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(This set list was appropriated from Robin Banks, the lucky owner!)
So we did it. We had six nights of rock (or pop) in seven nights. two in D.C., one at Maxwell's, and three at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY. it was total euphoria and ecstasy and emotional and all just completely great in every way. Mike from Black Tambourine tore off a finger in D.C., a few other BTs had stomach flu, many had terrible allergies, Pam had an ankle injury, and nearly everyone who attended all six shows lost their voices and had "retail feet" at some point! By Wednesday, April 11, I was nearly laryngitic. When I flew back home on Friday, April 13, I was so cloggy and allergic I lost hearing in one ear and I still have not regained it all! If it weren't for all the dopamine we were hopped up on, we would not have survived.
Friday, April 6: Tonight was Stevie Jackson, Frankie Rose, Honey Bunch, Dot Dash, and special guest The Pines (featuring Black Tambourine singer / CF cofounder Pam Berry & the Foxgloves' Joe Brooker). Watching the Pines with Pam's daughters Ava and Lulu was a highlight in both D.C. and New York. They already have a hunch that they totally lucked out in the mom department, and now they got to see mom (er, mum) up there singing like an angel along with Joe. The Pines did a quickie special guest set in D.C. but it was just delightful. Dot Dash, featuring Terry Banks of Tree Fort Angst and glo-worm, was super great and sold a million T-shirts. Stevie ended up joining forces with Honey Bunch on their set and vice versa (he said it was like playing with the Velvets don'tcha know), and how great was that? Worlds collide. I don't think I'd heard the chickfactor song live since 1998 at the Supper Club in NY! The only issue with the venue was that it never quite seemed loud enough, except during soundcheck. Frankie Rose did all the hits and closed out the night with her cool pop combo. Dan Searing (of glo-worm, Big Jesus Trash Can, Saturday People) was the charmingly loquacious MC and booze coordinator for both nights. I only wish I'd been in town earlier to attend a party at the Pines, where parties are legendary. The age group tonight ranged from age 5 to 78 btw. chickfactor attracts a diverse clientele. (food diary: lunch veggie mezza at Lebanese Taverna Market, dinner a big salad)
Saturday, April 7: Tonight was Black Tambourine, Lilys, Fan Modine, Lorelei and special guest LD Beghtol (backed by some guys from Black Tambourine / Lorelei). LD is the bearish gent out of Flare, who also was a guest singer on 69 Love Songs and chickfactor's art director in the later years (when the photos started looking amazing). I had asked him to do some covers of songs by Crash, an amazing late-80s, early-90s pop group featuring singer Mark Dumais (who died 20 years ago) and guitarist Kurt Ralske (of Ultra Vivid Scene). I learned about Crash from Pam and Mike and the Black Tambourine/Slumberland crew 21 years ago and LD has a great voice for singing those songs. He did a few Crash tunes, a Flare song and a Jesus and Mary Chain tune, and oh my god "Everything Under the Sun" was one of the most compelling live music moments in years. Really was so great and so happy to see LD backed with a bunch of Crash fans. D.C.'s Lorelei made everyone swoon by covering the Pale Saints and being generally foxy, and while they were plenty loud during soundcheck in an empty room, I would have liked to hear them even louder (this was one of our main concerns with the venue all weekend). The Fan Modine came up from NC to play some hits and sounded super-rad, though I prefer hearing them when things quiet down more. Lilys mainstay Kurt Heasley played solo, which sounded pretty ace, even if I have to admit it would have been great to have him backed up with a band on a few of those classic tunes from his rich, rich back pages (why are these not all reissued? what is wrong with the world?). The first moments of the Black Tambourine show were just dead exciting. It just moved me to near-tears seeing them up there! I was one of the lucky few back in the day (1991 ish) to see them live, but tonight! you could hear the vocals! the venue was, well, basically an art gallery and wasn't always ideal (too bright, not always loud enough) but I was more than chuffed to finally be seeing these guys play live again (set list above, natch). "Aggi" was a highlight for sure! (food diary: again! Lebanese Taverna with the family; dinner: salad and a giant iced coffee)
Sunday, April 8: Day off from rocking. I had not enough sleep, took Amtrak north and guess who randomly sat next to me? Stephen Lorelei's mom! Crazy. She was telling other people on the train about the CF20 show! Along with my mom, she made it to the event, which was great. I got off the train in Newark, Gaylord Fields picked me up, we stopped and chowed on a few giant vegan sandwiches, and then we did his radio show together, with me getting to play all the records! What a dream come true! He seemed to enjoy what I played, which isn't surprising as we have similar (um, perfect!) taste in music. (food diary: we went to Angelica Kitchen! Where I would have many meals this week and where Lupe Pipas met us and hung out too)
Monday, April 9: Tonight was Black Tambourine, Fan Modine, Rose Melberg and special guest Musical Chairs. Downtime became a rare and valuable commodity this week, we realized after not having nearly enough. Today we were out at Maxwell's in Hoboken by 5pm or something, and the classic venue lived up to its reputation as being one of the finest venues in the nation in every way (apart from the food maybe). Once I had some superpowerfulmagic spanish ibuprofen powder (thanks to Lupe), I overcame my giant allergy migraine and had a spectacular night. We all sat down and had dinner together, which was really fun. We hadn't seen Ian from Musical Chairs in ages, and he played a short set of jangly kinda pop! Rose melted my heart by doing Kirsty MacColl's classic "They Don't Know" which many people know from Tracey Ullman, along with doing a handful of Tiger Trap songs! Fan Modine and Black Tambourine fared better in this environment — this is the kind of venue made for this music! I was woo-ing like a crazy Beatles fangirl and just completely losing my voice, it was so fun to watch them with Lupe and Gaylord and all our pals. Really super fun. MC Gaylord Fields was just as funny and entertaining as he is on the radio! (food diary: lunch with Loops at Candle Cafe on the Upper East Side; dinner at Maxwell's, I think I had a veggie burger, it was not terrifically memorable)
Tuesday, April 10: Tonight was Black Tambourine, Small Factory, Versus, The Lois Plus, Dump and Mark Robinson (last two were special guests). What a lineup, holy crap. I think I probably would have put SF & BT on different nights originally but Dave SF specifically requested this lineup, and I really wanted them to play so… Dump did a proper set of tunes including their stunning version of the Pacific Ocean's "Last Minute," Prince's "Pop Life" and a few of their own classics like "Superpowerless" (or what Dawn calls "Pants on the floor" or something). Dump said if it weren't for chickfactor they probably wouldn't play live, which is crazy! Mark Robinson was going to be there anyway and Unrest couldn't do a proper set but wowed the kids (and the oldies) with just two perfect tracks: "Isabel" and "Yes, She Is My Skinhead Girl" so so great, love that guy! Miss Maffeo played with The Would-Be-Goods' Peter Momtchiloff and Bratmobile's Molly Neuman on drums, and it was just so perfect. "Rougher" was a highlight, as was "Strumpet." Lois, as always, delighted the audience with badinage and persliflage. One would never suspect this lady has stagefright issues! Versus gave it to you. Richard and Fontaine looked foxy in their suits and Margaret is near the bursting point; Richard joked that they were my third choice (which is true: Containe & the Pacific Ocean were asked first, and it's pretty hard to conceal that information from Versus, it's all the same people!) They gave us exactly what we wanted: a trip back to the early 90s! Oh god, my heart was already overflowing when Small Factory hit the stage, delivering nothing but their ultracharming pop energy, including "Suggestions," one of the top pop songs ever. Black Tambourine played their third & final reunion show and it was mind-blowing, heart-warming, just amazing, so great. This venue was perfect for everything, especially being able to see and hear from anywhere despite your height. Just perfect! MC Gaylord Fields had nothing but witty, erudite things to say as always, I wish we'd had him properly miked up so we could go back and hear it all.(food diary: lunch at Angelica Kitchen, special no. 2; dinner: vegan panini from S'nice and I didn't realize how walking over there would seriously cut into my duties as promoter; note to self: next time: hire more interns!)
Wednesday, April 11: Tonight was The Aislers Set, Pipas, Bridget St John, The Legendary Jim Ruiz Group, and special guests LD Beghtol backed by some Lorelei/Black T types and John Lindaman from True Love Always. John TLA just came out and did "Mediterranean" the excellent pop track his group contributed to the chickfactor mixtape comp from 2002. LD & the gang did their Crash and J&MChain covers and Flare song along with a Ben Watt-sung EBTG tune, the first of many EBTG references this evening! The Legendary Jim Ruiz Group, or the Jim Ruiz Set as they may now be known, just blew us away with their midwestern pop genius. Highlights included "Goodbye to All That" and "Valentine", such a great set! Bridget performed beautifully and made a lot of people well up. We loved hearing "Mon Gala Papillons," something she was inspired to write after hearing the name of our 2004 London festival of that name, which was inspired by a Jacques Lartigue photo. The Brooklyn/London duo Pipas haven't played anywhere in years, and made the crowd so happy. They did so many hits. I really love those guys! The Aislers Set played a better set than I have ever seen them play, and I found myself wondering: Why, as a society, we ever allowed this fan-effing-tastic pop group to disband? What the hell? the Dubya era killed so many good things, and this was one of them. They did nothing but hits. Apparently they have nothing but hits! And they were just on fire tonight, ask anyone. The video doesn't really even capture the greatness. But wow, wow. And Peter Momtchiloff commented how this music being played this week doesn't feel like it's just about the past, but also about the present and the future. So true. Professor / film critic / indie nerd Sukhdev Sandhu was the MC tonight and he was irresistible as always albeit a bit quiet in his subtle Britishness. (food diary: lunch at Angelica Kitchen; dinner at S'nice)
Thursday, April 12: Tonight was Stevie "Belle and Sebastian" Jackson, HoneyBunch, The Softies, the Pines, and three! special guests Franklin Bruno, Ladybug Transistor and Fan Modine. Someone noticed that all the special guests were, uh, boys! I did try for some ladies, I'll have it be known that Mascott, Jennifer O'Connor, The Cover Girls, Laura Cantrell, the Naysayer were among those on the list but for various reasons they could not! The manguests were super anyway — Franklin did after all play at our very first CF party with live music in 1993. Ladybug did a few fine Nordic-tinged Brooklyn tunes, and Fan Modine did a couple ace covers. Again, watching the Pines with Ava, Lulu and Bix Madell may have been one of the festival highlights for me. The paparazzi could not get enough! It felt really special to see the Pines doing a proper set in a proper venue in New York — about time! The Softies hadn't played in 12 years and that was hard to believe because they just sound so fresh! HoneyBunch and Stevie did their collaborative thing again tonight and it was bliss. Stevie ended up with a real interactive fun set drawing the audience in and making them love him even more. We were at a chickfactor show and we were all singing our hearts out to Stevie's cover of "Rocket Man" by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. MC Phoebe Bluesky Summersquash was on hand to keep the audience entertained, man, she is a good one. In case you didn't know who HoneyBunch wrote "Hey Bluesky" about, now you do. The whole week just filled me with so much love, luck, dopamine, euphoria, pop love, friend love, I know I sound dorky but who cares. All that was missing was more time so we could all have spent more quality time together. Pam and I didn't even get to go shopping like the olden days. In fact the New York economy would have fared better had she been able to shop instead of just rehearsing! (food diary: lunch at Angelica; hummus sandwich with the kids from S'nice)
I got thanked an awful lot and CF did and I did work hard but it took a village to pull this thing off. Next stop: Portland, Oregon! May 30 at Bunk Bar featuring The Softies, Joe Pernice, Lois, and Selector Dub Narcotic. Later this year: San Francisco, Los Angeles and London, and maybe Chicago! (Sorry, kids, Black Tambourine not likely to play those dates)
• Here is a piece about chickfactor in the Washington City Paper, where Pam and I met. WCP also had some post-show commentary and photos.
• And an interview with Black Tambourine in the Washington Post, Mark Jenkins' review of the BT night, and another article here
• And an interview with Pam on Refinery 29 & an interview with Gail in Capital New York and one with NBC's Nonstop Sound
• This is a photographic document of our D.C. shows in Paste
• The DCist writes up the Black Tambourine Artisphere night and they interviewed Dot Dash as well
• Brooklyn Vegan reviewed some bands and missed others, nice photos here (Bell House April 10, Bell House April 11 and Bell House April 12)
• Maura's nice writeup in the Voice and her post-show technology commentary related to my attempt at getting people to put their cell phones away during the shows
• Vinyl District did some nice coverage here
• Brightest Young Things' kooky Stevie Jackson interview and some nice post-show coverage
• Here are some items from Killer Femme, The L Magazine, Exclaim, Pitchfork, Reverb City, NPR Intern Edition, TBD, TimeOut NY, New York Times, Yale Daily News, Express Night Out, South County Music, Eardrum NYC and Orange Juice in Bishops Garden
• Photographs from Verbicide, Brad Searles, Shantel Mitchell, Erica Bruce, Andrew Bulhak, Kyle Gustafson, Frances Chung, Sean, and Caren Parmalee.
• Videos from Bleary Eyed Brooklyn, Rawkblog, Vimeo and Youtube here.


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Condé Nast International (CNI), a division of Advance Publications, sets the benchmark for multimedia Publishing excellence. CNI currently operates in 26 markets, publishing 121 magazines, close to 84 websites and over 189 tablet and Smartphone apps, under such respected brands as Vogue, GQ, Glamour, Wired, Condé Nast Traveller, AD and Vanity Fair. Recent launches include Vanity Fair in France, Condé Nast Traveler in China, Vogue in Thailand, Ukraine and The Netherlands, GQ in Turkey, Glamour in Brazil, AD in India and Allure in Russia. CNI continues to expand beyond its traditional publishing domain, through activities which include: global events such as Vogue Fashion's Night Out, GQ Men of the Year and Glamour Women of the Year; Wired events and consultancy services; The Vogue Wedding Show; CNI Restaurants and the Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design which recently opened in London.
Condé Nast started operating in Russia in 1998 and now successfully publishes nine magazines (Vogue, Brides, GQ, GQ Style, Tatler, Glamour, AD, CN Traveller and Allure) with a total readership of over three million, seven websites (vogue.ru, glamour.ru, gq.ru, admagazine.ru, tatler.ru, cntraveller.ru, allure.ru) and digital applications that attract over five million unique users per month.
In just three months, Condé Nast was able to migrate over 500 servers, one petabyte of storage, various mission critical applications (such as HR, Legal, and Sales), and over 100 database servers into the AWS Cloud. As a result of going all-in into the AWS Cloud, the company reduced costs by 40% and increased operational performance by 30-40%.
Before migrating to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Condé Nast Russia outsourced its IT needs to a data center in Moscow. After experiencing numerous problems with equipment failures and the costs of upgrading hardware, the publisher needed to find a different platform that could scale with demand and increase the amount and type of work done for its digital publications.
Reliability of its cloud services partner is crucial for Condé Nast Russia. Because its readership holds the company to a high standard, Condé Nast Russia must deliver on that expectation by ensuring that the technology that powers its systems is reliable, modern, and cost-effective. It seemed like the data center Condé Nast used experienced a new problem every minute, which amounted to the Web sites hosting the digital publications being available only 85 percent of the time — an unacceptable situation. So the company began calling on cloud services providers to solve these problems. When Condé Nast began to explore AWS's features, reliability, and pricing, the decision became easy and the solution to the data center problem apparent. "It was quite sudden when we experienced problems with our data center, so we had to move quickly, but everything happened quite smoothly," says Michail Stepanov.
Condé Nast Russia also realized that it needed to increase the security of its digital properties and that remaining in a data center would essentially be leaving the security of its property in the hands of others. So, when the company moved to AWS, Condé Nast Russia was able to isolate each Web site so that if one site experienced a security issue, that issue wouldn't affect the others, which enhances the reliability of the system as a whole.
Condé Nast quickly realized that by moving to AWS, it could meet its requirements of partnering with a reliable, knowledgeable, and mature cloud services provider. In addition, the plans Condé Nast Russia has for expanding its digital offerings requires that its cloud services partner offers enough features and services to meet future technology needs without significant upfront capital expenditure.
The scalability of the system is a high priority for Condé Nast Russia. With nearly 3 million monthly readers across Russia and the greater trend toward digital consumption, Condé Nast needs to be able to handle the influx of readers when it arises.
Condé Nast Russia also needed a cloud services provider that would make the transition from the data center to the cloud manageable and predictable. The publisher began by moving one Web site to the cloud, and then moved the remaining six sites completely to AWS. The total time for the migration was approximately 6 months, with no notable problems or major obstacles.
Condé Nast uses Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) to handle all of its processing and computational needs. It uses Amazon Route 53 for its domain name listings, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for data storage, and finally AWS Storage Gateway to handle internal file storage needs. The system architecture services about 500 users every second.
By moving to AWS, Condé Nast Russia was able to meet the demands of its readership by providing consistent and reliable digital service. For the same price, the amount of work done on the AWS platform is double what it was when the publisher ran its Web sites in the Moscow data center. Condé Nast can also try new system architectures and develop applications without having to spend unnecessary capital on hardware, which gives it the freedom to innovate and create new methods of delivering digital content to consumers without the risk of unused equipment. As Stepanov says, "We can try new services without investing a lot of time or money."
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To learn more about how AWS can help support your enteprise needs, visit our Enteprise Cloud Computing detail page: http://aws.amazon.com/enterprise/.


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Ozzy Osbourne on Whether Rock Is Dead: 'We're the History Now'
Don't hold your breath for a new solo album from Ozzy Osbourne, who recently helped put Black Sabbath to bed. At the same time, however, he's not ready to join other classic rockers who've argued that rock is dead.
"I would like to do another record, but it's wasting money," he told Rolling Stone. "Nobody's buying."
That means he'll continue to focus on touring, including a few festival dates beginning on Sept. 30 in Louisville.
"Live, good rock music is not dead, but I think the record industry is really suffering now," Osbourne argued. "There are only about two f---ing record companies left. And when I went to the Grammys a couple of years ago, there'd be artists who'd go from a f---ing laptop straight to the charts and release a record. It's really a sad thing for me. ... It's just changed so much. I said to Sharon, 'It's like when vaudeville ended and f---ing modern music began. We're the history now.'"
He attributed these industry problems to technological advances – many of which, Osbourne freely admitted, have completely passed him by. "Why should people buy records when they can download it?" he asked. "You can get anything now online. And at the same time, I don't know how to turn the f---ing light on the monitor."
Still, you're not getting rid of Ozzy so easily. Though he's no longer performing with Black Sabbath, Osbourne steadfastly refuses to quit.
"They've retired but I haven't," he said. "It's like I'm jumping off one boat onto another. People forget, I was with Sabbath from '68 to '79, but I've been on my own from '79 'til now. I've been on my own thing for a lot longer than when I was with Sabbath. I love what Sabbath did for me and I love what I did for Sabbath, but it's not the be-all, end-all of my own whole career."
Returning to the Album That Saved Ozzy Osbourne's Career


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If you're always short of cabinet and counter space, it's time to de-clutter the kitchen—but that's a chore that seems to get relegated to "someday." The job may be easier if you know where to start, say consumer editors at Country Living magazine.
If you want to give yourself more kitchen space, begin by getting rid of the following:
Anything Free with Dinner – That goes for spare chopsticks, soy sauce packets, kid's meal toys, and other stuff that's cluttering your kitchen drawers. You're going to get more the next time you order, so there's no point in stockpiling.
One-Use Gadgets You Thought You Would Use – Garlic presses, apple corers, hot chocolate frothers…your cabinets may be full of specialty cooking gadgets that serve only one purpose. If it's taking up space and you use it less than four times a year, it's probably worth tossing—especially if there's an everyday object that can get the job done.
Plastic Grocery Bags – If you have more than 10 balled up in a cabinet or drawer, put the rest in your recycle bin or take them to the nearest store that recycles plastic bags.
Rarely Used Cookbooks – If they've sat on a shelf for more than a year without being used, it's time to sell or otherwise dispose of them. Keep only family collections and one or your favorite specialty cookbooks.
Reusable Shopping Bags – Keep only two or three of those eco-friendly bags and get them out of the pantry. Store them in the trunk of your car for use when you do your shopping.
Tupperware Collection – Most of us have far too many, including those empty deli and margarine containers we've saved. Limit yourself to containers in two sizes, and no more than five or six of each, with lids.
Weirdly Sentimental Mugs – Too much shelf space is often given up to mugs we will never use—from vacation souvenirs to those with cutesy sayings. Harden your heart and get rid of most of them. You will never, ever miss them.
By Barbara Pronin


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$ | One-time closing costs and fees0 (Origination charges, title insurance, inspection fees, and other service fees.) View/edit details Total closing costs 0 Cash needed at settlement0 Includes down payment *This assumption is based off of days of pre-paid interest. Click here to change *This assumption is based off of months of escrow property taxes. Click here to change |
- About This Answer
Calculating closing costs involves adding up all of the various fees and charges a homebuyer pays when taking ownership of a home, like lender charges and settlement services, as well as pre-paid and escrow amounts. We include every possible fee that you could be charged when closing a home, including title insurance, inspection fees, appraisal fees and transfer taxes. In fact, we replicate an entire Loan Estimate that you would get from a potential lender for your specific area. We track the cost of each fee by city and state to give you the best estimate on closing costs.
- Our Assumptions
Pre-paid interest: We assume 15 days of pre-paid interest in our calculation (but you can adjust this).
Escrow property taxes: We assume three months of escrow property taxes (but you can also change that).
Escrow homeowners insurance: We assume two months of escrow homeowners insurance.
Pre-paid homeowners insurance: We assume 12 months of pre-paid homeowners insurance.
Closing cost fee data: Using data from local governments and stewart.com we aggregate the component fees for each location in the United States.
Closing Costs Worksheet
Loan Costs | |||
A. Origination Charges | |||
Origination Charge | $ | ||
Points Credit/Charge | $ | ||
B. Services You Cannot Shop For | |||
Appraisal Fee | $ | ||
Credit Report Fee | $ | ||
Flood Certification | $ | ||
C. Services You Can Shop For | |||
Title Search and Lenders Title Insurance | $ | ||
Home Inspection (pest, etc) | $ | ||
Postage/Courier | $ | ||
Survey | $ | ||
Attorney, closing and settlement fees | $ | ||
Miscellaneous required services | $ | ||
D. Total Loan Costs (A + B + C) | |||
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E. Taxes and Other Government Fees | |||
Government Recording Fee | $ | ||
Transfer Taxes | $ | ||
F. Prepaids | |||
Pre-paid Homeowner's Insurance (12 months) | $ | ||
Up-front Mortgage Insurance Premium | $0 | ||
Pre-paid Daily Interest Charges days | $ | ||
G. Initial Escrow Payment at Closing | |||
Escrow Homeowner's Insurance (2 months) | $ | ||
Escrow Property Taxes months | $ | ||
H. Other | |||
Owner's Title Insurance | $ | ||
I. Total Other Costs (E + F + G + H) | |||
J. Total Closing Costs (D + I) |
Closing Costs Calculator
When it comes to your money, it's never a good feeling to be caught off guard. No one likes to be surprised by a high utility bills, or hit with an unexpected late fee. Far better to know what's coming in advance so that you can plan for it and prepare yourself mentally to avoid depleting your bank account. This is certainly true of buying a home. Before taking on a mortgage and buying a house, most people want to know everything they can about how purchasing a home will impact their finances.
There's one number in the home-buying process that is especially hard to pin down: closing costs. The best guess most estimates will give you is that closing costs are typically between 2% and 5% of the home value. True enough, but even on a $150,000 house, that means closing costs could be anywhere between $3,000 and $7,500 – that's a huge range! While your lender is required to provide a loan estimate explaining your closing costs within three days of submitting your loan application, that often occurs when you have already selected a home and are trying to finalize a deal. Not a great time to learn about thousands of dollars in fees you didn't see coming.
Part of the reason closing costs (also called settlement costs) are so difficult to determine ahead of time is that they aren't a one line item, but rather a collection of different expenses that arise for multiple reasons. Some depend on the state in which you're buying your home, others on the county. Some are related to your lender and the type of mortgage you're getting, and some have to do with the real estate professionals who are helping you get your deal done. In all, closing costs are a messy amalgam of variable fees.
A closing costs calculator like ours lets you see closing costs based on the specifics of your financial situation. Below, we'll take you through each one line by line, so you can understand what you'll be paying for.
The government has come up with rules that lenders must follow when it comes time to reveal estimated closing costs to people who are shopping for a mortgage. The government-mandated closing costs form is called a loan estimate (formerly known as a good faith estimate).
When you look at a loan estimate, you'll see a break-down of closing costs. Some of these will be listed as loan costs. This means that they're directly related to the cost of providing you with a home loan. Of these costs, some carry a fixed price and some are services you can shop for if you want to try to get a better deal.
A financial advisor can help you create a financial plan for your home buying goals. To find a financial advisor who serves your area, try SmartAsset's free online matching tool.
Loan Costs
A. Origination Charges
There are two categories of charges you pay your lender to secure your mortgage. These fees are very common, although not all lenders charge them to all borrowers.
In some cases, your lender will omit these fees to sweeten the deal, especially if you have really good credit. These fees should be incorporated into the APR stipulated for your loan. In other words, this means your lender is required to disclose them in advance.
- Origination charge: This is the standard fee lenders charge for the service of getting you a loan. Typically, this money is used to pay the broker or loan officer who got you the loan. It's the originator's commission on the deal. Origination charges are typically higher for borrowers with lower credit, but 1% of the loan amount is not unusual.
- Points: Points are a charge that you pay in exchange for a lower interest rate. Basically, they give you the option to pay more up front so that you pay less in interest over the life of your loan. Typically, one point costs 1% of the loan amount.
B. Services You Cannot Shop For
There's a lot of administrative and legal work needed to finalize a home sale. The bank needs to make sure the loan it is making is backed by a valuable asset; the government needs to make a record of the deal, and collect whatever fees and taxes are allowed by law; and someone needs to deal with all of the paperwork involved. All that work can add up to a significant amount of money.
- Appraisal fee: Before the deal is finalized, your bank will likely want to hire someone to confirm the value of the house. Appraisers look at the size of the property, the features, the condition the house is in and the price of comparable properties recently sold in the area. Appraisers typically charge around $300 to $500 for their services.
- Credit report fee: This is the cost to the bank of purchasing your credit report from one of the credit reporting agencies. Not all banks pass this fee along, but don't be surprised if they do. It should be no more than $30.
- Flood certification: If your house is situated on or near a flood plain, your bank may want documentation confirming its status. This involves paying for a certification from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and should be around $15 to $20.
C. Services You Can Shop For
If you want to lower your closing costs and you don't mind taking the time to shop around, the following are services you are allowed to shop around for in search of a better deal:
- Title services and lender's title insurance: The property's title is perhaps the most important document in the entire home-buying process. This is the piece of paper that spells out who actually owns the house, and if it's found to be invalid or fraudulent there can be big trouble. Title service companies research the title to ensure that it's legitimate. Lenders also require the borrower to buy an insurance policy to cover the lender in case the title is later found to be defective. The cost of title services and lender's title insurance varies significantly from state to state.
- Home inspection: Your lender may require an inspection of the home's interior to check for damage, pests and other issues. Unlike an appraiser, a home inspector does not consider price and does not look at comparable properties. Instead, an inspector looks for any issues that may need to be repaired, or that may affect the home's safety. A home inspector may get down and dirty, crawling into attics and poking around in the darkest corners of the house. A home inspection can cost anywhere from $100 to $500.
- Postage or courier: A lot of paperwork is involved in the sale of a home, and in some cases, your lender may hire a courier to transport the documents quickly and securely. If so, you may pay up to $60 for that service.
- Survey: This is an evaluation of your property to determine its boundaries as well as the location of fences, walls, gas lines and so on. This is required in some but not all states, and generally costs between $100 and $400.
- Attorney closing and settlement fees: Your lender may hire an attorney to look over the paperwork and make sure all the contracts pass legal muster. The homebuyer gets to pay for that service, which usually costs between $500 and $700.
- Miscellaneous required services: The full list of services you get from a lender can vary. The Loan Estimate includes a line for extra charges that might appear.
D. Total Loan Costs.
A + B + C = D, your total loan costs. This is only one component of your total closing costs, however. Read on for the rest.
Other Costs
E. Taxes and Other Government Fees
Government recording fees are charged by the local government (usually the county) for making a public record of the sale. The fee varies depending on location, but will probably be less than $200.
Transfer taxes, sometimes referred to as transfer charges, are what some state and local governments charge on home sale deals. These vary widely by location, and in some places are not applied at all.
F. Pre-Paids
One cost to the closing process comes from the amount you have to pay in advance for items you will be paying regularly as a homeowner. Our closing costs calculator accounts for those as well. Some of these pre-payments are placed into an escrow account (a special holding account from which funds can only be accessed in certain circumstances) so that there is a reserve in case the deal falls through or you, for whatever reason, can't make a payment at some point in the future. Other required pre-payments are made in advance to cover your first few weeks, months, or year in the house.
- Prepaid homeowners insurance: Homeowners insurance protects your house (and in some cases your belongings) against damage caused by bad weather, fire, theft and other unfortunate events (though it typically does not cover flooding or earthquakes). Most lenders require you to buy insurance on your home, and these policies are prepaid for periods of several months to one year. It is typical to pay the first 12 months of insurance up front at closing. The cost ranges depending on the coverage you need and where you live, but premiums can be as much as several thousand dollars a year, or just a few hundred.
- Up-front mortgage insurance premium: Depending on the size of your down payment, your lender may require you to pay for mortgage insurance. This can come with an up-front prepayment that you will owe at closing.
- Prepaid daily interest: If you are closing on your home in the middle of the month, you may need to pay interest covering the days until your first full month in the home begins.
G. Initial Escrow Payment at Closing
- Escrow homeowners insurance: Lenders may also require you to place some amount in an escrow account to cover homeowners insurance in case you fail to make a payment further down the line. This ensures that the home will be covered for some number of months even if you run into financial trouble. This, along with the property tax escrow described below, are most common when your down payment is less than 20%. Your Loan Estimate should show you the amount you'll be required to put in escrow to cover two months of homeowners insurance.
- Escrow property taxes: Since the government, in some cases, can place a lien on a house that has unpaid property taxes, or even foreclose on that house, lenders try to make sure that borrowers stay current on their taxes. Tax liens have priority over mortgage liens, so the government would have claim on the house before the lender. An escrow account for taxes gives the lender a backup if you do miss some tax payments and makes a property tax lien less likely to occur.
H. Other
- Owner's title insurance: An optional insurance policy that covers you, the homeowner, in the event that there are issues with the title. For example, if a prior owner of your home was foreclosed on and later wins a legal challenge against that foreclosure, your claim on the home may be found to be invalid. In that case, a homeowner's title insurance policy would protect you from financial loss. Rates on these policies vary widely, but can cost over 0.5% of the loan balance.
I. Total Other Costs.
E + F + G + H = I. This is the total of all the non-loan costs.
J. Total Closing Costs.
D + I = J. This is the total of all your closing costs. It represents the sum of all your loan costs and all your non-loan costs. This is roughly the amount you should budget for, since it represents the lender's estimate of what you will owe at closing time.
We've gone through some of the most common fees that make up your total closing costs. You can generally expect the total to be between 1 and 5% of the price you are paying to buy your home. Payment for closing costs can sometimes be financed with your loan, in which case it will be subject to interest charges. Alternatively, you can pay your closing costs in cash, similar to your down payment.


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6-9 pork chops (not too thick, you can use boneless pork loin)
2 eggs
4 Tbs water
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
Canola or vegetable oil for frying chops
1 1/2 cups honey
1/2 cup brown sugar (I added this)
1/2 tsp. ginger
dash of cayenne pepper (to your taste)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 Tbs chopped garlic
2 Tbs butter
How to make it
Whisk the eggs and 4 Tbs. water together in a shallow dish.
Mix the flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder in another shallow dish.
Dip the chops in the flour, then over into the egg.
Then back over into the flour mixture once again. This is what puts the extra crispy coating on the chops. Be sure to get plenty of flour on in this last coating, then shake them a little and place in a pan with about a half inch of oil. Be sure the oil is hot, but not too hot or the chops will cook too fast. You need to get it good and hot and then turn to about medium.
Cook for about 6 minutes on each side. Try not to turn more than twice or your breading will come off.
Remove from the pan to a 9″x13″ baking dish.
Saute the garlic a little in the butter.
Add the honey, soy sauce, brown sugar, cayenne, and ginger. Bring to a boil then reduce to low and simmer for about 5 minutes. Watch this carefully because it will foam and might boil over.
Pour 1/2 of the glaze over the pork chops. Flip them over and pour the other 1/2 over the other side. Place uncovered in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes. This sets the glaze and finishes them to be sure they are cooked through.


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text:
A man has died in Alabama as a result of Hurricane Sally, according to several media outlets.
The Weather Channel reported the unidentified man died in Orange Beach, Alabama.
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The National Hurricane Center reported that the slow-moving storm made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Wednesday at 5:45 a.m. ET with maximum sustained wind speeds of 105 mph.


text:
The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero)/Poetry/Volume 4/The Prisoner of Chillon
The Prisoner of Chillon, says Moore (Life, p. 320), was written at Ouchy, near Lausanne, where Byron and Shelley "were detained two days in a small inn [Hôtel de l'Ancre, now d'Angleterre] by the weather." Byron's letter to Murray, dated June 27 (but ? 28), 1816, does not precisely tally with Shelley's journal contained in a letter to Peacock, July 12, 1816 (Prose Works of P. B. Shelley, 1880, ii. 171, sq.); but, if Shelley's first date, June 23, is correct, it follows that the two poets visited the Castle of Chillon on Wednesday, June 26, reached Ouchy on Thursday, June 27, and began their homeward voyage on Saturday, June 29 (Shelley misdates it June 30). On this reckoning the Prisoner of Chillon was begun and finished between Thursday, June 27, and Saturday, June 29, 1816. Whenever or wherever begun, it was completed by July 10 (see Memoir of John Murray, 1891, i. 364), and was ready for transmission to England by July 25. The MS., in Claire's handwriting, was placed in Murray's hands on October 11, and the poem, with seven others, was published December 5, 1816.
In a final note to the Prisoner of Chillon (First Edition, 1816, p. 59), Byron confesses that when "the foregoing poem was composed he knew too little of the history of Bonnivard to do justice to his courage and virtues," and appends as a note to the "Sonnet on Chillon," "some account of his life ... furnished by the kindness of a citizen of that Republic," i.e. Geneva. The note, which is now entitled "Advertisement," is taken bodily from the pages of a work published in 1786 by the Swiss naturalist, Jean Senebier, who died in 1809. It was not Byron's way to invent imaginary authorities, but rather to give his references with some pride and particularity, and it is possible that this unacknowledged and hitherto unverified "account" was supplied by some literary acquaintance, who failed to explain that his information was common property. Be that as it may, Senebier's prose is in some respects as unhistorical as Byron's verse, and stands in need of some corrections and additions.
François Bonivard (there is no contemporary authority for "Bonnivard") was born in 1493. In early youth (1510) he became by inheritance Prior of St. Victor, a monastery outside the walls of Geneva, and on reaching manhood (1514) he accepted the office and the benefice, "la dignité ecclésiastique de Prieur et de la Seigneurie temporelle de St. Victor." A lover of independence, a child of the later Renaissance, in a word, a Genevese, he threw in his lot with a band of ardent reformers and patriots, who were conspiring to shake off the yoke of Duke Charles III. of Savoy, and convert the city into a republic. Here is his own testimony: "Dès que j'eus commencé de lire l'histoire des nations, je me sentis entrainé par un goût prononcé pour les Républiques dont j'épousai toujours les intérêts." Hence, in a great measure, the unrelenting enmity of the duke, who not only ousted him from his priory, but caused him to be shut up for two years at Grolée, Gex, and Belley, and again, after he had been liberated on a second occasion, ordered him, a safe conduct notwithstanding, to be seized and confined in the Castle of Chillon. Here he remained from 1530 to February 1, 1536, when he was released by the Bernese.
For the first two years he was lodged in a room near the governor's quarters, and was fairly comfortable; but a day came when the duke paid a visit to Chillon; and "then," he writes, "the captain thrust me into a cell lower than the lake, where I lived four years. I know not whether he did it by the duke's orders or of his own accord; but sure it is that I had so much leisure for walking, that I wore in the rock which was the pavement a track or little path, as it had been made with a hammer" (Chroniques des Ligues de Stumpf, addition de Bonivard).
After he had been liberated, "par la grace de Dieu donnee a Messrs. de Berne," he returned to Geneva, and was made a member of the Council of the State, and awarded a house and a pension of two hundred crowns a year. A long life was before him, which he proceeded to spend in characteristic fashion, finely and honourably as scholar, author, and reformer, but with little self-regard or self-respect as a private citizen. He was married no less than four times, and not one of these alliances was altogether satisfactory or creditable. Determined "to warm both hands before the fire of life," he was prone to ignore the prejudices and even the decencies of his fellow-citizens, now incurring their displeasure, and now again, as one who had greatly testified for truth and freedom, being taken back into favour and forgiven. There was a deal of human nature in Bonivard, with the result that, at times, conduct fell short of pretension and principle. Estimates of his character differ widely. From the standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, "C'était un fort mauvais sujet et un plus mauvais prêtre;" and even his captivity, infamous as it was, "ne peut rendre Bonivard intérssant" (Notices Généalogiques sur les Familles Genevoises, par J. A. Galiffe, 1836, iii. 67, sq.); whilst an advocate and champion, the author of the Preface to Les Chroniques de Genève par François de Bonnivard, 1831, tom. i. pt. i. p. xli., avows that "aucun homme n'a fait preuve d'un plus beau caractère, d'un plus parfait désintéressement que l'illustre Prieur de St. Victor." Like other great men, he may have been guilty of "quelques égarements du cœur, quelques concessions passagères aux délices des sens," but "Peu importe à la postérité les irrégularités de leur vie privée" (p. xlviii.).
But whatever may be the final verdict with regard to the morals, there can be no question as to the intellectual powers of the "Prisoner of Chillon." The publication of various MS. tracts, e.g. Advis et Devis de l'ancienne et nouvelle Police de Genève, 1865; Advis et Devis des Lengnes, etc., 1865, which were edited by the late J. J. Chaponnière, and, after his death, by M. Gustave Revilliod, has placed his reputation as historian, satirist, philosopher, beyond doubt or cavil. One quotation must suffice. He is contrasting the Protestants with the Catholics (Advis et Devis de la Source de Lidolatrie, Geneva, 1856, p. 159): "Et nous disons que les prebstres rongent les mortz et est vray; mais nous faisons bien pys, car nous rongeons les vifz. Quel profit revient aux paveures du dommage des prebstres? Nous nous ventons touttes les deux parties de prescher Christ cruciffie et disons vray, car nous le laissons cruciffe et nud en l'arbre de la croix, et jouons a beaux dez au pied dicelle croix, pour scavoir qui haura sa robe."
For Bonivard's account of his second imprisonment, see Les Chroniques de Genève, tom. ii. part ii. pp. 571-577; see, too, Notice sur François Bonivard,... par Le Docteur J. J. Chaponnière, Mémoires et Documents Publiés, par La Société d'Histoire, etc., de Genève, 1845, iv. 137-245; Chillon Etude Historique, par L. Vulliemin, Lausanne, 1851; Revue des Deux Mondes, Seconde Période, vol. 82, Août, 1869, pp. 682-709; "True Story of the Prisoner of Chillon," Nineteenth Century, May, 1900, No. 279, pp. 821-829, by A. van Amstel (Johannes Christiaan Neuman).
The Prisoner of Chillon was reviewed (together with the Third Canto of Childe Harold) by Sir Walter Scott (Quarterly Review, No. xxxi., October, 1816), and by Jeffrey (Edinburgh Review, No. liv., December, 1816).
With the exception of the Eclectic (March, 1817, N.S., vol. vii. pp. 298-304), the lesser reviews were unfavourable. For instance, the Critical Review (December, 1816, Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581) detected the direct but unacknowledged influence of Wordsworth on thought and style; and the Portfolio (No. vi. pp. 121-128), in an elaborate skit, entitled "Literary Frauds," assumed, and affected to prove, that the entire poem was a forgery, and belonged to the same category as The Right Honourable Lord Byron's Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, etc.
For extracts from these and other reviews, see Kölbing, Prisoner of Chillon, and Other Poems, Weimar, 1896, excursus i. pp. 3-55.
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind![1]
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art:
For there thy habitation is the heart—
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned—
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar—for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard!—May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.[2]
When this poem[3] was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I should have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues. With some account of his life I have been furnished, by the kindness of a citizen of that republic, which is still proud of the memory of a man worthy of the best age of ancient freedom:—
"François de Bonnivard, fils de Louis de Bonnivard, originaire de Seyssel et Seigneur de Lunes, naquit en 1496. Il fit ses études à Turin: en 1510 Jean Aimé de Bonnivard, son oncle, lui résigna le Prieuré de St. Victor, qui aboutissoit aux murs de Genève, et qui formait un bénéfice considérable....
"Ce grand homme—(Bonnivard mérite ce titre par la force de son âme, la droiture de son cœur, la noblesse de ses intentions, la sagesse de ses conseils, le courage de ses démarches, l'étendue de ses connaissances, et la vivacité de son esprit),—ce grand homme, qui excitera l'admiration de tous ceux qu'une vertu héroïque peut encore émouvoir, inspirera encore la plus vive reconnaissance dans les cœurs des Genevois qui aiment Genève. Bonnivard en fut toujours un des plus fermes appuis: pour assurer la liberté de notre République, il ne craignit pas de perdre souvent la sienne; il oublia son repos; il méprisa ses richesses; il ne négligea rien pour affermir le bonheur d'une patrie qu'il honora de son choix: dès ce moment il la chérit comme le plus zélé de ses citoyens; il la servit avec l'intrépidité d'un héros, et il écrivit son Histoire avec la naïveté d'un philosophe et la chaleur d'un patriote.
"Il dit dans le commencement de son Histoire de Genève, que, dès qu'il eut commencé de lire l'histoire des nations, il se sentit entraîné par son goût pour les Républiques, dont il épousa toujours les intérêts: c'est ce goût pour la liberté qui lui fit sans doute adopter Genève pour sa patrie....
"Bonnivard, encore jeune, s'annonca hautement comme le défenseur de Genève contre le Duc de Savoye et l'Evêque....
"En 1519, Bonnivard devient le martyr de sa patrie: Le Duc de Savoye étant entré dans Genève avec cinq cent hommes, Bonnivard craint le ressentiment du Duc; il voulut se retirer à Fribourg pour en éviter les suites; mais il fut trahi par deux hommes qui l'accompagnaient, et conduit par ordre du Prince à Grolée, où il resta prisonnier pendant deux ans. Bonnivard était malheureux dans ses voyages: comme ses malheurs n'avaient point ralenti son zèle pour Genève, il était toujours un ennemi redoutable pour ceux qui la menaçaient, et par conséquent il devait être exposé à leurs coups. Il fut rencontré en 1530 sur le Jura par des voleurs, qui le dépouillèrent, et qui le mirent encore entre les mains du Duc de Savoye: ce Prince le fit enfermer dans le Château de Chillon, où il resta sans être interrogé jusques en 1536; il fut alors delivré par les Bernois, qui s'emparèrent du Pays-de-Vaud.
"Bonnivard, en sortant de sa captivité, eut le plaisir de trouver Genève libre et réformée: la République s'empressa le lui témoigner sa reconnaissance, et de le dédommager des maux qu'il avoit soufferts; elle le reçut Bourgeois de la ville au mois de Juin, 1536; elle lui donna la maison habitée autrefois par le Vicaire-Général, et elle lui assigna une pension de deux cent écus d'or tant qu'il séjournerait à Genève. Il fut admis dans le Conseil des Deux-Cent en 1537.
"Bonnivard n'a pas fini d'être utile: après avoir travaillé à rendre Genève libre, il réussit à la rendre tolérante. Bonnivard engagea le Conseil à accorder [aux ecclésiastiques et aux paysans] un tems suffisant pour examiner les propositions qu'on leur faisait; il reússit par sa douceur: on prêche toujours le Christianisme avec succès quand on le prêche avec charité....
"Bonnivard fut savant: ses manuscrits, qui sont dans la bibliothèque publique, prouvent qu'il avait bien lu les auteurs classiques Latins, et qu'il avait approfondi la théologie et l'histoire. Ce grand homme aimait les sciences, et il croyait qu'elles pouvaient faire la gloire de Genève; aussi il ne négligea rien pour les fixer dans cette ville naissante; en 1551 il donna sa bibliothèque au public; elle fut le commencement de notre biblothèque publique; et ces livres sont en partie les rares et belles éditions du quinzième siècle qu'on voit dans notre collection. Enfin, pendant la même année, ce bon patriote institua la République son héritière, à condition qu'elle employerait ses biens à entretenir le collège dont on projettait la fondation.
"Il parait que Bonnivard mourut en 1570; mais on ne peut l'assurer, parcequ'il y a une lacune dans le Nécrologe depuis le mois de Juillet, 1570, jusques en 1571."—[Histoire Littéraire de Genève, par Jean Senebier (1741-1809), 1786, i. 131-137.]
My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,[4]
As men's have grown from sudden fears:
My limbs are bowed, though not with toil,
But rusted with a vile repose,[5]
For they have been a dungeon's spoil,
And mine has been the fate of those
To whom the goodly earth and air
Are banned,[6] and barred—forbidden fare;10
But this was for my father's faith
I suffered chains and courted death;
That father perished at the stake
For tenets he would not forsake;
And for the same his lineal race
In darkness found a dwelling place;
We were seven—who now are one,[7]
Six in youth, and one in age,
Finished as they had begun,
Proud of Persecution's rage;[8]20
One in fire, and two in field,
Their belief with blood have sealed,
Dying as their father died,
For the God their foes denied;—
Three were in a dungeon cast,
Of whom this wreck is left the last.
There are seven pillars of Gothic mould,[9]
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old,
There are seven columns, massy and grey,
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray,30
A sunbeam which hath lost its way,
The Prison of Bonnivard
from a photograph.
And through the crevice and the cleft
Of the thick wall is fallen and left;
Creeping o'er the floor so damp,
Like a marsh's meteor lamp:[10]
And in each pillar there is a ring,[11]
And in each ring there is a chain;
That iron is a cankering thing,
For in these limbs its teeth remain,
With marks that will not wear away,40
Till I have done with this new day,
Which now is painful to these eyes,
Which have not seen the sun so rise
For years—I cannot count them o'er,
I lost their long and heavy score
When my last brother drooped and died,
And I lay living by his side.
They chained us each to a column stone,
And we were three—yet, each alone;
We could not move a single pace,50
We could not see each other's face,
But with that pale and livid light
That made us strangers in our sight:
And thus together—yet apart,
Fettered in hand, but joined in heart,[12]
'Twas still some solace in the dearth
Of the pure elements of earth,
To hearken to each other's speech,
And each turn comforter to each
With some new hope, or legend old,60
Or song heroically bold;
But even these at length grew cold.
Our voices took a dreary tone,
An echo of the dungeon stone,
A grating sound, not full and free,
As they of yore were wont to be:
It might be fancy—but to me
They never sounded like our own.
I was the eldest of the three,
And to uphold and cheer the rest70
I ought to do—and did my best—
And each did well in his degree.
The youngest, whom my father loved,
Because our mother's brow was given
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven—
For him my soul was sorely moved:
And truly might it be distressed
To see such bird in such a nest;[13]
For he was beautiful as day—
(When day was beautiful to me80
As to young eagles, being free)—
A polar day, which will not see[14]
A sunset till its summer's gone,
Its sleepless summer of long light,
The snow-clad offspring of the sun:
And thus he was as pure and bright,
And in his natural spirit gay,
With tears for nought but others' ills,
And then they flow'd like mountain rills,
Unless he could assuage the woe90
Which he abhorred to view below.
The other was as pure of mind,
But formed to combat with his kind;
Strong in his frame, and of a mood
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood,
And perish'd in the foremost rank
With joy:—but not in chains to pine:
His spirit withered with their clank,
I saw it silently decline—
And so perchance in sooth did mine:100
But yet I forced it on to cheer
Those relics of a home so dear.
He was a hunter of the hills,
Had followed there the deer and wolf
To him this dungeon was a gulf,
And fettered feet the worst of ills.
Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent110
From Chillon's snow-white battlement,[15]
Which round about the wave inthralls:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made—and like a living grave.
Below the surface of the lake[16]
The dark vault lies wherein we lay:
We heard it ripple night and day;
Sounding o'er our heads it knocked;
And I have felt the winter's spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high120
And wanton in the happy sky;
And then the very rock hath rocked,
And I have felt it shake, unshocked,[17]
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.
I said my nearer brother pined,
I said his mighty heart declined,
He loathed and put away his food;
It was not that 'twas coarse and rude,
For we were used to hunter's fare,130
And for the like had little care:
The milk drawn from the mountain goat
Was changed for water from the moat,
Our bread was such as captives' tears
Have moistened many a thousand years,
Since man first pent his fellow men
Like brutes within an iron den;
But what were these to us or him?
These wasted not his heart or limb;
My brother's soul was of that mould140
Which in a palace had grown cold,
Had his free breathing been denied
The range of the steep mountain's side;[18]
But why delay the truth?—he died.[19]
I saw, and could not hold his head,
Nor reach his dying hand—nor dead,—
Though hard I strove, but strove in vain,
To rend and gnash my bonds in twain.[20]
He died—and they unlocked his chain,
And scooped for him a shallow grave[21]150
Even from the cold earth of our cave.
I begged them, as a boon, to lay
His corse in dust whereon the day
Might shine—it was a foolish thought,
But then within my brain it wrought,[22]
That even in death his freeborn breast
In such a dungeon could not rest.
I might have spared my idle prayer—
They coldly laughed—and laid him there:
The flat and turfless earth above160
The being we so much did love;
His empty chain above it leant,
Such Murder's fitting monument!
But he, the favourite and the flower,
Most cherished since his natal hour,
His mother's image in fair face
The infant love of all his race,
His martyred father's dearest thought,[23]
My latest care, for whom I sought
To hoard my life, that his might be170
Less wretched now, and one day free;
He, too, who yet had held untired
A spirit natural or inspired—
He, too, was struck, and day by day
Was withered on the stalk away.[24]
Oh, God! it is a fearful thing
To see the human soul take wing
In any shape, in any mood:[25]
I've seen it rushing forth in blood,
I've seen it on the breaking ocean180
Strive with a swoln convulsive motion,
I've seen the sick and ghastly bed
Of Sin delirious with its dread:
But these were horrors—this was woe
Unmixed with such—but sure and slow:
He faded, and so calm and meek,
So softly worn, so sweetly weak,
So tearless, yet so tender—kind,
And grieved for those he left behind;
With all the while a cheek whose bloom190
Was as a mockery of the tomb,
Whose tints as gently sunk away
As a departing rainbow's ray;
An eye of most transparent light,
That almost made the dungeon bright;
And not a word of murmur—not
A groan o'er his untimely lot,—
A little talk of better days,
A little hope my own to raise,
For I was sunk in silence—lost200
In this last loss, of all the most;
And then the sighs he would suppress
Of fainting Nature's feebleness,
More slowly drawn, grew less and less:
I listened, but I could not hear;
I called, for I was wild with fear;
I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread
Would not be thus admonishéd;
I called, and thought I heard a sound—
I burst my chain with one strong bound,210
And rushed to him:—I found him not,
I only stirred in this black spot,
I only lived, I only drew
The accursed breath of dungeon-dew;
The last, the sole, the dearest link
Between me and the eternal brink,
Which bound me to my failing race,
Was broken in this fatal place.
One on the earth, and one beneath—
My brothers—both had ceased to breathe:220
I took that hand which lay so still,
Alas! my own was full as chill;
I had not strength to stir, or strive,
But felt that I was still alive—
A frantic feeling, when we know
That what we love shall ne'er be so.
I know not why
I could not die,[26]
I had no earthly hope—but faith,
And that forbade a selfish death.230
What next befell me then and there
I know not well—I never knew—
First came the loss of light, and air,
And then of darkness too:
I had no thought, no feeling—none—
Among the stones I stood a stone,[27]
And was, scarce conscious what I wist,
As shrubless crags within the mist;
For all was blank, and bleak, and grey;
It was not night—it was not day;240
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness—without a place;
There were no stars—no earth—no time—
No check—no change—no good—no crime—
But silence, and a stirless breath
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!250
A light broke in upon my brain,—
It was the carol of a bird;
It ceased, and then it came again,
The sweetest song ear ever heard,
And mine was thankful till my eyes
Ran over with the glad surprise,
And they that moment could not see
I was the mate of misery;
But then by dull degrees came back
My senses to their wonted track;260
I saw the dungeon walls and floor
Close slowly round me as before,
I saw the glimmer of the sun
Creeping as it before had done,
But through the crevice where it came
That bird was perched, as fond and tame,
And tamer than upon the tree;
A lovely bird, with azure wings,[28]
And song that said a thousand things,
And seemed to say them all for me!270
I never saw its like before,
I ne'er shall see its likeness more:
It seemed like me to want a mate,
But was not half so desolate,[29]
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink,
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,
Or broke its cage to perch on mine,280
But knowing well captivity,
Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in wingéd guise,
A visitant from Paradise;
For—Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile—
I sometimes deemed that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;[30]
But then at last away it flew,
And then 'twas mortal well I knew,290
For he would never thus have flown—
And left me twice so doubly lone,—
Lone—as the corse within its shroud,
Lone—as a solitary cloud,[31]
A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear[32]
When skies are blue, and earth is gay.
A kind of change came in my fate,300
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was:—my broken chain
With links unfastened did remain,
And it was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,310
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,
My brothers' graves without a sod;
For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crushed heart felt blind and sick.
I made a footing in the wall,
It was not therefrom to escape,
For I had buried one and all,320
Who loved me in a human shape;
And the whole earth would henceforth be
A wider prison unto me:[33]
No child—no sire—no kin had I,
No partner in my misery;
I thought of this, and I was glad,
For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend
To my barred windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high,330
The quiet of a loving eye.[34]
I saw them—and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high—their wide long lake below,[35]
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;[36]
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channelled rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-walled distant town,[37]
And whiter sails go skimming down;340
And then there was a little isle,[38]
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;
A small green isle, it seemed no more,[39]
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,
And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue.350
The fish swam by the castle wall,
And they seemed joyous each and all;[40]
The eagle rode the rising blast,
Methought he never flew so fast
As then to me he seemed to fly;
And then new tears came in my eye,
And I felt troubled—and would fain
I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode360
Fell on me as a heavy load;
It was as is a new-dug grave,
Closing o'er one we sought to save,—
And yet my glance, too much opprest,
Had almost need of such a rest.
It might be months, or years, or days—
I kept no count, I took no note—
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;370
I asked not why, and recked not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fettered or fetterless to be,
I learned to love despair.
And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage—and all my own![41]
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:380
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell;[42]
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends390
To make us what we are:—even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.
- ↑ [In the first draft, the sonnet opens thus—
"Belovéd Goddess of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
Thy palace is within the Freeman's heart,
Whose soul the love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd—
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Thy joy is with them still, and unconfined,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom."Ed. 1832.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"I appeal from her [sc. Florence] to Thee."
Proph. of Dante, Canto I. line 125.]
- ↑ When the foregoing.... Some account of his life will be found in a note appended to the Sonnet on Chillon, with which I have been furnished, etc.—[Notes, The Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816, p. 59.]
- ↑ Ludovico Sforza, and others.—The same is asserted of Marie Antoinette's, the wife of Louis the Sixteenth, though not in quite so short a period. Grief is said to have the same effect; to such, and not to fear, this change in hers was to be attributed.
[It has been said that the Queen's hair turned grey during the return from Varennes to Paris; but Carlyle (French Revolution, 1839, i. 182) notes that as early as May 4, 1789, on the occasion of the assembly of the States-General, "Her hair is already grey with many cares and crosses."
Compare "Thy father's beard is turned white with the news" (Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV., act ii. sc. 4, line 345); and—
"For deadly fear can time outgo,
And blanch at once the hair."
Marmion, Canto I. stanza xxviii. lines 19, 20.] - ↑ But with the inward waste of grief.—[MS.]
- ↑ [The N. Engl. Dict., art. "Ban," gives this passage as the earliest instance of the use of the verb "to ban" in the sense of "to interdict, to prohibit." Exception was taken to this use of the word in the Crit. Rev., 1817, Series V. vol. iv, p. 571.]
- ↑ [Compare the epitaph on the monument of Richard Lord Byron, in the chancel of Hucknall-Torkard Church, "Beneath in a vault is interred the body of Richard Lord Byron, who with the rest of his family, being seven brothers," etc. (Elze's Life of Lord Byron, p. 4, note 1).
Compare, too, Churchill's Prophecy of Famine, lines 391, 392—
"Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride,
Two in the field and three on gibbets died."The Bonivard of history had but two brothers, Amblard and another.]
- ↑ Braving rancour—chains—and rage.—[MS.]
- ↑ ["This is really so: the loop-holes that are partly stopped up are now but long crevices or clefts, but Bonivard, from the spot where he was chained, could, perhaps, never get an idea of the loveliness and variety of radiating light which the sunbeam shed at different hours of the day.... In the morning this light is of luminous and transparent shining, which the curves of the vaults send back all along the hall. Victor Hugo (Le Rhin,... Hachette, 1876, I. iii. pp. 123-131) describes this... 'Le phénomène de la grotto d'azur s'accomplit dans le souterrain de Chillon, et le lac de Genève n'y réussit pas moins bien que la Méditerranée.' During the afternoon the hall assumes a much deeper and warmer colouring, and the blue transparency of the morning disappears; but at eventide, after the sun has set behind the Jura, the scene changes to the deep glow of fire...."—Guide to the Castle of Chillon, by A. Naef, architect, 1896, pp, 35, 36.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"One little marshy spark of flame."
Def. Transf., Part I. sc. 1.
Kölbing notes six other allusions in Byron's works to the "will-o'-the-wisp," but omits the line in the "Incantation" (Manfred, act i. sc. 1, line 195)—
"And the wisp on the morass,"
which the Italian translator would have rendered "bundle of straw" (see Letter to Hoppner, February 28, 1818, Letters, 1900, iv. 204, note 2, et post p. 92, note 1).]
- ↑ [This "... is not exactly so; the third column does not seem to have ever had a ring, but the traces of these rings are very visible in the two first columns from the entrance, although the rings have been removed; and on the three last we find the rings still riveted on the darkest side of the pillars where they face the rock, so that the unfortunate prisoners chained there were even bereft of light.... The fifth column is said to be the one to which Bonivard was chained during four years. Byron's name is carved on the southern side of the third column ... on the seventh tympanum, at about 1 metre 45 from the lower edge of the shaft." Much has been written for and against the authenticity of this inscription, which, according to M. Naef, the author of Guide, was carved by Byron himself, "with an antique ivory-mounted stiletto, which had been discovered in the duke's room."—Guide, etc., pp. 39-42. The inscription was in situ as early as August 22, 1820, as Mr. Richard Edgcumbe points out (Notes and Queries, Series V. xi. 487).]
- ↑ —— pined in heart.—[Editions 1816-1837.]
- ↑ [Compare, for similarity of sound—
"Thou tree of covert and of rest
For this young Bird that is distrest."Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, by W. Wordsworth,
Works, 1889, p. 364.Compare, too—
"She came into the cave, but it was merely
To see her bird reposing in his nest."Don Juan, Canto II. stanza clxviii. lines 3, 4.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"Those polar summers, all sun, and some ice."
Don Juan, Canto XII. stanza lxxii. line 8.]
- ↑ [Ruskin (Modern Painters, Part IV. chap. i. sect. 9, "Touching the Grand Style," 1888, iii. 8, 9) criticizes these five lines 107-111, and points out that, alike in respect of accuracy and inaccuracy of detail, they fulfil the conditions of poetry in contradistinction to history. "Instead," he concludes, "of finding, as we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we find it consisting entirely in the addition of details; and instead of it being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular and particular!"]
- ↑ The Château de Chillon is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of Meillerie and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent: below it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to the depth of 800 feet, French measure: within it are a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which we were informed that the condemned were formerly executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, eight, one being half merged in the wall; in some of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered: in the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their traces. He was confined here several years. It is by this castle that Rousseau has fixed the catastrophe of his Héloïse, in the rescue of one of her children by Julie from the water; the shock of which, and the illness produced by the immersion, is the cause of her death. The château is large, and seen along the lake for a great distance. The walls are white.
["Le château de Chillon ... est situé dans le lac sur un rocher qui forme une presqu'isle, et autour du quel j'ai vu sonder à plus de cent cinquante brasses qui font près de huit cents pieds, sans trouver le fond. On a creusé dans ce rocher des caves et des cuisines au-dessous du niveau de l'eau, qu'on y introduit, quand on veut, par des robinets. C'est-la que fut détenu six ans prisonnier François Bonnivard ... homme d'un mérite rare, d'une droiture et d'une fermeté à toute épreuve, ami de la liberté, quoique Savoyard, et tolérant quoique prêtre," etc. (La Nouvelle Héloïse, par J. J. Rousseau, partie vi. Lettre 8, note (1); Œuvres complètes, 1836, ii. 356, note 1).
With Byron's description of Chillon, compare that of Shelley, contained in a letter to Peacock, dated July 12, 1816 (Prose Works of P. B. Shelley, 1880, ii. 171, sq.). The belief or tradition that Bonivard's prison is "below the surface of the lake," for which Shelley as well as Rousseau is responsible, but which Byron only records in verse, may be traced to a statement attributed to Bonivard himself, who says (Mémoires, etc., 1845, iv. 268) that the commandant thrust him "en unes croctes desquelles le fond estoit plus bas que le lac sur lequel Chillon estoit citue." As a matter of fact, "the level [of les souterrains] is now three metres higher than the level of the water, and even if we take off the difference arising from the fact that the level of the lake was once much higher, and that the floor of the halls has been raised, still the halls must originally have been built about two metres above the surface of the lake."—Guide, etc., pp. 28, 29.] - ↑ [The "real Bonivard" might have indulged in and, perhaps, prided himself on this feeble and irritating paronomasy; but nothing can be less in keeping with the bearing and behaviour of the tragic and sententious Bonivard of the legend.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"... I'm a forester and breather
Of the steep mountain-tops."Werner, act iv. sc. 1.]
- ↑ But why withhold the blow?—he died.—[MS.]
- ↑ To break or bite ——.—[MS.]
- ↑ [Compare "With the aid of Suleiman's ataghan and my own sabre, we scooped a shallow grave upon the spot which Darvell had indicated" (A Fragment of a Novel by Byron, Letters, 1899, iii. Appendix IX. p. 452).]
- ↑ [Compare—
"And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."Christabel, by S. T. Coleridge, part ii. lines 412, 413.]
- ↑ [It is said that his parents handed him over to the care of his uncle,Jean-Aimé Bonivard, when he was still an infant, and it is denied that is father was "literally put to death."]
- ↑ [Kölbing quotes parallel uses of the same expression in Werner, act iv. sc. 1; Churchill's The Times, line 341, etc.; but does not give the original—
"But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which, withering on the virgin-thorn," etc.Midsummer Nights Dream, act i. sc. 1, lines 76, 77.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"The first, last look of Death revealed."
The Giaour, line 89, note 2.
Byron was a connoisseur of the incidents and by-play of "sudden death," so much so that Goethe was under the impression that he had been guilty of a venial murder (see his review of Manfred in his paper Kunst und Alterthum, Letters, 1901, v. 506, 507). A year after these lines were written, when he was at Rome (Letter to Murray, May 30, 1817), he saw three robbers guillotined, and observed himself and them from a psychological standpoint.
"The ghastly bed of Sin" (lines 182, 183) may be a reminiscence of the death-bed of Lord Falkland (English Bards, etc., lines 680-686; Poetical Works, 1898, i. 351, note 2).]
- ↑ [Compare—
"And yet I could not die."
Ancient Mariner, Part IV. line 262.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"I wept not; so all stone I felt within."
Dante's Inferno, xxxiii. 47 (Cary's translation).]
- ↑ [Compare "Song by Glycine"—
"A sunny shaft did I behold,
From sky to earth it slanted;
And poised therein a bird so bold—
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted," etc.Zapolya, by S. T. Coleridge, act ii. sc. 1.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate."Ruth, by W. Wordsworth, Works, 1889, p. 121.]
- ↑ ["The souls of the blessed are supposed by some of the Mahommedans to animate green birds in the groves of Paradise."—Note to Southey's Thalaba, bk. xi. stanza 5, line 13.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"I wandered lonely as a cloud.
Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 205.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"Yet some did think that he had little business here."
Ibid., p. 183.
Compare, too, The Dream, line 166, vide post, p. 39—
"What business had they there at such a time?"]
- ↑ [Compare—
"He sighed, and turned his eyes, because he knew
'Twas but a larger jail he had in view."Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, bk. i. lines 216, 217.
Compare, too—
"An exile——
Who has the whole world for a dungeon strong."Prophecy of Dante, iv. 131, 132.]
- ↑ [Compare—
"The harvest of a quiet eye."
A Poet's Epitaph, line 51, Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 116.]
- ↑
I saw them with their lake below,
And their three thousand years of snow.—[MS.] - ↑ [This, according to Ruskin's canon, may be a poetical inaccuracy. The Rhone is blue below the lake at Geneva, but "les embouchures" at Villeneuve are muddy and discoloured.]
- ↑ [Villeneuve.]
- ↑ Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a very small island [Ile de Paix]; the only one I could perceive in my voyage round and over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect upon the view.
- ↑ [Compare—
"Of Silver How, and Grasmere's peaceful lake,
And one green island."Works of W. Wordsworth, 1889, p. 220.]
- ↑ [Compare the Ancient Mariner on the water-snakes—
"O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare."Ancient Mariner, Part IV. lines 282, 283.
There is, too, in these lines (352-354), as in many others, an echo of Wordsworth. In the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle it is told how the "two undying fish" of Bowscale Tarn, and the "eagle lord of land and sea" ministered to the shepherd-lord. It was no wonder that the critics of 1816 animadverted on Byron's "communion" with the Lakers. "He could not," writes a Critical Reviewer (Series V. vol. iv. pp. 567-581), "carry many volumes on his tour, but among the few, we will venture to predict, are found the two volumes of poems lately republished by Mr. Wordsworth.... Such is the effect of reading and enjoying the poetry of Mr. W., to whose system (ridiculed alike by those who could not, and who would not understand it) Lord Byron, it is evident, has become a tardy convert, and of whose merits in the poems on our table we have a silent but unequivocal acknowledgment."]
- ↑ [Compare the well-known lines in Lovelace's "To Althea—From Prison"—
"Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage."] - ↑ Here follows in the MS.—
Nor slew I of my subjects one— What sovereign hath so little
yet so much hathdone?