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William Cowper and William Mason: Poetry, Politics and the Nonsense Club
Author: Joan Addison
William Cowper and William Mason: Poetry, Politics and the Nonsense Club Joan Addison Cowper and the Nonsense Club In June 1786, William Cowper wrote a letter to his old friend Joseph Hill. In it he expressed his pleasure at having recently heard from another friend of their youth, the first communication received from him for several decades. 'Such notices from friends are always pleasant,' he wrote. 'They refresh the memory of early days, and make me young again.' 1 The friend to whom Cowper referred was George Colman, who like Cowper himself had attended Westminster School. Like Cowper, Colman had been destined for the law. Neither young man would follow the profession. Colman became a successful playwright and theatre manager; Cowper suffered severe mental breakdown and ended his life as England's most famous poet. Their lives would diverge. But what had cemented their youthful friendship, once school was left behind, was their membership of the Nonsense Club. In his letter to Hill, Cowper wrote that 'the noble Institution of the Nonsense Club will be forgotten when we are gone who composed it.' This 'Institution' was, as Cowper had written to William Unwin the year before, 'a Club of seven Westminster men to which I belonged, who dined together every Thursday.' 2 The exact identities of all the Club's members are still unclear. Cowper, Colman, Robert Lloyd and Bonnell Thornton were certainly members. It is thought that Chase Price and Charles Churchill may have been others, though in the mid-seventeen-fifties, when the Club was founded, Churchill was a country clergyman, living at a distance from the city. He moved to London in 1758. Whether he was a regular member of the Club or not, Churchill, once the head boy at Westminster, had strong connections to it. A playboy and a rake,
Joan Addison
Cowper and the Nonsense Club
In June 1786, William Cowper wrote a letter to his old friend Joseph Hill. In it he expressed his pleasure at having recently heard from another friend of their youth, the first communication received from him for several decades. 'Such notices from friends are always pleasant,' he wrote. 'They refresh the memory of early days, and make me young again.' 1
The friend to whom Cowper referred was George Colman, who like Cowper himself had attended Westminster School. Like Cowper, Colman had been destined for the law. Neither young man would follow the profession. Colman became a successful playwright and theatre manager; Cowper suffered severe mental breakdown and ended his life as England's most famous poet. Their lives would diverge. But what had cemented their youthful friendship, once school was left behind, was their membership of the Nonsense Club.
In his letter to Hill, Cowper wrote that 'the noble Institution of the Nonsense Club will be forgotten when we are gone who composed it.' This 'Institution' was, as Cowper had written to William Unwin the year before, 'a Club of seven Westminster men to which I belonged, who dined together every Thursday.' 2
The exact identities of all the Club's members are still unclear. Cowper, Colman, Robert Lloyd and Bonnell Thornton were certainly members. It is thought that Chase Price and Charles Churchill may have been others, though in the mid-seventeen-fifties, when the Club was founded, Churchill was a country clergyman, living at a distance from the city. He moved to London in 1758. Whether he was a regular member of the Club or not, Churchill, once the head boy at Westminster, had strong connections to it. A playboy and a rake, he would become the drinking companion of Robert Lloyd, who at the age of thirty-three was to die penniless in a debtor's prison. Joseph Hill himself, though not an old Westminster, attended meetings of the Club and contributed to its literary inventions, though how far he was involved is uncertain.
The Nonsense Club was a convivial literary club. Its members were young men about town, old Westminster scholars already accustomed to the vibrant social scene that London offered. Cowper made clear his own enjoyment of London society, and his youthful pride in being part of it, in a letter to Chase Price, written about 1754: 'Dancing all last Night; In bed one half of the Day and Shooting the other half.' 3 It is a picture of insouciant pleasure greatly at odds with the tormented outpourings of the poet of later years.
Bonnell Thornton, like Cowper and Colman, had been expected to follow a professional career, in his case medicine. Family expectations were disappointed: Thornton had a private income, which allowed him to follow his first love, a life in writing. In 1754, he and Colman began the publication of a magazine, The Connoisseur, which purported to be written by 'Mr. Town […] Critic, and Censor-General.' It ran for two years, and provided Cowper with an opportunity to be published himself. His first essay for The Connoisseur, published in March 1756, poked gentle fun at 'Billy Suckling', the callow youth who, quite unfit for sophisticated life in the metropolis, is still tied to his anxious mother's apron strings:
The delicate BILLY SUCKLING is the contempt of the men, the jest of the women, and the darling of his mamma…she is the only woman, that he does not look on with indifference… I have known him sit with his mamma's white handkerchief round his neck through a whole visit, to guard him from the wind of that ugly door, or that terrible chink in the wainscot. 4
Cowper wrote a further four essays in light comic vein for The Connoisseur: the last, on modes of conversation – which cannot be looked for among fashionable people, Cowper writes, as there 'it is almost annihilated by universal card-playing'– appeared in September 1756.5 The most strikingly amusing of his contributions to the magazines edited by his Nonsense Club friends, however, appeared in the St. James's Magazine, which was published by Thornton and Robert Lloyd between 1762 and 1763. This was Cowper's Dissertation on the Modern Ode, a humorous commentary on a contemporary poetic style that Cowper and his friends considered laughably unpoetic.
The members of the Nonsense Club, in spite of its chosen name, may have been devoted to pleasure, but they took poetry seriously. They wrote to each other constantly in verse with, in Lance Berelsen's words, 'a love of spontaneity, and an extreme consciousness of self.'6 Words must be set down as they suggested themselves, immediately on the page, thoughts and feelings expressed without revision. Charles Churchill, who would become England's best known satirist in the last half of the eighteenth century, declared himself to be such a poet in the second book of his satire Gotham:
Nothing of Books, and little known of men,
When the mad fit comes on, I seize the pen,
Rough as they run, the rapid thoughts set down,
Rough as they run, discharge them on the Town. (ll. 71-74) 7
The uncompromising, vigorous force of Churchill's satire and his unconcern with the opinions of others, earned him the soubriquets of the Bear and the Bruiser. His satire, of course, was directed at the public, to whom he presented himself as a plain, honest versifier casting needed light on the iniquities of the times. The verse written by other members of the Club to each other, though gentler and more intimate in tone, was no less immediate and honest. Cowper's own 'Epistle to Robert Lloyd Esq.' not only included compliments on Lloyd's own verse, but also revealed a personal reason for taking up his pen, a habit that would continue through his writerly life. He 'presume[s] to address the Muse':
…to divert a fierce banditti,
(Sworn foes to everything that's witty),
My little garrison of sense:
The fierce banditti which I mean,
Are gloomy thoughts led on by spleen.
Then there's another reason yet,
Which is, that I may fairly quit
The debt which justly became due
The moment that I heard from you:
And you might grumble, crony mine,
If paid in any other coin. (ll. 12-26)
Literary effort was the valued currency of communication between the members of the Club. And in writing to his friend, Cowper was not afraid to be open about the 'fierce banditti' of depression and anxiety that already oppressed him. The manner in which he renders these lines, however, also demonstrates the wit and lightness of touch that would, much later, make 'The Ballad of John Gilpin' so popular with readers.
In his poem, Cowper compares the 'easy jingle' of the early eighteenth-century poet Matthew Prior to Lloyd's own poetry:
Matthew (says Fame) with endless pains
Smoothed and refined the meanest strains,
Nor suffered one ill-chosen rhyme
To escape him at the idlest time. (ll. 73-6)
This approach to poetry, Cowper goes on, is suspect:
Sure so much labour, so much toil,
Bespeak at least a stubborn soil.
Theirs be the laurel-wreath decreed,
Who both write well and write full speed. (ll. 81-84)
These lines seem a comical comment, as if dashing off a verse or two requires no poetic integrity at all, but the final couplet of Cowper's poem indicates his view of Lloyd's real worth as a poet: his friend 'Nor needs his genuine ore refine/ 'Tis ready polished from the mine.' (ll. 89-90)8
The Club and Poetic Criticism
The members of the Nonsense Club both laughed at and disliked, as Cowper's comment on Prior shows, what they saw as poetry in chains: its purveyors apparently bound by rules, writing not with inspired spontaneity, but with the kind of laborious effort that negated their claims to be true poets. Two poets who were particular targets for these critics were Thomas Gray and his friend William Mason. The two men had formed what would become a lifelong friendship when Mason was a Cambridge undergraduate and Gray, who became his mentor as well as his friend, was a Fellow of Peterhouse. Gray had published his 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' in 1751; in 1757 his two odes, 'The Bard' and 'On the Progress of Poesy', followed it into print. By the late 1750s Mason had published a number of poems, including several odes, and written two tragedies, Elfrida and Caractacus.
For the Nonsense Club members, Gray and Mason perfectly exempli-fied the inadequacies of modern poets. In 1760, Colman and Lloyd published Two Odes. The first, 'To Obscurity', was a parody of the two odes Gray had published in 1757; the second, 'To Oblivion', parodied Mason's 'Ode to Memory'. In their parodies, they mocked what they saw as the outmoded, even archaic, devices used by the labouring ode-writers of the day. In addition, Gray had laid himself open to accusations of poetic arrogance: he had prefixed his two 1757 odes with a motto translated from the Greek poet Pindar, 'vocal to the intelligent alone'. 'The Progress of Poesy', which contained unexplained references to the poets of the past, including Shakespeare and Milton, particularly caused 'misunderstanding and confusion', which Colman and Lloyd seized on with delight:
Daughter of Chaos and old Night,
Cimmerian Muse, all hail!
That wrapt in never-twinkling gloom canst write,
And shadowest meaning with thy dusky veil!
are the opening lines of 'Ode to Obscurity'.9 The initial address to the 'Daughter of Chaos' echoes the beginning of Mason's 'Ode to Memory'– 'Mother of Wisdom!'– which is followed in the second stanza by 'Hail, Memory, hail!'10 In his Dissertation on the Modern Ode, published three years later, Cowper instructs the poets who wish to write odes according to 'true mechanical principles' in the art of this kind of poetic appeal: 'Whether the poet addresses himself to 'Mirth or Melancholy', or any abstract quality, he should take care that he 'breaks out in a fine enthusiasm, with an Oh, or Hail! Or some such […] expression.'11 'Daughter of Chaos and old Night' is a reference to Alexander Pope's 'Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night', the goddess 'Dulness', in his satire The Dunciad; the Cimmerian caves, in classical mythology, were sunk in gloomy darkness.12 Colman and Lloyd are poking fun not only at Gray's poetic obfuscations, the 'dusky veil' he draws over meaning, but also at his, and Mason's, frequent classical allusions, sometimes themselves obscure.
The compound epithet 'never-twinkling' is a mischievous reversal of Gray's use of 'many-twinkling' in 'The Progress of Poesy'. 13 The shorter poems of Milton, himself a user of the compound epithet, had enjoyed a renaissance amongst readers in the middle of the century: in view of this, the advice of the Dissertation would be to 'Take Milton, read his shorter poems […] wherever you meet with an epithet, more especially if it be a compound one, put it in your notebook.' To the parodists, the use of compound epithets could also be seen to result from the modern fashion of 'sensibility' and the virtues of lonely contemplation in gloomy settings. 'A Tower', Cowper wrote, tongue firmly in cheek, will be of 'an insignificant appearance that is not moss-grown as well as cloud-capt.'14 The 'Ode to Memory' contains a 'moss-grown cave', Gray's 'Elegy' an 'ivy-mantled tower'. 15
In the first stanza of 'Ode to Oblivion', the parodists include their own 'hoar and moss-grown cell' where the 'Parent of Ease! Oblivion old/ ….delightest still to dwell'. And in the first stanza of 'Ode to Obscurity', they make very clear whose poetry they are mocking: 'Heard ye the din of Modern Rhimers' bray?/ It was cool M—n: or warm G–y/ Involv'd in tenfold smoke'.
For Churchill the satirist, Mason and Gray failed in the poetic mission not only because of their perceived pusillanimous verse – am I, Churchill asks in a reference to the 'Elegy', to 'Along the Church-way path complain with Gray?'– but also because of what he saw as their unwillingness to challenge authority as he did. In his poem The Author, published in 1763, he articulates the imagined attitude of such feeble-minded poets:
'All sacred is the name and power of kings,
All States and Statesmen are those mighty Things
Which, howsoe'er they out of course may roll,
Were never meant for Poets to control.'16
Churchill uncompromisingly dismissed Mason and Gray as poets, and what he saw as their lukewarm offerings to the Muse. Colman's and Lloyd's parodies playfully criticised the perceived obscurity and artificial poetic devices in Gray's two odes and Mason's 'Ode to Memory'. Cowper's Dissertation pointed with fine comic verve at the bad habits of modern ode writers who, armed with a number of such poetic devices, could treat an ode as a mechanical entity to be produced on any topic, with apparent lack of attention to 'the warm emotions of the feeling heart'.17
Cowper's criticisms and Colman's and Lloyd's odes, though well received, were less than fair. Their composition had been prompted by genuine concerns about poetry itself, but there was a more personal reason for their dismissive attitude to Mason and Gray, made evident in a letter Cowper wrote to Joseph Hill in 1777: 'I was prejudiced; (Gray) did not belong to our Thursday Society, and was an Eaton man, which lower'd him prodigiously in our Esteem.'18 The writer of The Elegy had, unfortunately for him, attended the wrong school. And William Mason, no Eton man himself, was condemned along with his friend and mentor.
Mason, the 'Antients' and 'Pindaricks'
Amongst the criticisms Cowper levelled at ode writers in the Dissertation was their neglect of the 'Antients', those 'hum-drum old fellows', who had been a source of poetic inspiration, style and wisdom to succeeding generations of writers.19 These remarks showed how little he really knew, or in fact remembered, of William Mason's work and poetic ambition. Eleven years before the Dissertation was published, Cowper had written to Chase Price about 'an admirable thing […] just published by Mason of Cambridge […] He calls it Elfrida, a Dramatick Poem. It is written upon the Greek plan.' Having read it, Cowper had 'recommended it to 2 or 3 who may be called sound and staunch Judges of all works of genius.' 20
With due regard for the 'Antients' Mason, setting the action of his drama in ancient Britain, had made a decision to structure it according to the Greek unities: the action must take place in one setting over the period of a day. The full title of the piece was 'Elfrida; written on the model of the ancient Greek tragedy.' In a series of letters, which were prefixed to the drama in its published editions, he explained his reasoning. The story of the drama is one of doomed love, that of the heroine Elfrida and the king's henchman Athelwold, who is sent by the king to report on Elfrida's reputed beauty. Athelwold, finding her as beautiful as report says, falls in love with her and she with him. The king, who had wanted her for his queen, discovers the pair. Athelwold is killed, and Elfrida takes the veil. It was a story to appeal to modern, feeling sensibilities. In his first letter Mason makes clear that his intention had been to tell a story in which 'affections' would be raised 'rather from the impulse of common humanity, than the distresses of royalty and the fate of kingdoms'– though a king in this drama can certainly be seen as distressed and distressing others – and in doing so 'to pursue the antient method, so far as it is probable a Greek poet, were he alive, would do now, in order to adapt himself to the genius of our times, and the character of our Tragedy.' The simplicity and style of classical structure were to be put to use in the service of modern sensibilities. In his second letter, Mason points out that Milton's tragedy Samson Agonistes had itself been written on the Greek model: in spite of Mason's admiration for Milton, he felt that the great poet's play failed to appeal to his own age because it was not adapted to 'the general taste'.21
Mason's desire to bring the ancient writers before the eighteenth-century public was not confined to drama. Commenting in his second letter on the effect upon the imagination of 'the Lyric Muse', he writes that 'Few men have a strength of imagination capable of pursuing the flights of Pindar'.22 In spite of his awareness of such a lack, it was the inspiration of Pindar that was to lead, pace Cowper, to Mason's composition of perhaps his most accomplished and acclaimed ode.
Pindar, who wrote in the fifth century BC, was best known to eighteenth-century poets for his epinikia, the odes he composed and declaimed in honour of the victors at the Greek Games. Though these were events concerned with physical prowess, they were also of great religious importance, requiring a poet of high skill and moral authority to match their significance. Later classical commentators referred to Pindar's odes as 'rivers of eloquence'; he wrote with 'stately and grand rhythms'; his clauses were not 'slaves to a necessary order, but ones that are noble, brilliant and free', showing 'frequent disregard for normal sequence'.23
Pindar's poetry was rediscovered at the Renaissance. Milton greatly admired him, and the seventeenth-century poet Abraham Cowley, amongst others, translated some of his odes. 'Pindaricks', original or in translation, became a popular literary medium. The problem was that in writing such poems, these poets felt that in view of Pindar's perceived technique, they themselves had no need to be 'slaves to a necessary order', but could concentrate on writing what in their judgement was 'noble, brilliant and free', with a general disregard for any kind of regular structure. What Cowper had to say, in the middle of the following century, about poets' casual attitude to ode-writing, certainly applied to these creators of Pindaric verse.
Pindar's odes, however, with their 'stately and grand rhythms', were in fact very carefully structured, the results of 'a complex, highly developed, and conscious art' poorly understood, or not understood at all, by English practitioners.24 Almost all Pindar's odes were written in a varying number of triads. The first two stanzas of each triad, the strophe and antistrophe, were equal in number and length of lines, and in metrical pattern. The last stanza, the epode, had a different number of lines from the first two, as well as a different length of line and metrical pattern. Where an ode contained more than one triad, each epode corresponded in metre, line length and line number, just as each strophe and antistrophe corresponded similarly with the others. It is thought that in ancient Greece, when triadic lyric poetry was performed by a chorus, the strophe was sung as the chorus danced in one direction, and the antistrophe as it reversed its movement. The epode was a stationary completion of the poem. Cowper had complained in his Dissertation that modern odists were in the habit of varying line lengths disproportionately, 'pairing them together like a dwarf walking by the side of a giant', but the Pindaric method encouraged such variation in the service of the verse, as long as it was structurally controlled. Indeed, such a variation in the poetic form helped to drive and energise the work.25
In 1706 the playwright William Congreve, who had studied Pindar's poetry seriously, and discovered how carefully it was constructed, wrote that for him, not one true Pindaric ode had been produced in English. What did exist, to his obvious irritation, were numerous 'rambling and grating Papers of Verses, pretending to be Copies of his Works'.26 Congreve's criticisms resulted, for some poets, in a change of approach to the Pindaric ode. In the mid-1740s, William Collins and Mark Akenside both produced odes which show evidence of attention to Congreve's strictures: several of the odes published by Collins in 1746, for example his 'Ode to Mercy' and 'Ode to Liberty', were in sections marked as strophe, antistrophe and epode. Rather than following true Pindaric structure, Collins was in fact creating his own version of it: 'Ode to Mercy' consists of a single strophe and antistrophe only; 'Ode to Liberty' has a strophe followed immediately by an epode, then an antistrophe followed by a further epode. The poet was experimenting with Greek form, but rejecting the authentic Pindaric model.27
In contrast, two odes in Akenside's collection of 1745, 'On Leaving Holland' and 'On Lyric Poetry', conform to the model exactly. They were written in triads, strophe and antistrophe following the same rhythmic and metric pattern, while the epodes structurally matched each other. The problem with these odes, however, is their dull, unvaried line length and the absence of any sense of the excitement, drama and inspiration which were essential elements of Pindaric verse. The initial stanza, or strophe, of 'On Leaving Holland' is a complaint about the poet's uninspired sojourn at Leyden's university: the 'maternal fogs' that he refers to in the final line seem to have settled, in a most un-Pindaric spirit, on his plodding lines:
Adieu to Leyden's lonely bound,
The Belgian muse's sober seat;
Where shedding frugal gifts around
On all the fav'rites at her feet,
She feeds the body's bulky frame
For passive, persevering toils;
And lest, for some ambitious aim
The daring mind should scorn her homely spoils
She breathes maternal fogs to damp its restless flame.28
The 'true Pindarist'
We do not know if Mason had read Congreve's comments, or what his influences were in this respect, but in 1747 he produced an ode that not only adhered strictly to Pindaric structure but also, unlike Akenside's attempts, contained the lines of varying metrical interest that were essential for an ode to have any claim to follow the Pindaric model.
Mason had gone down from St John's, Cambridge, in 1746; in the following year, unexpectedly, he was nominated for a vacant Fellowship at Pembroke. His Pindaric ode, 'On Expecting to Return to Cambridge', was the result. In it, he expressed his longing to return to 'fair Learning's spiry seats', where poetry first 'my soul enchain'd', and to the social pleasures arising from converse with like souls, 'The mental music of accordant breasts.'29 The prospect of a Fellowship came to nothing, and the ode itself remained unpublished until 1797, the year of Mason's death. His adoption of the true Pindaric form in the ode, however, his conformation to strictly regulated strophe, antistrophe and epode, all containing lines of varying length, have led critics to see him as leading the vanguard of a true Pindaric renewal. John Draper wrote that 'In point of (Pindaric) structure […] Mason may be said to have been ahead of his time […] of true Pindarists he stands at the beginning of a mid-century revival.' 30
Mason was born and brought up in Hull, where his father was the vicar of Holy Trinity Church, and where he attended the local grammar school. Though the chief burden of his ode is the poet's pleasure at contemplating a return to academic life, the first stanza, or strophe, describes and celebrates the lively commercial scene he will leave behind:
While Commerce, riding on thy refluent tide,
Impetuous Humber! wafts her stores
From Belgian and Norwegian shores
And spreads her countless sails from side to side;
While from yon crowded strand
Thy genuine sons the pinnace light unmoor,
Break the white surge with many a sparkling oar,
To pilot the rich freight o'er each insidious sand…31
The language of this initial stanza creates, as Akenside failed to do, a sense of excitement, of mobile plenitude. 'Commerce […] spreads her countless sails from side to side'; the oarsmen 'break the white surge with many a sparkling oar'; the river itself is energetically 'Impetuous'. The sense of movement and purpose is reinforced by the variation in line length. Length of line, too, is matched by the poet to the events and scenes of the stanza. The 'countless sails' of the fourth line, following two shorter lines of four beats, spread themselves within a line of five beats. The subsequent line shrinks again to three beats, its length echoing the cluttered sense of the 'crowded strand' where the 'pinnace light' is moored. The excitement Mason communicates, in this initial stanza, through choice of language and sympathetic line variation, can be seen as a manifestation of the kind of poetic buoyancy for which Pindar himself was noted.
When Cowper wrote his Dissertation in the early 1760s, he was likely to have seen the book of Mason's odes published in 1756. Among them was another Pindaric ode, 'On the Fate of Tyranny': it was published many times subsequently, frequently in Robert Dodsley's famous Collection.32 Mason was no rough and ready purveyor of satire in the manner of Churchill. He was, however, in spite of Churchill's implied criticism, a staunch and vocal Whig, constantly concerned with the importance of the constitutional contract, genuine partnership between people and king, as a bulwark against tyranny. In addition, he was very ready to express his political views in verse. His long didactic poem The English Garden is not only a practical gardening guide, which was used as such by gardening friends and acquaintances, but also a political statement, in which all that is forced and rigid in garden design and practice becomes a metaphor for tyranny. For
Each plant that springs
Holds, like the people of a free-born state,
Its right fair franchised; rooted to a spot
It yet has claims to air; from lib'ral heaven
It yet has claim to sunshine, and to showers:
Air, showers and sunshine are its liberty.
(Book 3, ll. 179-184)
And he laments the damage done by insensitive gardeners, resulting in sidelong walls
Of shaven yew; the holly's prickly arms
Trimm'd into high arcades; the tonsile box
Wove, in mosaic made of many a curl,
Around the figur'd carpet of the lawn… (Book 1, ll. 397-401)
All are 'hideous wounds' given to nature by mastering mankind, as a tyrant restricts and oppresses a people.33
Mason took for the theme of his ode,'The Fate of Tyranny', the verses from the Book of Isaiah which describe the downfall of Babylon, its tyrant king, and the release of the Jews from bondage. In writing Elfrida, he had looked back to ancient Greece for dramatic form. For his ode on tyranny he looked back not only to Pindar, but also to the ancient Hebrew writings revered by the eighteenth century as sublime, for their divine provenance and elevated language. At the beginning of the century the immoderately tempered critic John Dennis had opined that of all poetry 'the ode is the most degenerated'. Poetry's purpose was to improve moral behaviour. To this end, the reader should be exposed to sublime language and noble action, in order that his own passions should be moved. What, then, in Dennis' view, could be more appropriate for the reader than to profit from the awakening of passions moved by 'The Wrath and Vengeance of an angry God?'34 In his ode, Mason used Pindaric form to tell an ancient Hebrew story, in which a vengeful Creator destroys a godless tyrant and sets His people free. In 1688, the story of Babylon's downfall had found an echo in Britain's Glorious Revolution against the threat of despotism under the Catholic king James the Second. The moral message of Mason's poem for his own times concerns the deserved end of overweening, centralised power.
The metric structure of the ode indicates the poet's willingness to experiment with form, in order best to suit it to the tenor of his text. The ode is divided into three triads. Each strophe and antistrophe consists of eight lines of varied and matching length; the fifteen-line epodes are composed of varying lines and agree structurally.
The second stanza – the first antistrophe – articulates the response of 'Nature' to the tyrant's longed-for destruction:
He falls; and earth again is free,
Hark! at the call of Liberty
All Nature lifts the choral song.
The fir-trees, on the mountain's head
Rejoice through all the pomp of shade;
The lordly cedars nod on sacred Lebanon:
Tyrant! they cry, since thy fell force is broke,
Our proud heads pierce the skies, nor fear the woodman's stroke.
Action and injunction within the poem are evoked, with dramatic brevity, in lines such as that which begins this stanza. 'He falls'– the accent itself appropriately falling on the second word – could hardly describe more briefly the deserved end of an oppressive tyrant, now reduced simply to 'He': the rest of the short line ends on the emphasised 'free', the word central to the poem's theme. The stanza's final line, in contrast, is a long six-beat line, in which Lebanon's 'lordly cedars' express joy at their release from suffering. Carefully, Mason has matched generosity of line length here to the message of the stanza, so that 'Nature' expands, becomes itself, at the tyrant's demise: the trees raise themselves skywards once more.
In the epode of the second triad the poet himself, in the role of chorus to events, describes the tyrant's history and end:
Is this the man, whose nod
Made the earth tremble, whose terrific rod
Levell'd her loftiest cities? Where he trod,
Famine pursued, and frown'd;
Till Nature groaning round,
Saw her rich realms transform'd to deserts dry;
While at his crowded prison's gate,
Grasping the keys of fate,
Stood stern Captivity.
Vain man! Behold thy righteous doom;
Behold each neighb'ring monarch's tomb;
The trophied arch, the breathing bust,
The laurel shades their sacred dust:
While thou, vile outcast, on this hostile plain,
Moulders't a vulgar corse, among the vulgar slain. 35
The epode's short lines enable an intense distillation into personifica-tion of 'Famine'and 'stern Captivity', the horrors of the despot's reign. The last two lines again expand to describe the tyrant's present state, his corpse cast unceremoniously beyond Babylon's destroyed city walls. Stripped of power, this is the tyrant's final reality. Again, in this ode, Mason demonstrated a capacity not only to follow the Pindaric model, but also to invest his poem with the poetic energy that was the sine qua non for any professed imitator.
Mason the Whig
We can, in addition, sense in the voice of the writer his own passionate response to the downfall of all tyrants, represented here by the Babylonian oppressor. Mason, who became an Anglican priest, had been brought up by a clergyman father who was also a Whig. At an early age he had been introduced to the works of the seventeenth-century Whig philosopher John Locke. 'No government', Locke had written, 'can have a right to obedience from a people who have not freely consented to it.'36 The reference in his epode to 'neighb'ring' monarchs, their 'sacred dust' honoured by 'trophied arch' and 'breathing bust', indicates Mason's belief that kings could certainly exist, and had their uses, as long as they were kept in check. In September 1761, in his role as royal chaplain, only days before the coronation of the young king George the Third, he would preach a sermon at St James's, before king and court, which in the guise of religious exposition articulated such a view.
Mason took for his text part of verse iii. 17, from the Second Epistle to the Corinthians: 'Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' True Christianity, he claimed, can only flourish in a country where there is political freedom. Indeed, the two are interdependent: 'If, by the Spirit of the Lord, we understand the influence of true Religion, and by liberty, the advantages of Civil Freedom, the text will import to us a most important general truth […] that a land of liberty is the only one favourable to the true cultivation of (the) religious principle.' In support of his theme, and at the same time flattering his hearers, not least the king, he quoted from Montesquieu's L'Esprit des Lois, a book whose message would contribute to the birth of the French Revolution: 'There is a nation on the globe', Montesquieu had written, 'the very fundamental object of whose constitution is political freedom.' Many of the Reverend Mason's audience would have read Montesquieu's book, which had been published in English in 1750, and would immediately understand to which nation he referred : 'They will instinctively perceive […] that it is not far from every one of them.' We are not the unfortunate French, Mason implies, oppressed by an uncaring monarchy, but a country where political enlightenment flourishes, with a new king who will surely know his place. His sermon concludes with a reference to the king himself, who in being crowned will also be affirming his loyalty to the constitution: 'Our gracious Sovereign is about to confirm to us these our natural rights by the sanction of a solemn oath taken upon the Gospels of Christ.' In other words, George, he is saying, if you appear to renege on the power-sharing promise of 1688, you will offend not only your countrymen, but God Himself.37
Mason was no 'Bear' or 'Bruiser' in the style of the pugnacious and self-advertising Churchill. He was, however, more modestly, consistently prepared to express and animate his political stance through his writing. The themes and images of his verse, and the manner of their exposition, make frequent reference to his political view. And in his sermon before the coronation of the new king, he was able to accomplish what Churchill, himself an ordained priest, could never have done. Seizing his moment, he produced a sermon that was, in truth, a spiritually directed political broadcast. In view of Mason's royal audience, it was a bold act.
Churchill and his Nonsense Club cronies had publicly criticised the poetry of Mason and his friend Gray. Cowper's attitude to the verse of the old Westminster head boy, however, would prove to be equivocal. In a letter to William Unwin, possibly written in March 1780, he referred to the 'natural unforced Effusions of Genius' of 'Churchill, the great Churchill', who 'deserved the name of Poet.'38 A few months later, in January 1781, Cowper began writing his series of moral essays, of which Table Talk was one. In this poem, he makes a different kind of reference to Churchill and his approach to verse-making:
Surly and slovenly, and bold and coarse,
Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force,
Spendthrift alike of money and of wit,
Always at speed, and never drawing bit. (ll. 682-685)39
For Cowper, his old friend's natural gifts had been corrupted by his careless attachment to a playboy's life. Having deserted his wife, become a member of the Hell Fire Club, eloped with a girl half his age, and allied himself with the notorious and politically ambitious rake John Wilkes, he had to resign from the ministry. It is unsurprising that in his verse Cowper, the anxious Christian, should shake his head at the perceived waste of Churchill's poetic talents.
Something more is suggested here, however. Many years before, Cowper had asserted that 'Theirs be the laurel-wreath decreed/ Who both write well and write full speed.' Now the last of these methods, claimed by Churchill as authentication of his poetic sincerity, has become instead, for Cowper, inadequate, 'slovenly', created by 'mere force' and 'always at speed.' We have seen that in later years he confessed that much of the prejudice against the poet Gray felt by the youthful members of the Nonsense Club sprang, trivially, from his attendance at the wrong school. Cowper's own poetic efforts over time had shown him the impossibility of constantly writing 'at full speed'. In 1784 he would begin his translation of that most revered of 'Antients', Homer. It would take him six years to complete. Long ago, he had admired Mason's Elfrida, with its creative dependence upon Cowper's admired 'Antients'. The success of 'The Fate of Tyranny' was demonstrated in its frequent re-publications. That it was thought well of is evident from a reference to Mason by Thomas Nevile, who referred to its author in his own Imitations of Horace, published in 1758: 'Mason, who writes not with low sons of rhyme/ But on Pindaric pinions soars sublime' (ll. 9-10). 40 Might Cowper look differently now at the poet who had ambitiously revived, with effort and to acclaim, the form and style of Pindar?
Cowper, Mason, and the idea of freedom
Mason was a committed Whig, whose politics informed his verse. His belief about what was required of a monarch was echoed by Cowper himself in lines from the poem in which he had criticised Churchill's approach to writing poetry. 'Man made for kings! Those optics are but dim/ That tell you so – say, rather they for him', Cowper writes in Table Talk ( ll. 55-56). More than this, religion, as Mason claimed in his sermon at St James's, can only live where men are free:
Freedom has a thousand charms to show
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
The mind attains, beneath her happy reign,
The growth that nature meant she should attain…
Religion, richest favour of the skies,
Stands most reveal'd before the freeman's eyes…
The soul, emancipated, unoppress'd,
Free to prove all things and hold fast the best…
Religion, virtue, truth, whate'er we call
A blessing – freedom is the pledge of all. (ll. 260-287) 41
Cowper's belief that 'freedom is the pledge of all' explains his sympathy with the aims of the Yorkshire Association, a Whig-led movement for parliamentary reform set up late in 1779, and in which Mason was actively involved. It was created in protest at what was seen as monarchical interference in parliamentary affairs, the favouring of placemen sympathetic to the king, and general waste of public money. Mason, whose rectory was at Aston in Yorkshire, whole-heartedly involved himself in the cause, regularly making speeches and chairing meetings. There were high hopes that reform might be achieved, but in the end very little changed. At some distance from Yorkshire, and assessing the situation from his armchair, Cowper was very much aware of the existence of the organisation and the justice of its aims, criticising, in a letter written early in 1780, 'The undue Extension of the Influence of the Crown, the […] Displacing of Men obnoxious to the Court, […] the Waste of Public Money.'42 He took, however, as W.B. Hutchings has pointed out, a balanced view. He understood the need for protest, this particular 'attack upon excessive executive power', but feared public disorder as a result. 'Freedom' for Cowper, as Hutchings writes, was the necessary foundation for a civilised society, as long as it was 'guarded by wholesome laws responsibly applied.'43 He need not have been concerned: the Whig gentry who made up the Association were far more inclined to robust speech than to riot.
There was a particular aspect of freedom, however, to which both poets would address themselves publicly, through speech and the pen. Both abhorred slavery, and publicised its iniquities. Cowper articulated its ugliness and brutality in poems such as 'The Negro's Complaint', and his moral satire 'Charity'. Mason, through his activities in the Yorkshire Association, became the associate and friend of William Wilberforce, the great advocate of abolition. In 1788, the year in which Cowper published 'The Negro's Complaint', he preached a sermon in York Minster for which he took the text 'For we also are his offspring' (Acts xvii. 28). In it, he refers his audience to that 'horrible […] opinion, which, resting itself on argument that can go no deeper than the very […] tincture of the skin, has led many, who yet call themselves Christians, to treat beings of the same divine origin with themselves, even worse than […] they treat the beasts that perish.'44
Mason articulated his abhorrence not only as a preacher, but also as a poet. In the same year that he preached his sermon he wrote an ode, 'November the Fifth, 1788', commemorating the centenary of the arrival in Britain of the Protestant William and Mary, and the departure of the threat of Catholic oppression under James the Second. In his ode, Mason celebrated the return of 'freedom' to Britain, but he also questioned its meaning in an enlightened society:
May then that nation hope to claim
The glory of the Christian name
That loads fraternal tribes with bondage worse than death?
Tell them, they vainly grace, with festive joy
The day that freed them from Oppression's rod,
At Slavery's mart who barter and who buy
The image of their God. 45
As in his sermon at St James's, freedom and Christianity were presented as inseparable. How can either flourish where the savage hypocrisy of the slave trade degrades national life? Mason asks the question that Cowper, in all his poetic comment on slavery, is also putting: can this be called a civilised Christian nation, where freedom itself is corrupted?
As a member of the Nonsense Club, Cowper had enjoyed the fellowship of other youthful writers, his old school friends, sharing their dedication to the value of unforced verse. With them, he wittily condemned in print the poets, such as Mason and Gray, whose arduous poetic labours, in their view, destroyed the true spirit of poetry. Consideration of the legacy of the classical writers which Cowper felt was missing from the work of modern odists was, however, a central concern for Mason, as he showed in his writing. The pusillanimous attitude to politics attributed to him by Cowper's literary colleague Churchill was also unfounded. From childhood, Mason had absorbed the Lockean belief in the duty owed by a monarch to his subjects, a view shared, as his poetry shows, by Cowper himself. And he was moved enough not only to make use of a sermon to instruct a new king in his political obligation, but to actively involve himself in the attempts of the Yorkshire Association to control monarchical power. In spite of Cowper's youthful dismissal of Mason, the two men were not only to share a political outlook and a hatred of slavery and those who dealt in it, but also a willingness to publicise their views in their poetry. And time and experience would eventually convince Cowper of the inevitability of poetic effort, the impossibility of always writing 'at full speed'.
Mason, a sociable and committed priest, died at his rectory in Aston, Yorkshire, in 1797; Cowper, the victim of imagined religious persecution, died in Norfolk three years later. They were very different, as poets and men. If, later in their lives, they had met, how much might they have found to say to each other, long after the Nonsense Club had ceased to exist?
1 9 June 1786, The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, vol. II, eds. James King and Charles Ryskamp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 563.
2 30 April 1785, op. cit., p. 346.
3 c. 1754, op. cit., vol. 1 (1979), p. 74.
4 The Connoisseur, no. 111 (11 March 1756), op. cit., vol. V (1986), p. 4.
5 Ibid., no. 138 (16 September 1756), op. cit., p. 24.
6 Lance Berelson, The Nonsense Club (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 119.
7 Robert Anderson, The Works of the British Poets, vol. X (1795), p. 454 (books.google.co.uk).
8 Poetical Works of William Cowper, ed. H.S. Milford, 3rd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), pp. 266-8.
9 The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins and Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Roger Lonsdale (London: Longmans, 1969), p. 158; 'Ode to Obscurity' and 'Ode to Oblivion' can be accessed on http:// spenserians.cath.vt.edu
10 The Works of William Mason, vol. 1 (London, 1811), pp. 19-20.
11 King and Ryskamp, op. cit., vol. V, pp. 36, 35.
12 The Dunciad in Four Books (1743), Book One, l. 12 in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (1963), (London: Routledge, repr. 1992), p. 721.
13 l. 35, in Roger Lonsdale, p. 166
14 King and Ryskamp, op. cit., p. 38.
15 Mason, vol. 1, p. 21; 'Elegy', l. 9 in Lonsdale, p. 119.
16 The Author, Book One, pp. 6-7 (http:// galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/Eighteenth-Century Collections Online).
17 Op. cit., p. 36.
18 20 April 1777, op.cit., vol. 1, p. 268.
19 Op. cit., vol. V, p. 33.
20 1 April 1752, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 183.
21 Mason, vol. II, pp. 177-8, 182.
22 Ibid., p. 182.
23 Quintilian, in Pindar, ed. William Race, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p.1; Dionysius of Halikarnassos: de Compositione 22 in Race, pp. 25-6.
24 Robert Shafer, The English Ode to 1660: An Essay in Literary History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1918), p. 155.
26 William Congreve, A pindarique ode, humbly offer'd to the Queen (…) To which is prefix'd, a discourse on the pindarique ode (London, 1706).
(Eighteenth-Century Collections Online).
27 Lonsdale, pp. 437, 441.
28 Mark Akenside, Odes on Several Subjects (London, 1745), p. 39 (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online).
29 Mason, vol. 1, pp. 31-2.
30 John Draper, William Mason: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Culture (New York: New York University Press, 1924), p. 149.
31 Mason., vol. 1, p. 30.
32 Robert Dodsley's A collection of Poems by Several Hands was published in three volumes in 1748: by 1758 it had grown to six volumes. Dodsley wished 'to preserve to the public those poetical performances, which seemed to merit a longer remembrance than what would (…) be secured to them by the Manner wherein they were originally published'.
33 Mason, vol.1, pp. 268, 225-6.
34 John Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704) (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 20, 68-9.
35 Mason, vol.1, pp. 46, 48.
36 Mark Goldie, John Locke: Two Treatises of Government (1689) (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), p. 213.
37 Mason, vol. IV, pp. 30-40.
38 March 1780?, op. cit., vol.1, p. 319.
39 Milford, p. 15.
40 Thomas Nevile, Imitations of Horace, p. 93 (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online).
41 Milford, pp. 6-7.
42 Letter to William Unwin, 13 February 1780, op.cit., vol. 1, p. 314.
43 W.B. Hutchings, 'William Cowper and 1789', in The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 19, The French Revolution in English Literature and Art Special Number (1989), 71-93, pp. 75, 80.
44 Mason, vol. IV, p. 180.
45 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 77.
(J6 Article Addison)
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RCP Sales Manager Cristina Fantechi and Paulina Sowa from Ironmonger's Hall recently took part in The Moonwalk London, a 26.2 mile night time walk around the capital city, aiming to raise £6m for breast cancer causes.
Cristina and Paulina completed the marathon dressed in unicorn and elephant themed outfits in just 7.30 hours. Having smashed their initial target of £750, the girls managed to raise a total of £1,250 with generous donations from colleagues, friends and family.


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Summertime Safety Tips | Greening Law, P.C.
There's no doubt about it, summer is in full-swing. As we continue to see record high temperatures around the country, people are flocking to summertime activities to have fun and to beat the heat. At GreeningLaw P.C., we want everyone to get the most out of their summer, but we also want to remind everyone out there to stay safe with some summertime safety tips.
The first danger you're going to encounter in any Texas summer is the heat itself. With temperatures regularly running over 100 degrees, Texas summers can be especially brutal. That's why it's important to remember to keep yourself safe and cool to avoid the three most common heat-related ailments: heatstroke, heat exhaustion and heat cramps.
A person who is experiencing heatstroke will have extremely hot skin and an altered mental state, ranging from slight confusion to unconsciousness and seizures. Removing excess heat from the body is crucial to that person's survival.
Symptoms of heat exhaustion are similar to those of the flu and often include severe thirst, fatigue, headache, nausea, vomiting and, sometimes, diarrhea. Other symptoms include profuse sweating, clammy or pale skin, dizziness, rapid pulse and normal or slightly elevated body temperature.
Untreated heat exhaustion can turn into heatstroke, so make sure to treat the person quickly.
Pools are a great way to beat the summer heat, but it's important to remember to keep yourself and your family safe. The CDC estimates that about 3,500 people die due to unintentional drownings every year, and about one in five of those people are age 14 and younger.
Secure your pool with appropriate barriers. Completely surround your pool with a 4-feet high fence or barrier with a self-closing, self-latching gate.
Keep children under active supervision at all times. Designate a person to be responsible while people are in the pool and never let anyone to swim alone. Younger and inexperienced swimmers should wear a USCG-approved life jacket.
Make sure that everyone knows how to swim by enrolling them in age-appropriate water orientation and learn-to-swim courses.
Establish and enforce rules such as no diving, staying away from drain covers, always swimming with a buddy and not running near the pool.
Ensure everyone in the home knows how to respond to water emergencies by purchasing safety equipment and taking water safety, first aid and CPR courses.
Texas' lakes and rivers offer other great ways to have fun during the summer, but safety must be a concern here as well, especially when boating. The U.S. Coast Guard recorded more than 4,000 accidents that involved over 600 deaths, 2,600 injuries and approximately $42 million dollars' worth of property damage as a result of recreational boating accidents in 2015.
Be Aware of the Weather – Always check local weather conditions before departure. If you notice darkening clouds play it safe by getting off the water.
Follow a Pre-Departure Checklist – Proper boating safety includes being prepared for any possibility on the water. Following a pre-departure checklist is the best way to make sure no boating safety rules or precautions have been overlooked or forgotten.
Use Common Sense – This means operating at a safe speed at all times (especially in crowded areas), staying alert at all times and steering clear of large vessels and watercraft that can be restricted in their ability to stop or turn. Also, be respectful of buoys and other navigational aids, all of which have been placed there to ensure your own safety.
Designate an Assistant Skipper – Make sure more than one person on board is familiar with all aspects of your boat's handling, operations, and general boating safety. If the primary navigator is injured or incapacitated in any way, it's important to make sure someone else can follow the proper boating safety rules to get everyone else back to shore.
Make Proper Use of Lifejackets – Did you know that the majority of drowning victims are the result of boaters not wearing their lifejackets? Make sure that your family and friends aren't part of this statistic by assigning each member of your party with a life jacket prior to departure.
Avoid Alcohol – Practice boating safety at all times by saving the alcohol for later. The probability of being involved in a boating accident doubles when alcohol is involved, and many studies have shown that the effects of alcohol are exacerbated by sun and wind.
The summer months can be an especially fun and memorable time, but it's important to remember to have fun safely by following the tips discussed above. Unfortunately, even if you follow all the rules, others can ruin your summer due to carelessness and/or negligence.
If the worst happens and you or a loved one is injured as a result of someone else's negligence or because of unsafe equipment (e.g., pool, hot tub, jet ski, etc.), you may be entitled to compensation. Contact us for a free consultation. We will review the elements of your case, discuss the possible compensation you may receive, and suggest the best course of action.
GreeningLaw P.C. is recognized as one of the leading person injury law firms in Texas. Contact us today to book a free consultation and let us handle your case so you can focus on what matters most to you.


Recorded live this past weekend in Las Vegas at the Blog World new media exposition, PJM Political host Steve Green interviews frequent PJM contributor Austin Bay about the upcoming new edition of his book, A Quick And Dirty Guide To War.
Also at Blog World, pioneering Blog author and veteran talk radio host Hugh Hewitt discusses last week's tightening poll numbers for John McCain with Ed Driscoll.
James Lileks explores the recent cybercrimes perpetrated against Sarah Palin.
And Steve Green explores Joe Biden's gaffe-o-matic excesses from the start of this week.
Tune in to Pajamas' new PJTV channel for plenty of additional Blog World coverage throughout this week. If you missed any previous episodes of PJM Political, click here and scroll through for hours of audio archives.


Historical Documents, Institut Franis de Washington: Cahier I, The Treaties of 1778, $2.50; Cahier II, Lafayette in Virginia, $2.50; Cahier III, L'linfanl and Washington, $3.00. Kditcd hy Gilbert Chinard. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Colonel William Smith and Lady. By Katherine Metcalf Roof. Boston: Houghton Midlin Company. $5.00.
The revival of interest in our early history which the last dozen years have witnessed, has brought about certain curious phenomena. None is more so than the tendency for picking up odd bits of information about various characters or events, appending them to documents usually already well studied and published, and printing the result with a loud hurrah. This has been done with increasing frequency during the past few years, both under the guise of scholarship and in those books designed, as they say, to make a lowbrow feel highbrow. To be sure, it is difficult for a country to accumulate very much history in three short centuries of existence. Doubtless this offers an excuse for studying and restudying such as we have.
Three volumes have recently been issued under the patronage of the Institut Franis de Washington, with the diligent M. Chinard as editor. The Institut, described as "an association to promote in the United States of America the study of French civilization and history, literature and art, and to preserve the memory of French contributions to the development of American civilization"—an aim which at other times and in the other cases has been anathematized as propaganda—has published, as its "Cahier I," "The Treaties of 1778," which have many times received the attention of able scholars and arc here rejuvenated with an introduction by .Tames Brown Scott. The contribution consists in the preamble taken from a minute in the handwriting of Charles Thompson, recently found in the Library of Congress.
Cahier III, "L'Enfant and Washington," "published and unpublished documents now brought together for the first time," assembles Washington's letters and L'Enfant's reports, earlier printed in the "Records of the Columbia Historical Society," and scattered letters in other publications, with certain new material, chiefly from the L'Enfant-Digges-Morgan Collection at the Library of Congress. It is interesting to have all this together, but the added documents do not in any, way change the conclusions already reached by Jusserand in 1916 in his "Major L'Enfant and the Federal City," here reprinted as an introduction. L'Enfant remains the proud, quixotic, difficult genius; it is still hard to see how the authorities could have acted otherwise than they did.
In Cahier II, "Lafayette in Virginia," the papers are all unpublished but certainly add little to our knowledge, as indeed the editor indicates when he remarks with a modesty bordering on inferiority complex: "Such as they are, the historical and human value of these documents amply seems to warrant their publication." They confirm that Lafayette showed real abilities, and that Jefferson (contrary to charges still current in spite of frequent refutation from the evidence) seconded him quite as effectively as his military successor in the Governorship, General Nelson.
In "Colonel William Smith and Lady" Katherine Met-calf Roof has written a book that is at once annoying and full of human interest. From the mange of published and unpublished papers out of which the author has evolved the biographies of William Smith and his wife, only daughter of John Adams, the journal and letters of Abigail Adams emerge as the most interesting document. These, first published in 1841, have, of course, long been known to students of the period. Abigail's fresh comments on European society and manners, her naive acceptance of the superiority of New England to heaven itself, as when she says, "After all, neither Mount Edgcomb nor Plymouth, or any other place I have seen in Europe, will bear comparison to Milton Hill," are, however, as diverting today as when they were directed to her friends in 1787. It is unfortunate that the author has felt it necessary to dress up the forthright charm of these old letters with comments that can only be described as somewhat saccharine and cheaply witty.
various political posts to which his distinguished father-in-law succeeded in having him appointed, Colonel Smith became involved in the Miranda expedition. The author takes occasion to lay all blame for this and for the Colonel's subsequent trial for violation of the neutrality laws of the United States, at the door of Thomas Jefferson, who has recently likewise served as scapegoat, at the hands of another writer, for Edmond Charles Gen, quite overlooking the fact that the charges against the executive were withdrawn by the very man who had presented them to Congress. The popular sport of baiting Jefferson goes on with happy, indifference to any documents except those favorable to the authors' contentions. It is so comforting to their biographers not to blame L'Enfant's chimerical insubordination, Genet's overweening rashness, Burr's ambiguous ambitions, and Smith's amiable mediocrity, but to saddle all their failures on the shoulders of Jefferson.


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Samba 3.6 server was not able to authenticate to my Windows 2012 domain controller.
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Is this a compatibility between Samba 3.6 & W2K12 DC?
Is there a workaround or solution?


Winter is very real in Munich this year, with 10 to 15 degrees below zero and plenty of snow for weeks now. As a Swede I kind of like it.The cold weather definitely puts me in the mood for hot comforting soups, which is also how I get serious about my January detoxing. Ticking both boxes, this caraway and red beet soup is a new favourite. It is also both super simple and quick to make.
Wash the red beets, cut off any extra rough ends but don't peel them. Cut them into small cube sized pieces (so they boil quicker) and place in a medium sized pot.
Add ½ litre water, the caraway and cumin seeds, the garlic cloves and the bouillon and bring to the stove. Boil for fifteen or so minutes (until the red beets are tender).
Carefully pour everything into your blender - or use a hand mixer if you prefer - and run for a minute until completely smooth. Transfer back to the pot and place it on the stove on low heat. Add a little more water, a cup or so, if needed for consistency (the soup should be rather thick, but not like a puree).
Taste and add a little more bouillon of needed as well as salt and freshly cracked black pepper. If you are not vegan, you can choose to add a little shredded parmesan too.
Serve with a generous dollop of your choice of yoghurt and plenty of dill.


text:
Home Opinion Editorials Liberian Security Not Ready to Replace UNMIL
Liberian Security Not Ready to Replace UNMIL
In less than a year's time the United Nations peacekeeping force, UNMIL, is scheduled to depart Liberia at the completion of its mission here. UNMIL has already more than a year ago started scaling down its operations.
Its troops are expected to be replaced by Liberian security, led by the Liberia National Police (LNP).
This "completion" of UNMIL's mission became highly questionable last Saturday morning, to the utter embarrassment of our President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, just as she was attending the funeral of Liberia's Ambassador to London, Rudolf von Ballmoos.
But who cared that the President had been embarrassed and exposed? The officers of the LNP and the President's own personal bodyguards, the Executive Protection Unit (EPU), started quarreling among themselves, even violently, at Broad Street, just a few yards from where the President and other top officials joined the bereaved family at the late Ambassador's funeral.
President Sirleaf, upon hearing of the clash between her two closest security forces, ordered an immediate investigation. Her swift action was a clear indication that she was aware of the gravity of the incident. If the very people hired and paid to protect the President, her immediate family and the nation itself are publicly fighting among themselves, even while the President and her government are at an official function, can she rely on them to protect her?
These EPU officers—and their LNP counterparts—fail to understand that once you cut off the head of government, the rest is fair game. Is that not what happened in 1980?
The vile behavior of these two security organizations clearly demonstrates that they are NOT ready to defend either the President or even the country.
There are certain basic intangibles (things one cannot see or touch) that are prerequisite to the proper performance of any duty. The first is efficiency. One has got to know one's job and do everything possible to perform it well and to the best of one's ability.
The second is self-control. There may be on any job many distractions, not least among them provocations (things that make one angry) that can occur at any time on any job. The important thing here is to control oneself and one's temper, otherwise one becomes totally distracted from what one is doing and loses control. That clearly is what happened to the EPU and the LNP last Saturday.
The third essential on duty is a high sense of responsibility. How responsible were these two top security organizations in maintaining presidential and state security last Saturday? They clearly acted in a most irresponsible manner, putting at risk the President, her official entourage and, by the same token, the state.
The heads of these two organizations, Chris Massaquoi and Frank Nyenkan, we are afraid, will have a hard time defending themselves and avoiding summary dismissals. For clearly what happened on Saturday is tantamount to a very bad reflection on the leadership and rank and file of both organizations.
Alas, these organizational heads have been let off the hook! The President has suspended not them but only their "commanders." Does either Commissioner Massaquoi or Nyenkan have the honor to resign?
Remember what happened a few years ago when a man jumped over the White House fence in Washington, D.C.? The White House, the President and his immediate family are by law protected by the Secret Service. The Head of the Secret Service, taking full responsibility for what happened, promptly resigned.
Some time ago we published an editorial that followed remarks by the UN Secretary General's former Special Representative, Karen Landgren. In order for the LNP and other security agencies to be ready to protect Liberia when UNMIL departs, she said, these agencies must demonstrate the highest integrity.
In our editorial that followed, we pleaded with the LNP and its Inspector General, Chris Massaquoi, to take seriously the SRSG's advice. We suggested he first ensure that his men and women manning the traffic demonstrate the highest degree of integrity and self-respect. In other words, they should STOP demanding money from motorists, wheelbarrow boys, taxis and others.
In that editorial, we acknowledged the need to improve the salaries and working conditions of police officers; though that is never an excuse for corruption.
Last Saturday's incident is a clear and serious indication that our security agencies are NOT ready to replace UNMIL. The government must carefully weigh its options in this 11th hour of UNMIL's time here and take the necessary action to defend this vulnerable republic.
Previous article'Don't Panic'
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Are/Were There Any Lessons Learnt from the December 8 Poll Results?
The Violent Attack on the US Capitol by A Riotous Mob Must Be Condemned by All Well-Meaning World Leaders, Including President Weah
Can Newly Elected Senators Stand Up to the Salala Rubber Corporation (SRC) Land Grab?
Julius Tarnue on Liberian Scholar Launches Book on Dual Citizenship
Smith Whyte on 'These Times Call for A New Caliber of Liberian Patriots'
Patrick Sargbeh on Liberian Scholar Launches Book on Dual Citizenship
Health Minister Lauds Rotary Clubs for Contribution to COVID-19 Fight
China Donates Medical Supplies to NPHIL

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


SafeChoice Super Clean is a highly concentrated, all-purpose cleaner/degreaser. It is not toxic, odor free, dye free and biodegradable. It contains no phosphates, alkalines, acids, ammonia, butyl ethers, chlorine bleach, nor any chemical scents used to mask the odors caused by such harsh compounds. It will not irritate sensitive skin, nor does it give off noxious fumes. Yet it is strong enough for industrial strength cleaning chores.


You are surely known to this, from where you get the solar energy. Off course the answer is really simple you get the solar energy from the sun. The radiation that comes from the sun gives you solar energy. Well still there is a debate related to the power of solar energy. Do you know that an hour's energy of the sun is sufficient for n year? If not then it's time for you know that if you get an hour energy of the sun, it is sufficient enough to provide you electricity throughout the year.
There are so many solar energy companies out there even you can find a good solar energy company in UAE. People like to cut the cost, the energy they use they have to pay for that energy. Now if they will use solar energy that will be so beneficial for them because it will cut the cost of electricity.
You think that there are only pros of solar energy system, well if you are thinking that then you are wrong as there are some cons of it as well. Here you will get to know about its positive and negative aspects.
When you talk about the renewable energy resources then surely you can count on the sun power. Off course sun is always there so you can access the energy anytime. If you think that you can run out on solar energy then you are wrong, since sun is there you don't have to worry about the solar energy. Some of the positive aspects of solar energy are.
You definitely need energy to light up your house. To meet the energy needs it is better o find o the alternative way, the best is to go for the solar energy. Solar energy decreases your electricity bills. Now when it will reduce the electricity bill, you will be paying less for the energy consumed and you will save money from it.
Another amazing benefit you get is that the maintenance cost is always low. You don't have to spend much.
Well when you think of buying a solar energy system then you have to bear the huge cost. As the cost of solar energy is high, you have to pay high price for it. You can buy solar panels in Dubai but yes you have to pay a higher price.


text:
Watch Now: CBS 6 Noon News CBS 6 TV Schedule
Virginia AG: Decriminalize marijuana possession, shift to legal and regulated use
Posted 11:45 pm, June 16, 2019, by Web Staff, Updated at 09:01AM, June 17, 2019
RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring wants to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and those who were previously convicted for having the drug as well as eventually legalizing and regulating its use in the Commonwealth.
Herring made the case against criminalizing minor marijuana possession and eventually legalizing its use in an op-ed published in Sunday's Daily Press.
Herring argued the state's current policy is "needlessly creating criminals" and in turn burdening Virginians with convictions.
In fact, the attorney general's office pointed out that first time marijuana convictions have risen 53% -- from 6,533 in 2008 to 10,000 in 2017 -- over the past decade.
In addition, marijuana possession have skyrocketed 115% from around 13,000 in 2003 to nearly 28,000 in 2017, officials said.
Additionally, the cost of criminal enforcement is estimated at $81 million a year.
"The human and social costs are enormous, in addition to the millions of dollars it costs Virginia taxpayers," Herring wrote. "And the negative consequences of the current approach fall disproportionately on African Americans and people of color."
African Americans comprised 46% of all first offense possession arrests from 2007 to 2016, despite comprising just 20% of Virginia's population and despite studies consistently showing that marijuana usage rates are comparable between African Americans and white Americans, according to the Virginia Crime Commission,
"We can't avoid the conversation any longer, especially when our current system continues to saddle Virginians with convictions and even jail time, and black Virginians at a strikingly disproportionate rate," Herring wrote. "It is time for Virginia to embrace a better, smarter, and fairer approach to cannabis."
Love Virginia restaurants? Listen to Eat It, Virginia!
Subscribe to the Eat It, Virginia! podcast. Email feedback and questions to EatItVirginia@gmail.com.
Topics: Controversy, Crime and Justice, Health and Wellness, Mark Herring, Richmond
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Virginia AG speaks at cannabis conference amid push for marijuana decriminalization
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Instagram Local
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Why marijuana might be a key ingredient in upcoming Virginia elections
Attorney General Herring on human trafficking in Virginia: 'We will be relentless'
Hemp in Virginia grows toward the future
Herring reintroduces bills aimed at cracking down on hate crimes
Attorney General: Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions have 'no legal effect'
Virginia attorney general urges justices to prevent tragic rally violence
Attorney General's response to 2nd Amendment sanctuary resolutions: 'Gun safety laws will be followed'
Herring to introduce bills to address hate crimes in Virginia
Illinois governor pardons more than 11,000 people for low-level pot offenses
Virginia Supreme Court upholds Northam's gun ban at Capitol Square


text:
import sys
import logging
import os
import ssl
import hashlib

from Config import config
from util import SslPatch
from util import helper

class CryptConnectionManager:
    def __init__(self):
        # OpenSSL params
        if sys.platform.startswith("win"):
            self.openssl_bin = "src\\lib\\opensslVerify\\openssl.exe"
        else:
            self.openssl_bin = "openssl"
        self.openssl_env = {"OPENSSL_CONF": "src/lib/opensslVerify/openssl.cnf"}

        self.crypt_supported = []  # Supported cryptos

    # Select crypt that supported by both sides
    # Return: Name of the crypto
    def selectCrypt(self, client_supported):
        for crypt in self.crypt_supported:
            if crypt in client_supported:
                return crypt
        return False

    # Wrap socket for crypt
    # Return: wrapped socket
    def wrapSocket(self, sock, crypt, server=False, cert_pin=None):
        if crypt == "tls-rsa":
            ciphers = "ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES128-SHA256:HIGH:"
            ciphers += "!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DSS:!DES:!RC4:!3DES:!MD5:!PSK"
            if server:
                sock_wrapped = ssl.wrap_socket(
                    sock, server_side=server, keyfile='%s/key-rsa.pem' % config.data_dir,
                    certfile='%s/cert-rsa.pem' % config.data_dir, ciphers=ciphers)
            else:
                sock_wrapped = ssl.wrap_socket(sock, ciphers=ciphers)
            if cert_pin:
                cert_hash = hashlib.sha256(sock_wrapped.getpeercert(True)).hexdigest()
                assert cert_hash == cert_pin, "Socket certificate does not match (%s != %s)" % (cert_hash, cert_pin)
            return sock_wrapped
        else:
            return sock

    def removeCerts(self):
        if config.keep_ssl_cert:
            return False
        for file_name in ["cert-rsa.pem", "key-rsa.pem"]:
            file_path = "%s/%s" % (config.data_dir, file_name)
            if os.path.isfile(file_path):
                os.unlink(file_path)

    # Load and create cert files is necessary
    def loadCerts(self):
        if config.disable_encryption:
            return False

        if self.createSslRsaCert():
            self.crypt_supported.append("tls-rsa")

    # Try to create RSA server cert + sign for connection encryption
    # Return: True on success
    def createSslRsaCert(self):
        if os.path.isfile("%s/cert-rsa.pem" % config.data_dir) and os.path.isfile("%s/key-rsa.pem" % config.data_dir):
            return True  # Files already exits

        import subprocess
        cmd = "%s req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -sha256 -batch -keyout %s -out %s -nodes -config %s" % helper.shellquote(
            self.openssl_bin,
            config.data_dir+"/key-rsa.pem",
            config.data_dir+"/cert-rsa.pem",
            self.openssl_env["OPENSSL_CONF"]
        )
        proc = subprocess.Popen(
            cmd.encode(sys.getfilesystemencoding()),
            shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, env=self.openssl_env
        )
        back = proc.stdout.read().strip()
        proc.wait()
        logging.debug("Generating RSA cert and key PEM files...%s" % back)

        if os.path.isfile("%s/cert-rsa.pem" % config.data_dir) and os.path.isfile("%s/key-rsa.pem" % config.data_dir):
            return True
        else:
            logging.error("RSA ECC SSL cert generation failed, cert or key files not exist.")
            return False

    # Not used yet: Missing on some platform
    """def createSslEccCert(self):
        return False
        import subprocess

        # Create ECC privatekey
        proc = subprocess.Popen(
            "%s ecparam -name prime256v1 -genkey -out %s/key-ecc.pem" % (self.openssl_bin, config.data_dir),
            shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, env=self.openssl_env
        )
        back = proc.stdout.read().strip()
        proc.wait()
        self.log.debug("Generating ECC privatekey PEM file...%s" % back)

        # Create ECC cert
        proc = subprocess.Popen(
            "%s req -new -key %s -x509 -nodes -out %s -config %s" % helper.shellquote(
                self.openssl_bin,
                config.data_dir+"/key-ecc.pem",
                config.data_dir+"/cert-ecc.pem",
                self.openssl_env["OPENSSL_CONF"]
            ),
            shell=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, env=self.openssl_env
        )
        back = proc.stdout.read().strip()
        proc.wait()
        self.log.debug("Generating ECC cert PEM file...%s" % back)

        if os.path.isfile("%s/cert-ecc.pem" % config.data_dir) and os.path.isfile("%s/key-ecc.pem" % config.data_dir):
            return True
        else:
            self.logging.error("ECC SSL cert generation failed, cert or key files not exits.")
            return False
    """

manager = CryptConnectionManager()

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Kitten Natividad (nascuda Francesca Isabel Natividad; 13 de febrer de 1948) és una actriu de cinema mexicano-americana, ballarina exòtica i actriu pornogràfica. Destaca pel seu bust de 44 polzades (112 cm) i les aparicions en pel·lícules de culte fetes per la seva ex-parella, el director Russ Meyer.

Primers anys
Francesca Isabel Natividad va néixer el 13 de febrer de 1948 a Ciudad Juárez, Estat de Chihuahua, Mèxic. Era la gran de nou fills. La Natividad no parlava anglès fins als 10 anys. En aquell moment, la seva mare es va casar amb un ciutadà dels Estats Units i es van traslladar a Texas. Natividad va estudiar al Ysleta High School a El Paso, on va ser la seva presidenta de classe senior.

Després de traslladar-se a Califòrnia, va treballar tant com a minyona i com a cuinera per a Stella Stevens, i després com a perforadora de targetes per a IBM, abans d'acabar ballant com a gogó per arribar a final de mes. En aquest moment, va adoptar el nom artístic de "Kitten" Natividad, que provenia de la seva timidesa.
L'any 1969, als 21 anys, es va operar per primera vegada d'un implant mamari a Tijuana (on era legal) aconsellada pel seu agent.

Carreres professionals
Natividad, aleshores coneguda principalment com Kitten, va ser presentada a Russ Meyer per la seva companya ballarina Shari Eubank, intèrpret de la pel·lícula Supervixens de Meyer del 1975. Meyer la va contractar per narrar la seva pel·lícula Up! En ella es mostrava asseguda nua en un arbre, citant la poesia de Hilda Doolittle, i actuant com a cor grec a l'acció sense sentit. Meyer va quedar tan impressionat que volia que ella protagonitzés el seu proper llargmetratge, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, una de les diverses col·laboracions entre Meyer i el crític de cinema Roger Ebert. Meyer va pagar una segona millora dels pits i classes de veu per eliminar el seu accent. A causa dels tràgics resultats de les seves cirurgies de millora dels pits, va lamentar profundament el que li havien fer. Va deixar el seu marit per Meyer durant el rodatge, i van viure junts com a parella durant la major part dels següents 15 anys.

Després d'això, Natividad es va dedicar al modelatge pornogràfic, principalment fent filmacions de glamour o noia-noia amb persones com Candy Samples, Uschi Digard i Patty Plenty. Les aparicions van augmentar els seus ingressos de ball moltes vegades. Va incorporar una copa de xampany gegant al seu acte, semblant a la que havia utilitzat Lili St. Cyr, acompanyada per l'èxit de Bobby Darin "Splish Splash". Va aparèixer com a convidada a The Dating Game, un dels nombrosos espectacles de joc produïts per Chuck Barris.

Durant la dècada de 1980, Natividad va començar a aparèixer en produccions pornogràfiques, limitant inicialment les seves actuacions a aparèixer en topless. Finalment, però, es va graduar per participar en actuacions hardcore, generalment amb homes i dones més joves. Ha tingut una reacció d'intèrprets de burlesc perquè feia vídeos hardcore. També va fundar l'estudi privat de fotografia i vídeo anomenat "The Kitten Klub". El seu lloc web ara està tancat. Va aparèixer com a stripper a la festa de solter celebrada per Sean Penn per celebrar el seu matrimoni el 1985 amb Madonna.

El 2001, Natividad va protagonitzar la comèdia de pel·lícula de culte The Double-D Avenger, dirigida per William Winckler, i en ella es va reunir amb les seves companyes de repertori de Russ Meyer Haji (de Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) i Raven De La Croix d' Up!. A The Double-D Avenger, Kitten Natividad interpretava Chastity Knott, una dona que es converteix en una tetona lluitadora contra el crim disfressada..
El lloc web pornogràfic Brazzers està negociant el seu retorn a les actuacions hardcore.

A la cultura pop
 Natividad va aparèixer a The Gong Show a finals de la dècada de 1970 i a The $1.98 Beauty Show, tots dos, com The Dating Game, van ser produïts per Chuck Barris. (Barris va presentar The Gong Show; Rip Taylor va presentar The $1.98 Beauty Show; i Jim Lange va presentar The Dating Game).
 Va aparèixer en un vídeo musical de la dècada de 1980 per a la versió de Mitch Ryder de la cançó "When You Were Mine", que va ser escrita i composta per Prince.
 L'agost de 2006, Natividad va aparèixer en un disseny de Playboy, "The History of Bikinis".

Vida personal
L'octubre de 1999, Natividad es va sotmetre a una cirurgia de doble mastectomia per al tractament del càncer de mama. Després de l'extirpació dels seus pits, es va descobrir que la silicona que s'havia utilitzat en els seus implants quan s'havia sotmès a la seva cirurgia de 1969 era de grau industrial en lloc de grau quirúrgic. Posteriorment es va sotmetre a una cirurgia correctiva, i això la va apropar a la mida que els seus fans recordaven que havia estat.

A principis d'agost de 2016, vivia sola amb un pitbull i tres gats, tots ells presentats a la pel·lícula documental de 2005 Pornstar Pets, i va continuar mantenint-se amb la venda dels seus vídeos porno i sexe telefònic. Va aparèixer al llargmetratge independent d'Adam Rifkin A Night at the Golden Eagle; segons ella, Rifkin recordava haver-la reconegut quan els seus cotxes es van aturar al mateix semàfor 25 anys abans.

Filmografia seleccionada
Kitten Natividad ha aparegut en més de 65 pel·lícules i produccions de vídeo. Els aspectes més destacats de la carrera i les principals característiques de l'estudi inclouen:

 1972: The New Centurions
 1976: Up!
 1979: Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens
 1976: Deep Jaws
 1982: Airplane II: The Sequel (no acreditada)
 1982: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (no acreditada)
 1983: My Tutor
 1984: Night Patrol
 1984: The Wild Life
 1985: Takin' It Off
 1985: Bodacious Ta Tas
 1985: An Evening with Kitten
 1986: The Tomb
 1987: Takin' It All Off
 1990: Another 48 Hrs.
 1990: 40 The Hard Way
 1993: Titillation 3
 1993: Buford's Beach Bunnies
 1996: United Trash
 1997: The 120 Days of Bottrop
 2001: The Double-D Avenger
 2001: Night at the Golden Eagle
 2009: Nightbeats
 2017: Fags in the Fast Lane
 2019: 70 the Hard Way

Referències

Enllaços externs

 Web oficial

Actors pornogràfics estatunidencs
Actors de cinema estatunidencs
Persones de Ciudad Juárez
Models eròtics estatunidencs
Models eròtics americans
Naixements del 1948
Morts el 2022

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


For help on non-PK alignment, type HELP ALIGNMENTHELP.
deathknight, may still attack other players.
Note that it is possible to duel with other players using the DUEL command.
whether you are lawful or chaotic.
To convert to Law after choosing Chaos, see the HELP CONVERT file.
### Bob chooses to adhere to the order of LAW!


text:
Variation of seismic source parameters and stress drops within a descending slab and its implications in plate mechanics
Chung, Wai-Ying and Kanamori, Hiroo (1980) Variation of seismic source parameters and stress drops within a descending slab and its implications in plate mechanics. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 23 (2). pp. 134-159. ISSN 0031-9201. doi:10.1016/0031-9201(80)90008-4. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20141217-080309620
Full text is not posted in this repository. Consult Related URLs below.
A least-squares searching technique has been developed to estimate the source dimensions of intermediate and deep focus earthquakes using azimuthal variations of body wave pulse-widths. With this method and also amplitude data, modes of rupture propagation, seismic moments, and stress drops of 17 intermediate and deep focus earthquakes in the Tonga-Kermadec region have been determined in order to investigate variations in source properties and the state of stress within the descending slab there. Three different modes of rupture; unilateral, bilateral, and circular faults, are compared and tested against observations. Results indicate that the unilateral fault is the best model for most of the earthquakes studied. Stress drops of the 17 events vary within a very large range, from 20 bar to about 4.6 kbar, and change significantly with depth. The magnitude of stress drops for depths between 220 and 430 km is very much higher than at shallower depths. This change in stress drop magnitude at about 220 km-depth seems to reflect a change in material properties both in the mantle and within the slab. Two regions of high stress drop are observed at depths of about 360 and 640 km. A relative minimum of stress drop is found at about 450–560 km where the earthquake frequency is particularly high. Earthquakes at the northern end to the Tonga arc, where the Benioff zone is laterally bent, show systematically higher stress drops than other events at comparable depths, but away from the bend. Also, events in regions of low seismicity appear to have higher stress drops than those in regions of high seismicity. The upper bound of seismic efficiency is found to decrease with depth, implying an increase of frictional force with depth at the earthquake source.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0031-9201(80)90008-4 DOI Article
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031920180900084 Publisher Article
Kanamori, Hiroo 0000-0001-8219-9428
© 1980 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company. Received August 28, 1979; accepted for publication November 12, 1979. We would like to thank Don Anderson, Bernard Minster, Tom Ahrens, Sean Solomon, Nafi Toksoz, and Keiiti. Aki for helpful discussions. Karen McNally and John Ci par who critically reviewed the manuscript and made suggestions for improvement are also appreciated. The research work of this paper was done at Caltech under the support of the Division of Earth Sciences, National Science Foundation, NSF Grant EAR 76-14262. The typing and final writing was done at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at M.I.T. under the support of the Advanced Research Project Agency, Contract F4462075-C-0064 which was monitored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
NSF EAR 76-14262
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) F4462075-C-0064
Wai-Ying Chung, Hiroo Kanamori, Variation of seismic source parameters and stress drops within a descending slab and its implications in plate mechanics, Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, Volume 23, Issue 2, August 1980, Pages 134-159, ISSN 0031-9201, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0031-9201(80)90008-4. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031920180900084)


text:
TWITTER_CLIENT = Twitter::REST::Client.new do |config|
  config.consumer_key        = ENV['REGISTRY_TWITTER_KEY']
  config.consumer_secret     = ENV['REGISTRY_TWITTER_SECRET']
end

Koala.config.api_version="v2.10"

# Koala.config.api_version="v2.10"


I can't believe we are talking about this again. Another mass school shooting, this time taking the lives of 17 people in a Florida high school. When are school shootings going to stop? My heart breaks for all those affected by these senseless acts. Enough is enough.
After these horrific shootings, as parents we are left wondering: What should I tell my kids? Should I address this with them? How should I talk to them about these senseless and clueless acts?
Remember that children sometimes need to ask the same question over and over and over again to process and absorb tough or difficult information like this. Be patient and ready to answer the same questions many times.
2. Bring it up to your older children. They are going to hear about it anyway, and you want to make sure their questions are answered and any fears are addressed.
The first step would be to ask them what they've heard about it, ask them questions and invite them to ask you questions. It is perfectly ok to tell our kids that we don't know why people decide to do these horrible things. Some people do awful, senseless, painful, irreversible and unexplainable things.
Thankfully, there are many more good people than bad people in the world. Remind them what Mr. Rogers always said "look for the helpers." Make sure they see how people come together after these types of events, show them the first responders, policemen, emergency workers, ambulance crews, blood donors, anonymous heroes that protect their fellow citizens, people who raise money to support the victims, etc. It is amazing to see how kindness and love always rise up after these heartbreaking shootings, and our kids need to understand how resilient human beings are, and that love always wins.
3. Validate your children's fears. Don't make the mistake of dismissing their fears, you want them to open up with you, so you can help them cope. If you respond with a "you're going to be fine," or "don't worry about it", we risk them shutting down.
Instead, we can say something like "It's OK to be scared and sad, I feel that way too sometimes when things like this happen." We should speak honestly about our feelings about school shootings, so our children understand that they are not alone in feeling those big feelings.
4. Reassure your children that they grown ups around them and their school have plans in place to do everything they can to keep them safe.
Discuss with them the safety procedures that are in place in their school. You can remind them that all the school doors are locked at all times, security cameras are located all around the school, and that all visitors need to sign in the front office before entering the building. It is also good to remind them how their school has drills to teach them how to react in case something goes wrong.
Even though, numbers are not in my favor, and in less than 2 months, there had already been 19 school shootings in the US; I truly hope we will never have to use this, and mass school shootings are a thing of the past. I hope our representatives take action and find the best way to end this senseless masacres once and for all.
Next: Next post: Isn't peaceful parenting the same as permissive parenting?


text:
Home » Fashion » Léa Seydoux Stars in a Sexy New Bag Campaign for Louis Vuitton
Léa Seydoux Stars in a Sexy New Bag Campaign for Louis Vuitton
It has been five years since French Actress Léa Seydoux first teamed up with creative director Nicolas Ghesquière for her Louis Vuitton campaign debut. Now, the longtime brand ambassador is kicking the term femme fatale up a notch for her latest batch of ads, photographed by Steven Meisel and styled by Marie-Amélie Sauvé in Paris.
With her natural, glowing beauty on display, Seydoux elegantly lays nestled between the sheets embracing the new Capucines in black Taurillon leather. Leaving little to the imagination, the stunning imagery focuses on the intimate relationship between a woman and her handbag.
Still, this particular purse is far from your average sleek design. Named after Rue Neuve-des-Capucines, the address where Louis Vuitton opened his first store in 1854, the new iteration of the beloved classic bag focuses on timeless elegance and exquisite craftsmanship.
"The Capucines represents the essence of French savoir-faire," Seydoux said via statement. "There is no brand more iconic than LV. It is such an honor to work with Nicolas. I always feel welcome and we have so much fun collaborating together."
When asked where she plans to take her new Capucines once the world fully opens back up, Seydoux has the perfect answer ready.
"My Capucines bag will join me as I travel the world to reunite with my friends. I can hardly wait! " Seydoux, of course, is part of elite group, now officially joining the ranks of leading ladies who have been featured in not one, but countless campaigns for the fashion house, including Michelle Williams and Alicia Vikander to name a few.
Fashion lovers who are looking for something unique when bag shopping this spring might want to listen up. According to Seydoux, this bag also has a very special feature.
"You can't even imagine everything I have inside. In that tiny secret pocket, I hide my secret lucky charm, something I always carry with me," Seydoux told InStyle exclusively. As we all navigate a new normal this season, we for one, will take all the luck we can get, and look forward to making use of this tiny secret compartment.
We can't wait to see the full range of 10 colors and three sizes when the stunning collection officially hits stores April 1st. The one Seydoux snuggles is the black Taurillon leather variation, which retails for $5,100, and will be available at select Louis Vuitton stores, 866.VUITTON, and louisvuitton.com.
Khloe Kardashian & Daughter True, 2, Twin In Matching $525 Burberry Swimsuits: 'Vacation Vibes' — Pics
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Barnardo's on 'White Privilege'
Big fat cunting for this once great charity, set up by, you guessed it, a white philanthropist Dr Thomas Barnardo. Remember a few years ago when it pronounced that UKIP members were unfit to be adoptive parents? Well I fucking well do!
Now it has bought out this – "If you're a parent or carer, grandparent or guardian, we're produced a helpful guide to speaking to children about the subject of 'white privilege'."
Cunters can check it out here in all its depraved detail here: https://www.barnardos.org.uk/blog/white-privilege-guide-for-parents
Christ on his proverbial bike, indoctrinating poor little orphans about their privilege has got to be a new level of mental sickness.These fucking Barnado's cunts need to have their closest relatives die and then be preached at not to be so selfish. Or perhaps they just need introducing to Unkle Terry's oven asap.
First alerted to this horror via this https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/barnardo-s-and-the-myth-of-white-privilege-
Nominated by: Twenty Thousand Cunts Under the Sea
72 thoughts on "Barnardo's on 'White Privilege'"
Backstreet Cunt on November 21, 2020 at 8:53 pm said:
My partner who is of Indian decent works for one of the biggest banks in the world recently told me it's common practice to not even interview white men for roles due to the pressures in hiring woman and people from ethnic backgrounds. That's white privilege for you
Uncle Joe's new TV show.
You Ain't Black.
L.O Norm-just watched Utd highlights on YouTube-fucking lucky cunts. Saved by V.A.R and the woodwork.
Can you remember when they were this bad at home?
Norman on November 21, 2020 at 11:11 pm said:
I'd have to go back to 1988-89, CG. When we had Jim Leighton, Ralphie Milne, Colin Gibson. The early Fergie years were shite.
Wouldn't it be a turn up if Mourinho won the title with Spurs?
Nothing would give me greater pleasure👍
It would show the Glaziers and Woodward up for the cunts they are and give Jose some deserved respect.
My best mate is a Gooner-we both agreed that the best thing to happen to the Premier League was Van Dyke bring out for the season, as it opens it up.
We also both agreed that because of Covid, this year is extra-ordinary and almost doesn't count.
Twenty Thousand Cunts Under the Sea on November 22, 2020 at 10:18 am said:
Footie without fans present is bollocks.
Sounds like a Lammy/Henry scenario is needed and we defund
the cunts.


We have covered page creation and displaying data.
As the amount of the content and pages increases, navigation is important so that a user does not get lost deep in a site.
gatsby-source-plone provides Breadcrumb and root Navigation data, making this task fairly simple.
Since breadcrumbs depend on the page you are in, it needs to be dynamically created for each page.
So the approach is to query it in each page as they are created and pass it on to the Breadcrumb component.
Here items is an array of items where each one is a breadcrumb.
This data can be appropriately styled and used in a breadcrumb bar.
This is the common topbar in all the views of the site.
It allows quick jumping between root folders (depending on customization).
Unlike breadcrumbs, we can use a static query here (which queries data initially and then just uses existing data).
Similar to breadcrumbs as mentioned above, we get an array which can be used to display the navbar.