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Stonesfield

Stonesfield is a village and civil parish about 5 mi north of Witney in Oxfordshire, and about 10 miles (17 km) north-west of Oxford. The village is on the crest of an escarpment. The parish extends mostly north and north-east of the village, in which directions the land rises gently and then descends to the River Glyme at Glympton and Wootton about 3 mi to the north-east. South of Stonesfield, below the escarpment, is the River Evenlode which touches the southern edge of the parish. At the centre of Stonesfield stands the 13th-century church of St James the Great as well as a Wesleyan chapel, Stonesfield Methodist Church, slightly further west. The village is known for Stonesfield slate, a form of Cotswold stone mined particularly as a roofing stone and also a rich source of fossils. The architecture in Stonesfield features many old Cotswold stone properties roofed with locally mined slate along with some late 20th-century buildings and several properties under construction. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 1,527.

Name
The Domesday Book of 1086 records Stonesfield as Stunsfeld, meaning "fool's field". It was still spelt "Stunsfield" as late as 1712 and Stuntesfield in 1854 before mutating to its present place name under the influence of the fame of the Roman mosaic discovered in one of its fields, its slate quarries, and the dinosaur fossils discovered there.

Geology
Stonesfield is on the Taynton Limestone Formation, a type of Cotswold stone that until the 20th century was mined as a roofing stone called Stonesfield slate. It is common on roofs of older buildings in the Cotswolds and Oxfordshire. Many of the older buildings of the University of Oxford have Stonesfield slate roofs. The quarries were also one of Britain's richest sources of Middle Jurassic vertebrate fossils.

History
Under Roman rule, a road was constructed from Watling Street just north of the former Catuvellauni capital Verlamion (Roman Verulamium and modern St Albans) to the Dobunni capital Corinium (modern Cirencester), probably incorporating older British trails. Because Fosse Way continued to Aquae Sulis (Bath), known as Aquamannia in the early Middle Ages, this major thoroughfare became known as Akeman Street. The portion of the road passing just south-east of Stonesfield is now preserved as part of the Oxfordshire Way. Due east of the modern village, a major Roman villa was built just north of the road, probably in the 3rd or 4th century although coins as early as the 1st-century reign of Vespasian were possibly discovered nearby. It has been variously identified as the home of a wealth Romanized Briton, the estate of an officer of the Romano-British rebel Allectus, and the estate of an officer of Count Theodosius and his imperial dynasty. About 1 mi south of Stonesfield, on the other side of the River Evenlode and in the next parish, the remains of the North Leigh Roman Villa survive in the care of English Heritage.

Lying near Oxford University, Stonesfield's slate quarries produced the first fossils to be formally identified as those of a non-avian dinosaur. A partial femur found in 1676 was published by Robert Plot as belonging to a Roman war elephant and then to a Biblical giant; the specimen was lost but later identified from Plot's illustration and description as belonging to a megalosaur. Other Stonesfield fossils were acquired by the physician Christopher Pegge, the chemist John Kidd, and the geologist William Buckland. With guidance by the French anatomist Georges Cuvier, Buckland eventually realized they came from a bipedal lizard-like carnivore unlike any now living, publishing his description in 1824 with the name Megalosaurus, the "great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield". The fossils used by Buckland are now displayed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Other species later found at Stonesfield include the crocodile Steneosaurus, the pterosaur Rhamphocephalus, and the type specimens of the theropod genus Iliosuchus and the quadruped Stereognathus. This last species belongs to the cynodont clade, a form of protomammal.

On 25 January 1712, a tenant farmer named George Handes or Hannes rediscovered the old Roman villa while ploughing the Chesthill Acre fields. He tricked his landlord, Richard Fowler of Great Barrington, Gloucestershire, into allowing him to dig around his fields before revealing what he had found, leading to a prolonged dispute over ownership and the rights to income from the many visitors who came from Oxford and abroad. Ultimately, three large mosaics were uncovered, the largest of which featured the Roman god Bacchus holding a thyrsus and riding a panther. Oxford academics and their guests destroyed these, removing fragments piecemeal as souvenirs, although Thomas Hearne, Bernard Gardiner, and others created illustrations and descriptions while it was still largely whole and the Ashmolean Museum was able to acquire some hypocaust flue-tiles and the base of a pillar. The antiquaries William Stukeley and Richard Gough blamed the destruction on the tenant's maliciousness and "the mob, who refused to pay for seeing it"; the owners were also accused of salting the site with additional coins from other sources once they saw the profit from their original discoveries. The site was neglected after the initial interest waned, however, and as late as 1780 the antiquarian Daines Barrington reported that the mosaic found in 1712 survived "in tolerable preservation". Around that time, a second excavation took place, revealing a smaller room and parts of the villa's baths. The careless enclosure of Stonefield's common lands in 1801 caused the site of the Roman villa to be divided among 3 different owners, who seem to have quickly removed the last of the known ruins. By 1806, Gough's new edition of William Camden's Britannia reported it "destroyed, except some of the borders... and part of the corners"; James Brewer's 1813 Beauties of England and Wales noted that even the relics on the Duke of Marlborough's new land had not been preserved; and John Yonge Akerman found it "totally destroyed" by 1858. Despite George Allen's interest in aerial archaeology around Oxfordshire, he never bothered to photograph the site.

Church of England
The Church of England parish church of St James the Great was built in the 13th century. Surviving Early English features from that period include the chancel arch, north chapel, south aisle, arcade and piscina and most of the west tower. Decorated Gothic remodelling in the 14th century includes the piscina and south windows of the chancel, the north window and west arch of the north chapel and the east window of the south aisle. The octagonal font is also 14th-century. In the 15th century the west tower was increased in height.

Between the chancel and north chapel is a screen that is partly Perpendicular Gothic. The Perpendicular Gothic east window in the chancel is 15th-century. Fragments of 15th-century stained glass survive in the window, including a figure that has a 14th-century head and may represent Saint Peter, and symbols of the evangelists St John and St Mark. In the west window of the west tower is late-15th-century stained glass of four family coats of arms. In one of the south windows of the chancel is 16th-century stained glass of two coats of arms: one of a manorial family and the other of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. There is also mid-16th-century stained glass of two family coats of arms in one of the 17th-century south windows of the clerestory. The Jacobean pulpit was made in 1629.

In 1743 a clock was installed in the church. It was said to have been made for a local manor house in 1543, and transferred to the church after the house was demolished. The clock has since been moved from Stonesfield, rebuilt, and installed at Judd's Garage at Wootton. In 1825 the north aisle was greatly enlarged, opening directly into the nave without an arcade. This greatly changed the interior of the church, and in the 20th century the architectural historians Jennifer Sherwood and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner condemned the change as "lunatic". Other 19th-century changes include the addition of the south porch, possibly during a restoration in 1876. The vestry was added in 1956. The church is a Grade II* listed building St James' parish is now part of the Benefice of Stonesfield with Combe Longa.

Methodist
Stonesfield Methodist Church is a Wesleyan chapel with capacity for 100 people, located at the junction of Boot Street and High Street. The current church was first opened for worship in July 1867 and still remains in use today. The current Reverend is Rev Rose Westwood, Witney and Farringdon Circuit Superintendent and Minister for Long Hanborough, Charlbury, Stonesfield, and Sutton Churches.

The church contains a four and a half octave single keyboard organ with foot pedals and seven stops. It bears two plaques recording two last members who helped arrange for its purchase and installation; both plaques are dedicated to the Glory of God 30 April 1966.

Economic and social history
For centuries the parish had one main open field for arable farming: Home Field, which was east of the village. Three others, Church Field, Callowe, and Jenner's Sarts, were much smaller, and an early 17th-century survey records that not every farmer had strips in Church Field. In 1232 the parish almost doubled in size by acquiring King's Wood, a nearby detached part of Bloxham parish. It was in this wood that people from Stonesfield created Callowe by clearing woodland, a process called assarting. By the time of the Hundred Rolls in the 1270s, every tenant in Stonesfield held assarted land.

By the first decade of the 17th century Stonesfield had at least four fields. Church Field is taken to be ancient like Home Field, but Jenner's Sarts was created by felling in Gerner's Wood. It is not clear whether this field is the same as that called Gannett's Sarte in another source. By 1792 very little of Stonesfield's common land had been enclosed, and most of it was still worked by arable strip farming. By 1797 most of this had been enclosed and converted to pasture. Some common land remained in the parts of the parish closest to the village, but this was enclosed in a land award of 1804.

Former public houses
Over the years Stonesfield has had between seven and ten pubs; however, since 2020 the village no longer has any active pubs or restaurants.

The White Horse
The White Horse, Stonesfield's final pub, is at the top of the village green on The Ridings. The pub had served the community since its opening in 1876. Previously called the White Lion, a man named John Lardner held its licence from 1847 and resided in one of the three cottages making up the pub's buildings. Following John's death in September 1865 the licence was transferred to his son, Henry Lardner, in October 1865. This was the first mention of the name 'White Horse'. The White Horse was sold at auction after it was advertised on 28 October 1876.

The listing had the description: 'A stone-built and slated free public house, called or known by the name of "The White Horse," situate in the village of Stonesfield, and containing 2 front rooms, tap room, pantry, scullery, cellar 3 bed rooms, and 1 attic; together with the 2 Cottages adjoining (but unoccupied). Detached are a Brew-house, large Shop with extensive cellarage underneath, Stable, Barn, Wagon Hovel, Cow Shed, Poultry Pen, Piggery, and Cattle Yard; together with capital Garden Ground at the back and in the front of the house.

The Outgoings are Quit Rents amounting to 1s. yearly.'

From 1876 to 1907 various landlords took on the role of running the pub until the licence was passed on to the Oliver family. The family ran it from 1907 under Edward Oliver until 1962 under Minnie Oliver. The Witney Gazette referenced Vivian and Emily Miles' retirement from the pub's ownership in June 1977. During the 1980s Nigel Bishop ran the White Horse. During this period, much like Sturdy's Castle on the Banbury Road (A4260) and the King's Head in the centre of Woodstock, the White Horse Inn became a 'Spud Pub'. After a period between 2001 and 2005 of the pub being shut, it was bought by a Londoner called Richard Starowki. Following restoration he reopened The White Horse in 2006. Three years later, in 2009, John Lloyd bought the pub from Richard. During the March 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in England, the pub was forced to close and never reopened. The owner, John Lloyd, listed it for sale that July. Local residents formed a community benefit society to attempt to raise money to save the pub via a shared ownership concept. £430,000 was eventually raised. Despite this, a private sale took place in early 2021. The new owner says he plans to reopen the pub; however, concerns have arisen from his background as a property developer. The pub was bought by the community in 2023 and reopened as a pop-up pub. The pub was closed for repair and refurbishment in January 2024, with a plan to fully reopen later in the year.

The Black Head
Originally named The Black Boy, The Black Head was a pub on Church Street. The pub burnt down in around 1850 during which time Thomas Stewart had ownership. This was the cause of the name change to The Black Head when it was rebuilt soon afterwards, the name sticking until the pub ceased trading in 2010. During the 21st century the pub was owned by the Nomura Bank of Japan, owner of the Wellington Pub Company. Its latest owner applied in 2012 and 2014 for planning permission to turn the Black Head into a private house. The building is now a private residence.

The Chequers
The Chequers is another pub in the village that is now a private residence. It was on the south of Laughton's Hill and was allegedly a popular pub with entertainers travelling through Stonesfield. The Chequers was open from 1753 until 1847.

The Maltster and Shovel
The Maltster & Shovel, on High Street, was open from 1831 to 1939 and is now also a private residence.

The Marlborough Arms
A public house which now forms part of Prospect Villa, The Marlborough Arms, opened on the Woodstock Road in 1838 and served customers until 1875.

The Rose and Crown
The Rose & Crown also previously stood on the High Street; however, it was demolished in 1958 to make way for a new school playground and, 34 years later, five low cost houses were erected there.

The Swan Inn
The Swan Inn is thought to have been up the Tewer and served from around 1865 until 1877, although evidence is limited especially compared to the other Stonesfield pubs.

The Churchill Arms
The Churchill Arms is another public house with limited information regarding its details. The Oxford Journal mentioned the pub in 1826 and 1828 regarding the auction of an 'estate at Stonesfield'.

The Boot Inn
The Boot Inn was also among Stonesfield's previous pubs. Mr Vivian Miles and his wife, Emily, ran the pub from 1952 until 1962 before taking ownership of the White Horse Inn up the road for a further 15 years.

The Pick and Hammer
The Pick and Hammer pub is said to have been at the bottom of Well Lane. Records are also limited in regard to this pub; however, the cottage gained notoriety in the 1990s from a police incident involving a search for the body of a murdered woman. Michael Morton, a millionaire and architect by trade, was jailed for seven years in 1997 following his conviction of the murder of Gracia, his 40-year-old wife.

Village hall and Stonesfield Sports and Social Club
Stonesfield Village Hall is at the end of Field Close, next to the library, play park, and football pitch. Stonesfield Sports & Social Club opened on 23 July 1995 after 10 years of fundraising £65,000 for an extension to the village hall. The Main Hall can accommodate up to 200 people. The community hall contains a stage, small 50-capacity club room, kitchen and has a car-parking area outside. Stonesfield Parish Council meetings are regularly held at the village hall. The library next door, Stonesfield Library, is a small community library run by Oxfordshire County Council and supported by the Friends of Stonesfield Library (FoSL).

Sports pitch and playground
The adjacent 7 acre sports pitch accommodates cricket and football matches as well as three tennis courts in the far north corner. This is the home ground of Stonesfield Strikers F.C., a youth football club with a number of mixed-sex and girls-only teams. The club is FA Charter Standard and is affiliated with Oxfordshire FA, boasting teams in all local leagues. They also fundraise for the Mickey Lewis Memorial Fund in memory of the club mentor and coach.

There is also a small playground, Stonesfield Play Park, next to the library and sports pitch. The playground is fully grassed and has equipment such as three slides, five swings, and a zip line on a small mound. Stonesfield Tennis Club is a community tennis club which was established more than 50 years ago. The club's relatively small, friendly group of members play on the aforementioned tennis courts on the sports pitch, which were re-laid in 2018.

Stonesfield Cricket Club, also known as Stonesfield CC, are a community cricket club which play on Stonesfield's sports field each season. The club has a 1st XI, 2nd XI, under 15, under 13, and indoor team. Stonesfield CC beat East & West Hendred in 2005 to win the Telegraph Cup. The 2nd XI also won the Keith Crump Centenary Cup by beating Hook Norton 2nd XI in 2007's final.

Village shop
Stonesfield's village shop, Suriya Express, is located in Pendle Court in the centre of the village and is a Best-one store. It was previously known as Amlu's General Store, from the Tamil word ‘Amlu’, meaning ‘darling’. The shop was run by Sri Vairamuthu and his family for over ten years before they moved to London. During this time the shop was voted best Oxfordshire village shop in 2006. The shop is now run by Mathon Sabapathy and his wife. The shop now contains a Royal Mail post office following its move from next to St James the Great Church. Adjacent to the shop is a hairdresser called Salon Copenhagen.

Primary school
Stonesfield Primary School is a community primary school located in the centre of the village on the High Street. It caters for pupils age 4 to 11 from the ward of Stonesfield and Tackley and has capacity for 150 students. Its current headteacher is Ben Tevail and there are currently over 100 students. The approximately 68000 sqft sports field and playground behind the school, backing onto Peaks Lane, form an iconic part of the village.

St James’ Centre
Found on the High Street opposite Stonesfield Primary School and behind St James the Great Church, The St James’ Centre, previously the village school, is used for exhibitions, workshops, education classes for adults, meetings, family gatherings, fundraising events and children’s parties. The centre belongs to Stonesfield Parish Church and sits on the edge of the church’s grounds. The modernised centre includes a main hall, kitchen, sitting room, patio, 3 smaller rooms, garden, and a car park.

Allotments
Stonesfield Allotment Association, chaired by Jon Gordon, controls the allotments within the village. Churchfield Allotment is an allotment in the south of Stonesfield extending down into Stonesfield Common. The allotment's plot is about 473 ft in length by 95 ft in width. Having raised over £3000, in February 2019 the allotment holders helped to instal the infrastructure needed for four new water troughs to be installed to supply the allotment with fresh water via the Thames Water network. The second, slightly smaller allotment plot is the Woodstock Road site located in the north east reaches of Stonesfield, surrounded by fields.

1st Stonesfield Scouts
1st Stonesfield Scouts are a Beaver, Cubs and Scout group running in Stonesfield since 1948. The group caters for local children between the ages of 6 and 14 and has over 100 members with some getting put on a waiting list due to high demand. The Stonesfield Scout Hut, known as Andy's Den, was in Stonesfield Common’s woods at Stockey Bottom and could be found by taking a path off Church Fields opposite St James the Great Graveyard in the south west of Stonesfield. The scout hut was originally temporary wartime accommodation at RAF Bicester. In 1958 it was dismantled and transported via lorry to its new location. The site was demolished and cleared in late 2019 due to factors such as asbestos related health concerns, rodent infestations, and inadequate facilities. The group now aim to build a new Outdoor Education and Environmental Wellbeing Centre, fundraising for a target of £175,000.

The Stonesfield Slate
The Stonesfield Slate, often known simply as the Slate, is Stonesfield's monthly village magazine named after the famous slate found in the village. It is produced and delivered by volunteers. All residents of the village have the option of being delivered a copy every month for free although physical copies are also available at the village shop and library and a digital archive of all issues can be found on Stonesfield's official Parish Council website. The Bodleian Library, who believe the Slate to be one of the longest running local magazines, keeps copies of the publication for its archive. The Slate was founded in December 1976 by Gordon Rudlin who wanted a newsletter which gave details about village events as he kept hearing about things after they had taken place. There have been four publishers since 2020. Richard and Dale Morris took over from Gordon in January 1998 and held the publisher role for the next seven years, bringing the publication fully into the digital age. Jenny and Simon Haviland were presented with a framed Stonesfield slate on 29 February 2020 to celebrate the 500th issue of the publication and recognise their efforts as publishers of the magazine since 2004. In response to the Havilands stepping down, Diane and Paul Bates took over as publishers from January 2020. The front page of each issue formerly had the words "With or without offence to friends or foes We sketch your world exactly as it goes." Since the personal computer hadn't been invented yet, the Slate was originally typed on a mimeograph stencil on a manual typewriter. To get the project going, Rudlin asked the Village Hall committee and various village residents for sponsorship and to volunteer as editors, typists, printers and deliverers. For many years Rachel Sherlaw Johnson's illustrations were included in small otherwise empty spaces in each issue of the magazine. On 15 June 1990 the publication won a certificate of merit in the Oxfordshire Village Ventures Competition 1988–89. The Slate had a full page photographic cover for the first time to celebrate the start of the new millennium. It was by luck that it happened to snow the day of the deadline for that issue. January 2009 is the only other time a photographic cover has been used.

Other
There was previously a skittle alley at the top of Pond Hill on The Ridings, next to The White Horse pub. Its owner, John Lloyd, received opposition to his plans to turn it into a house next to the pub which he also owned. The skittle alley is no longer present.

Stonesfield also has a Women's Institute with meetings being held monthly in Stonesfield Village Hall.

Train
The nearest railway station, Finstock railway station, is 1.8 mi away in the nearby village of Finstock on the Cotswold Line. There is an alternative train service to London from Oxford Parkway on Chiltern Railways.

Bus

Stonesfield has four main bus stops: Combe Road, Prospect Close, Boot Street, and Green which are all used by Stagecoach S3 gold and 7 gold buses as well as The Villager V26 bus. The S3 and 7 provide the hourly bus service between Charlbury, Woodstock and Oxford which serves Stonesfield. Worths' Coaches of Enstone operated the route from the 1920s until 2004, when Oxfordshire County Council awarded the contract to Stagecoach in Oxfordshire. The Villager community bus service operates the V26 route between Oddington and Witney via Stonesfield. The V26 bus operates on a Monday, Tuesday and Friday only and departs from Stonesfield once in the morning, returning later in the day in the early afternoon.

Other
Stonesfield Voluntary Transport Scheme uses volunteer drivers to allow residents to get to medical facilities such as Woodstock Surgery, John Radcliffe Hospital, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford, and Horton General Hospital in Banbury free of charge. Stonesfield is on the Oxfordshire Way long-distance footpath, which runs for 66 mi from Bourton-on-the-Water to Henley. The Oxfordshire Cotswolds' Step into the Cotswolds walk three is a 6.5 mi route through Combe and Blenheim Great Park, starting and ending in Stonesfield. Stonesfield also features in the AA’s rated trips with a 3.5 mi 1.5-hour long walk through the village and south west of the parish down to the River Evenlode. Oaklands Farm Airstrip lies in a field on the outer south west regions of Stonesfield. It's a 400-metre long, 12-metre wide, grass, private airstrip in one of Oaklands Farm's crop fields. The airstrip is thought to have featured in a flight sequence in the 2009 British film 31 North 62 East.

Literature
Dr Romola Parish, an academic, lawyer, artist, and poet who studied Creative Writing at the University of Oxford has written two poems about Stonesfield during her time as poet in residence at Oxfordshire County Council, working as part of the Oxfordshire Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) project. Both poems are from the collection In Polygonia and were both published in The Stonesfield Slate. The first was published in April 2018 and was simply called "Stonesfield" while the second was published in March 2020 on the back page of issue 500 of The Stonesfield Slate and had the title "Stuntesfeld".

Notable people

 * Ed Atkins, an artist and teacher at Goldsmiths College London, famous for his multimedia poetry and video installations, was raised in Stonesfield.
 * Rev. Walter Brown, rector of Handborough and St James the Great Church in Stonesfield, chaplain and librarian at Blenheim, held two residences but resided in Stonesfield in the early 1800s. Walter is credited with repairing the paving and the west end of the chancel of St James the Great Church. He privately educated British army officer Sir Augustus Almeric Spencer.
 * Chris Davies, artist and runner-up in series 3 of the BBC One TV programme and competition The Big Painting Challenge, lives in the village.
 * Basil Eastwood, British Ambassador (Syria 1996–2000; Switzerland 2001–2004), lived in Stonesfield until retirement, and founded the charity Cecily's Fund in the village. A Cecily's Day picnic is held every year on the lawns of Stonesfield Manor.
 * Rupert Friend, actor, director, screenwriter and producer. Raised in Stonesfield and good friends with Ed Atkins.
 * Nicholas Timothy Hooper, BAFTA award-winning composer, has lived in Stonesfield since the 1980s. Nick, his wife Judith Marjorie Inez Hooper, and Susana Starling make up The Boot Band: a folk music trio. He runs his company, Nicholas Hooper Music Limited, from Sanders Gate, Churchfields.
 * Robert Sherlaw Johnson, composer, lived in Stonesfield from the late 1960s until his death in 2000.
 * Caroline Lucas, former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, lived in Stonesfield until her election as an MEP in 1999. She owned this house in Stonesfield for five years.
 * Gordon Rudlin, founder of The Stonesfield Slate village magazine in December 1976 and financial officer for Oxfam in Oxford for 13 years. Died at the age of 97 in 2005.
 * Sir William Strang, 1st Baron Strang of Stonesfield (1893–1978), succeeded by his only son Colin Strang. Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1949–1953) and subsequently the first Convenor of the Crossbench peers in the House of Lords from 1968 to 1974.

title: Stonesfield


text: Category:283 deaths

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

title: Category:283 deaths


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Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire

Gibraltar Point national nature reserve is an area of about 4.3 km2 on the coast of Lincolnshire, England.

The reserve is owned by Lincolnshire County Council and East Lindsey District Council and is administered by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. The reserve comprises two parallel ridges of sand dunes—the "east dunes" and the "west dunes"—separated by about half a kilometre (550 yards) of salt marsh; and an area on the seaward side with further salt marsh and sand, shingle and muddy beaches. The reserve extends for a distance of about 5 km along the coast, from the southern end of Skegness to the northern corner of The Wash (Gibraltar Point itself is at the southernmost tip, and marks the point where the North Sea coast turns southwest towards Boston). A golf course occupies much of the west dunes (the inland side) at the Skegness end of the area. Gibraltar Point is an area of coastal deposition—at the end of the 18th century the west dunes were by the shore, but they are now a kilometre inland.

In 2016 a new visitor centre opened at the southern end of the reserve to replace the previous one which had been damaged by Cyclone Xaver. There are numerous paths around the area, and several artificial lakes and hides. The Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust also owns an old farm and land just inshore of the west dunes at the southern end of the reserve, again with an artificial lake and hides. Revenue from car parks assists in the upkeep of the area.

Gibraltar Point is part of the twice daily inshore waters forecast in the extended form of the Shipping Forecast broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

The reserve's importance is recognised by its various designations:
 * SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest)
 * NNR (national nature reserve)
 * Ramsar wetland site (wetland of international importance)
 * SPA (Special Protection Area).

Birds
The reserve is home to a great variety of birdlife, mostly wildfowl, waders and gulls. The geography of the area, at the northern mouth of The Wash, makes the reserve very popular with migrant birds and many nationally rare species have been recorded. A total of 325 bird species have been recorded at the site as of 2021, the highest such total for any site in Lincolnshire. Recently, these have included black stork, pallid harrier, caspian tern, red-flanked bluetail and rustic bunting during 2015, and broad-billed sandpiper, black-winged pratincole and great reed warbler in 2014.

Notable breeding birds at the site include little tern, common shelduck, ringed plover, oystercatcher and common redshank, whilst the site is of international significance for overwintering wader species such as oystercatcher, grey plover, red knot, sanderling and bar-tailed godwit. Nationally important numbers of ringed plover also overwinter.

The site is home to a bird observatory, which has studied bird migration in the area since April 1949.

Flora
Gibraltar Point has the northernmost colony of sea heath in Britain.

title: Gibraltar Point, Lincolnshire


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I²S

I²S (Inter-IC Sound, pronounced "eye-squared-ess"), is an electrical serial bus interface standard used for connecting digital audio devices together. It is used to communicate PCM audio data between integrated circuits in an electronic device. The I²S bus separates clock and serial data signals, resulting in simpler receivers than those required for asynchronous communications systems that need to recover the clock from the data stream. Alternatively I²S is spelled I2S (pronounced eye-two-ess) or IIS (pronounced eye-eye-ess). Despite the similar name, I²S is unrelated to the bidirectional I²C (IIC) bus.

History
This standard was introduced in 1986 by Philips Semiconductor (now NXP Semiconductors) and was first revised June 5, 1996. The standard was last revised on February 17, 2022 and updated terms master and slave to controller and target.

Details
The I²S protocol outlines one specific type of PCM digital audio communication with defined parameters outlined in the Philips specification.

The bus consists of at least three lines:
 * 1) Bit clock line
 * 2) * Officially "continuous serial clock (SCK)". Typically written "bit clock (BCLK)".
 * 3) Word clock line
 * 4) * Officially "word select (WS)". Typically called "left-right clock (LRCLK)" or "frame sync (FS)".
 * 5) * 0 = Left channel, 1 = Right channel
 * 6) At least one multiplexed data line
 * 7) * Officially "serial data (SD)", but can be called SDATA, SDIN, SDOUT, DACDAT, ADCDAT, etc.

It may also include the following lines:
 * 1) Master clock (typically 256 x LRCLK)
 * 2) * This is not part of the I2S standard, but is commonly included for synchronizing the internal operation of the analog/digital converters.
 * 3) A multiplexed data line for upload

The bit clock pulses once for each discrete bit of data on the data lines. The bit clock frequency is the product of the sample rate, the number of bits per channel and the number of channels. So, for example, CD Audio with a sample frequency of 44.1 kHz, with 16 bits of precision and two channels (stereo) has a bit clock frequency of:

 * 44.1 kHz × 16 × 2 = 1.4112 MHz

The word select clock lets the device know whether channel 1 (WS = 0) or channel 2 (WS = 1) is currently being sent, because I²S allows two channels to be sent on the same data line. It is a 50% duty-cycle signal that has the same frequency as the sample frequency. For stereo material, the I²S specification states that left audio is transmitted on the low cycle of the word select clock and the right channel is transmitted on the high cycle. It is typically synchronized to the falling edge of the serial clock, as the data is latched on the rising edge. The word select clock changes one bit clock period before the MSB is transmitted. This enables, for example, the receiver to store the previous word and clear the input for the next.

Data is signed, encoded as two's complement with the MSB (most significant bit) first. This allows the number of bits per frame to be arbitrary, with no negotiation required between transmitter and receiver.

As an audio interconnect
In audio equipment, I²S is sometimes used as an external link between a CD player or digital audio streaming device and an external digital-to-analog converter, as opposed to a purely internal connection within one player box. This may form an alternative to the commonly used AES/EBU, Toslink or S/PDIF standards.

The I²S connection was not intended to be used via cables, and most integrated circuits will not have the correct impedance for coaxial cables. As the impedance adaptation error associated with the different line lengths can cause differences in propagation delay between the clock line and data line, this can result in synchronization problems between the SCK, WS and data signals, mainly at high sampling frequencies and bitrates. As the I²S bus doesn't have any error detection mechanism, this can cause significant decoding errors.

There is no standard interconnecting cable for this application. Some manufacturers simply provide three BNC connectors, an 8P8C ("RJ45") socket or a DE-9 connector. Others like Audio Alchemy (now defunct) used DIN connectors. PS Audio, Musica Pristina and Wyred4Sound use an HDMI connector. Dutch manufacturer Van Medevoort has implemented Q-link in some of its equipment, which transfers I²S over 4 RCA connectors (data, MCK, LRCK, BCK).

title: I²S


text:
1969 in rail transport

January events

 * January 1
 * As ordered by court, Penn Central takes over the assets and operations of the bankrupt New York, New Haven and Hartford ("New Haven") for $22 million; new passenger timetables over the new PC New Haven Region take effect February 2.
 * The Pullman Company is dissolved, having ceased to operate sleeping car services in the United States.
 * January 4 – The PATCO Hi-Speedline, in southeastern Pennsylvania, opens.
 * January 5 – Last trains over the Waverley Route from Edinburgh in Scotland to Carlisle in England.

February events

 * February 16 – Căile Ferate Române, in Romania, completes its systemwide electrification project.

March events

 * March 7 – The Victoria line of the London Underground is formally opened, between Warren Street and Victoria, by the Queen.

April events

 * April 5 – The South Devon Railway at Buckfastleigh in England, reopens as a preserved steam railway, the Dart Valley Railway.

May events

 * May 5 – The Lewes-Uckfield (or Wealden Line) railway line is closed under British Rail and Richard Beeching's Beeching Axe in East Sussex, England.
 * May 6 – The Chicago Transit Authority's Englewood 'L' service is extended to the new Ashland/63rd Terminal, replacing the former Loomis terminal.
 * May 7 – A northbound passenger train from London, England, bound for Aberdeen, Scotland, takes the curve in Morpeth too quickly and derails in the Morpeth rail crash (6 killed).
 * May – Union Pacific Railroad takes delivery of General Motors Electro-Motive Division EMD DDA40X, the most powerful and largest diesel locomotive to date.

June events

 * June – Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, on the United States Atlantic coast, discontinues the Silver Comet passenger train service.
 * June 1 – The Catalan Talgo Trans Europ Express begins providing a through service between Barcelona (Spain) and Geneva (Switzerland) with a wheelset change at Portbou station to overcome the break-of-gauge at the Spanish–French border.

September events

 * September 4 – Mexico City Metro Line 1, Chapultepec to Zaragoza route officially starts operation, a first section of Mexico City Subway.
 * September 28 – The Dan Ryan Extension of the Chicago "L" system is placed in operation between 17th and State Streets and 95th Street in the median of the Dan Ryan Expressway. The new line is originally combined with the Lake Street 'L' to form the West-South Route (Lake-Dan Ryan) providing through service between 95th Street and Harlem Avenue, Forest Park, using the first of the 2200-series rapid transit cars (2201–2350) built by the Budd Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Nine stations, designed by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owens and Merrill, are opened at Cermak-Chinatown, Sox-35th, 47th, Garfield, 63rd, 69th, 79th, 87th, and 95th. The Dan Ryan branch later becomes the southern half of the Red Line.

October events

 * October 14 – Seibu Railway's Chichibu Line opens in Japan.

November events

 * November 3 – Kansas City Southern's Southern Belle passenger train service between Kansas City, Missouri, and New Orleans, Louisiana, makes its final run.
 * November 29 – Opening of standard gauge link between Broken Hill and Port Pirie, completing the East–West rail corridor, Australia, on standard gauge between Sydney and Perth.

December events

 * December 6 – The Sakaisuji Line in Osaka, Japan, is opened between Tenjimbashisuji Rokuchōme and Dobutsuen-mae.
 * December 12 – First section of RER suburban rail network in Paris opened.
 * December 15 (00:50) – The last train departs Paris Gare de la Bastille, hauled by SNCF class 141TB-432 on the Ligne de Vincennes to Boissy-Saint-Léger. The Gare de la Bastille is the last terminus in Paris operated entirely by steam locomotives.
 * December 20 – The Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line is opened between Kita-Senju and Ōtemachi stations.

Unknown date events

 * ALCO ceases new diesel locomotive manufacturing.
 * The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway operates the last freight train on its subsidiary Grand Canyon Railway.
 * Rail transport in Cambodia: The line from Phnom Penh to the southern port city of Sihanoukville is completed.

Deaths

 * May 2 – Donald Gordon, president of Canadian National Railway 1950–1966, dies (b. 1901).

title: 1969 in rail transport


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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michelle Regan

Michelle Regan
Michelle Regan was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete.

Standard vanity. {User:Sander123, FWIW. Niteowlneils 15:47, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)} Delete Susvolans (pigs can fly) 15:00, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Good grief. Can nothing be done for her? Delete --Tagishsimon (talk)
 * Delete. Niteowlneils 15:47, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * It made me chuckle, but delete anyway. --PacknCanes 18:31, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * "Who cares that Michelle isn't famous?" umm, me. funny though. delete. Michael Ward 18:47, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, vanity. Wyss 21:49, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Vanity. Jayjg 22:42, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.


text:
Edward Ruscha

Edward Joseph Ruscha IV (, roo-SHAY; born December 16, 1937) is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He is also noted for creating several artist's books. Ruscha lives and works in Culver City, California.

Early life and education
Ruscha was born into a Roman Catholic family in Omaha, Nebraska, with an older sister, Shelby, and a younger brother, Paul. Edward Ruscha, Sr. was an auditor for Hartford Insurance Company. Ruscha's mother was supportive of her son's early signs of artistic skill and interests. Young Ruscha was attracted to cartooning and would sustain this interest throughout his adolescent years. Though born in Nebraska, Ruscha lived some 15 years in Oklahoma City before moving to Los Angeles in 1956 where he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now known as the California Institute of the Arts) under Robert Irwin and Emerson Woelffer from 1956 through 1960. While at Chouinard, Ruscha edited and produced the journal Orb (1959–60) together with Joe Goode, Emerson Woelffer, Stephan von Huene, Jerry McMillan, and others. As a result, Orb became one of the U.S.' first recorded alternative newspapers.

In 1961, Ruscha spent seven months traveling through Europe. After graduation, Ruscha took a job as a layout artist for the Carson-Roberts advertising agency in Los Angeles.

By the early 1960s he was well known for his paintings, collages, and photographs, and for his association with the Ferus Gallery group, which also included artists Robert Irwin, John Altoon, John McCracken, Larry Bell, Ken Price, and Edward Kienholz. He worked as layout designer for Artforum magazine under the pseudonym “Eddie Russia” from 1965 to 1969 and taught at UCLA as a visiting professor for printing and drawing in 1969. He is also a lifelong friend of guitarist Mason Williams.

Work
Ruscha achieved recognition for paintings incorporating words and phrases and for his many photographic books, all influenced by the deadpan irreverence of the Pop Art movement. His textual, flat paintings have been linked with both the Pop Art movement and the beat generation.

Early influences
While in school in 1957, Ruscha chanced upon then unknown Jasper Johns’ Target with Four Faces in the magazine Print and was greatly moved. Ruscha has credited this artist's work as a source of inspiration for his change of interest from graphic arts to painting. He was also impacted by John McLaughlin's paintings, the work of H.C. Westermann, Arthur Dove’s 1925 painting Goin’ Fishin’, Alvin Lustig's cover illustrations for New Directions Press, and much of Marcel Duchamp’s work. In a 1961 tour of Europe, Ruscha came upon more works by Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, R. A. Bertelli’s Head of Mussolini, and Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais. Some critics are quick to see the influence of Edward Hopper's Gas (1940) in Ruscha's 1963 oil painting, Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas. In any case, "Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head," Ruscha said.

Southern California
Although Ruscha denies this in interviews, the vernacular of Los Angeles and Southern California landscapes contributes to the themes and styles central to much of Ruscha's paintings, drawings, and books. Examples of this include the publication Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), a book of continuous photographs of a two and one half mile stretch of the 24 mile boulevard. In 1973, following the model of Every Building on the Sunset Strip, he photographed the entire length of Hollywood Boulevard with a motorized camera. Also, paintings like Standard Station (1966), Large Trademark (1962), and Hollywood (1982) exemplify Ruscha's kinship with the Southern California visual language. Two of these paintings, Standard and Large Trademark were emulated out of car parts in 2008 by Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz as a commentary on Los Angeles and its car culture.

His work is also strongly influenced by the Hollywood film industry: the mountain in his Mountain Series is a play on the Paramount Pictures logo; Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962) depicts the 20th Century Fox logo, while the dimensions of this work are reminiscent of a movie screen; in his painting The End (1991) these two words, which comprised the final shot in all black-and-white films, are surrounded by scratches and streaks reminiscent of damaged celluloid. Also, the proportions of the Hollywood print seems to mimic the Cinemascope screen (however, to make the word "Hollywood", Ruscha transposed the letters of the sign from their actual location on the slope of the Santa Monica Mountains to the crest of the ridge).

Ruscha completed Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights in 1961, one year after graduating from college. Among his first paintings (SU (1958–1960), Sweetwater (1959)) this is the most widely known, and exemplifies Ruscha's interests in popular culture, word depictions, and commercial graphics that would continue to inform his work throughout his career. Large Trademark was quickly followed by Standard Station (1963) and Wonder Bread (1962). In Norm’s, La Cienega, on Fire (1964), Burning Gas Station (1965–66), and Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire (1965–68), Ruscha brought flames into play. In 1966, Ruscha reproduced Standard Station in a silkscreen print using a split-fountain printing technique, introducing a gradation of tone in the background of the print, with variations following in 1969 (Mocha Standard, Cheese Mold Standard with Olive, and Double Standard).

In 1985, Ruscha begins a series of "City Lights" paintings, where grids of bright spots on dark grounds suggest aerial views of the city at night. More recently, his "Metro Plots" series chart the various routes that transverse the city of Los Angeles by rendering schematized street maps and blow-ups of its neighborhood sections, such as in Alvarado to Doheny (1998). The paintings are grey and vary in their degrees of light and dark, therefore appearing as they were done by pencil in the stippling technique. A 2003 portfolio of prints called Los Francisco San Angeles shows street intersections from San Francisco and LA juxtaposed one over the other.

Word paintings
As with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, his East Coast counterparts, Ruscha's artistic training was rooted in commercial art. His interest in words and typography ultimately provided the primary subject of his paintings, prints and photographs. The very first of Ruscha's word paintings were created as oil paintings on paper in Paris in 1961. He began to isolate monosyllables — ACE, BOSS, HONK, OOF — without additional imagery against solid backgrounds.

Since 1964, Ruscha has been experimenting regularly with painting and drawing words and phrases, often oddly comic and satirical sayings alluding to popular culture and life in LA. When asked where he got his inspiration for his paintings, Ruscha responded, “Well, they just occur to me; sometimes people say them and I write down and then I paint them. Sometimes I use a dictionary.” From 1966 to 1969, Ruscha painted his “liquid word” paintings: Words such as Adios (1967), Steel (1967–9) and Desire (1969) were written as if with liquid spilled, dribbled or sprayed over a flat monochromatic surface. His gunpowder and graphite drawings (made during a period of self-imposed exile from painting from 1967 to 1970) feature single words depicted in a trompe l’oeil technique, as if the words are formed from ribbons of curling paper. Experimenting with humorous sounds and rhyming word plays, Ruscha made a portfolio of seven mixed-media lithographs with the rhyming words, News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews, Dues, News (1970).

In the 1970s, Ruscha, with Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, among others, began using entire phrases in their works, thereby making it a distinctive characteristic of the post-Pop Art generation. During the mid-1970s, he made a series of drawings in pastel using pithy phrases against a field of color. He also congreagated with artists including George Condo. In the early 1980s he produced a series of paintings of words over sunsets, night skies and wheat fields. In the photo-realist painting Brave Men Run In My Family (1988), part of the artist's "Dysfuntional Family" series, Ruscha runs the text over the silhouetted image of a great, listing tall ship; the piece was a collaboration with fellow Los Angeles artist Nancy Reese (she did the painting, he the lettering). In a series of insidious small abstract paintings from 1994 to 1995, words forming threats are rendered as blank widths of contrasting color like Morse code. Later, words appeared on a photorealist mountain-range series which Ruscha started producing in 1998. For these acrylic-on-canvas works, Ruscha pulled his mountain images either from photographs, commercial logos, or from his imagination.

From 1980, Ruscha started using an all-caps typeface of his own invention named ”Boy Scout Utility Modern” in which curved letter forms are squared-off (as in the Hollywood Sign) This simple font is radically different from the style he used in works such as Honk (1962). Beginning in the mid-1980s, in many of his paintings black or white ‘blanks’ or ‘censor strips’ are included, to suggest where the ‘missing’ words would have been placed. The ‘blanks’ would also feature in his series of Silhouette, Cityscapes or ‘censored’ word works, often made in bleach on canvas, rayon or linen.

Surrealism
Paintings like Angry Because It’s Plaster, Not Milk (1965) and Strange Catch for a Fresh Water Fish (1965) are exemplary works from Ruscha's group of paintings from the mid-1960s that take the strict idea of literal representation into the realm of the absurd. This body of work is characterized by what the artist termed “bouncing objects, floating things,” such as a radically oversized red bird and glass hovering in front of a simple background in the work and have a strong affinity to Surrealism, a recurring theme in the artist's career. The fish plays a prominent role throughout the series and appears in nearly half of the paintings. Another frequent element is Ruscha's continuous depiction of a graphite pencil – broken, splintered, melted, transformed.

Odd media

In his drawings, prints, and paintings throughout the 1970s, Ruscha experimented with a range of materials including gunpowder, vinyl, blood, red wine, fruit and vegetable juices, axle grease, chocolate syrup, tomato paste, bolognese sauce, cherry pie, coffee, caviar, daffodils, tulips, raw eggs and grass stains. Stains, an editioned portfolio of 75 stained sheets of paper produced and published by Ruscha in 1969, bears the traces of a variety of materials and fluids. In the portfolio of screenprints News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews, Dues (1970), produced at Editions Alecto, London, rhyming words appear in Gothic typeface, printed in edible substances such as pie fillings, bolognese sauce, caviar, and chocolate syrup. Ruscha has also produced his word paintings with food products on moiré and silks, since they were more stain-absorbent; paintings like A Blvd. Called Sunset (1975) were executed in blackberry juice on moiré. However, these most vibrant and varied organic colorings usually dried to a range of muted greys, mustards and browns. His portfolio Insects (1972) consists of six screen prints – three on paper, three on paper-backed wood veneer, each showing a lifelike swarm of a different meticulously detailed species. For the April 1972 cover of ARTnews, he composed an Arcimboldo-like photograph that spelled out the magazine's title in a salad of squashed foods. Ruscha's Fruit Metrecal Hollywood (1971) is an example of the artist's use of unusual materials, this silkscreen of the "Hollywood" sign is rendered in apricot and grape jam and the diet drink Metrecal on paper.

Motifs in light
Notably different from many of Ruscha's works of the same period, most obviously in its exclusion of text, his series of Miracle pastel drawings from in the mid-1970s show bright beams of light burst forth from skies with dark clouds. An overall glow is created by the black pastel not being completely opaque, allowing the paper to shine through. In the 1980s, a more subtle motif began to appear, again in a series of drawings, some incorporating dried vegetable pigments: a mysterious patch of light cast by an unseen window that serves as background for phrases such as WONDER SICKNESS (1984) and 99% DEVIL, 1% ANGEL (1983). By the 1990s, Ruscha was creating larger paintings of light projected into empty rooms, some with ironic titles such as An Exhibition of Gasoline Powered Engines (1993).

Commissioned works
Ruscha's first major public commissions include a monumental mural at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1966) and a seventy-panel, 360-degree work for the Great Hall of Denver Public Library in Colorado (1995). Created as part of a public-art commission, The Back of Hollywood (1976–77) was made from a large sheet of sateen on a billboard and situated opposite the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, designed to be read in the rear-view mirror of a moving car. In 1985 Ruscha was commissioned to design a series of fifty murals, WORDS WITHOUT THOUGHTS NEVER TO HEAVEN GO (a quotation from Hamlet), for the rotunda of Miami–Dade Public Library (now the Miami Art Museum) in Florida, designed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee.

In 1989, Ruscha decorated a pool for his brother Paul at his house in Studio City, Los Angeles, with a supersized luggage label: on a black tiled background are the words Name, Address and Phone, complete with dotted lines.

In 1998, Ruscha was commissioned to produce a nearly thirty-foot high vertical painting entitled PICTURE WITHOUT WORDS, for the lobby of the Harold M. Williams Auditorium of the Getty Center. He produced another site-specific piece, three 13-by-23-foot panels proclaiming Words In Their Best Order, for the offices of Gannett Company publishers in Tysons Corner, Virginia, in 2002. The artist was later asked by the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum to create two large-scale paintings that flank his A Particular Kind of Heaven (1983), which is in the museum's collection, to form a spectacular, monumental triptych. For his first public commission in New York in 2014, Ruscha created the hand-painted mural Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today for a temporary installation at the High Line.

In 2008, Ruscha was among four text-based artists that were invited by the Whitechapel Gallery to write scripts to be performed by leading actors; Ruscha's contribution was Public Notice (2007). To celebrate the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)'s 75th anniversary, Ruscha was one of the artists invited to collaborate with the museum on a limited-edition of artist-designed T-shirts. Ruscha is regularly commissioned with works for private persons, among them James Frey (Public Stoning, 2007), Lauren Hutton (Boy Meets Girl, 1987), and Stella McCartney (Stella, 2001). In 1987, collector Frederick Weisman had Ruscha paint the exterior of his private plane, a Lockheed JetStar. The summer 2012 campaign of L.A.-based fashion label Band of Outsiders featured Polaroid shots of Ruscha. In 2020, Ruscha produced the cover art and typography of Paul McCartney's album McCartney III. In 2022, he teamed up with (RED) and Gagosian Gallery to create a limited-edition silk twill scarf—featuring his drawing Science Is Truth Found (1986)—to help provide more equitable access to COVID-19 relief. In 2023 he created the cover art for the Beatles single "Now and Then."

Books
Between 1962 and 1978, Ruscha produced sixteen small artist's books: Later book projects include:
 * Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963
 * Various Small Fires, 1964
 * Some Los Angeles Apartments, 1965
 * Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966
 * Thirtyfour Parking Lots, 1967
 * Royal Road Test, 1967 (with Mason Williams and Patrick Blackwell)
 * Business Cards, 1968 (with Billy Al Bengston)
 * Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass, 1968
 * Crackers, 1969 (with Mason Williams)
 * Real Estate Opportunities, 1970
 * Babycakes with Weights, 1970
 * A Few Palm Trees, 1971
 * Records, 1971
 * Dutch Details, 1971
 * Colored People, 1972
 * Hard Light, 1978 (with Lawrence Weiner)
 * Country Cityscapes, 2001
 * ME and THE, 2002
 * Ed Ruscha and Photography, 2004 (with Sylvia Wolf)
 * OH / NO, 2008
 * Dirty Baby, 2010 (with Nels Cline and David Breskin)

In 1968, Ruscha created the cover design for the catalogue accompanying a Billy Al Bengston exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. For the “Documenta 5" catalogue in 1972, he designed an orange vinyl cover, featuring a “5” made up of scurrying black ants. In 1978, he designed the catalogue "Stella Since 1970" for the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Leave Any Information at the Signal, a volume of Ruscha's writings, was published by MIT Press in 2002. In 2010, Gagosian Gallery and Steidl published Ruscha's version of Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road in an edition of 350.

Ruscha's artist books have proved to be deeply influential, beginning with Bruce Nauman’s Burning Small Fires (1968), for which Nauman burned Ruscha's Various Small Fires and Milk (1964) and photographed the process. More than forty years later, photographer Charles Johnstone relocated Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations in Cuba, producing the portfolio Twentysix Havana Gasoline Stations (2008). A recent homage is One Swimming Pool (2013) by Dutch artist Elisabeth Tonnard, who re-photographed one of the photographs from Ruscha's Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968) and enlarged it to the size of a small swimming pool, consisting of 3164 pages the same size as the pages in Ruscha's original book. The pages of this ‘pool on a shelf’ can be detached to create the life-size installation.

Photography
Photography has played a crucial role throughout Ruscha's career, beginning with images he made during a trip to Europe with his mother and brother in 1961, and most memorably as the imagery for more than a dozen books that present precisely what their titles describe. His photographs are straightforward, even deadpan, in their depiction of subjects that are not generally thought of as having aesthetic qualities. His "Products" pictures, for example, feature boxes of Sunmaid raisins and Oxydol detergent and a can of Sherwin Williams turpentine in relatively formal still lifes. Mostly devoid of human presence, these photographs emphasize the essential form of the structure and its placement within the built environment. Ruscha's photographic editions are most often based on his conceptual art-books of same or similar name. Ruscha re-worked the negatives of six of the images from his book Every Building on Sunset Strip. The artist then cut and painted directly on the negatives, resulting in photographs that have the appearance of a faded black-and-white film. The Tropical Fish series (1974–75) represents the first instance where the photographic image has been directly used in his graphic work, where Ruscha had Gemini G.E.L.'s house photographer Malcolm Lubliner make photographs of a range of common domestic objects.

Films and documentaries
In the 1970s, Ruscha also made a series of largely unknown short movies, such as Premium (1971) and Miracle (1975). With the assistance of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ruscha arranged in Premium a scenario which he first projected in his photo-book Crackers from 1969 and subsequently transformed into a film which features Larry Bell, Leon Bing, Rudi Gernreich, and Tommy Smothers. Miracle contains the essence of the artist's same-named painting, inasmuch as the story is told of a strange day in the life of an auto mechanic, who is magically transformed as he rebuilds the carburetor on a 1965 Ford Mustang. The movie features Jim Ganzer and Michelle Phillips. In 1984, he accepted a small role in the film Choose Me directed by his friend Alan Rudolph, and in 2010, he starred in Doug Aitken's film Sleepwalkers. Artist Tom Sachs' 2018 short film Paradox Bullets stars Ruscha in the role of a hiker lost in the desert and guided only by the voice of Werner Herzog.

Ruscha was featured in Michael Blackwood's film documentary American Art in the Sixties. He appeared in L.A. Suggested by the Art of Edward Ruscha, a 1981 documentary by Gary Conklin shot at the artist's studio and desert home. Interviews with Ruscha are included in the documentaries Dennis Hopper: The Decisive Moments (2002), Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005), The Cool School (2008), Iconoclasts (2008), and How to Make a Book with Steidl (2010), among others.

Birth of "Pop Art"
In 1962 Ruscha's work was included, along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Dowd, Phillip Hefferton, Joe Goode, Jim Dine, and Wayne Thiebaud, in the historically important and ground-breaking "New Painting of Common Objects," curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum. This exhibition is historically considered one of the first "Pop Art" exhibitions in America.

Ruscha had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. In 1966, Ruscha was included in "Los Angeles Now" at the Robert Fraser Gallery in London, his first European exhibition. In 1968, he had his first European solo show in Cologne, Germany, at Galerie Rudolf Zwirner. Ruscha joined the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1970 and had his first solo exhibition there in 1973.

Retrospectives
In 1970 Ruscha represented the United States at the Venice Biennale as part of a survey of American printmaking with an on-site workshop. He constructed Chocolate Room, a visual and sensory experience where the visitor saw 360 pieces of paper permeated with chocolate and hung like shingles on the gallery walls. The pavilion in Venice smelled like a chocolate factory. For the Venice Biennale in 1976, Ruscha created an installation entitled Vanishing Cream, consisting of letters written in Vaseline petroleum jelly on a black wall. Ruscha was the United States representative at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, showing the site- and occasion-specific a painting cycle Course of Empire. He was interviewed about the pavilion and its curation by Linda Norden and Donna De Salvo in Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World.

He has been the subject of numerous museum retrospectives, beginning in 1983 with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (traveling to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2000, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in 2001. In 2004, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney mounted a selection of the artist's photographs, paintings, books and drawings that traveled to the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo, Rome and to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

In 1998, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles organized a retrospective solely devoted to Ruscha's works on paper. In 2004, The Whitney Museum of American Art exhibited a second Ruscha drawing retrospective, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and then to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

In 1999, the Walker Art Center mounted Edward Ruscha: Editions 1959-1999, a major retrospective of the artist's prints, books, and graphic works, which number well over 300. The show travelled to the LACMA in 2000. Ruscha coauthored the catalogue raisonné with Walker curator Siri Engberg. In July 2012, Reading Ed Ruscha opened at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria.

In 2006, an exhibition of Ruscha's photographs was organized for the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Kunsthaus Zürich, and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.

In October 2009, London's Hayward Gallery featured the first retrospective to focus exclusively on Ruscha's canvases. Entitled "Ed Ruscha: Fifty Years of Painting," the exhibition sheds light on his influences, such as comics, graphic design, and hitchhiking. The exhibition travelled to Haus der Kunst, Munich, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. “Ed Ruscha: Road Tested,” opened at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas in January 2011. The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles prepared an exhibition with Ruscha inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which opened in mid-2011 (traveled to Denver Art Museum, Colorado in December 2011 and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida in May 2012).

In 2016, there was a large 99 piece exhibit of Ruscha's paintings and prints in San Francisco's M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. The exhibit, "Ed Ruscha and the Great American West," focuses primarily on how the artist drew inspiration from the American West. In 1956, Ruscha drove from his home in Oklahoma to Los Angeles where he hoped to attend art school. While driving in a 1950 Ford sedan, the 18 year old artist drew inspiration from dilapidated gas stations, billboards, and telephone poles cross the great expanse of the land. This inspiration from the American West across Route 66 stuck with Ruscha his whole life. The artists paintings of the West reflect both symbolic and ironic renditions of how we imagine the West.

In 2018, The Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas presented "Ed Ruscha: Archaeology and Romance," featuring more than 150 objects drawn from the Ransom Center's Edward Ruscha Papers and Art Collection.

From September 2023 to January 2024, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City exhibited the retrospective “ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN” featuring over 200 works across mediums, including The Chocolate Room.

Curating
In 2003, Ed Ruscha curated "Emerson Woelffer: A Solo Flight", a survey of the work of the late Los Angeles-based Abstract Expressionist, for the inaugural exhibition of the Gallery at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater). In 2012, Ruscha was invited to curate “The Ancients Stole All Our Great Ideas” at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the first exhibition in a series for which internationally renowned artists were invited to work with the national art and natural history collections.

Collections
In 2000, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, a branch of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, acquired Ruscha's complete graphic archive of 325 prints and 800 working proofs. The museum bought the archive and negotiated for impressions of future prints for $10 million, with funds provided by San Francisco philanthropist Phyllis Wattis. Another major collection of Ruscha's prints was compiled by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2003, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles acquired the Chocolate Room, then worth about $1.5 million. In 2004, the Whitney Museum acquired more than 300 photographs through a purchase and gift from the artist, making it the principal repository of Ruscha's photographic oevre. The gift, purchased from Larry Gagosian, includes vintage photographs that Ruscha took on a seven-month European tour in 1961. In 2005, Leonard A. Lauder purchased The Old Tool & Die Building (2004) and The Old Trade School Building (2005) for the Whitney, both of which were part of "The Course of Empire: Paintings by Ed Ruscha" at the Venice Biennale. Ruscha is represented by 33 of his works in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art owns 25 Ruscha paintings, works on paper, and photographs; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has 21 Ruschas in its permanent collection; and the Art Institute of Chicago has more than 40 works by the artist in their collection. Ruscha also has small collections of books and lithographs in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah and in Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art in Montsoreau, France.

Ruscha's private collectors have in the past included Leonardo DiCaprio, Owen Wilson and Jay-Z.

Awards

 * 2001: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters as a member of the Department of Art, after having previously received its Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Fund Award in 1992'.
 * 2001: Honorary doctorate degree from California College of the Arts
 * 2002: amfAR’s Award of Excellence for Artistic Contributions to the Fight Against AIDS
 * 2004: Honorary Royal Academician of London’s Royal Academy of Arts
 * 2006: The Cultural Award from the German Society for Photography (DGPh)
 * 2008: Aspen Award for Art
 * 2008: Honorary doctorate degree from Rhode Island School of Design
 * 2009: National Arts Award for Artistic Excellence
 * 2009: Honorary doctorate degree from San Francisco Art Institute
 * 2013: Named in Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world
 * 2013: Honored on the occasion of the Whitney Museum of American Art's annual gala event
 * 2019: J. Paul Getty Medal
 * 2024: Honorary doctorate from Occidental College.

Recognition
Fellow artist Louise Lawler included Ruscha in her piece Birdcalls (1972/2008), an audio artwork that transforms the names of famous male artists into a bird song, parroting names such as Artschwager, Beuys, and Warhol in a mockery of conditions of privilege and recognition given to male artists at that time. The muralist Kent Twitchell painted an 11,000-square-foot mural in Downtown Los Angeles to honor Ruscha entitled the Ed Ruscha Monument between 1978 and 1987. The mural was preserved until 2006 when it was illegally painted over. The band Talking Heads Ruscha's eponymous 1974 painting for their "Sand in the Vaseline" compilation album. The band Various Cruelties, based around Liam O'Donnell, was named after Ruscha's painting of the same name of 1974.

Between 2006 and 2012, Ruscha served on the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles where he had previously been included in eight special exhibits. In 2012, he was the honoree of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Art + Film gala; in a speech, the museums's director Michal Govan paid tribute to the artist, quoting the novelist J. G. Ballard: “Ed Ruscha has the coolest gaze in American art.” Ruscha was elected to a three-year term on the board of trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2013. From 2015 until 2019, Ruscha also served on the board of Desert X; he resigned over the board's decision to collaborate on an exhibition in Saudi Arabia.

In 2009, Ruscha's I Think I’ll... (1983) from the collection of the National Gallery was installed at the White House. In 2010, during British prime minister David Cameron's first visit to Washington, President Barack Obama presented him with a signed two-color lithograph by Ruscha, Column With Speed Lines (2003), chosen for its red, white and blue colors. Obama gave Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott a similar lithograph during his visit to the White House in 2014. Ruscha's Screaming in Spanish (2013) was installed in the entry hall of the residence of the United States Ambassador to Spain in Madrid.

Art market
As early as 2002, the oil on canvas word painting Talk About Space (1963), a takeoff on the American billboard in which a single word is the subject, was expected to sell for $1.5 million to $2 million from a private European collection. It was eventually sold for $3.5 million at Christie's in New York, a record for the artist. In 2008, Eli Broad acquired Ruscha's "liquid word" painting Desire (1969) for $2.4 million at Sotheby's, which back then was 40 percent under the $4 million low estimate. A navy blue canvas with the word Smash in yellow, which Ruscha painted in 1963, was purchased by Larry Gagosian for $30.4 million at a 2014 Christie's auction in New York. His word painting Hurting the Word Radio #2 (1964) sold by L.A. collectors Joan and Jack Quinn to an anonymous bidder at Christie's for a record-shattering $52.5 million with fees in 2019.

Angry Because It’s Plaster, Not Milk from 1965, which had been shown at Ferus Gallery that year, was sold by Halsey Minor to Gagosian Gallery for $3.2 million at Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, in 2010. From the same series, Strange Catch for a Fresh Water Fish (1965) made $4.1 million at Christie's New York in 2011.

Ruscha's classic prints, published as multiples, command up to $40,000 apiece.

Personal life
Ruscha is married to the former Danica Knego (known as Danna). They met in 1965, wed in 1967, separated in 1972, filed for divorce in 1976, divorced in 1978, and remarried in 1987. The couple has two children, Edward "Eddie" Ruscha Jr., a son, and Sonny Bjornson, a daughter. In the late seventies, Ruscha bought land about ten miles from Pioneertown, California; he later built a house there.

During the time he and Danna were apart, Ruscha dated actresses Candy Clark, Samantha Eggar, Diane Keaton, Lauren Hutton, and Michelle Phillips.

According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Ruscha donated $12,500 to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton in September 2016.

Legacy
In 2011, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute acquired over seventy photographs by Ruscha as well as his "Streets of Los Angeles" archive, including thousands of negatives, hundreds of photographic contact sheets, and related documents and ephemera. A portion of the material will go to the Getty as a promised gift from the artist. The "Streets of Los Angeles" archive acquired by the Getty Research Institute begins with the photographic and production material for Ruscha's landmark 1966 book Every Building on the Sunset Strip, and includes the original camera-ready three-panel maquette used for the publication. This ongoing project subsequently evolved into a vast photographic archive that spans over four decades and documents many major Los Angeles thoroughfares, including Santa Monica Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, and Pacific Coast Highway, shot in 1974 and 1975, and more than 25 other Los Angeles streets that Ruscha photographed since 2007. In total, the archive comprises thousands of negatives, hundreds of photographic contact sheets, and related documents and ephemera.

In 2013, the Harry Ransom Center acquired a Ruscha archive comprising five personal journals filled with preliminary sketches and notes; materials related to the making of his artist's book On The Road (2010); notes, photographs, correspondence and contact sheets relating to the creation and publication of his many other artist's books; and materials relating to his short films Miracle (1975) and Premium (1971); his portfolios; and several art commissions. Ruscha himself donated a substantial portion of the archive to the Ransom Center.

title: Edward Ruscha


text:
Judas of Galilee

Judas of Galilee, or Judas of Gamala, was a Jewish leader who led resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in the Judaea Province in 6 CE. He encouraged Jews not to register and those that did had their houses burnt and their cattle stolen by his followers. He is credited with beginning the "fourth philosophy" of the Jews which Josephus blames for the disastrous war with the Romans in 66–73. These events are discussed by Josephus in The Jewish War and in Antiquities of the Jews and mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.

In Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus states that Judas, along with Zadok the Pharisee, founded the Zealots, the "fourth sect" of 1st-century Judaism (the first three being the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes). Josephus blamed this fourth sect for the First Jewish–Roman War of 66–73. The Zealots were theocratic nationalists who preached that God alone was the ruler of Israel and urged that no taxes should be paid to Rome.

Several scholars, such as Gunnar Haaland and James S. McLaren, have suggested that Josephus's description of the fourth sect does not reflect historical reality, but was constructed to serve his own interests. According to Haaland, the part covering the Zealots acts as a transition and an introduction to the excursion concerning the Jewish schools of thought, all of which Josephus presents to portray the majority of Jews in a positive light, and to show that the Jewish War was incited by a radical minority. Similarly, McLaren proposes that Judas and his sect act as scapegoats for the war that are chronologically, geographically and socially removed from the priestly circles of Jerusalem (and Josephus himself).

Josephus does not relate the death of Judas, but does report that Judas's sons James and Simon were executed by procurator Tiberius Julius Alexander in about 46 CE. He also claims that Menahem ben Judah, one of the early leaders of the Jewish Revolt in 66 CE, was Judas's "son", which some scholars doubt though Menahem may have been Judas's grandson. Menahem's cousin, Eleazar ben Ya'ir, escaped to the fortress of Masada where he became a leader of the last defenders against the Roman Empire.

Judas is referred to in Acts of the Apostles, in which a speech by Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, identifies Theudas and Judas as examples of failed Messianic movements, and suggests that the movement emerging in the name of Jesus of Nazareth could similarly fail, unless he really was the Messiah.

title: Judas of Galilee


text:
Shivananda

Swami Shivananda (1854–1934), born Tarak Nath Ghosal, was a Hindu spiritual leader and a direct disciple of Ramakrishna, who became the second president of the Ramakrishna Mission. His devotees refer to him as Mahapurush Maharaj (Great Soul). Shivananda and Subodhananda were the only direct disciples of Ramakrishna to be filmed. He was a Brahmajnani ("knower of Brahman or the Supreme Being"). Shivananda introduced the celebration of the birthdays of his brother-monks. He was known to have laid the foundation stone of Shri Ramakrishna Temple at Belur Math, which was designed by Vijnanananda.

Early life
Shivananda was born in the village of Barasat in Bengal. His father was Ramakanai Ghoshal, a pious Brahmin who had a substantial income as a lawyer. He was a follower of tantra in his personal life. He and his first wife Vamasundari Devi, the mother of Tarak, provided free board and lodging to twenty-five to thirty poor students. Ramakanai also knew Ramakrishna personally, as he used to visit Dakshineswar on matters of business.

After completing his school studies, Tarak took up a job with Mackinnon Mackenzie in Calcutta to help his father.

Ramakrishna's influence
Tarak saw Ramakrishna for the first time at the house of Ramchandra Dutta in May 1880. A few days later he went to Dakshineswar to visit Kali Temple; from then he began to practise intense prayer and meditation under Ramakrishna's guidance. He later wrote "I have not yet come to a final understanding whether he [Ramakrishna] was a man or a superman, a god or the God Himself, but I have known him to be a man of complete self-effacement, master of the highest renunciation, possessed of supreme wisdom, and the supreme incarnation of love."

Marriage
Tarak married in 1881–82. His father could not afford a dowry for the marriage of his sister, as was usual; Tarak therefore agreed to marry a daughter of the prospective bridegroom's family. Three years later his wife died and Tarak started living sometimes in a devotee's house and sometimes in lonely places, till the Baranagar Math was started.

Renunciation
Tarak continued to visit Dakshineswar till Ramakrishna fell ill and was brought, first to the Shyampukur house and then later to the Cossipore Garden House. In Cossipore, Tarak joined with others including Narendranath Dutta, later known as Swami Vivekananda, to serve Ramakrishna.

After the death of Ramakrishna in 1886, the small group of direct disciples who decided to embrace monastic life gathered round in a dilapidated house in Baranagar; Tarak was one of the first to settle there. Thus began the Baranagar monastery of the Ramakrishna Math.

As a wandering monk
During his itinerant period, Shivananda travelled throughout northern India. He went to Almora, where he was acquainted with a local rich man, Lala Badrilal Shah, an admirer of Ramakrishna's disciples. During the latter part of 1893, Tarak also met E.T. Sturdy, an Englishman interested in theosophy, who later became an admirer and follower of Vivekananda after he met him in England. He was inclined towards leading a contemplative life and went to the Himalayas several times. He also went to Amarnath in 1909 with Swami Turiyananda.

Establishment of Ramakrishna Math and Mission
Tarak's itinerant life came to an end when Vivekananda returned to India in 1897. He went to Madras to receive Vivekananda, and came back with him to Calcutta. Vivekananda sent Shivananda to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, to spread Vedanta there. There he held classes on Gita and the Raja Yoga. He returned to the newly established Ramakrishna Math or monastery in Belur in 1898. In 1899 Shivananda, upon request from Vivekananda, helped in organising relief efforts when plague broke out in Calcutta. In 1900 he travelled with Vivekananda to Mayavati. There is a dormitory named, in his honour, Shivananda Dham in Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Deoghar.

Advaita Ashrama, Benaras
In 1902, just before Vivekananda's death, he went to Varanasi to start the Advaita Ashrama using the donation by Raja of Bhinga to Vivekananda. There he remained as head for seven years. Money was short, and they lived austerely. About this time, he translated Vivekananda's Chicago lectures into local Hindi. He continued to look after the affairs of the Ashrama till 1909.

Office-bearer of Ramakrishna Mission
In 1910, he was elected vice-president of Ramakrishna Mission. Shivananda was also one of the original trustees of Belur Math. In 1917 when Baburam Maharaj (Swami Premananda) fell ill and died, his duties of managing the affairs of the Math and Mission fell on Shivananda. In 1922, after the death of Swami Brahmananda, he became the second President of Ramakrishna Math and Mission. Like Brahmananda, he stressed meditation along with his daily work. He went to Dhaka and Mymensingh in what became East Bengal, and initiated many spiritual seekers. In 1924 and 1927 he went on two long tours to the South, and established the Ramakrishna Math in Ootakamund and then later in Bombay and Nagpur. In 1925, he went to Deoghar and opened a new building for the local chapter of Ramakrishna Mission.

The title of Mahapurush
Tarak was married in his teens but, with the consent of his young wife, he lived an absolutely celibate life. and that's why after the foundation of Belur Math, he came to be known as 'Mahapurush Maharaj by Swami Vivekananda', 'Mahapurush' meaning 'A Great Man'.

Last years
From 1930 on, Shivananda's health broke down rapidly. In April 1933 he suffered a stroke and developed paralysis of one side. On 20 February 1934, a few days after Ramakrishna's birthday, Shivananda died. The small room adjacent to the Old Shrine at Belur Math became known as the 'Room of Shivananda'.

Work
Under Shivananda's presidency, the Ramakrishna Mission slowly expanded in other locations. He established centres in Ootacamund, Nagpur and Bombay. Centres were also opened in various foreign locations. In 1915, he established a Ramakrishna mission centre in Almora. He initiated many people after the death of Brahmananda.

Quotes

 * It will not do to be restless. One has to get deeply absorbed in spiritual exercises; one must strengthen one's spiritual attitude in one's own mind. One may get a temporary enthusiasm by noticing someone else's spiritual fervour, but then one must remember that all such men had to pass through hard struggle
 * Behind work there should be meditation. Without meditation, work cannot be performed in a way which conduces to spiritual growth. Nor is work nicely performed without having a spiritual background

Character
Shivananda washed the soiled clothes of a sick inmate to his monastery in Benaras. He started a free nursery school for the poor children in Benaras. After Brahmananda died, Shivananda refused to proclaim himself as president of Ramakrishna Mission because he considered himself as merely a representative of Brahmananda. He was in favour of disciplines in monastic life, and he himself practised them rigorously till he was physically unable to do.

Related links

 * RKM: President's site – Swami Shivananda
 * The saga of a Great Soul, Swami Shivananda – Swami Vividishananda ISBN 0-87481-584-3
 * Mahapurush Maharaj as we saw him ISBN 0-87481-053-1
 * God lived with them – Swami Chetanananda ISBN 0-916356-80-9
 * Reminiscences of Swami Shivananda by Swami Shambhavananda
 * http://belurmath.org/shivananda.htm
 * http://www.chennaimath.org/reminiscences-swami-shivananda-11715
 * http://www.chennaimath.org/reminiscences-swami-shivananda-11715

Shivananda

title: Shivananda


text:
User talk:68.39.174.205

Nomination of John Doyle (announcer) for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article John Doyle (announcer) 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/John Doyle (announcer) 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 until the discussion has finished. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:25, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Nomination of List of heraldic charges for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of heraldic charges 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/List of heraldic charges 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 until the discussion has finished. Di (they-them) (talk) 19:08, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

title: User talk:68.39.174.205


text: User talk:81.129.134.16

title: User talk:81.129.134.16


text:
Organisation climate

Organisational climate (sometimes known as corporate climate) is a concept that has academic meaning in the fields of organisational behaviour and I/O psychology as well as practical meaning in the business world There is continued scholarly debate about the exact definition of organisational climate for the purposes of scientific study. The definition developed by Lawrence R. James (1943-2014) and his colleagues makes a distinction between psychological and organisational climate. "'Psychological climate is defined as the individual employee’s perception of the psychological impact of the work environment on his or her own well-being (James & James, 1989). When employees in a particular work unit agree on their perceptions of the impact of their work environment, their shared perceptions can be aggregated to describe their organisational climate (Jones & James, 1979; Joyce & Slocum, 1984).'"Employees' collective appraisal of the organisational work environment takes into account many dimensions of the situation as well as the psychological impact of the environment. For instance, job-specific properties such as role clarity, workload and other aspects unique to a person's specific job have a psychological impact that can be agreed upon by members of the organisation. Work group or team cooperation and effectiveness as well as leadership and organisational support are other dimensions of shared experience that factor into organisational climate. Surveys are the most common way of quantifying organisational climate. Aspects of climate that influence performance of specific sets of behaviours and outcomes can be measured, such as the climate for safety and the climate for innovation. Many instruments have been developed to assess numerous aspects of climate.

The shared perception approach emphasises the importance of shared perceptions as underpinning the notion of climate. Organisational climate has also been defined as "the shared perception of the way things are around here". There is great deal of overlap in the two approaches.

Cognitive schema approach
Cognitive representations of social objects are referred to as schemas. These schemas are a mental structure that represents some aspect of the world. They are organised in memory in an associative network. In these associative networks, similar schemas are clustered together. When a particular schema is activated related schemas may be activated as well. Schema activation may also increase the accessibility of related schemas in the associative network. When a schema is more accessible this means it can more quickly be activated and used in a particular situation. When related schemas are activated, inferences beyond the information given in a particular social situation may influence thinking and social behaviour, regardless of whether those inferences are accurate or not. Lastly, when a schema is activated a person may or may not be aware of it.

Two processes that increase the accessibility of schemas are salience and priming. Salience is the degree to which a particular social object stands out relative to other social objects in a situation. The higher the salience of an object the more likely that schemas for that object will be made accessible. For example, if there is one female in a group of seven males, female gender schemas may be more accessible and influence the group's thinking and behaviour toward the female group member. Priming refers to any experiences immediately prior to a situation that caused a schema to be more accessible.

Shared perception approach
Some researchers have pursued the shared perception model of organisational climate. Their model identifies the variables which moderate an organisation's ability to mobilise its workforce in order to achieve business goals and maximise performance.

One of the major users of this model are departments of the Queensland State Government Australia. These departments use this model of climate to survey staff in order to identify and measure those aspects of a workplace which impact on: stress, morale, quality of worklife, wellbeing, employee engagement, absenteeism/presenteeism, turnover and performance.

While an organisation and its leaders cannot remove every stressor in the daily life of its employees, organisational climate studies have identified a number of behaviours of leaders which have a significant impact on stress and morale. For instance, one Queensland state government employer, Queensland Transport, has found that increasing managers' awareness of these behaviours has improved quality of work life employees and the ability of QT's to deliver its organisational goals.

Organisational climate versus organisational culture
Climate and culture are both important aspects of the overall context, environment or situation. Organisational culture tends to be shared by all or most members of some social group, is something that older members usually try to pass on to younger members, and shapes behaviour, structures, and perceptions of the world. Cultures are often studied and understood at a national level, such as the American or French culture.

Culture includes deeply held values, beliefs and assumptions, symbols, heroes, and rituals. Culture can be examined at an organisational level as well. The main distinction between organisational culture and national culture is that people can choose to join a place of work, but are usually born into a national culture. Organisational climate, on the other hand, is often defined as the recurring patterns of behaviour, attitudes and feelings that characterise life in the organisation, while an organisation culture tends to be deep and stable. Although culture and climate are related, climate often proves easier to assess and change. At an individual level of analysis the concept is called individual psychological climate. These individual perceptions are often aggregated or collected for analysis and understanding at the team or group level, or the divisional, functional, or overall organisational level.

Climate surveys
Theories of cognitive and neuropsychology and emotional intelligence provide additional scientific rationale for why leaders should improve stress and morale in the workplace to achieve maximum performance. Climate surveys can provide concrete evidence of how this works in action.

Organisational climate surveying enables the impact of human resource (HR) strategies to be evaluated to create HR return on investment (HRROI) calculations. This data has been found to be highly effective in changing the perspective of people-based initiatives as being an "investment" rather than a "cost" and transforming HR into a "mission-critical strategic partner" from its perception of "personnel administration".

A number of studies by Dr Dennis Rose and colleagues between 2001 and 2004 have found a very strong link between organisational climate and employee reactions such as stress levels, absenteeism and commitment and participation.

A study has found that Hart, Griffin et al.'s (1996) organisational climate model accounts for at least 16% single-day sick leave and 10% separation rates in one organisation. Other studies support the links between organisational climate and many other factors such as employee retention, job satisfaction, well-being, and readiness for creativity, innovation and change. Hunter, Bedell and Mumford have reviewed numerous approaches to climate assessment for creativity. They found that those climate studies that were based on well-developed, standardised instruments produced far higher effect sizes than did studies that were based on locally developed measures.

title: Organisation climate


text: User talk:67.51.8.231

title: User talk:67.51.8.231