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text:
The Catholic Worker Movement is a collection of autonomous communities of Catholics and their associates founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the United States in 1933. Its aim is to "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ". One of its guiding principles is hospitality towards those on the margin of society, based on the principles of communitarianism and personalism. To this end, the movement claims over 240 local Catholic Worker communities providing social services. Each house has a different mission, going about the work of social justice in its own way, suited to its local region.

Catholic Worker houses are not official organs of the Catholic Church, and their activities, inspired by Day's example, may be more or less overtly religious in tone and inspiration depending on the particular institution. The movement campaigns for nonviolence and is active in opposing both war and the unequal global distribution of wealth. Day also founded the Catholic Worker newspaper, still published by the two Catholic Worker houses in New York City, and sold for a penny a copy.

History
The Catholic Worker Movement started with the Catholic Worker newspaper, created by Dorothy Day to advance Catholic social teaching and stake out a neutral, Christian pacifist position in the war-torn 1930s. Day attempted to put her words from the Catholic Worker into action through "houses of hospitality" and then through a series of farms for people to live together on communes. The idea of voluntary poverty was advocated for those who volunteered to work at the houses of hospitality. Many people would come to the Catholic Workers for assistance, only to become Workers themselves. Initially, these houses of hospitality had little organization and no requirements for membership. As time passed, however, some basic rules and policies were established. Day appointed the directors of each of the houses, but tried to maintain autonomy in the actual running of the houses. Because of this policy, the houses varied in both size and character: in the 1930s, the St. Louis Workers served 3400 people a day while the Detroit Workers served around 600 a day.

The Catholic Worker newspaper spread the idea to other cities in the United States, as well as to Canada and the United Kingdom, through the reports printed by those who had experienced working in the houses of hospitality. More than 30 independent but affiliated communities had been founded by 1941. Between 1965 and 1980 an additional 76 communities were founded with 35 of these still in existence today, such as the "Hippie Kitchen" founded in the back of a van by two Catholic Workers on Skid Row, Los Angeles in the 1970s. Well over 200 communities exist today, including several in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands,  Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden.

Co-founder Day, who died in 1980, is under consideration for sainthood by the Catholic Church.

Beliefs

"Our rule is the works of mercy," said Dorothy Day. "It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence."

According to co-founder Peter Maurin, the following are the beliefs of the Catholic Worker:
 gentle personalism of traditional Catholicism.
 personal obligation of looking after the needs of our brother.
 daily practice of the Works of Mercy.
 houses of hospitality for the immediate relief of those who are in need.
 establishment of Farming Communes where each one works according to his ability and receives according to his need.
 creating a new society within the shell of the old with the philosophy of the new.

The radical philosophy of the group can be described as Christian anarchism. Anne Klejment, a history lecturer at the University of St. Thomas, wrote of the movement:

Family involvement
Families have had a variety of roles in the Catholic Worker Movement. Because those donating funds to the houses of hospitality were primarily interested in helping the poor, the higher cost of maintaining a volunteer family (as opposed to maintaining an individual volunteer) conflicted with the wishes of those donating. Author Daniel McKanan has suggested that, for a variety of reasons, Dorothy Day's perspective on family involvement in the movement was controversial. Despite these elements of conflict, families have participated in the Catholic Worker Movement through multiple avenues: some assist the houses of hospitality while others open up a "Christ room" in their homes for people in need. There are many other opportunities for family involvement in the Catholic Worker as well, with some families running their own houses of hospitality.

See also

 Catholic Radical Alliance
 Catholic social teaching
 Catholic trade unions
 Catholic Worker, the movement's newspaper
 Christian anarchism
 Christian communism
 Christian left
 Christian socialism
 Christian trade unions
 Christian views on poverty and wealth
 Friendship House
 Georgism
 Industrial Workers of the World
 Liberation theology
 List of anti-war organizations
 Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement
 Political Catholicism
 Settlement movement
 Saint Patrick's Day Four
 Pitstop Ploughshares

Similar Christian movements
 Anabaptism, in particular the emerging peace church movement
 Beguines and Beghards, medieval religious communities composed entirely of laity
 Christian democracy, particularly distributism
 Focolare, Catholic/Ecumenical movement promoting the ideals of unity and universal brotherhood.
 Madonna House Apostolate
 "New Monasticism" related communities
 Peace Churches
 Servants to Asia's Urban Poor
 Labour Church

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading
 Dorothy Day (1997) Loaves and Fishes: The inspiring story of the Catholic Worker Movement. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1963.
 On the English CW, see: Olivier Rota, From a social question with religious echoes to a religious question with social echoes. The 'Jewish Question' and the English Catholic Worker (1939–1948) in Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXV n°3, May–June 2005, pp. 4–5.

External links
 Main website of the Catholic Worker Movement

 Dorothy Day-Catholic Worker Collection at Marquette University
 The Way of Love: Dorothy Day and the American Right – by Bill Kauffman, Whole Earth (Summer 2000)
 Following Jesus in love and anarchy – The Times, February 29, 2008
 Maurin, Day, the Catholic Worker, and Anarcho-Distributism  by Nicholas Evans 2018

Anti–Iraq War groups
Catholic lay organisations
Catholic social teaching
Catholic trade unions
Catholicism and far-left politics
Christian anarchism
Christian pacifism
Christian radicalism
Christian organizations established in 1933
Dorothy Day
Distributism
Anarchist intentional communities
Christian communities

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


First of all I would like to point out that as Artists, we are free to paint and draw what we wish – so unless you are an architectural artist, please don't feel that guides in drawing in perspective are RULES! They are simply powerful guides (or tricks) to use if you wish to create a 3 dimensional illusion on your flat surface. The choice is yours!
First, let's have a look at how powerful the illusion of perspective drawing can be! The two blue trees in the drawing below, believe it or not, are the SAME SIZE in reality!
Isn't that amazing! Just a few perspective lines can create that illusion. After all, we are just looking at a flat surface!
Maybe you would like to use this trick in your own drawing!
You might like to draw your own tree shapes on thicker paper or light cardboard so that they are stronger. First draw one tree and cut it out. Lay it on your card and draw around it. Now carefully cut out your second tree just INSIDE the line that you drew, so that they will be the same size. Hold them one on top of the other to check. Colour them black or a strong colour.
A little blue tack will hold your trees in place and you can move them to see how they look in different places on your drawing.
Now what about this next picture of the 3 men. Which of the two SMALL men is the bigger one do you think?
Can you believe they really are the same height? Let's check it out!!! It is really amazing isn't it!
OK now lets get on to the specifics of the Optical Illusion we call "PERSPECTIVE". How does it work?
I hope to throw in a few hints that might help explain it- although I certainly don't profess to be an expert in this.
Firstly, let's take a look at the most commonly known "trick" for the eye – single point perspective. This is when the alignment of objects in the painting or drawing become smaller towards a distant point, to create the illusion of distance…as you can see, the "horizon" line in relation to your viewpoint has a dramatic effect on the end result and appearance of things in those converging perspective lines.
Construction lines (or guidelines) are usually drawn very lightly in pencil and erased later but without them it is very difficult to sketch things in perspective. Naturally there are countless different shapes of buildings, windows & doors so this is just a very basic guide and you can create your own variation.
Below are some examples where I've used single point perspective in paintings… the first is called "Bringing them home, Inverell, NSW" painted from a photo taken through the windscreen of our car.
It is rarely that you can actually see a flat horizon (except perhaps looking out to sea or in a desert) but most of us have inbuilt in our balance system a feeling for "WHERE THE LEVEL OF THE HORIZON WOULD BE IF WE COULD SEE IT" and it is this "SENSE OF LEVEL" we need, to assess most traditional compositions we might wish to draw or paint.
This next example (a tonal rough) is straight-forward where the street perspective is concerned but look at the crazy angles of those rooves! How can we analyse those for drawing them into the finished painting?
Well, this is what I do if lines do not all merge to a vanishing point! I pretend each angle I want to draw is coming from the centre of an old fashioned clockface. I hope you are familiar with clockfaces in this era of digital LED displays? Which number would that angle be pointing to if it were a clock hand in relation to the sides of the paper or canvas? When I decide that, it helps me draw it.
It worked pretty well in this study, although I decided along the way to alter some of the roof lines. Here is the finished painting below. I like the "not-so-precise" roof angles-I feel they look more interesting & less architecturally perfect – after all old houses tend to sag a bit as they age, just like us!
In some compositions, more than one vanishing point might be in play e.g. a corner of a building. The exaggeration of the perspective becomes less and more gentle the further away each vanishing point is from the other.
Notice how lines above the level eyeline converge down to the vanishing points and those below converge upward? By drawing a simple box, you can see that above the eye level we can see underneath the base of the box. Below eye level, we can see into the box looking down.
Thank you. I really appreciate that you are putting information down for young artists to learn. Thank you, this was a wonderful tutorial.
wow, this really helps clear up those perspective issues. thanks so much for your time and expertise.
Grateful for sharing the secretes.
Julie, your tutorial is truly awesome !!! Thank you so much for sharing !
Thanks for this! I am thinking of introducing perspective to my 7 year old, and I think this will make it easy for her to grasp it. Thanks again!
Thanks, I've been struggling with perspective for years. You have helped me to really make sense of it all. My confidence in my artistic skills is starting improve. I have had a hard time telling visual stories because I could not tell when to set the horizon line at my eye level or from my point of view or the characters.
How does the clock work when you are using 2 or more vanishing points?
I'm confused by the example of the illusion with the two blue trees. While I understand that trees are in nature similar in size, as per your example. But it would seem that in your perspective drawing, the tree further down the road towards the vanishing point should seem smaller, not larger. What am I missing? Thanks!


text:
Q: Azure ServiceBusQueue function not firing locally I just cannot seem to figure out why this function will not fire.
There is an active message in my service bus queue.
My local.settings.json file has the correct queue name and bus connection string which are referenced correctly in the main function class.
I've checked my code agaisn't the example in the MS docs and it looks correct.
When I run it in debug, the CLI picks up the correct function then logs host lock acquired, but does nothing else.
I have tried...

*

*Adding ;TransportType=AmqpWebSockets to the connection string

*Explicitly typing the queue name in the main function class instead of the json settings file

*Sending a new message onto the queue

*Refreshing the queue

But it just will not work and I'm wondering what else to try?
Running the following...
.NET core - 3.1
Azure core tools - 3.0
Function version - 3.3.1
Nugets...
Azure.Messaging.ServiceBus - 7.5.1
Microsoft.Azure.WebJobs.Extensions.ServiceBus - 5.2.0 (I'm using the new ServiceBusReceivedMessage type)
Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Functions - 3.0.13
I haven't reached the stage to publish yet, still just getting it running locally first.
Thanks
 public static class Function1
    {
        [FunctionName("Function1")]
        public static async Task Run([ServiceBusTrigger("MessageQueueName", Connection = "ServiceBusConnectionString")] ServiceBusReceivedMessage message, ILogger logger)
        {
            var bus = new AzureBus(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("ServiceBusConnectionString", EnvironmentVariableTarget.Process)).SendOnly();
            var endpoint = new Endpoint(bus, logger);

            logger.LogInformation($"Message received from bus - {message}");

            await endpoint.Start();
            await bus.Handle(message);
        }
    }

A: TransportType is not a valid token for the connection string and will be ignored by the Service Bus client library.  To use the web socket transport, the easiest way is to specify it in your host.json:
{
  "extensions": {
    "serviceBus": {
      "transportType" : "amqpWebSockets"
  }
}

A: could you share your code snippet for the main class? It should look something like this:
  public static async System.Threading.Tasks.Task RunAsync([ServiceBusTrigger("myqueue", Connection = "ServiceBusConnection")]
    Message myQueueItem, string lockToken, Microsoft.Azure.ServiceBus.Core.MessageReceiver messageReceiver, ILogger log)

if using MessageReceiver you need to handle DeadLetter/Completing the message yourself
EDIT: make sure you have the storage emulator running aswell

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Donor update
Together in kindness: A CARE Package® recipient's story
These acts of kindness are what we need right now. We will get through this, just as we did 75 years ago, if we think and act with love and compassion together.
Original CARE Package® Recipient: Nachiko Yokota
CARE Canada donor Nachiko Yokota reflects on the CARE Package® she and her family received after the Second World War and her legacy of supporting our work over the years.
Giving back in the midst of crisis: A BC nurse's COVID-19 journey
Amy is a Registered Nurse at St. Paul's hospital in Vancouver, BC. After being hospitalized for COVID-19, she started asking friends and family to tie ribbons around the tree in her front yard to keep her spirits up, and to give back to the people that will be affected by this crisis both in Canada and around the world. What followed was an outpouring of support from loved ones, neighbours and complete strangers to create the "Giving Tree."
VIDEO: Reconstruction of Drinking Water Schemes | Leaving No One Behind
ShareTweetShareEmail
Surviving drought in Southern Zambia
Mutinta is doing everything she can to support her family. But it's a daily struggle with the severe drought is
threatening health and lives in Zambia.
The Impact of Cyclone Idai, 6 Months Later
In the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Idai, the generous support of CARE donors provided life-saving assistance to families in need including tents, food supplies, clean water and hygiene kits.
While I was fortunate enough to be raised by an upper middle class family in Montreal, I've known the struggle of making ends meet as an adult.
Empowering generations of women with CARE
"When I look back on my life, I want to be remembered as someone who created spaces for opportunities. Through supporters like you and me, CARE is providing a different model to the poorest people on the planet."
Remembering CARE Packages, and paying it forward
After more than half a century, Helga still remembers the joy of opening that package to reveal the special items within. There were necessities like milk powder and canned meat, as well as coffee and clean clothing. She felt special, excited and cared for.
Ten things we can do to help shine a light on forgotten crises amidst a global pandemic
New CARE report: The 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises of 2020
Quiz: What you made possible in 2020
CARE photographers' favourite images in 2020
CARE in the news
CARE's approach
Emergencies and resilience
Emergency alert
From our President & CEO

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
using System;
using Windows.ApplicationModel;
using Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation;
using Windows.UI.Xaml;
using Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls;
using Windows.UI.Xaml.Navigation;

// Pour plus d'informations sur le modèle Application vide, consultez la page http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=234227

namespace TestApp.Tablet
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Fournit un comportement spécifique à l'application afin de compléter la classe Application par défaut.
    /// </summary>
    sealed partial class App
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Initialise l'objet d'application de singleton.  Il s'agit de la première ligne du code créé
        /// à être exécutée. Elle correspond donc à l'équivalent logique de main() ou WinMain().
        /// </summary>
        public App()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            Suspending += OnSuspending;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Invoqué lorsque l'application est lancée normalement par l'utilisateur final.  D'autres points d'entrée
        /// seront utilisés par exemple au moment du lancement de l'application pour l'ouverture d'un fichier spécifique.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="e">Détails concernant la requête et le processus de lancement.</param>
        protected override void OnLaunched(LaunchActivatedEventArgs e)
        {

#if DEBUG
            if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)
            {
                DebugSettings.EnableFrameRateCounter = true;
            }
#endif

            Frame rootFrame = Window.Current.Content as Frame;

            // Ne répétez pas l'initialisation de l'application lorsque la fenêtre comporte déjà du contenu,
            // assurez-vous juste que la fenêtre est active
            if (rootFrame == null)
            {
                // Créez un Frame utilisable comme contexte de navigation et naviguez jusqu'à la première page
	            rootFrame = new Frame
	            {
		            Language = Windows.Globalization.ApplicationLanguages.Languages[0]
	            };

	            // Définir la page par défaut
	            rootFrame.NavigationFailed += OnNavigationFailed;

                if (e.PreviousExecutionState == ApplicationExecutionState.Terminated)
                {

                }

                // Placez le frame dans la fenêtre active
                Window.Current.Content = rootFrame;
            }

	        Bootstrap.Initialize(rootFrame);

            if (rootFrame.Content == null)
            {
                // Quand la pile de navigation n'est pas restaurée, accédez à la première page,
                // puis configurez la nouvelle page en transmettant les informations requises en tant que
                // paramètre
                rootFrame.Navigate(typeof(MainPage), e.Arguments);
            }
            // Vérifiez que la fenêtre actuelle est active
            Window.Current.Activate();
			/*
			ResourceLoader loader = new ResourceLoader();
	        var str = loader.GetString("Title/Text");
	        var str2 = loader.GetString("Text.Text");
			 */
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Appelé lorsque la navigation vers une page donnée échoue
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">Frame à l'origine de l'échec de navigation.</param>
        /// <param name="e">Détails relatifs à l'échec de navigation</param>
        void OnNavigationFailed(object sender, NavigationFailedEventArgs e)
        {
            throw new Exception("Failed to load Page " + e.SourcePageType.FullName);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Appelé lorsque l'exécution de l'application est suspendue.  L'état de l'application est enregistré
        /// sans savoir si l'application pourra se fermer ou reprendre sans endommager
        /// le contenu de la mémoire.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender">Source de la requête de suspension.</param>
        /// <param name="e">Détails de la requête de suspension.</param>
        private void OnSuspending(object sender, SuspendingEventArgs e)
        {
            var deferral = e.SuspendingOperation.GetDeferral();
            deferral.Complete();
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Colorlines Favorites of 2018: Cardi B's 'Invasion of Privacy' and the Value of Authenticity
The Colorlines team is sharing our favorite 2018 videos, books, hashtags, movies and more. Here, contributing editor Ayana Byrd on why Cardi B's "Invasion of Privacy" was the year's best album.
Ayana Byrd Dec 27, 2018 9:00AM ET
Cardi B accepts Favorite Artist - Rap/Hip-Hop award at the 2018 American Music Awards in Los Angeles, California. Photo Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
It was my birthday, and I was getting yelled at because when someone asked what music I had on repeat, I answered "Cardi B."
Record scratch, stop.
"Don't say that!" my friend yelled.
But I'd said it, so then I got: "She is horrible, terrible, she is setting women back."
My friend went on, for a very long time, documenting the many ways she thought Cardi B was an affront to all good things musical and cultural. She talked so much that I stopped listening and just sipped my wine. Finally, she asked what I could possibly like about Cardi. She yelled this, too.
I could have said a lot, gotten fancy and even given a feminist interpretation of what made Cardi B and her debut "Invasion of Privacy" so great. But I didn't.
"When I listen to her album, I feel happy," was all I said.
Happy is hard to come by these days. This has been a year that takes perverse pleasure in fucking with us every single calendar day. From sunup to sundown it sometimes feels like Armageddon has come. But actually, it's just Tuesday.
Entertainment used to be a surefire way to tune out the fuckery. But because I do, in fact, believe that slavery was not a choice, entertainers have let me down spectacularly in 2018. Beyond Kanye, there was Bill Cosby taking his well-deserved perp walk. There was the minister eulogizing Aretha Franklin with a fire-and-brimstone rendition of the Moynihan Report that blamed every Black people problem on Black mothers.
It all—every single little thing—feels like a whole lot.
Cardi B, born Belcalis Almanzar, does not. She is not going to save the world with her music, but she has saved me from many a cranky mood. And 2018 has proven what a precious commodity happiness is.
"Invasion of Privacy" was released in April, after she had already reached the kind of fame few ever will with the single "Bodak Yellow." While there is a lingering slowness to that song, most of the album is upbeat, perky even, in the special way that perk can live alongside shit talking. Guests including SZA, Migos and Chance the Rapper are Cardi's accomplices as she shows off her confident, sometimes staccato, other times rapid fire flow.
The album is fun in a way that smacks of '80s irreverence (as does the neon lettering and her outfit on the cover art). There is no political correctness, just bitches and pussy popping. The song "Bickenhead," a reinterpretation of Project Pat's "Chickenhead," has an entire verse about how to pop it in church, at a stove and on the pole.
As unoriginal as the album's subject matter may be—make money, buy designer gear, dump trifling men, show hoes up—"Invasion of Privacy" is refreshing. Because Cardi B is. She is a star in the Rihanna sense of the word, which is my favorite kind of stardom. It gives zero fucks in a rock star way, but made better with Black swag.
We have not seen a celebrity like Cardi B maybe ever. She will throw a shoe at Nicki Minaj at a New York Fashion Week party and then in her next public appearance, become the talk of Milan for dressing in head-to-toe animal print inspired by "The Nanny." Cardi's come-up, from the Bronx to strip club to Internet fame to Love & Hip Hop: New York to "Invasion of Privacy," might read like a film script, but she pulls it off with an authenticity that seems impossible to fake.
While we were just trying to get through the drudgery of whatever-the-word-is for 2018, someone showed up cooing nonsensically like a pigeon and with a whole lot of talent. And as Cardi keeps releasing new tracks, like October's "Money," 2019 might be an even happier year.
More of Ayana's Favorites:
TV Show: "The Good Place"
Movie: "Roma"
Podcast: "Revisionist History"
Artist: Vhils
Meme:
My mummy said she's not around.#mymommasaid pic.twitter.com/iILfhEVe41
— Energie ? (@Eneric24) July 14, 2018
Year-End Goodness


You are here: Home >Special > *Trans-Atlantic Cruises On Sale From $749 US!
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text:
HomeNewsUSAG Stuttgart and Stuttgart Airport partner in full scale exercise
USAG Stuttgart and Stuttgart Airport partner in full scale exercise
Host nation firefighters battle flames during a simulated aircraft crash as part of U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart's annual force protection exercise, Stallion Shake, in conjunction with the Stuttgart Airport in Echterdingen, Oct. 22, 2016. U.S. Army Photo by Eric Steen
By Holly DeCarlo-White
USAG Stuttgart Public Affairs Office
The U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart held its annual force protection exercise, Stallion Shake, in partnership with the Flughafen Stuttgart GmbH, or Stuttgart Airport, Oct. 22, at the airport and at Stuttgart Army Airfield.
The U.S. military provides support in emergency management all around the world, but if a disaster were to strike on one of the five military installations in Stuttgart, German host nation first-responders would take the lead working together with U.S. personnel, and various volunteer response teams.
This was the first time the garrison has partnered with the Stuttgart Airport to conduct such a simulated emergency incident response training.
"Stallion Shake is our full-scale exercise in which we test our capability on how we would handle any type of emergency response situation that would happen within our garrison footprint. Each year, we train on a different installation. The importance is really how we work together; our garrison emergency response with our host nation emergency response," said USAG Stuttgart Commander Col. Glenn K. Dickenson.
Typically, guidance for a military garrison full-scale exercise is provided by the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program. Stuttgart Airport's bi-annual requirements fall in accordance with the International Organization for Air Transport (ICAO). In addition to Defense Department evaluators from Vicenza, Italy, the U.S. Army Europe Deputy Commanding General for the Army National Guard, Maj. Gen. John L. Gronski, also attended to observe the events.
Stallion Shake 2016 was designed to assess various aspects of the garrison's emergency management plan, to include communications, random antiterrorism measures, intelligence information sharing, analysis and the AtHoc emergency mass notification system.
The scenario began for USAG Stuttgart personnel the evening prior to the exercise with a terrorist threat that raised the Force Protection Conditions (FPCON), and triggered the need to increase security measures at each of the installation access control points. The garrison also deployed an AtHoc recall message to stand up an Emergency Operations Center to monitor the situation. The EOC is made up of trained personnel from each directorate of the garrison to ensure communication flows through the proper command channels in any emergency situation.
"AtHoc messages do not just go out – it creates a dynamic that is internal to the garrison to handle any threat that may arise. We all kick into emergency process mode thinking about what we need to do next," said Daniel W. Spencer of USAG Stuttgart's Protection Branch.
The events following covered multiple separate training incidents: weather, aircraft inflight emergency, diversion and crash including fire and multi-national passenger evacuation.
Minutes after the crash on the airfield was reported, host nation airport first-responders arrived on scene to extinguish the fire and initiate the rescue and care of the 40 passengers (volunteer actors with simulated injuries) on board.
During this training scenario, the cause of the crash for airport personnel was an obstruction within the plane, such as birds in flight; while for USAG Stuttgart, the incident followed requirements for a terrorist attack.
First-responders aid multiple wounded passengers during the Stallion Shake force protection training exercise in conjunction with the Stuttgart Airport in Echterdingen, Oct. 22, 2016. U.S. Army Photo by Eric Steen
"Today, we are practicing an aircraft that has had an inflight problem and crashed on the runway. The international airport fire department, our garrison fire department as well as other emergency personnel responded and collectively worked together," Dickenson said.
The exercise involved a variety of German and American participants to include: USAG Stuttgart's Directorate of Emergency Services (Military Police and firefighters), the 66th Military Intelligence Criminal Investigation Detachment, the District Government Stuttgart, the Stuttgart Airport Fire Department, Esslingen County and City of Stuttgart fire departments, Police Department Reutlingen, volunteer emergency services departments to include the German Red Cross Esslingen-Nürtingen and the German Red Cross Stuttgart.
"It's critical how well we can communicate back and forth to support each other," Dickenson said.
At the conclusion of the exercise, Dickenson emphasized how the flow of information and interaction between participants improved in comparison to last year.
"The intent is to keep the strong relations with the civilian airport fire department…and to continue to improve relations with authorities from Esslingen County and townships surrounding SAAF," said Karl Dörsam, USAG Stuttgart's fire chief.
View more photos from Stallion Shake 2016, here.
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If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know I'm a fan of Super Soul Sunday on OWN. Last Sunday, Oprah's guest was one of my favorite teachers and authors, Marianne Williamson. They began talking about Marianne's campaign for nomination as a Congressional candidate, but late in the discussion their conversation turned to the violence in Ferguson, Missouri and what that's all about. Oprah brought up an article that Marianne had written for the Huffington Post. You can click the link and go read it for yourself. I don't want to rehash what Marianne has already written so beautifully. What I do want to write about is the mental and emotional journey I've been taking since listening to Marianne and Oprah's discussion.
First of all let me state that I am a white person. I was raised to believe that EVERYONE deserves to be treated with respect, so some of the discussions that have been going on lately about how white people need to take a good look at their attitudes about racism, rubbed me the wrong way. But Oprah and Marianne's discussion got me thinking about forgiveness. Slavery was one of the most horrendous episodes in our nation's history. Another one is how we treated the Native Americans. White people, for the most part, were behind both of those terrible situations. I think Marianne is right, white people don't want to think of the horrible things that whites did in our country's past. Most of us think that we weren't alive then, so it has nothing to do with us.
But here's the thing, we'll never heal our racial wounds if we don't forgive ourselves for our impulse to ignore what happened. We can't expect anything to get better if we don't take responsibility for what's happening right now. And what's happening right now is, whites want to point to the Civil Right's Movement of the 60s and 70s and say, "It's already been healed. The laws have been passed, we're all equal now." As we're seeing in recent events, that's just not true. The discussion and practice to make everyone equal is far from over.
So, I take responsibility for my assumption that African American's just needed to forgive us and move on, and for not forgiving myself and my ancestors for what they may have done. We as white people need to stop glossing over our discomfort with what has happened to African and Native Americans due to white aggression and greed. We need to look into those dark places and expose our true feelings about the differences of race and culture in this country. We need to acknowledge that we're not the top of the heap, and in reality, never have been.
If we're going to survive the myriad problems we face right now, we need to do some deep soul searching and forgive ourselves and then others. We've got to stop letting the past get in our way of creating a new future.
This blog is my public declaration that I'm committed to healing and forgiving myself for not acknowledging the deep wounds caused by white people in our country's history. I'm with Marianne and support any efforts our government makes to make reparation to any group that we've wronged. Making reparation is our collective acknowledgement of what happened, and that we want to make it as right as possible and build a new future together.
Where Are We After 9/11?
Tomorrow is the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11. There's been a bit of traffic on the social networks about the attacks with people reminiscing about their experiences and what they learned from the events of that day. I was deeply touched by a heart wrenching article by a journalist who interviewed the husband of one of the victims on flight 93 a few days after the plane crashed. He was remembering how open the husband was with his feelings of loss and grief. He was deeply touched when the husband asked him if he wanted to listen to the wife's last messages. Her voice was calm and full of love.
At the end of the article the author stated that he believes good always overcomes evil, and he enumerated the various times in history when good has prevailed. But now, he pointed out, we're facing a new threat from ISIS. His focus was on all the things going on in the Middle East. In doing so, he missed a big problem right here in this country.
Understandably the events of that terrible day sent us into shock, grief and fear. For those of us who were old enough to remember, the images of that day and the emotions we felt are seared into our memory. We will never forget them as long as we live. I want to say right now that I honor all those who died, whether they were in the planes, buildings, or trying to save people. But I feel like we've let the fear and confusion of that day rule our choices. We're not as tolerant as we used to be.
Okay, I know I can put a positive spin on any situation. If you've been reading my blog this past year and a half, you know that. But as I wrote in my last post, we've come to a dangerous crossroads in this country. The evil isn't only in the Middle East, or in the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine. It's here in our cities and towns. We've let fear co-opt our better judgment in many ways. At least some of us have.
In recent weeks police departments armed with military gear, have attacked peaceful demonstrators protesting against racially motivated police attacks. They've arrested fast-food workers, who, again, were demonstrating peacefully trying to get their companies to pay them a living wage, and we continue to have a whole section of the Republican Party treat our President and anyone who doesn't think like they do with blatant disrespect.
I didn't like President Bush. I thought he was a terrible President, but I didn't blast him publicly. He was the President, and I kept my mouth shut, except in private conversations. Now days it seems like bashing the President and his policies is a game of one-up-manship. It's just one indication that some people have closed their minds and are increasingly hateful and intolerant.
Those who criticize the President, and who advocate using extreme force against our citizens, are proving to me that we're dangerously close to a Nazi Germany type climate operating right here in the U.S., and I think it all started on September 11, 2001. We got so caught up in protecting ourselves, that it's had unexpected consequences. I believe many people live in the fear that we'll experience another day just like that one, even though it was thirteen years ago and the world is a very different place now.
Go back to our Constitution and take a good look at the rights it gives us as citizens.
Admittedly I'm not an expert on the Constitution of the United States. But, it seems some people's rights have been seriously violated of late. Those who have acted against the Constitution have acted out of fear. I know from personal experience that fear can rule your life to such an extent that you are able to twist authoritative documents to support your position no matter how paranoid or hateful your position may be. There are sectors of our society that have become so focused on self-preservation, that they are willing to do anything to protect themselves. They can't see that they've gone over to the dark side and are violating the rights of others.
I agree with that journalist who remembered the interview so long ago that still affects him to this day. Good does always overcome evil. But good has to be awake and paying attention or things can get out of hand. I think we've come to the point where we're in danger of evil getting a strong foothold. If it does, we'll have a very difficult time overcoming it.
How do we overcome the extremists who are so full of fear that they can't see straight? This is a secret they can't understand, "…the energy of a loving thought is enormously more powerful than that of a negative one." –David R. Hawkings, M.D., Ph.D., Power VS. Force. And as he points out on page 282 of his book, one individual who calibrates at the level of 300 counterbalances 90,000 individuals who calibrate below 200. Of course, the higher your calibration, the higher the number of people below 200 you counterbalance.
Trying reason with the extremely fearful won't work, nor will resisting what they're trying to do. The only thing that will work is to practice meditation, self-discipline, and love. Cleaning up our issues, releasing our fear and learning to love ourselves and others will help set our country and the world on a new path away from fear and hatred. That's how we shrink evil. That's how we heal the world.
Something about the article about Donald Sterling that I wrote last week stirred up lots of discussion, and made me go back to take another look at what I was trying to say.
Over the years I've done a lot of personal work, which started with listening to, and observing my dad. He used to say, "You can't change another person's mind. You can only change yourself, and hope they're paying attention." I've taken that advice to heart. Over the years I've discovered something really amazing. If I stop pushing against what I don't like in others, and just accept them for who they are, amazing changes happen.
I'm a very sensitive person, so I feel the pain of others deeply. It's hard for me not to speak up when someone is getting abused. Here's an example. When I was teaching high school, I had two students who were named to the State All Star Football team. They were full of themselves, and thought they ruled the world. This created a very bad situation in our classroom. There was a student in that class that everyone assumed was gay. The football players treated him very badly. When I tried to stop them from harassing him, they acted as if I had no power over them.
I called their parents, I talked to their coach, I talked with the Principal trying to get support to back me up. I got support, but the boys were convinced that they were gods, and nothing could touch them. They continued to treat that student badly. Of course, they treated everyone else with distain as well. One day I'd had enough. I took them outside the classroom individually, and told them that in my classroom everyone gets treated with respect. If they weren't willing to do that, then I would have them removed, which would mean they'd have to make up the English class. I left the choice up to them. If I saw improvement in their behavior, we'd say no more about it. Otherwise they were out. They straightened up. Part of what made that work was their eligibility to play football during their senior year.
They stopped harassing the student they thought was gay during class time. I don't know what happened outside of class.
Something happened to me during that incident. I had to accept that the two football players were probably not going to change their minds about gay people just because I said they should. The only thing I could do was to protect the other student, and show as much respect for everyone in the class as possible. Maybe it made a difference, maybe it didn't. I'll never know. However, by the end of the school year, the relationships among the students seemed to be much more amicable.
My dad was right. We can't change someone else. We can only change ourselves. That's been a big lesson in all my relationships, but particularly in my marriage. Like most of us, I thought once Barry and I got married, life would be perfect. But, of course, it soon wasn't perfect. Over the years, I've learned that if I want Barry to love and accept me, I've got to stop expecting him to be someone other than who he is, and I've got to love him the way I want to be loved. I've realized that I can't make him responsible for making me happy. Being happy is my job, not his.
Having written all that, I have to admit, that staying silent about issues as big as the way we treat others from different races, creeds and genders, isn't good. We have to speak up. We have to engage in discussion. We have to look at our own attitudes, and admit when we're wrong. We also have to treat the people who are racist, and full of hate with the kind of respect we wish they'd show to others, even though we'd like to punch them out.
Not long ago there was a great example of that. The Pastor of the Kansas church that makes a practice of demonstrating at funerals, showing signs full of hate, died. I'm sorry I don't remember his name or the name of his church. This group was particularly hateful toward gays. A large group of people got together for a different kind of demonstration at his funeral. They stood outside the church, with signs of love. They could have returned hate with hate. But they didn't. They turned the other cheek and returned hate with love. I don't know if that act of kindness will make a difference in the lives of the people of that congregation or not. I do know that being kind to someone has a better chance of affecting change than treating them with hate. Treating someone who's mean and hateful with love is a lot harder to do than lashing out in anger, but it's the only way I know to bring about positive change.
Recent events, and subsequent comments about them in the media have got my ire up. A white man, Donald Sterling, shows his true colors, and the brouhaha is on. In an" Open Letter to White People: Why I'm Donald Sterling and So Are You," The gist was that all white people are racist, and we'd better admit it. What made me so irritated wasn't what the author wrote, but the tone of the article. If you want to influence people, you get more with honey than you do with vinegar.
I'm not saying that this article is completely wrong. What I'm saying is that if you want us to take a good hard look at ourselves,accusing all whites of being racist is the wrong approach. In fact, EVERY SINGLE PERSON on this planet, except for those who are enlightened, like Jesus, Buddha and others have been, carry some kind of prejudice around with them. And we ALL need to check ourselves for prejudices of all kinds.
I know I'm not perfect, but I am continually working on becoming more open and loving. I'm always double checking my attitudes. I'm working on myself, so that I can be an influence for good in the world, and help humanity evolve to a deeper level of being. And I don't believe in the "when one person messes up, everyone in the class gets punished," mentality. So, I get angry when someone tells me I'm prejudiced just because I'm white.
We can't know what is in the deepest heart of another person. To lump an entire group together, and accuse them of having exactly the same feelings, is unrealistic. Not all Germans are bad, because Hitler was the leader of Germany during WWII. Not all people from Arab nations are bad because those who were behind the 911 tragedy were from Arab countries. Not all Mexicans are in this country illegally. Not all Black people are gang members, and commit crimes. Not all Asians are smart, and make cheap products that fall apart the first time you use them. Not all white people feel entitled because they're white. I could go on and on, but you get the point.
We have a lot of problems in this world. As I see it, the only way to solve them is for every single person to take a close look at themselves, as the article suggests. If we take care of the mess in our own backyard, and every single person does that, it makes solving the world wide problems so much easier.
In my opinion, we need to thank the Donald Sterlings in our world. They point out areas in our society where we still have work to do. He's not the only one who has made comments that we need to be scrutinizing. There are lots of intolerant people mouthing off in the media. We need to be examining what they're saying as well, and checking our attitudes about their points of view. They are showing us areas in our society where we need to work on becoming more tolerant of the plight of others.
I know this much about myself, when I'm judgmental of other people's actions, I'm doing that because they're showing me an area of my life that I don't want to look at. I'm trying to blame them for the mess in my own backyard. If I resist hiding my head in the sand, and look at my faults, my heart opens up. I understand myself, and the faults of others.
Don't get me wrong, everyone needs to accept responsibility for what they do. But, if we've done our own work, it's easier to have compassion for someone when they mess up. We are after all, imperfect human beings.
I read another article last week that helped me feel better about what's going on in the world. The title is "7 Things Self-Actualized People Do Differently" It's an article that gives us all something to shoot for in our self-improvement journey. If we can achieve the seven states of being described in this article, we'll be contributing to the growth of the human race.
Does this happen to you? I start to read a book, and the stars align or something, and the ideas in the book that grasp me the most start to pop up everywhere. At present I'm reading a long essay, which is based on a series of lectures delivered by Virginia Woolf. The compiled essay is titled "A Room of One's Own". It's our book club selection for this month. The thing that appalled me, but shouldn't have, were some of the things Ms. Woolf discovered about women's rights while preparing to deliver the lectures on "Women and Fiction".
In 1928 women had little access to education. They were considered property by their fathers, and husbands. Only a few years before the lectures, women had won the right to vote in England, and to keep the wages they earned. What appalled me was how little things have changed in eighty-six years. I began comparing what's happening now, with all the fracas about equal pay for women, women's health issues, the way women are portrayed in the media, and I felt really sad. We haven't gained much ground. This was confirmed when I talked with my sister a few days ago.
She was telling me about the Palm Sunday service at her church. They had a guest speaker, who happened to be a woman. In her talk, the guest speaker told of the difficulties she faces from time to time, because she's a woman, and she's a minister. I thought surely things would have changed, since I was harassed for declaring myself a religious studies major in 1976, but not so. She often gets the same kind of reaction that I got thirty-eight years ago, which makes me sad. Things haven't changed much for women.
Thirty-eight years ago, I was attending a small Christian college, and the only woman in the small group of religious studies students. Women were just beginning to be ordained as ministers at the time. When word got around that I'd changed my major to religion, I was the target of harassment by a conservative group at the college. Each day, at meal times, a group of three or four young men would quote scripture at me, and challenged me to see the error of my ways, and change my major to something more appropriate for a woman. Needless to say, it was a very difficult time for me. They assumed that my plan was to become a minister in our church, which wasn't even a possibility at that time.
My reason for studying religion, was because I've always been interested in the relationship between humans, and the Divine. Over time I became deeply angry at these young men. No matter what I said, or did, they were undeterred from challenging my life choice. In my mind, it was MY choice, not theirs. I didn't think they had any right to tell me how to live my life. They needed to take care of their own life choices. Eventually they gave up, assuring me that I was going to hell for breaking God's laws. I became an angry feminist.
In 1979, I graduated with my degree in Religious Studies. It has set me on a path of lifelong learning about all things spiritual, for which I'm eternally grateful, because through my studies I've realized that men are just as stuck in their gender roles as are we women. It's difficult to break out of social patterns, and long held beliefs.
Looking back, I realize I was able to stand up for myself, because I had supportive parents. Both parents. My mom worked outside the home, and I had a great dad who encouraged me to find my own path, and live up to my full potential. We need more dads like that. I think my dad was so supportive, because he'd been misunderstood by his teachers. He was told he was lazy, stupid, he was a trouble maker, and he'd never amount to anything, all because he had dyslexia. I'm not sure doctors were even aware what dyslexia was in the 1940s. Thankfully, my dad was strong and wise. He dropped out of school, learned to be a machinist, taught himself how to read, and became a lay minister in our church. Reading was one of his favorite things to do. He didn't read light stuff either. He loved to read biographies, and non-fiction scholarly books, like Carl Jung.
My dad could be a good dad, because he had a good dad, and because he studied human nature. He was vulnerable, kind, and open to new ideas. He wasn't like some of the male writers that Virginia Woolf found who stated in their books that women were inferior to men, mentally, physically, and morally. My dad didn't think he was superior to anybody else. He thought that EVERYONE has a purpose, and should look for, and pursue that purpose.
You may not have had a dad like mine, but I say to all women, don't give up. We're rising. We've got to continue exploring who we are, and what we can offer humanity. Don't blame men for what's gone before. That's not helpful. Men have been trapped by their gender roles, and ways of thinking too. What we need to do is educate them about who we are. We possess much depth of understanding about what it means to be human. We are peacemakers, healers, thinkers, creators, and teachers. We're good at all the same things men are good at. The best thing is, we have genius even we haven't tapped into yet.
Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings, Happy Holy Days.
Last night I watched a wonderful Frank Capra movie which embodies the idea of compassion. It's Meet John Doe (1941). Hah! Fooled you. You thought I was going to write about his most famous of movies, It's a Wonderful Life. Actually most of his movies that I've seen have similar themes. The little guy perseveres and changes the world, or at least his or her little part of it, through sharing compassion and love.
In Meet John Doe, times are bad. It's during the Great Depression. At the beginning of the movie Barbara Stanwyck's character Ann Mitchell, loses her job as a newspaper columnist. She's supported her mother and two younger sisters, since her father's death and needs the job desperately. So, she writes her last column including a fake letter from a man fed up with the politics of the day and with the incivility of regular people toward each other. Her fake John Doe vows to jump off the City Hall building on Christmas Eve in protest. This of course, she hopes will increase circulation of the paper and save her job. You might think from that description that Barbara Stanwyck's character is mercenary. Well, yes she is, but for a very good reason which you find out as the movie goes along. Of course, eventually the paper has to hire a "John Doe", played by Gary Cooper, because of accusations from another paper that the John Doe letter is fake, and it's all been a publicity stunt.
At the heart of the movie is the groundswell of ordinary everyday people forming John Doe Clubs promoting compassion for their neighbors and making sure everyone in the community is taken care of.
What actually started me thinking about compassion, was Karen Armstrong's interview with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday a few weeks ago. Karen, who was at one time a nun, has studied the religions of the world and her new book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, points out that every single religion has compassion as a core tenet. Then a few days after watching the show, I saw Meet John Doe, and the two fit together perfectly.
Compassion is slightly different than love. To me, compassion is an ability to feel another's pain and suffering; to understand that we all fall down and we all have a dark side. Just having a compassionate person's presence, is a balm to both the sufferer and the one giving compassion. Therefore, compassion is one component of love. In her interview, Karen Armstrong pointed out that we all have a dark side and once we acknowledge our own ability to harm others, we can show compassion to others even though they may be showing only their dark side in the present moment.
That brings me back to the movie. John Doe is exposed as a fake, by someone who wants to use the clubs as a way to gain the White House. The crowds of people at the John Doe convention turn on him and revert back to their angry, wounded, pessimistic view of the world. That is, until John decides to fulfill the deed set out in the fake letter. One of the groups that we see earlier in the picture, come to the City Hall to stop him. Ann, played by Stanwyck is also there trying to keep him from jumping. It's the climactic scene and we see that compassion lives on because of John's message even though the powerful politicians try to crush it.
I know from experience, that compassion is a powerful force. Kind words at a crucial time in my life helped me find new purpose. Showing compassion for others is a way for the recipient to feel seen, heard and understood. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but for 2014, I'm going to work on being more compassionate.
It's happened again. Another school shooting. As I wrote two or three weeks ago, I refuse to be pessimistic about these violent acts. I choose to believe they're part of our growing up as a species. We think we're so advanced, and in a way we are, but in other ways we're still children who don't understand ourselves. We haven't yet matured.
As I was thinking about this latest act of violence, I remembered an incident that happened when I was nineteen years old. I was working as a teacher's aide at a Montessori school in Spokane, Washington. I worked in the three year old room. In the room were large windows and on one of the window sills was a pencil sharpener. It was low enough for the students to use. And it was a fascinating piece of equipment. One day, I was sent to find a couple of students who were supposed to be on the playground or at another activity. When I came into our room, the missing boys were playing with the pencil sharpener. One was sticking his finger into the hole where the pencil goes. The other was turning the handle. Before I could stop them, the first boy's finger was lacerated by the blades inside the sharpener. I'll never forget the look on the second boys face. He was shocked. He had no idea of the effect that turning the handle of the sharpener would have on the boy who's finger was inside the device.
The thing is, we're all a little bit like those little boys. We don't always understand that our actions affect others. Though we should, because when bad things happen we're shocked and disturbed. We don't understand what's happened or why. The thing is we're being presented with an opportunity to wake up and see a bigger picture. We get a chance to learn more about ourselves and why we're here bumping up against each other. There must be a reason why we're all here experiencing the things that happen to us.
Unfortunately, what happens most of the time when bad things happen is we push the opportunity away. I don't know why we do that. Maybe we think it will be too much work, or maybe we think we're the only one who's got a dark side and so we try to hide it. The thing is we all have a dark side. We all have violent feelings from time to time. The question is, how do we deal with them?
I used to think I could avoid more pain if I ignored it. I found that didn't work. What happened was that another devastating incident would happen, only this time carrying much more angst. Eventually, after my life feel apart, I got it that if I deal with the challenges of life the first time around, my life is much easier. I'm still faced with challenges, but they aren't as desperate, or seemingly insurmountable as they once appeared.
I guess my point is this, there will be more violence with guns and other weapons, until enough of us examine all the issues that are a part of why we continue to lash out at each other. As I've written many times in these posts, that's an inside job. Each person must examine their own tendencies toward violence. We have to do as my sister says, and "throw out our trash". It's a matter of getting down to the root causes of why we lash out, and heal them.
I have faith that the human race is growing up and waking up to how interconnected we are. What affects me, affects you too. That goes for the good experiences as well as the bad.


text:
The item illustrated and described below is sold, but we have another example in stock. To view the example which is currently being offered for sale, click the "View Details" button below.
1823 Fielding Lucas Jr.
Stock# m0290
Fielding Lucas Jr.
Baltimore / 1823
Striking example of Fielding Lucas' fine work, which distinguished him as a top publisher of the era. His maps are printed on a higher quality paper than contemporary maps by Carey & Lea and demonstrate a superior engraving quality and more attractive coloring style. The detailed map is handcolored by country, showing the many islands of the West Indies, along with East Florida and parts of Central and South America. Towns, ports, waterways, and some topography appear on this map. Lucas' maps are highly desireable and increasingly scarce.
Fielding Lucas Jr. Biography
Fielding Lucas, Jr. (1781-1854) was a prominent American cartographer, engraver, artist, and public figure during the first half of the 19th century.
Lucas was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and moved to Philadelphia as a teenager, before settling in Baltimore. There he launched a successful cartographic career. Lucas's first atlas was announced in early- to mid-1812, with production taking place between September 1812 and December of 1813, by which point the engravings were complete. Bound copies of the atlas -- A new and elegant general atlas: Containing maps of each of the United States -- were available early in the next year, beating Carey to market by about two months. Lucas later published A General Atlas Containing Distinct Maps Of all the known Countries in the World in the early 1820s.
Antique Maps / Caribbean & Central America / Caribbean
Carta General Del Seno Mejicano Con Los Canales De Yucatan, Florida y Nuevo De Bahama . . . 1869
Scarce Spanish Sea Chart of the Gulf of Mexico, from Texas and the Yucatan to Florida and Cuba.
Chart of the West Indies From the latest Marine Journals and Surveys
Interesting general map of the Caribbean, published by Matthew Carey in his General Atlas.
Map of Cuba [with] Jamaica
Nice detailed maps of Cuba and Jamaica, colored by departments and parishes.
Culiacanae, Americae Regionis, Descriptio [with] Hispaniolae, Cubae, Aliarumqe Insualrum Circumiacientium Delineatio
The Earliest Obtainable Dutch Map of The Caribbean & West Coast of Mexico
Martinico
Scarce map of Martinico by Fielding Lucas Jr., which appeared in his General Atlas, as well as his A New General Atlas of the West India Islands.
Carte d'Espagne et des Principaux Etats Appartenans a cette monarchie dans les 4 Parties du Monde
Terrific map of the Spanish possessions throughout the world.


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Q: Quaternion rotation in XNA Am I doing the following right?
Well obviously not cause otherwise I wont be posting a question here, but I'm trying to do a Quaternion rotation of a model around another model.
Lets say I have a box model that has a vector3 position and a float rotation angle.
I also have a frustum shaped model that is pointing towards the box model, with its position lets say 50 units from the box model. The frustum also has a vector3 position and a Quaternion rotation.
In scenario 1, the box and frustum are "unrotated". This is all fine and well.
In scenario 2, I rotate the box only and I want the frustum to rotate with it (kinda like a chase camera) with the frustum always pointing directly at the box and at the same distance from the box as in the unrotated distance. Obviously if I just rotate the model and the frustum by using Matrix.CreateRotationY() for both the box and the frustum, the frustum is slightly offset to the side.
So I thought a Quaternion rotation of the frustum around the box would be best?
To this end I have tried the following, with no luck. It draws my models on the screen, but it also draws what looks like a giant box to the screen and no matter how far away I move the camera the box is always in the way
For the purpose of testing, I have 3 boxes and their 3 associated frustums
In my Game1 class I initialize the box[0] with positions and rotations
boxObject[0].Position = new Vector3(10, 10, 10);
boxObject[1].Position = new Vector3(10, 10, 10);
boxObject[2].Position = new Vector3(10, 10, 10);

boxObject[0].Rotation = 0.0f;
boxObject[1].Rotation = 45.0f;
boxObject[2].Rotation = -45.0f;

So all 3 boxes drawn at the same position but at different angles.
Then to do the frustums, I initiate their position:
float f = 50.0f;
frustumObject[0].Position = new Vector3(boxObject[0].Position.X,
            boxObject[0].Position.Y, boxObject[0].Position.Z + f);
frustumObject[1].Position = new Vector3(boxObject[1].Position.X,
            boxObject[1].Position.Y, boxObject[1].Position.Z + f);
frustumObject[2].Position = new Vector3(boxObject[2].Position.X,
            boxObject[2].Position.Y, boxObject[2].Position.Z + f);

And then try and rotate around their associated box model:
frustumObject[0].ModelRotation = new Quaternion(boxObject[0].Position.X,
            boxObject[0].Position.Y, boxObject[0].Position.Z + f, 0);
frustumObject[0].ModelRotation = new Quaternion(boxObject[0].Position.X,
            boxObject[0].Position.Y, boxObject[0].Position.Z + f, 45);
frustumObject[0].ModelRotation = new Quaternion(boxObject[0].Position.X,
            boxObject[0].Position.Y, boxObject[0].Position.Z + f, -45);

And finally, to draw the models, I Draw() them in my GameModel class which also has:
public Model CameraModel { get; set; }
public Vector3 Position { get; set; }
public float Rotation { get; set; }
public Quaternion ModelRotation { get; set; }

public void Draw(Matrix view, Matrix projection)
    {
        transforms = new Matrix[CameraModel.Bones.Count];
        CameraModel.CopyAbsoluteBoneTransformsTo(transforms);

        // Draw the model
        foreach (ModelMesh myMesh in CameraModel.Meshes)
        {
            foreach (BasicEffect myEffect in myMesh.Effects)
            {
                // IS THIS CORRECT?????
                myEffect.World = transforms[myMesh.ParentBone.Index] *
                    Matrix.CreateRotationY(Rotation) * Matrix.CreateFromQuaternion(ModelRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position);

                myEffect.View = view;
                myEffect.Projection = projection;

                myEffect.EnableDefaultLighting();
                myEffect.SpecularColor = new Vector3(0.25f);
                myEffect.SpecularPower = 16;
            }

            myMesh.Draw();
        }
    }

Can anyone spot where I am going wrong? Is it because I am doing 2 types of rotations n the Draw()?

myEffect.World = transforms[myMesh.ParentBone.Index] *
                          Matrix.CreateRotationY(Rotation) * Matrix.CreateFromQuaternion(ModelRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position);

A: From a quick glance, it would be best to create your Quaternions using a static create method such as Quaternion.CreateFromAxisAngle(Vector3. UnitY, rotation). The values of X,Y,Z and W of a Quaternion do not relate to position in any way. The handy static methods take care of the tricky math.
In your situation it appears as though you want to keep the frustum pointing at the same side of the box as the box rotates, therefore rotating the frustum about the box. This requires a slightly different approach to the translation done in your draw method.
In order to rotate an object about another, you first need to translate the object so that the centre of the desired rotation is at the origin. Then rotate the object and translate it back by the same amount as the first step.
So in you situation, something like this should do it (untested example code to follow);
// Construct the objects

boxObject.Position = new Vector3(10, 10, 10);
boxObject.Rotation = 45.0f;

frustumObject.Position = new Vector3(0, 0, 50f); // Note: this will be relative to the box (makes the math a bit simpler)
frustumObject.TargetPosition = boxObject.Position;
frustumObject.ModelRotation = Quaternion.CreateFromAxisAngle(Vector3. UnitY, boxObject.Rotation); // Note: this rotation angle may need to be in radians.

// Box Draw()
// Draw the box at its position, rotated about its centre.
myEffect.World = transforms[myMesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position) * Matrix.CreateRotationY(Rotation);

// Frustum Draw()
// Draw the frustum facing the box and rotated about the boxes centre.
myEffect.World = transforms[myMesh.ParentBone.Index] * Matrix.CreateTranslation(Position) * Matrix.CreateFromQuaternion(ModelRotation) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(TargetPosition);

Assumptions:

*

*The box rotates about its own centre

*The frustum stays facing the box and rotates around the boxes centre
Hope this helps.


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Rockland gets second downtown waterfront grant to deal with climate change
The City can now design changes on the land-side.
Rockland Community Development Director Julie Hashem, center, describes the city's plans for the downtown waterfront to Hannah Pingree, director of Gov. Janet Mills' Office of Policy Innovation and the Future during an Earth Day visit on April 22, 2022. Dan Burgess, the director of the governor's energy office is on the left. Photo by Stephen Betts
ROCKLAND — The city has been informed that it has been awarded a $50,000 grant to design land-side changes to prepare for expected sea level rise.
The grant from the Governor's Office of Innovation and the Future will help pay for preliminary engineering of the land-side infrastructure included in the conceptual design for the downtown waterfront. This includes relocation of the harbormaster's office and filling and regrading parking, restrooms and utilities. The engineering will also propose stormwater management, pedestrian connections, hillside seating and handicapped accessibility.
The city received earlier this year a grant to do preliminary engineering for water side changes. That includes the piers, floats, dinghy docks, seawall and the Harbor Trail boardwalk that will connect them. The city wants to increase the height of the two piers and to extend the boardwalk from its current terminus near the harbormaster building to continue along the seawall and to the middle pier.
Upon completion of the preliminary engineering, the City can apply for larger grants to make the changes.
The project area includes nearly 7 acres and more than 1,000 feet of publicly-owned waterfront. Harbor and Buoy Parks with their associated piers — the Public Landing and Middle Pier — are included, as are Mildred Merrill Park and Gilbert & Adams Central Park.
The Downtown Waterfront Advisory Committee has been working on a plan for these properties with help from planning and design consultants. The consultants were made possible with a grant from the Maine Coastal Program.
The process is detailed on the City's website at rocklanddw.info/process.
The Downtown Waterfront Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet 4 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6 via Zoom. The meeting ID number is 844 1382 6517 and the passcode 087222.
Crews respond to report of Rockland house fire
Court asked to dismiss charges against former Union contractor