text:
André-Charles Boulle

André-Charles Boulle (11 November 1642 – 29 February 1732), le joailler du meuble (the "furniture jeweller"), became the most famous French cabinetmaker and the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry, also known as "inlay". Boulle was "the most remarkable of all French cabinetmakers". Jean-Baptiste Colbert (29 August 1619 – 6 September 1683) recommended him to Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King" ((r. 1643 – 1715)), as "the most skilled craftsman in his profession". Over the centuries since his death, his name and that of his family has become associated with the art he perfected, the inlay of tortoiseshell, brass and pewter into ebony. It has become known as Boulle work, and the École Boulle (founded in 1886), a college of fine arts and crafts and applied arts in Paris, continues today to bear testimony to his enduring art, the art of inlay.

Life
in 1677, on his marriage certificate, André-Charles Boulle gave his birth date, for posterity, as being 11 November 1642. No other document corroborates this birth in Paris. The historians M. Charles Read, H.-L. Lacordaire and Paulin Richard have determined that his father was the Protestant Jan (or Jean/Johann) Bolt (or Bolte/Boul/ Bolle ) but at his own (Catholic) marriage, André-Charles Boulle named his father as "Jean Boulle". André-Charles Boulle's marriage at Saint Sulpice and burial in 1732 at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois are but two of many lifetime inconsistencies with his Protestant 'provenance', most easily explained by the ongoing persecution of Protestants. His parentage with the Protestant Boulles from Marseille, the Sun King's Historian needs clarification and Coliès, in his Bibliothèque Choisies confirms a Marseillais relative as being the author of a History of Protestantism, called Essay de l'histoire des Protestants Distingués Par Nation (1646).

In the absence of a birth document, three factors play a critical part in the mystery surrounding Boulle's parentage.

The first is that foreign artists flocking to the Sun King's Court were keen to be naturalised French subjects to 'fit in' and would, like Jean-Baptiste Lully the Royal Musician (28 November 1632 – 22 March 1687), have changed their names. For Lully, it was from "Giovanni Battista Lulli" to "Jean-Baptiste Lully") but at his marriage, he falsely declared his father's name to be Laurent de Lully, gentilhomme Florentin [Florentine gentleman]". This historical background makes it difficult for the historian to identify which of the many Jean Boulles, Jean Bolles, Johann Bolts or even 'Jean Boulds' on record was André-Charles Boulle's true father. Some of these are of Catholic French origin, some are French Protestants and some are from Gelderland in Holland. The second factor is that André-Charles Boulle's birth date is almost certainly inacurrate. Despite his genius (or perhaps because of it) André-Charles Boulle was a demonstrably poor administrator and poor with dates and specifically in respect of his age. His children were no different, declaring him to be 90 Years old when he died. This is highly unlikely. The third and perhaps most telling factor adding to the overall confusion about Boulle's parentage was that in October 1685 (a mere 8 years after his marriage), Louis XIV renounced the Edict of Nantes and declared Protestantism illegal with the Edict of Fontainebleau. All Protestant ministers were given two weeks to leave the country unless they converted to Catholicism. Louis XIV ordered the destruction of Huguenot churches, as well as the closure of Protestant schools. This made official the persecution of Protestants already enforced since 1681 and it led to around 400,000 fleeing the country.

Jean-Baptiste Lully demonstrates, by his documented actions, that marriage was a propitious time to tidy up provenance. Within the context of the times, it is natural to expect that as well as ensuring his father's Catholic name was recorded for posterity, André-Charles Boulle 'tidied' up his own place and date of birth. This made him older, for motives we do not yet comprehend. There is also the definite possibility, as yet unexplored by historians, that André-Charles Boulle was born in Holland. It would explain a lot of the confusion around his parentage. The salient fact is that we only have André-Charles Boulle's word that he was born in Paris in 1642.

André-Charles Boulle's Protestant family environment was a rich and artistic milieu totally consistent with the genius of the Art he was to produce in later years. His father, Jean Boulle (ca 1616-?), was cabinetmaker to the King, had been naturalised French in 1676 and lived in the Louvre, by Royal Decree. His grandfather, Pierre Boulle (ca 1595–1649), was naturalised French in 1675, had been cabinetmaker to Louis XIII and had also lived in the Louvre. André-Charles was thus exposed to two generations of illustrious artists, master craftsmen, engravers, cabinetmakers and, indeed, family all directly contracted by the King. As pointed out by the historians M. De Montaiglon and Charles Asselineau, this entourage included his aunt Marguerite Bahusche (on his mother's side) who was a famous painter in her own right, married to another very famous artist, Jacques Bunel de Blois, Henri IV's favourite painter. Others who were appointed by the King and worked with the two preceding generations of Boulles from their ateliers in the Louvre included the painter Louis Du Guernier (1614–1659), the embroiderers Nicolas Boulle and Caillard and the goldsmith Pierre de la Barre.

There is virtually nothing on André-Charles Boulle's youth, upbringing or training apart from a solitary Notarial Act dated 19 July 1666 (when he was supposedly 24 years old) agreeing a 5-year apprentice's contract for a 17-year-old nephew, François Delaleau, Master Carpenter from L'Abbaye des Celestins de Marcoussis in Paris. André-Charles Boulle's own apprenticeship was therefore most likely to have occurred within the focused confines of his father's atelier at the Louvre. Here, in any event, he was closest to the Sun King and to Jean-Baptiste Colbert who discovered him. In 1672, by the age of 30, Boulle had already been granted lodgings in the galleries of the Louvre which Louis XIV had set apart for the use of the most favoured among the artists employed by the Crown. To be admitted to these galleries signified a mark of special Royal favour and also freed him from the restrictions imposed by the trade guilds. Boulle received the deceased Jean Macé's lodgings on the recommendation of the Minister of Arts, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who described Boulle as le plus habile ébéniste de Paris. The Royal Decree conferring this privilege describes Boulle variously as a chaser, gilder and maker of marquetry. Boulle received the post of Premier ébéniste du Roi. Boulle initially had aspirations to be a painter but according to one of his close friends, Pierre-Jean Mariette (7 May 1694 – 10 September 1774), he was forced by his cabinetmaker father, Jean Boulle, to develop other skills. This may explain a sense of 'missed vocation' and resultant 'passion' and utter dedication to the collection of prints and paintings, which nearly ruined him…

The first payment on record to him by the crown (1669) specifies ouvrages de peinture and Boulle was employed for years on end at the Versailles, where the mirrored walls, floors of wood mosaic, inlaid paneling and marquetry in the Cabinet du Dauphin (1682–1686) came to be regarded by such as Jean-Aimar Piganiol de La Force ( 21 September 1669 – 10 January 1753 ) as his most remarkable work. The rooms were dismantled in the Late 18th century and their unfashionable art broken up. More recently, a partial inventory of the Grand Dauphin's decorations at the Palace of Versailles has come to light at the National Archives in Paris.

Boulle carried out numerous royal commissions for the "Sun King", as can be seen from the records of the Bâtiments du Roi and correspondence of the marquis de Louvois. Foreign Princes, French Nobility, government ministers and French financiers flocked to him offering him work, and the famous words of the abbé de Marolles, Boulle y tourne en ovale became a well established saying in the literature associated with French cabinetmaking. Professor C.R. Williams writes, ''There was no limit to the prices a reckless and profligate court was willing to pay for luxurious beauty during the sumptuous, extravagant reign of Louis the Magnificent of France. For much that was most splendid and beautiful in furniture making at this period stands the name of Charles André Boulle. His imagination and skill were given full play, and he proved equal to the demands made upon him.Boulle was a remarkable man. In a court whose only thought was of pleasure and display, he realized that his furniture must not only excel all others in richness, beauty, and cost; it must also be both comfortable and useful. He was appointed cabinet maker to the Dauphin, the heir to the throne of France. This distinction, together with his own tastes, led him to copy some of the manners and bearing of his rich customers.''' He was an aristocrat among furniture makers. ''He spent the greater part of his large fortune in filling his workshop with works of art. His warehouses were packed with precious woods and finished and unfinished pieces of magnificent furniture. In his own rooms were priceless works of art, the collection of a lifetime—gems, medals, drawings, and paintings, which included forty-eight drawings by Raphael.

Boulle's output from, at one time, three workshops included commodes, bureaux, armoires, pedestals, clockcases and lighting-fixtures, richly mounted with gilt-bronze that he modelled himself. Despite his skills, his exquisite craftsmen and the high prices he commanded, Boulle was always running out of money. This was mostly as a direct result of his lifelong obsession as a collector and hoarder of works of art. Although he undoubtedly drew inspiration for his own works from these purchases, it meant he did not always pay his workmen regularly. In addition, clients who had made considerable advances failed to obtain the pieces they had ordered and, on more than one occasion. These dissatisfied clients made formal attempts to get Royal permission to arrest him for his debts, despite the Royal protection afforded by his post at the Louvre. In 1704, the king granted him six months' protection from his creditors on condition that Boulle use the time to regulate his affairs or this would be the last grace that His Majesty would do him. Living beyond his means seems to have been a family trait as history repeated itself, twenty years later, when one of his sons was arrested at Fontainebleau and actually imprisoned until King Louis XV had him released.

In 1720, Boulle's shaky finances were dealt a further blow by a fire which began in an adjoining atelier and spread to his workshop in the Place du Louvre (one of three he maintained ), completely destroying twenty workbenches and the various tools of eighteen ébénistes, two menuisiers as well as most of the precious seasoned wood, appliances, models, and finished works of art. What could be salvaged was sold and a petition for financial assistance made to the Regent, the success of this appeal is unknown. According to Boulle's friend, Pierre-Jean Mariette, many of his pecuniary problems were indeed as a direct result of his obsession for collecting and hoarding pictures, engravings, and other art objects. The inventory of his losses in this fire exceeded 40,000 livres, included many old Masters, not to mention 48 drawings by Raphael, wax models by Michelangelo and the manuscript journal kept by Rubens in Italy.

The compulsive Boulle attended literally every sale of drawings and engravings he could. He borrowed at high interest rates to pay for his purchases until the next auction when he devised other means to gain more cash. His friend Pierre-Jean Mariette informs that it was a compulsion that was impossible to cure. André-Charles Boulle died on 29 February 1732 in the Louvre, leaving many debts for his four sons to deal with and, to whom he had transferred ownership of his business and tenure in the Louvre some seventeen years earlier.

Family
Boulle left four sons: Jean-Philippe (1678–1744), Pierre-Benoît (c.1683-1741), André-Charles II (1685–1749) and Charles-Joseph (1688–1754). They were handed over the contents and technology of his workshops as early as 1715. Despite all four sons being granted the very prestigious Royal title ébéniste du roi, their financial affairs were as badly managed as those of their father's. Three of the four brothers are known to have died in debt.

Boulle work
'''Boulle's inlay materials included tortoiseshell, brass, pewter and even animal horn. For contrasting woods, he often used rosewood, ebony, kingwood, and other dense, dark-toned tropical species. Boulle's marquetry technique was to make two contrasting sheets of intricate inlay that were cut from a single sandwich of materials. If the sandwich, or packet, contained two layers that were light and dark, the two finalproducts would be a sheet with a light pattern on a dark background, and a reversed sheet, with a dark pattern on a light background. One sheet would have been considered the primary pattern, in French the 'première partie'. The opposite pattern was called the counterpart, or 'contrapartie'. By sawing both patterns out of one packet and reassembling them on two trays, the background of the 'première partie' becomes the motif of the 'contrapartie'. Boulle made cabinets with both patterns in a single piece, or pairs of contrasting cabinets''.'.

Tortoiseshell
Tortoiseshell was used in thin sliced inlays onto wood and is today an important reference with regard to Boulle work. Despite tortoiseshell's rarity and cost, its durability, organic warmth and mottled-red aesthetics made it particularly apt for exotic wood such as ebony. This is because it gives a sense of depth to Boulle work. The initial processing of tortoiseshell involves separating the layers of the scutes from the animal's carapace by heating, and softening the plates by boiling them, in salt water, and thereafter flattening them under a press. Although two pieces could be fused together by use of a hot iron, great care had to be taken not to lose the colour. Finishing and polishing was done by various techniques.

Brass (Gilt bronze)
'''Henry IV established the privileged status for the artists in 1608 in a lettre patente (royal decree) in which he stated his express purpose of encouraging the flourishing of the arts in France through a sort of cross-pollenisation and co-operation. The inhabitants enjoyed the status for life which freed then from the strict laws of the guild system and granted other legal and fiscal benefits. The system was very important to André Charles Boulle who was granted the prestige of a workshop in 1672, the same year he was named ébéniste, ciseleur, doreur du roi (cabinet maker, chaser, gilder to the King) by Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche (1638–1683), Louis XIV's wife and Queen. The space was too small for a furniture production workshop of any scale, so basically served as a calling card or prestigious address for Boulle who still possessed his family workshop on Rue de Reims on the left bank, and was eventually granted a large space of over 500 square meters in an abandoned theatre in the Louvre. (Jean Nérée Ronfort, exhibition catalogue) In addition, the lack of guild control allowed Boulle, who was also trained as a sculptor, to create and cast his own gilt bronze mounts for his furniture. From 1685, he possessed his own foundry, a critical aspect to the originality of his work. Boulle also created objects purely in gilt-bronze such as chandeliers, clocks, firedogs, wall lights among others, which contributed greatly to his fame.''

Pewter
'Pewter or brass inlay on tortoiseshell was known as premier-partie, while tortoiseshell inlay on brass or pewter was contre-partie. For an even more sumptuous effect, mother-of-pearl, stained horn and dyed tortoiseshell would be included in the design.'

Works
André-Charles Boulle kept no accurate records of his prodigious output. The identification of furniture produced by Boulle's workshop is greatly hampered by a lack of documentation of the pieces he created. Unhappily it is by no means easy, even for the expert, to declare the authenticity of a commode, a bureau, or a table in the manner of Boulle and to all appearance from his workshops. His sons unquestionably carried on the traditions for some years after his death but his imitators were many and capable. A few of the more magnificent pedigree-pieces are among the worlds mobiliary treasures. Rather than having his own internal system of identification or poinçon or mark on each piece, he depended on the records kept by the Bâtiments du Roi. These, did not identify new works with specific entry numbers as they were being produced nor did they keep a detailed daily journal of output. Had Boulle used the royal wardrobe, the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne to identify and record his output, things might have turned out differently.

Of his many Royal commissions, only a pair of commodes delivered in 1708 and 1709 to the King at the Grand Trianon can be securely linked to any sort of documentation to confirm provenance. A series of grand armoires in the Louvre Museum and the Wallace Collection are also securely attributed to his workshop. Identification of some of Boulle's works based on the tell-tale refinements of the marquetry and the re-use of marquetry templates and characteristic boldly sculptured gilt-bronze mounts can at times be provenanced from three sets of images of furniture designs engraved by Boulle and published by his friend Pierre-Jean Mariette around 1720; pieces depicted in a series of workshop drawings traditionally ascribed to Boulle in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris and private collections; and the descriptions in the inventory of works in progress made when Boulle transferred legal ownership of the workshops to his sons in 1715.

A few of the more magnificent pedigree-pieces are among the worlds mobiliary treasures. There are, for instance, two famous armoires, which fetched 12,075 at the Hamilton Palace sale; the marquetry commodes, enriched with bronze mounts, formerly in the Bibliothèque Mazarine; various cabinets and commodes and tables in the Louvre, the Musée de Cluny and the Mobilier National; the marriage coffers of the dauphin which were in the San Donato collection. There are several fine authenticated pieces in the Wallace Collection at Hertford House, together with others consummately imitated, probably in the Louis Seize period. On the rare occasions when a pedigree example comes into the auction room, it invariably commands a high price; but there can be little doubt that the most splendid and sumptuous specimens of Boulle are diminishing in number, while the second and third classes of his work are perhaps becoming more numerous. The truth is that this wonderful work, with its engraved or inlaid designs; its myriads of tiny pieces of ivory and copper, ebony and tortoiseshell, all kept together with glue and tiny chased nails, and applied very often to a rather soft, white wood, is not meet to withstand the ravages of time and the variations of the atmosphere. Alternate heat and humidity are even greater enemies of inlaid furniture than time and wear. Such delicate objects were rarely used, and the most talented of the artists were employed by the crown.

The Louvre
Some of André-Charles Boulles Art at the Louvre are shown below:

The Metropolitan Museum of Arts
Metropolitan Museum of Arts

The Wallace Collection
Some of the most spectacular works by Boulle are on display at the Large Drawing Room of the Wallace Collection:

Grand Trianon
Boulle delivered the prototypes for the Mazarin Commode to the Grand Trianon in 1708. Louis Antoine de Pardaillan de Gondrin Director of the King's buildings, wrote to Louis XIV: "I was at the Trianon inspecting the second writing desk by Boulle; it is as beautiful as the other and suits the room perfectly." The design proved to be popular, although criticized for being awkward meaning, particularly because four extra spiral legs that were required to support the weight of the bronze and marble. At least five other examples were made by Boulle's workshop, dated between 1710 and 1732, including one now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Royal Collection & Windsor Castle
'Most of the furniture in the Royal Collection made by, or attributed to, Boulle was acquired by George IV (1762–1830). A Francophile, the king furnished the royal palaces with large quantities of fashionable French furniture from the 1780s until his death in 1830. The lavish style and use of exotic materials accorded well with his extravagant taste. However, due to the volume of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century imitations, as well as the fact that Boulle did not sign his work, it can be difficult to definitively credit pieces to the maker. For this reason, many of the Boulle-marquetry pieces in the Royal Collection are recorded as 'attributed to André-Charles Boulle'. There are at least 13 works of art by André-Charles Boulle in the Royal Collection, including (i)Armoire, c. 1700 (The Grand Corridor, Windsor Castle) (ii) Cabinet (en première-partie), c. 1700 (The Grand Corridor, Windsor Castle) (iii) Cabinet (en contre-partie), c. 1700 (The Grand Corridor, Windsor Castle) (iv)Cabinet, (without stand, similar to ones in the State Hermitage Museum and the collections of the Duke of Buccleuch) (v) Paire de bas d'armoire, (The Grand Corridor, Windsor Castle) (vi) Writing table, possibly delivered to Louis, the Grand Dauphin (1661–1711), c. 1680 (vii) Paire de torchère, c. 1700 (viii) Bureau Plat, c. 1710 (The Rubens Room, Windsor Castle) (ix) Petit gaines, attributed to., early 18th century. (Source: Royal Collection)

Sothebys

 * http://www.sothebys.com/en/search-results.html?keyword=boulle
 * http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/lot.22.html/2004/the-greenberg-collection-important-french-furniture-n08031
 * http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/treasures-l17303/lot.21.html

Christies

 * http://artist.christies.com/Andre-Charles-Boulle-13150.aspx

Hôtel des Ventes de Monte-Carlo

 * http://www.hvmc.com/en/auctions/mobilier-objets-d-art-tableaux-anciens-archeologie-civilisation-vente-de-prestige-105/andre-charles-boulle-1642-1732-84929

title: André-Charles Boulle


text:
Talk:Immunoglobulin E

Very long run-on sentence
Beginning with "Although IgE is typically the ..." This whole paragraph is a single sentence packed with a broad variety of punctuation. As a reader who is not formally skilled in Immunology, it makes comprehension between difficult and onward to impossible.

Cleanup
Someone has greatly expanded the article, but it is now almost exclusively about allergy. Scientific articles in this field should really follow the form (1) Physiology (normal function), (2) Genetics/molecular biology (ultrastructure and DNA), (3) Role in disease (allergy, in this case), (4) Therapeutic role (e.g. cromoglycate or omalizumab).

In its present form, the article is off-balance. Could the new contributor kindly do some tidying up and avoid speculation as much as possible? JFW | T@lk  21:26, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

 * I've tried to reword it so the article is more centred on IgE rather than drifting into slightly irrelevent stuff. Obviously IgE and allergy are intimately connected topics, but hopefully this is an acceptable improvement?

 * AIT

 * The article continues to contain highly biased and incomplete information. Unfortunately I have only the knowledge to recognize this, and do not feel I have the knowledge to correct it.  I suggest the reader take this article with a grain of salt and consider alternate sources such as MedLine.

 * LNB

 * The "Allergy Misconceptions" segment is highly subjective and suspicious of personal agenda. It should be designated as such by a moderator or, preferably, removed completely as it has nothing to do with IgE.

 * GPG, NREMT-P

 * ^ Yes I just removed it a few minute ago. People are confusing mild immune responses to foods (IgG or not) with truly allergic life-threatening illness mediated by IgE. Anonywiki 23:20, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

 * [LKP:] Someone got the history of the discovery of IgE wrong, the author seemingly confused Norman's and Lichtenstein's work on AgE (antigen E from ragweed, an allergen component) with IgE, the immunoglobulin identified during the same period: I posted this correction which was removed after 4 minutes. Please read the suggested literature ( Allergol Int. 2013 Mar;62(1):3-12. doi: 10.2332/allergolint.13-RAI-0537.Mast cells and IgE: from history to today. Saito H1, Ishizaka T, Ishizaka K. ) and the original references and the mistake should be clear to all:

 * IgE was simultaneously discovered in 1966-7 by two groups: Dr.s Kimishige and Teruko Ishizaka and Dr. Margaret M. Hornbrook in the Children's Asthma Research Institute and Hospital in Denver, CO. and by Gunnar Johansson and Hans Bennich in Uppsala, Sweden — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.83.135.20 (talk) 06:26, 24 February 2016

 * So my correction was live 4 minutes before removed it. Now 2 days have passed. Have you had time to read the documentation, and will you take responsibility to leave the former version on the page? Or can we start moving towards what really happened with IgE? Otherwise, please see http://www.eaaci.org/resources/scientific-output/global-atlas-of-allergy.html and find chapter 2, where Johansson tells more or less the same story as Ishizaka. This what is generally believed in the allergy community.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.198.37.130 (talk) 22:28, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

 * In case you continue to have reading comprehension issues, my username is "the wolf child" (de ulven barn). I see you reverted your edit back in again, but that's not how Wikipedia works. (see WP:BRD) The reason you take your issue to the talk page is so that is can be discussed with other contributors. If a consensus is reached supporting your edit, then you can re-add it. You can't just simply re-write your edit summary here, insult another editor then cram your edit back in. The content you are trying to change is properly supported by a reliable source. If you don't achieve consensus here, (or don't want to wait), you can challenge the attached sources at the WP:RSN. Please read Wikipedia's editing policies and guidelines, especially WP:EW, so that you can learn to contribute more effectively. - the WOLF  child  23:24, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

 * Hello. The changes made by the IP user are correct, according to his references cited and this additional [and powerful] Review article: The discovery of IgE, Stanworth DR. Allergy 1993: 48: 67-71]. The literature is in agreement in that the two teams that independently discovered IgE were: Johansson & Bennich (mostly), and Ishizaka's team. And it is evident that Lichtenstein and Norman made a subsequesnt discovery on myeloma using the already discovered IgE.  Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 04:50, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

 * - So with the current version, the source attached does not support the content? Or is the source itself not RS? - the WOLF  child  23:36, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

The source quoting Lichtenstein and Norman is not about the IgE discovery, but a type of myeloma. All sources indicate 2 teams: Johansson & Bennich and Ishizaka's team. I took the liberty to edit the portion on the discovery. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 01:48, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. I'm glad it got sorted out. Cheers - the WOLF  child  02:06, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

 * [LKP] Thanks,, the text here is now correct. However, the link to Gunnar Johansson is not. Now two different Johanssons have been merged into a single person. The original article describes a psychologist who died 1998. The immunologist Gunnar Johansson (in the scientific society and literature mostly known as SGO Johansson) is alive and well, and I am sure he will be sorry to read about his death. He still serves as a kind of professor emeritus at the Karolinska Insituttet in Stockholm, Sweden. http://ki.se/en/people/sgojoh I checked the Swedish Wiki, and he is recognized as a person that needs an article, but it has not yet been written. I'm obviously not well aquainted with the Wiki etiquette, I just happen to have known and worked with the persons that have been discussed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.198.37.130 (talk) 12:19, 27 February 2016
 * In that case it's probably best to confine your comments and suggestions to the related talk pages as you may have a conflict of interest. - the WOLF  child  19:01, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thewolfchild is correct; it is best you continue your valuable feedback in these talk pages and not edit the articles. I am currently busy with real life but I will make the point of separating both biographies on Gunnar Johansson. I thank you both for working together with me. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 19:36, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

 * I made a new article on him: Gunnar Johansson (biochemist). Please feel free to give feedback at THAT talk page. Thank you. BatteryIncluded (talk) 16:10, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Request for rewriting run-on sentence
Can someone, not necessarily an expert, please rewrite this run on sentence; "IgE that can specifically recognise an "allergen" (typically this is a protein, such as dust mite DerP1, cat FelD1, grass or ragweed pollen, etc.) has a unique long-lived interaction with its high-affinity receptor FcεRI so that basophils and mast cells, capable of mediating inflammatory reactions, become "primed", ready to release chemicals like histamine, leukotrienes, and certain interleukins, which cause many of the symptoms we associate with allergy, such as airway constriction in asthma, local inflammation in eczema, increased mucus secretion in allergic rhinitis, and increased vascular permeability, it is presumed, to allow other immune cells to gain access to tissues, but which can lead to a potentially fatal drop in blood pressure as in anaphylaxis." Thanks very much 220.101.92.34 (talk). —Preceding undated comment added 07:50, 11 May 2011 (UTC).

What's the normal adult and/or children's level of IgE?
i added a citation needed label to the value that's already in the article.

i spent a long time googling and haven't found any quotes of "normal" levels (neither with nor without a description of how many standard deviations "normal" actually means!).

If somebody can find this, then we could add one or both of the following refs and also give the value in IU/mL (or kIU/L, which is the same thing). The conversion according to these two references is: 1 IU/mL = 1kIU/L = 2.44 ng/mL. The polish reference gives 2.44, the US one 2.4, so presumably the polish one just goes to higher precision and the US one is a rougher approximation. These would put 75 ng/mL = 30.7 kIU/L or 31 kIU/L to keep about the same level of precision.
 * http://www.mp.pl/artykuly/index.php?aid=24925
 * http://www.aruplab.com/guides/ug/tests/0050345.jsp

However, until we get a reference, i don't see much point in adding the kIU/L value.

Boud (talk) 19:32, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Irrelevant/unexplained?
This hardly seems relevant - when its there with out further introduction?

"In 1975, Robert N. Hamburger, M.D. published "Peptide Inhibition of the P-K Reaction" based on blocking up to 89% of the IgE receptors on mast cells by the pentapeptide representing amino acids 320 to 324 on the epsilon chain of IgE.[13] Confirming the IgE binding site, in 1979 he published in Immunology "Inhibition of IgE binding to tissue culture cells and leucocytes by pentapeptide" (ref).

I'll remove unless someone objects? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radicularia (talk • contribs) 21:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Needs to be comprehensible to the intelligent layman
This article is full of technical terms, explained only by links to other pages, which themselves are full of other technical terms. This page may (?) be well written for biologists and doctors. Someone please make it accessible by the average parent who is looking up information for their hyperallergic children. I do *NOT* mean to "dum it down". Make it as comprehensive as possible. Just leave some of it within reach of non-experts. 69.247.14.176 17:17, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Came here to say exactly the same thing. Take the third sentence of the article as an example: "Monomers of IgE consist of two heavy chains (ε chain) and two light chains, with the ε chain containing 4 Ig-like constant domains (Cε1-Cε4)."Faff296 (talk) 06:52, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Is spelling dumb as 'dum' an example of dumbing down?Andrew ranfurly (talk) 07:54, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
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Explanation of where / how IgEs are produced?
I don't see in the article any meaningful explanation of the production of IgEs. There's a graphic and a few allusions to the fact that they are specific to specific antigens, and I'd be curious to have more information about how that comes to be. Unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to add this myself, but if someone else would be able to add it would be appreciated! zplizzi (talk) 16:30, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Immunoglobulin E


text: Category talk:1900s Atlantic hurricane seasons


text:
Hans Graf von Sponeck

Hans Emil Otto Graf von Sponeck (12 February 1888 – 23 July 1944) was a German general during World War II who was imprisoned for disobeying orders and later executed.

Pre-World War II career
Hans Graf von Sponeck was born in 1888 in Düsseldorf. He received a military education and was commissioned as an officer in 1908. He married in 1910 and had two sons by this marriage. He served in World War I as a battalion adjutant, regiment adjutant, company commander and general staff officer. He was wounded three times and in 1917 was promoted to the rank of Hauptmann (Captain). Afterwards he was awarded both orders of the Iron Cross with (oak) Leaves.

Between 1924 and 1934, he served on the General Staff HQ and later, as full colonel, commanded an infantry regiment at Neustrelitz. In 1925, Sponeck was admitted to the Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg) as a Knight of Honor (Ehrenritter).

Sponeck commanded Infantry Regiment 48 at Döberitz until late 1937 when he transferred to the Luftwaffe to establish paratrooper units. During the course of the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair, Sponeck was recalled by contemporaries as having suggested his willingness to lead his troops in support of army commander-in-chief Werner von Fritsch if called to do so, though no such plan ever came to fruition.

During the trial of General von Fritsch, Sponeck was called as a character witness but was roughly put down by Hermann Göring, who was serving as Court President. Nevertheless, Sponeck became commander of the 22nd Infantry Division with 42nd Army Corps training the troops as airborne infantry.

Second World War
On 1 February 1940, Sponeck was promoted to Generalleutnant. The German airborne assault on the Low Countries began on 10 May 1940, led by Sponeck and General Kurt Student. Sponeck led the German troops in the failed Battle for The Hague and was almost captured, only to be saved by the bombardment of Rotterdam on the 14 May 1940 which quickly led to the Dutch capitulation. He was wounded, and on his return to Germany was further awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by Adolf Hitler.

Invasion of the Soviet Union
Before dawn on 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa was launched beginning the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Sponeck commanded the 22nd Infantry Division as part of the 11th Army in the area of Army Group South attacking in the direction of the Crimean Peninsula. Two days before the invasion, on 20 June 1941, Sponeck's general staff gave orders to the division that any Jewish Red Army prisoners of war should be identified and separated from the rest of the Soviet prisoners. With the start of the invasion, Sponeck's division operated from the Romanian frontier driving into Bessarabia, and then to the southern Ukraine. In preparation for the invasion of Crimea, Sponeck's division was ordered in September and early October 1941 to attack east and north along the Sea of Azov to the cities of Henichesk, Melitopol and Berdiansk.

On 7 October 1941, Graf von Sponeck ordered his division to work closely with the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) by rounding up, identifying, and handing over Jewish civilians. Mass shootings of Jews by units of Einsatzgruppe D of the SiPo and SD are documented in both Henichesk and Melitopol shortly after these cities were occupied by the 22nd Infantry Division in October 1941. In Melitopol alone 2,000 Jewish men, women and children were massacred. In later English captivity at Trent Park, one of General von Sponeck's subordinate senior officers, Colonel (later General) Dietrich von Choltitz, admitted frankly in a surreptitiously recorded conversation that he had taken an active part in the work of killing Jews during the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Because of sciatica and intestinal trouble, General von Sponeck took sick leave from his division on 14 October 1941. On Sponeck's return on 3 December 1941, Manstein gave him command of the XLII Army Corps (with command of the 46th Infantry Division), which had taken the Kerch Peninsula on the extreme eastern tip of Crimea. In Feodosia, within the area of Sponeck's command, 1,052 Jews were murdered on or around 10 December 1941 by units of Einsatzgruppe D with the active cooperation and participation of the local military field commander and military police. On 10 December 1941, General von Sponeck ordered that all Jews found within his area of command were to be treated in principle as "partisans", marked with the Star of David, and "deployed as labor." He also ordered that any Red Army soldiers captured, even those in uniform, were to be shot immediately and approved reprisal actions against civilians for any local anti-German activity or sabotage. Historian Erik Grimmer-Solem remarks:

"The case of General von Sponeck is complicated. He had the moral courage to refuse an order from Hitler to stand his ground when his troops were threatened with destruction, and he was court-martialed and later killed by the Nazis for it. At the same time, he did not refuse to carry out the criminal Commissar Order, which gave cover for what became a genocidal war against ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ in the Soviet Union. While von Sponeck was not a Nazi in the technical sense and was himself even critical of some aspects of the regime, his orders and the actions of his troops leave no doubt that he had internalized anti-Semitic racism. Sponeck shows that it was not necessary to be an ideologically-driven Nazi to carry out the Nazi regime’s policy of mass murder. Under Nazism and in conditions of war, the lines between victim and perpetrator, between hero and follower could dissolve within a single person.”" On 26 December 1941, the Soviet forces landed on Kerch, and on 30 December executed another landing near Feodosiya with two armies. The operation was to drive to Sevastopol and relieve the garrison, now encircled by the German 11th Army. The 46th Division was the only division in a position to be able to block the Soviet advance. Manstein believed it could contain the landing, but the Soviets consolidated their bridgeheads and defeated the attacking Romanian brigades. As a result, Sponeck, as the XLII Corps commander, chose to withdraw the division from Kerch through the Parpach narrows to avoid being caught and encircled by Soviet forces advancing from the landing zones located at the extreme east (Kerch) and west (Feodosiya) of the peninsula. In doing so, he disobeyed direct orders from Hitler to hold his ground.

Trial, imprisonment and execution
On 23 January 1942, Sponeck was tried in front of the Court President Hermann Göring where he maintained that he had acted against orders, on his own initiative, in order to avoid the destruction of his division. He was found guilty of disobedience to a superior officer and given the death sentence. Adolf Hitler (on Manstein's proposal) commuted the sentence to seven years in prison. Sponeck was to serve as an example to those who disobeyed Hitler's new order not to retreat. Sponeck was imprisoned in the Germersheim Fortress.

Following the 20 July failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, Josef Bürckel, Gauleiter of Gau Westmark where Germersheim was located, pressed Heinrich Himmler, who was the Reich's Security Official, to have Sponeck executed in retribution for the assassination plot, even though the latter had no contact with the German military resistance. On Himmler's orders, Sponeck was shot to death on 23 July 1944. Sponeck was buried in Germersheim and no citations or speeches were permitted at his grave. After the war, Sponeck's remains were transferred to the Soldiers' Cemetery at Dahn in the Palatinate Forest.

After the war, Graf von Sponeck was commemorated in Germany, with an Air Force base in Germersheim, streets and monuments named after him. However, in 2015, following the publication of an article by Erik Grimmer-Solem in 2014 in the journal Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, which investigated Sponeck's role in "numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity in the southern Ukraine and Crimea in 1941", civil protests in Germersheim took place. The German Air Force, in accordance with the German Government's and the Bundestag's decisions, renamed the Sponeck Airbase ("General-Hans-Graf-Sponeck-Kaserne") "Südpfalz-Kaserne".

title: Hans Graf von Sponeck


text:
Saint Lucia National Emergency Management Organisation

Saint Lucia's National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) is responsible for disaster preparedness and disaster response co-ordination.

History
Disaster Management, though called by numerous names over the years has manifested itself constantly in Saint Lucia. As far back as June 10 – 20, 1979 Saint Lucia was host to the Caribbean Disaster Preparedness Seminar, where over one hundred and fifty delegates from the Caribbean, North and Latin America assembled to discuss the concerns of the day. The following year Hurricane Allen hit Saint Lucia.

A year later in 1991 Saint Lucia, together with fifteen other Caribbean States signed the Articles that created the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) Disaster Management in Saint Lucia is conducted on a voluntary basis and during an event NEMO is part of a larger network that comes into existence to respond to a disaster. There are various Ministries that are essential to a response action. There are also eighteen (18) District Committees that are composed similarly to the national committees, which are composed of representatives of various Ministries and Social Groups. For a response action the national personnel contact his/her local counterpart and together execute an action.

Statutory Authority
Provided NEMO with the power to commandeer resources during a state of emergency.
 * Emergency Powers Act 5 of 1995

Consolidated and placed in law the actions of NEMO.
 * Disaster Preparedness and Response Act 13 of 2000

Authorized the National Emergency Response Plan for Saint Lucia.
 * Cabinet Conclusion 1149/96

Replaced Disaster Preparedness and Response Act of 2000.
 * Disaster Management Act No. 30 of 2006

Mission statement
The role of the National Emergency Management Organisation [NEMO] is to develop, test and implement adequate measures to protect the population of Saint Lucia from the physical, social, environmental and economic effects of both natural and man-made disasters.

Its responsibility is to ensure the efficient functioning of preparedness, prevention, mitigation and response actions.

Disaster Response Plans
The National Response Plans for Saint Lucia are all at various levels of approval. Once they have met the full approval process they shall be available to the public. The plans are all “stand alone” documents that may be activated to support hazard management plans. They are inter alia: 1. SOPs: General [Approved 1149/96] 2. SOPs: EOC [Approved 1149/96] 3. SOPs: Declaring a Disaster [Laws of Saint Lucia] 4. SOPs: National Shut Down 5. Telecommunications Procedures [Approved 1149/96] 6. Mass Crowd Events Guidelines 1. A Policy Framework on Disaster Management 2. Donations and Importation of Relief Supplies Policy [Part 1 approved 1149/96] 3. Emergency Shelter Management Policy [Approved 1149/96] 4. Emergency Housing Policy 5. Hazard Mitigation Policy 6. Mass Fatalities Policy 7. Mass Crowd Events Policies and Guidelines 8. Governmental Officers Security Travel Policy 9. Backup Policy 10. National Policy on Ambulance Operations 11. National Incident Management System [NIMS] Policy 1. Damage Assessment and Needs Analysis Guidelines 2. Damage Assessment and Needs Analysis Plan 3. Crisis Communication Guide 4. Media Plan for Disasters and Emergencies 5. Telecommunications Plan 6. Relief Distribution Plan 7. Shelter Management Program 8. National Plan for Transportation in Disasters 9. Welfare Emergency Management Support Plan 10. Stress Response Team Plan 11. Emergency Action Plan for Agricultural Pests And Diseases 12. Disaster Auxiliary Corps Guidelines 13. Hospitality Industry Crisis Management Plan 14. Model Plan for the District Disaster Committees 1. Hurricane Plan [Approved 1149/96] 2. Earthquake Plan 3. Volcanic Eruption Plan 4. Landslide Plan 5. Oil Spill Contingency Plan 6. Strategy on the Management of Used Oil 7. Hazardous Materials Plan 8. Hazard Mitigation Plan 9. Response Plan for Refugees and Displaced Persons 10. Maritime Search and Rescue Plan 11. Land Search and Rescue Plan 12. Drought Response Plan 13. Flood Response Plan 14. Fire Response Plan 1. GOSL Continuity of Operations Plan [COOP] 2. The Ministry of Works Plan 3. The Ministry of Health Plan 4. Private Sector Response Plan 5. Borderlais Prison Emergency Plan 6. GFL Charles Airport Emergency Plan 7. Hweanorra International Airport Emergency Plan 8. Seaports Contingency Plan 9. Guidelines for Debris Management in a Disaster 10. Ministries of External Affairs - Guidelines in case of Disasters 11. National Incident Management System [NIMS] Plan 1. Articles Establishing the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency [CDERA] 2. St George's Declaration of Principals 3. Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations 4. United Nations Millennium Goals 5. Agreement Between Member States and Associate Members of The Association of Caribbean States for Regional Cooperation on Natural Disasters 1. The National Emergency Powers Act (5/1995) 2. The Disaster Preparedness & Response Act (13/2000)
 * STANDING OPERATING PROCEDURES [SOPs]
 * POLICIES & GUIDELINES
 * COMMITTEE PLANS
 * HAZARD SPECIFIC PLANS
 * GOSL PLANS
 * AGREEMENTS
 * LEGISLATION

PAHO on NEMO
In praise of Disaster Management in Saint Lucia, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has stated the following on its website.

"National Disaster Management is very active and well developed. Saint Lucia has achieved Disaster Management capabilities which other Caribbean countries can follow. Numerous agreements with the private sector, NGO's, Service Organizations, and neighbouring French Departments have been implemented. Health sector mitigation activities have begun and are expected to continue. St. Lucia has all possible disaster plans available and updated thanks to the National Emergency Management Office Saint Lucia


text:
Talk:Calpain

Untitled
I said "found in the brain" because that's the only tissue i'm sure it's found in. It may be in other tissues as well. If you have evidence for that, will you add it please? also, stroke and head injury may not be the only times it's activated in excess. --Delldot 21:27, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Calpain is ubiquitously found, indeed. You should find more sources at pubmed. The overactivation of calpain also contributes to induced hepatotoxicity and several neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's Disease, main subject of my graduation research project. Bruno Ramos 03:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Marnie.kotlyar. Peer reviewers: Marnie.kotlyar.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:35, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

References Missing
The text is full of numerical references that are not listed below. Please, fix that. Bruno Ramos 03:11, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It appears that a user added content from his/her thesis, but did not include the references. I have reverted to the last version before those additions. --Arcadian 14:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

P1 and P2
This text refers to the P1 and P2 position on the molecule but as far as I can determine there is no explanation of what these are anywhere in wikipedia, including on the protein page. Could this please be rectified? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.159.165.35 (talk) 03:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Links mislabeled
I am not sure where to best provide this feedback, but it seems that there are a range of pages that contain mislabeled link boxes. The links in the section "Available PDB structures" don't go to any of the PDB sites, but to PDBsum. I suggest renaming the section to "Links to PDBsum" and adding another section that redirects to the PDB, similar to what is available for many other protein related pages, e.g. SHC1 --Andorsch (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Plagiarism
"tertiary structure elements rather than primary amino acid sequences are likely responsible for directing cleavage to a specific substrate." This exact phrase is found in an uncited research paper with the DOI: 10.1055/s-0032-1301419 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.65.169.22 (talk) 23:07, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Calpain


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bystander

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Result: Delete -- (drini's page| ☎ ) 01:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Bystander
This is a dicdef that has already been transwikied to Wiktioanry. Delete Angr/undefined 21:27, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Andrew pmk | Talk 23:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Kushboy 03:09, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.


text:
Staggered fermion

In lattice field theory, staggered fermions (also known as Kogut–Susskind fermions) are a fermion discretization that reduces the number of fermion doublers from sixteen to four. They are one of the fastest lattice fermions when it comes to simulations and they also possess some nice features such as a remnant chiral symmetry, making them very popular in lattice QCD calculations. Staggered fermions were first formulated by John Kogut and Leonard Susskind in 1975 and were later found to be equivalent to the discretized version of the Dirac–Kähler fermion.

Single-component basis
The naively discretized Dirac action in Euclidean spacetime with lattice spacing $$a$$ and Dirac fields $$\psi_n$$ at every lattice point, indexed by $$n = (n_1,n_2,n_3,n_4)$$, takes the form

S = a^4 \sum_{n \in \Lambda}\bar \psi_n \bigg(\sum^4_{\mu=1}\gamma_\mu \frac{\psi_{n+\hat\mu}-\psi_{n-\hat \mu}}{2a}+m\psi_n\bigg). $$

Staggered fermions are constructed from this by performing the staggered transformation into a new basis of fields $$\psi_n'$$ defined by

\psi_n = \gamma_1^{n_1}\gamma_2^{n_2}\gamma_3^{n_3}\gamma_4^{n_4}\psi'_n. $$

Since Dirac matrices square to the identity, this position dependent transformation mixes the fermion spin components in a way that repeats itself every two lattice spacings. Its effect is to diagonalize the action in the spinor indices, meaning that the action ends up splitting into four distinct parts, one for each Dirac spinor component. Denoting one of those components by $$\chi_n$$, which is Grassmann variable with no spin structure, the other three components can be dropped, yielding the single-component staggered action

S = a^4 \sum_n \bar \chi_n \bigg(\sum^4_{\mu=1}\eta_\mu(n)\frac{\chi_{n+\hat \mu}-\chi_{n-\hat \mu}}{2a}+m\chi_n\bigg), $$

where $$ \hat \mu$$ are unit vectors in the $$\mu$$ direction and the staggered sign function is given by $$\eta_i(n) = (-1)^{\sum_{j<i}n_j}$$. The staggered transformation is part of a larger class of transformations $$\psi_n \rightarrow A_n \psi_n$$ satisfying $$A_n^\dagger \gamma_\mu A_{n+\hat \mu} = \Delta_\mu(n) \in U(1)^{\otimes 4}$$. Together with a necessary consistency condition on the plaquettes, all these transformations are equivalent to the staggered transformation. Due to fermion doubling, the original naive action described sixteen fermions, but having discarded three of the four copies this new action describes only four.

Spin-taste basis
To explicitly show that the single-component staggered fermion action describes four Dirac fermions requires blocking the lattice into hypercubes and reinterpreting the Grassmann fields at the sixteen hypercube sites as the sixteen degrees of freedom of the four fermions. In analogy to the usage of flavour in particle physics, these four fermions are referred to be different tastes of fermions. The blocked lattice sites are indexed by $$h_\mu$$ while for each of these the internal hypercube sites are indexed by $$s_\mu$$, whose vector components are either zero or one. In this notation the original lattice vector is written as $$n_\mu = 2h_\mu+s_\mu$$. The matrices $$\Gamma^{(s)} = \gamma_1^{s_1}\gamma_2^{s_2}\gamma_3^{s_3}\gamma_4^{s_4}$$ are used to define the spin-taste basis of staggered fermions

\psi^{t}(h)_\alpha = \frac{1}{8}\sum_s \Gamma^{(s)}_{\alpha t}\chi(2h+s), \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \bar \psi^{t}(h)_\alpha = \frac{1}{8}\sum_s \bar \chi(2h+s)(\Gamma^{(s)\dagger})_{t\alpha}. $$

The taste index $$t$$ runs over the four tastes while the spin index $$\alpha$$ runs over the four spin components. This change of basis turns the one-component action on the lattice with spacing $$a$$ into the spin-taste action with an effective lattice spacing of $$b=2a$$ given by

S = b^4 \sum_h \bar \psi_n \bigg\{\sum_\mu[(\gamma_\mu \otimes 1)\partial_\mu + \tfrac{b}{2}(\gamma_5 \otimes \gamma_5 \gamma_\mu^T)\square_\mu]+m(1 \otimes 1)\bigg\}\psi_h. $$

Here $$\partial_\mu$$ and $$\square_\mu$$ are shorthand for the symmetrically discretized derivative and Laplacian, respectively. Meanwhile, the tensor notation separates out the spin and taste matrices as $$[(A\otimes B) \psi_n]^t(h)_\alpha = A_\alpha{}^\beta B^t{}_{t'}\psi^{t'}(h)_\beta$$. Since the kinetic and mass terms are diagonal in the taste indices, the action describes four degenerate Dirac fermions. These interact together in what are known as taste mixing interactions through the second term, which is an irrelevant dimension five operator that vanishes in the continuum limit. This action is very similar to the action constructed using four Wilson fermions with the only difference being in the second term tensor structure, which for Wilson fermions is spin and taste diagonal $$( 1 \otimes 1)$$.

A key property of staggered fermions, not shared by some other lattice fermions such as Wilson fermions, is that they have a remnant chiral symmetry in the massless limit. The remnant symmetry is described in the spin-taste basis by

\psi_n \rightarrow e^{i\alpha \gamma_5\otimes \gamma_5}\psi_n, \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \bar \psi_n \rightarrow \bar \psi e^{i\alpha \gamma_5 \otimes \gamma_5}. $$

The presence of this remnant symmetry makes staggered fermions especially useful for certain applications since they can describe spontaneous symmetry breaking and anomalies. The symmetry also protects massless fermions from gaining a mass upon renormalization.

Staggered fermions are gauged in the one-component action by inserting link fields into the action to make it gauge invariant in the same way that this is done for the naive Dirac lattice action. This approach cannot be implemented in the spin-taste action directly. Instead the interacting single-component action must be used together with a modified spin-taste basis $$\psi^{t}(h)_\alpha$$ where Wilson lines are inserted between the different lattice points within the hypercube to ensure gauge invariance. The resulting action cannot be expressed in a closed form but can be expended out in powers of the lattice spacing, leading to the usual interacting Dirac action for four fermions, together with an infinite series of irrelevant fermion bilinear operators that vanish in the continuum limit.

Momentum-space staggered fermions
Staggered fermions can also be formulated in momentum space by transforming the single-component action into Fourier space and splitting up the Brillouin zone into sixteen blocks. Shifting these to the origin yields sixteen copies of the single-component fermion whose momenta extend over half the Brillouin zone range $$-\pi/2\leq k_\mu \leq \pi/2$$. These can be grouped into a $$4\times 4$$ matrix which upon a unitary transformation and a momentum rescaling, to ensure that the momenta again range over the full $$[-\pi,\pi]$$ Brillouin range, gives the momentum-space staggered fermion action

S = \int_{-\pi}^\pi \frac{d^4 p}{(2\pi)^4}\bar \psi(p) \bigg[2i\sum_\mu \sin\tfrac{p_\mu}{2}(\gamma_\mu \otimes 1) + 2m ( 1 \otimes 1)\bigg]\psi(p). $$

This can be transformed back into position space through an inverse Fourier transformation. In contrast to the spin-taste action, this action does not mix the taste components together, seemingly giving an action that fully separates out the four fermions. It therefore has a full $$U(4) \otimes U(4)$$ chiral symmetry group. This is however only achieved at the expense of locality, where now the position-space Dirac operator connects lattice points that are arbitrarily far apart, rather than ones restricted to a hypercube. This conclusion is also seen in the propagator which is discontinuous at the Brillouin zone edges.

The momentum-space and position-space formulations differ because they use a different definition of taste, whereby the momentum space definition does not correspond to the local definition in position space. These two definitions only become equivalent in the continuum limit. Chiral symmetry is maintained despite the possibility of simulating a single momentum space fermion because locality was one of the assumptions of the Nielsen–Ninomiya theorem determining whether a theory experiences fermion doubling. The loss of locality makes this formulation hard to use for simulations.

Simulating staggered fermions
The main issue with simulating staggered fermions is that the different tastes mix together due to the taste-mixing term. If there was no mixing between tastes, lattice simulations could easily untangle the different contributions from the different tastes to end up with the results for processes involving a single fermion. Instead the taste mixing introduces discretization errors that are hard to account for.

Initially these discretization errors, of order $$\mathcal O(a^2)$$, were unusually large compared to other lattice fermions, making staggered fermions unpopular for simulations. The main method to reduce these errors is to perform Symanzik improvement, whereby irrelevant operators are added to the action with their coefficients fine-tuned to cancel discretization errors. The first such action was the ASQTAD action, with this being improved after analyzing one-loop taste exchange interactions to further eliminate $$\mathcal O(a^2)$$ errors using link-field smearing. This resulted in the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action and it forms the basis of modern staggered fermion simulations. Since simulations are done using the single-component action, simulating staggered fermions is very fast as this requires simulating only single-component Grassmann variables rather than four component spinors. The main code and gauge ensembles used for staggered fermions comes from the MILC collaboration.

An advantage of staggered fermions over some other lattice fermions in that the remnant chiral symmetry protects simulations from exceptional configurations, which are gauge field configurations that lead to small eigenvalues of the Dirac operator, making numerical inversion difficult. Staggered fermions are protected from this because their Dirac operator is anti-hermitian, so its eigenvalues come in complex conjugate pairs $$m\pm i \lambda$$ for real $$\lambda$$. This ensures that the Dirac determinant is real and positive for non-zero masses. Negative or imaginary determinants are problematic during Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations as the determinant is present in the probability weight.

Fourth-root trick
In the continuum limit the staggered fermion Dirac operator reduces to a four-fold continuum Dirac operator $$D = D_1 \otimes 1$$, so its eigenvalues are four-fold degenerate, hence $$[\det D]^{1/4} = \det D_1$$. This degeneracy is broken by taste mixing at non-zero lattice spacings $$a\neq 0$$, although simulations show that the eigenvalues are still roughly clustered in groups of four. This motivates the fourth-root trick where a single fermion is simulated by replacing the staggered Dirac operator determinant by its fourth root in the partition function

\int \mathcal D U \det[D_{\text{stag}}] e^{-S_{\text{gauge}}} \ \ \ \ \ \rightarrow \ \ \ \ \ \int \mathcal D U (\det [D_{\text{stag}}])^{1/4} e^{-S_{\text{gauge}}}. $$

The resulting fermion is called a rooted staggered fermion and it is used in most staggered fermion simulations, including by the MILC collaboration. The theoretical problem in using rooted staggered fermions is that it is unclear whether they give the correct continuum limit, that is whether rooting changes the universality class of the theory. If it does, then there is no reason to suppose that rooted staggered fermions are any good at describing the continuum field theory. The universality class is generally determined by the dimensionality of the theory and by what symmetries it satisfies. The problem with rooted staggered fermions is that they can only be described by a nonlocal action for which the universality classification no longer applies. As nonlocality implies a violation of unitary, rooted staggered fermions are also non-physical at non-zero lattice spacings, although this is not a problem if the nonlocality vanishes in the continuum. It has been found that under reasonable assumptions, the fourth root trick does define a renormalizable theory that at all orders in perturbation theory reproduces a local, unitary theory with the correct number of light quarks in the continuum. It remains an open question whether this is also true non-perturbatively, however theoretical arguments and numerical comparisons to other lattice fermions indicate that rooted staggered fermions do belong to the correct universality class.

title: Staggered fermion


text: User talk:62.65.192.21

title: User talk:62.65.192.21


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Secret Level

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was DELETE. — J I P | Talk 15:48, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

The Secret Level
Non-notable message board. 202.156.6.54 21:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nom. CambridgeBayWeather 21:35, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Andrew pmk | Talk 23:31, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete non-notable. (and I even go to it.) Toffile 00:39, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Deleet24.255.211.121 05:59, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete - not every GameFAQs message board spinoff will be notable or merit and article, and is not and does not. --Mysidia (talk) 07:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Non-notable. *drew 15:27, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.


text:
Henry Seidel Canby

Henry Seidel Canby (September 6, 1878 – April 5, 1961) was a critic, editor, and Yale University professor.

A scion of a Quaker family that arrived in Wilmington, Delaware, around 1740 and grew to regional prominence through milling and business affairs, Henry Seidel Canby was a son of Edward T. Canby. Canby was born in Wilmington, and attended Wilmington Friends School. He graduated from Yale in 1899, then taught at the university until becoming a professor in 1922.

Following a four-year stint as the editor of the literary review of the New York Evening Post, Canby became one of the founders and editors of the Saturday Review of Literature, serving as the last until 1936. His notes on the work of Vilfredo Pareto in 1933 in the Saturday Review helped launch the Pareto vogue of the 1930s. In 1926 Canby became Editorial Chair of the newly created Book of the Month Club. This was a subscription book club intended to promote the notion of middlebrow culture though their premier selection was quite forward at the time.

In 1922 Canby, together with his wife Marion Ponsonby Gause Canby, Mason and Helen Fox Trowbridge, Beverly Waugh and Caroline (Lena) Jennings Kunkel, Henry Noble and Marjorie Dodd MacCracken, Lee Wilson and Marion Roberts Canby Dodd, and David Stanley and Cora Deming Welch Smith founded the Yelping Hill Association. A summer colony based on the Pocono Lake Preserve Quaker colony in Pennsylvania, where some of the families had summered in previous years. It was from his office, The Writer's Cramp, on Yelping Hill that Canby did much work for the Saturday Review of Literature and the Book of the Month Club. In his book American Memoir Canby reflects on his, and authors', work done in Cornwall citing that "it is not too much to say that for some years at least the fate of a new book of importance was more dependent upon the Hills of Cornwall than upon anything else except its own merits."

Henry Canby joined nearly 250 bohemians in signing The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door sometime between 1920 and 1925. The door is now held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and Canby's signature can be found on front panel 2.

He was the father of Edward Tatnall Canby (1912-1998), a noted reviewer, radio-show host, folkloris t and early advocate of electronic music.

title: Henry Seidel Canby


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Wikipedia:Account suspensions/Yeltensic42.618

User:Yeltensic42.618
was blocked for pagemove vandalism. I'm waiting to hear back from him and the user who was the target of the vandalism before deciding whether to unblock. -- Curps 21:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

It looks like the target of the pagemove vandalism was blocked indefinitely for vandalism and threatening more, and this was slightly immature retaliation, so I will let the block on Yeltensic42.618 expire in about 18 hours (instead of indefinite), unless some other admin (Geogre?) sees fit to apply a different block. -- Curps 00:06, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


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Panalpina

Panalpina, legally Panalpina Welttransport Holding AG, was a Swiss logistics company. It merged with DSV in 2019 and became DSV Panalpina, with the Panalpina name being killed off in September 2021 by DSV through a brand re-alignment.

Overview

Panalpina provided freight forwarding and logistics services, intercontinental air and ocean freight and associated supply chain management. It employed 15,000 people worldwide with hubs in Luxembourg, at Findel Airport, Prague and in Huntsville, Alabama, at Huntsville International Airport. The aircraft fleet composed of one Boeing 747-8F. Panalpina offers services to various industry verticals such as Hi-Tech, Automotive, Telecom, Retail&Fashion, Healthcare as well as Oil and Gas. Panalpina had wet leased or ACMI (aircraft, complete crew, maintenance, and insurance) agreements with cargo airline Atlas Air Cargo, naming one Boeing 747 the "Spirit of Panalpina". This arrangement ceased in July 2020 with the loss of around 88 jobs.

Panalpina was fully owned by the Ernst Göhner Foundation until its public listing on the SWX Swiss Exchange on 22 September 2005. In 2005, Panalpina acquired Janco Oilfield Services in Singapore and Overseas Shipping Group in Norway.

In 2010, Panalpina agreed to resolve foreign bribery investigations and to pay more than $80 million in penalties. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated whether the company had paid foreign officials to speed drilling rigs and other equipment through customs.

In 2017, the company acquired two companies in Germany and the Netherlands, respectively, to extend its network in the perishables business. In 2019, after wide speculations circled around a possible merger of competitor DSV A/S and Panalpina, an agreement was announced on April 1, 2019 valued at CHF 4.6 billion (€ 4.1 billion). In effect Panalpina has been taken over by DSV (contrary to the "joining forces" statement) with the transaction completing in August 2019. The Panalpina C-Level has been entirely replaced, with former CEO Stefan Karlen ending a 21-year association with the old Panalpina business. At DSV's extraordinary general meeting on 24 September 2019, the shareholders voted to change the name of DSV A/S to DSV Panalpina A/S.

As part of the restructuring, DSV has decommissioned some old Panalpina IT systems (such as SAP TM in favour of CargoWise), resulting in job cuts across the new organisation. This also extended to relocating the head office to Copenhagen, effectively ending the tenure of Basel as the main company headquarters.

The Panalpina logo placed on the roof of the head office in Viaduktstrasse, Basel was taken down in May 2020.

On 8th September 2021, DSV announced that 'with the purchase of Agility’s Global Integrated Logistics business, “DSV will undergo its most significant change of the business since the acquisition of Panalpina in 2019. With this change, the timing is right to change the name of the parent entity back to DSV A/S and secure brand consistency across all markets and operations”.' This statement effectively ensured that the Panalpina name was killed off.

title: Panalpina


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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cartifact

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Result: delete -- (drini's page| ☎ ) 01:30, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Cartifact
This is a neologism that has already been transwikied to Wiktionary. Delete Angr/undefined 21:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Andrew pmk | Talk 23:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.


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Talk:Kampong Glam

Untitled
Is "Kampong Gelam" an alternative spelling? Thanks --Dpr 21:30, 8 October 2005 (UTC) gelam trees are the paperbark trees that grow there. glam is a shorter "version"danlowyh (talk) 09:46, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
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title: Talk:Kampong Glam


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Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory

In physics, Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory is a calculational approach to gauge theory and a special case of lattice gauge theory in which the space is discretized but time is not. The Hamiltonian is then re-expressed as a function of degrees of freedom defined on a d-dimensional lattice.

Following Wilson, the spatial components of the vector potential are replaced with Wilson lines over the edges, but the time component is associated with the vertices. However, the temporal gauge is often employed, setting the electric potential to zero. The eigenvalues of the Wilson line operators U(e) (where e is the (oriented) edge in question) take on values on the Lie group G. It is assumed that G is compact, otherwise we run into many problems. The conjugate operator to U(e) is the electric field E(e) whose eigenvalues take on values in the Lie algebra $$\mathfrak{g}$$. The Hamiltonian receives contributions coming from the plaquettes (the magnetic contribution) and contributions coming from the edges (the electric contribution).

Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory is exactly dual to a theory of spin networks. This involves using the Peter–Weyl theorem. In the spin network basis, the spin network states are eigenstates of the operator $$Tr[E(e)^2]$$.

title: Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory


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Talk:Songs from a Room

Worse than debut?
How can this album be considered as commecrially weaker release, when it reached #2 at UK charts and #63 at Billoboard, while his first album was #13 (UK) and #83 (US). Also, many fans hated the "over-production" of the debut release, particularly the UK listeners, and many of them still consider 2nd LP to be his best record. Cohen himslef said he turned to Johnston (after some fights with Simon during mixing sessions of first album), and thatt with him he finally achieved the ascetic sound he thinks as being the most appropriate for his songs. Thus, not only commecrially, but artistically Cohen's 2nd LP seems to be better than the first one... Tomsak 13:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree with you on all accounts here, Tom. – Hattrem 22:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I edited it a little, so you can see it & make corrections.

 * Christgau said it was worse. So does the AMG. It's mostly in his vocals - compared to the first record (and even for Cohen) they're rather indifferent. Also, the arrangements aren't always ideal (the jew's harp is a distraction, the guitar is mixed too low, and the bass is overbearing) and they get monotonous. Finally, Cohen is writing mostly about politics here, and generally speaking he's better off writing about love and despair. -Maggie --64.229.64.62 15:32, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Comments re. "Priests" incorrect. I definitely owned an LP of LC's in the ealy 1970s with a recording of "Priests" by him. I'm fairly sure it was on "Songs from a Room". Why has it been erased from history?...Was it the Jazz Police???????

Musicians
I have one doubt more - I am not sure can we refer to Cornelius as Cohen's band leader, because Bob Johnston was on both tour, playing organ and keyboards, and I'd guess he's supposed to be bandleader, as he already gathered the musicians in the studio in the first place... That fact should be checked in the books. Tomsak 09:41, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay, we will leave out the term "bandleader", although I don't think it's a problem for the producer not to rehearse and lead the band.
 * But where did you find the detailed information about the backup musicians? – Hattrem 05:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

 * All tour musicians are listed in Devlin's book about the tours (and copied to The Files from there), but I either don't have the full list of people who appeared on first three albums - only the names I gathered from Devlin's, Nadel's books and Dorman&Rawlin's and other places.Tomsak 14:37, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

 * I guess that I found those few names for this particular album in Devlin's "In Every Style of Passion".Tomsak 14:39, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

 * Thank you, that's good to know. – Hattrem 16:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Signature sound?
Is it correct to call the Jew's harp Cohen's "signature sound"? I don't recall it being on any other records than Songs from a Room and Dear Heather. – Hattrem 07:09, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Bob L. Moore
Nashville A-Team musician, Bob L. Moore, was definitely the upright bassist on Leonard Cohen's, "Songs From A Room." According to Mr. Moore's original workbooks Bob Moore was the bassist and Local 257 union leader on the following Leonard Cohen sessions: Monday September 30, 1968 (9:00pm)  Thursday January 16, 1969. Friday January 17, 1969. Wednesday January 20, 1971. Plus additional sessions later in the 70's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teenking (talk • contribs) 00:14, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The Partisan
Who is the woman who sings in the second half of "The Partisan"? She ought to be listed in the Personnel section of the article. --Zundark (talk) 08:58, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Seems So Long Ago, Nancy
Just to preserve it, here is the story of Nancy by her nephew Tim Challies

Seems So Long Ago, Nancy January 17, 2011

Back in 2005 I wrote an article called “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy.” Anyone who knows the work of Leonard Cohen will recognize that this is also the title of one of his songs. In this article I explained the significance of that song in my own life. Now, nearly 6 years later, I want to post this article again as a means to introduce you to Nancy (since the majority of today’s readers were not reading the blog back in ‘05). I am anticipating that in the next few weeks or months I will have some interesting updates to this post and the story behind it. But first, the article.

In 1969 Leonard Cohen released a record entitled Songs From A Room. The fifth track on that album is “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy.” The song has become one of Cohen’s more popular ones; it has found its way onto one of his live albums and has been covered by several other artists. It is a dark, haunting song that speaks of a young woman named Nancy. The poetic words are difficult to interpret, leading many fans of Cohen’s music to speculate on what they mean.

It seems so long ago, Nancy was alone, looking at the Late Late show through a semi-precious stone. In the House of Honesty her father was on trial, in the House of Mystery there was no one at all, there was no one at all.

It seems so long ago, none of us were strong; Nancy wore green stockings and she slept with everyone. She never said she’d wait for us although she was alone, I think she fell in love for us in nineteen sixty one, in nineteen sixty one.

It seems so long ago, Nancy was alone, a forty five beside her head, an open telephone. We told her she was beautiful, we told her she was free but none of us would meet her in the House of Mystery, the House of Mystery.

And now you look around you, see her everywhere, many use her body, many comb her hair. In the hollow of the night when you are cold and numb you hear her talking freely then, she’s happy that you’ve come, she’s happy that you’ve come.

Over the years Cohen has made several references to the song during concerts and in interviews. Fans once speculated that the song was written as a tribute to Marilyn Monroe, but Cohen replied “No, it was about a real Nancy.” In his introduction to Frankfurt 72 Cohen said “This is a song for a girl named Nancy who was a real girl—who went into the bathroom of her father’s house, took her brother’s shotgun and blew her head off. Age of 21. Maybe this is an arrogant thing to say, but maybe she did it because there weren’t enough people saying what I’ve been saying.” “In the song book for the Songs of Love and Hate album, there is a description of a LC concert. LC is about to start singing ‘It Seems so Long Ago, Nancy,’ but he decides to talk about her first, to get in the mood. He says that she was not adjusted to life in this world. She had a baby and they took it away from her, and she shot herself.”

Over the years I have had a fascination with this song. It is an awful song, in many ways, leaving Nancy a legacy that few would want—a legacy of promiscuity and self-loathing. I have often felt such pity for Nancy as I can almost feel her sadness and pain through the song. I have wished that someone could reach through the sadness and bring her some measure of peace.

But the peace never came. Lost in her despair, Nancy took her own life.

How do I know this? Nancy was my aunt.

Perhaps this puts my fascination with this song into perspective. The song is not about some anonymous Nancy, but is about a woman I should have been able to know and love, but for the fact that she took her life before I was ever born.

At times in my life I have been nearly obsessed with finding out about her. Her name rarely comes up when the family comes together and it is as if the past is so painful to her siblings that they would rather not think about her at all than relive that pain. What follows represents the small amount I have learned about my aunt.

Nancy was born October 20, 1943 and died on March 10th of 1965, when she was only twenty-one years old. She was a troubled young woman, and spent many of her teenage years under psychiatric care. Several years ago, digging through some old papers at the family cottage, I found a few letters she had written to her mother from psychiatric hospitals. In some of these letters she seems to be doing well, thanking my grandmother for sending her clothes and saying “Next week seems so far away. I just hope I’ll be free soon.” In others she seems to be in times of torment, writing disjointed thoughts in scrawled handwriting. “A manic depressive just bombed in—And I mean bomb. Hell! She came 400 miles by ambulance in 4 hours. Imagine the ball she had eh? Well she’s great fun but really ‘hurt’ through behind her happy face. Don’t worry!”

There is a second series of letters, which pre-date the first by several years. In 1961 Nancy lived away from home, serving as a tour guide at historic Fort Henry in Kingston, Ontario, and she writes about dating boys from R.M.C. (Royal Military College) and visiting with aunts and other relatives, even travelling to New York to take in a Henry Fonda show and shop at Bloomingdales. “Don’t worry about me,” she wrote, “I know that I’m doing the right thing.”

My grandmother was a meticulous calendar-keeper and on December 20, 1963 she noted, “Nancy met Mike.” At some point in the following months Nancy became pregnant, and social conventions being what they were at the time, especially in a prominent family of Members of Parliament and Supreme Court Judges, Nancy was forced to give up her baby for adoption. Just a few months after the baby was born, Nancy, in a time of desperate depression, took her life with her brother’s gun. Her brother is my father. He was just fifteen.

Several months ago, in private correspondence with Leonard Cohen, he commented to me about Nancy and his memories of her. “It is her beauty and bravery that shine through. Many young women of the time came up against the hard limitations of family and society, although not every confrontation ended so sadly.” Cohen was not fast friends with Nancy, though he had met her many times through mutual friends. Their closest mutual friend was Morton Rosengarten, an artist and sculptor.

When I consider Nancy’s life, I can’t help but wonder if she had not found more than the hard limitations of family and society. My grandmother once shared with my mother that in the weeks before her death, Nancy would scream, “Mom, get me a guru! I need a guru!” Nancy seemed to know that her torment went deeper than societal conventions, touching even on the realm of the spiritual. She cried out for guidance; for help. But it would never come.

I wish I knew more about Nancy. I dream some day of finding and meeting her son (my cousin). I wonder if that would help bring a small measure of closure to what is a tragic story. Or perhaps it would merely bring unnecessary pain into his life. But perhaps the joy of knowing that some glimmer of good—a human life—came from the situation would bring some measure of comfort to those who still mourn Nancy, even after forty years.

A few years after Nancy took her life, my grandfather did the same.

Imagine the pain the family faced as they dealt with another suicide, another tragedy, another humiliation. He, too, dealt with tormentuous depression, anger and grief. When it came to be too much for him to handle, he took his life. Could a family get any lower? Imagine gathering at Christmas or Thanksgiving with two family members missing. Imagine the pain.

But at about the same time my grandfather took his life, something miraculous happened in that family. My father was given new life.

The Bible shares a story that speaks of a similar situation.

In John chapter eleven we read about a man named Lazarus, who was a close friend of Jesus. At one point Jesus received a messenger telling him that Lazarus was gravely ill and asking him to hurry to the town of Bethany to be with his friend. But by the time Jesus arrived, it was too late—Lazarus was dead and had been in the tomb for four days already. Imagine a four-day old corpse in the heat of the middle-east. The corpse would already have been decaying. When Jesus asked to see the body, Lazarus’ sister, Martha, said, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” Martha knew what to expect of a man who was dead—he would be putrefying, causing an unbearable stench. She had a reasonable expectation of a dead man.

But Jesus did not, because he had something to teach them. He said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Jesus then went into that tomb and called “Lazarus, come out!” And just like that, life was breathed back into the dead man, and he walked out of the tomb, still bound in grave cloths. The power of God had breathed life into death. And that is what happened to my father. He did not experience physical death, but was spiritually as lost and dead as his sister had been. His spirit was as dead as Lazarus’ body. He was without a guru, without a teacher, without a God and without a hope. But then the power of God breathed life into him. My father was saved from the horror and despair that befell his sister and his father.

What is even more amazing is that this same life was breathed into Nancy’s sister (my aunt) and Nancy’s mother (my grandmother). They, too, were given life! That life has continued to bring joy and comfort to the family through the years. The words Jesus said to Lazarus are the same he says to you today. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Do you?

This article was enthusiastically received by Leonard Cohen’s fans who had long wanted to know more about the person behind the song. And over the years it has made its way to other people who have been able to fill in some of the gaps about Nancy’s life. Through a near-miraculous series of events, we found Mike and Nancy’s son, my cousin. He lives just a short distance from my home and has quickly become a part of our extended family.

http://www.challies.com/articles/seems-so-long-ago-nancy-0

86.140.120.129 (talk) 11:14, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

title: Talk:Songs from a Room