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54 (film)

54 is a 1998 American drama film written and directed by Mark Christopher. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, Neve Campbell, and Mike Myers, the film focuses on the rise and fall of Studio 54, a famous nightclub in New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Prior to its release in the United States on August 28, 1998, by Miramax Films, the film was extensively reshot and recut; it ultimately opened to poor critical reaction and box office. In 2008, a bootleg version of the director's cut was screened at Outfest, leading to interest for its release. In 2015, Christopher and Miramax premiered a new edit of the film at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, with 45 minutes of original material restored and 30 minutes of studio re-shoots removed.

Theatrical version
In the summer of 1979, 19-year-old Irish-American filling station attendant Shane O'Shea lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his widowed, conservative father Harlan and two younger sisters Grace and Kelly. Weary of his working-class existence, Shane longs for a more glamorous life across the river in New York City's Manhattan, so one night, he persuades his two friends into accompanying him to Studio 54, a disco nightclub. When he is chosen to enter upon arrival by the club's co-owner Steve Rubell, he is exposed to the flashy, hedonistic world of 54, with unbridled alcohol, drugs, and open sex. Against his father's wishes, he returns to 54 the next night and Steve hires him as a busboy. After fighting with Harlan over his new job, he leaves Jersey City and moves in with fellow busboy Greg Randazzo and his coat-check girl wife Anita, an aspiring singer, in Manhattan.

After a week bussing tables, Shane is promoted to bartender following a one-night stand with club regular Billie Auster, upsetting Greg, who feels that he did not get the job because he would not let Steve perform oral sex on him. As Shane's popularity skyrockets, he mingles with the city's upper-class, poses for a beefcake photo shoot in Interview magazine, consumes drugs, and has sexual intercourse with multiple women. After a while, he begins to feel used because he wants to be taken seriously and valued for more than just his good looks and sex appeal.

Shane's sudden rise in popularity also damages his relationships with his friends and family, especially during the Christmas holidays. On Christmas Eve, Greg, who now moonlights as a drug dealer for extra money, criticizes him of displaying a conceited attitude and accuses him of attempting to sleep with and have sexual intercourse with Anita after witnessing him attempting to begin a romantic relationship with her earlier at their apartment. Harlan, whom Shane has not seen or spoken to in several months, rejects him when he returns home for a visit on Christmas Day because a female friend of the family who got into 54 one night informed him that she saw Shane doing drugs there. However, he does experience some brief happiness during the holidays when he commences a short-lived romance with his celebrity crush (and fellow New Jerseyan) Julie Black, a soap opera starlet determined to succeed in the film industry.

On New Year's Eve 1979, Shane's stardom, his relationship with Julie, and 54's life all abruptly end. He disgustedly rejects Julie after discovering her with Roland Sachs, an agent she plans to sleep with to advance her career. After elderly 54 regular Mona (aka Disco Dottie), a feisty, foul-mouthed, drug-using grandmother, dies of a cocaine overdose during Anita's debut performance, Steve asks a grief-stricken Shane to ignore the incident and continue working. Shane angrily refuses and gets into a near-physical altercation with Steve, who then fires him and orders his bouncers to expel him from the club. Simultaneously, the FBI raids 54 and arrests Steve, as he has been skimming money from the club's nightly take. As Shane leaves 54 in disgrace, Julie passes by him in a limousine, and following a brief heart-to-heart, they part ways but agree to remain friends.

Ultimately, Steve receives an 18-month prison sentence for tax evasion, and 54 consequently closes; upon release, he is forced to sell 54 but remains associated with the club as a consultant under the new management. During that time, Shane communicates regularly with Julie, who moves to Hollywood and lands a bit part in a film, but he, Anita and Greg drift apart. Anita releases a moderately successful album with Casablanca Records and Greg obtains a construction job after serving six months of probation for dealing drugs. Shane works nights managing a restaurant in Greenwich Village and takes business classes at NYU during the daylight hours; he also improves his relationships with his father and sisters by visiting them weekly. The trio reunite at the newly reopened 54 upon Steve's release, for a one-night welcome-back party hosted by him for all of his old friends and employees. Eventually, 54 closes permanently in 1986, and Steve dies of AIDS in 1989 at age 45.

Director's cut additions
The director's cut opens with a new narration of the film's original opening as Shane is seen leaving 54 after being thrown out on New Year's Eve. Shane's narration from the theatrical version is omitted.

In a moment of confusion, an openly bisexual Shane kisses Greg in the VIP room on Christmas Eve, before then having sexual intercourse with Anita in the ladies' room after she and Greg have an altercation. Anita, noticing Steve watching them, hits Shane in the stomach and runs out of the ladies' room in shame.

When Shane discovers that he is running low on cash due to his numerous debts, Greg introduces him to his covert drug-dealing operation. Shane steals some of Steve's skimmed cash as capital and repays his debts on New Year's Eve.

Greg eventually agrees to let Steve perform oral sex on him for the bartender job, but Steve disagrees, admitting that he would rather watch Greg and Anita have sex instead, as he did on Christmas Eve. Greg goes to the cloakroom to confront Anita and encounters her hugging Shane, after which the two have a fistfight. Shane freebases cocaine to ease his emotional pain.

After Greg and Anita reconcile following her interrupted debut performance, Anita leaves with Billie for a photo op. Shane discovers G-men raiding Steve's office and retreats upstairs to warn Greg, but Greg ignores him. Greg then runs to retrieve his belongings from his locker when he sees Shane being thrown out of the club but discovers that a G-man has already beat him to it and has found his drugs.

After Shane is expelled from 54, he witnesses Greg running up behind him. Shane offers him his garbage bag cloak to keep him clothed, and Greg begrudgingly accepts. Anita runs up to them afterwards in a lavish fur coat and cloaks Greg in it with her as they both depart. Greg calls for Shane to accompany them, just as Julie pulls up Shane alongside in her limousine and offers him a ride. Shane declines Julie's offer and instead departs with Greg and Anita, with the trio staying together as a family instead of drifting apart.

Production
Based on two short films Mark Christopher made, Miramax Films persuaded Christopher to direct the full-length feature about Studio 54. He had spent five years researching the club and the time period while working on a screenplay. Miramax purchased a partial screenplay in 1995 and developed the script with the filmmaker for over a year.

Christopher shot the film in Toronto over two months in the fall of 1997. However, he and studio head Harvey Weinstein differed on their respective visions of the film. Christopher intended for the film to capture Studio 54's notoriety as "the epicenter of the gay cultural explosion in New York City" and wanted the story to be told from the perspective of "Shane, a kid from New Jersey who sleeps his way to the top of the 54 pecking order, which means that he becomes one of the shirtless bartenders for which the club was notorious, golden boys who flexed and preened for the clientele of both sexes, occasionally deigning to grant sexual favors in return for money and drugs". Conversely, Weinstein wanted a more commercial film akin to Saturday Night Fever (1977), with its gay storyline removed.

Weinstein screen tested Christopher's cut of the film on Long Island in early 1998. Audiences at this screening reacted negatively to the lead character's bisexuality, particularly to a scene where Shane and Greg kiss, as well as the happy ending for both characters and Anita. Miramax subsequently requested the film remove any suggestions of bisexuality. The postproduction process was troubled, with Weinstein hiring a second writing team to flesh out new scenes that play up a romance between Shane and Julie. Christopher was not allowed in the editing room, and though he agreed to shoot the new scenes after initial resistance, he did not get to see the final cut.

Reception and legacy
54 opened at number four on its opening weekend (August 28–30, 1998) with $6.6 million, behind Blade, There's Something About Mary, and Saving Private Ryan.

Studio cut
The studio cut of the film received almost universally poor reviews and was a commercial disappointment, grossing $16.8 million on an estimated budget of $13 million. Mike Myers, in his first serious dramatic role, garnered some of the film's only positive word-of-mouth. The role was Myers' only foray into drama until Inglourious Basterds (released in 2009) and Bohemian Rhapsody and Terminal (both released in 2018).

Though some critics noted Christopher manages to "[re-create] the club's playfully subversive physical details: the glitter confetti and giant silver man-in-the-moon cokehead mobile, the VIP room hidden in the dank basement", many were particularly disappointed with the film's fictional characters and storyline, believing that Studio 54's notorious, real-life past should have been explored with better detail and more realism.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 15% based on 66 reviews, with an average rating of 4.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Robbed of its integral LGBTQ themes, 54 is a compromised and disjointed glance at the glory days of disco." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 33 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.

The film was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Actor for Ryan Phillippe and Worst Supporting Actress for Ellen Albertini Dow. Neve Campbell was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress (also for Wild Things) at the 1998 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.

Director's cut
In the years after the theatrical cut's release, a bootleg VHS version of the two-hour-long rough cut began circulating. Strong word of mouth and support led to New York LGBTQ film festival Outfest screening the rough cut to a sold-out crowd in 2008. Christopher and his co-producer Jonathan King had been lobbying Miramax for years to allow them to remaster the director's cut for DVD. In 2014, the filmmakers received the greenlight to make 54: The Director's Cut from Zanne Devine, Miramax's then-VP of production. They completed the film in time for a screening in the Panorama section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2015. The 105 minute-long cut included 44 minutes of restored footage, with all but a few seconds of the studio-dictated re-shot footage jettisoned.

The director's cut has received a much more positive critical response,  and the film has a huge cult following among the LGBT community. Of 54: The Director's Cut, critic Louis Jordan wrote, "Driven by character and atmosphere rather than soapy plot, Christopher's film is permeated by a melancholy that adds depth to the ecstatic party scenes. Mike Myers nails the pathos and charm behind Rubell's luded-out lechery, while Phillippe's measured performance, finally given space to breathe, is vulnerable, amoral, and sexy. There are no easy heroes or villains in this 54, only people looking for something they'll likely never find."

Home media
A 2012 Blu-ray release features several additional and alternate scenes that were not included in the theatrical release. This extended cut runs 100 minutes, eight minutes of which are not in the studio's 92-minute release. Miramax and Lionsgate Home Entertainment released 54: The Director's Cut in digital HD on streaming video providers on June 2, 2015. A Blu-ray version of this cut was released in 2016.

title: 54 (film)


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Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf (born September 25, 1956) is a Croatian Protestant theologian and public intellectual and Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale University. He previously taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in his native Osijek, Croatia (1979–80, 1983–90) and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California (1990–1998).

Having received two advanced degrees under the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, Volf has been described as a "theological bridge builder. The main thrust of his theology is to bring Christian theology to bear on various realms of public life, such as culture, politics, and economics. He often explores dialogues between different groups in the world—such as between denominations, faiths, and ethnic groups.

Volf has served as an advisor for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and for several years co-taught a course at Yale with former British prime minister Tony Blair on globalization. He is a frequent commentator on religious and cultural issues in popular media outlets such as CNN, NPR, and Al Jazeera. Volf won the 2002 University of Louisville and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Grawemeyer Award in Religion and his 1996 book Exclusion and Embrace was named by Christianity Today as one of the 100 Most Influential Books of the Twentieth Century.

Family and early life
Miroslav Volf was born on September 25, 1956, in Osijek, Croatia, which was then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At the age of five his family moved to the multicultural city of Novi Sad, Serbia (then also part of Yugoslavia), where his father became a minister for the small Pentecostal community. Growing up as part of that community, Volf lived doubly on the margins: religiously, Osijek was predominantly Catholic and Novi Sad predominantly Serbian Orthodox; in both towns, Protestants were a small minority and Pentecostals were "a minority of a minority". Politically, Yugoslavia was dominated by Marxist ideology and Christian ministers were particularly suspect and carefully monitored. Volf later recalled about his childhood that he did not have the luxury of "entertaining faith merely as a set of propositions that you do or don't assent to". In school, especially in his early teens, the faith of his parents and their community was a heavy burden; Volf's sense of being different from his peers and from the larger culture around him caused him "almost unbearable shame" and he rebelled against faith. In his mid teens, however, he had a quiet conversion. As the only openly Christian student in his high school, he had to explain why and how the Christian faith makes sense intellectually.

Early influences and education
Volf studied philosophy and classical Greek at the University of Zagreb and theology at Zagreb's Evangelical-Theological Seminary. He graduated summa cum laude in 1977 with a thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach. The same year he started working on his M.A. at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and graduated summa cum laude in 1979. During the interim year back in Yugoslavia between his masters and doctoral study, he continued studying philosophy at the University of Belgrade.

From 1980 to 1985 Volf pursued a doctorate at the University of Tübingen, Germany, under the supervision of Jürgen Moltmann (with compulsory military service back in Yugoslavia interrupting his studies from October 1983 to October 1984). For most of this time he had an ecumenical scholarship from the Diakonisches Werk and lived in the Evangelisches Stift. His dissertation was a theological engagement with Karl Marx' philosophy of labor, and pursuing this project led him to study both German idealist philosophy and English political economy. He graduated again summa cum laude, and the University of Tübingen awarded him the Leopold Lukas Nachwuchswissenschaftler Preis for his dissertation.

In 1989 he received a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and started working on his Habilitation (a post-doctoral degree required by many continental European universities for a call to a professorship). The Habilitation was on "Trinity and Communion", a topic stimulated by Volf's long standing involvement in the official dialogue between the Vatican's Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the international Pentecostal movement. He was awarded this degree in 1994.

Teaching
In 1979, Volf began his teaching career as a lecturer in systematic theology at his alma mater in Croatia. Doctoral studies and compulsory military service interrupted his regular teaching, though he continued to offer intensive courses at the same institution. After submitting his doctoral dissertation, Volf returned to full-time teaching. From 1984 until 1991 he served as professor of systematic theology at the Evangelical-Theological Seminary, which had by then moved to his native Osijek.

In 1991, Volf took a position as an Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller, succeeding his former teacher at that institution, Paul King Jewett. He remained in this position until 1997 when Fuller appointed him to a full professorship. Throughout this time, he continued to teach in Osijek, as his contract with Fuller included provisions for teaching two courses every year in Croatia. In 1998 Volf took the position of Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut.

Theological work
Since Volf considers theology to be an articulation of a way of life, his theological writing is marked by a sense of the unity between systematic theology and biblical interpretation, between dogmatics and ethics, and between what is called "church theology" (e.g., Karl Barth and, later, Stanley Hauerwas) and "political/public theology" (e.g., Jürgen Moltmann and David Tracy). His contributions to theology have for the most part been topical; he wrote on human work, the nature of Christian community, the problem of otherness, violence and reconciliation, the question of memory, and the public role of faith, to name a few issues. But in all his writings, he sought to bring the integrated whole of Christian convictions to bear on the topics at hand.

The systematic contours of Volf's theology are most clearly visible in Free of Charge. A former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, commissioned the book as his 2006 Lent Book. Its immediate themes are giving and forgiving as two chief modes of grace, but the book is an accessible introduction and invitation to the Christian faith. In this work, the central themes of Volf's work that receive more in depth treatment in other texts—God as unconditional love, the Trinitarian nature of God, creation as gift, Christ's death on the cross for the ungodly, justification by faith and communal nature of Christian life, love of enemy and care for the downtrodden, reconciliation and forgiveness, and hope for a world of love—come together into a unity. Because it contains frequent reflections on concrete experiences, the book makes visible that Volf's theology both grows out of and leads to a life of faith. Of all his books, Free of Charge bears the strongest mark of the young Martin Luther's influence.

Christian faith and economics
The first phase of Volf's academic work began with his dissertation and continued through the eighties. His concern then was the relationship between Christian faith and the economy, and in particular the nature and purpose of human everyday work. In his dissertation he engaged Karl Marx and it was published in an abbreviated form as Zukunft der Arbeit—Arbeit der Zukunft: Der Marxsche Arbeitsbegriff und seine theologische Wertung (1988), making a contribution not just to a critical theological evaluation on Marx's philosophy, but also to Marx studies (notably with regard to the influence of Feuerbach on Marx' theory of economic alienation and affinities between the late Fichte's ideas and Marx' conceptualization of communist society).

In the process of writing the dissertation, Volf formulated an alternative theology of work, primarily situated in ecclesiology and eschatology, rather than in the doctrine of creation or of salvation, and associated with the Third, rather than the First or Second person of the Trinity. Volf breaks with the long tradition of Protestant thinking about work as "vocation" (both Luther and Calvin, as well as Puritans and later theologians, including Karl Barth, advocated it), and proposes "charisma" as the central theological category with the help of which human work is to be understood. This line of thinking provides a flexible theological account of work, suited for dynamic contemporary societies in which people engage in multiple kinds of work over the course of a life-time, and better coordinated with the multiplicity of ministries that each person can have in the church. Volf published the new, pneumatological account of work in Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work (1991).

As a result of his academic work on faith and economics, Volf took on the task as the main drafter of the Oxford Declaration on Faith and Economics (1990). Working groups from various parts of the world sent papers to Volf's desk, and the text he prepared on the basis of those papers was discussed, amended, and finally adopted at a conference in 1990 by a wide array of Christian leaders, theologians, philosophers, ethicists, economists, development practitioners, and political scientists (Gerechtigkeit, Geist und Schöpfung. Die Oxford-Erklärung zur Frage von Glaube und Wirtschaft, eds. Herman Sauter and Miroslav Volf, 1992; Christianity and Economics in the Post-Cold War Era: The Oxford Declaration and Beyond, ed. H. Schlossberg, 1994). His own charismatic account of work has found endorsement in that document.

Trinity and community
In 1985 Volf became a member of the Pentecostal side of the official Roman Catholic and Pentecostal dialogue. The theme of the dialogue for the five years that followed was communio, and, together with Peter Kuzmič, Volf wrote the first position paper. In the final year of the dialogue (1989), along with Hervé Legrand, then a professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris, on the Catholic side, he was the main drafter of the final document ("Perspectives on Koinonia"). This intense ecumenical engagement led Volf to explore the relation between the church as a community and the Trinity, and this topic became the subject of his Habilitationschrift.

The dissertation was published as "Trinität und Gemeinschaft: Eine Ökumenische Ekklesiologie" (1996; translated into English as "After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Triune God", 1998). Volf seeks to both show that a Free church ecclesiology is a theologically legitimate form of ecclesiology (a proposition denied by both Roman Catholic and Orthodox official teaching) and to give that typically individualistic ecclesiology focused on the lordship of Christ a more robustly communal character by tying it to the communal nature of God. Volf takes Joseph Ratzinger (Catholic, current pope emeritus Benedict XVI) and John Zizioulas (Orthodox bishop) as his dialogue partners, and critiques their anchoring of the communal and hierarchical nature of the church in hierarchical Trinitarian relations (both thinkers gives primacy to the "One", though each does this in a different way). As an alternative, Volf proposes a non-hierarchical account of church as a community rooted in an egalitarian understanding of the Trinity (since hierarchy is, in his judgment, unthinkable with regard to three equally divine persons). Each member of the church has "charisms" for the common good of all in the church, without the strict need of the "one" to symbolize and guarantee unity (though the "one" might be needed for pragmatic rather than dogmatic reasons). Volf's position is not, however, that hierarchical forms of ecclesiology are illegitimate. Though not ultimately ideal, in certain cultural settings hierarchical forms of the church may even be the best possible and therefore preferable ways of reflecting in the church the Trinitarian communion of the one God.

Parallel with pursuing these internal ecclesiological issues in light of ecumenical concerns, Volf explored the nature of the church's presence and engagement in the world—partly to connect his "charismatic" understanding of mundane work (Work in the Spirit) with his "charismatic" understanding of the church (After Our Likeness). In a series of articles he developed an account of the church's presence in the world as a "soft" and "internal" difference—roughly in contrast with either the "hard" difference of typically separatist (often Anabaptist) and transformationist (often Reformed) positions or the "attenuated difference" of those who tend to identify church and culture with each other (often Catholic and Orthodox stances) He has taken up and further developed this position in A Public Faith (2011). He sums it up as follows: "Christian identity in a given culture is always a complex and flexible network of small and large refusals, divergences, subversions, and more or less radical and encompassing alternative proposals and enactments, surrounded by the acceptance of many cultural givens. There is no single way to relate to a given culture as a whole or even to its dominant thrust; there are only numerous ways of accepting, transforming, or replacing various aspects of a given culture from within".

Exclusion and Embrace
Volf is probably best known for Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996). It won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for religion in 2002, and Christianity Today included it among its 100 most influential religious books of the twentieth century. The book grew out of a lecture Volf gave in Berlin in 1993, in which his task was to reflect theologically about the Yugoslav Wars, marked by ethnic cleansing, that was raging in his home country at the time.

Exclusion and Embrace deals with the challenges of reconciliation in contexts of persisting enmity in which no clear line can be drawn between victims and perpetrators and in which today's victims become tomorrow's perpetrators—conditions that arguably describe the majority of the world's conflicts. The evocative "embrace" is the central category of the book, and Volf proposed it as an alternative to "liberation" (a category favored by a variety of liberation theologies). Embrace is marked by two key stances: acting with generosity toward the perpetrator and maintaining porous boundaries of flexible identities. Even though it is a modality of grace, "embrace" does not stand in contrast to justice; it includes justice as a dimension of grace extended toward wrongdoers. "Embrace" also does not stand in contrast to boundary maintenance. On the contrary, it presumes that it is essential to maintain the self's boundaries (and therefore pass judgment), but suggests that these boundaries ought to be porous, so that the self, while not being obliterated, can make a journey with the other in reconciliation and mutual enrichment. Volf sees the father in the story of the prodigal son as an exemplar of this stance (the father forgave and accepted the change in his identity as "the-father-of-the-prodigal"). But supremely the stance is exemplified in the death of Christ on the cross for the ungodly (Christ, who assumed humanity, forgave and opened his arms to embrace). Central to Volf's theology of the cross is Christ's death as an "inclusive substitute" for the ungodly, which is to say Christ's dying for them and making space "in God" for them. "Solidarity with victims", central to his teacher Jürgen Moltmann's "theology of the cross", though dislodged from the center in Volf's proposal, still remains a key aspect of God's embrace of humanity.

For Volf, the practice of "embrace" is ultimately rooted in God's Trinitarian nature—in God's love, which is unconditional because it is the very being of God, and in the mutual indwelling of the divine persons (whose boundaries are therefore reciprocally porous). He succinctly articulated the Trinitarian underpinnings of his proposal in "The Trinity is Our Social Program,", a text in which he both argues for a correspondence (on account of God's indwelling presence) between God's Trinitarian nature and human relations and stances, and underscores the ineradicable limitations of such correspondences. The primary limitation consists in the fact that, obviously, human beings are not God; the second consists in the fact that human beings are—equally obviously—sinful, which requires the human "embrace" to be an eschatological category. Volf's main contribution to eschatology, partly triggered by making "embrace" an eschatological category, is his re-thinking of the "Last Judgment." In "The Final Reconciliation" Volf argued that the Last Judgment ought to be understood as the final reconciliation in which judgment is not eliminated but seen as an indispensable element of reconciliation, a portal into the world of love.

The End of Memory
A central concern in Exclusion and Embrace is truth-telling in the context of enmity and conflict, especially truth-telling about the past. Volf's The End Of Memory (2006) explores this theme in much greater depth. He argues that it isn’t enough that we remember the past (as Elie Wiesel, for instance, has done), but that we must remember the past rightly. There is a pragmatic and not just a cognitive dimension to memory. Memories concerned merely with the truth of what happened and oriented exclusively toward justice often become untruthful and unjust memories; the "shield" of memory then morphs into a "sword," as can be seen in many parts of the world, including the region in which Volf grew up. The proper goal of memory should be reconciliation—"embrace"—which includes justice. In a novel move, Volf proposes that the sacred memory of Christ's passion and resurrection, properly understood, should guide Christians’ remembering of wrongs committed and suffered.

The most controversial part of The End of Memory is Volf's sustained theological argument, developed in dialogue with Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Søren Kierkegaard, that remembering wrongs suffered and committed, if done rightly, will ultimately result in non-remembrance of the wrongdoing. The world of love, which is the Christian eschatological hope, will be realized when people and their relationships are healed to such an extent that former wrongdoing would, for lack of affective fuel, no longer come to mind.

Volf traveled domestically and internationally and spoke extensively on issues of reconciliation—in China, India, Sri Lanka, Israel, South Africa, New Zealand, various European countries, and, of course, the United States. For instance, on the morning of 9/11/2001, at 8:34am when the first plane had hit the North Tower, he was finishing his keynote address at the International Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations. His topic was "From Exclusion to Embrace: Reflections on Reconciliation."

Interpretation of scripture
An important feature of Volf's work is the theological interpretation of the scriptures. He believes that any theology—whether it be "liberal" or "evangelical", whether it be Roman Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant—will wither if not nourished through Scriptural engagement and interpretation. Though the interpretation of biblical texts is not the exclusive or even primary mode of his theological work (as it is, for instance, for David F. Ford [with his "scriptural reasoning" project] or Michael Welker [with his "realistic biblical theology" project], many of his books contain sustained engagement with biblical texts. In Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection (2010) he has given both an account of why theological interpretation of biblical texts matters and how it should be undertaken and offered examples of such interpretations (dealing with John's Gospel and Epistles, 1 Peter, Ecclesiastes, St. Paul's writings). But many of his books—notably Exclusion and Embrace—contain sections with biblical interpretations.

Interfaith engagement
Volf has brought his theology of embrace to bear on how people of different faiths relate to each other. He participated actively in the work of The Elijah Interfaith Institute by writing Christian position papers—both on his own and with his students as co-authors—for the meetings of its Board of Religious Leaders and by participating in its meeting. For a number of years, Volf also participated in the Jewish–Christian dialogue. However, most of his interfaith efforts are directed to the relation between Christianity and Islam. He focuses on Islam partially because he comes from a region in which these two faiths have intersected for centuries (he was born in a city-fortress that the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I started building around 1700 to keep Ottoman Muslims at bay) and partly because he considers the relations between these two religions to be today's most critical interfaith issue.

Since 2004 Volf has taken part in the Building Bridges Seminar, a yearly gathering of Muslim and Christian scholars chaired until 2012 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. His engagement with Islam intensified after the publication of A Common Word Between Us and You (2007). Occasioned by Pope Benedict XVI's speech at the University of Regensburg, but motivated by a deteriorated relationship between Christians and Muslims (especially in the wake of 9/11), the document, which was originally signed by 138 of the world's most prominent Muslim leaders, argued that what binds Muslims and Christians (and Jews, of course) is the dual command to love God and love one's neighbors. It proposes this common ground as a place of dialogue and cooperation between the two religions. Along with the staff at the Center for Faith and Culture (Joseph Cumming and Andrew Saperstein), Volf drafted Yale Divinity School's response ("Yale Response"), which was endorsed by over 300 prominent Christian leaders (including some of the world's most respected evangelical figures such as John Stott and Rick Warren).

Allah: A Christian Response (2011) is Volf's major work engaging Islam. The book is an exercise in "political theology"; it explores the possibilities of peaceful co-existence of Muslims and Christians "under the same political roof," rather than the merits of Islam and Christianity as systems of salvation (an area in which there is substantially more divergence between the two religions than in regard to moral values). The central question of the book is whether Muslims and Christians have a common God and whether, consequently, they have common or at least overlapping central values. In a dialogue with Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther, Volf develops his own method of assessing the issue and argues that Muslims and Christians do have a common God, even though each group understands God in different ways, at least in part. The most obvious differences concern the Christian belief that God is Love and that God is the Holy Trinity (though when it comes to the Trinity, Volf argues that Muslims objections seem directed at ideas that the great Christian teachers never actually affirmed). These differences notwithstanding, Christians and Muslims have similar accounts of the moral character of God and therefore of basic human values—the one Creator God who is different from the world is just and merciful, and God commands worshipers to do similar things (e.g., the Ten Commandments [minus the Fourth]; the Golden Rule). Love for and fear of that common God can, therefore, bring Muslims and Christians together, or at least be the basis for resolving conflicts without resorting to violence. As Volf sees it, in Allah as well as in his engagement with Islam more broadly, he is applying to interfaith relations the kind of generous engagement with the other that his theology of embrace recommends.

Church theologian
Volf started preaching early, before he was 18. While living in his native Croatia, he often taught in the church and served for a brief period as interim pastor of a church in Zagreb. In the United States, he continued to preach and teach in churches as well as appear on Christian radio and TV programs. True to his reputation as a "theologian of the bridge," he addressed a wide variety of types of church groups, ranging from speaking to the conference of Episcopal bishops to preaching at Robert Schuller's Hour of Power, from teaching for the Trinity Wall Street Church to giving an hour-long interview to James Kennedy Radio ministries, and much in between (such as speaking at conferences of Covenant, Adventist, Vineyard or "Emergent Church" pastors and church workers).

While doing his doctoral work and teaching in Croatia, Volf worked for the Croatian Christian monthly Ivori, re-designing and re-branding the magazine his father, then General Secretary of the Pentecostal Church in Yugoslavia, was publishing. As the magazine's co-editor (1979–84) and editor (1984–89), he regularly wrote editorials and feature articles. These took up themes and staked out positions he would later develop in academic publications. Some of these texts were on issues at the intersection between faith and culture (as, for instance, those dealing with the religious dimensions of the poetry of the Serbian poet Aleksa Šantić, which were the seed for his first book, done in collaboration with the Croatian painter Marko Živković and titled I znam da sunce ne boji se tame ["The Sun Doesn’t Fear Darkness"]. Other texts were theological interpretations of biblical texts, notably of 1 Peter. Interest in culture broadly construed and in theological interpretation remained a significant feature of Volf's theological work from then on, as did his commitment to writing for the church and not just for the academy.

When Volf moved to the United States, he continued to write for church audiences. He wrote occasional articles and gave interviews for Christianity Today, and for many years he wrote a regular column "Faith Matters" for The Christian Century (the collection of these is published as Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Great Enmities [2010]).

Public theologian
Volf's theological work is predicated on the conviction that "private" and "public" spheres cannot be separated, though they must be distinguished. In recent years he has given increasing attention to the public dimensions and roles of faith.

From 2008-2011 Volf taught a course on "Faith and Globalization" with former British prime minister Tony Blair, an interdisciplinary course for students from all parts of Yale University. The assumption of the course was that globalization processes and faith traditions are some of the most powerful forces shaping today's world and that the world's future depends to a significant degree on how faiths relate to globalization and how, in the context of globalization, faiths relate to each other. Many themes of Volf's work so far came together in this course—the relation between faith and economics, faith and reconciliation (and violence), interfaith relations, faith and politics (in particular, defense of democratic pluralism), and so on. Through this course and in his work with globalization more broadly, Volf is seeking to think through all these issues not from a generically human standpoint suspended above concrete traditions—which he believes does not exist—but from the perspective of the Christian faith.

In A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good (2011) Volf summed up his reflections over the years on how Christians should interact with the surrounding culture broadly conceived. He contends that with regard to the public realm Christians face two major dangers ("malfunctions of faith," in his terminology): one is to withdraw from public life and to leave their faith "idling" in all spheres outside their private and church lives; the other is to be engaged, but to do so in a coercive way, shoving the demands of their faith down the throats of those who embrace other faiths or no faith at all. Positively, Volf argues against two extremes: against a complete separation of faith from public life, a kind of secularist exclusion of religion from public realm (and sectarian self-isolation), and against a complete saturation of public life by one dominant religion, a kind of religious totalitarianism. Against both secular exclusivists and religious totalitarians he contends that, in a world in which many faiths often live under a common roof, freedom of religion and the Golden Rule should guide how faiths relate to each other in the public space. As to the Christians’ own engagement, Volf contends that there is no single Christian way to relate to the broader culture as a whole. Instead, while remaining true to the convictions of their own faith, Christians should approach their larger cultures in an ad-hoc way, accepting or partly changing some aspects of culture, possibly completely withdrawing from still others, and cheerfully celebrating many others.

Over the years, in diverse settings Volf has brought faith to bear on a variety of more public issues. Examples include the following: He was a member of the Global Agenda Council on Faith and on Values of the World Economic Forum (2009–2011); he worked with the Advisory Council of President Obama's Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships; he gave a keynote address at the International Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations (on 9/11) and spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington (2010); he delivered a keynote address at the international Military Chief of Chaplains conference in Cape Town, South Africa (2008). He is also present in the media, giving interviews to major news organizations in this country (for instance, NPR, CNN, MSNBC) and abroad (for instance, Al Jazeera, HRT).

In 2003, Volf founded the Yale Center for Faith and Culture housed at Yale Divinity School. The goal of the center, which he still directs, is to promote the practice of faith in all spheres of life through theological research and leadership development.

Honors and grants

 * Leopold Lukas Junior Scholar Award, University of Tübingen (1990)
 * Alexander von Humboldt Stipend (1989–91, 1993)
 * One of only five academic theologians named among the "50 Evangelical Leaders 40 and under", Christianity Today (1996)
 * One of the 100 most influential books in 20th century for Exclusion and Embrace by Christianity Today
 * Pew Evangelical Research Fellowship (1998–99)
 * Center of Theological Inquiry Fellow (1998–99)
 * Grawemeyer Award for Religion for Exclusion and Embrace (2002)
 * Lilly Grant for Sustaining Pastoral Excellence, 2003–2007

Lectureships

 * Waldenstroem Lectures, Stockholm School of Theology (1998)
 * Laidlaw Lectures, Knox College, Toronto (1999)
 * Gray Lectures, Duke University Divinity School (2001)
 * Stob Lectures, Calvin College (2002)
 * Robertson Lectures, University of Glasgow (2003)
 * Raynolds Lecture, Princeton University (2004)
 * Dudleian Lecture, Harvard University Divinity School (2004)
 * Stilman Lecture, Wake Forrest University (2005)
 * Ryan Lectures, Asbury Theological Seminary (2005)
 * Laingh Lectures, Regent College, Canada (2006)
 * Ernest Lau Lectures, Trinity Theological College, Singapore (2008)
 * Gifford Lectures, University of Aberdeen (2025)

Personal life
Volf was previously married to New Testament scholar Judith Gundry; the marriage ended in divorce. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with his second wife, Jessica (married January 2012), and his daughter, Mira. He has partial custody of his two sons, Nathanael and Aaron, who live with their mother four days a week and their father three days a week, according to their divorce settlement. He is a member of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.

Books
Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Allah: A Christian Response. New York: HarperOne, 2011.
 * Translations: Dutch

A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011.
 * Translations: Korean, German and Chinese
 * Awards: One of the top 100 books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly and included in the Top 10 Religion Books; Nautilus Silver Award in the Religion and Spirituality – Western Traditions category [2012]; ForeWord’s silver recipient in 'Religion' [2012]).

Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010.

Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009.

The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.
 * Translations: Portuguese, Dutch, and Chinese
 * Awards: Christianity Today Book Award in category "Culture" for 2007

Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005
 * Translations: Dutch, German and Chinese
 * Awards: Archbishop of Canterbury 2006 Lent book

After Our Likeness: The Church as an Image of the Triune God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Translated from German, Trinität und Gemeinschaft: Eine Ökumenische Ekklesiologie (Mainz/Neukirchen-Vluyn: Grünewald Verlag/Neukirchener Verlag, 1996).
 * Other translations: Croatian, Hungarian, Korean, and Russian

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon, 1996.
 * Translations: Croatian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Macedonian, Chinese, Russian, and Korean
 * Awards: Christianity Today Book Award for 1996; Christianity Today one of the 100 most influential books in 20th century; Grawemeyer Award for Religion, 2002

Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991 (reprinted by Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001).
 * Translations: Chinese

Zukunft der Arbeit – Arbeit der Zukunft: Der Arbeitsbegriff bei Karl Marx und seine theologische Wertung. München/Mainz: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1988.
 * Translations: Croatian and Korean

I Znam da sunce ne boji se tame: Teoloske meditacije o Santicevu vjerskom pjesnistvu. Osijek: Izvori, 1986.

Edited works
Do We Worship the Same God?: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Dialogue. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.

With Ghazi bin Muhammad and Melissa Yarington, A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbor. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009.

With Michael Welker, God’s Life in the Trinity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.

With Michael Welker, Der lebendinge Gott als Trinitaet. Jürgen Moltmann zum 80: Geburtstag. Guetersloh: Guetersloher Verlagshaus, 2006.

With William Katerberg, The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition amid Modernity and Postmodernity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

With Dorothy Bass, ''Practicing Theology. Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life.'' Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

A Passion for God’s Reign: Theology, Christian Learning, and Christian Self. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998

With T. Kucharz and C. Krieg, The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996 (translated into German).

With Hermann Sautter, Gerechtigkeit, Geist und Schöpfung: Die Oxford‐Erklärung zur Frage von Glaude und Wirtschaft. Wuppertal: Brockhaus Verlag, 1992.

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

title: Miroslav Volf


text:
Warabe uta

Warabe uta (童歌) are traditional Japanese songs, similar to nursery rhymes. They are often sung as part of traditional children's games. They are described as a form of min'yo: traditional Japanese songs, usually sung without accompanying instruments.

The centuries-old lyrics are often incomprehensible to modern Japanese (especially to children who are singing it), and others can be quite sinister on close analysis. Like many children's songs around the world, because people are used to them from an early age, they are often oblivious to the real meanings.

Tōryanse
"Tōryanse" is often played as an electronic tune at pedestrian crossings in Japan to signal when it is safe to cross.

Japanese: 通りゃんせ　通りゃんせ ここはどこの　細通じゃ
 * 天神さまの　細道じゃ

ちっと通して　下しゃんせ
 * 御用のないもの　通しゃせぬ

この子の七つの　お祝いに お札を納めに　まいります
 * 行きはよいよい　帰りはこわい

こわいながらも 通りゃんせ　通りゃんせ

Romaji:  Tōryanse, tōryanse  Koko wa doko no hosomichi ja?
 *  Tenjin-sama no hosomichi ja

 Chitto tōshite kudashanse
 *  Goyō no nai mono tōshasenu

 Kono ko no nanatsu no oiwai ni  O-fuda wo osame ni mairimasu
 *  Iki wa yoi yoi, kaeri wa kowai

 Kowai nagara mo  Tōryanse, tōryanse

Translation:  Let me pass, let me pass '' What is this narrow pathway here? ''
 *  It's the narrow pathway of the Tenjin shrine

 Please allow me to pass through
 *  Those without good reason shall not pass

 To celebrate this child's 7th birthday  I've come to dedicate my offering
 *  Going in will be fine, fine, but returning will be scary

 It's scary but  Let me pass, let me pass

(When infant mortality was high, people traditionally celebrated when a child survived to reach the age of 7. See Shichigosan)

This particular warabe-uta is sung as part of a traditional game identical to "London Bridge Is Falling Down". Two children facing each other link their hands to form an arch 'checkpoint', and the remaining children walk through underneath in a line (and back round again in circles). The child who happens to be under the arch when the song finishes is then 'caught'.

The tune is played at Japanese pedestrian crossings by analogy with this game, i.e., it is safe to cross until the music stops.

Teru-teru-bōzu
A teru teru bōzu is a little traditional hand-made doll which supposedly brings sunshine. "Teru" is a Japanese verb which describes sunshine, and a "bōzu" is a Buddhist monk. Children make teru-teru-bōzu out of tissue paper and a string and hang them from a window to wish for sunny weather. There is a famous warabe uta which is about the small ghost-like dolls which people can see hanging on rainy days.

Japanese: てるてるぼうず、てるぼうず 明日天気にしてをくれ いつかの夢の空のよに 晴れたら金の鈴あげよ てるてるぼうず、てるぼうず 明日天気にしてをくれ 私の願いを聞いたなら 甘いお酒をたんと飲ましょ てるてるぼうず、てるぼうず 明日天気にしてをくれ それでも曇って泣いてたら そなたの首をちょんと切るぞ

Romaji:  Teru-teru-bōzu, teru bōzu  Ashita tenki ni shite o-kure  Itsuka no yume no sora no yo ni  Haretara kin no suzu ageyo  Teru-teru-bōzu, teru bōzu  Ashita tenki ni shite o-kure  Watashi no negai wo kiita nara  Amai o-sake wo tanto nomasho  Teru-teru-bōzu, teru bōzu  Ashita tenki ni shite o-kure  Sore de mo kumotte naitetara  Sonata no kubi wo chon to kiru zo

Translation:  Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu  Do make tomorrow a sunny day  Like the sky in a dream sometime  If it's sunny I'll give you a golden bell  Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu  Do make tomorrow a sunny day  If you make my wish come true  We'll drink lots of sweet sake  Teru-teru-bozu, teru bozu  Do make tomorrow a sunny day  but if it's cloudy and I find you crying (i.e. it's raining)  Then I shall snip your head off

The lyrics are allegedly about a story of a monk who promised farmers to stop rain and bring clear weather during a prolonged period of rain which was ruining crops. When the monk failed to bring sunshine, he was executed.

Yuki
Yuki (雪) is a song Japanese children sing when it's snowing and they want to play outside. 'Yuki' means 'Snow' in Japanese. The song is also commonly known as 雪やこんこ (Yuki ya konko) The snow falls densely.

Japanese: 雪やこんこ 霰やこんこ 降っては降っては ずんずん積る 山も野原も 綿帽子かぶり 枯木残らず 花が咲く 雪やこんこ 霰やこんこ 降っても降っても まだ降りやまぬ 犬は喜び 庭駈けまわり 猫は火燵で 丸くなる

Romaji:  yuki ya konko, arare ya konko  futtewa futtewa zunzun tsumoru  yama mo nohara mo wataboshi kaburi  kareki nokorazu hana ga saku  yuki ya konko, arare ya konko  futtemo, futtemo, mada furiyamanu  inu wa yorokobi, niwa kakemawari  neko wa kotatsu de marukunaru

Translation:  The snow falls densely, the hail falls densely!  It's falling and falling, collecting more and more.  The mountains and the fields are also wearing their cotton hats,  and in every tree flowers bloom.  The snow falls densely, the hail falls densely!  It's still falling and falling, never stopping.  The dog is happy, running around the garden,  the cat is curled up under the kotatsu.

A kotatsu is a low, heated table. In the first stanza, flowers blooming in winter probably refers to the snow collecting on empty branches. The literal translation of the line is something like "No withered trees remaining, flowers bloom".

title: Warabe uta


text:
African silverbill

The  African silverbill  (Euodice cantans) is a small passerine bird formerly considered conspecific with the Asian species Indian silverbill, (Euodice malabarica). This estrildid finch is a common resident breeding bird in dry savanna habitat, south of the Sahara Desert. This species has also been introduced to other countries such as Portugal, Qatar and United States.

Taxonomy
The African silverbill was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin under the binomial name Loxia cantans. The specific epithet is from Latin and means "singing". Gmemlin specified the locality as Africa but this was restricted to Dakar in Senegal by William Lutley Sclater and Cyril Mackworth-Praed in 1918. It is now placed with the Indian silverbill in the genus Euodice that was introduced in 1862 by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach.

In early literature, the African silverbill and the Indian silverbill (E. malabarica) were treated as conspecific. In 1943, Jean Théodore Delacour united both species in his revision of the Estrildinae. However, in 1964, Colin Harrison studied the two in a strictly comparative manner and concluded that they were two separate species. He discovered that although the call notes were similar, the songs are distinctly different in form, but sharing a common pattern. They are sympatric in the south of the Arabian Peninsula and there is no record of natural hybridization. From Harrison's personal observation of birds in captivity, each of the two forms evinced a preference for its own kind. A molecular phylogenetic study of the Estrildidae published in 2020 found that the African and Indian silverbills were sister species that had diverged around one million years ago. The two species formed a clade that was basal to members of the genus Lonchura.

Subspecies
Two subspecies are recognised:
 * E. c. cantans (Gmelin, JF, 1789) – Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia to south Sudan
 * E. c. orientalis (Lorenz von Liburnau, L & Hellmayr, 1901) – south Arabian Peninsula, east Sudan to Somalia and south to Tanzania

Description
The African silverbill is approximately 10 cm in length with a long black pointed tail. The adult has a stubby silver-blue bill, finely vermiculated light-brown upper parts, whitish underparts, black rump and black wings. The sexes are similar, but immatures lack the vermiculations. This species has a tseep call and a trilling song. The contact call of the male is a single tseep while the female is a double noted tsiptsip. Birds in flight keep up a constant tseep tseep tseep.

The subspecies E. c. orientalis is darker on the face and upperparts than the other subspecies.

Distribution and habitat
The species is widespread in savanna country, arid landscape with thorn bush, and grasslands with acacias or dry grassland. It may also be found in cultivated areas and dry grassland. It is by nature a bird of dry country. It is primarily a lowland species but can be found up to 2,000 m altitude.

Behaviour
The African silverbill is tame and sociable, often found perching in trees in dense flocks, touching one another. However, it is a particularly inactive bird, sitting huddled together for a long period of time. It stays in flocks all year round and usually breeds in loose colony.

Feeding
The African silverbill feeds mostly on grass seeds, picked from the ground but also taken from the growing plants if available. It will cling to grass stems to take seeds from the inflorescences. It seems that it feeds mainly on vegetable matter and rearing its young on seed as well. However, it has been recorded to take aphids from water mint (Meinertzhagen 1954).

Courtship
The male displays by grasping a stem of grass at one end, and hops or files to near the female. At once he sleeks down his feathers, stands upright with tail straight down, and jerks his head upwards a few times. He then leans forward, twists his tail towards the female and fluffs his flank and belly feathers. At this stage he usually drops the straw and begins to sing and dance. The flank and ventral feathers are not always fluffed out, and the intensity of the display probably depends on the relationship of the two birds. If the female seems receptive the male will attempt copulation. However, most displays come to an end before this final phase is reached. Successful mating is usually followed by a little bill fencing and mutual preening (Baptista and Horblit 1990).

Breeding
The nest of the African silverbill is usually built in the form of a roundish bundle of grasses. It is lined with soft fibres and sometimes feathers, and may be placed in a thick bush or hedge or amongst the creepers on a house. The male is recorded in the wild as collecting all the nesting material (Meinertzhagen 1954), while the female only shares in construction.

The clutch varies from three to six oval, smooth white eggs. The female incubates during the day, and though the male may relieve her when she leaves the nest to feed. It has been suggested that the male does not actually brood (Soderberg 1956). They are both at nest at night. The incubation period is about eleven to thirteen days average, and the young fledging in about twenty-one days and becoming independent within a month of fledging.

Newly hatched young are dark and have waxy-looking yellow gape swellings. The plate has a single heavy black circle inside the white mouth flange, which embraces the upper and lower parts of the gape.

Threats
The African silverbill is currently trapped for the cage bird trade. However, its numbers and its considerable range mean that this is unlikely to have any impact on the species' survival.

title: African silverbill


text: Talk:St Mark's Basilica

title: Talk:St Mark's Basilica


text:
User talk:Elpenmaster

Welcome to the Wikipedia
Here are some links I find useful

 * Policy Library
 * Cite your sources
 * Verifiability
 * Wikiquette
 * Conflict resolution
 * Brilliant prose
 * Neutral point of view
 * Pages needing attention
 * Peer review
 * Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
 * Village pump
 * Boilerplate text

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can sign your name by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~.

Cheers, Sam [Spade] 05:27, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Elpenmaster


text:
Texas A&M Transportation Institute

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) in Bryan/College Station, Texas is a transportation research agency in the United States. The institute was created in 1950, primarily in response to the needs of the Texas Highway Department (now the Texas Department of Transportation). TTI is a state agency and a member of the Texas A&M University System.

Over 100 TTI researchers publish papers and give presentations at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual meeting, with around 50 serving on TRB committees. Since the inception of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) in 1962, TTI has led over 70 NCHRP projects, more than any other participant in the program.

The institute maintains a close association with the Texas A&M University Dwight Look College of Engineering, the College of Architecture, and the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, as well as other academic units within the Texas A&M University System and at other collaborating universities. Over 40 TTI researchers hold joint academic positions at Texas A&M University. TTI also plays a role in training and educating students; one-third of the staff is students.

Headquartered on the Texas A&M University System RELLIS Campus in Bryan, Texas, TTI also maintains a roadside safety proving ground facility there, and has offices in Arlington, Austin, Dallas, Doha, El Paso, Fort Worth, Galveston, Houston, Mexico City, San Antonio, Waco, and Washington, D.C. As part of its research program, TTI also operates eleven formal state and national research centers.

Administration
The director is currently Gregory D. Winfree, J.D. He is assisted by a deputy agency director, three executive associate directors, three assistant agency directors, a director of human resources, and chief information officer.

Research focus areas

 * Connected Transportation
 * Economics
 * Environment
 * Freight
 * Human Interaction
 * Infrastructure
 * Mobility
 * Planning and Operations
 * Policy
 * Safety
 * Security
 * Workforce Development

Centers

 * Center for Advancing Research in Transportation Emissions, Energy, and Health
 * Center for Alcohol and Drug Education Studies
 * Center for Infrastructure Renewal
 * Center for International Intelligent Transportation Research
 * Center for Ports & Waterways
 * Center for Railway Research
 * Center for Transportation Computational Mechanics
 * Center for Transportation Safety
 * Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center
 * National Institute for Congestion Reduction
 * Safety Through Disruption (Safe-D)

Notable research projects
ET2000 – In 1991, the TTI-patented ET2000 guardrail end treatment was developed. Over 250,000 units have been shipped throughout the United States and around the world. TxDOT and TTI received the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) 1991 Administrator's Biennial Safety Award for their development of the ET2000.

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) – GPR is a nondestructive geophysical method that "sees" underground and produces a record of subsurface features—without drilling, probing, digging, or coring. Since 1988, researchers at TTI have been developing, testing, and implementing GPR technology for TxDOT to use in its road repair and maintenance activities.

Roadway Congestion Index (RCI) – To evaluate mobility levels on Texas streets and freeways, TTI developed the RCI, which is now computed annually for over 85 major U.S. cities.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) – TTI's ITS research has been implemented in several major Texas cities. Real-time train detection and analysis systems have expedited emergency vehicle dispatch, enhanced signal operations, and averted major accidents.

HOV Lanes and Managed Lanes – Since the 1980s, many major metropolitan areas have developed HOV or High Occupancy Vehicle lanes to help with traffic flow and provide incentives for carpooling and public transit. TTI has become known as the nation's leader in HOV lane research. Some cities have taken the HOV lane concept one step further in the development of what's being called Managed Lanes.

Teens in the Driver Seat – TTI has developed a peer-to-peer driving safety program. Teens in the Driver Seat relies on young drivers themselves to create safety messages and then serve as the messengers to make their peers aware of the risks of teen driving.

title: Texas A&M Transportation Institute


text:
Bronze mannikin

The bronze mannikin or bronze munia (Spermestes cucullata) is a small passerine (i.e. perching) bird of the Afrotropics. This very social estrildid finch is an uncommon to locally abundant bird in much of Africa south of the Sahara Desert, where it is resident, nomadic or irruptive in mesic savanna or forest margin habitats. It has an estimated global extent of occurrence of 8,100,000 km2. It is the smallest and most widespread of four munia species on the African mainland, the other being black-and-white, red-backed and magpie mannikin. It co-occurs with the Madagascar mannikin on the Comoro Islands, and was introduced to Puerto Rico. Especially in the West Africa, it is considered a pest in grain and rice fields. It is locally trapped for the pet bird trade.

Taxonomy
The bronze mannikin was formally described in 1837 by the English naturalist William John Swainson and given the binomial name Spermestes cucullata. The specific epithet is from Late Latin cucullatus meaning "hooded". The type locality is Senegal.

Two subspecies are recognised:
 * S. c. cucullata Swainson, 1837 – Senegal and Gambia to south Sudan, Uganda, west Kenya and the island of Bioko
 * S. c. scutata Heuglin, 1863 – Ethiopia and east Kenya to southeast South Africa, east Angola and Comoro Islands

Description
The bronze mannikin is one of the smallest munia species, measuring 9–10 cm in length and weighing 7–12 grams. The adult is a compact bird with a short black tail, and stubby black and pale grey (not distinctly bluish) mandibles. It is black to brownish black on the head, chin, throat and center of the chest, with some purple-green iridescence on the face and sides of the breast. It has greyish brown upper parts and white underparts with irregular barring on the flanks and rump. A small green iridescent patch is present on the outer scapular feathers, besides, especially in the western race, the sides of the lower breast. Wing coverts and remiges are bordered in a paler or warmer tone. The sexes are similar. Immature birds are dun brown above with buff head and underpart plumage. They moult into full adult plumage by age six months, when the males also begin to sing and exhibit breeding behaviour. The race S. c. scutata has barred rather than bronzy green plumage at the junction of the lower breast and flanks. Rump and upper tail feathers only finely barred and almost uniformly dark. These characters are however somewhat variable and unpredictable.

This species has a number of calls including a rreep-rreeep in flight, a twittering when perched, consisting of various wheezy or buzzing notes. The song is a concatenated and somewhat repetitive series of notes.

Distribution and habitat
The bronze mannikin is native to mainland Africa and the Bioko, Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafia and Comoro islands, and has been introduced to Puerto Rico, where it is established. The two accepted races have an extensive region around the upper Nile River which is inhabited by birds with intermediate features. A proposed third race, S. c. subsp. tressellata Clancey, 1964 is not generally recognized.

Behaviour and ecology
The bronze mannikin is a tiny gregarious bird which feeds mainly on seeds, including wild grass seeds, millet, rice and grain. Alternatively termites, nectar or strands of algae may also be eaten. Before going to roost at nightfall, they usually visit a watering hole where vegetation is hanging into the water. They roost at night in ball-shaped nests, which in the non-breeding season are built solely for this purpose. These slovenly communal roosting nests are dismantled (for reuse of material) and rebuilt almost daily at the same or a new location, in a communal effort. Each party, numbering 8 to 20 birds, seems to be dominated by a single adult male. The flock defends the immediate vicinity of a nest against intruders, but newcomers to a flock are easily accepted. They may associate with waxbill or other mannikin species, and may also use their vacated nests. Pairs often allopreen.

Breeding
They are incessant nest builders that may raise up to four broods a year, given favourable circumstances. The nest is a large domed grass structure in a tree, into which 4 to 8 small, white eggs are laid. Incubation takes 12 days, and chicks fledge after three weeks, and are independent in another three weeks. The chicks are reared on soft green seeds and insects.

title: Bronze mannikin


text:
User:Resister

Strike Anywhere is good.

title: User:Resister


text:
Martin Erat

Martin Erat (born August 29, 1981) is a Czech former professional ice hockey player. He played in the National Hockey League for the Nashville Predators, Washington Capitals and the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes.

Playing career
Erat was selected in the seventh round, 191st overall, of the 1999 NHL Entry Draft by the Nashville Predators, the team's 12th choice in the draft

Erat made a splash in his NHL rookie year in 2001–02 as a member of the "vowel line", which consisted of himself on left wing, Vladimír Országh on right wing and Denis Arkhipov at centre. His first NHL point was a game-winning goal against the Calgary Flames on October 11, 2001. That year, he set a then Nashville rookie record for games played (80), assists (24) and points (33).

Erat struggled in his sophomore season in 2002–03 and spent the majority of the season with the Predators' American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, the Milwaukee Admirals. After changing his number from 19 to 10 in the off-season, his play improved in his third season, 2003–04. He notched then career highs with goals (16), assists (33) and points (49), also ranking second on the team with a +10 plus-minus rating. Erat's first Stanley Cup playoff point was an assist in the 2004 Western Conference Quarterfinals in a 2–1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on April 10, 2004.

During the 2004–05 NHL lockout, Erat played for HC Zlín of the Czech Extraliga, where he finished eighth in the league in scoring with 20 goals and 23 assists in 48 games.

In 2005–06, Erat scored a career-high 20 goals in his fourth season with the Predators, tallying 49 points. He also played for the Czech national team at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, where he helped the team secure a bronze medal.

During the 2006–07 season, Erat emerged as a legitimate first-line player, tallying 57 points in 68 games. Most often, Erat teamed with Paul Kariya and David Legwand to form the team's top unit. However, Erat missed the final five weeks of the season with a torn medial collateral ligament (MCL).

In 2007–08, Erat posted a new career-high of 23 goals and added 34 assists to once again reach the 57-point plateau. Following the 2007–08 season, he signed a seven-year, $31.5 million contract extension with the Predators. He has two career hat-tricks, the first against the Edmonton Oilers and the second against the Vancouver Canucks on December 8, 2009.

On April 3, 2013, the Predators traded Erat and Michael Latta to the Washington Capitals at the NHL trade deadline in exchange for prospect Filip Forsberg. Erat requested the trade away from Nashville and waived a no-trade clause in his contract to facilitate the deal.

On November 25, 2013, Erat requested a trade for the second time since being traded to the Capitals, just eight months prior. Erat first asked for a trade in October after being demoted to the team's fourth line. Erat's second request for a trade came after he was a healthy scratch for the first time in his career. Erat has said he would waive his no-trade clause, claiming it is "time to move on".

On the eve of the 2013–14 NHL trade deadline, on March 4, Erat was traded (alongside John Mitchell) to the Phoenix Coyotes in exchange for Chris Brown, Rostislav Klesla and a fourth-round pick in 2015.

After 13 seasons and 881 regular season games in the NHL, Erat left North America as a free agent and signed a one-year contract with Russian club Avangard Omsk of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) on September 17, 2015. In May 2016, he returned to the Czech Extraliga and signed a contract with HC Kometa Brno. On April 19, 2017, Erat helped the team claim its 12th championship, after a 51-year drought. Erat retired on May 30, 2019.

International play
Erat played for the Czech Republic national team at the 2001 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, helping the team win the gold medal. In 2006, he played for the bronze medal-winning Czech team at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. That same year, Erat was also a member of the silver medal-winning team from the 2006 IIHF World Championship in Riga.

Erat was called up to replace Vladimír Sobotka on the Czech team for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Erat reprised his role on the Czech team in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Personal
Martin has an older brother, Roman, who played for HC Kometa Brno in the Czech Extraliga.

Awards

 * Named the WHL Eastern Conference Player of the Month for November, 2000.
 * Named the WHL Player of the Week for November 13–19, 2000.
 * Named the NHL Third Star of the Week for November 12–18, 2007.
 * Named the NHL Second Star of the Week for March 12–18, 2012.

title: Martin Erat


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Havana Conference

The Havana Conference of 1946 was a historic meeting of United States Mafia and Cosa Nostra leaders in Havana, Cuba. Supposedly arranged by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the conference was held to discuss important mob policies, rules, and business interests. The Havana Conference was attended by delegations representing crime families throughout the United States. The conference was held during the week of December 22, 1946, at the Hotel Nacional. The Havana Conference is considered to have been the most important mob summit since the Atlantic City Conference of 1929. Decisions made in Havana resonated throughout US crime families during the ensuing decades.

Background
The conference took place at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba. The reported organizer of the Havana Conference was crime boss Lucky Luciano. At the beginning of World War II, Luciano was serving a 30-to-50-year prison term for pandering. In 1942, U.S. military intelligence officers approached Joseph "Socks" Lanza and Meyer Lansky with a proposal for Luciano. At that time, Lanza was one of the Mafia bosses who controlled Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market, its workers, and the docks in Lower Manhattan. Lansky had broader power in cities along the Atlantic Seaboard. Military intelligence was worried about possible Nazi sabotage of docks and other shipping facilities in New York and other East Coast ports. The government told Luciano that if his family was able to protect East Coast ports from sabotage, he would be pardoned at the end of the war and deported to Italy as a free man. Luciano agreed to the proposal and assisted the government.

After the war ended, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey agreed to Luciano's pardon on the condition that he never be allowed back into the U.S. In February 1946, after a lavish farewell party on the ocean liner, Luciano sailed back to Italy. He first settled in Lercara Friddi, Sicily, then moved to Palermo, Naples, and Rome. After being forced out of Rome by Italian police, he finally settled in Naples and immediately started planning a return to the United States.

In early fall 1946, Luciano received a sealed envelope from a recently deported U.S. mafioso, which contained three words, "December-Hotel Nacional." In late September, Luciano obtained two Italian passports issued in his real name, Salvatore Lucania, with visas for Mexico, Cuba, and several South American nations. Luciano was now able to visit the Western Hemisphere and meet with criminal associates from the U.S.

In late October, Luciano traveled from Italy to Caracas, Venezuela, Mexico City, and finally Havana. Lansky greeted his old friend on his arrival in Cuba. Following Luciano's orders, Lansky had organized a conference in Havana the week of December 22 of crime bosses from all over the United States. Lansky quickly suggested that Luciano purchase a $150,000 interest in the Hotel Nacional, a plush casino and hotel owned by Lansky and his silent partner, Cuban president Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. Luciano agreed and the Havana Conference was set.

In December 1946, the Havana Conference started as planned. To welcome Luciano back from exile and acknowledge his continued authority within the mob, all the conference invitees brought Luciano cash envelopes. These "Christmas Presents" totalled more than $200,000. At the first night dinner hosted by Lansky, Frank Costello, and Joe Adonis, Luciano was presented with the money. The official cover story for the Havana Conference was that the mobsters were attending a gala party with Frank Sinatra as the entertainment. Sinatra flew to Havana with Al Capone cousins, Charlie, Rocco, and Joseph Fischetti from Chicago. Joseph "Joe Fish" Fischetti, an old Sinatra acquaintance, acted as Sinatra's chaperone and bodyguard. Charlie and Rocco Fischetti delivered a suitcase containing $2 million to Luciano, his share of the U.S. rackets he still controlled.

The most pressing items on the conference agenda were the leadership and authority within the New York mafia, the mob-controlled Havana casino interests, the narcotics operations, and the West Coast operations of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, especially the new Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Luciano, absent from the American underworld scene for several months, was especially concerned with the situation in New York. Boss Vito Genovese had returned to New York from exile in Italy and was not content with assuming a minor role in the organization.

The conference begins
The Havana Conference convened on December 20, 1946. Delegates were present representing New York City, New Jersey, Buffalo, Chicago, New Orleans, and Florida. The largest delegation of bosses was from the New York-New Jersey area. Several major bosses from the Jewish Syndicate were at the conference to discuss joint La Cosa Nostra-Jewish Syndicate business. According to conference rules, the Jewish delegates could not vote on Cosa Nostra rules or policies; however, the Jewish crime bosses were allowed input on any joint business ventures, such as the Flamingo Hotel.

Luciano opened the Havana Conference by discussing a topic that would greatly affect his authority within the American Mafia; the position of capo di tutti capi ("boss of all bosses"). The last official boss of all bosses had been Salvatore Maranzano, who was murdered in September 1931. By the end of 1931, Luciano had eliminated this top position and re-organized the Italian mafia into "Cosa Nostra", or "This Thing of Ours". A board of directors, commonly called the "Commission", had been formed to oversee criminal activities, control rules, and set policies. Cosa Nostra thus became the top criminal organization within the National Crime Syndicate.

Luciano could easily have declared himself as Maranzano's heir in 1932; instead, he decided to exercise control behind the scenes. This arrangement had worked until Vito Genovese's return from Italy. Officially, Genovese was now just a caporegime; however, he had made it clear that he intended to take control of the Luciano crime family. Since Luciano's deportation in 1946, Luciano ally Frank Costello had been the acting boss of the Luciano family. As a result, tensions between the Costello and Genovese factions had started to fester. Luciano had no intention of stepping down as family boss; he had to do something about Genovese. Luciano also realized that Genovese threatened his overall authority and influence within the American mafia, probably with support from other crime bosses. Therefore, Luciano decided to resurrect the boss of all bosses position and claim it for himself. He hoped the other bosses would support him, either by officially affirming the title or at least by acknowledging that he was still "First Amongst Equals".

At the conference, Luciano allegedly presented the motion to retain his position as the top boss in La Cosa Nostra. Then Luciano ally, Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia seconded the motion. Anastasia voted with Luciano because he felt threatened by Genovese's attempts to muscle in on his waterfront rackets. Checkmated by the Luciano-Costello-Anastasia alliance, Genovese was forced to swallow his ambitions and plan for the future. To further embarrass Genovese, Luciano encouraged Anastasia and Genovese to settle their differences and shake hands in front of the other bosses. This symbolic gesture was meant to prevent another bloody gang war such as the Castellammarese War of 1930–1931. With Luciano solidifying his personal position and squashing Genovese's ambition for now, Luciano brought up discussion of the mob's narcotics operations in the United States.

Narcotics trade
One of the key topics at the Havana Convention was the global narcotics trade and the mob's operations in the United States. A longstanding myth has been the supposed refusal of Luciano and Cosa Nostra to deal in narcotics. In reality, only a few bosses such as Frank Costello and the other bosses who controlled lucrative gambling empires opposed narcotics. The anti-drug faction believed that Cosa Nostra did not need narcotics profits, that narcotics brought unwanted law enforcement and media attention, and that the general public considered it to be a very harmful activity (unlike gambling). The pro-drug faction said that narcotics were far more profitable than any other illegal activity. Furthermore, if Cosa Nostra ignored the drug trade, other criminal organizations would jump in and eventually diminish Cosa Nostra's power and influence.

Luciano himself had a long involvement in the drug trade, starting as a small time street dealer in the late 1910s. In 1928, after the murder of Arnold "The Big Bankroll" Rothstein, Luciano and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter took over Rothstein's large drug importation operation. Since the 1920s, Cosa Nostra had been involved in drug importation (heroin, cocaine, and marijuana) into North America. In the 1930s, the organization started transporting narcotics from the East Asia Golden Triangle and South America to Cuba and into Florida. The American mob had a longtime association with the government of Cuba concerning gambling interests such as casinos along with their legitimate business investments on the Caribbean island. This put them in a position to use their political and underworld connections to make Cuba one of their narcotics importation layovers or smuggling points where the drugs could be stored. They were then placed on sea vessels before they continued on to Canada and the United States via Montreal and Florida among the ports used by Luciano's associates.

With Luciano's deportation to Italy, he now had the opportunity to import heroin from North Africa via Italy and Cuba into the US and Canada. Luciano made connections with Sicily's biggest bosses such as Don Calogero "Calo" Vizzini of Villalba who assisted the Allies' invasion of Sicily and had the greatest political connections of all the Sicilian bosses. Also, Don Pasquale Ania, a powerful boss in Palermo who had connections to legitimate pharmaceutical companies because large-scale heroin manufacturing in Italy was legal at the time.

During the Havana Conference, Luciano detailed the proposed drugs network to the bosses. After arriving in Cuba from North Africa, the mob would ship the narcotics to US ports that it controlled, primarily New York City, New Orleans, and Tampa. The narcotics shipped to the New York docks would be overseen by the Luciano crime family (later the Genovese) and the Mangano crime family (later the Gambino). In New Orleans, the operation would be overseen by the Marcello crime family, led by Carlos "Little Man" Marcello. In Tampa, the narcotics shipments would be overseen by the Trafficante crime family led by Santo Trafficante, Jr. The Havana Convention delegates voted to approve the plan.

Luciano built a massive drug organization spanning Italy and America. One of Luciano's narcotics lieutenants in Siculiana, Sicily was his old associate from New York, Nicola "Zu Cola" Gentile who oversaw all drug operations in the Agrigento province for Lucky Luciano and his partner Don Giuseppe Settecasi, the capo-provincial of Agrigento. A top Luciano lieutenant in the "Caneba Network" of mainland Italy was Antonio Farina, who would ship the narcotics to their U.S. partners in New York's Mangano crime family including Albert Anastasia, Frank "Don Cheech" Scalise, Jack Scarpulla, Peter Beddia and Matthew "Matty" Cuomo.

Long time Luciano ally Frank "Fingers" Coppola ran the Sicilian "Partinico Clan". This was a satellite group affiliated with the Detroit Partnership or Zerilli crime family led by boss Joseph "Joe Z." Zerilli and fellow bosses and Detroit allies, John "Papa John" Priziola, Angelo Meli, and Rafaelle Quasarano. The Detroit crime family then shipped the narcotics to their New York contacts, Giovanni "Big John" Ormento, of the Lucchese crime family, Carmine "Lilo" Galante and Natale "Joe Diamonds" Evola of the Bonanno crime family, Frank "Cheech" Livorsi of the Luciano crime family, and Joseph "Joe Bandy" Biondo of the Mangano crime family. These East Coast contacts would then distribute the drugs all along the East Coast.

Other Luciano lieutenants working mainland Italy included American deportees, Frank Barone and Giuseppe Arena in Rome, Frank Pirico, Frank Saverino and Giovanni Maugeri in Milan, Salvatore DiBella in Naples, and former Mangano crime family soldier, Joseph "Joe Peachy" Pici in Milan and Genoa. Other U.S. distribution groups that worked with Luciano and his allies were "The Bellanca Gang", brothers Antonio, Joseph, and Sebastiano "Benny Blanca" Bellanca and Gaetano "Tommy" Martino of the Mangano crime family. Then there was the group of Settimo "Big Sam" Accardi, Joseph "Hoboken Joe" Stassi and his brothers James "Jake" and Anthony, Anthony Granza, Vincent Ferrara and Louis Cirillo who worked for Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia and Carlo "Carl" Gambino. Even with all the growing animosity Lucky Luciano couldn't leave out his old associate, Vito "Don Vito" Genovese who had his group of distributors including Anthony "Tony Bender" Strollo, Vincent "Vinnie Bruno" Mauro, Frank "The Bug" Caruso, Salvatore "Sam" Maneri, Vincent "Chin" Gigante and even Joseph "Joe Cago" Valachi who were all associated with the "Papalia-Agueci Network" of the Magaddino crime family of Buffalo and led by members Johnny "Pops" Papalia and Alberto Agueci of Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario.

At first the Mafia's operation was one of many individual operations connected or affiliated to the French-Corsican Mob or Unione Corse's famous "French Connection" heroin distribution ring. By the late 1950s the Sicilians and Americans organized a joint U.S. and Sicilian La Cosa Nostra narcotics operation that would eventually grow into one of the largest global narcotics operations ever. This famous joint U.S.-Sicilian operation came to be known as the Pizza Connection and was cemented between the two mafia organizations at the famous mafia summit held at the Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily in October, 1957.

Salvatore and Ugo Caneba assisted Luciano and were the overseers of the famous heroin operation they controlled from mainland Italy to the United States, the Caneba Network which supplied high grade pharmaceutical quality heroin. Luciano's narcotics network was big and complex and he had many of his old, deported former U.S. allies to help him run his empire throughout the late 1940s. The main drug imported by Luciano's network at the time was heroin and the main sources were French underworld clans that made up the core of the Unione Corse Syndicate, or French Mob. The Corsican Clan was headed by powerful bosses Antoine D'Agostino, Jean Baptiste Croce, and Paul Mondolini, while the Marseilles Clan was made up of four groups. These four powerful groups included brothers Antoine and Barthelemy "Meme" Guerini, brothers Dominique and Jean Venturi, brothers Marcel, Xavier and Jean Francisci, and Joseph Orsini. Auguste Joseph Ricord was another boss that became part of the Unione Corse in the 1960s-70s. These two clans ruled the French underworld from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, supplying Luciano and his mafia allies with large amounts of heroin until the heroin ring known as the French Connection started to crumble in 1972 with the arrest of one of its biggest bosses, Auguste Joseph Ricord.

The Luciano narcotics empire continued to grow and prosper with the help of his U.S. associates. Many of Luciano's partners in the narcotics empire were Havana Conference delegates such as Joseph "The Old Man" Profaci who was once the biggest importer of olive oil and tomato paste in the United States and quietly used his food importation business to smuggle narcotics for decades, Gaetano "Tommy Brown" Lucchese, a longtime Luciano ally from their days as children in the streets of New York and who, along with his Lucchese crime family's narcotics distribution arm, the 107th St. Crew, which controlled all heroin distribution in Harlem, New York. Without a doubt one of the architects of the American heroin network and a partner of Luciano is well known and powerful New York mafia boss, Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, the patriarch of the Bonanno crime family, who along with the assistance of his cousin, Buffalo crime family boss Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino led the American mafia's expansion into Canada. Bonanno's and Magaddino's crime families in New York and Buffalo opened up Montreal and Toronto in the 1950s as satellite groups or individual operations connected with the famous French Connection, but eventually the satellite groups would grow into their own powerful crime families and control massive narcotics distribution networks that still operate even today, all of the narcotics networks mentioned help destroy the myth that Charlie Luciano and La Cosa Nostra were against narcotics. When Cuban president Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar was eventually overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959, the mob had to look elsewhere for a landing and storage facility for their narcotics shipments.

The Siegel Situation
The next item on the agenda at the Havana Conference was what Lansky called the "Siegel Situation". In the mid-1930s, the New York and Chicago crime families had been sent west to establish and oversee a race wire service, gambling activities in Los Angeles and Nevada, and supervise narcotics shipments from Mexico. In a short while, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel had become a popular and visible figure in Hollywood's most glamorous circles.

The Flamingo Hotel was the creation of Billy Wilkerson, a Hollywood nightclub owner and one of the founders of The Hollywood Reporter. By the mid-1940s, it was still unfinished. This Flamingo Hotel project became Siegel's obsession. Siegel persuaded his longtime friend and business associate Meyer Lansky to help him sell New York and Chicago crime bosses on investing in this project. Siegel promised the bosses that the hotel and casino would be a smart and profitable investment.

The Flamingo project immediately ran into problems. Siegel appointed his girlfriend Virginia Hill as a project overseer. As a result, contractors were stealing from Siegel. They would sell him materials one day, then steal them from the building site at night, then resell them to him the next day. The Flamingo project was also impacted by the rising cost of materials and labor from the post World War II building boom. The bottom line was that a project projected to cost $1.5 million would eventually reach $6 million.

To make matters worse, the bosses suspected Siegel and Hill of stealing project money. Lansky and the bosses had discovered that Hill was taking frequent trips to Zürich, Switzerland and depositing money in a bank account. They suspected that Siegel was skimming money and might flee the country if the Flamingo failed.

Following a discussion, the delegates voted to execute Siegel. The delegates assigned Chicago Outfit consigliere, Charles "Trigger Happy" Fischetti to oversee the contract. The actual hit would be given to Jack Dragna, the Los Angeles crime family boss. Dragna, who despised Siegel, then gave the contract to Mob hitman, John "Frankie" Carbo, a Lucchese crime family soldier.

At the last moment Siegel got a reprieve. The partly completed Flamingo was scheduled to open December 26. Longtime Siegel friend Lansky convinced the delegates to see how the hotel did in its opening. The delegates agreed, and then took a break for Christmas Day. The delegates soon learned that the Flamingo opening night was a flop. The enraged mobsters demanded Siegel's head. Lansky again convinced them to wait. He argued that Siegel could still save the casino and make money.

After two weeks, the Flamingo closed to resume construction. The completed hotel opened a few months later. The Flamingo started making a small profit, but the Mafia investors had finally lost patience with Siegel. On June 20, 1947, Siegel was home alone at Hill's mansion in Los Angeles reading a newspaper by a living room window. A gunman with a military M-1 carbine rose up from the bushes and fired four shots into the room. Siegel was hit twice in the head and twice in the torso and died instantly.

Lucky and Don Vito
At the end of the Havana Conference, the tension between Luciano and Genovese allegedly reached a boiling point, according to "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano", by Martin Gosch and Richard Hammer.

Meeting with Luciano in his room at the Hotel Nacional, Genovese told him that the U.S. government knew that Luciano was in Cuba and was pressuring the Cuban Government to expel him. Since Luciano was going to have to return to Italy, he should turn over leadership of the Luciano Family to Genovese and retire.

Positive that Genovese had tipped off the US government to his presence in Cuba, Luciano finally snapped. He proceeded to beat Genovese and eventually broke three of his ribs; it was three days before Vito could travel again. When Genovese felt better, Luciano and Anastasia put him on a plane to the States. Luciano also threatened to kill Genovese if he ever mentioned this incident to anyone.

In February 1947, the New York City papers got wind of the fact that Luciano was in Cuba. U.S. drug agent Harry Anslinger (called "that S.O.B Asslinger" by Luciano) demanded that Cuba deport Luciano to Italy. Anslinger claimed that Luciano was behind the recent surge of heroin into the United States. When Cuba refused to comply, Anslinger took his case to President Harry S. Truman. The U.S. government then halted all shipments of medical supplies to Cuba while Luciano was still on the island. Later in February, the Cubans caved in; they arrested Luciano and sent him back to Italy. When his plane landed there, the Italians arrested Luciano, but released him soon after.

Lucky Luciano died on January 26, 1962, of a heart attack at the Naples, Italy airport while picking up movie producer Martin Gosch.

Martin Gosch had helped Luciano write an autobiographical screenplay, but the Mafia Commission wouldn't allow the film to be made. Gosch along with Richard Hammer used the screenplay to write the book "The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano" in 1975.

Luciano's longtime associate and eventual nemesis, Vito Genovese, died a natural death in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1969. Luciano and Genovese are buried 100 feet from each other in the same cemetery in New York.

Havana Conference attendees
List of the organized crime figures who attended the Havana Conference on December 20, 1946 at the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Cuba.

Hosts

 * Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, former Luciano family boss, former chairman, founder and member of the Commission. Luciano was living in Naples, Italy. After the meeting he was named United States’ boss of bosses.
 * Meyer "The Little Man" Lansky, Jewish Syndicate boss, a top financial and gambling operations advisor for the Italian mafia in America and casino operations front man (Las Vegas, Cuba, Bahamas).

New York-New Jersey delegation

 * Frank "The Prime Minister" Costello, Luciano family boss, Commission member.
 * Gaurino "Willie Moore" Moretti, Luciano family underboss.
 * Salvatore “The Pope” Pellegrino, Luciano family consigliere and future front boss.
 * Vito "Don Vito" Genovese, Luciano family caporegime and future boss.
 * Giuseppe "Joe Adonis" Doto, Luciano family caporegime.
 * Anthony "Little Augie Pisano" Carfano, Luciano family caporegime.
 * Michele "Big Mike" Miranda, Luciano family caporegime and future consigliere.
 * Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia, Mangano family underboss and future boss.
 * Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, Bonanno family boss, charter Commission member.
 * Gaetano "Tommy Brown" Lucchese, Gagliano family underboss and future boss.
 * Giuseppe "The Old Man" Profaci, Profaci family boss, charter Commission member.
 * Giuseppe "Fat Joe" Magliocco, Profaci family underboss.

Chicago delegation

 * Anthony "Joe Batters" Accardo, Chicago Outfit boss, Commission member.
 * Charles "Trigger Happy" Fischetti, Chicago Outfit consigliere.
 * Sam Giancana, Chicago Outfit front boss.

Buffalo delegation

 * Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino, Buffalo family boss, charter Commission member.

New Orleans delegation

 * Carlos "Little Man" Marcello, New Orleans family boss (some mob historians dispute his position at this time).

Tampa delegation

 * Santo "Louie Santos" Trafficante Jr., Tampa family caporegime, moved to Havana in 1946 to oversee La Cosa Nostra and Tampa family casino and business interests, future Tampa family boss.

Jewish Syndicate delegation

 * Abner "Longy" Zwillman, New Jersey Jewish Syndicate boss, National Syndicate Commission member.
 * Morris "Moe" Dalitz, Cleveland Jewish Syndicate boss, casino front man (Desert Inn, Las Vegas)
 * Joseph "Doc" Stacher, New Jersey Jewish Syndicate boss, casino front man (Sands Hotel, Las Vegas)
 * Philip "Dandy Phil" Kastel, Jewish Syndicate boss, Frank Costello's Louisiana slots operations and Tropicana Casino, Las Vegas partner.

Entertainment

 * Frank Sinatra

Sidenote
While Luciano knew that Vito Genovese had tipped off the U.S. government to his whereabouts in Cuba, he did not live to learn that it was "Joe Bananas" Bonanno who revealed to New York City newspapers as to Luciano's whereabouts in Cuba in February 1947. Joseph Bonanno was a respected and feared Don, who was ruthless, ambitious and had aspired to being crowned capo di tutti capi (boss of all bosses) like his former boss and mentor Salvatore Maranzano. This information of Joseph Bonanno's treachery was picked up by former FBI agent William Roemer, who was given the information by several of his former FBI colleagues. Bill Roemer details this on pages 132-42 in his 1990 book, War of the Godfathers.

In popular culture
The film The Godfather Part II has an homage to the Havana Conference when Michael Corleone travels to Havana to have a meeting with several other mob bosses.

Bugsy also has the climatic debate and decision on whether to and when to execute Bugsy Siegel set at the Hotel Nacional.

title: Havana Conference