title: Neil Finn

text: Finn's solo album, "Dizzy Heights", was released in Australia and New Zealand on 7 February 2014 via Kobalt Label Services. His sons and his wife also play on the album. "Dizzy Heights" is his third solo album.


title: Neil Finn

text: On 15 April 2018, Fleetwood Mac announced that Finn had joined the band along with Heartbreakers' lead guitarist Mike Campbell. Both Finn and Campbell toured with Fleetwood Mac in the concert tour An Evening with Fleetwood Mac from October 2018 to November 2019.


title: Neil Finn

text: In 1986, Finn performed with The Rock Party, a charity project initiated by the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (NCADA) that included many Australasian musicians such as Reg Mombassa from Mental As Anything, Tim Finn, and Nick Seymour and Paul Hester of Crowded House. The Rock Party released a 12" single entitled "Everything To Live For".


title: Neil Finn

text: In December 2008, several of the "7 Worlds Collide" lineup reconvened in Auckland, New Zealand to record "The Sun Came Out", a charity album for Oxfam.


title: Neil Finn

text: In March 2009, Neil Finn, with his son Liam, joined Tim Finn on stage at Melbourne's charity Sound Relief concert at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in support of the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Liam Finn played drums on a rendition of the Crowded House song "Weather With You".


title: Neil Finn

text: Finn has contributed solo music to various film and TV soundtracks including "Rain", "Boston Legal", "Boston Public", "The Waiting Game", "Antz", and "Sports Night". In 2012, Finn recorded the song "Song of the Lonely Mountain", which was featured in the end credits of Peter Jackson's film adaptation "".


title: Neil Finn

text: Finn married Sharon Dawn Johnson in February 1982. Finn and his wife have two sons, Liam Finn and Elroy Finn. Both sons are musicians.


title: Neil Finn

text: "This discography relates to solo releases by Neil Finn only. See Split Enz discography, Crowded House discography and The Finn Brothers' discography for other related works."


title: Neil Finn

text: "Countdown" was an Australian pop music TV series on national broadcaster ABC-TV from 1974 to 1987, it presented music awards from 1979 to 1987, initially in conjunction with magazine "TV Week". The TV Week / Countdown Awards were a combination of popular-voted and peer-voted awards.


title: Neil Finn

text: The Helpmann Awards is an awards show, celebrating live entertainment and performing arts in Australia, presented by industry group "Live Performance Australia" since 2001. Note: 2020 and 2021 were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West was a successful novelist, poet and journalist, as well as a prolific letter writer and diarist. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry and 13 novels during her lifetime. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, "The Land", and in 1933 for her "Collected Poems". She was the inspiration for the protagonist of "", by her friend and lover Virginia Woolf.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: She wrote a column in "The Observer" from 1946 to 1961 and is remembered for the celebrated garden at Sissinghurst created with her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Victoria Mary Sackville-West — called Vita, to distinguish her from her mother — was born on 9 March 1892 at Knole, the Kent home of Sackville-West's aristocratic ancestors. She was the only child of cousins Victoria Sackville-West and Lionel Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville. Vita's mother, the illegitimate daughter of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville and the Spanish dancer Pepita (Josefa de Oliva, née Durán y Ortega), had been raised in a Parisian convent.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Although the marriage of Sackville-West's parents was initially happy, the couple drifted apart shortly after her birth, and Lionel took an opera singer who came to live with them at Knole as his mistress.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Knole had been given to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I, in the sixteenth century. The Sackville-West family followed the English aristocracy's inheritance customs, preventing Vita from inheriting Knole upon the death of her father; this was a source of lifelong bitterness for her. The house followed the title, and was bequeathed instead by her father to his brother Charles, who became the 4th Baron.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West was initially taught at home by governesses and later attended Helen Wolff's school for girls, an exclusive day school in Mayfair, where she met first loves Violet Keppel and Rosamund Grosvenor. She did not befriend local children and found it hard to make friends at school. Her biographers characterise her childhood as one filled by loneliness and isolation. She wrote prolifically at Knole, penning eight full-length (unpublished) novels between 1906 and 1910, ballads and many plays, some in French. Her lack of formal education led to later shyness with her peers, such as those in the Bloomsbury Group. She felt herself to be sluggish of mind and she was never at the intellectual heart of her social group.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West's apparently Roma lineage introduced a passion for "gypsy" ways, a culture she perceived to be hot-blooded, heart-led, dark, and romantic. It informed the stormy nature of many of her later love affairs and was a strong theme in her writing. Sackville-West visited Roma camps and felt herself to be at one with them.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Vita's mother had a wide array of famous lovers, including financier J. P. Morgan and Sir John Murray Scott (from 1897 until his death in 1912). Scott, secretary to the couple who inherited and developed the Wallace Collection, was a devoted companion and Lady Sackville and he were rarely apart during their years together. During her childhood, Vita spent a great deal of time in Scott's apartments in Paris, perfecting her already fluent French.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West debuted in 1910. She was wooed by Orazio Pucci, son of a distinguished Florentine family; by Lord Granby (later 9th Duke of Rutland); and by Lord Lascelles (later 6th Earl of Harewood), among others. In 1924 she had a passionate affair with historian Geoffrey Scott. Scott's marriage collapsed shortly thereafter, as was often the fallout with Sackville-West's affairs, all with women after this point (as most of them had been beforehand).


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West fell in love with Rosamund Grosvenor (1888–1944), who was four years her senior. In her journal, Vita wrote "Oh, I dare say I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find it out," but she saw no real conflict. Lady Sackville, Vita's mother, invited Rosamund to visit the family at their villa in Monte Carlo (1910). Rosamund also stayed with Vita at Knole House, at Murray Scott's pied-à-terre on the Rue Laffitte in Paris, and at Sluie, Scott's shooting lodge in the Scottish Highlands, near Banchory. Their secret relationship ended in 1913 when Vita married.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West was more deeply involved with Violet Keppel, daughter of the Hon. George Keppel and his wife, Alice Keppel. The sexual relationship began when they were both in their teens and strongly influenced them for years. Both later married and became writers.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West was courted for 18 months by young diplomat Harold Nicolson, whom she found to be a secretive character. She writes that the wooing was entirely chaste and throughout they did not so much as kiss. In 1913, at age 21, Vita married him in the private chapel at Knole. Vita's parents were opposed to the marriage on the grounds that "penniless" Nicolson had an annual income of only £250. He was the third secretary at the British Embassy in Constantinople and his father had been made a peer only under Queen Victoria. Another of Sackville-West's suitors, Lord Granby, had an annual income of £100,000, owned vast acres of land and was heir to an old title, the Duchy of Rutland.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The couple had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships before and during their marriage, as did some of the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, with whom they had connections. Sackville-West saw herself as psychologically divided into two: one side of her personality was more feminine, soft, submissive, and attracted to men while the other side was more masculine, hard, aggressive, and attracted to women.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Following the pattern of his father's career, Harold Nicolson was at various times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of Parliament, and author of biographies and novels. After the wedding the couple lived in Cihangir, a suburb of Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Sackville-West loved Constantinople, but the duties of a diplomat's wife did not appeal to her. It was only during this time that she attempted to don, with good grace, the part of a "correct and adoring wife of the brilliant young diplomat", as she sarcastically wrote. When she became pregnant, in the summer of 1914, the couple returned to England to ensure that she could give birth in a British hospital.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The family lived at 182 Ebury Street, Belgravia and bought Long Barn in Kent as a country house (1915–1930). They employed the architect Edwin Lutyens to make improvements to the house. The British declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, following Ottoman naval attacks on Russia, precluded any return to Constantinople.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The couple had two children: Benedict (1914–1978), an art historian, and Nigel (1917–2004), a well-known editor, politician, and writer. Another son was stillborn in 1915.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West continued to receive devoted letters from her lover Violet Keppel. She was deeply upset to read of Keppel's engagement to Major Denys Trefusis. Her response was to travel to Paris to see Keppel and persuade her to honour their commitment. Keppel, depressed and suicidal, did eventually marry her fiancé, under pressure from her mother, though Keppel made it clear that she did not love her husband. Sackville-West called the marriage her own greatest failure.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West and Keppel disappeared together several times from 1918 on, mostly to France. One day in 1918 Vita writes that she experienced a radical 'liberation', where her male aspect was unexpectedly freed. She writes: "I went into wild spirits; I ran, I shouted, I jumped, I climbed, I vaulted over gates, I felt like a schoolboy let out on a holiday... that wild irresponsible day".


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The mothers of both women joined forces to sabotage the relationship and force their daughters back to their husbands. But they were unsuccessful. Sackville-West often dressed as a man, styled as Keppel's husband. The two women made a bond to remain faithful to one another, pledging that neither would engage in sexual relations with their husband.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Keppel continued to pursue her lover to great lengths, until Sackville-West's affairs with other women finally took their toll. In November 1919, while staying at Monte Carlo, Sackville-West wrote that she felt very low, entertaining thoughts of suicide, believing that Nicolson would be better off without her. In 1920 the lovers ran off again to France together and their husbands chased after them in a small two-seater aeroplane. Sackville-West heard allegations that Keppel and her husband Trefusis had been involved sexually, and she broke off the relationship as the lesbian oath of fidelity had been broken. Despite the rift, the two women stayed devoted to one another.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: From 1925 to 1927, Nicolson lived in Tehran where Sackville-West often visited him. Sackville-West's book "A Passenger to Tehran" recounts her time there. The couple were involved in planning the coronation of Rezā Khan and got to know the six-year old Crown Prince Mohammad Reza well. She also visited and wrote about the former capital of Isfahan to see the Safavid palaces.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West's relationship with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf began in 1925 and ended in 1935, reaching its height between 1925 and 1928. The American scholar Louise DeSalvo wrote that the ten years while they were together were the artistic peak of both women's careers, owing to the positive influence they had on one another: "neither had ever written so much so well, and neither would ever again reach this peak of accomplishment".


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: In December 1922, Sackville-West first met Virginia Woolf at a dinner party in London. Though Sackville-West came from an aristocratic family that was far richer than Woolf's own, the women bonded over their confined childhoods and emotionally absent parents. Woolf knew about Sackville-West's relationship with Keppel and was impressed by her free spirit.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West greatly admired Woolf's writings, considering her to be the better author. She told Woolf in one letter: "I contrast my illiterate writing with your scholarly one, and I am ashamed". Though Woolf envied Sackville-West's ability to write quickly, she was inclined to believe that the volumes were written too much in haste: "Vita's prose is too fluent".


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: As the two grew close, Woolf disclosed that as a child she had been abused by her step-brother. It was largely due to Sackville-West's support that Woolf began to heal from the trauma, allowing her for the first time to have a satisfying erotic relationship. Woolf purchased a mirror during a trip to France with Sackville-West, saying she felt she could look in a mirror for the first time in her life. Sackville-West's support gave Woolf greater confidence and helped her cast off her self-image of a sickly semi-recluse. She persuaded Woolf that her nervous ailments had been misdiagnosed, and that she should focus on her own varied intellectual projects; that she must learn to rest.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: To help the Woolfs, Sackville-West chose their Hogarth Press to be her publisher. "Seducers in Ecuador", the first Sackville-West novel to be published by Hogarth, sold only 1,500 copies in its first year. "The Edwardians", published next, sold 30,000 copies in its first six months. The boost helped Hogarth financially, though Woolf did not always value the books' romantic themes. The increased security of the Press's fortunes allowed Woolf to write more experimental novels such as "The Waves" Though contemporary critics consider Woolf a better writer, critics in the 1920s viewed Sackville-West as more accomplished, with her books outselling Woolf's by a large margin.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West loved to travel, frequently going to France, Spain and to visit Nicolson in Persia. These trips were emotionally draining for Woolf, who missed Sackville-West intensely. Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse", noteworthy for its theme of longing for someone absent, was partly inspired by Sackville-West's frequent absences. Sackville-West inspired Woolf to write one of her most famous novels, "", featuring a protagonist who changes sex over the centuries. This work was described by Sackville-West's son Nigel Nicolson as "the longest and most charming love-letter in literature."


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: There were, however, tensions in the relationship. Woolf was often bothered by what she viewed as Sackville-West's promiscuity, charging that Sackville-West's great need for sex led her to take up with anyone who struck her fancy. In "A Room Of One's Own" (1929), Woolf attacks patriarchal inheritance laws. This was an implicit criticism of Sackville-West, who never questioned the leading social and political position of the aristocracy to which she belonged. She felt that Sackville-West was unable to critique the system she was both a part of and, to a certain extent, a victim of. In the 1930s they clashed over Nicolson's "unfortunate" involvement with Oswald Mosley and the New Party (later renamed the British Union of Fascists), and they were at odds over the imminent war. Sackville-West supported rearmament while Woolf remained loyal to her pacifism; this contributed to the distancing of their relationship in 1935.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: One of Sackville-West's male suitors, Henry Lascelles, would later marry the Princess Royal and become the 6th Earl of Harewood.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: In 1927, Sackville-West had an affair with Mary Garman, a member of the Bloomsbury Group; between 1929 and 1931, she maintained a relationship with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department. In 1931, Sackville-West was in a ménage à trois with journalist Evelyn Irons and Irons's lover, Olive Rinder. Irons had interviewed Sackville-West after her novel "The Edwardians" had become a best-seller.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: In 1930 the family acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent. It had once been owned by Vita's ancestors. This gave it a dynastic attraction as she was excluded from inheriting Knole and a title. Sissinghurst was an Elizabethan ruin and the creation of the gardens would be a joint labour of love that would last many decades, first entailing years of clearing debris from the land. Nicolson provided the architectural structure, with strong classical lines, which would frame his wife's innovative informal planting schemes. She created a new and experimental system of enclosures or rooms, such as the White Garden, Rose Garden, Orchard, Cottage Garden and Nuttery. She also innovated single colour-themed gardens and design principles orientating the visitors' experience to discovery and exploration. Her first garden at Long Barn (Kent, 1915–1930) was experimental, a place of learning by trial and error and she carried over her ideas and projects to Sissinghurst, utilising her hard won experience. Sissinghurst was first opened to the public in 1938.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West took up writing again in 1930 after a six-year break as she needed money to pay for Sissinghurst. Nicolson, having left the Foreign Office, no longer had a diplomat's salary to draw upon. She also had to pay tuition for her two sons to attend Eton College. She felt she had become a better writer thanks to the mentorship of Woolf. In 1947 she began a weekly column in "The Observer" called "In your Garden", although she was not a trained horticulturalist or designer. She continued the very popular column until a year before her death, and writing helped to make Sissinghurst one of the most famous and visited gardens in England. In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust's garden committee. The grounds are now run by the National Trust. She was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: In the early 1920s Sackville-West wrote a memoir of her relationships. In it she sought to explain both why she had chosen to stay with Nicolson and why she had fallen in love with Violet Keppel. The work, titled "Portrait of a Marriage", was not published until 1973. In the book she uses metaphors from nature to present her account as truthful and honest, describing her life as a "bog" and a "swamp", suggesting that her personal life was naturally unappealing and unpleasant. Sackville-West stated that she wanted to explain her sexuality, which she presented as being at the core of her personality. She wrote that in the future "it will be recognized that many more people of my type do exist than under the present-day system of hypocrisy is commonly admitted".


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Reflecting a certain ambivalence about her sexuality, Sackville-West presented her sexual desires for Keppel as both "deviant" and "natural", as if she herself was uncertain of whether her sexuality was normal or not, though the American scholar Georgia Johnston has argued that Sackville-West's confusion on this point was due to her wish to have this memoir published one day. In this regard, Sackville-West wrote of her deep desire and love for Keppel while at same time declaring her "shame" about this "duality with which I was too weak and too self-indulgent to struggle". At various times, Sackville-West called herself a "pariah" with a "perverted nature" and "unnatural" feelings for Keppel, who was portrayed as a tempting, if degrading, object of her desire. Sackville-West called for a "spirit of candor" in society that would allow for tolerance of gay and bisexual people. Much influenced by the theories promoted by sexologists like Magnus Hirschfeld, Edward Carpenter, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud, Sackville-West sometimes wrote of her sexuality as abnormal and wrong and due to some psychological flaw she was born with, portraying heterosexuality as the norm that she wanted, but failed to live up to.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Several times, Sackville-West stated that she wrote "Portrait of a Marriage" for scientific purposes so people would be able to understand bisexual people, which would thus allow her, despite her self-condemnation, to present her sexuality as in some way normal. Several of the sexologists Sackville-West cited, most notably Carpenter and Ellis, had argued that homosexuality and bisexuality were in fact normal, and despite her condemning herself, her use of a "scientific" approach backed up with quotes from Ellis and Carpenter allowed her to present her bisexuality as implicitly normal. Writing in the third person, Sackville-West declared "she regrets that the person Harold married wasn't entirely and wholly what he had thought of her, and that the person who loves and owns Violet isn't a second person, because each suits each other". Sackville-West presented her sexuality as part of the personality she had been born with, portraying herself as an accursed woman who should be the object of sympathy, not condemnation.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: In 1973, when her son Nigel Nicolson published "Portrait of a Marriage", he was uncertain if he was going to be charged with obscenity, going to considerable lengths to stress the legitimacy of a love for a person of the same sex in his introduction. Despite portraying herself as in some way "deviant" because of her feelings for women, Sackville-West also wrote in "Portrait of a Marriage" of the discovery and acceptance of her bisexuality as a teenager as the joyous "liberation of half my personality", suggesting that she did not really see herself as a woman with "deviant" sexuality, as this statement contradicted what she had written at the beginning of the book about her "perverted" sexuality. Johnson wrote that Sackville-West, in presenting the lesbian side of herself in terms that depicted Keppel as evil and Nicolson as good, was the only way possible at the time to express this side of her personality, writing "even if annihilating herself seemed the only way she could present any type of acceptable self."


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The memoir was dramatised by the BBC (and PBS in North America) in 1990, starring Janet McTeer as Vita, and Cathryn Harrison as Violet. The series won four BAFTAs.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West's novel "Challenge" (1923) also bears witness to her affair with Keppel: Sackville-West and Keppel had started writing this book as a collaborative endeavour. It was published in America but banned in the UK until 1974.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The male character's name, Julian, had been Sackville-West's nickname when passing as a man. "Challenge" (first entitled "Rebellion", then "Enchantment", then "Vanity" and at some point "Foam"), is a "roman à clef" with the character of Julian being a male version of Sackville-West and Eve, the woman he desires so passionately is Keppel. Notably, Sackville-West in "Challenge" defends Keppel against several of the insults Nicolson had applied to her in his letters to her; for example Nicolson often called Keppel a "swine" and a "pig", and in the book Julian goes out of his way to say that Eve is neither a swine nor a pig. In the book, Julian says that "Eve is not a 'little swine', she just has the weaknesses and faults of femininity carried to the 9th degree, but is also redeemed by a self-sacrifice, which is very feminine".


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Reflecting her obsession with the Romany people, Eve is portrayed as a seductive Romany woman with an "insinuating femininity" that Julian cannot resist, calling him away from his political mission of winning independence on a fictional Greek island during the Greek war of independence. Nicolson wrote in a letter to his wife: "Don't "please" dedicate it to Violet, it would kill me if you did". When "Challenge" was published in 1924, the dedication was written in Romany reading: "This book is yours, honoured witch. If you read it, you will find your tormented soul changed and free". Throughout their relationship, Keppel was given to threatening suicide if Sackville-West left her, a character trait shared by Eve, who finally drowns herself by walking in the sea when Julian is aboard a boat and too far off to hear her calling for him. The book's ending reflected Sackville-West's guilt about breaking her relationship with Keppel.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Her mother, Lady Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to refuse to allow publication of the novel in England; but Vita's son Nigel Nicolson praises his mother: "She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything ... How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?"


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West was fascinated with and often wrote about the Roma people. As the British scholar Kirstie Blair noted, for her: "Gypsies represent liberation, excitement, danger and the free expression of sexuality". In particular, the Roma women, especially Spanish Romany women, served as a symbol for lesbianism in her writings. As with many other women writers in this period, for Sackville-West, the Romany represented a social element both familiar and strange; a people perceived and admired as flamboyant romantics while at the same time viewed and hated as shifty, dishonest types; a rootless people who belonged nowhere yet could be found everywhere in Europe, serving as a symbol for a sort of unconventional femininity. The picture Sackville-West held of the Romany was much influenced by "Orientalism", as the Romany were believed to have originated from India. The idea of a people who belonged nowhere, existing outside of the values of "civilization", held genuine appeal to her as it offered up the possibility of gender roles different from those held in the West. Sackville-West was English, but she invented Romany ancestry for herself on the Spanish side of her family, explaining her bohemian behavior as due to her alleged "Gypsy" descent.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Woolf was inspired by Sackville-West to write her most famous novel, "" (1928), featuring a protagonist who changes sex over the centuries. Reflecting Sackville-West's interest in the Romany, when Orlando goes to bed as a man and mysteriously wakes up as a woman in Constantinople (which is implied might have been the result of a spell cast by a Romany witch whom he married), it is at a Romany camp in the Balkans that Orlando is first welcomed and accepted as a woman, as the Romany in the novel make no distinctions between the sexes. Ultimately Woolf satirizes Sackville-West's Romany fetish, as Orlando, an English aristocrat, prefers not to live in poverty as part of wandering Romany caravan in the Balkans, because the call of a settled life of the aristocracy at a country house in England proves too strong for her, just as in real life Sackville-West fantasised about living the nomadic life of a Romany, but in reality preferred the settled life in the English countryside. "Orlando", which was intended as a fantasy where the character of Orlando (a stand-in for Sackville-West) inherits an estate, not unlike Knole (which Sackville-West would have inherited as the eldest child if she had been a man), ironically marked the beginning of a tension between the two women. Sackville-West often complained in her letters that Woolf was more interested in writing a fantasy about her than in returning her gestures of affection in the real world.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sackville-West's 1932 novel "Family History" tells the story of Evelyn Jarrold, a rich widow who married into a family which owes its recent wealth and social position to the ownership of coal mines, and her ill-fated love affair with Miles Vane-Merrick, a much younger man with progressive social ideas. Evelyn Jarrold's husband, Tommy, died in the Great War, and she has nothing to occupy her apart from her son Dan (the Jarrolds' heir, who is away at Eton), social events, and visits to her dressmaker. Vane-Merrick is a farming landowner and Member of Parliament, and is writing a book on economics. He represents new, progressive values and the male world of work and economic activity, and Evelyn Jarrold represents traditional values and the female world of family ties and social engagements.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The characters of Viola and Leonard Anquetil in "Family History" are socialists, pacifists and feminists, thinly veiled versions of Virginia and Leonard Woolf. In "Orlando", Woolf allowed Vita to finally "own" Knole, and in "Family History", Vita returns the gesture, as the Anquetils have children who turned out to be intelligent and decent people. Woolf had never had children and was afraid that she would have been a bad mother. In casting her fictional alter-ego as an excellent mother she was offering a "gift" to Woolf.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Most of the novels were an immediate success (except "Dark Island", "Grand Canyon" and "La Grande Mademoiselle"). "All Passion Spent" (1931) and "Seducers in Ecuador" (1924) sold especially well. Somewhat ironically "Seducers" overtook her mentor's novel "Mrs Dalloway" at the top of the sales charts.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: "The Edwardians" (1930) and "All Passion Spent" are perhaps her best-known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of following convention. This novel was dramatised by the BBC in 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller. "All Passion Spent" appears to reflect Woolf's influence. The character of Lady Slane begins to truly live only after the death of her husband, a former prime minister. She befriends the servants of her estate, discovering the lives of people she had previously ignored. At the end of the novel Lady Slane persuades her granddaughter to break off an arranged marriage in order to pursue her career as a musician.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: "Grand Canyon" (1942) is a science fiction "cautionary tale" (as she termed it) about a Nazi invasion of an unprepared United States. The book takes an unsuspected twist, however, that makes it something more than a typical invasion yarn.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: A recently re-discovered work from 1922 "A Note of Explanation" was written specifically to be a part of the miniature collection of books within the doll's House, and tells the story of a sprite that inhabits the doll's house and re-tells several fairy tales from the point of view of the sprite, indicating how they had influenced the story.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The book was adapted for the stage by Emily Ingram under the title "A Sprite in the Doll's House" in 2019 and was performed in Edinburgh, at the Palace of Holyrood House as part of their Christmas festivities.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The poetry remains the least known of Sackville-West's work. It encompassed epics and translations of volumes such as Rilke's "Duino Elegies". Her epic poems "The Land" (1926) and "The Garden" (1946) reflect an enduring passion for the earth and family tradition."The Land" may have been written in response to the central work of Modernist poetry "The Waste Land" (also published by Hogarth Press). She dedicated her poem to her lover Dorothy Wellesley. A recording of Sackville-West reading it was released by the British Columbia label.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Her epic poem "Solitude", published by the Hogarth Press in October 1938 contains references to the Bible, Paracelsus, Ixion, Catullus, Andromeda, the "Iliad" and a Sabine bride, all of which were quite acceptable in the early 20th century, but were seen as anachronistic by 1938. The narrator of "Solitude" has an ardent love of the English countryside. Though the sex of the narrator is left ambiguous, implied at various points to be a man or a woman, it is made clear the narrator loved intensely a woman who is no longer present and who is deeply missed. At one point, the narrator's horror and disgust at Ixion, a brutal rapist, implies that she is a woman. At another point in the poem, her desire to free Andromeda from her chains and to make love suggests that she is a lesbian. The narrator compares the love of nature to the love of books, as both cultivate her mind. She thinks of herself as superior to the farmers who merely work the land without the time or the interest for poetry, all of which make it possible for her to have a deeper appreciation of nature.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: She is not well known as a biographer. The most famous of those works is her biography of Saint Joan of Arc in the work of the same name. Additionally, she composed a dual biography of Saint Teresa of Ávila and Thérèse of Lisieux entitled "The Eagle and the Dove," a biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography of her maternal grandmother, the Spanish dancer known as "Pepita".


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Despite being a shy woman, Sackville-West often forced herself to participate in literary readings before book clubs and on the BBC in order to feel a sense of belonging. Her love of the classical traditions in literature put her out of favour with modernist critics and by the 1940s, she was often dismissed as a dated writer, much to her chagrin. In 1947 Sackville-West was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Companion of Honour.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Vita Sackville-West died at Sissinghurst in June 1962, aged 70, from abdominal cancer. She was cremated and ashes buried in the family crypt within the church at Withyham, eastern Sussex.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: Sissinghurst Castle is owned by the National Trust. Her son Nigel Nicolson lived there after her death, and following his death in 2004 his own son Adam Nicolson, Baron Carnock, came to live there with his family. With his wife, the horticulturalist Sarah Raven, they committed to restore the mixed working farm and growing food on the property for residents and visitors, a function that had withered under the aegis of the Trust.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: The film "Vita and Virginia", with Gemma Arterton as Vita and Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia, had its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. It is directed by Chanya Button and based on a play by Eileen Atkins, created from the love letters between Sackville-West and Woolf. The play was first performed in London in October 1993 and off Broadway in November 1994.


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: In her poetry, she often engaged themes of natural life and romantic love. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry during her lifetime, listed here:


title: Vita Sackville-West

text: In 1931, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press published in London a small run of a beautiful edition of Rainer Maria Rilke’s "Duino Elegies". This marked the English debut of Rilke’s masterpiece, which would eventually be rendered in English over 20 times, influencing countless poets, musicians and artists across the English-speaking world.


title: Hanafuda

text: In Korea, hanafuda are known as "Hwatu" (Korean: 화투, Hanja: , "battle of flowers") and made of plastic with a textured back side. The most popular games are "Go-stop" (Korean: 고스톱) and "Seotda" (Korean: 섯다). Hwatu is very commonly played in South Korea during special holidays such as Lunar New Year and "Chuseok" (추석).


title: Hanafuda

text: In Hawaii, hanafuda is used to play Sakura. Hanafuda is also played in Micronesia, where it is known as "Hanahuda" and is used to play a four-person game, which is often paired cross-table.


title: Hanafuda

text: Playing cards were introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century. The Portuguese deck consisted of 48 cards, with four suits divided into 12 ranks. The first Japanese-made decks made during the Tenshō period (1573–1592) mimicked Portuguese decks and are referred to as "Tenshō Karuta". The main game was a trick-taking game intermediate in evolution between Triunfo and Ombre. After Japan closed off all contact with the Western world in 1633, foreign playing cards were banned.


title: Hanafuda

text: In 1648, "Tenshō Karuta" were banned by the Tokugawa shogunate. During prohibition, gambling with cards remained highly popular which led to disguised card designs. Each time gambling with a card deck of a particular design became too popular, the government banned it, which then prompted the creation of a new design. This cat-and-mouse game between the government and rebellious gamblers resulted in the creation of increasingly abstract and minimalist regional patterns (地方札). These designs were initially called "Yomi Karuta" after the popular Poch-like game of "Yomi" which was known by the 1680s.


title: Hanafuda

text: Through the Meiwa, An'ei, and Tenmei eras (roughly 1764–1789), a game called "Mekuri" took the place of "Yomi". It became so popular that "Yomi Karuta" was renamed "Mekuri Karuta". Mechanically, "Mekuri" is similar to Chinese fishing games. Cards became so commonly used for gambling that they were banned in 1791, during the Kansei era.


title: Hanafuda

text: The earliest known reference to "Hana Awase" (a previous version of hanafuda) is from 1816 when it was recorded as a banned gambling tool. Unlike earlier decks it consists of 12 months (suits) divided into four rank-like categories. The majority of hanafuda games are descended from "Mekuri" although "Yomi" adaptations for the flower cards survived until the 20th century. Though they can still be used for gambling, its structure and design is less convenient than other decks such as Kabufuda. In the Meiji period, playing cards became tolerated by the authorities.


title: Hanafuda

text: In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo for the purposes of producing and selling hand-crafted hanafuda. Nintendo has focused on video games since the 1970s but continues to produce cards in Japan, including themed sets based on Mario, Pokémon, and Kirby. The "Koi-Koi" game played with hanafuda is included in Nintendo's own "Clubhouse Games" (2006) for the Nintendo DS, and "" (2020) for the Nintendo Switch.


title: Hanafuda

text: There are 48 cards total, divided into twelve suits, representing months of the year. Each suit is designated by a flower and has four cards. An extra blank card may be included to serve as a replacement. In Korean "Hwatu" decks, several joker cards (조커패) award various bonuses.


title: Hanafuda

text: The standard categorizations and point values for each card are as follows. Note that some games change the point values or categorizations of the cards. For example, in the game Hachi-Hachi, all of the November cards count as "kasu", and in the game Sakura, the values of the cards are different.


title: Hanafuda

text: A few cards in hanafuda contain Japanese text. In addition to the examples below, the December "kasu" cards typically display the manufacturer's name and marks, similar to the Ace of spades in western playing cards.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: The Prime Minister of Italy, officially the President of the Council of Ministers (), is the head of government of the Italian Republic. The office of president of the Council of Ministers is established by articles 92–96 of the Constitution of Italy; the president of the Council of Ministers is appointed by the president of the Republic and must have the confidence of the Parliament to stay in office.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Prior to the establishment of the Italian Republic, the position was called President of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Italy ("Presidente del Consiglio dei ministri del Regno d'Italia"). From 1925 to 1943 during the Fascist regime, the position was transformed into the dictatorial position of Head of the Government, Prime Minister Secretary of State ("Capo del Governo, Primo Ministro Segretario di Stato") held by Benito Mussolini, Duce of Fascism, who officially governed on the behalf of the king of Italy. King Victor Emmanuel III removed Mussolini from office in 1943 and the position was restored with Marshal Pietro Badoglio becoming prime minister in 1943, although the original denomination of President of the Council was only restored in 1944, when Ivanoe Bonomi was appointed to the post of prime minister. Alcide De Gasperi became the first prime minister of the Italian Republic in 1946.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: The prime minister is the president of the Council of Ministers which holds executive power and the position is similar to those in most other parliamentary systems. The formal Italian order of precedence lists the office as being, ceremonially, the fourth-highest Italian state office after the president and the presiding officers of the two houses of parliament.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: As the president of the Council of Ministers, the prime minister is required by the Constitution to have the supreme confidence of the majority of the voting members of the Parliament.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In addition to powers inherent in being a member of the Cabinet, the prime minister holds specific powers, most notably being able to nominate a list of Cabinet ministers to be appointed by the president of the Republic and the countersigning of all legislative instruments having the force of law that are signed by the president of the Republic.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Article 95 of the Italian constitution provides that the prime minister "directs and coordinates the activity of the ministers". This power has been used to a quite variable extent in the history of the Italian state as it is strongly influenced by the political strength of individual ministers and thus by the parties they represent.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: The prime minister's activity has often consisted of mediating between the various parties in the majority coalition, rather than directing the activity of the Council of Ministers. The prime minister's supervisory power is further limited by the lack of any formal authority to fire ministers. In the past, in order to make a cabinet reshuffle, prime ministers have sometimes resigned so that they could be re-appointed by the president and allowed to form a new cabinet with new ministers. For this to happen the prime minister requires the support of the president, who could theoretically refuse to re-appoint them following their resignation.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: The office was first established in 1848 in Italy's predecessor state, the Kingdom of Sardinia—although it was not mentioned in its constitution, the Albertine Statute. From 1848 to 1861, ten prime ministers governed the Kingdom, most of them being right-wing politicians.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: After the unification of Italy and the establishment of the kingdom, the procedure did not change. In fact, the candidate for office was appointed by the King and presided over a very unstable political system. The first prime minister was Camillo Benso di Cavour, who was appointed on 23 March 1861, but he died on 6 June the same year. From 1861 to 1911, Historical Right and Historical Left prime ministers alternatively governed the country.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: One of the most famous and influential prime ministers of this period was Francesco Crispi, a left-wing patriot and statesman, the first head of the government from Southern Italy. He led the country for six years from 1887 until 1891 and again from 1893 until 1896. Crispi was internationally famous and often mentioned along with world statesmen such as Otto von Bismarck, William Ewart Gladstone and Salisbury.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Originally an enlightened Italian patriot and democrat liberal, Crispi went on to become a bellicose authoritarian prime minister, ally and admirer of Bismarck. His career ended amid controversy and failure due to becoming involved in a major banking scandal and subsequently fell from power in 1896 after a devastating colonial defeat in Ethiopia. He is often seen as a precursor of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In 1892, Giovanni Giolitti, a leftist lawyer and politician, was appointed Prime Minister by King Umberto I, but after less than a year he was forced to resign and Crispi returned to power. In 1903, he was appointed again head of the government after a period of instability. Giolitti was Prime Minister five times between 1892 and 1921 and the second-longest serving prime minister in Italian history.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Giolitti was a master in the political art of "trasformismo", the method of making a flexible, fluid centrist coalition in Parliament which sought to isolate the extremes of the left and the right in Italian politics. Under his influence, the Italian Liberals did not develop as a structured party. They were instead a series of informal personal groupings with no formal links to political constituencies.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: The period between the start of the 20th century and the start of World War I, when he was Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior from 1901 to 1914 with only brief interruptions, is often called the Giolittian Era. A left-wing liberal with strong ethical concerns, Giolitti's periods in the office were notable for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms which improved the living standards of ordinary Italians, together with the enactment of several policies of government intervention.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Besides putting in place several tariffs, subsidies and government projects, Giolitti also nationalized the private telephone and railroad operators. Liberal proponents of free trade criticized the "Giolittian System", although Giolitti himself saw the development of the national economy as essential in the production of wealth.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: The Italian prime minister presided over a very unstable political system as in its first sixty years of existence (1861–1921) Italy changed its head of the government 37 times.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Regarding this situation, the first goal of Benito Mussolini, appointed in 1922, was to abolish the Parliament's ability to put him to a vote of no confidence, basing his power on the will of the King and the National Fascist Party alone. After destroying all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes, Mussolini and his Fascist followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years, he had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means, aspiring to create a totalitarian state. In 1925 the title of "President of the Council of Ministers" was changed into "Head of the Govermnent, Prime Minister Secretery of State", symbolizing the new dictatorial powers of Mussolini.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Mussolini remained in power until he was deposed by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1943 following a vote of no confidence by the Grand Council of Fascism and replaced by General Pietro Badoglio. A few months later, Italy was invaded by Nazi Germany and Mussolini was reinstated as head of a puppet State called Italian Social Republic, while the authorities of the Kingdom were forced to relocate in Southern Italy, which was under the control of the Allied Forces.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In 1944 Badoglio resigned and Ivanoe Bonomi was appointed to the post of Prime Minister, restoring the old title of "President of the Council of Ministers. Bonomi was briefly succeeded by Ferruccio Parri in 1945 and then by Alcide de Gasperi, leader of the newly formed Christian Democracy ("Democrazia Cristiana", DC) political party.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Following the 1946 Italian institutional referendum, the monarchy was abolished and De Gasperi became the first Prime Minister of the Italian Republic. The First Republic was dominated by the Christian Democracy which was the senior party in each government coalitions from 1946 to 1994 while the opposition was led by the Italian Communist Party (PCI), the largest one in Western Europe.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In the first years of the Republic, the governments were led by De Gasperi, who is also considered a founding father of the European Union.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: After the death of De Gasperi, Italy returned in a period of political instability and a lot of cabinets were formed in few decades. The second part of the 20th century was dominated by De Gasperi's protégé Giulio Andreotti, who was appointed Prime Minister seven times from 1972 to 1992.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: From the late 1960s until the early 1980s, the country experienced the Years of Lead, a period characterised by economic crisis (especially after the 1973 oil crisis), widespread social conflicts and terrorist massacres carried out by opposing extremist groups, with the alleged involvement of United States and Soviet intelligence. The Years of Lead culminated in the assassination of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978 and the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, where 85 people died.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In the 1980s, for the first time since 1945 two governments were led by non-Christian Democrat prime ministers: one Republican (Giovanni Spadolini) and one Socialist (Bettino Craxi). However, the Christian Democrats remained the main government party. During Craxi's government, the economy recovered and Italy became the world's fifth-largest industrial nation, gaining entry into the Group of Seven, but as a result of his spending policies, the Italian national debt skyrocketed during the Craxi era, soon passing 100% of the GDP.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In the early 1990s, Italy faced significant challenges as voters—disenchanted with political paralysis, massive public debt and the extensive corruption system (known as "Tangentopoli") uncovered by the "Clean Hands" ("mani pulite") investigation—demanded radical reforms. The scandals involved all major parties, but especially those in the government coalition: the Christian Democrats, who ruled for almost 50 years, underwent a severe crisis and eventually disbanded, splitting up into several factions. Moreover, the Communist Party was reorganised as a social-democratic force, the Democratic Party of the Left.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In the midst of the "mani pulite" operation which shook political parties in 1994, media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, owner of three private TV channels, founded Forza Italia (Forward Italy) party and won the elections, becoming one of Italy's most important political and economic figures for the next decade. Berlusconi is also the longest-serving prime minister in the history of the Italian Republic and the third-longest serving in the whole history after Mussolini and Giolitti.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: Ousted after a few months of government, Berlusconi returned to power in 2001, lost the 2006 general election five years later to Romano Prodi and his Union coalition, but won the 2008 general election and was elected Prime Minister for the third time in May 2008. In November 2011, Berlusconi lost his majority in the Chamber of Deputies and resigned. His successor, Mario Monti, formed a new government, composed of "technicians" and supported by both the center-left and the center-right. In April 2013, after the general election in February, the Vice Secretary of the Democratic Party (PD) Enrico Letta led a government composed by both center-left and the center-right.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: On 22 February 2014, after tensions in the Democratic Party the PD's Secretary Matteo Renzi was sworn in as the new prime minister. Renzi proposed several reforms, including a radical overhaul of the Senate and a new electoral law. However, the proposed reforms were rejected on 4 December 2016 by a referendum. Following the referendum's results, Renzi resigned and his Foreign Affairs Minister Paolo Gentiloni was appointed new Prime Minister.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: On 1 June 2018, after the 2018 Italian general election where the anti-establishment Five Star Movement become the largest party in Parliament, Giuseppe Conte (leader of Five Star) was sworn in as Prime Minister, at the head of a populist coalition of Five Star Movement and the League.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: After the 2019 European Parliament election in Italy, where the League exceeded Five Star Movement, Matteo Salvini (leader of the League) proposed a no-confidence vote in Conte. Conte resigned, but after the consultations between the President Sergio Mattarella and the political parties, Conte was reappointed as Prime Minister, heading a government of the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party of Nicola Zingaretti.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In January 2021, the centrist party Italia Viva, led by former Prime Minister Renzi, withdrew its support to Conte's government. In February 2021, President Mattarella appointed Mario Draghi, former President of the European Central Bank, Prime Minister. His new cabinet was supported by most Italian parties, including the League, M5S, PD, and FI.


title: Prime Minister of Italy

text: In October 2022, President Mattarella appointed Giorgia Meloni as Italy's first female Prime Minister, following the resignation of Mario Draghi amidst a government crisis and a general election.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Cloud Gate is a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, that is the centerpiece of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture and AT&T Plaza are located on top of Park Grill, between the Chase Promenade and McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink. Constructed between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture is nicknamed "The Bean" because of its shape, a name Kapoor initially disliked, but later grew fond of. Made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, its highly polished exterior has no visible seams. It measures , and weighs .


title: Cloud Gate

text: Kapoor's design was inspired by liquid mercury and the sculpture's surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline. Visitors are able to walk around and under "Cloud Gate"s high arch. On the underside is the "omphalos" (Greek for "navel"), a concave chamber that warps and multiplies reflections. The sculpture builds upon many of Kapoor's artistic themes, and it is popular with tourists as a photo-taking opportunity for its unique reflective properties.


title: Cloud Gate

text: The sculpture was the result of a design competition. After Kapoor's design was chosen, numerous technological concerns regarding the design's construction and assembly arose, in addition to concerns regarding the sculpture's upkeep and maintenance. Various experts were consulted, some of whom believed the design could not be implemented. Eventually, a feasible method was found, but the sculpture's construction fell behind schedule. It was unveiled in an incomplete form during the Millennium Park grand opening celebration in 2004, before being concealed again while it was completed. "Cloud Gate" was formally dedicated on May 15, 2006, and has since gained considerable popularity, both domestically and internationally.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Lying between Lake Michigan to the east and the Loop to the west, Grant Park has been Chicago's front yard since the mid-19th century. Its northwest corner, north of Monroe Street and the Art Institute, east of Michigan Avenue, south of Randolph Street, and west of Columbus Drive, had been Illinois Central rail yards and parking lots until 1997, when it was made available for development by the city as Millennium Park. For 2007, the park was Chicago's second largest tourist attraction, trailing only Navy Pier.


title: Cloud Gate

text: In 1999, Millennium Park officials and a group of art collectors, curators and architects reviewed the artistic works of 30 different artists and asked two for proposals. American artist Jeff Koons submitted a proposal to erect a permanent sculpture of a playground slide; his glass and steel design featured an observation deck above the ground that was accessible via an elevator. The committee chose the second design by internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor. Measuring and weighing , the proposal featured a seamless, stainless steel surface inspired by liquid mercury. This mirror-like surface would reflect the Chicago skyline, but its elliptical shape would distort and twist the reflected image. As visitors walk


title: Cloud Gate

text: In the underside of the sculpture is the omphalos, an indentation whose mirrored surface provides multiple reflections of any subject situated beneath it. The apex of the omphalos is above the ground. The concave underside allows visitors to walk underneath to see the omphalos, and through its arch to the other side so that they view the entire structure. During the grand opening week in July 2004, press reports described the omphalos as the "spoon-like underbelly". The stainless steel sculpture was originally envisioned as the centerpiece of the Lurie Garden at the southeast corner of the park. However, Park officials believed the piece was too large for the Lurie Garden and decided to locate it at AT&T Plaza, despite Kapoor's objections. Skyscrapers to the north along East Randolph Street, including The Heritage, the Smurfit-Stone Building, Two Prudential Plaza, One Prudential Plaza, and Aon Center are visible, reflected on both the east and west sides of the sculpture.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Although Kapoor does not draw with computers, computer modeling was essential to the process of analyzing the complex form, which created numerous issues. Since the sculpture was expected to be outdoors, concerns arose that it might retain and conduct heat in a way that would make it too hot to touch during the summer and so cold that one's tongue might stick to it during the winter. The extreme temperature variation between seasons was also feared to weaken the structure. Graffiti, bird droppings and fingerprints were also potential problems, as they would affect the aesthetics of the surface. The most pressing issue was the need to create a single seamless exterior for the external shell, a feat architect Norman Foster once believed to be nearly impossible.


title: Cloud Gate

text: While the sculpture was being constructed, public and media outlets nicknamed it "The Bean" because of its shape, a name that Kapoor described as "completely stupid". Months later, Kapoor officially named the piece "Cloud Gate". (Kapoor eventually accepted the nickname of "The Bean".) Critical reviews describe the sculpture as a passage between realms. Three-quarters of the sculpture's external surface reflects the sky and the name refers to it acting as a type of gate that helps bridge the space between the sky and the viewer. The sculpture and plaza are sometimes referred to jointly as ""Cloud Gate" on the AT&T Plaza". It is Kapoor's first public outdoor work in the United States, and is the work by which he is best known in the country according to the "Financial Times".


title: Cloud Gate

text: The British engineering firm Atelier One provided the sculpture's structural design, and Performance Structures, Inc. (PSI) was chosen to fabricate it because of their ability to produce nearly invisible welds. The project began with PSI attempting to recreate the design in miniature. A high-density polyurethane foam model was selected by Kapoor, which was then used to design the final structure, including the interior structural components. Initially, PSI planned to build and assemble the sculpture in Oakland, California, and ship it to Chicago through the Panama Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway. However, this plan was discarded after park officials deemed it too risky, so the decision was made to transport the individual panels by truck and to assemble the structure on-site, a task undertaken by MTH Industries.


title: Cloud Gate

text: The sculpture's weight raised concerns. Estimating the thickness of the steel needed to create the sculpture's desired aesthetics before fabrication was difficult. "Cloud Gate" was originally estimated to weigh when completed. However, the final figure was almost twice as heavy at . This extra weight required engineers to reconsider the sculpture's supporting structures. The roof of the Park Grill, upon which "Cloud Gate" sits, had to be built strong enough to bear the weight. The large retaining wall separating Chicago's Metra train tracks from the North Grant Park garage supports much of the weight of the sculpture and forms the back side of the restaurant. This wall, along with the rest of the garage's foundation, required additional bracing before the piece was erected. "Cloud Gate" is further buttressed by lateral members underneath the plaza that are anchored to the sculpture's interior structure by tie rods.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Inside "Cloud Gate"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s polished exterior shell are several steel structures that keep the sculpture standing. The first structural pieces, two type 304 stainless steel rings, were put into place in February 2004. As construction continued, crisscrossing pipe trusses were assembled between the two rings. The trusses and supporting structures were only present for the construction phases. The finished sculpture has no inner bracing. The supporting structural components were designed and constructed to ensure that no specific point was overloaded, and to avoid producing unwanted indentations on the exterior shell. The frame was also designed to expand and contract with the sculpture as temperatures fluctuate. As a result, the two large rings supporting the sculpture move independently of each other, allowing the shell to move independently of the rings.


title: Cloud Gate

text: When "Cloud Gate"'s interior components were completed, construction crews prepared to work on the outer shell; this comprises 168 stainless steel panels, each thick and weighing . They were fabricated using three-dimensional modeling software. Computers and robots were essential in the bending and shaping of the plates, which was performed by English wheel and a robotic scanning device. Metal stiffeners were welded to each panel's interior face to provide a small degree of rigidity. About a third of the plates, along with the entire interior structure, were fabricated in Oakland. The plates were polished to 98 percent of their final state and covered with protective white film before being sent to Chicago via trucks. Once in Chicago, the plates were welded together on-site, creating 2,442 linear feet (744 m) of welded seams. Welders used keyhole welding machines rather than traditional welding guns. The plates were fabricated so precisely that no on-site cutting or filing was necessary when lifting and fitting them into position.


title: Cloud Gate

text: When construction of the shell began in June 2004, a large tent was erected around the piece to shield it from public view. Construction began with the omphalos, where plates were attached to the supporting internal steel structure, from the inside (underside) of the sculpture downward to the outermost surfaces. This sequence caused the structure to resemble a large sombrero when the bottom was complete.


title: Cloud Gate

text: The shell of "Cloud Gate" was fully erected for the grand opening of Millennium Park on July 15, 2004, although it was unpolished and thus unfinished, because its assembly had fallen behind schedule. The piece was temporarily uncovered on July 8 for the opening, although Kapoor was unhappy with this as it allowed the public to see the sculpture in an unfinished state. The original plan was to re-erect the tent around the sculpture for polishing on July 24, but public appreciation for the piece convinced park officials to leave it uncovered for several months. The tent was again erected in January 2005 as a 24-person crew from Ironworkers Local 63 polished the seams between each plate. In order to grind, sand and polish the seams, six levels of scaffolding were erected around the sides of the sculpture, while climbing ropes and harnesses were used to polish harder-to-reach areas. When the upper and side portions of the shell were completed, the tent was once again removed in August 2005. On October 3, the omphalos was closed off as workers polished the final section. Every weld on the "Cloud Gate" underwent a five-stage process, required to produce the sculpture's mirror-like finish.


title: Cloud Gate

text: "Cloud Gate" was finally completed on August 28, 2005, and officially unveiled on May 15, 2006. The cost for the piece was first estimated at $6 million; this had escalated to $11.5 million by the time the park opened in 2004, with the final figure standing at $23 million in 2006. No public funds were involved; all funding came from donations from individuals and corporations.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Kapoor's contract states that the constructed piece should be expected to survive for 1,000 years. The lower of "Cloud Gate" is wiped down twice a day by hand, while the entire sculpture is cleaned twice a year with of liquid detergent. The daily cleanings use a Windex-like solution, while the semi-annual cleanings use Tide. A notable February 2009 rare incident saw two names etched in letters about tall on the northeast side of the curved sculpture. The graffiti was removed by the same firm that did the original polishing.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley declared the day of the sculpture's dedication, May 15, 2006, to be "Cloud Gate Day". Kapoor attended the celebration, while local jazz trumpeter and bandleader Orbert Davis and the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic played "Fanfare for Cloud Gate", which Davis composed. The public took an instant liking to the sculpture, affectionately referring to it as "The Bean". "Cloud Gate" has become a popular piece of public art and is now a fixture on many souvenirs such as postcards, sweatshirts, and posters. The sculpture has attracted a large number of locals, tourists, and art aficionados from around the world. The sculpture is now the piece by which Kapoor is most identified in the United States.


title: Cloud Gate

text: "Time" describes the piece as an essential photo opportunity, and more of a destination than a work of art. "The New York Times" writes that it is both a "tourist magnet" and an "extraordinary art object", while "USA Today" refers to the sculpture as a monumental abstract work. Chicago art critic Edward Lifson considers "Cloud Gate" to be among the greatest pieces of public art in the world. The American Welding Society recognized "Cloud Gate", MTH Industries and PSI with the group's Extraordinary Welding Award. "Time" named Millennium Park one of the ten best architectural achievements of 2004, citing "Cloud Gate" as one of the park's major attractions.


title: Cloud Gate

text: When the park first opened in 2004, Metra police stopped a Columbia College Chicago journalism student who was working on a photography project in Millennium Park and confiscated his film because of fears of terrorism. In 2005, the sculpture attracted some controversy when a professional photographer without a paid permit was denied access to the piece. As is the case for all works of art currently covered by United States copyright law, the artist holds the copyright for the sculpture. This allows the public to freely photograph "Cloud Gate", but permission from Kapoor or the City of Chicago (which has licensed the art) is required for any commercial reproductions of the photographs. The city first set a policy of collecting permit fees for photographs. These permits were initially set at $350 per day for professional still photographers, $1,200 per day for professional videographers and $50 per hour for wedding photographers. The policy has been changed so permits are only required for large-scale film, video and photography requiring ten-person crews and equipment.


title: Cloud Gate

text: In addition to restricting photography of public art, closing a public park for a private event has also been controversial. In 2005 and 2006, almost all of Millennium Park was closed for a day for corporate events. On both occasions, as one of the park's primary attractions, "Cloud Gate" was the focus of controversy. On September 8, 2005, Toyota Motor Sales USA paid $800,000 to rent most venues in the park including "Cloud Gate" on AT&T Plaza from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. On August 7, 2006, Allstate paid $700,000 to rent the park. For this price, Allstate acquired the visitation rights to a different set of features and only had exclusive access to "Cloud Gate" after 4 p.m. These corporate closures denied tourists access to Kapoor's public sculpture, and commuters who walk through the park were forced to take alternative routes. City officials stated that the money would help finance free public programs in Millennium Park.


title: Cloud Gate

text: In 2015, a sculpture similar to "Cloud Gate" was reported in Karamay, China at the site of an oil discovery, which according to Eduardo Peñalver, the Dean of Cornell Law School, "very probably" is a copyright infringement against "Cloud Gate". Though designed to resemble an oil bubble, Kapoor hoped that legal action would be taken against what he termed a Chinese knockoff. Mayor Rahm Emanuel was less concerned and said that it was a flattering imitation.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Anish Kapoor has a reputation for creating spectacles in urban settings by producing works of extreme size and scale. Before creating "Cloud Gate", Kapoor had created art that distorted images of the viewer instead of portraying images of its own. In so doing, he acquired experience blurring the boundary between the limit and the limitless. Kapoor drew on past experience to design "Cloud Gate", in particular the designing of "Sky Mirror" (2001), a concave stainless steel mirror that also used a theme of distorted perception on a grand scale.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Kapoor's objects often aim to evoke immateriality and the spiritual, an outcome he achieves either by carving dark voids into stone pieces, or more recently, through the sheer shine and reflectivity of his objects. This Indian artist's works have no fixed identity, but rather occupy an illusionary space that is consistent with eastern theologies shared by Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism, as well as Albert Einstein's views of a non-three-dimensional world. Kapoor explores the theme of ambiguity with his works that place the viewer in a state of "in-betweenness". The artist often questions and plays with such dualities as solidity–emptiness or reality–reflection, which in turn allude to such paired opposites as flesh–spirit, the here–the beyond, east–west, sky–earth, etc. that create the conflict between internal and external, superficial and subterranean, and conscious and unconscious. Kapoor also creates a tension between masculine and feminine within his art by having concave points of focus that invite the entry of visitors and multiplies their images when they are positioned correctly.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Kapoor often speaks of removing both the signature of the artist from his works as well as any traces of their fabrication, or what he refers to as "traces of the hand". He aspires to make his works look like they have independent realities that he reveals rather than creates. For him, removing all the seams from "Cloud Gate" was necessary in order to make the sculpture seem as though it was "perfect" and ready-made. These effects increase the viewer's fascination with it and makes them wonder what it is and where it came from. His attempts to hide his works' seams as an artist stand in contrast to Frank Gehry's architectural designs in the park, Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Pedestrian Bridge, which display their seams prominently.


title: Cloud Gate

text: "Cloud Gate" is described as a transformative, iconic work. It is similar to many of Kapoor's previous works in the themes and issues it addresses. While the sculpture's mirror effects are reminiscent of fun-house fairground mirrors, they also have a more serious intent; they help dematerialize this very large object, making it seem light and almost weightless. "Cloud Gate" is considered Kapoor's most ambitious use of complex mirrored form dynamics. Kapoor challenges his viewers to internalize his work through intellectual and theoretical exercise. By reflecting the sky, visiting and non-visiting pedestrians and surrounding architecture, "Cloud Gate" limits its viewers to partial comprehension at any time. The interaction with the viewer who moves to create his own vision gives it a spiritual dimension. The sculpture is described as a disembodied, luminous form, which is also how his earlier "1000 Names" (1979–80) was described when it addressed the metaphysical and mystical.


title: Cloud Gate

text: The viewer physically enters the art when he walks underneath it into its "navel". The omphalos is a "warped dimension of fluid space". In this dimension, solid is transformed into fluid in a disorienting multiplicative manner that intensifies the experience. It is emblematic of Kapoor's work to deconstruct empirical space and venture into manifold possibilities of abstract space. The experience is described as a displaced or virtual depth that is composed of multiplied surfaces.


title: Cloud Gate

text: According to project manager Lou Cerny of MTH Industries, "When the light is right, you can't see where the sculpture ends and the sky begins." The sculpture challenges perception by distorting and deforming the surrounding architecture. The skyscrapers along East Randolph Street to the northeast (Two Prudential Plaza, and Aon Center), north (One Prudential Plaza) and northwest (The Heritage, Crain Communications Building) are reflected on "Cloud Gate"'s surface when viewed from either the east or the west. The sculpture also warps viewers' perception of time by changing the speed of movements such as the passing of clouds.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Although in the conventional sense "Cloud Gate" is not an opening that leads anywhere in the same way that monumental gates do, it frames a view and is celebratory in the way it creates a ceremonial place. The work is credited with achieving a new level or understanding described as a transubstantiation of material, reminiscent of that which the artist experienced during a 1979 trip to India. Kapoor's "1000 Names" evolved immediately after this trip; twenty-five years later he created "Cloud Gate", an object that emerged from material forms to become immaterial.


title: Cloud Gate

text: Kapoor often relies on tenets of Hinduism in his art and says that "The experience of opposites allows for the expression of wholeness." Primal dualities that are one, such as the lingam and yoni, are important to Indian culture, and "Cloud Gate" represents both the male and female in one entity by symbolizing both the vagina and testicles. Thus, it represents the tension between the masculine and the feminine.


title: Cloud Gate

text: The sculpture has been used as a backdrop in commercial films, notably in the 2006 Hollywood film "The Break-Up", which had to reshoot several scenes because the sculpture was under cover for the initial filming. It is also prominently featured in the ending scene of "Source Code". Director Duncan Jones felt the structure was a metaphor for the movie's subject matter and aimed for it to be shown at the beginning and end of the movie. The sculpture served as an aesthetic and symbolic setting for the 2012 film "The Vow" when the lead characters share a kiss under it. It also appears in the video to "Homecoming", a song by Chicago native Kanye West, featuring Chris Martin of the band Coldplay. The sculpture is also featured in the 2008 mumblecore film "Nights and Weekends". It was also featured in the Bollywood film "Dhoom 3" and the 2014 movie "", the fourth installment in the "Transformers" series. A modified reproduction of "Cloud Gate" is also included in "Watch Dogs", a video game released in 2014 that takes place in Chicago. Unlike the real sculpture, the in-game replica is a curved, white torus. A movement to Windex the Bean was started in 2017, gaining the attention of over thirty thousand people on Facebook. The event took place on November 15, 2017, because of a consensus that the Bean is dirty and needs to be cleaned.


title: Cloud Gate

text: "Cloud Gate" plays a prominent role in "Battle Ground", the 17th title in the Dresden Files urban fantasy novel series by Jim Butcher. In the Chicago of the novels, the sculpture was commissioned by Queen Mab, ruler of the Winter Court of Faerie, and proves to be hiding a large stockpile of armaments. Its placement by the Winter Court was in anticipation of a massive supernatural attack on the city of Chicago.


title: Cloud Gate

text: A June 2017 NRA video entitled "The Clenched Fist of Truth" used an image of "Cloud Gate". Anish Kapoor sued the NRA to stop running the video, pay any profits gained as a result of the video, compensate him for statutory damages equivalent to $150,000 per infringement, and attorney fees. The suit was settled in December 2018 with the removal of the image from the NRA video, with no cash payment made to Kapoor, according to the NRA.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: Terrance Quinn (born July 15, 1952), known professionally as Terry O'Quinn, is an American actor. He played John Locke on the TV series "Lost", the title role in "The Stepfather" and "Stepfather II", and Peter Watts in "Millennium", which ran for three seasons (1996–1999). He has also hosted "Mysteries of the Missing" on The Science Channel. For his role in "Lost", he won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: O'Quinn was born at War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, one of 11 siblings, and grew up in nearby Newberry, Michigan. He is of Irish descent, and was raised Catholic. He attended Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City. He changed his surname from Quinn to O'Quinn as another registered actor already had the name Terrance Quinn.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: In the 1970s, he went to Baltimore to act in the Center Stage production of "Tartuffe". He remained at Center Stage for some years and often appeared with the late Tana Hicken, most notably as Benedick to her Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing". His first movie role was in "Heaven's Gate".


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: O'Quinn began acting in the 1970s during his time at Central Michigan University. He not only was an actor but also playwright/director. He wrote and directed the musical "Orchestrina". This musical featured five main characters: The Man (played by Jeff Daniels), The Boy (Harold Downs), The Woman (Ann O'Donnell), The Girl (Debbie Penwarden), and The Drunk (James Hilliker), plus a female and a male chorus. He was roommates at CMU with actor Brad Slaight.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: Starting in 1980, O'Quinn has appeared in various feature films such as "Silver Bullet", "Tombstone", "Heaven's Gate", "Young Guns", alongside Rutger Hauer in Blind Fury, and as Howard Hughes in "The Rocketeer".


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: O'Quinn also appeared in the Canadian horror movie, "Pin" (1988) alongside British-born Canadian actor, David Hewlett.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: His early television roles include guest appearances on " Tales of the unexpected (episode "in the bag"), "Miami Vice" (episode "Give a Little, Take a Little"), "Moonlighting", "" (episode "The Pegasus"), "The Twilight Zone" (1985 revival; episode "Chameleon"), "" (episode "Hate Crimes"), a recurring role on "Earth 2", another recurring role as Captain (later Rear Admiral) Thomas Boone on "JAG", as well as Colonel Will Ryan in episode 15 of season 1 on the "JAG" spin-off series "NCIS" (episode "Enigma").


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: Around 1995, O'Quinn made guest appearances in "The X-Files" and "Harsh Realm", produced by Chris Carter, who also cast him in the film "The X-Files: Fight The Future" and then once again in the final season. In 1996 O'Quinn started acting in the television series "Millennium" as Peter Watts, also produced by Chris Carter. O'Quinn held this role for all three seasons of the series. O'Quinn holds the distinction of having played four different characters within the extended "X-Files"/"Millennium" continuum (the two shows being classed together since both Lance Henriksen's character of Frank Black and Charles Nelson Reilly's character of Jose Chung have appeared in both shows).


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: O'Quinn made his breakthrough by starring as the title character in "The Stepfather", a deranged serial killer going by the name "Jerry Blake" (his character's real name and identity are never revealed), who is obsessed with having an ideal family. When a widowed mother and daughter do not comport with his expectations, he spirals into a spell of madness and attempts to brutally murder them. O'Quinn was praised by critics, including Roger Ebert in the "Chicago Sun-Times", who commented, ""The Stepfather" has one wonderful element: Terry O'Quinn's performance." Ebert wrote, "He is a journeyman actor from TV and many movies, usually in supporting roles, and you may or may not recognize him. What's clear at once is that he is a strong actor, and given this leading role he brings all kinds of creepy dimensions to it. He has the thankless assignment of showing us a completely hateful, repellent character – and he approaches the task as an exercise in cloying middle-class good manners." O'Quinn was nominated for both a Saturn Award and an Independent Spirit Award for his performance. A sequel, "Stepfather II", was released two years later, in which his character escapes from an insane asylum. It grossed almost a million dollars less at the box office. Not impressed with the second movie, O'Quinn declined to appear in the third installment, in which the stepfather character was portrayed by Robert Wightman.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: O'Quinn was approached by director of the 2009 reboot of "The Stepfather", Nelson McCormick, to make a cameo appearance in the film, but according to the producers O'Quinn turned down the offer.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: After a string of recurring appearances on "Alias" (2002–2003), as the FBI Director Kendall, O'Quinn became a favorite of television producer J.J. Abrams. Following a seven-episode guest run on "The West Wing" in 2003–2004, O'Quinn received a call from Abrams indicating that the producer wanted to cast him in his new television drama "Lost" without any audition. In 2005 O'Quinn received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama for his work as John Locke on the series "Lost". O'Quinn admitted on the TV Guide Channel that he did not have much faith in "Lost" at first, calling it "The Mysterious Gilligan's Island of Dr. Moreau". The show, however, became one of the most popular on television, and on September 16, 2007, he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series for his role, and was nominated again for an Emmy for the role in 2010, which he did not win. In a "TV.com" interview O'Quinn commented that the reason he felt comfortable playing this character is because he's a bit like him.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: O'Quinn has made a number of television appearances since "Lost". From 2012–2013, O'Quinn starred in the short-lived series "666 Park Avenue" as Gavin Doran. In 2012, he appeared in the second season of "Falling Skies". Additionally, O’Quinn starred for two seasons in Amazon Studios' "Patriot".


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: In 2016, it was announced that O'Quinn would be joining the second season of "Secret and Lies". In 2019, O'Quinn starred in the only season of "Perpetual Grace, LTD" on Epix.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: In February 2021, it was announced that O'Quinn was cast as Martin Queller in the upcoming Netflix thriller series "Pieces of Her", which is adapted from the Karin Slaughter novel of the same name.


title: Terry O'Quinn

text: Terry joined the Cameo platform shortly after its launch in 2017. He has since been creating videos for fans and donating all of the proceeds to the Virginia Beach SPCA. Terry has raised thousands of dollars on Cameo, and continues to create videos weekly.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Hericium erinaceus (also called lion's mane mushroom, mountain-priest mushroom or bearded tooth fungus) is an edible mushroom belonging to the tooth fungus group. Native to North America, Europe and Asia, it can be identified by its long spines (greater than 1 cm length), occurrence on hardwoods, and tendency to grow a single clump of dangling spines. The fruit bodies can be harvested for culinary use.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium erinaceus" can be mistaken for other species of "Hericium", which grow across the same range. In the wild, these mushrooms are common during late summer and fall on hardwoods, particularly American beech and maple. Usually "H. erinaceus" is considered saprophytic, as it mostly feeds on dead trees. However, it can also be found on living trees, so may be a tree parasite. This could indicate an endophytic habitat.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Both the Latin genus name ' and the species name ' mean 'hedgehog' in Latin. This is also reflected by the German name, "Igel-Stachelbart" (literally, "hedgehog goatee"), and some of its common English names, such as "bearded hedgehog" and "hedgehog mushroom". It is known in Japan as "Yamabushitake", in China as "Hou Tou Gu", and in Europe and the United States as "Lion's Mane".


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: The fruitbodies of "H. erinaceus" are large, irregular bulbous tubercules. They are in diameter, and are dominated by crowded, hanging, spore-producing spines, which are 1–5 cm long or longer. Fruit bodies and spines colour are white to cream, but can turn yellow-brown when older.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: The hyphal system is monomitic, amyloid, and composed of thin- to thick-walled hyphae that are about 3–15 microns (um) wide. The hyphae also contain clamped septa and gloeoplerous elements (filled with oily, resinous substances), which can come into the hymenium as gloeocystidia.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: The basidia are 25–40 µm long and 5–7 µm wide, contain four spores each and possess a basal clamp. The white amyloid basidiospores measure around 5–7 µm in length and 4–5 µm in width. The spore shape is described as subglobose to short ellipsoid and the spore surface is smooth to finely roughened.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: The fruitbodies of "H. erinaceus" are mainly produced annually from August to November in Europe. It was observed that "H. erinaceus" could fruit intermittently for 20 years on the same dead tree. It is hypothesized that "H. erinaceus" can survive for 40 years. The mating system of "H. erinaceus" species found in the USA was shown to be bifactorially heterothallic.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: The monokaryotic mycelium growth of "H.erinaceus" is slower than dikaryotic growth and only about a low percentage of monokaryotic cultures yield fruitbodies. Monokaryotic fruitbodies are also smaller than dikaryotic fruitbodies. The monokaryotic mycelium was found to produce fusoid to subglobose chlamydospores of 6–8 x 8–10 µm size. These spores can stay viable for more than seven years and be stored under anaerobic conditions. Chlamydospore germination requires 30 to 52 hours, with a germination success rate of 32 to 54%.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Spore production is highest at midday, relative to temperature increase and relative humidity decrease. Daily trends towards lower relative humidity can favor sporulation, however levels of relative humidity that are too low do not favor high total spore production.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium" species can be found throughout the northern hemisphere. "Hericium erinaceus" has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries and its production is widespread within Asia, mostly using extensive production practices on wood logs or stumps.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Despite its higher prevalence in Asia, "H. erinaceus" was first described in North America. Its production there occurs only on a small scale. Most of it is intensive indoor production with only a few small outdoor sites where log cultivation is practiced. Three "Hericium" species can be found in eastern North America, one being "H. erinaceus", the other two "H. americanum" and "H. coralloides."


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Although "H. erinaceus" is native to Europe, it has been red listed in 13 European countries due to poor germination and establishment. This specific genus fruits between August and December in the United Kingdom, and will continue to produce spores until as late as February in the following year. It is able to withstand cold temperatures and frost conditions.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Hericium erinaceus is scarce and threatened and is one of only four fungi to have the highest level of legal protection in the UK, making both picking and sale of the fungus illegal.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: In fungi cultivation, fungal strains are analogous to plant varieties in crop breeding. Fungal strains comprise clonal descendants of a single isolation from one fungal colony in a pure culture. "Hericium" spp. grow in the wild in North America, Europe and Asia and, although there is considerable scientific research about them, they are not commonly industrially produced. Accordingly, there are few commercially available strains in the USA or Europe and little or no breeding for higher yield or other favorable traits has occurred. Production trials in Egypt report yields of "H. erinaceus" averaging at 165g per 1 kg medium.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium erinaceus" produces edible fruiting bodies that have uses as food and in traditional medicine. Some guides consider it inedible.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium erinaceus" is common in gourmet cooking. Young specimens are considered the best. Alongside shiitake ("Lentinus edodes") and oyster ("Pleurotus ostreatus") mushrooms, "H. erinaceus" is used as a specialty mushroom. Its flavor may be compared to that of lobster. The production of specialty mushrooms in the USA increased by about 23% between 2010 and 2018 from 16 to 20 million lbs (7–9 million kg).


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium erinaceus" fruiting bodies contain 57% carbohydrates (8% as dietary fiber), 4% fat, and 22% protein.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium erinaceus" contains diverse phytochemicals, including polysaccharides, such as β-glucan, as well as hericenones and erinacines. From its essential oil, 77 aroma and flavor compounds were identified, including hexadecanoic acid (26% of total oil composition), linoleic acid (13%), phenylacetaldehyde (9%) and benzaldehyde (3%), and other oils, such as 2-methyl-3-furanthiol, 2-ethylpyrazine and 2,6-diethylpyrazine. Low concentrations of ergosterol are present.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Brennandania lambi" (Acari: ) is a mite pest of fungi culture in China. This mite can develop and reproduce on the mycelium of "H. erinaceus". Farm hygiene and heating treatments are the most important pest management strategies that should be done to counter this acarus.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium" species are good competitors against other wood colonisers. They show the ability to maintain their place on dead wood, also when confronted with secondary colonizers like "Trametes versicolor" and "Stereum hirsutum". "Hericium erinaceus" has shown to be slightly more competitive than other fungi tooth species including "Creolophus cirrhatus" and "Hericium coralloides."


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: As a saprophyte that occurs on dead wood, "H. erinaceus" requires adequate substrate factors, including suitable carbon and nitrogen sources, a certain pH value and ideal carbon/nitrogen ratio.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Many different substrates have been successfully used for this mushroom cultivation. Depending on the type of cultivation, the substrate can be either solid (artificial log) or liquid (submerged culture and deep submerged culture).


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: The solid substrate is most commonly a mixture of sawdust of hardwood or conifer containing different complements that may include wheat bran, wheat straw, soybean meal, corn meal, rice bran and rice straw. For example, "H. erinaceus" strains grow on beech sawdust substrate enriched with wheat bran (20%), rye grain (25%), soybean meal (7%), rapeseed meal (10%) or meat-osseous flour (6%).


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: An example of a liquid substrate composition can be glucose for the carbon source, soybean powder, corn powder, and wheat bran powder as a complex nitrogen source. The pH values most suitable for the favorable growth of "H. erinaceus" were in the range of 5.0 - 9.0, with pH 6.0 as optimal.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: "Hericium erinaceus" requires a humid environment for its growth: 85 to 90% of relative humidity in the air. The incubation temperature most suitable for the mycelial growth of "H. erinaceus" was found to be 25 °C, and the optimum temperature for vegetative growth was 26 °C. "H. erinaceus" is unable to grow with a water potential lower than -5 Mpa.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: The artificial cultivation of "H. erinaceus" was first reported in China in 1988. It is cultivated using artificial logs, bottles and polypropylene bags. However, this type of artificial cultivation is not suitable for industrialized production due to its low yield and long cultivation cycles.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Submerged culture is a type of artificial cultivation of "H. erinaceus" whereby the fungus is grown in a liquid medium. Using this method, a large number of mycelia can be obtained quickly. Bioactive compounds can be sourced from the fruiting bodies, submerged-cultivated mycelial biomass or liquid-cultivated broth. Growers optimize the culture medium composition to obtain simultaneously high yields of "H. erinaceus" mycelial biomass, exopolysaccharides, and polysaccharides. Submerged fermentation is preferable for the production of mycelial biomass and biologically active metabolites in order to produce a more uniform biomass and extract products.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Growth regulators, such as 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and gibberellin, were observed to have an advantageous impact on spore germination. Other technologies, like red and green laser light of low intensity, stimulated spore germination as well as the vegetative growth of mycelium. Argon and helium lasers also contributed to the acceleration of fruit body development by 36–51%.


title: Hericium erinaceus

text: Wild strains of "Hericium" spp. can be isolated and cultivated by first gathering fruiting bodies from fallen trees in the natural habitat. The fruiting bodies can then be opened to attain pieces of their inner spore-producing tissue. This tissue is then placed onto petri dishes with agar to cultivate fungal colonies at 25 °C. After several transfers to new petri dishes to verify the purity of the strain, it can be kept at -80 °C for long-term storage.


title: Gillian Flynn

text: Gillian Schieber Flynn (; born February 24, 1971) is an American author, screenwriter, and producer. She is known for writing the thriller and mystery novels, "Sharp Objects" (2006), "Dark Places" (2009), and "Gone Girl" (2012), which are all critically acclaimed. Her books have been published in 40 languages and according to "The Washington Post", as of 2016 "Gone Girl" alone has sold more than 15 million copies.


title: Gillian Flynn

text: Flynn is the screenwriter of the 2014 film adaptation of "Gone Girl", directed by David Fincher. For the script, she won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, among others.


title: Gillian Flynn

text: The author also wrote and produced the HBO limited series adaptation of "Sharp Objects"—for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award and a —and co-wrote with director Steve McQueen the film "Widows" (2018).


title: Gillian Flynn

text: Flynn also worked as a showrunner, writer, and executive producer on Amazon Prime Video's sci-fi thriller series "Utopia", which ran for one season.