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Grass carp

The grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella) is a species of large herbivorous freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae, native to the Pacific Far East, with a native range stretching from northern Vietnam to the Amur River on the Sino-Russian border. This Asian carp is the only species of the genus Ctenopharyngodon.

Grass carp are resident fish of large turbid rivers and associated floodplain lakes/wetlands with a wide range of temperature tolerance, and spawn at temperatures of 20 to 30 C. It has been cultivated as a food fish in China for centuries, being known as one of the Four Domestic Fish (四大家鱼), but was later introduced to Europe and the United States for aquatic weed control, becoming the fish species with the largest reported farmed production globally, over five million tonnes per year.

Appearance and anatomy
Grass carp have elongated, chubby, torpedo-shaped body forms. The terminal mouth is slightly oblique with non-fleshy, firm lips, and no barbels. The complete lateral line contains 40 to 42 scales. Broad, ridged pharyngeal teeth are arranged in a "2, 4-4, 2" formula. The dorsal fin has eight to 10 soft rays, and the anal fin is set closer to the tail than most cyprinids. Body color is dark olive, shading to brownish-yellow on the sides, with a white belly and large, slightly outlined scales. Grass carp grow very rapidly. Young fish stocked in the spring at 20 cm will reach over 45 cm by fall. The typical length is about 60 –. The maximum length is 2.0 m and they grow to 45 kg.

Ecology
Grass carp inhabit lakes, ponds, pools and backwaters of large rivers, preferring large, slow-flowing or standing water bodies with abundant vegetation. In the wild, grass carp spawn in fast-moving rivers, and their eggs, which are slightly heavier than water, develop while drifting downstream, kept in suspension by turbulence. Grass carp require long rivers for the survival of the eggs and very young fish, and the eggs are thought to die if they sink to the bottom.

Adult grass carps feed primarily on aquatic plants, both higher aquatic plants and submerged terrestrial vegetation, but may also eat detritus, insects and other invertebrates. They eat up to three times their own body weight daily, and thrive in small lakes and backwaters that provide an abundant supply of vegetation.

According to one study, grass carp live 5-9 years, with the oldest surviving 11 years. In Silver Lake, Washington, a thriving population of grass carp is passing the 15-year mark.

Introduced species
Grass carp have been introduced to many countries around the world. In the Northern Hemisphere, countries and territories of introduction include Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, the United States, Mexico, Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. In the Southern Hemisphere, they have been introduced to Argentina, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and South Africa. Grass carp are known to have spawned and established self-reproducing populations in only six of the many larger Northern Hemisphere rivers into which they have been stocked. Their failure to establish populations in other rivers suggests they have quite specific reproductive requirements.

In the United States, the species was first imported in 1963 from Taiwan and Malaysia to aquaculture facilities in Alabama and Arkansas. The first release is believed to have been an accidental escape in 1966 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Fish Farming Experimental Station in Stuttgart, Arkansas, followed by planned introductions beginning in 1969. Subsequently, authorized, illegal and accidental introductions have been widespread; by the 1970s, the species had been introduced to 40 states, and it has since been reported in 45 of the country's 50 states. In 2013, it was determined to be reproducing in the Great Lakes Basin. It is still stocked in many states as an effective biocontrol for undesirable aquatic vegetation, many species of which are themselves introduced.

Weed control
Grass carp were introduced into New Zealand in 1966 to control the growth of aquatic plants. Unlike the other introduced fish brought to New Zealand, the potential value and impact of grass carp was investigated in secure facilities prior to their use in field trials. They are now approved by the New Zealand government for aquatic weed control, although each instance requires specific authorization. In the Netherlands, the species was also introduced in 1973 to control over-abundant aquatic weeds. The release was controlled and regulated by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality. In both of these countries, control is made easier because grass carp are very unlikely to naturally reproduce because of their very specific breeding requirements, but elsewhere, control is obtained by the use of sterile, triploid fish.

Food
Grass carp is one of the most common freshwater farmed fish in China, being one of the Four Domestic Fish (四大家鱼) alongside the Black carp, Silver carp, and Bighead carp. Its meat is tender, while with little bone. Many Chinese cuisine has grass carp as a featured dish, such as Cantonese cuisine. In some Asian countries, it is believed that ingestion of raw bile or entire gall bladders of the grass carp may improve visual acuity and health. However, it may in fact cause severe poisoning.

Fishing for grass carp
Grass carp grow large and are strong fighters when hooked on a line, but because of their vegetarian habits and their wariness, they can be difficult to catch via angling. The IGFA World record for a grass carp caught on line and hook is 39.75 kg, caught in Bulgaria in 2009. The fish are also popular sport fish in areas where bowfishing is legal.

Where grass carp populations are maintained through stocking as a biocontrol for noxious weeds, fishermen are typically asked to return any caught to the water alive and unharmed.

title: Grass carp


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J. F. Oberlin

J. F. Oberlin (31 August 1740 – 1 June 1826) was an Alsatian pastor and a philanthropist. He has been known as John Frederic(k) Oberlin in English, Jean-Frédéric Oberlin in French, and Johann Friedrich Oberlin in German.

Life
Oberlin was born the son of Johann Georg Oberlin (1701–1770), a teacher, and Maria Magdalena (1718–1787), daughter of lawyer Johann Heinrich Feltz, on 31 August 1740 in the German-speaking city of Strasbourg, where he studied theology. In 1766 he became Protestant pastor of Waldbach (now Waldersbach), a remote and barren region in the Steinthal (Ban de la Roche/Steintal), a valley in the Vosges on the borders of Alsace and Lorraine. Oberlin set out to improve both the material and the spiritual condition of the inhabitants. He began by encouraging the construction of roads through the valley and the erection of bridges, rallying the peasantry to the enterprise by his personal example. He introduced an improved system of agriculture. Substantial cottages were erected, and various industrial arts were introduced. He founded an itinerant library, originated infant schools (precursors of the modern nursery schools of France) and established an ordinary school at each of the five villages in the parish. In the work of education he received great assistance from his housekeeper, Louisa Scheppler (1763–1837). He practiced medicine among them, founded a savings and loan bank and introduced cotton manufacturing.

Beside all this Oberlin was a man of rare spirituality, being frequently styled "a saint of the Protestant church," and an excellent pastor, who preached each month three sermons in French and one in German. In 1812 Daniel Legrand visited the Steinthal (Ban de la Roche), where he met Oberlin, who lived in Waldersbach. Legrand came under the spell of the pastor, and moved with his ribbon factory to the village of Urbach in the vicinity of Waldersbach, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Oberlin died at Waldersbach on 1 June 1826 and was interred with great manifestations of honor and affection at Urbach (now Fouday, Bas Rhin).

Legacy
Oberlin has been called the "true precursor of social Christianity in France." Daniel Legrand's grandson was Tommy Fallot, founder of "Christianisme social." Legrand and Robert Owen (1771–1853) of Wales, another industrialist, advocated creation of an international organization dedicated to reform of labor laws. Oberlin's orphan asylums were the beginning of the many "Oberlinvereine" for the protection of children, such as in Leonberg, Potsdam and Worms.

Oberlin, Ohio, founded as a Christian settlement, and its centerpiece, Oberlin College, a liberal arts college, were named for him upon their founding in 1833. J. F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan, which was named for Oberlin College, also bears his name. Oberlin, Louisiana, was also named after him.

His brother Jérémie Jacques Oberlin was a noted archaeologist and philologist.

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

title: J. F. Oberlin


text:
Washwood Heath

Washwood Heath is a ward in Birmingham, within the formal district of Hodge Hill, roughly two miles north-east of Birmingham city centre, England. Washwood Heath covers the areas of Birmingham that lie between Nechells, Bordesley Green, Stechford and Hodge Hill.

Geography
Saltley on the south-western side and Ward End on the north-eastern side of Washwood Heath are the two areas that cover the entire ward, though some parts near Nechells and Hodge Hill do not come under either of these and are simply headed under "Washwood Heath". One of the area's major employers was the railway works owned by Metropolitan-Cammell (later Alstom), but it closed in 2005.

In the 2020s, Washwood Heath railway depot was to be constructed as part of the High Speed 2 project - to service and maintain the high speed trains.

Demographics
According to the 2001 Population Census, there were 27,822 people living in the ward with a population density of 5,335 people per km2 compared with 3,649 people per km2 for Birmingham. The area is 5.2 km2. Washwood Heath is an ethnically diverse community with 57% (15,863) of the ward's population being of an ethnic minority compared with 29.6% for Birmingham. It had been a major Irish community.

Education
The area is served by Washwood Heath Academy. For the younger population, there is a children's centre.

Politics
The ward is represented on Birmingham City Council by three councillors: Mariam Khan, Ansar Ali Khan and Mohammed Idrees, all Labour.

Project Champion
Project Champion was a project to install a £3m network of 169 Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras to monitor vehicles entering and leaving Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook. Its implementation was frozen in June 2010 amid allegations that the police deliberately misled councillors about its purpose, after it was revealed that it was being funded as an anti-terrorism initiative, rather than for 'reassurance and crime prevention'.

Places of interest

 * Saltley
 * Adderley Park
 * Adderley Park railway station
 * Wheels Adventure Park

 * Ward End
 * Fox & Goose
 * Ward End Library
 * Washwood Heath Christadelphians
 * Ward End Park

The Ward End Works
In 1914 the Electric & Ordnance Accessories Company Ltd (Vickers, Sons & Maxim) constructed a large factory between Common Lane and Drews Lane in the Ward End area of Washwood Heath. The Ward End Works covered an area of 65 acre upon completion. A distinctive feature was the Bromford House administrative block, with its 400 ft façade fronting onto Drews Lane.

The factory was an assembly plant and before the outbreak of hostilities produced a light car called the Stellite. During its first four years, the factory also produced munitions fuses and shell cases for soldiers fighting in mainland Europe during World War I. When the war was over, Vickers, the owners of Electric & Ordnance Accessories Company Ltd, put the factory under the ownership of another subsidiary Wolseley Motors on 30 September 1919. After the change in ownership, Wolseley replaced the small workshop sheds with a large assembly building.

Wolseley began to encounter difficulties in the 1920s and it was saved after being purchased by William Morris. As a result of the purchase, car manufacturing was completely moved from the Adderley Park site, which became Morris Commercials, to the Ward End Works. Engines for the Morris Minor were also produced at the factory during the 1930s alongside the Wolseley production line.

When World War II broke out in 1939 the factory became the production base for tanks and military vehicles as well as mines. In 1941, it also began to produce the Horsa glider. By the end of the war, £500,000 worth of damage had been inflicted on the plant by the Luftwaffe in raids in 1941 and 1942.

In 1939 a new factory for the Morris Motors Pressing Branch was constructed on the Common Lane side of the Ward End Works. This was renamed Nuffield Metal Products in 1945. Production of Wolseley cars recommenced on 4 September 1945.

In 1948 the works began to encounter new problems and it was seen to be more efficient for production of new Morrises to be moved to Cowley in Oxford. By the 1950s, production was centred at Cowley and the Ward End Works were used in the productions of Nuffield Group products. Following the formation of the British Motor Corporation in 1952, parts were also made there for Austin-Healey Sprite, and the Wolseley 1500/Riley 1.5 twins. The formation of British Leyland resulted in the plant being redesignated the Austin Morris division's Transmission Plant. 4,400 workers were employed on site.

When the Adderley Park plant closed in 1972 all vehicle production was moved to the Common Lane works. During the mid-1980s there was a fire at the factory however no other problems surfaced.

In 1989 Freight Rover became Leyland-DAF Vans, which then became the LDV Group in 1993. The site covered 85 acre, with Bromford House being used as the company's headquarters. The works have since been demolished.

The former Metro-Cammell and Leyland DAF Vans sites are to be redeveloped as the Washwood Heath depot for High Speed 2.

title: Washwood Heath


text:
Stockland Green

Stockland Green is an area of Birmingham, England.

It gives its name to a ward which is part of the Erdington formal district, and is located to the south-west of Erdington and north-east of Birmingham City Centre. The area is often mistakenly identified as Erdington, normally through domestic and commercial addresses. The area however has its own council ward and is outside Erdington's traditional boundaries, previously in the Birmingham Aston constituency.

Demographics
The 2001 Population Census recorded that there were 23,060 people living in the ward with a population density of 4,487 people per km2 compared with 3,649 people per km2 for Birmingham. 24.7% (5,706) of the ward's population consists of ethnic minorities compared with 29.6% for Birmingham in general.

Politics
The ward was dominated by the Labour Party between the mid-1980s to 2007 and sent three Labour councillors to Birmingham City Council. However, in 2008 this changed when Matt Bennett won for the local Conservative Party.

Ward boundaries changed in 2018 and Stockland Green was reduced from three councillors to two; the ward no longer included Gravelly Hill which became a single-member ward.

Stockland Green has a Ward Support Officer.

Places of interest
Points of interest include Witton Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in the Midlands, which can be seen from the M6 motorway. Other areas include the Josiah Mason/Stockland Green complex of schools and colleges and Witton Lakes, an area of local beauty.

A rocky outcrop is located along the Tyburn Road. There are two major areas of open space; Bleak Hill Recreation Ground and Brookvale Park, which contains a large lake.

Stockland Green Community Leisure Centre serves the area.

Transport
Three major roads dissect the area; Tyburn Road (A38), Gravelly Hill (A5127) and Reservoir Road (A4040). The M6 motorway is situated in the southern boundary of the ward.

Gravelly Hill railway station on the Cross-City Line is on the boundary of Stockland Green and Gravelly Hill wards.

title: Stockland Green


text: User talk:80.42.75.100

title: User talk:80.42.75.100


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William Heath

William Heath (March 2, 1737 – January 24, 1814) was an American farmer, soldier, and political leader from Massachusetts who served as a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

Life and career
Heath made his home for his entire life at his family's farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts (present day Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, part of the city of Boston). He was born on a farm that had been settled in 1636 by his ancestors. He became active in the militia, and was a captain of the Roxbury Company of the Suffolk County militia regiment in 1760. By 1770 he was the regiment's colonel and its commanding officer.

In 1765 he was elected as a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts and was elected as the company's lieutenant in 1768 and as its captain in 1770.

In December 1774 the revolutionary government in Massachusetts commissioned him as a brigadier general. He commanded Massachusetts forces during the last stage of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. As the siege of Boston began, Heath devoted himself to training the militia involved in the siege. In June of that year, Massachusetts named him a major general in the state troops, and the Continental Congress commissioned him a brigadier general in the newly formed Continental Army.

In 1776 Heath participated in the defense of New York City, and was one of those who urged General Washington not to abandon the city. He saw action at Long Island, Harlem Heights, and White Plains. In August 1776 he was promoted to major general in the Continental Army, but Washington had doubts about Heath's abilities and posted him where no action was expected. In November he was placed in command of forces in the Hudson River Highlands. In January 1777, Washington instructed Heath to attack Fort Independence in New York in support of Washington's actions at Trenton and Princeton, but Heath's attack was botched and his troops were routed. He was censured by Washington and thereafter was never given command of troops in combat.

General Heath was placed in charge of the Convention Army of John Burgoyne’s surrendered troops after the Battle of Saratoga. In 1780 he returned to command the Highland Department after Benedict Arnold’s treason.

He was admitted as an original member of The Society of the Cincinnati in the state of Massachusetts when it was established in 1783.

After the war, Heath was a member of the Massachusetts Convention that ratified the United States Constitution in 1788. He served in the Massachusetts Senate from 1791 to 1792, and as a probate court judge. In 1806 he was elected the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, but declined the office.

He died at his home in Roxbury on January 24, 1814, and was buried nearby in Forest Hills Cemetery. The town of Heath, Massachusetts, is named in his honor. A street in the west Bronx is named in his honor.

title: William Heath


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User:Wadewitz

Biographical sketch
My name is Adrianne Wadewitz. Currently I am a Mellon Digital Scholarship Fellow at Occidental College. In 2011, received a PhD from Indiana University in English literature. My dissertation was on the self and sensibility in eighteenth-century British children's literature. You can find me on the web here.

Partially because of my work on Wikipedia, the digital humanities has become an interest of mine and I have presented academic papers and published on how to integrate Wikipedia into the classroom. I am involved in the Wikipedia Education program and am on the Wiki Education Foundation Board of Directors. I have worked on various Wikimedia education initiatives and written a brochure on how to use Wikipedia in the classroom. My courses on Wikipedia:
 * Adolescent Literature (Spring 2012)
 * Children's Literature (Fall 2011)
 * FemTechNet Wikistorming

Apart from my interest in literature and history (which are integrally tied together for me), some of my hobbies include playing classical piano, reading popular science books, rock climbing, and hiking.

Conflict of interest statement
I am employed by Occidental College and am currently working on Sociological Images, an article about a blog maintained by a faculty member at that institution. I myself have no connection to the blog but do know the faculty member.

Alternate account used for outreach events: User:Queeralice

Wikium vitae
I made my first edit to Wikipedia on 18 July 2004. In the past, I have reviewed at Featured article candidates, Peer Review and Good article nominations. I particularly enjoy reviewing literature articles, since that is my area of expertise, and science articles to ensure their accessibility to the general public. If you would like me to review your article, please leave a message on my talk page and I will give it a careful and thoughtful review. I will also respond to specific copy editing requests.

Currently, I am engaged in outreach work, encouraging professors to contribute to and teach with Wikipedia. I worked in the Public Policy Initiative as a Campus Ambassador to further these goals and am now part of the United States Education Program.

I would specifically like to thank Kaldari who helped initiate a wiki-newbie on Mary Wollstonecraft and encouraged me to take it to FAC. I would also like to thank the following editors for their insightful contributions to projects I have worked on: Opabinia regalis, lquilter, qp10qp, WillowW, scribblingwoman, AnonEMouse, Markus Poessel, Outriggr, Scartol, Roger Davies, Ruhrfisch, Maria, Moni3, Brianboulton, Xover, Simmaren, Ealdgyth, Elcobbola, Laser brain, Shoemaker's Holiday, Durova, Cirt, and Casliber. I would also like to thank Jeeny who polished up many images for me. I wish that there were more Wikipedia editors such as these and that I could work with them more often.

 * DYK contributions that I have made
 * Pages that I've created
 * Awards that have been kindly bestowed upon me
 * WP:WBFAN

Articles
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Mary Wollstonecraft
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Mary: A Fiction
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Original Stories from Real Life
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] A Vindication of the Rights of Men
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Analytical Review (with WillowW)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Joseph Johnson (with WillowW)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Fanny Imlay
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Mary Shelley (with Qp10qp)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Proserpine
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] History of a Six Weeks' Tour
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Some Thoughts Concerning Education

 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Anna Laetitia Barbauld
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Sarah Trimmer
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Mary Martha Sherwood
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] List of works by Joseph Priestley
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] The Age of Reason
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Joseph Priestley (with ragesoss)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Joseph Priestley House (with Ruhrfisch)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Lessons for Children
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] The Guardian of Education
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Timeline of Jane Austen (with Simmaren)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Priestley Riots
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Boydell Shakespeare Gallery (with Rupert Clayton)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Reception history of Jane Austen (with Simmaren and Maria)
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] The Lucy poems
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] The Time Traveler's Wife
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Cartman Gets an Anal Probe
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] The Historian (with )
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Rambles in  Germany and Italy
 * [[Image:LinkFA-star.png]] Lynn Hill

Edit-a-thons organized
 * The Botanic Garden
 * The History of the Fairchild Family
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 * Susanna Clarke
 * The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
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 * List of works by Mary Martha Sherwood
 * 1794 Treason Trials
 * Wikipedia Takes America: Los Angeles
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 * Wikipedia Loves Eagle Rock
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My thoughts about Wikipedia
 * The struggle over gender on Wikipedia: The case of Chelsea Manning
 * Looking at the five pillars of Wikipedia as a feminist, part 1
 * Wikipedia's gender gap and the complicated reality of systemtic gender bias
 * Who speaks for the women of Wikipedia? Not the women of Wikipedia.
 * Wikipedia is pushing the boundaries of scholarly practice but the gender gap must be addressed
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 * Featured article writers—the inside view
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 * Copyediting podcast
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 * FAC reviewing podcast
 * Teaching and Wikipedia podcast
 * Wikimania talk Wiki-Writing (also here)

title: User:Wadewitz


text:
Talk:Car donation

Untitled
From VfD:

When I came upon this, it had a vfd tag, and had been listed here, but no rationale. I've since rewritten the article, and vote keep. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 16:17, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)
 * Keep: The original version implied it was an advert for a company buying 2nd hand cars Giano 16:23, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep the present article as explanatory rather than promotional. Geogre 16:28, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. An interesting curiosity of the US charity system. Nice job on the rewrite. -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 16:31, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep rewrite. Good job. - Lucky 6.9 16:56, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. jengod 18:24, Jul 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * Excellent rewrite :). Keep. Thue | talk 09:32, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, excellent rewrite. Andris 11:52, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

end moved discussion

I suggest we remove the line "as such, this type of giving has become very popular in the early 21st century," or at least the "in the early 21st century" portion. This type of donation existed before the year 2000 (I donated cars in 1994 and again in 1994), and I'm not aware of any such measurement of popularity, let alone how noting popularity adds to the article. --michael zimmer 04:54, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

There are 8 links now in the External Links section. Car donation is in the wikipedia spam category, and I see why. The first external links is a true resource. All other 7 external links are spam.

 * 2nd link: Links to page with poor content - page dominated by Paid Ads.
 * 3rd link: Does not provide any usefull info. Has google ads - In the end of the page, Other Usefull Sites refer you to credit guides and home loans.
 * 4th link: This site is a duplicate of the second link – same layout exactly – just a diferent URL with google ads are in a different spot.
 * 5th link: Adsense – Google paid ads
 * 6th link: DO not have ANY resource or links to other blind sites. It only has links to Adsense.
 * 7th link:Is a one page site with no tips – it only has Adsense ads – with Google paid ads.
 * 8th link:A car donation site advertising themselves.

I suggest all 7 links to be removed.--mp 17:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The new “external link” just added claims to be “charity-neutral” – however, it is full of Google Ads.

Click on “view charities that benefit animals” – you will see Google Ads about: Pet Adoption, Adopt a Shelter Cat Month, etc.

Click on “Donation by Location – Atlanta”: you will see Google Ads on: Car Donation Washington, etc.

--mp 18:01, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

 * Google ads arent bad - they help support a website --joeychgo

I do not think it is appropriate for an encyclopedia to call such a site a “car donation directory that is charity-neutral”.

Top fold of the home page is dominated by paid ads.

--mp 15:03, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a topic that gets very consistently spammed. Per WP:EL I'd say only something that serves as a very high quality link that is either noncommercial or the ads are very unobtrusive and the quality is very high should be included. Just keep removing the crud. If someone disagrees they can start a discussion on the talk page on why the link is worth including. But even those need to be culled to avoid SEO. - Taxman Talk 00:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Possible spam link
Someone added a link to http://car-model-08.blogspot.com, a blog which at first glance seems to promote car donation, but I cannot find contact information, or the legal advice it claims to contain. I would appreciate if someone could take a look at the blog and either support or reject my conclusion that it is spam. It should be noted that the link was added to Automobile and Car model as well, which adds to my suspicions. But if it should be anywhere, it should be on this page. --τις (talk) 13:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Kars4Kids
I added kars4kids, which someone delated, because it is one of the leading (if not *the* leading) car-donation programs in the U.S. How can you talk about long-distance service without mentioning AT&T? Or fast-food without mentioning McDonalds? Kars4Kids, with its annoying jingle, is certainly the most recognized player in this field. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.19.148.90 (talk) 16:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

 * Please review the Wikipedia policies on external links to understand why your link was deleted. Your edit also deleted properly cited material from the article, such edits are generally regarded as poor form.  --CliffC (talk) 16:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 10:52, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Car donation


text:
Fundamental theorem of Riemannian geometry

In the mathematical field of Riemannian geometry, the fundamental theorem of Riemannian geometry states that on any Riemannian manifold (or pseudo-Riemannian manifold) there is a unique affine connection that is torsion-free and metric-compatible, called the Levi-Civita connection or (pseudo-)Riemannian connection of the given metric. Because it is canonically defined by such properties, often this connection is automatically used when given a metric.

Statement of the theorem
Fundamental theorem of Riemannian Geometry. Let $(M, g)$ be a Riemannian manifold (or pseudo-Riemannian manifold). Then there is a unique connection $∇$ which satisfies the following conditions: The first condition is called metric-compatibility of $X(g(Y, Z))$. It may be equivalently expressed by saying that, given any curve in $X$, the inner product of any two $g(Y, Z)$–parallel vector fields along the curve is constant. It may also be equivalently phrased as saying that the metric tensor is preserved by parallel transport, which is to say that the metric is parallel when considering the natural extension of $[X, Y]$ to act on (0,2)-tensor fields: $∇$. It is further equivalent to require that the connection is induced by a principal bundle connection on the orthonormal frame bundle.
 * for any vector fields $Y$, $Z$, and $X$ we have $$X \big(g(Y,Z)\big) = g( \nabla_X Y,Z ) + g( Y,\nabla_X Z ),$$ where $∇$ denotes the derivative of the function $∇$ along vector field $X$.
 * for any vector fields $Y$, $X$, $$\nabla_XY-\nabla_YX=[X,Y],$$ where $∇g = 0$ denotes the Lie bracket of $Y$ and $M$.

The second condition is sometimes called symmetry of $∇$. It expresses the condition that the torsion of $∇$ is zero, and as such is also called torsion-freeness. There are alternative characterizations.

An extension of the fundamental theorem states that given a pseudo-Riemannian manifold there is a unique connection preserving the metric tensor, with any given vector-valued 2-form as its torsion. The difference between an arbitrary connection (with torsion) and the corresponding Levi-Civita connection is the contorsion tensor.

The fundamental theorem asserts both existence and uniqueness of a certain connection, which is called the Levi-Civita connection or (pseudo-)Riemannian connection. However, the existence result is extremely direct, as the connection in question may be explicitly defined by either the second Christoffel identity or Koszul formula as obtained in the proofs below. This explicit definition expresses the Levi-Civita connection in terms of the metric and its first derivatives. As such, if the metric is $k$-times continuously differentiable, then the Levi-Civita connection is $(k − 1)$-times continuously differentiable.

The Levi-Civita connection can also be characterized in other ways, for instance via the Palatini variation of the Einstein–Hilbert action.

Proof of the theorem
The proof of the theorem can be presented in various ways. Here the proof is first given in the language of coordinates and Christoffel symbols, and then in the coordinate-free language of covariant derivatives. Regardless of the presentation, the idea is to use the metric-compatibility and torsion-freeness conditions to obtain a direct formula for any connection that is both metric-compatible and torsion-free. This establishes the uniqueness claim in the fundamental theorem. To establish the existence claim, it must be directly checked that the formula obtained does define a connection as desired.

Local coordinates
Here the Einstein summation convention will be used, which is to say that an index repeated as both subscript and superscript is being summed over all values. Let $m$ denote the dimension of $M$. Recall that, relative to a local chart, a connection is given by $m^{3}$ smooth functions $$\left \{ \Gamma^l_{ij} \right \},$$ with $$(\nabla_XY)^i=X^j\partial_jY^i+X^jY^k\Gamma_{jk}^i$$ for any vector fields $X$ and $Y$. Torsion-freeness of the connection refers to the condition that $∇_{X}Y − ∇_{Y} X = [X, Y]$ for arbitrary $X$ and $Y$. Written in terms of local coordinates, this is equivalent to $$0=X^jY^k(\Gamma_{jk}^i-\Gamma_{kj}^i),$$ which by arbitrariness of $X$ and $Y$ is equivalent to the condition $Γi jk = Γi kj$. Similarly, the condition of metric-compatibility is equivalent to the condition $$\partial_kg_{ij}=\Gamma_{ki}^lg_{lj}+\Gamma_{kj}^lg_{il}.$$ In this way, it is seen that the conditions of torsion-freeness and metric-compatibility can be viewed as a linear system of equations for the connection, in which the coefficients and 'right-hand side' of the system are given by the metric and its first derivative. The fundamental theorem of Riemannian geometry can be viewed as saying that this linear system has a unique solution. This is seen via the following computation: $$\begin{align}\partial_ig_{jl}+\partial_jg_{il}-\partial_lg_{ij}&=\left(\Gamma_{ij}^pg_{pl}+\Gamma_{il}^pg_{jp}\right)+\left(\Gamma_{ji}^pg_{pl}+\Gamma_{jl}^pg_{ip}\right)-\left(\Gamma_{li}^pg_{pj}+\Gamma_{lj}^pg_{ip}\right)\\ &=2\Gamma_{ij}^pg_{pl}\end{align}$$ in which the metric-compatibility condition is used three times for the first equality and the torsion-free condition is used three times for the second equality. The resulting formula is sometimes known as the first Christoffel identity. It can be contracted with the inverse of the metric, $g^{kl}$, to find the second Christoffel identity: $$\Gamma^k_{ij} = \tfrac{1}{2} g^{kl}\left ( \partial_i g_{jl}+ \partial_j g_{il} - \partial_l g_{ij} \right ).$$ This proves the uniqueness of a torsion-free and metric-compatible condition; that is, any such connection must be given by the above formula. To prove the existence, it must be checked that the above formula defines a connection that is torsion-free and metric-compatible. This can be done directly.

Invariant formulation
The above proof can also be expressed in terms of vector fields. Torsion-freeness refers to the condition that $$\nabla_XY-\nabla_YX=[X,Y],$$ and metric-compatibility refers to the condition that $$X\left(g(Y,Z)\right)=g(\nabla_XY,Z)+g(Y,\nabla_XZ),$$ where $X$, $Y$, and $Z$ are arbitrary vector fields. The computation previously done in local coordinates can be written as $$\begin{align}X\left(g(Y,Z)\right)&+Y\left(g(X,Z)\right)-Z\left(g(X,Y)\right)\\ &=\Big(g(\nabla_XY,Z)+g(Y,\nabla_XZ)\Big)+\Big(g(\nabla_YX,Z)+g(X,\nabla_YZ)\Big)-\Big(g(\nabla_ZX,Y)+g(X,\nabla_ZY)\Big)\\ &=g(\nabla_XY+\nabla_YX,Z)+g(\nabla_XZ-\nabla_ZX,Y)+g(\nabla_YZ-\nabla_ZY,X)\\ &=g(2\nabla_XY+[Y,X],Z)+g([X,Z],Y)+g([Y,Z],X).\end{align}$$ This reduces immediately to the first Christoffel identity in the case that $X$, $Y$, and $Z$ are coordinate vector fields. The equations displayed above can be rearranged to produce the Koszul formula or identity $$2g(\nabla_XY,Z)=X\left(g(Y,Z)\right)+Y\left(g(X,Z)\right)-Z\left(g(X,Y)\right)-g([Y,X],Z)-g([X,Z],Y)-g([Y,Z],X).$$ This proves the uniqueness of a torsion-free and metric-compatible condition, since if $g(W, Z)$ is equal to $g(U, Z)$ for arbitrary $Z$, then $W$ must equal $U$. This is a consequence of the non-degeneracy of the metric. In the local formulation above, this key property of the metric was implicitly used, in the same way, via the existence of $g^{kl}$. Furthermore, by the same reasoning, the Koszul formula can be used to define a vector field $∇_{X}Y$ when given $X$ and $Y$, and it is routine to check that this defines a connection that is torsion-free and metric-compatible.


text:
User talk:Ponder

Welcome
Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

 * To sign your posts (on talk pages, for example) use the '~' symbol. To insert just your name, type ~~~ (3 tildes), or, to insert your name and timestamp, use ~~~~ (4 tildes).
 * Try the Tutorial, and feel free to experiment in the test area.
 * If you need help, post a question at the Help Desk
 * Follow the Simplified Ruleset
 * Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
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Good luck!

Near Earth asteroid
Thanks for putting the million back in the price at Near Earth asteroid. At $450 I could do the search myself! Rmhermen 13:12, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

There
Thanks. I always thought there was a page for that. [[User:supadawg|supadawg - talk - contribs]] 21:59, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * If this is referring to There, thanks for the revert while you were just an IP. Thanks also for catching the Pepsi vandalism by tracking the users contributions.  I never would have noticed. --TIB (talk) 01:23, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

Stressed
Wow, you sure got fed up fast. :P --TIB (talk) 04:59, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
 * Nice user page. :D --TIB (talk) 06:24, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

Pentathlon
See Olympic_medalists_in_athletics_%28women%29. At the olympics, there was a women's pentathlon from 1964, replaced by heptathlon from 1984 onwards. It is completely different from the modern pentathlon, which involves shooting, horse riding, a 3k run, fencing and something else. Dunc_Harris|☺ 14:35, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Testing
Please don't create test articles in the name space. There's always the sandbox. RickK 22:32, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

User page spelling correction
I appreciate your proofreading skill, but I consider "fourty" to be the correct spelling. :) -- Grunt 🇪🇺 18:52, 2004 Sep 3 (UTC)

There vandalism
Thanks for help (reverting and listing on Vandalism in Progress) with that. This seems to be a persistent vandal that several admins have blocked over the last weeks. Andris 22:11, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

notenglish
Please, when you add the tag to an article, also make a note at Pages needing translation into English. If you don't, I will eventually do it, but it's not exactly my favorite task, and it may sometimes be days before I go looking for these. -- Jmabel 06:07, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

 * I'm sorry if I've offended you by posting this on your page. For what its worth, I posted 400 of these messages manually, and then employeed the bot to do the next 1000 or so.  The text of the message is the same regardless of who uploaded it, so if no one complained about me adding it using my main user account, why should the bot matter?  I had also hoped that most people would consider my proposal not based on how it got to their user page but because of the content itself, and in fact I've so far only received 3 complaints out of about 1,500 requests.  I am legally required to ask for explicit permission if I would like to seek to use someone's contributions under a different license.  Since I am seeking a rather large group for permission, it is just not practical to ask thousands of users using a personal letter each.  So in that respect, I was forced to use a spam-like message.  My task would otherwise take me months to complete and you would STILL get a message dealing with this same topic on your page.     – Ram-Man (comment) (talk)   00:02, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

 * It might have come to pass where the community agreed this was the best method to get the permissions you need, but I think it would have been better to discuss it first before turning your bot loose. I see now there are comments indicating you limited it to just the top 2000 users, so I guess it wasn't all users like I thought at first. It would have been good to say something like "this special mass-message to the top 2000 contributors was approved by consensus in this discussion here: (link)" -- Ponder 00:15, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

 * Please read some of the text on my talk page or archive where I explain how the purpose is not to change Wikipedia, but to share.   – Ram-Man (comment) (talk)   00:51, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

 * I have not yet taken the time to digest the proposal itself, I'm only commenting on the method you chose to alert people about this project. I bet anyone who follows my suggestion above will get zero complaints next time. -- Ponder 00:58, 2004 Dec 11 (UTC)

 * I appreciate the desire not to have spamming. In fact, after the first 400 people, I had about 1 person who had anything to say about my message.  A few people complained about wording of the statement or the size of it, but not that I put it on the talk page.  I figured that 1 in 400 was acceptable, so I started using the bot.  I've stopped the bot for now to see what everyone has to say, as I don't want to start a war.    – Ram-Man (comment) (talk)   01:13, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

 * 1 in 400 was a form of implicit consensus. Actually even after the spamming, only a few people have continued to express any sort of major concern.  It seems that the consensus is still on the side of performing the "spamming".  A simple reading of the comments on my page should show this.  In any case, after receiving comments such as yours, I won't be continuing the spamming in the same form as before.  I plan to use a much smaller less obtrusive message with links to more information.     – Ram-Man (comment) (talk)   14:23, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Tsunami
Hi Ponder, thank you for restoring my first edit to tsunami. As you probably have guessed, my second edit was not intentional vandalism but a mistake. I tried to restore it myself, but got into an editing conflict with ChrisO.Paul 20:10, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Presidential Callsigns
I know about the Foreign Military One, but I researched the user who initiated that article and it seems that he has a ... penchant for persistence. I decided it would be easier to include it italicized in the template than to get into a "fight" with him over it. For now, I'll leave it as is, but if it gets too involved, I'm tempted to wash my hands of it. — THOR 18:00, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, amusingly, both the template & the Foreign Military One talk page are both my content. ;^) —  THOR 18:05, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:49, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Ponder


text:
Spring Mountains

The Spring Mountains are a mountain range of Southern Nevada in the United States, running generally northwest–southeast along the west side of Las Vegas and south to the border with California. Most land in the mountains is owned by the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management and managed as the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area within the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest and the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

Geography
The Spring Mountains range is named for the number of springs to be found, many of them in the recesses of Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, which is on the eastern side of the mountains.

The Spring Mountains divide the Pahrump Valley and Amargosa River basins from the Las Vegas Valley watershed, which drains into the Colorado River watershed, by way of Las Vegas Wash into Lake Mead, thus the mountains define part of the boundary of the Great Basin. The Great Basin Divide, (one of the Great Basin region borders) continues north through the Indian Springs Pass region, then turns due east at the perimeter mountain ranges north of Las Vegas.

Mount Charleston
The highest point is Mount Charleston (officially Charleston Peak), at 11918 ft. The area around Mount Charleston is protected in the Mount Charleston Wilderness. The main town in the area is also named Mount Charleston (Nevada), which lies in Kyle Canyon. The area is typically 30-40 °F cooler than the valleys below, and it is a popular getaway for Las Vegas residents and visitors. The Lee Canyon (Ski and Snowboard Resort) lies in Lee Canyon on State Highway 156.

Strawberry Valley
Strawberry Valley is the gap pass on the north point of the Spring Mountains. U.S. Route 95 in Nevada goes though the pass. Nevada State Route 160 is just west of the Strawberry Valley pass.

Other peaks
In addition to Mount Charleston, other major summits in the Spring Mountains range include Bonanza Peak, McFarland Peak, Mummy Mountain, Griffith Peak, Bridge Mountain, Mount Wilson and Mount Potosi.

Biological diversity
The Spring Mountains are a sky island ecosystem. With an area around 860 sqmi, and a vertical range of nearly 2 mi, the mountains encompass a wide variety of habitats, and the biological diversity is probably greater than anywhere else in Nevada; 37 species of trees are known (more than any other Nevadan range), and 600 species of vascular plants have been reported from the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area alone.

The bases of the mountains are part of the Mojave zone dominated by creosote bush and white bursage, then rising to a blackbush scrub zone, followed by a pygmy conifer zone with juniper, pinyon pine, and mountain mahogany, and topped by a montane zone with many species of conifers around Mt. Charleston and its connecting ridges.

Palmer's chipmunk is endemic to the Spring Mountains.

title: Spring Mountains


text:
West Heath, West Midlands

West Heath is a residential area of Birmingham, England on the boundary with Worcestershire. Forming the larger part of the ward of Longbridge And West Heath it is situated between Kings Norton, Northfield, Longbridge and Cofton Hackett and lies on traditional heathland formed in the 13th century as part of the Kings Norton manorial lands, and was historically in Worcestershire.

Based on a small village formed in the early 1900s that was originally centred on the medieval Lilley Lane, the majority of West Heath's expansion and growth took place just after World War II. The original expansion in the 1940s and 1950s consisted of large numbers of prefab houses, most of which were eventually replaced by permanent housing estates in the 1960s and 1970s.

There are a number of buildings in West Heath that date to the 19th century and earlier. The suburb is adjacent to rural Worcestershire and a number of public footpaths allow open access to the surrounding fields up to Hopwood, Cofton Hackett and the Lickey Hills.

Early history
In early Anglo-Saxon times, West Heath lay at the northernmost border of the lands of the Hwicce, a people who occupied the former territory of the British tribe, The Dobunni. As part of what would become Kings Norton, West Heath was positioned slightly to the north of the boundary between two tribes, the Pencersaetan and the Tomsaetan.

There is evidence of the previous presence of Romans in West Heath – in 1949, Roman coins of the reign of Emperor Hadrian were unearthed in Coney Green Drive in the Austin Village and there was a further discovery of coins of the reign of the Emperor Diocletian in 1966 in Hawkesley Drive, also in the Austin Village.

One of the earliest mentions of West Heath is in the Saxon lease of land at Coston Hackett in 849 AD detailing a grant by Worcester's Bishop Ealhhun to King Berhtwulf, King of Mercia. West Heath and parts of Kings Norton would remain part of Coston Hackett manor estates as late as the early 20th century. West Heath was mentioned in the manorial court roll of Bromsgrove and Kings Norton in 1267 when it was recorded that "Richard de Coſton has a purpresture (i.e. an enclosure of tenants land or an enclosure of waste land) upon Westhethe, Richard de Coſton holds four acres in Westhethe and does nothing in service to the King. Alexander and Gregory de Coſton hold land in Westhethe, Master John de Aluvechurch as (sic) 1 and half acres of purpresture upon "La Westhethe" by permission of Robert de Coſton". In 1494 it was recorded that "Baldwin Lyndon – banks in ruins between Hawkesley Pole and Westhethe...fined 2d" whilst the Abbot of Bordesley was fined 8d "through defect in cleansing the banks at West Hethe". In 1596, a woman called Joan was fined 6d because "she enclosed a parcel of the King's waste at West Heath".

Turves Green was known as Turvosland in 1490 and was the site for peat-cutting for fuel. There is a layer of peat a few feet below the surface and deeper still are successive layers of clay and a coal seam and a bloomery has been discovered – this is the first form of forge for smelting iron from ore leaving less bulk to transport for further smelting to refine the metal. In 1442 Turves Green had been named Le Grene Slave, Greenway Lane in 1780 and Green Lane in 1877.

During the English Civil War West Heath was on the border between royalist Worcestershire and parliamentary Warwickshire and there were regular minor skirmishes and conflicts between the forces of the two opposing sides. Situated off Turves Green, Hawkesley House, which belonged to the royalist George Middlemore and his family, was besieged and seized by parliamentary forces under Colonel Tinker Fox in April 1644. The Parliamentarians fortified the building but on 13 May 1645 Royalist forces under the king’s nephews Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice laid siege to Hawkesley House and were joined the following day by King Charles I who had been staying at nearby Cofton Hall. The Royalists took the house on 16 May and expelled the Parliamentary forces and razed the house to the ground. The inhabitants of West Heath would also have been aware of other clashes close by during the Civil War. Two miles away at Kings Norton Prince Rupert with eight troops of horses and 300 foot soldiers was engaged on 17 October 1642 on Kings Norton Green by a Parliamentary force of 800 foot soldiers and horsemen on its way to join the Earl of Essex at Worcester. The Royalists were routed by the Parliamentarians under Lord Willoughby Of Parham and fifty Royalist troops were killed and buried in an unmarked grave in King's Norton Churchyard. On 10 July 1643 Queen Henrietta Maria arrived in Kings Norton with 3000 horsemen, 30 companies of foot soldiers and artillery and camped there en route to Oxford where she planned to join King Charles. She passed the night in the ‘Saracen's Head’ while the location of the site where the soldiers camped is said to be where ‘The Camp’ public house is now located.

This historic association with the Civil War is marked by the naming of several roads in West Heath such as Fairfax Road, Cropredy Road, Edgehill Road and a public house named "The Cavalier" on Fairfax Rd.

William Middlemore rebuilt Hawkesley House in 1654 but by the 19th century its status was simply that of a farmhouse, called Hawkesley Farm, until it was demolished in 1957. A municipal block of flats – ‘Moat House’ – was built on the spot of the original Hawkesley House in 1971. The ancient moat can still be seen near Moat House.

From earliest times, what is now known as West Heath Road had been a trackway until 1796 when it was surfaced to become part of the Stourbridge to Wooten Wawen turnpike road. It remained a turnpike until 1820 with a toll-house at the junction of what are now Alvechurch and Redhill Roads, recorded in 1813. National censuses for the 19th century reveal that the inhabitants were principally farmers, agricultural labourers or nail-makers. West Heath formed a part of Kings Norton, linking Kings Norton isthmus-like to Rednal which was also part of the district and the area was principally used as livestock grazing land. The land was jealously guarded – in the fifteenth century, during the reign of Edward IV, the manor court ruled that "No man shall take in foreign cattle to keep on the common" and in 1641, John Brookes of Cofton Hackett was fined five shillings for keeping a great flock of sheep on the common, "being a foreigner". Alan The Bailiff in the fifteenth century, had been charged to "drive" the common two or three times a year to discover the nature of the stock being pastured there and to ensure that no one should keep above five colts, horses or mares upon the common. Inhabitants were sometimes fined for "encroaching" (enclosing small areas) on the common although these may actually have been payments to regularise a new practice rather than a form of punishment.

After the Civil War, a Parliamentary Survey of "The Manor of Kingsesnorton" produced in 1649 because the manor "was in the hands of Parliament by reason of the seizure of the lands of King Charles I", reported that "The soil of the heaths, wastes, and commons called.... West Heath, and the archery (and all of them do contain in the whole by estimate of 3,000 acres or thereabouts) are the lord's and the trees thereon growing and "the bitt" belong to the tenants".

By the 19th century there was considerable local poverty and those who lived on Cofton Common were described as "peasants" in a reminiscence of Alice Impey who lived at Longbridge House and who recalled that when someone died there it was necessary for her father to send a cart for the body to be taken to Cofton Church and buried in the pauper's section of the graveyard.

Nail making in West Heath
Apart from agriculture, nail making was the most notable industry in 19th-century West Heath. Numbers of nailers in West Heath are included in figures for Northfield and in the whole district there were 122 employed in the industry in 1831. However the industry was already in decline – in 1841 there were 74 nailers and in 1884 there were only twenty-three with only seven in West Heath. Nailers' workshops were present at Groveley, West Heath and Turves Green; the latter was still the site of hand-made nail production by Mr. Withers in Oak Tree Cottages as late as 1910 although the factory of The Patent Hob Nail & Rivet Company had been opened in Station Road in 1900. The nailers' workshops were usually little lean-to sheds built against the sides of the cottages with a brick-built small furnace.

20th century residents
As well-drained open heath land, the area was not developed as a residential area until the early 1900s, containing only a few scattered agricultural buildings and latterly one or two grand houses in the Lilley Lane area. In 1907 Kelly's Directory Of Birmingham records that several middle class residents were living in the larger houses of West Heath including two professors of chemistry at the new University of Birmingham – Percy Faraday Frankland F.R.S. (son of Edward Frankland, an eminent scientist who discovered chemical valency and also godson of the famous physicist, Michael Faraday) lived at The Dell and Adrian John Brown F.R.S. (whose chair at the university was actually that of Malting and Brewing and who became a pioneer in enzyme kinetics) who lived with his family in West Heath House, which was the largest residence in the village but was demolished to make way for an Elderly Person's Home, situated at the junction of Alvechurch Road and Cofton Road. The replacement 1950s building was closed and demolished in 2016 and a newly built, 3-storey, 80-bedroom Residential Home, called "Austin Rose", was opened in Autumn 2017.

Groveley Hall: The earliest building on the site probably dated back to 1530 and had been a religious institution belonging to Westbury College in Bristol but it had been confiscated as a result of The Reformation and handed to Sir Ralph Sadler, Secretary of State to King Henry VIII, in 1536. In 1548 the property was bought by John Coombes and later by John Lyttleton and after 1600 by Francis Heaton. In the early nineteenth century the house belonged to Robert Middleton Biddulph from whose family John Merry obtained the property around 1820. It passed through the Merry family, eventually being purchased by Ambrose Biggs, a tobacco manufacturer and merchant who was also a mayor of Birmingham, in 1872. Biggs was declared bankrupt in 1883, at which point the estate was purchased by Joseph Billing Baldwin, paper maker of Kings Norton. The property remained in the Baldwin family until 1937. It became the home of Robert Jolly, a physician, his wife Fanny (Joseph B. Baldwin's daughter), and Baldwin's son Major James Baldwin (d.1922). Neither Fanny nor James had children. Fanny left the property to the National Trust in her will, intending it to be a holiday home for distressed gentlefolk. The nearby Dingle Farm, formerly the farmhouse serving the Groveley estate, remains in National Trust hands as a private property.

Elsewhere in West Heath, Lieutenant Meynell Hunt lived at Groveley House. The only houses on Cofton Common which are mentioned in the Directory were both owned by women – Mrs. Higgins at Fern Bank and Mrs. Avery.

The surname Hobbis had been particularly common in the area in the 19th century and people with that name included farmers, agricultural workers and (in Kings Norton village) the publican of the inn, The Plumber's Arms, but no one named Hobbis is listed in the 1907 Directory as owning property in West Heath although a small piece of land in what is now Alvechurch Road was known as Hobbis' Piece and was then owned by Adam Webb, chief clerk in an assurance company, another solid middle class inhabitant of that time in West Heath.

The only farmer recorded to be living in Turves Green in the late nineteenth century censuses was Thomas Morris, born in 1865, but in 1907 he was mentioned in Kelly's Directory as either living at Longbridge or Staple Old Road.

In 1874, the Impey family moved from Edgbaston to Longbridge House, which had been Prince Rupert's headquarters during the siege of Hawlesley House in 1645 during the Civil War. Frederick Impey was a partner in Messrs White and Pikes which owned a printing works in Moor Street in Birmingham and which was developing a method of colour printing onto tin. Impey opened a factory in the area to carry out this process but it was burned down in 1900 and not reopened. Herbert Austin subsequently bought the site to build premises for motor car manufacture. In 1910, the Impeys moved to "The Island", a large house in West Heath situated between Turves Green and West Heath Road, but moved away when Frederick Impey died in 1920. Like the Cadbury family who lived in neighbouring Northfield, the Impeys were Quakers and as well as being important developers of local industry, showed considerable interest in improving the lot of their factory workers.

The first post office in West Heath was opened on 5 June 1892 although the 1891 census records a rural postman, John Cook, to be living in West Heath. Mail was cancelled with the village's name by the use of a rubber canceller. The first postmaster of West Heath was William A. Jarvis who was recorded in the 1901 English census as also being a grocer at 37 West Heath Lane, the post office having been opened at that address in 1899 in the newly built "West Villas" and this coincided with the post office becoming a money office and savings bank on 1 May of that year. Jarvis's wife, Sarah, was described as "Postmistress" in 1901 and Jarvis remained the postmaster until 1912 by which time West Heath Lane had been renamed as Alvechurch Road and West Villas had been allocated the address of no. 53 Alvechurch Road. West Heath post office's status changed from that of a rural post office to a town sub-post office on 20 August 1916. It continues to operate but with very limited services.

Hospital
West Heath Hospital was established as an infectious diseases hospital in 1889, became a tuberculosis hospital in 1910 and was refocused as a geriatric hospital in 1980.

Expansion
In 1900 visitors arriving via Northfield railway station could visit the skating rink on West Heath Road next to the bridge over the river Rea. Unfortunately the skating rink was used during the First World War as a munitions factory and following an accident the rink was destroyed by fire.

In the 1930s small terraced houses that were built along Alvechurch Road and Sir Hilton's Road, and slightly grander semi-detached and detached houses, along West Heath Road and Redditch Road began to change the traditional rural nature of West Heath. The newer high density housing estates built two decades later would complete the change.

The rapid expansion of West Heath and its transition from open farmland to residential suburb of Birmingham had commenced in the years immediately after the Second World War when several extensive estates of pre-fab houses were quickly erected to house returning servicemen and families made homeless during wartime bombing raids. Another notable building of the area was The Bath Tub open air lido (now demolished), opened on 1 July 1937 in Alvechurch Road, where 20,000 people had gathered to watch the opening ceremony by Gracie Fields with Mantovani and his orchestra and the M.P. for Northfield and Kings Norton, Ronald Cartland, the brother of Dame Barbara Cartland, the novelist. The lido which had been built by Percy Hollier who intended it to be "Birmingham's brightest entertainment spot" and which included a 180 feet by 90 feet sized swimming pool as well as a putting green, lawn for archery and a children's playground, only operated for 3 years and was closed due to commercial failure. Laughtons took over the site with Eddystone Radio during the war when its rural location helped it to avoid attack by German air raids. The lido site is now covered by a housing estate. There is also the art deco Man On The Moon pub on Redditch Road, which was built in 1937 (originally as The Man In The Moon but the name was changed in 1969 to commemorate the first Moon landing).

Prior to 1938, when a school was opened in Turves Green, children had attended St. Anne's Church School in West Heath. The headmistress of that school, Miss Mary Davies, was appointed to be headmistress at Turves Green where a junior school was first opened and then, in 1939, a school for seniors. A Catholic Primary School linked to the parish of St. John Fisher was opened in Alvechurch Road on 5 September 1961 on the remaining part of an industrial estate next to Hobbis' Piece to accommodate the large number of local children of Irish Catholic origin (at the time 60% of children attending the school passed their summer holidays in Ireland). A tree was donated to the school by the Birmingham Tree Lovers charity but was cut down in 2010 to make way for a car park.

In the 1950s the population of West Heath continued to increase and change considerably. Working-class families who had lived in central Birmingham in old unsuitable properties which were to be demolished and a considerable number of Irish immigrant families settled in the new homes on the newly built council estates around Cofton Common and the land between it and Turves Green. Local work was plentiful, especially at the Austin Motor Works at Longbridge and, for the women, at Cadbury's chocolate factory in Bournville or the Kalamazoo paper factory in Longbridge, which had been moved to the area by Oliver Morland and F. Paul Impey in 1913 from central Birmingham.

Services
West Heath has a small, somewhat neglected shopping area on Alvechurch Road and there is an Art Deco building which previously housed a Co-Operative store which closed in 2018. Other facilities include a Chinese Food Takeaway shop, a Fish and Chip shop, a sandwich shop, an undertaker's, a dry cleaner's, two pharmacies and an optician's shop. The post office with very limited services is still located at "West Villas" on Alvechurch Road. There is a “Tesco Express” supermarket located in the building which previously housed “The Fordrough” public house.

Located on West Heath Road is a primary health care centre, built in 2011, replacing the former surgery which had been situated in a 1930s detached house neighbouring the previous residence of a former general practitioner, Dr Anthony (Antek) Bobak who had set up his practice in 1954. Another general practitioner's surgery, that of Dr. Shan, was located for many years on Alvechurch Road.

A children's nursery is also located on West Heath Road. There are other doctors' surgeries and nurseries in the area. West Heath Hospital is located on Rednal Road and nearby, on Ivyhouse Road, there is a rehabilitation hospital for people with brain injury. There are two elderly persons' homes, primary schools, a community centre in Hampstead House (a second community centre, Oddingley Hall, is actually situated in Kings Norton), recreation grounds and other basic facilities.

West Heath Library, previously situated near the former Fordrough public house off West Heath Road, was closed by Birmingham City Council in January 2014 despite a vigorous local community-based campaign to fight the closure. More than 110 local residents attended a public protest outside the library building on 12 April 2014 to further the aims of the campaign against closure. At the meeting the local Labour councillor strenuously reassured the campaigners that a local library service would continue but an announcement by Labour-run Birmingham City Council, made in mid-February 2016, revealed that plans for a new building had been withdrawn and that a library may be opened in the future elsewhere. Subsequently, on 9 April 2016, a rally of 50 people including the Member of Parliament for Northfield, the Leader of Birmingham City Council and the three Northfield City Councillors, was held at the site of the old West Heath library to call for a new building to be constructed on this site but nothing came of this. The area is now served by a weekly mobile library service but there is a move to relocate some library facilities to the West Heath Community Centre at Hampstead House. Before moving to the Fordrough, there was a library situated next to St Anne's Church in a prefabricated building on Lilley Lane.

Events
For many years an annual West Heath Flower And Produce Show was held at the beginning of September. It was originally held at St. Anne's Church Hall but from the 77th Show in 2011 it was located in Hampstead House in Condover Road, West Heath's Community Centre. The holding of the annual Flower And Produce Show has now been discontinued. There is an annual West Heath Art Exhibition held at Hampstead House.

An annual summer fete for the local community is held in June at Hampstead House.

An annual West Heath Beer and Cider festival is held at Hampstead House usually in late September or early October.

The ‘Velo Birmingham 2019’ cycling event passed through West Heath on 13 May 2019 when cyclists rode through the area along Rednal Road, up Lilley Lane, around West Heath green and along Cofton Road and Groveley Lane. The same event was to have taken place in 2020 but was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The area
There is a green which forms an island around which the roads from Kings Norton to Rednal and Northfield to Alvechurch pass and at the centre of which is a large and old oak tree. The green is planted with bulbs which provide a colourful display in spring. On either side of the green are St. John Fisher church and St. Anne's church as well as a residential home for the elderly and new housing. There is also a very large oak tree situated at the corner of Longbridge Lane and Groveley Lane which has been named "The Cofton Oak" and which was the subject of a campaign to preserve it when it was threatened by plans to have it removed.

Council estates were constructed after 1945, both at West Heath and Turves Green. Both areas feature a large number of terraces and semi-detached houses with some Tower blocks at Fairfax Road which latterly have become known as 'The Poets' Blocks', each being named after a famous British poet (Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Tennyson). The first flats to be built in West Heath were 3 six storey blocks in Turves Green constructed in 1952 by Deeley for the then Birmingham County Borough Council in an Art Deco style. The three blocks, Oxford House, Aylesbury House and Buckingham House, were demolished in 1999.

A high-density private estate was built on the former grounds of West Heath Hospital. Turves Green at one time had nine residential towers, several blocks of low-rise flats, and an estate of pre-fabricated bungalows and brick semi-detached houses, known as the Austin Village, which was built in 1916 to house First World War munitions workers. The Austin Village has been a Conservation area from the early 1990s but in 2019 Birmingham City Council decided to withdraw its special status though it has extended the time allowed for an appeal against this decision in the face of a campaign led by the Austin Village Preservation Society.

West Heath Park is located at the north-east boundary of West Heath with Kings Norton. Amenities include children's recreation facilities and football pitches and nearby is Oddingley Hall, the second of West Heath's Community centres, though this is located in Kings Norton.

Cofton Park, where Pope Benedict XVI attended a service for the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman on 19 September 2010, is situated within the boundaries of the Longbridge and West Heath electoral ward. Various public events are held in the park including, annually, the Longbridge Pride event which celebrates the heritage of the Longbridge motor works.

Historical
Historically, in the Middle Ages West Heath was part of the upper division of Halfshire Hundred that also contained Bromsgrove, Coston Hackett, Dodderhill, Doverdale, Droitwich, Elmbridge, Feckenham, Hadsor, Hampton Lovett, Kington, Kings Norton, Northfield, Salwarpe, Tardebigge and Upton Warren. However, West Heath was incorporated in the City of Birmingham in 1911 when the Kings Norton and Northfield Urban District Council was abolished.

Westminster
The area is in the Birmingham Northfield parliamentary constituency and is represented by Gary Sambrook (Conservative Party) who was elected on 12 December 2019.

Birmingham City Council
West Heath is represented on Birmingham City Council as part of the Ward of Longbridge And West Heath by two councillors:- Deborah Clancy (Conservative), re-elected 5 May 2022, and Ron Storer (Conservative), elected 5 May 2022.

Prior to May 2018 West Heath, apart from a small part at the southern edge from 2004, was represented on Birmingham City Council by the three Northfield councillors. Previous councillors from 1973 when local government boundaries had been considerably altered include Neil Scrimshaw who died in office to be succeeded by his wife, Margaret Scrimshaw (1984-1996 and 1999-2004), Reg Corns (1973-1994, re-elected 2000-15), Les Lawrence (1982-1995 and 1998-2012), Randal Brew (2004-2018 and previously Councillor for Longbridge, Lord Mayor of Birmingham 2007-8) and Edwina Currie (1975-1986, later Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire and government minister and mistress of Prime Minister John Major).

As part of the reorganisation of representation on Birmingham council, the Local Government Boundary Commission England released a report in 2015 which proposed West Heath become a ward of the city with a single councillor. The suggested boundaries excluded West Heath village on Alvechurch Road, from the proposed West Heath ward, along with West Heath parish church, West Heath post office, West Heath Community Centre in Hampstead House, the site of the now-closed West Heath library and West Heath medical centre. The village itself and the sites mentioned were all to be placed in a ward titled "Northfield East". It was proposed "Northfield East" be renamed "West Heath North", to reflect the reality that otherwise West Heath's most important sites would not be included in a ward named "West Heath". In response, the Local Government Boundary Commission for England recommended on 10 May 2016 that the new wards be named "West Heath North" and "West Heath South" respectively, but a final submission combined the two with part of Longbridge in a large ward with 2 councillors to be called "Longbridge and West Heath". The new ward stretches from Cofton Park in the south, to West Heath Park in the north and includes West Heath village, Longbridge town centre, the Austin village, Cofton Primary School, Albert Bradbeer School, the Turves Green Schools, West Heath Primary School and St. John Fisher Roman Catholic School along with Bournville College (in Longbridge), St. Anne's Church, St. John Fisher Church and St. John The Baptist Church in Longbridge. The ward includes Longbridge railway station, West Heath Community Centre, West Heath Hospital and notable buildings including the old railway workers cottages along Station Road, the old nailers cottage in Turves Green and The Man On The Moon pub. The ward is the most southerly in Birmingham.

Geology
West Heath is built on a well-drained stretch of gravel and sand that had been laid down under a prehistoric shallow sea and enriched by sediments from ice age glaciers. The natural heath land had grown on a flatter area between the nearby Lickey Hills and Redhill. The Lickey Hills area includes a wide geological range of rocks of various ages. The stratigraphic sequence, which is the basis for the area's diversity of landscape and habitat, comprises:

 * Barnt Green rocks – Precambrian tuffs and volcanic grits
 * Lickey Quartzite – a Cambrian quartzite
 * Keele Clay – a Carboniferous clay
 * Rubery sandstone – a fossiliferous sandstone of lower Silurian age
 * Clent Breccia – a Permian breccia
 * Bunter Pebble Beds – beds of Triassic water-worn pebbles

The subsoil layers under West Heath and Turves Green also contain a coal seam that would indicate that a prehistoric tropical forest once existed here.

Waterways
The River Rea runs through West Heath on its way from its source to the North Sea. The river rises in Waseley Hills Country Park and after dropping 70 metres in the first mile passes through West Heath and onwards to Kings Norton, Selly Oak and Digbeth in the centre of Birmingham. Near Gravelly Hill Interchange, about 14 miles from its source, the Rea becomes a tributary of the River Tame and its waters eventually discharge into the North Sea via later connections with the River Trent and eventually the Humber Estuary.

Although now often reduced to a sluggish trickle, due to changes in agricultural usage and other demands, the River Rea was once a major waterway and served several working mills in West Heath and provided water for the skating rink and open air lido (now both demolished).

Roads
The A441 Redditch Road, which runs between Birmingham and Redditch, passes to the East, and the A38 Bristol Road South, which runs between Birmingham and Worcester and eventually Cornwall, passes to the West. The M42 and M5 Motorways are also close, providing national connections.

Demography
As part of the Northfield ward there are no separate demographic figures for West Heath.

In the 2011 UK census the total population of the Northfield constituency was about 101,400 living in approximately 43,000 households (in the 2001 census, approximately 25,000 people were resident in the Northfield ward, the population density being about 45 persons per hectare compared with an average of around 36.5 for Birmingham as a whole). In 2001 Northfield ward had an approximate average age of 39 compared with 36 for the city as a whole. The total population of Northfield constituency had increased by 3.5% between 2001 and 2011. In 2011, 15.1% of the population of Northfield constituency was aged 65 years and over compared with 12.9% for Birmingham as a whole.

In 2011, the White ethnic group accounted for 85.8% of the population (in 2001, 94% of all residents were White). In 2011, 4.2% of the population was recorded as being Asian in origin while in 2001, 1.5% were recorded as being of Asian Pakistani origin. Around 4.4% of the population was recorded as Black in 2011 (1.5% in 2001). The 2011 Census recorded that 8.5% of the population of Northfield had been born overseas compared with figures of 22.2% for Birmingham and 13.8% for England. In 2011, 1.8% of the population of Northfield did not speak English as their first language compared with 7.5% for the whole of Birmingham

In 2011, 60.7% of the population of Northfield (compared with 46.1% of the population of Birmingham) recorded that they were Christians, 28.5% recorded that they adhered to no religion (19.3% of Birmingham population), 6.8% did not state their religion (6.5%) and 2.3% described themselves as Muslims (21.8% of Birmingham population).

In 2011, 67.7% of the population of Northfield were economically active compared with 64.2% of the population of Birmingham while the unemployment rate in Northfield was 6.2% compared with 9.4% for Birmingham as a whole.

Economy
The early 1970s were difficult times for many of the West Heath inhabitants who worked at the motor works in Longbridge because of the severe industrial unrest which prevailed then with its accompanying "wildcat" strikes. Derek Robinson – "Red Robbo" – at one time lived in Alvechurch Road and he was generally seen as one of the principal leaders of the industrial action that was frequently taken against the management of the company that was then known as British Leyland. With so many local people working at the motor works at the time the factory was of great economic importance to West Heath and there was even a pub on Longbridge Lane which was called "The Jolly Fitter" which depicted a happy-looking motor worker on its pub sign.

Since the closure of the Longbridge motor works there is little in the way of major industry in the area and West Heath serves as a dormitory area for central Birmingham.

There is a small industrial estate in Lightning Way off Alvechurch Road including a company which manufactures glass products, a local speciality.

Landmarks

 * Man on the Moon Public House – This public house was built in 1937 and its name was changed from The Man In The Moon to its present name after the first crewed lunar landing.

Education

 * West Heath Primary School
 * West Heath Junior School
 * Cofton Junior and Infant
 * Albert Bradbeer Junior and Infant
 * St John Fisher Catholic Primary School.
 * Turves Green Boys' School
 * King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls

Religious sites

 * St John Fisher Catholic Church – The large influx of Irish people in the 1950s led to the establishment of the Catholic parish of St. John Fisher on 30 September 1956 with first masses being held by Father Philip Smith at Turves Green Girls School and afterwards at Archbishop Masterson Girls' School. Father Philip Smith cut the first turf on the land for a new church on 5 March 1962 and Archbishop Grimshaw laid the foundation stone on 25 June 1962 with the church being opened on 31 March 1964 and consecrated on 22 June 1972, the feast of St. John Fisher. The building was designed by the architect E. Bower Norris. Until it sustained damage and was removed in 2008 there was a large wooden sculpture of St. John Fisher dressed as Bishop of Rochester, sculpted by Jonah Jones (1919–2004), attached to the front of the church but it has now been replaced by the pattern of a cross in brick. The large Catholic population in West Heath amounts to about 900 families living in the area in 2010.
 * St Anne's Church – The Anglican Parish of St. Anne covers a geographically small area with St. Anne's Church at the centre, the building consisting of the old church, called "The Mission Church" until 1942, which was built in 1900 and opened by the Bishop of Worcester on 1 December 1900 and now used as the church hall, and the new church. Work on the building of the new church began in 1968 with the consecration of St Anne's Church and St Francis’ Chapel taking place on 4 October 1974, St Francis’ Day. West Heath became the Benefice of West Heath in the Deanery of Kings Norton in 1966. The architects of the new church were Harvey and Wicks.
 * St Nicholas Church – Prior to the building of St. Anne's, the medieval church of St. Nicholas in Kings Norton, had served West Heath as the parish church. Cofton Common lay within the parish of St. Michael's Church at Cofton Hackett.

Sports clubs and recreation

 * West Heath Football Club, West Heath Park – founded 2014 - Leisure Leagues Rubery Division 1
 * West Heath Snooker Club, Unit 8 Lightning Way
 * West Heath Community Centre, Condover Road

Buses
The suburb is served by several buses operated by National Express West Midlands routes 45 and 49 and Stagecoach Midlands routes 46/46A.

Rail
Northfield railway station on the Cross-City Line is located at the north end of West Heath, with trains operating to Redditch, Bromsgrove, Birmingham & Lichfield at a 10 to 20 minute frequency during peak times. Longbridge railway station is located inside the Longbridge and West Heath ward close to Longbridge town centre and the Austin Village.

Notable people

 * Mike Skinner – the musician aka The Streets lived in and was raised in West Heath.
 * Freddie Farrell – Comic. Lived in and was raised in West Heath.
 * Ian Lavender – actor of Dad's Army fame (Private Frank Pike) lived in Harpers Road in West Heath. In the TV show he wore the claret and blue scarf depicting a loyalty to his real life favourite local football team Aston Villa ).
 * Dame Barbara Cartland – it is sometimes stated that the romantic novelist who had been born in Augustus Road, Edgbaston, lived in West Heath but no published evidence is available to support this belief. It is possible that her family moved to West Heath, less affluent than Edgbaston, temporarily after her grandfather's suicide in 1903 which followed his bankruptcy and the family's consequent loss of wealth.
 * Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry – creator of "Thomas the Tank Engine", was curate at St. Anne's West Heath from 1940 to 1946. It was during this period of his life that Awdry first told a railway story to his son Christopher in 1943 and published his first railway story, "The Three Railway Engines", in 1945. Awdry also held services at the Epiphany Church in the Austin Village.
 * Bruce Chatwin – as a young child during World War II, the novelist and travel writer often lived for periods in West Heath at the home of his widowed paternal grandmother, Isobel Chatwin, who lived at 198 West Heath Road. His uncle sometimes took him to sail boats he had built at nearby Barnt Green Reservoir. Chatwin's mother Margharita had worked as an assistant to Ronald Cartland, Barbara Cartland's brother, who was Member of Parliament for Kings Norton. In the 1950s, 198 West Heath Road became the home of the local medical general practitioner, Dr. Anthony Bobak, but despite the significance of the building, the house was demolished in 2007 and replaced by a block of apartments.
 * The Rockin' Berries – the chart-topping band from the 1960s first formed while members were pupils at Turves Green Boys School.
 * David Claridge – born in 1953, lived in Coney Green Drive in the Austin Village as a young child and was a pupil at Turves Green Infants' School, before moving to a private school, Greenmore College. As an adult he created the character of "Roland Rat", a puppet which first appeared on the British breakfast television programme, TVam, in April 1983 and went on to save the station from closure. Many series were made for the BBC, Channel 5, Channel 4 and ITV. Roland continues to make guest appearances on British television from time to time, although Claridge now lives in California.
 * Lewis Goodall - as a boy lived in Longbridge and attended Turves Green Boys School from whence he went to St. John's College, University of Oxford graduating in 2010 with a degree in History and politics. Now an author and journalist and editor of the Newsnight current affairs programme on BBC television.

title: West Heath, West Midlands


text:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí) is a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, about two women, two men, a dog, and their lives in the 1968 Prague Spring period of Czechoslovak history. Although written in 1982, the novel was not published until two years later, in a French translation (as L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être). The same year, it was translated to English from Czech by Michael Henry Heim and excerpts of it were published in The New Yorker. The original Czech text was published the following year.

Premise
The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place mainly in Prague in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and three other Warsaw Pact countries and its aftermath through the lives of two separate pairs of people and those around them.

Characters

 * Tomáš: A Czech surgeon and intellectual. Tomáš is a womanizer who lives for his work. He considers sex and love to be distinct entities: he has sex with many women but loves only his wife, Tereza. He sees no contradiction between these two positions. He explains womanizing as an imperative to explore female idiosyncrasies only expressed during sex. At first he views his wife as a burden whom he is obliged to take care of. After the Warsaw Pact invasion, they escape to Zürich, where he starts womanizing again. Tereza, homesick, returns to Prague with the dog. He quickly realizes he wants to be with her and follows her home. He has to deal with the consequences of a letter to the editor in which he metaphorically likened the Czech Communists to Oedipus. Eventually fed up with life in Prague under the Communist regime, Tomáš and Tereza move to the countryside. He abandons his twin obsessions of work and womanizing and discovers true happiness with Tereza. His epitaph, written by his Catholic son, is "He Wanted the Kingdom of God on Earth".
 * Tereza: Tomáš's young wife. A waitress from a hotel restaurant in a small provincial town, became a photographer with the help of one of Tomáš's lovers, she delves into dangerous and dissident photojournalism during the Soviet occupation of Prague. Tereza does not condemn Tomáš for his infidelities, instead characterizing herself as a weaker person. Tereza is mostly defined by her view of the body as disgusting and shameful, due to her mother's embrace of the body's grotesque functions. Throughout the book she fears simply being another body in Tomáš's array of women. Once Tomáš and Tereza move to the countryside, she devotes herself to raising cattle and reading. During this time she learns about her anima through an adoration of pet animals, reaching the conclusion that they were the last link to the paradise abandoned by Adam and Eve and becomes alienated from other people.
 * Sabina: Tomáš's mistress and closest friend. Sabina lives her life as an extreme example of lightness, taking profound satisfaction in the act of betrayal. She declares war on kitsch and struggles against the constraints imposed upon her by her puritan ancestry and the Communist Party. This struggle is shown through her paintings. She occasionally expresses excitement at humiliation, as shown through the use of her grandfather's bowler hat, a symbol that is born during one sexual encounter with Tomáš, before it eventually changes meaning and becomes a relic of the past. Later in the novel, she begins to correspond with Šimon while living under the roof of some older Americans who admire her artistic skill.
 * Franz: Sabina's lover and a Geneva professor and idealist. Franz falls in love with Sabina, whom he considers a liberal and romantically tragic Czech dissident. He is a kind and compassionate man. As one of the novel's dreamers, Franz bases his actions on loyalty to the memories of his mother and Sabina. His life revolves completely around books and academia, eventually to the extent that he seeks lightness and ecstasy by participating in marches and protests, the last of which is a march in Thailand to the border with Cambodia. In Bangkok after the march, he is mortally wounded during a mugging.
 * Karenin: The dog of Tomáš and Tereza. Although she is a female dog, the name is masculine and is a reference to Alexei Karenin, the husband in Anna Karenina. Karenin displays extreme dislike of change. Once moved to the countryside, Karenin becomes more content as she is able to enjoy more attention from her companions. She also quickly befriends a pig named Mefisto. During this time Tomáš discovers that Karenin has cancer and even after removing a tumor it is clear that Karenin is going to die. On her deathbed she unites Tereza and Tomáš through her "smile" at their attempts to improve her health.
 * Šimon: Tomáš's estranged son from an earlier marriage.

Philosophical underpinnings
Challenging the concept of eternal recurrence (the idea that the universe and its events have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story's thematic meditations posit the alternative: that each person has only one life to live and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again – thus the "lightness" of being. Moreover, this lightness also signifies freedom; Tomáš and Sabina display this lightness, whereas Tereza's character is "weighed down". In Constance Garnett's translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace she gives us the phrase "strange lightness of being" during the description of Prince Andrey's death. In contrast, the concept of eternal recurrence imposes a "heaviness" on life and the decisions that are made. Nietzsche believed this heaviness could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual's perspective.

Quoting Kundera from the book:

"The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? ... When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina – what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden, but the unbearable lightness of being."

In the novel, Nietzsche's concept is attached to an interpretation of the German adage einmal ist keinmal 'one occurrence is not significant'; namely, an "all-or-nothing" cognitive distortion that Tomáš must overcome in his hero's journey. He initially believes "If we only have one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all," and specifically (with respect to committing to Tereza) "There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison." The novel resolves this question decisively that such a commitment is in fact possible and desirable.

Publication
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) was not published in the original Czech until 1985 by the exile publishing house 68 Publishers (Toronto, Ontario). The second Czech edition was published in October 2006, in Brno, Czech Republic, some 18 years after the Velvet Revolution, because Kundera did not approve it earlier. The first English translation by Michael Henry Heim was published in hardback in 1984 by Harper & Row in the U.S. and Faber and Faber in the UK and in paperback in 1985.

Film
In 1988, an American-made film adaptation of the novel was released starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche and directed by Philip Kaufman. In a note to the Czech edition of the book, Kundera remarks that the movie had very little to do with the spirit either of the novel or the characters in it. In the same note, Kundera goes on to say that after this experience he no longer allows any adaptations of his work.

title: The Unbearable Lightness of Being