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Battleground of the Eye
In the Pacific Northwest, more than any other region of America, landscape painting embodies all our conflicting views—our hopes and delusions, our regrets and ambitions—about the natural world and the place of human beings in it. The author travels across time and ideology, canvas by canvas
Jonathan Raban
Landscape—if you give that rather slippery term its full weight—is one of the great divisive issues in the Pacific Northwest. The landscape paintings of the region, from the eighteenth century to the present day, are pictorial dispatches from a long war that is more heated now than at any time in the past 200 years.
Landscape is land shaped—land subordinated to a vision or a use. A picture frame or a Claude glass* converts land into landscape; so, too, does a logging road or a barbed-wire fence. The railroad magnate and the painter of majestic wilderness scenes have in common their designs on the land: James J. Hill and Albert Bierstadt are brothers under the skin.
Consider this curious tale of two pictures of the Pacific Northwest. In 1999 Slade Gorton, the Republican senator from Washington State, tacked an ingenious rider onto a bill intended to provide American aid for Kosovo. Gorton's rider concerned a proposed cyanide-leach gold mine in Okanogan County (he was for it). Eighteen months later, in the race between Gorton and his Democratic challenger, Maria Cantwell, the gold-mine rider came back to haunt him. (It may have lost him the election, which Cantwell won by a cigarette-paper-thin majority.)
In the Gorton-Cantwell race landscape turned into the central topic of debate, as the candidates fought over such questions as the Okanogan County mine, logging in national forests, and the breaching of dams on the Snake River. From the barrage of television ads that were broadcast by both sides, two pictures emerged, each executed in a style familiar to any Northwest gallery-goer. Gorton's was a tame Augustan landscape, with irrigated farms and gardens and orderly plantations, in which nature was tailored to human needs and specifications. Cantwell's was a landscape in the manner of Bierstadt or Thomas Cole—a Romantic wilderness, with free-swimming salmon and untouched stands of tangled old-growth forest (spotted owl calling to spotted owl), a realm of aboriginal solitude and grandeur.
Rural voters east of the Cascade Mountains showed an overwhelming preference for the Gorton picture, with its promise of money and jobs. West of the mountains, along the urban corridor that stretches north and south from Seattle, the Cantwell landscape found favor with hikers, bird-watchers, fly-fishers, and the mass of college-educated white-collar voters, who bear out the interesting paradox that Seattle is the first big city to which people have swarmed in order to get closer to nature.
One might hear echoes of that debate almost anywhere in the United States, but in the Pacific Northwest it is conducted with a peculiar and obsessive intensity, because here the wilderness itself seems to possess a tenacious memory. In this damp, dauntingly fertile climate the creeping salal and salmonberry, and the green spears of infant Douglas firs, are bent on restoring everyone's back yard to the temperate rain forest that it once was, not so long ago. The towns and cities of the Northwest tend to have a makeshift, provisional air, as if the forest might yet swallow them alive. Because the region was settled by whites more recently than elsewhere, its Indian past—10,000 years of it—lies very close to the surface, and Native American conceptions of landscape and land use remain live political issues here.
Last year's Senate race was fought on terms that go back to the eighteenth century, as the painted landscapes of the Pacific Northwest remind one, with their endless variations on the themes of wilderness, white settlement, tribal rights, and the competing claims of industry and nature. These paintings haven't dated. The questions they raise are all around us, even now.
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The Portrait of Captain James Cook by John Webber
Webber's portrait of Captain James Cook, along with biographical information about both Cook and Webber. Posted by the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.
John Webber was the first white artist to unpack his paint box in the Pacific Northwest. In the spring of 1778 Captain James Cook's Resolution put in to Nootka Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, after a long northward haul up the Pacific Ocean from New Zealand, with stops in Tonga, Tahiti, and Hawaii. En route through Oceania, Webber, the official expedition artist, had painted a series of watercolors that are dominated by exotic tropical greenery in which every palm frond has a life of its own.
Cook's ship left the palms, wili wilis, breadfruit, and hibiscus of Hawaii on February 2; on March 29 it sailed into the great funnel-shaped approach to Nootka Sound, on the same latitude as the mouth of the English Channel. To British eyes the Pacific Northwestern light falls at a familiar and homely angle. The vegetation is Scottish, the weather Irish. After Hawaii, Nootka Sound must have felt to the voyagers like a wet and windy corner of their own country, named New Albion, in honor of its teasing similarity to home.
Webber, who trained as a painter first in Switzerland and then in Paris, clearly seems to have experienced a bout of déjà vu. In sharp contrast to his Tahitian and Hawaiian watercolors, his Nootka sketches render the local scenery (and "scenery" it is) in brisk pictorial shorthand, the water, rocks, pines, and mountains composed into a strikingly efficient and conventional landscape. We might be on the shore of Lac Léman or Lake Windermere here.
Like Cook, in his posthumously published Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1784), Webber seems to have barely noticed the land itself, so preoccupied was he with the Indians in the foreground—their swan-necked cedar canoes, their curious timber dwellings, the frames on which they dried their salmon. In Paris he had specialized in "picturesque peasant scenes," a useful preparation for his studies of Indian life. Though the figures are small on the page, they are exquisitely detailed and individuated. With a magnifying glass one can pick out their conical hats, woven from cedar bark, and capes made from sea-otter hides. Given his education, Webber almost certainly had encountered the ideas of Rousseau, and his Pacific Northwest is the habitat of "natural man," drawn with the fastidious zeal of a keen amateur anthropologist.
In 1791 and 1792, more than a decade after Resolution's flying visit to the Northwest (from Nootka, Cook sailed offshore to the Gulf of Alaska, sighting land to starboard but not stopping there), Spanish and British expeditions cruised through the region, proving the insularity of Vancouver Island and charting Puget Sound. The Spaniards shipped professional artists (Tomás de Suría, José Cardero, Atanásio Echeverría), whereas the English, under Captain George Vancouver, made do with the artistic efforts of a bunch of talented young midshipmen, including John Sykes, Harry Humphrys, and Thomas Heddington. From the mass of sketches that came home to London and Madrid one can see something of the Pacific Northwest but much more of the tastes and interests prevailing among cultivated young Europeans in the last decade of the eighteenth century.
One catches the artists' excitement at the strange customs, costumes, and architecture of primitive man, and their elation at finding themselves in a real-life Salvator Rosa landscape, with all its shaggy cliffs, tangled woods, blasted trees, and lurid skies. Rosa, the Sicilian Baroque painter, was a great and much imitated favorite in Georgian England, where the novelist Tobias Smollett called his work "dreadfully picturesque." So the young men had a fine time, in their journals and sketchbooks, with granite precipices, waterfalls, and snowcapped peaks, as the land steepened around them along the Inside Passage.
Dread was in fashion in the 1790s, when the word "awful" still had a precise meaning, and images of the vertiginous crag, the dark forest, the storm at sea, were calculated to induce a delicious sensation of vicarious terror. It happened that the Pacific Northwest was discovered by whites just as the idea of the Romantic Sublime was gaining sway. The lonely and forbidding geography of the place perfectly fit the reigning conception of how a Romantic landscape ought to look. It conveniently combined, within a single view, the essential iconic features of the Swiss Alps, the German forest, and the English Lake District.
There was a single dissenting voice on the voyage—that of George Vancouver, known by his men (though never to his face) as Captain Van. At thirty-four, Vancouver was far behind his time. He was a provincial (from King's Lynn, in Norfolk, where his father was employed by the Customs Service); his education had been mostly acquired at sea (he'd been one of Captain Cook's midshipmen); and the Sublime left him cold. His posthumously published Voyage (1798) gives a candid, heartfelt portrait of the Pacific Northwest as seen through the eyes of a young fogey who was out of touch with the intellectual currents of his age.
Captain Van took a great shine to Puget Sound and its surroundings. Among the low hills and forest clearings he was able to imagine himself in a reborn England of close-shaven lawns, artful vistas, rolling fields, and country houses. Remembering the stretch of coast over which the retirement homes of Sequim are now sprawled, he wrote,
The surface of the sea was perfectly smooth, and the country before us exhibited every thing that bounteous nature could be expected to draw into one point of view. As we had no reason to imagine that this country had ever been indebted for any of its decorations to the hand of man, I could not possibly believe that any uncultivated country had ever been discovered exhibiting so rich a picture.
But his pleasure in this newfound land soon curdled into repugnance as the expedition sailed north and west into the narrow, mountain-walled channels of the Inside Passage. While his juniors, along with the expedition naturalist, Archibald Menzies, thrilled to the dramatic sublimity of their surroundings, Vancouver recoiled from what he saw. The snowcapped peaks were "sterile," the cliffs of dripping rock and vertical forest were "barren," "dull," "gloomy," "dreary," "comfortless." Of the much admired waterfalls he complained that their incessant noise made it impossible for him to hear any birdsong.
Vancouver's voice seems to come from the wrong end of the eighteenth century, when mountains were conventionally seen as rude geologic excrescences—chaotic, useless, and offensive to the mind and eye ("vast, undigested heaps of stone," as the theologian Thomas Burnet described the Alps in 1681). Yet most of the effusive paeans to the region's scenic grandeur conspicuously lack the real depth of feeling in Vancouver's response to a grim and spiritually corrosive landscape whose epicenter he named Desolation Sound. Captain Van ought to be adopted as the patron saint of all northwesterners who have felt walled in by their mountain ranges, or suffered a jolt of depression when faced by the black monotony of the fir forest under a low, wintry, frog-spawn-colored sky.
The back-of-beyond aspect of the Pacific Northwest heightened its romantic allure. Even after the Oregon Territory came within reach of the enterprising tourist, Washington and British Columbia remained comparatively remote. The famously grueling sea passage from Portland to Seattle was a serious deterrent, and it wasn't until James J. Hill's Northern Pacific Railroad at last arrived at its Tacoma terminus, in 1883, that Puget Sound became easily accessible to the casual traveler. In the meantime, a growing mystique attached itself to the area: people who had never been there spoke of it as the last resort of unspoiled wilderness, romantic solitude, and wild indigenous inhabitants.
It was the Indians who drew the Irish-Canadian painter Paul Kane to British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon on a long and adventurous trip in 1846-1847. But Kane's noble red men, alone with their primeval forest and steam-belching volcanic cones, are disappointingly generic, and look as if they stepped straight out of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. What Kane's pictures celebrate is, rather, the intrepidity of the artist—the solitary white man out in the Far West, ahead of the crowd, communing with primitive people in their natural state. His sketches and studio canvases document the progress of the artist as romantic hiker-hero. Kane's journey is the real subject; his Pacific Northwest is an adequately wild backdrop for a sequence of pictures in which one's attention instinctively fastens less on the land than on the personality of the painter.
In 1855, when the artist George Catlin was pushing sixty, he stopped in the Northwest, breaking a voyage that took him from Cape Horn to the Bering Sea. At the mouth of Clayoquot Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, then as wild a site as any in the region, he painted a prophetic elegy on the fate of wilderness in an industrial, land-hungry age. A Whale Ashore—Klahoquat is as ambitious a painting as Catlin ever attempted—half moody seascape, half grim morality tale. Set against a troubled sunset over the Pacific, the stranded whale is not the only creature in the picture that is seeing its last day. The Indians swarming around the carcass, in canoes and on foot, are observed from such a distance that one can tell little about them except that they are members of the same species. They might just as well be a colony of prairie dogs. The swirling pattern made by the crowd on the beach has the organic coherence of a shoal of minnows or a flock of gulls. In the middle distance a trim schooner rides at anchor. A boat has just put off from it. On the far horizon, to the right of the schooner, is a flattened contrail from a steamship going south. Numerous as the Indians may appear, it's the smoke in the distance that signals the inevitable outcome of this story. Historically speaking, we are just seconds away from the arrival of the logging crew, the pulp mill, the cannery, and all the rest of the machinery that will change forever the life of the unsuspecting people on the beach.
Since 1830 Catlin had been chasing Indians westward across the plains, trying to capture them on canvas before they were swamped by the tide of white conquest and settlement. By 1855 great tracts of the land that he had known as wilderness had been claimed for civilization by the barbed-wire fence. That Catlin could see the Indians as doomed even here, in the last outpost of the truly wild, reveals the depth of the visionary pessimism he had acquired on his travels. And he was right, of course. Ten years before he stood above the beach at Clayoquot, the Hudson Bay Company had made Victoria its western headquarters; three years before, the Seattle city fathers had staked claim to their settlement on Elliott Bay. Catlin's nearing steamship was as unstoppable as the setting sun.
The Indians in A Whale Ashore are squarely seen as part of the Pacific Northwest's nature, not its culture. It's no accident that one of the best collections of Native American art from the Northwest coast is housed not in the National Gallery but in the American Museum of Natural History, where the Salish, Haida, and Kwakiutl tribes take their place alongside stuffed elk and bison. In the basic grammar of nineteenth-century landscape painting, no stretch of Northwest water is complete without its canoeful of Indians—a native aquatic species whose presence gives the stamp of regional authenticity to a canvas. As the same water filled in real life with square-rigged lumber ships and steam tugs, its painted counterpart became an exclusionary zone in which white vessels were banned and only cedar canoes allowed.
In 1863, on his second swing through the West in search of material for his enormous pictures of the American Sublime, Albert Bierstadt planned to visit Puget Sound. However, his companion, the journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow, fell ill in Oregon, and the two men sailed instead from Portland to San Francisco, en route to New York. The unvisited territory evidently loomed large in Bierstadt's imagination, and in 1870 he produced a curious painting titled Puget Sound, on the Pacific Coast, in which he depicted a landscape of artistic myth and rumor, a Pacific Northwest de l'esprit.
By Bierstadt's usual seven-by-twelve-foot standards, the canvas is quite a modest one, but every last inch is packed to the bursting point with the stock ingredients of the Sublime, all lusciously painted in the artist's best theatrical style. Here are rocks, precipices, withered trees, the darkness of a howling storm, a shaft of golden sunshine of the kind that might herald the Second Coming, a thunderous cascade descending a mountain face, a turbulent and angry sea, and Indians, hauling their canoes to safety out of the exploding surf. The picture turns Puget Sound into a brand name for the dreadfully picturesque.
More effectively than the Oregon paintings that Bierstadt drew from the life, Puget Sound, on the Pacific Coast formulates the terms on which the Pacific Northwest made its appeal to the aesthetic tourist. The region was soon dotted with established vantage points offering painterly views of the major landmarks: Mount Hood seen from the northwest bank of Lost Lake, Mount Adams seen from the Oregon side of the Columbia River, Mount Rainier seen from across Commencement Bay, on Puget Sound. It was a quickly established convention that Northwest water—river, lake, or branch of the sea—was sufficiently still to hold a faithful reflection of a mountain for hours at a time. This despite Bierstadt's suggestion that Puget Sound waves break on the shore like those of the Mediterranean in a full gale.
Sanford Gifford, a Luminist painter and a close friend of Bierstadt's, was another early visitor. In 1874 he pitched his easel on what I take to be the beach on the southeastern tip of Vashon Island and painted Mount Rainier mirrored in the lakelike water of Commencement Bay. The snowcapped summit, rose-tinted in the light of a late-summer afternoon, rises above a layer of hazy cloud like an apparition, or (in Gifford's own terms) a manifestation of the divine. The water is made radiant by the diffused brilliance of the mountain's reflection. On the scored-glass surface of the bay float two Salish canoes. On the far shore the most prominent trees are as green and, more surprisingly, deciduous as any in Gifford's English and Hudson River landscapes. It's a picture of an undisturbed American Arcadia, in which Indians—with their pathless woods, their peaceful water, and their inspiring alp—are seen to be living apparently beyond the reach of time.
It's Gifford's determined erasures that catch the eye. Gone (from the patch of land immediately above the canoe in the foreground) is the young town of Tacoma, with its new lumber mill, new docks, and fleet of moored cargo ships. Gifford's lovely Arcadia, so seemingly present, belongs to an imagined past, and the painting is suffused with nostalgia for a period that never really was, when bushy elms grew out over the water, and Indians were the nymphs and shepherds of European pastoral tradition.
Fifteen years after Gifford painted Mount Rainier, Bierstadt at last reached Puget Sound, having completed a painting tour of southeastern Alaska. Camped out on what appears to be the same spot that Gifford had used for his view of the mountain, Bierstadt set to work. By 1889 Tacoma had grown to a smoke-and-steam-wreathed city of 30,000 people. Bierstadt obliterated it from his vision. To accentuate the enchanted solitude of the scene, he painted just one Indian canoe in place of Gifford's two.
It should not be thought that Bierstadt took no interest in the great industrial developments of his time. He was acutely sensitive to them. His major patrons were financial, timber, mineral, and railroad magnates for whom Bierstadt's pictures (like those of Thomas Moran) were grandiose souvenirs of the West as it had been before their own work crews landscaped it to the industrialists' design. When Bierstadt finished his Rainier painting, in his New York studio, he sent a hopeful letter to James J. Hill. Mount Tacoma (the alternative name for Rainier) was, he wrote, "one of the grandest of mountains," and it was happily situated "on the line of your road." The railroad baron didn't bite.
In a spirited counteroffensive to the idea of Manifest Destiny, the Romantic painters made it their great mission to depopulate the Northwest of all but its aboriginal inhabitants. It was left largely to amateurs—and, interestingly, to painters of Indian scenes such as Catlin and John Mix Stanley—to tell the other side of the story. No one had a keener sense of the fantastic pace of white settlement and industry than the artists who spent their lives searching for authentic Indians in the ever decreasing wild.
Oregon City on the Willamette River
John Mix Stanley's painting, posted by the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
Though John Mix Stanley specialized in Indian portraits, he was an accomplished, if conventional, landscape painter. His Oregon City on the Willamette River (c. 1850) is a conspicuously fair-minded treatment of the theme. The Sublime survives in the immediate foreground, where a bluff overlooks the Willamette Valley, but it has mostly been exiled to the back of the canvas, where sandstone cliffs and thick forest frame a splendid river-wide waterfall. Sandwiched between wilderness in the distance and wilderness nearby lies an infant city of neat rectangular plots and newly painted houses, dominated by an English-style church and a three-story sawmill. Covered wagons are rolling down Main Street. The low light is falling from the east; it's early morning, and this is just the beginning of what is going to happen to Oregon in the near future.
Cut to the figures on the bluff—still in shadow, for the morning hasn't reached them: two Indians, a man and a woman, with what looks like a bedroll between them. The man is leaning on a staff, so he's a pilgrim, or a vagrant. Both figures look directly at the viewer. They might be homeless people on a modern street, begging passersby for change. With hindsight, we know where the couple are headed. In 1857 Stanley painted an allegory titled Last of Their Race, in which ten Indians, wearing the costumes of different tribes, are perched on a pile of rocks at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, their last toehold on the West that was once their domain.
Yet Stanley rendered the fatal city so affectionately that the painting seems to shimmer with ambiguity, like a hologram changing shape as it is tilted under a light. Now you're with the Indians, now you're with the whites. At first glance the picture looks like an advertisement for the civic pleasures that await travelers at the end of the Oregon Trail; it promises space to build and to breathe amid tranquil natural surroundings—a school for one's children, a waterfall to delight one's eye. At second glance that cheerful promise seems callow and heartless—but not so callow, or so heartless, that it cancels out one's first impression. As in the hologram, both images are equally there, but never quite at the same time.
Album: Licton Springs
Photographs of the Denny family homestead.
In the 1880s an amateur, Emily Inez Denny, a member of one of Seattle's founding families, took the robust, monocular view of settlement in a painting of Smith's Cove, on Elliott Bay. The artist is standing in the middle of a stump field, where timber is being logged to make way for future development. (The space just behind her will turn, eventually, into a chain-link-fenced compound for imported Japanese cars, fresh out of their containers.) Beyond the field lie the already substantial accomplishments of Denny's ingenious, hardworking family and friends: a handsome homestead, with barns, outbuildings, and an orchard; ships, under steam and sail, in the harbor; a locomotive hauling a line of cars on the railroad, which is carried on trestles over the shallows at the north end of the bay; two horse-and-buggy outfits, heading into town down a southeast-trending lane. The sky is dominated by a roiling billow of steam, issuing from the impossibly tall smokestack of a mill somewhere over on Vashon Island, or beyond. Emily Denny's picture, with its proud detailing of modes of transportation, makes that most poignant of provincial boasts: we may seem to live miles from anywhere, but we are really very well connected. In that respect her painting is bang up-to-date 120 years later.
Denny's work belongs to a tradition of vernacular landscape which includes picture-postcard photographs of the Pacific Northwest. Photographers and painters used many of the same views and vantage points, but these coincident locations serve only to expose the huge rift between their visions of the land. Turn-of-the-century postcards abhor solitude. They represent nature as a resource, for industry and for recreation. One wonders what Bierstadt, for instance, would have made of the diagonal line of twenty-five people "nature coasting" down a snowy slope of Mount Rainier and waving to the camera as they slide by. Every river has its fisherman, every lakeshore has its picnic table. A postcard from Oregon shows Mount Hood mirrored in Lost Lake, a favorite view of painters—but here a man in a bush hat sits in the foreground cradling a gun, as if he were about to unzip the reflection with a bullet. Mountain scenes afford a pretty backdrop for early Oldsmobiles and Fords, shown parked on dirt tracks in the heart of the Sublime.
As the postcards promote the luxury hotels, the parks, the zoos, and the electric lighting of the new cities, so they take a boosterish line on the sources of the cities' wealth. Loggers are represented as gnarled western heroes, grinning widely from halfway up the trunk of some monarch of the forest, which they are about to dethrone. Massive balks of cut timber, a hundred feet long and seven feet square, are captioned "Washington Tooth Picks." A class of twenty-five grade school children is shown sitting atop the flat stump of a single logged cedar. Bridges, ships, farms, mills, and railroads figure on the postcards as triumphs of civilization over the wilderness—a wilderness that by 1905 or thereabouts could already be thought of as a lavish extension of a civic park, to be valued in terms of its facilities for tourism and sport.
A postcard from a later date—circa 1950—qualifies as one of the few iconic Northwest landscapes. It shows the vast glaciated extrusion of Mount Rainier, grandly outclassed by a B-17 Flying Fortress that appears to be cruising directly over the summit. Here is the awe-inspiring, Seattle-manufactured Technological Sublime, putting nature in its place. The dormant volcano and the Boeing bomber are up to the same deadly waiting game. This was the card to send, with love, to Moscow.
The most powerful and dramatic landscapist of the Northwest was the timber industry, which has turned the forested mountainsides into a new kind of wilderness, of skid roads, stumps, and slash. I saw my first clear-cut eleven years ago, when I was out here on a visit. It was unexpectedly stirring to see the sheer totalitarian scale of damage that the chain saw can inflict, and the sight ranks in memory somewhere alongside my first view of the Manhattan skyline, or of the Pyramid of Cheops, as one of the great eccentric wonders of mankind. I understand perfectly why Paul Bunyan was a leading mythological god in the American pantheon, before his activities came to be regarded as commensurate with spilling oil and dumping untreated sewage.
No sooner had the Pacific Northwest been established as the last outpost of the Sublime than it was recast as a battlefield in the war between man and nature. The loose group of Seattle-based painters whom Life magazine would in 1953 label "The Northwest School"—Morris Graves, Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson, and Kenneth Callahan—lived within view of the clear-cuts. If their best-known work leans toward the calm restraint and stylization of Japanese and Zen Buddhist art, that may be—in part, at least—a response to the violence and upheaval that figure so prominently in their early paintings. Against Graves's later, light-infused and delicate studies of birds, animals, and potted plants should be set his Logged Mountains, painted from 1935 to 1943.
The upstanding dead and withered trunks left by the loggers are identical twins to the lightning-blasted trees found in the spooky landscapes of Salvator Rosa, such as Mercury and the Dishonest Woodman and Landscape With Tobias and the Angel (both in the British National Gallery, in London). But they are the least of it. The land itself has turned into slurry; it's pouring in a viscous, yellowish-green waterfall right through the bottom of the painting. The grand cascade, central to Romantic pictures of the Northwest in the nineteenth century, has here been perverted into a Niagara of waste. The draining land leaves behind bare chunks of rock, like rotten molars, under a stormy and sinister sky. The dominant colors—russet, ocher, greens that verge on black—are the true colors of Washington as seen by an unillusioned resident rather than by tourists like Gifford and Bierstadt.
From the archives:
"The Liquid Earth" (January 1999)
Landslides and other "ground failures" cost more lives and more money each year than all other natural disasters combined, and their incidence appears to be rising. By Brenda Bell
Graves was only describing what actually happens when a mountain is indiscriminately logged and its drainage system wrecked: it turns into a mudslide. His landscape—as dreadful as anything conceived by the Romantics—is based on close observation. Similarly, House in a Landscape (believed to date from the 1930s), his exquisitely precise depiction of a collapsing homestead, its timbers warped and splayed as the house melts back into the earth, is at once a bold statement about the decay of human hopes in an unkind land and a cool exercise in pure draftsmanship. In both paintings one feels Graves's fierce intimacy with his region and its areas of darkness. This is a northwesterner's bleak version of the Northwest—and it is little wonder that Graves later escaped into the light and airy simplicity of his post-1960s work. It's not for nothing that rainy Seattle leads the country in the per capita sale of sunglasses.
The response of Graves's friend and colleague Kenneth Callahan to the clear-cuts was a sequence of big, almost Bierstadt-sized canvases that tip their caps ironically to the Romantic Sublime: same mountains, same rivers, same forest—except that the forest has been stripped from the picture, and the landscape rendered in a monochromatic muddy brown and littered with the machinery of the timber industry, so that it recalls a strange, alpine version of the battlefields of the Marne and the Somme. One might expect to see the tin hats of dead soldiers hung on the crosslike projections of Callahan's surviving stumps.
In the 1940s, before he entered his squiggly, Zen-inspired, drip-painted white-writing phase, Mark Tobey was paying close attention to the art of the Northwest-coast Indians, as in his Drums, Indians and The Word (1944). Since John Webber first sketched at Nootka, Indians had often been in the foreground of Northwest landscapes, as the obligatory genii loci of the region, but their art had made only incidental appearances, in the form of carved and painted canoes, house posts, totem poles, and embroidered hats. The rediscovery of primitive art was part of the core curriculum of twentieth-century Modernism, with Braque and Picasso rivaling each other in their extensive collections of Amerindian and Pacific-island trophies. Borrowing from the stylized and abstract vision of the world as represented in tribal art became a Modernist mannerism, and on the Northwest coast the white artist had immediate access to an extraordinary body of native work. The art of the Kwakiutl, Haida, Tsimshian, and Tlingit Indians was as vital, strange, and complex as any in the world. On bentwood boxes, muslin wall hangings, housefronts, masks, and domestic equipment the Indians left their own, often highly enigmatic, landscapes of the Pacific Northwest—a great treasury of techniques and images to which twentieth-century white artists began freely to help themselves.
Tobey—like Morris Graves, who took on Oregon—accepted a commission to paint Washington for a United States series that was funded from 1946 to 1949 by the Container Corporation of America. Graves's Oregon is a delicate, feathery, Japanese-looking study of northwestern evergreens. Tobey's Washington is an intensely busy Indian-inspired pictographic puzzle, like the totemic heraldry on a Kwakiutl painted chest. It's a labyrinth of interlocking rectangles, each one packed with images and symbols, on a ground as luminously gray as a Seattle sky. Inside the rectangles are dozens of ovoids or "eye shapes"—the basic building blocks of Northwest-coast Native American design. As with a Kwakiutl chest, the painting demands to be "read" by the viewer, and, as with the chest, some of its meanings readily disclose themselves whereas others appear to be deeply secretive and private. One sees immediately the salmon, the Pike Place Market scene, the seascape with a sailboat, the tribal masks, but the larger code is not so easily cracked. On one level the painting resolves into a game of Can You Spot (... the killer whale? canoes? logs? mountains? the Indian bird-rattle? Skagit Valley tulips? the artist in his studio? the oyster? clams?). On another it's a palimpsest—writing-on-writing, some legible and strongly foregrounded, some faint and obscure, with the whole composition giving the impression of infinitely recessive depth. More than any other painting in the Container Corporation series, Washington succeeds in condensing an entire American state—its nature, industry, and recreations—into a square of paperboard; and it does so by summoning the aid of the state's aboriginal inhabitants, whose art informs the whole conception of the piece.
It was Tobey who nagged at Emily Carr, a British Columbian painter, to get the Indian-folklore material out of her pictures. After training in Paris, where she fell for the work of Derain and the Fauvists, and after a long spell in an English mental hospital, where she filled an aviary with British songbirds, hoping to import them to Vancouver Island, Carr traveled through coastal British Columbia, painting Indian canoes, house posts, and totem poles in the forest. In 1930, when he was forty and she was fifty-nine, Tobey appointed himself Carr's mentor and critic, advising her to drop the Indian subjects and follow his lead into greater abstraction. The famously spiky Carr was not a natural follower. "Clever but his work has no soul," she remarked of Tobey in her journal (published posthumously as Hundreds and Thousands [1966]).
Though Tobey's opinion of her work rankled, it evidently made its mark, because the canoes and totem poles began to disappear from Carr's canvases, allowing the turbulent shapes of the forest itself to emerge as her great subject. Before, she had concentrated on re-creating, in two dimensions, the swooping curves and expressive distortions of carved figures like Raven and Thunderbird. After about 1930 the foliage of the fir forest, and its undergrowth of bracken, blackberry, and salal, became for her a kind of painted sculpture in its own right. Every leaf and twig looks chiseled, in Indian house-post style, and Carr's forest is thick with fortuitous visual echoes of the mythological creatures who dominated her earlier paintings—especially Dzonogwa, the female Kwakiutl child-stealer; Raven; and Eagle. This is animistic nature—a realm of gross and copious fecundity, where powerful half-seen beings live in the shadows.
In her journal Carr took a dim view of people who "stay outside [the forest] and talk about its beauty."
Nobody goes there. Why? Few have anything to go for. The loneliness repels them, the density, the unsafe hidden footing, the dank smells, the great quiet, the mystery, the general mix-up (tangle, growth, what may be hidden there), the insect life. They are repelled by the awful solemnity of the age-old trees, with the wisdom of all their years of growth looking down upon you, making you feel perfectly infinitesimal—their overpowering weight, their groanings and creekings [sic], mutterings and sighings—the rot and decay of the old ones—the toadstools and slugs ...
If this passage seems to be at least as much about the dank and smelly mystery of sex as about trees, so do Carr's paintings—though the explicit sexuality of her forest is far from being its only signification. In August of 1937 she wrote of an unfinished picture of the woods, "It all depends on the sweep and swirl and I have not got it yet." In her best paintings the forest is literally a whirlpool of meanings, in a state of constant dissolution and recombination. Sex is to be found there, but so are worship, peaceful refuge, fear, revulsion, beauty, power, pathos. It's a complex and accommodating place, which answers equally to, say, George Vancouver's desolation and the Romantic sense of wonder. It seems as close as any white artist or writer has ever come to the Indian version of the Northwest forest as it appears in the native stories collected by Franz Boas and other early anthropologists.
The Pacific Northwest is now entangled in a rancorous quarrel about landscape: "Wise Use" has become a sly euphemism for chain-saw liberation; farmers rally to protest the reintroduction of wolves into the mountains; salmon-first conservationists plan on dynamiting the hydroelectric dams about which Woody Guthrie used to sing.
Here's a contemporary Pacific Northwest landscape: On the Olympic Peninsula the carcass of a northern spotted owl was found nailed to a fence post. The bird had been expertly shot with a high-powered small-caliber rifle. Beside it was pinned a typewritten note, or caption: "If you think your parks and wildernesses don't have enough of these suckers, plant this one." The anonymous artist left behind two beer cans, a Band-Aid, and a spent match.
This stretch of land has been so fought over, painted and repainted, laden with partisan and contradictory meanings, that it tends to invite the response of a tired postmodern shrug. A recent New Yorker cartoon by David Sipress shows a vacationing couple standing beside their RV atop a dizzy precipice, from which they're looking down at the usual natural amenities of the Pacific Northwest—fir trees, mountains, waterfalls, winding trails. The man, in baggy tartan shorts and wraparound sunglasses, is saying to the woman, "So this is the famous environment everyone's so hyped up about?"
It's "the famous environment" that the Portland artist Michael Brophy depicts with sardonic cool in People's View. At the turn of the twenty-first century Brophy has achieved the ambition of every nineteenth-century Romantic painter: he has voided the land of its people. Not even a solitary Indian disturbs his denuded Northwest, with its lonely geology, water, and dark-green vegetation—though field lines and bridges survive, and the hills have been largely shorn of their timber. Nature (or what little is now left of nature) has become a prettily lit stage set, from which the audience has been divorced by a proscenium arch. In the immediate foreground of the picture the spectators are assembled, their backs to the painter—a dense crowd of urban types, in Birkenstocks and earth-toned leisurewear from Eddie Bauer. We're in there too, dutifully gazing at this empty spectacle, this picture of a picture, which is what the Pacific Northwest has become. We're in exactly the same position as the people who look at the sea in Robert Frost's poem:
They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?


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Home / Sports / Brazil Footbal Legend, Pele, Dies At 82
Brazil Footbal Legend, Pele, Dies At 82
December 30, 2022 Comments Off on Brazil Footbal Legend, Pele, Dies At 82 11 Views
Brazilian football legend, Pele has died at the age of 82
He is credited with scoring a world record 1,281 goals in 1,363 appearances during a 21-year career, including 77 goals in 92 matches for his country.
Pele was only player to win the World Cup three times, lifting the trophy in 1958, 1962 and 1970, Pele was named Fifa's Player of the Century in 2000.
He had been suffering with kidney and prostate problems in recent years.
Pele had surgery to had a surgery to remove a tumour from his colon in September 2021 at the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo, after the tumour was detected in routine tests. He was readmitted to hospital in late November 2022.
His daughter Kely Nascimento has kept fans updated on her father's condition with regular social media updates from hospital.
On Thursday she posted a picture of what appeared to be Pele's family's hands on his body in hospital and wrote: "Everything we are is thanks to you. We love you infinitely. Rest in peace."
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pele, became a global star when, aged 17, he helped Brazil win the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, forcing his way into the starting line-up by the knockout stages.
He scored the only goal in a 1-0 victory over Wales in the quarter-finals, a hat-trick against France in the semi-final and two in a 5-2 triumph over the hosts in the final.
Pele had made his debut for club side Santos two years earlier at the age of 15, scoring in a 7-1 win over Corinthians de Santo Andre.
Previous "Serve me Breakfast!" Part 1
Next Serve Me Breakfast! Part 2
Pele's lying in state, burial set for Monday, Tuesday
The burial of the late football legend Pele has been set for Monday and Tuesday. …
BREAKING: Argentina Beat France 4-2 To Win 2022 FIFA World Cup
Argentina defeated France 4-2 in a penalty shoot-out to win the 2022 FIFA World Cup …

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The new bowls season is nearly upon us and Better would like to invite you to enjoy the relaxed and friendly atmoshere at King George V Bowls Pavilion & Greens.
We have 2 quality Greens available for casual use, members of the public are welcome to come and enjoy the season.
The pavilion is home to several bowls clubs, who welcome new members to join them. Either as a complete beginner or if they have some experience of the game.
The price of a game is £3.80 (including equipment), or purchase a season ticket starting from £76.20 (concession rate), this gives unlimited access to the greens throughout the season.
The Pavilion & Greens are open daily from 10:00 - 7 days a week (From 23rd April).
Our friendly on site team are on hand to answer any questions.


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House by AE Arquitectos that balances two different styles
By larisa
Architects: AE Arquitectos
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
Area: 14.369 ft²/ 1.335 m²
Photo courtesy: Lorena Darquea
"House OM1 was conceived as a solution that balances two different concepts. Initially, there was a need to create a space where modern-day activities such as intimacy or leisure are sufficed. Another requirement was for the house to have an old-fashioned aesthetic where wood and stone were the main materials used. It stands out as a unique project from the ground up. The plot conditions were distinctive, it had a pronounced slope that culminated in cliffs several meters high. It was built one level below the street level and the entrance was designed as a stairway transitioning from the street noise to the quiet beauty of the house which is slowly revealed as one walks down.
It was designed to be in constant contact with nature, with two patios and one garden that allow the users to be surrounded by nature. The first patio is placed along the entrance stairway; the second and most important is a patio placed at the center of the house, functioning as a nucleus that unifies the ground floor with the second floor. This central patio is brimming with vegetation, the rest of the house revolves naturally around it: the lining room, dining room, and kitchen; these spaces connect with the backyard also filled with vegetation, a deck, and a pool.
House OM1 was built over a base made of a coppery stone brought from Chapala, Jalisco that helps create an old-fashioned aesthetic and enhance the sensation of heaviness in the house that reminiscences of grounding your feet into the sand. The second floor is surrounded by windows that allow the users to enjoy the views of the backyard and the cliffs. Natures presence is obvious in every space, even in the most intimate ones, giving a feeling of safeguard, comfort, and relaxation. Dark-wood finish and the brick walls help reinforce the feeling of coziness inside the house. It is a space where the users can relax, be their true self and leave any preoccupation at the door."
AE Arquitectos
Two Halves House by Moloney Architects
END THE ROC project – the final apartment renovation similar to that of the previous apartments by nook architects
Earthworld Architects & Interiors design the Gauché House situated in one of Pretoria's oldest Golf Estates
Oooox designed this contemporary apartment in the old town of Prague
Sands Point Residence by Narofsky Architecture
Farmhouse transformation into an elegant residence in the north of Belgium
CAANdesign - Nov 1, 2016
How to Choose Furniture Pieces That Bring Warmth and Personality
Enclave in the Clouds by HOLA Design


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Airports near Fort Lauderdale
Duration 1h 34m
Average price $60
Closest airports to Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa
The nearest airport to Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa is West Palm Beach/Palm Beach (PBI). However, there are better options for getting to Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa. You can take a bus from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) to Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa via Central Terminal Bay B1 - Rt10 and Us1/Se 10 S in around 2h 23m. Alternatively, Tri Rail operates a train from Miami Airport Station to Boca Raton Station hourly. Tickets cost $5 - $8 and the journey takes 1h 18m.
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL)
Airport/Rental Car Center
Central Terminal Bay B1 - Rt10
Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa
Miami Airport Station
West Palm Beach/Palm Beach (PBI)
TURNAGE BLVD at PBI TRM
West Palm Beach Station
Ft. Myers (RSW)
Ft Myers Bus Station
Punta Gorda (PGD)
Important airports for Fort Lauderdale
Fort Lauderdale Airport
Want to know about travelling to Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa, FL, USA? We have put together a list of the most frequently asked questions from our users such as: What is the cheapest mode of transport?, What is the quickest option?, How much do tickets usually cost? and many more.
Will Coronavirus (COVID-19) affect my travel to Fort Lauderdale?
Some travel restrictions may still be in place within United States. For the latest travel status, please check the official page for United States.
What is the nearest airport to Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa?
The nearest airport to Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa is Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) Airport which is 16.8 miles away. Other nearby airports include West Palm Beach/Palm Beach (PBI) (26.6 miles), Miami (MIA) (37.6 miles) and Ft. Myers (RSW) (105.6 miles).
How long does it take to get to Fort Lauderdale from the Airport?
It takes 2h 23m to get from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) Airport.
How do I get to Fort Lauderdale?
We recommend flying to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) Airport, which is 3.5 miles away from Fort Lauderdale. The line 01 bus and line 10 bus from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) to Fort Lauderdale takes 2h 23m.
Where can I stay near Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa?
There are 380+ hotels available in Embassy Suites Deerfield Beach - Resort & Spa. Prices start at $100 USD per night.
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The Business Council of Westchester's Coalition for Westchester Airport (CWA) continues to be the driving force in engaging key stakeholders on the importance of enhancing, not expanding, the airport.
John Ravitz, head of the CWA and Chief Operating Officer of the BCW, this week called on members for assistance on an important airport matter – repaving Runway 16/34.
Over the past two years, the county has been developing the necessary plans to repave the airport's Runway 16/34. The last time that this runway was repaved was in 1998, and it is now beyond the 20 – year standard of an airport's runway lifespan.
The Coalition for Westchester Airport was formed in August 2018 so that it could provide a reasoned voice to the public debate, separating myths from facts about enhancing the delivery of services at the airport. Those enhancements to the runway will clearly help the business, traveling and neighboring communities, but most importantly, it is a basic matter of safety.
"Making the repairs to the Runway 16/34 runway is strictly a safety issue that should move forward as quickly as possible," Ravitz said.
Ravitz calls on all members to send a letter directly to County Executive George Latimer expressing support for the county's plan to make the necessary repairs to Runway 16/34.
If you need any additional information about this issue, please contact John Ravitz at JRavitz@thebcw.org or 914-948-2110.


Do you love noodles? Let's try a different type of noodles using vermicelli, which is a healthier alternative to the noodles available in market. Here I come with vermicelli noodles. Since instant noodles are coated with wax, they pose health risk. Why not try a healthier alternative? All of us have vermicelli available at home. Try vermicelli noodles and enjoy a healthy snack.
Meanwhile, heat oil in a pan. Add onion, stir well for 2 minutes.
Add capsicum and fry for a couple of minutes.
Add tomato and fry well for 2-3 minutes.
Add salt, black pepper, coriander powder (you can use any other masala as well), and tomato sauce. Stir for 1 minute.
Once water has dried up, add vermicelli to the onion tempering.
Stir very well so that everything is mixed properly.


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Mira is a comune (municipality) in the southern Veneto, northern Italy. It is part of the Metropolitan City of Venice and the 11th most populous comune of Veneto.

It is situated on the Riviera del Brenta, midway between Padua and Venice and it is crossed by SR11 Regional road. The main attractions are the Villa Foscari, designed by Andrea Palladio, and the Villa Widmann-Foscari.

The southeastern part of Mira is characterized by "barene", typical lagoon saltmarshes which are periodically submerged by the tide crossed by tidal channels. These barene constitute a third of the whole municipal area.

People
 Giuseppe Carraro - Roman Catholic bishop;
 Jacopo del Cassero - medieval politician mentioned by Dante Alighieri in the 5th canto of the Purgatory;
 Maurizio Bacchin - mayor of Mira and member of the senate

Sources
(Google Maps)

References

External links
Official website

Cities and towns in Veneto

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Unit 315 - Chocolate Lofts on Queen St.
Urban living in Toronto at it's best.
Look no further than this rarely offered 830sq/ft open concept conversion in the Chocolate Co.
Lofts located in the historical part of the building.
Originally a two bedroom unit and converted to an open concept one bedroom complete with custom built murphy bed (approx. $6,000) for added living space.
Enjoy the extra large windows with Easterly views as well as a view of Trinity Bellwoods Park.
This unit boasts hardwood floors, exposed brick, wood beams, nearly 11ft. ceilings, stainless steel fridge and stove, extra large walk-in closet in the master and custom closet ($5,000) in the second bedroom.
There are two washrooms, one parking space (conveniently located by the elevator), one locker, private bike rack for two, 24 hr. security/concierge and a newly renovated gym and party room for your enjoyment.
You will love being able to take a stroll through the park to catch some sun or eat, drink and shop at the many available cafes located in the neighbourhood!


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The Daily Bee (November 30, 2016): Liverpool want Pulisic, but they won't get him
Your daily Dortmund news and notes.
By Alex Greenberg@AGreenberg22 Nov 30, 2016, 3:00am PST
Share All sharing options for: The Daily Bee (November 30, 2016): Liverpool want Pulisic, but they won't get him
Photo by Alex Grimm/Bongarts/Getty Images
Good news: You've made it to Wednesday! This week since the Frankfurt defeat has been quite slow, but a chance to make things right against Monchengladbach is just a few days away.
For Frankfurt that win over us moved them all the way up to fourth place. Meanwhile Monchengladbach are stuck in 13th, 11 points off the top 4. Such is the insanity that is the Bundesliga table right now.
Anyway, on to today's links.
The Northern Echo is reporting that Dortmund are "hoping" Middlesbrough will make a January move for Neven Subotic.
This move makes sense because it's clearly already been tried once. The only reason Subotic isn't a Middlesbrough player right now is because his rib injury was discovered during his medical with the Premier League club. The move would leave us a bit short-staffed in defense, but buying a defender in January might already be the plan.
Subotic recently returned from his injury to play for BVB's reserve side. His return was a bit ahead of schedule, as reports initially were that we wouldn't see him back until at least the new year.
The Mirror says that Liverpool are set to "step up" their interest in Christian Pulisic following the injury to Philippe Coutinho.
Coutinho will miss six weeks after getting injured in the Reds recent 2-0 win over Sunderland. Jurgen Klopp's side have already lost Danny Ings for the season, and know they will lose Sadio Mane for the African Cup of Nations soon enough. So apparently Klopp really wants Pulisic.
Maybe the interest is real, but there's no way this transfer happens. The Mirror says we want £25 million for Pulisic, but I'd think the fee would be even higher. This type of deal would never happen in January either.
Yes, Pulisic has said it's his dream to play in England, but he's so young. The best thing for his development is to stay at Dortmund where he's getting such a great chance at such a young age. He knows that. He'd only be plucked away if Liverpool really wanted to break the bank and spend more than £30 million on an 18-year-old.


The fascinating images below, is section of How to Hang Hammock Chair Swing article which is assigned within Hammock, perfect Hammock Chair Swing, Best Hammock Chair Swing, Modern Hammock Chair Swing and published at November 28th, 2017 22:28:30 PM by arka.
Hammock chair swing – Let's find out how to choose a hammock and where to hang it in the country. And unnecessarily fool yourself with a shopping hammock, especially if there are not two standing trees for its installation? After all you can take a cot and lie down with a book. But no, do not give up the dream because modern hammock – very simple design that can be installed anywhere whatever the heart desires. Outstanding sense of flowing over the earth, light wiggle, gives a special style to rest. All other types of furniture for recreation are also not bad, but a hammock is a special structure. No wonder, after spending summer at the cottage, the towns change this favorite equipment to the apartment, where it fits perfectly into the interior.
This images of Awesome Hammock Chair Swing has dimension 1600 x 1600 pixels, you can download and gain the Awesome Hammock Chair Swing images by right click on the clicking the right mouse to get the large version.
Here is needful tip on Modern Hammock Chair Swing. We have the cool method for Modern Hammock Chair Swing. Check it out for yourself! You can get Awesome Hammock Chair Swing guide and see the latest How to Hang Hammock Chair Swing in here.
What is Backpack Beach Chair?


text:
<?php
require('core.php');

$filename = dirname($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME']);

$f = file_get_contents($filename . '/groc');
$gl = unserialize($f) ;

print "<pre>";
print_r($gl);
print "</pre>";

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Sadly, this hack is broken for a number of reasons.
Some of the bigger ones involve the fact that Yahoo!Local got rid of their insanely useful API. I may eventually convert this to a more useful service like Yelp.
Is that Yahoo! Local in your pocket..?


Our business is based on quality, honesty and community values. When it comes to residential roofing and exteriors, we've got you and your family covered. If you are a homeowner, you know that your house is more than just a possession — it's your home. It's where your family lives, eats, sleeps, shares memories, and more.
Our team is made up of people just like you. We live and work in the community, spend time with our families, and take pride in our homes and neighborhood. Whether you need minor repairs or complete exterior remodeling, we will be there so you can focus on what matters most — your family.
We know that there is nothing worse than a leaky roof, so we make it our business to reduce that headache for you as much as possible.
From the initial inspection to the final production, we promise to always provide honest assessments, competitive pricing, and only the highest-quality service when we repair or replace each roof, siding, and gutter system for you.
Signature Exteriors is a licensed, bonded, and insured professional roofing and restoration exteriors contractor that has earned our customers' trust since January 2012.
We also specialize in insurance claims so you don't have to deal with them, and we pride ourselves on relieving you of all worry and stress. You can trust us to make sure that your residential or commercial property gets the quality repair or restoration it needs!
We understand that cost is an issue for most homeowners, so we have remained competitively priced—especially when we are bidding with Owens Corning.
If you're a general contractor, real estate agent, or insurance agent, you know that a construction project is filled with unexpected delays. You can rest assured that we will make things as easy as possible for you by providing you with an honest opinion of what is going on with the roof, and backing it up with plenty of photos and reports. We will install, repair or replace the roof, complete the paperwork, and coordinate with all parties in order to ensure that your closing date isn't affected.


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Prince Ozo Chukwrah is one the most visible freight forwarders in the country and the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents(ANLCA).
He was at the forefront of the various peace efforts to resolve the protracted crisis which has bedeviled the association for almost five years now.
In this exclusive interview with our reporter, the ANLCA chieftain highlighted the latest peace moves by the BOT to end the lingering crisis and restore peace to the battle-weary association.
He however accused Joe Sanni, the former Senior Special Assistant(SSA) on Media and Publicity to Prince Olayiwola Shittu, the immediate past president of ANLCA, as the killjoy to all the various peace efforts in the association, accusing him of making merchandise of the crisis as he was continuously fanning the embers of discord through his inflammatory statements which he alleged were bare-faced lies to profit from the unfortunate situation.
What is your reaction to reopening the ANLCA secretariat after it was shut for about two months following the unfortunate incident at Tin Can port where one person was killed?
That narration was totally wrong. The secretariat had been long closed before the incident t your referred to. The Police shut the secretariat over the petition they received that some people wanted to burn the place from the Western zone group. All efforts to dissuade the police from shutting down the place fell through. The police insisted that they will close it for security reasons. That was the reason the secretariat was shut.
Both warring groups went to the Lagos state commissioner of police. I led our team while Taiwo Mustapha led his team. There, the Commissioner of police expressed frustration at the seeming perpetuity of the crisis, saying he was tried. I made my own submission, saying that we too are tired because the matter is so simple. It was a matter between the two boards. The New board and the past board. The new board came and inherited the problems.
The NECOM was initially not part of the problem, but at a stage, they got the NECOM involved because they accused the NECOM of taking sides.
As I have earlier explained in my past interview, there were court cases that barred Tony Iju-led NECOM not to recognize the other party.
It was a court declaration and nobody contested or appealed against that judgment.
Now that the Secretariat has been opened and handed to Tony Iju-led NECOM, what is your reaction? What is the way forward? Where does the association go from there?
Before I answer that question, let me conclude the analysis of our peace efforts before now.
The two groups went to the Commissioner of police where I told him that he has a legal department, and let the other party submit what they have as evidence of being in charge of the secretariat because they were then claiming they have taken over the secretariat when they appointed Pius Ejubomon as interim President while we still have Tony Iju as our President who is in charge.
I asked the police to investigate to find out which of the two contending boards is in charge, is it the one led by Taiwo Afolabi or the one led by Taiwo Mustapha?
That was where we left it with the police.
The Mustaha-led board was genuinely registered but no longer active as of August 26th, 2022 while the new board led by Dr. Afolabi came in on September 7th, 2022. These dates are very sacrosanct and germane to the issue on the ground. they are verifiable.
The Mustapha-led board ceases to be active in the status of the Corporate Affairs Commission(CAC) as at August 26th, 2022. While the new board led by Afolabi came in and issued a certificate on September 7th, 2022. with the names of the nine members of the board printed on the certificate.
This is what we asked the Police to investigate to determine which of the two boards is fake and genuine.
So the police took all legal steps to investigate and found out that the authentic board genuinely registered by the CAC is the one led by Dr. Taiwo Afolabi which is supporting the Tony Iju-led NECOM.
That is why they reopened the secretariat and handed it over to Tony Iju-led NECOM as a confirmation of the authenticity and genuineness of Afolabi-led BOT.
This action by the police has finally vindicated us and settled the issue of the legitimacy of our board.
To be sincere with you, everyone, including Mustapha, knows the truth, probably with the exception of one man, Joe Sanni.
But why are still contesting the ownership of the secretariat with the authentic board?
All this while, Joe Sanni was the lawyer, the judge and the complainant. He has been the one who determines what to say, dishing out falsehood to the public.
I am sure he is feeding fat on this crisis, he is not losing anything. He is massively reaping from it otherwise who among these people is the enemy of Prince Ozo?
Sir Ernest Elochucku, whom I regard as the most intelligent freight forwarder in Nigeria, is my boss and friend. Dennis Okafor is the closest friend to my brother, Chief Mike Nwoko and a close friend to me.
Taye Oyeniyi is another close friend who once made me relinquish my hard-won victory in Tin Can which I later reclaimed with the support of others, including Dayo Aziz who supported me to become the first Igbo ANLCA chapter chairman in Tin Can.
They all also rallied around me when I contested for Zonal coordinator which I eventually won unopposed.
"We should all be concerned, especially those who are close to this man, about his state of sanity.
Is Joe Sanni normal and of sound mind?"
So who among these people is my enemy: none, not even Mustapha whom I have severally met in private to seek peace in ANLCA.
This is a new year, I plead and sue for peace, even if it means going down on my knees. I will do everything possible for us to achieve peace.
We should embrace peace and shun bitterness because time is fast running out.
I will make a proposal to our board and NECOM so that we can convene an AGM/NEC meeting where the suspension of some members could be reversed and they would be reabsorbed into the association for peace to reign.
Most of us in the elective positions in the association are on the final lap of our tenure. We need youths to come up and take over.
Beyond rhetorics sir, what are the concrete steps the Dr. Afolabiled BOT is making to ensure a lasting peace and to placate the aggrieved party?
Only four people from the Mustapha group are qualified to recontest their positions and they are Dayo Aziz, Ernest Elochukwu, Taiwo Mustapha and Dennis Okafor who can join the nine members of the Taiwo Afolabi-led board. We need to amend the constitution to accommodate them. This should not be a problem because laws are made for man and not man for the law.
This is part of the peace efforts the board is willing to make to ensure that this crisis is resolved and lasting peace is restored back to the ANLCA.
Even these people I mentioned, some of them don't have time for the association again because they are heavyweight. They don't even have enough time for their numerous business interests. So we need to start to groom some capable youths to take over the leadership of the association.
The second aspect is we should allow all the actions and inactions of Tony Iju to pawn out. Every chapter where he conducted elections should be allowed to serve out its tenure.
Also, if we come together, the board will allow them to be part of the ASECO that will conduct the next elections.
They are too big to be ASECO members but they can send in their representatives to the association's electoral body.
We run an inclusive government not by appointment but elections.
I was elected as a member of the BOT for six years and I have served out two years, the remaining four years. I am not willing to resign but intend to serve out my tenure.
I have supported all the past members who have served on the board, I never called for their sack or resignation before they served out their tenure, including Taye Oyeniyi, until this crisis started.
Therefore, I am begging everyone concerned to allow peace to reign in the association.
I am calling on all of them to an enlarged meeting where we all jaw-jaw and not war-war so that we can bring the association back to the path of peace.
No victor, no vanquished. We are all winners in this matter.
What happens if the much sought-after peace is not achieved and you know that by April this year when the tenure of the incumbent NECOM expires and we know that constitutionally, the BOT will kick start the process of a new election, What happens if the other group does not back down?
Constitutionally, the BOT takes over the running of the NECOM for 90 days in case of a crisis. Has it not dawned on you now which is the authentic BOT?
Anyway, don't let us count our chickens before they are hatched. We shall get to the bridge first before we attempt to cross it.
What is going to happen to all the pending court cases? They are numerous and distractive.
I think all the court cases have been disposed off and all their judgments are in the favour of the parent NECOM and the Board. However, only one court case is pending and judgment will come in February. Even at that, the event has overtaken the court case because the man that was praying the court to be allowed to serve out his tenure of office has already served out his tenure. That was Aziz in the Seme chapter.
However, the court will still make its pronouncement despite this fact.
The one in Kano too has been decided.
We have had enough of delays and waste of time. It is time to come together and chart a new course for ANLCA. The crisis has led to lots of pain and loss of time and resources. So I bed all concerned to sheath their swords.
Another criminal case pending was the one where Tony Iju and his group were attacked. We shall look into that and prevail on the complainants to withdraw it if only the other group agrees to embrace peace.
What efforts is the current BOT making to forestall a reoccurrence of this crisis that has nearly torn ANLCA apart?
A. As far as I know, a crisis is part of human life. It is bound to happen where are two or more people, not to talk of a group like ANLCA. Crisis happens in families, countries, religious groups and professional or trade groups like ANLCA and political groups.
What is important is the ability to manage a crisis and navigate through the crisis. That does not mean there will be no crisis.
There are people who were created to foment trouble and create crises while some were born as peacemakers. Both groups will cohabit and coexists.
I wish to appeal to all well-meaning members of this association to prevail on Joe Sanni to stop his current efforts to further destabilize ANLCA despite all efforts to resolve the issues.
He has been fanning the ember of discord and disunity in the association through his inflammatory statement, and the spread of falsehoods, half-truths and outright lies.
He has been peddling lies the certificate of Dr. Taiwo Afolabi-led BOT is fake. Yet he has not been able to take us to the police for forgery which is a criminal case.
He knew that the certificate is fake, why has he not written to the man whose signature was forged on the certificate to take legal action, yet he chooses to spread uncoordinated and incoherent narratives that do not add up to the discerning minds?
In another breath, he was telling the whole world the so-called fake certificate has been canceled and withdrawn by the CAC.
Is that not illogical and laughable? How can the CAC cancel a document that is supposed to be fake which they did not issue?
All these incoherent and illogical narratives of Joe Sanni are a sad reflection of his state of mind.
I enjoined the industry stakeholders to be circumspect and take time to analyse the logic behind some of these mendacious narratives this character is dishing out to the public on this matter.
A fake document cannot be canceled because it is already fake. And the man who is well versed in deciphering fake objects is supposed to write to the police without much ado for investigation.
I think by now we should all have been arrested because forgery is a criminal case.
But instead, the man chooses to spew out falsehood to the public.
I am as concerned as other true friends of this character called Sanni because he is doing more harm to the peace and progress of ANLCA through his illogical and incorrect utterances.
I appeal to those who are sponsoring him, those paying him for this hatchet job he is doing to desist from paying him if they truly love ANLCA.
He cannot contribute one Kobo in ANLCA, so he enjoying the crisis because he is feeding fat on it.
I am appealing to him to sheath his sword. This is not a personal war.
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What is Giftedness? Its Meaning and Use in Coaching
As a coach for the gifted, I devote my work to supporting intellectually advanced and intense, or "gifted", adults because I believe in the importance and potential of these unique, if sometimes overlooked or misunderstood, individuals. But I regularly encounter a lot of confusion about the subject, both in the general public and in "gifted" individuals themselves. What is "giftedness"? And why does it matter? And what is coaching gifted people all about?
Many people resist the label of "gifted" because they aren't exceptional at all possible subjects, didn't receive optimal marks in school, or even because they believe they have a learning disability. Others resist the label due to the social stigma attached to it (this is particularly true in Europe where considering oneself as gifted has historically been looked down upon as presumptuous and erudite). And still others resist the notion simply because it is a label – an oversimplified way to organize the many facets of a person – and they consequently see no use for it: "Okay, if I'm gifted, so what?"
The "so what" is actually quite important. Not being fond of overly simplistic labels myself, many question why I persist in utilizing this often taboo conceptualization. I continue to use it because it has proven to be an incredibly effective tool for self-awareness and self-acceptance. It helps a portion of the population understand that they're not alien, crazy, awkward, or socially useless; it helps them make sense of their inner world, accept their limitations, and find a place for their vast and often misunderstood and stymied potential. Of course, it goes without saying that using the label "gifted" as an ego boost or as an escape from personal responsibility would render it useless (and, one can reasonably argue, harmful).
"Giftedness," in short, is not just about being smart. It describes instead a range of conceptualizations of the world, with some of its most striking characteristics being intense curiosity, hypersensitivity to stimuli, and a high capacity for global (or broad and comprehensive) thinking.
And it's not just about ease in learning and living either. In fact, the qualities that make up the "gift" of giftedness are often the very qualities that cause many gifted individuals to experience their "blessing" as more of a curse. A gifted person lives an extremely intense and rich inner-life. This intensity, when misunderstood, can provoke strong reactions in others, and lead to agonizing inner confusion about one's social place and value. The qualities that give a gifted person such richness of spirit can be unwelcome and discouraged by family members, teachers, and friends. Gifted children often experience themselves as "too much" for others. "You ask too many questions" and "you think too much" are comments both children and adults in the gifted range regularly hear. Adaptive behavior and low self-esteem often follow, showing up as isolation, perfectionism and overachievement, and/or underachievement and depression.
I encounter clients reporting these very symptoms, yet having no idea where they come from. Reframing their experience and giving voice to the intense inner world they have tried to disown or manage in secrecy (often in an effort, conscious or unconscious, to "fit in") is the first step to an amazing recovery of a sense of self. Once fully integrated – as with any tool which has served its purpose – the conceptual label of "gifted" can then be set aside. What remains is a new awareness: an understanding of one's unique potential and limitations, finding sense in past experiences where before there was confusion, and identifying and embodying one's needs and responsibilities. From this foundation, anyone, "gifted" or otherwise, can build a life of purpose and integrity. This is why I use the tool!
For more information, read: Living with Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults, by Susan Daniels, PhD and Michael M. Piechowski, PhD
Author: Jennifer Harvey Sallin
http://www.rediscovering-yourself.com
Jennifer Harvey Sallin, MA, LLPC, NCC is a psychologist, coach, mentor, trainer and author who dedicates her work to raising awareness about giftedness in adulthood, and supporting gifted adults to understand their unique mind and channel their uncommon potential and intensity with self-awareness and purpose. She spends a lot of her time teaching and training professionals who support the gifted and writing on giftedness and self-development. She is co-founder of Rediscovering Yourself, and founding director of an international community of gifted adults, www.intergifted.com, which has an international network of coaches and mentors dedicated to supporting gifted adults. She lives in Switzerland and works locally and by Skype internationally (in English, French and Italian).
Support for Gifted People: Guidelines for Therapists & Coaches (and Advice for Gifted Clients)
Mastery: The Gifted Coaching Process
The Stages of Adult Giftedness Discovery & How Gifted Coaching Can Help
High, Exceptional & Profound Giftedness
Discovering Your Highest Values
Slowing Down to Speed Up: Hurrying vs. Observing
Sign up to receive our newsletter with Jen's latest articles and other Rediscovering Yourself news and resources.
Schedule assessments, coaching, mentoring or training with us; or for a referral to an InterGifted coach:
contact@rediscovering-yourself.com
-Training professionals who support the gifted
-Giftedness assessments
-Coaching & mentoring for profoundly gifted adults
-Coaching & mediation for families, couples, and kids
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS & TRAINING
Check out InterGifted's workshops page
Climate Emergency, Childhood Trauma & Finding My Contribution
Gifted Adults & Second Childhoods: Revisiting Essential Stages of Development
Trauma, Giftedness & Healing – a Personal Story
InterGifted
Gifted community, assessments, coaching, mentoring, courses & workshop.
I Heart Earth
Personal & collective healing and action in the climate emergency.
Gifted Mindfulness Collective
Gifted-specific mindfulness education, community, retreats & events.
Intrepid Integrity
Group programs for cultivating an authentic and courageous gifted life.


Pending legislation and a new property sector rulebook mean agencies cannot ignore empowerment requirements.
only themselves to blame for the 60-page empowerment rulebook that they can no longer ignore. That is according to Mashilo Pitjeng, who has been closely involved with the amended code.
He told the annual general meeting of the Real Estate Business Owners of South Africa (Rebosa) in October that the residential property sector's failure to voluntarily grasp the transformation nettle has forced the hand of lawmakers. And in an interview with Property Professional, Pitjeng was adamant that residential sector agencies had paid little heed to transformation imperatives.
"Where industry fails, where the market fails, government will legislate," says Pitjeng, who chairs the research committee of the Property Sector Charter Council and is the facilitator of its technical committee. "The residential sector is not married to the philosophy of transformation. They ignored it (the old code), making zero submission," he says. The new code was gazetted in June 2017, amending the 2012 version, with a number of new provisions and tweaks to weightings and targets.
The game-changer, though, is the Property Practitioners Bill, also gazetted in 2017. Once passed into law, the bill will put the code front and centre for agencies because it prohibits the issuing of a fidelity fund certificate to anyone "not in possession of a BEE certificate", details of which are in the code.
But Portia Tau-Sekati, the Property Sector Charter chief executive, says agencies need not panic. None will be denied a fidelity fund certificate, regardless of its broad-based black economic empowerment score, so long as they provide a BBBEE certificate. Tau-Sekati does not rule out future changes to the property code that might include minimum points requirements, but says for now the compliance bar has been set low for small agencies. She explains that those with a turnover below R2.5m a year are classified as exempted micro enterprises and need only submit an affidavit in lieu of a certificate, stating turnover and ownership.
says Tau-Sekati. The Department of Trade and Industry drafted the generic codes of good practice upon which all industry codes are based, including property.
But Jan le Roux, chief executive of Rebosa, is concerned about how qualifying small enterprises with limited resources will cope. "It's very tough for a small company to comply," he says, and questions some of the thinking behind the R2.5m threshold. While Le Roux emphasises Rebosa's unequivocal support for transformation, he says this threshold makes little sense as it still excludes 85% of the industry. "Bryan Chaplog, previous chief executive of the Estate Agency Aff airs Board, indicated that 85% of the industry falls below the R2.5m threshold. This is indicative of the lack of research on which the charter is based. This information is available at the EAAB.
Pitjeng says qualifying small enterprise agencies should easily be able to earn the points needed to comply from procurement and enterprise development. "My message to everyone is: find something to do within your means. This is not designed to make you broke; codes are designed for economic development," he says. Lew Geffen, chairman of Lew Geffen Sotheby's International Realty, says the code needs to be seen within the context of a residential sector that has shrunk in size over the past decade while regulation has grown.
"The tighter market caused some natural attrition, but 2008 was also when the board changed industry entry criteria. The stringent barriers are restricting all-comers to real estate, have created dysfunctional behaviour and are seriously hampering transformation and growth," says Geffen.
"This is just one example of the impossible hurdles to actually implementing the code, because the board's mandatory year-long internship takes the option of a career in real estate off the table for 60% of the population. How can you expect candidates to put themselves in a position of low earning capacity for that long if they have families to feed?" Geffen calls for tax breaks or other financial assistance to help agencies meet compliance requirements.
The amended Property Sector Code spells out transformation goals for the entire property industry, from JSE-listed property asset unit trusts to small estate agencies. A host of targets, scorecards and weightings apply, depending on the kind of property company, its turnover or net asset values.
• QSE agencies that fail to meet 40% compliance targets in the ownership element in addition to either skills development or enterprise and supplier development will have their BBBEE qualification marked down by one level.


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Profitable & Ambitous Businesses
Leading the Circular Economy
Circular Yorkshire
Skilled & Inspired People
Successful & Distinctive Places
A Well-Connected Economy
A64 Growth Partnership
All Funding
Funding to Grow Your Business
Skills Capital Funding
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Closed Funding
York, North Yorkshire & East Riding Local Enterprise Partnership The Lodge
2 Racecourse Lane
North Yorkshire DL7 8AH
Copyright York, North Yorkshire and East Riding Enterprise Partnership
Minister Gives Green Light for Junction Upgrade Unlocking Potential for 3,000 New Jobs
MINISTER for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth Jake Berry MP is today to announce the final go-ahead for Junction 47 of the A1/A59 upgrade as part of his first official tour of North Yorkshire this week.
Not only will the upgrade address existing congestion at the junction, it will also increase its capacity to accommodate additional traffic generated at the new Business Park at Flaxby, which received planning approval from Harrogate Borough Council and has the potential to create 3,000 new jobs.
Funding for the Junction 47 upgrade was originally announced as part of the Local Growth Deal funding from the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in January 2015, following a successful national bid by the York, North Yorkshire and East Riding Enterprise Partnership (LEP).
Since then, the LEP secured additional funding by working with local and central government partners, North Yorkshire County Council and Highways England, leading to the Minister's announcement that that the works are approved and will be going ahead.
Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry said: "This government is investing billions of pounds in transport across the north to build the Northern Powerhouse and deliver improved journeys for the whole region."
Chairman of the York North Yorkshire and East Riding Enterprise Partnership, Barry Dodd said improving connectivity is one of the Local Enterprise Partnership's objectives to grow the local economy, the North and internationally. Mr Dodd said:
"We are keen to play our part in the development of the Northern Powerhouse by reflecting the enormous opportunities our rural area plays in its economic growth. Not only does it provide a fantastic leisure destination for our own residents, it also has an enormous visitor economy, alongside growing industries such as agritech, food manufacturing and energy. Page 2 of 3
"All of our key partners recognise that improvements need to be made to this junction, to deal with both existing capacity issues, and to accommodate growth in the LEP area. The junction provides access from our key east west corridor to the A1 (M) the major north south national arterial route, and provides access from our area to the rest of the UK and beyond."
Leader of North Yorkshire County Council, Cllr Carl Les explained that North Yorkshire is highly productive, generating over £13bn of GVA, the measure of the value of goods and services produced, each year. York and North Yorkshire generate £22,353 GVA per head of population, which is more than that of Greater Manchester.
Mr Les said: Our ambition is to continue to increase the number of good-quality jobs and improve access to economic opportunities for people right across the county. Better transport links are vital to realising those ambitions."
During the Minister's visit, he was also updated on plans for Harrogate's Station Gateway Project was been indicatively allocated £1million in growth deal funding from the York, North Yorkshire and East Riding Enterprise Partnership for the transport element of the scheme.
Minister Mr Berry MP was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Northern Powerhouse and Local Growth in June this year. He is also MP for Rossendale and Darwen just across from neighbouring Skipton in the LEPs area.
What does the project involve?
Signal control is proposed for all arms at A1(M) 47 with storage areas created on both the circulatory and approaches through widening.
Extra lanes would be introduced on both A1(M) exits and the flares improved on both A59 approaches.
Widening is proposed at discrete locations around the circulatory carriageway in order to create the required additional lanes and stacking capacity.
North Yorkshire County Council will provide linked traffic signals at the adjacent A59 / A168 3-arm priority junction to the east of Junction 47 at the same time as the A1(M) J47 scheme.
The installation of traffic lights significantly reduces queuing and journey times at the junction to an acceptable level.
York, North Yorkshire & East Riding Local Enterprise Partnership
Askew Brook


Perfect for all the family, this 17 day self-drive holiday from Cape Town to the Eastern Cape, will keep everyone happy with it's mix of incredible wildlife, amazing scenery and fun activities. Staying in a collection of family friendly guesthouses and hotels you will take in the highlights of Cape Town, the Whale Coast, Route 62 and the Garden Route, finishing with a Big Five Eastern Cape Safari.
On arrival into Cape Town you will collect your hire car and drive into the city, (enjoying the fantastic views of Table Mountain), to spend 3 nights in a 2 bed apartment in the V&A Waterfront – stay an extra night for free from May-September – the perfect location to visit the aquarium, take a spin on the Cape Wheel, take in a few drumming or singing busking groups, browse cool crafts, head out on a boat trip to Robben Island and visit restuarants. And don't worry there is a pool for the kids to splash about in!
Two free days to explore Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula. ! You can head to the Cape of Good Hope and the penguins at Boulders Beach, take the cable car up Table Mountain, sit in a restaurant at Camp's Bay watching the world go by and much more. See our Cape Town guide.
Today you will be drive along Route 62 to enjoy spectacular landscapes, passing through the semi desert of Karoo, rugged mountains, orchard farms and vineyards. It is relatively quiet allowing you to just take everything in without worrying about traffic, have your cameras at the ready! You will be heading to AfriCamps Klein Karoo where you will be staying for 2 nights in a 2 bedroom luxury tent with breakfast basket included. Another perfect family-friendly spot on a working ostrich farm with a pool. If you prefer a different hotel then let us know. We know the best places for families, having travelled many times with our own children in South Africa.
Early this morning head on a meerkat safari. The rest of the day is free for you to explore. Take a tour of AfriCamps working ostrich farm, head out on a sunset drive with a specialist guide, take a stargazing lesson. You can also arrange to visit AfriCamps crèche where they care for 85 children from the underprivileged community. In the area, there's the Cango Wildlife Ranch for encounters with cheetahs and lemurs and the Cango Caves.
Driving south to the coast today you will hit the beautiful Garden Route where you will spend 3 nights at Hog Hollow in a Family Suite with breakfast included (STAY 3, PAY 2 from May to August) . on the edge of the beautiful Knysna Lagoon with spectacular views. Set in its very own private nature reserve, family-friendly Hog Hollow offers a personalised stay, away from the crowds and in breath-taking surroundings.
Two free days to explore. This area could keep you busy for weeks – zipwire through the Tsitsikamma, horse ride to Monkeyworld, SUP the Keurbooms River, jump the world's highest bridge bungee and more. Ask us what we would recommend for your family.
Following a final morning in Knysna you will drive the final 3 hr section of the Garden Route to the Eastern Cape, heading to Amakhala Game Reserve where you will spend your final 3 nights in a Family Suite at Hlosi Lodge (STAY 3, PAY 2 from May to June) with all meals and game drives included. Hlosi is a lovely family-friendly safari option offering an amazing wildlife experience with plenty of kid-friendly options. There are a number of lovely safari options in the Eastern Cape to suit a wide range of budgets – call us on 01273 923100 to discuss the options.
Two full days to enjoy tracking game on morning and afternoon Big Five safari drives in Amakhala Game Reserve. You will be woken early to head out on safari for approx. 3 hours and head out again after brunch, a spot of relaxing by the pool and a freshly baked high tea. The animals prefer the cool of the morning or late afternoon. Within Amakhala's 18,000 acres you are likely to encounter lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo, cheetah, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, monkeys, tortoise and plenty of antelope species. Talk to us about whether your children are ready for a safari.
After a final morning safari and a hearty breakfast you will drive 1hr to Port Elizabeth Airport, drop your hire car and fly back to the UK (via Johannesburg).
Welcome home….(how many photos!) If you don't have 17 days, ask us to re-design this holiday to your requirements – call 01273 923100.
This South Africa Family holiday idea costs from £8,792 per family and includes International flights (price based on London), internal flights, all accommodation on a sharing basis, 11 nights B&B, 3 nights full-board and 16 days Group K car hire. Based on a family of 2 adults and 2 children aged (2-11) travelling in May or June. CALL 01273 923100 and we can tweak this itinerary to suit your family.


Cynthia Upham pursued her interest in the medical field by first becoming an X-ray tech. Although she had a passion for her work, she followed her yearning to further her education and returned to school for a radiation therapy degree and subsequently a medical dosimetry degree. Cynthia left full-time employment to attend the Southern Illinois University Medical Dosimetry program. She is looking forward to her new adventure in medical dosimetry. She is grateful to the AAMD Foundation and the MDCB for the scholarship award she received to defray the cost of the MDCB CMD examination. Cynthia credits her success to challenging work and the support of others that advanced her professional growth.


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To dream of a bustling masquerade party or ball predicts a surprise opportunity that could secure your future if you can summon up the courage required to latch on to it.
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Nice split-level home on 2 acres in the Bishopville/Burr Oak area. There are 3 bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms, an attached garage, as well as a detached garage. A wooden deck expands the length of the home and overlooks the backyard. The main floor is cooled and heated by an electric split heat and air unit, a vented gas fireplace, and electric radiant ceiling heat, which is adjustable from room to room. (The radiant ceiling heat is not installed in the open living and dining area). The lower level is cooled by a separate electric split air only unit and heated with a ventless gas unit, which according to the home owners, sufficiently heats the lower level.