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Tom Paxton

Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than sixty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions.

Paxton's songs have been widely recorded, including modern standards such as "The Last Thing on My Mind", "Bottle of Wine", "Whose Garden Was This", "The Marvelous Toy", and "Ramblin' Boy". Paxton's songs have been recorded by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, the Weavers, Judy Collins, Sandy Denny, Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Seekers, Marianne Faithfull, the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, John Denver, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Flatt & Scruggs, the Move, the Fireballs, Francesco Guccini and many others (see covers).

Early life
Paxton was born on October 31, 1937, in Chicago, Illinois, United States, to Burt and Esther Paxton. His father was "a chemist, mostly self-educated", and as his health began to fail him, the family moved to Wickenburg, Arizona. It was here that young Paxton began riding horses at the numerous dude ranches in the area. It was also here that he was first introduced to folk music, discovering the music of Burl Ives and others.

In 1948, the family moved to Bristow, Oklahoma, which Paxton considers to be his hometown. Soon after, his father died from a stroke. Paxton was about 15 when he received his first stringed instrument, a ukulele. He was given a guitar by his aunt when he was sixteen, and he soon began to immerse himself in the music of Burl Ives and Harry Belafonte.

In 1955, Paxton enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, where he studied in the drama school. It was here that he first found other enthusiasts of folk music and discovered the music of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers. He would later note, "Woody was fearless; he'd take on any issue that got him stirred up ... and he became one of my greatest influences." In college, he was in a group known as the Travellers, which sang in an off-campus coffeehouse.

Early career
Upon graduating in 1959 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, Paxton acted in summer stock theatre and briefly tried graduate school before joining the Army. While attending the Clerk Typist School in Fort Dix, New Jersey, he began writing songs on his typewriter and spent almost every weekend visiting Greenwich Village in New York City during the emerging early 1960s folk revival.

Shortly after his honorable discharge from the Army, Paxton auditioned for the Chad Mitchell Trio via publisher Milt Okun in 1960. He initially received the part, but his voice did not blend well enough with those of the group members. However, after singing his song "The Marvelous Toy" for Okun, he became the first writer signed to Milt's music publishing company, Cherry Lane Music Publishing.

Paxton soon began performing at The Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, where he became a mainstay. In 1962, he recorded a privately produced live album at the Gaslight entitled, I'm the Man That Built the Bridges. During his stay in Greenwich Village, Paxton published some of his songs in the folk magazines Broadside and Sing Out!, and performed alongside such folksingers as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Eric Andersen, Dave Van Ronk, and Mississippi John Hurt. Paxton met his future wife, Margaret Ann Cummings (known as "Midge"), at the Gaslight one night in January 1963 after being introduced to her by David Blue.

Pete Seeger learned a few of Paxton's songs in 1963, including "Ramblin' Boy" (which Seeger performed at The Weavers reunion concert at Carnegie Hall) and "What Did You Learn in School Today?" Paxton increased his profile as a performer, appearing at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which was recorded by Vanguard Records. A month after Newport in 1963, Paxton married Midge. He began traveling the country on the coffeehouse and small-venue circuit before returning to New York. Paxton became involved with causes that promoted human rights, civil rights and labor rights. In 1963, Paxton and a group of other folk musicians performed and offered moral support to striking coal miners in Hazard, Kentucky.

After returning to New York in 1964, Paxton signed with Elektra Records, a label which at that time featured a distinguished roster of folk musicians. He would go on to record seven albums for Elektra. As the folk revival hit its peak, Paxton began getting more work outside of New York City, including benefit concerts and college campus visits. In 1964, he took part in the Freedom Summer and visited the Deep South, with other folk musicians, to perform at voter registration drives and civil rights rallies. His civil rights song "Beau John" was written after attending a Freedom Song Workshop in Atlanta, Georgia, and the song "Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney" was written about the murders of three civil rights activists (Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney) in the summer of 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Paxton's own compositions began to be increasingly recognized within folk music circles, and in other genres.

Of the songwriters on the Greenwich Village scene of the 1960s, Dave Van Ronk said, "Dylan is usually cited as the founder of the new song movement, and he certainly became its most visible standard-bearer, but the person who started the whole thing was Tom Paxton ... he tested his songs in the crucible of live performance, he found that his own stuff was getting more attention than when he was singing traditional songs or stuff by other people ... he set himself a training regimen of deliberately writing one song every day. Dylan had not yet showed up when this was happening, and by the time Bobby came on the set, with at most two or three songs he had written, Tom was already singing at least 50 percent his own material.  That said, it was Bobby's success that really got the ball rolling.  Prior to that, the folk community was very much tied to traditional songs, so much so that songwriters would sometimes palm their own stuff off as traditional."

In 1965, Paxton made his first tour of the United Kingdom. The tour was the beginning of a still-thriving professional relationship that has included yearly performances there. He met Bruce Woodley, one of the founding members of the Australian folk group The Seekers and they collaborated on the song "Angeline (Is Always Friday)" which The Seekers recorded and featured in their concerts, TV shows and a DVD. In 1967, the rock group Clear Light recorded a menacing and lengthy psychedelic version of Paxton's song "Mr. Blue" on their only album Clear Light. Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton's recording of "The Last Thing on My Mind" reached the top ten on the U.S. country singles charts in December 1967. Then in 1968, Paxton scored a Top 10 radio hit when The Fireballs recorded his song "Bottle of Wine". In the 1960s, Paxton licensed one of his songs, "My Dog's Bigger than Your Dog", for use in a Ken-L Ration dog food commercial. Not too fazed by the success of some of his songs, Paxton continued writing and performing. He was not interested in jumping on the folk rock (or, as he once joked, "folk rot" ) bandwagon though, and continued his folk singer-songwriter style on albums like Outward Bound (1966) and Morning Again (1968). On January 20, 1968, three months after the death of Woody Guthrie, Paxton and a number of other prominent folk musicians performed at the Harold Leventhal produced "A Tribute to Woody Guthrie" concert at New York City's Carnegie Hall.

Paxton decided to try some more elaborate recording techniques, including neo-chamber music with string sections, flutes, horns, piano, various session musicians, as well as his acoustic guitar and vocals, similar to what his labelmate Judy Collins and his friend Phil Ochs were experimenting with around this time. Paxton finally broke into the album pop charts himself with The Things I Notice Now in the summer of 1969, and also charted with Tom Paxton 6 in the spring of the following year. His song "Whose Garden Was This", an environmentalist anthem written for the first Earth Day, was later recorded by John Denver and became the title track of Denver's 1970 album. Another Paxton song Denver recorded was "Forest Lawn", in whose lyrics Paxton satirized the "theme park approach" to death that Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, has been accused of having taken.

The diverse "Baroque Folk" experimentation on Paxton's recordings was basically short-lived though, and he tended to think that the music was becoming too overproduced and away from the more natural acoustic roots that he loved best. Regarding this time, he said, "the acoustic guitar has always been what I loved the most ... I know I didn't have that rock mentality or anything. I was still a kid from a small town in Oklahoma.  And I just wanted to hear folk songs." Paxton continued to sing and perform his songs on acoustic guitar at his live performances, and it was not too long before his albums would once again generally reflect his original traditional-sounding style.

Middle career
Paxton, his wife and their two daughters lived in Holland Park, London, for about four years in the early 1970s. After a stay in England due to professional success and love of the country, Paxton and Midge went on a tour of New Zealand and China and even appeared on a Chinese talk show. Paxton released How Come the Sun in 1971. The album gave him his highest chart ranking in the U.S. but it only reached number 120 and his next album, Peace Will Come (1972), barely even reached the charts. He soon returned to New York City and the Long Island town of East Hampton before moving to the Washington, D.C., area around 1977. After recording three albums for Reprise Records and a few for "an English label that didn't pan out well", Paxton signed with Vanguard Records, with whom he recorded a live album with Steve Goodman, New Songs From the Briarpatch (1977), which contained some of Paxton's topical songs of the 1970s, including "Talking Watergate" and "White Bones of Allende" as well as a song dedicated to Mississippi John Hurt entitled "Did You Hear John Hurt?" In 1978, Paxton released his album Heroes, which contained a song, "Phil", about his friend Phil Ochs, who had taken his own life in 1976. The album also includes the song "The Death of Stephen Biko", which details the murder of anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko in South Africa. Paxton's 1979 album, Up and Up, contains the song "Let the Sunshine", which addresses issues concerning environmentalism and solar energy. Paxton has also performed at the Clearwater Festival, an annual event, started by Pete Seeger, dedicated to environmentalism and cleaning up the Hudson River. His 1983 album Bulletin includes a song about Woody Guthrie entitled "They Couldn't Take the Music".

After recording for labels such as Mountain Railroad and Flying Fish in the 1980s, Paxton started his own label, Pax Records, in 1987. It was during this time that Paxton continued to suffer from an undiagnosed and deepening depression that affected his work. With some advice from Midge, he began to look for a solution and was eventually diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, for which he received ongoing treatment.

Later career
In the 1990s, Paxton began delving deeply into children's music, recording nine children's albums during the decade. In July 1994, Paxton was invited to perform at a folk festival in Israel, "Jacob's Ladder", and he played there and a series of concerts around Israel accompanied by folk guitarist and harmonica player Shay Tochner. Paxton recorded a live album in 1996 with his good friend Jim Rooney, and it contained some new comical songs about current events. Eric Weissberg, John Gorka, Robin and Linda Williams, among others, also performed; and the album was titled Live: For the Record. In the mid-1990s, Paxton also began to give more workshops in songwriting.

In 2000, Paxton once again began to write more of the topical songs that had been prominent during his early career. In 2001, he released an album with Anne Hills entitled Under American Skies, and in 2002, he released an album of all new songs entitled Looking for the Moon (Appleseed Recordings). At the time of its release, Paxton was quoted saying that it might be his best album so far. Looking for the Moon contains the song "The Bravest", which is about the firefighters who gave their lives while trying to save others in New York City on September 11, 2001. Around this time, Paxton began writing and releasing his "Short Shelf Life Songs" about current events for free download on his website. Paxton wrote a number of topical protest songs that were critical of the Bush administration's actions. In 2007, he rewrote a song of his from 1965 entitled "Lyndon Johnson Told The Nation", about the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and transformed it into "George W. Told The Nation", about the surge in the Iraq war. In 2007, Tom Paxton became one of the founding members of the Copyright Alliance, whose purpose is to promote the cultural and economic benefits of copyrights.

In 2008, Paxton rewrote his song "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler", about the federal loan guarantee to Chrysler in 1979, as "I Am Changing My Name to Fannie Mae", about the 700 billion dollar "bailout of the U.S. financial system". He continues to perform yearly tours of the United States and UK.

In March 2015, Paxton released the studio album Redemption Road. In January 2017, Paxton released Boat in the Water, his sixty-third album.

Paxton is now in "semi-retirement", though he still performs occasional shows and did a ten-venue UK tour in 2017.

Paxton toured the UK in 2018 and 2019 (11 venues), accompanied by The Don Juans. His shows featured his 2011 song "What if, no matter" ("He couldn't lay his hands on a gun").

Personal life and family
Paxton married his wife, Midge (born Margaret Anne Cummings, February 23, 1945), in 1963. They have two daughters, Jennifer and Kate, and three grandsons. Jennifer is a history professor who has published courses for The Teaching Company. Midge Paxton died June 1, 2014, after a long illness.

He has described his political views in the following way: "My own politics more or less resembled Will Rogers's politics. He had said that he belonged to no organized political party — he was a Democrat ... being young and impassioned almost automatically put me over on the radical side of most issues. Being older, I find myself still more or less there, somewhat to my surprise."

Awards, honors, and nominations
In February 2002, Paxton was honored with the ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award in Folk Music. A few days later, he received three Wammies (Washington, DC, Area Music Awards); as Best Male Vocalist in the "traditional folk" and "children's music" categories, and for Best Traditional Folk Recording of the Year for "Under American Skies" (2001).

Paxton has been nominated four times for Grammy Awards, all since 2002. He was first nominated in 2002 for his children's album, Your Shoes, My Shoes. The following year, Looking for the Moon received a 2003 nomination for "Best Contemporary Folk Album". Live in the UK (2005), received a 2006 Grammy nomination in the "Best Traditional Folk Album" category. Most recently, his 2008 album Comedians and Angels received a 2009 nomination, also in the "Best Traditional Folk Album" category. Paxton was honored with a 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy, and the formal announcement was made during the 51st Annual Grammy Awards telecast, which aired on February 8, 2009.

In 2004, the Martin Guitar Company introduced the HD-40LSH Tom Paxton Signature Edition acoustic guitar in his honor. In 2005, Paxton received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting at BBC Radio 2's Folk Awards at London's Brewery Arts Centre. In 2006, Paxton received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance. On January 22, 2007, Paxton was honored with an official Parliamentary tribute at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom at the start of his 2007 UK tour. On May 3, 2008, Paxton was honored with a special lifetime tribute from the World Folk Music Association, and a concert was held at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center at Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria Campus, in Alexandria, Virginia.

Writings

 * 2000: The Honor of Your Company; by Tom Paxton New York, NY: Cherry Lane Music Company ISBN 1-57560-144-3

title: Tom Paxton


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United States National Agricultural Library

The United States National Agricultural Library (NAL) is one of the world's largest agricultural research libraries, and serves as a national library of the United States and as the library of the United States Department of Agriculture. Located in Beltsville, Maryland, it is one of five national libraries of the United States (along with the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the National Transportation Library, and the National Library of Education). It is also the coordinator for the Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC), a national network of state land-grant institutions and coordinator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) field libraries.

NAL was established on May 15, 1862, by the signing of the Organic Act by Abraham Lincoln. It served as a departmental library until 1962, when the Secretary of Agriculture officially designated it as the National Agricultural Library. The first librarian, appointed in 1867, was Aaron B. Grosh, one of the founders of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry.

History

NAL was established as the U.S. Department of Agriculture Library on May 15, 1862, by the signing of the Organic Act by Abraham Lincoln. In 1863, the library's collection comprised 1,000 volumes that had been transferred from the U.S. Patent Office's Agricultural Division. By 1889, the library's collection had increased to 20,000 volumes, and a librarian from Amherst College was hired to create a classification system for the library's collection. At this time, the library was located on the second floor of the Department of Agriculture's main building. In 1893, William Cutter was hired as Librarian of the Department, and he began a reorganization effort to modernize the library and improve its effectiveness. His primary achievement was consolidating the library's collection of 38,000 volumes into one central library; previously, more than half of the library's collection was held in divisional libraries across the United States. By 1900, the library's collection contained 68,000 volumes, and in 1915, the library was moved to a larger facility in the Bieber Office Building at 1358 B Street SW, Washington, DC. The library moved again in 1932 to facilities in the USDA's South Building on Independence Avenue.

In 1934, the collection reached 250,000 volumes in size, and the library began participating in the Bibliofilm Service, which, along with the American Documentation Institute and the Science Service, supplied microfilm copies of articles to scientists. This was the first large-scale attempt by a library to provide copies of library materials to patrons rather than the original documents, and during its first year, over 300,000 copies were distributed.

During World War II, the Department of Agriculture underwent reorganization to address wartime needs. The library, which had been decentralized since 1920, was consolidated into a central facility under the direction of Department Librarian Ralph R. Shaw.

On May 23, 1962, the 100th anniversary of the library's establishment, Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman officially designated the library as the National Agricultural Library, making it the third national library in the United States. In 1964, funds were appropriated by Congress to begin planning for a new library facility in Beltsville, Maryland, on the grounds of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. Construction on the new facility began in 1965, and it first opened in 1969. In 2000, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman designated the building as the Abraham Lincoln Building.

Librarians of the Department of Agriculture

 * Aaron B. Grosh (1867–1869)
 * Stuart Eldridge (1869–1871)
 * John B. Russell (1871–1877)
 * Ernestine H. Stevens (1877–1893)
 * William P. Cutter (1893–1901)
 * Josephine Clark (1901–1907)
 * Claribel Barnett (1907–1940)
 * Ralph R. Shaw (1940–1954)
 * Foster E. Mohrhardt (1954–1968)
 * John Sherrod (1968–1973)
 * Richard Farley (1973–1983)
 * Joseph Howard (1983–1994)
 * Pamela Q.J. Andre (1994–2002)
 * Peter Young (2002–2008)
 * Simon Y. Liu (2010–2014)
 * Paul M. Wester Jr. (2015–)

Facilities
The main library is housed in the Abraham Lincoln Building, a seventeen-story facility on the grounds of the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland. NAL also operates a Washington, D.C., branch known as the DC Reference Center, which is located in the USDA's South Building.

Paul L. Byrne Agricultural Teaching and Research Center
The Paul L. Byrne Agricultural Teaching and Research Center is located at California State University, Chico and is part of the 800-acre Paul L. Byrne Memorial University Farm.

PubAg
PubAg is search engine that gives the public enhanced access to research published by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists, and also to agriculturally relevant citations from the scientific literature. At its launch on January 13, 2015, PubAg made over 40,000 publications by USDA scientists available, and provided access to an additional 300,000 citations.

Ag Data Commons
Ag Data Commons is a repository and catalog for scientific datasets that are associated with publications by the USDA's agricultural research service and other institutions. The data included is funded by the USDA, either in whole or in part.

LCA Commons
Hosted by the National Agricultural Library, the U.S. Life Cycle Assessment Commons (LCA Commons) is a collaboration among federal agencies, private industry, and academic researchers. The intention of LCA Commons is to aggregate and archive life cycle inventory data that represent US economic activities, making it freely available for re-use. It is geared for use in LCAs, supporting policy assessment, decision-making in technology implementation, and public disclosure of comparative product or technology assertions.

i5K Workspace @ NAL
The i5k Workspace@NAL provides genome projects resulting from the i5k initiative with a space to display and share genome assemblies and gene models. In particular, the Workspace is geared towards research groups that do not have the resources to display the genome assembly and its features.

AGRICOLA
NAL maintains AGRICOLA (AGRICultural OnLine Access), the largest bibliographic database of agricultural literature in the world. It contains more than 4.1 million records for publications dating as far back as the 15th century. 78 percent of the records are for journal articles and book chapters, while 22 percent cover full-length books, journals, maps, electronic resources, and audiovisual materials. The database indexes publications from many disciplines related to agriculture, including veterinary sciences, entomology, forestry, aquaculture and fisheries, economics, food and human nutrition, and environmental sciences.

AGRICOLA originated in 1942 as the Bibliography of Agriculture, a printed index of article citation records. It was first digitized in 1970, when records were placed on magnetic tapes rather than reproducing them manually. The name was changed to AGRICOLA at this time, and the records were made available through database vendors such as Dialog and OCLC. In 1998, it became available to the general public for free on the World Wide Web.

National Agricultural Library Special Collections
The library's Special Collections houses rare materials related to the history of agriculture, including books, manuscripts, paintings and drawings, seed catalogs, agricultural photographs, and posters from the 1500s to the present. The subjects covered include horticulture, entomology, poultry sciences, and natural history.

Pomological Watercolor Collection
Within the Special Collections, the Pomological Watercolor Collection holds over 7,500 original watercolors on botanical subjects created by USDA artists between 1886 and 1942, almost half of which are apples. It is a unique resource documenting new introductions of fruit and nut cultivars as well as specimens discovered by USDA's plant explorers, representing 38 plant families in all. Some of these watercolors were published in the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture in the 1902–1913 period, but many were never published at all.

Some 65 different artists are represented in the collection, of whom one-third were women. Just 9 of the 65 are responsible for more than 90% of the total: Deborah Griscom Passmore (over 1500 watercolors), Amanda Newton (over 1200), Mary Daisy Arnold, (over 1000), Royal Charles Steadman (over 850), J. Marion Shull (over 750), Ellen Isham Schutt (over 700), Bertha Heiges (over 600), Elsie E. Lower (over 250), and William Henry Prestele (over 100). Many of the pictures in the Pomological Watercolor Collection are available online through the library's Digital Repository (see link below).

National Agricultural Library Digital Repository
The NAL Digital Repository, created in April 2006, serves as a digital archive of historical USDA documents. The repository contains over 600,000 pages of digitized texts. Publications contained in the repository include the issues of the Journal of Agricultural Research from 1913–1949 and the archives of the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture dating back to 1894.

Information Centers
NAL also houses several specialized information centers, which provide access to comprehensive and essential information resources focusing on the specific aspects of agricultural subjects. In addition to the general reference services available at NAL, each center offers Internet access to resources enhancing information availability and dissemination. The centers have staff available to serve customers on-site as well as by phone, fax or email. The Information Centers at the National Agricultural Library include:

 * Alternative Farming Systems Information Center
 * Animal Welfare Information Center
 * Food and Nutrition Information Center
 * Nutrition.gov
 * Food Safety Research Information Office Center
 * National Invasive Species Information Center
 * Rural Information Center
 * Water and Agriculture Information Center

Animal Welfare Information Center
The Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC) is a centralized resource of information products, services, and activities that provide information on animal welfare in research, teaching, testing, and exhibition as specified by the Improved Standards for Laboratory Animals Act of 1985. The 1985 Act was an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 (AWA), and mandated an information service at the NAL to provide information on employee training, preventing duplication of animal experiments, and improving animal experimentation methods by reducing or replacing animal use and minimizing animals' pain and distress. The center later became known as AWIC in 1986.

The AWIC provides educational outreach through its website, free in-person and virtual workshops and trainings, the USDA NAL Twitter feed, and monthly newsletters. Outreach topics focus on the AWA and its amendments, the Three Rs principles (reduction, replacement, and refinement of animal use), and alternatives literature searching. This information is available to the public, but is specifically targeted towards scientists, veterinarians, animal care staff, librarians, and students. AWIC also provides free literature searching services upon request.

AWIC supports the research community by assisting with their alternatives literature search, which is one way it meets the AWA requirement to consider alternatives. Scientists working with animals are required to provide their institution's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs) with documentation demonstrating that alternatives to painful or distressful procedures were considered and that experiments are not unnecessarily duplicative. These literature searches help identify 3Rs alternative methods to and within animal experimentation.

Food Safety Research Information Office Center
The Food Safety Research Information Office (FSRIO) collects, organizes, and disseminates food safety information in accordance with the Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1998. The Act mandated that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) establish an office to collect and maintain information on food safety studies to prevent duplicative research projects and to assist the government and private research organizations in determining research priorities. The National Agricultural Library formally launched the office on July 2, 2001.

FSRIO's mission also includes disseminating information to the general public  on publicly funded (including university investigations) and, as much as possible, privately funded research initiatives. The office assists the Federal Government and private research entities with assessing food safety research needs; while also supporting the research community through organizing, collecting, and disseminating food safety research information. FSRIO also makes food safety investigations conducted through the Agricultural Research Service and from across other U.S. Department of Agriculture agencies available to researchers as well as projects from the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

FSRIO maintains a searchable database on more than 1,700 food safety research products dating from 1996 to the present. The collection is indexed using the National Agricultural Library Thesaurus (NALT). The Thesaurus and its glossary are online vocabulary tools of agricultural and related terms in English and Spanish cooperatively produced through NAL, USDA, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, and other Latin American agricultural institutions in the Agriculture Information and Documentation Service of the Americas (SIDALC). In 2016, FSRIO created a repository of "Meet the Expert" videos that include content from a variety of sources. The videos highlight the latest food safety research applications conducted at USDA and other federal agencies.

Food and Nutrition Information Center
In 1971, the Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) was established as a national repository of training and educational materials for the staff of USDA's Child Nutrition Programs (e.g. school lunch programs). The Food and Agriculture Act of 1977 furthered the mission of FNIC also to be a resource for state education agencies and interested members of the general public. FNIC covers topics related to dietary guidelines and supplements, and food composition. It also maintains a database of extensive food, nutrition, and related topics and resource lists. Currently, the FNIC website contains links to over 2,500 current and reliable resources on nutrition and is regularly updated by a staff of registered dietitians.

FNIC offers a Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) (established Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine) calculator for daily nutrient recommendations, healthy recipes, educational materials, professional resources, food labeling information, and consumer food safety information, among other resources. In 2019, FNIC expanded their Spanish language website, "En Español” which offers over forty web pages translated into Spanish. With the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, FNIC expanded the site to offer a recipe page with recipes from both Federal and Cooperative Extension sites; the recipe library is updated regularly.

Nutrition.gov
Nutrition.gov is a USDA-sponsored website created and maintained by the Food and Nutrition Information Center. The website receives content guidance from a USDA working group of scientific experts in food and nutrition and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Launched in 2004, Nutrition.gov is a part of the USDA's Obesity Intervention Plan and is funded by the Research, Education and Economics (REE) mission area of USDA. Nutrition.gov provides consumers with access to up-to-date, reliable information about food, healthy eating, food safety, and physical activity.

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


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Treaty of Georgievsk

The Treaty of Georgievsk (Георгиевский трактат; გეორგიევსკის ტრაქტატი) was a bilateral treaty concluded between the Russian Empire and the east Georgian kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti on July 24, 1783. The treaty established eastern Georgia as a protectorate of Russia, which guaranteed its territorial integrity and the continuation of its reigning Bagrationi dynasty in return for prerogatives in the conduct of Georgian foreign affairs. By this, eastern Georgia abjured any form of dependence on Persia (who had been its suzerain for centuries) or another power, and every new Georgian monarch of Kartli-Kakheti would require the confirmation and investiture of the Russian tsar.

Terms
Under articles I, II, IV, VI and VII of the treaty's terms, Russia's empress became the official and sole suzerain of Kartli-Kakheti's rulers, guaranteeing the Georgians’ internal sovereignty and territorial integrity, and promising to "regard their enemies as Her enemies" Each of the Georgian kingdom's tsars would henceforth be obliged to swear allegiance to Russia's emperors, to support Russia in war, and to have no diplomatic communications with other nations without Russia's prior consent.

Given Georgia's history of invasions from the south, an alliance with Russia may have been seen as the only way to discourage or resist Persian and Ottoman aggression, while also establishing a link to Western Europe. In the past, Georgian rulers had not only accepted formal domination by Turkish and Persian emperors, but had also often converted to Islam, and sojourned at their capitals. Thus it was neither a break with Georgian tradition nor a unique capitulation of independence for Kartli-Kakheti to trade vassalage for peace with a powerful neighbor. Though Orthodox Christian, Russia was otherwise culturally alien, in the treaty's preamble and article VIII the bond of Orthodox Christianity between Georgians and Russians was acknowledged, which tied the two, and Georgia's primate, the Catholicos, became Russia's eighth permanent archbishop and a member of Russia's Holy Synod.

Other treaty provisions included mutual guarantees of an open border between the two realms for travelers, emigrants and merchants (articles 10, 11), while Russia undertook "to leave the power for internal administration, law and order, and the collection of taxes [under the] complete will and use of His Serene Highness the Tsar, forbidding [Her Majesty’s] Military and Civil Authorities to intervene in any [domestic laws or commands]". (article VI). Article III created an investiture ceremony whereby the Georgian kings of Kartli-Kakheti, upon swearing fealty to Russia's emperors, would receive the royal regalia.

The treaty was negotiated on behalf of Russia by Lieutenant-General Pavel Potemkin, commander of Russia's troops in Astrakhan and a delegate and cousin of General Prince Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin, who was the official Russian plenipotentiary. Kartli-Kakheti's official delegation consisted of a Kartlian and a Kakhetian, both of high rank: Ioane, Prince of Mukhrani, (referred to in the Russian version of the treaty as "Prince Ivan Konstantinovich Bagration"), Constable of the Left-Hand Army and son-in-law of the Georgian king, and Adjutant-General Garsevan Chavchavadze, Governor of Kazakhi (aka Prince Garsevan Revazovich Chavchavadze, member of a Kakhetian princely family of the third rank, vassals of the Abashidze princes). These emissaries officially signed the treaty at the fortress of Georgievsk in the North Caucasus on July 24, 1783. The Georgian King Erekle II and the Empress Catherine the Great then formally ratified it in 1784.

Aftermath
The results of the Treaty of Georgievsk proved disappointing for the Georgians. King Erekle's adherence to it prompted Persia's new ruler, Agha Mohammad Khan, who had sent several ultimatums, to invade, as he sought to re-establish Persia's traditional suzerainty over the region. Russia did nothing to help the Georgians during the disastrous Battle of Krtsanisi in 1795, which left Tbilisi sacked and Georgia ravaged (including the west Georgian kingdom of Imereti, ruled by Erekle II's grandson, King Solomon II). Belatedly, Catherine declared war on Persia and sent an army to Transcaucasia. But her death shortly thereafter (November 1796) put an end to Russia's Persian Expedition of 1796, as her successor, Paul, turned to other strategic objectives. Persia's Shahanshah next contemplated the removal of the Christian population from eastern Georgia and eastern Armenia, launching the campaign from Karabagh. His goal was frustrated not by Russian resistance, but by a Persian assassin in 1797.

On January 14, 1798, King Erekle II was succeeded on the throne by his eldest son, George XII (1746–1800) who, on February 22, 1799, recognized his own eldest son, Tsarevich David (Davit Bagrationi-batonishvili), 1767–1819, as official heir apparent. In the same year Russian troops were stationed in Kartli-Kakheti. Pursuant to article VI of the treaty, Emperor Paul confirmed David's claim to reign as the next king on April 18, 1799. But strife broke out among King George's many sons and those of his late father over the throne, Erekle II having changed the succession order at the behest of his third wife, Queen Darejan Dadiani, to favor the accession of younger brothers of future kings over their own sons. The resulting dynastic upheaval prompted King George to secretly invite Paul I to invade Kartli-Kakheti, to subdue the Bagratid princes, and to govern the kingdom from St. Petersburg, on the condition that George and his descendants be allowed to continue to reign nominally – in effect, offering to mediatize the Bagratid dynasty under the Romanov emperors. Continued pressure from Persia, also prompted George XII's request for Russian intervention.

Paul tentatively accepted this offer, but before negotiations could be finalized changed his mind and issued a decree on December 18, 1800 annexing Kartli-Kakheti to Russia and deposing the Bagratids. Paul himself died shortly thereafter. It is said that his successor, Emperor Alexander I, considered retracting the annexation in favor of a Bagratid heir, but being unable to identify one likely to retain the crown, on September 12, 1801 Alexander proceeded to confirm annexation. Meanwhile, King George had died on December 28, 1800, before learning that he had lost his throne. By the following April, Russian troops took control of the country's administration and in February 1803 Tsarevich David Bagrationi was escorted by Russian troops from Tbilisi to St. Petersburg. He was pensioned, joined the Russian Senate, and retained his royal style until May 6, 1833 when he was demoted from tsarevich (the Russian equivalent of batonishvili) to "prince" (knyaz), along with other members of the deposed dynasty, following an abortive uprising in Georgia led by David's uncle, Prince Alexandre Bagrationi.

The Russians then ended the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813 with a victory. By the Treaty of Gulistan (1813), Qajar Persia was forced to officially cede eastern Georgia to the Russian Empire.

Paul's annexation of east Georgia and exile of the Bagratids remain controversial: Soviet historians would later maintain that the treaty was an act of "brotherhood of the Russian and Georgian peoples" that justified annexation to protect Georgia both from its historical foreign persecutors and its "decadent" native dynasty. Nonetheless, no bilateral amendment had been ratified altering article VI sections 2 and 3 of the 1784 treaty, which obligated the Russian emperor "to preserve His Serene Highness Tsar Irakli Teimurazovich and the Heirs and descendants to his House, uninterrupted on the Throne of the Kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti...forbidding [Her Majesty’s] Military and Civil Authorities to intervene in any [domestic laws or commands]."

Legacy
Ironically, that clause of the treaty would also be recalled during obscure late 20th century debates about restoration of the Russian monarchy. In 1948, Vladimir Kirillovich Romanov, (1917–1992), pretender to Russia's throne, married Princess Leonida Georgievna Bagration-Moukhranskaya, (born 1914), a descendant of the Mukhranbatoni who negotiated the 1783 treaty, and thus a member of the once royal House of Bagrationi. The marriage produced an only child, Maria Vladimirovna, (born 1956), who has taken up her father's claim as Russia's de jure monarch. She and her son, George (born of her former marriage to Prince Franz Wilhelm of Prussia), have pretended to the Romanovs’ old grand ducal title. Her supporters argue that her father's marriage to Leonida, alone among those contracted by Romanov males in exile since 1917, complied with the Romanov house law that required marriage to a princess of a "royal or ruling family" in order for descendants to claim the throne. That law also provided that upon extinction of all male dynasts, female Romanovs born of dynastic mothers become eligible to inherit the crown. Based on this rationale, Maria purports to have the strongest legal claim to the Russian throne in the event that Russia ever restores its monarchy.

Critics deny that Princess Leonida could be reckoned of royal rank by Romanov standards (the title of prince was one of nobility, not dynasty in Russia, except in the imperial family). They point out that the Bagration-Mukhranskys were demoted from dynastic status and incorporated into Russia's ordinary nobility by 1833: Though the princess descended patrilineally from a dynasty that had ruled as kings in Armenia and Georgia since the Middle Ages, it had been reduced to the status of Russian nobility for over a century prior to the Russian Revolution. Leonida's branch of the Bagratids, although genealogically senior, had not been regnant in the male line as kings of Georgia since 1505. Members of the family accepted court appointments under Russia's emperors incompatible with claims to dynastic dignity. Moreover, when an imperial Romanov princess wed Prince Constantine Bagration-Mukhransky in 1911, the marriage was officially deemed non-dynastic by Nicholas II, and the bride, Tatiana Konstantinova Romanova, was obliged to renounce her succession rights.

While these facts are admitted, it is counter-argued that the demotion of the Bagratids, including the Mukhrani branch, violated the Treaty of Georgievsk and therefore failed to legally deprive any Bagrationi of royal rank. That fact, it is claimed, distinguishes Leonida from princesses of other once-sovereign families of the Russian Empire who married Romanovs. Nonetheless, it was the agnatic seniority of the Mukhranbatoni’s descent from Georgia’s former kings, rather than the broken treaty, that Vladimir Kirilovich cited in a 1946 decree recognizing the Bagration-Mukhranskys as dynastic for marital purposes, presumably so as to avoid repudiating the Russian Empire's annexation of Georgia.

The language of article VI guaranteed the Georgian throne not only to King Erekle II and his direct issue, but also embraced "the Heirs and descendants to his House". On the other hand, article IX offered to extend no more than "the same privileges and advantages granted to the Russian nobility" to Georgia's princes and nobles. Yet first on the list of families submitted to Russia to enjoy noble (not royal) status was that of the Mukhranbatoni. That list included twenty-one other princely families and a larger number of untitled nobles, most of whom were enrolled in Russia's nobility during the 19th century. The claims made on Maria's behalf have long embittered Romanov descendants who belong to the Romanov Family Association. Many of them descend matrilineally from noble Russian princesses, some of whose families were also of "dynastic" origin, but cannot claim that a Treaty of Georgievsk has "preserved" their "dynasticity".

In 1983, the Soviet authorities celebrated the bicentennial of the Treaty of Georgievsk, provoking protests from anti-Soviet Georgian dissidents. In this period, several monuments were erected to commemorate the treaty, among them the Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument along the Georgian Military Road. Georgia's underground Samizdat publication, Sakartvelo (საქართველო), dedicated a special issue to the event, emphasizing imperial Russia's disregard of the key agreements in the treaty. Underground political groups disseminated leaflets calling on Georgians to boycott the celebrations, and several young Georgian activists were arrested by the Soviet police.

title: Treaty of Georgievsk


text:
Krzysztof Wodiczko

Krzysztof Wodiczko (born April 16, 1943) is a Polish artist known for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. He has realized more than 80 such public projections in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

War, conflict, trauma, memory, and communication in the public sphere are some of the major themes of his work. His practice, known as Interrogative Design, combines art and technology as a critical design practice in order to highlight marginal social communities and add legitimacy to cultural issues that are often given little design attention.

He lives and works in New York City and teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is currently professor in residence of art and the public domain for the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). Wodiczko was formerly director of the Interrogative Design Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was a professor in the Visual Arts Program since 1991. He also teaches as visiting professor in the Psychology Department at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology.

Early life
Wodiczko, son of Polish orchestra conductor Bohdan Wodiczko, as well having a Jewish mother, was born in 1943 during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and grew up in post-war communist Poland. In 1967 while still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, he began collaborating with director Jozef Patkowski and the Experimental Studio on sound performances. He graduated in 1968 with an M.F.A. degree in industrial design and worked for the next two years at UNITRA, Warsaw, designing popular electronic products. From 1970 until his emigration to Canada in 1977, he designed professional optical, mechanical, and electronic instruments at the Polish Optical Works.

In 1969, Wodiczko collaborated with Andrzej Dluzniewski and Wojciech Wybieralski on a design proposal for a memorial to victims of Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. He also performed with Personal Instrument in the streets of Warsaw and participated in the Biennale de Paris as a leader of a group architectural project. He was a teaching assistant for two years, 1969–70, in the Basic Design Program at the Academy of Fine Arts before moving to the Warsaw Polytechnic Institute, where he taught until 1976. Throughout the 1970s he continued his collaborations on sound and music performances with various musicians and artists.

In 1971, Wodiczko began work on Vehicle, which he tested the following year on the streets of Warsaw. In 1972 he created his first solo installation: Corridor at Galeria Wspolczesna, Warsaw. The following year he began exhibiting with Galeria Foksal, Warsaw. In 1975, Wodiczko traveled for the first time to the United States where he was artist-in-residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana and exhibited at N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago. He participated again in the Biennale de Paris, this time as a solo artist.

In 1976, Wodiczko began a two-year artist-in-residence program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He emigrated from Poland in 1977, establishing residency in Canada teaching at the University of Guelph in Ontario, and began working with New York art dealer Hal Bromm. In 1979 he taught at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and continued teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design until 1981. From 1981 to 1982 he was artist in residence at the South Australian School of Art (currently part of the University of South Australia in Adelaide). In 1983, Wodiczko established residency in New York City teaching at the New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury. The following year, he received Canadian citizenship and in 1986 resident-alien status in the United States. He began teaching at MIT in 1991, maintaining his residence in New York City while working in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Projections
Wodiczko began developing his public projections in 1980 interfacing the facades of urban architecture – whether public monuments, public buildings, or corporate architecture – with images of the body to juxtapose the physical space of architecture with the psycho-social space of the public realm. "In the process of our socialization," the artist writes, "the very first contact with a public building is no less important than the moment of social confrontation with the father, through which our sexual role and place in society [are] constructed. Early socialization through patriarchal sexual discipline is extended by the later socialization through the institutional architecturalization of our bodies. Thus the spirit of the father never dies, continuously living as it does in the building which was, is, and will be embodying, structuring, mastering, representing, and reproducing his 'eternal' and 'universal' presence as a patriarchal wisdom-body of power."

In an often cited example, Wodiczko projected an image of the hand of Ronald Reagan, in formal dress shirt with cufflinks, posed in the pledge of allegiance, onto the north face of the AT&T Long Lines Building in the financial district of New York City four days before the presidential election of 1984. "By creating a spectacle in which a fragment of the governing body, the presidential hand, was asked to stand for corporate business," writes Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, "Wodiczko offered a suggestion about the class identity of those forces that – hidden under the guise of God, State, and Nation – are the actual receivers of the pledge of allegiance." In subsequent projections, the artist layered iconic representations of global capitalism, militarism, and consumerism with images of fragments of the body to suggest a consideration of our relation to public space that is contingent both to history and social and political ideologies of the present.

Art historian Patricia C. Phillips writes of the artist's work: "In his public projects of the past decade, Wodiczko has conducted a series of active mediations that combine significant public sites, tough subjects, and aggressive statements that are only possible because of their temporality. He applies the immediate force of performance to social and political problems. The rhythms of extenuating events and the brevity of each installation give his projected episodes the intensity of public, political demonstrations.  His thoroughly staged, illuminated images often require months of preparation, yet they seem like surprise attacks – fiercely focused parasitic invasions of renowned institutional hosts."

Perhaps the best-known and most popular intervention of this nature was performed when the artist created a projection for Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square, London in 1985. The South African government was at that time petitioning the British government for financial support. Wodiczko turned one of his projectors away from Nelson's column projecting a swastika onto the tympanum of the temple-like façade of South Africa House, the South African diplomatic mission to the United Kingdom. Though the image remained only two hours before the police suspended the intervention as a "public nuisance" it lingered in public awareness much longer. It is frequently cited at conferences, in classroom discussions, and other forum as an example of successful urban guerrilla cultural tactics – that is, art and/or performance that is waged by unexpected means for the purpose of engaging an active response.

In explaining the potential of cultural projects in the public sphere, the artist writes: "I try to understand what is happening in the city, how the city can operate as a communicative environment… It is important to understand the circumstances under which communication is reduced or destroyed, and under what possible new conditions it can be provoked to reappear. How can aesthetic practice in the built environment contribute to critical discourse between the inhabitants themselves and the environment? How can aesthetic practice make existing symbolic structures respond to contemporary events?" For Wodiczko, disrupting the complacency of perception is imperative for passersby to stop, reflect, and perhaps even change their thinking; so he built his visual repertoire to evoke both the historical past and the political present.

In this way, Wodiczko's visual repertoire for his projections expanded beyond the body (ears, eyes, and hands as indicators of human sensibility) to include chains, missiles, tanks, coins, cameras, boots, swastikas, guns, candles, food baskets, and corporate logos. "In these projections," writes Kathleen MacQueen, "the artist alternates between symbolic, iconic, and indexical images – the principal relations an image can have to its subject, according to the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce – that is, predicated on a cultural reference, a physical resemblance, or a physical relation respectively. In many instances they scramble all relations: the hand, an index of the body – someone's body – is also an iconic representation of communication that might symbolically represent an open or closed ideological position." The reductive, visual signs monumentally-sized to fit the facades on which they are projected, are not meant to read as logos for a political agenda, instead they suggest a perceptual contradiction to disrupt the kind of assumptions that beset the casual passerby.

Wodiczko's visual interventions into public space are intended to alter what Jacques Rancière would later term the realm of the sensible. When the public views its urban monuments with sidelong glances out of the corners of its eyes, it accepts the monuments as natural and uncoded. By intercepting vision with projections, Wodiczko replaces an unconsidered reception with a critical one. This is the lesson of the Russian Formalists, of Bertolt Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt and of Friedrich Nietzsche's understanding of Goethe's belief that knowledge must quicken activity rather than lead to complacence.

The artist began to integrate direct activism into his projects in the late 1980s with his vehicles and his instruments, articles of design that would act as band-aids – not only healing social wounds but perhaps more importantly calling attention to them.

Vehicles
As homelessness reached over 100,000 in late 1980, Wodiczko used the ‘homeless vehicle’ as a source of discussion and discourse. While the artist had produced his first vehicle in Poland with additional conceptual versions designed when he lived in Canada, it was with his Homeless Vehicle Project of 1987–89, that he redirected "attention from the work of art as dissent to the work of art as social action: in this case, the discussions and design collaboration with members of the homeless community to develop both a physical object and a conceptual design that would make their participation in the urban economy visible and self-directed." Wodiczko's cart consisted of “a storage area for personal belongings, a washbasin that doubled as support for a table, a bin to hold cans and bottles, and, beneath its roof, just enough space for a desperate homeless man to sleep” The cart was used in New York and Philadelphia. The art sparked outrage as people thought the cart took up too much space resulting in the audience reaction becoming part of the art itself. The Homeless Vehicle Project was both symbolic and useful: the artist's first work to use a collective process to legitimize the problems of a marginal community "without legitimating the crisis of homelessness." While the public was cautious, the operators of the vehicles took the project seriously. According to Wodiczko, "You see this in certain gestures, certain ways of behaving, speaking, dialoguing, of building up stories, narratives: the homeless become actors, orators, workers, all things which they usually are not. The idea is to let them speak and tell their own stories, to let them be legitimate actors on the urban stage." The attention to testimony as a transformative process while still tentative in the Homeless Vehicle Project became a significant performative process in the artist's Instruments and eventually part of his projections as well. Through this art piece, Wodiczko was able to amplify the issue of homelessness in a society that dehumanizes and strips homeless people of their voice.

Wodiczko created Poliscar in 1991 as a kind of "command center" for communication and community activism – a vehicle equipped with first-aid supplies, video and radio transmission equipment, and tools for everyday survival, it could support legal, medical, and social crisis aid, the mobile units ranging from three to ten miles from a base station. Poliscar was a technological design for the disenfranchised public of the polis or public sphere. Later Wodiczko would merge his vehicles with his projections when working with war veterans (see "Recent Work").

Instruments
Wodiczko created the Personal Instrument in 1969, his first conceptual design work taken into the public sphere. Though he had a degree in industrial design and created popular electronics for a Polish manufacturer, his design philosophy was influenced by Russian constructivism epitomized by the poet/artist Vladimir Mayakovsky's statement, "the streets our brushes, the squares our palettes." The Personal Instrument consisted of a microphone, worn on the forehead, which retrieved sound while photo-receivers in gloves isolated and filtered the sound through the movement of the hand, which was then perceived discriminately by the artist, perceptually confined by the sound-proof headphones. By emphasizing selective listening, vital (under authoritarian restrictions) to a Polish citizen's survival, Wodiczko intimated the prevalence of censored speech, registering "dissent of a system that fostered one-directional critical thinking – listening over speech."

After his work with the homeless community in New York City and Philadelphia, Wodiczko returned to the possibilities of smaller, personal instruments as conceptual and functional objects to offset the problems of communication for urban migrants. Initially based on the iconic staff of the wandering prophet, the Alien Staff (1992 and its variant, 1992/93) was designed to mediate conversation between aliens (the juridical term designating all immigrants whether of legal or illegal status) and the franchised population of an urban environment. The staff not only presented an object of curiosity to passersby, causing them to interrupt their pace long enough to ask questions, it also became a repository of narrative recording and objects both sacred or necessary (e.g., green cards or family mementoes) to the lives of the immigrants. Influenced by Julia Kristeva's Strangers to Ourselves (1991), Wodiczko developed new equipment in 1993 that focused even more directly on democratic speech rights for the performative stranger. Mouthpiece (Porte-parole) was intended to act as a protective zone so that the immigrant could expand her narrative outward into a collective experience thereby pulling her out of isolation. The video technology, to be worn over the mouth, makes strange the familiar thereby creating a point of entry for passersby to enter into conversation with the immigrant. Between 1993 and 1997, thirteen culturally displaced persons used variants of the Mouthpiece in Paris, Malmö, Helsinki, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Trélazé, and Angers.

Xenology
In its earliest sense, the ancient Greek xeinos was the guest who received hospitality, as opposed to the xeinodokos or "host", who welcomed strangers and provided them with hospitality. It is from this perspective, that of the immigrant, the stranger within a society, as opposed to that of society or the xeinodokos viewing the outsider, that Wodiczko employs the term xenology: "Xenology is the art of refusal to be fused, an art of delimitization, deidentification, and disintegration" ("Xenology: Immigrant Instruments", exhibition statement distributed at the Galerie Lelong, New York, 1996). Wodiczko calls xenology "a new, nomadic, and yet undeveloped form of understanding and expression". Like the Eleatic Stranger (Xenos) in Plato's The Sophist, the vehicle of Wodiczko's xenology is a "nomadic Sophist", a "practitioner of democracy" who "recreate[s] an agora or forum each time he or she wishes to speak or listen."

Recent work
While working on Porte-parole in Europe, Wodiczko received an invitation from the filmmaker Andrzej Wajda to participate in an urban festival in Kraków using for the first time powerful Barco NV video projectors. Working with the Women's Center, he merged for the first time the testimonial work that had evolved from his work with instruments with the visual impact of his well-known large-scale public projections. Testimony of domestic abuse spoken from the City Hall Tower created shockwaves in an overwhelmingly Catholic culture of denial.

In this way, Wodiczko continued in his testimonial video projections to respond to the needs of urban society's marginal citizens who frequently survive outside the usual boundaries of juridical and social resources. In 2001, he merged the means of his instruments with the purpose of the projections in his Tijuana Projection executed for InSite 2000. In this public intervention, women working in the "maquiladora" industry of Tijuana, Mexico wore media technology designed to project their faces onto El Centro Cultural as they spoke emotionally of incest, police abuse, and work place discrimination in real time. As participants, their parrhesiastic speech was courageously offered at great risk to themselves for the purpose of moral and political change. Through the video projections, Wodiczko continues to develop the potential for aesthetic practice to effect social change as part of a wider discourse on agonistic pluralism prompted by such influences as Chantal Mouffe and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The role of art in understanding and confronting conflict becomes an increasingly significant aspect of both Wodiczko's aesthetic and pedagogical practices. This is true in his continued work with immigrants and his recent work with war veterans in the Veteran Vehicle Project as well as his public lectures and teaching seminars worldwide including his seminar on "Trauma, Conflict, and Art" for the Warsaw School of Social Psychology. Recently, Wodiczko has also created projections for the interiors of cultural spaces as a metaphor for our psychological isolation from broader social and political experience. His 2005 exhibition at Galerie Lelong in New York City, If you see something…, his 2009 installation in the Polish Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale, Guests, position the viewer in relation to the consequences of global capitalism and the conflict produced as a result of the inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities. Krzysztof Wodiczko believes in the necessity for intellectuals to participate actively in society forging, as critic Jan Avgikos points out, "a commitment to resistance and truth-telling that, while often derided as outmoded or impossible, remains a basic human impulse."

"...Out of Here: The Veterans Project"
In 2009, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston exhibited …Out of Here: The Veterans Project. The multimedia installation, which ran from November 4, 2009, to March 28, 2010, filled a dark and empty museum gallery with recorded voices and explosions, along with flashes of light, simulating the experience of a mortar attack in Iraq. On three walls of the gallery, projectors cast two horizontal rows of windows, creating the illusion that viewers were inside a darkened warehouse. The eight-minute audio track started with the bustle of traffic and citizens in an Iraqi city, brought in children's laughter, and subtly overlapped an excerpt from an Al Jazeera broadcast of President Obama speaking about the need to endure in Iraq. Listeners also noted an Islamic call to prayer, forebodingly drowned out by the approach of a helicopter. Without much warning, soldiers began yelling and shooting. When the gunfire ceased, a mother was heard wailing, and the episode ended in ominous silence (voices recorded for Out of Here belonged to a mixture of Iraqi-Americans, United States soldiers, and actors).

In the process of creating Out of Here, Wodiczko opted to expand the dictionary definition of veteran. Traditionally, the term is described as "a person who has served in a military force." Wodiczko has redefined veteran to include anyone who has lived in an area where war was fought at the time they lived there, for example, residents of Iraq from 2003 to 2011, or residents of Germany, England, France, etc. during World War II. The Iraqi-born civilians (veterans, by the artist's definition) who contributed to Out of Here, including the woman who lent her voice to the audio track, offered a perspective altogether different from those of the American military who had been in Iraq. This careful manipulation of the term foreshadows the artist's choice to insert his own thoughts in Out of Here, in addition to culling the testimonies of soldiers and Iraqis. Having lived through World War II in Poland and served in the Polish military during the cold war, Wodiczko is not merely working with veterans; he is one. The artist fulfills both old and new definitions of the word veteran.

One year later, Out of Here was shown at Galerie Lelong in New York City. This second iteration contained an excerpt from a different speech by the President, and mentioned the end of the war and the gradual withdrawal of troops. Speaking on the changes, the artist commented, "It made the work more up to date…but the irony is that this project didn't have to change much." Wodiczko cited the locations, Boston and New York, as sufficient to garner different readings of the work. "The works in Boston and New York have different publics. New York's character and the [art] shows gave Out of Here a big international audience as opposed to the more local audience in Boston." Collectively, these narratives paint a picture of the individual veterans who told them, the larger picture of the Iraq War, and the more subtle clues to the war's repercussions.

"Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection"
For Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection, presented by More Art, Wodiczko engaged with dozens of American war veterans and their family members to explore the traumatic consequences of war. The artist interviewed a total of fourteen participants, recording conversations about war experiences, the difficult return to civilian life, loss, and guilt. These interviews were then edited into a video that was projected on the statue of Abraham Lincoln In Union Square Park.

Prizes and awards

 * 2009 – Golden Medal "Gloria Artist" from the Polish Ministry of Culture for his exceptional contribution to Polish culture.
 * 2009	Medal for the Contribution to the Promotion of Polish Culture Abroad from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 * 2008	Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture.
 * 2007	Katarzyna Kobro Award of the Polish Cultural Institute.
 * 2005	College Art Association artist award for a distinguished body of work.
 * 2004	Kepesz Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 * 1998	4th International Hiroshima Prize for his contribution as an artist to world peace.

Selected publications, essays, and interviews by the artist

 * 2014, "The Transformative Avant-Garde: A Manifest of the Present," Third Text 28:2 (2014): 111–122.
 * 2009, City of Refuge: A 9/11 Memorial. Edited by Mark Jarzombek and Mechtild Widrich. London: Black Dog Publishing.
 * 2009, "Designing for a City of Strangers" in The Design Culture Reader, edited by Ben Highmore, Routledge.
 * 2008, "Questionnaire: Krzysztof Wodiczko." October 123, "In what ways have artists, academics, and cultural institutions responded to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq?" (Winter 2008): 172–179.
 * 2003, "Creating Democracy: A Dialogue with Krzysztof Wodiczko" by Patricia C. Phillips in Art Journal 64, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 33–47.
 * 2003, "The Tijuana Projection, 2001" in Rethinking Marxism 15, no. 3 (July 2003): 422–423.
 * 2002, "Instruments Projections Monuments" in AA Files 43: 31–41.
 * 1999, Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects and Interviews. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999.
 * 1997, "Alien Staff, Krzysztof Wodiczko in Conversation with Bruce Robbins." In Veiled Histories: The Body, Place, and Public Art. Edited by Anna Novakov. New York: San Francisco Art Institute and Critical Press, 1997.
 * 1990, "Projections." Perspecta 26, Theater, Theatricality, and Architecture (1990): 273–287.
 * 1988, "Conversations about a project for a homeless vehicle." October 47 (Winter 1988): 68–76.
 * 1986, "Conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko." With Douglas Crimp, Rosalyn Deutsche and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth. October 38 (Winter 1986): 22–51.
 * 1986, "Krzysztof Wodiczko: Public Projections." October 38 (1986): 3-22.

Selected catalogs

 * 2009, Guests/Goscie. With John Rajchman, Bozena Czubak, and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth. Milan and New York: Charta.
 * 2005, Krzysztof Wodiczko: Projekcje Publiczne, Public Projections 1996-2004. With contributions by Anna Smolak, Malgorzata Gadomska, Dariusz Dolinski, et al., The Bunker Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, Kraków.
 * 1998, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, July–September.
 * 1995, Krzysztof Wodiczko: Projects and Public Projections 1969-1995, De Appel Foundation.
 * 1995, Sztuka Publiczna, Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw.
 * 1994, Art public, art critique, Paris.
 * 1992, Public Address: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
 * 1991, The Homeless Vehicle Project. With David Lurie, edited by Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Kyoto Shoin.
 * 1990, Krzysztof Wodiczko: New York City Tableau, Tompkins Square, The Homeless Vehicle Project, Exit Art, New York City.
 * 1987, Counter-Monuments: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Public Projections with Katy Kline and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, List Visual Arts Center.

Selected critical and scholarly studies

 * 2014, Marc James Léger, "Aesthetic Responsibility: A Conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko on the Transformative Avant-Garde," Third Text 28:2 (2014): 123–136.
 * 2014, Kathleen MacQueen, "Casting Shadows: Krzysztof Wodiczko's If You See Something..." in Tactical Response: Art in an Age of Terror (Agon Press, 2014) 103–171.
 * 2012, Blake J. Ruehrwein, "Wodiczko's Veterans: Artist, Institution, and Audience in ...Out of Here: The Veterans Project," M.A. Thesis, City College of New York, Dec 2012.
 * 2011, Duncan McCorquodale, ed. Krzysztof Wodiczko, with contributions by Dick Hebdige, Denis Hollier, and Lisa Saltzman, Black Dog Publishing.
 * 2009, Eva Marxen, "Therapeutic Thinking in Contemporary Art or Psychotherapy in the Arts" in The Arts in Psychotherapy 36: 131–139.
 * 2008–09, Ewa Lajer-Burchardt, "Interiors at Risk: Precarious Spaces in Contemporary Art" in Harvard Design Magazine 29 (Fall-Winter 2008–09)
 * 2008, Dora Apel, "Technologies of War, Media, and Dissent in the Post 9/11 Work of Krzysztof Wodiczko" in Oxford Art Journal 31, no. 2 (June 2008): 261–280.
 * 2008, Rosalyn Deutsche, "The Art of Witness in the Wartime Public Sphere" in Forum Permanente, transcript of the Tate Modern lecture, March 4, 2005.
 * 2007, Tom Williams, "Architecture and Artifice in the Recent Work of Krzysztof Wodiczko" in Shifting Borders, edited by Reid W.F. Cooper, Luke Nicholson, and Jean-François Bélisle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
 * 2006–7, Lisa Saltzman, "When Memory Speaks: A Monument Bears Witness" in Trauma and Visuality in Modernity, edited by Lisa Saltzman and Eric Rosenberg, University Press of New England and in Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art, The University of Chicago Press.
 * 2006, Mark Jarzombek, "The Post-traumatic Turn and the Art of Walid Ra'ad and Krzystof Wodiczko: from Theory to Trope and Beyond" in Trauma and Visuality in Modernity, ed. Saltzman and Rosenberg.
 * 2002, Andrzej Turowski, "Krzysztof Wodiczko and Polish Art of the 1970s" in Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art Since the 1950s, The Museum of Modern Art.
 * 2002, Rosalyn Deutsche, "Sharing Strangeness: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Aegis and the Question of Hospitality" in Grey Room 6 (Winter 2002): 26–43.
 * 1998, Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics, The MIT Press.
 * 1997, Marc James Léger, "Xenology and Identity in Critical Public Art: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Immigrant Instruments." Parachute (Oct, Nov, Dec 1997): 14–21.
 * 1993, Denis Hollier. "While the City Sleeps: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin'" in October 64 (Spring 1993).
 * 1989, Patricia C. Philips, "Temporality and Public Art." Art Journal 48, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 331–335.
 * 1987, Ewa Lajer-Burchardt, "Urban Disturbances." Art in America (November 1987): 146–153, 197.
 * 1986, Rosalyn Deutsche, "Krzysztof Wodiczko's Homeless Projection and the Site of 'Urban Revitalization." October 38 (Fall 1986): 63–99.

Films and video

 * 2005, Susan Sollins and Susan Dowling, series producers. Art 21, Art in the Twenty-first Century. Season Three.  Alexandria, VA: PBS Home Video.
 * 2000, Yasushi Kishimoto, Krzysztof Wodiczko: Projection in Hiroshima, 70m/color, Ufer! Art Documentary.
 * 1991, Derek May. Krzyszstof Wodiczko: Projections. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: National Film Board of Canada.
 * 2022, Maria Niro, Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Art of Un-War, 63m/color, and Black and White, Crossing Waters, Art Documentary.. New York, New York, United States.

title: Krzysztof Wodiczko


text:
Paul Barker

Paul Gordon Barker (born February 8, 1959), also referred to as Hermes Pan, is an American musician, best known as the former bass guitarist, producer and engineer for industrial metal band Ministry from 1986 to 2003. Prior to Ministry, he provided bass for the Seattle post-punk ensemble The Blackouts alongside future Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin and his brother, one-time Ministry touring keyboardist/saxophonist Roland Barker, from 1979 until 1985.

Ministry
Beginning as touring bassist for Ministry's 1986 Twitch tour, Barker collaborated with frontman Al Jourgensen and collectively released The Land of Rape and Honey in 1988. Although many musicians briefly contributed to Ministry in the nearly two-decade period after Barker joined the band, he and Jourgensen were the only continuous members. The dynamics between these two different personalities came to shape Ministry's sound, along with a number of side-projects which they were involved in together.

In 2003, Barker left the band a year after the release of their eighth album Animositisomina. The decision was made official after the death of his father. Despite being in Ministry for almost 18 years, Jourgensen did not do anything to spur his departure. "Over the years we've had strained relations as well as good times, and the last tour was no different than any other tour. That means it was extremely difficult and very intense and lots of fun," Barker had said.

It is often believed that Jourgensen and Barker were close bandmates and the latter played a huge creative role in the band. Jourgensen rebuffed these claims saying that their relationship was more like an arranged marriage and "acrimonious." He said that they were never friends but business partners. Since leaving Ministry, Barker has distanced himself from Jourgensen and the two have had almost nothing positive to say about their relationship in the band.

Barker was quoted in a 2011 interview that it was "tough to watch" the band's Fix: The Ministry Movie documentary as he could no longer associate himself with the band. When asked in a 2015 interview if he would ever work with Jourgensen again, he replied, "I'm fairly confident we will not work together. We have zero relationship now." When asked why he left Ministry, he replied he was no longer willing to put up with the stupidity and decided that it was enough.

Barker has since moved on to other things and in 2016, seems to have more or less made peace with Ministry. "Of course, that was a very intense time and extremely rewarding. That was quite a while ago and I rarely think about it. I'm still fascinated with the heaviest, ugliest music and it's now hard to find the time for those pursuits. I am not in direct contact with Al these days."

In 2018, Jourgensen reconciled with Barker after they both made appearances at screenings for the documentary ''Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records''. Jourgensen has stated he is eager to collaborate with Barker very soon. In March 2024, it was announced that Barker would reunite with Jourgensen to write, perform, and produce what is quite possibly the final Ministry album.

Lead into Gold
Lead into Gold is Barker's current solo project.

In Summer of 2018 he released the full length album The Sun Behind The Sun, followed by a North America tour with OhGr (Nivek Ogre) and Omniflux (Mahsa Zargaran).

In Spring of 2023 Barker released another full length album The Eternal Present, followed by a North America tour with Skinny Puppy.

Post-Ministry
Since 2003, Barker has spent his time recording new material, producing such acts as I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness and collaborating with artists such as Stayte (on their 2007 Cognitive Dissonance (The Art of Lying To Yourself) EP). He joined U.S.S.A. with Duane Denison (Tomahawk, ex-The Jesus Lizard) as bassist. The first album from his solo project Flowering Blight, entitled The Perfect Pair, was released on November 19, 2008, via the official website.

In 2011, Barker remixed the Deadly Apples song "Self Inflicted Oppression" with samples from Ministry's Psalm 69. The remix was featured on the soundtrack for the documentary film Fix: The Ministry Movie.

Barker released Fix This!!! on April 10, 2012. This album features guests such as Chris Connelly, Ogre, Taylor Momsen, Puscifer, Deadly Apples, Alexis Marshall, Joshua Bradford, and Devix Szell.

In 2015, Barker joined the touring lineup of rock supergroup Puscifer as their bassist.

Barker is also one of the founders of Malekko Heavy Industry Corporation, a manufacturer of synthesizer modules and guitar effect pedals.

Bands

 * The Blackouts (1979–1985)
 * Ministry (1986–2003, 2024)
 * Pailhead (1987–1988)
 * Revolting Cocks (1987–1993, 2016–present)
 * Lard (1988–2000)
 * Lead into Gold (1988–1990, 2015, 2017–present)
 * 1000 Homo DJs (1988, 1990)
 * Acid Horse (1989)
 * PTP (1989)
 * Pigface (1990)
 * Pink Anvil (2001, 2003)
 * U.S.S.A. (2006–present)
 * Flowering Blight (2008)
 * Bells into Machines (2013–2022)
 * Puscifer (2015, tour)

Blackouts

 * Exchange of Goods (1981)
 * Lost Souls Club (1985)
 * History in Reverse (2004)

Lard

 * The Power of Lard (1989)
 * The Last Temptation of Reid (1990)
 * Pure Chewing Satisfaction (1997)
 * 70's Rock Must Die (2000)

Lead Into Gold

 * Chicks and Speed: FUTURISM (1990)
 * Age of Reason (1990)
 * Low & Slow (2015)
 * A Savage Gift (2018)
 * The Sun Behind the Sun (2018)
 * The Eternal Present (2023)

Ministry

 * The Land of Rape and Honey (1988)
 * The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste (1989)
 * In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up (Live) (1990)
 * Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs (1992)
 * Filth Pig (1995)
 * Dark Side of the Spoon (1999)
 * Sphinctour (Live) (2002)
 * Animositisomina (2003)

Pailhead

 * I Will Refuse (1987)
 * Trait (1988)

Pigface

 * Gub (1991)

Revolting Cocks

 * Beers, Steers, and Queers (1990)
 * Linger Ficken' Good (1993)

title: Paul Barker


text:
Talk:Undeath

infection: Vampires/werewolves(not exactly undead as they are alive)

Werewolves should not be placed here. They are not considered "undead" by anyone's standards. Vampires, on the other hand, are reanimated human corpses returned from the grave to drink the blood of the living. Although Anne Rice's "vampires" may be living-creatures(?), traditional vampires are most definitely as un-dead as any zombie or mummy. Until Dracula came along (and for a good long while after), they were just zombies with fangs! --Corvun 22:16, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

==

I think this page should merged with Undead.

title: Talk:Undeath


text:
User talk:Georg.Egger

Unverified images
Hi! Thanks for uploading the following image:

 * Image:IrishWolfhoundPair.jpg

I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use if you release it under the GNU Free Documentation License,  if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know at my talk page where you got the images and I'll tag them for you. Thanks so much. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]] 22:16, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

P.S. You can help tag other images at User:Yann/Untagged_Images. Thanks again.

title: User talk:Georg.Egger


text:
Modigliani

Modigliani is a Jewish Italian surname, which may refer to:

People

 * Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), painter and sculptor
 * Elio Modigliani (1860–1932), anthropologist, zoologist, and plant collector
 * Ettore Modigliani (1873–1947), Italian functionary
 * Franco Modigliani (1918–2003), economist
 * Jeanne Modigliani (1918–1984), daughter and biographer of Amedeo Modigliani

Other uses

 * Modigliani (film), a 2004 biographical film about Amedeo Modigliani
 * "Modigliani (Lost In Your Eyes)", a 1987 single from the band Book of Love

title: Modigliani


text: User talk:69.68.243.118

title: User talk:69.68.243.118


text:
Battle of Krtsanisi

The Battle of Krtsanisi (კრწანისის ბრძოლა, ) was fought between the army of Qajar Iran (Persia) and the Georgian armies of the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti and Kingdom of Imereti at the place of Krtsanisi near Tbilisi, Georgia, from September 8 to September 11, 1795, as part of Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar's war in response to King Heraclius II of Georgia’s alliance with the Russian Empire. The battle resulted in the decisive defeat of the Georgians, capture, and complete destruction of their capital Tbilisi, as well as the temporary absorption of eastern Georgia into the Iranian empire.

Although the Russian Empire had officially declared in the Treaty of Georgievsk of 1783 that it would protect Heraclius's kingdom against any Iranian attempts to re-subjugate Georgia, Russia did not intervene to protect its ally. Subsequently, in order to restore Russian prestige, Catherine the Great launched a punitive campaign against Iran in 1796, but it was soon recalled after Catherine's death the same year. The reestablishment of Iranian rule over Georgia did not last long, for the shah was assassinated in 1797 in Shusha, and the Georgian king died the year after. With Georgia laying in ruins and the central authorities in Iran occupied with the question of succession, the way was opened for Georgia's annexation by Russia several years later by Tsar Paul.

As Iran could not allow the cession of Transcaucasia and Dagestan, which had been integral parts of Iran for centuries, the Battle of Krtsanisi directly led to two bitter Russo-Persian wars in 1804–1813 and 1826–1828, in which Fath Ali Shah, Agha Mohammad Khan's successor, unsuccessfully attempted to reverse Russian military advances and restore Iranian authority north of the Aras and Kura rivers. After these wars, Iran ceded Transcaucasia and Dagestan to imperial Russia per the Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828).

Background
Eastern Georgia, composed of the kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti, had been in the early modern era under Iranian suzerainty since the 1510s. In 1744, Nader Shah had granted the kingship of Kartli and Kakheti to Teimuraz II and his son Heraclius II, respectively, as a reward for their loyalty. When Nader Shah died in 1747, they capitalized on the chaos that had erupted in mainland Iran, and declared de facto independence. After Teimuraz II died in 1762, Heraclius II assumed control over Kartli, and united the two kingdoms in a personal union as the Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, becoming the first Georgian ruler to preside over a politically unified eastern Georgia in three centuries. At about the same time, Karim Khan Zand had ascended the Iranian throne; Heraclius II quickly tendered his de jure submission to the new Iranian ruler, however, de facto, he remained autonomous. In 1783, Heraclius placed his kingdom under the protection of the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Georgievsk. In the last few decades of the 18th century, Georgia had become a more important element in Russo-Iranian relations than some provinces in northern mainland Persia, such as Mazandaran or even Gilan. Unlike Peter I, Catherine, the then ruling monarch of Russia, viewed Georgia as a pivot for her Caucasian policy, as Russia's new aspirations were to use it as a base of operations against both Iran and the Ottoman Empire, both immediate bordering geo-political rivals of Russia. On top of that, having another port on the Georgian coast of the Black Sea would be ideal. A limited Russian contingent of two infantry battalions with four artillery pieces arrived in Tbilisi in 1784, but was withdrawn, despite the frantic protests of the Georgians, in 1787 as a new war against Ottoman Turkey had started on a different front.

In the next several years, Russia would be too occupied with Turkey (due to the 1768-74 war), Poland, and the European consequences of the French Revolution to give Georgia much attention. Even the consolidation of the Qajar dynasty under Agha Mohammad Khan, who had become the new owners to the Iranian throne and therefore the new heirs to the geo-politically rivalling empire that had been bordering Russia for centuries, did not divert Catherine from preoccupations in the west. In 1791, when Agha Mohammad Khan was in Tabriz, Heraclius asked General Gudovich, commander of the Russian Caucasian Line, for renewed military aid, but the government in St. Petersburg did not judge it expedient to send troops again to Georgia. In 1792, Gudovich told Heraclius that he would receive only diplomatic support in the advent of any Iranian onslaught. Despite being left to his own devices, Heraclius still cherished a dream of establishing, with Russian protection, a strong and united monarchy, into which the western Georgian Kingdom of Imereti and the lost provinces under Ottoman rule would all eventually be drawn.

The consequences of these events came a few years later, when a new dynasty, the Qajars, emerged victorious in the protracted power struggle in Persia. Their head, Agha Mohammad Khan, as his first objective, resolved to bring the Caucasus again fully under the Persian orbit. For Agha Mohammad Khan, the resubjugation and reintegration of Georgia into the Iranian Empire was part of the same process that had brought Shiraz, Isfahan, and Tabriz under his rule. He viewed, like the Safavids and Nader Shah before him, the territories no different than the territories in mainland Iran. Georgia was a province of Iran the same way Khorasan was. As the Cambridge History of Iran states, Georgia's permanent secession was inconceivable and had to be resisted in the same way as one would resist an attempt at the separation of Fars or Gilan. It was therefore natural for Agha Mohammad Khan to perform whatever necessary means in the Caucasus in order to subdue and reincorporate the recently lost regions following Nader Shah's death and the demise of the Zands, including putting down what in Iranian eyes was seen as treason on the part of the wali of Georgia.

Finding an interval of peace amid their own quarrels and with northern, western, and central Persia secure, the Persians demanded Heraclius II to renounce the treaty with Russia and to reaccept Persian suzerainty, in return for peace and the security of his kingdom. The Ottomans, Iran's neighboring rival, recognized Iran's rights over Kartli and Kakheti for the first time in four centuries. Heraclius appealed then to his theoretical protector, Empress Catherine II of Russia, pleading for at least 3,000 Russian troops, but he was not listened to, leaving Georgia to fend off the Persian threat alone. Nevertheless, Heraclius II still rejected the Khan's ultimatum.

Battle
In August 1795, Agha Mohammad Khan crossed the Aras river with a 70,000-strong army. This force was divided in three: the left wing was sent in the direction of Erivan, the right one parallel to the Caspian Sea into the Mughan across the lower Aras towards Dagestan and Shirvan, while the Shah headed the centre force himself, advancing towards the fortress of Shusha in the Karabakh Khanate, which he besieged between 8 July and 9 August 1795. His right and left wing forced the Khans of Ganja and Erivan into alliance respectively. Having abandoned the siege of Shusha due to stiff resistance, which was further aided by Georgian crown prince Aleksandre, the Khan of Karabakh, Ibrahim Khan, eventually surrendered to Mohammad Khan after discussions, including the paying of regular tribute and to surrender hostages, though the Qajar forces were still denied entrance to Shusha. Since the main objective was Georgia, Mohammad Khan was willing to have Karabakh secured by this agreement for now, for he and his army subsequently moved further. While at Ganja, having secured Shirvan, he was joined by Javad Khan Qajar and the rest of his right wing contingent. At Ganja, Mohammad Khan sent Heraclius his last ultimatum, who received it in September 1795:

"Your Highness knows that for the past 100 generations you have been subject to Iran; now we deign to say with amazement that you have attached yourself to the Russians, who have no other business than to trade with Iran... Last year you forced me to destroy a number of Georgians, although we had no desire at all for our subjects to perish by our own hand...It is now our great will that you, an intelligent man, abandon such things... and break relations with the Russians. If you do not carry out this order, then we shall shortly carry out a campaign against Georgia, we will shed both Georgian and Russian blood and out of it will create rivers as big as the Kura...."

According to the author of the Fārsnāma-ye Nāṣeri, Ḥasan-e Fasāʼi, a contemporary Qajar era historian, Agha Mohammad Khan had declared in the letter:

"'Shah Ismail I Safavi ruled over the province of Georgia. When in the days of the deceased king we were engaged in conquering the provinces of Persia, we did not proceeed to this region. As most of the provinces of Persia have come into our possession now, you must, according to ancient law, consider Georgia (Gurjistan) part of the empire, and appear before our majesty. You have to conform your obedience; then you may remain in the possession of your governorship (wali) of Georgia. If you do not do this, you will be treated as the others'."

His advisors divided, Heraclius ignored the ultimatum, but, sent couriers to St.Petersburg. Gudovich, who sat in Georgievsk at the time, instructed Heraclius to avoid "expense and fuss", while Heraclius, together with Solomon II and some Imeretians headed southwards of Tbilisi to fend off the Iranians.

Agha Mohammad Khan at the same time marched directly on Tbilisi, with half of the army he crossed the Aras river with, though other estimations mention 40,000 instead of 35,000,  and attacked the heavily fortified Georgian positions of Heraclius and Solomon on the southwestern limits of the city. Abandoned by several of his nobles, Heraclius II managed to mobilize around 5,000 troops, including some 2,000 auxiliaries from neighbouring Imereti under its King Solomon II, a member of the Georgian Bagrationi dynasty and thus distantly related to Heraclius II. The Georgians offered a desperate resistance and succeeded in rolling back a series of Persian attacks on September 9 and 10. After that, it is said that some traitors informed the Persians that the Georgians had no more strength to fight and the Qajars army cancelled their plan of going back to Persia, which they previously had. Early on September 11, Agha Mohammad Khan personally led an all-out offensive against the Georgians. Amid an artillery duel and a fierce cavalry charge, the Persians managed to cross the Kura River and outflanked the decimated Georgian army. Heraclius II attempted to mount a counterattack, but he had to retreat to the last available positions in the outskirts of Tbilisi. By nightfall, the Georgian forces had been exhausted and almost completely destroyed. The last surviving Georgian artillery briefly held the advancing Persians to allow Heraclius II and his retinue of some 150 men to escape through the city to the mountains. The fighting continued in the streets of Tbilisi and at the fortress of Narikala. In a few hours, Agha Mohammad Khan was in full control of the Georgian capital which was completely sacked and its population massacred. Among those killed in the city was the archbishop of Tbilisi, Doistheus. The Persian army marched back laden with spoil and carrying off some 15,000 captives. The Georgians had lost 4,000 men in the battle, the Iranians 13,000; a third of their total force.

An eye-witness, having entered the city several days after the bulk of the Iranian troops had withdrawn, described what he saw:

"I therefore pursued my way, paved as it were, with carcases, and entered Tiflis by the gate of Tapitag: but what was my consternation on finding here the bodies of women and children slaughtered by the sword of the enemy; to say nothing about the men, of whom I saw more than a thousand, as I should suppose, lying dead in one little tower! (...) The city was almost entirely consumed, and still continued to smoke in different places; and the stench from the putrefying, together with the heat which prevailed, was intolerable, and certainly infectious."

Aftermath

On his return, after the conquest of Tbilisi and being in effective control of eastern Georgia, Agha Mohammad was formally crowned Shah in 1796 in the Mughan plain, just like his predecessor Nader Shah was about sixty years earlier. As The Cambridge History of Iran notes; "Russia's client, Georgia, had been punished, and Russia's prestige, damaged." Heraclius II returned to Tbilisi to rebuild the city, but the destruction of his capital was a death blow to his hopes and projects. Upon learning of the fall of Tbilisi General Gudovich put the blame on the Georgians themselves. To restore Russian prestige, Catherine II declared war on Persia, upon the proposal of Gudovich, and sent an army under Valerian Zubov to the Qajar possessions on April of that year, but the new Tsar Paul I, who succeeded Catherine in November, shortly recalled it.

Agha Mohammad Shah was later assassinated while preparing a second expedition against Georgia in 1797 in Shusha and the seasoned king Heraclius died early in 1798. Reassessment of Iranian hegemony over Georgia did not last long; in 1799 the Russians marched into Tbilisi. The next two years were a time of muddle and confusion, and the weakened and devastated Georgian kingdom, with its capital half in ruins, was easily absorbed by Russia in 1801. As Iran could not permit or allow the cession of Transcaucasia and Dagestan the consequences of the Krtsanisi battle would also directly lead up to two wars between the nations. The Russo-Persian War (1804-1813) and Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) would eventually force the cession of the aforementioned regions to Imperial Russia per the Gulistan and Turkmenchay of 1813 and 1828 respectively.

title: Battle of Krtsanisi