Jason Fish
Michel Thomas, decorated vetern of World War II, polyglot linguist and teacher of multiple languages, was born on February 3, 1914. Thomas lived through incarceration in a number of Nazi concentration camps following his service in the French Resistance. He also worked with Army Counter Intelligence Corps of the United States during that time. Following the conflict, Thomas moved to the U.S. where he created a language education system called the Michel Thomas Method. He was eventually awarded the Silver Star by the United States Army in 2004.
He was born in Poland into a wealthy Jewish family that owned textile factories. When Thomas was seven, his mother and father dispatched him to – what was then – Breslau, Germany where he easily settled in. The surge of the Nazis forced him to depart for the University of Bordeaux in France in 1933, and afterwards the Sorbonne in Paris and also the University of Vienna.
Michel Thomas’ biography provides a record of his years during the war. When France was defeated by the Nazis, he fled to Nice – mostly neutral under the Vichy government – and joined the French Resistance movement. He was detained repeatedly, and shipped to several Nazi slave labor and concentration camps. Eventually, Thomas was placed in the Camp des Milles, near Aix-en-Provence. In August 1942, he secured his discharge from Les Milles employing forged paperwork and made his way to Lyon, where his responsibilities for the Resistance included enrolling Jewish refugees for organization. In January 1943, he was detained and interrogated by Klaus Barbie. He was let go after persuading a Gestapo official that he was a French artist and apolitical. Thomas later testifed at the 1987 trial of Barbie in Lyon, even though the doubted Thomas’ accounts regarding the “difficulties of identification” because of the length of time which had elapsed. In February 1943, following an arest, torture, then subsequent release by the Milice, the Vichy French paramilitary militia, he signed up with a commando group in Grenoble, aiding the OSS and started to work for the Army Counter Intelligence Corps of the United States.
Once the Dachau concentration camp was liberated in 1945, Thomas discovered the location of the Hangman of Dachau – Emil Mahl – who Thomas charged 2 days later. With CIC colleague Ted Kraus, he later arrested Nazi SS Major, Gustav Knittel. Mahl and Knittel were eventually found guilty of war crimes, with Mahl given a death sentence and Knittel given life life in prison (despite the fact that both sentences were later commuted). Thomas likewise designed an undercover sting after the war; an operation which triggered the capture of many ex-officers of the S.S. A 1950 Los Angeles Daily News write-up credits him with the seizure of as many as 2,500 Nazi war criminals. Within the last week of WWII, Thomas took part in the recovery of a cache of Nazi documents which had been transported by Nazi leader in order to pulp them at a German paper mill. The cache included a membership card file of at least 10,000,000 Nazi party members…worldwide.
Once the the war ended, Thomas found out that his mother and father and the majority of his relatives had died at Auschwitz.
In 1947, Thomas moved to Los Angeles, California, where some cousins lived. He launched a school of language in Beverly Hills which he named: the “Polyglot Institute.” Subsequently, he renamed the school to “The Michel Thomas Language Center.” There, Thomas created a language-teaching system, called the Michel Thomas Method, which he said allows students to become conversationally proficient in just a handful of days. His clients included celebrities, as well as diplomats and industrialists. The prosperity of the institution resulted in tours an additional school in New York City, together with a line of instructional books and tapes in Italian, French, Spanish and German. Upon Thomas’s death in 2005, his CDs, books and tapes had become the foremost technique of recorded language learning in Britain. In 1997, he took part in a BBC documentary, called “The Language Master,” during which he successfully tutored French to a class of young students in less than a week – in spite of the students having no prior exposure to the French language.
Michel Thomas stayed single until late in his life. He married California school teacher, Alice Burns. She gave birth to a daughter and a son before the marriage ended in divorce.
In 2001, when the L.A. Times released an account which cast doubt on his war record, he sued the newspaper without success for defamation. In 2004, after archival documents and current testimonies from Thomas’ surviving WWII compatriots were given to the United States Army by Senator John McCain and Representative Carolyn Maloney, Thomas was presented with the Silver Star. The award was given to Thomas by former Senator Robert Dole and Senator John Warner at the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C.
On January 8, 2005, Michel Thomas died of heart failure at New York City home – a month before what would have been his 91st birthday.
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Booker Prize winner, “The God of Small Things,” takes on the Big Themes.
Madness.
Love.
Infinite Joy.
Racism.
Hope.
Ground-breaking writer, Arundhati Roy, is one who dares to challenge the rules and break with convention. She dislocates trite rhythms and remakes the language as she requires it; a language that is on one hand, classical, and on the other, utterly original. Arundhati Roy has written a book which is moored to the reality of life, but fueled by humor and magic.
“They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. ”
In the year 1969, on the southern edge of India in the state of Kerala, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is trapped on the highway in the midst of a demonstration by Marxist workers. Two-egg twins Esthappen and Rahel watch from inside the car, and that’s where the story begins.
Equipped solely with the innocence of children, the siblings fashion a childhood for themselves in the shadow cast by the wreckage that is their family. Their lovely but lonely mother, Ammu, loves a man by night that her children love in a different way by day. Ammu’s mother – Esthhappen and Rahel’s grandmother – is the blind Mammachi, who plays Handel on her violin. Their much loved uncle, Chacko, is bottom-pinching, radical Marxist who is a Rhodes scholar and also a pickle baron. The children’s oft adversary, Baby Kochamma, is their grand-aunt; an former nun. And then there’s the spector of an imperial entomologist and his moth – one with unusually dense dorsal tufts.
When their cousin from England (Chako’s daughter), Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, land at the airport to visit over Christmas, the children discover that “Things Can Change in a Day.” That their normal lives can drop away forever; twisted into a newer, yet malevalent shapes, all the while still residing by their “graygreen” river. With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.
Arundhati Roy’s novel is plotted skillfully and brilliantly, uncoiling in a way that leaves the reader feeling anxious in the face of inevitability. However, there is nothing that can prepare the reader for what lies at the center of it all.
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The art movement known as Cubism produced what was possibly the most important artistic and visual styles of the 20th century – and certainly the most important of the early 1900s. The movement and form was established by Spaniard, Pablo Picasso, together with Frenchman, Georges Braque, in Paris, France between 1907-1914. It was the art critic, Louis Vauxcelles, who actually termed the movement “Cubism” and not it’s creators. Vauxcelles did so soon after viewing the landscapes Braque had painted in 1908 at L’Estaque. He named the geometric style in those extremely abstract pieces “cubes.” The influences which sparked Cubism have been traced to non-Western works; African primitive art being the most apparent influence. In fact, the stylized and distorted forms of Picasso’s innovative “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”), which he completed in Paris in 1907, was derived directly from African artworks. Picasso initially encountered African work the Spring of 1907 when he discovered the ethnographic museum in the Palais du Trocadéro in Paris.
Cubist artists invalidated the widely accepted notion that art ought to duplicate the natural work, and that painters must embrace the conventional techniques of foreshortening, modeling and perspective. These artistic pioneers desired instead to highlight the two-dimensionality of their canvases. Thus, they minimized and broke the objects in their works into geometric forms, realigning them inside a shallow, relief-like frame. Additionally, they employed numerous, and often contrasting, vantage points.
In Cubist paintings, from its origins and up to 1910, the topic of a work was basically apparent. Even though objects and human figures had been dissected (or analyzed) into a great number of smaller aspects, they were eventually reassembled to suggest those same objects and figures. But throughout what has come to be known as “Analytic Cubism” – which lasted until about 1912, Picasso and Braque abstracted their paintings to such a degree as to reduce them to merely a number of crossing planes. The painters’ color palette during this period was mostly uniform, consiting of monochromatic brown, gray, and/or black hues. During this time, Picasso and Braque often blended representational motifs with alphabetic letters. Their favorite motifs remained still lifes with musical instruments, glasses, bottles, newspapers, pitchers, playing cards, and the human form. Indeed, landscapes during this period were very rare.
Then, during the winter months of 1912-13, Pablo Picasso produced a myriad of papiers collés. This new approach consisted of pasting colored or found pieces of printed paper onto their works. With this, Picasso and Braque obliterated three-dimensional space for good. As opposed to Analytic Cubism, where the tiny elements of a dissected form are put back together to suggest that form as it appears in life, Synthetic Cubism’s bits of paper themselves allude to a certain object or form – sometimes because they are cut out in the ideal shape or in other cases because they possess a visual element which points out the correlation.
Even though Picasso and Braque were the acknowledged creators of this new visual language, it became widely implemented and evolved by many artists, including Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Metzinge, as well as Diego Rivera. Although principally linked to painting, Cubism even proved to be an important influence on 20th century architecture and sculpture. In fact, the abandonment of formal methods begun by Cubism was a precursor to later art movements such as Dada and Surrealism, and for many artists in Germany, Holland, Italy, England, Russia, and the United States, who sought to paint in abstraction.
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Located in the heart of Spain’s Costa del Sol (Sun Coast), is Marbella. It’s become one of the Mediterranean’s most popular tourist cities and a must for Medi travelers. Marbella was once just a modest, white-painted village of fishermen, but today it’s among the most modern and sophisticated places on the Costa del Sol, and host to one of the top sports ports on the Mediterranean, Puerto Banus. That’s where you’ll see yachts anchored which belong to the world’s most rich and famous people. The greater Marbella area is nestled in the middle of the western Costa del Sol, in between the sierras of the coastal mountain range and the sea to which it looks out along 24 kilometers of coast.
Marbella’s outstanding yacht harbors, medical facilities, golf courses, hotels, etc. – along with its proximity to the airport in Malaga – are key features. The town also boasts excellent roads, and a gorgeous, safe and distinct, historic urban setting. Because it’s a center of residential and holiday jetsetter, with its millionaires and celebrities, Marbella remains a clean and secure town with well-maintained boulevards, tropical parks and gardens.
Although Marbella is a modern town, it’s full of history, going back more than 3,400 years! So it is reasonable to state that there’s a small part of history to be found around each corner of the “old town”, including its Moorish castle and renowned “Orange Square”. The historical old quarter, with its Andalucian and Moorish styles, can be enjoyed with its flower-filled balconies and narrow roads. Strong scents intoxicate you with each turn you make. There’s something for anyone in Marbella, from the magnificent natural environment and exceptional shoreline to its most upscale resorts and fabulous restaurants, offering refined cuisine from around the globe.
In the thin, winding pedestrian streets and squares of old town Marbella, relaxing with a cool beverage, eating tapas and strolling through the small art galleries and shops are definitely the primary activities. You’ll hear the sound wafts from a local music school and the pace is easygoing. If you enjoy the nightlife, down the hill near the beaches, a formerly dilapidated neighborhood is now the an enticing clubbing area.
The country of Spain features a rich selection of gastronomic delights which can only be caused by its distinctive cultural and climactic diversity. Food in Spain is family cooking, usually prepared with fresh ingredients. The paella, together with gazpacho and ajoblanco, are the common dishes. There is also the “pescaito frito” fried fish, which is starting to become well-known to visitors.
Spain’s Costa del Sol has long been recognized for the finest weather in the whole of Europe, with 320 days of sun every year and temperatures ranging from 61 degrees to 86 degrees Fahrenheit – and that’s year-round! Because of its geographic situation, it has a remarkably moderate microclimate, because it’s protected by the striking Sierra Blanca mountain range, and a cosmopolitan environment, because of the mix of nationalities, races and religions which coexist side-by-side in Marbella.
With its blessed weather, luxurious hotels, magnificent sports facilities, Marbella is a locale to be reckoned with. There are several big cities close by with many different cultural spots to check out, including: Sevilla, Ronda, Malaga and Granada. And because Marbella faces the coast of Africa, you’ll find frequent short trips available departing from Algerciras.
Fantastic beaches, excellent weather and a distinctive offering of sports, food and entertainment – it’s hard not to guarantee wonderful memories with a trip to Marbella!
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Tinkers by Paul Harding
Paul Harding’s Tinkers thoroughly exams living and dying, its accuracy frequently reflecting that of the protagonist while he works to repair clocks. The book, even though thin in inches, delivers a lot of detail within the closely twisted prose. The men of a few generations of the New England family share only 191 pages, structured around George Washington Crosby while he lies on his death bed. The author features the grand scope of a saga about family, however Harding offers it with a scientist-like attention to detail, identifying the complex wheels of memory that turn in the mind of his characters..
Telling, is that George works as a clock repairman, for what’s a clock but an embodiment of existence in its allocated hours and minutes. It is under the face of the clock that more understated workings are taking place, and it is primarily as George moves in between living and dying that he is capable of seeing so clearly the significance of the times in his own life which have ticked by and are now gone. Paul Harding’s assessment is anything but monotonous, because with his mindful guidance an entire world is revealed, loaded with dynamics as well as meaning.
The author’s lucidity is usually poetic, and also at times, mind-blowing, particularly when outlining George’s father, Howard, who journeyed in the back country, selling products who also suffered epilepsy.
The prose of Tinkers rings of seizure and shock, of frigidness and frozen action. A severe ailment is changed into a lyrical rush of alliteration and evaluation, while remaining frightening. The book is stuffed with such short, powerful moments of illumination and self-examination, and both of them spotlight the fear and shock of living while pointing to the persistent ticking down of a one’s life.
In the course of the prose, the narration switches between George, Howard, and Howard’s dad, and each one has their own specific ordeals. It all begins when “George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died,” and it is not a secret that George won’t be around at the conclusion of the novel. While George lies in this deathbed, flanked by loved ones, Harding moves in and out of George’s awareness to inform the reader of George’s epileptic dad, Howard, while touching upon Howard’s own dad.
He was a pastor whose psychological capacities steadily diminish, eventually informing his church members that the devil may not be all that bad. The reader is told that Howard had never really entertained the notion of informing his son about his dad, and it is probably that gap amongst the 3 generations which leads to George’s odd feeling of physical selfhood.
This is a distinct tempo about the recollections folks are left with, and in Paul Harding’s world they include many topsy-turvy yet reasonably ordered things. George’s meticulous focus on timepieces assumes additional proportions whenever the author details his father’s and grandfather’s detachment from their physical embodiments, due to the fact, in Tinkers, one’s body isn’t what’s important, because it is not everlasting. Instead, what remains are recollections, even though Harding’s focus on mind over body certainly raises questions regarding just how long memories themselves remain, even while the author’s prose goes right to the circumstances in which it may be handed down through family.
At one point during this lustrous book, George attempts to create a tape recording of his own words, retelling his history. But as he concentrates on his mundane retelling of the cold, hard truth of his lifetime, the words smack as stilted. So, he burns the tape because he is ashamed of the recording contents and tenor. This particular instance clearly illustrate that, although George is flanked by loved ones at his deathbed, while he gradually dies, it is unclear just how, and even if, his recollections of his father will ever be know by people who outlive him.
George’s meditations make this a novel that isn’t just concerned with death, but on the contrary, a study about life itself. It is not the story which makes the book work so much as the sentences. Each sentence strikes similar to a grandfather clock through an vacant house. The author utilizes phrases to explain the disorderly and abridged time people are given. There is a unique depth about the evaluation, and George’s final thoughts seem intelligent as well as hard-earned, not diminished by the truth that he’s lying on the very edge of living and dying. The precipice is what Paul Harding is focused on, just as if he were in possession of a magnification glass, under vivid sunshine, setting alight each page of Tinkers.
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Douglas Gibson is an award-winning composer with seventeen years of training and experience. He has constructed a diverse body of work including movie soundtracks and compositions the theater, dance, classical music ensembles, commercial projects and digital art installations.
He began his musical journey in magnificent fashion in 2001 when he conducted the full orchestra at the Sydney Opera House. Since then, his own pieces have been showcased Phoenix film festivals, Los Angeles, Sydney and Melbourne, in addition to the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre of the Moving Image. Gibson’s work has been aired on radio stations such as RRR, 3MBS and ABC Radio.
Douglas Gibson released “God Help Me I’ve Gone Mad” which was his debut recording in March of 2006 while he worked on the soundtrack for “The Line” – an Austrailian feature film. His orchestral composition “Avalanche” premiered in August 2006 at the Iwaki Auditorium and was aired on Australia’s nationwide classical music radio station – ABC Classics FM. Soon after, “Avalanche” was optioned for syndication internationally by ERM media and recorded by the Kiev Philharmonic for “Masterworks of the New Era,” a compilation CD. He released his second CD in 2009, titled: “Opening the Hand of Thought.” That same year, “Essence” – a piece written for shakuhachi, guitar, and string quartet – won a prize in the first International Shakuhachi Chamber Music Composition competition. He was also chosen to write a fresh piece for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra composers workshop. Also in 2009, Gibson was chosen to participate in the 2009 NYU/ Buddy Baker film scoring workshop. In 2007, 2008 and 2009, he won awards from ASCAP for outstanding contribution to concert music.
One of his objectives has been to actively engage the wider public in the appreciation of contemporary music and to facilitate collaboration between artists in film, music and other creative fields. In 2004, with the objective to engage a wider audience with contemporary music, he founded the Melbourne Film Composers Society. He toured New York City In 2005 with the Foreign Exchange Film and Music Festival he created. The festival highlighted an award-winning Australian film screened to live soundtrack performances. The pieces were performed by up-and-coming NYC composers. Gibson also launched The Future of Classical Music, a composers’ collective which staged a two-year series of monthly shows which spotlighted classical music at the venue, Loop, in the Melbourne, Australia.
In 2009, Douglas Gibson moved from Australia back to his native USA, and settled in New York City where he’s furthering his career as a film, television, and concert composer. Recently, he finished a brand-new ten-minute piece for Orchestra Victoria, entitled: “Mesmerized.” It had been commissioned by Symphony Australia’s emerging composers program. Most recently, in October of 2010, he made his Carnegie Hall debut, with his composition: “The Pearl Divers.”
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Watkins has debuted its list of the one hundred most spiritually influential individuals alive, which was published in the Spring 2011 Review. Yes, they’ve taken up the not so easy job of naming best loved writers and spiritual teachers whose participation in spirituality and growing consciousness has effects on all of us.
We abide in a time of where lists are popular; from groceries and obituaries, to resume details, listings of capitals cities and lottery numbers. Obviously, listings that categorize yesteryear are simpler to put together than lists which try to foresee the future. With the holy grail of sorting algorithms, the world is certain to be your oyster.
Nevertheless, the Watkins Review believes that an essential list has been lengthy overdue, and they say that they are delighted to reveal to you their list of the One Hundred Most Spiritually Influential Individuals Alive Today. Lists of important individuals promote the discussion and issues that every individual represents, and also the Watkins Review hopes their list will foster the discussions encircling modern day spirituality.
There are many elements that they took into account while compiling the list:
1) The individual has to be alive,
2) The individual has to have created a distinctive and spiritual contribution on a worldwide scale,
3) The individual is often googled, appears in Nielsen Information, and featured in blogs:
And here’s the list:
Ken Wilber
1. Eckhart Tolle
2. Dalai Lama
3. Dr Wayne W. Dyer
4. Thich Nhat Hanh
5. Deepak Chopra
6. Louise L. Hay
7. Paulo Coelho
8. Oprah Winfrey
9. Ken Wilber
10. Rhonda Byrne
11. James Redfield
12. Neale Donald Walsch
13. Doreen Virtue
14. Alejandro Jodorowsky
15. Richard Bach
16. Alex Grey
17. Byron Katie
18. Masaru Emoto
19. NelsonMandela
20. Bernie Siegel
21. Caroline Myss
22. Brian Weiss
23. Mantak Chia
24. John Gray
25. Gregg Braden
26. Stephen R. Covey
27. Marianne Williamson
28. Desmond Tutu
29. Mata Amritanandamayi
30. Philip Berg
31. Ervin Laszlo
32. Andrew Harvey
33. Don Miguel Ruiz
34. Joseph Alois Ratzinger
35. Krishna Das
36. Drunvalo Melchizedek
37. Sai Baba
38. Jack Kornfield
39. Pema Chödrön
40. T.K.V. Desikachar
41. Esther & Jerry Hicks
42. Dan Brown
43. Z’ev Ben Shimon Halevi
44. Diana Cooper
45. Ram Dass
46. Andrew Weil
47. Satya Narayan Goenka
48. Jon Kabat-Zinn
49. Alan Moore
50. Dan Millman
51. Bruce Lipton
52. Peter Kingsley
53. Karen Armstrong
54. Judy Hall
55. Colin Wilson
56. Joscelyn Godwin
57. James Lovelock
58. Satish Kumar
59. Shakti Gawain
60. Elaine Pagels
61. Kyozan Joshu Sasaki
62. Gary Zukav
63. Erich von Däniken
64. David Deida
65. Oberto Airaudi ‘Falcon’
66. Stuart Wilde
67. John Bradshaw
68. Jeff Foster
69. Patrick Holford
70. Andrew Cohen
71. Vladimir Megre
72. Thomas Cleary
73. Daniel Pinchbeck
74. Jonathan Goldman
75. Sonia Choquette
76. Seyyed Hossein Nasr
77. Mother Meera
78. Barefoot Doctor
79. Richard Bandler
80. Robert Bly
81. Adyashanti
82. Sogyal Rinpoche
83. Li Hongzhi
84. Sri Bhagavan
85. Rupert Sheldrake
86. John & Caitlín Matthews
87. Chogyal Namkhai Norbu
88. Kenneth Grant*
89. Stanislav Grof
90. James Hillman
91. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
92. Stephen Levine
93. Candace Pert
94. Barbara Ann Brennan
95. Coleman Barks
96. Robert Thurman
97. B.K.S Iyengar
98. William Bloom
99. Lynne McTaggart
100. Marion Woodman
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For more than forty years, Anselm Kiefer has put together a dynamic oeuvre in the fields of painting, sculpture and installation. The visual and metaphorical power of his artistically-varied body of work has made him one of the most important artists of his generation.
Early in the 1970s, Anslem Kiefer studied under Joseph Beuys, however he quickly started to realize his own style of art, imbued with an intentionally local range of subject matter and symbolism which he employed to explore the tangled territory of German identity and the people’s collective history. Within his physically creative vocabulary, gross materiality as well as visual sophistication invigorate his topics and themes with an abundant, lively tactility. His subjects span across origins as varied as Teutonic mythology, alchemy and the dynamics of belief itself – which are all portrayed in a staggering assortment of materials, including oil paint, lead, photographs, straw, woodcuts, models, dirt and all sorts of natural and organic materials. Through the addition of found materials applied to the painted surface of his enormous works, he creates a persuasive 3rd space, somewhere in between sculpture and painting.
Newly released work has evidenced an expanded range. In 2006 he exhibited a number of works based upon the mostly unknown writings of modernist poet Velimir Chlebnikov, who died in 1922. Not many contemporary artists can compete with Kiefer’s grand reach, and his art regularly balances potent visuals together with discerning critical analysis of his subjects.
Born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany, Anslem Kiefer has lived and worked in Provence, France for much of his career.
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The story of the English language began when 3 Germanic tribes invaded Britain during the fifth century. These tribes where know as the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons. The traversed the North Sea by way of what we know today as the northern part of Germany, and also Denmark. In those days the people of Britain spoke a Celtic language, but the majority of those people were forced north and west by the invading tribes. They fled mainly to what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles actually came from a place call “Englaland” and their language was called “Englisc.” As you might guess, it is from these words which “English” and “England” are taken.
All of the aforementioned Germanic tribes spoke comparable languages. This turned into what we call “Old English” these days. Old English didn’t read or sound like the English we know today. Modern English speakers would have tremendous difficulties comprehending Old English. Nonetheless, about 50% of the most widely used words in today’s version of English have roots that date back to Old English. “Be,” “strong” and “water,” for instance, come from Old English. It was spoken for over 500 years, up to about 1100 AD.
In 1066, England was invaded and conquered by William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, which is part of modern France. The newest conquerors, who were called “the Normans,” introduced the people to style of French, which took over as the language of the Royal Court, as well as with hthe business and ruling classes. For a period there was a linguistic class division; the lower classes spoke English and the upper classes spoke French. In the fourteenth century, English grew to be predominant in Britain once more, though with numerous French words included. This language is now known as “Middle English.”
Right at the end of Middle English, an abrupt and distinctive alternation in pronunciation began – known as the “Great Vowel Shift” – with vowels being pronounced ever shorter. From the sixteenth century, the British had connections with many countries from around the globe. That, and the Renaissance of Classical learning, resulted in several fresh phrases and words entering the language. The innovation of the printing press furthermore resulted in a common language – in print – for the first time. Books grew to be less expensive and many more learned to read. The printing press also meant a standardization of the English language. Grammar and spelling turned fixed, and also the vernacular of London – where most publishing houses were – took over as the norm. Then, in 1604, the 1st dictionary in England was published.
The primary difference among Early Modern English and Late Modern English can be found in the vocabulary used. Late Modern English features quite a few more words as a result of 2 main factors: 1) the Industrial Revolution and its outgrowth of technologies developed a need for new words; 2) the British Empire, at its most powerful, covered one-fourth of the planet’s surface, and the English language implemented foreign words from a variety of different cultures.
The English colonization of North America in the 1600s triggered the introduction of a distinctly American way of using the English language. Several English pronunciations and words “froze” once they reached The New World. In certain ways, American English is a lot more akin to the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is today. Several words and phrases that the British call “Americanisms” are actually authentic British expressions which were maintained in the colonies but displaced over time in Britain.
In contemporary times, American English is especially influential, as a result of America’s prominence in cinema, television, popular music, trade and technology. However, there are numerous alternative kinds of English worldwide, such as Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean English.
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Marseille is a city that has an ancient seafaring vocation, thus an important approach to view the sights of Marseille ought to leave from the ‘old port’ of the city. Built in a region guarded by the slopes of Saint Lorent, Moulins and Carmes and the two fortresses of Saint Nicolas and Saint Jean, it’s also a vibrant location with its wharves dating back to the 17th century, and also the sight of vivid fishing boats, the fish marketplace, along with a fantastic quantity of bistros.
Nearby you are able to go to the Musée des Docks containing examples of items dating back to the 1st century B.C., and also the Musée du Vieux Marseille, where you view a model which reproduces the town as it was in Roman times. Also specializing in nearby history is Musée d’Histoire de Marseille‘, that contains the remains of an old boat from the third century BC – found within the Old Port region.
Likewise fascinating for tourists to Marseille will be the old ‘Panier district, with the ‘Maison diamante’ and also the ‘Vielle Charité’ (XVII-XVIII century) – an architectural function by Pierre Puget and these days the house to a number of museums (such as the ‘Museum of African Arts‘ and ‘Mediterranean archaeology’), amongst which stands out the Marseille Mediterranean Archaeology Museum with its Etruscan, Roman and Egyptian artefacts (statues, votive offerings, texts on papyrus).
Equally of value will be the Musée des Beaux Arts within the Palais de Longchamp, extremely important to the artists of numerous nations, with works of art by Corot (‘View from the shore’), Courbet (‘The Deer’) , Tiepolo (‘Christ and also the adulterous woman’), Perugino (‘The family members of the Virgin’), Guercino (‘The departure of Cato from Utica’), and Rubens ( the ‘Wild-Boar Hunt’).
Completely focused on the artwork from the 12th century is the Cantini Museum, with works by Picasso (the ‘Head of a smiling woman’), Signac (‘The entrance of the port of Marseilles’), and then Ernst, Matisse and other people.
For contemporary art in Marseille go to the the Musée d’Art Contemporain. Launched in 1994, it features probably the most assorted styles, with pieces by Raymond Hains, Cesar, Orozco and Tinguely.
To the north of the river, within the Old Port, sits the nineteenth century Cathedral of the Major, built on the the site of the old cathedral, that was itself believed to have been constructed where once stood the Temple of Diana, the goddess to whom the Phoceans colonists had been especially devoted. The church was constructed about the 11th century, having a design typical of the 1st basilica in paleo-Christian churches, in Romanesque style. By decree of Louis Napoleon (1808-1873) in 1852, they demonstrated that the church would be reconstructed at fantastic expense, and also that the new Marseille cathedral be designed in a Byzantine style, with front stripes and green marble stone from Cassis.
Traveling south you are able to appreciate the historic and massive fifteenth century arsenals, which housed crews and acted as a prison. They have been largely demolished within the mid-18th century. Here we discover also the Church of Saint Victor, modified across the centuries even though dating originally to the 11th century, with 3 aisles and vaults, it possesses an awe-inspiring design, significant for the existence of 2 fortified towers along with a structure comparable to that of a castle. The inside has vintage as well as important paintings, like The Virgin by Michel Serre (1658-1733). Also fascinating are the underground crypts (13th century), wealthy in prized artifacts such as sculptures and sarcophagi.
An additional structure of sizeable value will be the Notre Dame de la Garde (nineteenth century), designed in Romanesque style with Byzantine influences: in ancient times the site was an observation post on which a chapel stood, and above which the figure of the Virgin is silhouetted against the heavens.
There’s much more to soak up than simply the main ‘Marseille attractions. To appreciate culture have a walk alongside probably the most well-known route to the city, the Canebiere (12th century) – so known as simply because it was here that industries and also merchants of hemp had been based. The Canebiere is a stylish street, with extremely stunning structures. It used to be much more lively, however these days it’s home to many retailers, and is well-liked by visitors.
The area about Marseille provides an excellent deal of sights for nature lover. You will find the spectacular Calanques down the shoreline to the east of the city which expands for dozens of miles to Cassis (or should I say kilometers?), forming a rugged Mediterranean shoreline. Also go to the stunning islands of Frioul, with the Chateau d’If, made well-known by the novel The Count of Monte Cristo by A. Dumas.
You will find numerous other extremely stunning locations and little villages where, following your exploration, you are able to taste the authentic dishes of Marseille like the well-known fish soup called bouillabaisse, along with other local favorites like the tapenade, accompanied by the Cotes de Provence white wine that’s made within the Marseille region.
I truly hope you have the opportunity to visit Marseille, along with the rest of Southern France.
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