text:
Wits School of Arts and WISER, University of the Witwatersrand
Form and formlessness; violence and eroticism; horror and ecstasy: the precarious slip and a split of making art at the knife edge.
Form and formlessness; violence and eroticism; horror and ecstasy: the precarious slip and a split of making art at the knife edge.
I start simply by being struck by an image. Something odd, curious, dramatic. The image might come from newspapers, books, movies, magazines, other art, my imagination or direct experiences. Many of these images are at once violent, erotic, tragic and beautiful. They are atavistic and elemental as well as social and analytical at the same time. Many allegorise deep human experiences like collapse, disorder, decay and formlessness. Some images emerge out of the vicissitudes of the medium itself. What happens when ink and glue act on a surface is unpredictable and exciting. This unpredictability creates a vital tension or energy between form and formlessness, balancing them on a knife edge.(Penny Siopis, 2009.)
Sarah Nuttall: Your show is titled Paintings, but apart from a small section of the background of Twins, there is no oil or acrylic paint in this body of work. Your medium is ink and glue. Why this change?
Penny Siopis: The mix of liquid ink and viscous glue involves processes of radical flux and flow that excite me. The fact that these mediums literally have an unpredictable life of their own makes them perfect for the radically contingent way I want to work.
Nuttall: So how do you work these mediums?
Siopis: The process involves the mix of ink and glue and sometimes water through splashing, dripping and moving the canvas to direct the flow. These materials then congeal into different configurations on the surface. I work with the canvas flat on the ground and then on the wall - horizontal to vertical - and work more. Back and forth, up on the wall and down on the floor. Sometimes I try to direct these configurations into recognisable images, other times I just let the medium have its way. I also throw ink or glue on to the surface in a way which emphatically registers the energy of my gesture. The openness, experimentality and risk this involves is something I love. And the 'accidents' that happen as a consequence. What occurs in one work can't be repeated in another. The drying time of the glue depends on the thickness of the layer. There is a strong element of surprise in this, partly because the glue is white and opaque when wet and only becomes transparent when dry. Only then can I see what has actually happened to the painting. It's not all chance, of course. I have long experience with manipulating material, and this experience becomes a kind of second nature that pushes and directs me when I can't see how the opaque surface is going to settle down. You could say that I set up the conditions for chance to operate along certain lines. I have always been intensely interested in materiality as idea and sensation, as something more than merely a means to make an image.
Nuttall: You assert your strong interest in form and so I wonder: what aspects of modernism continue to offer you critical resources for the practice of painting?
Siopis: Modernism's struggle for form against reference is still alive to me today - despite the radical critiques that have followed in its wake. Modernism's emphasis on the relation between form and materiality also remains compelling for me. There are tensions here that still offer critical possibilities for painting. I must stress, though, that my interest in form involves the other side of form, formlessness. In pursuit of purity, modernist formalism recognised that if you push purity of form too far, it risks tipping into its other: formlessness (chaos) or mere decoration (uniformity).
More generally I suspect that the persistence of painting has something to do with being humane - a human, embodied trace in a time of hyper-mediation, of excessive remediation, for example.
Nuttall: How do the iconographic aspects of your work relate to this emphasis on form, or formlessness?
Siopis: By holding on to reference, and hence to a form of the iconographic, and insisting on a disruptive materiality, I seek to create a slippage between the two, a tension between figure and ground. This parallels the slippage between pictorial reference and abstraction. This creates a space which is crucial for opening the visual field for projection and triggering affect.
So my impulse is to disturb reference or iconography by emphasising figure-disrupting materiality. I am especially drawn to iconography that stresses the arrested moment. Materially, this arrest literally happens when the medium dries and hardens. Bodily, the gesture - acts of dripping, splashing, manipulating - is also arrested. And, as happens in the photographic process, there are two kinds of iconographic arrest. One is when you take the shot, and the other when the image emerges in the developer and is then fixed. The shot registers a world in a moment which passes and is forever lost, but remains in the fixed image of the photograph itself. Actually the shot is also reminiscent of the moment when I am struck by an image I see in the world.
I am less interested in fixity than in a kind of unsettled arrest. My interest in painting is to hold on to and to show the signs of its becoming.
Nuttall: In an interview with you in Art South Africa in 2005 I asked you about your frustrations with painting and you replied that you never seem to be able to keep the formlessness in your paintings that corresponds to what Georges Bataille called 'informe'. Does this interest in the informe still drive you?
Siopis: Yes, it does. Bataille's informe is an operation, neither theory nor product, and in this I see something of my process. My desire is to go as far as I can in pulling the form (or materiality) away from the subject, to drag form and figuration to the verge of formlessness, to bring form down. But I don't get to the extreme of what I think Bataille's informe suggests. It's more like an impulse that drives me to a formlessness that can disrupt the coherence of form as it seeks to usurp content for itself alone, as in the idea that form is content, a major tenet of modernism.
Bataille's informe points to the formlessness of the world, implying its intrinsic worthlessness and the irredeemable futility of our thinking about it. His informe is philosophical and only obliquely related to visual form, or art. Yet his constant use of dramatic visual metaphors in his writing suggests its richness for visual art. In The Tears of Eros he does actually use visual images from a variety of sources.
Nuttall: Your psychic and painterly interest, in these works, relates to balancing on a knife edge. The knife edge seems to be the concatenation between the beautiful and the cruel, the violent and the erotic. Why is this such an interesting, exciting place for you? Siopis: The space, friction and energy between contending, even irreconcilable, desires are critical for me. The beautiful and the cruel, or the violent and the erotic, are not such odd bedfellows really. Each is tied to the other. And in art, the aesthetic is all but constituted though the play of contraries. The knife edge is a precarious condition where a slip and a split can happen. I want to hold this condition in a state of suspended animation rather than resolve or settle it, one way or another.
Nuttall: Your recent work has been almost exclusively in the registers of red and pink. You have long described yourself as drawn to the passions and traumas of 'redness' (the hot red of the candles of Catholicism) rather than to the cool colours (the blues of the Virgin's robes). And then we walk in to this new work and we see great swathes of blue and green, and some brown. Are your internal chromatic landscapes shifting? Might it have to do in part with the fact that this new work developed from your recent sojourn in Greece?
Siopis: It's true. I love red for all sorts of reasons. But blue, and water, have come on stage of late. I have an ancient feeling for water, as far back as I can remember. I would rather drown (almost did) than burn. Fluid and flow are my métier. I suppose it is also linked to an abiding interest in Sigmund Freud's 'oceanic', to the openness of life before language, an openness we imagine, seek, but never really know.
But this recent turn to blueness might well have a great deal to do with my time in Greece last year. It was a kind of interruption in my life and being so close to the sea marked this. I found myself just staring at the sea, stunned at its expanse, intensity, beauty. That the Aegean is so very blue is a shock. Blue seems so foreign to the reds of the body.
The Aegean was not without its traumas, of course. My mind was often filled with the horrific stories I heard at the time of African migrants drowning - thrown overboard by traffickers in their bid to get to Europe. I made work which tried to give form to my feelings here. Mostly they were small works, but the influence of these mental images is also manifest in Still Waters.
But the idea of the sea reaches beyond trauma. Perhaps it's the indeterminacy of water. Things float and sink. In a way, water approaches perfect formlessness. I have always liked what that old flux philosopher Heraclites said about water, that you never step into the same water of a river twice.
Nuttall: What made you want to paint such huge canvases this time? Compared, for instance, to the miniatures of your earlier Shame series?
Siopis: I needed an expanded field to act in, and to register energy. Ironically, while the larger field offers more scope for the expansive gesture, it also allows for intense intimacy. You can be both distant and close up; you can stand back and see the whole scene and come close and engage the body, the surface, the matter of the scene.
Nuttall: Many - though not all - of these works are violent, sometimes traumatic. In many ways, these emotional registers are signal in your work. But the physical deposits of emotion which accrue in these paintings also suggest a deep life force.
Siopis: My imagery is often violent, and the materiality itself often suggestive of violence. But at the same time you can see a vitality that is buoyant and libidinal. I like Bataille here when he sees art as entranced by horror and links this to the idea of sacrifice. In The Cruel Practice of Art he writes: 'Yet it is in this double bind that the very meaning of art emerges - for art, which puts us on the path of complete destruction and suspends us there for a time, offers us ravishment without death.'
I'd like to ask you now about some specific works on the show, and the kinds of references from which you have drawn. Miracle shows a tiny baby falling through space and a great twisted column of fire, which also has something of the look of an umbilical cord seen in colour on a medical scanner. What were you looking for in the making of this image?
Siopis: This work came from two separate stories I read in newspapers. One happened in a small town in Germany in 2008, the other in downtown Johannesburg in 2006. Both occurred in places where migrant workers live. They are uncannily similar. In each a mother is faced with a dilemma as she is trapped on a floor high in an apartment block which has caught fire. Should she hang on to her baby in the hope that the blaze will be extinguished? Or should she throw the baby out of the window in the hope that someone will catch the baby down below? Both mothers chose the latter. The babies were both caught and miraculously survived. I was struck by the elemental quality of these almost identical stories; like Sophie's choice, or King Solomon's threat to cut the baby in half to settle a dispute between two mothers claiming the same child. In this work the fire is entirely gestural, while the baby is more or less illusionistically depicted.
Nuttall: Three Trees is an overwhelmingly violent and emotional rape scene and yet you mentioned that it was based partly on a Japanese woodblock print. These woodblock prints, though, contrary to your work, seem to contain or disavow, or perhaps even infer by excluding, intense emotion or the kind of knife-edge places you're pursuing in this collection.
Siopis: Yes - the primary image is a rape of a woman by two men; and yes, it references a Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock print I found in a book on erotic art. It is perhaps one of the works that pits materiality against representation most strongly. You can see something of what is going on, but the materiality disrupts the scene. In this work the materiality is quite beautiful, a physical deposit of emotion. Even the trees seem to be shedding their bark in the pull towards the main 'action'.
I am intrigued by Japanese prints of this period - especially how they portrayed sexuality in such crisp, clear linear form. To me their form seems highly conventionalised, and so contrary to the sexual violence they depict. They don't reveal process, and look like elaborate diagrams of experience. They are strange to me and I can't stop looking at them. Because of this they offer me an affective and literal structure for painting, bare bones to give body to.
In drawing on Japanese prints or other historical sources, I am less concerned with history and specific pictorial traditions and more with how they resonate now, in our contemporary moment.
Nuttall: In Migrants we can make out bird-like figures amidst a terrifying frenzy of movement. By giving the work this title, you tempt us towards a reading of human migrants as well as the animal versions, although of course we also understand that any one meaning must be a provisional one. Siopis: This work was stimulated by a scene I witnessed from my veranda at dusk. Birds were consuming clouds of flying ants swarming from the ground after rain. I was mesmerised by the explosive energy of the moment. I initially created a field of intense visual activity on the canvas, and tentatively clarified certain forms to suggest the birds and their prey. But the figuration is tenuous, and the feel elemental and associative. Things moving fast and furious, and then frozen. Yes, just as Three Trees is not about trees, Migrants is not about migrants other than through different kinds of association. Birds and ants do of course migrate, and there is a relation between the natural and the social here.
Nuttall: By choosing Hundred Pieces as the title of this work, you point us towards Bataille. What is the association you were making here?
Siopis: Here I have drawn on a photograph Bataille writes about in The Tears of Eros. The photograph is of a hideous Chinese torture purported to have happened around 1905 in which a criminal's body is cut off bit by bit. Bataille could not take his eyes off this image. The reason for this, he says, is that the photograph reveals the conjoining of two apparently opposite experiences - religious horror of sacrifice and the abyss of eroticism. These two apparently opposite experiences have something in common in how we read an 'image'. Both seem ecstatic.
I too was struck by this photograph, but there is scant evidence of it in my Hundred Pieces. The title gives a clue for those who know Bataille's text. There is also the very schematic shape of the body, red marks where eyes and nipples might be, and the form that resembles the pole onto which the criminal is tied. But it's the feel, the sensation of how Bataille's words and the image resonate for painting that concerns me here, more than anything literal. 'Ecstasy' figures in perhaps more obscure or open ways for me than the photograph suggests. In my work the figure melts downward, against an upward movement. In terms of painting itself, the figure came from a single gesture. For me this was closer to capturing the sensation of what Bataille was talking about than the actual pictorial reference.
Nuttall: In Still Waters the surface is made up of a mass of shapes vaguely suggesting a mix of jellyfish and water lilies. In the midst of these emerges a face, and the expression on this face is almost unreadable - it could be agony, bliss, near-death or raw survival.
Siopis: Yes, the forms veer in a vortex towards the head of a person who seems to be either swamped by the mass or emerging from it. It looks like the person might be coming up for breath. The image condenses three visions that came to me simultaneously as I was struck by seeing an infestation of jellyfish pulsating in the harbour in Thessaloniki. The three visions were Shakespeare's Ophelia, an imagined scene of a migrant drowning in the Aegean, and, finally, Monet's water lilies. The condensation of images was similar to what happens in a dream. Trauma mixes with other, quite different, sensations.
Nuttall: How did you make Floating World?
Siopis: Here the source is another Japanese print, Awabi Fishergirl Ravished by Water-spirits (c1788) by Utamaro. The splash in the painting is important as it both breaks up and gives shape to the girl who is splashed. It also draws attention to the forms and force of water. There is no splash in the original print. Here I did two things with water. First, I flung ink on to the surface where it left its residue. I then applied ink marks to give body to this residue. These marks resemble conventional depictions of water - the wavy lines which have become almost symbols of water. The girl who is splashed sits in an arrested pose and looks to the lower left part of the painting. Here, another, smaller girl is submerged, struggling sexually with two murky male creatures.
Nuttall: Pine was surely painted in Greece. The embrace of the couple is not entirely a gentle one, is it?
Siopis: Yes. At the time I was thinking about the expressive possibilities of the visual field in painting, how repetition of shapes and physicality of surface could trigger emotion. I began by dropping ink and glue randomly on to the surface. The resulting forms brought an image of a forest to mind. This might have been because I was living in a building swathed in a thicket of pine trees. Greece is the only place I've been where pine trees grow so near to the sea! But I was also reading about the Greek civil war and how forests were places of both terror and refuge at the time. I then looked for a visual reference of the civil war and came upon a photograph of two comrades-in-arms. The couple reminded me of an old photo of my father and mother. I made a clearing in the forest, so to speak, and positioned them as if spot-lit in that clearing. Yes, they are locked in an ambiguous embrace; aggression or love? I then dripped hot coloured ink from the top of the canvas. The drips ran around the raised dollops of glue simulating pine cones and needles, animating and binding the surface and the whole visual field.
Nuttall: Ambush is included in this catalogue because it prefigures many of the works in the exhibition.
Siopis: This work was the first large piece I made with ink and glue and in which chance really mattered. The source is Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's woodblock print The Dream of a Fisherman's Wife (1820). It shows a huge octopus performing oral sex on a reclining woman. A smaller octopus kisses her lips, with one tentacle around her nipple. The woman seems relaxed - in another world. Another world is, of course, where she is - octopus sex is a fantasy. The powerful way Hokusai works with this fantasy makes this print so erotic. There is also a kind of wild informality in the octopus; it can change shape radically, disturbing any sense of equilibrium or stability.
The liquidity of the ink and viscosity of the glue curdle into forms reminiscent of Hokusai's image. But the forms are bloody, liquid, energetic. They congeal on the edge of formlessness in an unsettling organic process of becoming.
Apparently westerners have interpreted Hokusai's image as a rape scene. Others have seen the octopus as a kind of Zeus who disguised himself as an animal to ravish unsuspecting young women.
As a clever, sexual creature the octopus has stimulated many sexual fantasies. Some are hinted at in the text that structures the 'ground' of the image, what would otherwise have been the white of the canvas. The text strings myriad expressions of sexual transgression together. These are culled from high literature, poetry, technical documents, psychosexual narratives, pornography; from Bataille, Freud, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Antonin Artaud, Anaïs Nin, Angela Carter and Jeffrey Eugenides. Some are anonymous, demotic texts from much trashier sources. While these words replace the original text in the Hokusai image, I have also included a translation of this text (as silly as it actually is). Strung together these texts tie up (loosely) to create another story. It is hard to read every line, not least because you need to tilt your head in an unnatural and uncomfortable position to do so.
Nuttall: In what sense, if at all, are these South African paintings?
Siopis: The times seem to have made me hypersensitive to all sorts of imagery, especially that which marks ambivalence and the imponderable. In South Africa now we are confronted with the estrangement and dislocation that come with deep uncertainty about the stability of what we might call the social contract. At the same time, this instability can be an occasion for exhilarating change. It's a time of flux; a time which can congeal into sheer horror or open up to sheer ecstasy.
This interview was first published in "Penny Siopis: Paintings". Cape Town: Michael Stevenson catalogue 42. 2009.http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/exhibitions/siopis/index2009.htm


text:
What does it take to set up a wireless router to connect to a vpn service so everybody in the local wireless network surfs the internet through that vpn tunnel? What do I need to be careful about?
I'm willing to spend 200-300 on the router and VPN service, but I want to make sure I don't run into compatibility issues such as a router not using a certain protocol.
Any router or vpn service suggestions are greatly welcome as well.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
FTC is designed for those who want to apply knowledge to a fun hands-on experience and who want to work in a more relaxed setting than FRC. Teams of students are responsible for designing, building, and programming their robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. The robot kit is reusable from year-to-year and is programmed using a variety of languages. Teams, including coaches, mentors, and volunteers, are required to develop strategy and build robots based on STEM principles. Awards are given for the competition as for well for community outreach, design, and other real-world accomplishments.
FTC Team 3635:
FRC Team 2996 began an FTC team at Coronado High School in its sophomore year, 2010. Intended to be the "JV" team for freshmen, FTC team 3635 helps new high school students adjust to the rigors of robotics. At the moment, team 3635 is not an active team, due to a lack of sufficient student body and mentors capable of the time commitment. We hope to be able to have 3635 up and running in the future!
What is FIRST?
Learn more about the organization that is changing the STEM world.
This Year's Robot
Look at this year's game and what we've planned for the robot.
Dr. Wood Memorial
One of our beloved mentors passed away August 2014. Here's our memorial in honor of his memory.
© Copyright 2017 Cougars Gone Wired. All Rights Reserved.
FIRST and FRC are registered trademarks of United States Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, 200 Bedford Street Manchester New Hampshire 03101.


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A man who had been missing from Derbyshire for several weeks has been found.
Peter Draper, 56, of no fixed abode, was reported missing last week.
It was believed he had been missing for a number of weeks.
But Mr Draper has now been found in Matlock.
Police thanked everyone who shared the appeal to find him.


text:
In August, 2012, Charlie Atkinson was playing the best tennis of his life. With a newly perfected forehand, the seventy-six-year-old had recently trounced his sons in a doubles tournament. But one day, while travelling with his family from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to New Hampshire, Atkinson came down with an intense fever. At a local emergency room, doctors suspected that he had a urinary-tract infection. Worried that something more serious was amiss, however, Atkinson's son had him transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital, back in Boston. By the time Atkinson arrived, he was paralyzed with polio-like symptoms. He was sent to the hospital's intensive-care unit, where he eventually was diagnosed with a severe case of West Nile Virus. He had been felled by a mosquito.
After a month in the I.C.U., Atkinson was well enough to leave the hospital. He had "made it." But he remained dependent on a ventilator and confused—able to recognize his own name and little else. He didn't know it, but he had crossed an invisible threshold into a territory of protracted sickness and uncertain hope for improvement, a limbo known as "chronic critical illness."
The phrase was first coined in the nineteen-eighties to describe patients who survive a devastating illness or surgical procedure but who remain dependent on life support. It is the most profound example of a widening gap between merely surviving the I.C.U. and fully recovering. While those who leave the I.C.U. alive often carry scars, the chronically critically ill typically cannot breathe without a ventilator, are prone to infection, and suffer from brain dysfunction that ranges from intermittent agitation to a coma. Worse, they have dim prospects for getting better. Half die within a year; those who press on tend to remain institutionalized, with only ten per cent ever returning to independence. At any given time, there are a hundred thousand or so such patients in the United States, a number that's expected to grow with improvements in life-saving technologies and an aging population.
The chronically critically ill are often transferred from general hospitals to institutions known as long-term acute-care hospitals, which resemble an admixture of a nursing home and an I.C.U. Inside, the walls are often decorated with photos that show patients smiling in younger and healthier days, while the air smells of talcum powder, antiseptics, and bodily fluids. The nurses, in cheerful yellow disposable gowns, dispense dozens of daily medications against the steady backbeat of beeping cardiac monitors and whooshing ventilators. Families sit by beds day after day, marking movement toward goals that are measured in weeks to months, not days: getting off the ventilator, or regaining enough strength to sit up on the side of the bed. While some patients do improve, said R. Nicholas Nace, the associate medical director of Spaulding Hospital for Continuing Care, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, others "slowly come to the realization that they're not getting better."
The facilities are little known to the public, and even poorly understood by many physicians, since most doctors who work in acute care never have occasion to work in a long-term acute-care hospital. I had never visited one until recently, and, when I did, I was driven by curiosity, not mandate. This means that doctors who take care of the sickest patients often do so without a clear understanding of what comes after the I.C.U.
Not long ago, I had faced this uncertainty when I sat down with a patient's wife in a conference room outside the I.C.U. The eighty-year-old man, whom I'll call James Smith, had been healthy until a virus severely exacerbated his emphysema. He was placed on a ventilator, which is a temporary solution: the thick plastic tube, inserted through the mouth, past the vocal cords, and into the windpipe, is so intrusive that patients often require painkillers and sedatives to tolerate it, Within weeks, the tube can damage the vocal cords. After two weeks, on a ventilator, Smith still couldn't breathe, so I talked to his wife about a tracheotomy—a surgical procedure that creates a small hole in the neck, which serves as a more permanent entry point for the breathing tube. While patients with tracheotomies don't always require breathing machines, many do at first, and, since most people can't eat while connected to one, the procedure is often paired with a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy—the insertion of a feeding tube that trickles liquid meals directly into the patient's stomach. The procedures occur as a set so frequently that in the medical field they're often referred to by a nickname: the trach'-'n'-PEG.
"Do we have a choice?" Smith's wife asked me. She told me that her husband was a man who danced on tables, and that she had promised he would never end up a "vegetable."
"We could take him off the ventilator," I told her.
"Will he die if we do that?"
"Maybe," I replied. "Probably."
"And the tracheotomy—will that come out?"
"We hope so," I told them. "That's the goal. But we don't know."
The next day, Smith's family agreed to the tracheotomy.
Our conversation might seem inadequate, or my counsel uncertain. Indeed, had I the tools—the language and the experience—to explain chronic critical illness to my patient's family, perhaps I could have better approximated what Smith's life might look like if we went forward with the tracheotomy. But I.C.U. doctors are typically separated from their patients' long-term outcomes, and prognostication itself is an imperfect science, making these types of conversations fairly routine. Judith Nelson, a critical-care physician at New York City's Mount Sinai Medical Center who has studied how chronic critical illness is communicated to patients and families, explained to me that while "we know people want more information and need more support, we don't know at what point people can absorb and integrate an understanding of all this in their decision-making. If we were to tell them in the I.C.U. how it might be, would that really make a difference? Would they be able to hear it? And if they did hear it, would they actually decide differently?"
Part of the problem when it comes to communicating possible outcomes of chronic critical illness is that it is sometimes not possible to offer more than a general trajectory. Indeed, that was the information gap facing Charlie Atkinson and his family when he arrived at Spaulding in September of 2012. His wife, Jeannette, remembers that she had little idea what lay ahead. "I just felt relieved that he'd survived," she told me, when I first met her and her husband this past summer. "But then there were setbacks." While Atkinson's delirium cleared within a few months, he could not stand, despite months of physical therapy. The doctors said that Atkinson seemed to have gotten as far as he would get. "They pronounced me plateaued," Atkinson remembered.
By this past July, though, thanks to the attention of a particularly skilled physical therapist, Atkinson walked two hundred yards with the aid of a walker, and was eating without a ventilator. In October, some four hundred days after the mosquito bite that caused his West Nile Virus, Atkinson returned to his home, where I visited him recently. On the day I stopped by, sitting up hurt more than usual, and nerve damage from the virus has left his hands and feet achingly cold, so Atkinson greeted me from a hospital bed that he had ordered from eBay for fifteen hundred dollars. (Such beds typically cost around sixteen thousand dollars.) Improved muscle strength had freed him from the nighttime ventilator, but his cough was still weak; secretions built up and still needed to be occasionally suctioned through his tracheotomy. Helpers rotate through his house, day and night, because he can't be alone.
After his wife placed dinner in the oven, Charlie Atkinson wanted to take me on a tour. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and used the strength of his arms to propel himself toward his walker. We moved slowly through the living room to a newly installed lift to carry Atkinson to the second floor. Slowly walking up the stairs beside him, I asked Atkinson if this was all ever too much. He told me no. "I was a rower," Atkinson said. "I know how to put the oar in one more time."
When dinner was ready, we made our way back down to a table filled with roast chicken, apple cobbler, and vanilla ice cream. Charlie's appetite isn't what it was before West Nile, but he still marvelled over how he had recently enjoyed his first tastes of solid food after months with a feeding tube. When we finished eating, the Atkinsons stepped away to the bathroom, where Jeannette suctioned secretions out of Charlie's tracheotomy before they said goodnight to me. At home, with a clear mind and with the promise of further recovery ahead, Atkinson is one of the lucky ones. Without tennis, he's found pleasure in playing piano. He recently returned to M.G.H. to have his tracheotomy tube removed, which will allow the small hole in his neck to close and scar.
But luck looks different here. I do not know what it will look like for James Smith, nor for the dozens of others I've ushered into chronic critical illness over the years. When I last saw Smith, a week after he transferred from the I.C.U. to a long-term acute-care hospital, he was still on the ventilator, in and out of dim wakefulness, fighting a new case of pneumonia. I asked his wife whether she had thought again about the decisions we'd made that day in the conference room. "You gave us hope," she told me. "And so we took that hope."
Daniela Lamas is a fellow in critical-care medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston.
Photograph by Colin Gray.


text:
even before i became the feline-lover that you know & semi-tolerate today, i totally enjoyed stuff on my cat-- "STUFF + CATS = AWESOME"
it brings me a sick, twisted sense of well-being to witness that there are other delusional cat owners out there that like to "theme dress" (yes, i know.) their cats.
some spectacular examples--
d bag cat:
porn star cat:
coffee-table cat:
nkotb fan club president cat: (just for you, vanessa!)
gender-confused cat:
"working girl" cat:
drunk bum cat:
bi-polar cat:
founder, president, AND client of hair club for men cat:
have a great weekend!
4 comments Friday, April 30, 2010
thankful thursday
Posted by Mindi at 12:04 AM Labels: thankful thursday
things i am thankful for this week:
**a show that comes up with lines like the one at :27--
**a five year old girl:
**this magnificent and spectacular ginormous cupcake birthday creation:
**a loving & talented aunt megan, who creates our b-day masterpieces and saves us from the dreaded fate of an albertson's cake:
** catties. they will love you even when others think you suck:
**& for people with freakishly-extraordinary talents:
8 comments Thursday, April 29, 2010
hb mia!
my baby turns 5 years old today. where has the time gone?
she has brought me so much joy. i love hers.
mia: stop growing older! stay my little baby girl forever!
6 comments Wednesday, April 28, 2010
just in case you were wondering.....
Posted by Mindi at 12:03 AM Labels: funnyfunnyfunny randomness
here's a map of the states where you can legally marry your cousin.
you NEVER know when this information will come in handy.
vegas escape: "tonight's the night we make hisssstorrrrryyyyyyy..."
Posted by Mindi at 12:04 AM Labels: besties, blogging bffs, las vegas
we had a night out with some two of our favorites, and it involved ALL of the greatest things: lumberjack food portion sizes, vegas lounge-lizarding, almost-courtney love sightings, "sluts on a ship" performances, ginormous psychedelic snails, & the belting of classic styx songs. (who knew dennis de young looked like such a 70's porn star?)
we got to check off another swanky place on our 'vegas list' while staying at THEhotel--
we loved how 'sexy & grown-up' it was. too bad kami & i couldn't take advantage of said sexiness in our school-marm cardigans.....
seriously. NOBODY wears any clothes in las vegas! (which is why kyle & russ enjoyed their night SO.)
we were able to feel a bit of the vegas nightlife vibe whilst lounging on the leather couches in lavo and were completely thrilled when we were told that we could go on up to the nightclub section to see courtney love, who had just shown up.
we were equally just as bummed when we got up there and did not see hide nor hair on courtney's crazy little head. as well as feared for our lives when realizing that, in the event of a fire breaking out, we were SCREWED. we estimated approximately 1 bajillion people in a space that should have housed 150.
we also saw mystere. and we beheld it was unbelievable.
{want to see the better, cooler-blogger-version of this trip? go HERE.}
5 comments Tuesday, April 27, 2010
CRIBS: recession style
Posted by Mindi at 12:03 AM Labels: youtube favs
okay, i have always loved seth green--but i think i might just heart him a little bit more after seeing this little gem that made me laugh. OUT LOUD.
my favorite? that his car is sitting on the "14-inch rims" and that he is rocking the "27 inch tv screen". WORD!
russ & mindi: the search story
i loved the commercial above--i thought it was so clever.
now you can create your own google search story--since my man & i have been together nearly 20 years (!!!), i thought i would create our own version of a google search after falling for a handsome boy from a small, small town:
{courtesy of i *heart* you}
5 comments Monday, April 26, 2010
Posted by Mindi at 12:03 AM Labels: funnyfunnyfunny randomness
married to the sea always has something to make me giggle.
Posted by Mindi at 12:04 AM Labels: derrill, family, lana, warm and fuzzy
my parents left today for costa rica for 18 months and i'm feeling blue....
they are excited and i know that serving a mission for our church makes them so happy, so i am happy for them--i just wish that it was more like 18 days. i think that would be much more doable.
i love my parents and am so grateful for the wonderful example they are to me and everyone around them--i am proud of their lives and am grateful for their love.
so, today i give myself just a moment to be sad and to mope a bit and feel sorry for myself. and then it's onward & upward!
(being sad today included creating teen-angst broken heart collages. good stuff!)
13 comments Friday, April 23, 2010
thankful thursday
Posted by Mindi at 12:04 AM Labels: thankful thursday
things i am thankful for this week:
**the 2nd row (SECOND ROW!!!) tickets tiburon scored to john mayer in slc in august.
it's always nice to have somebody handle your business for you. AND score you the sweetest perks while at it. me so lucky.
**speaking of tiburon, she sent me the best surprise in the mail--and it was pink.
it went right the back of my car next to the depeche mode. it completes me. which is sad and somewhat pathetic to admit, but if you know me, then you know that i can be somewhat irrational about my music. as well as car decals.
unfortunately, it was time to say goodbye to my faithful pink girlie-skull decal. it had run it's course and served it's purpose. but i shed a tear as i peeled it's little corpse from my window--the end of an era.
**for my sweetest neighbor who works hard growing these beautiful roses. which then climb up her property and beautify mine. it's a total bonus for me--all the enjoyment and NONE of the upkeep. WIN/WIN.
**this card from vanessa, who enables my love for catties. she rules.
**this flower ring that is currently bringing me exceedingly great joy whenever i look down upon it. (but NOT my hands, which i had to treat with the 'SOFT FOCUS' option on picassa so you would be spared the horror.)
it sucks to get old.
**for this guy and his motorcycle, which take me on rides in this beautiful weather. there's nothing better in the whole wide world. i love him.
**for this video which brings out the 12 year old boy in me.
7 comments Thursday, April 22, 2010
happiness is....
Posted by Mindi at 12:04 AM Labels: i heart tv, youtube favs
i may or may not have allegedly watched this video of rachel & jessie st. james upwards of 30 times.
i'm not sure why it speaks to me so--because i freaking HATED the original version by sir lionel richie.
but, boy! this music video sure displays the majesty of lionel's acting skillz. and his impressive collection of bill cosby sweaters. (are those shoulder pads in there? just wondering...)
8 comments Wednesday, April 21, 2010
babysitting mia
this is mia & her little buddy from preschool, pierce. or, if you by chance speak mia, "PEAWSE".
they became friends and thought it might be a good idea to perhaps set up a play date--but poor pierce was in a quandary: mia was a GIRL.
so pierce pondered: how does one go about playing with an (eeeeewwwwhhh!) girl and still save face with the other four year old boys?
and then he came up with a brilliant solution--
he asked his mom if he could "babysit mia."
so, we set up a "babysitting opportunity" at the park with pierce & some additional buddies:
and they lived happily ever after with pierce on the clock and in control!
famous movie quotes: graph form
Posted by Mindi at 12:02 AM Labels: i heart movies
1 down, 8 to go
yesterday i got in the car with mia to go pick up the kids from school.
i just happened to be on the phone with my bff kamari, who had pulled up down the street at my other bff's house. i told her i was pulling out of my driveway and would stop to see her for a moment.
i pulled up, she got out of her car, turned to face me and screamed, "YOU HAVE A CAT ON TOP OF YOUR CAR!!"
apparently "maaaahhhhhhtin" had been chilling on my car roof and hadn't really bothered to climb down when i backed out of the garage.
i'm wondering how far he would have made it......?
6 comments Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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text:
The Rise of the Opportuneur –
The 7 radical new strategies for successfully starting up or growing your own business.
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Power shifts are happening everywhere and it's not being reported.
Companies are becoming flatter, more connected, more collaborative, more global, more decentralised, more dynamic.
In this new world of work there is a global talent pool of skilled people everywhere. Experienced people are common, but new skills are in constant demand.
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Welcome to the Revolution.


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We know we have to brush daily, and not just once. Most of us brush our teeth at least twice a day, if not more. That means that if you are using it as often as you should, your friendly tooth brush should be taking quit a beating day in and day out. Also, if you take into account that most people store toothbrushes in the bathroom, where there is a huge potential for bacterial infection (let's not go into that, but you know what we mean), as well as the constant moisture from the warm showers family members take, there is a big chance that your toothbrush needs some kind of cleaning, maybe even replacement.
But, what if you don't? Is there a risk to get sick from using that old toothbrush? For example, can you get sick from brushing with the same toothbrush you used while you had a cold or the flu? Well, not likely. This is because once you're over the cold or flu, your organism has the antibodies needed to fight off the same infection. In other words, you can't get sick from the same thing right after you just recovered. But just in case, if you are sick, make sure you rinse your toothbrush and dry it up. Actually, you should do that even if you are not sick.
Other peoples brushes.
What you really must avoid is using someone else's toothbrush. That's because whatever bacteria there is in their toothbrush, it will have the potential to infect you because you don't have the antibodies they have. Also, even if they don't have a cold or the flu or something like that, you still could get infected if they have dental caries or tooth decay. So the rule is simple. Stay away from other people's toothbrushes, keep people away from your toothbrush.
The fact of the matter is that bacteria can live for a long time, basically anywhere, including your toothbrush. So always make sure your rinse it after using it, remove any stuck left overs it may have, any toothpaste debris, and leave it drying upright, in the open. Never ever keep in somewhere enclosed, like a cabinet, plastic container, zip-lock bag or wrapped in paper. Those enclosed places are breading grounds for bacteria.
Replace it.
Even if you follow the above recommendations, in time, your toothbrush will end it's life cycle and it won't be very healthy to keep it along. When the time arrives, say goodbye, and replace it.
If you take care of your toothbrush and replace it when it has to be replaced, it will take care of your teeth. Did you know that your dentist in Tijuana can also take care of your teeth? Call us today to schedule your dental cleaning in Tijuana, and let a professional dentists make sure your oral health is in top shape.


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It has always been my aim to do these posts on a sunday - still haven't managed it but maybe one day. Anyway I hope your weeks have all started well. I had a lovely relaxing weekend and really enjoyed the sunshine. Here are some of the little things that I have loved from the last week. 1. Morning sunshine rippling on the thames on my way to work. Have been walking part of the way to work a couple of days a week and it is a seriously good start to the day when the sun is shining.
2. All this blossom is making London looking mighty fine right now. Am loving this city right now.
3. Checking out the beautiful liberty prints in the my local fabric shop
4. Park wanderings with my fave at the weekend
5. This little money plant we got from the garden centre after deciding we needed a bit more greenery in the house.
6. Sorry for the terrible photo but check out these beautiful personalised notebooks that my buddy Kate got for me. How am I ever going to use them? they are just too pretty!


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Wednesday Morning Meditations & Silent Prayer
Wednesday mornings we're inviting people to meet with us at Taborspace in SE Portland at 7am, but we're also welcoming individuals to take part remotely. Tuesday evenings the plans for Wednesday mornings will be posted here. We believe that life is better together, however we can make that happen. Please consider making this a regular part of your weekly practice.
We know that it is tough to find communities centered on Contemplative Christianity and hope this serves as a support for individuals who don't feel like they fit inside or outside of the church, but still haven't given up their seeking and knocking.


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Don't you hate it when you see something beautiful, and you pull out your camera, and you just can't make it look the same. What is wrong here? Is it me or the camera?! When you think of a robotic version of a human eye, or even a prosthetic eyeball, you probably picture some kind of camera. It makes sense, they both capture images and video, but aside from general comparisons, they're really not the same at all! When you're looking out through your eyeball, it's doing the same things as a camera, adjusting the lens, focusing and trying to make the image look as good as possible. In fact, generally speaking, both the eye and a camera have a lot in common! Both have adjustable apertures to let in the right amount of light, both have a lens, and both have a way to absorb the light. But from there, comparisons get a little fuzzy.
The reason your photos don't look the same way your eye sees them is because of the way the two different mechanisms function. The eye is 28 grams of vitreous fluid, muscles, cells and nerves. Cameras can be formatted and customized to do thousands of different types of shoots. When focusing, the lens of the eye uses the ciliary muscle to change its shape, a lens needs to be physically moved. When it's bright or dim, the pupil uses the sphincter pupillae to adjust the amount of light being let into the eyeball -- a camera uses an aperture to adjust the amount of light. According to research conducted in Canada in the late 50s, the f-stop of the human eye might be around f/3.2 to f/3.5… It was cited a lot, but I couldn't find the study to double check. Regardless, cameras have a far wider range of f-stops and ISO sensitivity to pick up dim light. When a full-frame camera absorbs light, it does so with a 35 millimeter sensor, compared to the eyeball -- which has a retina at the back. That wall of cells is CURVED, but is almost the same exact size as the camera -- about 32 mm! The difference is, the retina isn't very clear. We can only see 20/20 at the macula, or fovea. A spot on the retina that is ALL cone cells. Outside of the fovea are a mix of rods and cones, followed by just cones at the edge. This is why you can't read something you're not looking directly at, and why peripheral vision is mainly just for movement. Additionally, your eye only sees color where there are lots of cones, so closer to the fovea the more color.
A camera, by contrast, can pick up detail across the whole of the sensor, all in color! However, even though the camera can see a wider field, the amount of information is relatively low. Most high-end cameras process around 24 megapixels, but the human eye can get 52 megapixels on average and HUNDREDS of megapixels if you take into account the whole field of vision! It get's pretty ridiculous. What you see isn't just one image, it's dozens or more! You don't worry about overexposing, shutter speed, or aperture because your brain does that for you and filters out any errors in color or depth. In the end, the reason your photos don't look like what you see, is because what you see isn't really real. It's what your brain created while sucking in all that visual information and compiling it into a three dimensional, multi-million-pixel world.


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The PSO musicians should be well paid
Christine Rupp's defense of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra management ("PSO Musicians Should Face the Reality at Hand," Oct. 4 letters) is misguided. The musicians' salaries are indeed two or three times that of the average Pittsburgher. But salary for the average sports star here is about 15 times higher, corporate executives make about 10 times more and doctors about eight times more. The musicians work in a nonprofit, but so do well-paid professors and executives of the PSO. Which among these groups of elite professionals brings worldwide acclaim to Pittsburgh? None but the PSO musicians. They need our support.
The problem isn't with salaries but why local corporations are not giving more to the PSO.
The author also claims that PSO ticket prices are among the highest in the city. However, seats at the PSO average about $45, lower than "The Fantasticks" ($60), "La Traviata" ($100) and Alan Cumming's show ($56), none of which rivals the world-class caliber of the Pittsburgh Symphony.
Finally, Ms. Rupp's advocacy of the PSO management's hardline stance is unsupportable. The management initially asked the musicians for a 25 percent pay cut, a punch in the nose to the city's cultural life. Now it is refusing to negotiate. How is stonewalling in the best interest of the PSO? How does it reflect good faith? The musicians are not the problem.
Squirrel Hill


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News that Chinese white goods manufacturer Midea Group and the country's biggest e-commerce operator, Alibaba, have teamed up to develop a mass-market range of 'smart' home appliances, which can talk to each other.
The project will see Alibaba's recently-formed cloud computing arm, Aliyun, work to incorporate the technology into Midea's range of appliances, which includes refrigerators and washing machines.
Momentum in the development of smart appliances has accelerated considerably in recent years, with manufacturers working on interfaces for their machines which can be controlled remotely via a smartphone.
Reuters news agency reported that Alibaba had been taking steps to diversify its business in recent times, developing, among other products, mobile banking platforms and mobile games.
And from tomorrow (Wednesday), it said, Midea was due to launch its first smart home heating control system. This will be available through Alibaba's mobile phone network.
The announcement came just days after Alibaba announced it would be looking to float on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Welcome to Pelican's Foot
Welcome to the new website of Pelican's Foot, a unique marine environmental consultancy with a strong track record in sustainable seafood and fisheries advice, coastal management, awareness and education, community engagement, environmental interpretation, project design and communication.
You can learn more about the services we offer and key projects we have completed in those areas. Also, feel free to read our testimonials, our history and the latest news on this blog.


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We Are Here/
Yesterday was Mother's Day and today would have been my mother's 79th birthday. I actually had to check the math on a calculator because how could my mother be 79? The answer is that she really can't be because she is frozen in my mind at 73, the age she was when we said our last words to each other, "I love you" and "I'll see you next time." I think of my mother often as she is the central character in so many stories of my past, the ghost I still fight in my mind, in my parenting. Of course, time does give perspective if not complete healing and I can see her differently than I used to, can find comfort in memories of a well-timed smile, the way she chewed gum, her strength and pride, her determination. I can hold onto the best of her in a way that I couldn't before and I find that sometimes, I want to keep her close to me as equal parts inspiration and cautionary tale.
I have two of her wedding rings - one from her marriage to my father and one from her marriage to my stepfather. I have no memories of her wearing the one from my father so the one from my stepfather holds more meaning. I can close my eyes and see it on her finger, can remember her hands and her perfectly manicured nails that never gave away that she preferred to spend most of her time in the garden, working the earth.
On the day of our wedding, I slipped her wedding ring onto the ring finger of my right hand as if doing so would somehow bring her along, as if doing so would send a message across time that said, "Look how far we've come." I never thought I'd see the day I would legally marry and she never did.
I slipped her ring onto my finger once again as I headed to the theater for Listen To Your Mother last Thursday. The setting on her ring is flashy in a way that I have never been but I wore it anyway and took her along. All night I was aware of that ring because every time I tried to put my hands in my pockets - which I do more often than I realized - it would catch. Each time was a reminder, a whisper of "I am here." And as in life, there were times when that presence irritated me which felt right too.
This blog, my writing, Listen To Your Mother are all proof of how much good can come from the hardest things. I am here and she is too - in the face I see in the mirror, in my hands, in the way I throw my head back and laugh loudly and without apology, in the way I grit my teeth and purse my lips when I am determined to get my way. But there is more to me and I find that I trust that to be true more than I did in the past. Each time one of my children curls onto my lap or snuggles closer to me in bed, I know that I am also making my own way. We are here. The good and the hard. Together.


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Contact person
Laura Aletto
Mario De Cesare
Maria Vittoria Madaschi
Miriam Magri
Martina Melesi
The Commission intends to improve the knowledge of complementary and alternative medicine that enables the nurse to assist the person in its entirety.
Last year the commission undertook to enhance the different techniques that are part of the complementary care. In particular it focused on the matter of "therapeutic touch", as a positive influence for patients.
We intend to organise a course at least every year to make other complementary healing techniques more visible.


text: How to Amend a Georgia State Tax Return Georgia State Taxes Georgia "The Peach State" When Do I Need to File an Amended Georgia Tax Return? Your amended Georgia state return should be filed within 3 years of the filing deadline for the original tax return, or 2 years from the time when tax was paid (whichever is later). How Do I Correct My Accepted Georgia Tax Return or File a Tax Amendment in Georgia? You should file a tax amendment if there were changes to your Georgia state income, or if you filed a federal tax amendment. Here's how: Download and complete Form 500X. Print out your amended return and mail it to this address: Georgia Department of Revenue, Processing Center, P.O. Box 740318, Atlanta, Georgia 30374-0318. Georgia State Tax Amendment Forms (Download, Print Out, Fill Out, and Mail) Complete Form 500X for the appropriate Tax Year below. Form (Tax Year) Description Form 500X (2018) Amended Individual Income Tax Return Form 500X (2017) Amended Individual Income Tax Return Form 500X (2016) Amended Individual Income Tax Return Form 500X (2015) Amended Individual Income Tax Return Form 500X (2014) Amended Individual Income Tax Return Form 500X (2013) Amended Individual Income Tax Return Form 500X (2012) Amended Individual Income Tax Return Form 500X (2011) Amended Individual Income Tax Return How Do I Check the Status of My Georgia State Tax Amendment? You can call the Georgia Department of Revenue at 1-877-423-6711 (press Option #2). What Are the Penalties, Interest, and Fees Related to Georgia Tax Amendments? The state of Georgia has penalties for late filing, late payment, frivolous return, negligent underpayment, fraudulent underpayment, and a failure to file an estimated tax penalty. The penalty for filing late is 5% per month, but will not exceed a total of 25% of the tax due. The penalty for late payment is 0.5% per month, but will not exceed a total of 25% of the tax due. Also, the late filing and late payment penalties can't exceed 25% when combined. The penalty for frivolous return is $1,000. A frivolous return is defined by the Georgia Department of Taxation as one that doesn't have the necessary information to calculate the tax due or one with information that reflects a significantly incorrect tax, and the return was determined to be done with the motivation to hinder Georgia Tax Laws or is based on a frivolous position. The penalty for negligent underpayment is 5% of the tax underpayment. The penalty for fraudulent underpayment is 50% of the tax underpayment. The penalty for failing to file an estimated tax penalty is 9% per year for the timeframe of underpayment. The interest is 1% per month and is accrued from the due date until the tax is paid in full. Note that filing a tax extension or an installment payment plan doesn't exclude the taxpayer from interest or a late payment penalty. Where Do I Mail My Georgia Tax Amendment? - Georgia Mailing Address: Georgia Department of Revenue Processing Center P.O. Box 74031 Atlanta, Georgia 30374-0318 Georgia Department of Revenue Phone Number: 1-877-423-6711 (press Option #2) Georgia Department of Revenue Where Do I Find More Georgia State Tax Information? How Do I Just Prepare and File My Georgia Tax Return? Where is My Georgia State Tax Refund? Georgia Income Tax Extensions Georgia State Income Taxes What If I Need to Prepare and File My Federal, IRS Tax Amendment? Learn how to file a federal tax amendment.


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(Leel, Nila, Leelwal, Leela)
Country : India, Afghanistan
Languages : Rajasthani, Punjabi, Dhundhari
Neel (नील)[1] [2] Nila (नील) Leel (लील)[3]Leelwal (लीलवाल) [4] Leela (लीला)[5] is gotra of Jats found in Rajasthan[6] and Punjab. In Rajasthani language they are also called Leel in some areas. It is a Rajasthani Language variant of Neel. Nil clan is found in Afghanistan.[7]
- 1 Origin
- 2 Mention by Panini
- 3 History
- 4 In Mahabharata
- 5 Villages founded by Neel clan
- 6 Distribution in Rajasthan
- 7 Distribution in Madhya Pradesh
- 8 Distribution in Punjab
- 9 Notable persons
- 10 Gallery of Neel people
- 11 References
This Gotra originated from Nagavanshi mahapurusha named Nilabha (नीलाभ)[8] or Nila (नील). [9]
Mention by Panini
Nila (नील) A cloth dyed with nili, is mentioned by Panini in Ashtadhyayi. [10]
Nila (नीला) is mentioned by Panini in Ashtadhyayi. [11]
Nili (नीली) is mentioned by Panini in Ashtadhyayi. [12]
Rajatarangini[13] mentions that Nila: Then reigned Nila over the Nagas ; his royal umbrella was the hood of
[p.5]: the serpent (Naga). There lived various classes of Nagas whose jewels made the city as rich as the treasury of Kuvera. The first king Nila was invited by the Nagas to reign over them. He had a sceptre one and a half cubit long, and had an umbrella placed over him, and a kunda.
Rajatarangini[14] tells us that when Sussala became king of Kashmir second time in 1121 AD he had to face defeat but continued the renewal of war. .... Although the king Sussala's army was destroyed, yet with twenty or thirty men of the royal blood and of his own country, Sussala faced the enemies.
Nila and others, sons of Viḍāla, born of the family of Bhāvuka, of the royal blood and of his own country, helped Sussala in facing the enemies in 1121 AD. (p.92)
Neela[15], the paramount of Nagas of Kashmir, was believed from early times, to have dwelt in main source of Vitasta river. Hence this fine spring was known as Neela-kunda, may possibly account for the location of the neel naga in this particular fountain.[16] It goes by the name of Veranaga. Neelanaga is still worshipped in Kashmir and fairs related to him are also held even today. In the district of Nāgām (ancient name nāgrām) which is watered by the Dudhganga a small stream which joins the Vitasta at Srinagar, there is a small lake, likewise, known by the name of Neelā nāg.[17]
Tej Ram Sharma[18] writes about Avamukta (अवमुक्त) in Allahabad Stone Pillar Inscription of Samudragupta (=A.D.335-76) (No. 1, L. 19). This Inscription No. 1 refers to Avamukta as one of the countries in Dakshinapatha subdued by Samudragupta . Its ruler was Nilaraja.[19] . Avamukta has not been identified with certainty. Some scholars on the basis of the similarity of names identify it with Avimukta another name of Kasi. [20] But the suggestion cannot be accepted. Avamukta of the inscription was a country in the South while Avimukta or Kasi is an eastern country. It may be considered to be situated in the Godavari district. [21] According to D.B. Diskalkar it must lay on the Eastern Ghats which lie to the west of Kanchi or Conjeevaram. [22]
In Mahabharata
Military Campaign of Karna: Mahabharata, Book 3, Chapter 252.... Having met with Rukmi, Karna, repaired to Pandya and the mountain, Sri. And by fighting, he made Karala, king Nila, Venudari's son, and other best of kings living in the southern direction pay tribute.
Villages founded by Neel clan
- Neel Ki Kheri (नील की खेड़ी) - village in Mandalgarh tahsil in Bhilwara district in Rajasthan.
- Neel Ka Khera (नील का खेड़ा) - village in Bhadesar tahsil in Chittorgarh district of Rajasthan.
Distribution in Rajasthan
Nila (नील) gotra of Jats found in, Sikar, Tonk, Jaipur districts in Rajasthan.
Villages in Sikar district
Bhawanipura Srimadhopur, Dabason Ki Dhani (12),
Villages in Tonk district
Nila (नील) gotra Jats live in villages:
Ambapura Pachewar (1), Bapdunda (1), Ganta (5), Sardarpura (3), Thada Nimeda (1),
Leel inhabited Villages in Tonk district are:
Bagarwa Tonk (12), Banediya (1), Maindwas (4), Nimola (13), Paldi Dardahind (7),
Villages in Jaipur district
Neel (नील) gotra Jats live in villages:
Amarsar Jaipur (6), Chakwada Chauru (3), Chhaparwada (1), Jhag, Nanda ki Dhani Sewa (1), Paloo Kalan, Sakhoon, Sawarda (सावरदा), Salarsoo, Shri Rampura, Sitarampura, Surajpura Dudu,
Leel inhabited Villages in Jaipur district are:
Achalpura (1), Hanutpura, Jaisinghpura Sanganer (250), Khedi Charanan (4), Khedi Gokulpura (1), Khijuriya (3), Mundiya Amber, Nanda ki Dhani Sewa (1), Phagi, Raipura Jaipur (15), Sunadiya (1), Watika (1),
Villages in Nagaur district
Neel Gotra Jats are found in villages:
Villages in Alwar district
Leel Gotra Jats are found in villages:
Baroda Meo, Rajwara, Kathoomar,
Villages in Karauli district
Leel Gotra Jats are found in villages: Leeloti, Rajawara,
Villages in Bhilwara district
Neel Ki Kheri (t.Mandalgarh),
Villages in Chittorgarh district
Neel Ka Khera (t.Bhadesar)
Distribution in Madhya Pradesh
Villages in Shivpuri district
Distribution in Punjab
Villages in Jalandhar district
Villages in Ludhiana district
Villages in Patiala district
Notable persons
- Rekha Choudhary (Leel) - Agriculture Officer, Permanent Address : Phagi, Jaipur, Present Address : 1. A-30 ,Krishan Vihar, Opp. Hira Path, Mansorvar Jaipur. 2. A-134, Vidhyut nagar ,Ajmer Road, Jaipur ,Rajasthan, Phone : Mob : 9983750975, Email Address : firstname.lastname@example.com
- Anand Choudhary (Leel) - Ex. Manager RSRTC, VPO- Rajwara, teh.- Mandawar Alwar, distt.- Alwar, Rajasthan, Present Address : A-37,Bhan Nagar, Queen's Road, Jaipur, Phone : 0141-2353756, Mob : 9414054909
- Hawa Singh (Leel) - A. En. PWD, VPO- Rajwara, teh.- Mandawar Alwar, distt.- Alwar, Rajasthan, Present Address : H.NO.-333 "Jasraj house" Sugreev Marg,Hanuman Nagar Extension,Khatipura, Jaipur,(Rajasthan),PIN: 302012, Phone Number : 0141-2357972, Mob: 9413339821, Email : firstname.lastname@example.com
- Satyendra Singh (Leel) - RPS Addl. SP,VPO- Rajwara, teh.- Mandawar Alwar, distt.- Alwar, Rajasthan, Present Address : 6, Yadgar Police Quarters, Ajmeri Gate Jaipur, Phone : 0141-2574772, Mob: 9829058100
Gallery of Neel people
- ↑ Jat History Dalip Singh Ahlawat/Parishisht-I, s.n. 48
- ↑ O.S.Tugania:Jat Samuday ke Pramukh Adhar Bindu,p.47,s.n. 1414
- ↑ O.S.Tugania:Jat Samuday ke Pramukh Adhar Bindu,p.59,s.n. 2236
- ↑ Jat History Dalip Singh Ahlawat/Parishisht-I, s.n. ल-51
- ↑ Jat History Dalip Singh Ahlawat/Parishisht-I, s.n. ल-55
- ↑ Jat History Thakur Deshraj/Chapter IX,p.695
- ↑ An Inquiry Into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, H. W. Bellew, p.112
- ↑ Mahendra Singh Arya et al.: Ādhunik Jat Itihas, Agra 1998, p. 260
- ↑ Dr Pema Ram:Rajasthan Ke Jaton Ka Itihas, p.19
- ↑ V. S. Agrawala: India as Known to Panini, 1953, p.209
- ↑ V. S. Agrawala: India as Known to Panini, 1953, p. 231
- ↑ V. S. Agrawala: India as Known to Panini, 1953, p. 209, 231, 246
- ↑ Rajatarangini of Kalhana:Kings of Kashmira/Book I,p.4-5
- ↑ Kings of Kashmira Vol 2 (Rajatarangini of Kalhana)/Book VIII,pp.92-93
- ↑ Vogel J. PH. "Indian Serpent lore" P-227
- ↑ Dr Naval Viyogi: Nagas – The Ancient Rulers of India, p.19
- ↑ Dr Naval Viyogi: Nagas – The Ancient Rulers of India, p.20
- ↑ Personal and geographical names in the Gupta inscriptions/Place-Names and their Suffixes,p.253, s.n.1
- ↑ No. I, L. 20.
- ↑ History of Dharmasastra by P. V. Kane , Vol. IV, p. 626
- ↑ H. C. Raychaudhuri, Political History of Ancient India, p. 453, also see note 5.
- ↑ Diskalkar, Selections From Sanskrit Inscriptions. Vol. I, Part II, p. 33, see in Kanchi.
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- Villages in Patiala
- Ancient Jat Gotras
- The Mahabharata Tribes
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