Church Spire Research Articles

Adaptive reuse of factory chimneys – industrial heritage symbols and urban landmarks

Industrial heritage buildings and sites are seen as an important part of urban regeneration and sustainable development strategies over the last two decades for a number of reasons. Of particular note is the genius loci that accompanies them, but also the potential to attract artists and creative industries. In this sense, factory chimneys are a strong visual element and also an important symbol. At the same time, thanks to their distinctive proportions, they have also become an unmissable part of the urban structure of cities, in which they can assume a compositional and orienting role (a landmark), comparable with church spires or belfries with all due respect. In order to design adaptive reuse of the chimney, it is therefore necessary to place it in a context that is not only spatial but also symbolic, both in relation to its immediate surroundings and in a wider context. Often, however, the subject of the new use of the chimney is only raised when at least the material context of the chimney was irreversibly altered; in extreme situations, the chimney is the only surviving element of the original structure. However, the lost authenticity – the originality of the preserved building structure or technological flow – also opens up new meanings and other possibilities for the use of a solitary chimney in a transformed environment. The contribution introduces adaptive reuse possibilities of the industrial chimneys within the sustainable urban development, considering both industrial heritage values and specific chimney construction limits.

ACROKERATOSIS VERUCIFORMIS OF HOPF CLINICALLY MIMICKING AS NECROLYTIC ACRAL ERYTHEMA

Acrokeratosis verruciformis is very rare genodermatosis that was originally described by Hopf in 1931. A 29-years-old male presented to skin outpatient department with brown-colored hyperkeratotic plaques on dorsum of both feet that clinically mimicked as necrolytic acral erythema in our case. Biopsy was taken from lesion that shows hyperkeratosis, acanthosis, and slight papillomatosis along with well-circumscribed elevation of epidermis resembling church spires. No dyskeratotic cells were seen.

The digital peregrine: A technonatural history of a cosmopolitan raptor

AbstractHumans, non‐human animals, and technologies are increasingly entangled. Using the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) as an illustrative example, we propose ‘technonatural history’ as a theoretical and methodological approach for observing, describing, and examining the role technologies play in shaping human relations with other species. After nearing extinction in the 20th century, peregrines have become woven into the fabric of everyday urban life and are a frequently sighted urban raptor in the UK, nesting on high‐rise buildings and church spires since the late 1990s. Their unexpected presence in cities symbolises hope for multispecies conviviality amid the contemporary ecological crisis. As their populations resurged, crucially, webcam and livestreaming technologies developed rapidly. Peregrines were one of the first animals to be broadcast over the internet via ‘nestcams’, granting broad publics access to their intimate lives. We examine the related technological histories of livestreaming technologies and natural histories of peregrine falcons in the UK, tracing the emergence of ‘the digital peregrine’ and its manifold implications for more‐than‐human and digital geographies. To do so, we build on oral history interviews with people associated with digital peregrines throughout the UK: nestcam technicians, peregrine conservationists, professional ecologists, activists, and citizen scientists. While digitisation brings broad publics closer to these cosmopolitan raptors, they can only ever grasp at the wildness of peregrine falcons and their wider milieus as the digital peregrine is a distinct entity, encountered via its own set of affects and affordances. In the peregrine's case, digital technologies create unexpected and radical opportunities for urban conviviality, signalling the positive potentials technologies host for forging meaningful more‐than‐human connections.

Warty papules on the hands and feet: Acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf

A 47-year-old female was referred to our department because of skin-colored lesions located mainly on the dorsum of the hands and feet. The patient had no diseases and had not taken continuous medication. The lesions were present at birth and had increased in number since then. Four more members of the family, including the mother and the uncle (mother’s brother), had similar skin lesions. A dermatological examination revealed multiple flesh-colored, flat-topped papules, about 2–5 mm in size, which were reminiscent of flat warts on the dorsum of the hands and feet (Fig. 1). A nail examination revealed thickened nails with V-shaped nicks at their free margins on the fingers of both hands (Fig. 2). The patient declined skin biopsy. We retained the diagnosis of acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf (AVH). AVH is a rare inherited disorder of keratinization caused by an abnormal ATP2A2 gene [1,2]. Familial cases indicate an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance, yet sporadic cases of the disease have also been reported [2]. It is characterized by multiple asymptomatic, flat-topped, skin-colored papules on the dorsum of the hands and feet. Other features may include pits on the palms and soles and nail dystrophy (pearly white nails or nails with longitudinal ridges and nicks in the free edge) [3]. AVH is diagnosed clinically, which becomes easier if there are family members with similar skin findings. Sometimes, a skin biopsy is performed to assist the diagnosis. The key features on histology are hyperkeratosis, hypergranulosis, acanthosis, papillomatosis, and circumscribed epidermal elevations known as church spires, which are a distinctive finding [1,2].

Jerusalem: The Shepherdess

a FICTION I come to Jerusalem to be with my amour. I come to dance with her divine spirit. The glow of youth is behind me, and the madness of humankind is still a mystery to me. Deeply troubled by the course of the human race, where insanity stretches the envelope of reason, I still see under the dome of heaven a world that is barbaric, selfish, and ungrateful . The daily depressing news pierces its claws into the skin of my soul; warfare in countries, outrages of injustice, protests in every language, tyrants crushing freedom, refugees at borders, poverty in shadows, and the seeds of peace and happiness tossed to the farthest fringes of the world. When my simple heart is ravaged and in need of deep virtue, I come to my beloved city to imbibe from her rich wells and wise fountains. Mystified by the matrix of humanity, I shed all my skin, address my heart to adventure, and take my journey to Jerusalem. As I prepare for my excursion, people try to force their biased opinions upon me, but I refuse to carry a canvas strongly colored by others. For I never desire to only be a connoisseur of a cause, but a connoisseur of humanity. I want the spirit of this majestic city to seize my being and throw me into the accented fabric of humanity. I shall venture into my winding and arduous inner soul, exploring the tendrils of life. I need to feel myself by myself. Jerusalem The Shepherdess by Yousef Khanfar Sometimes Jerusalem is too much Jerusalem. It is not that humans like war, they are just unfaithful to peace. In the following voyage of self-discovery and reflection on humanity—excerpted from a forthcoming book—the author encounters Jerusalem, personified, on the Mount of Olives. WORLDLIT.ORG 71 DANA BARQAWI, WOMAN DIGGING THORNS OUT OF FIELD / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST COVER FEATURE JERUSALEM | BY YOUSEF KHANFAR Beneath the crest of this noble land, the ashes of the powerful and powerless are all mixed together. This is a voyage of self-discovery and a reflection on humanity through my pilgrimage to Palestine. I travel to Old Jerusalem with a balanced air and tabula rasa. I arrive with fresh thoughts and an overheated imagination . Seen from a distance, my gaze floats over her endless vistas and unfolding hills. Lingers over the rooftops of homes and holy places. Hovers about the magnificent minarets and church spires that loom with pride in the sky. The great wall frames the Old City with eight gates for access; the Damascus Gate is the most magnificent and busiest. None of the gates carries a female name, except Bab Sitt Miriam Gate, which the Palestinians named out of respect for Mary, mother of Jesus. The Old City consist of four quarters: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian. Behind these walls is a metropolitan mosaic with invisible borders between neighborhoods; an ancient city full of exciting Oriental bazaars, bustling lives, holy places, native inhabitants, visitors, and tumbling dominoes of stairs upon stairs upon stairs. In my fascination, I dream of Jerusalem as a glowing goddess . She comes with all her dazzling beauty and stands only an olive away from me. I am Lady Jerusalem, she says, welcome to my city. I bring heaven to earth for people to experience. I shepherd them toward their own desires. I shall hover over you and keep you safe. You shall be intoxicated with her divine beauty and find the flowing light of revelation. Roam my city, feel the pulse of her happiness and sadness, but free her from the past dust of violence and the gray ashes of conflict. Reveal her truth to your circle of friends. Then she gently says goodbye to me and fades away beyond the horizon, yet her spirit seeps deep into my heart and blossoms luxuriously. I say to myself, write your diary every day; an empty page is an empty day. I shall capture images with beauty, what I see with truth. So come, come to the land of infernos and legends, where alleys chase alleys, questions ask questions, massacres invite massacres, souls devour souls, and Gods tussle with Gods...

Squamous Cell Carcinoma Transformation of Acrokeratosis Verruciformis of Hopf

Acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf is a rare genodermatosis with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance. It is a disorder of keratinization, characterized by multiple, skin-colored keratotic lesions resembling warts typically observed on the dorsum of the hands and feet. Histopathologically, the lesion shows considerable hyperkeratosis, acanthosis, and papillomatosis, mimicking a "church spire", and a thickened granular layer. It arises in early life, often at birth or infancy and rarely transform to squamous cell carcinoma. A rare case of acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf with squamous cell carcinoma transformation is reported in the department of Dermatology and Venereology, Combined Military Hospital, Dhaka. A 36 year old lady presented with multiple verrucous, hyperkeratotic, dyspigmented papules and plaques on her both legs since her early childhood and ulcer developed on the hypertrophic plaque about 20 years after the initiation of cutaneous lesions. Lesions were asymptomatic in the initial stage and subsequently developed mild pruritus and occasional bleeding from the ulcer. Histopathological finding from verrucous plaque is compatible with Acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf and skin biopsy from ulcerated plaque is compatible with Squamous cell carcinoma.
 Journal of Armed Forces Medical College Bangladesh Vol.14(1) 2018: 84-86

How Does a Smokestack Mean?

How Does a Smokestack Mean? Maryann Corbett (bio) In the fall of 1972, I was a new graduate student, at a university ten times the size of my undergraduate school, in an unfamiliar city far from my old home in the suburbs of Washington, D. C. I was also newly married. I was excited about these changes, if a little nervous about so much change at once. I cannot remember thinking I am disoriented or I need to find my bearings. But as I learned my way around in those first days, I found myself attending closely to physical landmarks. In that part of Southeast Minneapolis, the student housing district thinned and bled into an old industrial area. A railroad yard hugged its edge; the Purina logo marked a group of low-slung, boxy buildings. Especially prominent in my memory is a grain elevator in the middle distance, dun and treble-columned, a study in light and shade exactly like a thousand Midwestern paintings. I could see it more and more clearly as the weather changed and the trees lost their leaves along my daily walk from a bare basement apartment to a bare third-floor warren of graduate student offices in Lind Hall. Why does a grain elevator occupy such a select space in memory? Not simply because it helped me know where I was. And not simply because it was solid, as the social and emotional contours of my new department were not. I was bent on becoming a medievalist, and I remember playing mentally with the trope of the grain elevator dominating the landscape as a cathedral dominates its town or a castle its lord’s fiefdom. Perhaps the elevator looms because I was turning it into a metaphor even then. [End Page 46] Let me correct myself: It is the indistinct memory that looms, not the grain elevator. Looming connotes the dim and the vague. The grain elevator, which I can still locate with Google Street View, and can see on the rare occasions when I visit my old neighborhood in Minneapolis, is perfectly clear and perfectly benign. It was benign to me in those earliest days as well; I knew too little then about the fraught economics of agriculture in my new home to see the elevator as ambiguous. I didn’t think of this at the time, but tall things in the landscape, built or natural, are always ambiguous. The mountain, the high place, be it Horeb or Olympus or Tài Shān, is the home of the gods, who may favor us if we propitiate them correctly but who are unknowable, possibly capricious, awe-ful. The tall building also is ambivalent, with the sort of double valence Robinson Jeffers calls up in the opening lines of his “Rock and Hawk”: Here is a symbol in which Many high tragic thoughts Watch their own eyes. DOUBLES It has been forty-five years since I first walked past that grain elevator. What brought it to mind again was my encounter with Joshua Mehigan’s poem “The Smokestack,” in his book Accepting the Disaster. Like my grain elevator, like the sacred mountains, Mehigan’s smokestack is double dealing, and possibly triple dealing or more. For one thing, the poem allows complicated truths to be seen through an almost transparent surface. It uses short lines and a loose, rough-accentual mostly-trimeter, reminiscent of ballad meter and just inexact enough to feel a little distracted or a little evasive about its point. It uses simple diction and repeating sentence structures that remind us of nursery rhymes. It uses, in other words, the language of a child: The town had a smokestack. It had a church spire. The church was prettier, but the smokestack was higher. Then quietly it introduces a grownup’s concerns—labor and management, money and power. Another aspect of the poem’s double dealing is the way it changes direction. The title focuses on the structure of the smokestack, yet the poem spends only two short quatrains on the look of the “lone ruined column,” higher than the church spire. Then it swerves, spending most of its length on the shape-shifting smoke...

The Smokestack

The Smokestack Joshua Mehigan (bio) The town had a smokestack. It had a church spire. The church was prettier, but the smokestack was higher. It was a lone ruined column, a single snuffed taper, a field gun fired at heaven, a tube making vapor. The smoke thinned the attention. Its aspect kept transforming. It could look like a cloud, or like mosquitoes swarming. The smokestack’s bricks were yellow, and its mouth twenty feet wide. Its smoke was usually pale, but there was a rust color on its side. The smoke was yellow coral, a bouquet of yellow roses, a yellow beard, a yellow eye, and sometimes runny noses. Often it looked heavy like junipers under snow. At dawn it was limpidly pink and shaped like an embryo. It could look like Cuba as seen from outer space. It could look like a pedestal stone. It could look like Jesus’ face. [End Page 53] The busy residents tended to ignore it, though no one alive remembered a time before it. Sometimes it looked like ermine, sometimes like elderflower. Sometimes it looked like a Persian cat, and sometimes like power. It came before Lincoln Steffens. It survived Eric Blair. It was older than stop signs. It would always be there, resembling a tuxedo ruffle, or an elephant head, or a balled-up blanket on a hospital bed. It stopped three times a year, but only for one day. Once, in the ’30s, it seemed to die. Many families went away. But it stayed dead a week, and when it was resurrected, the sky turned black, and then white, as if a new pope were elected. To labor it looked like a witness, to management a snitch, to both victim and perpetrator it looked like getting rich. At the Chamber of Commerce, on a postcard of the square, you’d find it in the background, diminutive but there. [End Page 54] On cool summer evenings, it billowed like azure silk. On cold winter mornings, it spread like spilled milk. [End Page 55] Joshua Mehigan joshua mehigan’s first book, The Optimist, was a finalist for the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry and winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. In 2014, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published his second book, Accepting the Disaster, cited in the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere as a best book of the year. He was the Alan Collins Fellow at the 2015 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and has received writing fellowships in recent years from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Copyright © 2017 University of North Carolina Wilmington

The sinister steeples of Alexander North

Alexander North (1858–1945), who practised chiefly in Tasmania, was an outstandingly original architect during the stylistic period in Australia now commonly called Federation. His work includes features that represent an extreme expression of established forms, and draws attention to some inadequately explained characteristics of the period. Prominent among these is a series of church spires that North designed in Tasmania between 1893 and 1927, which evoke peculiar associations in the minds of many who notice them. Those associations, which depend mainly on graphic works published during the same era, were unlikely to have been intended by the architect. They provide evidence in support of an associationist theory of aesthetic response that has gone out of fashion, and a salutary reminder that architectural historians must seek to see through the eyes of their period and not the projections of hindsight.

Córdoba: Mezquita, and: Vermont: Fish & Wildlife, and: Enchanters of Addison County

Córdoba: Mezquita, and: Vermont: Fish & Wildlife, and: Enchanters of Addison County Major Jackson (bio) CÓRDOBA Mezquita Even if he'd pulled over to study Andalusia's road signs,after one thousand and one nights, he still couldnot make out its calligraphic script, its vertical lines,its dots, marks like smoke stilled from incense, its curledsand soft Arabic, but this city's voice has coffinsand carnations, and its hoarse singing shoots through himlike twelve bars of earthen road that lengthensinto a labyrinth of knowing, blood beneath black skin.More echoes: the Alhambra sent him back to the seraglioof his youth where a Moorish guard stood in a museum,unfazed by a harem's rising laughter behind palace doors.Here are pillars and banded arches to once againimagine the body passing through like a key into infinity.Was this the answer to his ghetto past? But why travelso far? Since a child, even in sleep, he voyaged and broke free,tossing dice in dreams below deck on a caravelnext to grains of paradise. He's collecting a thousand faces.He's moving beneath eyelids, turning time into flesh.Don't judge him. The courtyard's orange trees where oncehe washed like a morisco is teaching his tongue the craft. [End Page 253] VERMONT Fish & Wildlife The lake's cold shacks of ice fishing anglersspeeds by like homeless shanties. This is North Country,where a cabin's fireplace wears moose antlers,where the mesmeric drift of snow snakes Route 30sending a chalk-white F150 plummeting into a ditch.Icicles above Stewart's hover like liquid spears.A shawled neighbor in silhouette is a witchbut you believe in the company of man and seek a cold beerand the crackling fire of a bar up the road whose patrons'talk of deadly snowmobile accidents steams its frontwindow. Gossip turns the evening darker, and the nationmight as well be this small shadowy room half in huntinggear, eyeing the blond whipping some boy at a haloedpool table. Outside, a grumbling snowplow barrels upthe street like a middle linebacker. A truckloadof modern furniture sits in the parking lot. Yep,someone says to a Bruins loss: Yep, shoulda won thatone there. The almost bare streets seem clutchedin ice, wind dusting up crystals in orange street light.Old men in Franklin County dream of being touched. [End Page 255] ENCHANTERS OF ADDISON COUNTY We were more than gestural, close-listening,the scent of manure writing its waft on the leavesoff Route 22A. By nightfall, our gaze fleckedlike loon cries, but no one was up for turnipsnor other roots, not least of which the clergy.Romanticism has its detractors, which is whywe lined the road with tea-lit luminariesand fresh-cut lemons. We called it making magic,then stormed the corners and porchesof General Stores, kissing whenever cars idledat four way stop signs or sought Grade A maple syrupin tin containers with painted scenes of horse-drawnfarmers plowing through snow. The silhouetted, rustedfarm equipment gave us the laidback heavenwe so often wished, and fireflies bequeathed earth stars,such blink and blank and bunk-a-bunk-bunk.And of course we wondered if we existed,and also too, the cows in the ancient pastures,and the white milk inside our headslike church spires and ice cream cones.Even after all of that cha-cha-cha, we still cameout of swimming holes shivering our hearts out. [End Page 254] Major Jackson MAJOR JACKSON is author of four volumes of poetry: Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006), and Leaving Saturn (2001). In addition to being a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for his first book of poems, he is a recent Guggenheim Fellow and has also been honored by the Whiting Foundation, the Witter Bynner Foundation, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont and a core member of the faculty of the...

Parasite Pressures on Feral Honey Bees (Apis mellifera sp.)

Feral honey bee populations have been reported to be in decline due to the spread of Varroa destructor, an ectoparasitic mite that when left uncontrolled leads to virus build-up and colony death. While pests and diseases are known causes of large-scale managed honey bee colony losses, no studies to date have considered the wider pathogen burden in feral colonies, primarily due to the difficulty in locating and sampling colonies, which often nest in inaccessible locations such as church spires and tree tops. In addition, little is known about the provenance of feral colonies and whether they represent a reservoir of Varroa tolerant material that could be used in apiculture. Samples of forager bees were collected from paired feral and managed honey bee colonies and screened for the presence of ten honey bee pathogens and pests using qPCR. Prevalence and quantity was similar between the two groups for the majority of pathogens, however feral honey bees contained a significantly higher level of deformed wing virus than managed honey bee colonies. An assessment of the honey bee race was completed for each colony using three measures of wing venation. There were no apparent differences in wing morphometry between feral and managed colonies, suggesting feral colonies could simply be escapees from the managed population. Interestingly, managed honey bee colonies not treated for Varroa showed similar, potentially lethal levels of deformed wing virus to that of feral colonies. The potential for such findings to explain the large fall in the feral population and the wider context of the importance of feral colonies as potential pathogen reservoirs is discussed.

Non-familial Acrokeratosis Verruciformis of Hopf

Acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf is a rare genodermatosis with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance. It is a disorder of keratinization, characterized by multiple, flat-topped, skin-colored keratotic lesions resembling plane warts typically observed on the dorsum of the hands and feet. Histopathologically, the lesion shows considerable hyperkeratosis, acanthosis, and papillomatosis, mimicking a "church spire", and a thickened granular layer. It arises in early life, often at birth or infancy. Herein, we report on a rare sporadic case of acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf. A 44-year-old Caucasian man presented with multiple, grouped, hyperkeratotic, whitish, flat papules on his shins and feet, which had been present for more than one year. Histopathological examination showed typical findings of acrokeratosis verruciformis of Hopf. Our case is unique in that the patient had no familial history of similar skin lesions.

Ruskin, Reflection, Self Recognition and Self Creation in Proust

The reader of A la recherche du temps perdu should know better than to dismiss anything the pedant Brichot says as uninteresting. Presented as an utter bore, he nevertheless fascinates the narrator. For the duration of the train ride to Raspeliere, the latter is entirely absorbed in Brichot's account of the local etymology. Brichot is clearly mocked in the narrative. His nature as a bore is emphasised by his thick­ rimmed glasses and the fact that too much time spent with his head in books has made him extremely short-sighted. It is perhaps surprising, therefore to find, slipped into the account of the local etymology, a subtle observation of the natural world: 'La riviere qui a donne son nom a Dalbec [sic] est d'ailleurs charmante. Vue d'une falaise [ ... ], elle voisine les fleches de l'eglise situee en realite a une grande distance, et a l' air de les refleter'. 1 What does he mean by the fact that the river 'seems' to reflect the church spires? Surely it either reflects them or it does not. Does he mean that the reflections in the water are actually of something else? Or does he mean that the reflected images are so distorted that they can no longer be considered to be reflections, that the inverted image is unfaithful? Or is it the spectator himself who projects a prolongation of the spires in an imaginary reflection? Brichot, in spite of his poor eyesight, or perhaps because of it, seems to have identified a curious optical illusion. 2 Beginning with Ruskin's theory of reflection, this article will explore how image and reflected image do not always coincide in Proust. I go on to consider how Proust exploits the metaphor of reflection further as a rhetorical figure for the presence or absence of self recognition leading to the act of self creation which constitutes the Proustian enterprise itself.

Gerard David’s The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Gerard David’s <i>The Rest on the Flight into Egypt</i>

The Accidental German, and: Glucose Self-Monitoring, and: Sombreros

The Accidental German Now she shakes lots of hands, drinks coffee from matching cups and saucers recites the Lord's Prayer in German measures in centimeters and grams. She listens to questions about her former home: Why are there so many guns? So many hamburgers? She refuses to scrub her windows and front steps until they're clean enough to lick (a sin). She lights candles at every meal, says good morning, [End Page 97] good evening, good day. Why are there so many fat people? So many skyscrapers? She boards the train each morning with her crumbling briefcase, watches the Rhine muscle its way through the vineyards, gets sentimental for Methodist Churches, rodeo queens and motel ice machines. Why are Americans so shallow? So friendly? The Accidental German watches church spires of her current horizon needle their way into the fog. She's a breathing souvenir here, someone's piece of American apple pie brought back to the Fatherland for flavoring. Back to the Fatherland for spice. Glucose Self-Monitoring A stabbing in miniature, it is, a tiny crime, my own blood parceled drop by drop and set [End Page 98] on the flickering tongue of this machine. It is the spout-punching of trees for syrup new and smooth and sweeter than nature ever intended. It is Sleeping Beauty's curse and fascination. It is the dipstick measuring of oil from the Buick's throat, the necessary maintenance. It is every vampire movie ever made. Hand, my martyr without lips, my quiet cow. I'll milk your fingertips for all they're worth. For what they're worth. Something like a harvest, it is, a tiny crime. Sombreros So it's Ecuador this time. On its back the post card disappears behind your tiny eggs of fountain ink. After seven years you still misspell my name. [End Page 99] The address, though, is correct. It is this side, this paragraph of your voice I slap against the cool gold of the freezer compartment. Magnet-trapped you are, suspended. I leave you talking into the humming coils, the freon bloodstream the cell where ice cubes, popsicles, chopped broccoli and breakfast sausage sleep against their shaggy wall of frost. And the other side - the front? That's what I'd rather see. It looks out at me from between the whirlpool symbol and aerobics schedule. It's a lovely Leo Matiz photo: black, white, and woolly grays. There is a woman surrounded by gleaming sombreros laid across the earth in rows like sun-bleached tea cups with saucer-brims. In a Disney movie they would pop up, chink-chink together and sing. They would walk, with brilliant noodle legs and cartoon ponchos. They would walk away from the woman who wove them and brought them to the raked dirt stall. They would walk away, swaying, up the sun-scarred road to Quito.

L’école au village aujourd’hui. Carte scolaire et monde rural

Village schools today. School districts and the rural world. Dominique Lerch In the public mind, the school, just as much as the church spire, is an integral part of the village. However, for several decades now, each redistricting of the school system has reduced the weight of the one-classroom séhoolè, which were very often the only manifestation of State service in the villages. Having examined the process through which these schools are closed (number of pupils, minimum statutory threshold, but also parental choices and municipal investments in education), this paper sets out the constitutive elements underpinning a return to the one-room school, often managed by primary schoolteachers inspired by the Freinet method, and analyzes the recent debate sparked by various official reports (Mauger, Lebossé), stressing the complex nature of the choices faced, the diversity of the available responses, and the tensions which can be discovered in this area. The presentation of elements for a Europe-wide comparative approach may enrich the debate, which is also fed in a rather unexpected way by a «silent revolution » taking place at the level of the parish.

Eastern Europe a Decade Later: Another Great Transformation

Eastern Europe a Decade LaterAnother Great Transformation Richard Rose (bio) The fall of the Berlin Wall and its consequences are transforming a continent that had been divided for 40 years. Western Europe was the “ideal” Europe; freedom and prosperity could be found there. The lands behind the Iron Curtain had a better claim to be the “real” Europe, for authoritarianism and oppression by an alien ruler could be found there. While intellectuals sometimes speak of the Czech Republic, Hungary, or Poland as returning to a golden age, ordinary people in postcommunist societies do not want to return to the dictators, wars, and poverty that characterized earlier European history. Ten years into this transformation, what kind of a Europe is emerging at the start of the new millennium? Central Europe—which includes Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, and even parts of Italy—is once again central to the continent. The fall of the Wall has created a Drang nach Östen (drive toward the east), of which the movement of Germany’s capital to Berlin this year is an apt symbol. The new German parliament will meet in the new Reichstag; the old building has been transformed by the design of a British architect. The problems of the reunified Germany—in the Rhineland as well as along the Elbe—are a reminder that transformation has costs as well as benefits. Ten postcommunist countries have already reoriented their attention from Moscow to Brussels, applying to join the 15 member states already in the European Union (EU). The five leading candidates are [End Page 51] the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia; Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia make up the second flight. Russia, Ukraine, and Croatia are still outside the pale. 1 If these ten countries gain membership, Europe’s population center—the point equidistant from the population of the entire continent—will be Ulm, a pleasant town in Southern Germany with the tallest church spire in Europe and the birthplace of a quintessential modernist, Albert Einstein. 2 The river that runs through it does not flow toward Bonn or Berlin; it is the Danube, on its journey to the Black Sea. Achievements of a Decade Whereas England and Sweden took centuries to evolve into democracies and Germany stabilized democratic rule only under foreign occupation, many of the new regimes in postcommunist Europe have shown substantial evidence of becoming normal democracies in a single decade. In all ten countries, there has been at least one change of government through the ballot box, and often two. For example, in 1990, anticommunist governments were elected in Hungary and Poland. The ex-communists then showed their consistency—“Once an opportunist, always an opportunist”—and won elections campaigning as social democrats. The ex-communists, in turn, have been defeated at the polls and replaced by right-of-center governments. Voters have consistently rejected undemocratic alternatives. In Hungary, the radical right-wing party of István Csurka cannot be sure of winning enough votes to gain any seats in the parliament. In the autumn of 1998, Slovak voters rejected Vladimír Meciar, who had led the country to a peaceful separation from the Czech Republic but has subsequently shown antidemocratic tendencies. In Latvia, a popular referendum rejected proposals that, in effect, would have prevented most of its Russian residents from ever becoming citizens. Only in Romania does the total vote for fragmented antidemocratic parties begin to approach the vote won in established democracies by parties with dubious democratic credentials, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France or Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party in Austria. The costs of economic transformation have been substantial; establishing a market economy where none had existed for over 40 years is much harder than ending a recession in a country with well-developed market institutions. Still, these costs have been much exaggerated. In the days of the command economy, shortages were frequent, choice was nonexistent, and bribery and party favoritism often determined who got what. People learned to augment their standard of living by household production or by working in second economies; these skills have helped tide them over the worst of the...

Large-cell acanthoma is a distinctive condition.

We have studied the clinical and histopathologic features of 44 biopsy specimens of large-cell acanthoma (LCA) from 35 patients. There were 19 women and 16 men, 34-88 years of age (mean 75). The lesions were mainly located on the head and extremities, usually solitary, less than or equal to 10 mm in diameter, and of greater than or equal to 1 year's duration. However, there were also cases of multiple and larger lesions, and those of shorter duration. The most frequently offered clinical diagnoses were seborrheic keratosis, Bowen's disease, and LCA; two cases had the clinical features of stucco keratosis. Histologically, 41 of the specimens could be classified into three patterns: 16 lesions showed a basic pattern (mild to moderate acanthosis, hyperkeratosis, large cytoplasms and nuclei, hyperpigmentation, and bulbous rete ridges); 12 specimens showed a verrucous pattern (papillomatosis and hyperkeratosis resembling church spires); and 13 lesions exhibited a flat-hyperkeratotic pattern (compact hyperkeratosis arranged in horizontal layers of corneocytes lying on a band-like acanthotic stratum malpighii that lacks both rete ridges and papillae). Some cases exhibiting this latter pattern showed focal bowenoid changes. Some mixed and intermediate lesions demonstrated the existence of a spectrum. We have concluded that LCA is a distinctive condition with various stages of development and is probably related to stucco keratosis. It can clearly be separated histologically from solar lentigo and from solar keratosis. As other epidermal tumors, LCA can sometimes exhibit features of Bowen's disease.

The Bill of Rights: A Century of Progress

In an otherwise mundane tax opinion construing language in the Internal Revenue Code, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed that word . . . is the skin of a living thought.' As the years pass, an idea may mature, changing its shape, its power, and its complexion, even while the symbols that identify it remain constant. There is a special vitality in words like commerce, equality, and liberty. In southwestern England, the huge sarsen pillars that primitive astronomers erected and arranged at Stonehenge centuries ago convey a profound message about man's ability to reason and to create. Even though the intent of the framers of Stonehenge is shrouded in mystery and obscurity, their message is nevertheless majestic and inspiring. Only a few miles away, the highest church spire in England, the Salisbury Cathedral, stands as a symbol of the creativity, the industry, and the faith of the Christian architects and engineers of the thirteenth century. A visitor to that cathedral may view one of the four remaining copies of a famous document that was signed at Runnymede early in that century. The message to be found in the text of the Magna Carta is neither clear nor unambiguous because its language is not plain and its style and lettering are unfamiliar. It is, nevertheless, an im-

Stucco keratoses. A clinico-pathological study.

Stucco keratoses are benign acquired papular warty lesions which usually occur on the distal parts of the lower limbs of elderly men. Their nature and pathogenesis are uncertain. Eight patients with multiple stucco keratoses who presented to the Cardiff Dermatology Department over an 18-month period were studied in an attempt to characterize these lesions. All subjects were male, with ages ranging from 50 to 72 years. Their lesions were most numerous over the fronts of the lower legs, but were also evident over other areas of the limbs. Most patients had a history of prolonged solar exposure, but the relationship of this to the development of the lesions was uncertain. Histologically there were no dysplastic changes and a characteristic regular 'church spire' type retention hyperkeratosis without marked acanthosis was evident. Lack of a marked increase in the epidermal cell population size is reflected in the normal in vitro tritiated thymidine autoradiographic labelling indices (7.81 +/- 1.67%, normal range 5 to 9%). Ultrastructurally no viral particles were evident and a normal pattern of epidermal differentiation with hypergranulosis was present. Two of the patients with myriads of lesions who were treated for 2 months with etretinate showed a dramatic clinical improvement which, however, lasted for 6 months only.