My Life
0-18years 5months: In Indonesia 18years-25years: In Taiwan

Undergraduate student in central Taiwan majoring in CSIE. Mostly doing little editing in Wikipedia especially "See also" subsection. Not an english native speaker. Articles I started mostly based on inspiration rather than depth-knowldge on it. Hoping those articles could became a good, worth reading articles.

 * I think wikipedia could became Symbol of Human Civilization.
 * I think it would be much interesting if wikipedia could place applet, flash animation, and movies.

Jesus teaching

 * 1) First and most important of the commandments: One should love God with one's entire heart, soul, mind, and strength. One should love one's neighbour as one would love oneself. (Matthew, Mark and  Luke)
 * 2) How to Love: John,
 * 3) Beatitudes
 * 4) Our Father
 * 5) Divorce: Matthew,  Mark
 * 6) Conflict: Matthew, Turning the other cheek
 * 7) Paying taxes: Temple Tax, Nation tax
 * 8) Parables of Jesus: Good Samaritan, Lost son, Sower (Matthew, Mark, Luke), Two Sons
 * 9) Miracles of Jesus
 * 10) Samaritan woman
 * 11) Obedience: Luke, John
 * 12) Hypocrite: Woes of the Pharisees
 * 13) Neighbor: see Good Samaritan
 * 14) Afraid, Anxiety, Desperation: Calming the storm, For my yoke is easy and my burden is light Matthew, Matthew
 * 15) Disaster: Tower_of_Siloam(Luke)
 * 16) Live a life: For if you choose to save your life, you will lose it, and if you lose your life for my sake, you will save it. (Luke and Matthew)
 * 17) Promises:
 * 18) * Room: John
 * 19) * Holy Spirit: John
 * 20) * Second coming: Matthew
 * 21) Sad: www.openbible.info
 * 22) Insult: Matthew
 * 23) Service: Foot washing (John), Matthew

Bible
New American Bible (NAB), or the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
 * Doubt: Letter of James
 * Double standard: Letter of James
 * Love: 1 Corinthians
 * Fruit of the Holy Spirit

Catholic Resources

 * 1) XT3
 * 2) Catholic Wikis: Catholic Guide, Catechetics Online

Art
Listen to Music, Watching Movies(Review), fashion, Model design, Interior design, comic book, photography, Seven Wonders of the World
 * 1) Architecture: Architecture firms, Castle, Skyscraper,
 * 2) house: Couch,

Entertainment
List of popular tourist regions, Travelling, tourism, pilgrimage, World Heritage Sites,
 * 1) Taste Food: cake, cookie, cheese, chocolate, honey, milk, wine, Woochi, List of cheeses
 * 2) television network:

Religious
Acta Sanctorum, Apostle, bible, Catholicism, Christology, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctor of the Church, Saint, Holy See, Jesus Christ, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, priest, Roman Curia, Category:Catholic lay societies

Natural Science
philosophy, Anti-gravity, cognitive science, Cryogenics, earth, ecology, explosion, Futurology, famous experiments, geography, geology, mind, time, Unsolved problems in mathematics, Unsolved problems in physics, Water purification,
 * 1) Biology:
 * 2) anatomy: Hormone, prostate, rectum, urinary bladder
 * 3) medicine: Health, eye, HPV vaccine, kidney, Nephrology, stem cell, tooth
 * 4) Food hygiene: PCR food testing
 * 5) chemistry: electrolysis, Redox
 * 6) Computer science: Algorithm, Edge detection, Shortest path problem
 * 7) Mathematics: algebra, geometry, probability, statistics,
 * 8) Physics:
 * 9) Condensed matter physics: matter, Phase (matter),
 * 10) electromagnetism: electricity & magnetism: magnet, Electric charge, electric field, electromagnetic spectrum, Electromagnetic waves, magnetic field
 * 11) Material: Bulletproof glass, ceramics, limestone, marble, metal, glass
 * 12) nature: aurora, earthquake, Extremes on Earth, fjord, geyser, glacier, lake, mountain, ozone, ozone layer, river, tsunami
 * 13) optic: infrared, laser, light, ultraviolet,
 * 14) Particle physics: Elementary particle, List of particles, atom, electron, proton, neutron, quark, fermion, boson,
 * 15) Quantum mechanics/quantum physics: Quantum field theory
 * 16) Space science: astronomy, Orbit, Outer space, Project Vanguard
 * 17) Thermodynamics: energy, energy development, Energy storage, Fuel cell, Renewable energy,
 * 18) Nuclear physics: nuclear fission, nuclear fusion
 * 19) Plasma physics: fusion power
 * 20) research & development center: CERN, Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States Department of Energy National Laboratories

Social science
Society, psychology, Business, civilization, contradiction, Declaration of Independence (United States), Demography,emotion, ethics, feeling, forecast, Hammurabi, Human behavior, human migration, Human rights, irony, Life insurance, Marshall Plan, Nobel prize, orphan, paradox, Perfectionism (philosophy), Perfectionism (psychology), planning, Social issue, social security, security, safety, time management, Transhumanism,
 * 1) Education: child prodigy, Emotional intelligence, Experiential education, genius, Intelligence quotient, Lifelong education, efficient learning method, case study
 * 2) University:
 * 3) England: University of Cambridge, University of Oxford
 * 4) US: Harvard university, MIT, Princeton university
 * 5) Economy: currency, Economic development, Exchange rate, International trade
 * 6) Macroeconomics
 * 7) Microeconomics
 * 8) government: United States Congress
 * 9) History: Reconquista, Crusades
 * 10) Revolution: French Revolution
 * 11) Law: justice
 * 12) World government: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, World citizen, World population, World Federalist Movement

Engineering
Biosphere 2, construction, machine, new town, Urban planning, regional planning, Terraforming, Space colonization, Space station
 * 1) engine & motor:
 * 2) Internal combustion engine: V engine, W engine
 * 3) rotary engine: Turbine, gas turbine, water turbine
 * 4) External combustion engine: steam engine, stirling engine
 * 5) Transportation:
 * 6) Air: aircraft, Boeing, Boeing X-43,  helicopter, Accidents and incidents in aviation, Electric aircraft, Gossamer Albatross, List of airlines, Skylifter, Solar Impulse, PC-Aero Elektra One
 * 7) Airbus：A320, A380
 * 8) Land: bus, car, ICE, maglev, Shinkansen, TGV, tiger-stone, truck
 * 9) Water: boat, ship, cruise ship, Category:Shipbuilding companies, Bayliner, Innespace Seabreacher, Tûranor PlanetSolar
 * 10) ocean liner: RMS Queen Mary 2
 * 11) cruise ship: MS Freedom of the Seas, MS Oasis of the Seas
 * 12) Outer space:
 * 13) Civil engineering: Earthquake engineering
 * 14) Renewable Energy: Water turbine
 * 15) Tidal power: Aquamarine Power
 * 16) Wind turbine: Vestas, Sinovel, GE Wind Energy

Technology
Automaton, Cell chip, Communication, Digital signal processing, GIS, GPS, Liquid crystal display, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, microscope, nanotechnology, Organic light-emitting diode, Plasma display, radio control toys, rocket, surveillance, Synchronous optical networking, Telescope, Television, wind turbine
 * 1) Computer: Arduino, Collision detection, Computer game, internet, java, Java Community Process, jsp, PHP, SMIL, XHTMLplusSMIL
 * 2) Computer type: Enterprise Server, Mainframe Computer, Mini-Computer, Minisupercomputer, Laptop Computer,  Personal Digital Assistant - PDA, Supercomputer, Wearable computer, Workstation
 * 3) Personal computer: memory, display, hard drive, motherboard, processor, keyboard, mouse, CD drive, DVD drive, graphic card, sound card, casing, power, webcam, speaker, mic, headphone, ethernet card
 * 4) operating system: Comparison of operating systems, Kernel (computer science),
 * 5) open source: Asterisk PBX, Eclipse (computing), JFace, sipX, SWT, subversion, trac
 * 6) open source communities: BerliOS, java.net, SourceForge, Tigris.org
 * 7) Apache Software Foundation: Apache Ant, Apache Maven, Jakarta Project, Jakarta Struts
 * 8) Computer graphics: Blender (software)
 * 9) robot: ABB Group
 * 10) satellite: Sputnik 1
 * 11) Communication: 3G, Meraki, WRT54G
 * 12) cryptography: encryption, Enigma machine, steganography
 * 13) Renewable energy:
 * 14) Solar panel:
 * 15) Companies:
 * 16) China: Suntech Power, JA Solar, Yingli, Trina Solar
 * 17) US: First Solar, SunPower

Sports
Archery, Athletic, Bungee jumping, Dance, Fencing, Gliding, Judo, Parachuting, Shooting, Outdoor Activities

Mystery
Roswell UFO incident, Tunguska event

General knowledge
List of vegetables, List of fruits
 * 1) Wikipedia: Reference desk, Village pump, Extended_image_syntax, Picture tutorial, Category:Lists of Wikipedians, Category:WikiProjects, Category:Spoken articles
 * 2) Prospective Wiki (List): Consumerium, GreatestWiki , InfoAnarchy wiki , JnanaBase  , MusicWiki , Stockepedia , Wikilaw, Wikinfo , Wikitravel ; Professional Wiki: FIRSTwiki , Javapedia , OpenFacts , Wikicities

Proverbs & Quotations
I think proverbs & quotations are the same thing. Proverbs usually older and people forget their author so they were divide into countries. While quotations are new/fresh, people still know the author. So they were divide by the author's name.

suit me & I believe

 * prepare for the worst, hope for the best

mine

 * A beautiful day starts with delicious breakfast.
 * When choose friends of the same background you were tend to be separated, pick friends with same dreams you were tend to be united.
 * You can lie to some people for some times, but not to all the people and all the time.
 * God and evil are seeking the same glory, but with different ways. (glory: as much followers as possible)
 * The earlier you fell, the earlier you learn how to get up and stand with your own feet, and learn not to fell again. Unless you die on your first fell, but that's rarely happened, I guess.
 * God puts us in a terrible condition not to complain but to improve the terrible condition.

Problems

 * 1) How to transport $$\infty $$persons/objects between 2 points at 0 cost and 0 time.
 * 2) How to provide healthy, hygiene, satisfactory food & comfortable accomodation for $$\infty $$persons.
 * 3) How to provide first-class education and research & development center.
 * 4) How to eliminate hunger, disease, poverty, war, disaster, accident
 * 5) How to predict natural disaster
 * 6) How to create, build, maintain utopia or heaven on earth

pinpoint theory
An observation of one object by multiple objects to find out detail of observed object.

Architecture of life
''This might be a dream or a plan or a guidance or a science. And it is growing and always being revised. ''

Architecture of life is art and science of designing and planning on how to live a life, in purpose achieving a life to the fullest. That every person have their own definition of happy success life. Therefore, knowing the definition of happy life in their early age is essential, still they must perform their responsibility to society.

Creation of life by human
First the invention of electricity, then transistor, then computer, then AI, then robot, then cyborg, then self-replicating robot.

Simple Q&A
Reference desk: Computing, Science, Humanities, Entertainment

Useful links: Cheatsheet

2007

 * 1) Why water put in a container for a long time (a few weks maybe) could cause the container surface slippery? What really caused it? (ref desk - science, Mar 29)
 * 2) What's the average price to build a wind turbine? Let say a 2-3 MWatt wind turbine. (ref desk - science, Mar 30)

2008

 * 1) How rocket in vacuum works? (ref desk - science, Jan 17)
 * 2) Common Crusades route? (ref desk - humanities, Jan 19)
 * 3) Image search related question (ref desk - science, March 8)
 * 4) Linux disk management and webcam driver (ref desk - computer, April 17)
 * 5) What's the benefits and overheads of high-interest rate in a country? (ref desk - humanities, June 20)
 * 6) First human - according to Bible (ref desk - humanities, Nov 28)

2009

 * 1) Breathing in cold weather (ref desk - science, Jan 6)
 * 2) Communication software (ref desk - comp, Feb 17)
 * 3) Gossamer Albatross (ref desk - science, April 13)
 * 4) Question about magnet (ref desk - science, April 13)
 * 5) Ionic detox (ref desk - science, April 16)
 * 6) HIV transmission (ref desk - science, April 18)
 * 7) Electric field therapy (ref desk - science, April 19)
 * 8) Software for interior design (ref desk - comp, April 22)
 * 9) English grammar (ref desk - lang, May 19)
 * 10) Tree questions (ref desk - science, May 19)
 * 11) GPS on plane (ref desk - science, June 2)
 * 12) Rain after earthquake (ref desk - science, Oct 2)
 * 13) DNA (ref desk - science, Oct 6)
 * 14) GPS-based alarm (ref desk - science, Nov 27)

2010

 * 1) Seeing the past ( ref desk - science, Jun 20)

2011

 * 1) Bone decaying (ref desk - science, Feb 5)

Countries on Earth
As November 2004, there are 201 countries on earth according to List of sovereign states
 * 1) Australia: Australia is divided into six states and several territories. The states are New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia.  The two major territories are the Northern Territory (NT) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
 * 2) Belgium
 * 3) Canada: Canada is divided into ten provinces and three territories. The provinces have a large degree of autonomy from the federal government, while the territories have somewhat less.
 * 4) China
 * 5) France: France has 26 regions (French: région), which are further subdivided into 100 départements.
 * 6) Germany: Germany is divided into sixteen states (Länder, singular Land; commonly Bundesländer, singular Bundesland). It is further subdivided into 439 districts (Kreise) and cities (kreisfreie Städte) (2004).
 * 7) Iceland
 * 8) Indonesia
 * 9) Ireland
 * 10) Japan
 * 11) Malaysia: Malaysia is divided into fourteen political divisions: thirteen states (negeri) and three federal territories (wilayah persekutuan) that collectively has the status of a state.
 * 12) Netherlands
 * 13) Norway
 * 14) Portugal
 * 15) Slovenia
 * 16) Spain: Spain is divided into 17 autonomous communities (comunidades autónomas) and 2 autonomous cities (ciudades autónomas) - Ceuta and Melilla. These autonomous communities are subdivided into 50 provinces (provincias).
 * 17) Sweden
 * 18) Switzerland
 * 19) Taiwan
 * 20) United States
 * 21) United Kingdom

Earth

 * 1) Earth Area:
 * 2) *total: 510.073 million km²
 * 3) *land: 148.94 million km²
 * 4) *water: 361.132 million km²
 * 5) *note: 70.8% of the world's surface is covered by water, 29.2% is exposed land

China

 * 1) As 2012, on National Day Golden Week, 80.87 million people traveled by road each day. Trains carried 60.95 million passengers, airway travelers hit 7.61 million from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6. On 2nd, 186,000 people visited the Forbidden City. ref

Others

 * 1) Most viruses that have been studied have a diameter between 10 and 300 nanometres.
 * 2) As of July 2011, USA debt limit: $14.3 trillion and spending around $200bn more than it collects in revenue every month. Its cash balance is $73.7bn, as comparison Apple's is $76.4bn.
 * Colors

Dreams, Hopes, Wish List

 * peace on earth
 * travelling around the world

My Basic Needs

 * 1) God & love
 * 2) Safety
 * 3) Food & drink
 * 4) Health & sanitation
 * 5) Clean air & clean water
 * 6) Home
 * 7) Transportation & communication
 * 8) Clothes
 * 9) Education
 * 10) Comfort

Prettiest girl

 * Ito Misaki
 * Rena Tanaka
 * Chiling Lin
 * Kelly Chen
 * Keira Knightley
 * Tamara Bleszynski

id:User:Roscoe x ms:User:Roscoe x zh:User:Roscoe x

title: User:Roscoe x


text:
Lope de Vega

Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (25 November 1562 – 27 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist who was a key figure in the Spanish Golden Age (1492–1659) of Baroque literature. In the literature of Spain, Lope de Vega is second to Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes said that Lope de Vega was “The Phoenix of Wits” (Fénix de los ingenios) and “Monster of Nature” (Monstruo de naturaleza).

Lope de Vega renewed the literary life of Spanish theatre when it became mass culture, and with the playwrights Pedro Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina defined the characteristics of Spanish Baroque theatre with great insight into the human condition. The literary production of Lope de Vega includes 3,000 sonnets, three novels, four novellas, nine epic poems, and approximately 500 stageplays.

Personally and professionally, Lope de Vega was friend to the writer Francisco de Quevedo and arch-enemy of the dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. The volume of literary works produced by Lope de Vega earned him the envy of his contemporaries, such as Cervantes and Luis de Góngora, and the admiration of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe for such a vast and colourful oeuvre. Lope de Vega was also a close friend of Sebastian Francisco de Medrano, founder and president of the Poetic Academy of Madrid. He would attend Medrano's Academy from 1616 to 1626, and his relationship with Medrano is evident in his El Laurel de Apolo (1630) in silva VII.

Youth
Lope de Vega Carpio was born November 1562 in Madrid, in the Puerta de Guadalajara to a family of natives of the valley of Carriedo. His father, Félix de Vega, was an embroiderer. Little is known of his mother, Francisca Fernández Flores. He later took the distinguished surname of Carpio from his paternal grandmother, Catalina del Carpio.

After a brief stay in Valladolid, his father moved to Madrid in 1561, perhaps drawn by the possibilities of the new capital city. However, Lope de Vega would later affirm that his father arrived in Madrid through a love affair from which his future mother was to rescue him. Thus the writer became the fruit of this reconciliation and owed his existence to the same jealousies he would later analyze so much in his dramatic works.

The first indications of young Lope's genius became apparent in his earliest years. His friend and biographer Pérez de Montalbán stated that at the age of five he was already reading Spanish and Latin. While he was still unable to write, he would share his breakfast with the older boys in exchange for their help scribing his verses. By his tenth birthday, he was translating Latin verse. He wrote his first play when he was 12, allegedly El verdadero amante, as he would later affirm in his dedication of the work to his son Lope, although these statements are most probably exaggerations.

His great talent bore him to the school of poet and musician Vicente Espinel in Madrid, to whom he later always referred with veneration. In his fourteenth year he continued his studies in the Colegio Imperial, a Jesuit school in Madrid, from which he absconded to take part in a military expedition in Portugal. Following that escapade, he had the good fortune of being taken into the protection of the Bishop of Ávila, who recognized the lad's talent and saw him enrolled in the University of Alcalá. Following graduation, Lope had planned to follow in his patron's footsteps and join the priesthood, but those plans were dashed by falling in love and realizing that celibacy was not for him. Thus he failed to attain a bachelor's degree and made what living he could as a secretary to aristocrats or by writing plays.

In 1583 Lope enlisted in the Spanish Navy and saw action at the Battle of Ponta Delgada in the Azores, under the command of his future friend Álvaro de Bazán, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz, to whose son he would later dedicate a play.

Following this, he returned to Madrid and began his career as a playwright in earnest. He also began a love affair with Elena Osorio (the "Filis" of his poems), who was separated from her husband, actor Cristóbal Calderón, and was the daughter of a leading theater director. When, after some five years of this torrid affair, Elena spurned Lope in favor of another suitor, his vitriolic attacks on her and her family landed him in jail for libel and, ultimately, earned him the punishment of eight years' banishment from the court and two years' exile from Castile.

Exile
After libelling members of his family in his writing, Lope de Vega undauntedly went into exile. He took with him 16-year-old Isabel de Alderete y Urbina, known in his poems by the anagram "Belisa," the daughter of Philip II's court painter, Diego de Urbina. The two married under pressure from her family on 10 May 1588.

Just a few weeks later, on 29 May, Lope signed up for another tour of duty with the Spanish Navy: this was the summer of 1588, and the Armada was about to sail against England. It is likely that his military enlistment was the condition required by Isabel's family, eager to be rid of such an ill presentable son-in-law, to forgive him for carrying her away.

Lope's luck again served him well, however, and his ship, the San Juan, was one of the vessels to make it home to Spanish harbors in the aftermath of that failed expedition. Back in Spain by December 1588, he settled in the city of Valencia. There he lived with Isabel de Urbina and continued perfecting his dramatic formula participating regularly in the tertulia known as the Academia de los nocturnos, in the company of such accomplished dramatists as the canon Francisco Agustín Tárrega, the secretary to the Duke of Gandía Gaspar de Aguilar, Guillén de Castro, Carlos Boyl, and Ricardo de Turia. With them he refined his approach to theatrical writing by violating the unity of action and weaving two plots together in a single play, a technique known as imbroglio.

In 1590, at the end of his two years' exile from the realm, he moved to Toledo to serve Francisco de Ribera Barroso, who later became the 2nd Marquis of Malpica, and, some time later, Antonio Álvarez de Toledo, 5th Duke of Alba. In this later appointment he became gentleman of the bedchamber to the ducal court of the House of Alba, where he lived from 1592 to 1595. Here he read the work of Juan del Encina, from whom he improved the character of the donaire, perfecting still further his dramatic formula. In the fall of 1594, Isabel de Urbina died of postpartum complications. It was around this time that Lope wrote his pastoral novel La Arcadia, which included many poems and was based on the Duke's household in Alba de Tormes.

Return to Castile
In 1595, following Isabel's death in childbirth, he left the Duke's service and – eight years having passed – returned to Madrid. There were other love affairs and other scandals: Antonia Trillo de Armenta, who earned him another lawsuit, and Micaela de Luján, an illiterate but beautiful actress, who inspired a rich series of sonnets, rewarded him with four children and was his lover until around 1608. In 1598, he married Juana de Guardo, the daughter of a wealthy butcher. Nevertheless, his trysts with others – including Micaela – continued.

In the 17th century Lope's literary output reached its peak. From 1607 he was also employed as a secretary, but not without various additional duties, by the Duke of Sessa. Once that decade was over, however, his personal situation took a turn for the worse. His favorite son, Carlos Félix (by Juana), died and, in 1612, Juana herself died in childbirth. After the heartbreaking loss of his son and wife, Lope summoned his remaining children still alive under the same roof to devote himself to Christianity. His writing in the early 1610s also assumed heavier religious influences and, in 1614, he joined the priesthood. The taking of holy orders did not, however, impede his romantic dalliances; what is more, he supplied his employer the duke with various female companions. The most notable and lasting of Lope's relationships was with Marta de Nevares, who met him in 1616 and would remain with him until her death in 1632. Further tragedies followed in 1635 with the loss of Lope, his son by Micaela and a worthy poet in his own right, in a shipwreck off the coast of Venezuela, and the abduction and subsequent abandonment of his beloved youngest daughter Antonia. Lope de Vega took to his bed and died of scarlet fever, in Madrid, on 27 August of that year. He was buried in St Sebastian's Church, Madrid.

Priesthood
The period of life that characterizes priestly ordination of Lope de Vega was one of profound existential crisis, perhaps impelled by the death of close relatives. To this inspiration respond his Sacred Rhymes and the numerous devout works he began to compose, as well as the meditative and philosophical tone that appears in his last verses. On the night of 19 December 1611 the writer was the victim of an assassination attempt from which he could barely escape. Juana de Guardo suffered frequent illnesses and in 1612 Carlos Félix died of fevers. On 13 August the following year Juana de Guardo died while giving birth to Feliciana. So many misfortunes affected Lope emotionally, and on 24 May 1614 he finally decided to be ordained a priest.

The literary expression of this crisis and its repentances are the Sacred Rhymes, published in 1614; there it says: "If the body wants to be earth on earth / the soul wants to be heaven in heaven", unredeemed dualism that constitutes all its essence. The Sacred Rhymes constitute a book at the same time introspective in the sonnets (he uses the technique of the spiritual exercises that he learned in his studies with the Jesuits) as devotee for the poems dedicated to diverse saints or inspired in the sacred iconography, then in full deployment thanks to the recommendations emanated from the Council of Trent.

In 1627 he was admitted as a knight of the Order of Malta. This was an enormous honour for him since he had always taken an interest in orders of chivalry. In 1603 he had published the play El valor de Malta (The Valour of Malta) about the maritime battles of the Order. In his portrait by Eugenio Caxés he wears the habit of the Order of Malta.

Work
Lope's non-dramatic works were collected and published in Spain in the eighteenth century under the title Obras Sueltas (Madrid, 21 vols., 1776–79). The more important elements of this collection include the following: Lope de Vega was one of the greatest Spanish poets of his time, along with Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo. His poems of Moorish and pastoral themes were extremely popular in the 1580s and 1590s, and in these, he portrayed elements of his own love affairs (appearing as a moor called Zaide or a shepherd called Belardo). In 1602 he published two hundred sonnets in the collection La Hermosura de Angélica and in 1604 he republished them with new material in Rimas. In 1614, his religious sonnets appeared in a book entitled Rimas sacras, which was another bestseller. In 1634, in a third book with similar title, Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos, which has been considered his poetic masterpiece and the most modern book of 17th-century poetry, Lope created a heteronym, he concludes the identity of Tome de Burguillos, who has a deep and intimate romantic connection with a maid named Juana. This is a direct comparison and clash with Lope's skeptical outlook on society.
 * La Arcadia (1598), a pastoral romance;
 * La Dragontea (1598), an epic poem of Sir Francis Drake's last expedition and death;
 * El Isidro (1599), a poetic narrative of the life of Saint Isidore, future patron saint of Madrid, composed in octosyllabic quintillas;
 * La Hermosura de Angélica (1602), an epic poem in three books, is a quasi sequel to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

Background
Lope was the playwright who established in Spanish drama the three-act comedia as the definitive form, ignoring the precepts of the prevailing school of his contemporaries. In Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609), which was his artistic manifesto and the justification of his style which broke the neoclassical three unities of place, time and action, he showed that he knew the established rules of poetry but refused to follow them on the grounds that the "vulgar" Spaniard cared nothing about them: "Let us then speak to him in the language of fools, since it is he who pays us" are famous lines from his manifesto.

Lope boasted that he was a Spaniard pur sang (pure-blooded), maintaining that a writer's business is to write so as to make himself understood, and took the position of a defender of the language of ordinary life.

Lope's literary influence was chiefly Latin-Italian and, while he defended the tradition of the nation and the simplicity of the old Castilian, he emphasized his university education and the difference between those educated in the classics and the layman.

The majority of his works were written in haste and to order. Lope confessed that "more than a hundred of my comedies have taken only twenty-four hours to pass from the Muses to the boards of the theatre." His biographer Pérez de Montalbán tells how in Toledo, Lope composed fifteen acts in as many days – five comedies in two weeks.

In spite of some discrepancies in the figures, Lope's own records indicate that by 1604 he had composed 230 three-act plays (comedias). The figure had risen to 483 by 1609, to 800 by 1618, to 1000 by 1620, and to 1500 by 1632. Montalbán, in his Fama Póstuma (1636) set down the total of Lope's dramatic productions at 1800 comedias and more than 400 shorter sacramental plays. Of these, 637 plays are known by their titles, but only about 450 are extant. Many of these pieces were printed during Lope's lifetime, mostly by the playwright himself in the shape of twelve-play volumes, but also by booksellers who surreptitiously bought manuscripts from the actors who performed them.

Themes and sources
The classification of this large mass of dramatic literature is a task of great difficulty. The terms traditionally employed – comedy, tragedy, and the like – are difficult to apply to Lope's oeuvre and another approach to categorization has been suggested. Lope's work essentially belongs to the drama of intrigue, the plot determining everything else. Lope used history, especially Spanish history, as his main source of subject matter. There were few national and patriotic subjects, from the reign of King Pelayo to the history of his own age, he did not put upon the stage. Nevertheless, Lope's most celebrated plays belong to the class called capa y espada ("cloak and dagger"), where the plots are chiefly love intrigues along with affairs of honor, most commonly involving the petty nobility of medieval Spain.

Among the best known works of this class are El perro del hortelano (The Dog in the Manger), El castigo sin venganza (Punishment without Revenge), and El maestro de danzar (The Dance Teacher).

In some of these, Lope strives to set forth some moral maxim and to illustrate its abuse with a living example. On the theme that poverty is no crime, in the play Las Flores de Don Juan, he uses the history of two brothers to illustrate the triumph of virtuous poverty over opulent vice, while indirectly attacking the institution of primogeniture, which often places in the hands of an unworthy person the honor and substance of a family when younger members would be  better qualified for the trust. However, such morality pieces are rare in Lope's repertory; generally, his aim is to amuse and stir with his focus being on the plot, not concerning himself with instruction.

In El villano en su rincón, described as a romantic comedy, Francis I of France ends up spending the night in a woodcutter's hut, after becoming lost during a hunt, resulting in a confrontation between peasant-philosopher and king. The peasant's refusal to even look upon the king's magnificence, grand and dramatic compared with the humble rincón, is rebuked by a gentleman of the king's court: "a king of such might/that the Scythian and fierce Turk/tremble before his golden fleurs de lis!"

Legacy
Lope encountered a poorly organized dramatic tradition; plays were sometimes composed in four acts, sometimes in three, and though they were written in verse, the structure of the versification was left to the individual writer. Because the Spanish public liked it, he adopted the style of drama which was then in vogue. He enlarged its narrow framework to a great degree, introducing a wide range of material for dramatic situations – the Bible, ancient mythology, the lives of the saints, ancient history, Spanish history, the legends of the Middle Ages, the writings of the Italian novelists, current events, and everyday Spanish life in the 17th century. Prior to Lope, playwrights sketched the conditions of persons and their characters superficially. With fuller observation and more careful description, Lope de Vega depicted real character types with language and accouterments appropriate to their position in society. The old comedy was awkward and poor in its versification. Lope introduced order into all the forms of national poetry, from the old romance couplets to the lyrical combinations borrowed from Italy. He wrote that those who should come after him had only to go on along the path which he had opened.

Lope de Vega encountered other poets who were unimpressed with his discoveries and attempted to defame his writing. The Spanish poet Pedro de Torres Rámila wrote his thoughts on Lope in his Latin satire Spongia (Paris, 1617). Torres wrote personal attacks on Lope's sacramental plays and sought to scandalize his name and reputation. This attempt backfired on Torres due to the overwhelmingly negative responses his Spongia received from the public after its release. Scholars and poets alike came to the defense of Lope de Vega and wrote many counterclaims against the Spongia directed at Torres himself, like Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca's Exposulatio Spongiae.

Plays
Listed here are some of the better-known of de Vega's plays:

 * El maestro de danzar (1594) (The Dancing Master)
 * Los locos de Valencia (Madness in Valencia)
 * El acero de Madrid (The Steel of Madrid)
 * El perro del Hortelano (The Gardener's Dog, a variation of The Dog in the Manger fable)
 * La viuda valenciana (The Widow from Valencia)
 * Peribáñez y el comendador de Ocaña
 * Fuenteovejuna
 * El anzuelo de Fenisa (Fenisa's Hook)
 * El cordobés valeroso Pedro Carbonero
 * Mujeres y criados (Women and Servants)
 * El mejor alcalde, el Rey (The Best Mayor, The King)
 * El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus)
 * El caballero de Olmedo (The Knight from Olmedo)
 * La dama boba (The Stupid Lady; The Lady-Fool)
 * El amor enamorado
 * El castigo sin venganza (Punishment Without Revenge)
 * Las bizarrías de Belisa
 * El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi (The Duchess of Amalfi's Steward)
 * Lo Fingido Verdadero (What you Pretend Has Become Real)
 * El niño inocente de La Guardia (The Innocent Child of La Guardia)
 * La fe rompida
 * El Honrado Hermano (The Honourable Brother, based in the Classic story of the Horatii and Curiatii)

In January 2023, an anonymous work in the collection of the National Library of Spain, La francesa Laura (The Frenchwoman Laura), was identified with the help of artificial intelligence as another comedy by Lope de Vega. The comedy was classified as a late work of Lope de Vega and dated from 1628 to 1630, as its flattering treatment of France could be attributed to the momentary good relationship between Spain and France during the Thirty Years' War, having England as a common enemy. Later investigations by literary historians confirmed the findings of artificial intelligence.

Opera

 * La selva sin amor (18 December 1627) (The Lovelorn Forest), the first Spanish opera, with music by Alessandro Piccinini.

Epic poems and lyrical poetry

 * La Dragontea (1598) ("Drake the Pirate")
 * El Isidro (1599) ("Isidro")
 * La hermosura de Angélica (1602) ("The Beauty of Angelica")
 * Rimas (1602) ("Rhymes")
 * Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609)
 * Jerusalén conquistada (1609)
 * Rimas sacras (1614)
 * La Filomena (1621)
 * La Circe (1624)
 * El laurel de Apolo (1630)
 * La Gatomaquia (1634)
 * Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos (1634)

Prose fiction

 * Arcadia (published 1598) (The Arcadia), pastoral romance in prose, interspersed with verse
 * El peregrino en su patria (published 1604) (The Pilgrim in his Own Country), adaption of Byzantine novels
 * Pastores de Belen : prosas y versos divinos (published 1614)
 * Novelas a Marcia Leonarda
 * Las fortunas de Diana (published 1621)
 * La desdicha por la honra (published 1624)
 * La más prudente venganza (published 1624)
 * Guzmán el Bravo (published 1624)
 * La Dorotea (published 1632)

In popular culture
In Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel Ruled Britannia, in which the Spanish Armada was successful, Vega is depicted as a Spanish soldier-playwright on occupation duty in defeated England, who interacts with William Shakespeare. The novel's viewpoint narration alternates between the two playwrights.

A 2010 Spanish-language film about de Vega, entitled Lope, is available with English subtitles as The Outlaw.

Vega is played by actor Víctor Clavijo in the Spanish TV series El Ministerio del Tiempo. In his first appearance he played Vega in 1588, on the eve of the Spanish Armada, while the second episode depicted Vega in 1604.

Tribute
A municipality in Northern Samar in the Philippines was named after de Vega, created in 1980 from the 22 barangays of Catarmán.

A street in the Santa Cruz district of the City of Manila, Philippines is also named after the playwright.

On 25 November 2017 Google celebrated his 455th birthday with a Google Doodle.

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

title: Lope de Vega


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David's Psalter

David's Psalter (original Polish title: Psalterz Dawidow) is a poetic translation into Polish of the Book of Psalms, by Jan Kochanowski, the most prominent poet of the Polish Renaissance. It was printed in 1579 in Kraków, at the Lazarus printing house.

Kochanowski, like contemporaries in Western Europe, used a Latin translation of the Book of Psalms as the basis for his translation. Well versed in the ancient classics, he combined the original's biblical spirit with the literary achievements of Greek and Latin authors.

Kochanowski's David's Psalter won recognition from both Protestants and Catholics in Poland, and also resonated abroad, notably in the work of Moldavian Metropolitan Dosoftei. Some of Kochanowski's renderings of the Psalms are still used in Polish Catholic masses.

By the mid-18th century alone, it had gone through at least 25 editions and, set to music, became an enduring element of Polish church masses and folklore. It also became one of his more influential works on the international scene, translated into Russian by Symeon of Polotsk and into, among other languages, Romanian, German, Lithuanian, Czech, and Slovak.

Norman Davies wrote that "Kochanowski's Psalter did for Polish what Luther's Bible did for German".

David's Psalter was Kochanowski's first published collection of poems (in 1579).

title: David's Psalter


text:
Talk:Soviet ballroom dances

From the editable body of the article:

 * OK. No fun. How about the following replacement:
 * <>

 * It can be easily proved that there was an open political agenda indeed. It may be found in Russian popular dance books of these times. And the disputed statement is perfecly neutral: in the Soviet Union the notion of "political correctess" was exactly opposite to what it means e.g., in the USA today.
 * What is more, I remember a series of TV programs whose purpose was to present "new" ballroom dances based on folk dances of various nations of the USSR.
 * Mikkalai 07:18, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Работает радио: - В эфире программа “Полуночник”, и сейчас время нашей традиционной рубрики “Учитель танцев”. Мы продолжаем разучивать танец “вару-вару”. Сегодня мы проработаем движение номер шестнадцать, основой которого является кружение на подскоках вправо и влево. Напоминаем вам, дорогие полуночники, что творческий поиск оригинальных движений и фигур должен непременно идти в русле общего характера данного танца. Итак... На счет “и” - легко подскочить на правой ноге, поворачиваясь вправо на 180 градусов. На счет “раз” - поставить левую ногу на каблук влево по диагонали, корпус слегка повернуть влево... На счет “два” легко подскочить на левой ноге, поворачиваясь влево на 180 градусов. Опуская руки, слегка хлопнуть себя по бедрам и коленям.

Внимание, музыка, начали! И... From Ощущение бороды (also in ) by Ксения Драгунская. `'mikka 18:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

title: Talk:Soviet ballroom dances


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Great knot

The great knot (Calidris tenuirostris) is a small wader. It is the largest species of the genus Calidris. They are a migratory bird which breeds in Siberia, Russia, and flies to southern Asia and Australia in the northern winter.

Etymology
The genus name is from Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris, a term used by Aristotle for some grey-coloured waterside birds. The specific  tenuirostris  is from Latin tenuis "slender" and rostrum "bill".

Distribution
Their breeding habitat is tundra in northeast Siberia, Russia. They nest on the ground laying about four eggs in a ground scrape. They are strongly migratory wintering on coasts in southern Asia through to Australia. This species forms enormous flocks in winter.

The species is also recorded in low numbers in western Alaska, United States, most years, and has occurred as a vagrant in British Columbia, Canada, and in Oregon, West Virginia, and Maine, in the U.S.

Taxonomy and description
Calidris tenuirostris, commonly known as the great knot, is the largest species of the genus Calidris (sandpiper), in the family Scolopacidae. Its sister species, the red knot, is the next largest. Adult great knots can measure 26 to 30 cm, with a wingspan of 56 to 66 cm, and weighing 115 to 261 g.

This species has short dark legs and a medium-length thin dark bill. Breeding adults have mottled greyish upper parts with some rufous feathering. The face, throat and breast are heavily spotted black, and there are also some streaks on the rear belly. In winter the plumage becomes uniformly pale grey above.

It is distinguished from the red knot by its breeding plumage, in which the latter has a distinctive red face, throat and breast. In other plumages, the great knot can be identified by its larger size, longer bill, deeper chest, and the more streaked upper parts.

Behaviour
These birds forage on mudflats and beaches, probing or picking up food by sight. They mainly eat molluscs and insects.

Conservation status
The great knot is one of the species to which the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) applies.

Australia
Since 5 May 2016 and, the great knot is listed as critically endangered in Australia under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act), with the next assessment due on 30 October 2023. A study published in Biological Conservation in March 2023 listed 23 species which the authors considered to no longer meet the criteria as threatened species under the EPBC Act, including the great knot. The reason for the assessment was "Populations now stable or declining at a rate less than threshold".

Under state and territory legislation, the species is listed as vulnerable in New South Wales and the Northern Territory; endangered in South Australia; and critically endangered in Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia.

title: Great knot


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Calidris

Calidris is a genus of Arctic-breeding, strongly migratory wading birds in the family Scolopacidae. These birds form huge mixed flocks on coasts and estuaries in winter. Migratory shorebirds are shown to have decline in reproductive traits because of temporal changes of their breeding seasons. They are the typical "sandpipers", small to medium-sized, long-winged and relatively short-billed.

Their bills have sensitive tips which contain numerous corpuscles of Herbst. This enables the birds to locate buried prey items, which they typically seek with restless running and probing.

Taxonomy
The genus Calidris was introduced in 1804 by the German naturalist Blasius Merrem with the red knot as the type species. The genus name is from Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris, a term used by Aristotle for some grey-coloured waterside birds.

The genus contain 24 species:

 * Great knot, Calidris tenuirostris
 * Red knot, Calidris canutus
 * Surfbird, Calidris virgata
 * Ruff, Calidris pugnax
 * Broad-billed sandpiper, Calidris falcinellus
 * Sharp-tailed sandpiper, Calidris acuminata
 * Stilt sandpiper, Calidris himantopus
 * Curlew sandpiper, Calidris ferruginea
 * Temminck's stint, Calidris temminckii
 * Long-toed stint, Calidris subminuta
 * Spoon-billed sandpiper, Calidris pygmaea
 * Red-necked stint, Calidris ruficollis
 * Sanderling, Calidris alba
 * Dunlin, Calidris alpina
 * Rock sandpiper, Calidris ptilocnemis
 * Purple sandpiper, Calidris maritima
 * Baird's sandpiper, Calidris bairdii
 * Little stint, Calidris minuta
 * Least sandpiper, Calidris minutilla
 * White-rumped sandpiper, Calidris fuscicollis
 * Buff-breasted sandpiper, Calidris subruficollis
 * Pectoral sandpiper, Calidris melanotos
 * Semipalmated sandpiper, Calidris pusilla
 * Western sandpiper, Calidris mauri

title: Calidris


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Pomelo

The pomelo ( Citrus maxima), from the family Rutaceae, is the largest citrus fruit, and the principal ancestor of the grapefruit. It is a natural, non-hybrid, citrus fruit, native to Southeast Asia. Similar in taste to a sweet grapefruit, the pomelo is commonly consumed and used for festive occasions throughout Southeast Asia and East Asia. As with the grapefruit, phytochemicals in the pomelo have the potential for drug interactions.

Description
The pomelo tree may be 16 – tall, possibly with a crooked trunk 4 – thick, and low-hanging, irregular branches. Their leaf petioles are distinctly winged, with alternate, ovate or elliptic shapes 2 – long, with a leathery, dull green upper layer, and hairy under-leaf. The flowers — single or in clusters — are fragrant and yellow-white in color.

The fruit is large, 15 – in diameter, usually weighing 1 - 2 kg. It has a thicker rind than a grapefruit, and is divided into 11 to 18 segments. The flesh tastes like mild grapefruit, with a little of its common bitterness (the grapefruit is a hybrid of the pomelo and the orange). The enveloping membranes around the segments are chewy and bitter, considered inedible, and usually discarded. There are at least sixty varieties. The fruit generally contains a few, relatively large seeds, but some varieties have numerous seeds.

Etymology
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the etymology of the word "pomelo" is uncertain. It may be derived from Dutch pompelmoes. Its botanical name, Citrus maxima, means "the biggest citrus". In English, the word "pomelo" (also spelt pummelo, pumelo, pomello, pommelo) has become the more common name, although "pomelo" has historically been used for grapefruit.

After introduction into Barbados by 'Captain Shaddock' of the East India Company (apparently Philip Chaddock, who visited the island in the late 1640s ), the fruit was called shaddock in English. From there the name spread to Jamaica in 1696. The fruit is also known as jambola in varieties of English spoken in South Asia.

Nutrition
Raw pomelo flesh is 89% water, 10% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat (table). A 100 gram reference amount provides 159 kJ of food energy, and is rich in vitamin C (73% of the Daily Value), with no other micronutrients in significant content (table).

Prescription drugs
Pomelo, while not itself toxic, may cause adverse interactions with some prescription drugs similar to those caused by grapefruit and some other citrus fruits, through the inhibition of cytochrome P450-mediated metabolism of prescription drugs including anti-hypertensives and anticoagulants.

Non-hybrid pomelos

 * Dangyuja

Possible non-hybrid pomelos

 * Banpeiyu

Hybrids
The pomelo is one of the original citrus species from which cultivated citrus fruits have been hybridized, others being citron, mandarin, and to a lesser extent, papedas and kumquat. In particular, the common orange is presumed to be a naturally occurring hybrid between the pomelo and the mandarin, with the pomelo as larger and firmer of the two. The grapefruit was originally also presumed to be a naturally occurring hybrid of the pomelo and the mandarin; however, genome analysis conducted more than two centuries after this presumption was made shows that it is actually a backcrossed hybrid between a pomelo and a sweet orange which is why 63% of the grapefruit's genome comes from the pomelo.

The pomelo is employed today in artificial breeding programs:
 * The common sweet orange (Citrus × sinensis) is a pomelo × mandarin hybrid
 * The bitter orange (Citrus × aurantium) is another pomelo × mandarin hybrid
 * The tangelo is a hybrid between pomelo or grapefruit and any tangerine; it generally has a thicker skin than a tangerine and is less sweet
 * 'K–Early' ('Sunrise Tangelo')
 * 'Minneola tangelo': Bowen grapefruit × Dancy tangerine
 * 'Orlando' (formerly 'Take'): Bowen grapefruit × Dancy tangerine (pollen parent)
 * 'Seminole': Bowen grapefruit × Dancy tangerine
 * 'Thornton': tangerine × grapefruit, unspecified
 * 'Ugli fruit' (Jamaican tangelo): mandarin × grapefruit, probable (wild seedling)
 * Grapefruit is a pomelo backcross: pomelo × sweet orange (see above)
 * Forbidden fruit: another Caribbean pomelo/sweet orange cross
 * 'Nova': Clementine × Orlando tangelo cross
 * The Oroblanco and Melogold grapefruits are hybrids between Citrus maxima and the grapefruit
 * Mandelos: pomelo × mandarin
 * Mato buntan: a variety in Taiwan
 * Hyuganatsu is a pomelo hybrid
 * Kawachi Bankan: ujukitsu x unidentified
 * Shishi-yuzu, also called Oni-yuzu: Citrus x pseudogulgul is a pomelo hybrid. It is not a variety of yuzu, despite the name.

Culinary
The flesh and juice can be consumed, and the rind is used to make preserves, or may be candied. In Brazil, the thick skin may be used for making a sweet conserve, while the spongy pith of the rind is discarded. In Sri Lanka, it is often eaten as a dessert, sometimes sprinkled with sugar. In large parts of Southeast Asia where pomelo is native it is commonly eaten as a dessert, often sprinkled with salt or dipped in a salt mixture, but it may be made into salads. In the Philippines, a pink beverage is made from pomelo and pineapple juice.

The fruit may have been introduced to China around 100 BCE. In East Asia, especially in Cantonese cuisine, braised pomelo pith is used to make dishes that are high in fibre and low in fat.

Propagation
The seeds of the pomelo are monoembryonic, producing seedlings with genes from both parents, but they are usually similar to the tree they grow from and therefore pomelo are typically grown from seeds in Asia. Seeds can be stored for 80 days at a temperature of 41 F with moderate relative humidity. Citrus maxima is usually grafted onto other citrus rootstocks outside Asia to produce trees that are identical to the parent; high-quality varieties are propagated by air-layering or by budding onto favored rootstocks.

The physical and chemical characteristics of pomelo vary widely across South Asia.

title: Pomelo


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Simeon Gannett Reed

Simeon Gannett Reed (April 23, 1830 – November 7, 1895) was an American businessman and entrepreneur in Oregon. A native of Massachusetts, he made a fortune primarily in the transportation sector in association with William S. Ladd. Reedville, Oregon, and Reed College in Portland, Oregon are named after Reed.

Early life
Simeon Gannett Reed was born on April 23, 1830, in East Abington, Massachusetts. He was born into a wealthy family and received his education at a private academy, graduating when he was 13 years old. After working and training as an apprentice in several vocations, he married Amanda Woods at the age of 20, with the couple not having any children. Woods was 18 at the time and a distant cousin of John Quincy Adams.

When he was 22, he collected supplies to sell in California and sailed there, setting up a store in a tent in Sacramento, while Amanda remained back east. Reed sold his goods and grain to the gold miners, but decided to relocate to what was then the Oregon Territory after a few trips there to purchase supplies.

Oregon
Late in 1852, Reed started a mercantile in Rainier, Oregon, along the Columbia River downstream from Portland. After a short time, he relocated to Portland and became friends with William S. Ladd, a local merchant. In 1854, Amanda sailed to San Francisco to reunite with Reed, and accompanied Caroline Ames Elliott, Ladd's sweetheart who he married in San Francisco. In 1855, Reed became a clerk for Ladd, and in 1859 he became a partner in the company, which was then known as Ladd, Reed, & Co.

In May 1860, Reed, Jacob Kamm, and John C. Ainsworth founded the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, a conglomerate of several river shipping companies plying the Columbia and Willamette rivers. Reed held 128 shares in the company, which even during the economic depression of 1873 produced $300,000 in dividends. Reed was also vice president of the firm. He built a mansion at First and Harrison streets in 1868, where the other wealthy residents were also constructing large homes.

In April 1880, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company merged with the companies of Henry Villard and Ben Holladay to form the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. This created a single transportation conglomerate encompassing river shipping, stagecoach, and railroad ventures. Reed focused his energy now on meeting the demand for steel he anticipated due to Villard's Northern Pacific railroad. But Reed's Oregon Iron and Steel Company at Oswego suffered a lack of investment and never started production of the steel rails Reed expected; Reed lost half a million dollars in the venture.

Reed and Ladd also operated a hobby farm of more than 8000 acres, on which they raised livestock and held harness races, in the area where Reedville, Oregon now stands, with Reed as namesake.

Death and legacy
On November 7, 1895, Simeon Reed died while in California at his retirement home, "Carmelita", in Pasadena. His estate, worth millions of dollars, was left to Amanda, with instructions to use it to assist in the cultural and intellectual development of Portland. Amanda died in 1904 without much progress towards Simeon's instructions.

In 1908, Amanda's estate established Reed College in Portland. William M. Ladd (son of Reed's former partner William S. Ladd) provided the lands on which the college stands today, and almost all of Reed's estate was passed on to the college, Reed having left no heirs. Simeon and Amanda Reed are buried near the family plot of Jacob Kamm in Portland's River View Cemetery.

Reed Street, in Northwest Portland, is named for him.

title: Simeon Gannett Reed


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Island fox

The island fox (Urocyon littoralis) is a small fox species that is endemic to six of the eight Channel Islands of California. There are six subspecies, each unique to the island it lives on, reflecting its evolutionary history. They are generally docile, show little fear of humans, and are easily tamed. Island foxes played an important role in the spiritual lives of native Channel Islanders. They have been likely semi-domesticated as pets, used as pelts, or for other functions, like pest control.

Taxonomy and evolution
Genetic and archaeological evidence indicates that the species descends from a population of the mainland gray fox (U. cinereoargenteus) that arrived on the islands around 7,300 years ago, possibly due to having been introduced to the islands by humans. Humans are almost certainly responsible for their presence on the southern islands. The species is around 25% smaller than its mainland ancestor, an example of insular dwarfism.

Because the island fox is geographically isolated, it has not acquired immunity to parasites and diseases brought in from the mainland and is especially vulnerable to those that the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) may carry. In addition, predation by the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) and human activities devastated fox numbers on several of the Channel Islands in the 1990s. Four island fox subspecies were federally protected as an endangered species in 2004, and efforts to rebuild fox populations and restore the ecosystems of the Channel Islands are being undertaken. Radio collars are being attached to foxes in an effort to track and locate the young foxes. To date these efforts have been largely successful.

There are six subspecies of the island fox, each of which is native to a specific Channel Island, and which evolved there independently of the others. The subspecies are:
 * U. l. littoralis (the nominate subspecies) of San Miguel Island,
 * U. l. dickeyi of San Nicolas Island,
 * U. l. catalinae of Santa Catalina Island,
 * U. l. clementae of San Clemente Island,
 * U. l. santacruzae of Santa Cruz Island, and
 * U. l. santarosae of Santa Rosa Island.

Foxes from each island are capable of interbreeding, but have genetic and phenotypic distinctions that make them unique; for example, each subspecies has differing numbers of tail vertebrae. The fox did not persist on Anacapa Island because it has no reliable source of fresh water; Santa Barbara Island is too small to support the food needs of a viable fox population.

Other names for the island fox include coast fox, short-tailed fox, island gray fox, Channel Islands fox, Channel Islands gray fox, California Channel Islands fox and insular gray fox.

Description
The island fox is significantly smaller than the related gray fox, and is the smallest fox in North America, averaging slightly smaller than the swift (Vulpes velox) and kit foxes (Vulpes macrotis). Typically, the head-and-body length is 48 –, shoulder height 12 –, and the tail is 11 – long, which is notably shorter than the 27 – tail of the gray fox. This is due to the fact that the island fox generally has two fewer tail vertebrae than the gray fox. The island fox weighs between 1 and 2.8 kg. The species exhibits sexual dimorphism: the male is always larger than the female. The largest of the subspecies occurs on Santa Catalina Island and the smallest on Santa Cruz Island.

The island fox has gray fur on its head, a ruddy red coloring on its sides, white fur on its belly, throat and the lower half of its face, and a black stripe on the dorsal surface of its tail. In general the coat is darker and duller hued than that of the gray fox. The island fox molts once a year between August and November. Before the first molt pups are woolly and have a generally darker coat than adult foxes. A brown phase, with the grey and black fur of the body replaced by a sandy brown and a deeper brown, may occur in the San Clemente Island and San Nicolas Island populations. It is unclear if this is a true color phase, a change that occurs with age, or possibly a change that occurs because of interactions with Opuntia cactus spines that become embedded in the pelt.

Reproduction
The island fox typically forms monogamous breeding pairs, which are frequently seen together beginning in January and through the breeding season, from late February to early March. The gestation period is 50–63 days. The female island fox gives birth in a den, a typical litter having one to five pups, with an average of two or three. Pups are born in the spring and emerge from the den in early summer; the mother lactates for 7–9 weeks. Sexual maturity is reached at 10 months, and the females usually breed within the first year. Island foxes live for 4–6 years in the wild and for up to 8 years in captivity.

Genomic analysis
Island foxes have existed in small populations with low diversity for many generations. Morphological analysis indicate an absence of inbreeding depression. Apparently, the explanation for the absence of inbreeding depression is that, over the long-term, the small population size of island foxes facilitated a reduced burden of strongly deleterious recessive mutations through genetic purging by natural selection. Purging of deleterious recessive mutations occurs when their detrimental effect is expressed in homozygous individuals.

Ecology and behavior
Its preferred habitat is complex layer vegetation with a high density of woody, perennially fruiting shrubs. The fox lives in all of the island biomes including temperate forest, temperate grassland and chaparral, with no island supporting more than 1,000 foxes. The island fox eats fruits, insects, birds, eggs, land snails, crabs, lizards, amphibians, and small mammals, including deer mice (Peromyscus sp.), as well as human refuse. In addition, they are known to scavenge for food on beaches along the coastline. The fox tends to move around by itself, rather than in packs. It is generally nocturnal, although with peaks of activity at dawn and dusk. Activity also fluctuates with the season: It is more active during the day in summer than it is in winter.

The island fox is not intimidated by humans, although at first it may show aggression. It is quite easy to tame and is generally docile. The island fox communicates using auditory, olfactory and visual signals. A dominant fox uses vocalizations, staring, and ear flattening to cause another fox to submit. Signs of dominance and submission are visual, such as facial expression and body posture. Its main vocalizations are barking and growling. The island fox marks territory with urine and feces.

Relationship with humans
The indigenous people of the Channel Islands kept island foxes as pets and used their pelts for a variety of purposes, including ceremonial headdresses. Archaeological investigations have found island foxes (often juveniles) deliberately buried, sometimes in association with human remains. These foxes are suggested to have been ritually sacrificed. The foxes play a significant role in Chumash legend.

Conservation status and federal protection
In March 2004, four subspecies of the island fox were classified as a federally protected endangered species: the Santa Cruz island fox, Santa Rosa island fox, San Miguel island fox and the Santa Catalina island fox. As of 2013, the IUCN lists the entire species as near threatened, an improvement from its previous status of "critically endangered". A decline in island fox populations was identified in the 1990s. On San Miguel Island, the decline began in 1994, with the population falling from 450 adults to 15 by 1999. Similar population declines were discovered on Santa Cruz Island. On the Santa Cruz Island the population decreased from 2,000 adults in 1994 to less than 135 in 2000, and on Santa Rosa Island where foxes may have numbered more than 1,500 in 1994, but were reduced to 14 animals by 2000. In 2004, there were 38 San Miguel island foxes, all in captivity; 46 foxes in captivity on Santa Rosa Island and seven in the wild (golden eagle predation prevented the release of captive foxes into the wild); Santa Cruz Island had 25 captive foxes and a stable wild population of around 100 foxes.

Golden eagle predation, discovered when foxes were radio-collared and monitored, proved to be the cause of the high mortality rates. The golden eagle was an uncommon visitor to the Channel Islands before the 1990s, when it naturally colonized the area, according to data gathered by Dr. Lyndal Laughrin of the University of California Santa Cruz Island Reserve, and the first golden eagle nest was recorded on Santa Cruz Island in 1999. Biologists propose that the eagle may have been attracted to the islands in the 1960s after the decline of the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). The golden eagle replaced the bald eagle's niche and began to feed on feral pigs (Sus domesticus) following the devastation of the local bald eagle population due to DDT exposure in the 1950s—the bald eagle is hypothesized to have deterred the golden eagle from settling on the islands while it subsisted on fish.

The feral pigs on Santa Rosa, which themselves preyed on the foxes, were exterminated by the National Park Service in the early 1990s, which removed one of the golden eagle's food sources. The golden eagle then began to prey on the island fox population. Feral pigs on Santa Cruz Island and deer and elk on Santa Rosa Island were introduced almost 70 years prior to island fox decline, therefore, the golden eagle most likely did not seek these animals as alternative prey. This has occurred most likely as a result of a process known as apparent competition: in this process, a predator, like the golden eagle, feeds on at least two prey, for example, the island fox and feral pigs. One prey item is adapted to high predation pressure and supports the predator population (i.e. pigs), whereas the other prey item (i.e. the island fox) is poorly adapted to predation and declines as a consequence of the predation pressure. It has also been proposed that the complete removal of golden eagles may be the only action that could save three subspecies of the island fox from extinction. However, the pigs on Santa Cruz Island were killed by the Nature Conservancy on the idea that they drew the eagles to the foxes.

Introduced diseases or parasites can devastate island fox populations. Because the island fox is isolated, it has not acquired immunity to parasites and diseases brought in from the mainland and is especially vulnerable to those the domestic dog may carry. A canine distemper outbreak in 1998 killed approximately 90% of Santa Catalina Island's foxes, reducing the population from 1,300 to 103 in 2000. A vaccination program has been initiated to protect Catalina Island foxes from canine distemper. After several years of carefully trapping the foxes and vaccinating them against distemper and rabies, their population has surpassed the pre-disease population of about 1,300. Scientists believe the distemper virus was introduced by a pet dog or a raccoon from the mainland that hitched a ride on a boat or a barge. To eliminate the risk of disease, pets are not permitted in Channel Islands National Park.

Diminished food supply and general degradation of the habitat due to introduced mammal species, including feral cats (Felis catus), pigs, sheep (Ovis aries), goats (Capra hircus), and American bison (Bison bison), the last having been introduced to Catalina Island in the 1920s by a Hollywood film crew shooting a Western, also has had a negative effect on fox populations.

The foxes threaten a population of the severely endangered San Clemente Island loggerhead shrike (Lanius ludovicianus mearnsi) in residence on San Clemente Island. The island fox population has been negatively affected by trapping and removal or euthanasia of foxes by the United States Navy. Since 2000, the Navy has employed different management strategies: trapping and holding foxes during the shrike breeding season, the installation of an electric fence system around shrike habitats, and the use of shock collar systems. With the gradual recovery of the shrike population on San Clemente Island, the Navy no longer controls the foxes.

The populations of Santa Cruz island foxes, San Miguel island foxes, and Santa Rosa island foxes have dramatically rebounded from lows in 2000 of 70 for the Santa Cruz foxes and 15 each on San Miguel and Santa Rosa Islands. The Catalina Island Conservancy runs a captive breeding program on Catalina Island. On September 14, 2012, the US Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft recovery plan for the San Miguel island fox, Santa Rosa island fox, Santa Cruz island fox, and the Santa Catalina island fox. By 2012, the Catalina Island Conservancy determined that there were 1,500 Santa Catalina island foxes and the population was stable. Since then the fox populations have grown.

Because the Channel Islands are almost entirely owned and controlled by either the Catalina Island Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy, or the federal government, the fox has a chance to receive the protection it needs, including constant supervision by interested officials without the ongoing threat of human encroachment on its habitat.

Rene Vellanoweth, an archaeologist, has proposed that inbreeding depression can be managed by mixing the different island fox subspecies populations much as the indigenous peoples did, by moving them from island to island, creating a higher genetic diversity and assisting them in recovery.

title: Island fox


text:
List of Yiddish-language poets

Poets who wrote, or write, much or all of their poetry in the Yiddish language include:

A

 * Moyshe Altman

B

 * Rivka Basman Ben-Hayim
 * Israil Bercovici
 * Olexander Beyderman
 * Źmitrok Biadula
 * Hayim Nahman Bialik
 * Benjamin J. Bialostotzky
 * Rachel Boymvol
 * Moishe Broderzon
 * Srul Bronshtein

D

 * Der Nister (Pinchus Kahanovich)
 * Celia Dropkin

E

 * David Edelstadt
 * Mendel Elefant
 * Israel Emiot
 * Alter Esselin

F

 * Itzik Fefer
 * Leon Feinberg
 * Mikhoel Felsenbaum
 * Rukhl Fishman
 * Chaim Leib Fox

G

 * Mordechai Gebirtig
 * Aron Glantz-Leieles (alternative English spelling: Glanz-Leyeles (1899–1968), Polish native and Yiddish poet writing in the United States)
 * Jacob Glatstein (alternative English spelling: Yankev Glatshteyn)
 * Hirsh Glick
 * Abraham Goldfaden
 * Pincus Goodman
 * Chaim Grade
 * Eliezer Greenberg
 * Uri Zvi Greenberg

H

 * Moyshe-Leyb Halpern
 * Binem Heller
 * David Hofstein

I

 * Reuben Iceland

K

 * Itzhak Katzenelson
 * Emmanuil Kazakevich
 * Rokhl Korn
 * Moyshe Kulbak
 * Leib Kvitko

L

 * Mani Leib
 * H. Leivick (1888-1962), born in Russia, emigrated to the United States; called "foremost" Yiddish poet and dramatist
 * Abraham Liessin (1872-1948), American
 * Moshe Lifshits (1894-1940)
 * Malka Locker
 * A. Lutzky

M

 * Itzik Manger
 * Anna Margolin
 * Peretz Markish
 * N. B. Minkoff
 * Kadia Molodowsky

P

 * Rikuda Potash
 * Gabriel Preil (alternative English spelling: "Gabriel Preyl")

R

 * Abraham Regelson
 * Avrom Reyzen (Abraham Reisen)
 * Chava Rosenfarb
 * Morris Rosenfeld

S

 * Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman
 * Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath
 * Eliezer Schindler
 * S.L. Shneiderman
 * Meyer Shtiker
 * Fradl Shtok
 * Joel Slonim
 * Abraham Nahum Stencl
 * Jacob Sternberg
 * Abraham Sutzkever

T

 * Dora Teitelboim
 * Malka Heifetz Tussman

U

 * Miryem Ulinover

V

 * Leyb Vaserman

W

 * Morris Winchevsky

Y

 * Yehoash (Blumgarten)

Z

 * Aaron Zeitlin
 * Rajzel Żychlińsky

title: List of Yiddish-language poets


text:
Renn Fayre

Renn Fayre is an annual three-day campus-wide celebration that occurs at Reed College, a liberal arts college located in Portland, Oregon, United States. The festival began as a one-day Renaissance Fayre, held during the spring semester in an attempt to recreate the Renaissance era. The event begins with a parade of senior students, who march from the library to the registrar's office to mark the completion of their theses and to be congratulated by the institution's President. The event includes a variety of activities and forms of expressions.

Description

Renn Fayre is an annual three-day celebration that occurs on the campus of Reed College in Portland, Oregon. The festival was originally a one-day Renaissance Fayre, held during the spring semester for the purpose of recreating the Renaissance era. On the final days of class instruction, seniors march from the library to the registrar's office to celebrate the completion of their theses and to receive congratulations from the institution's President. The parade of students begins a weekend festival that has featured a variety of activities and forms of expression, including a fire show, fireworks, food, a giant slide and skate ramp, handicraft, lube wrestling, nude students covered by blue paint known as "Picts", Glow Opera, and other sports.

Drug use and controversy
In 2008, Willamette Week reported on the tolerance of drug use during the festival. The article "inflamed" students and faculty, generating hundreds of comments, some of which were critical of the publication. Willamette Week revisited the story in 2009, concluding that little had changed, with similar activities taking place and a continued tolerance of drug use. In response, the school's spokesman stated: "We have a moral, legal and institutional responsibility to report serious violations. If we didn't see it and nobody points it out to us, we can't do anything. We've taken it seriously in more instances in the past year. We've gotten the Portland PD involved more." The spokesman also insisted that the college improved crowd control by limiting the number of festival participants and examines its alcohol and drug policy on a "pretty regular basis".

title: Renn Fayre


text:
Statutes of Mortmain

The Statutes of Mortmain were two enactments, in 1279 (Statutum de Viris Religiosis, 7 Edw. 1) and 1290 (Quia Emptores, 18 Edw. 1), passed in the reign of Edward I of England, aimed at preserving the kingdom's revenues by preventing land from passing into the possession of the Church. Possession of property by a corporation such as the Church was known as mortmain, literally "dead hand". In medieval England, feudal estates generated taxes for the King (known as feudal incidents), principally on the grant or inheritance of the estate. If an estate became owned by a religious corporation which could never die, could never attain majority, and could never be attainted for treason, these taxes never became payable. It was akin to the estates being owned by the dead, hence the term.

The Statutes of Mortmain were meant to re-establish the prohibition against donating land to the Church for the purpose of avoiding feudal services, a prohibition which had originated in Magna Carta in 1215 and was specifically defined in its 1217 issue. But King John, the original signatory of Magna Carta, died the following year, and his son, Henry III, did not enforce the proscriptions and, to the contrary, showed great deference to the Church.

Henry's son, Edward I, desired to re-establish the precedent set by the 1215 and 1217 issues of Magna Carta. The Statutes of Mortmain thus provided that no estate could be granted to a corporation without royal consent. However, these statutes proved ineffective in practice, and the problem of Church lands persisted, due to the development of the device of the cestui que use, which side-stepped the royal courts and began – in the ecclesiastical courts – the development of the law of trusts, which separated the legal ownership from the right of occupation or use of land. The issue was only finally resolved in 1535, when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, confiscating all monastic lands for the Crown, though the bishops remained endowed with much land.

Alienation and the statute of Quia Emptores
In England in the 12th and 13th centuries, the legal ownership of land was defined through a hierarchical system of estates. The monarch was the ultimate owner of all land in the realm, and out of his estate lesser estates existed, held by individuals known as tenants in chief. Further estates could be created out of these estates in a process called subinfeudation.

Estates in land could be alienated (that is, their legal title – i.e. ownership – could be transferred to others), in two ways. Substitution meant that the transferee would take the estate with the same tenure, and hold from the same lord, as the original tenant. Subinfeudation meant that the original tenant continued to hold his estate, but there was created a new estate which was held from and through the original tenant, and which was subsidiary to the original estate.

Alienation was not always possible, and sometimes the permission of the immediate overlord was required. In the opinion of Pollock and Maitland, in the middle of the 13th century the tenant enjoyed a largely unfettered power of disposing of his tenement inter vivos, though this was subject to some restraints in favour of the overlord.

Other opinions have been expressed. Coke regarded the English tradition as one of ancient liberty dictated by custom, in which the tenant had relative freedom to alienate all or part of his estate. Blackstone was of a differing conclusion, namely that the law supported the inalienability of the fief as its starting point. Pollock and Maitland believed Coke's opinion to be the more valid one. Both views may have been true: modern scholars may have given more weight to the written law of the Normans than existed in reality after the Black Death had altered the economic conditions of the age.

A significant consequence of the ability of owners to alienate their estates was a growth in gifts of land to the Church. Estates so given were said to be held in frankalmoin tenure. The King made various attempts to prevent this practice, including in Magna Carta in 1215 and in the Statutes of Mortmain in 1279 and 1290, but these measures were largely ineffective.

Where estates were subinfeudated, the practice of mortmain was detrimental to the overlord's rights. It was difficult or impossible for an overlord to extract any services (such as knight service, rent, or homage) from the new tenant, who had no bond to the overlord. Pollock and Maitland give the following example: in a case of subinfeudation, the old tenant was liable for services to the lord. If A enfeoffed to B, to hold on a knight's service (a form of military service), and then B enfeoffed C to hold at a rent of a pound of pepper per year, if B then dies leaving an under-age heir, A is entitled to a wardship, but it will be worth very little: instead of being entitled to enjoy the land itself until the heir is of full age, the overlord will get only a few annual pounds of pepper, because C is in possession, not B. Instead of enjoying the land itself, by wardship or by escheat, he will only receive a trifling peppercorn rent.

Bracton gives the example of a tenant making a gift of frankalmoin: gifting land to the Church. A right of wardship would have no value at all, as ownership cannot henceforth pass to a minor. An escheat of the land (reclaiming the land by the overlord, for want of an heir to inherit it) would allow the overlord to re-take control of the land. But by placing the land in frankalmoin it was left in the hands of a group of lawyers or others, who allowed the use of the land by a religious organisation. The overlord would have only nominal control of this corporation, as it had never entered into a feudal homage arrangement, hence the corporation owed nothing to the overlord. Bracton was sympathetic to this arrangement. According to him, the lord was not really injured, as his rights to the land remained unscathed. It is true they had been significantly diminished, as he had suffered damnum; but there had been no injuria. Bracton was of the opinion that a gift of land to the Church could be voided only by the heirs of the donor, not by the feudal overlord.

The statute of Quia Emptores, enacted in 1290, confirmed the ability of tenants freely to alienate their estates by substitution, but ended the possibility of alienation by subinfeudation. It also ended the possibility for further estates in frankalmoin to be created by anyone other than the king, as any gift of land to the Church now required royal consent; but the lawyers who had created frankalmoin now nimbly side-stepped the Statutes of Mortmain, and the cumbersome and useless common law courts, with the development of a replacement device in the ecclesiastical courts, the cestui que use.

Frankalmoin and the Assize of Utrum

Gifts of land in frankalmoin were intended to be made to God. Bracton describes these as "primo et principaliter" (first and principally) to God, and only "secundario" (secondarily) to the canons or monks or parsons. A gift, for example, to Ramsey Abbey would take the form of a gift "to God and St. Benet of Ramsey and the Abbot Walter and the monks of St. Benet"; or in shorthand, "to God and the church of St. Benet of Ramsey" or briefly "to God and St. Benet".

Often the donor laid the charter of feoffment or some other symbol, such as a knife or other symbol of possession, upon the altar of the church. God was considered the primary landowner. Bracton founds several arguments upon this assertion. It suggested land given in frankalmoin was outside the sphere of mere human justice.

In later years, the feature of the tenure of frankalmoin which attracted the notice of lawyers was the absence of any service that could be enforced by the secular courts. Grants from the Crown "in free, pure and perpetual alms" would be free from all secular services. However, if a mesne (i.e. intermediate) lord was involved, then services such as socage, fee and other services might be extracted from the land, either in part or in total.

Cases became so complicated that a special assize, the Assize of Utrum, was established in the middle of the 12th century. Jurisdiction would normally lie with the ecclesiastical courts; but the Assize of Utrum, especially as defined in the Constitutions of Clarendon in 1164, gave the Crown a chance to clarify difficult questions of ownership and duty in a non-religious, secular court. Often, ownership was of less importance than in determining who had rights to grain, to knight service, to marriage penalties, and the like feudal rights. These duties were defined by the manner in which the land had been granted, and by who in the feudal chain had made the grant. Frequently, land would be donated to a religious body, which would simultaneously re-let it to the donor, in order to evade those feudal services which otherwise would be due to the immediate overlord.

Problems with mortmain in Bracton's time

Giving land to the Church had a long and contentious history in England. Prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066, the Anglo-Saxon state and the Church were often synonymous. The local bishop or priest might also sit in judgment of civil and criminal cases in the royal courts. The Normans created a strict separation of Church and state. William the Conqueror encouraged this separation, yet was enthusiastic about the role the Church played in moral matters.

As a result, a two-tier legal system developed: the ecclesiastical courts and the Royal courts (the latter being now known as the Common Law courts). Jurisdiction was frequently blurred. A petitioner not receiving a satisfactory result in one court could re-file the case in the other. Writs of prohibition were frequently issued by common law courts to bar the reissuing of a case in a Church court. Bracton considered it a sin for a man to pledge to live by the decision of a common law court, only to re-issue it in a Church court because the first court had ruled against him.

The practice of pledging land to the Church was governed by the laws of frankalmoin under the Normans. There were two reasons to do so: gratitude toward the Church, but also to avoid feudal services and taxes. Once land had been pledged to the Church, it was difficult or impossible for the overlord to extract his former dues from the land.

Bracton considered the outcome of this, in a case where the tenant made a gift into frankalmoin – a gift of land to the Church. A feudal right of wardship would now be of no value at all, as no minority (ownership of the land by a minor) could thereafter arise. An escheat of the land (reclaiming of the land by the overlord, for want of an heir) theoretically allowed the lord to take back control of it; but placing the land in frankalmoin left it in the hands of a group of lawyers or others who allowed the use of the land by a religious foundation: the overlord would have only nominal control of this corporation, as it had never entered into a feudal homage arrangement with him; the corporation thus owed nothing to the overlord, so did not pay him homage. Bracton was sympathetic to this arrangement. According to him, the lord was not really injured as his rights to the land remained unscathed. It is true that they had been significantly diminished, as he had suffered damnum; but there had been no injuria (damnum absque injuria). Bracton was (rightly) of the view that a gift of land to the Church could be voided only by the donor's heirs, not by the overlord.

Once land had passed into the control of the Church, it could never be relinquished. Since the Church never died, the land could never be inherited on death (so no fine could be levied for the entry of the heir), nor could it be escheated to the lord (forfeited for want of an heir). This came to be known as the "dead hand" (mortmain) – either the Church (a non-living corporation) represented this dead hand, or the hand was that of the dead donor, who in effect still controlled the land by his original gift of it. Thus did the actions of men who had died generations before continue to control their former lands.

Magna Carta (the Great Charter) of 1217 struck down certain practices to which the Church was privy. Collusion, in making a gift of the land to a religious body (so as to evade feudal service), in return for an immediate re-letting of it by that body to the donor, was forbidden. This law was undermined in practice by the Chief Justice of the kingdom, Coke, whose courts interpreted the provision as though its only effect was to make the gift voidable by the donor's heirs. Coke held that it could not be voided by the donor's overlord,  an opinion reiterated by Bracton.

The statute made provision in the following terms: "One is not to enfeoff a religious house and take back the land as a tenant of that house" (on the face of it, a ban on donating land to the Church on condition that it grant the donor a new tenancy thereof). The mischief aimed at by this arose because certain favoured religious bodies, such as the Knights Templar, possessed royal charters which, by general words therein, set free from any feudal burdens all the lands they possessed at the time of the granting of the charter, or thereafter acquired. Thus a man might give land to such a house, and in return be granted by it a tenancy of that same land, and as a tenant of the house he could now claim the immunity afforded by the charter. Thus did the gifting of land to a religious body free the tenant from his feudal duties to the overlord of the land.

King John's Great Charter of 1217 left no scope for granting land to the Church. But in spite of this his successor, Henry III, lavishly granted such licenses, despite that they were theoretically not allowed. The Great Charter, not being a statute but a mere administrative proclamation by the king, was binding only on the king's subjects, not on the king himself.

In 1258 at the Parliament in Oxford, the barons sought to preclude men of religion from entering into ownership of fees held from earls, barons and other lords without their consent, whereby the overlord lost forever the rights of wardship, marriage, relief and escheat, i.e. they were trying to use the authority of Parliament to bind the king with these provisions. In 1259 the Provisions of Westminster ordained that it shall not be lawful for men of religion to enter the fee of anyone without the permission of the lord from whom the land was held. The Provisions were alternately considered to be the law, then not rigorously enforced, depending upon who had greater political sway: the barons or the king. Most of the Provisions of Westminster were subsequently enacted, hence given greater authority, in the Statute of Marlborough in 1267, but not those relating to the gifting of fees to the Church. From this it may be inferred that the clergy had been influential with the king, who was then enjoying increased power over the barons.

The Statute of Marlborough was the nominal endpoint of the Second Barons' War, and underscored the victory of the king. The omission of restrictions on the Church can be directly traced to Henry III's sympathy for the clergy, according to Plucknett. In 1279 the statute De Viris Religiosis referred to the Provisions of Westminster as if they were settled law, whilst adding a restriction on alienations made in mortmain, discussed below.

By the 'Statute for Religious Men' of 1279, one of the so-called Statutes of Mortmain, no religious persons were permitted to acquire land. If they did so, the land was forfeited to the immediate overlord, and he had a brief period in which to take advantage of the forfeiture. If he failed to do so, the lord next above him in the feudal hierarchy had a similar opportunity. This right continued all the way up to the king. The statute did not merely abolish frankalmoin: ecclesiastical houses could no longer acquire land in any manner, even if they were willing to pay a full rent for it. Nevertheless, if the overlord was willing, land could still be gifted to a religious house with his complicity, i.e. by his inaction. And licenses from the king to acquire land in mortmain were easily obtained in those years, as Henry III was sympathetic to religious bodies during his long reign.

There had been a parallel French ordinance proclaimed in 1275. Henry III had a reputation of ruling by fiat – making royal proclamations on the spur of the moment. These were troublesome to both the secular and the church courts of the day, and efforts were made to curtail and limit this practice.

Result of the Statutes of Mortmain

During the long reign of Henry III, the donation of land to the Church became increasingly common. A feudal tenant would typically practice collusion with the Church in order to defeat a claim by his overlord for feudal services, by donating the land to a religious foundation on condition of it granting him a fresh tenancy of that land. The Great Charter of 1217 contained the first direct provision against this practice:

"It shall not be lawful for anyone henceforth to give his land to any religious house in order to resume it again to hold of the house; nor shall it be lawful for any religious house to accept anyone's land and to return it to him from whom they received it. If anyone for the future shall give his land in this way to any religious house and be convicted thereof, the gift shall be quashed and the land forfeit to the lord of the fee."

Several cases are recorded where the king specifically forbade the tenant from alienating a church or land held in perpetuity by the Crown, and thus presumably the equivalent of mortmain. These cases are dated 1164, 1221 and 1227. After 1217, there was a forfeiture of the land to the overlord in a case of unauthorized alienation in mortmain. However, Henry III showed conspicuous favour to the Church and left the proclamations of 1215 and 1217 made by King John largely unenforced. The proscription was reintroduced, and made more forcible, by Henry III's son, Edward I, by the Statutes of Mortmain in 1279 and 1290.

However, all of these attempts at proscription were ineffective. Land could instead be left to the Church by the development of the new device of the cestui que use. Henry VII expended much energy in the courts trying to break the legal grip of "uses" by Church corporations. The Statute of Uses, passed three centuries after the Statutes of Mortmain, would attempt – with only partial success – to end the practice of the cestui que use. Henry VIII would resolve the problem of Church lands once and for all, in 1535, by dissolving the monasteries and confiscating all Church lands.

title: Statutes of Mortmain


text:
Rob Sitch

Robert Ian Sitch (born 17 March 1962) is an Australian director, producer, screenwriter, actor and comedian. He is known for his 1990s comedy series Frontline, and the long-running comedy series Utopia (since 2014).

Early life and education
Sitch attended St Kevin's College and Melbourne Grammar. He graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Melbourne, and practised medicine for a short time.

Career
Sitch is a member of the Working Dog production company, which has produced the television shows Frontline, A River Somewhere, The Panel, Thank God You're Here, and Utopia, as well as the feature films The Castle, The Dish, and Any Questions for Ben?. Sitch co-wrote and directed each of these films.

In 2006, to mark 50 years of television in Australia, the Nine Network special 50 Years 50 Stars listed Sitch at the 39th greatest living television star in Australia. Several of his programs, including The D-Generation and Frontline, were included in the earlier special, 50 Years 50 Shows, coming in at 50 and 22 respectively.

Sitch is also a co-author of the satirical Jetlag travel guides to Molvanîa, Phaic Tăn, and San Sombrèro.

Albums

 * The D-Generation: The Satanic Sketches (1989)
 * The D-Generation: The Breakfast Tapes (1990)

Personal life
Sitch is married to fellow Australian comedian Jane Kennedy. They have five children, including Joshua Sitch, who starred in ABC's Little Lunch.

title: Rob Sitch