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Beggars Banquet

Beggars Banquet is a studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 6 December 1968 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States. It was the first Rolling Stones album produced by Jimmy Miller, whose production work formed a key aspect of the group's sound throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Brian Jones, the band's co-founder and early leader, had become increasingly unreliable in the studio due to his drug use, and it was the last Rolling Stones album to be released during his lifetime, though he also contributed to two songs on their next album Let It Bleed, which was released after his death (Jones also contributed to the group's hit song "Jumpin' Jack Flash", which was part of the same sessions, and released in May 1968). Nearly all rhythm and lead guitar parts were recorded by Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones' other guitarist and the primary songwriting partner of their lead singer Mick Jagger; together the two wrote all but one of the tracks on the album. Rounding out the instrumentation were bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, though all members contributed on a variety of instruments. As with most albums of the period, frequent collaborator Nicky Hopkins played piano on many of the tracks.

Beggars Banquet marked a change in direction for the band following the psychedelic pop of their previous two albums, Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request. Styles such as roots rock and a return to the blues rock sound that had marked early Stones recordings dominate the record, and the album is among the most instrumentally experimental of the band's career, as they use Latin beats and instruments like the claves alongside South Asian sounds from the tanpura, tabla and shehnai, and African music-influenced conga rhythms.

Beggars Banquet was a top-ten album in many markets, including a number 5 position in the US—where it has been certified platinum—and a number 3 position in the band's native UK. It received a highly favourable response from music critics, who deemed it a return to form. While the album lacked a hit single at the time of its release, songs such as "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man" became rock radio staples for decades to come. The album has appeared on many lists of the greatest albums of all time, including by Rolling Stone, and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Recording and production
Glyn Johns, the album's recording engineer and a longtime collaborator of the band, said that Beggars Banquet signalled "the Rolling Stones' coming of age. ... I think that the material was far better than anything they'd ever done before. The whole mood of the record was far stronger to me musically." Producer Jimmy Miller described guitarist Keith Richards as "a real workhorse" while recording the album, mostly due to the infrequent presence of Brian Jones. When he did show up at the sessions, Jones behaved erratically due to his drug use and emotional problems. Miller said that Jones would "show up occasionally when he was in the mood to play, and he could never really be relied on:

"When he would show up at a session—let's say he had just bought a sitar that day, he'd feel like playing it, so he'd look in his calendar to see if the Stones were in. Now he may have missed the previous four sessions. We'd be doing let's say, a blues thing. He'd walk in with a sitar, which was totally irrelevant to what we were doing, and want to play it. I used to try to accommodate him. I would isolate him, put him in a booth and not record him onto any track that we really needed. And the others, particularly Mick and Keith, would often say to me, 'Just tell him to piss off and get the hell out of here'."

Jones contributed to eight tracks on the album, playing sitar and tanpura on "Street Fighting Man", slide guitar on "No Expectations", harmonica on "Parachute Woman", "Dear Doctor" and "Prodigal Son", acoustic guitar and backing vocals on "Sympathy for the Devil", and Mellotron on "Jigsaw Puzzle" and "Stray Cat Blues". In a television interview, Mick Jagger recalled that Jones' slide guitar performance on "No Expectations" was the last time he contributed something with care. Other than Jones, the principal band members appeared extensively, with Richards providing nearly all of the lead and rhythm guitar work, as well as playing bass on two others, in the place of Bill Wyman, who appears on the rest. Drummer Charlie Watts plays the drum kit on all but two tracks, as well as other percussion on the tracks that do not feature a full drum kit. Additional parts were played by keyboardist and frequent Rolling Stones collaborator Nicky Hopkins and percussionist Rocky Dijon, among others.

The basic track of "Street Fighting Man" was recorded on an early Philips cassette deck at London's Olympic Sound Studios, where Richards played a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar, and Watts played on an antique, portable practice drum kit. Richards and Jagger took credit as writers on "Prodigal Son", a cover of Robert Wilkins's Biblical blues song.

Celebrating the completion of the album, Jagger held a party at Vesuvio's nightclub in Central London. Paul McCartney attended with an acetate copy of "Hey Jude". The song upstaged Beggars Banquet and, in author John Winn's description, "reportedly ruin[ed]" the party.

Packaging
According to Keith Richards, the album's title was thought up by British art dealer Christopher Gibbs. The album's original front and back cover art, photographs by Barry Feinstein depicting a bathroom wall covered with graffiti, was rejected by the band's record company, which delayed the album's release for months. Feinstein's photographs were later featured though on most vinyl, compact disc and cassette tape reissues of the album. On 7 June 1968, a photoshoot for the album's gatefold, with photographer Michael Joseph, was held at Sarum Chase, a mansion in Hampstead, London. Previously unseen images from the shoot were exhibited at the Blink Gallery in London in November and December 2008.

Release and promotion
Beggars Banquet was first released in the United Kingdom by Decca Records on 6 December 1968, and in the United States by London Records the following day. Like the band's previous album, it reached number three on the UK Albums Chart, but remained on the chart for fewer weeks. The album peaked at number five on the Billboard 200.

On 11–12 December 1968 the band filmed a television extravaganza titled The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus featuring John Lennon, Keith Richards,Eric Clapton, The Who, Jethro Tull and Marianne Faithfull among the musical guests. One of the original aims of the project was to promote Beggars Banquet, but the film was shelved by the Rolling Stones until 1996, when their former manager, Allen Klein, gave it an official release.

Critical reception
Beggars Banquet received a highly favourable response from music critics, who considered it a return to form for the Stones. Author Stephen Davis writes of its impact: "[The album was] a sharp reflection of the convulsive psychic currents coursing through the Western world. Nothing else captured the youthful spirit of Europe in 1968 like Beggars Banquet."

According to music journalist Anthony DeCurtis, the "political correctness" of "Street Fighting Man", particularly the lyrics "What can a poor boy do/'Cept sing in a rock and roll band", sparked intense debate in the underground media. In the description of author and critic Ian MacDonald, French director Jean-Luc Godard's filming of the sessions for "Sympathy for the Devil" contributed to the band's image as "Left Bank heroes of the European Maoist underground", with the song's "Luciferian iconoclasm" interpreted as a political message.

Time described the Stones as "England's most subversive roisterers since Fagin's gang in Oliver Twist" and added: "In keeping with a widespread mood in the pop world, Beggars Banquet turns back to the raw vitality of Negro R&B and the authentic simplicity of country music." Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone considered that the band's regeneration marked the return of rock'n'roll, while the Chicago Sun-Times declared: "The Stones have unleashed their rawest, rudest, most arrogant, most savage record yet. And it's beautiful."

Less impressed, the writer of Melody Maker's initial review dismissed Beggars Banquet as "mediocre" and said that, since "The Stones are Mick Jagger", it was only the singer's "remarkable recording presence that makes this LP". Geoffrey Cannon of The Guardian found that the album "demonstrates [the group's] primal power at its greatest strength" and wrote admiringly of Jagger's ability to fully engage the listener on "Sympathy for the Devil", saying: "We feel horror because, at full volume, he makes us ride his carrier wave with him, experience his sensations, and awaken us to ours." In his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine's annual critics poll, Robert Christgau ranked it as the third-best album of the year, and "Salt of the Earth" the best pop song of the year. In April 1969, for Esquire, he wrote that Beggars Banquet is "unflawed and lacking something".

Reappraisal
In a retrospective review for Wondering Sound, Ben Fong-Torres called Beggars Banquet "an album flush with masterful and growling instant classics", and said that it "responds more to the chaos of '68 and to themselves than to any fellow artists ... the mood is one of dissolution and resignation, in the guise of a voice of an ambivalent authority." Colin Larkin, in his Encyclopedia of Popular Music (2006), viewed the album as "a return to strength" which included "the socio-political 'Street Fighting Man' and the brilliantly macabre 'Sympathy for the Devil', in which Jagger's seductive vocal was backed by hypnotic Afro-rhythms and dervish yelps". Writing for MusicHound in 1999, Greg Kot opined that the same two songs were the "weakest cuts", adding: "Otherwise, the disc is a tour de force of acoustic-tinged savagery and slumming sexuality, particularly the gleefully flippant 'Stray Cat Blues.'" Larry Katz from the Boston Herald called Beggars Banquet "both a return to basics and leap forward".

In his 1997 review for Rolling Stone, DeCurtis said the album was "filled with distinctive and original touches", and remarked on its legacy: "For the album, the Stones had gone to great lengths to toughen their sound and banish the haze of psychedelia, and in doing so, they launched a five-year period in which they would produce their very greatest records." Author Martin C. Strong similarly considers Beggars Banquet to be the first album in the band's "staggering burst of creativity" over 1968–72 that ultimately comprised four of the best rock albums of all time. Writing in 2007, Daryl Easlea of BBC Music said that, although in places it fails to maintain the quality of its opening song, Beggars Banquet represented the Rolling Stones at their sharpest.

Beggars Banquet has appeared on professional listings of the greatest albums. It was included in the "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). In 2000, it was voted number 282 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, it was ranked at number 57 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, ranked at number 58 in a 2012 revised list, and ranked at number 185 in a 2020 revised list. Also in 2003, the TV network VH1 named Beggars Banquet the 67th greatest album of all time. The album is also featured in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In 1999, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Reissues
In August 2002, ABKCO Records reissued Beggars Banquet as a newly remastered LP and SACD/CD hybrid disk. This release corrected a flaw in the original album by restoring each song to its proper, slightly faster speed. Due to an error in the mastering, Beggars Banquet was heard for over thirty years at a slower speed than it was recorded. This had the effect of altering not only the tempo of each song, but the song's key as well. These differences were subtle but important, and the remastered version is about 30 seconds shorter than the original release. Also in 2002 the Russian label CD-Maximum unofficially released the limited edition Beggars Banquet + 7 Bonus, which was also bootleged on a German counterfeit-DECCA label as Beggars Banquet (the Mono Beggars). It was released once again in 2010 by Universal Music Enterprises in a Japanese-only SHM-SACDversion and on 24 November 2010 ABKCO Records released a SHM-CD version.

On 28 May 2013 ABKCO Records reissued the LP on vinyl.

In 2018, the album was reissued for its 50th anniversary.

Record Store Day Edition appeared on the British market on Saturday, 22 April 2023.

Personnel
Sources:

The Rolling Stones
 * Mick Jagger – lead vocals (all tracks), hand drum (1), backing vocals (3, 6), harmonica (4), maracas (6, 8)
 * Keith Richards – electric guitars (1, 4, 8), acoustic guitars (2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10), electric slide guitar (5, 10), bass guitar (1, 6, 8), backing vocals (1, 3, 10), opening lead vocals (10)
 * Brian Jones – acoustic slide guitar (2), acoustic guitar (1, 4), harmonica (3, 4, 7), Mellotron (5, 8), sitar (6), tambura (6), backing vocals (1)
 * Bill Wyman – bass guitar (2, 4, 5, 10), double bass (3), backing vocals (1), shekere (1)
 * Charlie Watts – drums (1, 3-8, 10), claves (2), tambourine (3), tabla (9), backing vocals (1)

Additional personnel
 * Nicky Hopkins – piano (1-3, 5, 6, 8, 10), Mellotron, Farfisa organ (2)
 * Rocky Dzidzornu – congas (1, 8, 9), cowbell (1)
 * Ric Grech – fiddle (9)
 * Dave Mason – shehnai (6)
 * Michael Cooper, Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg – backing vocals (1)
 * Watts Street Gospel Choir – backing vocals (10)
 * Barry Feinstein – photography and art design

title: Beggars Banquet


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Polyhedron (magazine)

Polyhedron (formerly Polyhedron Newszine) was a magazine targeting consumers of role-playing games, and originally the official publication of the RPGA (Role Playing Gamers Association).

1981 to 2002
Publication of the Role Playing Gamers Association magazine began in the year 1981, targeting players of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Articles were written by gamers for other gamers in the style of the Dragon magazine, and information was included on RPGA membership and events. The magazine was nominally quarterly from May, 1981 through February, 1982; bimonthly from April, 1983 through May, 1991; and monthly from June, 1991 through November, 1996; publication then ceased until October, 1997, and thereafter was bi-monthly (with some irregularity) through May, 2003; finally it was again monthly from June, 2003 until the final issue in August, 2004. For several years it was available only to RPGA members; for some, joining the RPGA essentially amounted to a subscription to Polyhedron. Polyhedron was produced by members of the RPGA, including some professionals working in the game industry, and was intended for RPGA members.

The magazine was initially referred to as the "RPGA Newsletter" (or RPGA News) inside the cover of the initial 4 issues and the title read "TSR RPGA" on the cover. Starting with Issue 4 (p3) the new title "The Polyhedron" would be used. From issue 5 through 9 the covers were titled with "The Polyhedron" and from issue 10 onward as "Polyhedron Newszine".

The masthead lists several formal publishers (occasionally omitting this information) including E. Gary Gygax (Issues 1-11); Kim Eastland (12-15); Mike Cook (irregularly 32-50); Jack Beuttell (51-68); Rick Behling (69-76 and 91-111); James Ward (77-90); TSR (112-141); Wizards of the Coast (irregularly 142-149); and Paizo (153 onward). Notable editors include Frank Mentzer (1-4); Mary Kirchoff (5-21); Penny Petticord (22-31); Skip Williams (33, 34, 37, 39); Jean Rabe (36, 38, 40-103); Dave Gross (104-107); Duane Maxwell (107-118); Jeff Quick (122-134); and Erik Mona (138 onward). Two special issues were also published—an Introductory Issue (Jean Rabe, 1989) that was sent thereafter to new RPGA members, and a Gen Con Issue (Sean Glenn, 1999) that was distributed only at that year's Gen Con. The magazine's publication was fairly erratic and the contents very uneven until Jean Rabe's period as editor where the magazine was put on a regular schedule and contents were developed into recurring topical columns and monthly themed materials. Rabe also strengthened the quality of content and applied more rigorous editing to articles which had previously tended to be somewhat amateurish and personal. During this time also, cover art improved markedly and, notably, focused on strongly presented (and fully clothed) female adventurers. Rabe also converted the magazine from bi-monthly to monthly.

Pagination of Polyhedron is problematic, because often (but not always) the mailing wrapper (generally containing printed matter) was counted in the pagination, and often (but not always) the cover was counted in the pagination as well. Given this, the magazine generally was 16-20 pages in length for issues 1-8; 32-36 pages in length for issues 9-128; and 32-48 pages in length for issues 131-143 (at this point, the magazine started to carry advertisements). From issue 144 onwards page counts became fairly variable but generally ran near to either 60 or 40 pages. Polyhedron featured several notable cover styles, including black and white art on issues 1-39; a single-colored left-hand stripe with hexes on issues 40-51; a single colored cover (retaining the hex stripe) from issues 52-74; single color cover with a cluster of hexes in the top-left corner on issues 78-119; increasingly variable covers on 120-143; and full-glossy covers from 144 onwards. Collectors should note that the magazine was serially issued but also published in volumes and numbers for issues 1-148 and then again for issue 161. However, the volume and numbers printed in the magazine frequently were wrong (at least fifteen errors are known during the 148 issues); the issue number should be taken as authoritative.

2002 to 2004
In September, 2002, Paizo Publishing acquired publishing rights and merged the Polyhedron magazine with the sister publication Dungeon to form a single magazine (issue 90 of Dungeon and issue 149 of Polyhedron were one and the same magazine, and this dual numbering continued throughout this period). This ended the association of Polyhedron with the RPGA. It also marked a major change in the magazine's focus, from a primarily Dungeons & Dragons-oriented magazine similar to Dragon to a general d20 system magazine that often featured entirely new, simple role-playing games based on this system, along with support for non-D&D d20 games such as d20 Modern. Eventually another formerly separate magazine, the Living Greyhawk Journal, briefly became a section in Polyhedron as well.

Though this version of Polyhedron had many vocal supporters, sales were poor, a situation many blamed on putting two magazines with distinct target audiences together in one somewhat higher-priced package. The Polyhedron section was removed from Dungeon as part of a major revamp of the latter magazine in 2004 and Polyhedron is no longer published in any form.

2005
From March to November, 2005, Wizards of the Coast used the name "Polyhedron" for a Dungeons & Dragons email newsletter with links pointing to content on their website. The newsletter typically contained product reviews and announcements and a cartoon.

Reception
Polyhedron was awarded the Origins Award for "Best Amateur Adventure Gaming Magazine of 1987".

Dungeon/Polyhedron Magazine won the 2002 Gold Ennie Award for "Best Aid or Accessory".

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

title: Polyhedron (magazine)


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Chessie System

Chessie System, Inc. was a holding company that owned the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the Western Maryland Railway (WM), and Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad (B&OCT). Trains operated under the Chessie name from 1973 to 1987.

Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, the Chessie System was the creation of Cyrus S. Eaton and his protégé Hays T. Watkins, then president and chief executive officer of the C&O. A chief source of revenue for the Chessie System was coal mined in West Virginia. Another was the transport of auto parts and finished motor vehicles.

The name "Chessie System" had been a popular nickname for the C&O since the 1930s, cemented with an advertising campaign that featured a sleeping kitten named Chessie. The 1970s holding company developed the "Ches-C" emblem: a kitten outline imposed on a circle, creating a rough letter C. This emblem was emblazoned on the front of all Chessie System locomotives, and also served as the "C" in "Chessie System" on the locomotive's flanks, and on other rolling stock.

History
The three railroads that would make up the Chessie System had been closely related since the 1960s. C&O had acquired controlling interest in B&O in 1962, and the two had jointly controlled WM since 1967.

Chessie System was incorporated in Virginia on February 26, 1973, and it acquired the railroads on June 15.

On November 1, 1980, Chessie System merged with Seaboard Coast Line Industries to form CSX Corporation. Initially, the three Chessie System railroads continued to operate separately, even after Seaboard's six Family Lines System railroads were merged into the Seaboard System Railroad on December 29, 1982. That began to change in 1983, when the WM was merged into the B&O. The Chessie image continued to be applied to new and re-painted equipment until July 1, 1986, when CSXT introduced its own paint scheme. In April 1987, the B&O was merged into the C&O. In August 1987, C&O merged into CSX Transportation, a 1986 renaming of the Seaboard System Railroad, and the Chessie System name was retired.

List of railroad subsidiaries
Its subsidiaries included:

 * Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
 * Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad
 * Chesapeake & Ohio Railway
 * Covington & Cincinnati Elevated Railroad & Transfer & Bridge Company
 * Staten Island Railroad
 * Toledo Ore RR Company
 * Western Maryland Railway

Notable locomotives
The Chessie System company itself directly owned no locomotives or other rolling stock. Instead, equipment was placed on the roster of one of the three component railroads and ownership denoted by the reporting marks C&O, B&O, and WM. All three companies shared a common paint scheme of yellow, vermillion, and blue.

Notable Chessie System locomotives include:
 * B&O #1977 (EMD GP40-2) was meant to celebrate the B&O's 150th anniversary. For a short time, there were two B&O locomotives numbered 1977; this GP40 was later renumbered B&O 4100 and B&O 4163.
 * B&O #GM50 (EMD GP40-2) was painted gold to celebrate GM-EMD's 50th anniversary as a diesel locomotive manufacturer. In 1984, it was repainted and renumbered B&O 4164.
 * B&O #3802 (EMD GP38) was named the All American Locomotive by Trains in 1982. It has been restored and is on display at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.
 * B&O #4444 (EMD GP40-2) pulled Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential train through Ohio. It was the third-to-last GP40-2 owned by Chessie; the last was B&O 4447.

The former Reading Company #2101 (T-1-class 4-8-4) was one of three locomotives that pulled the American Freedom Train in 1975 and 1976. As part of B&O's 150th anniversary celebration in 1977, the Chessie System sent #2101 on a national tour as the "Chessie Steam Special". Painted in the Chessie System motif, the train consisted of the locomotive, two tenders, and 18 to 20 passenger and baggage cars. In March 1979, the locomotive was severely damaged in a fire while stored in a Chessie System roundhouse. It has since been cosmetically restored to its American Freedom Train paint scheme, and is on static display at the B&O Railroad Museum, although has been exposed to the elements for most of its time there.

In 2017, the Lake Shore Railway Historical Society acquired C&O 8272, a GE B30-7. It has been restored in the Chessie System paint scheme and currently resides at the Lake Shore Railway Museum in North East, Pennsylvania, and most recently, an EMD GP15T (C&O 1507) was donated to the B&O Railroad Museum.

Heritage units
In 2015, CSX used decals to decorate two of its locomotives in the livery of predecessor railroads. CSX AC4400CW 366 bears the "Chess-C" and C40-8W 7765 has the "B&O" logo. 366's decal was later damaged by fire and removed.

In June 2023, GE ES44AH unit #1973 entered service, being repaired and painted at CSX shops in Waycross, GA with a CSX blue and yellow color scheme on the front (nose) and cab of the locomotive and throughout the rest of the locomotive, the classic yellow and red Chessie System scheme. It was numbered #1973 in homage to the year the Chessie System was created.

title: Chessie System


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1999 Wigan by-election

The 1999 Wigan by-election of 23 September 1999 was held after the death of the incumbent Labour MP, Roger Stott.

The by-election was contested by nine candidates in total, with Labour selecting Neil Turner, who had been a local councillor for 27 years, to defend the seat. Meanwhile, the Conservatives chose Tom Peet, who was an active Trade Unionist and had worked at a nearby coal mine.

The result was a hold for the Labour Party, with Turner gaining 59.6% of the vote, in spite of a 5% swing to the Conservative Party.

title: 1999 Wigan by-election


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File:South African Youth Congress (emblem).jpg

SAYCO symbol.


text:
Aortic sinus

An aortic sinus, also known as a sinus of Valsalva, is one of the anatomic dilations of the ascending aorta, which occurs just above the aortic valve. These widenings are between the wall of the aorta and each of the three cusps of the aortic valve.

The aortic sinuses cause eddies which prevent the valve cusps from touching the internal surface of the aorta and obstructing the openings of the coronary arteries.

Structure
There are generally three aortic sinuses, one anterior and two posterior sinuses. These give rise to coronary arteries: The aortic sinuses are typically more prominent than the pulmonary sinuses.
 * The left aortic or left posterior aortic sinus gives rise to the left coronary artery;
 * The right aortic or anterior aortic sinus gives rise to the right coronary artery;
 * The posterior aortic or right posterior aortic sinus usually gives rise to no vessels. It is often known as the non-coronary sinus.

Clinical significance
If the coronary arteries arise from the wrong aortic sinuses, this can put the heart's ventricles at risk of ischaemia. This is often only discovered when a heart attack has already occurred, usually before the age of 20 and during exercise.

Names
Each aortic sinus can also be referred to as the sinus of Valsalva, the sinus of Morgagni, the sinus of Mehta, the sinus of Otto, or Petit's sinus.

title: Aortic sinus


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Ford D3 platform

The Ford D3 platform is an automobile platform used by Ford Motor Company for model years 2005-2019, as the fifteenth generation of full-size North American cars.

The platform used unibody chassis construction with a transverse V6 engine and front-or all-wheel drive, deriving it from the 1998-2016 Volvo P2 architecture designed prior to Ford's 1999 acquisition of Volvo. From model year 2008 on, the related D4 platform has served as a basis for crossover SUVs.

While the vehicles of the D3 platform were officially introduced as the replacement for the 1999-2007 D186 platform (Ford Taurus), in terms of market position and interior volume, they effectively superseded the Ford and Mercury vehicles of the 1978-2012 Panther platform.

Between 2004 and 2019. All D3 vehicles have been assembled at Chicago Assembly in Chicago, Illinois along with the D4 Ford Explorer; the D4 Ford Flex and Lincoln MKT are assembled at Oakville Assembly in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

Overview
The Ford D3 platform differs slightly from the original configuration of the Volvo P2 architecture, including steel suspension arms (in place of aluminum) and other cost-saving measures.

In contrast to the Volvo P2 architecture, Ford adopted a common 112.9 wheelbase for each D3 variant (three inches longer than a Volvo S80, two inches shorter than a Ford Crown Victoria). In place of the inline-5 and inline-6 engines used by Volvo, Ford adopted its own Duratec V6 engines. As with the front-drive P2 platform, a Haldex all-wheel drive (shared with the S80/XC90) was optional.

As the first front-wheel drive full-size car platform produced by Ford, the D3 platform is also the first full-size Ford car produced with fully independent suspension, with a multi-link rear axle, coilover shocks and MacPherson front struts. The D3 is fitted with four-wheel disc brakes.

D4
The D4 platform is a revision of D3 unibody platform produced since 2008. Developed to underpin crossover SUVs (including the Ford Flex, Lincoln MKT, and the MY 2011-2019 Ford Explorer), the variant is adaptable to multiple wheelbases; the suspension is also upgraded for off-road driving and towing.

Two variants of the D4 were developed as replacements for Panther-platform vehicles: the Ford Police Interceptor Utility (a police-use version of the Ford Explorer) served as a replacement for the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor; Lincoln introduced limousine, and livery variants of the MKT, replacing similar conversions of the Lincoln Town Car.

Vehicles
Between the 2005 and 2019 model years, the Ford D3 platform has been used by Ford, Lincoln, and the (now-defunct) Mercury brands. Introduced as the Ford Five Hundred and Mercury Montego, which were subsequently re-branded as the fifth-generation Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable for 2008.

For model year 2009 and 2010 respectively, Ford also marketed a Lincoln D3 variant, the MKS and the D3-based sixth-generation Ford Taurus.

After discontinuation of the Mercury brand, the Mercury Sable ended production after the 2009 model year. For 2017, Lincoln replaced the MKS with the revived Lincoln Continental, based on the CD4 architecture.

Concept cars

 * 2005 Mercury Meta One diesel-electric hybrid crossover SUV
 * 2008 Lincoln MKT luxury crossover SUV not to be confused with the production car of the same name that is on a modified version of the D3 platform known as D4.

title: Ford D3 platform


text:
User talk:Rufustfirefly

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Copyright status of Image:Franketienne.jpg
Do you have copyright information for Image:Franketienne.jpg? The description page lists a source and says it's PD, but there's no PD notice that I can find on that site. Can you link me to it? grendel|khan 18:50, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

Request for review
Hey, since you seem to know about these things, can you have a look at Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums and Christopher Commission? I may be making some really glaring factual errors in here, and I'd like to get them fixed. Edit mercilessly, if you will. Be bold and all. grendel|khan 20:38, 2004 Jul 23 (UTC)

Possibly unfree Image:Franketienne.jpg
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Unreferenced BLPs
Hello Rufustfirefly! Thank you for your contributions. I am a bot notifying you on behalf of the the unreferenced biographies team that 1 of the articles that you created  is currently tagged as an Unreferenced Biography of a Living Person. The biographies of living persons policy requires that all personal or potentially controversial information be sourced. In addition, to ensure verifiability, all biographies should be based on reliable sources. If you were to bring this article up to standards, it would greatly help us with the current Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs article backlog. Once the article is adequately referenced, please remove the unreferencedBLP tag. Here is the article:

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Speedy deletion nomination of FreeMED

A tag has been placed on FreeMED, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, group, product, service, person, or point of view and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and FAQ/Organizations for more information.

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Hello, I'm Deb. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions have been undone because they appeared to be promotional. Advertising and using Wikipedia as a "soapbox" are against Wikipedia policy and not permitted; Wikipedia articles should be written objectively, using independent sources, and from a neutral perspective. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. Hello, Rufustfirefly. We welcome your contributions, but if you have an external relationship with the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest (COI). Editors with a conflict of interest may be unduly influenced by their connection to the topic. See the conflict of interest guideline and FAQ for organizations for more information. We ask that you:

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Also, editing for the purpose of advertising, publicising, or promoting anyone or anything is not permitted. Thank you.Deb (talk) 12:03, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Hugh Blumenfeld

The article Hugh Blumenfeld has been proposed for deletion because it appears to have no references. Under Wikipedia policy, this biography of a living person will be deleted after seven days unless it has at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article.

If you created the article, please don't be offended. Instead, consider improving the article. For help on inserting references, see Referencing for beginners, or ask at the help desk. Once you have provided at least one reliable source, you may remove the prod blp/dated tag. Please do not remove the tag unless the article is sourced. If you cannot provide such a source within seven days, the article may be deleted, but you can when you are ready to add one. Cardiffbear88 (talk) 21:04, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Nomination of Hugh Blumenfeld for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Hugh Blumenfeld is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Hugh Blumenfeld until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:36, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

title: User talk:Rufustfirefly


text:
Hasil Adkins

Hasil Adkins (April 29, 1937 – April 26, 2005) was an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His genres include rock and roll, country, blues and more commonly rockabilly, and because of his unusual playing and singing style, he is often cited as an example of outsider music. He generally performed as a one-man band, playing guitar and drums at the same time.

Adkins was born during the Great Depression and grew up in poverty. His spirited, unusual lifestyle is reflected in his music. His songs, which he began recording and distributing locally in the mid-1950s, explored an affinity for chicken, sexual intercourse, and decapitation, and were obscure outside of West Virginia until the 1980s. The newfound popularity secured him a cult following, spawned the Norton Records label, and helped usher in the genre known as psychobilly.

Personal life
Adkins was born in Boone County, West Virginia on April 29, 1937, where he spent his entire life. He was the youngest of ten children of Wid Adkins, a coal miner, and Alice Adkins, raised in a tarpaper shack on property rented from a local coal company. Born at the time of the Great Depression, Adkins' early life was stricken by poverty. His parents were unable to provide him shoes until he was four or five years old. Some reports say he attended school for a very brief time, as few as two days of first grade.

Adkins' given name, Hasil, pronounced "Hassel", was often mispronounced. One of his brothers was named Basil, similarly pronounced "Bassel". Hasil dated a girl named Hazel, and was later given the nickname The Haze. As he explained it, the nickname came about "'cause Starlight records wanted something catchy and I didn't have no middle name."

Hasil Adkins loved to eat meat, specifically poultry, the subject of many of his songs. Following the release of 2000's Poultry in Motion, Adkins toured with "dancing go-go chicken" dancers. His diet also reportedly consisted of as much as two gallons of coffee a day, and copious amounts of liquor and cigarettes.

Aside from his fondness for meat, Adkins claimed to have but three loves in life, "girls, guitars, and cars. All three of [which] got me into trouble over the years." One such incident occurred in 1957 when he and three friends drove a car off a mountain. A local newspaper reported the car tumbled 70 feet into nearby Pond Fork. While the driver died at the scene, Adkins survived, although he sustained a permanent back injury.

In the 1980s Adkins again found himself in trouble with the law. In 1983 he was living with his girlfriend who was still a minor. Her mother reported to police that she had been raped, and Adkins was subsequently charged with third-degree sexual assault, or statutory rape of a minor less than 16 years old. In October the same year, another relationship ended with jail time, when a shootout occurred between Adkins and a jealous husband. No one was hurt, but Adkins was charged with felony illegal possession of a shotgun and spent five months in jail.

Adkins was said to have manic depression and insomnia among other mental illnesses. He never married.

On April 15, 2005, Adkins was run over in his front yard by a teenager riding an ATV. Eleven days later, on April 26, Adkins was found dead in his home, three days before his 68th birthday.

Career
Nicknamed "The Haze", Adkins career began in the mid-1950s in an improvised studio in his home near Madison, West Virginia. There he put his vibrant Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis influences to work by recording scores of songs, beginning with the track "I'm Happy". In a later interview he exclaimed "I couldn't afford no drums so I just stomped my feet." He eventually learned to use percussive instruments to accompany his guitar and vocals, which would become his hallmark sound.

In 1961 Adkins headed to California in search of fame, auditioning with talent agencies in and around Los Angeles. With little to go on, he returned to West Virginia, though claimed he missed a callback from an agency a single day after departing for his home. Back at home, Adkins began performing at local nightclubs, behind a store-bought sign that read One of the Greatest Shows on Earth, the One Man Band Haze Adkins and his Happy Guitar.

The mid-1960s brought Adkins first official release through a local micro-label, with the 45 record Chicken Walk / She's Mine. What followed were the releases of some of his most notable songs, though at the time they received little attention outside of Madison. "She Said" revealed his imaginative tone in writing, in which he compared the woman of a one-night stand he had to "a dying can of that commodity meat." "No More Hot Dogs" was a song about decapitating a girlfriend and keeping her head as a wall mount.

Adkins began to transition from his rockabilly roots to country music by the 1970s, producing several self-released records. It was a tradition of his to mail a copy of each single he released to the sitting President of the United States. In 1970 Richard Nixon wrote back, saying "I am very pleased by your thoughtfulness in bringing these particular selections to my attention."

The early 1980s saw a resurgence in Adkins' fan base when the American punk rock band The Cramps did a remake of Adkins' "She Said". The Cramps having picked up the song from the bootleg compilation Rockabilly Bash during a UK tour. In 1984 UK label Big Beat Records included Hasil's original on the psychobilly compilation Rockabilly Psychosis and the Garage Disease. Having made contact with Big Beat Records, Hasil proceeded to provide them with some of his home recorded tapes, which resulted in the album She Said being released in 1985.

Also in 1985, he was approached by former Cramps drummer Miriam Linna and her husband Billy Miller about releasing some of Adkins' work. Resultantly they created the independent record label Norton Records and released the compilation album Out To Hunch in 1986, which became an underground success. Billy Miller soon was appointed as Adkins' manager, and together with Linna they headed to New York City for Adkins' first professional recording session, yielding 1987's The Wild Man. Upon release, the album was featured as The New York Times "Rock Album of the Week".

By the 1990s Adkins had gained a cult following and began touring regularly, receiving offers from more record labels. In 1994 Miles Copeland III of I.R.S. Records purchased the rights to Adkins' recordings, and although an album was planned for release, it never materialized. Frustrated, Adkins soon gained back rights to some of his songs after a deal with Mississippi blues label Fat Possum, who recorded and released 1999's What The Hell Was I Thinking? and booked him a tour alongside T-Model Ford and Elmo Williams.

In 2000 Norton released a compilation of new and previous recordings about Adkins' devotion to chicken, entitled Poultry in Motion that included such songs as "Chicken Run," "Chicken Hop," "Chicken Flop," "Chicken Wobble," and "Chicken on the Bone." In total, Adkins claimed nearly 7,000 songs to his repertoire.

While music was his true passion, Adkins enjoyed a career in the film and television industry. He played himself as a street musician in 2004's The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, partially narrated The Red's Breakfast Experience and starred in a comedic horror film entitled Die You Zombie Bastards!. As a composer he helped score Hair High in 2004. Adkins was also the subject of the Julien Nitzberg documentary The Wild World of Hasil Adkins, distributed by Appalshop.

Adkins was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2018.

Legacy
Adkins is often cited as an important precursor to the psychobilly genre. The Cramps attribute many of their punk-psychobilly traits to Adkins; they covered "She Said" live, and released a studio version as the b-side of "Goo Goo Muck" (1981), which later appeared on their compilation album Bad Music for Bad People (1984). This helped usher Adkins into cult status as an underground musician, and inspired Cramps' drummer Miriam Linna and her husband Billy Miller to found the Norton Records label. North Carolina psychobilly group Flat Duo Jets also covered Adkins with "Let Me Come In" on the 1993 lo-fi compilation Safari, which was released on Norton Records.

Adkins' song "Get Out of My Car" was featured in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto V on the country radio station "Rebel Radio".

Musical style

Frenetic in progression and explicit in lyrical content, Adkins was known for having an unconventional take on traditional rockabilly. His unpolished sound was a praised by-product of the makeshift studio equipment used for the majority of his career. "I didn't try to be primitive, I just had bad microphones", he wrote. His lyrics explored topics such as eating peanut butter on the moon and the suggestive strut of a chicken. Recurring themes in Adkins' catalogue included sex, heartbreak, decapitation, aliens, hot dogs and poultry. Together with country and honky-tonk, Adkins' assortment of styles helped delineate a genre known as psychobilly.

Adkins performed as a one-man band, using foot pedals to play the drums, or simply stomped his feet on the floor to an often detuned guitar. He once vowed that he would play "twelve to twenty" instruments simultaneously, including playing the piano and organ with his elbows. He noted in interviews that his primary heroes and influences were Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Little Richard, and Col. Harland Sanders, the inventor of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Adkins attributed his desire to perform as a one-man band to these artists, stating that when he was a child, he assumed the only credited musician in the band must have played all the instruments in the recordings. The first time he saw a guitarist in action, he built a guitar of his own.

Many of Adkins' songs were accompanied by a dance of the same name. "The Hunch" was understood to be a dry humping dance craze, although Adkins failed to define it in interviews. He used the term to describe anything of sexual relation, even naming his car the "Hunchin' Wagon". "The Slop" was a song and dance Adkins pioneered for "the drunks", which he made so "you could just go left or right or fall down or anything you ran into". 2000's Poultry in Motion introduced a slew of chicken dances. "The Chicken Walk" involved "quiver[ing] yourself from head to toe" to mimic that of a chicken, while "The Chicken Flop" was simply "flopping all over the place".

Adkins primarily recorded and performed his own songs, although Peanut Butter Rock and Roll included covers of Carl Perkins' "Blue Suede Shoes" and Harry Belafonte's "Day-O". Additionally, Achy Breaky Ha Ha Ha, a country album, included covers of songs by Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Carter Stanley, and A. P. Carter.

Discography

 * Singles & EP's
 * Haze's House Party (Norton Records, 1986, LULU1)
 * Big Red Satellite (Norton Records, 1987, NORTON 002)
 * Big Red Satellite (Norton Records, 1987, NORTON 002)

 * Albums
 * He Said (Big Beat Records, 1985)
 * Out to Hunch (Norton Records, 1986, ED-201)
 * The Wild Man (Norton Records, 1987)
 * Moon Over Madison (Norton Records, 1990)
 * Peanut Butter Rock and Roll (Norton Records, 1990)
 * Live in Chicago (Bughouse, 1992)
 * Look at that Caveman Go!! (Norton Records, 1993)
 * Achy Breaky Ha Ha Ha (Norton Records, 1994)
 * What the Hell Was I Thinking (Fat Possum / Turnstile, 1998)
 * Drinkin My Life Away (Shake It Records, 2003)
 * Evening Show Road (Nero's Nepture)

 * Compilations
 * Chicken Walk (Dee Jay (Germany), 1986)
 * Poultry in Motion (Norton Records, 2000)
 * Best of the Haze (CIA / Copeland International Arts, 2006)
 * Night Life (2009)
 * White Light/White Meat (Norton Records)

Filmography

 * The Wild World of Hasil Adkins (1993)
 * R.I.P. Rest in Pieces (1997), musician
 * Let Me Be Your Band (2003)
 * The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)
 * Die You Zombie Bastards! (2005)

title: Hasil Adkins


text:
Clifford Sifton

Sir Clifford Sifton, (March 10, 1861 – April 17, 1929), was a Canadian lawyer and a long-time Liberal politician, best known for being Minister of the Interior under Sir Wilfrid Laurier. He was responsible for encouraging the massive amount of immigration to Canada which occurred during the first decade of the 20th century. In 1905, he broke with Laurier and resigned from cabinet over the issue of publicly funded religious education in the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Early life
Sifton was born in Middlesex County, Canada West (now Ontario). Sifton's father, John Wright Sifton, was a contractor and businessman who moved with his family to Manitoba when Sifton was a boy.

Sifton trained as a lawyer and graduated from Victoria University in the University of Toronto, where he was the founding manager of Acta Victoriana.

Manitoba provincial politics: Attorney General for Manitoba
Sifton worked on his father's political campaigns before being himself elected to the legislative assembly of Manitoba in 1888. Sifton served in the cabinet of Thomas Greenway from 1891 to 1896 as attorney general and Provincial Lands Commissioner. He played a role in negotiating the Laurier-Greenway Compromise, which temporarily resolved the Manitoba Schools Question.

Federal politics: Minister of the Interior
In 1896, Sifton was first elected a Member of Parliament after being acclaimed in a by-election in Brandon. He was re-elected in the 1900 Canadian federal election against a strong challenge from former Manitoba premier Hugh John Macdonald. Sifton would be re-elected two more times, in 1904 and 1908.

Sifton was appointed Minister of the Interior under Laurier and implemented a vigorous immigration policy called "The Last Best West" to encourage people to settle and populate the West. Sifton established colonial offices in Europe and the United States. He enticed people to come to western Canada. While many of the immigrants came from Britain and the United States, there was also, to Canada, a large influx of Ukrainians, Scandinavians, Doukhobors, and other groups from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He famously defended the "stalwart peasants in sheep-skin coats" who were turning some of the most difficult parts of the western plains into productive farms.

Between 1891 and 1914, more than three million people came to Canada, largely from continental Europe, following the path of the newly constructed transcontinental railway. In the same period, mining industries were begun in the Klondike and the Canadian Shield.

After presiding over the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, Sifton resigned from cabinet following a dispute with Laurier over religious education.

Especially later in his life, Sifton battled increasing deafness, which precluded any further potential political advances.

Later life
Sifton retired from politics in 1911 but crusaded against the government policy of reciprocity, because he believed that increased economic integration between Canada and the United States would result in Canada being taken over by the Americans.

A sometimes repeated assertion on immigration policy, that "a stalwart peasant in a sheep-skin coat, born on the soil,[...]is good quality," was made in a 1922 article he wrote.

Sifton died in 1929 in New York City, where he had been visiting a heart specialist. He left a fortune estimated at $3.2 million, equivalent to about $ in present-day terminology. Sifton is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto.

Family
Sifton, then a young lawyer, was married in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on August 18, 1884, to Elizabeth Armanella Burrows. She was the daughter of Henry James Burrows and his wife, Sarah Sparks. Elizabeth was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and educated at the Ottawa Ladies' College. The couple had five sons. She founded and presided over the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Brandon, Manitoba.

His brother-in-law Theodore Arthur Burrows would also serve as a Liberal MP in the Laurier government, and he was later appointed the tenth Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba.

His brother Arthur Sifton served as the second Premier of Alberta.

Archives
There is a Clifford Sifton fonds at Library and Archives Canada.

title: Clifford Sifton


text:
Abadal

Abadal is a Spanish automobile company founded by the famous early 20th century racing driver Don Francisco Serramelera Abadal, better known as Paco Abadal, in Barcelona in 1912.

Don Francisco Serramelera Abadal
Abadal was born on 27 July 1875 in Manresa and by the end of the century was a notable cyclist in Barcelona. His first motor vehicle was a 1.75-hp Clément tricycle which he raced. In 1902 Abadal began selling cars, motorbikes, cycles and accessories from the Auto-Garage Central in Barcelona.

He won a won a couple of hill climbs at Rabassade near Barcelona. The first in February 1904 was in a Clement 16hp and the second in January 1905 was in a Hispano-Suiza T20. Also in 1905, he sold a Hispano-Suiza to King Alfonso XIII. His business grew and by 1908 he had branches in Calle Sepúlveda, Plaza Letamendi and Carretera de Sarriá. In In October 1912 Abadal married Mercedes Durán, daughter of the wealthy Catalan businessman and industrialist, Joaquim Durán Albert. In 1913 Hispano-Suiza cancelled its contract with Abadal so he decided to make his own vehicles under the make Abadal.

Soon after the inception of the Abadal line in 1913 Abadal visited the Belgian company Impéria. They negotiated an agreement whereby Impéria began building Abadals under license as Impéria-Abadal, With the outbreak of World War One and the invasion of Belgium by Germany this arrangement came to a temporary end.

In 1916 Abadal acquired the Buick agency, and Barcelona-built Abadals after that year had Buick power units and featured custom coachwork. These cars were called Abadal-Buick. In 1919 M A Van Roggen (formerly of Springuel) took over Impéria and built around 170 more Impéria-Abadals. Among the models produced were a 2992cc 16-valve four-cylinder OHC sports model and three prototype 5630 cc straight-eights.

Abadel passed away on 17 December 1939.

Abadal 18HP, 23HP and 45HP
The first models were released simultaneously in 1913 under the direction of Francisco. "Abadal 18HP" and "Abadal 25HP" had a four-cylinder engine with a volume of 3.6 liters with a piston stroke of 180 millimeters and a cylinder diameter of 80 millimeters, as well as a four-speed manual gearbox. The five-seater open-top car was equipped with a suspension on semi-elliptical springs and traditional at that time drum brakes. The models were assembled on a spar frame and generally had technical similarities with other similar cars of that time, in particular with "Hispano-Suiza", but differed in design, for example, a wedge-shaped radiator. The maximum speed that the cars could reach was 112 kilometers per hour. A 1914 version of the 25HP is held at the Caramulo Museum in Portugal.

Abadal 45HP had all the same characteristics, but unlike the previous models, it stood out with a six-cylinder engine. These cars were more reliable than their predecessors.

Abadal 15.9HP
The model was first presented at the Paris Motor Show in 1913. Despite the classic appearance of the cars of that time, the "Abadal 15.9HP" was a new racing model of the company and differed from other sports models by its completely wooden body, which was designed and recreated by the French coachbuilder Jean Henri-Labourdette.

Abadal Buick 1923
Buick engines had been used under licence in Abadal's since 1916. The first cooperative car of the two company's was released in 1923 under a joint name. The rear-wheel drive roadster was equipped with a six-cylinder engine with 60 horsepower, which contributed to acceleration of 140 kilometers per hour. The car was intended for track racing and weighed 1030 kilograms. One of these is held at Collecio D'automobils Salvador Claret near Barcelona.

There is a note of a Abadal Buick driven by José Rubio Márques winning a hillclimb at Reina near Malaga. This was followed by Pascual Sogas winning a hillclimb at Ordal near Barcelona on 29 December 1918 and again at Perdeces near Madrid on 7 June 1919. These are likely Buick engined Abadal's as the joint name did not appear till later. A Abadal-Buick driven by Leon Derny won a hillclimb at Porta-Coeli near Valencia on 23 June 1923.

Impéria-Abadal
Another racing car rolled off the assembly line in 1921 under another joint name, "Abadal Imperial". This was the last joint project, developed in the year the partnership agreement expired. The model turned out to be the fastest version of all those previously released in alliance with "Impéria". It had an 8-cylinder engine with a total volume of 5.6 liters and was capable of accelerating to a maximum speed of 145 kilometers per hour. On 12 August 1922 this car won the 40 lap (about 603km) Le Grand Prix pour voitures de tourisme at Spa-Francorchamps. It was driven by Baron Raymond de Tornaco and Barthélémy.

Abadal Continental 1930
The last car of this brand was a prototype of a luxury sedan with a 3.5-liter engine from the German company Continental AG, on which Francisco had placed great hopes, but they were not destined to come true, because nothing followed beyond the idea and the initial sample.

Demise
The company ceased automobile production in 1923. Abadal became an agent of General Motors in Spain. General Motors' plans in 1930 related to a prototype named the Abadal Continental never materialised.

Abadal Y-12 aero-engine
Abadal also produced the Abadal Y-12 aero-engine, a multiple bank in-line engine with twelve cylinders in three banks of four arranged in a Y. It was produced during World War One as an experimental aircraft engine. It was rated at 350hp.

Postage stamps
An Abadal featured on a 1977 Spanish postage stamp and a 1984 postage stamp from Nicaragua.

External websites
https://www.pacoabadal.com/

title: Abadal


text:
Jim Borgman

James Mark Borgman (born February 24, 1954) is an American cartoonist. He is known for his political cartoons and his nationally syndicated comic strip Zits. He was the editorial cartoonist at The Cincinnati Enquirer from 1976 to 2008.

Biography
Borgman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to James and Marian Borgman, where he began his career in journalism as a student at Elder High School. He then attended Ohio's Kenyon College where he started as an English major, then switched to being an art major. He graduated in 1976 with Phi Beta Kappa honors.

Borgman met his first wife Lynn Goodwin during his senior year of college at a class called Jesus and the Gospels. They had two children named Dylan and Chelsea. Lynn died in 1999 from a blood clot following surgery to ease chronic neck and shoulder pain. In 2003 he married Suzanne Soled, an educational psychologist and professor at Northern Kentucky University.

Career
At Kenyon College, Borgman drew editorial cartoons for the Kenyon Collegian.

He became The Cincinnati Enquirer's editorial cartoonist in 1976. Since 1980, his editorial cartoons have been nationally syndicated, at first by King Features Syndicate. In 2007, Universal Press Syndicate took over the distribution of his editorial cartoons. In 2008, he took a voluntary buyout offered by Enquirer parent Gannett Company but continued to work on Zits after leaving the paper.

Wonk City
His body of work has included the weekly comic strip Wonk City, which ran from 1994 to 1996 on the editorial pages of The Washington Post. A surreal send-up of inside-the-beltway mores during the administration of Bill Clinton, many of the cartoons featured a cat involved in behind-the-scenes political skullduggery.

Zits
While on vacation in Sedona, Arizona, Borgman met up with fellow cartoonist Jerry Scott. Scott pitched the idea of a cartoon about a teenager and thus the comic strip Zits was born, debuting in July, 1997, with Borgman drawing and Scott writing.

Zits is syndicated in over 1500 newspapers around the world and has been translated into nine languages, including German, Chinese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Finnish and Polish.

Awards
In 1991, when Borgman was 37 years old, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. He has also won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award for 1986, 1987, 1988, 1994, and 2006, their Newspaper Comic Strip for 1997, their Newspaper Comic Strip (with Jerry Scott) in 1998 and 1999 for Zits, and their Reuben Award in 1993.

Borgman also won the Reuben Award for editorial cartooning in 2006, and has achieved a great deal of recognition for his work.

title: Jim Borgman


text:
File:Ujprkampuchea.jpg

People's Revolutionary Youth Union of Kampuchea symbol. From around 1987.

title: File:Ujprkampuchea.jpg


text:
Chidiock Tichborne

Chidiock Tichborne (after 24 August 1562 – 20 September 1586), erroneously referred to as Charles, was an English conspirator and poet.

Life
Tichborne was born in Southampton sometime after 24 August 1562 to Roman Catholic parents, Peter Tichborne and his wife Elizabeth (née Middleton). His birth date has been given as circa 1558 in many sources, though unverified, and thus his age given as 28 at his execution. It is unlikely that he was born before his parents' marriage, so he could have been no more than 23 years old when he died.

Chidiock Tichborne descended from Sir Roger de Tichborne, who owned land at Tichborne, near Winchester, in the twelfth century. Chidiock's second cousin and contemporary was Sir Benjamin Tichborne who lived at Tichborne Park and was created a Baronet by King James I in 1621. In Chidiock's reported oration from the scaffold before his execution he allegedly stated: "I am descended from a house, from two hundred years before the Conquest, never stained till this my misfortune".

Chidiock's father Peter appears to have been the youngest son of Henry Tichborne (born circa 1474) and Anne Mervin (or Marvin) but the records are unclear. Peter was clerk of the Crowne at the trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton in 1554 and was an ardent Catholic supporter. Being the youngest son of a youngest son he was of little means and required to make his own way. He secured an education and the patronage of his distant kinsman, Lord Chidiock Paulet (1521–1574, son of the 1st Marquess of Winchester), after whom he named his son. In later life he spent many years imprisoned unable to pay recusancy fines. Chidiock's mother was Elizabeth Middleton, daughter of William Middleton (grandson of Sir Thomas Middleton of Belso) and Elizabeth Potter (daughter of John Potter of Westram). William had been servant to John Islip, Abbot of Westminster, and a banner bearer at Islip's funeral 1532, and later bought lands in Kent.

The name "Chidiock", pronounced ‘chidik’, as derived from his father's patron, Chidiock Paulet, originates from a Paulet ancestor, Sir John de Chideock, who owned land at Chideock, a village in Dorset. Chidiock Tichborne was never called Charles – this is an error that has grown from a misprint in the AQA GCSE English Literature syllabus which has included the Elegy in its early poetry section for several years. Unfortunately, this error persists in much of the educational literature supporting the syllabus.

At least two of Chidiock's sisters are recorded by name: Dorothy, first wife of Thomas Muttelbury of Jurdens, Somerset; and Mary, second wife of Sir William Kirkham of Blagdon in the parish of Paignton in Devon. At his execution Chidiock mentions his wife Agnes, one child, and his six sisters. In his letter to his wife, written the night before his execution he mentions his sisters – and also 'my little sister Babb'. Another sister is implied in a secret intelligence note to Francis Walsingham, dated 18 September 1586, in which the writer has had conference with "Jennings of Portsmouth" who reports that Mr Bruyn of Dorset and Mr Kyrkham of Devon are persons to be suspect as they had married Tychbourn's sisters.

History
After the succession of Elizabeth I to the throne following the death of Mary I, Chidiock was allowed to practise Catholicism for part of his early life. However, in 1570 the Queen was excommunicated by the Pope for her own Protestantism and support of Protestant causes, most notably the Dutch Rebellion against Spain; in retaliation she ended her relative toleration of the Catholic Church. Catholicism was made illegal, and Roman Catholics were once more banned by law from practising their religion and Roman Catholic priests risked death for performing their functions.

In 1583, Tichborne and his father, Peter, were arrested and questioned concerning the use of "popish relics", religious objects Tichborne had brought back from a visit he had made abroad without informing the authorities of an intention to travel. Though released without charge, records suggest that this was not the last time they were to be questioned by the authorities over their religion. In June 1586 accusations of "popish practices" were laid against his family.

In June 1586, Tichborne agreed to take part in the Babington Plot to murder Queen Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, who was next in line to the throne. The plot was foiled by Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster, using double agents, most notably Robert Poley who was later witness to the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and though most of the conspirators fled, Tichborne had an injured leg and was forced to remain in London. On 14 August he was arrested and he was later tried and sentenced to death in Westminster Hall.

While in custody in the Tower of London on 19 September (the eve of his execution), Tichborne wrote a letter to his wife. She is named as Agnes, even though the State Papers recording his interrogation clearly identify her as Jane Martyn of Athelhampton. But in Tudor times, Agnes was often used as a nickname or term of endearment for very devout women; and it was pronounced in a way that made it sound similar to Jane. So Agnes was most probably a private name that the young husband used for his wife.

The letter contained three stanzas of poetry that is his best known piece of work, Tichborne's Elegy, also known by its first line My Prime of Youth is but a Frost of Cares. The poem is a dark look at a life cut short and is a favourite of many scholars to this day. Two other poems are known by him, To His Friend and The Housedove.

On 20 September 1586, Tichborne was executed with Anthony Babington, John Ballard, and four other conspirators. They were eviscerated, hanged, drawn and quartered, the mandatory punishment for treason, in St Giles Field. However, when Elizabeth was informed that these gruesome executions were arousing sympathy for the condemned, she ordered that the remaining seven conspirators were to be hanged until 'quite dead' before being eviscerated.

Elegy
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my good is but vain hope of gain; The day is past, and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told, My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green, My youth is spent and yet I am not old, I saw the world and yet I was not seen; My thread is cut and yet it is not spun, And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb, I looked for life and saw it was a shade, I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb, And now I die, and now I was but made; My glass is full, and now my glass is run, And now I live, and now my life is done.

This is the first printed version from Verses of Prayse and Joye (1586). The original text differs slightly: along with other minor differences, the first line of the second verse reads "The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung," and the third line reads "My youth is gone, and yet I am but young."

The last word in the third line, "tares," refers to a harmful "weed" that resembles corn when young, and is a reference to Matt. 13:24–30.

To His Friend (assumed to be Anthony Babington)
Good sorrow cease, false hope be gone, misfortune once farewell; Come, solemn muse, the sad discourse of our adventures tell. A friend I had whose special part made mine affection his; We ruled tides and streams ourselves, no want was in our bliss. Six years we sailed, sea-room enough, by many happy lands, Till at the length, a stream us took and cast us on the sands. There lodged we were in a gulf of woe, despairing what to do, Till at the length, from shore unknown, a Pilot to us drew, Whose help did sound our grounded ship from out Caribda's mouth, But unadvised, on Scylla drives; the wind which from the South Did blustering blow the fatal blast of our unhappy fall, Where driving, leaves my friend and I to fortune ever thrall; Where we be worse beset with sands and rocks on every side, Where we be quite bereft of aid, of men, of winds, of tide. Where vain it is to hail for help so far from any shore, So far from Pilot's course; despair shall we, therefore? No! God from out his heap of helps on us will some bestow, And send such mighty surge of seas, or else such blasts to blow As shall remove our grounded ship far from this dangerous place, And we shall joy each others' chance through God's almighty grace, And keep ourselves on land secure, our sail on safer seas. Sweet friend, till then content thy self, and pray for our release.

The Housedove
A silly housedove happed to fall amongst a flock of crows, Which fed and filled her harmless craw amongst her fatal foes. The crafty fowler drew his net – all his that he could catch – The crows lament their hellish chance, the dove repents her match. But too, too late! it was her chance the fowler did her spy, And so did take her for a crow – which thing caused her to die.

The only known manuscript versions of "To His Friend" and The Housedove" are from Edinburgh Library MS Laing, II, 69/24. However, twenty-eight different manuscript versions of the "Elegy" (or "Lament") are known and there are many variations of the text.

Comment
Tichborne's authorship of the Elegy has been disputed, with attributions to others including Sir Walter Raleigh. However it was printed soon after the Babington plot in a volume called Verses of Praise and Joy in 1586, published by John Wolfe of London to celebrate the Queen's survival and to attack the plotters. In the same volume an answer poem entitled "Hendecasyllabon T. K. in Cygneam Cantionem Chideochi Tychborne" ("T. K.'s Hendecasyllabon Against Chidiock Tichborne's Swan Song") is most likely by the poet and dramatist Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy.

Hendecasyllabon T. K. in Cygneam Cantionem Chideochi Tychborne
Thy prime of youth is frozen with thy faults, Thy feast of joy is finisht with thy fall; Thy crop of corn is tares availing naughts, Thy good God knows thy hope, thy hap and all. Short were thy days, and shadowed was thy sun, T'obscure thy light unluckily begun.

Time trieth truth, and truth hath treason tripped; Thy faith bare fruit as thou hadst faithless been: Thy ill spent youth thine after years hath nipt; And God that saw thee hath preserved our Queen. Her thread still holds, thine perished though unspun, And she shall live when traitors lives are done.

Thou soughtst thy death, and found it in desert, Thou look'dst for life, yet lewdly forc'd it fade: Thou trodst the earth, and now on earth thou art, As men may wish thou never hadst been made. Thy glory, and thy glass are timeless run; And this, O Tychborne, hath thy treason done.

Elegy
Tichborne's "Elegy" (his rhyming, final soliloquy poem ), uses two favourite Renaissance figures of speech – antithesis and paradox – to crystallise the tragedy of the poet's situation. Antithesis means setting opposites against each other: prime of youth / frost of cares (from the first line). This is typical of Renaissance poetry, as for example in Wyatt's "I find no peace, and all my war is done", with the lover freezing/burning. It also appears in the poem by Elizabeth I "I grieve and dare not show my discontent", e.g., "I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned." A paradox is a statement which seems self-contradictory, yet is true, e.g., "My tale is heard, and yet it was not told", or "My glass is full, and now my glass is run." Often a Renaissance poem will begin with antithesis to establish circumstances and reveal its themes through paradox.

The "Elegy" is remarkable for being written almost entirely in monosyllables: Every word in the poem is of one syllable, with ten words in each line, monostich style), with the possible exception of the word "fallen". However, in early editions it was written as "fall'n" which is monosyllabic.

The "Elegy" has inspired many "homages" and "answers" including those by Jonathon Robin at allpoetry.com ; a rap version by David A More at www.marlovian.com ; After Reading Tichborne's Elegy by Dick Allen (2003) and Tichborne's Lexicon by Nick Montfort.

The "Elegy" has also been set to music many times from the Elizabethan era to the present day by, among others, Michael East, Richard Alison (fl1580-1610, in An Hour's Recreation in musicke, 1606), John Mundy (1592) and Charles-François Gounod (1873) and more recently Norman Dello Joio (1949) and Jim Clark (see Tichborne's Elegy Poem Animation ) and Taylor Momsen.

The Housedove
"The Housedove" exploits a popular image from the period: Tichborne sees himself as an innocent dove caught among his fellow conspirators, (see Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet 1.5.48). The "crafty fowler" is probably Sir Francis Walsingham, the spymaster who manipulated the Babington plot.

title: Chidiock Tichborne


text:
Abbey (automobile)

The Abbey was a short-lived friction drive car assembled by the Abbey Auto Engineering Co. Ltd in Westminster, England. It used a 10.8 hp 1498 cc Coventry-Simplex engine. It was built in 1922 only and cost £315. It also had Marles steering gear and friction drive. The two-seater model sold for £315.

Very few seem to have been made.

After 1922 the car may have been sold as the Lewis.

title: Abbey (automobile)


text:
Chick lit

Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at women. Widely used in the 1990s and 2000s, the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers, while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism. Novels identified as chick lit typically address romantic relationships, female friendships, and workplace struggles in humorous and lighthearted ways. Typical protagonists are urban, heterosexual women in their late twenties and early thirties: the 1990s chick lit heroine represented an evolution of the traditional romantic heroine in her assertiveness, financial independence and enthusiasm for conspicuous consumption.

The format developed through the early 1990s on both sides of the Atlantic with books such as Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale (1992, US) and Catherine Alliott's The Old Girl Network (1994, UK). Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary (1996, UK), wildly popular globally, is the "Ur-text" of chick lit, while Candace Bushnell's (US) 1997 novel Sex and the City, adapted to a well-known television program, has huge ongoing cultural influence. By the late 1990s, chick lit titles regularly topped bestseller lists, and many imprints were created devoted entirely to it. By the mid-2000s, commentators noted that its market was increasingly saturated, and by the early 2010s, publishers had largely abandoned the category. Nonetheless, the term "chick lit" persists as a popular category of fiction for both readers and amateur writers on the internet.

While the concept of "chick lit" has become outdated in developed-world English language literature, the term, and regional derivations of it, continue to be widely used to describe and analyse popular women's literature in other languages and other parts of the world.

Origins and derivations of the term
In 1992, Los Angeles Times critic Carolyn See was probably the first to spot that a new style of popular women's fiction was emerging. Though she didn't use the term chick lit, in a review of Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale, the critic noted that McMillan's book was not "lofty" or "luminous" but was likely to be highly commercially successful. Carolyn See wrote, "McMillan's new work is part of another genre entirely, so new it doesn't really have a name yet. This genre has to do with women, triumph, revenge, comradeship."

Chick lit did not become an established term for a style of novel until the second half of the 1990s. "Chick" is American slang for a young woman, and "lit" is a shortened form of the word "literature." There was probably no single origin of the term: Princeton University students were reported in 1988 to use chick lit as slang for a course on the Female Literary Tradition and, in the UK, Oxford Reference report that the term arose as a "flippant counterpart" to the term "lad lit". The parallel term used for movies, chick flick, enjoyed slightly earlier uptake. In what was probably one of its first major outings, the term chick lit was deployed ironically: Chick Lit: Postfeminist Fiction was a 1995 anthology of 22 short stories written in response to editors Cris Mazza's and Jeffrey DeShell's call for "postfeminist writing." Early use of the term was heavily associated with journalism (both Bridget Jones's Diary and Sex in the City began as newspaper columns) and James Wolcott's 1996 article in The New Yorker, "Hear Me Purr," co-opted the term chick lit to proscribe what he called the trend of "girlishness" evident in the writing of female newspaper columnists at that time.

In the early years, there was some variation on the exact term used: in 2000, the Sydney Morning Herald reported the birth of a "publishing phenomenon" that can be called "chick fiction."

At the peak of the term's popularity, a slew of related sub-genres were proposed with similar names chick lit jr (for young readers), mommy lit, and chick lit in corsets (historical fiction, and a term only found in one academic paper published in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies). The relationship with the term lad lit is more complicated: lad lit arose in the UK separately from, and possibly before, chick lit. Later, the term lad lit was adopted in the US for a male-oriented subgenre of chick lit (see lad lit). Of these parallel terms, mommy lit, and lad lit are the only terms to have enjoyed any significant uptake - and that a tiny fraction of the use of the primary term chick lit.

Other derivations of the term chick lit have been used to describe varieties of popular women's literature in different regions, or targeted at specific ethnic communities. In the US this has included "Sistah lit" targeted at black readers and "Chica lit" for Latina readers. In India the term "Ladki Lit" has been used (see below). In Turkey,  literature is a category (çıtır literally means 'crispy', but is colloquialy used to refer to attractive young women)

Writers and critics
Controversy over chick lit focused at first on the literary value of books identified or promoted as part of the genre. Over time, controversy has focused more on the term itself, and whether the concept of a chick lit genre is inherently sexist.

In 1998, reviewer Alex Kuczynski, writing for The New York Times, condemned Fielding's novel in particular, writing: "Bridget is such a sorry spectacle, wallowing in her man-crazed helplessness, that her foolishness cannot be excused." In 2001, writer Doris Lessing deemed the genre "instantly forgettable" while Beryl Bainbridge called the genre "a froth sort of thing". Author Jenny Colgan immediately fired back at Lessing and Bainbridge, explaining why, for a new generation of women, chick lit was an important development:

"We really are the first generation who have grown up with education as a right; with financial independence; with living on our own and having far too many choices about getting married (while watching our baby boomer parents fall apart), having children (while watching our elder sisters run themselves ragged trying to do everything), and hauling ourselves up through the glass ceiling.

Who reflects this? Growing up in the 1980s all we had to read if we wanted commercial fiction, were thick, shiny, brick novels covered in gold foil, in which women with long blonde hair built up business empires from harsh beginnings using only their extraordinary beauty and occasionally some goldfish...

With BJD, for the first time, here we were. The first time I read it, it was an absolute revelation to see my life and confusion reflected in print."

Two years later Colgan had turned strongly against the term chick lit, being the first to state what is now a mainstream position among writers of women's popular fiction: she rejected the term chick lit while defending the cultural value of her work. She observed, "Chick-lit is a deliberately condescending term they use to rubbish us all. If they called it slut-lit it couldn't be any more insulting." Much of the debate at this time was between different generations of women writers: for example, Maureen Dowd (b.1952) described the younger women's work as "all chick and no lit," while Colgan (b.1972) derided the older, female critics of chick lit as "hairy-leggers." There was a "troubling" lack of solidarity.

In 2005, debate continued with the publication of editor Elizabeth Merrick's anthology of women's fiction, This Is Not Chick Lit (2005), where Merrick argued in her introduction that "Chick lit's formula numbs our senses." In response, self-identifying chick-lit author Lauren Baratz-Logsted published her own anthology of stories This Is Chick Lit whose project was "born out of anger" and aimed to prove that chick lit was not all "Manolos and cosmos, and cookie-cutter books about women juggling relationships and careers in the new millennium," but rather that the genre deals with "friendship and laughter, love and death - i.e. the stuff of life."

In 2007, Diane Shipley came to the genre's defence, arguing that chick lit books increasingly covered serious topics but, anyway, "I just don't see what's morally or intellectually wrong with reading a book you enjoy and relate to, that might not draw deep conclusions about the future of humanity but might cheer you up after a bad day, or see you through your own health problems."

However, in general through the late 2000s and 2010s writers of women's popular fiction increasingly distanced themselves from the term chick lit, while arguing that blanket critical dismissals of their work were rooted in sexism. For example, in a 2010 Guardian article, humor writer DJ Connell leads with changing her writing name from Diane to DJ to avoid the chick lit label. Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes, two authors who have enjoyed huge success through and beyond the chick lit era, both now reject the term. Kinsella refers to her own work as "romantic comedy". Keyes said of the term in 2014, "It's meant to be belittling. It's as if it's saying, 'Oh you silly girls, with your pinkness and shoes, how will you ever run the world?' But as I've matured (haha) I've realised that I'm very proud of what I write about and I know that the books I write bring happiness and comfort to people."

Publishers
In 2000, Sydney Morning Herald described the "publishing phenomenon" of what it called "chicfic," books with "Covers [that] are candy-bright, heavy in pink and fluorescence. The titles are also candy-bright, hinting at easy digestion and a good laugh... ...Such books are positioned in a marketplace as hybrids of the magazine article, fictional or fictionalised, television...and comfort food digestible over a single night at home."

Through the 2000s publishers continued to push the subgenre because sales continued to be high. In 2003, Publishers Weekly reported on numerous new chick lit imprints, such as, "Kensington's Strapless, which launched in April 2003 and has one book a month scheduled through the end of 2004. Kensington editorial director John Scognamiglio explained that the imprint was created in response to requests from salespeople for a chick lit brand." Nonetheless, the same Publishers Weekly article was already looking back enviously at the massive sales achieved by Bridget Jones's Diary in 1998 and commenting on the challenges for chick lit publishers in a now-overcrowded market. Already, Publishers Weekly suggested, chick lit was - if not in decline - at least at a turning point.

In 2008, editor Sara Nelson stated that the definition of what's considered to be within the genre of chick lit has become more accomplished and "grown up".

By 2012 news sources were reporting the death of chick lit. Salon.com reported that "Because chick lit (whatever it is - or was) provoked so many ideologically fraught arguments about the values placed on women's vs. men's tastes, high- vs. lowbrow culture, comedy vs. drama and so on, it's tempting to read particular significance into its decline," but went on to argue that the decline was due to a normal process of changing fashion and taste in genre fiction.

Chick lit online
The development and decline of chick lit as a publishing phenomenon coincided with an explosion in internet usage in the developed world. The academic Sandra Folie argues that "Fans and their websites or blogs, online presences of newspapers, magazines, or publishing houses, and also the free encyclopedia Wikipedia" played a key part in defining and shaping the concept of a chick lit genre. Folie discusses the British site chicklit.co.uk which was online from 2002 to 2014 and included information no just on books and authors but also lifestyle issues for young women. The American Chicklitbooks.com was online from 2003 to 2013 discussing, "Hip, bright literature for today's modern woman." As chick lit declined as a publishing category fans online created their own response: in 2012 a website called chicklitisnotdead.com was reported to have 25,000 users. In 2022 an active chick lit community group on the goodreads.com site had 4,756 members.

Chick lit globally
Though chick lit originated in the UK and U.S., it rapidly became a global publishing phenomenon - and indeed may have been one of the first truly global publishing trends.

Saudi Arabia
In a book published in 2011, and in an article in Le Monde Diplomatique, academic Madawi Al-Rasheed discussed the emergence of Saudi "chick lit" over the preceding decade. Highlighting books from Saudi women authors including Raja Alsanea (Girls of Riyadh) and Samar al-Muqrin, Al-Rasheed characterises the books - which were first published in the more liberal Lebanon - as "novels that deal with women as active sexual agents.. ..rather than submissive victims of patriarchal society."

"Girls of Riyadh" has been published in English and is still in print in 2023; Publishers Weekly summarises the book as describing, "Four upper-class Saudi Arabian women [who] negotiate the clash between tradition and the encroaching West in this debut novel by 25-year-old Saudi Alsanea. Though timid by American chick lit standards, it was banned in Saudi Arabia for its scandalous portrayal of secular life." The book is widely distributed, being sold in stores from U.S. to Europe. In the reader's guide to novel, Alsanea notes that she wants to enable her Western readers to connect with Saudi culture, seeing that the girls in the novel had the 'same dreams, emotions, and goals' as them.

India
In India, Rajashree's Trust Me was the biggest-selling Indian chick lit novel. The popularity of novels like Trust Me, Swati Kaushal's Piece of Cake can be seen in the context of the rise of regional varieties of chick lit. In an interview with the New York Times, Helen Fielding said, "I think it had far more to do with zeitgeist than imitation." If the chick lit explosion has "led to great new female writers emerging from Eastern Europe and India, then it's worth any number of feeble bandwagon jumpers." Sunaina Kumar wrote in the Indian Express, "Ten years after the publication of Bridget Jones's Diary, the genre of fiction most recognisable for its pink cover art of stilettos, martini glasses and lipsticks, is now being colourfully infused with bindis, saris, and bangles." Indian chick lit is sometimes referred to as 'ladki-lit'.

Brazil
In Brazil, chick lit in translation is categorised as "Literatura de mulherzinha." -inha is the Portuguese diminutive form, so this means, literally, "little-women's literature." One Brazilian commentator notes, "The diminutive is not by accident. Just as its not by accident that the covers of books by women writers are usually, stereotypically feminine. With covers that suggest a light and romantic, commercial plot.. ....books by female authors arrive to the a reader with a series of biases which ensure that these authors remain on the cultural bottom rung."

title: Chick lit