text:
Materials Research Society Internet Journal of Nitride Semiconductor Research (2)
Journal of Glaciology (1)
Short Courses in Paleontology (1)
The Paleontological Society Papers (1)
Chapter 7 - Wind Energy
By Ryan Wiser, Zhenbin Yang, Maureen Hand, Olav Hohmeyer, David Infield, Peter H. Jensen, Vladimir Nikolaev, Mark O'Malley, Graham Sinden, Arthouros Zervos, Naïm Darghouth, Dennis Elliott, Garvin Heath, Ben Hoen, Hannele Holttinen, Jason Jonkman, Andrew Mills, Patrick Moriarty, Sara Pryor, Scott Schreck, Charles Smith, Christian Kjaer, Fatemeh Rahimzadeh
Edited by Ottmar Edenhofer, Ramón Pichs-Madruga, Youba Sokona, Kristin Seyboth, Susanne Kadner, Timm Zwickel, Patrick Eickemeier, Gerrit Hansen, Steffen Schlömer, Christoph von Stechow, Patrick Matschoss
Book: Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation
Print publication: 21 November 2011, pp 535-608
Wind energy offers significant potential for near-term (2020) and long-term (2050) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions. A number of different wind energy technologies are available across a range of applications, but the primary use of wind energy of relevance to climate change mitigation is to generate electricity from larger, grid-connected wind turbines, deployed either on- or offshore. Focusing on these technologies, the wind power capacity installed by the end of 2009 was capable of meeting roughly 1.8% of worldwide electricity demand, and that contribution could grow to in excess of 20% by 2050 if ambitious efforts are made to reduce GHG emissions and to address the other impediments to increased wind energy deployment. Onshore wind energy is already being deployed at a rapid pace in many countries, and no insurmountable technical barriers exist that preclude increased levels of wind energy penetration into electricity supply systems. Moreover, though average wind speeds vary considerably by location, ample technical potential exists in most regions of the world to enable significant wind energy deployment. In some areas with good wind resources, the cost of wind energy is already competitive with current energy market prices, even without considering relative environmental impacts. Nonetheless, in most regions of the world, policy measures are still required to ensure rapid deployment. Continued advances in on- and offshore wind energy technology are expected, however, further reducing the cost of wind energy and improving wind energy's GHG emissions reduction potential.
Cretaceous Records of Diatom Evolution, Radiation, and Expansion
David M. Harwood, Vladimir A. Nikolaev, Diane M. Winter
Journal: The Paleontological Society Papers / Volume 13 / October 2007
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2017, pp. 33-59
New information and discussions regarding Mesozoic diatoms presented over the last decade advanced our knowledge of their origin and early history. The oldest confirmed centric diatom fossils are presented here from the earliest Cretaceous, and araphid and raphid pennate diatoms now date from the Late Cretaceous; all from terrestrial sediments. Molecular sequencing helped clarify relationships between diatom lineages, and verify the position of diatoms within the heterokontophytes. Molecular clock approaches estimate a diatom origin near ~135 Ma, but not before 240 Ma. Biomarkers in marine sediments are able to trace a diatom presence back to the mid-Cretaceous, even when siliceous fossils are absent. Seasonal growth and encystment cycles in Late Cretaceous planktonic marine diatoms are now well documented. A biostratigraphic framework for the Late Cretaceous Arctic will aid regional and global biostratigraphic correlations. The systematic position of many new taxonomic groups is now included within a more natural classification scheme that better reflects phylogenetic relationships evident in molecular data and affirmed by biostratigraphic micropaleontology. Discussions regarding the impact of diatoms on several global systems are maturing, as more information becomes available. Four stages in diatom evolution are proposed to explain the history of radiation, extinction, and expansion into new environments and habitats during the Mesozoic.
High-Temperature Hardness of Bulk Single-Crystal AlN
Ichiro Yonenaga, Andrey Nikolaev, Yuriy Melnik, Vladimir Dmitriev
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011, I10.4.1
The hardness of single-crystal aluminum nitride (AlN) 0.5-mm-thick wafers was measured at elevated temperatures and compared with that of other semiconductors. A Vickers indentation method was used to determine the hardness under an applied load of 0.5 – 5 N in the temperature range 20 - 1400°C. The average hardness was measured as 17.7 GPa at room temperature, harder than GaN and InN. The fracture toughness is 0.5 MPa•m1/2. AlN exhibits the hardness higher than that of GaN in the entire temperature range investigated. Up to about 1100°C, AlN maintains its hardness and thus, a high mechanical stability for AlN at elevated temperatures is deduced.
Thermodynamic Analysis of Carbon Nucleation on a Metal Surface
Vladimir L. Kuznetsov, Anna N. Usoltseva, Andrew L. Chuvilin, Elena D. Obraztsova, Jean-Marc Bonard
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011, Z6.22.1
A thermodynamic analysis of the carbon nucleation on the metal surface was performed. From the consideration of the catalytic mechanisms of carbon deposit formation on the metal surface we concluded that majority of these mechanisms include some common steps. The most important of them is the step of nucleation of carbon deposit on the metal surface. The master equation for the dependence of critical radius of the nucleus on reaction parameters was obtained. This equation demonstrates that a variation of the reaction parameters, such as the temperature, the nature of metal catalyst and the degree of supersaturation of the metal-carbon solution, can lead to the formation of different carbon deposits, such as filamentous carbon, multi-wall nanotubes (MWNT) or single-wall nanotubes (SWNT). The analysis performed allows us to conclude that for selective production of SWNT the nucleation must proceed at high temperature on the surface of liquid metal particles (Fe, Co, Ni). For solid metal particles (Mo) a high degree of supersaturation with carbon is also required.
High Quality AlN and GaN Grown on Si(111) by Gas Source Molecular Beam Epitaxy with Ammonia
Sergey A. Nikishin, Nikolai N. Faleev, Vladimir G. Antipov, Sebastien Francoeur, Luis Grave de Peralta, George A. Seryogin, Mark Holtz, Tat'yana I. Prokofyeva, S. N. G. Chu, Andrei S. Zubrilov, Vyacheslav A. Elyukhin, Irina P. Nikitina, Andrei Nikolaev, Yuriy Melnik, Vladimir Dmitriev, Henryk Temkin
Journal: Materials Research Society Internet Journal of Nitride Semiconductor Research / Volume 5 / Issue S1 / 2000
We describe the growth of high quality AlN and GaN on Si(111) by gas source molecular beam epitaxy (GSMBE) with ammonia (NH3). The initial nucleation (at 1130−1190K) of an AlN monolayer with full substrate coverage resulted in a very rapid transition to two-dimensional (2D) growth mode of AlN. The rapid transition to the 2D growth mode of AlN is essential for the subsequent growth of high quality GaN, and complete elimination of cracking in thick ( > 2 μm) GaN layers. We show, using Raman scattering (RS) and photoluminescence (PL) measurements, that the tensile stress in the GaN is due to thermal expansion mismatch, is below the ultimate strength of breaking of GaN, and produces a sizable shift in the bandgap. We show that the GSMBE AlN and GaN layers grown on Si can be used as a substrate for subsequent deposition of thick AlN and GaN layers by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE).
AlN Wafers Fabricated by Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy
Andrey Nikolaev, Irina Nikitina, Andrey Zubrilov, Marina Mynbaeva, Yuriy Melnik, Vladimir Dmitriev
We report on AlN wafers fabricated by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). AlN thick layers were grown on Si substrates by HVPE. Growth rate was up to 60 microns per hour. After the growth of AlN layers, initial substrates were removed resulting in free-standing AlN wafers. The maximum thickness of AlN layer was about 1 mm. AlN free-standing single crystal wafers with a thickness ranging from 0.05 to 0.8 mm were studied by x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, optical absorption, and cathodoluminescence.
Sergey A. Nikishin, Nikolai N. Faleev, Vladimir G. Antipov, Sebastien Francoeur, Luis Grave de Peralta, George A. Seryogin, Mark Holtz, Tat'yana I. Prokofyeva, S. N. G. Chu, Andrei S. Zubrilov, Vyacheslav A. Elyukhin, Irina P. Nikitina, Andrei Nikolaev, Yuriy Melnik, Vladimir Dmitriev, Henryk Temkin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2012, F99W8.3
We describe the growth of high quality AlN and GaN on Si(111) by gas source molecular beam epitaxy (GSMBE) with ammonia (NH3). The initial nucleation (at 1130-1190K) of an AlN monolayer with full substrate coverage resulted in a very rapid transition to two-dimensional (2D) growth mode of AlN. The rapid transition to the 2D growth mode of AlN is essential for the subsequent growth of high quality GaN, and complete elimination of cracking in thick ( > 2 μm) GaN layers. We show, using Raman scattering (RS) and photoluminescence (PL) measurements, that the tensile stress in the GaN is due to thermal expansion mismatch, is below the ultimate strength of breaking of GaN, and produces a sizable shift in the bandgap. We show that the GSMBE AlN and GaN layers grown on Si can be used as a substrate for subsequent deposition of thick AlN and GaN layers by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE).
Pleistocene ice at the bottom of the Vavilov ice cap, Severnaya Zemlya, Russian Arctic
Michel Stiévenard, Vladimir Nikolaëv, Dmitri Yu Bol'shiyanov, Christine Fléhoc, Jean Jouzel, Oleg L. Klementyev, Roland Souchez
Journal: Journal of Glaciology / Volume 42 / Issue 142 / 1996
The Vavilov ice cap was perforated in 1988 by a drilling which reached the underlying frozen sediments. In contrast to the overlying glacier ice, the basal ice is composed of different ice layers with a variable debris load. The stable-isotope composition of these layers shows δ values much lower than everywhere else in the core or in the Vavilov ice cap. This is most probably the signature of a remnant of Pleistocene ice which, for the first time, is shown to occur in the Russian Arctic.
Cretaceous Diatoms: Morphology, Taxonomy, Biostratigraphy
David M. Harwood, Vladimir A. Nikolaev
Journal: Short Courses in Paleontology / Volume 8 / 1995
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2017, pp. 81-106
The Cretaceous record of the diatoms presented here outlines our understanding of their early morphological development. Recent documentation of well preserved Lower Cretaceous (Aptian/Albian) diatom assemblages provides a window into the early history of the diatoms and serves as a base for comparing their subsequent morphological changes. A brief review of diatom biology and morphology is provided to introduce this paper and that of Barron and Baldauf (this volume). Additional background information on the diatoms can be found in the works of Schrader and Schuette (1981), Tappan (1980), Bach and Burkhardt (1984), Barron (1985a, 1993), Fenner (1985), Ricard (1987), Bradbury (1988), Round et al. (1990), and Picket-Heaps et al. (1990).


Why do individuals investWhat is an investmentHow do investors measure the rate of return on an investmentHow do investors measure the risk related to alternative investmentsWhat factors contribute to the rates of return that investors require on alternative investmentsWhat macroeconomic and microeconomic factors contribute to changes in the required rates of return for investmentsThis initial chapter discusses several topics basic to the subsequent chapters. We begin by defining the term investment and discussing the returns and risks related to investments. This leads to a presentation of how to measure the expected and historical rates of returns for an individual asset or a portfolio of assets. In addition, we consider how to measure risk not only for an individual investment but also for an investment that is part of a portfolio.
The third section of the chapter discusses the factors that determine the required rate of return for an individual investment. The factors discussed are those that contribute to an asset's total risk. Because most investors have a portfolio of investments, it is necessary to consider how to measure the risk of an asset when it is a part of a large portfolio of assets. The risk that prevails when an asset is part of a diversified portfolio is referred to as its systematic risk.
The final section deals with what causes changes in an asset's required rate of return over time. Notably, changes occur because of both macroeconomic events that affect all investment assets and microeconomic events that affect the specific asset.


I have been fully remiss in putting up my notes from Carson System's Future of Web Applications… I am working on it. The reason I've taken so long is due to my busy schedule. I have a new job (more on this later) and I'm working on an expirimental film.
The film is a very cool concept, a visual metaphor for a tough, everyday human issue. It has really expanded my view on how to deliver messages and allows me to try new ways to do what I feel film should do… to question the way people see reality and try to give the viewers a new way to see things. I like films that challenge the status quo and make me think, therefore I'm exploring those types of films.
In exploring that I have found some pretty interesting problems. I have been running drafts of my script past some scriptwriters from my school and have found two major objections. The first is that some people don't get it, it's hard to see a visual metaphor on paper, but this still concerns me to some degree. I'm trying to figure out how to balance subtlety with universal understanding. What percentage of the audience has to "get it" for me to consider the film a success? A seemless balance where those who don't get it still walk away entertained would be perfect (think of the simpsons, and the use of obscure references in that show), but I don't think I'm going to get that when dealing with this subject matter (I am using a pretty vile metaphor for the real issue and when the scene involves kidnapping, torture, and ultimately murder, a viewer with a literal interpretation is probably not going to leave feeling all that good. I don't want to be so obvious as to lose the surprise (and therefore lose the ability to really challenge someones established thought process) but I don't want to be so subtle that only I get it. What's the happy medium here? I've settled on 50-70% — as long as 5-7/10 people get the concept I'll label it a successfully told story. The other issue is how to challenge the audience, if you are trying to attach a message or a thought to the film it's hard to attract the people who disagree. How do you get them to give your argument a chance? I hypothosize that it's best to avoid letting them know what the argument truly is for as long as possible. So I'm using a metaphor to try and then draw the correlation at the end and have people realize what the topic is after they have already heard the "pitch" so to speak.
This is all a guesstimation on my part and I suppose I'll have to gauge audience reaction to this film and see what I need to refine. Anyway working title is Mental Animals, look for it in about 5 weeks. There will be at least one showing in the city and hopefully a few more – I hope some of you will be able to make it.


text:
Ein Objektivdeckel wird zum Schutz der Linsen vor Verschmutzung und Beschädigung auf ein Objektiv aufgesetzt. In der Frühzeit der Fotografie diente der Objektivdeckel gleichzeitig als Kameraverschluss, über den die Belichtung des Filmmaterials gesteuert wurde.

Bei Wechselobjektiven wird zwischen Frontdeckel und Rückdeckel unterschieden. Der Frontdeckel schützt die Vorderlinse, die bei einer gebrauchsfertigen Kamera offen liegt. Der Rückdeckel wird am Kameraanschluss des Objektivs angebracht, während es nicht an der Kamera befestigt ist.

Frontdeckel bestehen heute meist aus Kunststoff und werden mit einer Federmechanik im Filtergewinde des Objektivs eingerastet, sodass sie einfach aufzusetzen und zu entfernen sind. Die erforderliche Größe des Deckels ergibt sich aus dem Filtergewinde-Durchmesser des Objektivs. Einfachere Modelle aus Kunststoff haften durch passgenauen Sitz auf dem Außendurchmesser des Objektivs. Bei hochwertigeren Ausführungen aus Metall zum Aufstecken werden Passgenauigkeit und ausreichend fester Sitz durch eine Samteinlage im Innenrand des Deckels erreicht. Daneben gibt es Objektivdeckel zum Einschrauben ins Filtergewinde.

Die Bauart des Rückdeckels ist vom Objektivanschluss des jeweiligen Kamerasystems abhängig, der als Schraubgewinde oder Bajonettanschluss ausgebildet sein kann. Rückdeckel unterschiedlicher Kamerasysteme sind daher meist nicht miteinander kompatibel.

Weblinks

Fotoausrüstung

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


5/9/2016 · 10 of the Longest Lasting Celebrity Marriages. 10 of the Longest Lasting Celebrity Marriages. Skip navigation ... 29 Of The Longest Hollywood Marriages (35+ years!!) - Duration: 12:02.
11/20/2018 · The longest-lasting celebrity marriage began in 1936 when multi-talented performer Irving Benson (born Irving Wishnefsky) tied the knot with Lillian Waldowsky. Benson was a major player on the vaudeville circuit and later gained fame as a wisecracking heckler on a number of popular variety shows.
5/22/2015 · The divorce rate seems to rise year after year, and thanks to the paparazzi, we can always hear or read about all of the failed celebrity relationships taking over the tabloids. Divorce is quite common, especially in Hollywood, but even so, it isn't too difficult to find long-lasting celebrity love stories.
8/29/2018 · Celebrities are known for having multiple short marriages. But some have found love and made it last. These are the longest-lasting celebrity marriages.
7/15/2014 · 15 longest celebrity marriages Who says Hollywood can't do marriage? These famous couples have been happily wed for over 25 years. Kristen Sturt | July 15, 2014. This article originally appeared on grandparents.com. ... This one simple move could lower your blood pressure by 10%.
It's easy to forget about these celebrities' marriages. What they lack in public drama, they make up for in time spent married. These are some of the longest-lasting celebrity marriages.


text:
For first time during pandemic, Darien schools reopen full-time
Darien schools want local control of COVID mask rules
Registration open for Darien High seniors to get COVID vaccine
Darien schools will go remote thanks to post-break quarantines
Superintendent: Criticism of teacher absences 'unfortunate and...
Darien considers COVID vaccine clinic for high school students
Darien Library reopens after COVID outbreak
Businesses hope next reopening phase turns tide
Nearly all school staff get at least first vaccine dose
News // Coronavirus in Connecticut
Students are dismissed at the end of the school day at Darien High School in Darien, Conn. Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022.
Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media
DARIEN — Over 1,000 people have signed a petition to cancel midterms at Darien High School, with students expressing frustration with the current testing policy and asking the administration for leniency as COVID-19 cases surge.
Students say they are under the same amount of stress and uncertainty as they were in the early days of the pandemic — in some cases, even more, as the highly-contagious omicron variant has forced several hundred students online in an echo of spring 2020.
"The administration likes to talk about how we are a Blue Wave family, yet they continue to ignore the health and well-being of their students," said senior Tripp Lyons, who started the petition to cancel midterms via Change.org. As of Thursday night, about 1,500 people had signed onto the petition. "This petition is not just because we don't like midterms or because we are too lazy to study. ... We are concerned that the current challenges that we face on a daily basis are going to impact our ability to perform to the highest standards."
This is the first time that the school will hold midterm exams since January 2020. The exams were originally scheduled for Jan. 12, but school officials decided to postpone testing in a concession to student concerns and as a result of weather-related school closures last week.
However, tests are still scheduled to run from Jan. 19 onward.
"We believe, as a school community, that midterm exams are opportunities for our students to answer questions that require a sophisticated understanding of the overarching themes within our disciplines, make connections, and communicate their thinking in a variety of ways," Principal Ellen Dunn wrote in a Jan. 5 communication to students. "These exams mirror the experiences that our students will have in their post high school educational settings. Given the limited opportunities they have had for these experiences in recent years, we believe the exam period also serves as important preparation."
Lyons said he and a group of fellow students have been discussing the situation with school officials for days, asking them to reconsider their decision to hold midterms.
He said students who are sick or quarantining are at a disadvantage, as they will not have access to remote midterms and will instead have to take the tests within a narrow time limit upon returning to school.
"What Darien High School is asking kids to do is to first get over a COVID infection, then cram material that has been taught over a period of five months, and then make up midterms when they come back," Lyons said.
Coronavirus in Connecticut
Editorial: Time for the next phase in state's COVID response
Lyons also pointed to nearby school districts that have done away with formal midterms this year, like Stamford and New Canaan.
In nearby Weston, a group of students also created an online petition after high school administrators announced the school would have midterms starting next week. Like in Darien, the petition pointed to the stress on students and the number of students who are unable to be in school because they tested positive and are in isolation or are a close contact to a positive case and are quarantining.
Given that Darien's midterms are still scheduled, Lyons said students are now asking the administration for a "structural reform" of exams, with students allowed to either use their notes or work on projects in substitution of formal exams.
Lyons said he also suggested optional exams, which would give students the chance to see their grades before deciding if they want tests to count toward their final class score.
Sophomore Jack Calve said, anecdotally, he knows around 15 students that are out of school right now for COVID-related reasons.
"It's unnecessary stress," Calve said. "Many of us are thinking about the students who have COVID-19 or are in quarantine right now. And rather than resting like they should be, they're being forced into studying all night and pulling all-nighters to figure out this material that they have to learn."
Students also said because of the confusion, many teachers conveyed to their classes that midterms might not proceed as scheduled after the break, leaving students scrambling when the administration announced testing would continue.
Superintendent Alan Addley said officials have made modifications in response to student concerns, such as lowering the weight of midterm scores to count for only 10 percent of their final grade.
"The high school administration and faculty are very sensitive to the kids' needs, and indeed throughout the pandemic have made adjustments along the way," Addley said. "We have been in school and exams play a role in school, as long as it's done thoughtfully and respectfully."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The current anti-American tensions in the Middle East shows how much digital media impacts such crises when compared to the time of Salman Rushdie's Iranian fatwa in 1989.
A screen grab of Libyan Alhurra TV, as collected on Buzzfeed, shows Libyans using the media to show that not all of them are involved in the anti-American attacks.
Technology and everyday tools that millions use are being blamed, in part, for the recent spate of attacks against U.S. embassies in the Middle East.
Social media and a YouTube video of an obscure, crudely-made trailer of an anti-Islam film have helped fan the flames of anti-American hatred that's always looking for an excuse to bubble up in some parts of the world.
All the negative and positive aspects of current media and technology shows how much has changed since a similar free-speech crisis involving Islam 24 years ago. But in making this comparison, I want to be clear that the only reason I am doing so is because of the free-speech issue and not to remotely suggest that this ridiculous trailer in any way is in the same league as the piece of literature I am bringing up now.
It was in September 1988 that the British edition of Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" was first published. Over the following few weeks, criticism from various people who claimed to speak for all Muslims started to come in (though it was clear most of them hadn't actually read the book). It wasn't until February of 1989 when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death that this story caught the world's attention.
In a coincidental parallel to the events in the Middle East now, Rushdie published a detailed account last week of the time he spent in hiding after the fatwa using the made-up name of Joseph Anton. He came up with the name by combining the first names of two writers he loved, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. The New Yorker magazine piece, an excerpt from his new book, "Joseph Anton: A Memoir," which is out this week, shows how much technology has changed.
"Will I see you tomorrow, Dad?"
He shook his head. "But I'll call you," he said. "I'll call you every evening at seven. If you're not going to be here," he told Clarissa, "please leave me a message on the answering machine at home and say when I should call."
This was early 1989. The terms "P.C.," "laptop," "mobile phone," "Internet," "WiFi," "SMS," and "e-mail" were either uncoined or very new. He did not own a computer or a mobile phone. But he did own a house, and in the house there was an answering machine, and he could call in and interrogate it, a new use of an old word, and get, no, retrieve, his messages. "Seven o'clock," he repeated. "Every night, O.K.?"
Zafar nodded gravely. "O.K., Dad."
He had his daily routine with Clarissa: At seven o'clock every evening, he would call to say hello to Zafar. If Clarissa couldn't be at home with Zafar at seven, she would leave a message on the St. Peter's Street answering machine telling him when they would be back. He called the Burma Road house. There was no reply. He left a message on Clarissa's machine and then interrogated his own. She had not left a message. Oh, well, he thought, they're a little late.
Fifteen minutes later, he called again. Nobody picked up. He called his own machine again: nothing there. Ten minutes later, he made a third call. Still nothing. It was almost seven-forty-five on a school night. It wasn't normal for them to be out so late. He called twice more in the next ten minutes. No response. Now he began to panic.
To see what happens next, you'll have to read the full piece or get the book.
Meanwhile, these two stories, two decades apart, have been brought together by the news that a foundation in Iran has revived the fatwa and increased the bounty on killing Rushdie to $3.3 million from $2.8 million.
I didn't see a response from Rushdie on Twitter (@SalmanRushdie), but he's one of the most compelling authors on the platform, often answering, retweeting and engaging with his followers. One can imagine how interesting it would have been for him to have Twitter at his disposal during his days in hiding.
Screenshot of @SalmanRushdie's Twitter feed, September 13, 2012.
Note to readers: Please post your thoughts in the comments below or e-mail me or tweet me at @sree or #sreetips on Twitter. If you've been reading my posts here, you know that one of the things I am trying to do is learn what works and what doesn't on social media. It's such a fast-evolving, confusing world that I believe we can all learn together. Thanks for reading.


text:
1991.12.09 - Madison Square Garden, New York, USA
by Soulmonster Tue Aug 21, 2012 3:49 pm
Madison Square Garden.
New York, NY, USA.
04. Attitude
05. Bad Obsession
06. Double Talkin' Jive
10. So Fine
12. Don't Cry [w/ Shannon Hoon]
Godfather Theme
13. Sweet Child O' Mine
14. Move To The City
15. Rocket Queen [w/ It Tastes Good, Don't It?]
19. Estranged
Axl Rose (vocals), Gilby Clarke (rhythm guitarist), Slash (lead guitarist), Duff McKagan (bass), Dizzy Reed (keyboards) and Matt Sorum (drums).
Re: 1991.12.09 - Madison Square Garden, New York, USA
by Soulmonster Tue May 06, 2014 2:23 pm
Review of one of the MSG shows in late 1991, from New Strait Times, January 7, 1992:
Review in New York Times, December 11, 1991:
Review/Rock; Guns 'n' Roses Brings New Lineup to the Garden
By JON PARELES
Guns 'n' Roses has staked its reputation on its volatility. W. Axl Rose, its lead singer, is famous for his temper, his onstage tirades and his conviction that self-indulgence plus self-importance equals integrity. The band's songs, which veer from raging hard-rock to wistful ballads, are a secondary draw. Yet when Guns 'n' Roses came to Madison Square Garden on Monday night for the first of three sold-out shows -- the final show is Friday night -- the most surprising part of its set was how routine it seemed.
The band has a new lineup for this part of its tour. Izzy Stradlin, the rhythm guitarist who co-wrote many of the songs on "Use Your Illusion" I and II (Geffen), the band's current best-selling albums, has quit, replaced for the tour by Gilbey Clarke. The band has also added two backup singers and three horn players, all women dressed in black lingerie. It's a horn section valued primarily for its G-strings. The women pouted and posed like Motley Crue's backup singers; also like Motley Crue, Guns 'n' Roses had an electronic display to flash its name between the set and encores, like an "Applause" sign.
As usual, the band went on late, nearly 90 minutes after the opening act, Soundgarden, had finished. As usual, the audience amused itself mightily between sets, aided by lighting and video crews who spotlighted girls who took off their shirts. As usual, the band worked hard once it appeared, playing for nearly 2 hours 45 minutes, with Mr. Rose and the other band members running and leaping around the stage as they knocked out one riff-and-screech song after another. (Near the end of the show, Mr. Rose announced that overtime would cost the band $24,000.)
And as usual, Mr. Rose stopped the show for his obligatory rant against the press. He excoriated Circus magazine, threatened lawsuits and asserted that someone had been hired to shoot him as revenge for nasty things he said in "Get in the Ring," the anti-press diatribe on "Use Your Illusion II." "I'm not really worried about what opening my mouth will do to my record sales," he announced, knowing he'd draw cheers. Lest anyone misunderstand his role in current rock, during "Civil War" he was dressed in a jacket with the word "rebel" above a Confederate flag.
Guns 'n' Roses' song choices vary from show to show, and Monday's set had a wildly uneven pace. Rockers like "Double Talkin' Jive," "Mr. Brownstone" or "You Could Be Mine" chomped down hard on the music, creating the perfect tension between muscular riffs and Mr. Rose's snarling or howling voice. Some ballads, like "Don't Cry," had terse, telling lead-guitar solos by Slash; others, like "Sweet Child o' Mine" or "November Rain," sounded mechanical as they shifted from a slow main section to a fast finale. It's hard to maintain momentum in such a long set, but at times Guns 'n' Roses seemed to be deliberately dragging the songs out, or just noodling through unaccompanied drum and guitar solos.
Hard-rock bands that sell millions of albums can usually count on their fans to shout and sing along, but Monday's audience was oddly restrained. Beyond the front rows, many people simply stood and watched as Mr. Rose raced around the stage, shimmying his shoulders or twirling his microphone stand and changing his costume every song or two; although the band played its ballad "Patience" quietly, as if expecting a sing-along, the audience didn't oblige. Only when Guns 'n' Roses played its MTV-promoted singles, or the house lights went on, did concertgoers make a show of enthusiasm. Partway through the set, Slash jokingly called the band "the No. 1 rock-and-roll cabaret act," but that's how its fans treated it.
by Blackstar Sun Apr 22, 2018 9:18 pm
Review from Rolling Stone:
David Fricke wrote: For once, Axl Rose had a good excuse for coming on an hour and a half late: He was sick, bitten by a demon flu that left him throwing up backstage between songs. Rose's illness accounted for both his extended absences from the stage and the rocky pacing of the show. Slash - looking, in his top hat and Cousin It curls, like the cover of T. Rex's Sliver come to life - covered for Rose with overlong guitar solos, and bassist Duff McKagan stepped in with a couple of lead vocals of his own. Rose also kept his stage oratory to a minimum, indulging in a brief anti-rock press rant "so the parasites looking for a meal ticket have something to write about" and making only a passing reference to departed guitarist Izzy Stradlin when he introduced new boy Gilby Clarke ("We got somebody who felt a little more like touring and hanging out with us").
But in spite of Rose's handicap, the Gunners didn't cheat on show time - nearly three hours - or shake appeal. When they were good, they rose to the heights of feral hysteria from Appetite For Destruction and the best parts of the Use Your Illusion twins. Once they hit the boards (to a tape of Leonard Cohen singing "Everybody Knows" - "Everybody knows that the dice are loaded … Everybody knows the good guys lost"), they ripped straight into "Nightrain" and "Mr. Brownstone," Rose racing all over the multitiered stage and hurling his mike stand javelin-style into the air, usually in a dangerous proximity to another Gunner. "Civil War," arguably the band's finest seven minutes on record, was a fierce, intensely focused serving of slow-burn agit-slam, sandwiched by Slash's burbling wah-wah quotations from Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."
Even when they stumbled, the band members showed flashes of inspiration. "Don't Cry" was unwisely shoehorned between a storming "It's So Easy" and a long, unremarkable drum solo by Matt Sorum, but this rendition packed a greater anthemlike wallop than in the two Illusion versions. A formulaic reading of "Sweet Child O' Mine" was prefaced by Rose's soulful a cappella crooning of Grand Funk Railroad's "Bad Time" just as Slash hit the piercing signature riff of "Sweet Child."
The main downer of Guns N' Roses extramusical reputation and Axl Rose's loose-cannon antics is that they obscure the band's real rock & roll worth. Tonight, they ran the gamut from the sublime (a ravishing twin-guitar snippet of the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" by Slash and Clarke) to the seething (a ferocious "Double Talkin' Jive") to the silly (a female brass section and backup singers decked out in heavy-metal harlot lingerie). As for their aversion to punctuality, it's become a kind of ritualized anarchy, which is a contradiction in terms. Besides, the best rock & roll - and rock & roll spirit - is about not wasting time: it's about seizing the moment and jump-starting the vibe, not just waiting for it to hit. If Guns N' Roses really want to be unpredictable, they should try a surprise attack: Get the opening band offstage pronto, plug in straightaway and whip into "Nightrain" or, better yet, "Don't Damn Me" (alas, not in tonight's set) before the fans know what hit 'em.
Time and the next album (whenever that comes) will tell how they recover from the loss of Stradlin, who was a formidable rhythm guitarist and a key songwriter. But the primal GN'R snarl of "You Could Be Mine" - delivered tonight with vehement enthusiasm - was vivid proof that there is still a lot more here than makes the headlines. "That was gun," Rose announced with a smile afterward. Amen to that.
by Blackstar Sun Jan 13, 2019 6:17 pm
Well, I might as well start now. I thought we can give the parasites looking for a meal ticket something to write about.
East Coast... Now, you've got a real reputation here for some upstanding responsible journalism. No? I think one of my favorite songs right now is Public Enemy's letter to the New York Post. Well, we've got some people supporting lies and bullshit, I hear. I hear people booing, supporting writing shit about other people to pay the rent.
I wanna tell you about two things in general (?) to Guns N' Roses. Two things that people go, "Oh, just ignore it, don't let it bother you." Well, I think that would be the irresponsible approach on my part. See, I don't have to be really worried about what opening my mouth will do to my record sales. Maybe if somebody decides they're chickenshit and they have to kiss ass to get their record sold - which I don't really have to do right now - they aren't so afraid to rock the boat. Maybe some kid could go in a store and spend a buck-and-a-half and buy an honest interview.
And so there's a lot of people that say, "Oh, Axl Rose has wimped out and didn't want to get in the ring." Honey, I won't put on no boxing gloves, I'll have you shot in the fucking head. Then again (?). You might not know this, but, you know, there was some people out there who got really upset about Get in the Ring, so they hired some people to shoot me and it didn't work in L.A. That's a real pussy approach, I think.
If you wanna get in the ring with me, you bring two things: you bring some integrity and you bring some respect. And Bob Guccione and Circus Magazine, you don't fucking have any.
Now these people have been starting shit for about three years. I haven't done an interview with Circus Magazine for three fucking years. I mean, a lot of money's been made off shit I never said. I mean, there's a lot of people that've been ripped off for shit I never said, because of the bunch of assholes who want to make money off of you, motherfuckers, by using us.
So we got pissed off and we put a little song on the record about it. Now, doing that song live is about the same as doing One in a Million live. There's really no need for it. It's a little bit of a hit below the belt, it's been done, it's been said, it's over with. But these people wanna just keep starting shit. So we're prepared to put our money where our mouth is. We're going to court. You wanna get in the ring? We'll get in the ring. We'll sue your motherfucking ass. Let's go. We dedicate this to Get in the Ring part 2, and the action starts. This is called "Double Talkin' Jive, motherfucker".
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by Blackstar Sun Jan 20, 2019 5:11 am
Review in New York Daily News, Dec. 11, 1991:
Going great Guns at Garden
By MATTHEW AUERBACH
WELL, THEY LIVED UP TO ALL of it, folks. The rock 'n' roll war machine known as Guns N' Roses has came to town and taken over Madison Square Garden for three shows (Mon., Tues., Fri.). They're dug in deep, unleashing the most ferocious hard rock since the glory days of this genre some 20 years ago.
Monday's show had "event" stamped all over it. After an ample set by opening act Soundgarden, whose heavy-metal grunge was a perfect table-setter for the barrage yet to come, there was a 90-minute wait for GNR. During that time, there were fights and females flashing their breasts (the flashings outnumbered the fights). This goofy frat-house atmosphere could not hide the growing anticipation, however.
Finally, at 10:45 p.m.. Guns N' Roses hit the stage, slamming into "Nightrain." It was off and running for the next three hours, with the band resurrecting all the best parts of Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Aerosmith, etc., without sounding derivative. The fact that the most popular rock band of the '90s could do songs by Paul McCartney ("Live and Let Die"), the Stones (a subdued version of "Wild Horses") and Bob Dylan ("Knocking on Heaven's Door") in surprisingly faithful fashion without losing any credibility with their mostly young audience was testament to their talents.
The show was balanced with almost equal helpings of ballads and rockers. Lead guitarist Slash was on fire all night, with a style that harked back to the old days. No Eddie Van Halen hammer-ons or whammy-bar displays — just the fat tone of a Gibson Les Paul launching melodic riffs. The rest of the group, led by monster drummer Matt Sorum and aided buy three scantily clad female horn players and two backup singers, pushed the sonic limits all evening, and on "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Welcome to the Jungle," "Bad Obsession" and "Rocket Queen," they hit warp drive.
It wouldn't be a Guns N' Roses concert without some sort of diatribe from Axl Rose, and this show was no different He railed against several rock publications, and East Coast journalists in particular, to huge cheers before the band began the appropriately titled "Double Talkin' Jive." He may be the essence of contradiction when he speaks, but when he sings, Axl, like the rest of Guns N' Roses, could do no wrong on this night.
(Auerbach writes on pop music.)
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From Los Angeles Times, Dec. 15, 1991:
GUNS II: New guitarist . . . same old antics.
Guns N' Roses may now be performing with guitarist Gilby Clarke in place of Izzy Stradlin, but everything else appeared true to form as GNR rolled into New York's Madison Square Garden last Monday for the first of three shows.
The band went on late—nearly 11 p.m.—and played until 1:30 a.m., which was well past the union curfew. Typically, Axl Rose turned this into a bond with the fans as he bragged about having to pay hefty union fees for running late. "You people are worth more than the $24,000 we're paying in overtime," he told the crowd.
Rather than have Clarke or Rose take over the lead vocal on the songs that Stradlin had sung on earlier legs of the tour ("Dust N' Bones" and "14 Years"), the band just skipped the songs. Bassist Duff McKagan, however, did sing lead on his own "So Fine."
This tour leg is scheduled to run through early February with shows in San Diego, Las Vegas and Phoenix expected to be announced shortly.
—Wayne Robins
by Soulmonster Sun Feb 10, 2019 8:00 pm
Soulmonster wrote: Review in New York Times, December 11, 1991:
This review, and Axl's reaction to it, would be discussed in an interview Rolling Stone did with Axl and which was published in April 1992:
Kim Neely wrote: KN: When you were in New York recently, you took offense at a review Jon Pareles wrote in the 'New York Times' and invited him to come onstage to talk about it. (Pareles, reviewing a December G n' R show at Madison Square Garden, described the audience as "oddly restrained." Pareles was invited to come to the following night's show and "tell the crowd why they weren't having a good time.")
Axl: I was actually just going to sit down and talk. I wasn't going to make him look like an ass.
KN: Still, he would've been walking into a minefield. No matter what he said, they'd boo him and cheer you.
Axl: He didn't have the balls to stand behind what he wrote, and he got exposed.
KN: A lot of people would say that in inviting him to talk about that on your turf, you were the one who didn't have the balls. Why didn't you call him and talk about it personally on neutral territory?
Axl: I'm not gonna make the New York Times any more money. It was an obnoxious piece. It was shit journalism. He could've written: "I didn't like the show, personally. I think they suck." Okay, fine. Cool. You can think we suck, and I can think you're an asshole. But don't just try to make it look like nobody enjoyed it.
KN: Couldn't he have been just calling it like he saw it?
Axl: Then that's a person with some severe fucking personal problems, and he has no business being there writing about our show. It's a different crowd at a G n' R show now than it used to be. He didn't understand it. Most people that have been into G n' R for years don't understand it, but they can feel it. Having a nice time is weird for people that don't have nice times in their lives. When you don't really know what a nice time is, a nice time is for pussies.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/yxeaosba
by Soulmonster Sat Jan 29, 2022 3:44 pm
It's almost like when Guns N' Roses sold out Madison Square Garden and I remember Duff McKagan, the bass player, and myself used to share a limousine, and we were driving up the back ramp, and I said, "Duff, this is the same ramp as in The Song Remains The Same" when Zeppelin started the tour and John Paul Jones picks up his phone and he goes, "Tour dates, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow." And Duff's like, "Oh my god, that's right. We're at Madison Square Garden." You know, that was one moment, right? And then there was many, many, many more moments like that.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, April 14, 2012
» 1991.12.13. - Madison Square Garden, New York, USA
» 1991.12.10 - Madison Square Garden, New York, USA
» 2017.10.11 - Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, USA


Written to assess students' knowledge of interpreting expressions that represent a quantity in terms of its context, this machine-scored task also allows for a good discussion about units guiding the problem solving and solution.
In this tax problem worksheet, learners read story problems and determine the percent of tax, discounts, and the final price of items. This one-page worksheet contains 11 problems.
Learners locate and compare the costs and options available of three comparable compact, midsize, or luxury automobiles. They utilize websites and a worksheet imbedded in this plan.


text:
Tag Archives: sanction clauses
Society for the Medieval Mediterranean 2015 (in Lincoln), parts 2 & 3
Posted on 7 January 2018 | Leave a comment
[Context: this post was half-written before I ground to a complete halt in hiatus last year. It's clear that I can't continue this scale of write-up, but because it was part-done, and because it involves the recently-lamented Simon Barton, I want to do this last one as it was meant to be done. I am, however, combining what would originally have been two posts, because this is an indulgence I can't go on permitting myself. After this, we can talk about what happens next but I am hoping, hoping that this is the cough of the blogger's virtual throat being cleared before saying something in a more regular fashion. We'll see, but I have hopes and reasons to do it and that's a powerful combination. This post's still a composite hodge-podge, though, so I've added headings to show where its layers separate.]
The Voice of October 2016
This is, as grimly predicted, the busiest term ever in my life so far, and at some point in it I'm moving house! Yay! Before that point, I can at least crunch out a few more posts, though, I hope [Edit: ha!], and the next in the queue is a report on the second day of the conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, which as you will recall was in Lincoln in mid-July 2015. This post deals with the papers and so on from the 14th July, and then we'll talk about something completely different before returning for the third and final day. [Edit: no we won't, it's all happening here.]
The Brayford Campus of Lincoln University, just for context
There were up to five parallel sessions running at all times except during the keynotes in this conference and so there was always plenty to choose from, including plenty of early medieval. As it happens, I underestimated the time it would take me to get from my (rather good) bed and breakfast to the university and so missed the first paper I'd chosen to see, which was a shame but at least, as its presenter told me, it was substantially the paper I'd seen him give in Leeds. Nonetheless, the questions seemed to reach to different things and I was sorry I hadn't seen this version. The session as it happened, even where I didn't see, was like this.
Law in the Post-Roman West
Graham Barrett, "Legislation and Codification after Rome"
Michael Kelly, "Transhistoricality in Early Medieval Hispania: Law as Narrative and Cultural Episteme"
Thomas Gobbitt, "Framing the Laws: prologues, epilogues and peritext. The Liber Leges Langobardorum in the Eleventh and Twelfth Century"
So as said, I missed Graham pronouncing his wisdom, but it got a better hearing here than it had at the slightly odd session in which it had been aired at Leeds, and his paper dominated discussion, so it's worth reprising its central point, that law after the end of Empire in the West was probably mostly used in small bits, which were occasionally recombined into codes but used quite differently in the field (or in court). Questions focused on issues of formality of, well, issue, and the audiences for the different sorts of law people were detecting bundled into codes like the Salic Law, and this discussion also included Graham asking what the difference is between a 'capitulary' and a 'novel', a question that could only matter to a legal historian you'd think but has everything to do with our confused relationship with the Roman Empire, both imitative and successive.
I didn't really understand Michael Kelly's paper, I will confess. It may, from my notes, have been intended to argue that all our sources were constructed by their authors to convey a particular version of the past, not reality, and that our sources therefore are really only sources for their context, the Visigothic Law being no exception and very full of contemporary bias that belies its deliberate impression of antiquity, in which case OK, but phrases like, "transhistoricality must be a purely discursive phenomenon," meant that I'm not sure.
Lastly Dr Gobbitt gave us a spirited run-through of the survival of Lombard laws in the eleventh century in the form of a text known as the Liber leges langobardorum [sic], which gathered up the Edict of Rothari and various other bits of genuinely Lombardic legislation along with some laws of Charlemagne and a reasonable salting of historical material (much of it already travelling with Rothari), apparently all for study at or around Pavia in a kind of pre-Bologna legal college. He too emphasised variation: no two of the seven eleventh-century manuscripts gather quite the same materials or lay them out in the same way. This stuff was of interest to a range of people but their purposes were not all the same. Quite what those purposes were was work still to be done but the evidence base seemed well established.
Justice and Judicial Practices in Early Medieval North-Western Iberia (II): punishment and justice in Castile and León
Julio Escalona, "Follow the Money? Justice and Authority in the Sanction Clauses of Tenth-Century Castilian Charters"
Álvaro Carvajal Castro, "Authority and Liability in Ninth- and Tenth-Century North-Western Iberia: the evidence from the sanction clauses"
Igor Santos Salazar, "Rule Through Courts: the settlement of disputes in Castile and Tuscany during the tenth-century"
It would probably be hard to pick three Iberian-peninsula scholars who have worked harder to link up with other areas and fields, and especially the English-speaking world, than these three, but because of the occasion they had a substantially Iberian-peninsula audience too and this was probably as close as I shall get to attending a seminar in Spain until I can take a year out to improve my spoken languages or something, which is to say, valuable. Not least, of course, because this was effectively a charters session! Julio's was illuminating: doing more or less the exercise I had done the previous year with Vic's charters by going through the clauses in which they lay down what will happen to those who infringe the charter's provisions, he noted that alongside the threats of excommunication, less common in sales than in donations as I too had found, there are many fines, levied largely in the name of the king. This being tenth-century Castile, however, the king was far away, and the count doesn't turn up as much as you'd expect and was not clearly a royal delegate for these purposes. Instead, the money seems to have gone to local lords whom we otherwise struggle to identify, those much-vaunted 'local élites', domini, whom Julio argued should be the focus of our questions about community formation in these areas rather than the traditional village grouping of the alfoz. This paper had some seriously subversive connotations bubbling up out of those sanction clauses.
Álvaro had meanwhile done something similar with charters from further west, in Asturias-León, and found a judicial system anchored in the same ideas but based very much on guarantee and surety, whether explicit or implicit; instructions on who was to pay if something went wrong show no particular regularity over whether actor or recipient, or either of their families, was expected to be liable. Instead, we have to assume that these situations were being judged, negotiated and arranged according to how people felt the various options which the traditional legal library gave them were best deployed in each case. Igor, meanwhile, lacking a precisely comparable charter base in Tuscany, looked instead at the actual trials there and in Castile, which was valuable because unlike in Julio's documents, the counts of Castile rarely appear in actual court cases; instead, again, their roles were delegated down to locals, this presumably being one way in which the counts attached themselves to such communities via the local headmen whose station they thus enhanced.
I am absolutely fine with this, but what was interesting was the comparison with Italy, where Igor saw the same trick being played with a different deck of cards, a working system of public courts becoming less effective in the face of decentralising power and being met with a recentralisation via an overhaul of that system that linked local 'judges' to the kingship. There is here a bigger dynamic about what failing states do to regain traction in their localities, I think, and it's one we could probably do with taking out and showing people. The role of the king was quite different in the two cases, being distant in Asturias and active in Tuscany, but then, the kings in Italy were already a local response to detachment from the bigger system of the Carolingian Empire to which, in its Ottonian form, attachment would soon resume… I think it works! And I'm also not sure I realised this at the time… That may of course have been because I had other things on my mind right then, not just lunch though that did indeed come next, but my own paper, because I was in fact up next, in this august company.
Medieval Iberia
Jonathan Jarrett, "Ceremonies of Property Transfer in Carolingian Catalonia: a model of documented transaction"
James d'Emilio, "The Formulaic Clauses of Charters: tradition, variation and originality"
Laura Cayrol Bernando, "« Hermana del emperador »: (re)constructing the memory of the Infanta Sancha Raimundez (d. 1159)"
The voice of January 2018 now takes up the story…
Predictably, my own paper in this session is the hardest for me to remember because I wasn't making notes, but I've just re-read it and gosh-darn if it isn't actually one of my better ones and I should probably send it out. What I was doing was something I've stabbed at here already, gathering up all the various testimonies I know from Catalan documents to the phenomenon specialists call reparatio scripturae, the replacement of documents that had been lost, and arguing that there is here evidence that not just churches but lay people went to some effort to get their friends and neighbours to remember not just the existence of charters but their actual textual content, and wondering what those efforts might have looked like. Josep María Salrach has already thrown a sentence or two away on this, but in the words of the late Captain Beefheart, "there's more." As I say, I should do something with this. Any suggestions?
It's hard to think of images for a lot of these papers, given how much they were about concepts, but Professor D'Emilio's one was at least partly located here at the monastery of San Julián de Samos, so here's a picture! By José Antonio Gil Martínez from Vigo, Galicia – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, Link
As to the other two speakers, James D'Emilio was on similar turf, but much later and in Castile; I was concerned about the apparent use of written formulae in my texts, but he can place some of his, from the Bible and Isidore of Seville. As that implies, his texts usually had grander aspirations and participants than mine, kings and bishops, but it's still something to watch out for: who says charter formulae have to start in charters? Then Laura Cayrol Bernando looked at a different kind of creation of memory, using the vexed question of just what the infantado that royal heiresses in high medieval Castile held was, to expose quite late medieval processes of sanctification of female royal donors by their commemorating churches that have, basically, created the problems with that question. In the process, however, it showed how some family ties were remembered much longer than others because things like this hung upon them and so had active memorialisers. Because I was facing them, I don't have much of a record of the questions from this session, and so without further ado I move on, as did we, to the second keynote address of the conference.
Andrew Marsham, "Rituals of Accession in Early Islam: a comparative perspective"
With us all gathered in the same room again, Simon, may he rest well, introduced Andrew Marsham, who somewhat cautiously introduced his own attempt to imitate Jinty Nelson's early work on rituals of royal inauguration.1 Resting explicitly on that, he set out to try and compare her early medieval West to both Byzantium and Islam, using the moments at which a king, emperor or caliph assumed power to expose what people thought was most important about that office. He argued that all three political zones shared the Judæo-Christian inheritance of a conviction that power ultimately came from God, making the ruler in some way the representative of God on earth. In the West, this became a link that was mediated through the Church, by coronation and unction, even to the point where without the cooperation of churchmen kings could not in fact assume power sometimes; the same struggles do occur in Byzantium but the Church was never so clearly separate from the ruler's control, and in Islam of course there is no Church, no liturgy as such, making other rituals like handclasping and popular acceptance much more significant, though they did operate in other areas too. Dr Marsham argued that what the caliphs lost, or saved themselves from, by not having that apparatus of religion to serve or obstruct them they however compensated for somewhat by also being the heirs of the Sasanian Persian monarchy, from which they could draw the representations of higher and divine power without which their office might have struggled to be free of direct interference from the 'umma. I make this sound less tentative than I remember it being, but I didn't think there was much wrong with it; Dr Marsham had been careful in stepping outside his own area and it was a thought-provoking lecture.
The Old Palace Hotel, Lincoln
With that complete, we then wandered at varying length to the Old Palace, where a rather splendid dinner was set before us. I can remember thinking at point of registration that the cost of the dinner was fairly high, but the setting alone quickly explained why, and the food didn't fall short either; looking back, I think that was probably money well spent. There were two sessions the next morning before we all dispersed, with hard choices to make about what to go to, but you'll quickly see why I chose as I did. First up!
Justice and Judicial Practices in Early Medieval North-Western Iberia
Iñaki Martín Viso, "Authority and Justice in the Shaping of Asturleonese Monarchy"
Robert Portass, "Levels of Justice in Tenth-Century Northern Spain"
Fernando Luis-Corral & María Pérez Rodríguez, "Local Communities and the Uses of Justice in the Kingdom of León"
These are, as you can tell, my kind of questions and being asked of my period in a neighbouring area by some of the hot names in the field, so my choice was clear. Iñaki was looking at Asturias in its ninth-century expansion, and observing that while the kings are a big part of that so are counts and other nobles; he saw a difference between them in that the kings were always the highest court of judicial appeal, and managed often to claim overall hegemony in areas of new settlement even if they didn't orchestrate it, but that even out there there were still areas where the kings held and could grant no lands because a count or a bishop had got there first; he pointed at Astorga and Coimbra for this. The following, and interesting, process, would thus be the one by which the various non-royal officers of justice in these areas were brought to recognise the king as their superior… Rob then brought out the judicial hearings from his pet area of Liébana, and argued that although office-holders like counts were visible in them they were often not the ones holding the court, which could be done by various individuals who had no 'official' right we can recognise except that they owned a lot of the local land; the local monastery was only one of these. Categories like 'public' and 'private' are really no use here, therefore. The paper involved a guy called Bagauda about whom I've written here before; I then thought that the obvious explanation of his position was that he owned the land the victims lived on, but Rob says that ain't necessarily so. I need to read his book!2 And the last paper was a study of the enigmatic figures known as 'worthy men', boni homines, in the Iberian Peninsula's charters, asking whether they were the tools of local communities or the means by which aristocrats asserted power over those communities. They concluded the latter, but without much attention to who the people in question actually were and how their position was manifested, and I felt quietly that if the speaker and his co-author had read, well, me, they'd have a more useful way of approaching this question.3
But the real worth of this session was the discussion, which was lengthy and erudite. I started by raising the point that power in Rob's area need not have been solely economic, which Rob answered with a reflection about what actually made power here, and whether the ability to coordinate process or the ability to defy it was more 'powerful'. I don't think question an answer linked but both were good points if I do say so myself. Igor Santos asked if the fact that the winners write history means that we can't see the weak in these trials, only the strong, but Iñaki asked if the Church, which is our source of record, must always be the strong party, and here again (as you may know) I agree. There then followed a lengthy tangle over what constituted the 'public sphere' in this area in this period, and specifically how the written law fitted into this, which was certainly not everywhere, and whether there was one 'public sphere' or many local senses of public practice, both questions raised by Julio Escalona. I suggested, as had Graham Barrett earlier, that law and custom were not necessarily separate either; the written law could be invoked as custom. But especially, because at this point I was still tangling with the questions about how someone powerful on the outside manoeuvered themselves into a local position of power in the frontier zones here at which I wrote at such length here a few years ago, I was interested in who set the limits of public office, and here Iñaki made a useful differentiation between sorts of royal property and rights that got me thinking, which Julio followed with the idea that kings and counts together tended to limit the number of people who could claim comital status. In both cases, it seemed to me (and seems) the crucial operation is to get other people recognising the rights you claim in your office. Afterwards, over coffee, Julio, Rob and I all agreed that this can be seen as convincing people that the public sphere you claim is the same one that they recognise. This is what the Asturian kings, and also the counts of Barcelona, achieved in the ninth and tenth centuries and I still want to know how. Then, onwards to the last session!
'Del tuerto al dretto': bridging the gap between lawcodes and society in the medieval Mediterranean world
Jeffrey Bowman, "Women Administering Justice in the High Middle Ages: a divergence of rule and practice"
Rodrigo García-Velasco, "Municipal Law at the Iberian frontier: the evidence of the fueros and cartas de población during the Iberian Reconquista, c. 1050-c.&nbsp:1150″
Belen Vicens, "Infançones, franchos, and Wannabees: rethinking status and identity in late medieval Aragón"
Here, of course, I had to be because I have learnt a lot from one of the participants, taught another and knew nothing of the third, all good reasons and the more so once combined. Professor Bowman was pointing out an obvious but neglected thing, that though as far as most of the rules on the subject we have from the Middle Ages say that women could not sit in judgement over men, they did nevertheless sometimes do so in the persons of countesses and viscountesses and probably more. Sometimes people argued about this: a legal specialist dealing with Matilda of Canossa wisely decided that her office carried the jurisdiction but in a case involving Ermengarde of Narbonne it went all the way to the king of France, who used it as a way to claim Narbonne as part of the French crown! There was, basically, usually a way to make it work whatever the rules said and fighting it as illegitimate doesn't usually seem to have worked, which is worth keeping around to think with.
I like this picture of Narbonne Cathedral so much that even this weak excuse will do to use it again. By Benh LIEU SONG (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
Rodrigo was looking at the various concessions of rights and local jurisdiction by kings that we group as fueros, a term that has come simply to mean 'laws' so commonly were these issued, and asking where the balance of power lay between the locals whose rights were here asserted and the kings who apparently granted them. He argued, however, that the texts we have represent a step after the balance had been found and agreed, and that the real processes of power lay in the circumstances that had led to the text's issue. Again, the question of how to convince a potential subject you and they shared a sphere of power arises, which is of course why I cite Rodrigo's work sometimes, but there was argument in questions about whether the fueros were somehow a bridge between the two public spheres or just an incentive dangled before the ungoverned by those who would govern them.4 Then the last paper looked at an episode of 1248 in which a number of people claiming free status were reduced to serfdom by royal judgement; the speaker argued that this was an exercise of consolidation of definitions of freedom which had previously been vague, imposing rules which left some people on the wrong side, and that trying to read the rules back from such cases was a mistake. That was why there needed to be a hearing! Well, maybe, but it was a good place to end.
And since thereafter we all said our goodbyes and dispersed, me towards the rather splendid cathedral—possibly the most impressive in the UK, but I sadly without my camera—and then the railway station, it's where I have to end too, closing an era of far-too-intensive reporting in the hope that you can see why I found it all worthwhile to do. Next post: the new régime!
Likewise this one! Lincoln Cathedral's west front, by Anthony Shreeve public domain via Wikimedia Commons
1. Collected in Janet L. Nelson, Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London 1986).
2. It being Robert Portass, The Village World of Early Medieval Northern Spain: local community and the land market, Royal Historical Society Studies in History: New Series (Woodbridge 2017). In fact, two different journals have asked me if I wanted to review this, and I said no, partly because I know Rob too well, partly because I didn't have time and mainly because I had already got myself a copy when I finally got round to paying my first subscription to the Royal Historical Society, which published it. Of course that still doesn't mean I've read it, but I do intend to!
3. Specifically, if they'd read Jonathan Jarrett, Rulers and Ruled in Frontier Catalonia 880-1010: pathways of power, Royal Historical Society Studies in History: New Series (Woodbridge 2010), pp. 35-36 & n. 55.
4. The work of Rodrigo's that I cite is his "Legislation and Resistance: limitations of royal power on the Catalan and Aragonese frontiers, 986–1134", M.St. dissertation (University of Oxford 2013), which I had the fun of supervising, but I think he would say that his thinking has moved on a bit now and I await the completion of his doctoral thesis keenly! No pressure, Rodrigo…
Posted in Catalonia, Charters, France, Frontiers, Institutions, Islamic Crescent, Italy, Spain
Tagged Andrew Marsham, Aragón, Asturias, authority and power, Álvaro Carvahal Castro, Castile, conferences, coronation, fueros, Galicia, gender history, Graham Barrett, Iñaki Martín Viso, Igor Santos Salazar, James D'Emilio, Jeffrey Bowman, judicial practice, Julio Escalona, Laura Cayrol Bernando, León, Lincoln, local power, Lombards, medieval law, medieval theology, memory, Michael Kelly, public, queenship, ritual, Rob Portass, Rodrigo García-Velasco, sanction clauses, Santo Toribio de Liébana, serfdom, Thomas Gobbitt, Tuscany, Visigoths


Trail runs in the Swiss Alps are often little journeys through different places and zones. As you start upward from Wilderswil for Schynige Platte, something more than a journey kicks off, a kind of trail running odyssey begins. Seriously. If there is one run to do in the Berner Oberland, this is a leading candidate. First, the unrelenting 1500 meter climb through thick forest - forest you ache to get out of. You know what view awaits so you push your legs to speed you upward, to get that forest behind and below, until you finally turn a corner and literally find yourself standing on the Schynige Platte's restaurant deck. And now the run begins! The next 10 kilometers are about to be a true lesson in managing your feet while staring at the views. To your right is the Jungfrau Region skyline, including the famous Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. On the left is the turquoise Brienzersee with the Hardergrat rising above. Thankfully, footing isn't so difficult, this is a very popular and well worn single track.
The run includes a hut stop at the Berghaus Männdlenen. While the hut is situated perfectly for water and food, it might be one of the only huts in the Alps without much of a view. Nevertheless, the hut keepers are very nice, often have some locally made cheese and sausages, and help keep you from having to carry much in your pack. Stop and enjoy the offering, but not for too long, you still have some work to do.
From Männdlenen you'll begin the traverse towards the Faulhorn, the highpoint of the tour at 2681m. Climb to the summit or take a shorter option on a low trail that bypasses the peak. From the Faulhorn, the quad pounding descent begins to the Bachsee (see Instagram for a plethora of amazing views) At First, the gondola station, you can call it a day if your legs don't have another 15km in them. Tempting... but, continuing has some rewards, plus you have an odyssey to complete. You'll get to enjoy a 7km rolling traverse while taking in most all the major peaks and glaciers of the Berner Oberland.
The traverse ends at Grosse Scheidegg, the pass where the descent trail begins for Grindewald. It's here you really understand that you have moved through some varied and beautiful mountain terrain...and that it's been a long day that you'll never forget.
Don't miss the other Jungfrau Region runs: The Hardergrat, Lauterbrunnen to Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen Obersteinberg.
Consider the options for food and water. You'll have three well placed restaurants for spending your Swiss Francs. Take advantage, it's likely you'll also want the breaks.
There are multiple opportunities to shorten the day. First, skip the big climb from Wilderswil to Schynige altogether by taking the old cog train up. Next, at the First gondola station, you can head straight to Grindelwald. And at Grosse Scheidegg, the Swiss PostAuto buses service the pass all summer. Hop on to avoid the 900 meter descent.
Leaving the Schynige Platte behind for the wide open landscape before the Berghaus Männdlennen.
The high peaks of the Berner Oberland are nearly always in sight.
Ueli Steck cruising some of the Jungfrau Region's best singletrack.
Traversing high above the still ice covered Sägistalsee in early summer.
With the Eiger Nordwand as entertainment, Jan Pyott is on his way to Grosse Scheidegg after passing First.
The Wetterhorn marks the end of the traverse from Schynige Platte. Directly below the wall is the Grosse Scheidegg, where the trail drops to Grindelwald.


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